Avelino González had instructed them to be at the Avalon Motel outside town by sundown. In all other respects, the invitation remained baffling.
“Peter, you know there are reports that González beheaded some of his opposition.”
“What are you saying?”
“González is serious business.”
He looked over at Henry. “Something else on your mind?”
“I’m wondering why you’re not nervous. We’re walking into a meat grinder, you know that.”
Peter refused to explain himself. He was tired of mapping out the real world for Henry. He had no fear of González for the simple reason that he wasn’t afraid of physical danger. When anyone, cop or civilian, asked him about the gun battles he had been in or the violent criminals he had faced down, the one factor he never discussed was his fear, or lack of it. It was impossible to articulate, since it would come across as arrogance, even stupidity, if he tried. At best, he would appear to be a cold bastard, which he was not. He feared for others but not himself.
Peter sidestepped Henry’s probe. “Simple. The question we’ll ask is the same as before: Does he know Casper Shaw’s true name? If he won’t answer that …”
Castle Rock turned out to be a pleasant reinvented tourist village with cute storefronts. It prospered as an adjunct to Denver, just far enough away to claim a separate municipal identity. The eponymous Castle Rock, visible from any spot in the area, pinned the town to the map.
“Drug dealers and motels go together like burritos and refried beans,” Henry said as they parked the F-150.
The Avalon was modern and comfortable. A shootout here seemed unlikely, Peter estimated, but he asked for a room on the second level, with a view from the window of the highway approaches.
A half hour later, there was a knock on the door and Peter answered. A tall, fat-bellied Mexican man with a bolo tie stood back from the door, by the iron railing. “Ready to parlay?” He could have been the hospitality coordinator inviting them for wine and cheese in the lobby, except that he didn’t smile and he displayed a large handgun on his hip. The big man led them outside.
Coincidentally, or not, González occupied a mini-suite six numbers down the same upper row of the motel. Peter then realized that the Mexican, a man who depended on elaborate precautions, probably wouldn’t be in the same room overnight.
González was about sixty-five, Peter estimated, older than he had expected for a drug dealer; but then, the Mexican probably didn’t expect to be dealing with a seventy-three-year-old detective either. His movements were slow, measured. He silently acknowledged the detectives. Peter sized him up: he wasn’t high on his own product and his expression was alert, though he wasn’t big on eye contact. This was a serious character.
The fat man with the impressive sidearm stayed by the door until González told him to leave. The drug lord put the chain on, a ludicrous thing to do given the security patrolling the balcony.
“So, the Mormon and the Englishman,” he said, to let Peter know he had done some research. “I prefer a second-floor room. Allows me a view of the camino.” He glanced at Peter. “I always used to rent the last unit in the row, so that I could hear my enemies coming up the stairs. Until the night they began firing their MAC-10s directly through the end wall.”
“Why are we here, señor?” Peter said.
“You know Shaw’s real name, or so you told DeKlerk,” Henry added. Peter noted that any goodwill from the Wendover one-on-one had dried up, at least as far as Henry was concerned.
“I don’t know his name,” González said.
“Then we can’t do business,” Henry said, too brusquely.
“Just a minute,” Peter said. “I want to talk with Señor González alone for a moment, Henry.”
The younger man looked puzzled. Peter explained. “Señor González initially asked for me on the phone. I want to ask him why.”
Henry hesitated but allowed everyone to save face. “Sure. See you back in the room.”
“We need a mutual pledge of good faith,” Peter said the moment Henry departed.
“What do you expect from me?” González said. They were two old realists talking, veterans of the criminal justice world.
“You don’t know Devereau’s name but you know where he’s going to be, am I right?”
A flicker of a smile. “Yes. Tomorrow night. We will ambush him while he tries to rip off one of my warehouses.”
“How many men are we bringing?”
“You, me, José, and Señor Pastern, and a few spotters.”
“You could bring an army.”
“This is personal. Are you in, Mr. Cammon?”
“Not so fast. If I commit, I’ll need to know why you are taking such a risk. Did Devereau kill your cousin, like DeKlerk suggested to me?”
The Mexican pondered his answer for a full minute. “It was not my cousin that Devereau shot in one of his hijackings back then. It was my younger brother. I have three brothers, but to lose any one of them like that demands retribution. Revenge is always personal. Yes, I want to be the one to kill him.”
“That was the attack just north of here, in 1995.” Peter silently thanked Maddy for her research.
González looked over at Peter in surprise. “Yes, that one. Five dead men.” He paced the room like a lion in a cramped cage. “The leader shot them point blank and burned the operation to the ground. Now I want my turn. But is it personal for you, Señor Cammon? Is it personal enough?”
Peter’s answer came a little too fast. “I have no problem killing him …”
“I understand that you have killed seven men.”
But Peter wouldn’t allow González to find common ground in body counts. “I believe Devereau is evil, on the basis of his murder of the Watsons, the Proffets, and Henry’s wife. There were also terrorist actions back in the eighties and nineties that qualify as indiscriminate killing and show a psychopathic mind, but it’s personal for me because it is that way for my friend.”
González smiled. “Revenge is a dish often served best on a cold case.” He had discerned that Peter’s resolve came from recesses as dark as his own. Peter was committed and the Mexican knew it.
It was time to change the subject to very practical matters.
“Was Marcel Riotte one of your people?” Peter asked.
“Yes, but small-time.”
“Did he deal in cocaine and hashish as well as marijuana?”
“Yes.”
“Heroin?”
“Yes.”
“The Kansas police found only traces in Riotte’s trailer.”
“Devereau stole the heavy drugs. He sold them in Denver the next day. We are sure of this.”
Peter leaned forward. “Which leads us to why we are all in Colorado today. How many armed men do you expect tomorrow night?”
“He has put together his squad very quickly, but it won’t outweigh our firepower.”
“I’m told four men took out Riotte. A team of six in Wichita,” Peter said. “How easy is it for Devereau to recruit people from the militia movements?”
González shrugged. “Weekend cowboys.”
Peter felt that González was being far too casual about the opposition. Was this some macho, daredevil expedition? “Nonetheless, I’d like to go over our preparations in detail.”
The Mexican stood and shook his hand. “Tomorrow morning.”
When the fat-bellied man knocked, González nodded to Peter, who slipped the chain and opened the door.
“Enjoy your evening,” González said. “The place offers free Wi-Fi.”
CHAPTER 34
A strange torpor afflicted the Avalon Motel. A swirl of warm rain came and went, steaming up the rooms. Everyone understood they were heading into a confrontation the next night, yet little had been discussed and the plan of attack
remained vague. Peter felt his momentum peaking, and he itched to get going. A walking tour of Castle Rock seemed ill-advised, and so they asked at the front desk for a good Mexican restaurant. Before leaving the lobby of the motel, Peter noted the fat bodyguard slouching in an armchair and watching television when he should have been watching his boss. It took a minute for Peter to grasp that José was positioned there to watch Henry and him come and go.
At the restaurant, Henry and Peter drank Cokes. Peter ordered the mildest item on the menu, and they spent the rest of the evening checking email messages from their phones, as if electronic connections with the broader world might palliate the tension pervading the motel.
Maddy had sent more data packets, and opening them would overload Peter’s phone, but she had included a cover note pointing to one item labelled “W/B: Coincidence?”
Dad:
Broadened my search this afternoon to look for events (I’ll let you define this category) coinciding with the Hollis Street killings. Part of attached package. Do you know Whitey Bulger? Crime boss from Boston, killer of maybe forty people. Disappeared in 1994 and arrested in June of 2011. Period roughly coincides with Devereau. Expected to come to trial next year; Bulger case has been in the news last six months. Not suggesting the two knew each other but maybe Dev figured if Bulger could be caught after umpteen years under a new ID, then he was vulnerable too.
At 9 a.m., González sent José to fetch them. Peter noted that the bodyguard led them to a different room at the other end of the Avalon.
González was cheerful and recharged as he opened the door. Weapons covered the bed, which hadn’t been slept in.
“Who wants to man up?” he said, sweeping his hand over the smorgasbord of weapons. There were pistols and revolvers, hunting rifles converted with military sights, semi-automatics, sawed-off guns, and a Taser. All the guns were suitable for an ambush, but at first Peter was unsure which one to select for himself.
“On TV,” Henry said, “the weapons seized from drug deals always include gold-plated guns with giant silencers.”
“Nobody seized this stuff, señor,” said the fat man in a smoky, aloof voice. “No toys or bling. Any one of these guns will get you out of gold-plated trouble fast.”
Henry gazed in awe. “Look at that MAC-10.”
Perhaps because Henry sounded like a boy shopping for his first fishing rod, or because they had no idea what was coming, Peter adopted a no-nonsense tone. “Relax, Henry. I’m the one who needs ordnance.”
“You want a pistol or a long gun, Chief Inspector?” José said.
Peter picked up the MAC-10. The machine pistol was popular with drug dealers and their bodyguards, and remarkably compact. Peter hefted it and found the weight was balanced nicely over the grip and the magazine. “What kind of ammunition does it take?”
González answered. “Standard .45 ACP, or 9-millimetre. Have you used one before?”
“No. I’ve tried the Cobra. It looks similar.” The Cobra “land defence pistol” had found favour with Rhodesian farmers back in the sixties. “What’s the range?”
“Good at 200 feet, less good beyond 230,” González stated. Peter noticed the threaded barrel on the MAC-10. “It is usually fired with a sound suppressor,” González added. “Would you like to try it today?”
Henry’s head jerked up. “Yeah! We don’t have much else to do while we wait for tonight.”
Peter remained cautious. “Where can we shoot?”
González looked over at the fat-bellied man, who nodded. “There’s a place out in the desert. We’ve employed the range before.”
“Don’t we risk attracting attention?”
“Hell, it would be unusual if you didn’t hear shooting in the desert. We’ll try not to alarm the gringo condominium owners. You notice we haven’t offered you the AR-15, which is a very powerful and popular semi-automatic. Not right for what we are about to do.”
“Do you have shotguns?” Peter said.
“There’s a Remington there on the pillow.”
“I prefer the Heckler & Koch 12-gauge Tactical.”
“An older gun, the 512 Auto. We can get one.” The fat man nodded again and smiled a connoisseur’s smile.
“And perhaps a light semi-auto carbine, the H&K German-type, as backup?” Peter said.
“We can try. Standard .45 ammunition, ten-round mag. We will definitely try.”
Peter didn’t relish shooting out in the desert with Henry, but doing something macho might calm him down; otherwise it would be a long day in the hotel room with bad television choices. Peter liked his own weapon selections. The German carbine would do for distance work, and he trusted the shotgun for close-up slaughter. The machine pistol was an indiscriminate firearm, and he left it on the bed.
It took an hour to reach the makeshift range in the desert. Peter and Henry followed González’s matched pair of Cadillac Escalades into the open, undistinguished scrubland east of Castle Rock. José and two sunburnt Mexican assistants were already setting up posts at paced-off hundred-yard lengths. They came back and hauled green melons, one at a time, out to the posts and balanced them there like Humpty Dumptys.
González led Peter and Henry to the back door of one of the Escalades, where several guns, including the shotgun requested by Peter, were lined up.
Looking at the display with a wry grin, the drug lord said, “I am ready for anything these days. When you look in the back of a truck, you don’t know whether you will see guns, drugs, cash, or bodies. All in a row, like los espárragos.”
The helpers carried each man’s weapons out to the firing line. González favoured a Glock 14, with a .45 in reserve. José gave instruction to Henry, who had fallen in love with a MAC-10, which this time came with a cylindrical suppressor screwed onto the barrel. Peter wondered if the silencer threw off the shooter’s balance, but he judged that the overall package remained light and deadly. Henry fired off a few rounds, which kicked up dust ninety feet away and did no damage to the closest post. He pressed the trigger again in rapid fire mode and nicked the green-hided melon atop the stake. The machine pistol produced a gentle stutter. Peter could see why untrained bangers in the drug business liked to use the no-aim-required MAC-10 and MAC-11.
“Not for you, Inspector?” González said.
“We want to shoot one man, not erase the neighbourhood. Henry, you’d do better with your own .45.”
José brought over the Heckler & Koch shotgun, and a beauty it was. Peter examined the action and felt the weight of the gun. He loaded the chamber with medium-size shells. He began to stride towards one of the posts, halting and firing his first shot, holding the gun at near shoulder level but avoiding any kickback that could wreck his upper arm or buck him in the chin. The shot went two feet to the left of the post. He lowered the gun to hip level and fired three more times as he continued walking. The second shot struck the post, sending the melon rocking, but before it could fall, the third load hit the target. Peter stopped twenty-five feet from the shattered mess and fired his next shell into the post stump, execution-style. The innards of the shattered melon coated the stunted pillar like blood.
Peter returned to the start line, grim but calm. His performance overwhelmed Henry, who sensed that it had been for his benefit. Peter didn’t dare meet the Mexican’s eyes, or both old pros would have laughed. Henry was now convinced that his partners at the OK Corral were lethally serious men; this had been Peter’s objective all along.
Peter took a short turn with the carbine but otherwise was content to watch. While Henry and José continued practising, he walked a distance into the scrub and took out his mobile. He speed-dialed Maddy and reached her on one ring. Although blasts of gunfire could be heard behind him, he spoke as if nothing was unusual.
“Hello, dear.”
“Am I interrupting anything important, Dad?” A particularly loud volley forced
her to pause. “What’s that noise?”
“I’m standing in the middle of the desert, shooting guns.”
“So nothing new … You didn’t respond to my last package. I’ve been worried about you.”
“I’m safe.”
“Surrounding yourself with guns doesn’t make you safe. Americans!”
“I haven’t had time to open your attachments, except the Whitey Bulger note …”
“Dad, Mom and I were both worried. We both had violent dreams last night.”
Peter knew better than to discount premonitory dreams. “Is she there with you?”
“No, no, I’m in Leeds. You should call her tomorrow, let her know you’re okay.”
“I’m okay.”
Peter returned to the carnage of fruit. The drug kingpin was full of surprises. His silent helpers had manhandled an easel and a whiteboard from the rear of the Escalade and erected it at the firing line. This is like some corporate morale-building exercise, with semi-automatic weapons. One helper brought out a building schematic and clipped it to the whiteboard. José, Henry, and Peter gathered round. Peter almost expected González to pull out a laser pointer.
González explained the layout of the drug operation and the way they would approach it that night. They would take up observation posts at the back. The complex was made up of three linked buildings. Hashish and marijuana were processed in a central building connected to a shipping room, which exited onto a driveway under a portico. A third building on the other side of the processing centre contained a marijuana storefront where college kids and small-timers bought their dime bags. Hashish, when warm, gives off a strong odour, and the centre processing room was equipped with powerful fans to draw off the smell.
“The noise from the fans works against us,” González explained. “It may cover Devereau’s invasion. But we’re counting on sealing him inside the building from both sides, so that our team won’t have to go in after him at all. When he comes out, bang!”
The Verdict on Each Man Dead Page 25
