Kage: The Shadow

by John Donohue

  “Be quicker to just find Xochi,” I said. “Ask him.”

  He nodded. “I agree. Quick is good, Burke,” Daley said. “I got this feelin’ that you’re running out of time…”

  I felt a spasm of alarm. “Did you hear something from my brother?”

  Daley looked at me. “Huh? No. That’s not what I mean. You got bigger issues to deal with.”

  I sat there, saying nothing. Waiting. The daylight was going, and the line of mountains in the distance was a black, jagged mass, backlit by the orange flare of the sun as it burned its way across the rocky expanse of the Southwest and into the distant Pacific Ocean. I worked my way through Daley’s information so far, weighing it, seeing how pieces fit together. I didn’t try to force a solution; the effort of doing so would probably just push it away.

  I had few, if any, options. I knew that. But that made whatever I did that much more important. It was like the intensity of a sword duel with live blades: each slight twitch of muscle pulsed into the ether, an expanding ring of possibility that opened a path to some gambits at the same time that it closed off others. Each step held within it the potential for victory or the seeds of your own destruction. So you push that awareness down deep, smother it so that the animal pleading for deliverance doesn’t echo in the back of your head. There’s no time for that; it’s a fatal luxury, because if you succumb you’ll be a split second too slow when the blade is arcing toward you for the decisive cut.

  I sat in Daley’s car and slowed my breathing. I tried to concentrate on nothing, let go of intention, of urgency, and to be in the moment. All that Zen stuff. But, of course, it was futile. Yamashita’s students try to set themselves as still, empty vessels, but life pushes at us and fills us as it will. I was no exception. A lifetime of training hasn’t made me invulnerable; sometimes it just makes me resigned.

  So I sat, simply waiting for the other shoe to drop, and determined not to let Daley enjoy the experience.

  “Here’s the kicker,” he finally said. “You got the different cartels all jockeying for dominance: Tijuana, Sonoma, Juarez. They got local offshoots all along the border. Xochi probably had feelers out to the local families, then TM-7 dropped by and rewrote the rules. But now someone else is pushing at them.”

  “Who?”

  “You heard of the Alphas, Burke?” Daley took off his sunglasses. His eyes were a pale, haggard blue. “Alphas take this to a whole new level.”

  I was getting impatient with Daley’s act: the world-weary expert sent to keep tabs on me, the local informant with a wealth of knowledge that he was doling out drop by drop, the Old Scout squinting out along the ridge line, searching for hostiles.

  “Daley,” I said. “Lose the drama. I don’t need the color on your play-by-play. I need some concrete leads and an accurate assessment of what I’m going to face. That’s it.”

  It seemed to me at that moment that I spent my life among men who never gave you the complete picture. Maybe it was because they somehow didn’t take you completely seriously, like my brother Mickey. Or they harbored some secret kernel of doubt that you’d ultimately be unable to meet the coming test. I used to think Yamashita eyed me skeptically, scanning me for the telltale signs of the germinal flaw that slumbered deep within me. Over the years those feelings had faded, but the experience still left old wounds that could flare into life.

  Daley didn’t flinch. He stared off into the distance and just started talking.

  “The Alphas are renegades, Burke. Anti-drug commandos trained in Mexico who realized they could make more money working for the drug cartels than against them. They’ve been involved with killings and kidnappings all over the place, although until recently they were concentrating their activities on this side of the fence to Texas.” He snorted. “There are mayors of Mexican border towns down there scared so bad that they hide out in the U.S. The Alphas protect the drug corridors. And anyone who gets in the way,” his head swiveled to look at me “and I mean anyone, gets taken out. Cops, Border Patrol agents, you name it. These guys are killing machines. The freaks from TM-7 are psychos. They like the rush of power they get from scaring people or hacking them up with a blade. Alphas could care less about that shit. They’re pros. Some of them have been at Benning at the School of the Americas. You know what that means?”

  I nodded. I had been to Fort Benning and seen the Special Forces training at work. There’s a special school there, the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, which trains military personnel from Latin America.

  “Well, the Alphas are expanding their reach. The word I get is that they’re here. And they’re even scaring our pals from TM-7. My guess is that you’ve got more than one problem and soon the Alphas will be on your case as well.”

  His voice was somber, almost reflective in the dim recess of the car. Then he stirred, prompted by a new thought.

  “You’re not carrying a weapon, are you, Burke? My professional opinion is that you’re gonna need one.” He dropped the Blazer into gear, seeming relieved at the prospect of concrete action. “Fortunately, here in the West, that’s something that’s easily fixed.”

  19 Ground

  Distant hills washed pink in the early morning light. Small birds fluttered in the bushes. I could smell water and cut grass. The golf course itself was an expanse of lush, dark greens. It was as if all the moisture had been sucked down out of those far hills, leaving them to ring the horizon like the fossilized remains of ancient monsters.

  Parties of golfers dotted the course; men and women in brightly colored sportswear and sunglasses, tanned and intent on the game. Noises were subdued: the distinctive whuck of someone hitting a ball, and the faint snippets of conversation across the fairway. I stood in the shadow of the clubhouse, waiting.

  Charlie Fiorella spotted me as he approached the final hole, walking with Lori Westmann. A good cop never loses the knack of scanning the environment for threats, and Charlie had been a good cop. I saw him look my way, once, but other than that he didn’t react. His movements on the green were smooth and unhurried, focused. When he was done, he spoke quietly to Westmann. She looked up sharply, her head turning in my direction. Fiorella touched her on the arm, a reassuring gesture. Then he came my way.

  “It’s a private club,” he told me. “She wants to have you arrested for trespassing.” There was no greeting or handshake. He stood about five feet away, his tanned face professional.

  “What if I were just here to see you?”

  “Then maybe I’ll have you arrested.” But his body language was relaxed and there was a hint of levity in his voice.

  I shrugged. “You’ll probably have to wait in line.”

  Charlie took off his sunglasses and looked at me carefully. He jerked his head. “Come inside, I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.”

  Another nice view, another table with clean linen and heavy silverware. There was the aromatic scent of coffee and bacon. It was surreal. In the subdued and civilized clubhouse dining room, I was oblivious to comfort, conscious only of the dangerous world stirring with another dawn, of time ticking away and the need to be moving.

  The waiter was Latino. His dark, sunburned skin made a nice contrast with the elegant white jacket he wore. He wordlessly delivered a stainless steel carafe of coffee to our table, flashed Charlie a knowing smile, and left.

  Fiorella sat across from me, waiting.

  “Ever get to the bottom of that bogus attack with the shuriken when I was out here, Charlie?”

  “What makes you think it was bogus?” he said.

  “You never followed up. I never heard anything. It’s not like you.”

  Fiorella swung his head back and forth, mulling over what to say. He finally decided. “Westmann put him up to it. Her boyfriend, Xochi. The Chief. I didn’t know it at the time. It was a harebrained stunt, but Lori was looking for something to spice up the negotiations about re-releasing her father’s books. She figured resurrecting the old man’s bullshit fantasy about Asian ass
assins would help drive up her advance.”

  “She was probably right,” I said. “Ever wonder why her boyfriend was so eager to help out?”

  He shrugged. “You’d have to ask him.”

  “Xochi,” I said. “I’ll bet he has all kinds of information.”

  “He might,” Fiorella said noncommittally, “but he seems to have disappeared.”

  “Convenient.”

  “For him,” he told me.

  “I hear that he’s laying low, Charlie. He may have gotten in over his head and needs to hide out until things blow over.”

  “Things?” His voice sounded skeptical, but Fiorella didn’t smile. He also didn’t seem to care whether I went on or not. He poured some cream into his coffee and meticulously stirred it with a spoon. The act didn’t fool me: there was watchfulness in his eyes—they were the still eyes of a man looking hard at hostile terrain.

  “He knows a lot about the desert, Charlie,” I began, “about the border. And before he died, Elliot Westmann was writing down the lore that Xochi proffered. Westmann didn’t know it, but some of that stuff was valuable information.”

  “What makes you say that, Burke?” He didn’t betray any interest, but he was letting me talk to see where this was going to go.

  “That stupid project I started for Lori Westmann,” I said. “I ended up with copies of some of her father’s notes on a new book.”

  “All of which is property of the Westmann estate,” he instructed. “I’ll want them back.”

  “You’re not alone.”

  Charlie carefully picked up his coffee cup and sipped at it, like someone working very hard not to react. “What’s that mean?” he said.

  I leaned back in my chair. “Let’s say that perhaps Xochi, who is, I think we can both agree, a man on the make, was looking to cash in on some of his knowledge about the desert.”

  Fiorella shrugged. “Let’s say that.”

  “Elliot Westmann takes an unfortunate spill and that potential gravy train gets derailed. Xochi’s sleeping with Lori Westmann, which is nice for him I suppose, but he’s looking for more. Maybe he wants to impress her; maybe he suspects that theirs is not a long-term thing. So maybe Xochi, who is not hindered by too many scruples, puts some feelers out to the sorts of people who are interested in little known, relatively unused trails across the desert. He wants to sell them his maps.”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me,” Fiorella commented. “Wouldn’t be a brilliant move in my opinion.”

  “Unfortunately for Xochi, he didn’t ask you,” I concluded. He said nothing, but tipped his coffee cup in acknowledgment.

  I sat forward in my seat. “Problem is, Charlie, that these people are very committed to the idea that Xochi’s trails stay their little secret. And when they learned I might have inadvertently stumbled onto this information, they were not pleased.”

  Fiorella’s face went slack; he set his cup down on the table and waited.

  “They sent someone after me, Charlie,” I hissed. I tried to stay calm, but my voice was tight. It trembled with memory. “They tried to kill my girlfriend Sarah. They tried to kill me.” I could feel the anger starting to spiral out of me. The implications of what I was going to do sparked to life inside my head. They made me more like them than I cared to admit.

  He looked down at his hands, dark and thick things against the expanse of clean linen. His eyes came up and met mine. “I didn’t know,” he said simply.

  I pushed the anger down and got some control back. “If I thought you did I wouldn’t be here,” I finally said.

  Fiorella took a deep breath and gazed out the window. He exhaled slowly through his nostrils, shaking his head. “Idiots.”

  He could have meant Xochi and Lori Westmann. He could have meant the people who came after me. It could have been a global comment on humanity. I didn’t respond to it.

  “I’m not sure what they told you, Charlie. How much you know.”

  He looked back at me. “My job,” he said with mild disdain, “is to know only the things I need to, and not too much more. Makes it easier on everyone and keeps me out of trouble.”

  “Nice theory,” I told him. He didn’t say anything, so I continued. “Let me fill you in on some of the things you maybe don’t know. Xochi sold the maps to his secret trails to the local members of TM-7.”

  “Oh, for Christ sake,” he muttered.

  I held up a hand. “Wait, it gets better. Now a new group is moving into town and they want to take over. Xochi by this time is smart enough to realize that he doesn’t want to be anywhere near this dogfight. And he needs to go to ground. He could hide out in the desert, of course, but that’s where all these very angry new people are. He could maybe hunker down in the barrio, but it wouldn’t take long to find him there either. He needs to go somewhere that they can’t. My guess is that he turns to Lori Westmann. But my experience of rich people, Charlie, is that they are not particularly good about saying no to themselves. And hiding out takes some discipline, involves some discomfort.”

  Fiorella grimaced. “They were both pretty clueless,” he admitted.

  I nodded. “They needed a pro, Charlie. A fixer. Xochi, I think, was realizing that he was getting expendable. He figured he’d lay low until all the shouting ended. Works out for him, I suppose. But what he didn’t tell you was that the local head of TM-7 was still looking to kill me to keep the desert routes secret.”

  Fiorella clasped his hands on the table, leaning in on his forearms. “Burke, I had no way of knowing this.”

  “I know Charlie, a round of golf every morning.” I poured some more coffee into his cup. “You owe me nothing, but I’m asking for some help; something very simple.”

  Outside the sun was climbing. The sky was a bright, hard blue. The expanse of the golf course shimmered in the rising heat. Far away in the distance, the image of rocks and scrub and hills danced in the thermal pulse of desert air. In the restaurant, Charlie Fiorella was very still, dreading what I might ask.

  “Tell Lori Westmann I can help her. TM-7 is gonna clean up by eliminating anyone who knows about it, including her. So, she’s got to convince Xochi to serve as a go between for me. I need to meet with the man he sold his secrets to.”

  “You sure?” Fiorella could read between the lines.

  But I didn’t answer him. I wasn’t sure, just in motion.

  Later, Daly had listened to my description of the ideal meeting place: secluded, away from the city, with a high enough rise to create a field of fire and enough cover on the ground to give a reasonable chance of escape. He thought for a while, took out a map, and checked some coordinates. Then we were off.

  Southwest of the city along Route 86, he pulled off at a town called Three Points, heading north toward the Ironwood Forest National Monument. He made a series of turns onto increasingly poor roads. On our final turn, the gravel gave out quickly and we bounced along the packed dirt road through the dusty scrub brush toward our final destination.

  The road didn’t end, it simply dissipated. A single-story adobe building sat along the northern edge of the fan-shaped clearing. The windows were blown out and there was no door remaining. Some blotchy fifty gallon drums were scatted around the side wall of the building. Odd pieces of old metal laid tangled in sporadic clumps around the area.

  Hills rimmed the clearing. I squinted into the sun, checked my watch, and mentally noted due west.

  “When will the sun be hitting the hill line over there?” I asked. Daley told me. I nodded. “That’s when we’ll set the meet.”

  I strode across the clearing and up the western slope, working my way around rocks and through the scrub until I thought we were high enough. At a jumbled cluster of rocks, I looked down on the clearing and the building for line of sight. Then I came back down. Daley watched me silently and said nothing.

  “When we meet, I’ll ask him to come alone. How likely is it that he’ll comply?” I asked him.

  Daley snorted. “Not likely at all. T
hese aren’t the boy scouts. One way or another, he’ll bring backup.”

  We were down by the building. “Could we get him inside the building?”

  “I wouldn’t go in, why would he?”

  “So it happens here,” I said, standing in the dusty wash where the road ended. I poked around. “There’s a gulley behind the house, trending north and west. If we had to scramble, we could get in it and head uphill to those rocks.”

  “It would take some real scrambling, Burke.” Daley sounded doubtful. “And what do you mean, ‘we’?”

  I ignored him. “We’ll need to distract them, pull them off balance.”

  “I can get my hand on some flash-bang grenades,” Daley said. “Work better indoors, but they’re loud as hell.”

  The interior of the house was a shambles. It smelled of heat and dust and old paper. I looked out the front windows. “Someone could cover me from here.” I turned around and walked to the back wall. A wooden screen door sagged in the back doorway. “Out here if things got tough, into the ditch and off and over the western hill. Sun’ll be in their eyes.”

  I turned around and walked out the front. “This’ll work.”

  “I don’t see how,” he said.

  So I told him.

  “And this,” the voice on the cell phone said, dripping sarcasm “is your big plan?”

  I took a breath. “Hey, it’s best to keep things simple. And you told me to keep in touch.”

  “Yeah,” Micky said. “I feel much better now.” He may have been concerned, but his sarcasm was still in place.

  “You got anything for me?” I demanded. “Otherwise I can hang up and we can argue when I get back.”

  Daley’s apartment was a box, a place where he waited. Nothing more. The walls were painted with the flat, off-white color contractors buy in five gallon tubs. The carpet was cheap and grey. My voice echoed in a room that was largely devoid of any sign of real human habitation: Daley decorated it with a folding lawn chair, some upended plastic milk crates that served as tables and a small television set. Laid upon a bare mattress on the corner of the floor, a rumpled sleeping bag looked like the covered body at a crime scene. Daley sat in his cheap aluminum chair sipping a beer and watching me as I paced in front of the windows, phone to my ear.