The Wizards 2: Wizard at Work

by Jack L Knapp

 

  That’s what we did. Two and a half hours later found us in the cabin having a nice dinner with Shezzie.

  T packed a light bag after dinner and followed me back to El Paso.

  #

  The Chupacabra struck again that day. This time, whatever or whoever it was appeared to be getting bolder. Two mid-level gang members, thought to be from the Gulf Cartel this time, were snatched from the street in late afternoon. Blood and fragments of flesh and bone spattered the walls of a nearby alley and dripped greasily down to where the remnants of bodies lay.

  If anyone saw anything, they weren’t talking. Juarenses had learned wisdom; better to say nothing, keep a low profile, try not to get noticed. The cartels had friends as well as enemies. No sabe, Senor.

  More graffiti appeared that night. The chupacabra line drawing was now positioned just above a smiley face. No one knew who had done that either.

  Chapter Four

  T dropped his bag off in the spare bedroom before joining me in the kitchen. I had started a pot of coffee and put out a plate of muffins; Ana Maria had made them before she went off to Juarez to visit with her family. She’d done that a number of times, visiting her family since moving in with me, but things weren’t going well. She was by turns sad, angry, or simply troubled; I never knew when the moods would change, nor what was causing them. But it was enough having Ana Maria in my life.

  Maybe I was the only happy one among the four of us.

  There was nothing I could do about Ana Maria’s family problems, but I might be able to help T. According to what Shezzie had said, he’d had been much better after we worked together, clearing brush and felling that tree above the cabin. He looked normal to me now after the tree-clearing exercise. I saw no sign of the moodiness she’d mentioned.

  “Anything you can tell me, T? Shezzie’s been worried, man. I have, too. That thing with the truck…it scared the hell out of me.”

  “I knew I could do it, Ray. The truck wasn’t nearly as tough as jerking those trees out of the ground. I wonder what the fire crews will make of it when they find the stacks we left?”

  I chuckled. “Maybe they’ll puzzle about it for a while, but they stay pretty busy during summer and they’ll file it with all the other odd things they see. They’ll move on, and when this fire is done there’ll be another one waiting. Arizona, Colorado, California, there’s always another fire waiting somewhere.

  “Floods in the east and south, fires in the west, hurricanes around the Gulf, and earthquakes here and there. North America is definitely an interesting place to live! Tornadoes too, and if that’s not enough to keep boredom away, there’s the occasional chemical plant blowing up in Texas.

  “Europe doesn’t seem to have those things. They just have an occasional freezing spell in the winter, a war now and then to break the monotony, and they argue among themselves the rest of the time when they aren’t shooting each other. Maybe that’s why they have the wars. Nature doesn’t provide enough natural disasters to keep them busy.”

  “It’s a thought, Ray. But I was sitting around the cabin, just watching the paint peel and the grass grow, and it all just came down on me. I can’t forget. I saw things, I did things that people just aren’t equipped to handle. Maybe they were once. I wonder if those old Romans and Greeks had a problem with killing people?”

  T paused for a moment.

  “Did the Spanish inquisitors have nightmares about the people they burned alive? Or did their belief that Jews and heretics would avoid hell if they were burned here on Earth keep them from realizing that they were torturing people to death? ‘We’re doing this for your own good.’

  “I don’t understand people like that. I don’t understand the gangers in Mexico either. They’re like the terrorists we saw in Afghanistan. They don’t see people as anything but objects. If you’re not part of the gang, or the tribe, or the same religious sect, then it’s OK to kill you. Chop off their heads, it doesn’t matter. Money, religion, power, they’re only a motive for butchering others. I don’t understand it.”

  “I don’t either, T. It was different when I first went into the Army. We still expected the Soviets to cross the border into Germany at any time, back then. Not that we’d have survived for very long, but the US would have been dragged in because those Guards armies had rolled over an American division or three. That kept the Soviets out, I think. They might have gone after Germany if they hadn’t known it would bring on a third world war. And probably end up going nuclear.”

  “Yeah. Most of that was history by the time I got sent to the Army. I was just an unwanted by-product of the School so they dumped me on the Army to let me sink or swim. But the Soviet Union had collapsed, Germany had absorbed East Germany, and all that was left of the Berlin Wall was just a few concrete souvenirs stashed in a German cupboard somewhere. The Russians had internal problems at the time, all those satellite nations that didn’t want to be satellites ruled by Russia. Not to mention that they’d bitten off something in Afghanistan they couldn’t chew. But then the Muj turned on us after we helped them boot the Soviets out and we ended up in another fight, this time in the Middle East. I guess we made our own history there. I wonder what history books will say about all this stuff a century from now?

  “Maybe you’re right, Ray. No hurricane, no tornado, let’s just have a war instead.”

  “We’ll talk about it, T. You’re not the only one that’s having problems trying to cope with it all. Lots of guys come home with bad memories.”

  “One part of me knows you’re right, Ray. But at night, that other part takes control. It would be nice if I could get a full night’s sleep. I can’t even take a sleeping pill! It wouldn’t work. I wonder why that body-control Talent doesn’t do something about those memories?”

  “Maybe it will, T, given enough time to work. Meanwhile, you’re here, we’ve got stuff to do, and when I’m busy there’ll be other people around and maybe you’ll find something else to interest you.”

  T brightened. “You know, I think I might know of something. I can help the city and piss off the gangs at the same time. You take care of what you need to do. I’ve got something else in mind. And no, it won’t be dangerous.”

  I heard the front door open and close. Ana Maria came into the kitchen, scowl on her face, but still the same pretty, leggy woman I’d first been attracted to.

  “No ‘Hi honey, I’m home?’ ” I teased her.

  “Not right now, Ray. Hi, T. Nice to see you. No, I’m just not getting anywhere with my father. I think my mother has come around, but my father is the main influence on the family. He’s got that idea set in his head, that I’m somehow responsible because some gangster murdered my sister. Sometimes I could just scream! I think I should just stay here for a while, go to class, spend time with you and leave my father to change his mind. If he ever does.

  “Anyway, did you feel the earthquake?”

  I looked at T and he just shook his head.

  “We didn’t feel anything. What earthquake?”

  “The radio reported that swimming pools in the northeast part of town sloshed over and wet people’s decks. The last time that happened it was because of that big earthquake in Mexico City. But I called my cousin Paula in Chihuahua, and she said that they hadn’t felt anything. So if it was an earthquake, it happened somewhere up here.”

  “We didn’t feel any shaking. Maybe it happened while we were driving. If there was any shaking it was minor and the road bumps hid it. I’ll turn on the news.”

  We listened to CNN for a while, until finally there was a report of a moderate quake in southern Colorado near the town of Pueblo. No one was making much of it yet. There had been only the one quake, at least so far. If there were after-shakes, they hadn’t been severe enough to warrant another news r
eport.

  I picked up copies of the Times and El Diario to see if anything new had happened in Juarez during the time I was up in New Mexico looking for T. But things had been quiet there too. The Chupacabra hadn’t struck during the past evening and the gangs were lying low. There were still fights and murders happening in other places, down in the Gulf states and over near the Pacific, but Juarez was quiet. The other areas experiencing violence were major transshipment points for drugs and the cartels were still fighting their wars to control the shipping lanes.

  But in Juarez, formerly the flash-point for the drug wars, things were quiet. People were on the streets again and even tourists ventured across the bridges. Nothing like so many of them as there had been before the fighting broke out, but people were now crossing the border in substantial numbers again.

  We went to bed early that night. It had been a long, eventful day. Ana Maria needed cuddling and I was happy to oblige, a substitute for the caring that her family no longer provided.

  I left the bedroom door open. If T had nightmares, I might wake up and be able to help. If nothing else, we could comm back and forth between ourselves and not wake Ana Maria.

  But the night was uneventful. I had a class to get to and T was off on the mysterious errand he had in mind. Ana Maria had things to do at UTEP too. We parked and separated after we got to the Student Union Building.

  #

  T breakfasted at Mickey D’s and started near the bridge. He found it was easiest if he parked and waited until pedestrians were few. Carefully, he used his Talent to pop the paint particles from walls and other places. His efforts left blank, unpainted stripes but there was no more graffiti to be seen after he moved away. He watched people going about their business, wiped the walls clean, and occasionally tried to pick up thoughts.

  At the end of the day he returned to Ray’s house, well pleased with his efforts.

  I met him at the door when he rang the bell.

  “You’re smiling, T. I take it you’ve had a good day?”

  “Oh, yes. It’s the best day I’ve had in a while. I didn’t kill anyone, but trust me, the gangs know I’ve been there! I might want to borrow your car tomorrow so they won’t connect my truck with what I did.”

  “Sure, if you need it, T. Not a problem. I can use your truck to get to school. I’ll need to park on the street instead of in a campus parking lot...your truck doesn’t have a sticker...but that’s no big deal. So what have you been up to?”

  “I went street cleaning, Ray. I picked a neighborhood and just sat there and cleaned graffiti off walls. If you work carefully, you can feel the tiny flecks of paint. It’s no problem to just peel them away and drop them. I did that along a stretch several city blocks long.”

  T laughed, and continued, “And then I called in a tip to the police department and told them that the taggers would be out tonight, and where the cops could find them.”

  “The cops are pretty overworked, T. Think they’ll send anyone?”

  “I don’t know, Ray. But maybe the taggers will be seen with their cans of spray paint. There are a lot of cameras around now. Sometimes the videos people take are on the evening news, the local reporting. People recognize the taggers occasionally even if the cops can’t spare the manpower to patrol. I think that if they did that, kept a close watch in the gang areas, they’d stop a lot of the problems. But the cops and politicians concentrate their efforts on protecting the nicer neighborhoods and that’s where the cops get sent. Sometimes it seems that no one cares about what happens in the barrios. But I do.”

  Briefly, a savage look crossed his face. Maybe he was remembering that the barrios, largely-Hispanic neighborhoods not far from the border, were where most of the crime in El Paso happened. And that most of the crimes involve Hispanic preying on Hispanic.

  “Try to stay out of trouble, T. Those people won’t like it if they realize what you’re doing.”

  “I’m not worried, Ray. I don’t want to kill anyone, but I have no problem with busting the belt holding up some ganger’s saggy pants. If he’s got a weapon under there, he’ll have both hands full, trying to keep from shooting his dick off and keep his pants from falling around his ankles at the same time.

  “Yeah. I don’t like the gangs, I don’t like what they do, the drugs and the violence and the painting of walls, and if I can embarrass a few of them rather than kill them I feel good about it.”

  Ana Maria had been showering while we talked. She got dressed and came out, and we chatted briefly. Both Ana Maria and I had been busy all day so T volunteered to take us out to dinner. We chatted, and between conversations T and I took the opportunity to comm Shezzie and bring her up to date.

  She told us what she’d been doing and filled us in on local news. The firefighters had managed to concentrate their operations in an area we hadn’t worked on, and between their efforts and what we’d done the fire was now contained. It would probably take a few days for the last few embers to die out but unless a high wind came up, the forest fire was over. Officials had already found the cause; a dry pine tree had blown across one of the high-tension lines that crossed the mountains. The spark had burned that tree and the fire had quickly spread, eventually burning several square miles.

  There had been two aftershocks following the earthquake in southern Colorado. The first had been fairly weak, barely felt by residents. The second quake had been stronger. A landslide had closed Interstate 25 just north of the border with New Mexico. Some were already blaming the quakes on fracking and were organizing protests against the drilling companies.

  Equipment was working…rockfalls had happened before, many times, in Raton Pass…and the road was expected to open soon. Meantime, the traffic backed up. Police had managed to unstick the worst of the traffic jams and some of the eighteen-wheel tractor-trailers had elected to head south and seek another route north.

  It had been just another day in the mountains.

  Chapter Five

  T continued his low-key activities during the rest of the week. He alternated his graffiti wiping with another hobby, picking up bits of conversation from gang members. Parking in an inconspicuous spot alongside a well-traveled street, T listened for a time, erased as much of the graffiti as possible before moving on, and passed the information he collected to the police.

  The information got called in using a pay-in-advance Tracfone that he bought in a Walmart. T paid for the phone with cash, planning to discard the cell phone and replace it with another before it ran out of minutes.

  He made it a point to work a neighborhood for no more than a few hours before moving on and he tried to make his visits as random as possible. He would be parked in the north for a few hours, perhaps in the northeast after that, then head to the west side or one of the surrounding towns to break up his pattern. No one connected the dusty pickup truck or the equally dusty Volvo with what was happening around the region. Mornings here, afternoons there, occasionally early evenings and once in the hours before dawn, T pursued his new hobby.

  #

  I made coffee every day when I got home from school, put out a plate of muffins or doughnuts for us to snack on, and when T came in we’d talk about our respective day’s activities.

  The lines had vanished from his face and he slept through the night now. I monitored him but heard nothing to indicate that the dreams or other symptoms of PTSD had come back.

  T’s phone tips regarding gang activity now went to a specific officer who worked with the department’s Central Tactical Gang Unit. The officer, a senior patrolman named Garcia, had asked T how he got his information. T had replied evasively, claiming that he overheard things. He had proposed to SP Garcia that he knew a fellow who might be willing to become a consultant to the department. Were there funds available to pay for something like this, perhaps monies that would otherwise be paid out to confidential informants? While most such were themselves members of the criminal class, nothing required that recipients be such. The only real requir
ement was that the information had to be correct.

  Garcia said that he’d pass the query along and would have information in a few days. He would then pass the department’s answer to T when he called next time to provide another tip.

  There was a web site, even a Facebook page maintained by the police department, but T avoided those. It was too easy for the site’s visitors to be tracked, and the cell phone he used was anonymous unlike computers used to access the web. He used the name ‘concerned citizen’ when he called in the tips and the name hadn’t leaked to the news media yet.

  I checked the online sites for him and told him what I found.

  We sat down with our usual coffee and snacks and munched for a time in silence.

  “T, I don’t want to discourage you, but how long do you plan on doing this?”

  “Another week or two, Ray. Then I think I’ll take some time off and go back to Jemez Springs. If I keep doing this, some bright guy will notice me and I don’t want that to happen. Besides, I miss spending time with Shezzie.” He smiled. “She kind of grows on me, sort of like Ana Maria does with you. I’ve been comming her at least daily, but it’s not the same.”

  We grinned at each other. No indeed, not the same at all!

  “Sounds like a reasonable plan, T. No reason to overdo it. Spend some time with Shezzie, and when you feel like it visit someplace else, someplace like Albuquerque or Santa Fe. Maybe Las Cruces or Socorro.”

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you about something, Ray. I’ve been waiting to bring this up, but it happened when we were dealing with that gang. You know, just before the RPG round blew up.”

  I thought back to that day. It hadn’t been one of my favorite times, but the events hadn’t affected me as much as they had T. A couple of gangsters had been trying to steal my car, others were trying to reach guns, and one had shot at us with an RPG. We had gone there because the same gang had murdered Ana Maria’s sister and then mutilated the body. No, eliminating them hadn’t bothered me much. The gangers were getting paid for murdering people in Mexico because a cartel underboss told them to. They had probably done it before, and would have continued doing it if we hadn’t intervened.