‘Yes. After they moved around to LaPaz.’ Jack Ames sat silently tapping his fingertips on the table for a couple of beats while his expression changed from serious to sad. ‘I guess the three of us, Fred, Mabel and I, should have seen that trouble was coming. I’ve always felt we should have done … something. Although to this day I don’t know what.’
‘You mean trouble between the McGintys or—’
‘No. I mean I think Bill came down to the Baja as a small-time dealer, making extra travel money selling pot to sailors off his boat, but after they’d been there a while he upgraded, if that’s the right word, to the big time.’
‘Cocaine, Mabel said.’
‘And from the looks of some of the people who came to his boat around that time, a little of whatever else they wanted him to do.’
‘Like what, for instance?’
‘Some deliveries to contested territories, I think. I never knew any of the details – but I could see how bruised and sore he was sometimes when he came back. I think he was making his bones, as they say, and it made him jumpy and short-tempered. He got more aggressive and he couldn’t seem to sit still. But Poppy went right on behaving like she had no idea what could be troubling him.’
‘You think she knew more than she was ready to admit?’
‘Or even think about.’ Jack Ames did some more silent finger-tapping. ‘She began saying things like, “As soon as Bill gets over this funk he’s in …” trying to pretend it was just a bad mood. But we could see – Fred agreed with me – that Bill was in up to his eyeballs in some serious shit, getting scared and trying to bluff his way out and go on his carefree way. I suppose Mabel told you about the fight, didn’t she? That night at the goat roast?’
‘Yes. It must have been pretty embarrassing.’
‘It was worse than that. It brought something to a head that they’d both been trying to avoid, I think. Poppy wasn’t usually a nagging wife. She always said she’d rather dance than fight. But that night, when she had too much to drink, she did want to fight. And she blew the lid off some things she’d been trying not to talk about.’
Sarah had often observed that talking to the police turned people into toe-tapping, ear-pulling fidgets. Especially if they were trying to put a little lipstick on the pig, they couldn’t do it sitting still.
Now she sat quietly watching Jack Ames, who had begun to tap his fingers and move his feet around. ‘I’ve been trying to think of some tactful way to ask this,’ she said, ‘and I can’t. But I need to know – were you and Poppy lovers?’
He re-crossed his legs and raised his eyebrows. ‘I’m not sure you do need to know that.’ He was silent for a few beats and did some more tapping. ‘But no, we weren’t. I hadn’t been a widower very long – I was still missing my wife. And Poppy – it was sort of legendary about her. A beautiful woman alone on her boat so much of the time, she could have had half the men in the harbor. Guys asked each other, what would it take to soften her up? Especially after Bill began to leave her alone so much and to bully her when he was aboard. But he seemed to be the only one she wanted in bed.’
‘Pretty frustrating, huh?’
He pulled on his right ear. ‘Well, I thought about it sometimes – I’m not made of wood. But we were such great friends and every time I was tempted to try something I thought no, why rock this wonderful boat? Pardon the pun.’ The little laugh again; he was a great chuckler.
‘Do you by any chance have any keepsakes from that time? Something she might have given you as a memento of all your good times together?’
‘Keepsakes? Like what, a Saint Christopher’s medal or something? No, I certainly don’t. What would you do with it if I had?’
‘DNA. Fingerprints. Anything she had that Bill might have handled.’
‘Humph.’ He looked as if he found that idea disgusting. ‘You’re still thinking the William McGinty you’re after now might be the one we knew?’ He shook his head. ‘I’m pretty sure you’re wasting your time with that idea.’
‘Mabel said you think the one you knew would be dead by now.’
‘I think he was at the bottom of the Sea of Cortez before the year was out. He had made friends with some very bad guys and you could see it in his face. He knew he was just low-hanging fruit to them.’
‘So you think this person making deposits is just somebody from the cartel using his credentials?’
‘Sure. He was working for them; they would have kept all his cards. Nothing they like better than American ID.’
‘True.’ Sarah folded up her tablet and tucked it in the side pocket of her daypack. ‘Mr Ames, you’ve been very helpful and I appreciate it.’ She put out a hand and they shook.
‘You’re quite welcome.’ Jack Ames squinted humorously at Jason Peete. ‘You’ve been strangely quiet during this conversation. Are you just here to pass judgment on the cut of my jib?’
Jason smiled. ‘That’s a very astute question,’ he said. ‘We could sure use an analyst like you down at headquarters, couldn’t we, Sarah?’
‘We used to say so,’ Sarah said, ‘till you came to work there.’ They all had another warm chuckle over that witticism while Jason shook Jack Ames’s hand. Then Ames went out and got the most perfectly behaved small dog Sarah had ever seen out of the shade in the parking divider. She sat down beside Jack Ames with her lovely tail furled around her feet and looked up at him as if he were God.
‘Well, so, any thoughts about Jack Ames?’ Sarah asked, rolling southeast on I-10 past the new Marana mall.
Jason rubbed his face, looking tired. He was not entirely recovered from yesterday’s overexposure to sun. He stared along the bright ribbon of highway for a minute before he said, ‘He’s just the way Mabel described him, isn’t he? An amazingly nice guy. Did she mention how much his dog loves him?’
‘Yes. She said kids always trust him, too.’
‘I can see why they would. Jack Ames reminds me of DeShawn Williams.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘My last stepfather. I told you, didn’t I, that my brothers and I all have different fathers? My mother never had any trouble attracting men but every one of them left her in the end. DeShawn was Leland’s father, the last of all the boyfriends who moved in and out of our house. The best one, too, and he lasted the longest. He didn’t leave till Leland was eight.’
‘And you missed him when he was gone?’
‘Still do, some days. He was so good to us – while DeShawn was with us we always had food on the table and decent clothes to wear to school. We knew he traveled for a living; he was usually gone during the week. But he explained he sold roofing and siding on the road so we just felt glad that he was almost always with us for weekends and holidays. He did fun stuff with us, took us camping and fishing. One year during the monsoon we played a lot of silly card games in a tent in the backyard. He made that seem like the greatest adventure, being out in that tent in the rain.
‘DeShawn said he loved us and we believed him because we loved him back. To this day I believe he told the truth about the love part. But there were times he would go quiet and thoughtful, and in the fall of the year when Leland was starting third grade, we found out why.
‘Turned out there were a few things DeShawn neglected to mention. The most important thing he left out was the fact that he had another family over in Willcox. I guess he’d probably forgotten to tell them about us, too – I never found out where they thought he went on weekends.
‘What wrecked the arrangement was the other wife got cancer. She began raising a ruckus, I suppose, about needing more money and a full-time husband. I never knew exactly what DeShawn and Mom said to each other. The worst part for us kids was DeShawn couldn’t face us to say goodbye. He just quit showing up. When we started asking, “When’s DeShawn coming home?” Mom had to do all the explaining. In retrospect, I think the most amazing thing she said was, “Let’s try to be charitable. DeShawn was good to us while he was with us, and being angry just makes everythi
ng worse.”
‘She was right, of course. But I was thirteen that year, a difficult year at best. Nelson was eleven and it damn near killed him. He had a bad overbite and a stammer – DeShawn was the only man in the world he ever felt close to. His own father hadn’t come around since he was a baby. Pretty soon he was in trouble in school, and—’ There was silence in the car for a minute before Jason said, ‘I guess I still can’t talk about Nelson.’ After another silence, he said, ‘Funny thing was the one with the most skin in the game suffered least. Leland was the youngest so he had the fewest memories. He got over it fast and he’s always been the happiest one in the family.’
Sarah drove for a couple of miles before she could ask, ‘Why does Jack Ames remind you of DeShawn?’
‘Well, see, what DeShawn left me with is a very keen sense of when something is being left out.’
‘Ah.’ She drove a while longer. ‘The tapping fingers, is that his tell?’
‘Yes. And the twitchy toes. Followed by a tendency to tell you a little more than necessary about some things.’
‘Like the bit about how he was still grieving for his wife and Poppy was in love with her husband?’
‘Exactly. He could have just said “No, we didn’t have that kind of chemistry.” Nobody ever questions that.’
‘So you think he’s troubled about something that he doesn’t want to tell me.’
‘Yes. And I think a detective who can look out a window and spot a small key, hidden inside a metal box that’s buried out of sight in the weeds, can surely find a way to get that troubled man to tell her what’s bothering him.’
Sarah drove in silence for a couple of miles before she said, ‘You think I should go back to him and ask some really rude, intrusive questions about what she was doing on his boat all those afternoons if they weren’t making love?’
‘That might work. Ask him if they weren’t getting it on, was she teaching him how to sell weed during loud parties on a boat? That’s another possibility, isn’t it?’
‘You think nice Jack Ames might have bought into the drug biz? I suppose that’s possible.’
‘Sure. Put the blame on me since he already took a dislike to me. Say that your colleague doesn’t think the sexy wife of Bill McGinty would have been keeping him around so close just to help carry the snack trays.’
‘Uh-huh. That would be rude all right.’
By then they were close to the Miracle Mile sign. They rode the rest of the way to South Stone watching the spiky mass of the Catalinas turn lavender in the late afternoon sunlight.
Back in the station, Sarah’s phone rang as she walked into her cubicle.
Delaney said, ‘Lois Johnson called from somewhere on the road. She says there appears to be a small drug war going on in Agua Prieta, just across the border from Douglas. She thinks it might be a fight over who gets to keep Calvin Springer’s funnel account. A running gun battle has lasted for three days, there are two dead cartel members and one of her ICE agents is hospitalized with serious wounds. She asked me to notify you and the rest of the crew because she thought you were all taking the threat a little too lightly. She said to watch your backs, travel in pairs with backup nearby for a while and … Oh, well, you know, the usual. I agree; it’s the sensible thing to do. I’m putting out a directive now.’
‘So … you want us all to know that Lois thinks we’re too dense to look after ourselves down here.’
‘Well, I’m sorry it strikes you that way. But do it anyway. How’d it go with Jack Ames?’
‘Kind of interesting.’
‘How so?’
‘Well, he didn’t exactly contradict Mabel’s story but he puts kind of a different spin on it.’
‘Really? I think maybe I’ll call a short meeting in the morning, get everybody on the same page about Bill McGinty.’
‘That sounds good.’
She tidied her desk, getting ready to leave, when her phone rang again and Delaney said, ‘Ray Menendez just called. I told him about the morning meeting and he said, “OK, then I won’t take the van home.” They were hatching some plan to speed up the start in the morning because they’re down to the last third of that list they started out with and they figure tomorrow’s going to be the day they find the stash.’
‘Ray and Ollie make the perfect pair, don’t they? Two days of that stupid drudgery with the key and they’re still optimistic.’
‘There’s some logic to what they said, though. They seem to be more convinced than ever that our search area is the right one. Some of the people they’ve talked to say they’ve noticed a truck like Calvin’s around the neighborhood.’
‘And there can’t be more than a few hundred of those in the south end of Tucson.’
‘Well, now, Sarah,’ Delaney said, dredging up a well-worn department mantra, ‘even Tucson cops are sometimes right.’
‘True. See you in the morning.’ She was turning to go when the phone rang again.
It was Mabel Conway, talking fast as soon as she said hello. ‘I know it’s probably quitting time but I just remembered something I forgot to tell you before. And I told Jack I’m going to tell you right now before I forget again.’
Damn. I should have let this go to voicemail. ‘What is it, Mabel?’
‘The last time Jack and I took Fred for an outing,’ Mabel said, ‘we went down to Convento Street, parked in that vacant lot in front of the Mercado and went into the farmer’s market. Fred couldn’t talk much by then but he enjoyed the music and watching people get on and off the streetcar. It was a busy day, crowded inside. I stopped at a booth to buy some bread and, just that fast, while my back was turned, Fred wandered off. When I turned and couldn’t see him I called to Jack, who was watching the musicians, “Where’s Fred? I can’t see him.”
‘Jack looked over a lot of heads and said, “I think I see him. He’s over there talking to a guy. Don’t worry, I’ll get him.” He disappeared into the crowd. When he came back he was practically dragging Fred, who kept saying, “Why didn’t you stay and talk to old Bill?”
‘I asked Jack, “What old Bill is he talking about?” but Jack just shook his head. And when I asked him privately later, he said, “Oh, he had some stranger by the arm and was sure we were old friends. You know how he is now – sometimes he remembers dreams and thinks they were real.”
‘Fred said to me as we got in the car, “Would have been fun to talk to old Bill.” But when we got home and I asked him if Bill remembered him too, he said, “Who?” So maybe Jack’s right and it was nothing, just another hallucination. Fred slid in and out of reality a lot in the last couple of years. But sometimes he’d surprise me with something he understood very well. So when I remembered that day I thought you should know about it.’
‘You’re right, we should. Thanks, Mabel,’ Sarah said, ‘I’ll keep that with the rest of your story.’
TEN
‘Ray and I better hit the road,’ Ollie said Thursday morning. ‘One meeting more or less, who’s ever going to remember? But I can feel in my bones – this is our day to bring home the stash.’
‘Me and Oscar need to hustle the flab too,’ Jason said, ‘if you want us to catch that ride to Benson. Those women in the crime-scene van don’t wait for nobody.’ He wanted to go in the van, he had told Sarah, so he could get better acquainted with Jody. He thought it was interesting, that day at Calvin Springer’s house, how she stayed so unflappable during the storm.
‘Don’t worry, it takes them forever to get all the right stuff in the van,’ Delaney said. ‘You can take ten minutes now so we’re all on the same page about the Jack Ames interview. Go ahead, Sarah.’
Jason had asked Sarah earlier not to share his DeShawn Williams story with the team, so that morning she just said they both felt Jack Ames was less forthcoming than Mabel. ‘But then Mabel is unusually open and frank.’
‘But Ames isn’t? You think he’s hiding something?’
‘Maybe. Or he just has a stronger desire for privacy
. Also, he insists that this William McGinty who’s making deposits can’t be the one they met in Mexico all those years ago. Says it was obvious the Mexican police were in league with the cartel. They didn’t care who’d killed Poppy, and when they saw how much value there was in the boat and cargo they didn’t even want to find McGinty. He says anyone could see Bill was beginning to be afraid of his new Mexican pals.’
‘So Ames thinks the cartel probably killed that Bill McGinty?’
‘Yes. He figures they would have kept Bill’s social and other numbers, and now one of their guys is using those records to make deposits to the funnel account.’
‘We’ve got to prove that, one way or the other,’ Delaney said. ‘Oscar and Jason, do your best to get some decent pictures from that bank in Benson.’
‘We’ll do the best we can with what they’ve got,’ Oscar said, ‘but it’s a small bank and they might not have great equipment.’
‘True. The next time I talk to Lois Johnson I’ll ask if she’s given me copies of everything she got there. She called me again yesterday, by the way. Wanted to be sure I told you all about the killings in Agua Prieta.’
‘Who’d have thought,’ Jason said, ‘that Lois had a muffin side?’
‘Not me,’ Ollie said. ‘I thought she was titanium all the way through.’
‘Does she really think,’ Oscar asked, ‘that we have worked all these years eighty miles from the border without learning how to watch our backs?’
‘Well, just keep it in mind and take the safety precautions I’m asking for in the directive,’ Delaney said. ‘There are two dead Mexicans and one badly injured American, Lois said.’
All heads went up then. Ray said, ‘An American? Anybody we know?’
Delaney shook his head. ‘An ICE agent named Gilmartin. If it’s true it means the gloves are off. They’ve been pretty much leaving Americans alone lately.’
‘OK, we’ll be careful,’ Ollie said. ‘Now can we all haul ass?’
‘Both teams go. Leo, back to cold cases. Sarah, sit still, I have a few more questions.’
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