by Aimée Thurlo
“His last name wouldn’t be Fasthorse, would it?” Gordon suggested.
“You’ve met the bastard?” Mike asked.
Charlie nodded. “He’s bad news, especially for Lola. You tell him anything?”
“Less than I told you. Just that she worked for me a couple of years ago, then said good-bye. Hadn’t seen her since, didn’t know where she was,” Mike replied.
“But you’ve seen her since our last meeting?” Charlie asked.
Mike looked away, across the room, and lowered his voice even more. “Yeah, Lola came by around closing last night, asking to borrow some money. She said her old boyfriend Jerry-something had turned on her. I barely recognized Lola, she’d dyed her hair and cut it real short. I gave her what I had in my wallet—five or six hundred. After she split I tried to find that number you gave me and track you down. No luck. I’m hoping you could help her out. I’m not in a position to get involved with the cops.”
“Fasthorse is Jerry Benally’s boss. They’ve got some kind of criminal operation going on. No offense,” Charlie added.
Mike thought about it for a moment, then smiled. “I looked up Fasthorse online—he owns an old family restaurant near Old Town. You talking mini-organized crime?”
Charlie shrugged, not wanting to give out any details that might compromise Al or the undercover operations. “They’re just thieves,” he said.
Gordon spoke. “Fasthorse make some threats? Looks like your boys are keeping an eye on everyone who comes inside.”
“The bastard said if I was lying to him or protecting Lola, I’d regret it. He said there was a bounty, though, on Lola, and if I helped him track her down there was a finder’s fee,” Mike retorted, contempt clear in his tone. “Arrogant shit.”
“The guy is getting a little desperate, and desperate people are dangerous, Mike. He’s been suffering some losses lately and has several wannabe badasses working for him,” Charlie said. “They pack some heavy firepower and won’t hesitate to gun you down.”
“Which is why we’re packing,” Mike pointed out.
“Did he give you a number to call if you heard from Lola?” Gordon asked.
“Wrote it on a napkin,” Mike said, pulling it from his shirt pocket.
Gordon wrote it down. “Probably a burner, certainly not the Piñon Mesa Steakhouse number,” he noted.
Mike looked back and forth between them. “What is your connection to this punk anyway? Just why is he so eager to find Lola?”
Charlie looked over at Gordon, who shrugged. “Lola took something that had come into the possession of Fasthorse, and he wants it back—bad.”
“Bad enough to kill for? What is it, drugs?”
“Nothing like that,” Charlie said.
“You’re still not telling me what it was, or how you’re involved,” Mike said, then looked up as Fernando came over. The man whispered something to Mike, then walked back to his seat at the bar.
Mike nodded. “You’re the guys from the pawnshop shooting. You killed one of the robbers and ran the others off. My man just recognized you from the news,” Mike said, a satisfied smile on his face.
“Damned liberal media,” Gordon said. “Screw privacy.”
“No wonder you kick ass. Special Ops and all that. You the good guys?”
“We’ll do until the heroes arrive,” Gordon replied.
“I get it. Lola pawned some stuff she stole from Fasthorse—at your shop,” Mike said.
Charlie shrugged. “Maybe. Either way, we’re out to screw the bastard over and he’s starting to feel it now.”
“Any way I can help out?”
“If we need something, we know where you work, Mike. Thanks. For now, though, just keep your eyes open and be very careful who you talk to. If Lola contacts you again, text us ASAP. We’ll protect her.” Charlie wrote his own cell number on a napkin this time. “Don’t throw it away.”
“And watch your ass,” Gordon added.
Mike nodded, sat back, then caught the eye of one of the women waitstaff, waving her over. “Suddenly, my appetite is back. You guys had dinner? I’m buying.”
“Thought you’d never ask,” Gordon said. “You have anything nonalcoholic to wash down a sandwich or two? I need to keep my edge.”
Mike laughed. “Got coffee, ginger ale, mineral water—no milk. But I do keep a case of Mexican Cokes for true connoisseurs.”
“Now you’re talking,” Charlie said, looking up as the waitress arrived with two laminated parchment menus.
* * *
They left after an hour of good food—oversized green chile cheeseburgers on locally baked buns, fries with the skins on cooked in peanut oil, and ice-cold Mexican Cokes straight from the bottles. Even the sliced tomatoes on the burgers were locally grown, fresh and tasty.
As Charlie drove west toward I-25, they discussed the few additional details Mike Schultz could provide. “We have the image from her driver’s license, and with the mug shots Mike provided of Lola from her hooker days, we have a lot more to work with,” Charlie pointed out.
“Yeah, but it would have been a lot easier if she’d have parked her current ride in the Firehouse lot so we could have grabbed an image from his surveillance camera. We’d know what she was driving, and maybe even gotten a look at the plates,” Gordon said.
“She’s smart, not wanting anyone, not even her old pimp, to know exactly how she arrived. If she has a car at all right now,” Charlie answered.
“For all we know, she’s a bushy redhead riding a motorcycle at the moment. But at least we have various ‘looks’ she’s chosen in the past to work from.”
“You know what I think?” Charlie asked.
“That the money she borrowed was getting out-of-town cash?” Gordon responded. “If you want to truly get lost, you go someplace you’ve never been and avoid contacting anyone you’ve ever been around. You also work at something you’ve never done, and always pay in cash.”
“But she doesn’t have the money to go far, either, so let’s come up with some possibilities,” Charlie said.
“Lola won’t go among local Navajos, who might have connections with the Night Crew. Maybe she’s living near or among another tribe, so she wouldn’t stand out to any non-Indians. How’s that?”
“Okay. We make it an Indian community, but not too small. A large pueblo, like around Taos,” Charlie said. “That’s far enough away.”
“Okay, but she needs work,” Gordon replied. “How about looking for a job at, say, a small-town restaurant, as kitchen help, out of public view?”
“Yeah, and she’d drive a pickup, the older the better,” Charlie suggested.
“So what you’re saying, is that she could be almost anywhere within four hundred miles. Nearly every city or town in this state is small, but this is a big state,” Gordon pointed out.
“We’ve got to start somewhere,” Charlie concluded, taking the Central ramp north on I-25, racing out to merge in with the mid-evening traffic. “Let’s see what a woman thinks of this.”
“Gina?”
* * *
Less than fifteen minutes later they pulled up in front of Gina and Nancy’s town house in Albuquerque’s Northeast Heights. The outside was generic, with drought-resistant flowers, gravel, and a few ornamental trees and shrubs. The ladies did, however, have a backyard with a tiny lawn and a grill. The four of them sometimes got together to barbecue steaks or burgers. Charlie and Gina had grown up together in Shiprock and their friendship had been rekindled after he left the Army.
As they stepped up onto the small porch, the light came on above them and Gina opened the door. “Hi, guys, come on inside. Nancy’s still on the job, but she and I have talked a little about Lola Tso and these crimes and I’ll give you my slant on her situation. As an attorney, I’ve had women clients who’ve been forced to go underground—usually as a result of domestic violence situations. There can be several effective options for a woman on the run.”
They stepped inside the ope
n-space design combo living room–kitchen, moving immediately toward the Mexican tile-topped breakfast bar. There were tall, leather upholstered chairs on both sides and a plate of cookies in the center.
“So, you’ve come up empty so far?” Gina asked, stepping over by the coffeepot on the counter. “Coffee, right?”
They both nodded, and she poured three mugs full.
“If I recall, Nancy said that Lola was a pretty bright girl,” Charlie ventured, taking the offered cup, then reaching for a cookie.
“Yeah, and more. According to Nancy, Lola was a survivor. What Nancy couldn’t figure out is what she was doing pawning jewelry stolen from a dead man—one who’d been killed and the victim of an active investigation. Not to mention grave robbing and the rest. Talk about raising flags to the authorities.”
“We brought that up the other night and Al suggested that maybe Lola didn’t know about that at the time,” Gordon said, accepting the mug from Gina.
“Okay. Going with that assumption, then where did she get the necklace? From her boyfriend Jerry, who’s part of Fasthorse’s crew?” Charlie offered.
“Guys, Nancy told me that Lola was a thief, at least at the time she was hooking. The girl bragged more than once about stealing cash from a john’s wallet. So why not grab a squash blossom necklace when nobody was looking?” Gina suggested. “A quick pawn for even quicker cash, then tearing up the ticket, never intending on redeeming the piece.”
“No honor among thieves, that’s a given. Clearly Lola didn’t know this necklace would link her to theft and murder,” Charlie said.
“Now she’s stuck in the middle. That necklace points back from Buck’s grave to Jerry, and from Jerry to Clarence Fasthorse,” Gina said. “That suggests that one of Fasthorse’s crew, Jerry or Clarence himself, killed the silversmith during the carjacking, then robbed the grave and snagged the jewelry. Holding on to that necklace was a mistake, and whoever had it is trying to save their ass.”
“By killing Lola before she goes to the cops,” Gordon said, shaking his head.
“Lola knows the truth now, in retrospect, because they’re after her. That’s why she’s on the run, and why we came here to get your take on where she might be hiding,” Charlie said. “Gordo, tell her our theory regarding where a really bright girl might lie low.”
Gordon quickly described their logic of a smart fugitive trying to avoid doing anything predictable. “It’s what I call the ‘country girl in a pickup’ theory,” he said with a grin, grabbing another cookie.
“That makes sense. But you know how many small communities there are within just a hundred miles of here? Lola could be anywhere,” Gina added.
Charlie shrugged. “That’s the problem. If she figures that we, the cops, or Clarence Fasthorse have guessed her plan, she might just do the opposite. She did risk a visit with Mike the Pimp to pick up some extra cash.”
“How long ago was this?” Gina asked.
“It was last night, late, and we just found out about it less than two hours ago,” Gordon said.
“Better pass that along to Nancy and Detective DuPree. They have people scouring the metro trying to find Lola before the bad guys do,” Gina advised.
“I’ll make the call,” Charlie said, standing and reaching for his phone as he walked across the room.
“Don’t tell her where you got the information, bro,” Gordon advised. “If we rat out Mike the Pimp he’ll quit helping us. And Lola trusts him more than she does the cops.”
“How does Nancy feel when you keep secrets from her?” Charlie asked, phone still in hand.
“Hates it. But I’m also bound by client privilege, so it’s nothing new,” Gina said.
“But Lola’s not your client,” Gordon reminded.
“But you guys are.”
“Good point,” Charlie said with a sigh. “I’ll see how she reacts,” he added, bringing up Nancy’s number on the display.
Five minutes later, Charlie ended the call and turned to Gina and Gordon, who’d remained beside the coffeepot, watching and listening as they drank the final dregs.
“Nancy sounded pissed,” Gordon said.
Gina shook her head. “No, when she’s pissed, you don’t hear any sounds at all. Trust me on this.”
“She’s going to call DuPree now, and, at least she won’t have to lie,” Charlie said.
“Think DuPree will figure it out?” Gordon asked.
Charlie shook his head. “He’s going to track us down first. Hopefully, before he does that, we’ll get in some sleep.”
“You don’t want to stay until Nancy gets off duty? She’ll be home in an hour,” Gina said, looking at the kitchen clock.
“Naw, we’ve got to work regular hours tomorrow and we need to stick close to the shop for a few days. We’ve been kicking at the ant den lately, and there’s no telling how Fasthorse is going to react. He’s already warned us off,” Charlie reminded.
“Don’t forget trying to kill us,” Gordon said, grinning.
Gina looked at them with sad eyes, shook her head, then walked over and gave them both a big hug.
“What was that for?” Charlie asked. “Not that it wasn’t nice.”
“Dammit, guys, the way you get into trouble, I never know if I’ve just hugged you for the last time.”
“We’ve got it under control, don’t worry,” Charlie said, winking as he backed toward the door. “Ready, Gordo?”
Gordon nodded. “Like he said, Gina. Under control.”
Gina kept the porch light on as they walked over to the Charger.
Chapter Fourteen
Charlie woke up to a loud crash, and something heavy landed on the bed. Instantly awake, he sat up and turned on the lamp. The window had been broken, glass was everywhere, and there was a brick on the covers down by his feet.
“Crap,” he grumbled, reaching for the pistol underneath the other pillow. He started to stand, thought about the glass, and looked down for his slippers beside the bed.
As he slipped on the slippers he heard another crash toward the side of the house, and his car alarm go off. Cursing again, Charlie grabbed his car keys from the nightstand and ran into the living room.
Through the thin curtains of the front window he could see the taillights of a car racing away down the street, engine roaring and tires burning rubber.
He thumbed the button on his key fob and the car alarm shut off. Cringing at what he might see next, Charlie unlocked the inside door leading into the garage, opened it up, and reached for the light switch.
The garage window had been shattered, and there was the Charger, a sitting duck in the middle. Cringing, he circled around the back end of the car and walked along the side, expecting to find the passenger window broken, or worse, body damage. Pane glass was everywhere, crunching beneath his feet, but as he checked, he couldn’t find any dents or damage to the car at all. There was no sign of whatever had come through the window.
Reaching the hood, he crouched and looked across the surface, wondering if a graze had scored the finish. Nothing. Maybe he’d gotten lucky this time. But what had set off the car alarm?
Circling around to the driver’s side, he found a brick on the concrete floor about a foot from the front tire, and a scuff on the sidewall where the brick had apparently bounced off the tire, jarring the Charger and setting off the alarm. Looking up, he found a big dent in the garage wall about chest high where the brick had struck after flying through the garage window. “Yes!” he yelled aloud.
Hearing the sound of the phone inside the house, Charlie hurried back into the kitchen and grabbed the cordless landline receiver off the wall.
“Charlie, some asshole just threw a brick through my front window, just missing my TV,” Gordon announced. “Better watch out…”
“Too late, Gordon. At least I got lucky this time. They broke some glass and dented a wall, but they missed my Charger.”
“You parked your ride outside?”
“No, the bastard too
k out my garage window. The good news is that he threw too high and missed the car completely.”
“You got lucky, all right. That it?” Gordon asked.
Charlie shook his head. “No. They tossed the first brick through my bedroom window and it ended up on the bed. I almost took a brick in the leg.”
“I should’ve known you’d be more worried about your car than your carcass, Charlie. You’d probably take a boulder in the chest to stop anyone from scratching your Dodge.”
“True,” Charlie admitted. “But what about your pickup? It okay?”
“Yeah. Thank God my garage has no windows.”
“You sure that’s all they did?” Charlie asked, walking into the bedroom, stepping around the glass and finding his cell phone.
“Yeah, I’m searching the place, phone in one hand, pistol in the other.”
“Me too,” Charlie replied. “You get a look at the rat bastards?”
“No, I just heard the sound of squealing tires and a racing engine. A pickup, based upon the noise. I never got a look. You?”
“Taillights—a dark sedan. That’s it. We might as well call the cops and report this—for our insurance agents,” Charlie suggested.
“Your agent’s gonna hate you by now. What is this, the third time someone’s trashed your house or car?” Gordon asked.
“Yeah, and my rates are already sky-high from last year. I may decide to foot the window repair bill on my own. You know who did this,” Charlie added.
“Yeah, the Night Crew—Fasthorse’s thugs. Thought they’d lie low for a while. I’m not going to take this lying down,” Gordon added softly.
“They need payback, but if we roust the restaurant and give his crew a beat down we could end up in jail, especially if some unconnected civilians join in. That would be bad for business—ours.”
“Got that right,” Gordon said. “How about a little tit for tat?”
“Good call. Maybe if something happens to our boy’s blue SUV?” Charlie said, feeling a little better now.
Gordon chuckled. “You know, when dealing with animals, unless you discipline them immediately they don’t learn the lesson. Right now, those suckers are probably crowing to each other about how they stuck it to us.”
