The Carrion Birds

by Urban Waite

  “You’re telling me you shot him,” Ray said. The two of them standing in the living room of the Sullivan house, a broken-down sofa turned halfway out from the wall, and the cracked plaster of the place around them on all sides. “Because I’ve already heard that, it’s all I’ve heard from you all day and I’m getting tired of you lying to me about it.”

  Sanchez was leaning against one of the walls, picking at the plaster, his fingers a chalk white and a small mound of detritus developing on the floor at his feet. “I’m telling you I shot him,” Sanchez said. “I’m not saying it was perfect, but I shot him and I saw him go down.”

  “And then what?” Ray said. They’d spent the last hour eating their food in silence at the diner, Ray faced away from the door, hoping he wouldn’t run into anyone who might recognize him. Sure at any moment Tom would walk in or worse yet, his father.

  “The gun was so loud,” Sanchez said. “I wasn’t expecting it to be that loud and I got scared. I didn’t know what to do. I was looking to where he’d taken the shot and he was just lying there in the sand.” Sanchez crossed and recrossed his hands, a white rim of plaster showing under each fingernail. “I walked down and pushed the gun into his back. He was dead. He was dead where I left him and the traffic was going by out on the highway.”

  Sanchez seemed like he was going to cry and Ray looked away. The sun had gone down out on the desert and there was a pink haze left in its wake, followed above by a dark blue spreading upward into the sky. “But he wasn’t dead, was he?”

  “I thought he was.”

  Ray went over and sat on the old sofa. He rubbed his hands over his face and spread his fingers up into his hair. This close to Coronado and he couldn’t avoid it, he was thinking about the day he’d come clean to Marianne about who he was, about what he did. It didn’t go well. Marianne telling him that he would ruin their marriage, that even then, as they stood close together there in the kitchen of their house, he was ruining their marriage. She wanted them to move. She said if the oil was gone and this was the work he was doing, they should move. If this was their life, then there must be more to it, to their life together. All of that only weeks before she died, before the cartel tracked Ray down and took her from him.

  When Ray looked back over at Sanchez, he’d already decided. Ray would do it, but he didn’t want anything to do with Sanchez anymore. Ray would go to the hospital because it had to be done. There wasn’t anything more to it than that. “Memo doesn’t trust you,” Ray said, looking up at Sanchez. “He wants you to go north in Burnham’s truck tonight. Tomorrow, after the job is done, he’ll send someone for the drugs.”

  Sanchez’s face fell. “He didn’t say that.”

  “He said that exactly.”

  Ray asked for the pager and when it was given, Ray had to wait only a moment before Sanchez went out the door.

  Now Ray sat in the Bronco watching the hospital entrance. The white napkin he’d taken from the diner in his lap and the air condensing all around him on the Bronco’s windows.

  Five hours had passed since he’d driven into town. On his way he passed RV lots where the trailers never moved and broken-down cars sat on deflated tires. He passed houses where he could still remember the names of the families that had lived there twenty years before. He passed areas, too, where lots that had once held two-story clapboard houses now held only the craterlike indentations of cement foundations, damaged with time and standing alone.

  After Sanchez left, Ray walked out a ways in the desert with the shotgun he’d killed Burnham with and the bag of heroin. Counting his steps as he went, the shovel in his hand, he made sure that he’d be able to find the spot again if he needed to. Taking his time as he dug the hole, pausing to wipe the gun clean, then burying both the bag and gun. By the time he was done, the sun had set and there was only the pale light to be seen in the west. He walked back to the house and sat on the couch trying to figure a plan.

  Out on the street there was nothing moving and Ray pulled himself up on the wheel. Sitting straight-backed in the driver’s seat, he pulled at his pants where the jeans had ridden up his crotch and tightened at his waist. He wore the nine-millimeter Ruger at the back of his belt and he brought it out and looked it over, checking the slide on the gun before placing it beneath the seat.

  He was dying for a piss. Turning to look into the backseat for a cup or a bottle, he saw the case for the hunting rifle. He’d thought for a moment about burying it along with the shotgun and drugs, but then thought better of it, knowing he still didn’t have a plan for the kid up there in the hospital room.

  With his bladder beating a constant rhythm against his belt buckle, Ray got down out of the Bronco and urinated against one of the chain-link fences nearby. He kept himself in the shadows, the only thing to tell he was there a steady rising of steam from the piss on the ground at his feet. He zipped up and looked back at the hospital.

  It was then, standing there in the cold of the desert night, that he saw the truck go by on the street before the hospital. The reverse lights came on and then the truck backed up to the curb. All of this Ray watched, fascinated after all these years to be back in the same town. His cousin Tom, there before him with his truck door open to the street. Ray watching as Tom clapped the door shut and walked up the drive toward the hospital.

  It was past midnight when Kelly came out of the hospital and saw Tom Herrera sitting on the hood of her cruiser with his feet on the bumper. “Careful,” Kelly said, “you wouldn’t want to damage county property.”

  Tom grinned. “I don’t know if the county quite knows how much damage I’ve already done.” He slid off the hood and stood waiting for her. At the bottom of the drive she saw his truck and his mutt, Jeanie, sitting inside with her window rolled down.

  “You two are getting to be a regular occurrence, aren’t you?” Kelly said.

  Tom looked back to where he’d parked his truck, the street all the way down a dark lane of shadow. “I guess we are,” Tom said. “I was going to see if you wanted to come out for a beer with me.”

  “Tomás Herrera,” Kelly said, with a lift of her eyebrows. “Are you trying to ask me out on a date?”

  “If that’s what you want to call it.”

  “Let me guess,” Kelly said, walking around him to her door, “you want to go by Dario’s bar and see what the mood is like tonight?”

  “I always knew you’d make a fine sheriff,” Tom said. He watched her where she stood, waiting for her to say something, and when she didn’t, “I guess we could drive separately. I wouldn’t want anyone thinking we were becoming a thing.”

  Kelly smiled at him. She opened her door and got in. She hadn’t planned on having a beer or going in to see Dario tonight, but she would if Tom wanted to go with her. Dario’s wasn’t exactly the type of place she liked to spend her evenings. Low ceilinged, with a central bar that cramped all the tables and chairs close to the wall, the only light in the place from the neon beer signs that hung behind the bar and against the windows.

  Down on the street in front of the hospital she saw Tom start up his truck and pull it around toward Main. Following him out she saw the empty parking spots all down both sides of the street, a good collection of cars outside Dario’s bar. Dark storefront windows running parallel to her as they came down the block and parked just across the street.

  “A lot of cars for a weeknight,” Tom said as they crossed the street toward the bar.

  “Looks like a roughne
ck convention might be going on inside.”

  Tom led as they crossed the street, looking back over his shoulder at her. “I didn’t think there were that many oilmen left in this town.” He gained the curb and in three quick steps had the door to the bar open. The smell of wet dish towels and spilled liquor leaked out onto the sidewalk, followed close by the thick billow of tobacco smoke from inside.

  “Wonderful,” Kelly said. But Tom didn’t seem to hear as he went in ahead.

  Walking into Dario’s was like walking into a cave. The streetlamps outside blocked by the tinted windows. The back was lit only by the light of the bathrooms, shining out into the barroom from far down the back hall. The only dependable light in the place from the green and red beer signs along the walls.

  “Find us a table. I’ll be back with a couple beers,” Tom said before disappearing into the crowd of oilmen that surrounded the bar.

  Kelly looked around at the place. It was her first time inside since Dario had come into town and taken it over almost three years before. She didn’t much care for places like it and until tonight there hadn’t been much cause for her to come in. All down the bar now, the men were turning to look at her, one after the other as they noticed her standing close by the door.

  To the right of her, someone called her name and turning she saw Luis, Tom’s father, sitting at one of the wooden tables close by the window. In front of him he had a tallboy of Coors and an empty shot glass. His eyes already glossed from the alcohol.

  “You driving tonight, Luis?” she said, pulling a chair up to the table and then another for Tom.

  Luis rolled his head around and gave her a grin. “You going to be a buzz-kill tonight, Edna?”

  “Never with you, Luis. You know that.”

  “Sure,” Luis said. He took a sip from his beer. “They laid off thirty men from the Tate Bulger well today.” Luis put the beer down. “Seems like a good enough reason to have a few drinks.”

  Kelly looked around at all the men in the bar. Some were going at it pretty good, while others sat quietly to themselves in the corners of the bar. It was the fifth layoff in about the same amount of months and it wasn’t getting to be much of a surprise to Kelly or these men. “You worried at all, Luis? All these young roughnecks out there looking for work, and you at the boyish age of eighty-one.”

  “Boyish, huh?” Luis smiled over at her. “Buy me a drink before you start sweet-talking.”

  “You know I love you, Luis, but not in that way.”

  “Worth a try,” Luis said. His eyes shifted away from her as Tom came back with the drinks.

  “Here you go, old man,” Tom said, sliding a shot of brown liquor across the wood to his father. For himself and Kelly he’d brought two beers in glass bottles. “I guess they laid off a few more,” he said after he sat. The three of them circled up to the table, their backs to the window, watching the crowd.

  “Your father just mentioned that,” Kelly said. “They seem to be doing all right, though.” She leaned to the side, looking the men over, trying to see past them toward the bar. Many of the men she knew by name, but about half of them she thought she’d never get to know. “You see Dario anywhere?”

  Tom shook his head.

  Next to her, Luis put back the shot of liquor and then finished it with a drink of his tallboy. Kelly watched him till he was done, his Adam’s apple beating a constant rhythm beneath his weathered skin. “Kind of hard to tell the mood of the place when there’s a party going on,” Kelly said.

  “More like a wake,” Luis added.

  Tom smiled across the table at Kelly. “I guess that’s one way to look at it.” He raised a hand and motioned for the bartender to come over.

  The bartender was a thick man named Medina who spoke little English. From what Kelly had been able to put together on him, he knew about thirty words and they all had to do with liquor or beer. “¿Su jefe?” Tom asked, Medina standing there, looking from Kelly back to Tom.

  Medina wore a liquor-stained white T-shirt with a picture of a buck on the front of it and a pail of icy Milwaukee’s Best printed on the back. When he turned to look around for his boss, his wide belly followed a split second later. “La oficina,” he said. “You want?”

  “No,” Kelly said. “We just wanted to see if he was here.”

  Medina kept staring at her like he didn’t understand. His pupils, very big in the dim light of the bar, shone green and bright with the reflection of the beer sign above. Sensing there would be nothing more, he turned back to the bar, where the oil workers were calling him.

  “You didn’t want to talk with Dario?” Tom asked.

  Kelly laughed. “Probably better if he just knows we’re here. Might be nice if he felt a little pressure from us.” She tipped her beer back and drank, watching Tom. “Besides, unlike Luis, this isn’t what I’d call a usual night.”

  “Baby steps,” Luis said to Tom.

  “You’re the expert,” Tom said to his father. Then to Kelly, “You don’t think the talk of the town hasn’t been all about that boy you have in the hospital now?”

  “I’m sure it has, and now everyone is wondering why I’m in here and why Dario is hiding in the back office on one of his best nights. At least I’m wondering that myself.”

  “Everything all right with that boy in the hospital?” Tom asked.

  “His name is Gil Suarez,” Kelly said. “We got the printout on him late this afternoon. He served three months in county on a possession charge when he was nineteen.”

  “How old is he now?”

  “Twenty-one.”

  Tom sat back in his chair. “Does he have a PO?”

  “Up in Albuquerque, but they hadn’t heard anything about him in a year till I called up there this evening.”

  “What are his chances?” Tom asked.

  “He hasn’t woken up yet. Pete is with him now and then the new kid, Pierce, will take over for the night.”

  Tom held his beer halfway to his mouth but didn’t drink. “What are the chances Gil wakes up and has something to say?”

  “According to the doctors, if he keeps going the way he does, things look pretty good. Whether he has something to say is another story altogether.”

  Tom stayed quiet and they watched the oilmen at the bar for a time and then Tom said, “You think that boy needs to be scared like that? You think he wouldn’t want to say anything against anyone, even if we could protect him?”

  Luis grunted something under his breath, but Kelly just kept staring at the men by the bar. There was a discussion going on about burning down one of the well trailers to get even with the Tate Bulger bosses. It was drunk talk but still Kelly listened, knowing how easily drunk talk moved from the bar out onto the street. The voices rising for a moment and then dying away as the men drank. She watched and listened, trying to identify those who were the loudest. A big man named Andy Strope seemed to talk the most, his voice carrying above the rest. Mike Shore was also there and Steve Herman, but the rest of the men in the group either stood with their backs to her or she didn’t know them. After a while she said to Tom, “You don’t have to worry about protecting anyone, Tom.”

  “Everyone has to make a choice,” Tom said, his voice low against the background noise from the bar.

  “I know,” Kelly said, “but your choice has already been made.” She looked at him to see how he’d taken it. She was about ready to call it a night. All she’d meant to do was
come by and let Dario know she was still around, that she hadn’t forgotten about him, or what he might represent. Whether the boy lived or not, it didn’t matter in the bigger scope of things. If Dario was cartel, there was no way a boy like Gil was going to speak out against him.

  Tom finished his beer and looked over at his father. “You about ready, old man?” Luis nodded, he put his hand out on the table and steadied himself for the move. “I know you don’t need any looking after,” Tom said, watching Kelly where she sat, “but I’m looking out for you all the same.” He put a hand under Luis’s armpit and pulled him up, the old man wobbling a bit as he found the floor.

  Kelly nodded to Luis and the old man nodded back. She watched Tom go and then, when the door closed behind them, she finished her beer and brought the bottle over to the bar.

  Medina broke away from the group of men and came over. He was looking at the empty beer bottle in her hand. “¿Otra?”

  “No, not tonight.” Kelly handed him the bottle. Past the group of roughnecks, she saw Dario standing just inside his office door, watching her or the door behind. When she looked over her shoulder and then back at the office, Dario had closed his door.

  Day 2

  It was a little past nine when the sound of the explosion came to Dario where he sat at the bar drinking his morning coffee. The windows rattled in their casings and he looked toward the street, from which the sound had come, and from where he could see the morning sun falling through the dust-stained glass onto the barroom floor, as if through a diffuse curtain.

  At the age of thirty-four he was still alive, even though he’d never expected as much, and he thought constantly of his death and how it would occur. All of it, the bar, the town, the shipments he held and then sent north, like any other place he’d been while working for the cartel. It was all the same to him, the same job, filled with the same thrills and boredom, the same highs and lows. He couldn’t have said it any other way, because, as he saw it, there was only this—there was only this life, this present. Though he hoped almost every day for something more.