No one spoke.
“Call the police,” Raul said. “The unis need to take care of this.”
Bobby stared off into the distance, and in the dim light Raul thought he saw tears in the older man’s eyes.
“If I reach out to the substation, then people who come in here will know,” Bobby said. “You think I want that?”
Raul leaned close, lowered his voice. “The guy’s hitting your daughter. Why don’t you just give him a little tune up yourself?”
Bobby picked up an ashtray, dumped cigarette butts into the trash.
“What do you want me to say? I’m not as young as I used to be.” The older man sighed. “I’d give anything to roll the clock back ten years. That guy wouldn’t know what hit him.”
Raul wanted to help Bobby and Junie. Especially Junie. Especially when somebody was causing her pain.
But he was not in a position to give somebody an off-the-books beatdown.
He was also busy. He was dating the niece of a city councilman and serving on the leadership committee of the Latino Law Enforcement Officers Association, slated to be the president of the local chapter next year.
Raul liked politics, which was why he took the meetings that the power brokers offered. He enjoyed the art of leadership. Turned out he had a knack for directing people toward a consensus, horse-trading favors and such.
From time to time, he imagined that this skill set was something supernatural, a gift from Carlos in the great beyond. He often wondered, however, if he had embellished Carlos’s skills, burnished them in his memory.
Beating up Junie’s husband was not a good idea for someone who eventually wanted to run for office.
Bobby had been wiping the same ashtray for a long time now. He was ignoring customers, too, letting one of his waitresses come behind the bar and fill the orders.
“What aren’t you telling me?” Raul said.
Bobby put the ashtray down. Without looking up, he said, “She doesn’t want me around anymore.”
“Who . . . Junie?”
Raul could hardly believe this. He hadn’t been close with Junie in a long time, as their lives had taken different courses. But Bobby was her father.
“Her aunt had to tell me about the miscarriage.” Bobby paused. “And the other thing.”
“Why wouldn’t she talk to you? I don’t understand.”
“Her mother’s people.” Bobby shook his head. “They never much like that Junie’s mom married somebody like me. A cop.”
Raul remembered the aunt well. She was a symbol of everything that was bad about Dallas. Shallow and vain, concerned only about her money and the new fashions at Neiman’s.
After Junie had graduated high school, the aunt had taken her niece under her wing, changed the way she dressed, the way she acted. The way she thought.
“What is it you want me to do, Bobby?”
“My little girl’s in trouble. I—” He wiped his eyes. “We—we need your help.”
Raul pushed the can of Diet Coke away. “You think I’m the family fix-it man?”
Bobby took a sharp breath, leaned close. “We made a pledge, remember? Not to talk about that ever again.”
“Talk about what?” Raul headed toward the door.
- CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT -
Lysol ties a bandana around his leg to stanch the flow of blood.
The wound is minor, little more than a nick, but it’s dribbling like a Bourbon Street hooker with a month-old case of gonorrhea.
He’s in an alley one block south of Singleton. The subgun is slung over his shoulder.
He hasn’t heard much from the area where he last encountered the guy in the tracksuit. A few horns honking, some yelling, but that’s it.
No sirens yet either, but they will come, of that he’s sure. You don’t have a ten-car pileup and two guys shooting at each other without the po-po at least putting in an appearance, even in this piss-hole section of town.
Lysol leans against a rack of trash cans behind a ramshackle old house. His breathing is labored. Too much hydro smoke, not enough exercise. Not enough time on the streets, battling the enemy one on one.
A tale as old as history—the king gets soft on the throne.
He pulls a cell phone from his pocket and starts calling people in his organization, the next layer down from those who were destroyed on Vilbig Road. But the calls go unanswered. Some slide straight to voice mail. Others just ring and ring.
Lysol struggles to control the fear pooling in his stomach, an electric glow that sends currents of shakiness throughout his body.
It’s time to move. He clutches the subgun in one hand, pushes away from the rack of garbage cans.
A helicopter buzzes overhead, low and loud.
Lysol crouches instinctively, looks up. The blood begins to seep from his wound again.
A TV station, not the police.
Behind him, a shuffle of feet on cracked asphalt.
Lysol spins around. He brings the gun up, finger on the trigger, starts to squeeze.
A boy, maybe nine years old, wearing a pair of ragged denim shorts and a dirty Dallas Cowboys T-shirt. The child’s hair is done in cornrows, his skin so dark it’s the color of eggplant.
Lysol moves his finger from the trigger, terrified at what he’d almost done.
The child stares at him, head cocked.
Lysol says, “What’s your name, boy?”
The child doesn’t respond.
“I axed you a question.” Lysol lets the street patois creep into his speech. Rulers need to relate to their subjects, the common people.
The child scratches his nose but doesn’t say anything.
Lysol stands up. “You know who I am?”
After a moment the boy nods.
“Who your people?” Lysol limps closer. “Your daddy do business with me?”
The helicopter flies over again. In the distance, the sound of a single siren.
“The five-oh,” the boy says. “They gonna fuck you up.”
Lysol looks at his cell phone. Then he drops it on the ground and smashes it with his good leg.
“You are one funny-looking nigger.” The boy shakes his head. “You’re all uptown and shit. They give you that suit at the country club?”
“Got a mouth on you, boy. Your mama teach you to talk like that?”
“My mama dead.” The youngster kicks an empty can of Schlitz. “Smoked that crack day and night.”
The man and the child stare at each other for a few seconds, neither speaking.
“The five-oh,” Lysol says. “They on your street right now?”
“Uptown Negro.” The boy laughs. “Hiding out in the alley like a hobo.”
Lysol realizes the child might be just a tad crazy about the same time it dawns on him that the mother died because of the product he sold.
“Your momma,” Lysol says. “I’m sorry about her.”
“What you sorry about?” Anger flashes in the boy’s eyes. “You light the pipe for her?”
Neither of them speak for a moment.
“I got a crib three streets over,” Lysol says. “I need to get there. You wanna be my scout?”
“You got nuthin’, Negro.” The boy shakes his head. “Fuck me running, you as dumb as a Pop-Tart.”
The insolence is amazing. If it wasn’t for the child’s age, Lysol is pretty sure he’d put a cap in his ass right now and leave him to rot in the alley.
The boy rubs his crotch absentmindedly.
“Well then, I’ll see you around, mister man.” Lysol smiles, swallows his anger. He slings the gun on his shoulder and prepares to leave.
“You in my alley, Negro.” The boy pulls a pistol from his shorts. “You owe me a toll.”
The gun is a tiny thing, silver, maybe a .380 or a .32.
Despite the circumstances, Lysol can’t help himself. He laughs.
“Put that thing down, ’fore you hurt yourself,” he says. “I’ll give you five dollars. Okay?”
From behind him comes the sound of feet, lots of them, scurrying down the alley.
Lysol turns.
More boys. Ten, maybe twelve of them. Around the same age as the youngster with the cornrows. Some are holding pistols, others have clubs. One carries what looks like a broken machete.
“You gonna give me whatever you got,” the boy says. “You ain’t no thing here. This is my territory.”
- CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE -
I watched a sea of blue run toward the empty North Dallas office building.
Dallas police officers. Angry. Breaking through the line of federal agents trying to maintain a secure perimeter.
I turned to Drake, the FBI contractor in charge of the operation, eager to see what he’d do.
His radio sounded like it was on meth.
Agent needs assistance!
Shots fired! Shots fired! Please advise.
WHERE THE HELL IS OUR BACKUP?
I grabbed his arm. “We need to get out of here.”
“The shipment.” Drake pointed to the container.
The pickup team had loaded the crate onto a forklift. They were securing it with canvas straps, nearly ready to drive the package out the back door.
The team leader, the ex-Ranger, looked at us.
“This is a Code One,” he said. “Mission protocol authorizes deadly force.”
“Who’s your parent company?” I said.
The police were at the building now, banging on the door. The FBI agents who’d been in charge of the perimeter were pressed between them and the glass entrance.
The Ranger told me a name, one of the larger and less felonious multinational military contractors. The company in question used Goldberg, Finkelman, and Clark exclusively for all their legal work.
“Your orders have changed,” I said. “Per your employee handbook, in the event of an emergency, legal counsel’s instructions supersede those of the mission commander’s.”
The medical crew wheeled Captain Burnett out through the back door. At the front, more police officers had arrived, hitting the tinted windows.
I pointed to the shipping container. “Unless you can get that out of here in the next thirty seconds, you are hereby ordered to abort this mission.”
The Ranger looked at the back exit, maybe a dozen meters away. The forklift traveled like a really fast tortoise. Right now he was probably trying to do the math in his head. Maybe he could make it, maybe not.
“One way or another, the police are going to be crawling everywhere before you know it,” I said. “We need to fall back and let the DOJ work out the pickup when everybody’s calmed down.”
Drake stared at me, paralyzed.
A window at the front broke. The shouts of angry cops filled the room.
“What’s plan B, fellows?” I asked no one in particular. “You gonna open fire on a bunch of police officers?”
“What’s your name?” the Ranger said.
“Jon Cantrell.”
“This is on you, then.” He ordered his men to abandon the mission.
The pickup team stopped what they were doing and ran out the back, leaving the forklift and its contents.
The first cop entered the office building at the far end.
I grabbed Drake’s arm, pulled him in the direction the Rangers had gone. “If we stay, it will only get worse.”
He nodded and followed me out the back.
The medevac chopper was a Sikorsky, a big old workhorse with enough floor area to accommodate Captain Mason Burnett and his medical team as well as me and Drake.
By the time we lifted off, the Dallas police had overrun the entire building and spilled out into the rear parking lot where the chopper had been idling.
The FBI agents stood around, jabbering into their walkie-talkies, no doubt trying to be cooperative now.
The police were pointing to the chopper, shouting.
Drake and I sat on a bench seat on the back wall. We wore headsets with boom mics. We were both watching the mayhem unfold below us as the chopper slowly gained altitude.
“It’s like the fall of Saigon,” I said.
“What?” Drake looked up.
“Vietnam. The fall of Saigon. Last chopper off the roof of the embassy?”
“Was that a TV show?”
My mouth fell open. I didn’t reply.
“No, no.” Drake shook his head. “That was a musical. Broadway. Miss Saigon.”
“Didn’t you take any history classes?”
The Sikorsky banked right. North Dallas lay spread out below, a sea of green trees and gray concrete.
“Or watch Apocalypse Now?” I said.
The chopper made a loop around the three Apache helicopters and headed south.
“Boy, this is a mess.” Drake rubbed his hands together. “The reports I’ve gotta fill out.”
I didn’t say anything, silently agreeing with him. I dreaded the call to Theo Goldberg. Still, this was better than having a bunch of Rangers open fire on the Dallas police.
“You were going to debrief me,” I said.
Drake nodded. He pulled out a tablet computer from his backpack and then asked a series of questions centered around one central theme: did Captain Mason Burnett ever identify himself as a police officer?
I told him no each time he asked.
This seemed to satisfy him, as did the data from the shipment itself. The container had been outfitted with the latest in surveillance cameras—wireless, unobtrusive, equipped for sound and video, powered by batteries with a two-year life span.
Drake reviewed the footage on his tablet, showed me the relevant portion. Then he shut down the device and said, “I think we’re in the clear. The captain never indicated to anybody he was a cop.”
“I hope you tell him that,” I said. “If he wakes up.”
Drake changed channels on his headset and had a quick conversation with the medical team. Then he clicked back to me.
“He wants to see you.”
“Who?”
“The captain.”
“He can talk?” I raised an eyebrow. “He’s alive?”
“Bulletproof vest.” Drake tapped his sternum.
I took off my headset and staggered toward the front of the chopper.
The medical team, two EMTs and a field assistant, moved to one side when I approached.
Mason Burnett’s face was pale, eyes dark-rimmed. They’d taken off his shirt and vest. His chest was muscular but bruised, skin the color of thunderclouds.
One bullet had punched through the fleshy part of his bicep. The wound had been bandaged but there was still a fair amount of blood everywhere.
I leaned close.
He pulled aside the oxygen mask with his good hand.
“Y-you’re the vigilante.” His voice was hoarse, weak.
“Not me.” I shook my head. “I’m a lover, not a fighter.”
“They’re gonna pin it on you and Delgado’s little split-tail.”
“Piper. That’s her name.”
I tried not to think about where she was at the moment.
Burnett grimaced. One of the EMTs checked the injured man’s pulse and then stepped back.
“Why were you following me?” I said.
“W-what’s that kid to you?”
“Tremont?”
“He’s dead by now. Has to be,” he said. “Statistically, that kid would never have made his twenty-fifth birthday. A drive-by waiting to get popped.”
I pondered the truth of his statement for a moment. Then I said, “Everybody needs at least one person who gi
ves a damn about them.”
I wondered what would have happened to Tremont if his father had not been killed.
Would he have been at the Iris Apartments? Almost certainly not. My friend Damon Washington would have gotten out of law enforcement at some point, maybe quit living on edge. There would have been a house in the suburbs, backyard cookouts.
Burnett shook his head. “You know what my life was like when I was that kid’s age?”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t really give a damn about your life.”
I realized the fallacy of my thinking. Damon Washington couldn’t have left law enforcement any more than I could have spent the last twenty years working an office job. We are what we are.
Burnett coughed. His face blanched, eyes wide. Then he licked his lips and said, “Did you find out where the kid worked?”
I didn’t reply. He stared at my eyes.
“How did you know he had a job?” I said.
“You got any children?”
I shook my head.
“My old man. He was a piece of work.”
“What does Tremont’s job have to do with anything?”
He coughed again, and shivered once like he was cold.
“I never wanted children,” he said. “I didn’t want to keep the bad genes flowing, one generation to the next. Know what I’m saying?”
I nodded. The helicopter banked again. In the distance I could see the medical district, a row of hospitals along Harry Hines Boulevard.
“Delgado’s a whackjob.” Burnett’s voice was weaker. “Guy joins the PD, then beats everybody over the head with the dead-brother thing. How does that make sense?”
The idea that I had been suppressing bubbled up to my consciousness.
“Do you think he’s the vigilante?”
Burnett started to speak but no words emerged. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.
One of the EMTs approached. He listened to Burnett’s chest with a stethoscope and then looked at his colleagues.
“We’ve got a punctured lung here.” He then grabbed my arm. “Sir, you need to step away from the patient.”
I pushed the EMT’s hand away, leaned back over Burnett.
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