“The point is that you’re not a stranger to the way things work,” he said.
“What do you want from me?”
“It gets dirty sometimes.” Jordan sighed and rubbed his eyes, indicating for the first time that he was not a robot. “Circumstances often require things to be done in a certain way, that, you know, might not be all that… traditional.”
“Or legal?” I said.
“It’s like making sausage. People would rather not know.”
“When do you tell me this is a matter of national security?” I smiled. “Don’t want to miss that part.”
“When an operative goes native, he doesn’t have an infrastructure anymore.” Jordan stood up and wandered to the craps table. He picked up a pair of dice and tossed them against the padded side. “You understand what I’m saying?”
“Where do I fit in with your missing army man?” I remembered the hired Fort Worth muscle used to take down the Traveler camp.
“You’ve had contact with him.”
I didn’t say anything.
“The NSA occasionally lets us in on things that hit their information grid.” He crossed the room to the blackjack table, picked up a stack of chips.
An image of Nolan’s stepson, Max, flashed through my mind.
“They’ve got technology the rest of us can’t even conceive of.” He tossed a chip across the room. It landed on the craps table. “You think some half-ass hacker starts digging around, it doesn’t get noticed?”
I stared at the craps table, making my face as impassive as possible. Connecting me to the hacking attempt would be difficult.
“Plus, the Weatherford police department found a gun with your fingerprints and blood on it at a murder scene,” he said. “Ballistics make it as the weapon used in three shootings at that location.”
I sighed. “If Big Brother knows everybody’s genetic code, then why do you need me?”
“Because this guy is a pro and he doesn’t want to be found.” Jordan held up the picture again.
“And you think I’ve got a line on him somehow and can lead you to him?”
Jordan nodded.
“Loosen your tie,” I said. “It’s cutting off the flow of oxygen to your brain.”
The agent sighed and sat down. “I know your blood type, your service record from start to finish. I know where your mother lives. I know your army buddy Olson is now a gunrunner and that he sold a dozen pallets of Chinese SKSs to a polygamist from Arizona two weeks ago.”
I remained silent.
“And I know about Mike Baxter.” Jordan smiled, clearly enjoying himself. “I can end his stay at the veterans hospital and put him on the street within the hour. Literally the street, too. No indigent care for him at the local dump-and-run. He’ll die at a homeless shelter, screaming in pain because he has no scrips and no money to get them filled even if he did.”
“You really drank the Kool-Aid, didn’t you?” I tried to control my anger. “You’d do that to a decorated war veteran all in the name of national security?”
“I’m not doing anything to him; you are,” he said. “Again.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Ten minutes later I was in the parking lot in front of Ari’s, free to go. Jordan gave me a card with his contact info on it, including a cell number. I told him I would help as he’d left me little choice. After he drove off with the uniformed agents, I tore up the card into little bits and let the pieces drift with the wind across the hot asphalt. I figured he could find me if he really wanted to and that Mike Baxter had a few days before getting bounced to the street.
The parking lot was empty. All the customers had left while the FBI man questioned me. Stinky Larry stood beside me, sweating like a redneck at the opera.
“Ari is pissed.” Stink shook his head and stared at the ground.
“Tell me something new.”
“Says you’re banned for life.”
“Even Christmas?”
“We’re not open on Christmas.” Stinky Larry looked up, a perplexed look on his face.
“That’s a joke.”
“Oh.” He chewed on a sweat-speckled lip for a moment. “Ari also says I’m supposed to teach you a lesson.”
I sighed and rolled my eyes.
“I don’t really want to—”
“On account of you don’t want your sweating ass handed to you?”
Larry nodded and mumbled something under his breath.
“‘Bye, Stink.” I headed toward the VW.
“Heya, Hank, wait up a sec, willya?” Larry motioned for me to stop.
“If it ever comes up, tell Ari I gave it to you good, okay?”
“No problem, Stink.” I kept walking.
I drove north on Grand Avenue, past a half-mile stretch of one-story buildings that used to house payday pawnshops, biker bars, and greasy restaurants termed authentic because of the surly waitstaff.
Now the elderly brick structures were filled with neighborhood mercados, tiny taquerias, and nightclubs with names like Los Dos Hermanos and La Cantina del Corazón, places that had Tejano music on Fridays and rap bands from Laredo on Saturdays.
Maybe half the cars on the street had a Mexican flag decal pasted on a bumper or a window, the rest a statue of the Virgin Mary glued to the dash. The sidewalks were crowded with working men and women and their families, threading past each other, laughing and smiling and generally enjoying life.
After a few blocks of Little Guadalajara, Grand Avenue gave way to the Tenison Park municipal golf course, the street now canopied by towering live oaks and maples. Emerald green swathes of fairway stretched on either side.
A few minutes later I entered the Lakewood section of Dallas, skirting the edges of White Rock Lake, the namesake of the area. I’d lived not far from this part of town, not so many months before, in a snug cottage on a street full of paisanos I was proud to call my friends.
Then a very bad man burned my cottage to the ground, very nearly with me in it, retribution for an act I had yet to commit, and I started on the slow, nauseating spiral downward from the vainglorious pinnacle upon which I had set myself.
I drove with no destination in mind as the tidy homes of East Dallas drifted by the windscreen of Anita Nazari’s VW. I debated going back to my motel room, ordering a pizza, and watching Oprah. I rubbed the raw spot on my wrists from where the handcuffs and been fastened.
My cell phone rang.
“Yeah-ello.” I stopped for the light at Mockingbird Lane and Abrams. There was a place a few hundred yards down Mockingbird called the First and Ten, a dive bar with darkened windows and a flickering flat screen on one wall. Maybe I could get them to switch to Oprah.
“You fucking piece of shit.” Nolan’s voice teetered on the edge of unhinged.
“Good afternoon to you, too.”
“I fucking hate you.” New territory for my former partner. The list of people and things she hated was long and ever growing, but yours truly had never been on it before.
“H-h-he kicked me out.” Emotion choking her words. Sobbing. Another first. Nolan didn’t cry. She shot things, beat up lowlifes, but she didn’t cry.
“Who did?” I turned right toward the First and Ten as the light changed. “Rufus?”
“You piece of shit, you…you…” Her diatribe dissolved into tears.
“Nolan?”
Nothing but sobs.
“Tell me what happened.” I pulled into the parking lot of the bar. I could taste the first sip of Shiner Bock, feel it hitting the back of my throat.
“This was my ticket.” Her voice was ragged. “I was out of the life. But you screwed it up for me.”
“What are you talking about?” A cute redhead in a black Miata parked next to me and got out. She had on a very short denim skirt. She smiled once in my direction before disappearing into the bar.
“Max.” She sobbed some more. “Goober fucking Max.”
“What about him?” I forgot about the girl in the denim skirt.
“S-s-somebody took him out, this morning.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
I headed east on Mockingbird, weaving through traffic, Nolan still on the phone. In the middle of the afternoon, going east or west in the city was tough.
“Talk to me.” I punched the accelerator and blew through the yellow-going-red light at Greenville Avenue.
“Some soccer mom found his body behind a Dumpster in Preston Center.”
“When?” Preston Center was in the geographical center of the most upscale part of the city, a half-mile square of high-rise offices and apartments and expensive shops clustered around Northwest Highway and Preston Road. Preston Center was a great place to dispose of a body if you didn’t care that it would be found.
“This morning sometime.” Nolan sounded like she had regained a little composure even though static filled my earpiece. I realized she was on a cell phone and driving. She told me that Max’s mother had called Rufus about two hours ago, and Rufus had confronted Nolan immediately thereafter. Rufus said it was her fault, because of her association with me. Told her she had twenty-four hours to get out.
“Where are you now?” I said.
“I just parked in front of the Time Out Tavern.”
“Good idea. Getting loaded in the middle of the afternoon will make everything better.” I crossed Central Expressway, the north-south dividing line between East Dallas and the rest of the city. “Wait for me. I’m ten minutes away.”
Eleven minutes later I parked next to her Cadillac Escalade in front of the black-and-white-striped awning that had been designed to look like a referee’s uniform. The awning was a signpost for the Time Out Tavern, a sports bar that had served as my office for a period of time after the landlord at my real one ran me out.
I got out of the VW and hopped into the passenger seat of the Caddy. The windows were so tinted that the interior seemed like midnight.
“He let you keep the car?”
“Shut up, Hank.” Her eyes were red-rimmed, swollen.
“Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“Dork Central.” I pointed west on Lovers Lane. Max’s place was only a few blocks away. “I need to get into his apartment before the heat does.”
“Are you nuts?”
“What’s the worst thing that can happen? Rufus kicks you out more?”
She turned and stared at me.
“Whatever is going on is way outside the bell curve. Men in black, secret agent stuff.” I fastened my seat belt and told her about my activities of the past few days, the assault on the Irish Traveler camp and the encounter with the gung-ho FBI agent. I left out the come-on from Anita Nazari.
“You boinked the doctor lady, didn’t you?” Nolan stared at my shirt and then leaned over and looked at my shoes. “Why else would you be dressed like a GQ model, huh?”
“I did not sleep with my client. And why have you always been fascinated with my sex life?”
“Fuck a duck, Hank. My stepson gets murdered and you can’t even keep your pants zipped.” Nolan left a strip of rubber on the cement as she backed out of the parking spot, causing cars on Lovers Lane to screech tires and honk horns.
I didn’t say anything, more than a little sure that I had in fact been the cause of the turbo geek’s death.
A few minutes later Nolan idled the Escalade down the street where Max had lived with his mother. This section of town was heavily wooded, the streets without curbs or sidewalks, and except for the occasional roar of a jet from Love Field a few thousand yards to the west, casual observers might have been fooled into thinking they’d found a sliver of small-town Norman Rockwell.
Nothing much was going on anywhere except for trucks full of yard equipment and yards full of Hispanic men, much like Anita Nazari’s neighborhood, a constant in any residential setting.
We drove past the house on our right. Max’s Nissan Xterra was the only car visible, nestled in the garage.
“Somebody boosted him,” I said.
“Looks that way.” Nolan nodded and stopped at the stop sign at the end of the block, behind a gray Mercury Marquis. The sedan turned right.
I motioned for Nolan to turn left. “Make the block and then go down the alley.”
She drove slowly but purposefully, eyes never resting but her head never moving either. Both of us were quiet, back in the zone. I felt a tingle of adrenaline course through my system.
We turned the corner onto the street running perpendicular to Max’s. The gray Marquis sat on the side of the street, near the corner, opposite the block we were interested in. The location was where I would have stopped if I was interested in Max’s apartment but didn’t want to park in front and be obvious.
“What?” Nolan must have sensed my interest.
“The Mercury.” I nodded once. “Keep going. Let’s do a loop.”
We passed the car. The interior was empty.
“You still friendly with that cop?” I wrote down the license plate.
“What cop?”
“The undercover guy that kept asking you out.”
“No, Hank, I’m not.” Nolan sighed loudly, her tone in that middle ground between mildly miffed and angry. “When you get married, your spouse generally doesn’t want some greasy, wrapped-too-tight narc sniffing around.”
“Too bad. We could run the plates.”
Nolan didn’t reply, making loops around the blocks surrounding Max’s place. Nothing out of the ordinary. More lawn crews, various repairmen, and occasionally what appeared to be residents.
“Okay, head down the alley,” I said.
“Your wish is my command.” Nolan turned as requested. The Marquis was still there, but a man in a suit was now bent over the open trunk while a woman with an infant on one hip stood a few feet away. “There. It’s a resident. You satisfied now?”
I nodded and wondered how damaged my street radar was after so many months off.
The alley’s surface had been covered in concrete at some point, though it now resembled a rock-strewn path, weeds growing in big patches where the pavement had disappeared. The trees lining either side were unkempt, entwined with each other and woven in among the various utility lines.
After a few dozen yards, Nolan stopped the Escalade. “This is it.” She pointed to the two-story structure on the left.
I recognized the gray siding, saw the stairs leading to Max’s apartment through the tangle of vines and trees that had almost swallowed the chain-link fence.
“I’ll be quick.” I opened the door. “Wait for my call, ten minutes tops.”
“Crap.” Nolan held up a pink Motorola. “Almost out of juice.”
“You used to charge your phone every night.” I got out of the Caddy. The air in the alley was steamy and smelled sour. Coffee grounds. Spoiled meat. Grease.
“Out of the business, remember?” She dug through the contents of the console. “I’ve got a charger in here somewhere.”
I shut the door and walked around the back of the truck, my new shirt sticky against my torso. The gate opened easily given its age. After a quick check of the garage to make sure no one had pulled in during the thirty seconds since we’d last driven by, I headed to the stairs, taking them two at a time as quietly as possible.
The door was ajar, and I knew instantly I was too late. I stood to one side and pushed it open with a foot.
Nothing.
I stepped into what had been Max’s home.
The place had been trashed. The monitors were still intact, but all the computers had been ripped apart, hard drives missing. Books and magazines were scattered everywhere, clothes ripped from their hangers and left lying on the floor. The odor of mint and soap hung over the room; they had hit the bathroom hard, too.
I went into the tiny tiled room and found shaving cream cans that had been punctured and then ripped apart, emptied shampoo bottles, aspirin tablets dotting the floor like oversized snowflakes. I took apart what was left of the small quarters, going as
fast as possible, aware that Max’s mother might return at any moment from the crime scene or the morgue or wherever it was that women go when their grown children meet a violent end too early in the game.
Nothing of any use. More time to sift might help, but I seriously doubted it. Professionals usually don’t leave much behind.
I sat down on Max’s mattress, the bed linens a tangled mess on the other side of the room. A rumpled, year-old copy of Maxim lay on the floor, the cover featuring a porn star trying to go legit by appearing as the centerfold with her clothes on.
I picked it up and rifled through the pages. Unfortunately, the searchers had mangled it and ripped half of them out. The porn star pics were MIA. Bummer.
Several glossy sheets from another magazine fell out. BusinessWeek. A stock analysis of some multinational company with a hard-to-pronounce name mixed in with what looked like sections from a copy of an aviation publication.
I let the mess drop to the floor and stood up. The AC was off, and the room was hot and still, even with the door open.
The sound of the wooden stairs creaking outside seemed as loud as a gunshot.
I froze, remembering the gray Marquis. I reached for the knife in my belt and crept toward the door.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Wood creaked nearby as a leaf blower fired up down the block. The wall adjacent to the stairs shifted slightly, a faint screech the only indication that someone had leaned against the side of the apartment trying to ease his weight as he made his way upstairs.
No question now. The visitor was going for a surreptitious approach, which pretty much ruled out a friendly.
Nowhere to go. Noplace to hide. One way in and out. The doors to both the bathroom and the closet had been removed, and I was in one big room.
And no time left.
Footsteps louder now, no longer trying to be quiet. The rush was on.
I dashed to the door as Rufus ran into the room, a pistol in his hand. He saw me at the same time I lunged. Got my fingers on the top of the gun as he brought it up.
I wrenched the weapon free with my right hand, giving him a shove with my opposite shoulder.
Crosshairs Page 17
