A jet took off, screamed across the sky above us. After it passed, I shook my head.
“It’s a brochure for a company that makes a do-it-yourself Lucite paperweight kit.”
I didn’t say anything.
“When this is all finished and we get the scanner back,” he touched the off-kilter part of his jaw, “I’m gonna take your balls and make a paperweight out of them.”
I kept my face impassive, didn’t react.
“Just to be clear,” he said. “I am not speaking metaphorically.” He snapped his fingers at the guards. “Load ’em up.”
The two agents from the plane shoved us inside and slammed the door shut as we lay on the floor.
The interior of the van was all metal. Bench seats ran along either side. The three new guards sat at the far end and made no move to secure our restraints to the D-rings attached to the seats, as was standard protocol.
A video camera was mounted in the corner, allowing the driver and anybody riding shotgun to see what was going on.
“Gonna be a rough ride today.” Guard One pulled on a pair of heavy leather gloves.
The van pulled away from the plane, accelerated, rocking a little.
“Expect lots of turbulence.” Guard Two slid a blackjack from his rear pocket.
The van turned. Piper and I, still on the bare metal floor, rolled to one side.
The guards held on to the canvas straps hanging from the ceiling as the van shimmied over a rough spot and then sped up. I couldn’t see out but figured we were on Denton Drive, the western boundary of the airport. The street led south toward Interstate 35, which in turn was a straight shot to the county jail. All in, maybe a ten-minute ride. Ten long minutes.
Guard One staggered toward us, smacking a fist into his palm. Then he fell over, landing with a painful-sounding thud on one of the bench seats as the vehicle took a sharp turn to the right.
The van sped over a bumpy road, rocking on its heavy shocks and safe-but-uncomfortable tires. Piper and I bounced and rolled, along with Guard One. The other two held on and tried to stay upright.
A voice blared on a speaker: “This is the driver. We’ve got a mechanical situation. Need to stop. I’ve called for backup.”
“What the hell?” Guard One managed to stand as the van rattled to a halt.
The voice on the speaker: “We’re gonna secure the cargo area. Wait for another transport.” From the front came the sound of a door slamming.
The three guards looked at each other, obviously confused.
Piper and I managed to sit up, cross-legged on the floor of the van.
The rear doors swung open and a figure in a blue uniform and DEA ball cap stood backlit by the afternoon sun.
“Oy vey. What’s going on here? Everything okay?”
Milo Miller stepped inside, tilting the ball cap a little to one side. “A new van is about five minutes away.”
Our friend, the mobster and occasional government contractor, had trimmed his beard, cut off the curly sideburns.
“What the hell’s going on?” Guard One said. “The rear door’s supposed to stay locked no matter what.”
“Change of plans.” Milo shot him in the crotch with a Taser.
The guard’s toes extended so hard and fast that his head hit the metal ceiling. His back arched like he was possessed, eyes wide and bulging. Then he fell to the floor and screamed.
Milo dropped the Taser and pulled two more from his belt like a cowboy gunfighter. He zapped the remaining guards before they could react.
They dropped and flopped. Moaned, twitched.
“Let’s go.” Milo jerked a thumb toward the outside.
Piper and I hopped to the street. Milo pulled a key ring from his pocket and unlocked our restraints as a gray Honda minivan pulled up behind the prisoner transport.
The neighborhood immediately west of Love Field was airport barrio, full of tiny, wood-framed houses on narrow overgrown lots. Virtually everybody who lived in the area was Latino, first-generation immigrants working two jobs until they could get enough cash together to move to a better, less noisy part of Dallas.
Late Thursday afternoon, and it was beer-thirty. A small crowd of people had gathered on either side of the street to see what was going on. Several of the men were drinking cans of Bud Light, bottles of Schlitz. A lowrider Chevy had its doors open, Mexican rap music blaring.
“How did you swing this?” I rubbed my wrists.
“I specialize in the transportation of prisoners,” he said. “A contractor, remember?”
“But they’re gonna tie this to you.” Piper leaned in and retrieved the duffel bag full of our stuff.
“Does that mean you care, my love? Be still my heart.” Milo clutched his chest. “Not to worry. I sold the business this morning to a competitor whom I detest.”
A guy in civilian clothes hopped out of the driver’s seat of the Honda. He tossed a small satchel to Milo and said, “We need to hurry.”
“Jon, you and my future ex-wife should get in the other van now.” Milo opened the bag.
“What’re you going to do with the guards?” I said.
“Disarm them.” Milo pulled out a small piece of cloth with the words ICE AGENT on one side and Velcro on the other.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“Then I’ll switch these out with the ones that say DEA.”
“Sweet.” Piper nodded.
“Let’s go.” I picked up the duffel bag and trotted to the Honda.
Piper and I got in the back. The driver hopped behind the wheel and pulled even with the white van.
Milo emerged from the rear and went to the side of the vehicle that had been our previous transportation. He tugged on a corner of the white panel, working on a tiny irregular spot. A few seconds later, he pulled a thin sheet of white plastic off, displaying a crude set of black letters: WETBACK COLLECTION VEHICLE. DEP’T OF IMMIGRATION.
He jumped into the passenger seat of our current vehicle and tapped the driver on the shoulder. “Move it.”
The crowd was growing larger. Several people pointed at the white van, angry looks on their faces.
The driver sped away.
“Ten, maybe fifteen minutes,” Milo said. “Won’t be nothing left but a greasy spot.”
“What about the guards?” I asked.
Milo shrugged. “Left a cell phone with one.”
“Thanks.” Piper buckled her belt. “You saved our bacon.”
“I heard the scuttlebutt, a big, top-secret transport from West Texas,” he said. “After a few calls, it didn’t take much to figure out who the cargo was.”
Piper opened the duffel bag and removed our stuff. She placed the rifles on the floor and handed me my wallet and the cell phone I’d been using.
“Phil DeGroot,” I said. “Did you send some people to the address I texted you?”
Seemed like a million years ago when I had asked to Milo to run some heavyweights over to the address where Phil wanted me to bring the witness. The entire trip to Marfa had been based on my guess that Phil was being coerced at that time. Was I right?
“He was there with his wife.” Milo nodded. “Not in great shape though. Their captor was not a good person.”
“Sinclair,” Piper said. “That’s who it had to be.”
We drove without speaking for a few blocks. Milo asked a couple of questions, tried to make small talk. Piper and I ignored him, focused our stony silence on each other.
With our sudden rescue came a moment of reflection, the luxury to acknowledge the juncture of our relationship. Piper had seen Eva kiss me. I’d pointed out the kiss as something Eva initiated, which was true. But the whole truth was more complicated than that, as it usually was. I had not turned Eva away.
“The witness was really a shooter.” I looked at Milo. “She killed Lazaro Morales.” A pause. “Who was also her husband.”
Milo didn’t reply. He pursed his lips.
The driver turned on Mockingbi
rd Lane, a major east-west thoroughfare in the city. He headed west toward the highway. The street was lined with stuff that was usually near an airport: fast-food restaurants, discount strip centers, low-rent office buildings.
I tried to imagine where my dad might be at the moment. I needed a way to find him, quickly and quietly. No ideas came to mind.
We passed between an adult bookstore and an indoor shooting range that advertised guns by the hour.
“Where do you want to go?” Milo asked. “Your wish is my command.”
I told him about my father. He nodded and frowned, muttered to himself.
“Some police associates of mine.” He pulled out a cell phone. “Very discreet inquiries could be made, see if he’s turned up anywhere.”
After brief moment of hesitation, I nodded.
“Which direction do you think he went?” Milo entered a text message.
“Don’t know.” I shook my head. “If he made it to the interstate and was lucid, he could be anywhere by now. Back in Dallas. California. Halfway to Canada.”
“Perhaps we shall get lucky, yes.” Milo sent the message.
We drove in silence for a few blocks.
“Where’s the scanner?” Piper spoke to me directly for the first time in a while.
In one sense, the scanner was the cause of all our recent troubles. Sinclair had given us the device on Sunday night when we’d retrieved his cousin from the Korean whorehouse. Despite his warnings not to, we’d used the scanner the next day, which brought Keith McCluskey and Paynelowe down on us like a swarm of angry locusts.
“Scanner?” Milo said. “What are you talking about, my love?”
“Something Paynelowe is very eager to get back.” I buckled my seat belt. “Hopefully it’s safe.”
“You hid it somewhere.” Piper shifted in her seat. “Right?”
The tool shed on the rented piece of property where my sister and father lived. Where my father had lived.
Before I could answer, her cell phone rang.
Nobody spoke.
“A call you are expecting?” Milo said.
Piper looked at the screen. “I hired a PI to track down my mother. That’s the only person who has this number.”
“You gave her the number for the untrackable phone?” I shook my head.
“She’s cool, not part of any of this.” Piper’s voice was shrill. “And if we’re gonna point fingers, maybe we can talk about you giving Eva the gun.”
“The witness?” Milo looked at me. “You gave her a gun?”
I started to say something but the phone kept ringing.
“Jonathan, we’ll get back to you in a moment.” Milo turned to Piper. “Aren’t you going to answer?”
Piper stared at me and pressed the Talk button.
“Hello?” she said. “Is that you, Imogene?”
- CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT -
I glared at the streets of Dallas, seething, until we arrived at our destination. I didn’t speak.
Milo Miller’s safe house was in South Dallas, in a transitional neighborhood near a tiny but vibrant nightlife and retail area known as the Bishop Arts District. The blocks of modest brick bungalows and prairie-style homes used to be run-down, full of gangbangers, welfare cheats, and outlaw bikers. Now many of the homes had been rehabbed, occupied by writers trying to create the next Great American Something, and same-sex couples who worked north of the Trinity River but lived in the southern sector because of the cheap housing and general funkiness of the area.
Milo’s place was down the street from a brewpub and a white-tablecloth, thirty-dollar-an-entree restaurant that specialized in upscale home cooking.
Six o’clock on a summer Thursday. Milo’s driver pulled down the gravel driveway of the safe house, a brick home that was not fixed up but not run-down either. He parked in the detached garage behind the house. Milo directed us to the rear door, which opened into a kitchen that had been remodeled for utilitarian purposes, not as a feature for a magazine. Double ovens and refrigerators, a deep freeze big enough to store a moose, and open shelving that displayed enough nonperishable food items—pasta, rice and beans, canned soups—to feed a platoon for a week.
Three bedrooms, each outfitted with three sets of bunk beds, closets stocked with clothes in various sizes, toiletries, and medical supplies.
Milo’s phone rang, a call from his police contact; no word on my father, but they would keep looking, discreetly of course. Milo sent the driver away and tossed me the keys to the van.
“The Honda’s clean,” he said. “Even has an old battery without one of those tags.”
Piper was sitting on the sofa, cradling in her hand the disposable cell phone that had rung. In the van, she’d told Imogene that she would have to call her back.
I grabbed a bottle of water from the kitchen and strode into the living room where I paced, drinking in little sips, hoping it would cool my anger.
“What’s your plan?” Milo sat next to Piper, looked at me.
I didn’t reply.
Piper put the phone on the coffee table.
“By now, there will be an APB out.” Milo sighed. “Treat as armed and dangerous.”
I nodded.
“Sinclair,” he said. “So much trouble he’s caused.”
I shrugged.
Piper crossed her arms. “Aren’t you gonna say something?”
I didn’t reply.
A long silence ensued. Milo laced his fingers in his lap and watched our relationship enter its final, most poisonous phase.
“Ten years ago.” Piper broke the stalemate. “I got into the orphanage’s files. Just for a quick look-see. Found out my mother’s name was Mary. She’d be about fifty-eight now.”
I finished the bottle of water.
“Imogene told me she had a lead.” Piper leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “On a woman named Mary, the right age and everything.”
I spoke for the first time since entering the safe house. “Where did you find Imogene?”
Piper didn’t reply. She averted her gaze, bit a lip.
“You’re not going to answer him?” Milo said.
Piper looked back at me. “Sinclair. He gave me Imogene’s name.”
“Oy vey.” Milo rubbed his eyebrows.
“A couple of weeks ago,” she said. “He called our number at the Cheyenne and we started talking.”
“And you asked for a good PI,” I said. “And the result is he’s been able to track us through her.”
“You don’t understand.” Piper shook her head. “She hates Sinclair like everybody else. No way she’d talk to him about us.”
“But somehow he still managed to find out where we were?” I said. “What roads we took?”
She stared at the floor, didn’t reply.
“I could have found you somebody, an investigator,” Milo said. “You never asked me.”
“You’re always trying to get down my pants.” She looked at him. “Kinda off-putting.”
He pursed his lips. “A valid point, I suppose.”
No one spoke. The anger built inside me, a simmering mass of rage.
Piper stood and approached me. “You kissed her.”
I didn’t say anything. The anger blossomed into something else, a ring of sadness around a vast chasm of feelings I couldn’t express.
“We’re in the middle of hostile territory.” She shook her head. “And you decide to get lovey-dovey with the witness.”
I cleared my throat. “I, uh, I’m sorry. That was a bad tactical move.”
Milo nodded.
“Tactical move?” Piper shoved my shoulder. “What about us? Wasn’t that a bad you-and-me move?”
I didn’t say anything. Words fled my mind when confronted with the weight of an emotional truth. I’d failed not only the mission but my lover, the one person who understood me best.
“You two should get some rest,” Milo said. “Clean up a little.”
Neither of us spoke. We stared at each ot
her.
“Some food,” Milo said. “I’ll make us something to eat.”
Piper shook her head, a rueful look on her face like a painful long-overdue decision had been made.
“Why did you go with me to Marfa?” I asked. “You could have gone to ground, just disappeared.”
She didn’t say anything.
“We both had the DA coming after us, and I needed the money,” I said. “But you, you’re used to living off the grid. You could’ve evaded everybody for a long time.”
“Yeah, I could have gone back to the street.” She spoke softly, in a matter-of-fact tone. “But did it ever occur to you that I didn’t want to? That maybe I wanted something better?”
I didn’t reply.
“I went with you to Marfa because I didn’t have anywhere else to go.” She paused. “And because I loved you.”
The words we could never say to each other, uttered in a dreary safe house, half the state of Texas wanting us dead or in jail. Much too late for our relationship.
Milo shifted in his seat, clearly uncomfortable with the intimacy of the scene.
I didn’t say anything, at a loss for an appropriate response.
“A shower and perhaps a nap for both of you,” Milo said. “Then we shall go hunting for Sinclair.”
I nodded. Looked toward the back of the house.
“I won’t be here when you get back.” Piper paused. “But I am sorry about Imogene. That was a stupid move on my part.”
“Where are you going to go?” Milo asked. “What will you do?”
She left the room without speaking.
- CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE -
Midnight on the day of my return to Dallas.
Midnight on the day after which things would never be the same.
Who was I kidding? Every day seemed like that since I’d snatched Sinclair’s relative from the Korean brothel. Should have stayed in bed that morning. Shoulda, woulda, coulda. Regrets weren’t my long suit. Play the ace early and roll. Don’t take any prisoners; don’t stop for any navel-gazing.
A quick catnap turned into a three-hour slumber that left me jittery and unrefreshed. Better than nothing. I showered, finally got all of the blood out of my hair, and slipped into a pair of brand-new Levi’s that fit a little snug in the hips after the Milo-provided replacement Glock had been put in a waistband holster. A black T-shirt. The DEA badge in my pocket.
The Contractors Page 33
