Piper was gone. She’d cleaned up, dressed in borrowed clothes, and walked out into the night, a child of the streets returning to her home.
Relationships ending were nothing new in my life. I tried to put her out of my mind, concentrate on the task at hand. Finding my father.
In the mirror in the living room, I caught sight of myself, dark circles under my eyes, smudges that underscored the sadness there.
Only Milo seemed normal, chipper and animated. He’d changed into a navy blue workout suit and a green bandanna tied around his head like a do-rag.
“I’ll drive.” He pointed outside.
We got in the Honda. I asked him if he thought Piper would be okay. He nodded, assured me that she could take care of herself.
Since Milo’s police contacts hadn’t turned up any information about my father’s whereabouts, I told him that I needed to visit my sister, Tanya, and see if she’d heard anything. I didn’t mention the scanner.
I entered the address of my father’s trailer into the GPS, too tired and too wired to give directions. Both Milo’s safe house and the family double-wide were on the south side of the county, pretty near each other as the buzzard flies but in entirely different worlds otherwise.
Fifteen minutes later, we bumped down the country lane that led to the trailer, the road as dark as Christmas morning at an orphanage. There were no streetlights, and the canopy of trees kept the light from the stars and moon from penetrating to the ground.
“How do you know they won’t be waiting for you?” Milo slowed as a coyote dashed across the road.
“The trailer’s a rental,” I said. “I’m guessing Costco tracked down Dad by calling Tanya’s boyfriend, who’s a constable.”
He turned down the packed dirt driveway. A gray Porsche SUV was parked behind Tanya’s pickup. A single light appeared to be on in the living room, but the porch lantern was dark.
“He made it back.” Milo whistled. “Amazing.”
“I’ll take care of this alone.” I opened the door as he came to a stop by the two vehicles.
“Is that wise?” He put the transmission into park.
I shut the door and touched the hood of the Porsche. It was hot, covered in road grime. The front windshield was cracked. I jogged up the porch steps.
The ringer was broken, and I didn’t want to knock, so I opened the door and stepped inside. The trailer still smelled like boiled cabbage and onions.
I strode to the living room.
Tanya sat on the sofa, staring at her cell phone. A movie was playing on the TV, Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer in Tombstone. She looked up, blinked. There was nobody else in the room.
“Hey.” I smiled.
“Jon?” She dropped the phone. “What are you doing here?”
“Where’re your crutches?” I stepped closer. “And what the hell are you wearing?”
She had on a rumpled blue uniform, cargo pants, matching shirt. The outfit looked like the clothes worn by the men guarding the Gulfstream a few hours before.
A black Sam Browne belt and holster sat on the coffee table.
“I got a job, like you told me to.” She stood. “This outfit called Paynelowe. They’re handing out signing bonuses.”
I didn’t say anything, too stunned to speak.
“They got insurance and everything. I’m on some new meds, no more crutches.”
“Gee, that’s swell, Tanya. When do you start?”
“Your old partner, Costco, he hooked me up,” she said. “He even took Dad with him. Said he was gonna give him a job, too.”
“And you didn’t think that was strange?” I said. “Offering a job to a man who can’t remember his name.”
“You shoulda seen him, Jon.” She came around the table. “How his face lit up when Costco told him he was gonna be a cop again.”
I shook my head.
“Of course it wasn’t a real job. But still, he got out of the house for a little and got to act like he was working again.”
“Where’s Dad now?”
Tears welled in her eyes.
“We even scheduled the biopsy for next week,” she said. “But…”
“What happened? How bad is he?”
“He—I don’t know,” she said. “He just showed up in that Porsche about fifteen minutes ago.”
The mind is a strange thing. Frank Cantrell couldn’t remember his children most of the time, but he could navigate halfway across the country. He must have hit the interstate somehow and kept going.
“Is he okay?” I asked.
“I shouldn’t have let him go with Costco, should I?” She wiped her eyes. “I just thought it would be nice, you know, for both of us, to get a little break.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“He was really upset when he got back. Not talking right, all slurred. Had trouble walking.”
“Have you called nine-one-one?”
“I was just trying to do the right thing.” She pointed to the phone like that was an answer in and of itself. “Is that so wrong?”
“It’s okay, Tanya.” I patted her arm. “Is he in his room?”
She nodded and padded after me as I went down the hall to our father’s bedroom.
He was asleep on top of the comforter, fully clothed, the same dirty uniform he’d been wearing in West Texas. A bedside lamp with a low-wattage bulb cast a depressing glow over the wood-paneled room. He appeared unharmed except for a scratch on his chin. One cheek drooped lower than the other.
“We need to call nine-one-one,” I said. “I think he’s had a stroke.”
“Jesus, no.” She sat on his bedside but made no move toward the phone. “Daddy, what have I done to you?”
I dialed the number, gave them the address, and told Tanya to stay with him. I went to the kitchen, dug around in a couple of drawers and found a flashlight that worked. Then, I left by the back door and made my way down the dirt path to the storage shed where I’d hidden the scanner.
It was still there, the same position and condition as when I’d left it.
Tanya pointed to the box when I came back to our dad’s room. “What’s that?”
“You only have to remember one thing.” I squeezed her arm. “I was never here.”
She nodded.
“Where did the money come from for the ranch?” I said. “And all the cars?”
“What’re you talking about? He worked security gigs, private consulting. That sort of thing. You know all that.”
“I need to know who he worked for.” Even as the words left my mouth I knew the answer no longer mattered.
I touched my father’s throat, felt the too-weak pulse. His skin was the color of vanilla ice cream, hanging loosely on his face. A tiny dribble of saliva pooled in one corner of his mouth.
“Why?” Tanya said. “I don’t understand.”
“He’s not doing well.” I looked at my watch. “The high blood pressure, the stress.”
“You think this is my fault, don’t you?” She pushed my arm. “I just wanted a break. Costco was so nice. We met him at the McDonald’s, and he took care of everything.”
I didn’t say anything.
“So Dad took a little badge money,” she said. “That any different from you?”
I closed my eyes, tired and sad and lost, like a child left alone at a bus stop. No sound but the soft rattle of our father’s breath.
We were silent for a while, the weight of our emotions sitting there along with the shell of the man who had been our father. A few minutes after one in the morning, the rattle of his breath grew still and he was no more.
I stood, kissed my half sister on the forehead, and left. The ambulance still hadn’t come.
- CHAPTER SEVENTY -
Back in the Honda, I put the box on the floorboard and buckled my seat belt.
“You were gone a long time,” Milo said. “Everything is okay? Your Dad is there?”
I didn’t reply.
“Made some calls.” Milo h
eld up a phone. “A couple of Sinclair’s poker games make their payoffs tonight.”
Sinclair. The cause of all this. The scanner, the missing witness, the trip to Marfa. All bore his sticky fingerprints. Payback time, Captain Sinclair.
“Where?” My voice sounded funny.
“Hillcrest Tower.” Milo put the Honda in gear. “Your dad actually made it back? Is he okay?”
“Sinclair’s holed up at that place?”
Hillcrest Tower was a luxury high-rise built in the sixties when flocked wallpaper and shag carpet were considered swanky. The building was near Preston Center in the heart of a wealthy North Dallas neighborhood, a lone skyscraper surrounded by a sea of expensive homes and high-end stores, just down the street from Neiman Marcus.
The Hillcrest was prestige and luxury, shellacked with faded glamour, the kind of place J. R. Ewing might have stashed one of his second-string mistresses. It was not the kind of place where you’d expect to find a slimy, gold-nugget-ring-wearing ex-cop.
“Sinclair runs a hundred-dollar-ante game on the twenty-seventh floor every Thursday,” Milo said. “All his other tables drop off the take and then somebody runs it to Fat Man HQ.”
“Which is where?” I coughed for no particular reason.
The dark road became even harder to see, watery. In the distance, red lights swirled.
“Jonathan, are you okay?” Milo slowed down a little. “Is that an ambulance?”
I told him briefly what Tanya had related to me. Then I wiped my eyes and said, “Just drive, will you.”
Milo stared at me for a few moments, mouth slack. Then he shrugged and sped up. A few seconds later, we passed the ambulance headed to my father’s trailer.
“I’m sorry about your old man.” He stopped at a light. “Is he gone?”
I nodded, unable to speak.
“Here we come, Sinclair.” Milo turned onto the highway, mashed the accelerator.
“This night, it belongs to us.”
The dark hours, as it turned out, belonged to no one.
We arrived at the Hillcrest at two in the morning, parked in a far corner of the visitor section in front of the glass-walled lobby. The ground floor was empty except for two men in blue blazers behind the front counter and a security guard sitting by the door.
Milo sent and received a series of text messages, each one leaving him more agitated.
There had been no Thursday night poker game at the Hillcrest, no drop-off from the other tables. Apparently, this occurrence caused much consternation in the Dallas underworld, a rip in the time-space continuum of hoods. The Hillcrest game was a constant, starting at noon every Thursday, no matter what the date or world calamity, holidays be damned.
“Not good, not good at all.” Milo shut off the phone. “Nature abhors a vacuum. Those Slavic bastards from Richardson will take over everything”
Richardson was an aging middle-class suburb to the north, home to a large number of Russian immigrants who had settled around an Orthodox church and a couple of banyas or baths run by mafiya members from the Ukraine.
“This magic scanner.” Milo pointed to the box. “What does it do?”
“Lots of neat things,” I said. “But when we turn it on, the bad guys can find us.”
“A problem, this.” Milo stroked his chin.
“Should we try the house on Tranquilla?” I asked.
Milo shook his head. “He’s shut that down.”
A yellow Hummer with gleaming chrome rims pulled under the apartment building’s awning, and a man with close-cropped blond hair got out of the rear. He wore a black wifebeater, black workout pants, and a gold chain around his neck.
The driver’s window rolled down, and he spoke to whoever was behind the wheel.
“The Russians are here,” Milo said.
The guy in the wifebeater strolled inside the lobby of the Hillcrest. He had a conversation with the two men behind the counter. He handed one an envelope, what had to be a payoff. The poker game would continue, just with a different crew in charge.
“That didn’t take long,” I said.
“We should leave.” Milo put the van in gear. “Nothing more to learn here.”
“Then what?” I said.
“Sinclair has many business interests.” Milo pulled away. “He leaves a trail like a slug.”
We drove down Northwest Highway through the heart of North Dallas. A light rain began to fall, and I drifted off to sleep remembering my father as he had once been.
- CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE -
Sinclair woke at dawn on Saturday. He touched the bandage on his side where the drunk vet in Brownwood had removed the tiny .22 caliber bullet and stitched him up.
The skin around the wound didn’t feel quite as hot as it had last night, so maybe the infection had gotten better.
He was in a second-floor room at the Motel 6 in Denison, Texas, pissing distance to the Red River and Oklahoma. Sadie sat cross-legged on the end of the bed, watching the Cartoon Network with the sound turned down low.
This was as far north as Sinclair had ever been in his life.
For a couple days now, his plan had been to leave Texas and head for Joplin, Missouri, just over the northern border of Oklahoma, two state lines away. A cousin had moved to Joplin in the seventies, and he was going to track him down, see if he and Sadie could stay for a while and regroup.
Each morning he woke thinking this was the day he would leave Texas for good. Each night he fell into a fitful sleep on the lumpy mattress, Sadie nestled by his side.
His organization had disintegrated, scattered to the four corners of Dallas County, the scraps gobbled by the jackals of the city. Thirty years of work vaporized in the length of time it took to cook up a pot of borscht. Damn Russians.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. What hurt him deep down was that he’d failed his old friend McNally. And friends like McNally—with such loyalty—were hard to come by.
He picked up the disposable cell phone he’d bought on the way back from West Texas and dialed the number of one of his few allies remaining at the Dallas Police Department.
No warrants out for his arrest yet. No serious inquiries on the street over his whereabouts either.
Both would come, though. The first of the warrants would be for the shootout at the Cheyenne, while the cartels would be scouring the back alleys of Dallas because you didn’t just walk away from your job as the Shield. Even though the bigwig narco in Marfa died before taking the stand, and Eva Ramirez never testified, Sinclair was still in trouble.
He’d left his post, gone to ground like a damn rabbit. He knew the way the cartels thought. His disappearance had aroused suspicion; suspicion equaled guilt.
And guilt meant they would come looking for him. They would want answers, crave blood. He only hoped that the narco’s death had somehow helped McNally.
Hopefully, none of the sicarios had ever heard of Joplin. Maybe they wouldn’t be able to track him, and he could live out his remaining years there in relative peace.
For now he and Sadie were in a small town on the Texas-Oklahoma border famous for being the birthplace of Dwight D. Eisenhower and not much else.
A battered Samsonite briefcase sat next to his bed. The case was stuffed, the locks straining. It contained three-quarters of a million dollars in cash, everything he could easily liquidate in the one frantic afternoon he’d allowed himself in Dallas.
He got out of bed. His joints creaked and ached. The pressure in his chest was growing more pronounced, not just the acid reflux.
On the nightstand next to his revolver was a Gideons Bible.
“You ready for some Kool-Aid?” Sadie looked up from the TV. “Make you a sammy if you want one.”
Sadie was quite the little homemaker, among other things. She liked to fix powdered drinks and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches in the room. She also liked coloring books, throwing rocks at hobos, and giving head.
“Nuh-uh.” Sinclair stared at the Bible.
/> When he was a kid, his mama used to take him and his old friend to church, a Pentecostal congregation in the Pleasant Grove section of Dallas, across the road from a salvage yard. He didn’t remember much of those times except Mama’s platinum hair shining in the Sunday sun and the fact that something big happened in the New Testament on the third day, the Lord Jesus arose from the grave or something.
Today wasn’t the third day, but close enough.
He got out of bed and stretched, a great weight lifted from his shoulders, the decision made. Today was the day. He and his dim-witted travel companion would cross the Red River into a new life.
Sadie slid off the end of the bed and stood. She wore an oversized Toby Keith T-shirt they’d bought at a flea market the day before. The shirt came to the tops of her thighs.
She sauntered over and nestled up against his good side, her head on his chest.
“What are we gonna do today?” she said.
“We’re going to Missouri.”
“We leaving right now?” She rubbed his belly, her hand moving lower and lower.
“In a few minutes.” He grasped her wrist. Stopped her advances. “We need to get us some gone from Texas.”
She pouted for a moment, then walked to the desk and made a glass of strawberry Kool-Aid. She took the drink with her and padded into the bathroom.
After she was dressed, he entered the steamy room and showered. Then, he put on a fresh guayabera shirt, his nicest Sansabelt slacks, and a pair of polished calfskin Lucchese boots. He would look his best when he left Texas.
Several restaurants were across the parking lot, a Saltgrass Steakhouse, an IHOP, some off-brand Chinese buffet.
“Let’s get us some pancakes.” He combed back his hair, squirted a little VO5 spray on the pompadour.
Sadie packed up her meager belongings in a small duffel bag they’d gotten at the flea market. Sinclair stuck the revolver in his waistband and walked to the door. He stopped, hand on the knob.
“What’s wrong?” Sadie said.
“Nothing.” Sinclair stared at a spot of chipped paint on the wall. He thought about everything that was his life in Dallas and in Texas, how he’d never again see any of the places or people he knew. A lump formed in his throat.
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