by Dean Ing
"No. I seem to be shorthanded," Luna remarked, making it a pun as he studied his fingers.
"You've got them," Guthrie said, nodding toward the silent companions. "And me."
"But not the Chiapas twins?"
The snake twins weren't really brothers, as Guthrie knew, but they were typical specimens from the distant state of Chiapas. "I heard one of 'em got took down by Feds in Fresno. You'd know more about that than I do."
"I know enough. And the other?"
Guthrie knew he mustn't even flutter an eyelid. Shrug. "Beats me."
"I don't think so. I think you beat him, Guthrie, and I even think I know how. Merced is not so big, and one of our good citizens recognized the man who, he thought, had driven a car into his orchard. By good fortune, he is of la raza. He contacted me. I caused the car and its contents to be removed. Observe."
Luna pressed the blunt point of his nail file, exactly like the one behind the seat cushion, down on the wooden top of the table. A few twists made a permanent imprint. Then another imprint, three-quarters of an inch away, and another, and so on. When he was finished, the table bore tiny depressions in a pattern perhaps two inches across. "Guess what that is," Luna said.
"A 'D'?"
"Now that you mention it; yes," said Luna, smiling. "Now show me the bottom of your boot."
"Prob'ly got dogshit on it," Guthrie objected.
"Humor me," Luna said, no longer smiling. Guthrie did it, showing his right boot instead of his left one.
"It was doubtless the other heel, but the patterns are always similar. Did you know how a cobbler's nails will stick down through a heel when the boot needs resoling, Guthrie?"
The direction of this little discussion was not where Guthrie wanted it to go. "I guess," said Guthrie, whose run-down boots were practically a trademark.
"The pattern of your boot nails is almost exactly the same as the pattern found on the head of my soldier. I will be direct, Guthrie: I had sent him after you. Whoever took him down wanted to make it look like an accident, but those nails made nasty little depressions even though there was almost no blood. I can think of few people who would have left his money and his handgun, Ralph Guthrie, but you would know better than to take them."
"What does he say about that?" Guthrie said.
"He will not be testifying." Their eyes met, and Guthrie's didn't drop, though the implication was clear enough. "Did you plant the drugs on him?"
"Fuck, no!" It simply leaped from Guthrie's throat of its own accord. The possibility that he might be accused of planting the stuff had never entered his mind. Well, shit, it was obvious that Luna already had convicted him - on pretty shoddy evidence at that - so the least he could do was make a case for self-defense. "Look, what if he was all cranked up, waving a piece around, snorting that stuff to make him crazier, while he had you in the backseat? Whatthehell would you have done?"
"Was that how it happened, Guthrie?"
"Pretty much. I was gonna tell you about - "
"Stop. I am considering you to take the place of the man you bested, but not if you lie to me. You know better than that, Guthrie. Tell me how it happened and you will be rewarded. Lie to me and - " He shrugged.
So Guthrie told him exactly how it went down, including the nail file and his still-swollen toes, which was the first time he'd ever seen Luna smile like a human being. When he was finished, Guthrie added, ". . .
the God's honest truth. How'd you know I picked his nose with that coke, by the way? I mean, it was his stash."
"Because, Guthrie, he could not possibly have been cranked up on it. I am actually touched, in my fashion, to know that you did not sample it. The Chiapas twins both developed a habit in defiance of my rule. You did not, it seems. That affected my decision about you, hombre. It looked like high-grade cocaine, powdery white. But," and now he was chuckling, "it was China White."
Guthrie's mouth fell open. What he'd thought to be an upper, La Familia's most popular product, was instead a world-class downer! China White wasn't cocaine, it was heroin - an Asian import so potent it could be snorted or smoked; no unsightly needle marks and, after a few experiences, no resistance to it, or to much of anything else for the rest of your life, amen. Asians had only recently begun bringing it in, the loudest smack that ever hit the street. Guthrie had only heard about it, wildly expensive stuff with a street price ten times as high as coke; before you snorted it, you picked out a nice soft spot to snooze because you'd be on the nod within seconds. No wonder Pepe Luna had figured out the real scenario so quickly.
And knowing what the snake twins had taken to snorting, no wonder Luna was ready to have them replaced immediately.
They had a good laugh about Guthrie's little mistake, and then Luna repeated in detail what he had hinted earlier. His reasoning seemed to be that if Guthrie was capable of replacing a man, then he should be given the chance. That was how promotions worked. They didn't need to talk about how demotions worked. Guthrie himself had demoted Señor Snake.
Ralph Guthrie had heard that the snake twins made little trips now and then to places like Puerto Vallarta. He liked that idea. He also knew that if he turned down Luna's offer, he might not be so lucky next time, so he didn't feel the need to dicker about the job description.
But later that day, he bought new boots and shitcanned the old ones. New boots were a great confidence builder, especially when you can afford good ones. They settled him down nicely. It had given him the jimjams to know that, with every boot print he had made for the past three days, he'd been advertising a murder weapon.
31
JUNE 1994
For Gary, the weekend passed as a series of moments to be long remembered. Jan arrived late and, later that night, they quietly sneaked a forbidden after-hours swim in the pool, the chlorine-laced water astringent as mouthwash, warm as summer kisses with its lingering memory of the day. Later still, they shared a single doughnut over coffee at an all-night cafe, speaking rarely, smiling often.
In his apartment, they exhausted one another sweetly to the murmurings of the compact disc Jan had brought him: love songs by Meredith d'Ambrosio.
They were up by noon on Saturday, and watched the sun's westering behind the whirling prop of the Cessna as they crossed Shaver Lake, a cerulean amoeba nested between Sierra foothills with its butterfly collection of sails pinned to its surface. Jan begged to see the mighty ramps of stone behind them, close up.
"You don't want to," Gary called over the engine's buzz.
"I guess I know what I want," she insisted.
"Okay, you have a choice. You either want to fly so high you'll freeze and fall asleep 'cause I don't have oxygen for us and probably can't get us high enough anyway; or you want to let the crosswinds and downdrafts through ten-thousand-foot peaks over there bash us into kindling. So which is it to be?" He began banking toward the white-capped peaks where winter kept its stronghold into August. She kept defiantly silent until she felt the first gentle buffets, many miles from those peaceful-looking spires of white, which were already whispering of deadly violence. When her stomach began to have misgivings, she agreed to have Gary take them home.
They rented favorite videos Saturday night. Hers was The Red Shoes, a visual feast; his was, to her astonishment, Chaplin's The Kid. She cried during both and of course, Gary's comforting embraces changed character without premeditation. They fell asleep ruminating on the Chaplin film. "Is that really one of your favorites? A tramp fighting for a little kid?" she murmured, holding him gently.
"You're domesticating me," he accused.
"Domestic, but goooood," she whispered, and held him more tightly, and then they slept.
On Sunday she surprised him by suggesting they investigate ads in the Sunday Fresno, Bee for open-house inspections. They spent hours musing over fireplaces, bedrooms that opened onto atriums, and lease options. They did not mention marriage, though Jan worried aloud about how her Ampa would react to her moving away. Gary tacitly accepted the idea t
hat they might begin family life without a wedding.
And Jan, driving her Datsun, never thought to notice the rental car that paced them far behind. She left for Bakersfield on Sunday night alone, yet not entirely alone. She carried the tang of Gary's after-shave lotion with her and, sometimes a half-mile behind, that rental car.
Gary began his work week by getting rid of his forearm cast and spent the balance of the day requalifying with small arms. Tuesday was different. McMilligan brought the latest office scuttlebutt, which he called a rumor, to Gary as he was waiting for Graham Forster's fax message. "You knew we picked up one of La Familia's little Chiapas soldiers, right?"
"In the China White bust, you mean," Gary supplied, nodding. "Man, do I love it. Luna had a matched pair of 'em and if one was actually soliciting Asian product, he's got to suspect the one who's still running loose, too."
"Ah, shit! You heard, then." McMilligan's face was falling.
"Fill me in," Gary urged. "Don't tell me the other one turned himself in."
"Nah," said the burly agent. "I wish he had. I bet he wished the same thing while they were torching off his fingerprints."
Gary wrinkled his nose in disgust, shook his head. "Oh, Christ! Where'd they find him? I don't suppose he's still suckin' wind."
"You suppose right, Gary. He was found spread-eagled in the parking slot usually occupied by the Mercedes of a certain scumbag attorney. Took a little time to identify him; no teeth left, and his mouth was stuffed with pure China White. Now you get to guess which shyster's 450SL nearly ran over the body,"
McMilligan grinned, enjoying himself immensely.
"Not Luna's," Gary said, half-questioningly.
"Nope. Right here in Fresno."
"I must be slow this morning," Gary admitted. He suppressed a shudder, thinking of the agonies that drug-runner must have suffered during his last minutes of life. He had met Pepe Luna's wizened little soldiers more than once; saw them as deadly vermin. Still, even vermin deserved a quick end. "Which fine upstanding shyster was it?"
"Fong, of Batrachian and Fong," McMilligan said. "The selfsame bunch who represent the Asian triads here. I wonder if they got the same message I get."
Gary leaned back in his chair and squinted at his fellow agent. "Give me a sec . . . Well, hell, it's La Familia's way of giving their soldier to the competition. 'You want my guys? Here's how you get 'em. Stay off our turf.' I'd think the one that's still in custody would read it pretty much the same." Gary nodded to himself. "Yeah, but that just might turn him state's evidence."
"Dream on," McMilligan said, a cynic's twist to his grin. "Guys like Luna's would rather have his blowtorch than our handshake."
"Well, that's just what they'll get, most likely," Gary said, as his dedicated fax machine flashed a message. He reached for the sheaf of hard copy. "Thanks for the update. I still dunno why you called it a rumor."
McMilligan paused with his hand on Gary's door frame. "It's the implication, man. La Familia and the Asians could live and let live, pushing different product, but it doesn't look like they will for much longer."
Gary could see that his brother agent's eyes were dancing with anticipation. "Hey, there's a down side to that," he said. "Lots of bystanders get popped in a drug war."
McMilligan's answer was a shrug of agreement. Gary watched the man's broad shoulders diminish down the hall. He's got a macho view of it, Gary thought. Like I used to have. He hasn't been a victim yet. The label, Gary realized, ill-suited him; after all, he'd been a volunteer warrior, and decently paid at that.
But you went into the DEA's kind of war with certain understandings about who your opponents were. To be blindsided by somebody fighting a war you didn't know you were in, was - he smiled at his own naiveté - it wasn't fair. Right. Tell me about fair, he challenged himself.
Graham Forster was as good as his word, but his word didn't seem to be as helpful as Gary had hoped.
According to Forster, the newest VICAP analysis of the Spooker File plainly said that the CIA was not - and never had been - dealing with a classic serial killer. The differences were so great that, in VICAP's language, the serial-killer paradigm could misdirect law-enforcement theorists.
To begin with, VICAP had pointed out, serial killers did not ply their ghastly trade primarily for material gain. And they did not have a quota. Typically, though not always, the serial killer operated alone with a sexual motive. Such a monster did not grow overnight but began in youth as one who was isolated from peers, dissociated, with dark personal fantasies that grew darker with what VICAP termed "facilitators."
Drugs, alcohol, pornography, all made effective facilitators; and vicious experiments on enemies or pets were more than facilitators, they reinforced the worst of violent sexual fantasies by telling him - it was almost always a male - that this was "it," the path toward satisfaction. The more specific a fantasy, the more dangerous the path.
The aftermath of a violent episode usually brought repulsion for the deed, remorse, a further lowering of self-esteem. The human monster needs to try again to somehow "get it right." The irony is that lie cannot ever get it right in this fashion; and, sure enough, VICAP had a pristine clinical term for that: trauma reinforcement. Caught up in this ever-tightening spiral of psychic pressure, the killer often deteriorates into such mental chaos that he finally makes idiotic, calamitous mistakes. Now he may become more vulnerable - and very, very much more dangerous.
There was more, including the kinds of photos that are pornographic only to the mentally deranged.
Gary forced himself to read it all. Judging from all this, the covers of detective magazines reinforced human predators by showing women in bondage. To such men, those depictions were the purest porn.
Another factor in VICAP's conclusion was the sheer duration of the Spooker File, suggesting that more than one generation of spook had been engaged in this bloody business. A third factor the political implications. Even the most garrulous KGB turncoats could not point to any similar file in Moscow. Many a Russian agent had disappeared, but often they turned up in the West, or on neutral turf, alive - for the moment.
In summary, VICAP surmised much the same as had Forster: that some rogue faction in the intelligence community was responsible for the Spooker File. If so, its members were even more deadly than a serial killer because, while they might enjoy their work, they enjoyed it in a coldly professional way: patterned, patient, proficient.
Gary clipped the pages together and added a route slip for Visconti's attention. His eyes burned, and he closed them while considering Forster's report. There was damned little comfort in those pages. They implied anew that the "faction" that had reeled him in was unlikely to be caught except by dumb luck.
Or - his eyes snapped open - if one of that bunch began to like his work so much that he crossed the line from professionalism to madness. But who could actually hope for that scenario?
He realized that Paul Visconti was standing in the doorway, regarding him with a mixture of amusement and pique. As Gary straightened, his chair squealed in protest. "Not so loud, Landis," Visconti said, a forefinger to his lips. "People are trying to sleep in here."
"Maybe I was praying," Gary said through a blush.
"Maybe you should pray for employment," Visconti smirked.
"Mm. Got Forster's input for you," Gary said, handing over the pages.
Visconti saw the time on the cover sheet; it had come in less than an hour before. "Aren't you going to read it?"
"Already did - while I was asleep," Gary said wryly. "It's trying to say, in so many words, the GRU or some similar bunch is getting rich off its vendetta against us."
Visconti nodded; closed his eyes for a moment, thinking that over. When he opened them, Gary had a forefinger to his own lips. "Your point is made," said the supervisor with a chuckle. "And fuck you very much." He moved off down the hall, still laughing softly to himself.
At lunchtime, Gary intended to call Jan from his personal phone in th
e Camaro. Trouble was, it wasn't in the Camaro. He was always misplacing the damned thing and suddenly recalled leaving it on his breakfast table that morning. He made his call from the pay phone in a nearby Russian restaurant while awaiting his order of piroshki, half-expecting her answering machine. After eight rings he was concluding she had forgotten to activate the thing again when he heard a clatter.
"Dammit! Yes, hello," she said quickly in a strained voice.
"Oh boy," he said. "What have I done now?"
A long sigh, and a pause. There was still an edge to her tone and he soon learned why. "Not you, hon. I seem to have pulled a muscle yesterday during Jazzercise." Her soft groan was convincing.
He suggested a doctor, a professional massage, and a soak in a spa, and she said she'd already tried the latter two. "Well, call Swede over," he said. "Get him to warm your soup, or something."
"He's still off fishing; I expect he'll be home today sometime, and I've already left a message for him.
Meanwhile, I'm in bed with a heating pad. And this damn corded phone won't reach."
He advised her to ignore its rings, exchanged loving phrases, and went back to his piroshki. There was nothing he could do to comfort her further without driving down.
32
JUNE 1994
It did not occur to Romana instantly that she must get rid of her big Plymouth, inasmuch as one of her clients had finally survived and might have given out a fair description of it.
Consumed as Andrew was with apprehension, she could understand how he might overlook that. Not forgive, but at least understand. Yet this same oversight on her own part frightened her more than the onset of crow's-feet at her temples, and the arthritic twinges that had begun, during the past year, to punctuate her exercises.
She could find no excuse for her lapse. Worse, contributing to a fury at herself that spilled over onto Andrew, she had to admit she had sought an excuse, a justification for failure. With an objectivity that finally did not flinch, she concluded that at long last, she was losing her mental as well as physical flexibility, becoming scattered in her thinking. Not badly scattered - at least not yet - but like other world-class competitors she had resolved to quit at the top of her form. In the game of revenge that Romana had played so well for so long, second-best would not mean a lesser prize. If she became a runner-up, she would be the prize joyfully held aloft by her enemies. And she fully intended to retire unbeaten.
