by Manuel Ramos
“Worthless, both of you.” Barbara stretched her hand holding the gun in Dillings’ direction. “But still I couldn’t keep him. Because of you, father. You. You.”
The gun went off and she screamed. The bullet tore out a chunk of paneling near Dillings’ shoulder. He whirled and dropped to his knees.
“Don’t do it, Barbara,” I yelled. “He’s not worth it. None of them are.” For her own good I had to stop her. “Drop your gun and everyone calm down. We can take care of these two, Barbara. You don’t have to do anything.”
She held the gun with both hands and moved it in a wide arc that covered Harry and Dillings.
Harry cringed on the floor. He clasped his hands around his head. He rocked back and forth on his heels. Dillings looked up at his daughter from his knees. Drool and tears streamed down his face and off his chin. His lips were moving but I didn’t hear him say anything.
Barbara jammed the gun barrel in her mouth and pulled the trigger.
16 [Luis]
somebody done hoodooed the hoodoo man
One of the last official acts of Ed Dillings was to approve Gus’ request for a temporary out-of-state travel permit. Gus had him sign the form when he told him about Harry’s scheme and the meeting at my office. Later, after the parole chief had been disgraced, nothing mattered to him. Gus’ request slid through the grease of the bureaucratic machine. He could come and go as he pleased.
Dillings resigned because he had no choice. His daughter’s suicide opened up too many cans of worms. Ugly secrets were revealed from the journals that Barbara kept neatly stacked in her closet. They were found by the girl’s aunt after the funeral. The aunt immediately turned them over to the police. Dillings not only abused his daughter when she was a child but he’d continued to manipulate her and basically destroyed any chance she had for a normal, happy life. Whatever that may be.
The governor made quick work of removing him from office. Dillings was charged with a wide variety of crimes based on his daughter’s journals, but the state never had the opportunity to prosecute. The end came with efficient finality. His sordid, perverse life was spread out in public for anyone to pick over, and it turned as foul as it deserved. It was too much for Dillings. He followed in his daughter’s footsteps and ended his own life. He laid down in the back seat of his running car in his closed-up garage until he died from the carbon monoxide flowing from a hose connected to the car’s exhaust. The cops found him the next day when they came to arrest him for not showing up in court at his arraignment.
Dirty Harry? The district attorney filed charges based on what Gus knew, his tape of the fateful night and what Dillings told them before he offed himself. Harry copped a plea to criminal intimidation and was given probation. Everyone assumed that sending him to prison would have been a death sentence, so I guess that’s why he slithered away relatively clean even though the D.A. had him cold because of Gus’ recording. The last I heard he was looking for a job.
And Gus and me? Naturally we caught a raft of crap because Barbara ended her life in my office—the second death of a woman in my office in less than a year. That looked suspicious to more than one policeman who didn’t like the idea of coincidence. The cops cordoned off my office and kept it closed for days, making my retirement almost a done deal without any fanfare.
Rosa and I were questioned more than once about any connection to Dillings or his daughter. Eventually they understood we had none.
Gus took the brunt of the heat. His recording of the event went a long way to clearing up any confusion the cops had about what had happened, but still they grilled him hard when they had the chance. They didn’t like it that he had possessed a gun, even though it wasn’t his and he had taken it from a man who was about to use it. They didn’t appreciate that he was involved in an extortion scheme, no matter that he stopped the scheme cold. And for sure they didn’t like it that he was on the scene when bullets were fired and a person died. It took a while and I had to go toe-to-toe with an ambitious assistant D.A., but finally even the police agreed that Gus was the good guy in the wretched drama, and that Dirty Harry and Dillings were the outlaws.
The shutdown hit my bottom line hard. No new clients came in and I had to cancel several appointments I’d already scheduled. The little bit of business I was able to conduct had to be done on the run, in my car or at the offices of a few attorneys who were willing to help me out. Rosa took a leave of absence since there wasn’t much for her to do.
Instead of getting ready to celebrate the triumphant end of my legal career, I felt like Luis Móntez at the beginning of his lawyer life: no prospects, no money and no clue.
When I got the call from Gus about the shooting and I rushed to the office the night it happened, I thought I’d reached the end of my joint venture with the ex-con. To be honest, I figured he was up to his old bad-boy tricks and Barbara Dillings had paid the price. His scheme to finagle out-of-state travel had imploded. The parole chief’s daughter died as a result. I was not feeling any love for Gus Corral. I stayed that way for several days until Gus and I met to iron out the details of what happened.
“You should have told me what you were doing, Gus.” I was angry and uncertain and my voice reflected both feelings.
We talked in the office when we were allowed back in after the cops finished their work and the cleaning crew clocked out. The landlord had demanded that I invest in a service to remove all traces of Barbara’s sad end. The place smelled like bleach and ammonia. The carpet had been replaced and the walls repainted. The office never looked better.
“I didn’t want to drag you into something that could have gone off the tracks. Which is what happened, right?”
“And yet I was dragged into it. Funny how that worked out.”
“You firing me?”
That stopped me. I couldn’t do it. I shook my head.
“You and me, Luis,” he said. “We’re meant to get the short end, no matter what we do. That’s what it’s all about.”
It didn’t sound like he was serious enough about his responsibility. “Don’t say that. I still have hope.”
“Good for you.”
He laughed.
“Seriously. Playing Dillings against Harry was a dangerous game.” I wanted him to admit he might have made a mistake.
“For those two jerks,” he said. “Nothing about Dillings or Harry worried me. Barbara was the wild card. After all these years she finally broke.”
“She could’ve shot all of you as well as herself. You literally dodged a bullet. You see that, don’t you?”
“She must have lost it completely when her father told her what Harry had done, how Harry revealed what she told him, and that he was trying to use it against Dillings. She had to feel used by both.”
“She was.” The conversation stopped for a few seconds.
“I’m sorry about what happened, Luis, if that’s what’s bothering you. But these people are all damaged goods. Barbara was broken a long time ago. She would have ended her life sooner or later unless she got help, and that wasn’t in the cards. I just happened to be around when she pulled the trigger. If there was anything I could have done to stop her, I would have tried.”
“That’s the thing about unintended consequences,” I said. “Maybe they’re foreseeable, maybe not. We have to be very careful when we play around with people’s lives, Gus. I think you know that. I’m not lecturing you. Hope I don’t sound like I am. But if we’re going to work together, we have to communicate, to make sure we’re on the same page. That’s all I’m asking.”
“I got it. I’m with you, Luis.”
That had to be enough for me.
“So, you still up for Mexico?” I asked.
“You must be kidding.”
“What could be better than Christmas in Baja? Fishing, drinking beer on the beach, just laying out in the sun. What’s not to be up for?” It sounded phony even to me.
“What do you hope to accomplish? The fact that there�
��s no more case doesn’t bother you? How about that little detail?”
“I want to talk to the Mexican cop, and, with some luck, the fishing guide who sits in prison and who we hope will spill his guts to us about Sam Contreras and whatever he may know about María or the missing money.”
“You still want to get into that? Everyone’s dead who was involved, but Luis Móntez won’t stop.”
I shrugged. “Bad habit. I like closure. I don’t like loose ends, especially about my clients.”
“To repeat. She’s dead. And so is her husband. And so is the guy who opened all this, Valdez.”
“Too many unanswered questions, Gus. I’m almost done with this lawyer game. I don’t want any of María Contreras’ life and death hanging over me when I finally lock up everything. I hope you can understand that. But, even if you don’t, you know I’m going to find Batista and try to get to Paco. That may be a blind alley, but it’s a step I think I have to take.”
I tried to lay it out for Gus, as clean and clear as I could make it, but the truth was that I didn’t understand all my motivation. I’d acted the same in the past and often it cost me. I kept promises I’d made in moments of weakness, or paid off a debt that only I remembered, sometimes risking my life. But I was too old to change. At least, that’s what everyone told me since I reached forty.
Gus’ face relaxed. “I went to a lot of trouble to get the travel pass,” he said. “I’m not quitting now. Besides, I could use a vacation.”
“Glad to hear it, although we won’t be on vacation until after we get to a dead end, either with Batista or this guy Paco. But that shouldn’t take too long.”
“Then Ana can join me? You think maybe a couple of days?”
“We talk to one cop and one convict. First, La Paz. Then the Tijuana prison. Two, three days ought to be enough. Then I come back here and pack up my office, and you can enjoy your time off. We get ready for the new year.” I realized that my retirement meant that Rosa and Gus would be out of work. “And we see about a new job for you and Rosa. I can help with that.”
Gus rubbed his hands together. “Let’s go, then.”
“I’ll call Rosa to come in and help with the travel and hotel.”
“If she hasn’t found something else already,” Gus said. He went off to his desk to finish whatever it was he’d been working on when he figured out his trap for Dirty Harry. I called Rosa.
She was more than eager to get back to work. “Christmas!” she shouted when I asked whether she wanted to do any work. She walked in the office a half-hour later and immediately searched the Internet for tickets to La Paz. It turned out that there was no way we could travel to Mexico in the next few days. Christmas was only two weeks away. There were no direct flights from Denver to La Paz; everything was routed through Mexico City and the tickets were running more than a thousand dollars each, roundtrip. My business account couldn’t take that kind of beating. I didn’t even bother to check my personal account.
“La Paz is packed with tourists and college students,” Rosa said when she looked up from her computer. “I can get you two a room in a hotel about three miles from the beach. But it looks real shady, even on its web page. I wouldn’t stay there. It’s not cheap either.”
“We should hold off,” Gus said. “I was ready to go tomorrow, if we had to. But now . . . We wait until after the New Year. Take our time, come up with a good plan about what to do if Paco gives us anything. We can avoid the turistas and set our schedule.”
“I hate to put this off. What if Paco disappears?” I asked.
“I thought he was in prison?” Rosa said.
“What if he gets killed?”
“Luis, he hasn’t been killed yet,” Gus said. “What are the odds, eh? I think we’ll be okay.”
I had to agree. “Guess we take a long break. Stall my retirement until February, something like that.”
“You weren’t ready, anyhow,” Rosa said. “There’s like a thousand things we have to do yet.”
“All right, all right. I get it. The Contreras case is on hold. Meanwhile, Rosa and I get serious about closing up. Take some time off, Gus. I can’t pay you anyway.”
“I’ll manage,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”
Gus and Rosa disappeared to the back room.
It took several minutes and a couple of phone restarts but eventually I contacted Batista and told him our plan. He complained about the delay but there wasn’t anything he could do about it, and I don’t think it really mattered to him anyway.
“Your passport still good?” Rosa asked when she brought out a bottle of tequila to celebrate whatever it was she felt like celebrating. Gus carried paper plates, a bag of lemons, a knife and a salt shaker.
“Yeah. Another three years.” I turned to my investigator. “Gus?”
“I’m okay, I think. At least I had one before I started my sentence.”
“It should still be good. Look at the date when you get home. They don’t automatically revoke passports for felons. As long as Batista clears the way, you shouldn’t have a problem crossing the border.”
Rosa sliced lemons. Then she spread salt on a paper plate and rubbed lemon juice on the rims of the shot glasses. She salted the glasses and poured the liquor.
“That tequila’s been sitting in the back for years,” I said. “It’s cheap stuff. Be ready for a jolt.”
I scanned the view from the windows of my office. Several lights were on in the building across the street. A medium-sized law firm occupied the first floor and the arched entrance evoked security and success. Large snowflakes glistened in the fading light and the world turned gray as clouds rolled across the skyline.
Gus reached for his drink. “Even if Batista doesn’t get me a visa,” he said, “I can sneak into the country, can’t I? Shouldn’t be a problem.”
Rosa and I stared at him.
“I’m joking.” He said. “Relax.”
We raised our glasses. “Merry Christmas and próspero Año Nuevo,” I said.
We chugged the tequila, everyone’s eyes teared up, and Rosa shouted, “Ay-yay-yay!”
Just like old times.
17 [Gus]
you know it’s nine below zero people
and my love don’t mean a thing
The Colorado winter blew into town with the solstice, but not with any goodwill. Denver was hit with a December cold snap that sent the temperatures below zero for a week. In the middle of that week, the snow started and didn’t quit for another day and a half. The residential streets were snow-packed, ice fingers hung from tree branches and roof eaves, schools began the holiday vacation early, snowdrifts muffled all sounds, and the world seemed to have stopped.
“I love it when it gets like this,” Corrine said. We ate oatmeal, toast and coffee in her yellow kitchen. There was little else left in the refrigerator or pantry. “No one’s going to work, no one’s hassling anyone about anything. It’s like peace has finally broke out.”
“It’s like Ebola wiped out the city and you and I are the only ones left alive, and to tell you the truth, I’m not feeling all that good.”
She punched my arm and a sliver of pain arched through my bicep and across my shoulders.
“Damn. That hurt, Corrine.”
“You’re such a drudge sometimes. Can’t you enjoy the moment?”
My older sister had developed a sense of Zen awareness, or something, which had me stumped about how I should act around her.
I rubbed my arm with more enthusiasm than called for. “Christ, I think you gave me a bruise.”
“Quit crying. For a guy, you sure fold up easy.”
I shook my head. “You’re too much, but you know that.”
It’d been three days since we’d left the house for anything more than shoveling the sidewalk or retrieving the newspaper. Although Corrine rattled on about winter’s serenity, cabin fever made us delirious and crabby.
“You should’ve gone to Mexico. At least you’d be out of
my hair.”
“First chance I get, I’m out of here.”
She ignored me and rifled the pages of her newspaper as though it actually had something important to report. I poured a third cup of coffee for both of us.
“God, what next?” she said.
“What’s up?”
“¡Ay, mi México! Won’t that shit ever stop? All the killings. The innocent pay the price for the drug dealers and the politicians.”
“Don’t forget the U.S. druggies and their addictions.”
She showed me the article in the paper that caused her anger. A newsprint photo of a smoking building with bars on the windows included several bodies scattered around the walls. The headline read, “Riot in Mexican Prison Spreads to Tijuana—Dozens Killed.”
“The inmates took over the prison,” she said. “Before the federal troops regained control, a mob of convicts ran through the streets of the city, killing, raping. They were eventually gunned down but several blocks were torched. I can’t believe it. It gets worse every damn day. Mexico’s on fire and no one cares enough to turn on the water hose.” She read more. “Now I’m glad you didn’t go down there. What a mess.”
“I should talk to Luis. We were supposed to meet with the guy, Paco Abarca, in La Mesa, that prison.”
“You’re kidding me?”
“Wish I was. This probably screws up everything.”
My cell buzzed. I assumed it was Luis.
“You heard the news?” Ana’s voice surprised me.
“About the Mexican prison riot?”
“Yeah, of course. Homeland Security sent out an alert early this morning that more than a hundred people were killed.”
“But it’s over, right? That’s what the paper said.”
“Some fighting continues in Tijuana, but it’s not clear that any of it involves escapees. In Mexico sometimes you can’t tell the difference between so-called convicts and gangsters on the street.”
“Our guy Paco could’ve been killed. He’s the only link we had to the mystery of María Contreras, and that was a very weak link.”
