As I stood over Stackhouse, who was groaning on the cracked and grayed asphalt, two patrol cars pulled up ahead of the lead SUV. They blooped their sirens and put on their light bars. Gutiérrez stepped out of the first car with a shotgun. Other officers I didn’t yet know came from the other doors. They were all armed.
I made a mental note to learn the names of every police officer on the Lansdale force and to buy them all a beer.
The truck door opened, and Hector shouted, “You all right?”
“Yeah,” I answered. “Stay there. We’re going to want to go quick when we go.”
He climbed back into the cab.
For the sake of the watching DEA agents, I lifted and then holstered my weapon. They relaxed but didn’t disarm. Not that I expected them to.
Kneeling beside Agent Stackhouse, I pushed his head to the side with one finger. He had a growing lump and road rash above the ear. “You’re going to need that looked at,” I told him.
He moaned but said nothing more.
“We need to talk again,” I said like I was chatting with an old friend. “To make sure we do—” I lifted the gold shield from where it was tucked between his body and the road. For a second I examined it. Then I pulled at the chain holding it around his neck.
Agent Stackhouse hissed his pain as the wound on his head grated on the blacktop and the chain broke.
“You can come get this from me anytime. As long as you ask politely.”
I took my prize and climbed back into the truck. “Come get your man,” I shouted to the glaring agents. To Hector, I said, “Let’s get back to town.”
He hit the gas hard. We shot across the road and onto the dirt shoulder, where we passed around the cruisers. They followed with their lights on all the way back to the station.
* * * *
I was seated behind my desk with the office door locked before I took a genuine breath. We had hardly talked on the drive back to the station. Hector did manage to communicate how he’d texted Gutiérrez, and she had come to back us up. That wasn’t the only news. Baron Wood and his girlfriend had been found alive and well and only partially dressed in the waters of the Rio Grande. They had indeed been picnicking. His father was still missing.
As I sat with my feet up, I fiddled with Stackhouse’s badge. Taking it was one of those impulse things. It was like counting coup on an enemy. Sometimes you just needed to let them know that the ground under their feet was not as steady as they thought.
Now I had it, though, what to do with it?
I locked it away in a desk drawer, amazed at the idea of having a desk, let alone one that had a lock on it. That was part of the problem, though, wasn’t it? I had the toys and the tools but not the experience to know the difference between them.
Once the badge was secured, I puzzled together the pieces of my phone and waited.
Nothing happened.
I couldn’t tell if that was a relief or a worry. For over an hour, it sat there silently, daring me to pick it up and make the call myself. I didn’t. I was afraid that like Stackhouse had said, things were bigger than me. That wasn’t true. Things had been bigger than me, and I’d been aware of our relative importance, many times. I’d just never cared before.
When the phone finally rang, I let it wait through three rings and then picked up.
“Yeah?”
“The fuck, Paris?”
“Good to hear from you too, Milo.”
“Screw that. Just what do you think you’re doing?”
“To tell the truth…” I took a breath. “I’m doing the best I can.”
Milo took a breath too. “Yeah. Look, I understand it’s not easy. But you can make it easier by keeping this phone on and staying in contact.”
“I can’t do anything with you calling me all the time.”
“I wouldn’t call you every goddamned hour if you ever once picked up when you should. Or call me. Is that too professional for you? We don’t need a rugged cowboy out on the lonesome prairie; we need a cop.”
“That’s the thing—” I stopped. I didn’t mean to or want to, but I did. It would have been easy to admit that I wasn’t a cop. I’d tried to come clean with Stackhouse. But that had been more about the end result. Trading truth for justice against the Machados. I didn’t have reason to believe that the DOJ would do more than the DEA. Even worse, I’d be an embarrassment to Milo and whoever his bosses were. They would work hard to bury me and everything I touched.
I didn’t go on.
“What?” Milo made the question both a demand and a challenge. “What’s the thing, Paris?”
“What’s that mean?”
“We’re in the desert here. The prairie is way north.”
“Tell you what, big boy,” he said, sounding deadly serious. “Why don’t you fold your geography lesson up until it’s all corners and cactus and then stick it up your ass?”
“I don’t know what I’m doing here,” I admitted. “Everything is a mess, and all the ends seem to tie La Familia de los Muerto to some DEA—”
“Screw the DEA,” Milo butted in. “And damn sure screw the family…whatever thing. You’re there for the money and the dirty department. You’re there to find the link between the cops, city officials, and all the disappeared grant money. And a big part of that is being there to pick up the phone when I call. Now are you going to do the job, or are we going to have to make changes?”
“Relax, Milo. I know what I need to do now, and I’m on it.”
“Anything you want to share?”
“Not yet.” I wasn’t lying. When Milo mentioned disappeared grant money, it was the confirmation I needed that I was on the right side of the street. The problem was he seemed to think it was a town problem. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Milo could probably hear me, but I didn’t mind if he knew I was being careful. “Will you listen to something you don’t want to hear?”
Even when he was silent, I could hear him cursing me. In the end, though, he said, “Tell me.”
I gave him a short version of what had gone on that day. I included Stackhouse and his crew. I even told him about the offer I had made. I didn’t tell him how I had the information I tried to serve up on the Machado brothers.
“Let me get it all straight,” he said. His voice was uncharacteristically even. “You believe there’s a connection between your investigation, a drug cartel, and rogue DEA. And your first move was to run over a federal agent and steal his badge?”
“Well, when you say it like that, anything is going to sound bad.”
“Someday you’re going to have to tell me the story of how you ever got to be a cop.”
“It’s a good one,” I said. “You’ll get a kick out of it.”
“No. I don’t think I will,” Milo answered.
“Would you do something for me?”
“What?”
“Can you run some names for me? Look for connections.”
“Run your own names. Investigation is your job.”
“You can go deeper than I can. And I’m not sure of the security of the system here.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” I thought about that, and then I said, “That’s part of the problem. This town lost the chief of police, and then the replacement was killed. The mayor is dead. And things just keep right on going.”
“You think the people in charge are not the actual people in charge?”
“Something like that,” I answered. “And most of the names I’m looking at are cops.”
“What are the names?”
It was a long list. I gave him Bascom Wood and the Machado brothers. Then I went through the cops: Mark Walker, Bronwyn Gutiérrez, Darian Stackhouse.
“Anyone else?” he asked.
“Buick Tindall.”
There was a beat of silence from the other end, and then Milo said, “I’ll get back to you. And you have that phone on.” He disconnected with his usual abrupt charm.
If I had taken a moment to think, it would have turned into hours of worry and brooding. I was lucky I had the thought to call the funeral home about Paris’s—Longview’s—body. It turned out that the DNA was a match, and no one questioned which of Buick’s sons was dead. The funeral director told me the body had been released, and they had Paris onsite. The funeral could be scheduled at my convenience. It led me to ask a question I swore that I wouldn’t. “Has Buick Tindall been in to ask about the arrangements?” There was a long silence from the other end. Before it could be broken by an apology I didn’t need, I said, “Never mind.”
There was another silence. I didn’t know how to fill that one. Before I had to try, the man on the other end asked me about clothes.
It was something I’d never considered. I had an instant solution though.
“A man—a friend—will be there tomorrow. His name is Hector Alazraqui. From now on, he will be responsible for everything about the funeral.”
I got off the phone and checked the papers littering my desk. Sure enough, one was the vacation schedule I’d asked for. I put Hector down for a week’s vacation starting the next day. With the paper in hand, I wandered out to the main office looking for Gutiérrez.
She wasn’t in the office. I checked with the dispatcher. She was the same black officer who had given me that quiet ride.
“Officer Gutiérrez is not scheduled on until three,” she told me. “But you called her and Officer Alazraqui in this morning.” She didn’t say more about it, but the message seemed to be that I was messing with schedules.
“What’s your name?” I asked. I had been told the first day but hadn’t paid real attention.
“Sunny Johnson,” she answered.
How could I not smile? She was a black woman who was both slim and challenged in stature. I could see why she was working the desk.
“Have I been making your life harder, Officer Johnson?”
“You have, Chief.”
No smile. She wasn’t joking, and she wasn’t letting me off the hook just because I asked the question.
“You’re full-time dispatch, aren’t you?”
She nodded.
“How do you feel about that?”
“It is what it is.”
“Fair enough. Would you change it if you could?”
She nodded again and then added, “Some people don’t think I belong off the desk because of my size.”
“We’re not those people, are we, Officer Johnson?”
“No, sir.” She smiled that time.
I handed her the vacation form. “Give Hector a call, and tell him about this vacation. You can take his patrol shifts while he’s gone, but I want you to make a workable schedule to keep someone on dispatch. Can you handle that?”
“Yes, sir.”
I felt like I’d made a friend, and a realization slowly settled on me. I had more cop friends than crook.
“I need a drink,” I said. Then I thought about it and added, “I really need a drink. So, Officer Sunny. Sunny smile and sunny disposition. Where should I go?”
“Are you flirting with me, Chief?” She didn’t look angry. She wasn’t smiling though.
“When I flirt with you, you’ll know it.” I grinned to show how charming I was.
“Because that wouldn’t be right.” Her face was open. The brown sparkle of her eyes was centered on mine. “And it would make my life harder.”
I deflated. Being a professional was not an easy transition to make. “No,” I agreed. “No, I’m not flirting,” I lied. “I’m just…”
Officer Sunny saved me from further embarrassment by asking, “Where can you go, or where should you go?”
“What?”
“You said you needed a drink. Then you asked where you should go.”
“Yeah.”
“Well—” She hesitated; then the decision showed in her eyes. “You’ve been here almost a week. I’d bet you hardly know a thing about your department.”
“Go on,” I encouraged, keeping my gaze square on hers.
“If you want a quiet beer, go to Ernesto’s.”
“Ernesto’s.”
“It’s the taqueria where you got into the fight.”
“I remember. But if I want a little eye opening with my beer?”
“Go to the Border Crossing.”
I must have looked a little blank. A lot blank maybe.
“The Border Crossing is that place out on the edge of town,” she explained. “By the new bank.”
I had seen the place that first night I had come to town. It was basically a shack with trailers out back, cribs for the working girls.
The blank look on my face must have filled in because Sunny said, “Yeah. That place.”
* * * *
The Border Crossing was busy even in the middle of the day. Outside the sprawling, tin-roof joint was a dirt parking lot. That lot was filled with big rigs, bikes, and rattletrap pickup trucks. Inside, it was dark and loud. What light there was had a decidedly red cast to it from the miles of red neon beer signs covering the walls. The few spaces left free of beer lighting were filled with paintings of women with big hips and breasts that were both unreasonably large and impossibly high. Because they were painted on black velvet, the women seemed to float in the red atmosphere.
I half expected a Wild West moment where everyone fell silent and turned to look when I walked into the room. That didn’t happen. Nothing happened. No one noticed or cared that I had walked in through the thick green door. The steel mesh bolted over the window was a nice touch.
To one side was a cluster of stand around tables. To the other were pool tables surrounded by salvaged church pews. Past the games was an even darker area full of tables and chairs filled by men and trafficked through by Mexican women bearing trays of beer. On a small stage, there was a girl. Pale skinned and bony, she was grinding against a brass pole with the kind of expression usually reserved for toilet plunging.
“What are you doing here?”
I turned toward the question to find Gutiérrez glaring at me. “Maybe I should ask you the same thing.”
She tossed up her hands and shook her head. It made me feel the same way I had when impatient teachers tried to get me to understand algebra by jabbing fingers at equations and then moving on to better students.
Gutiérrez walked off, and I looked around. My eyes were adjusted to the darkness by then, and I was able to get some of the finer details. One of those details was an overstuffed seersucker suit. Detective Mark Walker was sitting close to the stage, watching the skinny girl hump the pole.
“Get over here,” Gutiérrez called from the bar.
“Is this what you do with your time off?” I asked as I took the stool beside her. Removing my straw hat, I sat it on the bar with the crown down. I needed to keep all the luck I had.
“Homework.”
Gutiérrez looked like she was considering that. She took a sip of beer from a bottle and asked, “So, school’s in session. What have you learned?”
“Walker is here when he’s supposed to be on the clock.”
“Obvious. What else?”
“Those two guys playing pool.” I tilted my chin at the pair of big men with tattoos and long hair. They were not looking our way and being careful about it.
“What about them?”
“They’re DEA. Part of Stackhouse’s crew.”
“You’ve seen them before?”
“They may have been on the road today.” The bartender put an open bottle in front of me and then moved on. “But that’s not why I make them.”
“Okay…”
“They look like cops.”
“What do cops look like?”
“Mostly like smug thugs. Like they have a right.”
“What right?”
“All of them. Cops like rules that everyone else has to follow. Order. Those guys have tattoos that only show if their sleeves are rolled. They have ankle holsters, and they haven’t looked over here once.”
She shoved my beer over closer to me and took another drink from hers. “Why should they look over here? Are you that interesting?”
“Nope. But you are.”
“I’m not sure if that’s a compliment.”
I shrugged. “I’m not as good at complimenting women as I thought I was.”
“A man should know his limitations. What else?”
“I’d bet a nickel that most of the other men in here work for the Machados.”
“Most of the men in town work for him one way or another.”
“Yeah, I get that. These guys are a little more directly involved.”
“How do you know?”
“You, me, Walker—all local cops. The pair of feds. If I can make them, anyone else can. That’s five cops in here.”
“If you say so.”
“Five cops. No one cares. They’re all protected.”
She took another drink with her eyes open and gaze fixed on me. When the bottle was empty, she said, “Maybe you’re just a little sharper than I was giving you credit for.”
“Even a broken clock…” I said, toying with my sweating beer bottle. “How many sides are at play here?”
She was no longer looking at me. She had turned to look at the mirror in the bar back. I couldn’t tell if she was inspecting her reflection or the condition of the glassware. I did notice that there was good reason to take your beer from the bottle at the Border Crossing.
“Just when I think you might have a little edge, you turn into a big blunt hammer again.”
I slid my untouched bottle over to her hands. “What I lack in subtlety I make up for in other things.”
She took the beer. “What things?”
“I was hoping you wouldn’t ask.”
She took a drink.
“You didn’t answer my question,” I said as she sucked down a long drink of pale lager.
“Getting sharp again,” she said, setting the bottle down and keeping her eyes forward.
“Sides,” I said. “And who plays for which team?”
Gutiérrez raised the beer again stopping before it got to her lips. “That could be a fluid situation,” she said. Then she pursed her lips and pressed the bottle to them.
Off to the side and beyond the bar, I caught some movement. Detective Walker was standing at a table talking with a group of Hispanic men. I’d seen one of them at the gun club. Joaquin. The doorman who’d let me in. They looked a lot closer than one would expect.
I left Gutiérrez with her beer and her reflection.
“Detective Walker.” I didn’t quite shout it across the room.
He lost his smile quick. “Chief?” Walker asked.
Joaquin didn’t even turn to look at me.
“Walker.” I made sure to sound happy to see him. “Great work you’ve been doing.”
“What?”
“All the information you’ve been gathering.”
“Chief…” Walker had a little warning in his voice. “I’m just—”
“Don’t explain. I don’t need to know why you’re here. Are these the men you told me about?”
Joaquin looked at me. Then he looked away. The three other men at the table never even glanced up. They tried hard to act like I was invisible. The guy on the end was the most nervous. He looked familiar too. At first I couldn’t place him, but it occurred to me that I’d only ever seen him from behind. There was no way to be sure, but I thought he might be the guy who had kicked in the motel door two nights ago.
Walker was outright scared. “No,” he said. “I mean there aren’t—what are you talking about?”
“Don’t worry. It’s just between us chickens.” I laughed, but no one joined in. Then I pointed to Joaquin. “Is he your informant?” I shifted my finger to the man on the end. “Is that the guy from the motel?”
Walker went a little pale. All the men at the table leaned away from each other, adding a tiny bit of distance between everyone. The doorman scooted back in his chair as if to rise.
“Stay where you are, Joaquin,” I said. I wasn’t laughing anymore. Then I turned to Walker and tossed my arm around his shoulders. “Come here with me. I want to introduce you to a couple of our friends in the DEA.” I dragged him to the pool tables.
The bar was very quiet as we walked the few steps over. The two feds were leaning on their cues staring bullets at us—at me.
“What kind of crap are you trying to pull?” the bigger one asked.
“Tell me something,” I said. “You ever been fishing for sharks?”
“You’ve gone fucking crazy,” the smaller one said.
“No. I’m just fishing. And if you want to catch sharks, you gotta get some blood in the water.”
I turned toward the bar and looked straight at Gutiérrez. Her beer bottle was empty again. “Ain’t that right?” I hollered.
She didn’t reply. She didn’t even look.
The big fed pointed at me with his cue and said, “I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing here—”
“Game?” I cut him off loud and clear. “Yeah. Speaking of games—which one of you was in on that game down in Juarez?”
The change in their faces was instant.
“That was some bad action down there.” I checked to make sure the table of Machado’s guys was listening. They were. “But I hear someone got away with a load of cash.”
The feds were split. They wanted to go at me with their pool cues, but they were afraid to take their attention away from the four men at the table.
I turned to Walker and told him, “Get out of here. It probably wouldn’t be wise to come back to this place. In fact, if I don’t see you again, you can consider your resignation accepted.”
I walked across the room. Even the gloom seemed to be holding its breath. When I got to the bar, I picked up my hat and set it in place. Then, to Gutiérrez, I said, “Now, that’s what a hammer does.”