FROGTOWN
He’d told the crazy whiteboy not to teach him how to play the game. He meant it. Boxer loved speed chess. He’d learned it on the inside. When the whiteboy leaned down in his ear, told him he’d kill anyone Boxer and La Eme wanted, that he’d gun down the president of the United States and die smiling if La Eme would take care of his daughter, Boxer’s chess brain jumped around the board. It landed in Hangtree.
Hangtree, California. The high desert just north of the border. A legendary place. Meth lab fumes and mirage shimmers all blended together. The Sinaloa cartel used to move weight through Hangtree no problem. Then the bosses switched. A sheriff named Houser took the throne. Houser had whiteboy sympathies. He had his own ideas about law and order. He organized the meth cooks. He gave them a patch of the desert. An old army base, nothing left but concrete slabs in the desert. The cooks set up. Houser became meth baron of the desert. He ripped off any cartel loads he could find. Him and his deputy. Legend had it Jimmy liked to snatch drugs and experiment on the carnales who passed through the local lockups. The ones lucky enough to live told about crazy drug cocktails Jimmy would cook up. Said he had mind-control theories and nutbag eyes.
Mostly Houser just robbed them and let them go. After all, he had a badge. The badge made him bulletproof. He let most of the cartel runners go. But not all of them. Boxer knew Houser dumped their bodies in the desert. Coyotes around Hangtree learned the taste of long pig. They got fat on La Eme flesh. They cracked teeth on buckshot hidden in the meat.
La Eme wanted Houser dead. La Eme knew killing a white cop in the desert could destroy them. Brown killers taking down an American cop, hell, it could lead all the way to military interdiction. Seal Team 6 cruising down to Sinaloa. And Houser knew it. He was bulletproof. He was fucking fearless.
A few months back Houser had grabbed a mule named Luis. Somebody found his body in the desert. He’d been gutted. They’d cut him open just to get out the balloons in his stomach.
Luis was Boxer’s cousin. When they found him outside Hangtree, Boxer got mad. He had cop-killer daydreams. Then he thought it through. He played the chess game out. He lost every time. La Eme would never sanction a hit on a white cop. He learned to live with the idea that some folk were untouchable.
Then the crazy whiteboy dropped in his lap. A whiteboy willing to do anything. And then that little badass girl had shown him her wounds, and it had reopened the wounds inside Boxer, and he thought why the hell not? Fuck that the-cop-is-untouchable shit. No one’s untouchable. If JFK can get got, the whiteboy could take out one lousy dirty cop. The white in whiteboy was key. If it went bad, nobody would blame La Eme. They’d put it on whiteboy insanity. Even if they took him alive, he’d never get a chance to talk. The Steel would have him dead in hours.
Boxer makes some calls. Coded messages spelled out the plan to El Presidente in Pelican Bay. El Presidente sees Boxer’s logic. He likes the way it keeps their hands clean. El Presidente says greenlight on the high-desert cop. Send the crazy whiteboy. Killing Aryan Steel’s president will be bad for business, at least short-term. But they only have to pay the price if the whiteboy lives. If he dies, they don’t pay. Crazy Craig lives and the greenlight on the girl continues. Boxer doesn’t like it. But he sees it’s a pure business call.
Boxer calls in the crazy whiteboy for another meeting. Boxer meets him alone this time. He gives him the decision. He’s going to assassinate a cop in the middle of the cop’s own dirty kingdom. Boxer has to hand it to the crazy whiteboy. He keeps his face calm. Boxer can only see the fear in the whiteboy’s throat, how it jerks and pops.
The crazy whiteboy isn’t that crazy. He knows there’s no coming back from a cop killing. He knows the price he’s paying. His eyes a little too shiny, a little too wet. His voice comes out strong. No cracks in it.
The crazy whiteboy says, “I’ll do it.”