Southtown tn-5 Page 5

  Maia and I were fine, except for a few sprinkles of margarita on her blouse, a knee-print in my guacamole, and the twelve-inch meat cleaver shuddering in the tablecloth.

  Robert Johnson said, “Row?”

  “Yeah,” I agreed.

  Our waitress swept over with an oblivious smile and a leather-bound bill. “Well! Anybody save room for dessert?”

  The hotel room was too expensive-not even a hotel room, but a ranch-style bungalow with a mauve and creme bed, a canopied frame of rough-hewn oak and a Guatemalan rug on the flagstone floor. The fireplace was filled with dried sage and baby’s breath. A nest of birds chirped and echoed somewhere up in the old limestone chimney.

  Maia paid cash, signed our names Mr. amp; Mrs. Smith-her little joke, emulating so many Mr. amp; Mrs. Smiths we had tailed, photographed, strong-armed into divorce settlements back in the old days.

  We stood on the deck, Robert Johnson purring next to us on the railing.

  Beneath us, the cedars dropped away into a ravine, the red and silver ribbon of I-35 in the distance, heading north and south to our respective homes. I imagined some poor PI down below us, sweating in his car, pointing his telescopic lens this way, hoping to catch a clear, lurid, unmistakably guilty shot.

  I felt the need not to disappoint a hypothetical brother. I pulled Maia close. We kissed.

  “So how would it be,” she said, “if Erainya married this doctor of hers? Got out of the business. Got time to be a mother. That’s a possibility, isn’t it?”

  “A scary one, I suppose.”

  Our fingers laced. Down in the woods, a few late fireflies were blinking-something I hadn’t seen in San Antonio since I was a kid.

  “Then I’d only have the whole city of S.A. to contend with,” Maia decided. “Your roots.”

  She said the word roots like she might say cancer. If Maia believed in roots, she never would’ve had the courage to leave Shaoxing as a girl, smuggled aboard a Shanghai freighter by her uncle, who told her she would have to see America for both of them. If she believed in roots, she wouldn’t have left San Francisco, her adopted home, to be close to me.

  She never rubbed it in, never mentioned the fact that she’d left everything, come two thousand miles, followed me here because I would not stay in the Bay Area. She had resettled in the only palatable Texas port of entry for a Californian-Austin. Couldn’t I close the last seventy-five miles?

  “Six deaths,” I said. “All women, all illegal aliens.”

  It took her a moment to follow my thoughts. “You mean William Stirman.”

  “The accessory-to-murder charges. Six women were killed over a twelve-month period at a ranch in the Hill Country. Chopped to pieces with an ax.”

  “Stirman killed them?”

  “No. The murderer was a rancher named McCurdy. He ate a 12-gauge when the police surrounded his house. Stirman supplied the victims. He supplied slave labor to ranches all across South Texas. He promised immigrants safe passage north. Instead, they were worked to death. This case-the ax murderer-was the only one where Stirman got nailed. He knowingly sold those women to be victims of a killer.”

  Maia leaned against the railing, staring toward the distant highway. “Barrow and Barrera proved that?”

  “They worked from different ends, hired by different clients, but they cooperated. Barrow and Barrera broke the case, tied Stirman to the murderer and the victims, hand-delivered him to the police.”

  “Stirman won’t hang around,” Maia said. “He’s heading north, probably on his way to Canada.”

  I turned the idea around in my head, trying to believe it.

  “Besides,” Maia persisted, “why take revenge on the PIs? There must’ve been a lot of people involved in the case-police, attorneys.”

  I didn’t bother to answer. We both knew PIs made more satisfying targets-easier to hate, easier to get to. Policemen and lawyers were impersonal parts of the criminal justice machine. Your typical sociopath got little satisfaction from killing one, and then the wrath of the whole system came down on you.

  Nobody worked up much righteous indignation when a private investigator got smoked. PIs were everybody’s punching bag. In an average week, the Ortiz cousins had lobbed hand grenades at me and Quentin Yates had attacked me with a meat cleaver, all over trivial grudges. In a matter of serious vengeance, I didn’t want to think what a sociopath like Will Stirman would do.

  “You can’t lose sleep over it,” Maia said. “Even if Stirman is coming, he wouldn’t go after Fred Barrow’s widow. And even if he did, what could you do?”

  Fireflies blinked in the cedars. The cicadas hummed. In the distance, clouds were choking out the stars. It seemed impossible that it could rain again, but July wasn’t playing by the usual rules.

  “You’d stick by Erainya,” Maia answered herself. “I’ll give you this, Tres Navarre. You’re loyal. Once someone is in your life, you’d never willingly let them down.”

  I brushed a lock of hair behind her ear. “A compliment?”

  “A reminder.”

  “It’s hard,” I said. “A hard time for me to just quit.”

  She circled my waist, kissed me lightly on the mouth.

  “Next week,” I promised. “I’ll give you an answer by then.”

  But Maia wasn’t hearing me. She was concentrating on the moment-before the rain returned, before the morning separated us for another seven days. She tugged at my fingers, led me inside to the canopied bed, where all night long our slightest movements caused a flutter of birds in the hollow heart of the chimney.

  5

  Tuesday morning, Luis risked a call to tell Pablo about the amputation.

  The Guide had insisted on another heist, so they’d picked a sporting goods store in Oklahoma City-right next to the highway, a Monday evening, hardly a car in the parking lot. They’d been driving all day since the convenience store holdup in New Braunfels that morning, but they were still high on adrenaline.

  So there was Luis, leaning against the service counter, bullshitting some college girl cashier. Pablo remembered the drill. Luis would smile real good. He’d be all, I love these water skis, but oh, damn, I forgot my wallet. Can you wait till my roommate brings me my money? We live right down the street. It’s really gotta be tonight, ’cause we’re going out of town.

  So they let him stay after closing, and he was chatting up the pretty cashier. All the other clerks went home. The manager was impatient, but trying to be polite, because hey, it was a six-hundred-dollar purchase. Luis was dressed in a nice workout suit, gold chains. He looked like he could afford good things. Why not humor the customer?

  The sky turned purple. These huge locusts started dropping from the sky, right on the sidewalk. Hundreds of them crawling over the asphalt, like red cigarettes with legs. Luis figured the whole area used to be farmland, and the bugs were wondering where all the crops went.

  He thought of that story Pastor Riggs used to tell-Pablo remembered the one-how the locusts came as a plague to Egypt.

  Luis thought: God must be fucking pissed. But he kept smiling and bullshitting the cashier, because the plan depended on him being so damn charming they wouldn’t kick him out.

  The van pulled up, right by the entrance. His make-believe roommate, C.C., got out.

  Pablo interrupted the story: C.C.? They opened the door for C.C.?

  Yeah, Luis said. He cleaned up pretty good for a scrawny-ass nigger.

  Anyway, C.C. was wearing this flashy Italian suit, like a damn lawyer. He came to the door, looked straight through the glass at Luis, and shook his head like he was irritated. He held up a wallet. Naughty, naughty.

  The manager turned the key and let him in.

  The manager started to say, “Normally I wouldn’t-” when C.C. drew a gun and shot him in the face.

  The cashier screamed.

  The manager knelt, hands going out to break his fall even though he was already dead. He curled into fetal position at C.C.’s feet.

  Elro
y and the Guide busted inside, both wearing ski masks, carrying shotguns.

  They took the flanks, rounded up a couple of stock boys from the back of the store.

  Luis told the girl cashier, “We’re going into the office now and open the safe.”

  “He-” The girl pointed toward the thing that used to be her boss. “He’s the only one who knows how.”

  The Guide looked at C.C. “What the fuck you shoot him for?”

  “Fuck you,” C.C. said, but it was an act. C.C. was getting off on being the bad-ass, and the Guide was happy to let him.

  We make a little mess, the Guide had told them their first day heading north. Every once in a while, we surface and give them a new headline. That’s the price for your freedom.

  C.C. loved it. He thought he was goddamn Jesse James. He’d taken to wearing two pistols. He was the one who shot the convenience store clerk in New Braunfels, and a gas station attendant Sunday night in Seguin that the police hadn’t tied to them yet. C.C. was the one who delivered the headlines. He’d also be the one who got them a lethal injection, if they were ever caught.

  They herded the employees to the manager’s office and tied them up. The Guide said to forget about the safe-just get the cash from the registers. They went shopping-grabbed some new clothes, a shitload of ammunition. Elroy picked up a bow-and-arrow set and Luis was like, “What the fuck are you doing?”

  The big black man smiled. “Always wanted to be Robin Hood, brother.”

  The Guide said, “Time to leave.”

  He went back to the office and gave the employees a spiel-don’t yell for help, don’t try anything funny or we’ll hunt down your families and kill them.

  Luis knew what they’d remember-the guy in charge was an Anglo in a ski mask, medium build, West Texas accent. The police would figure it was Will Stirman. They’d figure the five of them were still together, heading north. Four guys did the heist. The fifth stayed in the car, playing lookout.

  As it turned out, it would’ve been better if there had been a fifth on lookout.

  As soon as they got outside, there was a blaze of headlights. Some guy was shining his brights on them. A red Chevy. The driver wore some kind of uniform. Luis couldn’t tell through the glare-an off-duty security officer, maybe. The guy was leaning out his window, training a gun on them. He yelled, “Freeze!”

  C.C. and the Guide opened fire. Luis and Elroy took off toward the van, locusts crunching under their boots.

  The guard’s Chevy revved and careened forward, toward the van, and Luis knew he was going to die. At the last minute the Chevy swerved toward the glass storefront, where C.C. was standing, a pistol in each hand, firing away. C.C. didn’t have time to jump before the red Chevy plowed into him, slamming him through the glass.

  Luis ran up. The Chevy’s engine was grinding. It wasn’t going anywhere, steam billowing out the hood, gas leaking from its belly. Behind the blood-spattered web of glass that used to be the windshield, the driver was dead. He wasn’t a security guard-he was a cop. Fucker must’ve been on his way home from his shift, spotted the holdup, had to stop and play hero.

  The worst was C.C. He was sprawled on the cement, half under the Chevy, broken glass and locusts all around him. He was screaming, and his leg was pumping like a busted pipe. The Guide yelled, “Get pressure on that!”

  Luis stripped off his shirt and tried to bind the wound. But then he saw what had happened. A plate glass shard had gone clean through C.C.’s calf like a guillotine blade. Nothing was holding the leg together but a few shreds of fabric.

  Luis managed to wrap the mess with his shirt, tying off the sleeves like a tourniquet, but C.C.’s eyes were rolling back in his head. He was shivering.

  Luis looked at Elroy, and they didn’t need to say anything. They were both thinking about stained glass, a broken angel feather stabbed in an old supervisor’s gut.

  The Guide said, “Get him in the van.”

  “He needs a doctor,” Elroy said. “We can leave him here, call

  911-”

  “No,” the Guide said. “Nobody leaves the group.”

  So they got C.C. in the van and gunned the accelerator, made it to the highway. They drove north into the dark plains of Oklahoma, listening for sirens that never came.

  C.C.’s breath smelled like raw meat. The wound oozed.

  They’d just passed the city limits sign when C.C. spat up blood, tried to wipe his chin and shuddered for the last time.

  They dug C.C. a shallow grave in the red earth of a creek bed. They shoveled dirt on his open eyes. A little sneer traced his mouth, like he was going to tell Satan a thing or two.

  The Guide took it in stride. He kept the same calm expression as when faced with police roadblocks, or WANTED signs in grocery stores, or the hotel night manager who had the fugitives’ faces on the television as they checked in for the night. The Guide was a Freon-blooded son-of-a-bitch, just like his boss, Will Stirman.

  Third day together, now, and Luis still didn’t know the Guide’s name. Luis didn’t trust him any more than when they’d first met in the Floresville Wal-Mart parking lot, when the Guide had given them all fresh clothes and guns, cell phones with clean numbers-Luis and Pablo exchanging looks, silently promising they would keep in touch.

  Stirman had said, “Take these folks to Canada. Get ’em set with paperwork and cash. Anything they want.”

  Luis had never trusted that promise. He tried to believe it would happen, because he had nothing else. He’d never really cared about going home to El Paso. And there was no chance he or Elroy could have made it so far on their own. The Guide had saved their asses a dozen times already.

  Luis knew the Canada trip was a diversion. It was a false flare to make the police think Stirman was going north. Luis just hoped he and Elroy wouldn’t end up like C.C.

  “Least we take some heat off you, cuz,” he told Pablo. “Hope you get back to Angelina. Brother Stirman treating you right?”

  Pablo stared out the warehouse windows, over miles of San Antonio railways.

  Angelina. All he wanted was to see her.

  Pablo didn’t have the heart to tell Luis what he and Stirman had been doing-how C.C.’s death sounded like a joyride compared to his last two days.

  I own you, amigo, Stirman had told him. You are my new right-hand man.

  Pablo remembered yesterday morning, in this room, holding a video camera for hours as Will Stirman interrogated the former owner of this warehouse, who used to be Stirman’s right-hand man.

  “I’m cool,” Pablo told Luis. “Just be careful. I keep thinking, maybe me and Angelina-”

  “Guide’s coming, man,” Luis whispered. “I got to go.”

  The line went dead.

  Pablo kept his eyes on the rain. He didn’t want to turn and see the work that was waiting for him.

  He thought about the night four and a half years ago in El Paso when he’d lost everything, drinking straight tequila in a bar on Airway Boulevard while a so-called good neighbor stoked his worst fears into anger. He was over there again last night while you were at work, ese. I hate to tell you this, but there ain’t no doubt. If I was you…

  Pablo remembered very little about loading his shotgun, driving home.

  He rubbed his eyes to get rid of the memory.

  Stirman had promised a chartered plane from Stinson Field. There was a drug runners’ airstrip near Calabras, in the mountains south of Juarez, only a few miles from El Paso. Pablo would be able to contact his wife from there. All he had to do was a few more days of service for Stirman.

  Pablo mastered his nerves.

  He turned. Behind him, waiting patiently in their metal chairs, were two corpses-a pair of fucking nobodies he had to dispose of before Stirman got back. Stirman hadn’t even hated these guys. They just happened to have some information he wanted. They’d recently seen some people Stirman was looking for. So after their heartfelt conversation, Stirman had let them die pretty easy, which was why you could sti
ll sort of recognize Lalu and Kiko Ortiz’s faces through the burn marks.

  Will Stirman focused on the boy.

  Fred Barrow’s widow was in the drop-off line for the school summer camp. There were nine cars in front of her.

  The boy had his arm out the passenger’s window. He was drumming his fingers against the Audi’s door. He had a mop of black hair, a coffee complexion that was nothing like his mother’s.

  The people Will had questioned didn’t know much about the kid. He was adopted, they thought. From somewhere overseas. Not Fred Barrow’s blood, anyway. They looked at Stirman through their pain, as if wondering why the hell he cared. What was one more kid to a monster like him?

  Will pulled out of line and parked on the side of the traffic circle. He didn’t have much time to think. He had misjudged the kind of place Erainya Manos would be going to. He had tailed her right into this wooded campus for the ultra-rich, the parking lot full of Hummers and Cadillac Escalades. His stolen Honda Civic stuck out like a skinhead in a Juneteenth parade. Soon, the uniformed security guard directing traffic would wonder what Will was doing.

  It pissed him off that a place like this could make him feel so nervous.

  Maximum security prison was no problem. But a bunch of moms dropping their kids off at soccer camp-that made Will’s palms sweat. It pissed him off that Barrow’s widow sent her son to this school. No way could she afford it. It rubbed Will’s failure in his face, flaunted what Fred Barrow had done to him.

  Seven cars before Erainya Manos reached the drop-off point.

  Will thought about the first time he’d met Soledad, in the burning fields.

  It had been one of Dimebox Ortiz’s stupider ideas. He’d decided to let this group of illegals out of the truck just before the Border Patrol checkpoint, let them walk a few miles through the sugarcane fields, then pick them up on the other side. He forgot it was March-burning season.