“Well, consider this place’s box checked. Because we, and I, don’t know shit about any Chuck Burr.”
“Yeah,” Beth said, stretching out the single word. “We’d probably need to have a look around a little before ruling anything out. But we’re here. We could just check it off now and get out of your hair.”
“So, have you got a search warrant for me or no?” Jerry asked with a smirk.
“Nah,” Beth said. “But one might say that your letting us have a look around was good faith. If we feel that looking around is a necessity, we’ll obviously come back with a warrant.”
Jerry stood from the stool she’d sat on and nodded. “I think that’s about all the time I’ve got, and I think we’re pretty much good without you poking around. If you feel it’s a necessity and have a warrant, we’ll comply without a word. Until then, I need to get back to work.”
We took it as being tossed out, and I placed one of my cards on the display case before we started for the door. I imagined it would be crumpled and in the garbage bin before we got to our car, but Karen had just ordered me a thousand or so new cards, so I had a couple to spare.
Sosa placed his hat back on the top of his head, extended an arm, and pulled open the door. He held it as Beth walked out and let it go as I reached out to keep it open for myself.
“Take care,” Jerry Walters said.
I glanced back at her and waved over my shoulder. “If you do happen to hear something or remember something, please give us a call.”
“I’ll just tell you in person the next time you’re in my bar.”
She had recognized me.
“Good memory,” I said.
“You may have stuck out a little. We don’t get too many strangers in my bar alone. And no matter what you’re wearing, you still smell like a cop. Or fed.”
“Figured I’d get a look inside the place and have a drink. I’d just gotten to town.”
“Could have saved you some time, then, and told you that I didn’t know anything about the guy.”
I glanced out the door that I had propped open with my toe. Beth and Sosa both had questioning faces. They must not have been able to hear the conversation between Walters and me.
“We’re just doing our jobs, ma’am. Doing whatever we can to find this guy. He’s dangerous—already killed people in Waco.”
“They didn’t say anything about him doing anything in Waco on the news,” she said.
“That gas station fire the other day, with the bodies inside. That was him,” I said. “I’m sure there will be coverage that he was responsible soon enough.”
She seemed to be in thought on the topic.
“If you hear something, please call.”
“Yeah,” she said.
“We’ve got a half-million-dollar reward for information leading to his capture,” I added.
“Oh, I’m aware of that,” she said. “Can’t miss that in the news coverage. But I still don’t have any information.”
I gave her a nod. “Have a good day,” I said and stepped outside.
Chapter 28
“Hmm.” Chuck sat on Jerry’s couch, pretending to mull over what the David guy had just pitched him—he never did get the guy’s last name. The first part of the plan that had been presented wasn’t the worst, provided the guy wasn’t feeding him a bunch of bullshit. David said he would get Chuck across the border into Mexico at Laredo. Apparently, he had a box truck that made regular crossings—a box truck that had a secret cargo hold large enough for a man to hide in. David said Chuck would be in the hold for no more than fifteen minutes.
The problem with the guy’s pitch came once they were in Mexico. He wanted to ship Chuck down to some ranch outside of Mexico City, where Chuck would work for free for six months, essentially paying David off for getting him out of the country. After six months, David said, Chuck could continue to work for him and actually get paid—and paid nicely, he was told—or leave and do whatever the hell he pleased. David said he would set Chuck up with a new identity as well as official documents confirming the new identity once the debt had been paid. Chuck wasn’t buying any of that—he imagined he would probably fetch a bullet in the back of the head at the end of his tenure if he opted to leave. The odds were pretty much nil that some drug dealer would let someone into his operation and then let them just up and walk away from it. Chuck wasn’t that stupid.
“What kind of assurance are you giving me that I’ll actually be free to go in six months?” Chuck wanted to take the guy’s temperature on the topic.
“My word,” David said. “Look, I’m only sitting in front of you right now because Jerry reached out to me and said she had someone that was Leland’s friend that needed some help getting out of the country. She mentioned you spoke Spanish and knew that I was looking for an American who spoke Spanish to help me out in Mexico. Now, to me, this sounds like a match made in heaven. But if you’re not interested, I’m sure I can find someone else that doesn’t have as much heat on them as you do.”
Chuck studied David’s appearance—he wore a gold pinky ring, a gold necklace, and a big, gaudy gold watch. He looked far more wannabe mobster than biker. His white hair was slicked back—he had to have been in his sixties. Not a single thing about the guy inspired trust.
“I can trust this guy?” Chuck looked at Jerry.
“You can,” she said.
David nodded.
Chuck had felt some tension between Jerry and David since the man had arrived but didn’t feel it was his place to question it—not that they would tell him even if he asked. He also didn’t care enough to pry. He weighed his options—accept the guy’s deal and then worry about getting out of it once he was safely in Mexico or go about things on his own. Even with him having sobered up, the Mexico plan seemed the path of least resistance. On the way to Mexico City, he could just kill whoever was transporting him and vanish. Chuck had been piecing together a plan of his own that afternoon. The more he’d thought about it, the more getting somewhere in South America sounded like a good idea—Argentina or Brazil, something like that. This David guy getting him into Mexico was the hard part, and that would be taken care of by telling the guy he was in.
“All right. I guess, ah, I guess I’m in. I’m your guy,” Chuck said.
“Good.” David leaned out of his chair and toward Chuck on the couch, then he reached for a handshake to seal the deal. “Probably be about eight in the morning or so.”
“Why so early?” Chuck asked.
“That’s just the time,” David said. “Be ready to go.”
“All right, and I will,” Chuck said.
David rose from his chair, and Jerry walked him to the door. She closed it at the guy’s back and returned to the living room, where she stood at the window. She appeared to be watching David leave or just looking to see if anyone was outside.
“Something up?” Chuck asked.
“A couple of feds showed up over at the shop,” she said. “I didn’t see any around here when I came home, but I can’t have them sniffing around. I can’t have David knowing they’re looking at me. The guy fed, he was in my bar the other night while you were in the back.” She still had two fingers spreading the blinds as she scanned the street in front of her house.
“Shit,” Chuck said.
“Yeah, shit is right.” Jerry took her face from the blinds and locked eyes on Chuck. “You must have forgot to mention what you did at the gas station across town.”
“Gas station across town?”
“Don’t act stupid. It doesn’t suit you. I mean, come on, you sat at my bar stinking of fuel and smoke.”
“Did the feds say that or—”
“They know it was you. Probably have your ass on video inside or something.”
Chuck shook his head. “The guy behind the counter recognized me. I was just trying to find directions to your bar.”
“Wait, you went into that gas station and asked someone inside, where without a doubt they h
ad cameras, where my bar was?”
Chuck didn’t have a response.
Jerry threw her hands in the air. “Seriously?” she snapped.
Again, he didn’t have anything for her.
“I take back that comment about you acting stupid. You actually are. No wonder the feds are snooping around my bar, showing up at my shop. You may as well have called them and told them where you were going, idiot.”
Chuck didn’t much care for her calling him stupid or an idiot. A stiff backhand would probably put her in her place but seemed inadvisable in the current situation. He let it go. “Are they here? Are they raiding this place looking for me? Did they storm your shop? Your bar?”
“I’m sure that’s just a matter of time.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. What did they actually say? What do they know?”
“It’s not like they sat there and went over their investigation with me,” she said. “They know you’re in the area. They said that they knew something about you and Leland being friends inside. They’ve obviously got someone talking over there too. It won’t be long before they put it all together.” She collapsed into the chair that David had been sitting in.
“You think Leland is talking to them?” Chuck asked.
“That’s a joke, right? Leland is the last person on the planet that’s going to say word one to a fed.”
“Well, now what the hell do I do?” Chuck asked, more to himself than her. “Should I just go?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Just let me think.”
Chuck did the same.
While he would have liked to lie on Jerry’s couch, watch television, and drink until David picked him up in the morning, it was starting to look as if that wasn’t the best idea. If the feds were actively looking for him in Waco, and close enough to be stopping in at Jerry’s bar and bike shop, it wasn’t out of the question that they would pop in at her house. Aside from locking him in a makeshift cell, being a cold fish, and running her mouth a bit, she had extended hospitality—and her bed. Chuck was fine with calling it a wash, thanking her, and moving along.
Aside from getting him across the border, the David guy’s plan didn’t really knock his socks off, plus then he would have to deal with getting away and killing some drug dealers who were sure to be armed. Going out on his own was starting to seem like the best idea. “I think I should probably just go. I don’t want to jeopardize your bar, your business, your freedom.”
Jerry was quiet for a second. She still seemed to be working on whatever the hell she was thinking about. “I need to go have a look around the neighborhood before you do anything.”
“I’ll just go out the back,” Chuck said. “It’s dark. I’ll dip through yards until I’m a good couple blocks away.”
“You’re not going anywhere until I see what the hell is going on outside. There could already be feds watching the place.” She rose from her chair. “Give me fifteen minutes. If it looks like the coast is clear, I’m going to get David to get you out of here tonight.”
“Jerry, I—”
She walked straight to Chuck, ran her hand in the hair on the back of his head, and pulled his face to hers for a kiss—it was hard, sloppy, passionate, and a completely unexpected move that was a bit odd for the situation. “Stay.” She gave him a peck on the lips as she pulled away. “I’ll be right back.”
Jerry walked from the room.
The kiss, and timing of it, was odd. Jerry hadn’t shown the slightest interest in Chuck since they’d gotten out of bed. Not a smile, not a touch, not anything, and then when he seemed settled on leaving, she wanted him to stay and planted a kiss on him that would have won a gold medal at any county fair kissing booth across the country. Chuck’s mind worked. If Jerry was smart, she would have tried to get him as far away from her and her businesses as possible. Chuck wondered why she seemed so set on getting him set up with this David guy—especially when he felt something was off with the relationship between those two.
Chuck felt as if something was amiss, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what. Something just seemed off.
Chapter 29
Our night of work ended a lot quicker than we’d thought it would. We were quickly asked to leave the bar and didn’t get so much as the bartender’s name before she told us to hit the road. The trip to the plot of land outside of town was almost as useless. A gate with a big, posted Private Property sign blocked the lone driveway that led to the trailers. A man whom we never did get an ID on came down to the gate from one of the mobile homes. He asked who we were and what we wanted. I told him and tried to ask him if Stewart Mayfield, the property owner, was there. The man, wearing a Lost Souls vest, responded that the owner lived in El Paso and simply rented out the trailers to a couple of guys from the club.
Beth asked whether the man we were speaking with could answer a couple of questions for us regarding Burr, but he said he didn’t know anything, turned around, and walked toward the trailer he’d come from. We stood around outside of his gate for about a half hour, but we never saw another person. Maddox called us as we were heading to town. He said Jerry Walters had just left the bike shop and passed him as she left. He’d followed her, at a distance, to her house, where he’d turned off. He asked whether he should park and watch the place, but since we had no probable cause, she seemed like exactly the kind of person who would sue for harassment, and we didn’t have enough on her to justify the surveillance. We asked Maddox if he could get the PD to watch the bike shop and the plot of land overnight while we continued to keep eyes on the bar. He said he would run it up the flagpole and get back to us.
Beth and I got to the hotel shortly after seven o’clock. Bill and Scott had just gotten in, and the plan was to grab a bite to eat in the hotel restaurant while we got the guys up to speed. We’d just exited the elevators and walked to our rooms.
“Downstairs in ten?” Beth fumbled around in her blazer pocket, obviously looking for her hotel room key.
I fished through my wallet looking for my own. “Yeah, you mind letting Bill and Scott know? I should probably call Karen.”
“I’ll call them,” Beth said.
The mention of Karen reminded me that she’d wanted me to say something to Beth about the stupid television show. I stood at my hotel room door, trying to remember what the hell the guy’s name was.
“Gas?” Beth asked.
“Huh?”
“It looks like you’re working on something over there.”
“Oh, nah, Karen wanted me to ask you what you thought of some guy from the Love on the Beach show. The season’s bad guy. I don’t remember what the hell his name was.”
“Ooh, she must mean Davis,” Beth said.
I pointed at her. “That would be it. The dipshit with frosted tips.”
“I think he’s cute,” she said.
“That’s because he looks like your ex. Who was also a dipshit.”
Beth scrunched her face, looking like she was in thought. “He does kind of look like Scott now that you mention it. And yeah, Scott was a dipshit. Am I attracted to dipshits?”
Having met five or six of Beth’s different boyfriends who would fit that description, I figured I’d let her chew on that for a bit. I lifted my eyebrows. “See you downstairs.” I swiped my card and entered my room.
After a quick call to Karen and a change into something other than a suit, I left my room and rapped on Beth’s door. She said she’d be down in five. I hit the elevators and got out in the lobby, where I found Scott, my colleague and not Beth’s dipshit ex, sitting on a bench close to the entrance of the restaurant.
“What’s up?” I asked. “How was your flight?”
He waved his hand back and forth and up and down in the air. “Always bumpy as hell coming into Texas for some reason. Beth still upstairs?”
I took a seat next to Scott. “She said she’d be a couple minutes. Bill?”
Scott pointed toward the main entrance.
Bill was standing with his phone to his ear. Noticing me, he threw up a wave.
“He’s on the phone with Ball. Checking in,” Scott said.
“I talked to him about forty-five minutes ago,” I said. “Same thing, giving him an update and checking to see if anything worthwhile came into the hotline.”
“Anything new?” Scott asked.
I shook my head. “The last thing that came in that was actually useful was finding the BOLO truck. Been quiet since.”
“Guess we’d know if something hit,” he said.
“Should we grab a table?” I poked my chin at the inside of the restaurant.
“Yeah.” Scott pushed himself up from the bench, and we walked over to the host station.
“For two?” the hostess asked.
“We’re going to have four, actually,” Scott said.
“Sure, how’s right over here?” She motioned to a table that was up front, visible to Bill and Beth when they stepped into the restaurant.
“Perfect,” Scott said.
The hostess seated us and said our waitress would be with us shortly.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I figured it was Beth asking where we were, but the screen showed a Texas number that I didn’t recognize.
“Hank Rawlings,” I answered.
“Hello,” a woman said. “This is Jerry Walters.” Her voice was soft, just above a whisper.
“Ms. Walters,” I said. “What can I do for you?”
“I may have some information.”
I scooted up in my chair. “On Burr?”
“Yeah.”
Bill nodded and smiled as he grabbed a chair at our table and scooped up a menu. In his right hand was a giant energy drink that he probably shouldn’t have been carrying in.
“What’s the information?” I asked.
“Who do I talk to about that reward money? I need that money if you want to hear what I know.”
“Ms. Walters, if you have information that leads us to his capture, we’ll make sure that you get it.”
“I want to remain anonymous,” she said. “I don’t want anyone knowing that I helped you guys.”
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