Fair Trade

by Dustin Stevens

  “As you can imagine, there aren’t a ton of COFA migrants coming into San Diego,” I say, “at least not that many arriving in need of immediate health services. Most of those make it only as far as Hawaii.”

  I spare her the parts Dr. Hoke shared about the nightmare that is care out there, the state not having the providers or the funds to look after the scads of folks arriving regularly.

  “Those that come here usually get shunted away from real facilities and end up in front of Dr. Hoke. A single man with a couple of nurses operating out of a house using supplies that fell off a truck years ago.”

  There is infinitely more I can share - even want to share. Thoughts the doctor had about the process, about the way people are handled, the manner in which they are funneled straight on past the system, the powers that be trusting that immigrant families will be devoured by the monolith that is American healthcare. About how many Fran Ogo’s he has seen over the years, nothing more than a visit or two, enough to confirm a severe diagnosis, before they move on, never to be heard of again.

  After a couple of minutes, Angelique lets out a garbled response. Sounding something like damn government, I nod emphatically in agreement, the things I’ve seen in my decade of service enough to make the common citizen sick with repulsion.

  In truth, this is bad, but it isn’t surprising.

  And it damned sure doesn’t even scratch the top ten of things I’ve borne direct witness to.

  “How many like her does he think there are?” she eventually asks.

  “No way of knowing for sure,” I reply. “He said he’s treated dozens over the years, but it isn’t like there’s a database out there.”

  “And he never met my daughter before?” she asks, the question and the underlying hints of disbelief both matching my response to the letter.

  “You have to remember a few things,” I reply. “First, there aren’t that many of them. Most of who Mira worked with came in from the south, not from the west. Like I said, a lot of those stopped in Hawaii, made it to San Fran or Seattle if they were lucky.”

  Beside me, Angelique grunts softly, letting me continue.

  “And those that do, most are older, don’t speak English. It’s not like they know a good attorney to call up or could pay for one even if they did.

  “The doctor estimated of all the patients he’s ever had, maybe two or three ever took it the extra step of getting an advocate on their behalf.”

  The familiar sounds of a working hospital fill the air between us, each of us processing, trying our best to superimpose the information we’d just gained onto what we already knew. Monitors beep, gurneys roll along, nurses talk to patients.

  Throughout it all, we both sit in silence, trying to answer the same questions we’ve been chasing for the better part of a week.

  Why her, and why now?

  Chapter Nineteen

  I wasn’t looking for an exit strategy, perfectly content to sit in the hallway outside Hiram’s room for as long as it took. For him to wake up, allowing me to go in and talk to him a few minutes. For my mother-in-law to work through everything I just shared, asking any remaining questions that linger. For me to make sure another moment like the one when we first sat down didn’t surface again.

  For five straight days, I have been surviving entirely on my SEAL training. Not so much the physical aspects, though those too have come to the fore, but the mental side of things. The parts that allow me to shove emotions into compartments. To narrow my focus down to a singular point, everything else just becoming extraneous noise.

  Right now, that dot in front of me is finding out why my wife was murdered. Until then, I can’t even think about her funeral, or my last days in the service, or what happens to the house, or going through the motions of everything required when a person passes away.

  In the immediate aftermath of it, my attention was squared on finding her killer and making him pay. Once that was past though – and proved to only be a stepping stone along the path – it had shifted forward to where I am now.

  If this is the end, I have no way of knowing. All I am certain of is I will follow it through for as long as it takes, wading through whatever the world puts in my way.

  My Mira deserves at least as much.

  Lost in such thoughts, I didn’t recognize the sound of my phone buzzing. I didn’t even it feel it in the front pocket of my jeans, vibrating against my thigh. Not until Angelique reach over, jabbing her forefinger just above my knee, did I even remember where I was and why I was there.

  “Hm?” I asked, my eyebrows rising my forehead.

  “You going to get that?” she asked, tilting her chin toward the outline of my phone pressed against the front leg of my jeans.

  Pressing my back into the chair, I wrestled it free and held it before me, peering down at the screen.

  “Valerie,” I said. Looking to Angelique, I added, “I should-“

  “Go,” she confirmed, waving a hand, motioning for me to be on my way.

  Accepting the call, I raised it to my face just long enough to say, “One minute,” before lowering it back to my side. Aware of the rules on cellphone usage in hospitals, I kept it tucked by my side, glancing over a shoulder before turning my attention back to Angelique.

  I myself could not care less if some nurse saw me and said something, but I wasn’t about to bring anymore unneeded drama around my mother-in-law.

  “Keep me posted. And please tell Hiram I stopped by.”

  “I will, and you do the same,” she replied. Reaching out, she put a hand on my forearm, squeezing once before removing it, an unspoken blessing for me to depart.

  Taking it as such, I shot straight up out of the chair, racewalking back over the route I’d taken forty minutes earlier. Weaving through the crowd of people filling the halls, I ducked outside to find the sun had already crested above me and was moving in the opposite direction, shadows lengthening across the ground.

  Like just about everything since Mira was shot, time seems to have become a fluid concept, completely immaterial as it marches onward.

  Now back outside of the hospital, I press the phone to my face. A bit of breeze picks up, blowing through the mouthpiece, as I say, “Valerie?”

  “Yeah,” she responds, “sorry if it was a bad time.”

  “Not at all,” I reply, “I just stopped by Paradise Valley to check on Hiram. They tend to be pretty fickle about cellphones.”

  “Right,” Valerie says, extending the word as if accompanied by a dawning. “How is he?”

  Checking in either direction, I cross back over the driveway running alongside the hospital. Keeping my pace just shy of a jog, I use my key fob to unlock the doors and slide down into my car, leaving the door cracked beside me, replacing the warm air trapped inside with the cooler breeze blowing past.

  “They’re going to keep him one more night,” I reply, “but he’ll be just fine. How about you? Everything okay?”

  A glance to the clock inset on the dash confirms what I was just thinking a moment before. Somehow, hours keep slipping by, already well into the afternoon.

  For most of the day, the Ogo’s were likely asleep. Now that they are awake, they no doubt are hungry and in need of some essentials, clothing and toiletries and such.

  When I had promised as much to Valerie earlier, I hadn’t yet spoken to the detectives. I didn’t know the name of Mike Lincoln, certainly didn’t know where he lived.

  And I had gotten excited. I had gotten ahead of myself.

  I had gotten sloppy.

  “Yeah, we’re okay,” Valerie said. “I’ve been awake for a while, Nana just got up.”

  “I’m actually just wrapping up in here,” I reply, “and then was going to head that way. I’m sure you’re both getting hungry.”

  It’s a lie, but for now the best I can do is hope she didn’t notice. Considering the circumstances, I’m sure she’d do the same.

  “We’re actually okay,” she says. “I walked down to
the gas station on the corner while Nana slept and got us some stuff. We’re all set on that front.”

  I’ve been at the Valley View long enough to know the closest gas station is a half-mile away, quite a hike to be making with an armload of groceries. Certainly further than down on the corner.

  Still, I can appreciate the effort.

  “But we need to go back to the house,” she continues. “Nana is...she has medicines there. Things she needs that we didn’t think to bring last night.”

  I catch the fact that she caught herself before telling me her Nana was sick. And that they never dreamed when we ran Hiram to the hospital that they would essentially be whisked away into hiding.

  Going back to the house isn’t really an option. Absolutely not for them. Not given how far out of town they are and the fact that there is definitely a few of the Wolves posted up nearby, scouting the place.

  “I’m not far from there,” I say, doing the math in my head. “Like I said, I’m over at Paradise Valley. What does she need and where is it in the house?”

  I don’t know how I’m going to get in and out undetected right now, but the logistics I’m not concerned with. I’ve made a career of carrying out operations a lot more complex.

  Against enemies a lot more imposing.

  For a moment, it seems like she is going to put up an argument, countering that they can’t ask me to do such a thing, before she falls silent. Seeming to accept what I am saying, that it would be my final answer whether I was nearby or not, she exhales slowly.

  “Okay,” she replies, “but it’s a long list. You’re going to want to write all this down.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Ringer is back in the corner booth where he feels comfortable. Where he doesn’t have random strangers staring out through the front windows of In-N-Out at him. Where he doesn’t have to put up with some overdone woman thinking she can call the shots.

  Where he belongs.

  Around him, his three deputies are grouped up, each looking exactly as they did the night before. Snapper, leaning back in his seat, engaged but wanting to put distance between himself and the disaster that happened at the Ogo’s. Gamer, pissed at the world, sweating profusely.

  Byrdie, the left side of his face resembling the aftermath of an allergic reaction, swollen twice the normal size. Staring straight into the center of the table, his one good eye is narrowed, his nostrils flaring.

  In total, it is not a good look for the Wolves. A day ago, they were in control. They were grouped up in the bar, masters of their domain. They controlled the entire eastern edge of the city, nothing able to move without their say-so.

  Now, one of their members was dead, another had been beaten badly, and they had been unable to secure a single octogenarian. Making things worse, they had no idea who was behind it, their only thread of a lead some snooty woman that walked right in on them, gun in hand.

  Leaning forward in his seat, Ringer let all of this simmer. The bottom half of both arms splayed across the tabletop, he lets it all meld together, each aspect pushing the acrimony he feels higher. Every breath is louder than the one before.

  This will never do. Not for him as leader, or for the organization as a whole. If things are left as they stand, if they don’t act soon, word will get out.

  And when it does, people a lot more imposing than one veteran and his fat sidekick are going to start gunning for them.

  “Meeting was a waste of time,” he opens. Low and measured, the words roll out in a grumble, drawing the attention of the others his way. “Woman had no idea who the guy is, says she’ll get back to us.”

  Nobody says anything in response, seemingly waiting for him to continue. Having no more to add, he glances up to each of them in turn.

  “That’s it?” Snapper asks.

  “That’s all,” Ringer replies. “She asked where Ogo is now, asked about the two men you guys saw, said she’d make some calls.”

  He doesn’t add that the entire meeting took five minutes. That the drive there and back was almost ten times as long in total. That the damn line at the place was so long, he didn’t even get a burger for his troubles.

  “To who?” Snapper asks.

  “Don’t know, don’t care,” Ringer replies. “What I do know is, this shit has gone on long enough. Who do we have on the house now?”

  Casting a glance between Byrdie and Gamer, Snapper looks his way. Seeming to be the unofficial spokesman for the group, he says, “Gold and Sprout.”

  To that, Ringer nods. Gold and Sprout both had more than a decade with the Wolves, had each been in more than their share of scraps. If there was any trouble, they would be up to the task.

  Of course, not that long before he thought the same of Gamer and Byrdie.

  “Any change?” Ringer asks.

  “Nothing,” Snapper replies. “They took over a couple of hours ago. Said nobody has come or gone from the place. Not even a sideways glance, like someone was scoping things out.”

  “How about them?” Ringer presses. A pair of grown men in vests sitting along a residential street isn’t the easiest thing to hide. Keeping an eye on a house in broad daylight is almost asking for trouble, though right now that’s a risk they have to accept.

  Finding that woman, and by extension whoever has been messing with the Wolves, is of greater importance than any neighbors getting suspicious.

  “Not that they mentioned,” Snapper says. “Same for the morning crew.”

  Grunting softly, Ringer nods. He shoves himself back away from the table, running things in his mind.

  Most likely, the Ogo’s aren’t going back to that house. His guys had one chance at it the night before, and through some combination of bad luck, timing, and sloppy execution, it had slipped by.

  Now, they were left scrambling, hoping that somebody did something stupid or Teller got back to them with useful information.

  Relying on others was not a situation he liked to be in. Nor did he feel the least bit comfortable with it.

  “Linc?” he asks. He knows the answer to it already, but he has to follow up. Long past the point of any hope, he asks merely so his deputies hear it, nothing more than a box to be checked.

  “Same,” Snapper replies. “No change.”

  Which means the man’s bike is still outside, his home untouched, his phone switched off. For a day or so, maybe that combination could occur. After a week, it’s all but assured that he’s gone.

  And considering what happened the night before, it can’t be considered a coincidence.

  “Hey, Boss.”

  The sound is so unexpected, it takes a moment for Ringer to place it. He casts a glance around the table, already knowing the voice doesn’t belong to any of his deputies, before sitting upright in his chair. Using his wrists as leverage, he cranes his neck upward, looking past Byrdie toward the bar.

  “Yeah, Maxie?” he asks. Rarely does the man speak beyond asking their drink orders. Never does he interrupt.

  For him to be doing so now means something is wrong, a bit of uneasiness settling into Ringer’s chest.

  “We’ve got company.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Mike Lincoln will have to wait for now. Or, at least, his house will.

  The call from Valerie Ogo was a shift. It reminded me that there is more than just a single plotline evolving right now, that there is a lot more people than just myself involved in this.

  No longer can I continue to be so selfish, so singularly focused as I move forward. Mike Lincoln is where all this started. He is the bastard that pulled the trigger, that ended the life of my Mira and irrevocably shifted the lives of so many others.

  But he has been taken care of. He met his end less than a day after she did, in a way that could be construed as anything but humane. Whatever his house contains, whatever other secrets he has left to share, they will have to wait for now.

  Sitting in the passenger seat of my sedan, I look over to see Wendell Ross behind the steering
wheel. The same height as me, he is a few pounds lighter, his body the textbook definition of a SEAL. Dense, but not overly muscled. Capable of hand-to-hand fighting or long-distance running.

  A fellow Petty Officer, he has been with us since the beginning of SEAL training as well. Like Swinger, he was a groomsman in my wedding. He was there with us at our favorite local bar the night of Mira’s death. He said goodbye to her for the final time not an hour before she perished, having no clue at the time how prescient the words would be.

  He was also there with us the night we found Lincoln and took him out into the desert.

  I have no qualms disclosing anything to the man, just as I know that Swinger and Stapleton would have no doubts about me bringing him along for this particular mission.

  “So walk me through it again,” he says, not bothering to glance my way as he maneuvers us through traffic. At this time of day, the freeway is heavy heading out of the city – and will be a bitch for us trying to get back later – but moving inbound it is fairly clear. Driving just north of sixty, we wrap in from his house in the suburbs, returning to National City for my third visit in the last twenty hours.

  The directive doesn’t clarify which it he means, though I can tell from the veins bulging along the back of his hands and forearms as he squeezes the wheel what he is referring to.

  “Found the listing in her datebook at work,” I say, stripping away all excess fat. “Gave a call, the woman that answered didn’t speak a word of English, so I assumed that with her living in National City, she must be Hispanic. Called Hiram and together we rolled down for a visit.”

  Pausing there, I turn my head out the window, watching as exits for 28th and 30th pass by. I press my lips down tight, clenching my teeth for a moment, again feeling pangs of self-loathing for my own foolishness the night before.

  The woman wasn’t speaking Spanish. I should have recognized it right off. And even if I didn’t, I never should have involved Hiram.