by Tom Fowler
“Don’t let him tackle you,” Rollins said.
Aguilar snorted. “I think the only thing he’s tackled the last fifteen years has been the buffet line. Standby.”
Again, a surprised voice spoke next. “What? Who are you?”
“Neighborhood watch,” Aguilar said. “Can I ask what you were doing at Héctor Espinoza’s house?”
“I was dropping something off.”
“Didn’t look like you were carrying anything on approach. Maybe you are now, though.”
“Get away from me!” the man said. “I’ll . . . I’ll . . .”
“What? Call the cops? Better do something with the drugs in your pocket first.”
“Screw you!” This fellow ran away, too.
“I could catch him,” Aguilar said. “It’s kind of hurting my pride not to try. I’ll see if anyone else comes by in the next half-hour or so.”
No one did. Aguilar said he’d return, and he rounded the bend from 543 a few minutes later. Once he was back in the car, Tyler said, “Sounds like they denied everything.”
“Yeah.” Aguilar nodded. “It seemed a little beyond just fear of being busted. I think those people were scared of Héctor . . . namely, what he might do if he thought they gave him up.”
“Ruling by fear,” Rollins said. “Machiavelli would approve.”
“Machiavelli’s dead,” Tyler said. “It’s about time Héctor Espinoza joined him.”
27
Lexi and Zeke didn’t run into any cartel soldiers on the drive back. The guy on the bike waved goodbye as he left. Upstairs, Lexi settled into her schoolwork, including watching a recording of a lecture she’d missed. She frowned as she realized the due date for a ten-page paper loomed five days away. She’d written precisely zero pages so far. Saving assignments like these until the last night or two worked in high school. Her dad told her she’d need to use her time better in college, and she had until this mess with the Espinoza clan.
While Lexi wanted to at least draw up an outline for the paper, her eyes glazed over the more she looked at it. Political science was boring. She thought it would at least be an interesting way to get three easy credits out of the way. Maybe a different professor could have livened things up, but Doctor Boyd droned on like he wanted to cover the late shift on C-SPAN. Lexi clicked away from her assignments and checked her email.
A message from her mother stood out. She opened it.
* * *
Dear Alexis,
It was so great to see you recently. I hope you’ll come again soon.
I know you were probably surprised to see your uncle George. He’s been a pretty frequent visitor. Still, I didn’t expect him to show up when he did. I hope you were happy to see him in the end. He loves you, too.
By now, I’m sure you’ve mentioned our exchanges to your father. I hope he’s supportive. I always wanted you to have a relationship with him when he was deployed. Please give him my best. I know things went south for us years ago, but I wish him well, and I hope the two of you are getting along.
Let me know when you’re coming by again. It’s always great to spend time with my daughter.
Love,
Mom
* * *
Lexi frowned at the screen. “Hell of a guilt trip,” she whispered to the empty room. “For me and for Dad.” In fact, she had definitely not been happy to see Uncle George, even though she wouldn’t tell her mother. Lexi dug her dad’s laptop out of her bag and fired it up. She logged in and typed her uncle’s name into the app specializing in digging up info on people—cleverly named DIRT by whoever wrote it and put it on the machine.
George Goodson, aged forty-four, did not live up to his last name. He’d been arrested eight times, all for fraud or theft. Only two of them turned into actual charges, and he managed to avoid serious jail time, doing a total of four months. The months and years of some of his arrests matched up with times Lexi remembered moving as a kid. Her mother and Uncle George were always close. Were they running some sort of scheme, and he took the fall?
“What’s your game, Mom?” She stared at the screen and tried to make sense of her uncle’s misspent life. Whatever they were cooking up, it wouldn’t be good for her father. She wouldn’t let them get to him.
Héctor had no problem keeping Todd Windholm waiting. Lackeys needed to know their place. Ten minutes after he’d been told the man wanted to see him, Héctor finally emerged from his office and entered the living room. “What is it?”
“I think our American friend is at it again.” Windholm lounged on a comfortable couch, leaning back into the soft pillows and spreading his fat arms wide. He looked far more comfortable than Héctor wanted him to feel.
“What do you mean?”
“Someone accosted a few of our customers today.”
Héctor dropped onto a nearby chair. “Explain.”
“Two people came to me and told me someone hassled them about stopping here,” Windholm said. “The description doesn’t sound like the man you’re after, though.”
“John Tyler?” Héctor asked.
“They said this guy was Hispanic. Both of them thought he worked for you at first until he started grilling them.”
“What was he saying?”
“Basically accusing them of buying drugs,” Windholm said.
Héctor sighed. “It wasn’t Tyler. He could have some associates, though. He’s smart enough to recruit a Latino to try and bring me down.”
“What are we going to do about it?”
“We?” Héctor glared at Windholm until the other man looked away. “We are not going to do anything. You are going to report to work in your model home every day and work on the side of the business you can control. The men and I will take care of Tyler. If we kill him, his friends will scatter.”
“Of course, Mister Espinoza.”
“Good day, Todd.” Windholm extricated himself from the couch and hustled out. When the front door shut behind him, Héctor stood and pushed a button on the intercom. “Nataniel, Raul . . . to the living room.”
The two came up from the basement and joined Héctor. Both remained standing even though he sat. He appreciated this. They didn’t overstep or try to get too familiar. They knew their places in the hierarchy. “What can we do, boss?” Raul asked.
“I think our American friend is sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong again,” Héctor said. “We have a shipment coming in soon. I don’t want any trouble.”
“What should we do?”
“Go to his house tonight,” Héctor told them. “Do it quietly. Not like last time. Make him suffer. Bring him here alive if you can. I’ll make sure he begs for death for hours.”
Nataniel smiled. “We’ll take care of it. Consider it done.”
28
After dinner, Tyler retired upstairs to paint. He used to think of it as winding down, but the creative—and sometimes cathartic—process usually amped him up for a little while before the inevitable crash. It only took a moment of reflection on recent events to get the brush moving. Tyler soon lost himself in the work. In his younger days, he used to scoff at writers who talked about the muse. A few years of therapeutic painting served to soften his opinion.
He narrowed his eyes to focus on finer details. He could see them in his mind, and while his limited skills never let him capture things exactly as they were, Tyler turned out some good representations. He rarely shared his output with anyone. Lexi had seen most of it, though she discovered it on her own. Sara knew Tyler painted, but she’d never glimpsed a sample. Maybe he’d show her one of these days.
A deep breath cleared his mind, and he finished the painting with a few broad strokes. A large house sprang up from green grass. A large foreboding black fence surrounded it. Blood ran from many of the spikes atop fenceposts. It was a version of Héctor’s house but heavily influenced by compounds Tyler helped raid during his years in Afghanistan. The Taliban and the most notorious opium traders knew how to set up a facility
to discourage visitors and prying eyes.
Tyler showered before bed, and his creative spurt predictably left him tired. He fired off a quick text to Lexi, asking how she was and received a short reply saying all was good. Next, he sent a message to Sara thanking her for the Aguilar introduction and promising to be less errant and more knight when all this mess was over. His eyelids grew heavy, and he was asleep before a response came in.
An alarm jolted him from his sleep.
It took him back to the sirens in Afghanistan. Tyler shot upright in bed. The security app on his phone sounded the alert. Because the rear half of his backyard was concrete, Tyler covered it in turf and had pressure plates installed when he bought the place. A night-vision camera above the back door showed two armed figures creeping closer to the house. Between the time it would take them to reach the door and bypass the excellent lock, Tyler figured he had three minutes.
He slipped a black T-shirt on and strapped a bullet-resistant vest atop it. His black sweats would be fine. Tyler hooked a knife onto his vest and held the familiar M11 in his hand. He screwed a suppressor onto the end. No need to wake the neighbors if he could avoid it. These were cartel guys here to do a job. They’d be thorough. There were plenty of places to hide on the first floor, so at least one of them would have to search it. Better to clear it in a pair. They’d probably ignore the basement.
Tyler could take a position at the top of the stairs and pick them off. It was the only way to reach the second floor. He wondered why the guys were here. Killing him was the easy answer—too easy in Tyler’s opinion. He knew he’d pissed Héctor off. No way someone like a mid-level cartel boss would farm out the torture and murder of a troublemaker to a couple of hired guns. No, Héctor would want to do it himself. Which meant these two assholes weren’t here to kill Tyler. Héctor would want him alive.
They needed to hold back. Tyler didn’t.
Downstairs, the rear door of the house swung open. Tyler’s security app beeped. He silenced his phone. The two guys would be searching the lower level. Tyler slid open the door to his walk-in closet and stepped in. He stood amid a collection of suit bags, the serrated knife now in his hand. Then, he waited. He’d always been good at waiting. Younger soldiers lacked patience, and even though Tyler told them it would keep them alive, their attention spans betrayed them. Silence and darkness were a prepared soldier’s allies.
Footsteps came up the stairs. Two sets . . . one trailing close behind the other. Lexi’s bedroom was the first door they’d come to. One went in, and the other entered the bathroom directly across the hall. They both emerged a moment later. Tyler’s door came next. His extra bedroom turned studio was the last along the upper hall. A pair of footsteps went in each direction. The thought of some cartel lackey seeing his paintings boiled Tyler’s blood.
The man in the bedroom took his time. He walked a circuit of the bed, spent more time in the connected bathroom than he needed to, and finally came to the closet. He nudged the door open. Tyler saw the outline of a slender man poke his head in. The suppressed barrel of a pistol moved ahead of him. Tyler hid in his collection of suits on the right side of the closet. The guy turned his head away.
Tyler slipped his left hand over the man’s mouth. At the same time, his right arm moved atop the other’s, pinning it to his body as he drove the knife up through the gunman’s ribs. A wet burble escaped his lips, and blood ran over both Tyler’s hands. He pulled the knife out and eased the dying man onto the carpeted floor. The gun fell from his grip as he expired.
A single pair of footfalls moved toward the bedroom. Tyler scampered from the closet and crouched at the end of his dresser. He set the knife down and eased the Sig from its holster. “Raul,” the second guy said as he tiptoed into the bedroom. “Raul?” The closet door remained open. No lights were on, but Raul’s fate would become apparent soon enough. Tyler pondered what to do with this second gunman. He could kill him. It might make his pending interaction with the police a little more complicated. Two dead bodies would draw a lot more attention and questions.
“Oh, no,” the man said. He gave no indication he saw Tyler at his four o’clock as he crossed the room to the open closet. Tyler picked the knife up again and put it in his left hand. If he wounded this one and took him alive, they might be able to learn more about the Espinoza cartel’s operation—including the upcoming shipment Aguilar lacked specifics on. “Raul, you idiot. You were supposed to be the cautious one.” Tyler slipped up behind this new assailant.
He clobbered him in the back of the head with the hilt of the knife. The man grunted and slumped forward. He remained conscious and swatted ineffectively at Tyler, who whacked him in the head with the butt end a second time. This one turned the lights out. Tyler rolled the guy over and checked for a pulse. A bit of blood dampened his hair, but he was alive.
Tyler grabbed his phone and called Rollins. “Get to my place quick,” he said when his friend’s sleepy voice came on the line. “The cartel sent two guys here. One might still be useful to us.”
“I’m on my way,” Rollins said.
29
Rollins’ pickup screeched to a halt in front of the house a few minutes later. He backed the large vehicle into the driveway. Tyler opened the front door, and the two men carried the unconscious gunman downstairs and outside. Once they tossed him onto the back seat, Rollins bound the man’s wrists and ankles with a zip tie. “You got someplace you can take him?” Tyler asked.
Rollins nodded. “I’ll text you the location later. You calling the cops?”
“Yeah. I’ll get rid of them as soon as I can.” Rollins drove away, and Tyler reported the home invasion via 9-1-1. He sat in his living room and waited. It didn’t take long for the first two Baltimore Police cruisers to roll up with their lights flashing. “It’s open,” Tyler said when he heard the officers at the door. Four men walked in.
Tyler went over the very basics with them. His name. Yes, he was alone. No, he’d never seen these guys before. Yes, he was a registered gun owner. A white van arrived at the end of the preliminary questions. A man and a woman in white Tyvek suits entered, conferred with one of the officers, and walked upstairs. “Detectives are on their way,” Officer Jennings said. He and another cop, Brennan, sat with Tyler in the living room. They might try to pass it off as being personable, but he understood it was to keep him from leaving.
Two more men entered a few minutes later. Tyler recognized one of them: Sergeant Rich Ferguson. He’d faced the man’s questions after the bloody end of the Braxton mess. Ferguson wore the same charcoal suit today he’d sported back then. His partner looked like a failed rocker in desperate need of a cut to contain his sandy mop of hair. He wore a blue blazer, gray pants, and shoes Tyler would have been embarrassed to present for inspection during his early enlisted days.
Ferguson sat near Tyler on the couch while his partner went to the second level. “Mister Tyler.” He nodded. “I kind of hoped we wouldn’t need to talk under these circumstances again.”
“No offense,” Tyler said, “but me, too.”
“Let’s start at the beginning.” Ferguson held a notebook and pen. “Tell me what happened.”
“I was asleep. An alarm in the backyard woke me. A couple minutes later, two guys were in the house. I took up a position in my closet. One of them nosed around and found me, so I stabbed him.”
After jotting a note, Ferguson asked, “What about the second one?”
“He got away.” Ferguson frowned, and Tyler spread his hands. “They woke me up. I wasn’t exactly dressed in full tactical gear. I also wasn’t going to shoot at a man while he ran away.”
“You ever see these guys before?”
“Nope.”
“Know why they might’ve come here?”
“Home invasion, I guess,” Tyler said. “Maybe they wanted to rob the place.”
“Anything missing?” Ferguson said.
“I don’t think so, but I haven’t checked. Once the second guy spl
it, I dialed nine-one-one. I figured I’d leave the investigation to you.”
Ferguson showed a wry smile as he recorded a few things in his notebook. “Good choice. Did either man say anything to you?”
Tyler shook his head. “The first guy turned toward me with a gun. He never said a word. The other one bolted once he saw what happened.”
“Can you describe the second man?”
“A little,” Tyler said. “I didn’t get a long look at him. He was Hispanic . . . I guess in his twenties. Younger than the guy upstairs, definitely. Probably a little taller than me . . . thin. He wore jeans and a dark jacket.”
“Not bad for a short look,” Ferguson said.
“Pretty sure you had a lot of the same training I did. It never leaves you.”
“Maybe I’ll find out in about twenty years.” Ferguson flipped his notebook shut. “Why’d you stab the guy?”
“He found me in the walk-in,” Tyler said. “He had a gun. What was I supposed to do? Invite him downstairs for tea?”
“I might have done something similar in your place,” Ferguson said. “I know you own several guns. I guess I’m curious why you didn’t shoot him.”
Tyler couldn’t tell him the real reason—he’d hoped to keep the whole thing quiet so the neighbors would be unaware. When he decided to KO the second gunman, the plan changed, but the first guy had already bled out. He wondered where Rollins took the survivor. “I guess I hoped to avoid bloodshed if I could. If he hadn’t opened the closet door, I wouldn’t have needed to do anything.”
Ferguson stared at Tyler a few seconds before pursing his lips. “You know the drill. We might have more questions later. Probably a good idea if you stayed in town.”