by Paul Levine
Payne was on his rump as Chitwood advanced, changing his grip on the wire cutters, prepared to plunge downward. Then the Nazi Low Rider grunted and looked down in disbelief. Stuck into the top of his dusty cowboy boot and pinning his foot to the paint-slicked wood floor was a pitchfork. Hanging on to the handle, his feet airborne like a pole vaulter, was Tino, who shouted, "I'm nobody's teddy bear, cabron!"
FIFTY-TWO
Racing up the dirt road toward the car, Payne discovered something new about Tino. The kid was fast. A blazer. Fluid, head still. No flying elbows or herky-jerky knees. A born sprinter, he'd be a hell of a base stealer.
Payne ran like a lame horse, his mended leg throbbing. Tino reached the Mustang first and vaulted over the door and into the passenger seat. Payne stutter-stepped into the driver's seat. Seconds later, the Mustang kicked up dirt as they roared out of the canyon.
They had tied Chitwood with a coil of rope to a structural beam in the barn. Tino took the wire cutters, while Payne broke down the carbine and tossed the parts into the woods. He used the pitchfork to puncture the tires of the Harley chopper and all three cargo vans. If Chitwood tried to catch up with them, Payne thought, he was going to do it as a pissed-off pedestrian with a bloody foot.
"You're a dead man, Payne!" Chitwood had called out, as the pair ran from the barn. "If I don't getcha, Zaga will, and he don't give a shit about the warf and woop of Ellis Island."
Payne floored the accelerator, heading up the narrow dirt road toward the Salton Sea Highway.
Less than a minute went by before a car appeared, coming straight at them. Flicking its high beams in the daylight.
A big car.
An SUV, maybe.
Then Payne saw it was a black Cadillac Escalade EXT, the combo SUV and pickup, a gas-guzzling monster.
It could be a local rancher. Or a lost tourist. Or… Zaga.
The Escalade's horn bleated. If it could talk, it would be saying, "Back up, asshole!" Two horses could have passed each other on the dirt road. Maybe even two Mini Coopers. But not the wide-hipped Escalade and the Mustang.
A hand came out the window and waved at Payne, delivering the same message as the horn. It made sense. It would be a shorter drive for Payne to back up to the stash house than for the Escalade to back up to the paved road. But no way Payne was going toward the stash house. Maybe Chitwood had gotten loose. Maybe he called for help. Maybe he had another firearm.
The Escalade door opened, and the driver stepped out. A bantamweight in a Western shirt with piping. A wide Western belt with a turquoise-and-silver buckle. A weathered face with Hispanic features. His age difficult to determine. Fifty? Sixty? Older?
Tight black pants tucked into fancy cowboy boots made of a green hide that might have been rattlesnake. And on his hip, in a Western holster, a handgun that looked as big as a cannon, way outsize on the trim little man.
A revolver. Maybe. 50 caliber. Bigger even than Dirty Harry's. 44 Magnum.
The man had a fine head of long hair, somewhere between gray and white, the color of spit. The hair was parted in the middle and fell to his shoulders, Wild Bill Hickok style.
"You fellows lost?" the man called out.
Payne kept his right hand on the gearshift and didn't answer.
The big man's right hand rested on his hip, inches from the gun. "I'm asking you nicely to back up. There's a turnoff not far behind you."
Payne depressed the clutch, slipped the gearshift into first, and revved the engine. The throaty roar had a rattle in it.
The man's hand wrapped around the gun butt. "You deaf? Someone's got to back up, and it's you, fellow."
Like two gunslingers.
"Not asking you again."
Payne leaned out the car window and shouted, "Why don't you kiss my sister's black cat's ass?" Not a great line, but Bo Hopkins said it in The Wild Bunch.
The question seemed to startle the little man with the big gun. "There something wrong with your brain, son?"
Payne took a stab at it. "Nope. Something wrong with yours, Zaga?"
The man froze at the mention of the name. Still as a boulder, he seemed to size up the situation. "You a dope fiend? One of Chitwood's asshole friends?"
Yep. Zaga, all right.
" 'Cause I warned that tweaker to get off the meth. If you're supplying him, I'll bury you without a second thought."
"Brace yourself, Tino," Payne whispered.
Payne let out the clutch and put the pedal to the rusty metal. Dirt spun from the rear wheels. The Mustang rocketed forward, right at Zaga, who vaulted to one side, drawing the handgun in a smooth motion.
The Mustang flew by, sheering off the Escalade's side-view mirror.
On its passenger side, the Mustang scraped the roadside boulders with metallic shrieks of dying soldiers.
Payne barely heard the first gunshot.
The second bullet clanged into the Mustang's trunk.
"Get down, Tino! On the floor!"
But the boy was propped on his knees, looking back at the man with the gun.
"Tino!" Payne tried to shove him down into his seat.
"In a second, vato."
Two more gunshots sounded.
When they slid around a bend in the road and Zaga was no longer in sight, Tino dropped into his seat.
"Jesus! What the hell's wrong with you, kid? You could have been killed."
"I memorized the pistolero 's license plate."
"Oh."
Tino rattled off the numbers and letters.
"Okay," Payne said. "Good. Very good. How'd you think of that?"
"It's what Rockford would have done," Tino said.
FIFTY-THREE
Marisol's lips were crusted together, and her mouth felt as if it were filled with sand.
The sheets were cool and clean but sweat poured from her. She tried to open her eyes, but the lids were heavy as church doors.
Her head throbbed.
Somewhere, a man's voice echoed, the words overlapping.
"You'll get used to it. It's better than picking melons."
She was naked under the sheet. She tried to remember where she was and how she got here.
A drink. She remembered being given a cold Pepsi. Then growing sleepy.
A patchwork of images. A man carrying her over his shoulder. Women's voices. Carpeted rooms. Soft music. Twinkling chandeliers.
The bed felt like a raft in a stormy sea. Her fingernails dug into the mattress to steady herself. In her mind, an eagle's claw gripped a tree limb. But if she were an eagle, she would fly away.
The man was talking again. The voice seemed familiar, but it bounced off the walls. Her eyes clouded over, and she could not put a face to the voice.
"You'll learn to like the club. No field hands. Gentlemen only." He laughed, a throaty growl. "Like me, panocha."
Panocha! Now, she remembered those first few moments after the van dumped out the migrants like a truckload of melons.
" I'm sixty-six and still filled with piss and vinegar, panocha."
El Patron. Mr. Rutledge.
Marisol felt his callused hand under the sheet, moving up her thigh.
Her eyes opened just enough to let in a slit of light. She saw his lips tighten, then crease into a smile sharp as a razor. A smile devoid of joy, but born of power and wickedness.
She closed her eyes and thought of the priest blessing her back home.
"Vaya con Dios, mija."
Wherever I am, Marisol thought, it is not with God.
FIFTY-FOUR
Sharon loathed restaurants where the waiter's haircut cost more than hers, but she made an exception for the California Club. It was a century old, a quiet place of quiet money. Travertine archways, dark woods, and wall tapestries. A decorative, thirty-foot-high carved ceiling with a vaguely baroque look, as if you were dining in a sixteenth-century castle. Chandeliers hung from the ceiling by chains heavy enough to moor a cruise ship.
The young waiter in this staid old establ
ishment had soap opera good looks and Superman's black hair, right down to the spit curl. An aspiring actor, no doubt. At the moment, he was politely whispering in her ear that she had a phone call.
Who even knew she was here?
Sharon left Cullen Quinn slurping his gazpacho and headed to a private booth of polished mahogany.
"Didn't want to call you on your cell," Payne said, when she answered. "I tried Philippe's and Langer's Deli. Then I figured Cullen asked you to his club. You were always a slut for sliced tenderloin."
"Jesus, Jimmy. Where are you?"
"I've picked up Marisol's trail."
"Have you lost your mind? There's a manhunt after you."
"At first, I was afraid it was hopeless. The hardest part was figuring out where to start. Turned out, it was Mexicali. Now we're getting close."
"Are you listening? You're wanted from here to the border, you idiot. Is this what you meant about changing your life?"
"Hey, you're the one who told me to help the kid."
"I didn't tell you to shoot at a sheriff's deputy."
"At his car, not at him. And Tino did the shooting, not me."
"If Rigney finds you-"
"He won't."
"Look, I was wrong. I never should have let you leave my house. Now you've got to come in and straighten it out. You've got to surrender."
"I will. After I find Tino's mother. I promise."
"The longer you're out there, the worse it's gonna get."
"C'mon, Sharon. I'm doing something for someone else. And you know what? It feels good. Tino's a terrific kid who's never gotten a break. No father, his mother doing the best she can. Did you know he's a natural athlete? The way he runs, he looks a little like Adam, only faster."
"Oh, Jimmy. Don't." Hearing him say their son's name-so unexpected-knocked the breath out of her.
"We have to be able to talk about Adam," Payne said.
"Now? Why couldn't you talk a year ago? Why'd you go into your cave and shut me out?" Her shock turned to anger.
"I felt the pain more than you did."
"Screw you, Jimmy. You showed the pain more. You swam in it. You drank it until you were intoxicated by it. But you didn't feel any more than I did. Any more than I do!"
"Sorry. That came out wrong."
"Damn right it did."
They each stayed silent, and it occurred to her that Jimmy never said why he was calling. But knowing him, it could only be one thing. "What's the favor you want?"
"I need you to run a license plate for me. A Cadillac Escalade. And get me the corporate info on three businesses."
"Forget it. Turn yourself in, Jimmy."
"You won't be doing it for me. It's for Tino and his mother."
"I know what you're doing, even if you don't."
"I'm helping a kid find his mother. Simple as that."
"You're paying penance. You blame yourself for what happened to Adam."
"Got nothing to do with it."
"Even if you find Tino's mother, then what? You'll wake up the next morning, and Adam will still be gone. Tino will be out of your life, too."
Payne stayed quiet, and she listened to the static on the line.
"Okay, so maybe it has something to do with Adam," Payne confessed. "Maybe every day I remember watching some damn birds flying over the ocean. Maybe if I'd kept my eyes on the road, I could have braked or swerved. Maybe Adam would be alive."
Another moment of silence.
"Let me finish the job," Payne pleaded. "You know it's the right thing to do. You knew it the minute I walked into your kitchen the other night."
Somewhere across the dining room, a man laughed so heartily it sounded obscene.
"Precision Glass Company," Payne continued, giving her the name painted on one of the vans in Chitwood's barn. "Supposedly in Palm Desert, but I doubt it exists."
"I can't do it!"
"Two more. Valley Plumbing and Sand Dunes Electrical. Probably fictitious, too. Are you writing this down?"
"No, Jimmy."
Payne rattled off the license plate number of Zaga's Escalade, then repeated it a second time.
"No. No. No."
"Don't call my cell," Payne said. "I'm sure Rigney's triangulating my calls." He gave her the number of the pay phone of the Joshua Tree Park 'n Eat, and she slammed the receiver down so hard it sounded like a gunshot.
Jimmy hung up and joined Tino in a red vinyl booth at the breakfast joint near the desert town of Thermal, just north of the Imperial County line. On a fluttering TV set, shelved above the counter, the news came on with stock footage of mountains and cactus. The anchor was a coppery-skinned, wizened old coot with a string tie. A local cable station, Payne figured, since big-city television seemed to recruit their anchors from America's Next Top Model.
"She won't help, will she?" Tino said.
"Sure she will, kid." Not letting the boy see his concern.
Sharon at the California Club, Payne thought, unhappily. Dining with that prick fiance of hers. Quinn's kind of place. Dark woods, old money, and raw power. Since the nineteenth century, the movers and shakers had been moving and shaking there. It's where William Mulholland hatched his plans to steal water from the Owens Valley. A ruthless scheme that bankrupted farmers and ranchers and turned a pristine lake into a parched and poisonous bed of alkali. On the plus side, it inspired the movie Chinatown.
While on the phone, Payne noticed the sign taped above the pass-through window to the kitchen. English Spoken Here.
One of those little put-downs of aliens, legal and illegal. Back home, Payne's Mexican-American plumber had two bumper stickers on his truck. One proclaimed his love of the Dodgers. The other, "Broken English Spoken Here." Not only could the guy fix the shut-off valve on a gravity sump, he had a sense of humor, too.
On the TV, the lead story seemed to be the weather. A hundred five degrees yesterday; a hundred five degrees today, a cooling trend tomorrow, at a hundred four.
The waitress, a tired forty-year-old with a messy bird's-nest of bleached hair and no wedding band, moseyed over to take their order.
"Chicken croquettes," Tino announced. "And a Coke."
"Eggs, ranch style," Payne said.
"Ranch style?" The waitress chewed on her pencil. "You mean, like a Denver omelette?"
"No omelette of any kind. Just eggs, ranch style."
"I'll ask the cook if he can make it."
"Sure he can. It's number three on the menu."
The waitress looked over his shoulder as he pointed to the item. "That's huevos rancheros, mister."
"Shhh." He motioned toward the sign. "English spoken here."
"You some sort of wise guy?"
"Just trying to follow the rules."
She walked away, muttering, "City people."
Sharon hadn't moved from the phone booth. She glanced toward Cullen at the table. Two men-a city councilman and a county supervisor-were kibitzing with him. Chuckles all around. Maybe planning their costumes for the Sheherazade Ball. The councilman gave Cullen a politician's whomp on the shoulder, no doubt congratulating him for holding the fort against the swarm of illegals. Sharon hoped the busboys didn't hear, fearing what they might slip into Cullen's drink.
Her fiance was in his element. Smiling his anchorman smile. Looking damn pleased with himself. Not seeming to wonder about her whereabouts.
She replayed her conversation with Payne. He had sounded excited. Involved. Optimistic. How long had it been since she'd heard that in his voice?
She looked down at the linen napkin she had carried from the table. Now covered with scribbles, the names and numbers Payne had given her.
Damn you, Jimmy Payne!
FIFTY-FIVE
Tino studied Jimmy. "You tell me the truth just now? Pretty lady's gonna help?"
"She's never let me down, kid. Except when she shot me and divorced me."
"But she's a cop. Can't she get in trouble?"
"When you love someone, you tak
e chances for them."
"If she loves you, why she gonna marry that cabron on the TV?"
"It's complicated. Adult stuff."
"You saying she doesn't know she loves you?"
"She knows, Tino. But she fights it."
The pay phone at the end of the counter rang, and Payne raced to answer it.
He reached the phone just as a bighorn sheep came on the TV news. Something about the animal's shrinking habitat.
"Sharon?" Praying it was her.
"Precision Glass. Sand Dunes Electrical. Valley Plumbing," she said flatly. "They all exist."
"Damn. Blows my theory out of the water."
"Just listen a second. On paper, they're legitimate. But none are doing business. And get this: All three were incorporated by the law firm of Whitehurst and Booth in San Francisco."
"So what?"
"They're general counsel for Rutledge Ranch and Farms, Inc. Simeon Rutledge is-"
"I know who he is. But that law firm's got a bunch of big clients, right? Banks. Insurance companies. Maybe other big growers, too."
"Sure they do. But that Cadillac Escalade. It's owned by a man from Kings County named Enrique Zaga."
"That's him. What else can you tell me?"
"Only this," Sharon replied, drawing out the moment. "He's worked for Rutledge Farms since he was a kid. Picker. Foreman. Crew chief. Been head of security the last dozen years."
"Yes! You found Marisol. You're terrific, Sharon." Payne's voice was so loud, the waitress who already hated his guts gave him a dirty look. He caught Tino's eye and shot him the thumbs-up. The boy bounced out of the booth and ran toward him.
"I don't know why I did this," Sharon said, softly.
"Sure you do," Payne said.
"Don't start with me."
Tino interrupted, gesturing wildly toward the TV set. Under the caption "WANTED" were two photos lifted from a police car's video. Blurry, but still no mistaking Jimmy and Tino. Beneath the photos, another caption: "Police Hunt Suspects."