“The car will still be there, right?”
“My muchachos got strict orders not to touch it, man.”
Buddy nodded. “All right, sounds good.”
He took a deep breath. Yeah, assault and kidnapping sounded like good things for a lawman to do. Something inside him cringed at the very idea. But he reminded himself of why he was doing this and of the sort of man this Ortiz was. Even if this was a step over the line from which he could never fully return, he was prepared to go ahead with it. He owed that to Tom Brannon. Hell, he owed that to the citizens of Little Tucson who had elected him. If he could put together a solid case against a member of M-15, he might be able to force the government to step in and actually do something. That was his hope, anyway.
He glanced at the girl and added, “Uh, you think maybe I ought to jump him before they start . . . you know . . .”
Diego waved a hand and smiled. “Don’t worry about that, man. It ain’t like she’s sacrificin’ her virginity or anything like that. Is it, chica?”
The girl just laughed and shook her head.
“Well, all right,” Buddy said. “I guess it would be better if Ortiz was, uh, distracted . . .”
“Now you’re talkin’,” Diego said.
He left the room. Buddy went to the tiny closet and opened the door. Before he could step inside, the girl said, “Jefe?”
He looked back and saw that she had taken a joint from a box on the dressing table. She held it up and smiled, offering it to him. Buddy shook his head and said, “No, thanks.”
The girl shrugged, reached down, and pulled the slip most of the way up her sleek brown thighs. She looked at Buddy and raised her eyebrows quizzically. “No, gracias,” he said, refusing that offer as well.
“Plenny of time,” the girl said.
Buddy put his hands up in front of him and moved them back and forth slightly. “No, but muchas gracias.”
The girl shrugged her bare shoulders, and Buddy retreated gratefully into the closet, pulling the door behind him until only a small gap remained. He blew out his breath, thinking about his wife and feeling very glad right now that he was a faithful husband.
It was hot in there. Sweat beaded on his forehead and rolled down into his eyebrows. His shirt was damp. He reached down and touched the gun in his trousers pocket. The serial number was filed off it, and it had never been registered anyway. It was a flat little .32 automatic, deadly enough at close range. Nestled beside it in Buddy’s pocket was an old-fashioned sap that had belonged to his uncle, who had carried it when he worked in the Cook County Jail back in Chicago, in the fifties. Buddy supposed that made the sap an antique, but it still worked just fine.
Long minutes dragged by. Buddy began to wonder if Ortiz was even going to show up. But then footsteps sounded in the hallway outside, and the door to the room creaked open. Buddy couldn’t see the girl, but he heard her greeting the man who had stepped into the room.
Buddy could see their shadows through the narrow gap, but that was all. He heard moaning and figured that they were kissing. The girl was carrying on like she was aroused. Typical whore behavior. Then Buddy smelled marijuana smoke. Ortiz hadn’t declined the offer of a joint.
A few minutes later Buddy heard the bedsprings squeak. The sound got louder and faster. He slipped the gun out of his pocket and put it in his left hand. Then he clutched the sap in his right hand. He pushed the door open with his foot.
The bed was only about five feet away. Two fast steps would bring him next to it. Ortiz was on top of the girl, still wearing his shirt, pumping away at her. Buddy took the first of those two steps and lifted the sap.
From the corner of his eye he saw movement and jerked his head in that direction to see the door to the hall opening. A man stepped through it, a big grin on his face as he said something in Spanish about Ortiz hurrying up so somebody else could get some. Then he froze as he spotted Buddy.
Buddy had stopped in midstride. He pivoted as the second man suddenly bellowed a warning to Ortiz and clawed at the gun in his belt. Buddy swung the sap and felt as much as heard the satisfying crunch as it landed on the man’s nose. The man went backward, blood spurting from the crushed nose. Buddy hoped that enough shards of bone had gone up into his brain to kill him.
He tried to turn back toward the bed, but as he did Ortiz came up with a yell and slammed a fist into Buddy’s chest. The blow knocked Buddy back a step. He slashed at Ortiz’s head with the sap but missed. The sap landed on Ortiz’s right shoulder instead, and that was almost as good because the man’s face contorted in agony and he fell to a knee, clutching his right shoulder with his left hand. Buddy figured the blow had numbed Ortiz’s whole right arm.
A gun roared behind him and Buddy’s left ear felt like somebody had pinched it. A part of his brain knew that a bullet had just grazed him, but for the most part he was operating purely on instinct now. He twisted around and saw that Ortiz’s friend wasn’t dead after all. He had a busted nose and blood all over his chest and the lower half of his face, but he was definitely still alive and about to take another shot at Buddy.
Buddy brought up the .32 in his left hand and triggered three shots before the man looming in the doorway could fire again with the old-fashioned revolver he held. The bullets caught the man in the chest and threw him backward. He hit the wall on the other side of the corridor with a crash and bounced off, pitching forward to land face-down on the threadbare carpet runner.
People started shouting. This was a cheap, squalid hotel used almost solely by prostitutes and their customers, and the patrons had to be accustomed to some trouble now and then. But a pitched gun battle would attract attention even in a place like this.
Everything was screwed, but Buddy thought he might still be able to salvage the situation if he acted fast enough. When he turned back toward the bed, he saw that Ortiz was struggling to get up from the floor. Buddy kicked him in the face and sent him sprawling. He leaned over the man and rapped him on the skull with the sap just for good measure.
Then he looked at the bed and almost threw up. The bullet that had clipped his ear had gone on past him and caught the girl in the head just as she jumped up from the stained mattress. Her nude body was sprawled across the foot of the bed now, her wide eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling with its peeling paper. The black hole in the center of her forehead hadn’t bled much, but there was a pool of crimson on the mattress under her head.
Buddy swallowed the bile that tried to well up his throat and jammed the sap back in his pocket. Still holding the gun, he bent to grab Ortiz. He hoisted the man’s senseless form, grunting from the effort as he draped Ortiz over his shoulder. Then he staggered out in the hall, stepping over the body of the man he had killed. Where the hell was Diego?
The young man appeared at the top of the rear stairs, holding a bloody handkerchief to his head. “Buddy!” he called. “Andale! Andale!”
Buddy hurried, all right, stumbling toward the stairs with his limp burden. “What the hell happened?” he gasped as he and Diego started down.
“I saw Juan start to go up after Ortiz and tried to stop him. He hit me, knocked me half loco for a few minutes. Then I heard the shooting . . . You killed him?”
Buddy nodded as they continued to clatter down the stairs. “I’m pretty sure I did.”
“He was with Ortiz, when those old people were killed.”
Buddy felt a throb of fierce satisfaction go through him. At least one of the murderers of Herb and Mildred Brannon had received justice.
They reached the bottom of the stairs. Diego pushed out through the door that led to the alley. Buddy was right behind him. The way things had been going, Buddy was a little surprised that his car was there and seemingly untouched, just as Diego had promised. He supposed he had to have some good luck sometime.
Sirens wailed somewhere close by. The Nogales police responding to the shooting. They might actually investigate the matter, since the dead man was a member of M-15 and Budd
y figured that the cops were probably in the gang’s back pocket. But it was only a few blocks to the border, and he intended to be back across before anyone could stop him.
Balancing the unconscious Ortiz on his shoulder, Buddy fished his keys out of his pocket and handed them to Diego, who popped the trunk lid. Buddy lowered Ortiz into the trunk and slammed it closed.
“Gracias, amigo,” he said to Diego as he took the keys back. “I can’t thank you enough.”
“You can thank me by not ever comin’ down here again,” Diego said. “Not only that, but don’t expect to be hearin’ from me again, either. We’re square, man. I don’t owe you nothin’ no more.”
Buddy nodded. “I’m sorry about the girl.”
“The girl? What you talkin’ about?”
“When the bastard you called Juan shot at me, he hit her instead. She’s dead, Diego.”
He looked stricken. “Muerte? Aaiiee . . .”
“If there’s anything I can do—”
“Just get outta here, man. And like I said, don’t come back.”
Buddy could have been wrong—it was hard to tell in the shadowy alley—but he thought he saw tears shining in Diego’s eyes. No pimp would cry over a dead whore, would he? Maybe sometimes . . .
With a shake of his head, Buddy got in the car and started it, relieved when the engine caught normally. He pulled away, leaving Diego in the alley. What a fine, upstanding cop he was, he thought bitterly. He’d shot a man and gotten a girl killed. Neither of them had been innocents, but the girl, surely, hadn’t deserved such a fate.
But Herb and Mildred hadn’t deserved their fate, either, he reminded himself, and neither had the dozens of other people Mara Salvatrucha had killed, most of them good friends of his.
The port of entry was in downtown Nogales. Most American tourists parked their cars in lots just north of the border and walked across, relying on cabs for getting around the Mexican city. But you could drive if you were brave enough or had a good enough reason, and there were a few cars waiting in line to go through customs either way. Buddy waited his turn patiently. He wasn’t worried about the Mexican customs agents; they would barely glance at him on his way through the checkpoint. It was always possible that the American agents might decide to search his car, though. If that happened, he was up shit creek, because they would find Ortiz. Of course, he could claim ignorance and say that someone had dumped Ortiz in the trunk while the car was parked. That story might be believed. But there would still be a lot of questions that he didn’t want to answer.
As expected, the Mexican customs agent on duty just waved him on through. The American took a look at his driver’s license and the badge that was next to it in the wallet. “You’re the sheriff of Sierrita County?” he asked.
“That’s right,” Buddy said, keeping his voice level and calm.
“Hear you’ve been having lots of trouble up there.”
“More than our share.”
“Why were you in Mexico?”
Buddy reached down to the seat and brought up a paper bag he had placed there earlier. He handed it to the agent, who opened it, looked inside, and handed it back.
“If you want to trust those Mexican antibiotics, Sheriff, that’s your business, but I’m not sure I would.”
Buddy smiled. “Yeah, I know, but my wife’s sold on ’em. She’s got a sinus infection, and she says they work better than the American ones. Cheaper, too.”
“Well, good luck to her.” The customs agent stepped back and motioned for Buddy to drive ahead.
He didn’t heave the huge sigh of relief he felt until he was several blocks away from the border crossing. The Mexican pharmacies just across the line did a huge business with American customers, and they were open twenty-four hours a day. Buddy had figured that stopping for a couple of bottles of antibiotics would give him just the excuse he needed to be in Nogales.
And now he was on his way home. When he got there, he would stash Ortiz somewhere and work on him until the man told him everything he wanted to know about M-15 and the gang’s involvement with the murders of Herb and Mildred Brannon. Buddy had never beaten a confession out of a suspect in his life, but after everything else he had done tonight, that didn’t seem so bad. As long as he didn’t let the ACLU get even a whiff of what was going on . . .
He drove carefully until he was out of Nogales, veering northwest from Interstate 19 on the state highway that led to Little Tucson. As always on the desert, the night air cooled off quickly. Buddy turned off the air conditioning and rolled down the windows.
It must have been the rush of air that kept him from hearing the helicopter until it was right on top of him. Suddenly it swooped past him like a huge bird of prey and flew on down the otherwise empty desert highway. Buddy hit the brakes as the chopper turned.
What the hell! The damn thing was coming right at him now. In the glow of his headlights, he saw the man leaning out from the cabin, saw the flicker of orange as the machine gun in the man’s hands opened up. Then the windshield shattered, splintering into a million razor-sharp shards. Buddy screamed as some of them lanced into his eyes and slashed his hands on the steering wheel. The car careened wildly back and forth.
A giant fist slammed into Buddy’s left shoulder, driving him back against the seat. The car bounced madly as it left the road. Buddy came up in the seat, slamming his head against the roof. A thunderous hammering filled his ears, and somehow he knew it was caused by the high-powered machine gun rounds hitting the car. If one of them struck the gas tank . . .
Then the car began to roll, and that was exactly what happened. It came apart in a huge ball of orange flame that threw pieces of the destroyed vehicle hundreds of yards in every direction. Anyone inside it was instantly incinerated.
The helicopter swooped over the site of the explosion, hovered there for a moment, and then flew toward the south, back across the border. The men inside it had done the job they came to do. Diego hadn’t lasted more than a few minutes under torture, and then he had told them exactly what kind of car to look for. Cipriano Asturias brought the machine gun back inside the cabin. Once he and his brother reported to Señor Montoya that Ortiz would never be able to testify against M-15, they could go ahead and kill Diego. Foolish young man, to think he could hide what he was doing from the eyes of Mara Salvatrucha.
The chopper disappeared into the distance, the eggbeater sound of its engine fading to nothingness, as behind it the wrecked car continued to burn fiercely.
And some yards away, the heat blistering his skin, the man who had been thrown clear bare seconds before the explosion, kept trying to crawl away. He was blind, his face covered with blood, and he felt the hot drops falling on his hands as he clawed at the desert sand . . .
21
Tom fought his way up out of sleep as the cell phone on the nightstand rang. Out of habit, he reached for the regular phone first, forgetting for the moment that he had unplugged all of them to keep the reporters from calling constantly. Then he realized it was the cell and picked it up instead. The screen was lit up, and the number it displayed belonged to the Sierrita County Sheriff’s Office.
A chill shivered along Tom’s spine. The bedside clock read 3:30 A.M. Buddy wouldn’t be calling at this time of the morning with good news.
“Whosit?” Bonnie murmured sleepily from beside him.
“Buddy,” Tom said as he pushed the button to take the call.
Only it wasn’t. After Tom said hello, a woman’s voice asked, “Mr. Brannon?”
“Yeah?”
“This is Lauren Henderson. From the sheriff’s office.”
Tom sat up straighter in the bed. He knew Lauren, but not all that well. Well enough, though, to tell that she was really upset about something. “What is it?”
“Buddy . . . Sheriff Gorman . . . There’s been an accident . . . It’s terrible . . . I thought you’d want to know . . .”
“Is he alive?” Tom grated out. Even as he asked the question, he wonde
red if what had happened to Buddy had really been an accident—or if this was another strike by M-15.
“He’s alive,” Lauren said. “Barely, though. He was in really bad shape when he was brought in. The doctors at the hospital don’t know if he’ll make it or not. If a trucker hadn’t come along the highway and seen the wrecked car . . .”
“It was a car accident?”
“Buddy’s car went off the road and rolled over and then the gas tank exploded. If he hadn’t been thrown clear when the car rolled, he would have died for sure.”
“My God,” Tom said softly.
“That’s not all of it,” Lauren went on. “Since you’re the mayor now, as well as Buddy’s friend, I suppose you have a right to know. He was shot, too. His whole car was shot up. And . . . there was what was left . . . of a dead man in the trunk.”
Tom closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. What the hell had Buddy been doing? The only thing he was sure of was that M-15 had to be mixed up in this somehow.
“Has Buddy been able to talk?”
“No, he’s unconscious. The ER doctor said he might never wake up.”
“I’m coming down there to the hospital.” Bonnie’s hand tightened on Tom’s shoulder as he spoke.
“There’s really nothing you can do—”
“I can be there,” Tom cut in. “That’ll have to be enough for now.”
Lauren was silent for a moment, then she went on, “I’m at the office right now, but I was thinking about going back to the hospital, too. I’ll meet you there, Mr. Brannon.”
“All right. Thanks for calling, Deputy.”
Tom broke the connection, and Bonnie said, “Buddy’s hurt, isn’t he? Was it M-15?”
“Looks like it.”
“Will he be all right?”
“I don’t know,” Tom said with a shake of his head. “I’m going down to the hospital to see about him.”
“I know. I’m coming with you.”
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