by Paul Coggins
“You look…uh…different,” Cash said.
“While you were gone and I was holding down the court, I squeezed in a visit to Doctor Katz.” She arched her back, accentuating the new bust. “Like them?”
“They’ll do in a pinch.”
“Please do,” she said. “I could use a good harassment lawsuit to pad my bank account.”
“Get in line.”
She stroked her chin. “Maybe I should make it a class action.” She stopped stroking. “Where the hell have you been?”
He ignored the question and asked his own. “What are you doing here?”
“You hired me to temp until I worked off my legal bills.”
Not exactly how Cash remembered it. While she had certainly made the offer, he didn’t recall accepting.
Eva emerged from an office. Dressed for the down and dirty of trial prep in a Texas Rangers jersey, cutoff jeans, and sneakers. A look of relief gave way to a cold glare. She dumped a stack of documents on the reception desk. The next batch of exhibits for marking.
Goldy approached from another office. He shuffled like a zombie on a bad day. If not at death’s door, he was certainly on the porch.
Both acted as if they belonged here, with Cash being the odd man out.
This just keeps getting better and better.
“You don’t smell so great either,” Eva said.
Cash turned to Tina. “What are they doing here?”
“I invited them to set up shop.” No trace of an apology. “They’re our co-counsel in a case set for trial in two weeks, and they were working out of Goldy’s apartment. Not an ideal arrangement.”
Cash raised his voice. “And this is?”
“You didn’t answer Tina’s question,” Eva said. “Where have you been?” She sounded more concerned than curious.
“To hell and back,” Cash said.
“You should feel right at home there,” Goldy said, “along with all your friends.”
“The three of you certainly have made yourselves at home, but it’s time to pack up and return to the hole you climbed out of.”
“Our mutual client will be here at two,” Goldy said, “and he expects to find his dream team hard at work. We wouldn’t want to disappoint Freddy the Forger.”
Cash calibrated how much to divulge of his past twenty-four hours, balancing their need to know against his desire to keep them safe. In the circumstances, knowledge wasn’t power. More like poison. He resolved to share next to nothing.
“Walk away,” Cash said. “It’s for your own good.”
Eva shook her head. “Not until you tell us why.”
Cash recalibrated, adding a new variable to the equation: Eva’s damned stubbornness. The trait made her a great ally, as well as a royal pain in the ass.
Cash led all three to a conference room, where they sat at a round table. Not sure where to begin, he started at the end. “I just had a near-death experience with Los Lobos.”
“Los Lobos!” Goldy said. “Aren’t they trying to kill your client?”
“Exactly,” Cash said, “and they were prepared to kill me, unless I divulged La Tigra’s whereabouts.”
“So did you?” Goldy said.
The question pissed off Cash. How could his mentor of all people think he would sacrifice a client to save himself? Stoked by anger, Cash threw the challenge back at Goldy. “Would you?”
“Of course not.” Goldy spoke with all the certainty of the untested.
“Nor did I,” Cash said.
Goldy refused to drop the line of attack. “Do you even know where La Tigra is?”
Cash shook his head. Goldy leaned back in the chair, smiling.
Eva piled on. “Did you tell Los Lobos that you didn’t know where she was?”
Cash nodded.
Her expression said something didn’t add up. “If they believed you, why didn’t they kill you?”
“I convinced them that I could find out where she is faster than they could track her down.”
Cash pinched the bridge of his nose, fighting a headache. No one asked the obvious follow-up, a bad sign. The people who knew him best must’ve assumed the worst.
“Hey, I would never actually tell them where she is.” Anger amped his voice. “I said whatever it took to stay alive.”
“I for one am fine with that,” Eva said. “If it comes down to a choice between you and La Tigra, burn the bitch.”
“At least you got Los Lobos off your back,” Tina said.
“They gave me a one-week stay of execution. Seven days to betray her, unless the bad guys go back on their word and take me out sooner. Which is why none of you should hang around. When the sicario comes for me, anyone in the same zip code is at risk of winding up as collateral damage.”
Goldy scoffed. “When you reach my age, sonny boy, threats like that don’t cut the mustard. Bikers, tweakers, bangers, neo-Nazis, and badasses of all stripes have come gunning for me. None proved half as terrifying as my exes.”
Goldy slapped both palms on the table. “But it does make sense to send the womenfolk to safety.” He looked from Eva to Tina. “As for myself, I ain’t going nowhere.”
Cash rolled his eyes. If Goldy hoped to persuade Eva and Tina to play it safe, that wasn’t how to do it.
Sure enough, Eva shot from her seat. “Say what, old man? Womenfolk? Seriously?”
“Everyone calm down,” Cash said, “and hear me out. Los Lobos aren’t the only wolves at the door. When La Tigra hears the best offer I have for her, she won’t be happy, and it’s not a good career move to make a crime boss unhappy.”
Eva crossed her arms, a sign of a closed mind. “Doesn’t change my decision to stay.”
“In for a penny,” Goldy said, “in for two.”
“That’s not how the saying goes.” Cash surrendered to the mother of all migraines. “Never mind that. There’s more at stake to consider. I’m playing off the DEA against the FBI to try to get a better deal for La Tigra. In the process, I’m sure to fuck over one agency, if not both. Meaning one or both will retaliate by coming after me and anyone fool enough to throw in with me.”
Eva took the floor and aborted the meeting. “All in favor of sticking together, raise your hands.”
Three hands shot up. Cash slumped. The odds were stacked against saving all three, but at this rate, he’d be lucky to save even one.
Tina’s iPhone pinged. She picked it up. Her face turned ashen.
“They found another body,” she said.
CHAPTER FORTY
The corpse lay on a metal gurney, covered by a white sheet. The lighting in the morgue burned mercilessly bright. The temperature in the room dipped to meat locker lows.
Cash had come to the viewing of the body with an empty stomach. Not his first field trip to the chop shop. It was a first for Tina, whose tear-streaked face paled. Her breaths escaped in bursts. She teetered on high heels.
Cash sidled away from her. Far enough to avoid a direct hit if she hurled, but close enough to catch her if she fainted.
A detective named Robert Gamez stood over the body. A decade ago, he had seamlessly slid from the Marines to the Dallas Police Department, keeping the same crewcut, combat-ready body, and blind allegiance that made him a good soldier in whatever war the suits blundered into.
Cash had given the cop—then a rookie—a baptism in fire, ripping him a new asshole on cross-examination in what should have been an open-and-shut DUI case. He recalled Gamez’s stumbles on the stand and hoped like hell the detective didn’t.
Fat chance.
Gamez pinched the sheet at the foot of the gurney and pulled it down slowly, like a magician milking a trick to build tension. He first revealed a forehead, unwrinkled and scrubbed clean of makeup. Eyes closed. Lashes, long and fine.
Everything looked peaceful until the sheet cleared her lips, which had twisted into a rictus grimace. Though death had silenced her screams, the lips don’t lie.
When the face came into ful
l view, Tina let out a cry and clutched Cash’s arm.
The death had been slow, painful, and prolonged by a sadist. Despite the last hours or days of torment and torture, the face had retained a beauty that was exquisite, partly by nature, mostly by design.
The detective continued to tug on the sheet. It slid past breasts that were larger than Tina’s and slowed over the speed bump of a shrunken penis. The cover caressed her thighs before the cop ripped it off and tossed it aside.
Cash focused on a tattoo on the instep of her right foot. A red tongue protruding through black lips. He had seen the tatt before but not on the deceased. Tina sported matching ink. Same design, colors, and spot. Marking them as BFFs.
“Recognize her, Miss Campos?” Gamez said.
Tina nodded. “It’s Brandi.” The words, more wheezed than spoken. “Brandi Foxx.”
Gamez pulled out a notebook. “Do you know her real name?”
“That is her real name.” A flash of anger swelled her voice.
Gamez blushed. “I meant her birth name.”
Tina shook her head. “She was Brandi when we roomed together. She came from Oklahoma as a teen, after her folks threw her out. I don’t think she’s talked to them since.”
“How long have you known her?” the cop asked.
“Eight years. She took me in when my…when my boyfriend turned me out.”
Cash didn’t call bullshit on her rewriting of history. Her pimp, not a boyfriend, had tossed her to the curb when she aged out of his fetish for underage flesh. Big difference.
“When did you last talk to her?” the cop said.
“Day before yesterday. She called me.”
“What did you two talk about?”
“She has…had been dating a married man. He wanted to keep it on the down low. She didn’t.”
“Was she a prostitute?”
Tina turned to Cash. He nodded.
“On and off,” she said.
Cash didn’t bring up his past representation of Brandi, a referral from Tina. He stepped closer to the table and bent over the body. Red welts dotted her torso and thighs. “What made the marks?”
“I’m here to ask questions, not answer them.” Gamez delivered the standard line poorly. Despite the military bearing, playing a hard-ass didn’t come naturally to him.
“We’re here to help,” Cash said, “and you can use all the help you can get.”
Gamez leaned closer to the civilians. “Keep this to yourselves, and above all, don’t share it with the media. We need to hold back some details to weed out the false confessions.”
Cash nodded. Tina followed his lead.
“The killer tortured the vic with a cattle prod. There are more marks on her back, buttocks, and the soles of her feet.”
Cash examined Brandi’s soles. Sure enough, more welts. But there was something else. A second tatt. Actually two more. A die on the left big toe and another on the right. Matching deuces on the dice. The deceased had rolled a four.
He pried Tina’s grip from his arm. She didn’t need to hear the rest. “Wait outside while I talk to the detective,” he said.
She took the cue and left the room. The good news, she hadn’t broken down at the sight of her friend. The bad, she was too numb to let go. The numbness would wear off, and he needed to be there when she fell apart.
“How many victims does this make?” Cash said.
“Again, this isn’t for public consumption, and I don’t want to see it in the press.” Gamez waited for Cash to nod before going on. “Four in eighteen months. All attractive transgender women between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five and active in the LGBTQ community. Your friend out there….” The cop clammed up.
Cash filled in the blanks. Tina fit the killer’s type. A young trans tempting enough to be a trap and bold enough to speak out.
“Where did you find the body?” Cash said.
“Dumped in an alley in Deep Ellum, like all the others.”
“Did the killer take a souvenir?”
Gamez stiffened.
Cash took that as a yes. “What was it?”
“How did you know?”
“Serial killer 101. A sick fuck who tortures before he kills usually takes something from the victims. Something to remember them by.”
Something to masturbate over later.
“Take a closer look at her mouth.”
Other than the death grimace, nothing seemed unusual about Brandi’s mouth. Her lips were full, but so what? It would’ve been more surprising if they hadn’t been pumped with collagen.
“Inside the mouth,” Gamez said.
Cash massaged her cheeks. The skin was cold, clammy. He stopped massaging when the lips parted.
Her tongue was gone.
Cash’s legs went rubbery. He grabbed the side of the table.
“He took a part of her, like all the others,” the detective said. “This detail has been kept out of the media.”
“Always the tongue?” Cash said.
Gamez shook his head.
“Did the victims advertise on Backdoor?”
“You want to tell me how you know that?”
“Good guess.” Cash didn’t mention his current representation of Toby Fine. Might put a damper on the detective’s cooperation. “What can you tell me about the killer?”
Gamez developed a sudden case of lockjaw. Could be because he’d already said too much. More likely, he didn’t have squat to share.
Cash didn’t let it go. “Tell me you have something.”
“We’re looking for a sadist with a dungeon straight out of a Rob Zombie movie.”
As Cash turned to leave, Gamez grabbed his arm. “By the way, your boy Clarkson was guilty.”
Cash shrugged. So Gamez hadn’t forgotten the cross-examination. Nor that Cash’s guilty-as-hell client had walked. “Not the way the jury saw it.”
The cop squeezed Cash’s arm. “I’m still waiting for a rematch.”
***
Three days later at dawn, Brandi’s army of friends descended on Oak Lawn Park for the memorial service. Rainbow-colored kites kissed the sky, and a marijuana haze hugged the earth. Loudspeakers blared the staccato sounds of dueling sitars, lending a festive air to the sendoff.
Cash arrived arm in arm with Tina and in time to catch the release of a white dove from the center of the crowd. A symbol of the ascension of Brandi’s spirit to the heavens.
Since the trip to the morgue, Cash had shadowed Tina, even to the point of moving her into his guest bedroom. Though he doubted she would do anything drastic, he couldn’t run the risk.
He stuck by her side as she made the rounds among her extended family. She introduced him as her “guardian lawyer.” It was all he could do to keep from handing out business cards to the target-rich crowd. Not the time or place for it.
Cash pointed to a petite Asian-American in a black leather vest and pants. No way would he have made her out to be trans, if they had passed on the street. Also, no way would they have passed on the street without him taking a second look, and a third.
“Who is she?”
“That’s Faith,” Tina said.
“She’s passable.”
Tina rolled her eyes. “Don’t tell her that, not if you’re trying to impress her. She’s not trying to pass as a woman. She identifies as a woman.”
“I meant it as a compliment.” He sounded defensive.
“She wouldn’t take it as one.”
Faith joined a flock of her spiritual sisters surrounding a grandfatherly figure in a white suit. The center of attention had the whitest and waviest hair, beard, and mustache this side of Colonel Sanders.
“Who’s Mister Popularity?” Cash said.
“He’s someone you definitely need to know.” She dragged him over to the mystery man. “Cash, meet Doctor Katz, the top cosmetic surgeon in the southwest. Brandi put me onto him, and in turn I’ve touted him to half the girls here.”
She elbowed Cash. “You’re
looking a little long in the tooth yourself. Better get his card.”
Cash and Doctor Katz shook hands and swapped cards. Not clear which of them would reap the most clients today. Nor who would be the first to need the other’s services.
“Based upon how Tina turned out,” Cash said, “I second her assessment that you’re the best in the field.”
Katz stroked his beard. “She says the same about you. But to give credit where it’s due, Tina was a beauty when she came to me. A touch here and there, and she became a goddess. You, however, will prove more of a challenge.”
“Whoa,” Cash said. “Keep that scalpel in your pants, Doc. I’m not in the market for a new look.”
“Well, not yet anyway,” Katz said.
Cash crossed his hands over his crotch. Pure instinct.
“Relax,” Katz said. “Without making any big cuts, I could shave five…ten years off your face.”
Cash’s arms dropped to his side. “Looking around at the beautiful people gathered here, I don’t doubt that you can roll miles off the odometer. My question is whether you can add miles to it.”
Katz did a double take. “Sure, but there’s not much of a market for that in Dallas.”
Cash pocketed the business card and drifted away.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Bettina Biddle had been on Cash’s mind when her text pinged his phone. Not really much of a coincidence, because she dominated his thoughts these days.
Her message read more like an FYI than an SOS. A woman had shown up at her house unexpectedly, asking questions about her late husband.
He texted back: say nothing, on my way. Pegged the odds at fifty-fifty on whether she would heed his advice. Her husband Marty hadn’t been able to keep his mouth shut, not until death sealed his lips. No reason to believe Bettina would do better.
He sped to her address in Richardson, a suburb that straddled Dallas and Plano. The ranch-style house looked depressingly similar to its neighbors on a block that struggled to keep the spirit of the ’70s alive. The new place was several rungs below the Southlake showplace, which had been forfeited to the feds to pay down Marty’s restitution order.