by Rosa Foxxe
They looked around the cave some more but didn't find any small passages leading to other parts. That's really what both of them were after, some Huckleberry Finn style exploring of a cave system. But it wasn't to be and they both realized they'd been gone about an hour and it was time to head back.
When they got back the government was waiting for them with a grim look on his face. Vinnie's men looked very cowed, like the government man had caught them all with their hands in some cookie jar in the desert.
“I'm sorry,” the government man said. “I realize this is likely a set up, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to arrest you. Please turn around and put your hands behind your back.”
“What the fuck!” Vinnie said. “What for? We haven't even started digging yet?!”
“I know, sir,” the man said. “This isn't so much about the digging as it was about what you were about to dig up. Now, I now that you thought you'd actually be digging into something judging by the amount of men and some of the tools they brought with them. And like I said, I get the feeling you were sent out here to do this, correct?”
Vinnie nodded. The sun beat down on them and seemed to be especially harsh now that the law had them in its sights. Tyra didn't know what to think. Maybe Vinnie would be able to talk his way out of it. What did the government have on him anyway? Did they find a turtle already dead out there and decide to blame it on him?
“What did you find out there?” Vinnie said. “I just got out here. Whatever was already out here I had nothing to do with. And neither did my men. We are simply here to dig.”
“We found a few bodies,” the man said. “Some of them fresh and a few of them not so fresh. I suspect that whoever sent you out here just wanted you to see them to send you some kind of message. It doesn't make sense for them to send you out here to do something with them because, as you've said, if it has nothing to do with you, why involve you.”
“Holy hell,” Vinnie said. “You have to know that I wouldn't tell you I was coming out to dig if I knew there would be bodies out here. Only a fool wouldn't think that the government would come out here to inspect the ground before we broke it.”
“I'm inclined to believe you, but at the same time I'm also bound by duty to arrest you,” the man said. “Once you get down to the station I'm sure you'll lawyer will be waiting and he'll handle everything. Until then, I need to read you your rights.”
Vinnie was read his rights, cuffed, and then stuffed in the back of an unmarked car. He stared sullenly out the window at the sky above, shaking his head slowly.
“You, m’am, will also have to go downtown,” the man said.
Tyra felt her blood run cold. What was going to happen to her? She couldn't go to jail. She wasn't a criminal. The most illegal things she'd ever done was stuff like cheat on her taxes or drive drunk. She had nothing to do with whatever they'd found out in the desert. Surely that was obvious to them. There was no way any sane person would actually think that the girl with Vinnie would actually be in on anything.
They probably just wanted to grill her for a while to see if she knew anything. If they did she'd have to wait for either Vinnie's lawyer or a public defender. But what if they bent the rules and made her talk, or did something like keep her in a room for hours making her tell the story over and over again.
“M’am, can you hear me?”
Tyra could hear him, but it sounded like his voice was coming from a million miles away. She tried to move her mouth but couldn't. She started to get confused, like she didn't know where she was at for sure anymore. Was she dehydrated? She'd only been like this one other time and it was because she didn't bring enough water on a hike with her and her head started to get goofy half way through because all her body wanted to do was shut down.
“M’am, are you all right?”
Tyra tried to put her hand out to grab something, but there was nothing there. The world spun around her as she fainted. Everything faded to black, the last bit of her vision to hold color was the sky far above her.
Chapter8
Tyra didn't know what to do. She thought she was going to die when they first put the cuffs on her. They closed around each of her wrists with small clicking sounds that would have been infinitesimal. But now that they signaled that Tyra was going to go to jail, they had the utmost significance. As one of the officers led her by the arm to a nearby car, she thought about how it was funny how perspective changed everything. It wasn't like she didn't know that handcuffs clicked before, but now she knew in a way that was more than intellectual. Just like she'd known before that there was some kind of funny business going on with Vinnie, but now she really knew how far things could go.
What was happening? She kept thinking that, over and over. There was no way this could be real, no way that she was really going to be put in a squad car because of bodies being found in the desert. How could this be her life right now? This had to be some kind of dream. She needed to wake up. But she knew it wasn't really a dream. This was just how life felt when things went wrong and you just couldn't believe it.
Vinnie was already seated in the back seat of a squad car. As Tyra passed by it she saw his face in profile. She only looked at him briefly, then moved her eyes quickly away. She didn't want to linger too long because he might look up and see whatever look she had on her face.
Tyra wasn't sure how well she was keeping it together, and she didn't want Vinnie to see her like this. Her breath was coming fast and she was sweating. She didn't want to get in the car, but knew that there was no way that she was going to get to walk away from this. This is what happened to gangsters and thugs that broke the law. The cops came and shook them down, sometimes they arrested everyone they were with and dragged everyone back to the station for questioning. The police would have many things to ask, she was already thinking of some of the ones she knew she'd hear.
The door to the squad car opened and the horizon started to spin. The sun above her seemed so hot. How could this be happening? Tyra tried to steady her breathing, tried not to panic, but there wasn't anything she could do. Her body was reacting to the extreme amount of stress being put on it by the situation around her. It wasn't something that she had planned for, or something she thought about in advance.
For some reason, as her knees went watery beneath her, she thought about when she was a kid and playing on the playground, sometimes she'd have to run really fast to catch up with her friends, and one time she hit her head on the swing set. Tyra remembered how the horizon had spun then, how everything had seemed to blur in and out of focus.
Years ago, after the swing set had rung her bell, she'd staggered a few feet while the world colored itself in nothing but gray scale, and the deep shadows in the trees seemed to rush out and cloud her vision so that her sight was short. She was having a similar experience now.
“Are you all right m’am?” the officer asked.
Tyra sagged heavily against his body, trying to regain her balance.
“I don't feel so well,” she said. “I think maybe it's the heat but I'm not sure. Just help me in the car and hopefully it’ll go away.”
The officer was kind and gently lowered her into the waiting back seat by her arm, careful that she not hit her head or twist an ankle. Then he got in the driver's seat and blasted the AC. Tyra sat in the back, looking at the cage that had been put up between the backseat and the front seat. It wasn't like a traditional patrol car in the sense that it wasn't real security—someone could probably freak out in the back seat and kick out the plastic grill that hung between the sections of the vehicle.
They had probably known she was with him when they came out, she thought, as she watched the officers speak among themselves not far from their parked cars. They had probably also known that they wouldn't need the heavy duty patrol cars. This arrest felt more like diplomacy than anything else. Tyra got the feeling that they would most likely be questioned for several hours before Vinnie's lawyers could get them out of there.
&n
bsp; The officer who had had helped her to the car got in the front seat and turned down the AC.
“Are you feeling any better?” he asked with a smile.
“Yes, thank you,” she said.
“Listen miss,” the plain clothes cop said as he started the car. “This isn't really about you, but now it involves you. I'm just saying that because I don't want you to have some kind of mental break down. But I also want you to know that you should be taking this very, very seriously. This is some no shit trouble out here. Multiple dead bodies in various stages of composition. I'm just telling you now because it'll be all over the news tonight, and also so you know what in the hell everyone is talking about when you get to the station.”
Tyra nodded, but didn't say anything. She was afraid she would cry.
“But keep your head up, because in all reality, the chances of you getting charged with a crime are slim. But it is possible, though. Depending who sits down with you at the interrogation table they might threaten it, and hell, they might even mean it. So don't get the idea that there is no chance of you catching some charges out of all of this. This is a very special situation, one that hasn't happened in Las Vegas in a very long time.”
The cop gently stepped on the gas and headed back towards the highway, back toward Las Vegas. Tyra watched him from the back seat, wondering what he was thinking; wondering if it would do her any good to talk to him about what exactly was going to happen beyond the vagaries that he'd already proffered.
“What is going to happen next,” Tyra asked. “Am I going to be booked? Will I need to wear a jump suit or anything like that?”
“Fuck, I don't know,” the cop said.
He swerved to miss a pothole in the broken asphalt road, swearing vehemently when the car still lurched, bottoming out as one of the wheels went into a hole.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “As I was saying, I'm not sure if they'll book you two just yet. I mean, you are under arrest and all of that, but as far as charges, none have been issued. That's the tricky thing about this town, it doesn't make any sense to run around flinging charges at people because so many rich people who that live here and have businesses here, are fiery mother fuckers. They won’t stand for the cops jerking them around. So we don't usually press charges unless we are really sure that's what we want to do.”
He looked back at Tyra and she detected pity flickering across his face. They didn't speak during the rest of the drive. The landscape would have been beautiful normally, but going to the police station downtown was all she could think about. So the desert and its harsh, subtle beauty flew by outside mostly unnoticed. Tyra could only think about how she'd gotten mixed up with someone who was into something that he hadn't realized could blow up like this. Or maybe he had realized that. He probably had.
When they got to the city, the unreality of it all started to slip away and the ugly, hard truth that she might be getting into trouble was all that filled her mind. They entered the station and the officer led her to a small holding area. It held nothing more than a table, a few chairs, and a clock on the wall. There was also a one way mirror below the clock. But besides that, nothing.
She was left there to sit in a chair and look at her nails. They hadn't even bothered to take her phone, or so she thought, until a female officer came in and asked her if it would be all right if she looked through Tyra's bag. Tyra consented without a second thought. There wasn't anything in her bag or on her phone that could get her in trouble. The female officer asked to briefly flip through her phone to see if there was anything of interest. Tyra again consented and the officer left.
About half an hour went by. In that time period, Tyra sat and looked at the table, occasionally picking at her nails. There really wasn't much she could do but sit quietly and hope that everything turned out all right. Playing stupid games on her phone didn't sound appealing at all considering the situation. Also, at some point there would be eyes on the other side of the two-way glass and they'd watch what she did.
They were probably studying her right now. Tyra didn't want to seem like an idiot by playing some stupid game on her phone in such a serious situation. But without her phone or something in her purse she was left with pretty much nothing. Not that it mattered all that much anyway, she figured.
Then two male detectives entered the small room. “Hello,” the first detective said when he walked into the room. He had short blonde hair and crystal blue eyes. “I heard that you let one of our officers go through your things without any attitude. That's really awesome of you. Way to be an adult about this situation. You have no idea how many people would have thrown a fit, asked to see a lawyer, or wanted to hear their rights. Stuff like that. And, don't get me wrong, all of those things can happen but you'll get arrested if any of them do.”
Both of the detectives sat down at the table and looked at Tyra sternly.
“Not that you can't or shouldn't ask for a lawyer,” the blonde man said. “But if you do, we'll have to arrest you because at this point we either arrest you or we ask you some questions and let you go. The questions we're going to ask aren't going to be anything crazy. And to be honest, we aren't really even going to ask you any hard questions considering how little you know about Vinnie. We've been talking to him briefly to see how much you might know. After hearing what he had to say and doing a little bit of follow up, it seems like you probably don't know dick.”
The dark haired man nodded.
“I'm James, by the way,” the blonde man said. “And this is Brian. We are pretty much the law when it comes to crazy shit like this.”
Again the dark haired man nodded.
“So,” James said. “Let's start from the start. A very good place to start. Or something like that. Right!? Mary Poppins or some shit?”
James raised his eyebrows and glanced at Tyra, then at the dark haired man named Brian. When no one smiled or even met his eyes, James looked down at the table.
“All right then, no one thinks I'm funny,” James said. “Everyone is in a bad mood. This lady, Tyra, I believe, is mad because some crazy shit is going on. Brian is mad because he got called in on his day off. I'm the only one not mad because this is actually kind of exciting.”
Again no one looked at him. Tyra broke the silence.
“Just ask me whatever you want and I'll do my best to answer,” she said.
“All right,” James said. “Do you know anything about the bodies? I think that's the pretty obvious question. And if you don't, which I think might be your answer, then what exactly do you know about Vinnie. I want you to tell us what you know, basically. I don't really expect it to be much, but knowing what you know will at least give us a pretty good idea if our own mental images of what is going on between the two of you and what your role is are correct.”
Tyra hadn't been expecting to answer open ended questions. The more she thought about it the more she realized she'd just been expecting to be asked about the bodies over and over by some over-over bearing asshole who wouldn't stop yelling.
But now that the cops were here and they were laid back she wasn't sure exactly to do. It was a lot harder dealing with all the freedom they were giving her than if they would have come in and started slamming things around and screaming.
“I don't really know much about Vinnie,” Tyra said. “To be honest, I met him through some weird game he ran in some casinos. I got really drunk and entered by crawling in a photo booth after filling out my information. Then I got contacted by some guy named Gizmo who works for him in Des Moines. From there I just got told that Vinnie was a nice guy who was rich. It all sounded fun and I came out a few weeks ago. Had a blast. This trip is proving less fun, though.”
James nodded his head and looked down at the desk between them.
“Yeah, that's what he said,” James said. “And I get completely that you are pretty much in the dark about what's going on, so I'm going to just level with you and tell you what you'll find out anyway. Or maybe he wouldn't tell
you if I didn't, I don't know. But I feel morally obligated to tell you.”
James glanced over at Brian who nodded in agreement.
“So Vinnie is part of a powerful international crime syndicate. He's a nice guy, and I admit that freely. The dude is pretty solid. But his family dragged him into a business that is fairly violent. If you googled him at all, you know about how his father's restaurant got shot the fuck up. Well, that was some gangland shit. And low and behold, when Vinnie movies to my formerly quiet little town, more gangland shit starts happening. Go figure.”
“Not to say that gangland shit didn't happen every once in a while. But it was every once in a great while,” Brian said, speaking for the first time. “But then Vinnie shows up and everyone has something to prove.”
“Vinnie comes to town and wants a piece of the pie,” James said. “Or I should say that his family sent him to town and now he wants a piece of the pay. That's probably a lot more accurate to what's going on. And now that he's here, he's opened up a casino, and that's going decently. He's also moved into human trafficking, and then out of human trafficking after we almost pinched him on it.”