Pierce held up his fat hands. His rings glittered in the parking lot lights. It was raining harder. “For old times, I’ll give you a third option, Able,” Walt Pierce said. “Stand down. Step aside.”
Able blinked. “What?”
“You heard me,” Walt said. “You stand down and I won’t burn you and that boy you dote over.”
FIFTY ONE
“Mr. O’Hara?”
She was in her midtwenties. Pale blond hair, Nordic good looks. Very poised. Shawn thought the stranger standing in his hospital room’s doorway might constitute his new physical ideal for women. No more fucking black-haired, black-eyed Mexican cunts for him.
The woman wore a tailored cream skirt and matching jacket over a white blouse. She had her hair pulled back and was slender and tall. She clutched a leather briefcase in both hands in front of her. Shawn could imagine her nude—busty (probably implants), wasp waist and a good ass. Probably porn-star smooth down there. Shawn wondered if he was getting hard. With all the Vicodin, it was tough to tell much of anything going on with his body lately.
She said, “I’m Tracey Blair. I’m a human resources specialist for Buxton Publishing. I understand you can’t talk so I’ll do that and try to keep it brief, Mr. O’Hara.” She scowled, taking in his condition. She was the first pretty woman to see him since his beating. The look in her eyes wasn’t a good omen for the future, Shawn thought.
Tracey Blair said, “The reporter who is filling in for you is under instruction to vet all copy for the week’s coming edition through an editor back at corporate. So when you sent your account of your own beating and your proposed editorial over last night, they both were passed along by her to the executive editor.”
She smiled sadly, looking earnestly into Shawn’s eyes. “I’m afraid that the content and statements contained in both items were of such a charged quality—and of what the executive editor regarded as extremely poor taste and poor judgment—as to cast doubt on your news judgment and continued suitability as an information gatherer for Buxton Publishing. We’ve therefore elected to end your term of employment, Mr. O’Hara. I’m sorry. Understanding your unfortunate situation, we’ll keep you on payroll through the end of the month. We’ll also extend you six weeks’ severance. Your insurance will lapse ninety days after that date. So you might want to inform your doctors of that so they can push ahead with any procedures or surgeries while you still retain coverage. I should mention there were some recent revisions to our corporate dental plan. Those changes hadn’t yet been announced prior to your attack. I mention this because it is possible that the dental implants I’ve seen ordered for you may not be covered under the new plan. We’re still checking into that. We’ll inform your physicians of the outcome there so you can make a decision about whether to go ahead if it’s to come out of your own pocket. They’re quite expensive.”
Tracey placed a packet on the tray table next to Shawn’s bed. “Everything is explained in there,” she said. “You’ll need to sign those and return them within fourteen business days if you accept terms. My e-mail address is also in there, as you can’t yet speak. We’ll try to rectify any concerns or details via e-mail.” She took a step closer. “I’m sure everyone at Buxton joins me in wishing you a fast and full recovery, Mr. O’Hara. These things are never easy for anybody. I appreciate you taking it so well.”
Shawn shrugged. What the fuck could he say to that? What would he say to that if he were even capable of speaking?
The human resources specialist smiled and fidgeted with the handle of her leather briefcase. “This is my first time handling a termination. I was nauseous all last night. My boyfriend cooked dinner and I wrecked it with my sour stomach. But this wasn’t so bad. I just want to personally thank you for making this so professional, Shawn. I really appreciate that.”
Dumbfounded, Shawn waved her out with his right hand, confused by her sudden frown back at him. He looked at his right hand. Splinted and bandaged as it was, it looked like Shawn was perpetually flipping the bird. Sorry, Tracey. Well, fuck that haughty cunt sideways, anyway. He listened to her heel taps fade down the hallway.
Fuck. Unemployed. A gimp with maybe no prospect for new teeth.
Shawn was beginning to see this horrible future for himself. He’d end up living with his mother in Chicago. He’d limp on and off el-trains because his fucked-up knee would never allow him to drive again. He’d end up taking low-tier freelance assignments while looking for some other shitty weekly newspaper gig. Only fat or plain chicks would take him to their beds and those maybe in pity.
Fuck. The doctor had told Shawn that Tuesday morning they’d maybe let him spend a few hours in a motorized wheelchair. The chair would allow Shawn to operate it with his left hand. Shawn looked over at Troy Marshall’s empty bed. Troy was in his own rehab session—trying to build back up some muscle in his punctured leg.
If Shawn went mobile, he could wait for Troy to sleep or go to rehab. Then Shawn could lay hands on the deputy’s gun. Shawn could blow a hole out of the shitty life those fucking Mexicans had dealt him. He felt a sudden kinship with his father. Saw now how easily a man could be driven in that direction. Shawn thought about all that some more. The more he mulled suicide, the more he leaned toward the option.
But Troy was scheduled to remain hospitalized a few more days. Shawn had time to think about it some more.
Time to weigh options; time to maybe settle some scores before.
* * *
Tell’s phone was ringing. He struggled out of sleep and checked the clock: nine A.M.
God, he should have been up and at work hours ago. He lifted the receiver, said, “Lyon.”
“Boss? We were worried.” Billy Davis.
Tell said, “I just overslept. Too much heat and walking at that damned festival yesterday.” Too much of everything, for too long, he might have added.
Billy said bitterly, “He goddamn quit, boss. He fucking kicked it in. Effective immediately.”
Tell rubbed sleep from his eyes and sat up in bed. “Who? Who quit?”
“Able Hawk resigned as Horton County sheriff this morning. Left us with our dicks in the wind.”
AGUILA DEL
NORTE
FIFTY TWO
Able looked sourly at his cell phone’s missed calls menu. Many, many of the calls that had gone unreturned or unanswered were from his various deputies. DeeDee had called seven times. The girl reporter who had replaced Shawn O’Hara had called several times too; he recognized her name from her by-lines in the Recorder.
And there had been many, many calls from Tell Lyon.
By agreement with Walt Pierce, Able couldn’t contact any of them—none of his ex-deputies or sheriff’s office flunkies. And particularly not Tell Lyon. His agreed-upon silence bought Able Walt Pierce’s silence and suppression of the evidence he held against Amos and Able for their felonious identification scam. Combined fines would likely reach two hundred grand. Both would be hung out to dry, because of the intent to obscure the recipients’ illegal statuses. Hell, that latter could be treated as a crime of aiding terrorism in the hands of the right wrong-headed legal types, just as Tell and Walt had warned. Able would die in prison, no question.
But Lyon: that betrayal ate at Able’s conscience the worst. He’d let Lyon set himself up as a target and now he wouldn’t have Lyon’s back as he’d promised to. He couldn’t even extend to Lyon his promised surveillance.
Surveillance.
That sparked Able’s anger afresh. Walt, making it clear that Able was now his bitch, had informed him that the Vale County Sheriff’s Office was running an indefinite tap on Hawk’s home phone. Able figured that probably extended to his cell phone.
An unmarked car had, until the last hour or so, been parked out front. Able suspected the one in the car, another of Walt’s flunkies, was probably equipped with a “big ear”—one of those portable eavesdropping gizmos that allow cops to listen through walls.
The only upside to Able’s morning was that
Amos was in school. Amos wouldn’t have heard yet that his grandfather had stepped down as Horton County sheriff. It would be a few more hours until Able had to field all of Amos’s impossible-to-answer questions as to why he’d resigned his post. And there was that other dark prospect: Amos had already revealed himself ready to sacrifice himself when he thought Tell Lyon would press the case against them for the false IDs. He might try to do the same in the face of Walt’s threats.
Absent Amos and any hard questions, Sofia was more than taking up the slack.
“I can’t talk about it,” Able told her again. He felt like he was saying that to her over and over.
He couldn’t talk about it without violating his pledge of silence to Walt Pierce. But Able was looking for loopholes—to at least find some way to get even a one-way dialogue going with Tell in order to warn Lyon of his precarious position and what he knew about Walt.
Sofia pressed while he listened, half-distracted. She said, “Does this all have something to do with Thalia? Is that what it is, Able?”
“I can’t talk about that,” he said. He was standing at the fireplace mantel. There was a framed picture of Thalia there now, alongside those of his daughter and his dead wife.
“Then it must be so,” Sofia said. “You would have simply said ‘no,’ otherwise.”
“Sofia …”
“Talk to me, Able. Let me help you, por favor.”
“I can’t.”
“Then talk to Tell Lyon. Let him help you. He’s a good man. He cares about you.”
“I can’t do that, either.”
“Why? Tell Lyon told me that you are allies.”
“We are. We were.”
“What’s changed, Able? What has happened? Please trust me to tell me. I’ll talk to Tell Lyon if you can’t bring yourself to.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Then help me understand how it is. Help me understand why things are the way they are.”
Able looked around for his car keys. He slipped the Impala’s keys in his pocket. “I’ve got to clear my head. I’m going for a drive.”
Evelia heard the jingle of his keys and ran into the kitchen. She grabbed his leg and held tight. She said, “Pap-Paw Hawk, can I come?”
He smoothed her hair, smiling down at her, surprised at how attached to her he’d already become.
“Pap-Paw has to go out for a while,” Sofia told her granddaughter.
Able considered it. He said, “I’d like to take her with me if you’d let me, Sofia.”
“You’re sure she won’t be a distraction? Particularly now? I mean, as you are now—with all this on your mind?”
“No. She’ll be no distraction. Or, rather, she will be. The good kind.”
The child would also be excellent cover.
“Do you know where you are going?”
“The library,” Able said.
* * *
Tell was driving to headquarters when he heard the news announcement on the radio: Walt Pierce announcing that with the assistance and cooperation of Able Hawk, he would soon assume custody of Jésus Acosta. He would do that just as soon as Shawn’s attacker could be released to a prison infirmary. He was also taking custody of all the other presumed MS-13 members in Horton County’s jail. The other gang members would also be charged with the rapes and murders of Thalia Ruiz, Esmeralda Marquez, Marisol Hernandez and Sonya Lorca.
“We have film of them with their vehicle, a red Isuzu pickup truck, dropping Thalia Ruiz’s body where it was found by them two young Mexicans,” Walt Pierce asserted in a recorded interview.
Tell slammed his fist into the dash.
Goddamn Able Hawk! Was this why Able had gone completely missing? Was it because he’d sold out those damned Mexican gangbangers, and Tell in the process?
With his throbbing hand, Tell picked up his cell phone and called the university professor who had been enhancing the baseball game footage Tell had found implicating Luke Strider.
“Just say it’s fucking ready,” Tell said.
“I’ve seen the news and anticipated your call,” Dan Stack told him. “It’s fucking ready.”
“Is it better than what we had?”
“Much. But that’s relative to next to nothing, you know.”
“You can make out faces now?”
“Faces, no. But race, yes. They’re white, Tell. And you can tell it’s a Dodge Ram—can see that big friggin’ grill. They don’t have grills like that on Isuzus. Someone should tell that to that asshole Walt Pierce.”
“You and I are fixing to do just that, Dan. Make ten or twelve copies, would you?”
“Sure. For who?”
“Media. And please say you’ll be available to stand with me at noon. We’re going to offer our own press conference. Let’s do it at your school—right in the heart of fucking Vale County. Let’s run it through those bastards, down deep.”
Tell called Julie Dexter and asked her to alert area television and print media to his press conference. Billy Davis came on the line.
“What are you planning, skipper?”
“I’m going to show my version of that film to the media, Billy. Put it up on a big-ass screen and let the reporters see it. And I’m going to name Luke Strider as my person of interest in Thalia Ruiz’s rape and murder. We may never make an arrest. We may never have enough for that. But, Billy, there’s nothing’s going to stop me from trying this case in the goddamn sorry media. At least we’ll wreck some careers.”
“Our own,” Billy said sourly.
“Maybe. But Strider’s and Walt Pierce’s for certain. Think of it as getting the first shot off. Now that Able’s off the field, Walt doesn’t have much more than me and all of you close to me to focus on, right?”
* * *
Able frowned to see that his e-mail to Shawn O’Hara had bounced back with the notation, “No such user.”
He checked the e-mail address he’d input against the one printed for Shawn in the New Austin newspaper. They were identical. Strange.
Able took Evelia by the hand and walked to the pay phone in the New Austin Library’s lobby. He called Horton County General Hospital.
It sounded like Shawn’s black nurse—Wendy, if he remembered right—on the line. Able said, “I know Shawn can’t talk yet, but I wondered if you could just get someone to pick up the phone in his room and get it up to his ear so he can listen. It’s urgent I talk with him. Talk to him, I mean. I need to do that right now.”
“Who are you?”
“Able Hawk.”
“Oh, Sheriff! We met the other day.”
Able shook his head. “I remember you.” She had called him sheriff. Wendy must not have heard the news. But given the long hours required of nurses, that was perhaps not surprising. Able was maybe still in the saddle when Wendy started her present shift.
“Good news,” Nurse Wendy said. “We have your man, Mr. Marshall, rooming with Mr. O’Hara. For Shawn’s protection, I mean. You know, since Shawn was attacked in his room the other day.”
Able smiled crookedly. Someone was thinking. He wondered which of his former flunkies had hit on that cost-saving scheme. “Give me the number to that room, or better, can you transfer me?”
“I can transfer you.”
Able thought about his pact with Walt Pierce—his promise to have no contact with his deputies. There was no such thing as being too safe or overcautious with Amos’s ass on the line.
“Transfer the call to the room, if you could,” Able said. “But first I need you to call in there and talk to Troy Marshall, Wendy. Have Troy pass the phone to Shawn and don’t identify me to Troy as the caller, right? Just say it’s official police business if he asks.”
Nurse Wendy said, “Mr. O’Hara won’t be talking back, remember.”
“He doesn’t have to,” Able said. “Shawn just needs to listen.”
There was some jostling of the receiver on the other end. Able said, “Shawn, it’s Hawk. If you’re there, and if you h
ave an ink pen or something like that handy, just tap the mouthpiece so I know you’re there.”
There was a rap. Able held the receiver a little farther from his ear. Evelia looked up at him, impatient. He gave her a “one-minute” finger gesture and fished a sucker from his shirt pocket. He pulled the wrapper from the cherry flavored Dum-Dum and handed it to the little girl.
“Shawn, one tap for yes, two taps for no,” Able said. “Got it?”
One tap.
“Good,” Able said. “You’ve heard I’m out as Horton County sheriff?”
A single tap.
“Yeah,” Able said. “Your work e-mail’s no longer working, so am I right to assume that something’s happened to your job too?”
A single click.
“Fired?”
Click.
“Yeah, well, I’m sorry, kid. I didn’t want to go, either. But that’s another story. I can’t go into that too much, presently. I need a big favor, Shawn. A big favor. I’ve established one of those free Yahoo e-mail accounts for myself.” Able gave Shawn the address.
“You got that, Shawn?”
Click.
“I want you to go to the Net now and register for one of those addresses yourself,” Able said. “Won’t take two minutes. Then e-mail me at that address I just gave you. I’m going to send you a short note back.” Able had already composed a longer personal note and burned it to a disc he was carrying with him. “Feel free to read that note, Shawn. But here’s the favor, partner: I need you to forward that e-mail to Tell Lyon. Do you have his e-mail address?”
Click click.
“Fuck.” Then Able said, “What about Patricia’s?”
A long pause, then a single click—lighter than the rest. Tentative.
“You’re hesitant,” Able said. “Look, I heard about before. About your e-mail to her … about the picture you sent. I understand why you wouldn’t want to mail her for me. But this is everything for all of us, kid. This is our last shot at getting Thalia Ruiz and them other women some justice. And it’s our last shot maybe at making all this grief we’ve endured count for something. A way for you and me to still make a difference. I can’t contact Lyon directly. Once Troy’s out of that room of yours, for keeps, I mean, I promise to come by and explain why. But this is critical now, getting this message to Lyon. Will you do this thing for me, Shawn?”
El Gavilan Page 29