Spanish Dagger

by Susan Wittig Albert

  Blackie’s face was taut when he looked at Sheila, and she was instantly tense. I felt an immediate compassion for both of them. Blackie and Sheila had been engaged for nearly two years, in an off-and-on fashion. Sheila loved him, but couldn’t make up her mind whether she cared enough to exchange her freedom for commitment, a dilemma I fully understood, having experienced it for myself. And she had another reason, a good one: a pair of enforcement careers in the same family makes for a difficult balance, especially when one person holds an elective office and the other is appointed.

  Last October, Blackie got tired of the uncertainty. He came to the conclusion that it was a lost cause—that Sheila was not going to marry him, and it was time to call it quits. “I’m a marrying man,” he’d said to me. “I want a wife. I want a home. I want Sheila, but if she doesn’t want me, I’ll find somebody who does.” He thought he had—the woman who was hired to develop the forensic anthropology program at CTSU. But that didn’t work out, either. The “bone doctor,” as people called her, is gone, and Blackie is still looking. Sheila, on the other hand, remains married to her job. It’s hard to say whether she’s happy. As I said, she keeps her feelings to herself.

  Blackie was looking around. “Everything okay here, China?” he asked. “I picked up the dispatch. I knew that McQuaid was over in Houston, so I thought I’d better stop by and see if you needed anything.” He touched the bill of his cap. “Evenin’, Chief.”

  “Hello, Sheriff,” Sheila said quietly.

  “Everything’s fine,” I said. “Carl Martin just picked up Tyson. You heard what happened?”

  “Martin called it in,” Blackie said. “Man claims to be a narcotics task-force agent, undercover.” He looked at Sheila, his tone neutral. “That right?”

  “I’m checking it out,” Sheila replied, “but I have my doubts. I don’t know how, yet, but I figure he’s connected to both the Fowler and the Sanchez murders. Sounded to me like something might be coming down tonight, but he wouldn’t say what. I’d appreciate it if you could keep him in custody until we find out what’s going on.”

  “Yeah, sure. Whatever you need. Happy to help.”

  “I’m glad you’re here, Blackie,” I said. “I was about to show Sheila something. You’ll probably find it interesting, too.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Blackie said.

  Blackie Blackwell is a careful, by-the-book lawman who wears his uniforms neatly pressed and his sandy hair cut regulation-style. He has a sense of humor, but it’s buried so deep under his sheriff’s persona that it’s sometimes hard to find. His intelligence, care, and compassion, however, are all right there on the surface. I’m glad to report that he was reelected last fall, defeating a militia-type challenger who wants to see armed citizens riding around the county in unmarked cars to defend the homeland against terrorism. The margin of victory wasn’t as comfortable as those of us who worked on his campaign might’ve hoped. But Adams County is safe from the militia for another four years.

  With Rambo tagging at my heels, I led Sheila and Blackie to the place where I had stashed the yucca pots on our neighbor’s side of the stone fence that borders our lane, about twenty yards from Tyson’s van. For obvious reasons, I hadn’t wanted the pots on the property. As I drove up the lane on my way home that evening, I had stopped, taken them out of the trunk, and lined them up on the back side of the fence, well out of sight. Our neighbor has a couple of thousand acres and lives in Austin. He’d never know that he’d been temporarily guilty of possessing enough cocaine to get him put away for twenty years.

  I retrieved my garden gloves from behind the fence, put them on, and hoisted the pots back over onto our property. As I did, Rambo came suddenly alert. His eyes brightened, his nose twitched, his whole body tensed. As we watched, bemused, he sniffed the air, then got down to business, sniffing first one pot and then the other three. And then, with a final, definitive whuff, he put his nose to one of the yuccas and lay down beside it. He looked up at me alertly, as if to say, Pay attention now. This is important.

  “I’ll be damned,” Sheila said softly. “A sniffer dog.”

  “That’s what it looks like, all right,” Blackie said admiringly. “Where’d you get this guy, China?”

  “He belonged to Colin.” Still wearing my gloves, I reached down and tipped the yucca out of the pot. “Okay, Rambo. Let’s see how good you are.”

  He was good. We were looking down at the Baggie half-hidden among the fibrous roots of the yucca. “Super dog, Rambo,” I said, bending over to ruffle his fur. He lifted his head and licked my ear.

  “Amazing,” Sheila said, hands on hips. “Rambo, I take it all back. You are one damn fine dog.”

  “Sure looks like dope,” Blackie said, kneeling down for a better look. “You never know, though, until it’s been tested. Could be gypsum, talcum, chalk.”

  “Rambo thinks it’s dope,” I said. “But maybe somebody had better test him. Just to see what he’s capable of.” I gave him an appraising look and he grinned at me, eyebrows up, eyes shining, the picture of smug Rottweiler achievement. “Attack dog, drug-sniffing dog, who knows what else. Cross-trained as a cadaver dog, maybe?”

  I was joking, but Sheila took me seriously.

  “You think? Yeah. Let’s get him tested. If Ruby would part with him, and if he’s as good as he seems, I could put him to work for the department. We need a K-9 program, but we don’t have the money.”

  “Ruby?” Blackie asked, straightening up. “How did she get into this?”

  “She says she’s going to adopt him,” I said. “But Rambo might be happier if he had a job to do. If he lived with Ruby, he’d have nothing to do but lie around all day, waiting for her to get home.”

  The yucca was evidence in Sheila’s investigation into Colin’s murder, so we loaded the pots into the black Ford. “I know you’re going to explain what those other yuccas were doing in the trunk of your Toyota,” she said. “The ones Tyson was looking at.” To Blackie, she added, “I thought for a minute you might have to arrest China for possession.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Oh, yeah?”

  “Those weren’t yuccas,” I said. “They’re tequila agaves. When Sonora first opened, I bought—”

  “Tequila agave?” Blackie asked, frowning.

  “The plant that produces tequila. It’s been throwing off pups. When I got home this evening—”

  “Pups?” Sheila stared at me, then down at Rambo.

  “Not that kind,” I said patiently. “Agave offshoots are called pups. I’ve been potting them up for sale, in five-gallon black plastic pots. When I got home this evening, I stashed the yuccas behind the stone fence, and put the agaves in my trunk. To an experienced eye, agaves and yuccas look nothing alike, but if Tyson showed up, I thought the agaves might fool him.”

  “Fooled me.” Sheila looked at her watch. “Ten twenty. If I want to get this stuff processed tonight, I’d better be going.” She scowled. “Damn it, I wish I could have forced Tyson to tell us what he had on tap for tonight.”

  “You guys have ten minutes for a cappuccino, don’t you?” I said. “Caramba café.” This is the frothy, frosty after-dinner Mexican coffee that McQuaid and I like so much. We always served it to Blackie and Sheila, back in the days when they were together.

  “Sounds great,” Blackie said heartily. “I’ll take you up on that.” When Sheila hesitated, he slung his arm around her shoulders. “Lighten up, Chief,” he said in a tone of friendly camaraderie. “You can spare the time for a cappuccino with old friends, can’t you?”

  Sheila gave him a game smile. “Sure,” she said, subdued. “Yeah. Fine.”

  I shut Rambo into the dog run and went inside to explain to Howard Cosell, whose nose was badly out of joint, why he hadn’t been allowed outside to join in the fun. I was lighting the burner under the kettle when I saw the blinking red light on the answering machine. I hit the button and heard a woman on the other end of the line. She sounded out of breath. She sounded scared.
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br />   “China, it’s Betty,” she said. “I need your help. Please.” She lowered her voice to a whisper as if she was afraid of being overheard, but I could still hear the desperation. “It’s about…it’s my son. Ricky. I’m afraid for him. So afraid.”

  She stopped, sucked in her breath, and was momentarily silent, as if she had turned to listen to something. “They’re coming tonight.” The words began to tumble out raggedly, faster and faster. “I’m in the office here at the shop. I was cleaning up after—The police told me I could clean up the blood and straighten things out. Somebody called, a man. He thought I was Lucita. He said the truck was coming at eleven thirty tonight, here. And Ricky is…Allan has—I don’t know what to do.”

  There was a sudden fearful intake of breath, and then a click. The connection was broken.

  Sheila and Blackie had come into the kitchen just as the message began. “Play it again,” Sheila commanded tersely.

  I hit the Replay button. The three of us listened in silence, Sheila with a fierce concentration, Blackie with puzzlement, and I with a cold certainty in my stomach.

  “What’s this about?” Blackie asked, frowning, when the tape was finished.

  “A drug delivery,” I said bleakly, “coming to the Sonora Nursery. Tonight. The caller is one of the owners, Betty Conrad. Ricky is her son. Allan, her husband, is the other owner.”

  I thought of the Conrads’ hard work, of the way they had remade Wanda’s failing business from nothing into something special, successful, admirable. I thought of the way they worked together, of Allan’s skilled plantsmanship, of Betty’s pride in her children. I thought of the pots in Colin’s yard, and where Sonora’s specialty plants were coming from, and understood, or thought I did, what was happening here. Understood, and was swept by a wave of sadness so strong that it nearly knocked the breath out of me.

  Sheila turned to Blackie. “I don’t have the manpower to handle this. Can you give me some help?”

  He considered briefly. “Let’s divide up. You interdict the truck. I’ll handle the situation at the nursery.”

  “That’ll work,” Sheila said. She frowned, going over the steps in her mind. “I’ll set up a roadblock at King and Feldman. Three cars ought to do it. But what we really need is to identify—” She looked at me. “Think Rambo can handle this?”

  She didn’t have to spell it out. I turned off the burner and took down the leash hanging beside the door. “If he can, he’ll save us a lot of work.” As an afterthought, I reached for my poncho.

  Sheila gave me a dry look. “I suppose you think you’re riding along as his handler.”

  “You got it,” I replied. Seeing the leash and hearing the word ride, Howard scrambled excitedly to his feet. “Howard, old buddy, you’re staying here,” I said. “This is a job for a trained nose.” I gave him a dog biscuit. He took it grudgingly—biscuits are good, but a ride is better—and retired to his basket beside the stove, grumbling that his nose was trained: he could smell a squirrel halfway across the county.

  “You’ll have to waive liability,” Sheila said, as we went out the door and I locked it behind us.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sure. I waive liability.”

  She appealed to Blackie. “You heard that, right? Civilian waives liability, insists on being involved in police business.”

  “I heard it,” he said over his shoulder, already headed for his car. “But don’t let her get shot up, or McQuaid will have your hide. Let’s roll.”

  And then I went to get Rambo, who had just been attached to the K-9 Unit. Pecan Springs PD’s only drug-sniffing attack dog, on his first assignment.

  I hoped that Colin Fowler would have been proud.

  I hoped that Betty Conrad would not regret what she had done.

  THERE’S only one road to Sonora. With Rambo in the backseat, panting with happy excitement at the idea of yet another ride, I drove Sheila’s borrowed car while she got on her cell phone, setting up a roadblock at the corner of King and Feldman. Feldman is a main feeder road that heads east off I-35, and King is the north-south road to the nursery. The intersection is about two miles east of the interstate.

  There has never been much after-hours truck traffic in the Pecan Springs area, but things are changing. In fact, a warehouse depot recently opened up on the east side of King. We saw five or six trucks—eighteen-wheelers and smaller delivery trucks—as we drove along Feldman. I could hear Sheila on the phone, sketching out the plan. Three squad cars, two officers each—with Sheila and me, we’d be eight. Nine, counting Rambo.

  The first squad car, a lookout, would be concealed behind a sign on the east side of King just past the warehouse depot, watching for trucks heading north on King. Since Sonora was the only commercial business out that way, the traffic should be minimal. When an eighteen-wheeler was spotted, the first car would radio ahead to the second, which would pull out and block the road. The officers would flag down the truck, while the third car would pull in behind the stopped vehicle and apprehend the driver and anyone with him. The officers in the second and third cars joined Sheila and me—and Rambo—for a search of the truck.

  I had raised my share of challenges against police searches of vehicles in my career as a criminal defense lawyer, but this was the first time I’d been on the other side of the legal fence. I knew the rules. The Fourth Amendment requires that searches and seizures be “reasonable.” A search or seizure is ordinarily reasonable when there is individualized suspicion of wrongdoing.

  And individualized suspicion was exactly what we had. Lucita Sanchez had told Colin that the shipment was coming in on I-35, in an eighteen-wheeler, and had left him the pots of yucca, to show him how it would be packed. Betty had said it was due in at eleven thirty. Whether we stopped two trucks or twenty, any court would uphold tonight’s search and seizure as legal. Once a vehicle was stopped, we wouldn’t have any trouble determining whether it was carrying contraband—that is, if Rambo’s earlier identification of the cocaine had not been a fluke. If Rambo did his job, and if there was no trouble with the driver, the bust should go down smoothly and without incident.

  Things didn’t turn out quite that way, of course. It started to rain hard just as we set up the cars. Even though it was late, there were plenty of vehicles coming off Feldman and heading north on King. A number of cars went past, three or four pickups, and several SUVs. Then we got a heads-up from the first squad car and flagged down a tractor-trailer rig whose driver said he was on his way home at the end of a long day on the road. He was not happy about being asked to stand beside his truck while Rambo circled it, sniffing. The dog didn’t act as if he was on to anything, but Sheila ordered the driver to open up the trailer anyway, just to be sure. It was empty. The driver, muttering a curse under his breath, rolled on.

  The second truck that came along was not an eighteen-wheeler, but Sheila ordered it stopped anyway, just in case. It turned out to be a rented vehicle loaded with the driver’s furniture, headed for a new house a couple of blocks away. Rambo gave it an all-clear. Sheila confirmed to her own satisfaction that it looked to be filled with furniture, and radioed a warrant check against the driver’s license. He came up clean, too, and she sent him on his way.

  At eleven forty-five, Sheila looked at me, her face taut in the light reflected from the dash. “Fifteen minutes late.”

  “Yeah,” I said comfortingly. “But they’re coming up from the border, and it’s raining. It’s hard to fix a time of arrival with any precision.”

  She punched in Blackie’s cell number. “All set?” she asked, when he answered.

  “All set. Seven deputies, stationed around the perimeter. Got anything yet?”

  “Negative. I’ll let you know.”

  “Roger. Out.”

  I sat back against the seat, thinking about Sheila and Blackie. They had been intensely involved for almost two years, romantically, sexually. But to hear their voices, flat and expressionless, you’d think they were two strangers. They were pros,
both of them. It was a shame they couldn’t work out their differences.

  The radio crackled to life at eleven fifty-five, the cop in the first squad car reporting an eighteen-wheeler just passing the warehouse depot, moving fast on the rainy street. The flagman stepped off the curb swinging his flashlight, and after what seemed like a very long time, the truck slowed and stopped. The driver, in his twenties, got out and stood, shielding his eyes against the glare of the squad car’s headlights. The tractor was licensed in Arizona, the trailer in New Mexico, the driver in Mexico. He spoke broken English. He was alone.

  Rambo got to work, and if I’d had any doubts about his credentials, they were immediately erased. He was halfway around the rig, at the left rear wheels, when he began to whine, low in his throat, and the fur stood up along his spine. He pulled at the leash, tugging me to the back of the truck.

  The driver was brought around to the back and told to open the double doors. “Only plants,” he said, frowning. “Only plants in here. Yuccas. Inspected when I crossed the border, all legal.”

  “Right,” Sheila said softly. “If it’s all legal, there shouldn’t be any problem, should there?” Her voice hardened. “Open up, sir. Now.”

  The driver complied. The doors swung open and three powerful flashlights illuminated the load. Tiers of metal shelves, three feet wide, were stacked floor to ceiling on either side of a narrow aisle. On the shelves were rows of five-gallon pots. I couldn’t see all of them, of course, but those I could see were filled with yuccas, closely packed and kept from sliding off the shelves by restraining metal bars. There were hundreds of pots, and Rambo was going nuts. I dropped the leash, an officer gave the dog a boost, and he scrambled into the trailer. He sniffed at one pot on the bottom row, then another, and then, with a whuffle and a grunt, dropped flat to the floor and put his muzzle on his paws.

  “Check it out,” Sheila said to the officer, who leaped into the truck and tipped a yucca out of its pot.