Other Works
By James Carlos Blake
Novels
The House of Wolfe
The Rules of Wolfe
Country of the Bad Wolfes
The Killings of Stanley Ketchel
Handsome Harry
Under the Skin
A World of Thieves
Wildwood Boys
Red Grass River
In the Rogue Blood
The Friends of Pancho Villa
The Pistoleer
Collection
Borderlands
The Ways of
Wolfe
A Border noir
James Carlos Blake
Copyright © 2017 by James Carlos Blake
Cover design by Daniel Rembert
Cover photograph © Marcus Bastel/Millennium Images UK
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove Atlantic, 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or [email protected].
Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America
First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition: September 2017
FIRST EDITION
ISBN 978-0-8021-2577-4
eISBN 978-0-8021-8941-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available for this title.
The Mysterious Press
an imprint of Grove Atlantic
154 West 14th Street
New York, NY 10011
Distributed by Publishers Group West
groveatlantic.com
17 18 19 20 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
In memory of
JAMES DICKERT,
DONALD R. WYLY, JR.,
and
THOMAS E. SANDERS.
Great teachers all.
The past is the present … It’s the future, too. We all try to lie our way out of that but life won’t let us.
—Eugene O’Neill
These violent delights have violent ends.
—William Shakespeare
All men should strive to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.
—James Thurber
Who is not of our ways is our enemy.
—Anonymous
Table of Contents
Cover
Other Works by James Carlos Blake
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Part One: Charles Zanco Prison Unit, Texas 2008
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Part Two: Fugitives
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Part Three: Reckonings
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
PROLOGUE
Dallas, Texas. 1984
Axel Wolfe stole a white Ford Fairmont out of the zoo parking lot, then followed Duro’s black Mustang up to I-30 and then eastward a few miles to an exit near a shopping mall. They left the Mustang in the next-to-last row at the rear of the mall’s outdoor lot, then took a busy street north for several miles before turning off into a small commercial plaza consisting of a single L-shaped one-story building housing a dozen small businesses, including a jewelry shop. It was twenty past nine and the bright morning was heating up fast on a day predicted to hit the high nineties and maybe break a hundred.
They parked next to a row of shrubbery near the jeweler’s—which stood in the middle of the long side of the L layout, its venetian blind down and the slats closed—then went to the Mexican café at the end of the short side of the L and sat in a window booth. All three of them wore light sport jackets. Axel and Billy also wore plain-lens eyeglasses, Axel a false mustache, Billy a plastic-strip bandage across the bridge of his nose. Duro wore sunglasses he did not remove.
They had a clear view of the jeweler’s, about sixty feet from the café on a diagonal line through the parking lot. They ordered coffee from the young waitress and when she brought it they insisted on paying the tab and tipping her then and there. To save time, Duro told her, because they were waiting for a pager notice from a client and would have to hurry off as soon as they received it. He withdrew a laminated bar graph from an expandable attaché case and they affected a relaxed review of it as they chatted in low voice.
The case also held eight sets of plastic flex cuffs, a wide roll of duct tape, and a pair of loaded 9mm Browning pistols fitted with suppressors. Brandished indoors, such accessorized pistols look the size of small cannons, the better to induce unhesitant cooperation. A third Browning, sans silencer, lay under a folded newspaper on the front seat of the Fairmont. Each man carried two extra fully loaded magazines.
They sipped their coffee. No one entered or exited the jeweler’s, and its blinds stayed down. A few minutes before ten a yellow Camaro pulled into the lot and parked a few cars over from theirs. The two men in it got out—both in sunglasses, jeans, boots, loose baggy shirts, one of them carrying a slim black document pouch—and went into the jewelry shop.
They slid out of the booth and exited the café with casual dispatch, Billy and Duro bearing toward the jeweler’s, Axel toward the Fairmont. At the shop’s door, Duro unzipped the briefcase and he and Billy furtively withdrew the Brownings, then went inside. A
xel got in the Fairmont and cranked it up and turned on the air conditioner. He took off his jacket and tossed it on the backseat, then lowered the car window and removed his mustache and flung it into the shrubs. He broke the fake glasses in two and wiped the lens on each half with his shirt and flung the glasses into the shrubs too and raised the window. A station wagon pulled into the lot and parked and a man got out and went into a locksmith’s shop. A trio of gesticulating girls came out of a nail salon and got in a small sedan and departed. Now there was no activity at all in the plaza. No one in view. Time seemed arrested. He fingered the pistol under the newspaper.
Then out they came, Duro in the lead, the briefcase under an arm and hiding his gun hand, Billy right behind him and shutting the door as he exited, holding his gun under his jacket, both of them moving with the same cool briskness as before. Billy got in the back and Duro slid into the shotgun seat. Axel backed out, drove up to the exit, and melded into traffic.
“We’re rich!” Billy Capp cried, flinging his mustache and glasses out the window and then closing it. “God damn if we ain’t!”
“They’re standing and talking at the counter, and you shoulda seen their faces, all of them—the old jeweler and his guard and the two carriers! Their eyes got this big when we come in pointing the pieces at them.” Billy was telling Axel about it as they headed back to the mall. “Duro says hands up, and every hand just flew up. I keep them covered and Duro takes their pieces and sticks them in the briefcase. Pouch was right there on the counter and he checks to see the bonds are there, sticks it in the briefcase too. Tells everybody get on the floor and for me to shoot anybody even looks like he’s thinking to try something. Cuffs them hands and feet, and then zip-zip-zip, gags them with the tape. Tells one of the carriers he’s left his wrist cuffs loose enough he oughta be able to work free in ten, fifteen minutes if he puts his mind to it, And we were out of there! Man, oh man, went like clockwork! Feel like goddamn Dillinger!”
The shopping center parking lot was shimmering with heat and packed with cars on this day before the July Fourth holiday. It was fenced all the way around except at the center’s main entrance and had various entry-exit gates. The sun was glaring off everything of glass, of chrome. They turned in to the parking lane where they’d left Duro’s car and were almost to it when a small red sports car shot rearward out of a space directly in front of them. Axel braked hard but couldn’t avoid bashing into it.
“Son of a bitch!” Duro said.
Axel backed up a few feet and stopped as the driver stormed out—a kid, tall and skinny—shouting, “Jesus fucking Christ!” He came to the rear of his car and furiously regarded the broken taillight and dented fender. It was a Porsche 911 Coupe with a Southern Methodist University decal in the back window. There wasn’t enough room to drive around it. The kid glared at him and yelled, “Asshole! Look what you did!” A pretty girl with a ponytail emerged from the passenger side and stood there, squinting against the brightness.
“Hell with this,” Duro said, opening his door. “Let’s hoof it to my car.”
“He’ll follow and get your tag,” Axel said. “Get a good look at us.”
Duro yanked the door shut. “Then back out into the cross lane and—”
“Hey!” the kid yelled. “Hey! Over here!” He was looking past them and waving his arms over his head.
They turned and saw the police cruiser idling on the cross lane behind them. The sunglassed driver the only occupant. He raised a radio handset to his mouth.
“Of all the shit luck,” Billy said. “What’s—”
“He’s checking the plate,” Axel said. “Might’ve been reported right after we took it.”
“Come on!” the kid yelled, beckoning the cop.
The cruiser backed up and then slowly turned into their lane and stopped about fifteen feet from them. The cop was talking on the radio.
“What the hell, man?” the kid said, shrugging at the cop, palms up.
There was a crackle from the cruiser’s activated megaphone. “Everyone in the white car! Exit the vehicle now! Keep your hands where I can see them!”
“He made us,” Duro said. “Go!”
Axel goosed the Fairmont and rammed the right rear of the Porsche, knocking it out of their way and into an adjacent car with a crash of metal and glass, the girl jumping away with a shriek.
The cop’s roof lights came ablaze and the cruiser leaped after them as Axel sped to the end of the parking lane and wheeled onto the lot’s perimeter road, tires screeching, then raced along the flanking chain-link fence. There were few cars parked in this farthest reach of the expansive lot. No people in view.
“Get us lost in all them cars in the middle of the lot,” Duro yelled. “We’ll scoot out and mix with the crowd, sneak back to my car.”
“Not with this fucker on our ass!” Billy yelled, looking out the rear window as the cruiser swung into Axel’s rearview mirror. The cop was driving with one hand and holding the handset to his mouth with the other.
Duro yelled, “Go for the engine block!” and leaned out the window and Axel heard the whamp-whamp-whamp of the suppressed gunshots, and then Billy was shooting from his window too.
The cruiser dropped back as if a tow rope had been severed, steam billowing from under its hood.
“Yow! We hit something!” Billy said.
The cop braked to a halt and jumped out, drawing his revolver and aiming it two-handed as Axel slowed to make a tight left into a lane of parked cars and void of people. Almost all in the same instant, he heard the cop’s two shots and the two thunks against the door and felt a jolt in his hip and yipped. Then they were out of the cop’s view and he slowed the Fairmont and turned right at the next cross lane.
“You hit?” Billy said.
“Okay! I’m okay!” Axel said.
He eased into a parking lane where a scattering of people were heading toward the mall building or returning to their cars, a few looking around, maybe having heard the cop’s gunshots but not comprehending what they were.
They slowly wove from parking lane to parking lane toward the center of the lot, into densely packed rows of vehicles and heavier pedestrian traffic, Axel’s hip throbbing. There was a siren in the distance.
“Gonna be cops all over real quick,” Billy said. “Let’s bail right here.”
“No,” Duro said. “We leave this barge blocking the lane, the guy behind us’ll get pissed and start a racket, attract attention. Gotta park it.”
The next lane Axel turned into was also jammed with parked cars but was bare of pedestrians. “There!” Duro said. A car was backing out of a space just ahead. More sirens now, growing louder. More people looking around, holding shopping bags, standing at pushcarts, jabbering at each other.
Axel wheeled into the vacated spot and cut off the engine and Duro and Billy got out, Duro with the briefcase again hiding the Browning in his hand. Billy’s pistol was in his waistband under his jacket. Axel stepped out and almost fell at the stab of pain in his hip. The bloodstain was dark and he pulled out his shirttail to cover it. They were about a dozen rows from where the Mustang was. Duro and Billy sidled over near a handful of people cutting through the parked cars, pushing their carts and walking fast, one of them saying there must’ve been a terrible accident nearby. Jaw clenched, Axel limped ahead, sopping with sweat.
A patrol car with roof lights flashing rolled slowly into view in the cross lane to their right, the two cops in it checking both ways. Looking for the Fairmont, Axel thought, and paused to peer all about as if in search of his own vehicle. His hand instinctively eased to his waist for the reassurance of the Browning and he realized he’d left it in the car. The cop car moved on and Axel hobbled after Duro and Billy, wincing at every step. They wended through rows of vehicles, staying close to one group of shoppers or another in order to seem part of them. When Axel came abreast of a Latino family unloading goods from shopping carts into a van, a pair of boys in Texas Rangers baseball caps gaped at him�
�at his dripping face, at the blood now staining his pants below the shirt hem. Axel hurried past them, walking faster, gritting his teeth. Sirens closing in from every direction.
They were but two rows from the one with the Mustang when he stumbled on a jut of asphalt and fell beside a parked pickup. He managed to sit up but couldn’t stand. “Billy!” he cried.
Billy glanced back and halted and seemed bewildered to see him on the ground. Duro stopped and looked back too. Axel raised his hand toward Billy and said, “Pull me up, damn it! I can walk—just haul me up!”
Billy took a step toward him and then turned and saw Duro hurrying away into the next row of cars. He looked back at Axel and his outstretched hand. Then spun around and hurried after Duro.
Axel was trying to pull himself up by the pickup’s door handle when the boys in the Rangers caps came running around the back of the truck, saw him, and stopped short.
“Here!” one yelled, pointing at him. “Right here!”
He let go of the handle and slumped against the truck door.
The boys jumped aside as a massive cop in full SWAT gear came stomping past them, eyes wide, teeth bared, and put the muzzle of his shotgun in Axel’s face, shouting, “Gimme a reason! Gimme a reason!”
There were two police guards posted at the door of his hospital room when he was wheeled in from recovery, still a little groggy. Somebody in plain clothes took pictures of him with a small camera and hastened away. A while later, a pair of detectives showed up. One of them read Axel his rights and then did all the talking. He said they had identified him by way of his prints on a license-to-carry form. Son of a hotshot criminal lawyer in Brownsville and he was gonna need daddy’s help for sure.
A jewelry store in West Dallas had been held up that morning and the robbers made off with a load of gems valued at forty thousand dollars. Three perpetrators: a black-and-white stickup team and a white driver. The stickup guys wore dark glasses, but the white guy took his off when he got outside and the jeweler and a customer got a look at him through the window. They’d been shown Axel’s photo and were leaning toward a positive ID. They only glimpsed the getaway vehicle but were in agreement it was a four-door of light color, as was the stolen Fairmont Axel crashed into the college kid’s car at an eastside mall where he and his partners had stashed another getaway car.
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