by Ben Rehder
This time, it was Sal who leaped forward, literally vaulting himself over the desk, wrapping his arms around Slaton as the rancher pulled frantically on the trigger. Both men crashed to the ground, Slaton grunting as he landed on his back, a stream of frothy blood rolling from the corner of his mouth. Sal felt a new cut open on his scalp as Slaton slammed the butt of the gun against the crown of Sal’s head with surprising force. Sal grabbed Slaton’s right wrist, shook the gun loose, then gripped the left wrist. Now he had both of Slaton’s wrists pinned to the floor. Before the rancher could begin to struggle, Sal crashed his head against Slaton’s, a classic head-butt, and the rancher was out cold.
Sal rolled off of him and sat, breathing heavily, on the floor, one leg still arching over Slaton’s knees. “What the fuck!” Sal said to himself. He had never been in a brawl like that. Back home, you pop a guy one time in the chin and he’s ready to call it quits. But this old bastard fought like he was possessed by the devil.
Sal worked his way to his feet, got a head rush, and almost fell back to the floor. He squatted there a moment, hands on his knees, and regained his composure.
Finally, he picked up both guns and turned to go clean himself up. Maybe I should call the law, he thought. Wouldn’t that be a switch? The cops coming to my rescue?
Then he heard a noise behind him, the growl again. Sal turned to see Slaton standing, a bloody mess, ready to come at him once more.
“Don’t even think about it,” Sal hissed. He raised his.35 and pointed it. But Sal saw another familiar look on Slaton’s face. A look that said, Sure, I might die today, but I’m gonna take you with me.
With a bone-chilling scream, Slaton lumbered forward.
Sal shot him in the center of the chest-and Slaton stopped in his tracks. Sal fired again. And a third time. For a moment, both men were frozen, motionless, the rancher standing bolt upright, confusion on his face, his eyes staring into space somewhere above Sal’s head.
Then he crumpled to the ground like a house of cards.
Seconds later, Vinnie came bursting into the room, eyes wild, ready to act. “What the hell? Pop! What’s going on?”
Sal collapsed into a chair, giving Vinnie a clear view of the body on the floor.
“Jesus,” Vinnie said, going pale. “Jesus Christ. What the hell is he doin’ here?”
Sal gave his son a harsh glare. “I was gonna ask you the same fuckin’ thing.”
Bobby Garza, a rugged, handsome man in his mid-thirties, had held the office of Blanco County sheriff for just more than a year. He had won the appointment by default when the previous sheriff, a corrupt, greedy ape of a man, was implicated in a drug-smuggling ring. A collective sigh of relief could be heard around the county when Garza was selected, because he was the only available deputy with the right combination of experience, intelligence, and honesty. Later, John Marlin had been one of Garza’s chief supporters in the general election in the spring, and Garza had held the office by an overwhelming margin.
Thirty minutes after Marlin had radioed the dispatcher to request assistance with the death of Bert Gammel, Garza’s patrol car crunched down the gravel road of the Hawley Ranch and pulled in next to Marlin’s truck.
Marlin’s relief at seeing Garza, who had become a close friend over the years, was tempered by the presence of a skinny, red-faced man with a crew cut in the passenger seat. Wylie Smith had been hired to fill Garza’s deputy position when Garza rose to sheriff, and the new man hadn’t made many friends since. Before coming to Blanco County, Wylie had been stationed in Houston with the Harris County Sheriff’s Department, and he had brought along the cynicism, sarcasm, and attitude of superiority that so many big-city residents seem to pack with them when they come to the country. But Marlin had to admit that the forensic training Wylie had received in Houston would be valuable to the case.
“What we got, John?” Bobby Garza asked, shaking Marlin’s hand. Wylie surveyed the landscape and offered no greeting.
“Lester found one of his hunters dead near his blind this morning,” Marlin replied, picking a careful path toward the body. “It’s Bert Gammel.”
Garza and Wylie both nodded somberly as they stared at the corpse.
Marlin said, “Took a round right in the chest. Plus, he’s hunting with a two-seventy automatic. I didn’t find a shell casing, so I guess we can assume he didn’t fire.”
“Do me a favor, will ya, and don’t assume what we know at this point,” Wylie said. “Leave that to us to figure out.”
Marlin gave Wylie a cold stare, but before he could reply, Garza spoke up: “Well, it doesn’t hurt to go into this with a fresh eye, but Marlin was first on the scene, so let’s hear what he has to say.” Marlin wished Garza had added asshole to the end of that last sentence.
Marlin checked his notes and quickly ran through Lester’s report, then summarized what he himself had discovered so far. He discussed the narrow alley between the trees and ended with the likely-looking hiding spot where the killer had carried off the ambush.
“So you just took it on yourself to begin the investigation?” Wylie asked. “Decided to start without us?”
“Well, it wasn’t what I’d call a real thorough bit of detective work, Wylie. I saw what I saw and decided to give the area a look. Anyone could have figured it out. Even you.”
Wylie’s face turned a vivid red.
Garza spoke up again: “Cool it, both of you. I don’t need you at each other’s throats right now.” He turned to Marlin. “John, it sounds like you did what any of us would have done. Now let’s see what you found.”
Marlin led them to the fenceline and the three men crossed the barbed wire. Marlin pointed out the makeshift blind under the cedar tree, drawing their attention to the puddle of tobacco spit.
“There’s our DNA,” Garza said, giving Marlin an approving smile. “Hell of a job. Anything else?”
“I saw a partial boot print over there between a couple of cedars. That’s all, so far.” He looked at Wylie. “I decided to leave the area and wait for reinforcements.”
“Great,” Garza said. “Good work.” He turned to Wylie. “Wylie, you’re the lead dog on this one. You’ve got the most experience in this area, and I’m hoping we can all learn a couple of things. So, how do you want to proceed?”
Wylie looked around and made an exaggerated gesture with his hands. “My first question is, where is Lester Higgs?”
Marlin said, “Took off about twenty minutes ago. Said he had some ranch work to do. I think he went back up to the barn for some supplies. I told him a deputy would be in touch.”
Wylie snorted. “You let our first witness just wander off? He could be on the phone right now, telling half the county what happened.”
Marlin swallowed the anger that was rising in his throat. “Listen, I asked him not to discuss-”
“Yeah, right,” Wylie interrupted. “I’m sure that’ll stop him. Smart move.”
Marlin opened his mouth, but once more Garza interceded: “Wylie, would you just back off a minute? Lester’s a good man. If John asked him to keep it under his hat, that’s what he’ll do. We can stop and interview him again if we need to on the way out.”
Marlin could tell that Wylie didn’t like it. “All right, the first thing I need to do is a more thorough search,” Wylie said. He looked at Marlin. “I’d prefer it if everyone just stayed out of my way.”
Wylie turned and made his way back toward the fence, returning to Garza’s patrol car for equipment. After he was gone, Marlin looked at Garza and said, “That boy needs his cinch tightened a little.”
“We gotta clean dis shit up and quick, before your mother gets home,” Sal said, placing the handgun on his desk.
“But, Pop, what the hell happened?”
“Never mind dat shit now. Go out to the garage, grab dat tarp on the shelf above the washer. Bring a bucket and a bunch of rags. We don’t got much time,” Sal said, glancing at his wristwatch. It was three-twenty. Angela had said she
and Maria would be home by six at the latest, when her Crock-Pot dinner would be ready.
Vinnie hustled to gather the items, and both men went to work cleaning up the scene.
First they wrapped Slaton in the tarp, bound it tightly with duct tape, and dragged him into the garage. Vinnie hopped into his Camaro in the driveway and backed it into the garage, parking in his mother’s usual spot. Fortunately, the Mameli home sat on five acres, and this provided plenty of privacy. Vinnie easily hefted the corpse and plopped it into his trunk.
For the next hour, the men attacked the grotesque residue in Sal’s den. They scrubbed, washed, wiped, and sponged, and the evidence was quickly disappearing-except for a large oval bloodstain on the carpet where Slaton’s body had fallen.
“Dis ain’t workin’,” Sal muttered, rubbing the rust-tinted carpet. “Fuck! Dis ain’t workin’!”
“Want some more water?” Vinnie asked, holding the bucket.
Sal pondered the situation for a moment. “Naw, we’d be here all night. Look, what you gotta do is run down to the Super S and rent a carpet cleaner, one-a dose portable jobs. Take my Lincoln, and get your ass back here pronto!”
“What about his truck, Pop?”
Damn it to hell! Sal had forgotten about Slaton’s Ford out front. “Why didn’t you remind me!” he shouted, Vinnie shrinking back. Sal thought things through, gears spinning. “Okay, listen. I’ll take my Lincoln, you follow in his Ford and we’ll ditch it somewhere along the way.”
He turned and grabbed something off the shelf behind him. “Put on dese gloves. We don’t need your fuckin’ prints all over the place.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
By five-thirty, U.S. Marshal Smedley Allen Poindexter was wolfing down his fifth Twinkie, sitting in his nondescript sedan, bored out of his mind. That was the thing about this job-there were times when you sat for hours doing nothing but watching and waiting.
Unfortunately, Smedley had a habit of combating the tedium by eating; there was always an assortment of packaged cookies, donuts, chips, and salty snacks on the passenger seat beside him. Sometimes a quart or two of Big Red soda, which tasted just fine to Smedley even when it was warm. In the past eleven years, he had packed a total of seventy disgusting, blubbery pounds onto his already pudgy body. He now tipped the scales at a whopping 280, way too much for his five-ten frame.
The worst part of it all was that he shared a name with a certain cereal-loving pachyderm. When the Cap’n Crunch folks had come out with Smedley the Elephant decades ago, Smedley Poindexter had been a skinny boy of thirteen. Sure, he had gotten razzed because of the name, but it would have been much worse if he had been overweight. He had had other problems to deal with-acne, shyness, a mild stutter-but thank God he hadn’t been fat!
Now, however, he was fat. Way too fat. And when you’re an overweight guy walking around with a name like Smedley-well, plenty of people can’t resist a setup like that. In Smedley’s office, there was this marshal named Todd-a GQ-looking jerk-who would press his cheek to his shoulder, toss his arm in the air like a trunk, and make a trumpeting noise when Smedley walked by. Everybody just laughed and laughed at that. Including Smedley. He pretended it didn’t bother him, but he secretly envisioned bitch-slapping Todd into early next week. Smedley just couldn’t assert himself enough to tell those guys to shut the hell up. He daydreamed about it, though. A lot.
What the hell, Smedley thought, as he crammed the remainder of the cream-filled delight into his mouth. Maybe he’d start a diet next week. It was never too late, right?
With his hands free now, he twirled the radio dial. He preferred talk radio. Rush Limbaugh, Dr. Laura Schlessinger, even those two goobers who yakked on and on about car repair. Those guys were pretty funny, even if they did have weird accents. Smedley found some sort of program about horticulture and sat back in his seat.
A car came bouncing down the rutted street in front of the Mamelis’ house. Could be a Mercedes. It looked kind of gray, too. Kind of hard to tell yet… nope, it was a Lexus, and it kept on going down the road.
Smedley had knocked on the door when he first arrived, but nobody was home. Looking through the garage windows, all he saw was the kid’s Camaro. So Smedley parked out on the road, a hundred yards down, waiting. A few minutes later, Sal’s Lincoln came ripping along with Sal and the kid inside, returning from who-knows-where.
It was Smedley’s job to drop in on the Mamelis on occasion, maybe a couple of times a month. Kind of keep an eye on them, make sure everything was kosher. Granted, Sal didn’t have a lot to gain by running at this point, but with some of these guys, you never knew what they’d do.
Smedley remembered Gino Riccotto, a wiseguy who had turned federal witness. Late in the game, Riccotto decided he’d made a mistake, he wasn’t a rat, and it was time to kiss and make up with the men he was going to send to prison. So, the day before the trial, Gino slipped away from the safe house while Smedley was asleep on the sofa. Not much you can do for him now, Smedley’s boss had said. He’ll turn up eventually. Three days later, a security guard found what was left of Gino oozing out of a bus-station locker. Maybe that’s how Sal will end up, Smedley thought. Then he realized he was smiling.
Angela and Maria drove along in silence in Angela’s gray Mercedes, the only sound the hum of the tires and the soft classical music on the stereo.
There were times when Angela could hardly stand to look at her housekeeper. She didn’t hate Maria, exactly; in fact she didn’t hate her at all. After all, deep down, Angela knew it wasn’t Maria’s fault. If something was going on between Maria and Sal, Angela felt certain it was all Sal’s doing. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Sal’s infidelity had left Angela plodding through life in a state of despair and regret for twenty years. She didn’t love her husband, and wasn’t sure if she ever would again. Sure, she had loved him at one time, back when they first met. Those days seemed like a fairy tale compared to the last two decades.
Sal had swept Angela off her feet in 1983. She was a secretary working for the New York building inspector’s office, leading a dreary life, living in a dreary apartment, hanging out with dreary friends.
Then one day, in walked a good-looking young man with thick black hair, playful eyes, and a beautiful smile. Tall. Charismatic. In an expensive suit. He had an appointment, he said, and his name was Roberto Ragusa. (Angela couldn’t get used to his new name, Sal. She still slipped sometimes and called him Bobby. Sal always looked around nervously and said, What, you trying to get me killed? It’s Sal, goddammit-Sal!)
While Sal had waited for his meeting, he flipped through magazines and flirted with Angela. She played coy, but inside, she ate it up. He seemed so lively and fun, so different than anybody she had ever met.
They had their first date that night and were married six months later.
They were the toast of the town, attending Broadway premieres, rubbing elbows with important politicians and captains of industry, going to the hottest clubs and dancing till dawn.
Then, fourteen months after the wedding, Vinnie was born.
That’s when things changed.
Angela knew, with a newborn, that she and Sal couldn’t do the things they had done when they were courting. The wild, exciting ride was fun while it lasted, but now it was time to settle down and raise a nice family.
Sal had other things in mind.
While Angela stayed home with the baby, Sal still caroused until all hours of the night, often coming home drunk, sometimes with the lingering scent of perfume woven into his clothing.
He always claimed she was imagining things-but he had affairs, the bastard, and she knew it. He was cold to her, treating her like a nanny and a maid. Their sex life vanished.
But what was she to do? Disgrace herself by divorcing the son of a bitch? Her mother would simply die if that happened. Her new friends-wives of men with money and power-would pity her at first, then slowly stop calling. She’d be out of the loop, dropped from the inner
circle, and the extravagant lifestyle she had grown accustomed to would slip away.
There was also the baby to consider. She could never support herself and a child if she returned to her job as a secretary. Also, Vinnie deserved a father-and Sal, Angela bitterly admitted, was a good father. Hell, he spent more time with the boy than he did with Angela.
It was also about this time when Angela reluctantly admitted to herself that her husband wasn’t a mere businessman. Despite his claims to the contrary, Sal was nothing more than a thug. He ran a concrete business, but from snippets she heard while Sal was on the phone, the business was far from legit. There appeared to be kickbacks, strong-arm tactics, and laundering involved. Not to mention the way some of Sal’s associates tended to disappear suddenly. Here one day, gone the next, never to be seen again. She always wondered if Sal had anything to do with those disappearances.
So, for twenty years, Angela had resigned herself to a lonely, bleak existence, the wife of a common criminal.
Then, three years ago, Sal had finally come clean. The federal investigations and upcoming trials forced his hand, and he told her everything. Or at least he said he did. The newspapers referred to Sal as a hit man, but he never confessed to that, despite the mounds of evidence against him. I bent a few tax rules, Sal would say, but kill somebody? Never.
Now she thought Sal was screwing the housekeeper.
It made Angela furious.
When their family had been relocated, Angela, oddly, had been elated. She looked at it as a fresh start, an opportunity to wipe the slate clean and begin a whole new life. A chance to gain respectability, make up for Sal’s evil deeds in the past. And maybe now, away from the circles that had turned Sal into a corrupt, heartless man, they could fix their broken marriage.
But it wasn’t working out that way at all.
Sal, so far as Angela knew, was staying inside the law, even with his new brush-clearing business. But his womanizing-the thing that hurt her most-had returned.