Farnsworth Score

by Rex Burns

  “Those Spaniards, they came and conquered our civilization—they killed off the old gods and brought a new one that demanded the sacrifice not of just one man but the whole people. They brought death and famine where we had peace and plenty; they made slaves out of princes!”

  Wager smiled at the thought of Manny the Aztec prince. Crap. Manny would have been just like Wager, another Aztec peon, cow dung in his ears and his forehead kissing the dirt whenever a real prince went by. But Manny would never see that. Manny was a deposed prince. Manny was his people’s savior. Let my people go—I, Manuel Baca, tell you this, world! Wager forced his neck to bend agreement.

  “And then the Anglos! What they couldn’t steal, they cheated us out of. And they’re still doing it. If you don’t believe it, just try to borrow money, just try to get a job that’s got some responsibility to it, man! They want cheap labor because cheap sweat means more profit—and that’s the only prayer their gods know: profit! The Anglos brought their own gods, Pepsicoatl and Cocacoatl, and their prayer is profit!”

  Farnsworth laughed. “That’s good—Pepsicoatl and Cocacoatl.”

  Wager had thought it was funny the first time he heard it, too.

  “Manolo—hermano—you know I’m as much La Raza as you or Gabe. In spirit, anyway. And there’s a lot of us. It’s time, man; it’s time to do things!”

  “That’s what I keep telling people, but nobody listens. The time is now, and if we don’t get our act together and do it, there ain’t nobody going to do it for us.”

  “Well, we got money. And in this shitty country when you got money you got power. We can do something!”

  Baca gazed through the cabin wall at some grand vision. “By God, we could set up a deal!”

  “Like what?”

  “Like, I know this hombre in the People’s Labor Party. And he’ll pay two, three times the price for guns delivered in Mexico.”

  “What kind?”

  “Pistols, rifles—large-caliber stuff. Military stuff. Hell, down south, everybody wants guns. It’s like they’re getting ready for a war.”

  “Everybody?”

  “Sure—you got the bandidos who want guns so they can move in on the big dope honchos. The big guys want guns so they can keep the bandidos from moving in. Both of them want guns against the federales and the army. The growers got to protect their fields, the transporters got to guard the stashes and the convoys. They’re just hungry for weapons and there’s not enough to go around.”

  “What side’s this People’s Labor Party on?”

  “That’s a whole different trip. They’re politicos. They got people on both sides of the border, and they work with the braceros who come across. They make sure nobody gets ripped off, that kind of thing. They’re all right—real caballeros.”

  “What do they want guns for?”

  “Power! From the end of a gun, man. Suppose that son of a bitch in Brownsville was shooting at some of the People’s Labor Party. Well, they get guns, they come back and wipe that mother out, and nobody around there fucks no more with the people, man!”

  “Why can’t they get their own guns?” asked Ramona. “They’re U.S. citizens, too.”

  “Everybody knows them—the F.B.I.’s got a file from here to Washington, D.C., and they can’t even pick their nose without somebody finking on them. And if they tried to cross the border, the federales would be on them in no time.”

  “Why?” asked Wager.

  “They been screwing around in local politics down south. Hell, you can’t help getting hung up if you got any political awareness at all. The caciques don’t want no organization of the braceros on their side of the border, either. And they own the local cops. What is it about cops, they always got to be owned instead of doing their job?”

  “I still don’t see what they want with guns,” said Ramona. “Or how they’re going to pay for them.”

  “That’s my deal! They don’t even need money. What they do is pay in dope, see? They got so many contacts down south they can get all the dope they want. What happens is we trade our money for guns, then the guns for their dope, then the dope for more money. We get a little profit on each trade, and at the same time we’re helping the hermanos in their struggle for justice!”

  Wager was always surprised at how many of the really important things came as casually as a cloud across the sun. A gentle shift of light, a new shadow on the face he had been watching, a tiny quiver: suddenly came the realization that the important thing was happening, almost without his knowledge or help, and all he had to do was let it move. Under Manny Baca’s excited words, he could even hear his grandmother’s voice, worn calm and level with experience and trust: “Lo que no se hace en un año, se hace en un rato.” A moment may bring what a year hasn’t.

  Ramona shook her head. “Muy malo—too much risk. Too many people you got to work with.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” said Wager.

  Baca looked at him, “¿Por qué?”

  “I’ve been trying to tell Ramona—I can get an airplane. And one of my contacts just might have a lead on some hardware.” And won’t Sergeant Johnston crap at that news. “With an airplane, we can deliver direct and cut out a lot of risk.”

  “Hey, that’s real good!”

  Wager caught the slight effort behind the words; Baca was pulling back. “We can help our hermanos in their struggle and help ourselves, too,” reminded Gabe.

  “I don’t like it.” Ramona frowned.

  Farnsworth looked from her to Gabe to Baca. “It might really help our people, honey.”

  Wager held Baca’s eyes in challenge. “If you really want this—if you ain’t just bullshitting—we can do it.”

  “Who’s bullshitting?”

  “Some people drink a little and talk a lot. You know how it goes.”

  “No, I don’t know how it goes. You tell me how it goes.”

  “Hey, hombres”—Farnsworth made pushing motions at the floor—“let’s keep it cool. We don’t need this macho stuff around here.”

  “Sure,” said Wager. “Nice and cool. But ya tengo colmillos”—he tapped his eyetooth with a fingernail— “and I’ve heard people talk before. A little of it was real and a lot of it wasn’t.”

  “Yeah? Yeah? You talk to that contact of yours. You see if he can come up with some iron. We’ll see who’s just talking!”

  Wager sipped at his beer, “Even if I can find the guns, buying them’s going to take mucho dinero. Maybe we’d better forget the whole thing.”

  Baca’s face got that cross between a glare and a smile that comes when somebody has someone down and is sticking him. “What’s the matter? You been talking big and want to pull out now? You find them guns, Villanueva. Dick’s with me. We can come up with the coin if you can come up with the guns.”

  “I don’t like this,” said Ramona.

  “It’s O.K., honey. Manolo’s got a good idea. We can help our people and make a little bread, too.”

  With help like that, the people didn’t need enemies; yawning and stretching to hide his excitement, Wager stood to leave. He shook hands and paused in the doorway to smile into Baca’s eyes. “Para siempre, su servidor,” he said.

  “You want to run guns to Mexico?” Sergeant Johnston’s eyes bulged slightly.

  “It happens every day, Ed.”

  “Not by us it don’t! You can’t get us into something like that!”

  “Let’s see what Sonnenberg says.”

  “Let’s see!”

  At first the inspector said nothing, letting Wager sketch in the background without interruption. But Gabe noticed that he fiddled more than usual with his cigar. “Who brought up the idea?”

  “Baca, sir.”

  “Did you lead Farnsworth to it in any way?”

  “No, sir.” The inspector was considering entrapment, something that had been in the back of Gabe’s mind, too, and that Sonnenberg should have known Wager would consider. “But I sure as hell didn’t shut Baca up. I think
it’s the only way Farnsworth’s going to deal.”

  Sonnenberg gently touched a curl of cigar ash. “And it’s him we want, not Baca.”

  “But, Inspector, you ain’t really going to—”

  “I’m just turning over the possibilities, Sergeant.”

  Wager waited. It wasn’t his decision. The pay was the same either way. Still, he hoped to hell Sonnenberg didn’t throw away all his work.

  “If we even ran a water pistol down there, we’d be in trouble,” Sonnenberg said.

  “Oh, God, Inspector—don’t even think of it!”

  “It wouldn’t do any good, anyway, because our jurisdiction stops at the state line.” Sonnenberg drew once more on the cigar. “D.E.A. could do it; we couldn’t. But D.E.A. turned him over to us, and with this Rietman thing in the air, I want Farnsworth.” The thought trailed off in a puff of smoke.

  “And if it ever turned out that we were providing guns for Farnsworth to buy dope so we could arrest him for selling that dope”—Wager smiled at the thought—“well, there would be some tight jaws in high places.”

  “Oh, Jesus and Mary,” Johnston said.

  “Gabe, there has to be some way for us to buy the dope from Farnsworth without getting involved in either guns or financing. But the way Baca wants to do it, I don’t see any possibilities.”

  “What about front dope?” Wager asked.

  “Explain.”

  “Suppose our gun merchant doesn’t want cash. Suppose he’s greedy and wants only dope instead.”

  His blue eyes narrowing in thought, the inspector rolled the wet tip of his cigar against his lips. Wager wondered if he slept with one. “So we would tell Farnsworth that the guns were his for a couple of kilos, and then pop him when he paid?”

  “That’s it. But we’ll have to flash some guns. He’s too paranoid just to take my word.”

  “We could do that all right. I think I could borrow the weapons for that.”

  “And I’d need someone to play the gun dealer.”

  The inspector nodded again. “But he’ll have to be unknown: no one who’s been active; no one imported. It takes paperwork to bring in a special agent, and that could warn Rietman.”

  That was another wrinkle. “I forgot about that.”

  “Someone,” said Sonnenberg, “who won’t talk to anyone Rietman might know.”

  Wager looked at Sergeant Johnston. “I think I got a man.”

  The cigar paused as the eyes considered.

  Sergeant Johnston looked from one to the other. “Me?”

  “It’s a natural.”

  “Wait a minute, Inspector!”

  “You’re the only man, Ed,” said Wager. “There’s no way these people ever met you, and no one else has to be brought into the deal. Security would be perfect.”

  “Gabe’s right, Sergeant. I will not risk any leaks that might warn Rietman or any confederates he may have. Besides, this whole unit is a field unit. Everyone. So you two work out the details; I’ll see what I can round up in the way of weapons.”

  Wager made the telephone call to Nederland within the week, saying that the weapons could be bought. Farnsworth and Baca met him at the Timber Line; Ramona, who wasn’t as dumb as her husband and who asked pesky questions, fortunately stayed at home.

  “It wasn’t my idea, Manolo. My connection says he can get weapons, but he doesn’t want cash. He wants the payoff in dope.”

  “Well, screw him—he’s trying to cut us out of our percentage on the exchange.”

  “I told him how you felt about it. He just said for us to get the guns somewhere else.”

  Baca was silent; the lenses of his glasses reflected the dim light of the room and the white streaks of snow falling beyond the tavern’s small windows.

  “He’s got us by the balls,” said Farnsworth. “We couldn’t buy that many guns without a fucking license and he knows it.”

  “What did he show you? Did he show you any merchandise?”

  “No, but he talked about dynamite stuff: a few M-1’s, mostly M-16’s, pistols, even a couple of rocket launchers. Three-point-six, I think he called them.”

  “Where in shit’s he going to get stuff like that!”

  Wager glanced around the almost empty room and dropped his voice. “He’s in the National Guard or Army Reserve. He’s a sergeant or something who can get into the armory.”

  “It’s got to be in cash,” said Baca. “I’ll be goddamned if I want to give up half my profit to that bastard. A lot of that profit’s supposed to go to the movement, not to that son of a bitch.”

  “I’ll tell him the deal’s off, then.” Wager sat unmoving; the other two were silent also. “I kind of expected this anyway.”

  “Expected what?”

  “That you wouldn’t go through with it.” Wager smiled at Baca.

  “You calling me un cobarde?”

  “I’m not calling you a goddam thing, amigito. All I’m saying is you told me to come up with the guns and you’d come up with the buy. I did. Now it’s your turn”—he smiled—“and all you give me is words.”

  “I didn’t say we’d do it for nothing. We do it for nothing, we’re robbing the brothers!”

  “You’ll get some good profit out of the guns. You say they want guns down south more than they want money, so raise your price.”

  “Why doesn’t this dude want coin? Does he think we’re going to file a tax return?” asked Farnsworth.

  “He wants the dope for the same reason you do. It’s hard to trace and it’s worth more than cash.”

  “No shit! I say we don’t do it, Dick. It’s a rip-off!”

  Wager ordered another round and waited until the bartender had come and gone. “It’s still a good profit for us. I’d be happy with it.”

  “Well, I ain’t.”

  “Yeah. You know, I believed that crap about you two wanting to do something for La Raza. Big joke on me, right?”

  “I really meant that, Gabe.”

  “Thanks. I’ll tell the widows and orphans you really meant it. What about you, Baca? Did you mean it, too?”

  “You know it.”

  “No, I don’t. All I know is that I got those guns like I said I would, and now you two are handing me a pile of shit because you ain’t getting rich enough fast enough.”

  “If you want to play Zorro, why don’t you do it yourself?”

  “Because I don’t have enough dope. And by the time I get it, it’ll be too late. This dude’s got inventories and inspections to worry about. He’s not going to wait forever.”

  Farnsworth finished his beer and belched slightly. “Hell, there’s enough for everybody. Manny, let’s at least talk to the mother. Like Gabe says, it’s for a good cause.”

  “It sure is,” said Wager.

  Johnston closed the door of Sonnenberg’s room against the noise from the rest of the O.C.D. offices. The inspector pointed toward the chairs and finished lighting his cigar. “Well?”

  “They’re not as eager as I’d like them to be,” said Wager.

  “How much persuasion did you use?”

  “I just called them chicken-shit. Their machismo did the rest.”

  “Hmm. But they came up with the idea initially?”

  Sonnenberg already knew that, but he was prodding at a possible soft spot in the case. “Yes, sir.”

  “Were they drinking or high at the time? Were they capable of sound judgment?”

  “They had two or three beers when I was with them. I don’t know if they had anything before. But my evaluation of their behavior and the questions they asked about the deal is that they were in full possession of their faculties.”

  It was the kind of witness-stand answer the inspector wanted. “They knew it was dangerous and they knew it was illegal, but they decided on their own to do it anyway?”

  And, like every lawyer, ex-prosecutor Sonnenberg couldn’t leave a thing said just one way. “Yes, sir.”

  “O.K.—let’s go ahead, then. I’ve arrange
d to borrow the weapons from the Marine Reserve unit out at the Federal Center. The colonel and I went through law school together. But he wasn’t very eager about it—the weapons, I mean—and believe me, gentlemen, nothing had better go wrong with those weapons.”

  “Sweet Jesus, Inspector, that’s federal property!”

  “I’ve cleared the activity with the F.B.I., too, Sergeant. They know what’s going on and will cooperate.”

  “Will the weapons be fully equipped, sir?” For additional security, many reserve units stored the firing pins and bolts separately from the weapons.

  “A hundred percent. Ed, make arrangements for a civilian truck; and you and I will have to go out there and personally count and sign for each weapon. That’s going to take time, so, Gabe, give us enough advance notice on the deal.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What kind of weapons and what kind of price, Inspector?”

  Sonnenberg looked at Gabe for the answer.

  “They’ll want to talk about that with you, Ed. I mentioned shoulder weapons, handguns, and rocket launchers. I wanted to get the value as high as possible, so that Farnsworth couldn’t trust anyone else to handle the deal.”

  “What kind of dope are they talking?”

  “Coke, heroin, anything we can name.”

  Sonnenberg jotted some arithmetic on his pale green notepaper. Each sheet had “From the Desk of Inspector Sonnenberg” across the top, and Wager had often been tempted to reply, “Dear Desk.” “Let’s figure a wholesale value for the dope at … seventy-five thousand. They’d have paid thirty, at the most fifty percent of that?”

  “Yes, sir. I’d say between fifty and seventy-five is a good range for us. It’ll still give them some profit, but won’t make us look too eager to do business.”

  Back to the little green pad. “Let’s offer a hundred pistols, forty M-1 rifles, twenty M-16’s, and two—make that three—rocket launchers.”

  Sergeant Johnston had been figuring on his notepaper. His was white and said “From the Desk of Detective Sergeant Johnston.” “That’s a hell of a lot of money per weapon!”