by Ed Lynskey
“So you keep saying. Maybe we can help you out on that,” said Mr. Kuzawa as his opening gambit. “But one hand washes the other, you understand. You Feds specialize in cutting deals. So, tell us what you need, and then let’s make a deal.”
Gil bared his rodent teeth. “Fine. A major drug player has operated in this sector, and we’ve had Sizemore under our scrutiny. He wields a big stick in the local politics, so we tread lightly and don’t want to make waves unnecessarily. But we’ve learned big dollars funnel through his criminal organization.”
“His criminal organization sells beaucoup pot?”
“That’s just for starters. Sizemore has grander ambitions to grow fatter profits. His plans are to fly in the cocaine shipments from down south. The prop planes just track up the Appalachian mountain chain to avoid any radar detection. So it’s expedient to shut down his enterprise.”
“How are you privy to all this?” I asked.
“Our people infiltrated his workings,” replied Gil.
Narc, I thought. “Is Paco your inside man?”
Gil tapped an unlit cigarette on its end. “Yeah. Since Ashleigh’s arrest for pot, our suspicions have increased. Now we’re taking down her father.”
“Good luck with that,” said Mr. Kuzawa.
“Yeah, well maybe I’ll create some luck by starting with two arrests here.” He dropped the cigarette on the tabletop, brought out two pairs of handcuffs, and dropped them beside the cigarette. “Now, what’s your involvement?”
“Our involvement?” I swallowed but I’d no spit left in my cork-dry mouth.
“Quit your bluffing. You don’t have dick on us,” said Mr. Kuzawa.
“Don’t be so smug and sure.” Gil smirked as his hands screwed down their imaginary vise grips crushing our nuts. “The bottom line is we lack the hard evidence to make our arrest of Sizemore stick. Foremost, where does he raise his narcotics? Not even ditch weed grows wild on his estate.”
“Yeah, we know that, but the name of the game is quid pro quo.” Mr. Kuzawa sipped his coffee and all but smacked his lips at them.
“Why do we trust you?” asked Earl.
“Why not? You compiled my dossier. My credibility must still carry some weight.”
Gil cranked forward bearing down on his bent elbows. “You’ve got our ear. What do you want?”
I fastened my rapt eyes on the handcuffs. Then I glanced at Mr. Kuzawa who was in control of pulling the right levers. I wished I’d half the confidence he did. He gave each of the Feds a calculated stare.
“Complete immunity. That’s my price. You wipe the slate clean on us both. Any headlines go to you glory hounds. We just want back our lives. That’s it, gents.”
Eye blinks telegraphed between the two DEA operatives. “This is separate from his homicide rap.” Gil used his cigarette as a pointer at me.
“No soap. I’ll repeat it. The entire slate gets wiped clean for us both.”
“Why? Are there more deaths?” asked Gil, sounding wary.
“What we’ve got didn’t come so cheap. Dope dealers are dog-eat-dog.”
“How many are dead?”
“Two drug mules bought it at Lake Charles,” replied Mr. Kuzawa.
Earl zippoed another cigarette. He exhaled through a grimace. “Two are dead, you say?”
“That’s it. Don’t forget collaring Sizemore is a big coup,” said Mr. Kuzawa.
Gil smiled, all lip. “We know that. Now, we’ll bury these two dead drug mules in our official reports. Nobody refers to them again. Understand me?”
I nodded. Gil acted sanguine, as if this tidying up process went on every day in their shop. Dead bodies disappeared in the gnat shit print of their official reports. Lives amounted to statistics and numbers.
“What two drug mules?” Mr. Kuzawa was cagey.
“Precisely. Now, our superiors will have to approve your proposal,” said Gil.
C-Y-A, I thought.
“Make it snappy. Don’t leave us twisting.” Mr. Kuzawa, rising, scraped his chair over the floor. “Brendan, we’ll go on now.”
Elated not to do the perp walk out in handcuffs, I didn’t grin in relief but trailed close to Mr. Kuzawa’s strides from the pancake diner. Gil snapped out a warning to stay reachable, but my pace didn’t slow down or break.
* * *
After collapsing on the seat in my cab truck, I rotated the ignition key, cuffed the column shift into first, and we tailed a middle-aged counterculture type in her psychedelic VW microbus weaving down the block.
“I sweated like a boar hog,” was how I summed up my face time with the DEA.
Mr. Kuzawa’s scoff downplayed my fears. “We’ll hear back fast. Striking deals is their strong suit, and they’ll snap up ours.”
“How did they know we talked to Ms. Sutwala?”
“Obviously she’s their undercover agent there.”
“She might have an idea where Edna is.”
“She knows a lot more than Gil or Earl does.”
“We’ll pave the way for Sizemore’s arrest, and get me off the hook for Ashleigh’s murder but …”
“Even with all that, you’re still not happy?”
“I’ve counted on nailing Sizemore as her killer while clearing my name.”
“He’ll do big slammer time on the narcotics rap. Your getting any hotheaded revenge will score you the same deal. You want no part of a federal pen, believe it.”
“But he’s getting off too easy.”
“He had Cobb killed, and it chaps my ass, but I’m realistic enough to take what I can get.”
“Suppose the DEA votes us down? They might decide to keep watching Sizemore until he trips up enough for them to arrest. Where does that leave us?”
“They’ll play poker, all right. It’s fast and expedient.” Mr. Kuzawa clanked down his window. “If you feel shorthanded, I’ll get us fast reinforcements.”
I envisioned a throng of action figures armored in bulletproof vests and equipped with automatic rifles swarming Lake Charles. I shook off the specter. “Leave Cullen and the rangers out of this. Okay?”
“Whatever you say.”
My thoughts wrapped around a detail Cobb had told me about the land ownership at Lake Charles. He’d told me a deep pockets donor had ceded the Lake Charles property to the federal government, and I put my blue chips on Sizemore as the benefactor. Cobb had caught the property transfer notice in the newspapers apparently not read by the Feds who also didn’t talk to each other. Clarifying the detail would nail down our evidence against Sizemore and pry the DEA off our backs.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
After traversing Yellow Snake’s main street, we doubled back, and juddered down an alley behind a Lebonanese restaurant, staying sharp-eyed all the way. No furtive sedans dogged us. Mr. Kuzawa liked my idea, so we moored opposite the Yellow Snake Courthouse where I’d last frog marched into while tricked out in irons for my bail hearing.
Four beige Corinthian columns hoisted the courthouse’s elegant portico. A titanic revolving door had once admitted the citizens through the circular alcove, but we grabbed the exterior brass knobs to pass through the double oak doors. The mustiness to old books and lemon furniture polish hosed over us. The corridor we took was narrow and ill lit. The middle-aged clerk, still slender with prim breasts, seated at a walnut desk was dabbing a piece of sticky Scotch tape to pick the lint off her uniform blazer. At hearing our tread, she hid the piece of tape under her desk. Petula read the name pin above her left breast pocket. She smiled, and her eyes shone blue like her blazer.
“You gentlemen appear lost. May I help you?”
“We need information on Ralph Sizemore,” said Mr. Kuzawa.
Dark emotions clouded her face. “Is he a friend?”
“Anything but,” said Mr. Kuzawa with a disarming chuckle. “He gave us a hard time over the fishing rights at Lang’s Teahouse, and we’d like to know if he really owns Lake Charles like he claims he does.”
My nod reinforced the lie.
>
“Oh, I despise the arrogant way he runs roughshod over people.”
“Ain’t it the awful truth,” said Mr. Kuzawa.
Reassured we were also just folk, she left her post and shepherded us downstairs to the sub-ground level where it felt even mustier. She lit the overhead fluorescents, wrested down several heavy as a brick property transfer record books, and talked all the while.
“Lang’s Teahouse. There’s a blast from the past. The old marina has a colorful history. The first owner—I can’t recall his name, but he was Irish, I think—built the dance and roller skate pavilion to entertain the young people. Later the marina and ramp went in for the local boaters to use.”
“Lang’s Teahouse in its heyday was a swinging hot spot.”
Somehow, I couldn’t picture Mr. Kuzawa bringing a date to the dances at Lake Charles. I could see him camped out on Will Thomas Mountain to get an early morning jump for a bear hunt.
“Didn’t Baxter Sizemore buy that property?” she continued. “That was the summer I had my first girl, Shirley Lou. What a scorcher it was, and no rain fell in months. The forest fires blazed away and spread to every ridge and the smoke—oh dear God—that wretched smoke. We’d bloodshot eyes and runny noses everyday for—”
“How did Baxter Sizemore get the property?” I said to correct her topic drift.
She selected the likely record book and riffled through its crinkly pages with expert ease. “This should tell us. Let’s see. Right. Okay. Mr. Jeb Longerbeam sold the property to Baxter Sizemore for the princely sum of one dollar. Nine hundred and ninety-nine acres. No hold on, the adjoining tract was one thousand and one acres, upping the total to two thousand acres.”
“Mr. Longerbeam rewarded Baxter for busting the pressmen’s strike. Then his son Ralph inherited the land,” I said, recognizing how Lake Charles was a vast acreage to conceal and raise bushels of illegal pot.
“You know, my memory is Ralph Sizemore donated the sizeable tract to the federal government,” she said.
“Then he set up the land gift with an ulterior purpose in mind,” I said.
“His ulterior purpose was greed,” said Mr. Kuzawa. “The kind sending crooks to prison for a long time.”
Petula nodded at us. “If that’s true, it couldn’t happen to a better person, now could it?”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Mr. Kuzawa thought we should have another go at Ms. Sutwala before Ralph Sizemore returned from his horseback ride. Unfollowed, we motored out to his estate, through his front gate, and up his curvy driveway. I didn’t slacken our speed where the pavers gave way to the pasture. Our objective was the same sheet metal building.
My cab truck’s loud glass pack mufflers alerted Ms. Sutwala who was shutting a gate at the stone barn. She lit out at a frantic run to intercept us. Arriving first, she blocked our entry into the sheet metal building.
“You’re trespassing,” she said, out of breath. “You’re also not Henderson and Bates. Gullible me.”
“We never made that claim. You did,” said Mr. Kuzawa.
“Cute. Never mind. Who are you? Let’s see some ID. Dig out your badges but just so you know, I maintain DEA jurisdiction here.”
I glanced at Mr. Kuzawa who’d been dead on about DEA Agent Sutwala.
“Gil and Earl know us,” said Mr. Kuzawa, flashing her some official-looking but long-expired government ID in his wallet. His willingness to play off her second mistaken identity of us left me uneasy but not enough to object. She didn’t like us invading her turf.
“Shut up,” she said in a contentious whisper. Her hazel eyes blazed with indignant fury as she regained her breath. “Your barging in like this busts my cover. I’ve spent weeks at busting my hump setting up this sting, and you botch it within minutes. Just turn around and clear out now.”
Mr. Kuzawa tipped his head. “What’s inside there?”
“Nothing that’s important. Look, making enemies at the DEA is a bad career move.”
“We’re already in this up to our necks,” said Mr. Kuzawa.
Adopting a civil tone, I elaborated. “We’re not here to jam your spokes. We talked to Gil and Earl, and they gave us the lowdown on your Ralph Sizemore probe.”
“We just went through all this with them over coffee,” said Mr. Kuzawa. “Call Gil if you want to verify it. We’ll wait.”
She broke off her outrage, and the exasperation left her dispirited. “As usual, I’m kept in the dark. I didn’t know Gil and Earl had briefed you. Why? The DEA is still a boys’ club. Okay, Sizemore put his car in here. A recent home invasion frightened him, and he moved it to a more secure spot.”
“So why did you want to keep us out earlier?” asked Mr. Kuzawa.
“Simple. I don’t like you.”
“This won’t help out but I’ll fess up anyway. We’re the guilty party breaking into Sizemore’s place searching for evidence.”
She grew more distressed. “That’s highly illegal. You should’ve cleared it through me first. We shouldn’t be working at cross-purposes.”
“Sorry. The next time, for sure. Where did you go then?”
“I was away grocery shopping in Yellow Snake. When I drove up, Sizemore looked a wreck, all cruddy and wet. He said he’d had to chase an escaped horse from out of the woods. I didn’t believe him. While he was gone, somebody—apparently now you two—had broken into his residence. Nothing appeared stolen. I reported the incident to my field office, and Gil and Earl rushed down again.”
“We know. They’ve been tailing us.”
“They have?” Her eyes clouded with dismay.
“Gil must be your agent-in-charge.” Mr. Kuzawa shook his head. “Some things on the job never change. When a case starts to gain traction, the boss rushes in and mucks around.”
Catching herself at nodding in agreement, she put on a stilted smile. “I’ve come across for you, so now you can give. Which agency are you? The FBI?”
“Agency? You’ve got us wrong again, I’m afraid,” I said.
With her wide-eyed gaze raking us, her lean face blanched. “You’re not with the government?”
Mr. Kuzawa summarized our Lake Charles adventures for her, climaxing with our proposed deal with Gil and Earl.
“I’ve heard of crazier things in my career, but yours ranks up there.” She sounded more relieved than anxious. “So, you’re working for us.”
“That depends. Is our deal a go or not?” said Mr. Kuzawa.
“We haven’t heard anything back,” I said.
“Come on inside, and we’ll talk some more.”
She unlocked the sheet metal building’s door and toggled on the overheads. The light caromed off the dark blue Porsche I assumed was Sizemore’s sporty car. Its sleek shape didn’t match the boxy vehicle I’d spotted in the Chewink Motel’s parking lot the night Ashleigh overdosed.
“Gil told us they followed Ashleigh and me to the Chewink Motel,” I said.
“After they tracked her car there with no results, they returned to our field office,” said Agent Sutwala.
“Actually their stakeout wasn’t all that clever because I saw them parked in the motel lot.”
“No damn kidding,” said she with a slight smirk before she turned serious again. “I was hired to work here and gain Sizemore’s trust, but I still haven’t found his narcotics source. My leading theory is a covert greenhouse or a hydroponics operation. I observe his drug mules in their hatchbacks transporting out the dope, but how does it get here? Where does it come from? Do you see my problem?”
“As I said, we can help you with that,” said Mr. Kuzawa.
She steadied her hazel eyes on us. “Where is Sizemore’s pot growing?”
“We’d love to show you but . . .” I glanced at Mr. Kuzawa.
“But only if our deal has been blessed,” he said.
“What if I call and see where we are on that?” She turned, left us, and closed the door to a makeshift office at the end of the building. My last glimpse saw the black ph
one cord snaked under a shag carpet remnant.
Mr. Kuzawa stopped in his tracks. “This is interesting.” He had walked over to the rear of Sizemore’s Porsche. I watched Mr. Kuzawa toe aside the leaning sheath of plywood and send it crashing to the floor. “Is this contraption what I think it is?”
My walk headed to the spot where he stood. “It’s Edna’s jet ski.” Instant relief spread its warmth and soothed the knots in my lower back muscles. The mud flecked, banged up jet ski had been squirreled away in here all the time. She was near us, and I knew where I’d search next.
“One crotch rocket is recovered, but one girl is still missing,” said Mr. Kuzawa.
“We’ll tear apart Sizemore’s mansion,” I said.
“Rip it down, brick by brick. If she isn’t there, we’ll raze the rest of the buildings.” Mr. Kuzawa lifted the Porsche’s hood and removed its distributor cap. “That should clip Sizemore’s wings from driving off.”
The swinging office door fanned the air, and Agent Sutwala’s chiseled face was flushed red from excitement. “Gil tells me they’ve green lighted your deal.”
“Put our terms in writing and have it signed off.” Mr. Kuzawa laughed. “The last time I trusted you Feds, I shipped out to a police action in a cold wasteland.”
Her smile turned wry. “Given your small window of opportunity, Mr. Kuzawa, I’d urge you to trust us. This case is breaking. We’ll soon ferret out what you know, and you’ll have nothing valuable left to trade us.”
His glance at me was sharp. “They’ve boxed us in. We better take her to where it grows.”
“Great but first we rescue Edna.” My head jerked to outside and down the way. “Sizemore is holding her prisoner.”
“Edna is Brendan’s twin sister, so this isn’t just somebody,” said Mr. Kuzawa.
“But Sizemore has lived alone since Ashleigh died,” said Agent Sutwala.
“Did you search the mansion lately?” asked Mr. Kuzawa.
“This morning after he rode off I ran a sweep. I stay in the bungalow out back, and I have the door keys.”
“I want to comb his rooms again. She’s in there. I just know it.” I bristled, expecting Agent Sutwala’s blunt refusal, given our time crunch.