by Dave Stanton
“This ain’t gonna take us back to the highway,” I said.
“I know. But I don’t want to get spotted. Best we wait them out.”
“Might take hours before the police clear out.”
“You want to get questioned for this? With a fresh bullet hole in the door?”
The road turned to dirt and dead-ended at a hilltop lot that looked like it had been cleared some years ago but was never built upon. We stopped, and Cody took a day pack from his trunk, then we hiked through the dry grass to the apex of the lot. Before us lay a series of forested valleys that turned from green to shades of blue and purple. The hills rose and fell to the west until we could see where the Pacific Ocean merged with the sky.
We stood for a moment, taking it in. Amid other circumstances, I’m sure I would have enjoyed the splendid view. But I could still feel the adrenalin in my blood, and my lips were clenched tight against my teeth.
“Hey, don’t look at me that way,” Cody said. “I didn’t plan this.”
“You insisted on shooting at them.”
“Right, and so what did we learn? A guy with a Marine Corps tattoo tried to take us out with an assault rifle. Now we know more about who we’re dealing with.”
“Bullshit,” I said. “We should have pulled over, seen what they had to say.”
“And risk getting shot? You’re kidding, right?”
I threw up my hands. “You assume they were out to kill us. I don’t.”
Cody raised his eyebrows, an incredulous expression on his face. “Yeah, they probably just wanted to sit down for tea and crumpets.”
“I don’t take dead bodies, lightly, Cody. We weren’t exactly acting in self-defense.”
“And we ain’t exactly responsible for their fate. They shot at us with an assault rifle, and drove off the road on their own.”
I spit into the weeds. “We might have been able to learn a lot more about this damn case if we could question them.”
Cody made a huffing sound. “I doubt that.”
I looked away from him at the panorama of color before us, the natural beauty of the view utterly incongruous with the day’s events. I heard him unzip his pack.
“Here,” he said. He tossed a pint bottle of Jim Beam my way. I snatched it out of the air. “You always like getting drunk when someone dies, right?”
I shook my head. “That’s usually at the end of a case,” I replied. But I twisted the cap and hit off the bottle anyway, the whiskey bitter in my throat. And then I took another small swig before I lobbed the bottle back to him.
“Good man.” Cody winked and tilted the bottle to his mouth. He stood looking out over the ridges, then he stomped a patch of dry grass and sat and lit a cigarette. After a minute I heard the gurgle of whiskey again.
“Hey,” I said.
“What?”
I sat and held out my hand. “Quit hogging the bottle.”
• • •
Two hours later we drove back to the highway and into Los Gatos. I had dozed off while we were killing time, and dreamt that the black man with the missing eye and crushed legs had spoken to me before floating away in a wheelchair. The dream was short and vivid and not something born of deep sleep; really it was more like a vision that hovered just beneath my consciousness. But I couldn’t remember what the man was trying to tell me.
It was six o’clock, and we stopped at a bar and grill in a strip mall at the end of University Avenue. The place had changed names since I’d last been there, but inside it hadn’t changed. The bar was U-shaped under a low ceiling, and there were no windows. The lighting was minimal, as if welcoming day drinkers to an environment where it was always night, always time to drink. I had spent a Christmas Eve here during my divorce.
We took a table in the back, near a row of electronic dartboards, and ordered food from a young, tattooed waitress with torn jeans and a slender waist. When she leaned down, her loose, low-cut shirt hung from her shoulders, and her small breasts were fully visible, the nipples just touching the cloth. I looked away and pulled from my pocket the wallet I’d taken from the dead man. There was no driver’s license, but a gym membership card identified him as Ahmad Jones.
“That’s the recent trend in dive bars around here,” Cody said when the waitress left. “Hire nubile bimbos to keep the boozers interested.”
“Works for you, huh?” I said.
“Sure. I’m a sportsman.”
“If whoring’s a sport, you’re a champ, all right.”
“Well, not everyone is destined for domestic bliss.” He tried to sound flippant, but there was a flicker of hurt and indignation in his eyes.
I sighed. I was still angry with Cody over the death of the two men in the SUV, which was a situation that never should have happened. I was angry at him not only because he goaded them into the altercation but also because it was likely they’d identified him because of his foolish indiscretion with Shanice Tucker. Regardless, I felt a stab of guilt over my remarks. “I didn’t mean anything,” I said.
“Don’t worry about it.”
I rubbed at the stubble on my jaw. I wished I didn’t have to concern myself with Cody’s personal life, which was akin to worrying about global warming, or perhaps the AIDS epidemic in Africa. But it was clear his sexual habits had become a professional liability. His affair with his SJPD boss’s wife was only the tip of the iceberg. A couple years ago, we worked a case together, each of us separately hired by a woman who seduced Cody early on. Our search for her stepson, who’d won the lottery, left a number of people dead (including the stepson), and she walked away with his fortune while we barely escaped with our lives. And in a more recent episode, Cody had shown up in South Lake Tahoe with an outrageously dressed bimbo, who created a scene and stormed out of the fancy restaurant where Candi and I had joined them for dinner on New Year’s Eve. The woman was found dead the next day. The chaos that ensued left me seriously considering a different line of work.
The waitress brought Cody a schooner of beer, while I sipped a cup of black coffee that no doubt had been aging since morning. Cody’s impulsive and jeopardous actions made it easy to blame him for the events of the afternoon. But blaming him entirely would be to ignore my own actions. I had been the one who broke into Farid Insaf’s residence and hogtied Duante Tucker. No doubt that had influenced the agenda of the men who followed us. Given that perspective, maybe Cody was right; maybe they did plan on killing us. So taking the offensive may have been the right move. But that didn’t make me any happier with the outcome.
Bottom line: Farid Insaf now knew who we were and had determined we needed to be discouraged, or worse. We’d have to factor that into our tactics moving forward.
• • •
We ate dinner at the bar and drove back to Cody’s house. At eight o’clock my cell rang. It was General Raymond Horvachek.
“I’ve spent the last couple hours reviewing Lawrence Tucker’s history,” he said. “I’ve got to hand it to you, Reno. You’ve picked an interesting subject.”
“How so?”
“I’ll start at the beginning. Tucker came out of the projects in Compton and enlisted in the marines in 1980. His record was exemplary for ten years, pretty impressive for a ghetto kid. By 1990 he’d been promoted to gunnery sergeant. In August 1990 he was deployed to Saudi Arabia, one of the first squads sent over for the Gulf War. When ground assaults began in January 1991, Tucker had fourteen confirmed kills before he was wounded, shot in the shoulder, a minor injury. A month later he was back with his unit, but by that time hostilities were winding down, and a cease-fire was declared.”
“Okay, so we know where the Purple Heart came from,” I said.
“Correct, but then Tucker went AWOL.”
“In the Mideast?”
“Yes. He vanished in Kuwait, assumed to have deserted.”
“Why would any sane American want to stay in the Mideast?” I asked.
“That’s a good question, and here’s where it gets m
urky. Some of the marines in Tucker’s squad voiced suspicion he’d become friendly with locals in Saudi Arabia. The MP investigated and came up empty but conjectured that Tucker potentially posed a threat to US interests. So they forwarded the case to the CIA.”
“What kind of threat?”
“The initial assumption involved opium trafficking, which in itself is not enough to concern the CIA. But the Taliban and al-Qaida rely heavily on heroin revenue to fund their organizations.”
“So the CIA thought Tucker was involved with al-Qaida?” I asked.
“They had suspicions because some of the Saudis he knew were linked to the Taliban in Afghanistan. Understand, Afghanistan is a nightmare for us. Our troops are trying to eradicate the Taliban, but we can’t do it without the support of the rural tribes. If the tribes side with the terrorists, we’re screwed; we can never win. So we try to make nice with the tribes, who are not much more than a ragtag group of millions of poor farmers living in places you or I wouldn’t use for a latrine. Guess what crop makes up the biggest portion of the tribe’s income?”
“Opium.”
“You got it. I’ll tell you, we’d like nothing more than to burn every poppy field in that godforsaken region and screw al-Qaida’s revenue stream. But in the long term, that would be a losing strategy because if we turn those tribes against us, al-Qaida will have a safe haven, one protected by the majority of the Afghan population.”
“How does Lawrence Tucker fit into all this?”
“Be patient,” Horvachek said. “I’ll get to that. You might ask, so do we just let the Afghans harvest their poppy crops and allow it be processed into heroin and distributed? No, we don’t. Our strategy today is to let the famers sell their crops and then we intercept the heroin before the money finds its way to the terrorists.”
“How successful have we been?”
“Somewhat,” he answered. “But here’s where Tucker comes in. In 1997, CIA operatives in Pakistan identified Tucker in a video clip they’d acquired. Tucker was spotted with a group of unsavory Arabs, all objects of US interest. We’re talking brothers of political bigwigs, oil rich sheiks suspected of kidnapping American women to staff their harems, and two known terrorists who had ties to Bin Laden. This was the first surfacing of Tucker since he deserted.”
“So he’d been living over there the whole time?”
“Apparently. He was bearded and wearing a turban and robes. They only discovered it was him when they used facial recognition software.”
“You said 1997,” I mused. “That was one year after Lamar Tucker was killed.”
“Who?” asked Horvachek.
“Is there any record of Lawrence Tucker’s family?” I asked. “Siblings?”
I heard the rustling of papers. “Yes,” the general replied. “Lamar Tucker, younger brother. Was he in the service?”
I paused for a self-congratulatory moment, then said, “I don’t think so. He also grew up in Compton, dealt drugs with the Crips until he was sent to jail and murdered by the Aryan Brotherhood.”
“Sounds like drug trafficking runs in the family. Anyway, in 1998 the DEA boarded a freighter as it approached the Port of Oakland, and seized eighty kilos of pure heroin. The CIA linked the shipment back to an Afghani drug lord. Lawrence Tucker allegedly brokered the deal.”
“Was Tucker arrested?”
“By who, the Afghani police? Not a chance. But he did drop off the radar after that for a number of years. His whereabouts were unknown until 2004, after we’d invaded Iraq and captured Saddam Hussein. I spent two years in Iraq during that time, and the entire region was a massive cluster-fuck. Iraq was teetering on civil war, various factions of Shiites and Sunnis were fighting for power, suicide bombings happened daily, and a new brand of ultraviolent al-Qaida emerged in Iraq. Despite heavy US military presence, to say Iraq was lawless would be an understatement. During this mayhem, the CIA was monitoring a senior al-Qaida member’s e-mail. There were repeated references to an individual they called Black Dog. He was involved in training al-Qaida soldiers for pay. In one of the e-mails, he was referred to as an American ex-soldier loyal to radical Islamic causes.”
“Meaning terrorism?” I asked.
“Right,” said Horvachek. “But he was also called greedy and not a true Muslim, so it seemed his relationship with the fundamentalists was somewhat tenuous. Anyway, the CIA confirmed this man was Lawrence Tucker, and we tried to take him out in a drone attack at a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan.
“Unsuccessful, I take it?”
“His death was considered likely but was never verified.”
“And?”
“That was the last we’ve heard of him.”
I rose from my chair at the kitchen table. Cody was sitting on his couch, the television on mute, his eyes staring at me. “I’ve got another name I’d like you to check,” I said. “A marine, or ex-marine. Ahmad Jones. Black male. Thirty years old.”
“He’s connected to Lawrence Tucker?” Horvachek asked.
“Maybe,” I said, and paused long enough for him to say, “Yes?”
“General,” I said, “I believe Lawrence Tucker is alive and is in the US.”
“How do you know this?” he demanded.
“Would the CIA still like to get their hands on him?”
“He’s a deserter who’s cavorted with the Taliban. What do you think?”
“I need a little more time to confirm it’s him. I’ll update you when you get the G-2 on Ahmad Jones.”
“Reno, Lawrence Tucker is considered an enemy of the people. If you have information to his whereabouts, you need to report it immediately.”
“I hear you,” I said.
“You mess with the CIA, you’re in over your head, son.”
“What else is new?” I replied.
• • •
“Jesus Christ,” Cody said. “Lawrence of Arabia, what a piece of work. Ditches the marines, sets up shop peddling opium in camel jockey land, and on the side trains suicidal ragheads who’d like nothing more than to pull off an encore to nine-eleven.” He paced around his living room. “Two bricks of C-4 in his closet, and who knows how much more he has?”
“We report him, the CIA will grab him, and we’ll never see him again.”
“So what?”
“Lawrence Tucker is the key to the case, Cody. He’s the one who hired the attorney. He’s the one who paid off someone to disappear the evidence. He’s the one who went to a lot of trouble to make sure Duante Tucker wasn’t prosecuted.”
“How do you reach those conclusions?”
“He’s got money, and he’s spent the last twenty years surviving in the most hostile region on the planet, in a place where he could be killed simply because he’s an American. This is a guy who knows how to operate and thrive in the underworld, where rules and laws and allegiances change without warning. He’s a special kind of guy. He’s also Duante Tucker’s uncle.”
“Fine, but why would he go to the trouble to free the shitbag?”
“Don’t know yet,” I admitted.
“Dirt, we got other angles to play here. I just got e-mailed updated audio files from Suggs’s house.”
“Suggs is dead,” I reminded him.
“Yeah, that’s a shame,” he said. “But I’d like to hear what he was talking about before he bit the dust, wouldn’t you?”
“Yeah, I would. What about the bugs from the Skyscape?”
“Nothing yet. Should get an e-mail tomorrow.”
“How about Shanice Tucker’s mobile phone?”
“Haven’t heard from the encryption dude.” Cody sat on a chair across from me. “I’ll call him.”
“Let’s keep our eye on the ball, all right?” I said. “Ryan Addison hired us to uncover who was behind Duante skating on the rape charge. He also wants justice done—he wants Duante to pay for the crime.”
“One way or another.”
“We find out how that evidence disappeared, maybe Duante will be r
etried. Maybe—”
Cody laughed. “You’re dreaming. First, he’s protected by double jeopardy, and second, even if we could find the DNA evidence, it would be tainted. Any defense attorney would tear it apart. Sorry, Dirt, it ain’t gonna happen that way.”
I felt my face twist in a grimace. I got up and went to Cody’s refrigerator, but I wasn’t hungry or thirsty. When I came back to the couch, I said, “Whatever Lawrence Tucker’s up to, he’s gonna be extra cautious now.”
“Extra cautious? Or maybe extra motivated to take us out.”
I grunted and bent down to tie my shoelace. A flash of light panned the room through the partially drawn drapes on the big window overlooking Cody’s front yard. I looked up in time to see a car creeping along. It wasn’t just one car; two sedans had stopped across the street. I peered out, watching as the four car windows facing us simultaneously lowered. I froze for a second when I saw the glint off a rifle barrel, then I yelled, “Take cover!” and dove to the floor. An instant later the front window exploded in a shower of glass. A row of bullets tore into the couch above me. Cody flipped backward in his recliner just before a series of rounds stitched the bottom of the chair and blew chunks of wood into the air.
The staccato clatter of automatic weapons fire continued. At least two shooters, I estimated. Bullets ripped through the house, shattering the television screen, reducing a potted plant to a pile of dirt and clay fragments, and blasting large chips out of the tile counters in Cody’s kitchen.
“I’m hit,” Cody said. I was pressed flat to the carpet. I looked up and saw blood soaking through the thigh of his jeans. “I can’t fucking believe this,” he said.
I pulled my belt out of its loops and shimmied on my stomach to where he lay. “Stay flat,” I said, and tied the belt above the wound. Then I crawled on my stomach toward the laundry room, where I had set my gear bag next to a door to the side yard.