by Tim Green
Jose wouldn't answer. He pulled away, his face tight and flushed with shame, and headed back for the cab.
Casey let him go.
CHAPTER 50
SHOWERED, SHAVED, AND HIGH, WITH HIS HAND ON A CHROME.45 automatic and a cigarette dangling from his lip, Teuch rode beside Adulio, his brother-King. Slouched down in the front seat of Adulio's pimped-out '73 Impala, they rumbled down the steaming street past the Catholic church in Wilmer. The church's doors swung open and there stood the priest. Teuch might have thought the priest meant to welcome them, except he knew the priest could not have known that Teuch would be back in Wilmer.
"Stop," Teuch told Adulio in Spanish, taking a final drag before pitching his cigarette out the open window.
"Que?" Adulio asked, looking around, his bald brown head swiveling.
"Back up," Teuch said. "To the church."
They did, and the priest studied them without moving from the stoop, a watering can cradled in his arms. The priest's face suddenly relaxed and he approached the car.
"You look terrible," the priest said, in Spanish. "I didn't recognize you."
"Guess I fucked up," Teuch said in Spanish, offering up a placid grin. "Last time I saw you, Father, you offered me a blessing. I should have taken it."
Teuch pointed at the white helmet atop his head. "Cop blew half my fucking brains out, Father. Now I got some sense."
"To blow out half of his?" the priest asked, raising an eyebrow and switching to English.
"To see what you wanted me to see before, Father," Teuch said in Spanish, "to take your blessings this time. Bring me some luck."
"I hope to bring you the Lord's blessings by showing you the work I believe your brother died for," the priest said, returning to Spanish, resting his watering can on the gravel next to the small plot of flowers surrounding the stunted belfries. "I told you that days ago. Did the men who killed your brother do that to you?"
Teuch touched the dressing and smiled at the pain, now muted by heroin. "Yes. I'd like to know more."
Teuch got out of the car and followed the priest up the hard-packed dirt walk lined with small round stones. The priest swung open the dark door and they entered a musty nave with rough-cut dark wood pews that faced an altar lit by a single arched piece of stained glass and watched over by a large wooden Jesus, bleeding on his cross. Along one wall the priest went, turning in to a flickering chapel no bigger than a motel room. Teuch eyed the wooden Jesus above the main altar and sniffed before turning in to the chapel himself and seeing a hundred or more small photographs taped to the plaster wall in rows. Beneath them stood two racks of candles, their small orange flames guttering low and dribbling clear white wax.
"The people say 'Triangulo de Bermudas' behind my back," the priest said. "These are the missing, their photographs. Some from right here, they simply disappear. Most of them have sent word that they are coming and then, nothing. Back home, in Mexico, the people say they went. Here, they wait, but no one comes."
"Coyotes," Teuch said with a nod.
"Maybe," the priest said. "But why hasn't anyone heard? Some of them are bad, these coyotes. They take advantage of the weak. But their stories are told. These people"-the priest nodded at the wall-"there is nothing. They simply vanish."
"And my brother?" Teuch said.
The priest nodded vigorously. "He didn't tell me what it was, but I found him here in this chapel, late one night, just before he died. I don't know how he got here, or what he was doing, but when I asked him, he told me these souls might not be lost. That was all he would say, but I took it to mean something."
Teuch studied the souls. A young girl. A man with a full white beard. A fat mother with two grinning children. Smiling, random faces with no connection to one another beyond their Mexican heritage and their quest for a better place. Teuch chuckled and turned away, waving his hand.
"Ghosts and demons and smoke and mirrors," he said. "The work of priests."
Teuch stopped in the middle of the nave. The priest had followed him, but with a head hung in disappointment.
"Bless me anyway, Father," Teuch said, turning toward him and eyeing the bloody wooden savior. "For luck. I can't say it's God's work, but it is work I think He'd want done."
CHAPTER 51
CASEY WOKE TO THE SOUND OF HER CELL PHONE RISING ABOVE the alarm she'd been too lazy to shut off. She cleared her throat and coughed, picked it up, and answered.
"Where are you?" Stacy asked.
Casey swatted the clock radio into silence, woefully eyeing the bottle of sleeping pills on the nightstand. She widened her eyes, worked her jaw, and wagged her head to clear the ill effect of the pills.
"I'm coming," she said, clearing her throat again.
"You sound like shit," Stacy said.
"I feel great, though," she said.
"Sorry."
"You saw that last night?" Casey asked.
"How's Jose?"
"I better get going here," Casey said.
"The TV trucks got here before me. I showed them where to set up."
"How do they look, the reporters?" Casey asked.
"Hungry, I guess."
"Good. They're about to get fed," Casey said, then hung up.
A cold shower cut through the fog of the sleeping pill. She dressed quickly, gulped down a glass of tomato juice, and hurried out the door with her briefcase tucked beneath her arm.
She darted in and out of the morning traffic, which was thinning now with the lateness of the hour, until she found herself in front of the courthouse with a pounding headache. TV trucks jammed the drive with more than just the local news and she pulled up her Mercedes behind one of them like just another reporter risking a ticket and a tow. She found three Advils in her purse, swallowed them dry, and checked her makeup in the rearview mirror. She got out into a sun standing well above the horizon, too bright and too hot to look at.
Stacy appeared beside her wearing a new dress and high heels that made Casey stare.
"I figured," Stacy said, looking down at herself, "TV and everything."
Casey nodded. "Thanks for coming."
Although there was no press podium for her, the media had coagulated around the usual spot on the granite steps, in the shadows of the main entrance, where lawyers, jurors, and families of the accused hurried to and fro to receive their portion of justice. Among the media, she thought she detected mic flags from CNN, E!, and Access Hollywood. Casey breathed deep and fiddled with her hair, tucking it in and out from behind her ears as her own mind wavered between images of a powerful, meticulous lawyer and of a sympathetic woman unjustly accused. As she stepped to the spot in front of all the lights, cameras, and microphones, she went with both, one side of her red hair pinned back behind her ear, the other falling loose across the edge of her cheek and jaw.
She set her briefcase down on the steps, extracting her five-page statement with trembling hands. After the blazing morning heat, the deep shadow of the courthouse tower sent a chill down her spine. She forced a smile at the reporters, thanked them for coming, and began to read.
Somewhere in the midst of her denials and pointed counteraccusations, she began to wish she'd postponed speaking to the press. Her consternation over Jose, a bad night's sleep, and a hangover from the sleeping pill left her feeling nauseated and less than sharp mentally. Not knowing how to go back, though, she plowed through to the end, thinking she could make a quick exit before she threw up.
But when she finished her statement and the questions came zipping at her like traffic on a busy highway, her legs seized up.
"Are you saying that your history of mental illness isn't connected with these wild allegations?"
Wham.
She scowled, searching for the source of the question.
"That is a lie," she said, gritting her teeth, knowing she shouldn't even address it, knowing she should just leave, but somehow unable to keep her mouth shut. "I have no mental illness."
"We've seen your da
te book from two years ago," said a bleached blonde in a red skirt and jacket, pointing at Casey with a microphone. "You saw a Dr. Eppilito over a dozen times. The psychotherapist. Are you saying you have no mental problems?"
Casey sighed, smiled wanly, and asked, "Who doesn't have problems? My marriage was a train wreck. A former client tried to kill me."
"And you took antipsychotic drugs for your mental illness?"
"What's wrong with you people?" Casey barked, even while the lawyer in her shouted to walk away. "A man was murdered. They cremated his body to destroy the evidence. The US government deported his wife and baby to cover it up, and you want to know about a couple Xanax I took two years ago?"
Cameras flashed and clicked and the reporters began to jostle one another, undulating like a polluted sea, their questions coming like breakers, jumbled together and smashing into her. Gangs. Drug deals. Movie contracts. Corruption. Dirty cops. Murderesses. Madness. Sex. They hit her with everything, until, finally, her stomach heaved. She snatched up her briefcase, choking back the bile, and vacated the steps.
They followed her in a pack, snapping at her with insistent and outrageous questions and accusations. Stacy locked an arm into Casey's and acted as buffer, escorting her down the steps with a stiff back, jutting out her chin and glowering. At the bottom of the steps, the young bleached blonde in the red skirt and heels darted in front of them, microphone first.
"Are you going to return the money you've taken from charity?" she said, her blue eyes bulging and spittle flying from her cherry lips.
The foam bulb on the end of the microphone bumped Casey's nose hard enough to make her eyes water.
"Are you!" the reporter yelled.
Casey grabbed the microphone and yanked it. The reporter held tight, crashing into Casey and careening off of the elbow Stacy fired into her ribs. The reporter sprawled to the pavement, her long legs akimbo. She screamed, but gripped the microphone with both hands and stabbed it at Casey.
Casey knocked the mic aside, stepped over the woman reporter, and marched on toward her car. The pack closed in and the tirade of questions, now indignant and angry, cascaded down on her and Stacy.
"Fucking animals," Stacy said with her arm across her face.
Casey jerked open the car door and looked up at the mob.
"This shitbox is my Mercedes!"
She threw herself inside, and crawled away through the swarm with her full weight on the car's horn.
CHAPTER 52
HEY, BUDDY," KEN TRENT SAID, "WHERE YOU AT?"
Jose squinted at the clock on his phone and wormed his swollen tongue around inside his mouth, searching for moisture. He cleared his throat and said, "In my truck. Why?"
"Where in your truck?"
Jose went rigid at the tone of his ex-boss's voice. He sat up, kicking a trio of empty Budweiser bottles across the floor mat. He studied the tree-lined street in front of him where Casey lived, and scoured the nearly empty parking lot of the small, shrub-trimmed shopping center. On the pavement outside, the rest of the empty beer bottles stood in their cardboard container next to a shimmering puddle of piss.
The third-floor window to Casey's back bedroom stared down at him with a half-shut pink shade, a watchful eye that somehow accused him of cowardice for sitting there and drinking all night without going inside to talk to Casey.
He said, "On my way to a job."
"In town?"
"Yeah," Jose said. "Why? What's up?"
The police captain took a turn at silence before he said, "I think you need to come in and see me."
"I got a wife about to come out of an aerobics class with some college kid," Jose said. "Husband's an insurance agent, paying top dollar, so you gotta do better than a tip on the Mavs game."
"I can't tell you, exactly, Jose," he said. "It's important. It's got to do with that thing you're working on down in Wilmer."
"Tell you what," Jose said. "I can't get down there, but I'll meet you. There's a shopping center across the street from my job, the place just off the Colinas exit on 114. You can buy me a Starbucks."
"Half an hour, okay?" Ken asked.
"Cappuccino?" Jose asked. "If I get there first?"
"Just the closest thing to regular black coffee," Ken said.
Jose always kept a spare set of clothes behind the backseat. He removed the duffel bag and crossed the street, dialing Casey's cell number but getting no answer. Casey kept a key in the flower box outside the back door. Jose dug it out of the dirt and let himself in to use the shower and change clothes. Clean and smelling much better, he jotted out a note telling her that he'd used the shower and explaining that if it hadn't been urgent and involving the Senator Chase case, he never would have been so bold as to use her spare key to let himself in. He added a postscript that said he hoped she'd forgive him for that, even if she couldn't forgive him for his past.
He drove over to the shopping center ten minutes before the appointed time, but instead of entering the large parking lot, he passed by and pulled into the adjoining apartment complex perched on the hill above. Parking out of sight, he walked with a pair of field glasses to the edge of the wrought-iron fence by the apartment complex's pool. He scanned the Starbucks and saw Ken Trent outside in a gray blazer and black slacks, talking to an undercover cop who nodded, looked around, and then hurriedly returned to the unmarked car, where he slumped down in the seat next to his partner.
When Ken disappeared into the coffee store, Jose studied the other cars in the lot and came up with a second unmarked car, where two more cops sat slumped low, one of them talking into a cell phone.
Jose checked the loads in his guns as he crossed the lot toward the back. He hopped the fence and shuffled down the dirt hillside into the back of the shopping center where the AC units groaned from the rooftop and the smell of garbage floated past on warm zephyrs. He jogged the length of the center and came around the opposite side, slipping into the side door of the coffee shop and sneaking up on the police captain at his table against the wall.
"Sorry I'm late," Jose said.
Ken jumped and spun. "Jesus."
"Thanks for getting the coffee," Jose said, slipping into the chair across from him and taking a drink from the other cup. "Double espresso. You remembered. That's sweet."
"Who else drinks that shit?" Ken said, taking a careful sip from his own cup.
"Look at the line, that's who," Jose said, nodding toward the counter crowded with businesspeople, most of them talking rapidly into cell phones or bending over their BlackBerrys.
"What's up?" Jose asked. "That class finishes in about ten minutes and then I'm on."
Ken's face went sour. "We've been friends for a long time. I want to help."
Jose nodded slowly. "Okay."
They stared at each other for a minute. Jose took another sip.
"You want to tell me something?" Ken asked.
"You want to tell me something?" Jose asked. "You're the one acting strange."
Ken winced and looked at him hard. "They found your aunt and the other woman, dead. Execution style, Jose. No struggle. And right there with them? That little popgun you own. The one you keep in the crack of your ass."
Jose felt his mind casting free, dizzy from the night before and this news, but he gripped his legs under the table and dug in with his fingertips.
"What about the others?" he asked, thinking of Isodora and the baby.
"Others?" Ken said, studying him.
"A woman and her baby girl," Jose said. "What about them?"
Ken shook his head. "If you're trying to distract me, don't. I'm doing my best to make this easy."
Jose paused, but only for an instant, and said, "I'm a serial killer all of a sudden, right? A basement full of bodies somewhere?"
"You admitting to the two?"
"Of course I'm not," Jose said. "You're not serious. I'd leave my own gun there?"
Ken just stared.
"You giving me a chance to run?" Jose asked. "Tha
t your help?"
"You know it's not," Ken said. "I told you and told you, back in the day. You can't play on the edge. Sooner or later, you lose your balance. It just happens. I just thought it could be you and me and make it easy that way, not taking you down like some banger in the street."
"Cup of coffee and a friendly surrender, huh?" Jose said. "You're a pal."
Jose flicked the coffee without warning, blinding the cop, whipping out his automatic, and clipping Trent with a backhand across the temple. Jose grabbed him under the arm so he didn't fall to the floor, scanning the cafe over his shoulder. One woman looked, her mouth agog, but when her eyes met Jose's, she raised her newspaper. The rest kept their phone calls going.
Jose propped his old friend up against the wall. A small trickle of blood seeped down along his hairline, draining into his ear. Jose turned again, scanned the cafe, stashed his gun, and slipped out the back.
CHAPTER 53
THE OTHER PATRONS AT WHO'S WHO NUDGED EACH OTHER AND stared at Casey. Paige, her big blonde mane radiating, glared around the deck until they dropped their prying eyes and the buzz of conversation recommenced. With a curt nod Paige grabbed hold of her burger with two hands and took a bite. The big diamond on her hand flashed, blinding Casey for a moment with a dash of sunlight.
After swallowing, Paige dabbed her lips and said, "Honey, I got one chit and one chit only, with Mrs. Cavanaugh. You telling me I need to use it?"
"I can't think of any way to get to her except through you," Casey said, sipping her Diet Coke. "Especially with everything going on."
"It's awful," Paige said before falling silent.
"I'm sure she's not keeping score," Casey said. "This isn't that big of a deal for her."
Paige shook her head violently. "When I stepped down at the Bovine Ball so her daughter could win that crown, she told me point-blank in the French Room Bar of the Adolphus Hotel and I'll never forget it, she said, 'You'll get one favor from me for this. Don't you dare ask for two.'"