by Tim Green
CHAPTER 59
TEUCH SENT ADULIO OFF IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION IN THE Impala while he turned left out of the quarry, heading for Interstate 45. He checked himself in the rearview and poked at where the gauze sagged on his forehead. He looked like shit and turned away from his reflection, gripping the wheel tighter. He liked riding in the cruiser. It had a big macho engine, and no one would mess with a Po Po's ride. No one would find an empty cop car, either, and start looking for the cop who went with it. He didn't need that. The cop was just one down. He still had the senator to go.
The Kings had a junkyard and chop shop in Irvine, where he could lose the whole package, except for the girl. You couldn't chop down a girl. He knew some people who would do that for a price but that wasn't the way Teuch rolled.
He felt like he'd seen her before even though he had no idea where. Teuch punched up the cop radio and listened to the regular chatter about speeders and grocery snatch-and-grabs and then turned it off, finding a good Norteno station, letting the windows down and lighting up a fat spliff he'd saved for the right time.
The pain subsided to the sounds of Los Tigres del Norte. The smoke and the sweet accordion took him back as he listened to "Directo al Corazon." He found the switch for the flashers and siren and gave them a twirl, laughing, and reaching into the glove compartment to find a sweet.38 Chief's Special fully loaded.
A bridge came into view, rising up over the Trinity River, a high point where he would be able to see traffic coming and going. The guardrails glowed in the beam of the headlights, nothing but blackness beyond. Teuch checked the mirror for traffic behind and saw the same kind of empty road that lay before him. He drove to the high point of the bridge and pulled over as far as he could and carefully studied the landscape around him to make sure they were alone.
He smoked the spliff down to a roach, seeing nothing but the lights of a distant farm and hearing nothing but the sweep of water beneath the bridge. Satisfied, he popped the trunk, hopped out, and rounded the car. On his way, he tossed the bloody knife over the guardrail, pausing to hear it splash as he rounded the back bumper.
He hoped the bitch could swim, as he tucked the newly found.38 into the waistband of his jeans.
The woman lay blinking up at him in the weak light of the trunk, a cell phone in her hand.
"Stupid," he said, reaching for the phone.
The woman clutched the phone but Teuch grabbed for it and twisted away. He shook his head and drew the gun from the back of his pants.
"Puta."
From the corner of his eye, Teuch now detected a faint glow from up ahead. He snorted at the sight of headlights, distant, but moving his way. He cursed in Spanish and slammed the trunk shut again and hustled back behind the wheel. With the cop car in gear, he eased away from the guardrail and started across the bridge.
Instead of continuing, the oncoming vehicle, a truck by its size, swerved into the middle of the bridge, blocking Teuch's path. Thirty yards away, it came to a stop. The truck's high beams kicked on and Teuch winced and jammed on his brakes. Blocking the bright lights with an arm, Teuch threw the car into reverse. He sped backward, but the truck advanced and bumped his front end, spinning him and causing him to crash into the guardrail.
Teuch punched the gas again, but the car only whined and tugged against the guardrail, which had hooked its crumpled edges into the car. The truck stopped again, high beams still blinding him. Teuch dove across the seat, flung open the passenger-side door, and rolled out onto the bridge. Still shielding his eyes, he drew the gun with his other hand, popped up the roof, and fired into the truck.
Ducking down, he scurried up to the front end and eased around the bumper, ready to fire again. Nothing moved. The truck's engine rumbled over the top of Teuch's rapid breathing. Teuch studied the shadows inside and around the truck and moistened his lips.
The red-and-blue lights on Gage's cop car flashed; the sounds of the Mexican radio station came softly from inside the car.
Finally Teuch yelled, "Come out!"
Nothing happened. No one moved. Teuch crept along the guardrail, staying in the shadows, his eyes locked onto the truck with his gun aimed and ready. He inched closer, heart hammering fast. Out of the headlights' beams, he could see the bullet hole at the center of the frosty web that made up the damaged windshield. When he reached the door, he stood listening for several minutes before wrenching it open. Instead of a bloody body, only the soft sound of a bell and the dim glow of the dome light greeted him.
"Drop it, fucknuts," a voice behind him said.
Teuch stood still and raised his hands, turning slowly.
The voice told Teuch to drop it again, this time in Spanish and including a nasty curse on his mother.
Teuch saw an automatic pointed at his head and he dropped the.38. When it clattered to the pavement, the man covering him allowed his eyes to flicker at the sound. Teuch dropped and rolled, hitting the pavement for an instant before finding his feet and propelling himself forward into the shadows. The blast of the gun seemed to split his head open, but the bullet zipped past his ear in the same instant. He dodged twice, first one way, then the other, before reaching the guardrail and leaping into empty black space.
CHAPTER 60
CASEY HEARD JOSe SHOUT AND THEN A SECOND GUNSHOT. Her fingers found a tire iron and she clutched it tight.
The trunk popped open.
"Miss me?" Jose said.
Casey held the tire iron, sweating and breathless.
"I should knock you in the head,'' she said. But she dropped the tire iron and grabbed hold of him. He pulled her out, and she gripped the front of his shirt, planting a solid kiss on him.
"I did what they said," he said, "but it wasn't like that. I had to help some people. A container of girls, children, ready to go on a ship for Singapore. There was a big drug kingpin down in Nuevo Laredo who had the information I needed. That's all. I didn't do it for money. The drugs had nothing to do with me, but I cut a deal."
"Do I look like a give a shit right now?" she said, looking up at him. She kissed him again.
"Yes, you do," he said. He put his hand on the lower part of Casey's spine and led her to the truck. "They killed Amelia and my aunt, and someone is trying to make it look like me. Gage was one of them, but it wasn't him alone. They took Isodora and the baby."
"I know," Casey said. "I saw them.''
"You know where they're taking them?"
"Gage brought them to the eighteen-wheeler at the quarry," Casey said. "I don't know how many people were in it, but it's gone. I didn't get the plate.''
Jose scratched his chin. It looked as if he hadn't shaved in days. He looked at the windshield of his truck and shook his head.
"What did the truck look like?"
"The cab was red and it had a black rooster with a circle of words around it. Does that help?"
"You work with what you got.'' Jose wrapped his hand in his denim shirt to bang out the damaged windshield before helping her in.
"What about Teuch?" Casey asked.
"My guess is he stopped here to toss you into the river. We've got to get your car and then get out of here. When they find Gage's car, I need to be in another place."
Jose shut the door and circled the hood. He jumped in beside her, put the truck in gear, and took off toward the quarry. They rode in a terrible wind, unable to really talk. Jose asked her to point out the service entrance to the quarry and she did.
They pulled in and stopped and Casey said, "Check this out."
Jose cast a puzzled look at her cell phone.
"Listen," she said, then played back the video she'd recorded from inside the trunk.
"Play that part again," Jose said, grabbing Casey's arm.
"What part?"
"What Gage just said."
Casey reversed the recording ten seconds and hit play.
Jose didn't say anything. His hands gripped the wheel and he hunched his head forward as he put the truck back in gear and
they bounced along the gravel road. Finally he slowed down and said, "It could be anything. Use your imagination. Those people are no one. They leave Mexico to come here. People down there don't hear from them and they have no idea what happened. The people here don't know if they went back to Mexico or got a better job somewhere else. That's what they figure. There's no record of these people. No one can check. No one can know anything. These people can just disappear because they don't exist."
"What about Nelly? Chase's maid?"
Jose pulled to a stop with his headlights shining on Casey's dusty blue Mercedes and shrugged. "She's an illegal, and one day she has trouble with the boss. Next thing you know, she's gone. Even if they want to complain, who do they call? No one.
"Get in your car and follow me," Jose said. "We can drop my truck a few exits down and head for the border."
"Why?"
"If that eighteen-wheeler is going to Mexico, we might beat it to the crossing. Even if we don't, I've got a friend there who might be able to help us pick it out based on the red cab and the rooster. He'll give us the plates, and we can track it down."
Casey hesitated and said, "I'm grateful to you, Jose, but are you going to tell me the whole story behind that news report?"
He stared out the empty window for a few moments, then said, "It'd be easy to say they made it all up, that my work brought me into close contact with the bad guys."
"That happens," Casey said quietly. "But there's more, isn't there?"
Jose nodded and clenched his hand, gently pounding the dashboard. "Not the prostitution. I have no idea where they got that. But I took some money. I could say it was because of my wife, but that's bullshit. These people have so much cash it's like lawn cuttings. I took some. I got caught. That's it. Am I dirty? I guess I am."
"How much?" Casey asked.
Jose shrugged and said, "About twenty thousand."
He held up his wrist, shaking the steel Rolex, and said, "I bought this watch with part of it."
Casey reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. "I've seen a lot worse."
Jose dropped his arm, sighed, and said, "Well, we've got to get your car out of here, either way. Come on. Follow me. If you want, we can dump this truck, get you some clothes and things, then hit the road. That's if we're still in this thing together."
Jose held out his hand.
Casey took it and nodded.
CHAPTER 61
CASEY WOKE AND BLINKED AT THE BLINDING SUN.
"You drove all night?" she asked Jose.
He gave her half a smile. "Like a stakeout. How 'bout we stop for some doughnuts?"
Casey's phone chirped. She opened it.
"Seventeen messages," she said, studying the numbers of the calls that had come in as she retrieved the messages. She listened to the first three before snapping it shut.
"Everyone wants an interview," she said. "You save some teenage mother and her baby from being beaten by Dad, the drug dealer; no one cares about that. But if you're a mentally ill woman lawyer going after a US senator and Susan Lucci played you in a crap movie? Do you even like Susan Lucci?"
"I see you more as Lucille Ball.''
"And you as Desi?"
"She was just the first redhead I could think of. I don't know who'd play me, maybe George Clooney.''
"Poor Lifetime can't afford George. I think you'll have to be happy with Lorenzo Lamas.''
"Fantastic,'' Jose said.
After a minute, Jose looked her way and said, "I waited outside your apartment, thinking of how to tell you the truth about all this bullshit. Then I fell asleep."
She thought about what that meant, then said, "The 'shrink' I saw was a friend of a friend, during the divorce. He gave me some Xanax to help me sleep, of which I took about three."
Jose nodded. "Ah, the media."
"Can we get some coffee?" Casey said, yawning. "And, yes, doughnuts. Doughnuts would be good.''
Jose pointed to a foam cup with a plastic lid in the cup holder between them.
"Still hot," he said. "You were sleeping too good. They didn't have doughnuts. I checked."
"Where are we?" she asked, peeling off the lid and sipping the coffee.
He nodded up ahead. Casey saw the lines of traffic, mostly trucks, and the booths filled with agents.
"My guy's on the midnight shift," he said, turning left and crossing the lane of oncoming traffic, pulling into the parking lot of the drab brick government building with its flagpoles for the United States and the State of Texas. "They got him on a desk right now, working on some unmanned-aircraft thing. Usually he's out on a four-wheeler."
Jose pulled into a space and flipped open his cell phone to let his friend know they'd arrived. A couple of minutes later, a man with bronze skin and a brush-broom mustache walked their way wearing the dark blue uniform of a border agent. Jose got out of the Mercedes and greeted him with a hug before the agent climbed into the backseat and reached forward to shake hands with Casey.
"Tony Chehenga," he said.
"Can I buy you breakfast?" Jose asked, starting the Mercedes.
"Dinner for me," Tony said. "Sure. There's a Perkins one exit up."
Jose pulled out of the lot and headed back up the highway.
"So what's all the mystery?" Tony asked.
"I thought they might be listening to your calls," Jose said.
"Not our government," Tony said, sitting back in his seat. "We respect your privacy. So, what is it you need?"
"Let's get you something to eat," Jose said.
"That bad, huh?"
"We've seen worse," Jose said.
"That's no comfort, Jose," Tony said.
Tony asked Casey how she got mixed up with Jose and she told him.
"I had a partner killed by these Mexican bangers from M-13," Tony said. "He was visiting his ex-wife and kids up in Dallas. Jose worked the case, that's how we met, but we've done a few favors for each other over the years."
Casey suspected there was a story behind the favors, but they pulled into the Perkins and she didn't ask.
Tony ordered steak and eggs, then handed the menu to their waitress. "Okay, I don't have to actually have the food in my stomach. What's up?"
"We need to stop a truck from going into Mexico," Jose said.
"No problem," Tony said, flipping his cup and accepting some coffee from a waitress with a toothy smile. "I'll call President Calderon."
"Or at least know when it went in and where it's going."
Tony looked at the flag on the shoulder of his uniform and said, "You got me confused with a Mexican border agent."
"Don't you know those guys?" Casey asked.
"Last time one of our guys crossed the line to ask if they wanted to put together a softball team to play us, they arrested him. We're not real close."
"Really? Arrested him?" Casey said.
Tony nodded. "Really. They had to go halfway up the ladder to get it worked out. I could get what you need, though. I just have to go through channels. We have a Mexican liaison. I know they've got cameras, same system as us, so you could run the plates and it'll come right up. It'll cost you some cash, though. Nothing happens over there without grease."
Jose glanced at Casey and said, "We don't have a plate number."
Tony tapped the tines of his fork against the spoon, looking from one of them to the other as if waiting for the punch line, before he sighed and said, "I could get you some DVDs, I guess. You'll have to watch them yourself, though."
"We'd be looking for them right away," Jose said, checking his watch. "The truck we want could've come through here any time since, I don't know, two a.m. if they were making time. Or it might come through any time now if the driver stopped, which I doubt."
"Maybe you should sit out there on the road and watch until I know I can get a copy of it," Tony said.
"I guess we'll have to," Jose said.
"I was kidding. What happens if you see it?"
"I ask for another favor," J
ose said.
"And I'm going to find what in this truck?" Tony asked.
"Let's talk about that if we get to that point," Jose said. "How long would it take you to stop it if we see it heading into the border?"
"A phone call," Tony said. "Providing it's as urgent as you're making out."
"If we found the truck on the video, could you have them pull the destination?" Casey asked. "Would they have that?"
"For the right price, they'd give you a limousine ride there,'' Tony said. "Todo es para la venta, they say. Everything is for sale."
"Even women and children," Casey said under her breath.
CHAPTER 62
CASEY BLINKED AND RUBBED HER EYES WITH THE PALMS OF HER hands, clicking the pause button on the computer.
"I can't even keep my eyes open," she said, hiding a yawn in her elbow and swinging her legs off the motel bed. The room was a room like a million others, flowered bedspread with assorted stains and spots, cheap furniture, and a small television with a pay-per-view box for porn on top. Jose had dismantled the box and hooked up the laptop.
"Eight lanes of truck traffic," Jose said, his voice trancelike. "Too bad half of the hundred billion we export to Mexico comes from Texas."
He sat slumped down in the desk chair, his eyes half shut but unblinking as he stared at the screen. He picked up the menu of television choices from a little table by a bank of windows. "Lord of the Cock Rings? Must be epic.''
"You're losing it," she said. "You're running what? Thirty-six hours without sleep?"
Jose held his Rolex out in front of his face, then moved it farther away, trying to focus. "Forty."
"We have to do this," Casey said, "but we also have to sleep. You should see what you look like. Come to bed."
"You go," Jose said, his eyes glued to the screen. He flipped the porn menu into the trash can.
Casey shook her head, got up, and went into the bathroom. She examined the hint of crow's feet in the corners of her eyes, then stretched the skin taut to make them disappear. She ran the water hot enough to fill the small tiled bathroom with steam before dropping her clothes and stepping into the shower. She got clean and let the water run over her hair, covering her face.