Mistletoe Man - China Bayles 09

by Susan Wittig Albert

  Anyway, there was a certain logic to Ruby's idea, and I went after her. Aunt Velda's red Ford truck had been parked in Swenson's tractor shed since Sunday afternoon— it could sit there a few hours longer. Aunt Velda wasn't going anywhere. And if there was something illegal in that bam, we could alert Blackie to the fact, so he would come prepared.

  Ruby and I stood together in front of the building. I assumed that the double doors—sliding doors, hung from a track at the top—would be locked, and wondered whether it was time to use Ruby's handy-dandy lock-picking kit. But the right-hand door hung open a couple of inches. Ruby pushed it to the side until the opening was just wide enough to slip through.

  "Wait, Ruby," I said cautiously. "Somebody might be in there."

  "If anybody's in there, they're in the dark," Ruby retorted.

  "We'll be in the dark, too. Did you bring your flashlight?"

  "No, but I brought this." She reached into her canvas bag and took out the can of pepper spray. "Are you coming or do I go by myself?" And with that, she stepped through the door. I had no choice but to follow her.

  It was pitch-black inside, but my nose told me that something—pot or not—was growing in this building. The smell of rich, damp earth and green leaves was unmistakable, and the air was warm, 50 degrees or so.

  "Smell it?" Ruby asked excitedly. "He's growing staff!"

  "Maybe it's orchids," I whispered.

  "If I were a light switch," Ruby said, "where would I be? To the right, just inside the door?"

  "Wait, Ruby!" I exclaimed. But it was too late. She'd found the switch and flipped it on. A string of bulbs suspended overhead came on, not very bright, but bright enough to show us what we'd come all this way to see.

  Swenson's greenhouse. Not your everyday glassed-in variety, but a large, open growing area in the middle of a dirt floor. This rectangular space, covered with several inches of pine-bark mulch, was home to forty or so rows of robust, flourishing green plants. Some, in three-gallon pots, were head-high and obviously mature; others were waist-high; still others, in gallon pots, were knee-high. Along the right, on wooden tables, were flats of tiny green seedlings. Banks of fluorescent tubes, not operating at the moment, were suspended over the growing area, along with a complex web of what looked like sprayers or misters. With a metallic grunt and a whisde, a blower came on and the leaves began to stir slightly in the mechanical breeze.

  We moved forward and to the right for a better look. As we stood there, taking all this in like a pair of open-mouthed tourists on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, we heard a loud click. The fluorescent tubes blinked and brightened, flooding the growing area with an intense, full-spectrum light that made the leaves look intensely, potently green. Seconds later, the misters came on, spraying clouds of sparkling droplets. The system was obviously regulated by electronic timers which measured out just the right amount of sun, wind, and rain. The result was an extremely lucrative harvest of green plants that were almost literally worth their weight in gold.

  I blinked against the bright light. Ruby sucked in her breath and let it out again in a long hiss. "Wow," she whispered. "I thought we might find a few plants, but this is— It's—" She gave up trying to find words. "The mind boggles," she said, and fell silent.

  "Yeah," I agreed, and did a rapid-fire calculation. There were maybe eight hundred to a thousand plants in front of us. What was the street value? A million dollars? Two million? My stomach lurched. My lower lip was hung up between my teeth. No wonder Swenson could afford to shop for a Rio condo. Hell, if he'd been doing this for a while, he could probably buy the whole damn condo complex. With pocket change.

  Beside me, Ruby was taking very deep breaths. "Do you know what this means, China?" she asked in a threadlike voice. "It means that—"

  I put my hand on her shoulder. "It means that you were right. It also means that we'd better get to that phone, on the double. Blackie is going to have one hell of a drug bust on his hands, and he'll want—"

  The lights went out. All the lights. The dark was immediate and stifling, a thick, warm, earthy blanket. I froze in place. It was hard to hear anything over the sudden pounding of my heart. I didn't have time to guess who, or why, or what was going to happen next—I was too busy kicking myself for letting us get into this mess.

  "Don't panic, Ruby," I whispered. "We'll let our eyes get accustomed to the dark, then we'll turn around and walk toward the double doors." We had left them open, so there'd be a strip of light down one side. "Then we'll get in the car and drive like hell to Corinne's. We can borrow her phone."

  It was a reasonable plan, under the circumstances. But before we could put it into operation, we were assaulted by a brilliant spotlight, as sharp and penetrating as a dagger, that pinned us to the spot where we stood.

  I threw up my arm, shielding my eyes against the blinding light. Beside me, Ruby was suddenly and violently wrenched away. Then I heard the sharp hssst of Ruby's pepper spray, and then somebody—a man—howling in furious pain. Then there was the sound of a scuffle, and sharp pantings and gaspings, and a shrill, despairing cry. "Help, China!"

  But I couldn't help her. I couldn't even help myself. At the instant Ruby sprayed her attacker, somebody had thrown a burly arm tight around my neck and thrust the business end of a gun against my neck, just behind my ear.

  Chapter Twelve

  In Sweden mistletoe is diligently sought after on St. John's Eve, the people believing it to be, in a high degree, possessed of mystic qualities; and if a sprig of it be attached to the ceiling of the dwelling-house, the horse's stall or the cow's crib, the Troll will then be powerless to injure either man or beast.

  Sir James George Frazer The Golden Bough

  The man who was holding me was a head taller and had a wrestler's grip. He smelled of old sweat and wet wool and strong tobacco. "One wrong move," he rasped in an ugly tone, "and I'll blow your stupid head off."

  "I'm not moving," I choked, pulling at his arm. "Loosen up. I... can't breathe." I was struggling to break the stranglehold, but his arm was clamped tight across my windpipe. "Please, loosen up!"

  "Shut up and stand still," Ugly Voice said, but he relaxed his grip just enough for me to take a breath, compensating for his generosity by shoving the gun even harder against my neck.

  Somewhere nearby, the man Ruby had sprayed was choking and hacking, still moaning in pain. I could hear

  Ruby whimpering, a hurt little-girl whimper, then more scuffles, a sharp curse, and a muttered, incredulous, "The goddamn bitch bit me!" There was a sharp slap, and another whimper.

  "Ruby!" I cried. But I couldn't get enough air to make the word audible. I tried to turn my head to see what was happening to her, but my ski mask was twisted across my face, cutting off my vision.

  "Stop fuckin' around, you guys," another man yelled. "Hit the lights!"

  I felt, rather than saw, the spotlight go off. I made another effort to call to Ruby, but all I could manage was a mouselike squeak.

  "Shut up, I said," Ugly Voice snarled. "Come on."

  He tightened his hold again, yanking me against his chest, pulling me off my feet, half-carrying, half-dragging me across the floor. I hung onto his arm with both hands, trying to take some of the pressure off my windpipe. My insides had turned to a quivering, cowardly, self-reproachful jelly. We'd been so stupid! We'd blundered into the biggest pot farm in Texas and gotten ourselves nabbed by Swenson's nefarious cronies. And not a single soul on earth—not McQuaid, not Blackie, nobody—knew where we were. These guys could kill us and bury our bodies somewhere in this desolate stretch of Hill Country, and we'd never be found.

  Ugly Voice dumped me onto the floor like a sack of garbage. On my knees, I sucked in air in huge gulps. My nose was running. I couldn't swallow and the saliva pooled in my mouth. I was going to throw up. Somebody reached into my pocket and pulled out my gun, then yanked off my ski mask, getting a handful of my hair in the bargain.

  "Shit," Ugly Voice said, full of surprised dis
gust. "Who the bloody hell is she?" He was standing in front of me. In the light of the overhead bulbs I could see his black running shoes and the blue knees of his coveralls. I managed to lift my head and saw him holstering his gun, a wicked-looking magnum .357. Over the coveralls, he was wearing a dark blue jacket, zipped. He was brown-skinned, with a droopy Zapata mustache and a couple days' worth of patchy black beard. On his head was a dark blue baseball cap with the bill turned backward. "Somebody go see if Marvin needs any help," he said. "The other one sprayed him good."

  I was sweating and shivering at the same time. So Marvin was in on this, after all. Well, it figured. You don't pay for a Camaro out of your aunt's cookie jar. But it didn't explain Aunt Velda's truck.

  Ugly Voice kicked my knee with his foot, and I gasped at the pain. "Who the fuck are you?" he demanded. "What are you doing here?"

  "We'll find out soon enough," somebody else said, behind me, clipping the words. He was firm, authoritative, in command. "Take her to the kitchen, Jose. Zacho, you take the other one. Search them both. I'll interrogate them when we've got the area secured."

  I was still doing deep breathing, trying to keep from throwing up, but that got my attention. Interrogate them? Got the area secured? Who the devil were these guys anyway?

  "Yessir, Cap'n," Jose growled, and yanked me roughly to my feet. He shoved the gun into my ribs with an enthusiastic zeal and pushed me forward. "Don't try anything, babe. It'd be real easy for my finger to slip."

  "Be cool," I said. I lifted my arms. "I'm just wondering who you are, that's all."

  "Forget it," Jose said. "You're the one who's gonna be answerin' the questions, not me."

  But at that moment, another man—also wearing blue coveralls and jacket—crossed my field of vision. As he turned, I caught sight of the red letters on the back of his jacket.

  South Texas Regional Narcotics Unit.

  When Zacho brought Ruby into the kitchen, she looked sick and scared, and there was a bloody scratch down one side of her face. Her eyes were red and her nose was dripping, but she was trying not to cry. "I'm sorry, China," she said dejectedly. "This was a lousy idea."

  "Who could've guessed we'd walk into the middle of a drug bust?" I said. "Have you seen Marvin? Wonder what he looks like."

  If these were feds, then Marvin must be a narc. I hoped he wasn't hurt too badly. I couldn't remember the penalty for assaulting a federal agent, but it was probably something on the order of ten years at hard labor.

  Zacho left. Jose brandished his gun and instructed us to line up facing the kitchen wall, legs splayed, arms braced against the wall over our heads. He took his time patting us down, familiarly and ungently, then shoved us onto chairs and cuffed our hands in front of us. I could have protested against being searched by a male, but under the circumstances, it seemed politic not to. Especially when, going through Ruby's canvas tote, he found the bag of white powder, the two joints, the wad of money, and the rest of Ruby's stage props. At that point I offered to explain, but he was too busy gloating to listen. He told me to shut up.

  A few minutes later, Zacho came back into the kitchen with Ruby's bolt cutters, my shoulder bag, and the black plastic garbage sack full of leafy stuff that he'd found in my trunk—Swenson's mistletoe, which I'd stashed in the car the night before, planning to take it to the shop. The bag was securely tied. It rustled.

  Jose's eyes widened at the sight of the bag. "Man, these chicks don't mess around. They got enough stuff to supply half the kids in San Antonio."

  Ruby coughed. "Honestly, it's not—"

  "Shut your face," Jose said sternly. "Marvin okay?"

  Zacho dropped the bag on the floor and everything else on the kitchen counter. "Burned the shit out of his eyes," he said gruffly. "He's still blind as a bat and in a lot of pain. Must've been allergic to whatever was in that can." He glared at Ruby and went out again.

  "If you'll take these handcuffs off," Ruby said after a few minutes, "I'll make you some coffee."

  Stroking his black mustache, Jose considered this suggestion more carefully than my offer of an explanation. But in the end he refused it too, although his "Shut up" was a bit more regretful.

  Not having anything better to do, I looked around. The kitchen was nicely arranged, flooded with natural light, and furnished with new appliances. Through an open door, I could see a large pine-paneled dining area and a living area with a massive stone fireplace in one wall, plush rugs on polished oak floors, and expensive-looking leather furniture. The house might be sixty or seventy years old, but it was well maintained and Swenson had put a substantial amount of money into it fairly recently. I could guess where the money had come from.

  We sat for a while in silence while I considered various options for action or negotiation, none of which seemed very satisfactory. I no longer feared that Ruby and I would be dismembered and our body parts distributed among the prickly pear but it was clear that we were in for a long and tedious round of embarrassing explanations which would probably culminate in my losing my law license. The Ethics Committee of the Texas State Bar would not be amused by our oregano joints and confectioners' sugar cocaine.

  At last, Ruby began to squirm. "I have to go to the bathroom," she said.

  Jose frowned. "Hold it," he ordered.

  Five minutes later, Ruby made a whimpering noise. "I really have to go, sir. It hurts."

  Jose was about to say "Hold it" again when I spoke up. "You'd better let her go pee, Jose. She's got cancer. She could get really sick."

  "Cancer!"

  I gave Ruby a look that said, I'm sorry. She gave me back a tiny smile.

  "I'm scheduled for surgery two days after Christmas," she said to Jose. "If you don't believe me, I'll give you my doctor's number and you can call him."

  Jose's nostrils flared and he gave his head an I'm-not-believing-this shake. After a moment of sour deliberation, he stood up, holding the gun on us.

  "Okay," he said curtly. "Both of you, down the hall. No funny business."

  We stood up and he pushed us ahead of him. When we got to the bathroom at the end of the hall, he made us face the wall. With one eye on us, his gun held shoulder-high, he opened the bathroom door and glanced in—checking, I supposed, for a means of escape. Satisfied, he motioned with his head.

  "Okay, you," he said to Ruby. "Pee fast." To me, he said, "Face the wall."

  Ruby held up her cuffs. "Can you take these off, please?" she asked humbly.

  Jose shook his head. "You can pee with 'em on."

  "But I can't get my pants down!" Ruby wailed. "They're too tight."

  "Pee through your pants," Jose growled.

  "I'll help you get your pants down, Ruby," I offered over my shoulder.

  "I said, face the wall," Jose snapped. To Ruby, he said, "Go pee, for crissake. And don't take all day."

  Ruby went in and shut the door. I took the opportunity to say, in a conversational tone, "This isn't what you think, you know. Those joints are only—"

  "Face the wall," Jose said.

  "—oregano."

  "Yeah." He barked a laugh. "That's what they all say. I suppose that white stuff is powdered sugar."

  "Right. Taste it if you don't believe me. And the stuff in the garbage bag is mistletoe."

  "Mistletoe! You two are something else, you know that?" He smirked. "I suppose the gun is a cap pistol, right?"

  "No," I said. "Any fool can see it's a Beretta."

  "Shut up," Jose said. He frowned at the door. "She's taking a helluva long time."

  "Women have bigger bladders than men. And she's got those clumsy cuffs on, so it takes longer. You ever try to get your pants down when you're cuffed?" I turned half-around and added, cordially, "You guys are a little out of your territory, aren't you? What brings you up here from South Texas?" I paused, thinking that Blackie had been conspiciously absent from this bust. "Does the sheriff know you're here?"

  Jose's eyes became flintlike. He started to say something, then shut his mouth.<
br />
  I leaned my shoulder against the wall and cocked my head to one side. "So how long has Marvin been on the case? Was that how you got the lead on Swenson?"

  "Marvin?" He fixed his eyes on me and his jaw began to work. "What d'you know about Marvin?"

  My lips twitched. I gave him a look that said I knew a lot, but he wasn't going to hear any of it.

  "Face the wall," he growled. "I don't want any more shit outta you."

  There was the sound of a toilet flushing, then water running. The bathroom door opened and Ruby stepped out.

  "Next," she said politely. "But I'm afraid I used the last of the toilet paper."

  "That's okay." I took a step toward the bathroom. "I can drip dry."

  Jose grabbed my shoulder and jerked me back. "Forget it, smartass. You ain't got cancer, you can hold it. Back to the kitchen, both of you."

  We'd been sitting for about twenty minutes when another man in coveralls came in, the one with the clipped, authoritative voice, whom Jose had addressed as "Cap'n." He was short and sallow and without expression. He wore his blue cap with the bill forward. His eyes were icy blue.

  Ruby and I sat in silence as Jose pointed out, with an unmistakable relish, the various items he and Zacho had confiscated, evidence of our criminal connections to the drug world. My gun was there, too. When I saw him looking at it, I said, "I'm licensed for concealed carry."

  The captain turned for a disdainful look at me, then went back to the loot. He and Jose held a muttered consultation, during which I heard the whispered word "Marvin." The captain took my billfold out of my purse, studied my driver's license, and put it back. He jerked his head at me.

  "You," he said. "Into the dining room."

  We left Ruby under Jose's supervision, and took seats at the dining room table, where the captain recited my rights, fast. Then he leaned back in his chair and folded his arms, regarding me. He gave me about fifteen seconds of flinty-eyed silence.