Dead Man's Badge

by Robert E. Dunn

  “Try to imagine the disappointment I feel knowing that.”

  “Tell me what the hell you were doing up at the club.”

  I put my elbows up on the bed of the truck and leaned on them like I might if I was puzzling through a big question. “I want to know the truth about what you have going on here. What are you hiding?”

  “I’m not hiding shit. You know what I am? I’m a lid on a pot. I’m trying to keep everything inside and cooking just right. You get me? The stew or the soup or whatever is inside the pot is hot and almost boiling. I’m there to keep it from boiling over or cooking too slow.”

  “You’re a lid?”

  “I’m a fucking lid. And you’re one more flame under the pot I just don’t need.”

  “How about if you try being a cop?”

  He squared his shoulders. I noticed his fists were clenched. “If you had a goddamned clue, you would shut your mouth,” he finally said.

  “I can testify.”

  “Testify to fucking what?” He took a step away from me. “Are you going to drag your half-brother into this? Because Longview Moody was a piece of work himself. I can toss out anything you got from him.”

  “I can testify to direct knowledge of Simon Machado ordering murder.”

  “We’re the DEA.”

  “I can take you to four bodies. Two were murdered by the Machados. Two were men who worked for them. One of the men working for the family carried a DEA shield.”

  “That’s exactly the kind of crap I’m holding inside the pot.”

  “And I can give inside knowledge about the organization, especially the flow of cash across the border.”

  “Longview again?” Stackhouse walked back like he could distance himself from what I was saying. Standing directly behind the truck, he looked it over like he’d never seen a Ford before. “Your brother was as worthless as the people he served. The only service he ever did the world was getting himself killed.”

  I stretched my arms, leaning back from the top rail of the truck bed. “Are you protecting the people who killed my brother?”

  Stackhouse placed his hand on the weapon at his hip.

  There was a slight change in the idle of the truck. I didn’t hear it. I could only feel it through my hands resting on the metal box of the bed. Hector was watching everything through the rearview mirrors. I was sure he couldn’t hear us, but he knew something was going on.

  “Whatever you have in that pot is going to burn,” I said. “And it’s going to take the whole house with it. I’ll make sure of it.”

  “You’re not going to make sure of shit.” Stackhouse pulled his weapon and brought it to bear on me. “Some things are bigger—more important than your bastard brother.”

  The idle of the truck changed again as Hector popped the gear selector from neutral to reverse. Stackhouse was struck above the knee by the bumper, and the top of the tailgate hit under his left arm. He went down hard. His automatic cartwheeled in a high arc before bouncing to a grinding stop on the road.

  As if the next moment had been choreographed, all the doors of the waiting SUVs opened to spill more men with guns. They aimed at me, but I was already standing over Stackhouse with my .45 angled down at his heart.

  ELEVEN

  As I stood over Stackhouse, who was groaning on the cracked and grayed asphalt, two patrol cars pulled up ahead of the lead SUV. They blooped their sirens and put on their light bars. Gutiérrez stepped out of the first car with a shotgun. Other officers I didn’t yet know came from the other doors. They were all armed.

  I made a mental note to learn the names of every police officer on the Lansdale force and to buy them all a beer.

  The truck door opened, and Hector shouted, “You all right?”

  “Yeah,” I answered. “Stay there. We’re going to want to go quick when we go.”

  He climbed back into the cab.

  For the sake of the watching DEA agents, I lifted and then holstered my weapon. They relaxed but didn’t disarm. Not that I expected them to.

  Kneeling beside Agent Stackhouse, I pushed his head to the side with one finger. He had a growing lump and road rash above the ear. “You’re going to need that looked at,” I told him.

  He moaned but said nothing more.

  “We need to talk again,” I said like I was chatting with an old friend. “To make sure we do—” I lifted the gold shield from where it was tucked between his body and the road. For a second I examined it. Then I pulled at the chain holding it around his neck.

  Agent Stackhouse hissed his pain as the wound on his head grated on the blacktop and the chain broke.

  “You can come get this from me anytime. As long as you ask politely.”

  I took my prize and climbed back into the truck. “Come get your man,” I shouted to the glaring agents. To Hector, I said, “Let’s get back to town.”

  He hit the gas hard. We shot across the road and onto the dirt shoulder, where we passed around the cruisers. They followed with their lights on all the way back to the station.

  * * * *

  I was seated behind my desk with the office door locked before I took a genuine breath. We had hardly talked on the drive back to the station. Hector did manage to communicate how he’d texted Gutiérrez, and she had come to back us up. That wasn’t the only news. Baron Wood and his girlfriend had been found alive and well and only partially dressed in the waters of the Rio Grande. They had indeed been picnicking. His father was still missing.

  As I sat with my feet up, I fiddled with Stackhouse’s badge. Taking it was one of those impulse things. It was like counting coup on an enemy. Sometimes you just needed to let them know that the ground under their feet was not as steady as they thought.

  Now I had it, though, what to do with it?

  I locked it away in a desk drawer, amazed at the idea of having a desk, let alone one that had a lock on it. That was part of the problem, though, wasn’t it? I had the toys and the tools but not the experience to know the difference between them.

  Once the badge was secured, I puzzled together the pieces of my phone and waited.

  Nothing happened.

  I couldn’t tell if that was a relief or a worry. For over an hour, it sat there silently, daring me to pick it up and make the call myself. I didn’t. I was afraid that like Stackhouse had said, things were bigger than me. That wasn’t true. Things had been bigger than me, and I’d been aware of our relative importance, many times. I’d just never cared before.

  When the phone finally rang, I let it wait through three rings and then picked up.

  “Yeah?”

  “The fuck, Paris?”

  “Good to hear from you too, Milo.”

  “Screw that. Just what do you think you’re doing?”

  “To tell the truth…” I took a breath. “I’m doing the best I can.”

  Milo took a breath too. “Yeah. Look, I understand it’s not easy. But you can make it easier by keeping this phone on and staying in contact.”

  “I can’t do anything with you calling me all the time.”

  “I wouldn’t call you every goddamned hour if you ever once picked up when you should. Or call me. Is that too professional for you? We don’t need a rugged cowboy out on the lonesome prairie; we need a cop.”

  “That’s the thing—” I stopped. I didn’t mean to or want to, but I did. It would have been easy to admit that I wasn’t a cop. I’d tried to come clean with Stackhouse. But that had been more about the end result. Trading truth for justice against the Machados. I didn’t have reason to believe that the DOJ would do more than the DEA. Even worse, I’d be an embarrassment to Milo and whoever his bosses were. They would work hard to bury me and everything I touched.

  I didn’t go on.

  “What?” Milo made the question both a demand and a challenge. “What’s the thing, Paris?”

  “Desert,” I said.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “We’re in the desert here. The prairie is way n
orth.”

  “Tell you what, big boy,” he said, sounding deadly serious. “Why don’t you fold your geography lesson up until it’s all corners and cactus and then stick it up your ass?”

  “I don’t know what I’m doing here,” I admitted. “Everything is a mess, and all the ends seem to tie La Familia de los Muerto to some DEA—”

  “Screw the DEA,” Milo butted in. “And damn sure screw the family…whatever thing. You’re there for the money and the dirty department. You’re there to find the link between the cops, city officials, and all the disappeared grant money. And a big part of that is being there to pick up the phone when I call. Now are you going to do the job, or are we going to have to make changes?”

  “Relax, Milo. I know what I need to do now, and I’m on it.”

  “Anything you want to share?”

  “Not yet.” I wasn’t lying. When Milo mentioned disappeared grant money, it was the confirmation I needed that I was on the right side of the street. The problem was he seemed to think it was a town problem. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Milo could probably hear me, but I didn’t mind if he knew I was being careful. “Will you listen to something you don’t want to hear?”

  Even when he was silent, I could hear him cursing me. In the end, though, he said, “Tell me.”

  I gave him a short version of what had gone on that day. I included Stackhouse and his crew. I even told him about the offer I had made. I didn’t tell him how I had the information I tried to serve up on the Machado brothers.

  “Let me get it all straight,” he said. His voice was uncharacteristically even. “You believe there’s a connection between your investigation, a drug cartel, and rogue DEA. And your first move was to run over a federal agent and steal his badge?”

  “Well, when you say it like that, anything is going to sound bad.”

  “Someday you’re going to have to tell me the story of how you ever got to be a cop.”

  “It’s a good one,” I said. “You’ll get a kick out of it.”

  “No. I don’t think I will,” Milo answered.

  “Would you do something for me?”

  “What?”

  “Can you run some names for me? Look for connections.”

  “Run your own names. Investigation is your job.”

  “You can go deeper than I can. And I’m not sure of the security of the system here.”

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” I thought about that, and then I said, “That’s part of the problem. This town lost the chief of police, and then the replacement was killed. The mayor is dead. And things just keep right on going.”

  “You think the people in charge are not the actual people in charge?”

  “Something like that,” I answered. “And most of the names I’m looking at are cops.”

  “What are the names?”

  It was a long list. I gave him Bascom Wood and the Machado brothers. Then I went through the cops: Mark Walker, Bronwyn Gutiérrez, Darian Stackhouse.

  “Anyone else?” he asked.

  “Buick Tindall.”

  There was a beat of silence from the other end, and then Milo said, “I’ll get back to you. And you have that phone on.” He disconnected with his usual abrupt charm.

  If I had taken a moment to think, it would have turned into hours of worry and brooding. I was lucky I had the thought to call the funeral home about Paris’s—Longview’s—body. It turned out that the DNA was a match, and no one questioned which of Buick’s sons was dead. The funeral director told me the body had been released, and they had Paris onsite. The funeral could be scheduled at my convenience. It led me to ask a question I swore that I wouldn’t. “Has Buick Tindall been in to ask about the arrangements?” There was a long silence from the other end. Before it could be broken by an apology I didn’t need, I said, “Never mind.”

  There was another silence. I didn’t know how to fill that one. Before I had to try, the man on the other end asked me about clothes.

  It was something I’d never considered. I had an instant solution though.

  “A man—a friend—will be there tomorrow. His name is Hector Alazraqui. From now on, he will be responsible for everything about the funeral.”

  I got off the phone and checked the papers littering my desk. Sure enough, one was the vacation schedule I’d asked for. I put Hector down for a week’s vacation starting the next day. With the paper in hand, I wandered out to the main office looking for Gutiérrez.

  She wasn’t in the office. I checked with the dispatcher. She was the same black officer who had given me that quiet ride.

  “Officer Gutiérrez is not scheduled on until three,” she told me. “But you called her and Officer Alazraqui in this morning.” She didn’t say more about it, but the message seemed to be that I was messing with schedules.

  “What’s your name?” I asked. I had been told the first day but hadn’t paid real attention.

  “Sunny Johnson,” she answered.

  How could I not smile? She was a black woman who was both slim and challenged in stature. I could see why she was working the desk.

  “Have I been making your life harder, Officer Johnson?”

  “You have, Chief.”

  No smile. She wasn’t joking, and she wasn’t letting me off the hook just because I asked the question.

  “You’re full-time dispatch, aren’t you?”

  She nodded.

  “How do you feel about that?”

  “It is what it is.”

  “Fair enough. Would you change it if you could?”

  She nodded again and then added, “Some people don’t think I belong off the desk because of my size.”

  “We’re not those people, are we, Officer Johnson?”

  “No, sir.” She smiled that time.

  I handed her the vacation form. “Give Hector a call, and tell him about this vacation. You can take his patrol shifts while he’s gone, but I want you to make a workable schedule to keep someone on dispatch. Can you handle that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I felt like I’d made a friend, and a realization slowly settled on me. I had more cop friends than crook.

  “I need a drink,” I said. Then I thought about it and added, “I really need a drink. So, Officer Sunny. Sunny smile and sunny disposition. Where should I go?”

  “Are you flirting with me, Chief?” She didn’t look angry. She wasn’t smiling though.

  “When I flirt with you, you’ll know it.” I grinned to show how charming I was.

  “Because that wouldn’t be right.” Her face was open. The brown sparkle of her eyes was centered on mine. “And it would make my life harder.”

  I deflated. Being a professional was not an easy transition to make. “No,” I agreed. “No, I’m not flirting,” I lied. “I’m just…”

  Officer Sunny saved me from further embarrassment by asking, “Where can you go, or where should you go?”

  “What?”

  “You said you needed a drink. Then you asked where you should go.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well—” She hesitated; then the decision showed in her eyes. “You’ve been here almost a week. I’d bet you hardly know a thing about your department.”

  “Go on,” I encouraged, keeping my gaze square on hers.

  “If you want a quiet beer, go to Ernesto’s.”

  “Ernesto’s.”

  “It’s the taqueria where you got into the fight.”

  “I remember. But if I want a little eye opening with my beer?”

  “Go to the Border Crossing.”

  I must have looked a little blank. A lot blank maybe.

  “The Border Crossing is that place out on the edge of town,” she explained. “By the new bank.”

  I had seen the place that first night I had come to town. It was basically a shack with trailers out back, cribs for the working girls.

  The blank look on my face must have filled in because Sunny said,
“Yeah. That place.”

  * * * *

  The Border Crossing was busy even in the middle of the day. Outside the sprawling, tin-roof joint was a dirt parking lot. That lot was filled with big rigs, bikes, and rattletrap pickup trucks. Inside, it was dark and loud. What light there was had a decidedly red cast to it from the miles of red neon beer signs covering the walls. The few spaces left free of beer lighting were filled with paintings of women with big hips and breasts that were both unreasonably large and impossibly high. Because they were painted on black velvet, the women seemed to float in the red atmosphere.

  I half expected a Wild West moment where everyone fell silent and turned to look when I walked into the room. That didn’t happen. Nothing happened. No one noticed or cared that I had walked in through the thick green door. The steel mesh bolted over the window was a nice touch.

  To one side was a cluster of stand around tables. To the other were pool tables surrounded by salvaged church pews. Past the games was an even darker area full of tables and chairs filled by men and trafficked through by Mexican women bearing trays of beer. On a small stage, there was a girl. Pale skinned and bony, she was grinding against a brass pole with the kind of expression usually reserved for toilet plunging.

  “What are you doing here?”

  I turned toward the question to find Gutiérrez glaring at me. “Maybe I should ask you the same thing.”

  She tossed up her hands and shook her head. It made me feel the same way I had when impatient teachers tried to get me to understand algebra by jabbing fingers at equations and then moving on to better students.

  Gutiérrez walked off, and I looked around. My eyes were adjusted to the darkness by then, and I was able to get some of the finer details. One of those details was an overstuffed seersucker suit. Detective Mark Walker was sitting close to the stage, watching the skinny girl hump the pole.

  “Get over here,” Gutiérrez called from the bar.

  “Is this what you do with your time off?” I asked as I took the stool beside her. Removing my straw hat, I sat it on the bar with the crown down. I needed to keep all the luck I had.