Joaquin’s smile evaporated, but he still seemed to think we were talking. “What are you trying—”
“Let’s find out.” I thumbed the hammer of the gun back and put the barrel to Joaquin’s cheekbone. “What would happen to me if I pull this trigger? Do you think all of a sudden the world would change, and I would meet justice? Or do you hope you would be revenged?” He didn’t say anything. His eyes were pointed my way, but the pupils were constricted down to black points. I knew it wasn’t me he was seeing. “The big men in their houses and suits—do you think they’ll come themselves to settle things over, Joaquin? The best you can hope for is some other slouch like you and Álvaro there. And how’s that been working?”
Joaquin didn’t say anything.
I turned the weapon to the sky, easing the hammer down. Darian Stackhouse was standing behind Joaquin’s shoulder, watching. “What’s going on here?” he asked, as if he didn’t know.
I let go of Joaquin, and he walked away from me. Not just from me—he left the parking lot without a glace back at me or Stackhouse. I took a look to my right. Álvaro was gone. Either they were afraid of the DEA agent, or…was it possible they were there working for him?
“Sorting out the good guys from the bad ones,” I answered. “What do you want?”
“You still think you’re a good guy?”
“No.” I looked him square in his eyes. I noticed they were the color of old brass, muted but not lifeless. “But I’m a hell of a lot better than anything you offer.”
“Keep telling yourself that.”
“Again. What do you want?”
“I want to show you something.”
“I’m not interested.”
“You don’t know what it is.”
“I can smell a sales pitch from a mile. You’re not the kind of man I want to get my used cars from.”
“You’re a smart-mouth son of a bitch,” he said. There wasn’t a lot of fire behind it. “But you’re not as sharp as you like to think you are.”
“That’s no news flash. It’s been the headline every day of my life.”
“Come on.” He jerked his thumb at the SUV parked nearby. “Let’s take a ride.”
My face must have given something away.
“What?” he asked. “Don’t you trust me?”
“Does anyone?”
“I’m married. I have two kids and a dog.”
“Do they trust you?”
“Mostly. Look, I’m trying to tell you I’m a regular guy. We’re on the same side.”
“Is this the honesty-if-nothing-else-works trick?”
“Kinda.” He grinned. The expression was big and warm. Then he dropped the hammer. “How do you like working for Milo?”
I can’t say it didn’t have an impact on my stony resolve. But when you get hit, you have to get up and hit back, or guys like Stackhouse will eat you alive.
“I don’t mind it,” I said. “It beats having me and my whole team under internal investigation by my own agency.” There it was. His eyes widened slightly before he glanced to the side. Stackhouse didn’t know he was being investigated. That was a screw that needed twisting. “From what I hear, you have to fuck up good for anyone in SOD to start worrying about the rules.”
His big friendly grin was frozen and hard. “How about that ride?”
“Why not?”
It wasn’t a quick trip. We went to the border crossing and into Mexico. There we went onto a hard-packed dirt road looping almost back to where we’d been. We drove well over an hour to end up a couple miles south of Lansdale and the border.
It was almost dark when we found the town. “Town” was a big word for a collection of mostly industrial buildings, unpaved streets, and trailers tucked behind desert hills. A big word but evidently not big enough for the residents. There was a sign. Hand-painted red on bare planks, it read, Ciudad de la Sangre de Angel. City of Angel’s Blood.
There was a war going on in Angel’s Blood.
From where we sat at the top of a hill, I saw the far end of town lit with muzzle flashes. There was a force of maybe forty men in trucks. One of the pickups had a machine gun stand mounted in the bed. They were assaulting a blockade of no more than a dozen men, who were firing back with military-grade automatic weapons.
“This is what’s happening two miles beyond our border,” Stackhouse said.
“What is it?”
“Some write it off as a turf war. That’s too simple and plain wrong. It’s a revolution.” He kept looking at me as I looked at the action. “And don’t think it stops here. The border won’t keep it out.” In the deepening dusk, I saw movement on the crest of the opposite hill. Men were circling the conflict on the high ground and flanking the men in the trucks.
“Are you and your black-bag friends here to stop or help the revolution?”
“We’re here to control it.”
We watched. The trained men on the hill disappeared from sight as darkness grew over the desert. They reappeared as flashing firepower and tracer bullets cutting in from the side and behind the men and trucks. The pickup with the machine gun took a rain of glowing metal that wore it down to smoke and ash. No one escaped.
As the violence wilted to single shots of mercy, Stackhouse kept watching. I looked away. I’d had my fill of brutality and rage that day. Down in the City of Angel’s Blood, the gloom of evening was cast away with the light of multiple fires. What caught my eye were answering flickers from the other end of the road. There, alongside the largest building, were parked three white commercial vans. On the side of each, in reflective vinyl, was the same company name I had seen on vans parked at the industrial development in Lansdale. They were contractors for electronics and IT systems.
“What’s the end game here?” I asked Stackhouse.
He pulled his attention from the circle of fire that had been a battle a moment before. “I told you. Control.”
“You can’t control revolution. Isn’t that the nature of the beast? Uncontrolled change of power.”
“Tools.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Everything is a tool, if you use it to build what you want.”
“I don’t get it,” I said, looking down at the town. The fading flames were leaving me literally and figuratively in the dark. “Revolution, war—those are your tools? To build what?”
“Mexico is the third world on our doorstep. It’s at war with itself and sending the conflict over our border.”
“Our drug habit, our war.”
“That’s an easy thing to say,” Stackhouse said. “But like everything easy, it doesn’t mean shit.”
“Okay. You brought me out here because you want me to get the meaning. What is it?”
“Like everything else—money.”
“Drug money?”
“Bigger than that.” He pointed down at the dark buildings. “What you see down there is a joint operation of US forces and Mexican Federal Police against criminal organizations. The only thing they all have in common is money. Drugs and whores, guns, and extortion generate cash. What most people don’t think about is the money in fighting it. Police, Border Patrol, DEA, Mexican police and military agencies on both sides: it’s an industry that generates billions. Lawyers, arms dealers, manufacturers of ammunition, ballistic vests, handcuffs, assault vehicles—everything down to tactical boots. We can’t afford to win the drug wars. The best we can do is manage it.”
“With more war?”
“You use the tools you have.”
“Take me back to town.”
He started the SUV and then spun the wheel around to take us back the way we’d come. “Now you have a part to play.”
“I wondered when you’d get to that.”
“I need things to go easier with La Familia.”
“I’m not your guy.”
His reaction was to press harder on the gas. The big SUV sped over the rugged track, bouncing from peak to peak. “You are. Know it or not. Li
ke it or not. You’re the guy that keeps showing up and wiping his shoes on my plans. The Machados think you’re part of my team. And they think you were involved in a mess your asshole brother got into. That giant clusterfuck in Juarez.”
“You want them to blame Longview.”
“Why would I want that?”
“Because it was Cesar Barcia’s badge in the house. No one’s found him or the missing money.”
Stackhouse hit the brakes, and we slid sideways. Billowing dust made the night even darker. “Where are you getting your information?” His question came through clenched teeth. He didn’t look at me either. It was as if he believed loosening any control would be to lose it all.
“Barcia was the poster boy for everything wrong with agencies like yours. And he was a piece of shit,” I said.
“Maybe. But he was my piece of shit.”
I didn’t look at Stackhouse. I watched the dirt settle out of the headlights.
“I shouldn’t have said that.” His voice softened. “He wasn’t the best of people, but he was a decent cop doing a hard job.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I suppose he had a wife and two kids and a dog at home?”
“Fuck you, Paris Tindall.”
“I think that’s the first honest thing you’ve said tonight.”
Stackhouse hit the gas again. I couldn’t help but notice that he didn’t say anything more to defend Barcia.
“Your brother was a drug runner for the Guzman DTO. They got taken over by La Familia de los Muerto.”
“Longview Moody was a cash courier.”
“A distinction without a lot of fucking difference.” Stackhouse was practically snarling his words. “And your old man is a dirty cop.”
“A dirty cop that works for you.”
“As far as he knows, he works for La Familia.”
“Viva la revolución.”
“Look.” Stackhouse turned to look at me for an instant. Then he shifted back to the road rushing under our tires. “People are dying. Good people. Bad people. If we keep it managed, we keep it down here.”
“You want to keep good people and bad people from dying but not Mexican people?”
“My job is to protect American interests.”
“You expect me to help you with that?” I asked.
“I don’t think you have a hell of a lot of choice.”
“Why didn’t you just take me to the river and put a bullet in my head?”
“My team doesn’t commit murder.”
“Have you ever stopped La Familia from murdering?”
He didn’t answer. The SUV did go faster. We traveled in silence through desert and impossible dark until we saw the lights of town and the border crossing.
“If you don’t convince the Machado brothers that you aren’t a part of my team—if you don’t find a way to put their worries about DEA betrayal to bed…” Stackhouse didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to.
Once we were back stateside, I asked him, “How long can you keep it up?”
“Keep what up?”
“You’re partners with a criminal family operation. Your team is funneling money to them. You have a crew that commits murder and brutality, not to mention black-bag military operations in another country. How long can it last? Your own agency is investigating.”
“That’s the thing about government work.” He was smiling again as he said it. “All you have to do is get the pieces in place. Politicians won’t walk away from the money spent or open themselves up to scandal. Almost all my pieces are in place.”
“All except me?”
He didn’t say another word the rest of the drive back to Ernesto’s place and my truck.
FIFTEEN
My truck had a bullet hole in the fender—either Joaquin or Álvaro venting after our talk. Who could blame them? I wasn’t mad about it. It helped that it wasn’t my vehicle. I climbed in and sat behind the wheel without twisting the key.
I was numb and tired, and my head was filled with everything but understanding. Time to go home, even if home was a motel room.
I pulled into the Desert Drop parking lot. The early-evening sun was still bright and yellow. It made long, angled shadows. In the deep shade of the motel alcove, along with the ice and vending machines, stood Lenore, almost as if she was waiting for me.
I parked and went straight to her.
Lenore leaned away from the soda machine and smiled at me. I ignored the scent of cigar smoke in the air.
“You look like a man carrying weight,” Lenore said.
“You look like a wish.”
She cocked her head and examined me with a crooked smile and off-angle eyes. It made me think I was the tilted one. It may have been the case.
“A wish come true?” she asked. The tease and promise were clear in her voice.
I took her hand and led Lenore up the stairs to my room. With the boards covering the windows, the room was dark. I turned the lights on and left them on. I’d had enough of darkness, and I wanted to see every inch of her skin. Lenore didn’t complain.
Taking charge, she slid down my body, raking her nails as she went.
“Hold my hair,” she told me without waiting for compliance. With her gaze locked to my eyes, she covered me with her mouth.
I did as I was told.
She smiled with her eyes as I watched every movement.
There were no words exchanged, but somehow she knew when I got too close. Lenore released me and laughed with pleasure.
My own laughter was in relief. I wasn’t ready to reach an ending. Her hair flowed from my fingers, leaving them empty and lonely for contact. I reached for her, and she let me touch as she drew away. At first my fingertips grazed her face, then her shoulder. Lenore turned. My hands caught instants of her skin as she fell away from me.
Lenore spread her arms out and lowered her body to the bed with her back to me. Her thighs were open. All but her hips were pressed to the bed. The shapely swell of her ass was lifted. A new demand.
That time I didn’t obey. Not instantly. I bent over her body to kiss and then bite the soft skin at her waist and worked my way down.
She made a feline sound in the back of her throat. It was urgent and rough like a tiger’s purr.
I put my tongue to the base of her spine and licked upward. I pinned her arms and then used my legs to spread hers wider. When she raised her head to meet my mouth, I bit her hair and pulled. She moaned in response and under me, pressed herself up.
“I’m ready,” she said.
I wasn’t. I rose up on my knees and scratched her back with my nails. Then I touched. My fingers worked her back like the stations of the cross. It was enough to have my skin against hers. The warmth of her flesh, the firm feeling of moving bones under muscle, her breath rushing cool into her lungs and racing out hot—that was everything I needed.
Lenore turned on her right side and exposed her breast to my searching hand. She arched her back when I pinched the nipple.
As I drew my hand away, it trailed over the lines tattooed on her ribs. I could read the words clearly.
Yo soy la noche vivente.
La oscuridad. El aliento de la muerto.
En mi cama, la sombra reside—cada lado de mis ojos.
Bajo la tierra, entre los muros de la desesperación.
Mi santa viene.
Mi protector me lleva a Jesús.
Me convierto en la sombra en tu sangre.
Derramar me para respirar.
The way I read it, the poem came out as this:
I am the living night.
The darkness. The breath of death.
In my bed, the shadow resides—each side of my eyes.
Under the earth, among the walls of despair.
My saint is coming.
My protector carries me to Jesus.
I become the darkness in his blood.
Sp
ill me to breathe.
I didn’t understand. Then it didn’t matter. Lenore reached back to take my hands. She guided them to her hips. I didn’t need more encouragement.
* * * *
I woke up to dawn creeping through a wide-open door. I wondered if Lenore had left the door open to make a gift of the sunrise or to leave me vulnerable.
Just in case I shut the door and put the security latch on before heading for the shower.
Clean and dressed, I felt good, better than I had in a long time. There was no mystery why. I was smiling as I went down the stairs to the truck. I was smiling still when I stopped at a café for breakfast because Officer Sunny Johnson was there.
She asked me, “Why the smile? You look like a dog that buried a bone.”
“Did what?”
“You know what I mean,” she said and then added, “And yeah, you did.”
Her apparent disapproval brought my mood down but only a bit. “What do you say I buy you breakfast?”
“It’s the least you could do.”
“That’s me,” I said as I sat across from her. “Always the least I can do.”
“You think that’s funny?”
“I’m sensing that you’re not sharing my good mood.”
The waitress came over. Sunny ordered one egg, grits, and a strip of bacon.
I laughed. “How are you going to keep going on that?” Then I turned to our waitress. “May I have the short stack, please? With three eggs over medium, grits, sausage, and bacon on the side.”
“How long do you expect to keep going eating like that?” Sunny asked.
The waitress left us without a word.
“You’re a strange man, Chief Tindall,” Sunny said as she examined me from across the table.
“What makes me strange?”
“Sometimes you seem like a decent person. Sometimes you seem like a decent cop.”
“Other times?”
“Other times you’re a psychopath.” She didn’t smile when she said it.
“Psychopath is a little strong.”
“Violence won’t solve all your problems.” She said it without accusation. If there was anything in her voice, it was concern.
Our food began arriving. First came Sunny’s diminutive meal. Mine took two trips.
I poured syrup on my pancakes but kept my eyes on her.
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