Sunny stared back at me like I was an idiot. Then she glanced down at my plate of pancakes.
I pushed them across the table, right in front of her.
Without hesitating, she cut into the most syrupy and buttery part of the pancakes with her fork. She held the big, dripping wedge up like a prize. “You’re fooling yourself if you think violence follows you because you’re a cop. It’s because of who you are. Who you choose to be.” She stuffed the bite into her mouth.
We dug in and ate in silence for a while. I couldn’t help feeling a difference in my past night and the morning. It was a contrast that resided entirely in the women I was with. To keep from thinking about what I was feeling, I asked, “Is that who you choose to be—a cop?”
“Cop is something you choose to do.” She pushed aside her empty plate. “That’s different from who you are.”
“If you say so.” I pushed over the last of my pancakes to her.
“Tell me about you, your choices. How’d you become a cop?” She dug in.
“My father is a cop. And my brother—” I tossed the answer off before thinking about it.
“A family thing?”
“No.” I must have put more force in that answer than I intended because she stopped chewing and looked at me hard.
“Why not?”
“We’re very different people.”
“Who?”
I thought about that one. Then I said, “All of us, I guess.”
“You can’t be that different.”
“My half-brother, Longview, isn’t a cop. He’s a criminal.”
“Complicated. But you must have some things in common. Did you grow up together?”
“My father kept two families. One real. One something else. My brother and I knew about each other but didn’t meet until he was sixteen and had a driver’s license. He came to our place and parked outside just—looking—for a long time.”
“Looking at what?” Sunny had set her fork down and pushed the pancakes away.
“Differences, I think.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He had a house and a car and a mom who didn’t work.”
“And you?”
“I didn’t.”
“And?” she asked, pushing me.
“And we got past it. We became friends.”
Sunny stood. “Time for me to get to work.”
I rose too, dropping cash for the bill. “Report in. Tell them you’re on duty with me.”
“Doing what?”
“We’re going to that construction site by the Border Crossing.”
“That’s out of our jurisdiction.”
I didn’t say anything as I went to my truck.
“Why are we going there?” she asked as she followed.
“Call it investigation. Or call it fact-finding.”
“Fishing,” she said.
“Yep.”
I got into my truck and she into her cruiser.
At the site, Sunny went straight in the main drive. I circled the far side and parked behind the contractor’s trailer.
It was still early. There were no workers. Plastic tacked up on two-by-fours to shield the site from prying eyes billowed in a rising breeze. Where I parked was muddy even though it hadn’t rained since I’d come to town. I picked my way around puddles to check the trailer before moving on.
Officer Sunny Johnson left her cruiser and went straight for the first, and largest, plastic-wrapped foundation. She thrust the sheeting aside and walked through.
I angled over to another unfinished building. That one had three standing walls. They appeared to be prefabricated pieces of steel and concrete. The floor was a smooth slab of cement. There wasn’t much to see. I walked on to where Sunny had gone through the tarp.
“I’m a police officer for the City of Lansdale,” she said, in a full, strong voice.
She wasn’t speaking to me, but the volume was for my benefit, I was certain.
I backed away from the opening in the plastic and circled back to the side. There the draping was closed and taught, but it was still a glorified trash bag. I gripped the plastic and tore a hole.
Sunny was standing with her left hand out and her right on the gun at her hip. The man facing her was armed with a machine pistol. The only reason I didn’t shoot him then and there was that his weapon was not pointed at her. He kept it angled into the dirt. His other hand was pointed out the direction she’d come.
“I can’t leave,” she said. “I need you to put your weapon aside and talk to me.”
“No,” he said right back. “You go.”
I took a moment to look for other guards. There weren’t any I could find. Taking another grip of the plastic, I pulled it apart until I had a hole big enough to step through.
Sunny could see me. I caught her glance. But it was just a glance. She kept her gaze and all attention on the man in front of her. “Drop your weapon,” she ordered him.
He shook his head and pointed again at the flap in the plastic. “No. You must go.”
I crept up, moving to my left until I was behind and to the man’s left. That kept me clear of Sunny’s line of fire and still out of his sight. Once placed, I told him, “Drop your weapon, and show your hands.”
As soon as I spoke, Sunny pulled her revolver.
Instead of freezing or reaching for his gun, the man gave a long, tired sigh and asked, “Policia?”
“Yes,” I answered. Then I added, “Sí.”
He nodded and asked, “Tindall?”
“Yes.”
He shrugged the strap from his shoulder and let the machine pistol fall into the dirt. Then he raised his hands and said, “Álvaro esta un culero.”
“Sí,” I said. “He’s a big asshole.”
“Are you going to shoot me?” he asked.
“I don’t want to shoot anyone,” I answered.
“Oh.” He sounded disappointed.
“You want me to shoot you?”
“If you shoot me a little, it would go easier on me with La Familia.”
“Show me your hands,” I told him.
He presented the backs of his hands. There were no tattoos.
“Look at this,” Sunny said, pointing into the building’s foundation.
It was a rectangle of raised concrete rim with a slab floor poured within. The surprising thing was that the center of the pour was a long, wide ramp that dropped into darkness. It was a hole large enough to drive a truck through. Along the walls of the hole and rising up above the floor were conduits stuffed with wiring. None of it was the kind of cabling you expect to see for lighting or high voltage. It was all the thin kind of stuff that feeds computers and phones.
“What’s going on here?” I asked the man.
He shrugged and said, “I keep people away at night.”
Sunny pointed at the gaping hole and asked him, “Where’s it go?”
He shook his head.
“Ciudad de la Sangre de Angel,” I said.
“What’s that?” Sunny asked, still staring into the shadowed tunnel.
“Blood of angels,” our prisoner said with disgust. Then he turned his head and spat. “The angels come to towns like mine. They tell us we have jobs. You can’t say no. You accept their money, or you take their bullet.”
“Why don’t you run away?” Sunny asked him. “Go back to your town?”
“They leave someone there to keep watch on our families. If you betray La Familia, your family dies. If you go home—the same.”
“Come on,” I said to Sunny. “We’ve seen what we need to.”
“What about him?”
I turned to him and asked, “What about you?”
He shrugged again.
“He’s not going to shoot us.” I said it to her but kept my gaze on him. He listened carefully. “And I don’t think he’s going to tell anyone we were here.”
“If they find out…” He dropped his eyes.
“We won’t tell,”
Sunny reassured him. She turned and pushed open the fluttering plastic. “Shit.”
“What?” I raised my weapon again.
“Cars,” she answered. “And men.”
“Workers?”
“Some.”
I looked through the opening and saw, mixed in with workers, Joaquin and two of the men he’d sat with at the Border Crossing. “This has a big chance of getting messy,” I said. “And by messy I mean dangerous and bloody.”
When I turned around, Officer Sunny Johnson had the mic on her shoulder keyed. Her voice was quiet but firm. “Officers involved. Repeat. Shots fired.”
“Help is on the way?” I asked her.
“That’s the way it works.”
“Remind me to make sure you get a raise.”
“I promise.”
I turned to look out the plastic again. The three men with guns were marching our direction. “Why did you say there were shots fired?”
“Turn around,” Sunny said.
I was about to look when I realized too late she wasn’t talking to me. The hammer of her revolved clicked loudly. That was when I turned. I was just in time to watch her shoot our prisoner in the back of the outer thigh.
“What the hell?” I shouted.
“We can’t let him be found uninjured,” she said to me. Then into her mic, she said, “Send EMTs.”
I looked out again and saw the three men spreading out with their weapons at the ready. Before they could get around us, I pushed through the plastic gap. “Police,” I shouted with my .45 aimed right at Joaquin.
He froze. His buddies didn’t.
I spread my stance carefully and cupped my left hand under the butt of my pistol, taking solid aim, center mass, on Joaquin.
“Wait,” he called, raising his gun to the air.
I’m not sure how much pull he had with the other two. They didn’t shoot, but they didn’t drop their aim on me either.
There was a long, excruciating few seconds before sirens could be heard approaching. At the far edge of my vision, the two gunmen put their weapons away and slunk back to a shining new red GMC pickup.
“You’re making big mistakes, Tindall,” Joaquin called over. “Screwing with things you don’t understand.”
I didn’t answer. I was happy I could still breathe.
Joaquin rounded the hood of the truck and climbed behind the wheel. He slung gravel and dirt getting out of there as two Lansdale units pulled up. They were soon followed by an ambulance.
Sunny took charge. She set officers around the perimeter before ushering in the EMTs. The injured man was being taken care of as I went back to my truck.
SIXTEEN
My assistant chief, Bronwyn Gutiérrez, came tearing up the road with lights and sirens on. The odd thing about that was her direction. She didn’t come from town. I pulled the truck around, slinging mud as I went, and cut her off before she could run from the car to where the EMTs were working.
“Get in,” I told her.
“Where to?” she asked without moving to the door.
“Does it matter?”
“Yes,” she said firmly. “It matters a whole lot.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I trusted Stackhouse to take me someplace. You can trust me.”
“I’m not sure that logically follows,” Gutiérrez said, but she got into the truck.
I stood on the gas. Acceleration pushed us both into the back of the seats.
“Are we in a hurry?”
“I don’t know,” I answered. “Better fast than sorry.”
I told her what was behind the plastic tarps at the construction site.
“Where does the tunnel go?”
“That’s what we’re going to see for ourselves.”
I drove to the crossing and into Mexico, following the same route that Stackhouse had taken the night before. At one point, I had to stop and get my bearings. There was more than one dirt road headed out of town and into the desert, and there were no road signs pointing the way to the City of Angel’s Blood.
For most of the drive, we traveled in silence. I evaded one stone in the rut to strike another. The truck jumped. For a second we were free from the ground, and everything was smooth. When we settled back to earth, the shock was brutal. We bounced in the seats, restrained by belts and roof.
“You’re dangerous. They shouldn’t let you run around with a gun.” We hit another huge bump too fast. “Or a truck.”
I laughed. I was enjoying the drive.
“You outed me to Stackhouse,” Gutiérrez said. The cab of the truck went silent.
“I didn’t.”
“Last night he made calls trying to find out about the investigation of his team. He asked a lot of pointed questions that included your name.”
“I may have said he was under an internal investigation. I didn’t mean…I never used your name.”
“How stupid do you think he is? How long until he gets my name or figures it out?”
“I’m sorry.” I meant it. “I screwed up.”
“You’re why people get killed.”
“I said I was sorry. What do you want?”
“I want you to go away.”
“That’s not happening.”
“Then you can fucking pay for my funeral.”
Things were even quieter after that.
Ten minutes later we topped the hill above Ciudad de la Sangre de Angel. I pulled off the relative comfort of the dirt road and into the untracked desert and parked the truck behind a stand of cactus and rocks.
“What are we looking at?” Gutiérrez didn’t sound less angry.
“That’s the town—the City of Angel’s Blood.”
“Sounds cozy.”
“I think Stackhouse and his crew built it.”
“Why would they build a town?”
“I don’t know. That’s probably your job.”
She gave me a hard look.
“But it’s not a real town,” I explained. “I think it’s more of a depot. Or maybe it is a town. Maybe that works better for them. I don’t understand any of this.”
Again, she looked at me. Her expression was easy to read.
“Anyway,” I went on. “What I do understand is that what starts at the construction site there by Lansdale comes out here.”
“The tunnel?”
“More than that.”
“A tunnel like that can move trucks full of drugs, guns, people. What more could they need.”
“It has something to do with the bank.”
“What bank?”
“Look…” I said carefully.
She took her gaze from the metal buildings below and gave me her full attention.
“I’m sorry,” I said again. “I mean it.”
Gutiérrez nodded her understanding. She kept looking at me, waiting for more.
“You’ve been looking at Stackhouse and his close relationship with the Machado brothers and La Familia. Am I right?”
She took a long, deep breath and held it. When she relaxed, it escaped slowly. Her eyes never looked away from mine. “They are building up La Familia, helping one DTO over the others. It’s being done with the cooperation—with the help—of intelligence agencies on both sides of the border but without governmental oversight. It’s not only putting millions of dollars at risk of misuse or outright embezzlement; it could be a huge international incident. The people who need to know, and who most need to be involved, are in the dark. That’s why I’m here.”
“Stackhouse said to me it was about revolution.”
“Revolution?”
“He said they were controlling revolution. How do you do that?”
“I guess that depends on what you mean by ‘control.’”
“Exactly,” I said, feeling a little less foolish. “What he said made me think it wasn’t about controlling battles or war. I think they want the revolution to keep going. They want to make use of i
t somehow.”
“How do you make use of another country’s revolution?”
“Money,” I said. Then I pointed down at the big building. “That’s where the tunnel comes out—I’m sure. If it was only for smuggling, that’s all they need. But they’re building a whole town.”
“It doesn’t look like much of a town.”
“Which one of those other buildings do you think is a bank?”
The slower—saner—drive back to Lansdale took close to two hours.
* * * *
Back at the police station, I tried calling Milo. He didn’t answer. Now I knew how it felt, and it pissed me off. I went to the impound lot to see what had happened with Bascom’s car. It was in pieces with the interior now on the outside. The only thing to show for all the effort was a group of small plastic zipper bags. Each one had a slip of paper or a bit of dirt or a cigarette butt. None of the car’s detritus looked very significant. The cigarette had been found in a heater vent and was so old the paper had broken into flakes when it had been recovered.
I tracked down Gutiérrez. She wasn’t happy to see me, but when I asked about the councilman, she relaxed.
“Decided to be a real cop for a change?” she asked.
“I could ask you the same thing,” I said right back. “But I’m the bigger man.”
“Sure you are.” She tossed a file over at me. “Here you go.”
“What’s this?”
“What you asked for.”
I opened the folder, and within it were photos, forms, and handwritten notes all focused on Bascom Wood. “You’ve done all this already?”
“You sound surprised.”
I skimmed over pages. There were notes detailing interviews with over a dozen people. “Not surprised. Impressed.” I closed the file and dropped it back in front of her. “What’s it all come to?”
“What do you think it comes to?”
“Nothing?”
“You win the prize. No one saw or knows anything.”
“Maybe you’re asking the wrong people.”
“You think if I dragged one of the Machados in here, he would tell me everything I want to know?”
“I know a treasury agent you could ask.”
Gutiérrez glared at me. “Why don’t I just pull Darian Stackhouse in for questioning?”
“I’ll drive.”
The hard light in her eyes didn’t flicker. I didn’t press because I knew how useless it would be. Stackhouse and his team were protected by bureaucracy, and bureaucracy always had lawyers. If it was easy, Gutiérrez would have already done it. I left her and crossed the street to talk to Mr. and Mrs. Toomey.
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