They made the city hall seem like their home, and they were glad to have company. I asked, and Mr. Toomey opened the safe again. We chatted about the town and the situation it had gotten into as I made a more careful examination of the papers Bascom Wood had left behind. Conversation fell off as I laid out pages, organizing them into small piles grouped by type. I took notes and used my phone to photograph the bits that I thought were especially interesting. Those I e-mailed to Milo.
The largest pile was the paperwork for government grants. There were two other stacks in diminishing size. The middle one was banking information. Some were obvious receipts. Other pages were series of printed numbers with amounts listed. Those pages were on the letterhead of Bank of Lansdale.
“Wait a minute,” I said. The sound of my own voice startled me; I hadn’t realized I had spoken out loud. “I’m a stupid, stupid man.” That time I was sure to say it aloud and let it sink in.
“What’s wrong, Chief?” Mr. Toomey asked, setting a cup of coffee on the littered table.
“City councilman is not a full-time job here in Lansdale, is it?”
“Of course not,” he said. “Even the mayor, when we had one, was part time. He owned the hardware store.”
“Bascom Wood?” I pointed down at the banking papers. “Did he work at the bank?”
“The Bank of Lansdale is a family business. Bascom’s father started it in 1966.”
“And it started getting big just a couple of years ago?” I asked, but it wasn’t a question.
“Yes. Bascom Wood has financed the entire boom going on in Lansdale.” Mr. Toomey nodded his head sadly. “He’ll be missed.”
I turned to the smallest pile of papers. Those pages were crumpled and straightened bits with handwritten notations. Some were simply scraps on which questions and random statements were jotted. One was a segment of a computer print-out of more numbers with some familiar names written alongside them, names like Machado, Stackhouse, and my father’s.
The last page was a sheet of lined notebook paper with names written and arrows drawn from some to others. To the side was a list that included Homeland Security, DEA, Policia Federal, and La Familia. Long looping lines linked the agencies to names and people to other people. It was a convoluted flowchart, maybe a representation of hierarchy or reporting order. Or maybe it was a series of guesses about the movement of money. None of it was clear to anyone but Bascom Wood. Maybe it wouldn’t even have been clear to him.
One thing did stand out though. Between the name Darian Stackhouse and a circle bearing the names of the Machado brothers was a square with the name Joaquin D’Cruz in a little box. Joaquin’s name was crossed out, and outside the square was a question mark. Was Bascom questioning loyalty or identity?
At the very bottom in a shaky black scrawl were three lines that left me feeling sick.
They know about Paris Tindall—
They know about me—
They know—
All along I had been assuming Bascom had been killed because he had gone storming up to the gun club making a scene about his son. It had nothing to do with that. He’d been killed because they knew something about him, and I was convinced what they knew about was this pile of paper. What was in the paperwork may not have been known, but someone was aware that he was collecting information. Was it blackmail? Protection?
And the big question—what did they know about Paris?
I photographed the chart and sent images to Milo.
* * * *
It was dark by the time I locked the papers back up and left with Mr. and Mrs. Toomey. The night was one of those startlingly clear desert infinites. There was no moon, but a river of stars overflowed its banks, flooding the sky.
When I pulled up at the Desert Drop, my headlights swept past Lenore standing at the office door. She looked like she was waiting for me to arrive. That may have been hope doing the thinking for me. She was wearing shorts of cut-off jeans and a threadbare white wifebeater. I could have read her tattoos through it if I were closer.
When I parked the truck and killed the engine, I looked for her again. The office was closed and dark. Lenore was walking slowly up the far steps. Her face was set straight forward, but I could feel her eyes watching me.
I went to the opposite staircase and started climbing.
My room door was standing open. The lights inside were off. When I got closer, I saw that the wifebeater was hanging from the doorknob, and the shorts were on the floor.
That night we didn’t talk, and I didn’t read the poetry on her body. We reached for each other in the darkness and held on as if all the needs in the world could be expressed by touch.
SEVENTEEN
In the coldest, smallest hours of morning, a fist pounded on my door. The sound, a threatening pulse, roused me quickly. Getting out of twisted sheets was less quick. I was surprised to learn that I was alone.
My pants and the .45 clipped to them were on the floor. I didn’t open the door until both were on me.
The pounding didn’t stop until the door pulled away from the hand that beat it. Hector stood with his fist poised to keep sounding his demand.
“What are you—”
“You don’t answer your phone?” He cut me off with a voice as demanding as his fist.
I looked around, holstering my weapon as I did. “I think it’s in the truck.”
“Get your shirt and shoes on.”
“What’s going on?”
“Just do it,” he said, already headed for the stairs. As he began tromping down, he called, “I’ll be waiting.”
I dressed from the discarded clothes.
“Where are we going?” I asked, dropping into the seat beside Hector.
He didn’t answer. He slammed the car into gear and bolted onto the roadway. We traveled in silence until he jabbed the brakes and twisted the wheel, sending us into the same dirt track I had followed when I had gone fishing. That time I had found Officer Sunny Johnson with the body of Councilman Wood.
“Who is it?” I asked.
Hector didn’t answer.
Through the trees, white lights strobed while red and blue chased circles. We rounded a rutted bend and came out into the same clearing in which we had faced down Stackhouse and his team. In the center of police cruisers was a circle of tape. It looked like every officer of the Lansdale Police Department was crowded up to the barrier. Some were in uniform and on duty. Many were in civilian clothes and had obviously been pulled from sleep just as I had.
Hector stopped the car in a grind of tires and billowing of dust. We both got out, but he stayed at the car, leaning against the open door. I looked ahead and then back at Hector. He shook his head and looked down. I went forward alone.
As I approached, officers made way for me. Some of them looked away. Some stared stones at me. Blame and shame.
I expected a car with another body slumped and blood spattered on glass and metal. Expectations are a bitch. There was blood. It had sprayed and pooled in the dirt around the woman’s body tied to a young hickory tree. It was Gutiérrez.
Bronwyn Gutiérrez was dead.
She had been beaten. I imagine that had happened before she had been tied to the tree. Her clothes were soaked with thick blood not yet dry. The clothing was disheveled but intact. The violation that had been visited upon her was a different kind. Her tongue had been cut from her mouth. It was in the dirt and crawling with ants.
“Cut her down,” I said.
“We haven’t done our investigation,” someone said.
“Cut her down. I know who did this.”
“I want to help,” one of the officers said.
“I’m in,” another announced in a choked whisper.
“Fuckin’ A,” someone else said.
“We all want to help,” Officer Sunny Johnson said. She was standing right in front of me. It was the first I’d seen her.
“You’re cops.” I lifted my head to include them all in my words. “You’r
e all better than what I’m going to do.”
“You’re a cop too.” Sunny placed a hand on my arm.
“If I was any kind of cop, she wouldn’t be here.”
I turned away, trudging back through the spinning lights and judging eyes to the car. Hector was no longer behind his door. He had moved forward to stand between the dirt ruts in front of his headlights.
I put out my hand and said, “Give me your keys.”
Hector looked me right in the eyes. Nothing else about him or me moved. Our eyes watered and twitched. Finally, his head ticked a negative. He marched back to his seat behind the wheel and waited.
I climbed in, and we backed away, leaving the rest of the Lansdale police to take care of their own.
* * * *
There wasn’t a single word spoken as we drove. I didn’t tell Hector where to go. When we came to intersections, I pointed the way. At one point I pulled my .45. I ejected the magazine and the round in the chamber before checking the movement. Once I was satisfied that everything about the weapon was ready, I reloaded.
As we passed the construction area, I pointed at the sagging shack with trailers out back. Hector turned into the gravel lot of the Border Crossing and stopped sideways in a clear patch.
We both climbed from the car, and Hector said, “Hang on.” He went to the trunk and pulled out a twelve-gauge riot gun. He racked the slide and then pulled a shell from the band on the stock and shoved it into the loading port. “Let’s go.”
Cars passed on the road behind us. Their tires made quiet tearing sounds on the pavement. Underfoot, gravel crunched. As we approached the door, music bled out. It was like everything else, though: sound without feeling or meaning.
This time there was no clear segregation. I didn’t see Stackhouse, but most of his SOT crew were playing pool alongside soldiers of La Familia. Joaquin was there in the back. No one was surprised to see us.
I sidled right, toward the bar, with my hand on the butt of my pistol. Everyone was watching. I hoped that meant they wouldn’t notice Hector creeping in and to the left with his shotgun at the ready.
They noticed.
Every man in the place—there were no women that I saw—was armed and weapons ready. When I stopped beside the bar, Stackhouse popped up from behind it with a gun at my head. Hector turned with his shotgun when Stackhouse showed. As soon as Hector shifted his aim, another man stepped from behind the partition wall and pressed a pistol to his temple.
Hector didn’t flinch. He didn’t lower his weapon either. His aim remained steady and fixed on Stackhouse.
“Good to see you, Chief,” Stackhouse said. He was speaking carefully. I couldn’t see, but I believed his gaze was on Hector, not me.
“I bet it is,” I said, turning my pistol in slow motion to point right into his gut. “Looks like you expected me.”
“Be prepared. I was a Boy Scout.”
“You’ve come down in the world.”
“You mind asking your friend there to lower the shotgun? It makes me nervous.”
“Hector?”
“I’ll play it how you say it.” The fear in his voice couldn’t compete with the resolve.
“Hold steady,” I said. “Whatever we do, we shouldn’t die alone.”
A couple of the military types snickered softly. They thought it was bravado. None of the Mexican gunmen laughed. To a man, they eased back a step or two.
“You’re in the wrong place,” Stackhouse said.
“Where should I be?”
“Not here.”
“Why not here?”
He didn’t say anything.
I eased back a long step, clearing more room between Stackhouse and me. His gun followed me but nothing else.
“Hector,” I said. “If you shoot him, the man with his gun at your head will kill you.”
“I know.”
“Will you shoot him if you have to?”
“Yes.”
No one snickered.
“There are a few ways to play this, Stackhouse.” It was gratifying to see the sweat beading on his forehead and rolling down the bridge of his nose. “Most of them end up with you dead.”
“You won’t survive it.”
“That’s the thing. That’s your fuck-up here.” I turned my attention from him to the rest of the room to make sure everyone was listening. Then I brought my gaze back to his eyes. “We’re willing.”
I let it set there, time for him to think it through.
“Put your weapons down,” Stackhouse said. “We can talk.”
“We like the conversation as it is.”
“You’re holding federal officers at gunpoint, Tindall. Do you think you can get away with that?”
“Tonight, you and your boys murdered a federal agent.”
Some of the big military types looked at each other. It was a reaction of surprise. The Mexicans didn’t respond.
“But I don’t think everyone was in on it. Keeping secrets from the team?”
“No one knows what you’re talking about.” Stackhouse spat the words out in a desperate slur. “We’ve been here all night.”
“See, Hector?” I stole a glance his way. Hector never took his eye from Stackhouse or the front sight he had centered on his chest. “He gave an instant alibi for something he claimed not to know about. What’s that say to you?”
“It says guilty as fuck.”
“We don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know what you’re talking about, Chief.” The hand with which Stackhouse was holding the gun on me inched down. “Can’t we deescalate this?”
I brought my pistol up rather than lowering it. His hand stopped.
“First thing you said when I came in, Stackhouse—remember?” I asked. “You were prepared. You knew. Question is—” I looked away from him and turned to one of the men. He was the same big pool player I had antagonized a few days ago. “Did you know?”
The man looked stunned but otherwise did not react.
“Officer Bronwyn Gutiérrez of the Lansdale Police Department. I know you knew her. You were standing right there when I talked to her at this bar a few days ago. She was murdered.”
He glanced at Stackhouse.
“Don’t look at him,” I warned. “Look at me.”
He did.
“The other question—” I pressed. “Did you know she was DEA?”
Whatever held his face in position cracked.
“You didn’t.”
“He’s lying, Bart,” Stackhouse told the man.
“Shut up.” Hector’s warning was like a feral dog’s growl. Stackhouse listened.
“You didn’t know your entire team was the subject of internal investigation?” I asked Bart.
He didn’t answer.
“She was murdered tonight and her tongue cut out. Tell me, Bart, who gets that kind of treatment?”
“Snitches.” He said the word, but it was simply a fact, not condemnation. Then he stole a look over at the nearest of La Familia.
“Is an undercover cop a snitch, Bart?”
He shook his head.
“You’re flapping like a bird with broken wings, Tindall,” Stackhouse said. “Noise and feathers, going nowhere.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” I said, with my gaze on Bart. “But it’s not you I was talking to.”
Bart was looking at his boss.
At the edge of my vision, I could see Stackhouse. His gun hand wavered. It was time for me to put up or get out. “Hector?”
“Yeah?”
“You ready to get out of here?”
“You want me to kill him?”
“No.” I eased my .45 away from Stackhouse and returned it to the holster. “We’re not going to kill them.”
“Why?” he asked, sounding genuinely disappointed.
“Because La Familia is going to do it.” That got a reaction. The Mexicans, who had been happy staying back, letting the whites and the cops threaten each other, became suddenly atten
tive. They looked at each other with questioning eyes and then looked at the cops around them with new malice. “And these guys are going to kill La Familia.”
“What are you talking about?” With only one gun aimed at him, Stackhouse was sweating a little less and ready to be his asshole self.
“War,” I said. Then I walked backward to the door and pulled it open. Holding it, I shifted my aim to the man holding his weapon to Hector’s head. “Come on out, Hector. It’s over for tonight.”
“Tindall,” Stackhouse called after me. “This isn’t a little thing. This is big as hell. Government big. National economy big. Too big for a chief of police.” He grinned, finally looking like a man back in control. “Too big for you.”
We drove back the way we had come, still silent. In my head, I entertained myself wondering about the conversation Stackhouse was having with his men and the La Familia boys. There was something else rattling around in my brain—what he’d said there at the end, before Hector and I had made it out the door. Stackhouse had said it was big. Too big for me.
I was unable to shake the thought. It was like everything else that I had been trying to do since I had found Paris in my trailer. Nothing fit right. I had tried responding to events by becoming something I wasn’t. Paris. I was trying to become bigger. Maybe the answer was to make things smaller.
When we approached the turnoff onto the dirt road, Hector had to stop the car and wait for the ambulance to exit.
“I don’t need to go back there,” I said. “Take me back to the motel.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I need my truck.”
“Then what?”
“Then I’m going to do what I do. And it ain’t going to be pretty.”
Hector turned the wheel and pulled back onto the blacktop. He passed the ambulance, which was traveling with lights but no siren.
EIGHTEEN
I didn’t go back to my room or change clothes. Even though the morning was yet to begin burning in the east, I went to the city hall and parked out front. There I was alone with my thoughts as I waited. They weren’t good company. I turned on the radio and listened to music. It was all about loss and fear and beer. Perfect.
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