Dead Man's Badge

by Robert E. Dunn

  “I got the images you sent,” Milo said as soon as he picked up. “And I’ve been hearing things from other sources. What the hell is going on down there?”

  “They killed Gutiérrez.”

  “Do you know who?”

  “Yes?”

  “Is that a question or an answer?”

  “He’ll tell me himself when I find him.”

  “Was it La Familia or…”

  “Are you asking if the DEA’s SOT could have killed one of their own?”

  “Was it La Familia or the SOT?” That time his question had its spine.

  “Both.”

  For a long few moments, he was quiet. “Which one pulled the trigger?”

  “Both,” I repeated.

  “I’m not sure what that means.”

  “It means that she was mutilated and murdered by the SOT member working undercover in La Familia de los Muerto.”

  “Do you have evidence?”

  “I don’t need evidence.”

  “Don’t go stupid on me, Paris.”

  “I’m not Paris,” I said. “He’s dead.”

  “Clamp that crap down and get your head screwed back on,” Milo told me.

  It wasn’t the reaction I expected. It took a second for me to realize that he took my confession as hyperbole.

  I was about to set the needle into the right groove when he said, “You’re a good cop. I need you to see this through.”

  “Look—”

  “And by me, I mean your country. This is important.”

  I didn’t know which was worse, feeling good or feeling bad about that.

  When I didn’t say anything back, Milo said, “On the bigger picture…”

  “Bigger picture?”

  “I know how it sounds. I hope you know it’s not what I mean.”

  As touchy as I was at the time, I thought I did know how it sounded was not what he intended. Saying okay was the best I could give him.

  “What’s happening?”

  I filled him in on the basics, including the trips to Ciudad de la Sangre de Angel and the tunnel.

  “What’s it about?”

  “That’s more on you at this point,” I said. “It’s bigger than simple drug smuggling, and it’s federal. I can’t say I know what it is. But I will say you won’t like what comes next.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Killing.”

  It was Milo’s turn to be silent. It didn’t last as long as I expected. “That’s not our job.”

  “Do you think you can arrest these people?”

  He was quiet for a long time. Then: “What are you going to do?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  I hung up, and Milo didn’t call back. I called Hector.

  He answered before the first ring was complete. “Chief?”

  “I have a question.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Where do La Familia get their tattoos?”

  “There’s a few places I know of.”

  “Where do they get the grinning skulls inked on their fingers?”

  “There’s only one place for that.”

  * * * *

  Hector was waiting outside in his car when I pulled up in front of a dirty but colorful joint called Death’s Head Tattoo and Body Art. There were also two bikes and a bright-red pickup that looked like it had rolled off the lot that day.

  “What are we doing this time?” Hector asked.

  “More of the same.”

  “Let me get the street sweeper.” He opened the trunk and pulled out the shotgun.

  “You know you don’t have to do this, don’t you?”

  “I know.”

  “Thanks.” I took a deep breath. “I mean it.”

  “Thank you.”

  “For what? I haven’t done anything worth thanks since I’ve been here.”

  “Not true. You gave Paris back to me. At least you saved him in my memory. Most of all you stuck around when you could have run.”

  “Should have run.”

  “Could have. Should have. You stayed. It was a hard thing. Thanks.”

  “I wish it was Paris here.” I didn’t look at Hector when I said it. “I wish…”

  “I know, man. You don’t have to spill it all out to me. I know.”

  In the movies that would have been the moment that Hector racked a round into the chamber of the shotgun and one of us would say, “Let’s go,” or something like it. Life never goes like the movies. Hector already had a round of double-aught buckshot chambered, and I was already walking.

  A little bell tinkled over the door when I shoved it open. Four men inside stopped laughing at the same time. Two of them froze. They belonged to the bikes outside. The one with the tattoo gun dropped it on a cluttered table and ran for the back door. I let him go. The man in the chair with his back to me would have jumped and run too, but he was only half out of the deep chair when I shouted, “Joaquin.”

  I couldn’t see his face. I didn’t need to. His understanding of his situation was carved into tense muscles and an artificially straight posture.

  “You two,” I said to the bikers. “Show me your hands.”

  They each put up their hands, palms up in surrender.

  “The backs,” Hector ordered.

  The pair looked at each other.

  “The backs of your hands.” They complied. Hector let them run, but he kept an eye on them until the bikes rumbled down the road. “Clear.”

  All that time I kept my gun on Joaquin, and he stood as still as a pinned bug. “Can I turn around now?”

  I shifted to my left, widening the line of fire between him and Hector’s shotgun. “You can when your gun hits the floor.”

  Joaquin looked over his shoulder at me and then craned his neck to see Hector. Our separation made it impossible for him to shoot us both. He lifted his weapon gingerly and dropped it to the floor.

  “I got something else to show you.”

  “I don’t need to see your badge,” I told him.

  Joaquin’s shoulders slumped.

  “Badge?” Hector sounded incredulous.

  “Joaquin here is the DEA man undercover with La Familia,” I explained.

  “Is that true?” Hector demanded.

  “True enough.” Joaquin turned slowly with his hands up in front of him. “See? We’re on the same side.”

  “Which side was Gutiérrez on?”

  “This guy?” Hector stepped forward with the shotgun level at center mass on Joaquin.

  I reached out before he could react and grabbed Joaquin’s right wrist. I twisted it around to show the new outline of a grinning skull with a mantilla comb.

  “Things happen.”

  That was the last thing I needed to hear him say. I jerked him forward and let him fall face down in the tattoo chair. Then I raised my boot and put it in his back to hold him there. When I twisted his arm, he almost screamed. His fingers flexed open wide.

  When I put the barrel of my .45 against his tattooed finger, he shouted, “No.”

  “Why not?” It was Hector asking, not me.

  “I’m on the job. You can’t do this.”

  “She was on the job.” Hector bellowed the accusation. “Did she get to tell you that before you cut her tongue out?”

  “I’m a federal officer.”

  “So was Cesar Barcia,” I said it without anger or recrimination. Joaquin stopped fighting though. “You know that name.”

  “Who’s Cesar Barcia?” Hector asked.

  “Tell him.” I gave the wrist another twist.

  Joaquin grunted but said nothing.

  “You remember him, don’t you? He was a real funny son of a bitch, always laughing.” I stepped harder into his spine and turned the wrist another inch.

  “He was a friend of mine.”

  “You know what happened? Cesar Barcia begged me. After I broke his leg, he showed me his badge. He tried hiding behind it.”

  “What did you do?�
�

  I stared down at Joaquin. His teeth were clenched, but the question was still on his face. Suddenly I wasn’t proud of what I’d done. But I wasn’t hiding either. “I broke his other leg. Then I broke his hand under my boot.”

  “You killed him?”

  I shook my head. “I left him in the grave he made me dig for myself. I left him alongside others he’d killed. But he was alive.” I flexed my muscles at the memory and turned Joaquin’s wrist a little farther. “I left him a gun and a bullet. The coyotes were already howling.”

  Hector eased the pressure off his trigger finger. He took a sliding step back too. He was angry but not the same kind of man as me.

  I was glad of that.

  It didn’t stop me from cocking my pistol. The barrel was still pressed to the first tattoo on Joaquin’s fingers. It was still new and shiny. “For Bascom Wood?”

  He didn’t say anything. He didn’t move at all. There was an energy in his eyes that I thought was an answer.

  I lifted my gun and moved the barrel to the other finger. That one was red and angry-looking with the almost-complete skull inked there. “For Gutiérrez?”

  Joaquin flinched.

  I squeezed my trigger.

  His digit disappeared into muzzle flash and a settling red mist.

  The roar of the gunshot muted my hearing. Joaquin’s screaming sounded like a power saw on the other side of a mattress wall. Hector said something. His mouth moved anyway. I couldn’t make out any words.

  “What?” I pointed to my ears and then at the writhing man on the tattoo chair.

  “What do you want to do with him now?” Hector yelled over the screaming.

  I hadn’t thought that far ahead.

  Joaquin passed out. At least he fell silent and stopped his thrashing around. That was good enough.

  “Help me get him out to his truck,” I told Hector.

  Together we tossed him in the bed and shut the gate. Hector cuffed Joaquin’s undamaged hand to a tie-down ring. I rifled his pockets until I found keys.

  “Where to?”

  “Are you hungry?”

  Hector looked at me like I’d introduced him to Frankenstein’s monster brought to life in my basement. Then he shook his head. “I don’t think I’ll ever be hungry again.”

  “That’s the time you most need good food and people around.”

  “People?”

  “Being alone is the worst thing at a time like this.”

  “What is a time like this?” Hector asked, looking around as if he was surrounded by ghosts. He may have been. “Do you mean the time of dead friends? Or maybe it’s the time of brutality and violence?”

  “All of it. And more.”

  “More?”

  “Things can still get worse. Who makes the best barbecue in town?”

  Hector stared at me like I was a crazy man. Eventually, though, he said, “Tubby.”

  TWENTY

  I didn’t know if the trip was hard on Joaquin. I didn’t ask. Not that it would have mattered. He was still unconscious when I arrived at Tubby’s BBQ. That or he had woken and passed out again. The trip was fast, and I took the corners none too gently.

  I glanced in the truck bed. The red paint did little to disguise the pool under the body. And Joaquin’s clothing appeared as if he’d rolled around on a slaughterhouse floor.

  Tubby was aptly named. He was a huge black man with a lively smile and an ever-present scent of wood smoke about him.

  “I need your help,” I told him as he checked the meats in the smaller of two huge smokers.

  “How can I help the police today?” He sounded willing but wary.

  “They say you’re the best in town.”

  “Ain’t that big a town.” He said it dismissively. “Now tell me,” he said, turning paper-wrapped brisket on the grate. “How can I help the police? And keep in mind, my chief, the historical difficulties between the black business owner and the Anglo-centric authorities.”

  That I had to puzzle out. It took a second, but I finally said, “This isn’t a shakedown. And if you ever get one while I’m around, we can smoke a new kind of meat.”

  “Fair enough.” Tubby nodded but kept his eyes on his work. “Now, as long as I ain’t turning over my hard-earned cabbage to the man, what can I do for you, Mr. Chief of Police?”

  “We lost an officer today.”

  Tubby stopped fiddling with meat. He closed the smoker door and gave me his full attention. “Go on.”

  “It’s been an awful day for a lot of folks. It’s been a horrible one, as a matter of fact.” I might have choked a bit, but I let it be because of the smoke. “I want the cops working for me to be fed. I want them to be together, not hunkered down at home or alone wondering…”

  Tubby squared his shoulders and started to say something.

  I stopped him by asking, “How much?”

  “How many?”

  “Anyone that shows up. Cops. Citizens.”

  He nodded like he had made an important decision and then jerked his head over at the bigger smoker for me to follow. The door was heavy steel, and even with welded-on counterweights, the big man had to push hard to lift it. Within were two hogs. Not cuts of meat—these were the entire animal splayed open and wrapped in chicken wire. They smelled amazing.

  “This’ll get us started,” he said.

  “We’ll need beer.”

  His eyes lit up. “’Course you will.”

  “And potato salad?”

  His grin was brighter than his eyes. “Best you ever had. And beans, roasted corn ears, cracklin’s, broccoli-and-cheese casserole, and maybe a few other things. When you want it?”

  “As soon as you can get it over to the station.” I pulled a wad of bills from my pocket and counted out $2,000. “Keep it going as long as people are hungry. If the bill goes over that, see me.”

  “You got it, Chief. Glad to help.”

  * * * *

  I was on the phone with Sunny Johnson telling her what was happening with Tubby and the food coming to the station when I saw Joaquin in the rearview mirror. He tried to stand. It didn’t work out very well. When I hung up, he tried again. I twisted the mirror to get a better view.

  Joaquin started shouting at me and wielding his injured hand like a college kid with an Occupy sign. He couldn’t stand all the way. The cuffs required him to spread his legs wide and keep his back bent. People honked as they passed. He shouted into the wind and slung free-flowing blood from his nonexistent finger onto the back glass.

  I jerked the wheel to the right and then hard back left. He went down, cursing loud enough I caught a few words. He stayed down the rest of the way to the motel.

  I parked, and Joaquin lifted his head above the truck bed to scream at me and at anyone else he saw. He kept demanding that someone call the DEA.

  I stepped down from the cab and said, “I’m not sure this is the place you want to be playing the DEA card.”

  “You’re a dead man,” he said, finally not screaming.

  On the motel balcony, I stopped in front of my room to stare out to the southward dirt and sky. Old Mexico. Looking at anything at that moment was like peering through the wrong end of a telescope, distorted and distant. The day seemed to have gone on long enough to turn me into a fossil bone in the desert. Joaquin was right. I was a dead man. He was wrong about the timing. I had to wonder, Have I ever been alive?

  Introspection and feeling sorry for yourself only go so far before the world sticks in its nose to remind you that none of us is that important, even in our own lives. Lenore appeared, climbing the stairs at the far end of the building. She wasn’t looking at me. Her eyes were watching Joaquin, who had gone silent as he gaped at her.

  I opened my room door but didn’t go in. Lenore was on the balcony and walking slowly, but deliberately, right to me. “You picked up a stray,” she said. “You’re a good one for that.”

  “We all have to be good at something.”

  “That’s
not my experience.”

  I’d been fooling myself thinking I could ease into it. “About Simon Machado—”

  “About Simon or about what I did?”

  “I figure they’re tied together.”

  “You don’t understand nearly as much as you think you do.”

  “There’s no arguing that.”

  “Why don’t you go?”

  That surprised me. “Where?”

  “Anywhere. Run.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why? The way I hear it, you’re not much of a cop. La Familia will turn you. Even your daddy thinks so.”

  “Turn me?”

  She stepped away from me and through my open door. As she went, she mimed counting cash. Lenore folded the imaginary bills and tucked them away, saying, “Put you right into their pocket.”

  “They don’t always win.” I followed her into the room.

  “They don’t have to. They never stop playing.”

  “There’s nothing special about them, Lenore. They’re criminals. Killers.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. You’ve seen Eladio. They are vampires. The suck the blood of peasants and gringos. La Familia de los Muerto lives in death and darkness, and you can’t fight them.”

  “Mexican vampires?” I almost laughed. “I’ve seen that movie. What kind of hold do they have over you?”

  “Ownership.”

  “We can stop—”

  “Simon gave me to you. Not once but both times. He would be happy if I bent over right now and let you do anything you want. I wouldn’t say no. I would spread. I would suck you and let you finish anyplace—anyway. Is that what you want? To have what he gives?”

  “Make your own choices.”

  “He gave me to your daddy too.”

  All the breath disappeared from my chest.

  “Buick grunted and sweated over me for hours. Then he pissed with the door open and sent me away. He said thank you to Simon.”

  My muscles were paralyzed. No air could come into my lungs.

  “Will you thank him?”

  It seemed to be impossible for me to speak, but I heard myself saying, “I’ll kill him.”

  “For me? Or because of your father?” She shut the door.

  TWENTY-ONE

  My gut was acid and my legs trembling when I got back to the red truck. I had been unable to convince Lenore to come with me. I had convinced her of nothing. She had convinced me that she knew darkness better than I did. We’d both been in our own graves. I’d gotten out.