Dead Man's Badge

by Robert E. Dunn

  If Joaquin had been shouting, I would have gotten into the truck without a thought. He was quiet. That got my attention. Before I could ask, my nose grabbed on to the scent of cigar smoke.

  While I had been inside talking to Lenore, Simon Machado had been outside talking with Joaquin. From the looks, it hadn’t been a pleasant conversation.

  “What happened?”

  “Fuck you,” he spat back but without venom.

  “Machado was here.”

  Joaquin flipped me off with his missing finger.

  “What’d he say?”

  “What do you think he said? He’ll kill you for this.”

  “You tell him you’re a cop?”

  “Stackhouse won’t let you keep me. And once I kill you, I’ll be back in La Familia and bulletproof.”

  “I wouldn’t be betting on his batting average if I was you.” I opened the truck door and tried not to show the trouble I had climbing in. “Let’s go for another ride,” I said and then slammed the door before he could curse me again.

  * * * *

  A hundred people had already gathered at the police station when I pulled into the parking lot, and they kept coming. Tubby was there with hogs on display. He had a trailer with a smoker behind a truck loaded with compartments both heated and chilled.

  Some of the arriving vehicles were laden with folding chairs and tables. I saw two church vans pull up with more furniture and food. Cops and civilians were helping to unload and set up.

  Almost everyone stopped what they were doing to stare at the prisoner in the bed of the red truck. The word had gotten out.

  Before the engine was stilled, Hector, Sunny, and another ten cops came out of the station house.

  “Is that him?” Officer Sunny called to me.

  “Yep.”

  “Just when I was about to give up…” Hector said.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I told him.

  “I didn’t think I’d see him alive again.”

  There wasn’t an answer for that. I didn’t even try.

  “What are we going to do with him?” Sunny asked. Her question wasn’t casual. Nor was it fully trusting.

  “Lock him up,” I answered.

  “Then what?” she hit back. “Are you going to give him over to the feds?”

  “If we turn him over to anyone, feds or state, he disappears.”

  “So?” Sunny pushed.

  “So—I don’t know.”

  Hector took the prisoner to lock him safely in a cell. As he went, Officer Sunny asked, “Do you think a party is a good thing?”

  “A party? No. A wake? Maybe. Something to take a little bit of the edge off a horrible day? Sure. Beer and barbeque? Can you say you don’t need it?”

  “That all sounds fine. But this feels like a funeral.”

  “Well…we should all have a send-off like this.”

  An hour later people were eating and drinking as a cloudless sky drained of light and color. Tubby’s was the best barbeque I ever had. That may have owed something to the company and how good it was to be surrounded by people who didn’t want to kill you.

  I had tossed my well cleaned paper plate into the trash and was wondering if I could stand another beer, when two people who didn’t quite fit flowed out of the crowd to seek me out. Simon Machado was dressed again like a country music star from 1969. He was wearing a black suit with embroidered green cacti. The green silk shirt matched perfectly. On his feet were hand-tooled boots that cost more than most people’s cars. They were matched to the gun belt on his hip. In the holster was a revolver, hand scrolled and nickel plated. As bold as he looked, his light dimmed beside Lenore. She was dressed in an embroidered black skirt and white peasant blouse. Her hair was tied with ribbons, each in a different, brighter color. Through her eyes shone a charged light, electricity that crackled with energy.

  Machado pushed her forward with a hand on her ass, and Lenore twirled for me, showing off the clothes and…something more that I was too blinded or too foolish to pick up on.

  “You’re beautiful,” I said.

  She smiled warmly, joyously.

  A snick of sound, derisive and superior, came from her handler’s mouth. Simon pulled a cigar from the inner pocket of his jacket. He bit and then spat out the tip before placing it in his mouth. The cigar bobbed and rotated in his mouth as he moistened it. That was when he looked at me and feigned a first notice.

  Simon took the wet cigar from his mouth and turned it, butt end to me, and said, “I’m sorry. I should have offered first.” He stared, white teeth showing, smug malice and hate. “Would you like a cigar?”

  Before anything more could be said, Lenore interposed herself between us. She took my hand and put it on her breast before she pressed her whole body against mine. She was small at that moment. Her eyes were an animal’s looking up at me. Lenore was a creature captured and on the edge of panic. She was also a woman, lovely and warm. Under the peasant top, she wore no bra. Her nipple was hard as a stone against my fingers. Beneath that, below skin and bone, her heart beat slower than I thought possible. It was a contradiction—one I had no capacity to understand. But I didn’t take my hand away.

  “Please,” Lenore whispered up to my face. Her breath was warm. It caressed.

  I breathed the scent of perfume and whiskey.

  She moved her body against me. It was a gift of heat and license to take all the passion she represented. It was not a promise that her passions would be mine alone, though.

  I snaked my hand from between our bodies.

  “No, sir,” I said, my voice thick and hushed. Then, stronger: “I’m not a cigar man.”

  Simon stuck the smoke back into his sneer. “This is a nice party,” he said.

  “It’s not a party.”

  “It looks like a party.”

  “It’s more of a wake. Something to remember a friend who has—gone on.”

  “She likes you.” Simon pointed at Lenore, who was still pressed to my body while looking at my chest rather than my face. Then he lit his cigar. The flame exposed his face in a flickering orange that didn’t touch his eyes.

  “Not by choice.” The words sounded cruel as soon as they left my mouth.

  “We don’t all have the same choices in life, amigo. Comprende?”

  “I do. I understand very well. But that’s the thing. We make the choices we have. Or they are made for us.” I stepped back from him and, sadly, from Lenore. There was a fading heat where she had been pressed to me. It faded too quickly. I touched the brim of my hat and said, “You folks enjoy the food and the company.”

  “Tell me…Chief.” his intonation managed to piss on the word. “Whose life are we remembering today?”

  “You know that, Mr. Machado.”

  He didn’t react.

  “And you know I have your man, Joaquin, in a cell for the killing. He lost his finger in the fracas—the one he was just having decorated. But that’s a small thing.”

  “How about—you give him to me?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “An exchange of goodwill. A token of understanding.”

  “Mr. Machado, if there is one thing clear in this world, it’s that you don’t understand shit about me.”

  He puffed the cigar belligerently. Then Simon tilted his head back to exhale clouds of bluish smoke from under his hat into the deepening night. When his lungs were clear, he looked back at me to say, “You are doing a very nice thing here for one of your people.” He turned to regard Lenore. She was staring at the sky, where stars were sparking. “You’re a hard man.” He continued and then shifted his focus back to me. “But even hard men have family.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh at that. “My father? You’re trying to leverage Buick Tindall against me?”

  The confusion on Simon’s face was perfect.

  “You should have asked him how that would pan out before you showed up here.” I turned and walked away. Three steps and I sto
pped. “But I tell you what.” I turned and looked Simon Machado in the eye. “Come see me tomorrow. We have a few things to discuss, and you have a lot to learn.”

  He smoked and stared, giving nothing.

  “We’ll do it at noon.”

  “High noon?” he asked. “The cowboy cliché.”

  “Yep. High noon. At the tunnel entrance by the bank.”

  “Why would I do this?”

  “Not just you. Bring your brother.”

  “Again, I ask why we would do such a thing.”

  “It’s where I’ll be. It’s where Joaquin will be. Stackhouse and his boys will be there too. It’s time you find out who your enemies are and why none of your plans for tunnels and banks are going to work out.”

  “Then look for us at noon,” Simon said. He reached out and grabbed Lenore by the back of the hair and pulled. “Vamos, puta.”

  “Hey.” I shouted loud enough to draw attention from the entire crowd. I hated to hear any woman called a whore. Without realizing it, I had put my hand on the butt of my pistol as well.

  Simon took his hand from her hair and held it up for me to see.

  “Lenore?” I asked.

  She looked from the ground to me. Her gaze held my eyes but never stilled. Then she closed them and turned away. She stepped slowly. The walk turned into a sashay as she worked her hips and flounced the skirt in her hands.

  Machado gave me an exaggerated shrug, “Choices, hey?” He turned and caught Lenore, putting his hand possessively on her ass as they went.

  It wasn’t twenty minutes later when Darian Stackhouse and his DEA crew showed up in their big SUVs. They parked on the street. As a group, they marched straight into the parking lot full of civilians. Every man was bearing automatic weapons. The crowd moved aside, a wake peeling off the bow of a tanker. Or a battleship.

  “Turn him over,” Stackhouse ordered as he approached. First shot across the bow.

  “Who?”

  “You know who.”

  “Hey.” I pointed. “You got a new badge.”

  “Hand my man over, and we’ll go away.”

  “Correct me if I’m wrong—but wouldn’t a man of yours be a federal agent? A cop?”

  Stackhouse didn’t speak, but the big “fuck you” was blazing in his eyes.

  “We don’t have your man. We have, in custody, a murderer. A cop murderer and member of La Familia de los Muerto drug-trafficking organization.” I sucked my teeth and then spit at the ground in front of Stackhouse’s boots. “But don’t go away. We want you to stick around. Have a beer and some food. Think about the life of Officer Bronwyn Gutiérrez.”

  “You know who he is.”

  “Think about her life. Consider it. Consider it real good.”

  Stackhouse held his ground and gaze. The other men, however, looked away. None of them backed up, but they weren’t happy to be reminded about Gutiérrez.

  “You know you have to kick him loose.” Stackhouse’s voice was a measured calm, smooth as a flat line. That was scary.

  “Hector,” I called without looking away from the big man in front of me.

  “Got you covered,” he called back. “All of us got you covered.”

  “Everyone,” I shouted out. “The man in front of me is Darian Stackhouse.”

  He looked around like a politician judging the mood of his crowd.

  “He’s a federal agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration,” I went on, shouting to the gathered citizens of Lansdale. “He is the leader of a DEA Special Operations team.”

  When Stackhouse turned back to me, the blaze in his eyes was dimmed.

  I finished up in a normal voice, “Let’s all hear what he has to say about our prisoner.”

  “You’re going to give him over one way or another.”

  “Yep,” I agreed, speaking low and only to him. “If you want him tonight, bring a court order.”

  His eyebrows went up in a surprised arch.

  I almost laughed. “See? I can be reasonable. But you don’t want courts involved, do you?”

  The surprise slid off his face.

  “Or you can get him tomorrow at noon.”

  “What’s the deal?” he asked, awfully eager.

  “No deal. Tomorrow at noon. At the tunnel mouth.”

  His eyebrows crept up again.

  “The one on this side of the border.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I told you. No deals. Show up. We’ll talk things over. I’ll leave Joaquin and walk away.”

  He looked around. One by one he polled his men by eye contact. Stackhouse turned back to me and said, “Barbeque smells good.”

  “I changed my mind about that. You’re not welcome.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  Things settled down. The night unwound to a pleasant melancholy braced by food and beer. I offered Tubby more cash. He didn’t take it. People pitched in and cleaned up. It was the ending of the gathering that most brought out the loss for me.

  Guilt—I wrapped the feeling around me, feeding it beer and stars and the utter assurance that if I were Paris, Gutiérrez would still be alive.

  “You should go home and sleep.” It was Officer Sunny. I hadn’t even noticed she was there.

  “Who’s going to sleep tonight?” I didn’t wait for an answer. I crossed the lot over to where I had left the red truck parked.

  There was a man waiting. I smelled the cigar smoke before I saw him. It wasn’t Simon Machado. It was just a hulking form leaning over the truck hood, blackness within shadow, until the cherry on the cheap cheroot flared and showed Buick’s face.

  “You should have asked Machado for a good cigar,” I said. “He likes sharing them.”

  “I never acquired the taste.” He pulled the smoke from his mouth and examined it. “This is good enough for me.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  He hesitated, working the cigar in his fingers. If it was to distract him or me, I couldn’t tell. When he reached whatever point he was waiting for, Buick flicked the ash and said, “I’ve got one last chance.”

  “For what?”

  “To get you on the payroll.”

  “After trying to kill me?”

  Buick put the cigar back into his mouth. “Dead or paid. No one cares. What’s happening calls for predictability.”

  “And I’m not predictable?”

  “You never have been. I remember a time when—”

  “Don’t do that,” I said. “Don’t try to go all fatherhood on me.”

  “Anyway, I told them it wouldn’t work.”

  “Why didn’t you do that the first time? With Paris?”

  “It was different with him. He wasn’t the saint you think he was.”

  “You already said he wouldn’t take the money. Are you saying something else now?”

  “This is a nice truck,” he said, running his hand over the smooth metal. “I like red.”

  “Is that an answer?”

  “No. It’s a chance to take the question back.”

  I looked at him and waited.

  “The problem with Paris was one of timing, not character.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “Yes, you do. He was a lot more like me than you ever were. I think he would have taken the money. Not at first. But he would have worn down. He never had your steel or your sense of outrage about things.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “It means you were a hard boy. And a hard young man. And you’ve grown into a hard bastard just like your old man.”

  “The key word being ‘bastard.’”

  “That’s one key on a whole big ring. One your mama never dwelled on.”

  “You weren’t there when she cried at night.”

  “Yeah, I was. A lot more than you know. And I was there when the cryin’ was over you.”

  “Whatever.”

  “No. Now you seem all hard pressed to talk this out, let’s do it.”

 
; His words were a challenge. I was dead set not to back down, but I did look away before I asked, “How do you do it? How does a man have two families?”

  “By making the easy choice every time. By being selfish.”

  “Words are easy.”

  Buick pushed himself back from the truck and stood straight. He pulled the cigar from his mouth and dropped it. Then he waited for me to look at him. When I did, he said, “Shame.”

  I thought he was telling me I should be ashamed. I opened my mouth to shout my answer back at him.

  “I was ashamed.” He muttered the words.

  I closed my mouth.

  “Not of you or your mother. I was ashamed of myself. I was ashamed of the secret and then of not keeping it.” He took a step to the front of the truck, and I took one back. Buick stayed where he was, but his hands moved like a man carving his own thoughts into words. “Can you understand that, boy? Most of my life was built on shame. But it never stopped me.”

  “Where’s the reason in that, Buick?”

  “Reason? Hell, there’s no reason. There’s no excuse.”

  “That’s too easy.”

  “Easy?” His hands reached out again, but my father kept his feet planted. “What’s easy? There’s just…what is.”

  “Then why are you here? You didn’t believe you could bribe me. The best explanation you have for all the mess in my life is that ‘it just is what it is.’”

  “You want things straight?”

  “It would be nice for once.”

  Buick quickly came around the front of the truck. He surged forward too quickly for me to back away or put up my hands. He stopped with his face only inches from mine. I saw something of a wound in his eyes. It wasn’t there long.

  “I’ll tell you this, Longview—looking at you is like looking at myself. A few years back, maybe. And I’m not talking about the outside, the bitter cast to your face or the concrete in your eyes, not the way you stand or the way you walk—we all three shared those. I’m talking about what’s under all that. You’re cocky at the expense of better judgment. Hell bent to have things your way, you bull through the lives of other, better people. You are me, boy.”