Dead Man's Badge

by Robert E. Dunn

  Hector relaxed and almost smiled. “I was thinking to get the bodies covered first.” He pointed to a patch of parking lot with no cars and no dead men on it. “And thought we could make a command post there.”

  “That’s good,” Buick agreed and then pointed to the road. “But if you set up there, the ambulances can line up and load up. Everything can be logged, and nothing goes without a tag.”

  I left them talking and collected Officer Sunny Johnson. I put her in charge of exercising our annexation order and trumped-up charges against the Border Crossing. She closed the bar for not having a city liquor license.

  It was Sunny who came up with the idea of running the girls out of the cribs because they had no connection to city plumbing. It was also her idea to call state social services and nonprofit agencies that helped women escape from trafficking. She was also responsible for seizing some of the Machado’s worker’s mobile homes and providing the girls and their children with places to go. Sunny was an amazing cop.

  * * * *

  That night I ate dinner—carne asada and cold beer—with Hector and Sunny at Ernesto’s taqueria. I had showered before, but the scent of death still lingered. I wasn’t certain it was simply the smell of the hog I’d taken out to the desert.

  After dinner, I went next door for a fresh haircut and a shave. I got the same splash of scent that I’d been given that first night I had come to town. A man should have a signature scent, I decided.

  The sandalwood and cedar helped when I picked up the second hog from Tubby. That time I had the sense to show up with a plastic drop to keep the juice of a dead pig off my clothes.

  Tubby offered a beer. “I think you need it,” he said.

  He was right. What I was up to was hard, troubling work.

  With the cold beer bottle sweating between my thighs, I drove out to Big Bend and to the same level spot I’d been the night before. Last night’s hog was nothing more than ratty, scattered bones and flies. Even at that, there were still a few coyotes slinking around. They kept watchful eyes on my truck as they bit through bone to get at the moldering marrow within.

  I opened the door and stepped out. Suddenly the coyotes were invisible. They weren’t gone. I knew that. I was simply unable to see them. That didn’t mean there was no sense of them. I could clearly feel the gaze of each animal. It was as if they had disappeared, leaving only eyes behind, like a pack of brutal, scavenging Cheshire cats.

  That lasted as long as it took to pull the new hog out and drop it into the dirt.

  I folded up my tarp and tied it with a bit of string I’d brought for the purpose. The long end of the string I tethered to the same tie-down I’d secured Joaquin to. Once things were tidied up, I drove the truck back and turned it to shine my headlights on the carcass.

  The lights and truck kept the coyotes back from the hog for a few minutes. After the first brave animal slipped forward for a taste, their fear was gone. It was what I wanted.

  For two hours, I listened to Merle Haggard and watched the beasts rend the pig to bone.

  * * * *

  It became almost routine. My days were spent finding the bodies of men. Mostly they were La Familia cleaning its own house. One man I recognized as a member of Stackhouse’s team. There were a couple of Hispanic men with tooled belts and boots with long pointy toes found with holes in them made by military weapons.

  My evenings, once it was dark enough, were occupied by bringing hog carcasses to the coyotes. They came to expect the feeding and didn’t care that I remained close by and watched.

  That routine lasted for three days while the fighting between La Familia and the SOT, and my feeding sessions, grew more violent.

  I had no contact with Milo. He tried. Paris’s phone remained disassembled and locked away. When he called the station line, I had him put on hold. While he waited, I went for beer.

  On the third evening, as the sun faded and the heat flowed into the empty sky, the conflict became open war. The gun club grounds erupted with a firefight. The Lansdale police responded to the edge of our jurisdiction and watched. There was no response from county or state law enforcement.

  I hoped the two sides, the criminal and the corrupt, would take care of each other. No such luck. The fight ended with an anticlimactic retreat of the big SUVs used by the SOT. I imagined them licking wounds and bragging about the damage they’d inflicted.

  That night the coyotes didn’t even wait for me to get the hog out of the truck before they stalked around. Their numbers had swelled from the few to at least fifty snarling beasts. They circled close as I worked, ready and dangerous.

  The next day two bodies were sent to the Houston morgue. They didn’t go through our department. They were members of the SOT.

  Stackhouse showed up when I was eating dinner at Ernesto’s with Sunny and Hector. Buick was with him.

  “You need to fix the hell you started,” Stackhouse said without preamble.

  “I didn’t start anything,” I said. “I ended up in the middle of your storm.”

  He bolted forward like he was going to rip my head off. Buick was the one who stopped him. He put himself between us and faced Stackhouse down. Then he turned to talk to me.

  “We have an opportunity,” Buick said.

  “I’m not interested.”

  “Hear things out. This is a way to get what you want and for the government to get what they want.”

  “What is it I want?” I asked him.

  “To make better choices than I ever did.” He stared down at me, waiting for a response I didn’t give. “Or to finish the job you started.”

  “Those two don’t line up.” I pushed my plate of tamales away.

  “You want people to keep getting killed?” Stackhouse demanded.

  “Depends on who they are.”

  Buick held up his hands for a pause. “All you gotta do is talk to the Machados. They won’t talk to anyone from DEA.”

  “You want me to—”

  “To go up there.” Buick was adding a little extra emphasis to his words. “Just you. To talk.”

  It took a second, but I understood the opportunity he was presenting between better choices and finishing what I had started. “Talk about what?”

  “A new deal.”

  “Why?” I turned my gaze back to Stackhouse. “You wouldn’t be here asking me if something hadn’t changed.”

  “The FBI,” he answered. “Your boy, Milo Janssen, has them involved. If we don’t settle this, we’re all going down in the same flush.”

  “Classy.” I turned back to Buick. “Do you think they’ll talk to me?”

  “Yeah.” Buick pulled a cheroot and stuck it in his mouth. “I think they’ll listen.” He lit the smelly little cigar. “The way they see it, you’re an asshole. But you haven’t lied to them.” He glanced over at Stackhouse.

  “When?” I asked, hoping.

  “Go over now. Get something started and the shooting stopped,” Stackhouse said. He sounded a little desperate. “Then we can fix things. We can all get what we want.”

  I looked back at Buick. “What do you think I should do?”

  “Are you asking my advice?”

  “Yep.”

  “I think you should leave. I’ve said it before—walk away.”

  “The better choice?”

  “You know it is.”

  “And if I don’t make that choice?”

  “Who am I to judge?” He bent over the table, placing both hands on the top, and then looked straight and level into my eyes. “But anything you do, do it all the way.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Before going to the gun club, I stopped at Tubby’s. I paid him for a hog but told him to keep it. He handed over a beer without comment. I held it in my hand and stared at the bubbling amber lit by the inferno red of the smoker’s open firebox.

  Tubby used an old shovel to arrange coals.

  “You got another one of those?” I asked him.

  He jerked a thumb ov
er his shoulder toward a barrel against the wall. It bristled with the burned and rusted ends of rakes and shovels. I went to the tools and hefted a shovel.

  “You want it,” he said. “Take it. Don’t worry about bringing it back.”

  Something else caught my eye. On one of the posts that supported the roof was a wire hanger on a nail.

  “Mind if I take your hanger too?”

  * * * *

  No one stopped me when I drove onto the gun club grounds. It wasn’t surprising since the iron gate was warped and pushed to the side. There were men at the main door. They led me in without comment.

  At the glass doors of the inner sanctum, they demanded my weapon. I refused. No one was surprised or angry. They were tired of everything. One man grabbed my arms from behind as another put a gun to my temple. A third man pulled my pistol from the holster. He looked more bored by the exercise than angry. He opened the door, and I was led in without my .45.

  Simon sneered.

  Eladio wheezed, but his eyes were alive.

  “We’re here to talk,” I said. “The feds think things can get back to some kind of working relationship.”

  Eladio nodded and smiled as if I had told a joke he was politely acknowledging. “What do you think?”

  “I think you can’t trust them anymore than they can you.”

  “Would you like a drink?” As soon as the question was out of his mouth, Eladio looked away. His expression was the kind they would have called “inscrutable” in old novels.

  “How do you keep holding on?”

  He didn’t look at me. Eladio kept his gaze focused someplace over my head. He did smile though. “Because I must.”

  “If ever a man looked ready to let go, it’s you.”

  Simon sucked his teeth and flipped the tail of his silk jacket aside to show the shiny revolver.

  “That’s a pretty gun,” I said.

  “We each have our appreciations,” Eladio said. “The lust for things is not that different from the lust for women, I think. They are both a holding on. A possessiveness.”

  “You think that’s what I want to talk about?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  “It’s the only thing you want to talk about,” he insisted. “Pretty Lenore.” Eladio lifted a shaking finger and pointed to a spot high on the wall above my head.

  I looked and wished I hadn’t.

  Mounted, framed and illuminated by a soft spot of light, was what looked like parchment. It wasn’t. Ink on the skin made a crucifix that bore a bleeding Christ. Those were made of shades of gray. Blood, in red, poured out to become roses and skeletons. At the bottom was a colorful band of grinning skulls. Between them was a tattooed poem in Spanish.

  One line stood out to me: “In my bed the shadow resides—each side of my eyes.”

  She believed that her bed was a grave—death, both before and behind her eyes. I understood how she could see herself as both a victim and a tool of death. It wasn’t parchment. It was the skin taken from Lenore’s back.

  Simon expected me to go for my gun. He was ready for that. He wasn’t prepared for me to grab his brother by the loose collar and lift him off the couch.

  In my rage, Eladio Machado had no weight. But he was the perfect shield. I shoved him against his brother, and when the fancy revolver peeked from under the bony arm, I turned it to the side and jerked Eladio higher. Under his frail body, I lifted my knee into Simon’s crotch. As soon as it connected, I twisted at the shoulder and threw my weight into Eladio’s chest.

  The one brother, thin as bird’s bones, fell aside. The other brother sneered at me again right up to the instant I shoved the barrel of his own revolver into his mouth.

  I pulled the hammer back. “Don’t move,” I ordered, quiet but hard.

  Reaching behind and into my back pocket, I pulled out the coiled bit of clothes hanger I had taken from Tubby’s. With my mouth and free hand, I unwound the wire and then hooked it over my right wrist. It was just long enough to wrap around Simon’s head and back to the pistol. The end went through the trigger guard and locked us together.

  When it was done, I asked him, “Understand?”

  He nodded as slightly as it was possible.

  “Good.” I inclined my head down at his motionless brother. Simon bent with me as I pulled Eladio up. Left handed, I hefted him over my shoulder. “Out to my truck,” I ordered.

  The gunmen in the hall quickly read the situation. They had the sense to not even raise their weapons. Or maybe they didn’t care anymore. As long as they stayed out of my way, I didn’t worry about it. I pointed at my .45 sticking from the belt of the man who had taken it. Then I shoved my hip out. He got the message and put my weapon into the holster. He didn’t even give me a dirty look.

  Outside, I tossed Eladio into the truck bed without being gentle. Simon went with me to the driver’s-side door and carefully slid over the low console.

  It was a quick drive over to the flat spot overlooking the little valley. The coyotes were gathered with expectation.

  I made Simon lie in the dirt while I released the hanger wire from around his head. When I turned to lower the truck tailgate, I wasn’t worried that he would jump and run. He could see the glowing green eyes and hear the growls as well as I could.

  “Start digging,” I ordered as I tossed him the shovel.

  I patted Eladio’s face, trying to revive him.

  “Big man,” Simon said. He used the shovel to sweep away some pig bones. “You feel pride in doing this?” His shovel bit into the dry earth.

  “Nope,” I answered. “You’ve got mostly sand and loose dirt. This should go quick.”

  “Why bother with a grave?”

  “Because you gave me one. I’m just returning the favor.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Never mind. I think your brother is waking up.”

  Eladio was rousing.

  “Are you going to make him dig his grave too?”

  “We only need one grave.”

  “Why?”

  I pulled the revolver from out of my belt and pointed it at a cluster of coyotes getting close. I fired, and they scattered. The noise got Eladio a little closer to full consciousness. “I’m glad you could join us,” I told him.

  Simon had worked at the ground with little self-deceit. The grave was still very shallow, but it was about the right size.

  “Why?” Simon demanded again. “Which of us gets the grave?”

  I raised the revolver and flipped the loading gate open. One by one I used the plunger to remove the spent casing and four live rounds.

  “You awake, Eladio?” I patted his face a few more times. “You with us?”

  Simon stopped digging and raised the shovel.

  I aimed the revolver at him.

  “You going to shoot me? Wouldn’t that ruin all your fun?”

  “I wouldn’t kill you.” I gave him a moment to work that over. “A leg wound would be worse than killing you outright in this situation. Don’t you think?”

  He spat.

  “Dig.”

  “I always knew a bullet in the desert would be my ending,” Eladio said. His gritty voice had taken on kind of a delirious sing-song. “That is what I was waiting for.”

  “You think you’re better than us?” Simon spat again to show his opinion of that.

  With my .45 in my right hand and the revolver with one bullet in the left, I helped Eladio down from the tailgate. Coyotes were crowding around again. I didn’t drive them off.

  “That’s enough,” I told Simon. “Toss the shovel away.”

  He threw it hard at a bunch of creeping coyotes. They yipped and retreated with tails tucked under.

  “Get out of the hole,” I ordered. With the .45 I pointed to a spot beside the grave. “Kneel.”

  “You don’t have to do this, amigo,” Simon said. The plea was hopeless and without force. He went to his knees.

  “You too,” I said to
Eladio and helped him down.

  The brothers faced each other from about eight feet.

  “You are no better than we are,” Simon said.

  “I’m exactly what you are,” I told him. “That’s why it happens this way.”

  I reached over Eladio’s shoulder and put the revolver in his hand. “One bullet,” I said. “Your choice.”

  Without hesitation, seemingly without thought, he raised the weapon and shot his brother in the heart.

  “I chose,” he said. “I get to live.”

  “No. You get the grave.”

  I pulled Eladio up by the collar and threw him into the shallow hole.

  If it had been Simon, I would have shot him in the knee. I didn’t think Eladio was going to get very far. The coyotes already smelled blood.

  As I walked to the truck, I realized that something, finally, was easy.

  * * * *

  Milo showed up the next day. He didn’t come alone. There were cadres of lawyers and investigators from every three-letter branch of the government you could name.

  I was right: Milo Janssen was a black man. But if I had guessed any more, I would have been wrong. He was older than I thought. Gray dusted his short hair. Deep lines made deltas of skin at the sides of his eyes. His muscles were softened with a layer of desk-earned fat. That took nothing away from the power in his eyes and his carriage. Even though there was a stew of federal agencies around, there was no doubt Milo was in control.

  I kept reporting to the office as chief of police of Lansdale, Texas. A week later I was surprised to find no one had kicked me out. I asked Milo about it over tacos and beer.

  “That’s a tricky question. Isn’t it, Longview?” His brown eyes were bright. They had humor but no laughter in them.

  “You know?”

  “You think I’m an idiot?”

  “No.”

  “It’s good to understand each other.”

  “When did you know?”

  “You never fooled Gutiérrez.”

  “Wait.” I almost spilled my beer. “You were in contact with her?”

  Milo took a drink but managed to shake his head with the mug at his mouth. When he set the glass down, he was looking right into my eyes. “The man she worked for—worked for me.”