South of Evil

by Brian Dunford

  “Who was it?”

  “Work,” said Curtis.

  “What did they want?”

  “Did you see me answer the phone?” he asked, annoyed. This was the Curtis who Virgil had never seen: a man with runaway intensity and omnipotent powers of concentration. Once he started, he put his head down and didn’t move for hours. This was a man who could find a drug lord hidden in a sea of numbers. This was the man who could find three million dollars buried in the desert.

  Virgil had never been made for this type of work. He grabbed the phone.

  “Bobby Jordan,” announced Virgil.

  “He’s a Texas Ranger. We work together on the task force.”

  “You’ve mentioned this guy. He’s a legend down here, you said. I thought you guys were friends?”

  “We were.”

  “Not anymore?”

  “We’re running out of time,” said Curtis.

  Curtis was busy. He had a series of photos he had printed from the computer. He arranged them across the table.

  “My theory is that it’s either a corporate retreat or a spot where some bigwig can bring his mistress.”

  “What if the mistress is there?” Virgil asked.

  “She won’t be. That’s why we’re going on a weekday. I’ve seen satellite footage from several days and there’s never been a car. No one lives there. “

  “But what if she is?” Virgil asked softly.

  Curtis looked at him and wondered what had happened to the man he knew. The man on the other side of the table worried. He was nervous and hesitant and unsure of the direction in which he was headed.

  “Then we wait for her to go shopping. And since there is nothing around there and nothing to do, she’ll be gone for a while. Good enough?”

  “Tell me again how Eduardo Mendes knows about this place?” Virgil asked.

  “Mendes was the one who wired the money to Mexico. He would quietly transfer a portion into cash and send it across the border, just like Colon asked. It was always small amounts, but over time, it came to three million dollars. Then one day, Colon asked him to handle some business. Find two men who can handle concrete and who won’t be missed. And bring muscle.

  “He asked Eduardo to field it to his people. Instead, Eduardo came down there himself to do it personally.”

  “That doesn’t sound like the guy you described.”

  “It doesn’t. I think he was trying to discover Colon’s secret. He wouldn’t tell me the rest. Whatever really happened down there made him very uncomfortable. Haven’t you ever done something out of character?”

  “I’m doing it now,” said Virgil.

  ***

  “Phone call,” Nixon the guard said to Eduardo. He barely understood him. Eduardo saw the annoyance on his face and hurried.

  “Mister Mendes,” said the voice on the phone. It was Flan, the lawyer. There weren’t many people left that would call him Mister Mendes, and he couldn’t decide if Flan was using it condescendingly himself.

  “What can I do for you?” asked Eduardo. He hated those words.

  “You can tell your unit supervisor that you will be unable to work in the kitchen tomorrow morning, Mister Mendes.”

  Nixon wouldn’t like that. He hated change. If it were written in ink on the page in his hand, it might as well have come from God himself and been carved in stone.

  “How come?”

  “You are due in court tomorrow morning for a hearing.”

  “You said it would be months.”

  “I said it might be months. There’s a reason why you hired me and not someone else.”

  Eduardo sighed into the phone.

  “Relax, Mister Mendes.”

  “That is easy for you to say. What are we doing tomorrow?”

  “I requested an emergency evidentiary hearing based on systemic problems with the investigation, as well as misidentification of the accused, namely, Eduardo Mendes.”

  “The feds allowed this?”

  “Hopefully, they’re just finding out about it now.”

  “How were you able to arrange this?”

  “I asked nicely,” said Flan.

  “You expect me to believe that you simply walked into a court house, asked to have a hearing made up out of thin air, and it’s just because you asked nicely?”

  “You’ve paid handsomely for my services, Mister Mendes, and there is a reason for it.”

  “What reason is that?”

  “People like me,” said Flan.

  ***

  It was the watch.

  Sheldon Cashman awoke on the couch again with the ticking in his ears. During sleep, his hands always crept up to his face, the watch and its tourbillon components and its incessant ticking crawling closer and closer to his ears until his eyes opened. This happened every night.

  This watch had gotten him where he was now: awake in the dark on the couch and wondering what Eduardo Mendes was going to do.

  His wife was asleep in the master bedroom. They had a beautiful king-sized bed with a massive oak headboard. She had bought room darkening shades, and the room had become a tomb. Sheldon had slept in there only three times.

  It was the thrashing. And the snoring. He hadn’t known he did either of these things, but it kept his wife awake endlessly, despite her pills. She was dead to the world now, and he was on the couch listening to the ticking of the fabulously expensive watch that he couldn’t afford.

  Eduardo Mendes had seen this watch and refused to even acknowledge it. Eduardo could have it now if he would promise to never have come into his life. The watch could keep Eduardo up all night.

  He stood, and his head smashed into the floor.

  As Sheldon Cashman’s brain stopped bouncing off the side of his skull, he realized that he had been struck. He tried to get to his feet when he was struck again. He landed half on the couch, the rest of him kneeling. A man pounced on him and grabbed his face.

  Cashman began to scream, and the man pulled his head upwards. His voice was strangled by a hand on his throat. He felt the weight of the man and his strength. It was willful and relentless. There was a smell of waste.

  “I have money!” he shouted as he twisted away from him. The man relented. It was the slightest, most incremental hesitation, but he relented. This was his chance. He could talk his way out of this. He could bargain.

  “I have some money,” he said. “But I can give you all my cards.”

  What else did he own?

  “I have a car downstairs. An Audi.”

  The man said nothing. He didn’t grunt or nod. His fingers remained gripped on Cashman’s jaw, and he gave no sign of understanding or acceptance. Cashman wore pajamas, but felt naked. His toes nipped uselessly at the rug. He waited for a response. That was when he realized why this man was really here.

  “My God, did Eduardo send you?” he asked. It was a plea. The man said nothing.

  “Tell Eduardo that I am no threat to him at all. I am his friend. I have as much to lose as he does.” Cashman struggled to think of what might appeal to this man. He tried to conjure a child who could make his life worth saving. He couldn’t do it.

  His mind went to another place.

  “Look at this watch,” he said desperately.

  Cashman moved his hands together, and he felt the grip on his jaw tighten. His head raised against his will.

  “No, no, no, just look. Let me show you.”

  His hands were shaking and missing their marks. His fingertips found the tiny clasp and pulled the leather away from it until the watch dangled invitingly from his hand.

  “This watch is ridiculously expensive. It’s extremely rare. No one else has one. It’s worth money anywhere in the world. You can have it.”

  With that, Angel pushed the blade through the soft flesh of Sheldon’s neck until metal struck bone. Angel took the watch from the air as Cashman’s hands lunged helplessly for his own throat. Angel stood and regarded the item in his hand as Sheldon convulsed on the fl
oor.

  Blood spread quickly across the hardwood floors, and the rug formed an island in the growing dark flow. There was a subtle thrashing from Cashman, but that stopped soon enough. Then there was silence except for the tiniest, most delicate ticking from the elegant timepiece.

  Angel didn’t look at the body. Instead, he put the watch into his coat pocket. Then he went into the bedroom where Cashman’s wife was sleeping, and he slit her throat too.

  ***

  Judge Granary was a large woman with sad eyes that lit up when she saw Tobias Flan. He smiled that same smile that he had shown Eduardo years ago, when Eduardo was free and had money to spend. He remembered thinking once upon a time that Flan and that old grin of his had indicated that he was a push over and a simpleton. Somehow, that same grin had become flat out carnivorous.

  The judge was a plain woman. She had ancient bifocals perched on her nose and a ten year old hairstyle. After greeting Flan, her mask went back on. It was pure seriousness, just as Flan had warned.

  “Do I want that?” Eduardo had asked hesitantly.

  “If I am your attorney, yes, you do. While we’re on the subject, what are you wearing?”

  Eduardo had been led into court wearing his orange prison jumpsuit and shackles. The shackles stretched from his handcuffs to a chain that led to matching bracelets around his ankles.

  “What happened to the clothes you were arrested in?”

  “That’s a good question,” Eduardo had said.

  Flan had left a request with a guard he knew to have Eduardo changed into his own clothing for his court appearance. The clothes had been worn for days and bore the sweat of fear and interrogation, but the judge wouldn’t be able to smell him from the bench. But when he was handed a large plastic bag containing his things, what he found instead were vintage slacks that had been passed along a dozen halfway houses and a flannel shirt that smelled like vomit.

  “What is this?” Eduardo had asked. He realized at that moment that he had learned to automatically remove the entitled air of disgust from his voice. Not that it mattered to Nixon, who sucked on his toothpick and simply replied, “Your clothes.” So he went to court in his prison jumpsuit.

  The prosecutor, a woman of thirty who was new to the office, was on fire.

  “Your honor, the government believes its case against Mister Mendes is solid and it will present evidence that he is guilty of laundering money across the Mexican border and into the hands of drug cartels.“

  “Name one,” chimed in Flan.

  The prosecutor shot him a death look for interrupting. She wore her ambition on her sleeve. Just from listening to her in the courtroom, and watching her interact, Eduardo knew that she spoke loudly and forcefully, giving orders instead of asking.

  “Miss Tibideau is speaking, Mister Flan,” stated Judge Granary. Though she seemed almost pleased when she said it.

  “Thank you, your honor,” Tibideau continued. “Mister Mendes has been implicated in a scheme to launder money for drug cartels and is in fact believed by my office to be the head of a methamphetamine trafficking operation. He has dual citizenship in the US and Spain. He is considered to be a flight risk, and we feel his bail is justified.”

  “Your honor, respectfully, Miss Tibideau may have the best intentions, but she has been misled by an overzealous team of agents that focused on Mister Mendes, who has no criminal record and is a self-made businessman. He has no link to drugs or drug money and no drugs or money were found during the deeply invasive search of his home and place of business. All that was found was that his accountant seems to have mental health issues, unbeknownst to Mister Mendes. I would request an immediate reduction in bail to ten thousand dollars.”

  “Ten thousand seems low, considering the charges your client is facing, but I will consider one hundred thousand dollars.”

  “That’s ridiculous, Your Honor,” blurted the prosecutor.

  “Pardon me, ma’am?” said the judge.

  “That is an insignificant amount of money for Mister Mendes.”

  “I will point out that not a cent of cash was located in his apartment during the search,” said Flan politely.

  “Mister Mendes is a drug dealer and a money launderer.”

  “Accused of such.“

  “He lives in a luxury building and drives an Aston Martin.”

  “Have these assets been seized by the government, Miss Tibideau?”

  “Your honor, if I may,” interjected Flan. “Mister Mendes rents a two-bedroom unit in a very nice building and he leases his vehicle. I will concede that he lives beyond his means, but that is likely a product of his upbringing. His father died when he was young.“

  “His father was a drug dealer too,” said the prosecutor, in a voice that was too loud and too direct for the judge’s taste.

  “Does that make Mister Mendes a drug dealer, Miss Tibideau?” asked the judge.

  “Well, ma’am, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

  Flan lowered his head. Eduardo stood in shackles and watched, not understanding anything of what he was seeing. He felt the eyes of the judge on him. He tried not to look back. He followed them to Miss Tibideau, where they lingered and smoldered, before going back to Flan once more.

  “I am setting Mister Mendes’ bail at fifty thousand dollars,” said Judge Granary.

  “Your honor, that’s ridiculous!”

  “Miss Tibideau, I’m not in the habit of being called ridiculous in my courtroom and I don’t think I care for it.”

  “Your honor, fifty thousand dollars is a joke. This is a man who has laundered millions of dollars into Mexico through his business and may even be implicated in several murders.”

  “Murders?” Flan asked. “My client is going to be charged with murder now?”

  “Is the indictment against Mister Mendes going to be amended, Miss Tibideau?”

  “Your honor, I may have misspoken. I’ve had meetings with several officers on this case who tell me that Mister Mendes“

  “Your Honor, if I may,” began Flan. “This harkens back to our central theory that Miss Tibideau has been duped into thinking that she has a drug kingpin on her hands when in fact she may have only a kid who grew up rich, took what was left of his inheritance, and invested in a check cashing business in a bad neighborhood. Frankly, I feel the prosecution is a bit delusional.”

  “Don’t you call me delusional!” shot Tibideau, who was on the edge of fury.

  Real fireworks now, thought Eduardo, still in the dark.

  “Your Honor,” said Flan in calm, friendly tones. “Miss Tibideau appears a little overwhelmed at the moment. Perhaps we can return later in the morning in order to continue with the hearing. I think a lot of Miss Tibideau’s confusion in the matter could be cleared up by calling the officer at the center of this case.”

  Flan looked at his notes. Eduardo peered at them. There was nothing on the page.

  “An IRS agent by the name of Walter Curtis.”

  “An IRS agent?” asked the judge.

  “Your Honor, we believe this is a tax matter relating to an accountant who has a mental disability and has been blown well out of proportion.”

  Tibideau opened her mouth as if to speak, but thought better of using the word ridiculous again. Instead, she was quiet.

  “Will Agent Curtis be here this morning, ma’am?”

  From where Eduardo was standing, there seemed to be a little less of the prosecutor now.

  “I don’t know, ma’am.”

  “You may want to find him,” said Judge Granary. “Bail is set at fifty thousand dollars.”

  “Your Honor, we have a woman here who is willing to post the full amount.”

  That part shocked Eduardo. That part he definitely had not see coming. He turned and scanned the courtroom. There was no missing her. She sat perched at the end of the bench, touching as little of it as possible. She had her hair down and long, despite her age, as she always did, so no one would see her tattoo. He
r pale legs were crossed and slid out from beneath a stunning black dress that had probably cost more than the rest of the clothes in this room. He hadn’t seen Elodia de la Cueva Mendes in five years, and he hadn’t spoken to her in three.

  “Where did you find her?” he asked Flan in a stunned whisper.

  “Hamburg,” said Flan.

  “Can this woman account for the funds she is providing for your client, Mister Flan?” demanded the judge.

  “Oh, yes, ma’am,” said Flan. He looked like he had been licking his lips. They glistened. “She is his mother.”

  ***

  In the hallway to the cells, Eduardo Mendes sat on a metal bench that was affixed to the wall and watched as the unthinkable happened: the court officer unlocked his handcuffs and let them fall loudly to the ground. What a wonderful sound, he thought, as he rubbed his wrists and ignored everything that Flan was saying to him. His skin felt almost like his own once more. A month ago, if those shackles had been on his wrists, he’d have run to the nearest sink with his arms outstretched to douse them in scalding hot water and disinfectant. Now he ran his fingers pleasantly along the trenches and ridges caused by the digging metal frames.

  “How did you find my mother?” Eduardo asked.

  Flan had been speaking when he said it. He had been speaking about procedures and next steps. He had been speaking about not leaving the state or associating with anyone who could cause conflicts for him if this matter should fail to resolve as succinctly as expected.

  “I have a very talented investigator at my disposal. He followed an account that was generated after you wired some funds to her just last year. Good things happen when you’re good to your ma.”

  “I was paying a debt,” Eduardo said wistfully.

  “No doubt, Mister Mendes. I am going to ask you to sign some documents.”

  “I need to make a phone call,” said Eduardo.

  “Is it urgent?”

  “Very.”

  “I wouldn’t recommend using any of the phones in this building.”

  “Good point,” said Eduardo. He was still cruising through disbelief.

  “How did you pull this off?” he asked.

  “Pull what off, Mister Mendes?” asked Flan innocently.