I pick my fingernails. Listen to the woman walks in six-inch steps. “It’s so quaint. So common. Delightful.”
Here a week and I hate the fuckin’ tourists.
Cinder hear her too. Narrow eye smile.
He sign a paper and I take my box. Now it been a minute I don’t care to eat, so much. Make Stinky Joe happy. Just same I open the box and eat the bacon.
We step to the side walk. I open the truck door.
“Get on down, puppydog.”
Joe jumps to the cement. I rest the open clamshell on the sidewalk and he get about business.
Cinder say, “Here’s what maybe you don’t know. That meat truck comes up from Sierra Vista. Luke Graves’s sons—including the one you shot—take trips down there once a month. They make deliveries in Phoenix and Tucson on the way down. Maybe other places farther south. Then they meet members of MS-13. You heard of them?”
“Nah.”
“They’re a gang. Mara Salvatrucha. They do all the shit you’d think a gang does, but more like a terrorist group. Drugs, murder for hire; they shot up a bus in Honduras full of women and kids to protest the death penalty. Killed twenty-eight. They’re all through Latin America and the US. Luke Graves and his sons get their girls from MS-13.”
“Where does the MS get the kids?”
“Kidnapping, some. Recruitment. Promises. Then there’s the orphanages. Lot of kids with no parents down there. Different kind of violence.”
“You sayin’ Luke Graves is tied with nasty people, and I tangle with him it’s same as them.”
“That’s right. You see someone with tattoos all over, neck, arms, hands, even on the face, they’re likely fighting for the other side, and they fight hard.”
He don’t need know ’bout my skill or the twenty some bodies I piled up the last month. Truth is I’s got the taste for it. Feel like it maybe purifies the soul. Live a life of petty persecutions, little jolts a juice every time someone say a lie. Get the rage bottled up ’cause you can’t do nothing. And one day you see they’s plenty you can do.
Plenty.
Cinder say, “What’s your plan?”
“How you know so much ’bout Graves and this MS group?”
Cinder lean to the truck front fender. Cross his arms. “I got tangled up in a little fiasco last year—one of those situations where you take a stand on principle, though you don’t care for the people you’re standing with. I’m an alcoholic. I got clean in the process, and you might say I started looking a little deeper at things. Illegal immigration. MS-13. The kids. All of it. I’m used to being ... involved. And I haven’t yet decided what to do about it. But for the gangs, you don’t solve a weed problem with a lawn mower. You do it with napalm and a bulldozer. Burn them out and bury them.”
I look up and down the street and kinda see things come together. I got no business. No home. Wanted by every law organization in the United Police States of America. Retired by dint of standing up for myself. I got a daughter and three grandbabies and though I love ’em, we’s far past living in a single home and sitting down for dinner at six. And Ruth is Ruth is Ruth. Couldn’t live without her for thirty year—’cept I did. Now she reveal the mystery behind the curtain, I like the curtain. I’s set in my ways and she in hers. We poke and tussle ’cause we got body parts made for it. But rest the time I make her howl and she drive me batshit. Sum of the whole is I got strings but no ties.
Mexican girl with the backpack? She’ll run out food and have no means. In a month she’ll be camping in three feet snow. Suspect she didn’t learn snow skills in Mexico, and she’ll meet up with the dead blackhair on the other side soon.
Feel like so far I danced around it without being straight with the man. I’s done pretending. Done living in the woods ’cause they’s nasty people telling lies all over. Though it’s just me I only got one way to see it. Time to call the evil man to account—where ever I find him.
“Cinder, the man I shot was evil and the clan that come for him too. They got more kids, and all around is people who got a good clue and don’t care. Now, if all this was in the paper they’d be outrage and fury. People’d put down they paper and drink they sweet tea satisfied they outrage is enough. So if a man like me—got no permanent attachments—don’t take it up a notch and do something, them kids’ll keep comin’ in and getting shot. An used for whatever else they bring ’em for. You don’t gotta guess ’bout that. So my intentions is to hunt down them men and kill ’em.”
Cinder pushes off the truck fender. Offers his hand for another shake. “I’m interested in your work. I’ll keep an eye out. Maybe I’ll see you in here for breakfast one day soon.”
I shake his hand. No juice, no red.
We’ll see.
Old-timer from the breakfast come out the door, walks sidey sidey like a mousetrap caught his balls. But he don’t seem to mind like I would.
“Cinder!”
Old-timer takes Cinder’s paw in his then covers it with the other, shaking his arm and pulling close. “Don’t mean to interrupt, Nat, but I hope you run.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Ain’t a block two from breakfast to the hotel and they’s a good chance Mae’s still in bed. So I rap on Ruth’s door, and she open it wearing granny glasses with chains about her neck. Quilted pajama gown.
“You get them glasses at the pawn?”
“No these are new.” She uglies up her face. “I hope you’re here for a bath.”
I grab the newspaper on the floor by the door. Sit on the desk chair. Joe slink in and take cover in the cubby tween sofa and wall. Ruth close the door behind him and slide the lock.
“I was about to go in the bathroom. Take a shower.”
“Don’t let me stop you.” I read the paper.
“I don’t have time for frisky business this morning,” she say.
“Good ’cause I can’t pop a woody for granny glasses and quilted jammies.”
“I’m saying I don’t want to have sex this time around, Baer, and you’re not going to trick me.”
“My pencil outta lead.”
“So no busting in the shower again.”
“Shit, woman, give a man peace.”
She close the door and I hear the lock. Old gal’s like a sawmill opened up and need a steady feed a timber.
Rustle through the newspaper and see the fuss about Nat Cinder.
Is Nathan Cinder Running?
You know him as the Arizona recluse millionaire who brought down Democrat governor Virginia Rentier. With Rentier’s former chief of staff already in prison and state attorney general possibly close to indicting Rentier on charges of conspiracy, racketeering, and obstruction of justice, you might say Nat Cinder achieved all he set out to achieve.
Now Arizona wants to know, is Nat Cinder running for governor?
I joined him for breakfast in Flagstaff recently for a wide-ranging discussion.
FC: We have to start off with the big question. Your name keeps coming up among well-placed Republicans as the front runner, should you decide to run for governor. Will you?
NC: Decide? There’s nothing to decide. No interest whatsoever.
FC: The rumor mill has it that you’re meeting privately with all the right people.
NC: I guess to tell each one that I’m not interested. Arizonans have for too many years been mistreated by the career politician. I understand that and believe it. It’s time for someone with a different background to step up. But as I’ve already explained to a lot of people, I haven’t yet felt called to be that person.
FC: Sounds like a lot of wiggle room. So what’s been happening in the last year? Obviously, your testimony put former governor Rentier’s chief of staff, Mick Patterson behind bars. If Virginia Rentier is charged, your test—
NC: I need to stop you right there. Both my attorney and the state prosecutor have advised me not to discuss those matters.
FC: So it’s been a year. What other interests have you turned your advocacy toward?
<
br /> NC: Well, as you know, we have a border problem, and that’s been leading to a lot of other problems. Regardless of what side a person takes, we can all agree the immigration process is broken, and the result affects all of us. We have a class of people coming into the country illegally, and that’s one set of issues. But another problem is far more troubling to me personally. We also have a set of people—very young people—orphans, kidnapping victims, runaways, being brought here against their will. I’m talking about human trafficking. And what distinguishes this problem from the others is that this group is the only one where they aren’t their own agents.
FC: What do you mean by that?
NC: Well, they’re not making their own decisions. They’re the most disenfranchised of all. To my mind, if a society doesn’t protect its kids, it has no reason to exist. It has failed. These kids are stolen, brought to the United States, and sold throughout the country as sex slaves. That’s the issue I’ve been investigating for my, as you put it, advocacy.
FC: What a horrifying problem. What can be done about it?
NC: A lot of things. Obviously, a more secure border would raise the cost of getting these kids to the markets that are buying them. I don’t mean to sound cold, but even though this is a moral issue, I believe the solution is economic. All human action is economic. If you want to reduce an activity, you tax it—meaning you stress it. Well, you can’t impose financial taxes directly, but you can create the same financial impediments through law enforcement. Secure borders would limit the routes available to bring these kids in. Every market requires a certain level of activity to flourish. Just like the stock market. If suddenly there were no sellers, the price would skyrocket, inventory would crash, then the market would close because buyers come to markets to buy. Literally, the market would starve. So on one side, you attack the problem by closing off the supply.
FC: Is that possible? Aren’t there other sources of children for what you call the markets?
NC: There are, and I want to be clear about one thing. Human trafficking isn’t a crime against borders. It’s a crime against people. It means trafficking in people, or selling people. Transportation of the victims is not what identifies the crime. It just so happens we have tremendous numbers of children coming into the country in this manner, and they have no voice. That’s what strikes me as so important about the issue. Now the other part of solving the problem is limiting demand. We can’t do as much about that in Arizona because most of the children brought through our state have other destinations. Some wind up here, but most go to Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Then second tier destinations are Seattle, Saint Louis and Chicago. That’s why, so far, my work has been into the supply part of the problem.
FC: Wouldn’t a cynic just say you’re trying to find yet another way to justify closing the borders, and that you’re really just aligning yourself with the hardliners in your party, but in a way more palatable for the more centrist voter?
NC: Who the hell has time for cynics? I don’t affiliate with a political party. I have rece—
“Hey.”
“Hey yerself.”
I look up. She nekkid.
“You want a little mud for your turtle?”
No, I want a gurgle of Wild Turkey and a nap. A bath in a cool brook with a couple wood nymphs slobbin the knobbin. A bowl of boiled cabbage and that razor sharp cheddar out Vermont. Smoke from cherry wood. But looking up from the paper and seeing Ruth in the window sunlight, it ain’t like she’s got leprosy.
“Turtle need a bath ’fore it get muddy.”
She pull me from the chair and show me the way.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Wayman started his day at noon. He kept an apartment adjacent his office, which overlooked the nightclub dance floor through mirrored glass. His bedroom also had a glass wall looking down on the dance floor. When a woman saw the room, she assumed things about his character. She expected coke on a mirror. A candy jar full of X.
Wayman didn’t party often, and when he did, he remained stone sober.
He lived square in the middle of every possible kind of excess. Alcohol. Drugs. Sex. Violence. He learned early the only way to survive was to associate fear with pleasure. He governed the chaos with rules and, like his father, enforced them instantly, without hesitation or remorse.
Wayman never slept while the club was open or in a room with a door that wasn’t locked.
Never spent the night with the same woman twice, and when she entered his room, she did so nude, and carried nothing with her.
And last, when the party was over, the woman had to leave. No sleepovers.
Except last night.
Claudia.
Wayman opened his eyes and his first thought was to touch her again. She was his first conquest in a month and he’d exhausted himself on her, almost mad for her perfume and softness.
Eight weeks ago, he’d noticed she drank water all night. She danced and laughed with her friends, batted away men, and left at midnight. Designated driver, he’d thought.
The following week, same strawberry blond girl, same water on the rocks. He’d sent a guard to invite her to the balcony. He’d spoken with her there. She was twenty-nine, a doctor of anthropology, and by far, the most enticing creature Wayman had ever seen. Not in the club.
In his life.
He led her by the hand toward the office. She shook her head. “I don’t go off with strange men.”
“Me? Strange?”
“Men I don’t know. Or men I do know, for that matter.”
Wayman had nodded, seeking words and not conceiving them. The dance music was too loud. The pulsing lights, annoying. He wasn’t frustrated so much as surprised, and not by her. Other women had rejected him—diehard lesbians. Not his fault.
This one didn’t frustrate him. And she didn’t surprise him. She made him surprised with himself.
He felt something different toward her, that he had not felt toward other women. He watched her walk away from the door, back to her dancing friends on the balcony.
She had a nice backside, but another thought rose to the top of his mind.
Child bearing hips.
And her skin ...
European stock.
One of the many necessary corollaries of existing so high up the food chain was how tiny others appeared. The men who served him were his inferiors. All but one, Asger Erickson, were order takers, not thinkers and doers. The women Wayman slept with were barely more human than the ones he bought and sold. Sex was mechanical, temporal.
Seven weeks ago, when Claudia walked away, he’d entered his office alone, taken a notepad and pen, and returned to her while she danced.
He took her hand, put his mouth to her ear, and said, “Dinner and a movie?”
“Okay.”
He took her out as frequently as she would allow, until finally last night she joined him in bed.
Instead of following his rules, her clothes were in a pile on the sofa and she lingered half awake and half sleeping with him all morning, until now.
He wanted her again, and he wanted her elsewhere. In a house, with a back yard and a pool. With a family room. Christmas tree and presents ...
“I have to work,” he said.
“What time is it?” Claudia said.
“Eleven fifty-three.”
“I thought so.”
He squinted at her.
“Approximately.”
He watched her slip into her clothes. “Where I come from, what we did last night means we’re gettin’ hitched.”
She smiled. “I didn’t think a nightclub owner would be the marrying kind.” She threw her purse strap over her shoulder. “Can you show me out? I have to get ready for a class I teach.”
“Sure.”
Wayman put on a robe. “Seriously, though. I’m going to marry you.”
“If you think that’s how to propose to this girl, I’ve made a mistake.”
He led her from his bedroom to the adjoining of
fice. She halted.
“Who’s that?”
On the other side of the glass wall stood Asger Erickson, at post and awaiting his boss.
“Asger. You might call him my right-hand man.”
“He looks like a body guard.”
“That too.”
“I don’t want him to see me.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t shack up.” She smiled. “Isn’t there another exit?”
“Just a minute. Wait in the bedroom.”
Wayman knelt. Twisted a lock placed frustratingly at the metal base of the glass door.
“Asger, please wait for me in the elevator.”
When Asger entered the elevator, Wayman motioned to Claudia.
He led her across the balcony, down the stairs, across the dance floor, and to the nightclub’s main entrance. On the cement step ,he reached for her hand but she pecked him on the cheek.
“I have to go. I need time to get cleaned up, and I’m going to be late.”
He took her face in both his hands and kissed her, hard.
She returned his force.
The kiss broke and she left him there, again watching her form, but now relishing the secret knowledge he had of it.
He wanted to take her places and tell her stuff. Listen to her stuff. Intoxicate himself on her.
A block away, Claudia stopped walking. She turned to him. Wayman looked both ways. The street bustled with noon traffic, foot and vehicle. He stepped toward her in his robe and bare feet. She came back toward him with short, quick steps, and thirty feet away, put her hands at her mouth. “You have to ask my father!”
“Yeah?”
“Next week! He’ll be here next week.”
She blew him a kiss, turned around, and jogged toward her car.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Luke Graves drove Interstate-40 west in Cephus’s F-150 with Cephus lengthwise in the bed. He powered down both front windows and the bracing wind buffeted his face and tossed his hair. His ears grew numb and his eyes wet. He felt their redness. The sting.
Pretty Like an Ugly Girl (Baer Creighton Book 3) Page 7