These guys used to be an item, Fernando said to himself, looking from Avina to the doctor and back again. He tried to imagine Avina’s angular body intertwined with the doctor’s, her hawk’s eyes blurred with passion, her short black hair matted with sweat on her forehead, but he failed. It would be like fuckin’ a tarantula, he thought, shaking his head slightly while he thought it.
“Are you okay?” the doctor asked.
“Yeah,” Fernando said. “I’m just great.”
“Keep this dressing fresh,” the doctor said. “And keep up with these antibiotics. You’re really at risk for infection here.”
I’m from the sewers of Tijuana, Fernando said silently. If infection could kill me, I’d be dead already.
“And these are for the pain, in case you change your mind later,” the doctor continued, handing him a pill bottle that rattled with the promise of relief.
Maybe later, Fernando thought. First, I find that fuckin’ Rebecca.
“Thanks for coming,” Avina said. “I owe you.”
“You already owed me,” the doctor said. He finished throwing his stuff together, slipped on a dark jacket, and strode to the door. “I hope it turns out to be worth all this shit.”
“I hope so, too,” Avina said. She opened the door, the doctor walked out, and she closed the door behind him. She stood there silently for a moment before she turned back in Morton’s direction.
“Do you think we’re covered at the motel?” she asked.
“The way we set it up will hold,” Morton said. “Nobody’ll get to us through the motel.”
“How about the escort service?”
“That’s not a problem, either,” Morton lied. “The driver didn’t see anything, and he’s scared shitless anyway.”
“How will you explain the hole in your shoulder when you get back?” she asked, turning her attention to Fernando.
“I’ll just tell the truth,” Fernando said as he slowly rose from the conference table in the middle of the room.
“And what’s that?”
“Some fuckin’ puta went crazy on me.”
Morton came over from his perch in the corner and began to help him pull a shirt over the bandaged shoulder.
“That story’s gonna work down there?”
“The truth sets you free, you know that.”
“Take him to the Laurelhurst house,” she said to Morton.
“Keep an eye on the wound, keep the dressing changed, whatever—just make sure he doesn’t die until after this thing comes down, all right?”
“I’m not a fuckin’ nurse,” Morton said.
“I know that. You’re a special agent working on the biggest bust either of us will ever see, and I just asked you to make sure our inside man doesn’t die from his own stupidity. All right?”
“Well, when you put it that way.”
“Good,” she said, turning back to Fernando. “Will staying up here a few days be a problem?”
Fernando shook his head. No, he said to himself. I might need a day or two, anyway.
“I’ll just tell them the truth,” he said again. He thought about saying more, but the look in Avina’s cold eyes killed the impulse.
“Do you think you can fuck with me?” she asked.
Without a doubt, he said to himself. Women are made to be fucked with.
“Do you?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “You’re the one with the badge.” And you can stick that badge up your skinny ass, he thought.
“You’re fucking with me right now,” she said. “And you don’t even know why that bothers me.”
Sure I do, he thought.
“I don’t?” he asked.
“No, you don’t. You can think whatever you want—it makes no difference to me what you get off on.”
“So why are we having this conversation?”
“Because thinking you can fuck with me is stupid, Fernando, just like killing that girl tonight.”
“Which means you’re stupid to be working with me.”
“Exactly.”
“Don’t worry about it. We’re both smart enough to make this thing happen.”
“I hope so, Fernando. And you should hope so, too.”
Why is that? he said to himself, but her hawk’s eyes were reading his mind somehow.
“Because if we don’t,” she said, “I will personally cut off your fucking balls and stuff them down your throat.”
You’re not woman enough to play with my balls, he thought. And you’re not man enough, either.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “You’re going to take Rodriguez down, I promise you.”
“Just how good is your promise, Fernando?”
Read this, you fucking bitch, he said to himself. My promise is as fucking good as gold.
“Would you hand me my jacket?” he said to Morton. He leaned against the table until Morton walked across the room, retrieved the jacket from a chair along the wall, walked back, and draped it over his shoulders.
“Don’t worry about how stupid we are,” Fernando said. “We’re smarter than Rodriguez, so we’re cool.”
“What makes you so sure?” Avina asked.
“Rodriguez trusts me,” Fernando said. “How smart is that?”
The shadow of a smile flickered in Avina’s hard eyes, but it didn’t stick. Fuck you, Fernando said without a sound, and he shuffled in the direction of the door. Morton walked with him and opened the door when they reached it, and Morton pulled it closed behind them when they crossed to the other side.
“She’s probably staring at us right through the door,” Morton said as they moved toward the elevator bank at the end of the hall.
“Let her fuckin’ stare,” Fernando said softly. “Where’s Jimmie now?”
“He’ll meet us at the Laurelhurst house. He should be done at the escort service by now.”
Good, Fernando thought. Maybe I can pop a couple of these pills after all. He was leaning slightly against Morton’s shoulder and dreaming of uninterrupted sleep when the elevator arrived in front of him The door whispered open, and after a moment they had another wall between themselves and Avina’s cold hawk’s eyes.
FIVE
“Yeah,” I said softly. “That’s Lizzie.”
Sam pulled the sheet back over my daughter’s lifeless face, placed his big black hand on my shoulder, and guided me gently out of the room. We walked for some unrecognizable length of time until we entered a brightly lit room filled with metal chairs and shabby wooden desks. He led me to one of the desks, ushered me into one of the chairs, and draped his 250 pounds of muscle on another.
I looked at him sitting there, looking back at me through those big glasses with the ugly black frames, and the only thing I could think of was the time Leon knocked those glasses off that thick head in a scuffle for a rebound back in the days when I didn’t have a daughter and my daughter wasn’t dead.
“Do you still play?” I asked.
Sam chewed on the question and eyed me intently for a while, but he eventually answered. “Not as much as I’d like,” he said. “But, yeah, I still get out there now and then.”
“Do you still get all the fuckin’ rebounds?”
“Pretty much,” he said.
“Where do you play? I can’t remember the last time I saw you.”
“I play with some guys from work here. The Bureau has its own gym.”
“I guess that’s a good thing,” I said. “I can’t think of who else would want to play with you guys.”
“The feeling is pretty much mutual,” Sam said.
“I guess it would be.”
“Even if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be lookin’ for you two. You guys beat me enough in high school to last a lifetime.”
“We’re not in high school anymore, Sam. We could all be on the same team now.”
“Yeah,” Sam said, still looking at me as though his eyes were focused on a different conversation than his mouth. “Wouldn’t that be somethi
ng?”
“I’ve never been able to figure out what that means. Isn’t everything something?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess everything is. Maybe it’s just an expression.”
“An expression of what?”
“Of awkward nervousness in this case. You know, something to say until we’re ready to deal with this situation.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever be ready to deal with this situation, Sam.”
“I’m sorry about that, Wiley. I truly am. But I have a job to do here, and I think we both want me to do it.”
“I know,” I said softly, and then I drifted off inside myself for a while. Sam let me go, but he continued to watch me relentlessly. I began to shrink under the weight of his gaze, and then I began to think I might disappear entirely if I could only hang onto the nervous silence between us long enough.
I don’t know how long we sat there waiting for me to evaporate, but I finally gave up when I noticed that I was diminished but not gone.
“What happened, Sam?” I asked.
“I don’t really know too much,” he replied. “I don’t have the M.E.’s report yet, but there are two knife wounds on her body—one on her right arm and another across the front of her throat. It looks like she bled to death.”
“What’s the story?”
“I don’t know. I was hoping you could help me a little there.”
I laughed at that, but it was one of those laughs that won’t come out of your mouth until you rip it away from your ribcage. It sounded more like a scream than a laugh by the time it finally hit the atmosphere.
Sam looked like he wanted an explanation, but I didn’t have a thing to say. “I’m talkin’ about some general information,” he continued. “Why she might have been at the scene of the crime, who she knew, just basic stuff like that.”
“You need to talk to Leon, not me.”
“Why’s that?”
“This is the first time I’ve seen her in more than a year.” “What’s Leon got to do with it?”
“I haven’t seen him in more than a year, either.”
“But they saw each other during that time, I take it.”
“Yeah,” I said. “They saw a lot of each other during that time.”
“Jeezus,” Sam said quietly. “That’s fucked up.”
“Tell me about it,” I said.
“So you can’t help me at all?”
“I don’t know shit, Sam.”
“How ‘bout where she was working, or what line of work she was in?”
“Why?” I asked. “Is there some occupation that’ll make her a little less dead?”
Sam’s eyes narrowed a little in response to that, but neither of us said anything else for a while. He finally saw what he was waiting for or got tired of waiting for it.
“I’m trying to figure out what your daughter was doing at the scene of the crime,” he said, and by then his gaze was hot enough to burn holes in my forehead.
“Where was that?” I asked.
“A motel out by the airport,” he said, his eyes fixed intently on mine as he said it.
“Where?” I asked, but I barely had enough breath in me to get the word out of my mouth. I tried to inhale, but either my technique no longer worked or the air was gone from the room.
Sam did not reply. He sat there behind those ugly black frames and watched me try to catch my breath, and when I finally did he sat there and watched me some more.
“What motel?” I asked.
“The Evergreen,” he said quietly.
“Never heard of it.”
“Neither had I,” he said, and then he disappeared. One moment I was staring at him staring back at me, and the next moment he was gone and all I could see was Leon.
I had been carrying a cold fury over Leon for more than a year, and at that moment in Sam’s squad room my anger achieved critical mass—some internal switch flipped from cold to hot. I could feel the heat radiating through my veins, and I reveled in the warmth for a moment.
I didn’t know how Lizzie had ended up in a room at the Evergreen Motel, but I did know that the path had run directly through my oldest friend in the world. My cheeks began to burn as I contemplated what needed to happen next, but that’s when I learned that Sam was still in the room.
“Doesn’t Leon own an escort service?” he asked, just letting it hang out there like he was checking on tomorrow’s weather forecast.
“Leon has a lot of businesses,” I said, but by then I had already made the same connection. I couldn’t think of many ways to explain Lizzie’s presence at the Evergreen late Thursday night, and being there to work was by far the most likely of them.
“I think you’re right,” Sam said. “I do need to talk to Leon. If you really have been avoiding him for a year, I suggest you avoid him for a while longer.”
“He’s all yours,” I lied, and then I told the truth: “He’s the last person on earth that I want to see.” After one more look at Leon, I thought, I won’t want to see anyone else.
Sam watched me soberly, mulling over what he saw as I rose from my chair. “I’m glad it’s you,” I said, telling the truth again. “Thanks for leading me through it.”
“We’re not through it yet,” he said softly. “But we will be.”
“Yeah,” I lied. “That’s what I meant.” Then I turned my back on Sam, walked out of the room, and down the hall to the front stairs. I could still feel Sam’s eyes on my back by the time I reached the street, but he asked no more questions so I kept the rest of the answers to myself.
Back to TOC
Here is a preview of Trey R. Barker’s crime novella Road Gig…
ROAD GIG
“Watch yourself.”
Late afternoon when the deputy said it. Standing in the squad room, trimming his nails, staring at the talking heads on TV.
“What?”
“Lotta shit flowing. Don’t get it on your boots.”
Thunderstorms built and lightning slashed. The far sky burned with the coming storm. Too far away to see clearly, but I was damned sure at least one tornado churned deep in those purple clouds. Soon enough, whatever thing lurked in that far sky was going to tear hell out of this barren stretch of southwestern Oklahoma.
“Watch yourself.”
Then gone and I stood alone in the squad room. Snapped the TV off. My hand shook. Hot sweat popped on my skin. Anxiety gnawed at my gut.
Ten days to the end of my probation. Ten days more and I’d be one year wearing my badge and that’s the advice I got: “Watch yourself.”
The warning hit me like a baton to the jaw.
Shouldn’t have watched myself, though. Should’a watched my locker.
A knife in the jail. Then twenty grams of virgin-pure Mexican meth in my locker.
And all I could fucking remember was “Watch yourself.”
***
“Y’all confuse me, boy.” Lt. Les Haley. Southern drawl as pungent as a cloud of sulfuric acid. Choking. As deadly. “Y’all smart and all, got all that education, but…” Tossed a pile of papers across the desk. At me. “Ain’t that hard. Cain’t y’all get it right?”
Bond sheets and arrest cards, booking sheets; the official paperwork of a place that warehoused men and women until society decided they’d had enough. Mistake dotted every page.
“Too many fuck-ups, Kinney. The job too tough?” His eyes pools of dirty tar.
Clenched my jaw. Tension burned from my balls up through me. “I can do this job just fine.”
Grabbed a bond sheet and waved it at me. “No court date. Damnit, boy, this is the only record we got of when the bad guy bonds out. If it ain’t got no court date, how they s’posed to know when to come back?” Shoved two arrest cards at me. One fluttered to the floor. Immediately I retrieved it. “Arrest times in the wrong place.”
“Wrong place?”
“Goes on the back, boy. Y’all’s on the front.” Licked his teeth. “Damn, boy, why you always smell like…I d
on’t know what. Perfume.”
“Candles.”
“Yeah, well, smell like a sissy. Put on some aftershave.” Haley indicated the paperwork. “Mistakes everywhere.” His thin fist banged the desk. “This the fifth time we been down here—”
“Seventh.”
Frowned, eyebrows like gray worms dead over his eyes. “What?”
“Seventh time, Lieutenant.” All in the last two weeks, I didn’t say. Last two weeks and always something different. Always some bullshit. Ate those words down like rotten meat.
“Proves my point, don’t it, boy? Y’all ain’t getting it. Gotta keep dragging y’all’s ass down here.” Pulled out a typed sheet of paper. “Extending y’all’s probation. Another six months. This shit keeps happening? Y’all be out the door.”
My mouth dried. Like a puddle of spit on a mid-summer sidewalk, burned away to nothing by the heat. “Wait, you can’t—”
“It’s done, boy.” Eyes pinpointed mine and low voice rattled the empty soda cans cluttering his desk. “Got something to say? Go on…say it. Y’all a smart college man…say it.”
Couldn’t even work up enough spit to swallow it back down. Finally, skin on fire, moved my eyes off of his.
Grinning. Smug. Full of his own importance. Leaned back and his chair screeched. “Y’all screwing up the pat-downs, too. Todd found some cigarettes and pictures. Take your time with those arrestees. Do the job right.”
“But—” Hated the whine in my voice. “This is minor stuff. Everybody makes these mistakes. We’re short-handed and it’s a lot to remember.”
“Yeah, that’ll sound great on the witness stand when an inmate gets killed on your watch. ‘Sorry, Your Honor, but I ain’t got a brain big enough to remember it all. Yeah, I know I been to college and all, but it’s just so hard.’” Snorted.
Wanted to punch his skinny face in. Fucking smug tone, his years in the trenches in every word leaking out of his mouth. I had no years, no physical scars, no mental scars. Every word was a hard slap. Haley knew it. Relished it. Was written in his face like a tattoo.
“We’re out of stamps for prisoners’ mail. Bring me a check from the prisoners’ account; I’ll sign it so you can get some.”
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