by Steve Brewer
"Better if we don't talk about it over the phone, Colonel."
Estes started to argue, but Tex was right. Estes should see the man in person.
"So, again I ask," he said tightly, "where are you?"
"Room Fourteen at the Roadrunner Motel on Candelaria, a few blocks from the Albuquerque Truck Terminal."
"What are you doing in a motel?"
"Kinda got stuck here, sir. That's part of the hitch."
Through clenched teeth, Estes said, "I've got a car. Stay right there until I arrive."
"Yes, sir."
Estes thumbed off the phone and put it away. Then he put the car into gear and pulled out of the parking lot. He navigated his way to Interstate 25, following green-and-white highway signs. Soon he was in the flow of freeway traffic, headed into the center of the city. Only then he did allow himself to mull over what Tex had said.
A hitch. How was that possible? Estes had this operation so carefully planned, from the guns' quiet disappearance at Fort Bliss to the handoff in Albuquerque. His customer, skinhead leader Clyde Rawls, was already on his way here to take delivery of those guns. He wouldn't respond well to a delay; Clyde was the excitable type. Estes might have to sweeten the deal to keep him happy, but the thought made him wince. Every extra expense cut into his planned retirement.
He'd already been robbed of his retirement fund once. He'd been heavily invested in the stock market when it crashed in '08. Scrambling to get what was left of his money out of the market and into something safer, he'd invested in a Palm Springs golf resort, which promptly went into bankruptcy.
He still had his Army pension and his Social Security, but he was sitting on a mountain of debt, and none of it added up to the drinks-on-the-beach retirement he'd pictured through thirty years of serving his country.
He'd had to scramble to set up a better send-off from the Army, working with a couple of insiders in the quartermaster's office to divert the truckload of firearms. He'd used the last of his retirement savings to pay off those guys, knowing he'd make it all back when he sold the guns. Everything was riding on this sale.
Estes didn't know what this "hitch" might be, but he did know that he would make this deal happen, through sheer force of will, if nothing else. And he'd live happily ever after.
Or there would be hell to pay.
Chapter 14
Tex Russell sniffed at the dusty curtains as he peered out the window of his room at the Roadrunner Motel. The room was all the way at the back of the Roadrunner, and he couldn't see the truck terminal three blocks to the south because another cheap motel stood in the way. But by standing near the window, Tex could see his motel's entire parking lot. No sign yet of Colonel Duvernay.
The Roadrunner Motel had definitely seen better days. The thin carpet was so uniformly gray with ground-in dust, he couldn't tell its original color. The once-white walls had yellowed like a smoker's teeth. The bed was gut-sprung and the toilet had an internal leak that sang all night long. Everything seemed coated in years of grime.
Tex felt pretty grimy himself. All his toiletries and spare clothes had been in that Peterbilt. He'd taken a shower and cleaned his teeth with his index finger when he got up this morning, but his clothes smelled of perspiration and his boots were dusty from his night-time trek to this motel. He was a man who took great pride in his personal appearance, and he hated for the Colonel to see him unshaven and smelly. The Colonel had always been such a stickler for detail when they served together in the Army, the kind of officer who'd discipline a soldier for a scuffed boot or a loose button. Tex had always been careful to never be on the receiving end of Colonel Duvernay's fury. Now, he was in a position to experience it first-hand.
No way, no how, should Tex be blamed for the loss of that truck and trailer. A man's got to take a dump, right? He'd left the truck idling to keep the heater running, but he'd been very careful to lock the doors and he'd come straight back from the men's room. But by then the truck was already gone.
Tex had spent much of the night marveling at how quickly everything had gone to hell. One minute, he's sitting pretty, drive nearly done, a quick thirty grand nearly in his hands. The next minute, he's running through the dark and cold, trying to put some distance between himself and those inquisitive truckers.
Retreat had been the only answer. Report to the Colonel. Let him sort out what to do next. Colonel Duvernay had a real genius for strategy. No better time to put it into action. Maybe he could figure out a way to track down those guns.
A white sedan slowed on Candelaria in front of the Roadrunner and turned into the parking lot, blinker going. The car eased toward the back of the potholed lot, and Tex squinted to make out Colonel Duvernay behind the wheel. The car parked in front of Room Fourteen, and the engine died with a cough.
Tex thought the Colonel probably couldn't see him here beside the window, a dark man in a darker shadow, and he watched as Duvernay got out of the car and pocketed his keys and straightened the creases of his khaki pants. Still odd to see the Colonel in civilian clothes after so many years in uniform together.
One glance around the parking lot, then the Colonel marched to the door of Tex's room and rapped on it twice with his knuckles.
Tex took a deep breath. Time to face the music.
Chapter 15
When the motel room door opened, Estes Duvernay greeted Tex Russell with a firm, "Sergeant."
"Colonel. Please come in, sir."
He stepped inside and Tex shut the door behind him. Estes noted the way Tex looked him up and down, but he knew his hip-length gray jacket covered the .45-caliber Colt stuck in the back of his waistband. And Tex would never have the nerve to try to frisk a superior officer.
"Jesus," Estes said as he looked around the seedy motel room. "How did you end up in this shithole?"
"It's kind of a long story," Tex said. "You want to sit?"
The only chair in the room was rickety-looking item of fake wood and smashed green padding. Estes sat on it gently, and it held his weight. Tex sat on the end of the bed, facing him.
Tex's cowboy hat was on the dresser, and Estes noticed that Tex was losing his salt-and-pepper hair. Thin enough on top that Estes could see his scalp shining through. No wonder he wore that hat all the time.
Estes had a lifelong reputation as a good listener. Even as a child, he had a way of looking at the speaker, his own face on full alert as he absorbed every detail. He tuned in fully now, as Tex described his bathroom break at the truck stop and the disappearance of the gun shipment.
"I wasn't gone longer than ten minutes," he said. "Everything was locked up tight, but this woman used a Slim Jim and let herself into the cab."
Estes cocked an eyebrow at him.
"How do you know that? I thought you were in the shitter."
"I was. This other driver saw her breaking in, and he told me about it when I got back to the parking lot."
"He didn't try to stop her?"
"He said he yelled at her, but it was too late. She drove away before he could do anything about it."
"And he told you all this when you got back to the scene?"
"That's right. Said he'd been ripped off the night before by the same woman."
"Is that so? You get his name?"
"Nate McCoy."
"And the other drivers?"
"I didn't get their names. There were four or five of them standing around there, and I was trying to make my exit."
"They all got a good look at you?"
"I suppose," Tex said cautiously. "It was pretty dark in that parking lot, though. I doubt if they could recognize me."
"Hm-mm." Estes nodded, thinking: Tex just became a liability. "Then you came over here on foot?"
"Yeah, and I made sure nobody followed me."
"And when you checked in here? You used your own name?"
"Had no choice about that," Tex said. "I had my wallet, but everything else was in that truck. I figured, long as I stayed out of sight, I'd be okay
until you could come get me."
"I see."
Estes shifted on the rickety chair. The pistol was digging into his back, but he didn't want to reach for it. Not yet.
"So you just hunkered down," he said. "Didn't bother to pursue that shipment?"
"How was I supposed to do that, Colonel? It was long gone by the time I knew about it, and I didn't have a vehicle—"
"You think this Nate McCoy might know more?"
"Maybe, but I kinda doubt it. All those drivers seemed sorta mystified by the notion that a woman would steal a truck."
Estes turned that over in his mind for a minute, then he said, "You think it's random? That she was just stealing whatever truck was available?"
Tex shrugged his narrow shoulders.
"Or," Estes said, "did you let someone get on your tail somewhere along the way? Don't you think it's more likely that the hijacker was waiting for you to stop somewhere?"
"I considered that," Tex said, "but the fact that she hijacked that other truck the night before would seem to indicate she was already here in Albuquerque."
"Maybe she was waiting for you."
"And what?" Tex said. "She stole McCoy's truck for practice?"
Estes considered that a second, then said, "I think I need to talk to McCoy myself."
"Good luck finding him. I'm not going over there to point him out. Sorry, Colonel. But it's too risky."
"No, you're right," Estes said. "You're a pretty easy man to spot. We don't want people asking a lot of questions about you."
Tex smiled and seemed to relax all over, as if he'd passed through the other side of the colonel's ire and was now safe. He was wrong about that.
Estes pulled the .45 out of his belt. He pointed it right between Tex's wide brown eyes.
"Hey, Colonel, what the hell?"
"You screwed up," Estes said. "I can't let incompetence go unpunished."
"But I'm the victim here—"
Estes squeezed the trigger and the gun bucked in his hand. The bullet smashed through the middle of Tex's forehead and blew out the back of his head in a red gush that spattered the wall. He fell backward onto the bed, his legs splayed, cowboy boots pointed at the ceiling.
"No," Estes said. "Now you're the victim."
Chapter 16
Jackie Nolan steered her father's precious Chevrolet El Camino through stop-and-go traffic, occasionally glancing over at her mother, who sat very straight in the passenger seat. Jackie knew some of the sights and sounds must be getting through to Marge, but she showed no sign. Perfectly still except for her hand clasping at the hem of her wool coat.
Even when Marge was checked out like this, Jackie could move her around, get her to walk while holding onto her arm, get her to help as Jackie put her in the car. So Jackie knew her mother was seeing things and her muscles worked well enough to walk. But if Jackie let go of her, Marge was likely to fall or wander off. She was fine riding in a car, so far. But how long before Jackie couldn't move her anymore? How long before Marge couldn't move at all? Every high-priced specialist they visited made a different prediction about how fast her dementia would progress, but it all boiled down to the same answer: Each case was different and your guess is as good as mine. Nobody, however, predicted that dementia that struck this early – Marge was only sixty – would be anything other than fatal.
The only question, really, was how long Marge could stay in contact with the world; the rest would be a matter of systems shutting down. Jackie did all she could to keep her mother from slipping away, but it was a fight she could only lose.
Jackie sighed as she caught another red light. A jacked-up Dodge Charger, sleekly black like the El Camino, rumbled up beside her in the left-turn lane, its stereo pounding with rap-song bass. She glanced over, saw the driver was a thirty-year-old Hispanic guy with slicked-back hair and wraparound sunglasses. Thick neck. The kind of musclehead who'd say "bro" a lot.
He gave her a big smile and a thumbs-up. Then he reached to turn down the thumping music.
Aw, shit.
She looked away, but when she glanced back his window was humming down and he was twirling a finger to show she should roll hers down, too. Jackie checked Marge, but she still was staring straight ahead.
Jackie cranked the window down two inches.
"Yeah?"
"Hey," he called. "I love your car."
"It's not mine. It belongs to my Dad."
"You know if he's looking to sell it?"
Albuquerque was a town full of car nuts. Jackie got this kind of thing every time she took the El Camino out of her mom's garage. She wasn't thrilled about driving such a noticeable vehicle today, but her own car seemed riskier.
"Never," she said. "He bought it new in 1974. Before I was born. He was a truck driver, and everybody kidded him about how even his car was a truck."
"He's kept it in great shape over the years."
"Thanks."
The guy smiled. He had great teeth and he knew it. "You look to be in pretty great shape yourself."
Jackie sighed. Another asshole. She raised her middle finger just as the light went to green, and punched the accelerator, zooming away. She checked her mirror to make sure the he didn't follow her, then looked over at Marge. If her mother had registered the conversation, she gave no sign of it.
They went another eight blocks, then Jackie steered the El Camino onto the side street where she'd left the guns in Chuck's garage. When she stopped at the gate of the fenced lot, she looked over at her mother, wondering if Marge would recognize her late husband's familiar old truck or the rust-streaked garage. But Marge showed no sign of knowing the place.
Jackie got out and opened the padlock and rolled the wide gate out of the way, its wheels crunching on the gravel. Then she got back in the El Camino and drove across the lot to a shady spot beside the diesel tank that stood on six-foot-tall steel legs next to the garage.
She hated to leave Marge in the car alone, but it was nice and warm in there and Marge didn't seem to know the difference at the moment.
Jackie killed the engine and got out. She reached behind the seat for the green duffel bag with the shotgun inside. Didn't seem to be anyone around, but she wanted to be armed when she went inside the garage. Just in case.
"I'll be right back, Mom."
Nothing.
Jackie gently shut the door, then hurried around the corner to the garage door. She unlocked another padlock there, readied the shotgun, then rolled up the overhead door. No one was inside, and the trailer was just as she'd left it. She climbed up onto the back bumper and swung open the tall door. Nothing seemed disturbed. Boxes of ammo and M4 rifles, stacked six feet deep.
She grabbed the rope-handle of a box on the top row and gave it a tug. The box slid out, and Jackie got under it to take its weight as she freed it from the stack. Using the handle, she gently lowered the forty-pound box to the concrete floor. Then she grabbed the next box.
Fifteen minutes of this and she was puffing and sweating, but she'd moved enough boxes around that she'd gotten an inventory of sorts, confirming that the trailer was fully loaded with U.S. Army ordnance. About six hundred automatic rifles, with four boxes of bullets for each.
Jackie climbed down from the trailer to the concrete floor, where a half-dozen wooden crates now stood around like Stonehenge. She thought about putting them back, but what was the point? She didn't plan to move this trailer anytime soon.
The guns should remain safe here. As far as she could remember, she'd never mentioned this property to Howard, and everything was in her mother's name now that Chuck was gone.
She rolled down the garage door and locked it up and went back around the corner to the El Camino, the duffel slung over her shoulder. Marge was right where she left her.
Jackie walked around the perimeter of the gravel lot, checking the weedy ground along the chain-link fence. No footprints, no sign anyone had been inside since she'd put the guns here.
So far, so good.
As she was walking back to the El Camino, her phone rang inside her jacket pocket. She checked the readout. "Howard." For maybe the twentieth time. Sighing, Jackie punched the button to answer.
"What do you want, Howard?"
"Jackie! Finally, you answer me! I've been so, um, worried about you."
"Don't bullshit me, Howard."
"You went out of here in such a huff," he said. "Before we could work something out."
"There's not much to work out, unless you know some way to give these guns back to the Army without getting us both thrown in prison."
"Give 'em back? Come on, Jackie. You know that's not possible."
"But we can't send them to Mexico, either."
"Why not? My customer pays good money—"
"We've covered this, Howard. I'm not going to spend the rest of my life seeing dead Mexicans on the TV news and wondering if it's my fault."
"What about me? When you see me dead on TV, that'll be okay?"
"Nobody's going to kill you, Howard."
"I talked to Santiago. He's not happy about the delay. He's sending a couple of people, including a guy named El Gűero."
Howard pronounced it "where-o," but Jackie spoke enough Spanish to recognize the word.
"The Blond?"
"Apparently, he's a tough customer. And he'll expect me to hand over that shipment as soon as he gets here."
"Guess he'll be disappointed."
"What do you think he'll do to me if I don't have what he wants?"
"If you're scared, call the cops."
"Come on, Jackie."
"Then get out of town."
"And make them hunt for me? That would just piss them off."
"I don't see what else you can do. Either tell 'em the guns are gone, or disappear yourself. Or both."
"They'll find me. They'll kill me."
"Don't be melodramatic, Howard."
"It's true! My life is on the line here."
Jackie tipped her head over to make her neck crack. Howard was giving her a pain.
"Just tell me where the guns are," he said. "That's all you have to do. We'll take it from there, and you never have to know another thing about it."