High Desert Vengeance (Brannigan's Blackhearts Book 5)

by Peter Nealen

  “And sold out your own fucking family.” Gomez didn’t even raise his voice. His tone was flat, dead. The sheer lack of inflection made it that much scarier.

  “No, man, no!” Gutierrez all but screamed, his voice getting higher-pitched. “I just delivered a package! That was all I did at first. I delivered stuff, I hid stuff. That was it. Then they brought me along on a deal, and I was a lookout. I started to get more money, and they were my friends, you know? I was getting important. They even brought me down to Mexico, to the hacienda.”

  “What hacienda?” Flanagan asked.

  “The Espino-Gallo hacienda,” Gutierrez said. “It’s huge, this big old Spanish manor. It’s their headquarters, ever since they got backstabbed by the Sinaloas.”

  “You’ve been there?” Gomez asked. “You know where it is?”

  “I don’t know how to get there,” Gutierrez said, but then he looked into Gomez’ eyes, and he started to panic again. “I mean it, man! They kept me and the other two in a van with no windows all the way there! They said I hadn’t gotten far enough to know the way yet!”

  “Go on,” Gomez said, his voice still as lively as a tomb.

  “After that, I was in. I got better jobs, more important packages. I even got to be part of a crew a few times,” Gutierrez almost sounded proud, but quailed in front of his cousin’s pitiless stare. “Some of it was…some of it was bad, man. They wanted me to start bird-dogging girls and then houses where they went in at night and…and killed people. Not competition, either.”

  “But you were greedy, so you just kept on doing it,” Gomez said, the first bit of emotion creeping into his voice. It was a combination of disgust and a dangerous, simmering fury that put anyone who heard it in mind of a finger tightening on a trigger.

  “No, man,” Gutierrez protested. “It wasn’t like that. I wanted out after the first house; I didn’t know they were going to do that! But I was scared, man. I met El Destripador. That fucker’s scary. He doesn’t just kill people because it’s business. He does it because he enjoys it. He gets his rocks off on it, man. And he’s just the worst. There are others who are almost as bad. They showed me videos, man. Stuff they did in Juarez before they left. They’re crazy, man.”

  “And of course you just became their slave, held by fear, and didn’t profit at all from being a spotter for human trafficking and murder, didn’t you?” Flanagan asked acidly, his fingers tightening on the wheel, his knuckles going white.

  “Of course I got paid, man,” Gutierrez whined. “If I didn’t, they’d get suspicious. I had to act like everything was cool.”

  “Tell me about when you spotted on our ranch to get my mom, my dad, and my little brother killed, cousin,” Gomez said quietly.

  If Flanagan had thought that Gutierrez’ voice couldn’t get any higher, he’d been wrong. “I didn’t have anything to do with that, man! They didn’t tell me about it until afterward, when they wanted me to show them good spots to hide stuff on the ranch.” He gulped and stared at the floor of the cab. “El Destripador told me that he knew I might lose my nerve, given that they were…they were family. So he didn’t tell me.”

  “And so you helped them,” Gomez said, his voice even lower and more dangerous. Flanagan glanced over at him. This was not the time for a gunshot in the truck, especially with three vehicles behind them and several more in front and oncoming. But Gomez was icily calm, and met Flanagan’s gaze with a look that said, I got this.

  “What was I supposed to do, man?” Gutierrez asked desperately. “What was done was done. I couldn’t change it. What good was I gonna do, getting my head blown off? Or worse?”

  “You might have died with some honor left,” Gomez said flatly. “You said this had been happening before. Other houses, other people targeted. Who was picking the target list?”

  Gutierrez looked pained, but he quickly folded. “Some the Espino-Gallos picked,” he said. “Rivals and law enforcement. Some…” he paused, reluctant.

  “Keep talking,” Gomez said flatly.

  “Some of them had property that he wanted,” Gutierrez said, defeated. “They were favors, you know? He helped them out, they helped him out.”

  “Who is ‘he?’” Gomez demanded.

  Gutierrez sagged, his head dropping to his chest. “They’re gonna kill me, man,” he whimpered. “I’ve already said too much.”

  “What do you think I’ll do if you don’t talk?” Gomez asked coldly. “You stopped being my cousin when you threw in with the people who murdered your own family. Either you talk, or I find a nice fire ant hill out there in the desert. Take care of you the way Mom’s people used to.”

  Flanagan honestly wasn’t sure if the threat was just a ploy, or if he was entirely serious. Either one was about as likely at that point.

  “Acosta,” Gutierrez all but whispered. “That’s why he’s suddenly gotten so much richer over the last couple years. And he wanted the northern half of the Lazy GR. So he made a deal. Just the latest one, that’s all. He’s been doing it for a long time.”

  “Acosta,” Gomez murmured. Flanagan kept his eyes on the road, but they narrowed as he thought.

  Gomez said that Acosta was the county kingmaker. He’d know the right places to hit, if he knows everybody well enough to be the big man. Guess he got greedy. Greedier.

  “I think we’ve got a new target,” Gomez said. He stared out at the desert and the freeway ahead. “Congratulations, Tony. You’ve bought yourself some time. If you turn out to be telling the truth. If I find out you’re lying to me, that ant hill is still on the table.”

  Gutierrez just sat in the middle, his chin on his chest, and quaked as they rolled west, toward Lordsburg and Francisco Acosta.

  Chapter 16

  “Are we sure about this?” Brannigan asked. “You told us that this Acosta character is a pillar of the community, Gomez.”

  “He is,” Gomez replied. The two of them were sitting in Brannigan’s rental, a Nissan Pathfinder, watching one of Acosta’s several feed stores. “Single most important man in the county. Richest by about a decimal place. He knows everybody and owns about half of everything.”

  “So, what’s he got to gain, being a spotter for a cartel?” Brannigan wondered. “If he’s already that loaded, why play patty-cake with a bunch of narco savages?”

  Gomez just shrugged. “People like him always want more,” he said.

  Brannigan looked at him. “You seem awfully sure about this,” he said. “Given that we’ve just got your cousin’s word to go on.”

  Gomez’ eyes might have flashed a little at calling Gutierrez his cousin. He seemed to have taken his own statement about Gutierrez abdicating that status seriously. “I know that little shit too well,” he said. “He can’t lie to me. And it all kind of makes sense. Acosta’s been after Dad to sell the northern three hundred acres to him for years. Dad always said no.”

  He nodded toward the feed store. “Here he comes.”

  Francisco Acosta was dressed in the same jeans and sports coat that he’d been wearing the last time Gomez had seen him, outside the sheriff’s office. He also had a younger man with him, dressed in a dark jacket over a plaid western shirt.

  “Is that his son?” Brannigan asked.

  Gomez shook his head. “Acosta only has daughters,” he said. “I bet he’s a bodyguard.”

  “Who the hell has a bodyguard in a small rural county like this?” Brannigan wondered. But he didn’t need Gomez to tell him. He already knew.

  Somebody’s who’s playing with fire, that’s who.

  But as they watched, Brannigan started to doubt. Acosta said something to the younger man, who listened, wrote something down in a notebook, then nodded and walked off toward a green sedan, talking on his phone. Acosta, meanwhile, walked to his own truck and got in. The two of them left in different directions.

  Brannigan slowly pulled the Pathfinder out to follow Acosta. He frowned. The first assumption had just proven false. What else were they going to find?<
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  Had Gutierrez been cleverer than they’d thought? Had he fingered Acosta to take some of the heat off himself? He hadn’t done a terribly good job at it if that was the case, considering he was currently flex-cuffed in a corner of the abandoned adobe down south, awaiting his eventual fate. Brannigan hoped to get this situation sorted out and turn him over to the sheriff, once they got Thomas out from under the Espino-Gallos’ thumb.

  If we manage to get him out, and if he appreciates it enough not to make trouble because of a wounded ego. I don’t know the man, and I don’t know which way he’ll jump if he finds himself indebted. I’ve certainly known men who would double down to cover their pride, try to sweep the fact that they were dancing to a bad guy’s tune like a friggin’ marionette under the rug.

  Acosta led them to another one of his businesses, a Mexican restaurant called “La Cocina de la Abuela.” He parked outside and went in, while Brannigan parked across the street, reminded by a grumble in his stomach that it was getting past lunchtime pretty quickly.

  They waited there for most of an hour, watching the restaurant. Acosta might have been having lunch or conducting business, but Brannigan didn’t want to follow him in. He would flat-out veto any idea of sending Gomez in there. Acosta knew Gomez, and might get the wrong idea.

  So, they waited.

  Eventually, as the parking lot started to clear, the local clientele departing back to their jobs, Acosta came back out and got back in his truck, pulling out of the parking lot and heading down the street.

  “He sure seems to do a lot of roaming around during the work day,” Brannigan commented, as he followed.

  “He’s got a lot of businesses,” Gomez said. “He probably just sticks his head in to check on the managers every now and then.” He grunted. “He sure doesn’t need money badly enough to actually have to work all day.”

  Brannigan didn’t reply, but frowned as they followed Acosta. He was going to have to consider switching out with one of the other vehicles soon. Especially if Acosta really was dirty—and so far, he hadn’t seen any real indicators—he was going to figure out that he was being followed. And if he wasn’t, then that could lead to trouble with the law. Trouble that they really couldn’t afford.

  To his mild surprise, Acosta simply pulled into the parking lot of another restaurant, “La Parillada,” only two blocks down the street. The parking lot wasn’t full, but there were just about as many cars left as had been outside Acosta’s own “La Cocina de la Abuela.”

  Acosta parked and got out, walking inside the restaurant as Brannigan found a parking spot across the street and just around the corner, where they could watch the restaurant without, hopefully, being too obvious. “Is this one of his, too?” Brannigan asked.

  Gomez was frowning slightly. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Unless something’s changed in the last few weeks, this is Joaquin Ramos’ place.”

  They sat and watched for several minutes. Then the doors swung violently open and Acosta stormed out, visibly angry even at fifty yards. He stopped just outside, standing in the parking lot, his fists clenched, and then reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. He stabbed at the screen with a finger and then brought the phone to his ear as he stalked toward his truck.

  Brannigan’s eyes narrowed as he watched. “Does this look off to you?” he asked Gomez.

  “Yeah,” the other man said slowly. “It does.”

  Acosta got back in his truck and roared out of the parking lot, heading back toward “La Cocina de la Abuela.” Brannigan just eased the Pathfinder forward to make sure he could see down the street to follow Acosta’s truck. Sure enough, he pulled back into the restaurant parking lot.

  Brannigan frowned, rolling it around in his mind. It was entirely possible that what they had just witnessed was just a regular dispute between competitors. Nothing that didn’t happen in towns and cities across the country on a daily basis.

  But crime also happened on a daily basis, and given what Gutierrez had already told them about Acosta, they couldn’t just let it slide. It could well still be that Gutierrez was either lying or had been lied to, but under the circumstances, Brannigan didn’t think they could really take the chance. If Acosta was bird-dogging targets for the Espino-Gallo gang in order to enrich himself, then the scene they’d just witnessed could very well be far more sinister than it initially appeared.

  “What are you thinking, Gomez?” he asked. The younger man was sitting in the passenger seat, silent, his dark eyes focused back toward Acosta’s restaurant.

  “I think that Ramos needs to be looking over his shoulder,” Gomez said quietly.

  “I’m inclined to agree,” Brannigan muttered, running a hand over his mustache. He hadn’t trimmed the salt-and-pepper handlebar in a few days, and it was starting to get a bit unruly. “In fact, I think that we should probably be looking over his shoulder for him for a bit.” He looked over at Gomez and raised an eyebrow. “Wouldn’t you say?”

  Gomez nodded slowly. “Yeah,” he said. “I think that might be a good idea. Just in case.”

  “Just in case,” Brannigan repeated. It might be nothing. Then again, it might be the incident we need to confirm that Gutierrez was telling the truth. And the opening to move on Acosta. Gutierrez might not know where the Espino-Gallo hacienda is, but I bet Acosta does.

  He pulled out onto the street and headed back the way Acosta had gone, looking for another vantage point. “We can’t take eyes off Acosta, but we can spare a couple guys,” he said. “You know where Ramos lives?”

  Gomez nodded. “Known his son all my life,” he said.

  “Great,” Brannigan said, even as he turned into another parking lot. “Give Joe a call. And be sure to give him good directions.”

  ***

  “This feels like something out of a B movie,” Curtis said, fidgeting a little in the seat of Flanagan’s truck. “Local businessman turns to evil and starts working with a cartel. This kind of thing doesn’t happen in real life.”

  “Of course it does,” Flanagan said, without taking his eyes off the Ramos house, about two blocks ahead of them. The white-and-red one-story house was situated about halfway between the nearest streetlights, well outside the circles of dim orange illumination, but the porch light was lit, spilling a faintly blue-green glare across the nearly-barren lawn. The driveway was empty, but there was a single sedan parked out front.

  “People don’t stop being greedy just because it’s the current year,” Flanagan continued. “Organized crime isn’t just goombas and narcos in basements with stacks of cash. They do a lot of their go-between stuff with legitimate businesses. Acosta seems to just be more ambitious than most.”

  Curtis looked at him, tilting his head a little. “Since when are you an expert on organized crime?” he asked. “You start working on a criminal justice degree, or something? Since you’re not getting busy with Rachel and all…”

  Flanagan spared a second from watching the Ramos house to glare at his friend. “Rachel’s not that kind of girl,” he said, “which you should probably know, since you were making time with her friend.”

  It was almost too dark in the truck to tell, but Curtis might actually have looked a little abashed. “We, uh…we didn’t talk about her that much.”

  Flanagan snorted, turning his attention back toward the house. “Surprise, surprise,” he said.

  “Getting back to the subject at hand,” Curtis said, clearing his throat, “what makes you such an expert on local pillars of the community becoming gangsters?”

  “I read, you ignorant slut,” Flanagan replied. “You should try it sometime.”

  “That would mean I’d have to risk turning out like you,” Curtis shot back. “All mopey, boring, and uninterested in women.”

  “Never said I wasn’t interested,” Flanagan muttered. “Just a bit more careful than you are. Never needed penicillin from a date.”

  “Hey, neither have I!” Curtis protested. “That ain’t fair!”


  “Minor miracle, that,” Flanagan said, deadpan.

  “I take precautions,” Curtis said, folding his arms as he slumped a little in his seat. “I’m not stupid.”

  Flanagan sighed. “And if Sanda turns out to be the girl you really want?” he said tiredly. “Is she really going to appreciate that? That you were ‘taking precautions’ while you were sleeping around with everything in a skirt?”

  “Not that many girls wear skirts these days, Joe,” Curtis pointed out.

  “Not the point,” Flanagan growled.

  “Why are we being so serious?” Curtis asked.

  “Because you made it serious when you started trying to date the team’s little sister, Kevin,” Flanagan replied.

  “She was sleeping with Aziz, for fuck’s sake!”

  “So, she’s made mistakes,” Flanagan allowed. “Not to speak ill of the dead, but maybe one of the more profound such mistakes I’ve ever heard of. No reason to pile more on top of it.”

  “You’re not going to let this ‘little sister’ thing go, are you?” Curtis asked, his voice sounding pained.

  Flanagan grinned tightly. “No, can’t say as I am.”

  Curtis slumped even lower in the seat. “I don’t deserve this.”

  “Consider it payback,” Flanagan said, but he suddenly held his hand up to forestall Curtis’ retort. “We’ve got company.”

  “For real, this time?” Curtis wondered.

  Two cars had just turned down the street, rolling slowly toward the Ramos house. At least, it looked like that was where they were going. The house was only two lots from the intersection, but it was late, they were moving slowly, and given the point of the two men’s surveillance, neither one of them was quite ready to assume that all was well.

  The lead car was a little Subaru Impreza with an intake scoop in the hood and a spoiler on the back. Behind it rolled a black Escalade, the windows appearing tinted almost as dark as the body. Flanagan’s eyes narrowed as they rolled past, and his hand dropped to the OBR tucked next to his seat. He’d considered just running with the Marlin while low-profile like this, but the OBR had better capacity. It also had a suppressor, which the Marlin didn’t.