The Contractors Read online

  His eyes swept the room before settling on Piper. After a few moments, he walked around the bar and sat on the stool between the two of us.

  “Jon’s a schmuck,” he said. “Undying love, Piper. This I pledge to you.”

  Without being asked, Dolly Parton placed three drinks in front of us, mugs of foaming Budweiser for me and Piper, a sweating bottle of Big Red soft drink for Milo.

  Piper groaned and took a swig of beer. She closed her eyes.

  “Nice getup,” I said. “When did you start going to synagogue?”

  “A devout man does not attract the attention of the authorities.”

  He stroked the scar on his cheek that he’d gotten during one of his stints in juvenile. He’d been twelve at the time.

  “Your little foray in West Dallas this morning,” he said. “What a mess that was.”

  Piper opened her eyes. “We didn’t kill those two gangbangers.”

  “Their employers don’t see it that way.” He patted her hand. “I will of course offer you my protection.”

  Piper moved her arm. “I can take care of myself.”

  “In exchange, you would have to lay with me.” He leered at her. “In the biblical sense.”

  Piper curled her lip.

  “Let’s sign both of you up on Match-dot-com and see what happens,” I said. “In the meantime. tell me what you’ve heard about Sinclair’s operation of late.”

  “In the punch bowl of life,” Milo sighed, “Sinclair is a floating turd.”

  The jukebox changed songs. The Bee Gees, “Stayin’ Alive.”

  “Why do you do business with him?” Milo looked at me. “Any fiefdom in my kingdom I can offer you, yet you want to play with this swine?”

  “I’m not going to work for you,” I said.

  “Oh, yes.” He stroked his chin. “Your high ethical standards.”

  “That’s me, a regular Eliot Ness.” I took a long pull of beer. “Any idea why Sinclair would be interested in a witness in a big cartel trial?”

  Milo didn’t reply. His face went blank, eyes empty, devoid of any expression. The silence dragged on, got uncomfortable.

  I sipped beer, waited. After about a half minute, I asked the bartender for a bag of pretzels. Hadn’t eaten since morning. I was halfway finished with the snack when my friend spoke again.

  “I’ve started a new venture.” Milo pulled out a business card. “Miller Law Enforcement Services.”

  The card had an emblem that look like a cross between the seal for the State of Texas and the US Capitol.

  “I have a contract to transport convicts to the penitentiary,” he said. “A great way to keep tabs on what the lowlifes are up to.”

  “But you’re a convict.” I tried not to sound incredulous. “Now you’re a contractor, too?”

  “Indicted only.” He wagged a finger. “They never proved any of that stuff.”

  “Back to my original question.” I put the card in my pocket. “Sinclair and the cartels?”

  He stared at a blank spot on the far wall, the wheels churning, his mind worrying over the answer.

  “Some topics,” he said. “Questions, they shouldn’t be asked.”

  “This is important, Milo, very important.”

  “My life, I owe you, Jonathan.” He touched my arm. “Walk away from this one.”

  “The witness can clear us of killing those two thugs.” Piper filled him in briefly.

  Nobody spoke for a while. Dolly Parton opened another piece of nicotine gum.

  “You should leave town,” Milo said. “You need money? I have the ten grand I owe you.”

  I shook my head. “You don’t owe me anything.”

  When I had allegedly saved Milo’s life—really nothing more than a well-timed knuckle shot to the crotch of a crooked bookie—I had also enabled him to recover a large sum of money. The ten thousand was a finder’s fee, something I had never accepted, preferring to keep our relationship strictly social with only the occasional item of business, usually just the sharing of select tidbits of information.

  “Hypothetically speaking.” Milo rubbed his eyes. “What if Sinclair provided certain services that aided in the transportation and security of a certain, er, product.”

  “A crooked ex-cop with his contacts.” Piper nodded. “He could be the Shield for North Texas.”

  Milo clutched his chest. “This term, not to be used in my establishment.”

  A Shield was a regional position, like a traffic coordinator for the various narcotraffickers. The job title had been created by the cartels in response to the massive, publicity-attracting violence that had plagued the border region, an attempt to keep the peace in the major metropolitan areas north of the border. For a small percentage paid by all the cartels, a Shield ensured that product moved safely through a given area. The Shield also ensured that all disputes were settled in unpopulated areas.

  “With Sinclair’s track record,” I said, “if he gets tied to that sort of an operation, they’d throw him under the jail for life.”

  Milo nodded. “Now imagine, again hypothetically, if someone like that started skimming.”

  I closed my eyes and smelled the leather in the Bentley, saw the light glint off the diamonds on Sinclair’s Rolex.

  Piper said, “Are you telling us—”

  “Nothing, this is what I am telling you,” Milo said. “You two should leave town.”

  “But we need to find the witness,” Piper said. “We’re both going down on a double manslaughter beef if we don’t.”

  “Eva Ramirez,” I said. “That’s her name.”

  “Oy.” Milo covered his ears. “Enough.”

  “Can you help us track her down?” I asked.

  He didn’t reply.

  “Anything at all would be a help,” I said.

  “Nothing is as it seems, Jonathan.” He spoke the words softly. “This you must understand.”

  I sighed. “Make sense, will you?”

  “A history lesson.” He looked at each of us. “Would you mind listening to one?”

  I shrugged. “Whatever ices your cake.”

  “In World War II, the feds let the mob have a free pass,” he said. “Anything they wanted, within reason.”

  I nodded.

  “They ran the ports through the unions. You know this, right?”

  I nodded again.

  “In exchange, the mob helped the war effort. Secured the harbors, made sure shipments went through easily.”

  “What’s your point?” Piper said.

  “What is this mess you are involved in right now?” he said. “What is it called?”

  “I don’t understand.” I arched an eyebrow at Piper. “It’s called our job.”

  “They have a name for it, don’t they? The War on Drugs, that’s what they call it in the papers.”

  “Yes,” Piper said. “That’s what they call it.”

  “Note the first word.” He flexed his hands, examined his fingernails. “War.”

  “But the war is against drugs,” I said. “Why would they make a deal with the dealers? The enemy?”

  “Jon’s right,” Piper said. “That’d be like the feds in World War II making a deal with the Nazis.”

  “Don’t you ever wonder if there’s something beyond the cartels?” Milo sighed.

  “Why?” I asked. “You know something we don’t?”

  “No. I’m just a student of history” He finished his soft drink. “The alliances and undercurrents of our world are fascinating.”

  “Piper and I have become fascinated with staying alive and out of jail,” I said.

  “Perhaps I can learn something about this Eva person. Call me in the morning.”

  “Thank you.” Piper stood.

  “A condo in South Padre.” Milo put his hand on her arm. “Run away with me and it’s yours.”

  She plucked his fingers from her flesh, one by one, then headed to the door.

  I slid off the barstool and pointed to his outfi
t. “Do you even believe in God?”

  “Last week I’m pretty sure I screwed the Devil himself out of seven whorehouses on the west side of town.” He paused. “Does that count?”

  - CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX -

  We left Milo’s bar in the middle of rush hour, the streets and freeways clogged with cars and trucks and blue clouds of exhaust fumes. The grimy skins of the glass towers in downtown fractured the setting sun into a thousand yellow reflections, wedges of light that seemed to have no purpose or focus.

  A few blocks from the Main Street Dash, I pulled into a parking lot across the street from the Dallas City Hall, a bizarrely shaped wedge of a building that looked like an upside-down, sand-colored triangle. The spot I’d picked had no camera coverage.

  I flipped on the hazard lights and got out. From the back, I retrieved a small toolkit.

  Using a screwdriver, I disconnected the power cord from the two-way radio as well as the networked laptop mounted on the transmission hump. Both had the ability to act as transponders, homing devices that broadcast the vehicle’s location to whoever had the proper equipment.

  Since warrants were about to be issued for us, it would only be a matter of time before Phil DeGroot or the honchos at Blue Dagger demanded the government-issued vehicle back. With the inherent bureaucracy that comes from public agencies interacting with the private sector, this might take weeks. Following the vehicle electronically could be authorized in a few hours, especially by an unscrupulous contractor like Paynelowe who might wave the national security flag.

  While I did that, Piper detached a slim piece of plastic about the size of a credit card that was mounted to the windshield by the rearview mirror. The item was a device for electronic toll collection, or ECT, called a TollTag in North Texas. In different parts of the country it had different names: E-ZPass, Smart Tag, and so on.

  She ripped it in two, shredding the passive RFID tag it contained.

  In the United States, about twenty percent of the quarter-billion passenger vehicles were equipped with an electronic toll collection device of some sort. This percentage was rising as more local governments contracted with private companies to operate public roads as tollways.

  Similarly, about twenty percent of the highways were equipped with tag readers, another figure that was increasing each year.

  With the right equipment and authorization, a government entity could track a car pretty easily by its ECT device.

  But we didn’t stop there.

  Piper popped the hood, and I went to the front of the Tahoe. She came up beside me and handed me a utility knife.

  “You ever done this before?” she said.

  “Once.” I nodded. “Should last for a day or so.”

  Not many people had heard about the Transportation Security Act, a little-known piece of legislation drafted by the Republicans, signed by a Democrat, and lobbied for by the auto parts industry. Our concern at the moment was a tiny clause in the act, what was informally called the Loose Juice Amendment. The clause, like most government initiatives, was a bastardized abortion of a compromise, equal parts inventory control, 9/11 hangover, and pork pie.

  The amendment required that all vehicle batteries in the United States manufactured after a certain date be equipped with permanent RFID tags. Removal of the tag was punishable by up to ten years in Club Fed and would disable the battery within twelve to twenty-four hours.

  The tags, of course, were registered to the owner of the car or the person who bought the battery. That name would eventually be linked seamlessly to the various criminal and civil databases used by law enforcement.

  “There it is.” I pointed to a card-size bump on the Sears DieHard, an active tag that emitted a very low-strength signal powered by the auto battery itself.

  Piper nodded. “Go for it.”

  Two months ago, we’d been in a hotel bar in Austin where we’d met a drunk contractor for the National Security Agency. The guy had told us about a new, cheap tag reader that was being mass-produced ostensibly for the Department of Transportation. The device required very little power to function but was still able to beam information to a series of repeaters, which in turn sent the information to the main NSA location, a sprawling campus on the eastern seaboard.

  The really chilling part of his drunken tale?

  The Department of Transportation, at the behest of Homeland Security, was planning to install the cigarette-pack-sized device on signal lights across the country as well as in select roadside junction boxes, essentially anywhere a steady source of electricity could be found.

  This meant that when the system was fully implemented, Uncle Sam could, without using satellites, track a particular vehicle in real time across the United States.

  I jammed the blade under the upraised portion and cut. A few seconds later, the tag came free, dangling a series of wires.

  “First thing tomorrow.” I tossed it in the gutter. “We stop at an auto parts store and get a new battery.”

  “They’ll eventually tie the new one to us, won’t they?” Piper packed up our tools.

  “Yeah, but it will slow them down a lot.”

  We got back in the front seat. I took out my cell phone, turned it off, and removed the SIM card from the back.

  “There’s disposables at the apartment,” Piper said.

  We kept a supply of untrackable pay-as-you-go phones handy.

  “We’re not going back to the apartment.”

  “I’ve got some cash there, too.”

  I started the engine but didn’t say anything.

  “I need to go back to the Cheyenne,” she said.

  “We’ll stop at a Target or something.” I pulled out of the parking lot. “Get fresh clothes.”

  “But the children, the ones I sponsor.” She stared straight ahead, voice stiff. “The pictures. Their information.”

  “They’re just photographs.” I spoke in a gentle tone. “You’ve never actually met any of them.”

  She was silent for a few moments. Then she nodded. “You’re right.”

  “You can get more pictures.”

  “I know.”

  I stopped at a light, blinked several times, trying to wake up. The fatigue and extreme stress of the day was catching up with me.

  “There’s a picture of my mother at the apartment, too,” she said.

  I turned and stared.

  “It’s the only thing of hers I’ve got.”

  “You never told me.”

  “Lots I haven’t told you.” She buckled her belt. “I dream about her sometimes.”

  From sleeping in the same bed together, I’d ascertained Piper’s dreams to be much like mine, cyclones of unexpressed emotion. Fear and rage. Tears.

  “I dream of going to the park with her in the springtime for a picnic,” she said. “There’s tulips everywhere. I’m, oh, maybe a year and a half or two.”

  “But she gave you up at birth, right?”

  “That’s what they told me.” She sighed. “I wonder sometimes though.”

  “You should have the picture of your mother,” I said.

  A police car, lights and sirens blazing, sped through the intersection on the cross street. We both flinched.

  “Seems so real, that picnic,” Piper said. “The flowers. The toys—there were tons of dolls and stuff. And my mother, I remember she made goose-liver sandwiches.”

  “Goose liver?”

  “With Grey Poupon mustard.” Piper smiled. “I can still taste them.”

  “We’ll get the picture. Not sure how, but we’ll do it.”

  “After that, my next memory is nothing but gray.” She shook her head. “The orphanage. All I had was this one doll that I remembered from the picnic.”

  The light changed. I accelerated away from the intersection and downtown Dallas.

  “But this girl in the bunk across the room took it. And I never saw it again.”

  “The picture of your mother,” I said. “Where did that come from?”


  “My foster family when I was ten. They were actually nice people, not in it for the money from the state.” She shuddered a little. “They found it in the file and gave it to me.”

  I turned a corner, drove past the farmers market, and accelerated onto the freeway.

  “Where we gonna stay tonight?” She shifted in her seat, relaxing a little. Her tone of voice and mood shifted as well.

  We both subscribed to the same theory: The past was a dangerous place to visit; don’t go too often.

  I told her what our best option was—one the northern suburbs, maybe Plano. Away from the Dallas police and the inner city where the cartels operated their wholesale businesses. Away from Sinclair.

  “Tomorrow, early, we start looking,” I said. “If you can get in without being spotted, we’ll stop at the Cheyenne too.”

  “What’s gonna happen to us?” She stared out the window as the city passed by.

  “We’ll find the witness, this Eva Ramirez person.” I spoke the words with a conviction that I didn’t really feel. “Then we turn her over to Phil DeGroot and get clear on the two dead guys. Maybe collect the reward.”

  Also on my to-do list: dispose of the scanner I’d hidden on my father’s property and find out why a corrupt ex-cop like Sinclair was so interested in the missing witness. Ditto on the cokehead DEA agent, McCluskey. Maybe, if I could learn why the two men were so intent on finding her, we could neutralize the both of them. I tried not to think about my father and his biopsy. His need for cash.

  “You are so dense.” She shook her head. “I meant us-us.”

  “Oh, you and me? That us?” I pulled onto the freeway on the south side of downtown. “You and me will run away and live happily every after in a cottage with a white picket fence.”

  “Smart-ass.”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “I want you to say everything will be all right.”

  I reached across the console and grasped her hand but didn’t speak.

  “I’ve never been in this deep before,” she said. “And I’m scared.”

  I drove north and tried to think of something comforting to say.