Texas Sicario (Arlo Baines Book 2) Read online

  “That could work.” He rubbed his chin.

  “But that’s back to square one. Because I still don’t know who the killer is.”

  We returned to silence, staring at the ground.

  He looked up. “Did you know that Quinn Vega’s husband represented several people affiliated with the Vaqueros?”

  “So I heard.” I remembered the predicament Vega had found himself in with Pax Larson-Ibarra.

  At his core, Frank Vega was an angry man, one with money and access to firearms. And the legal skills to stay under the radar of the police.

  “Wouldn’t it be funny if he were the killer?” Throckmorton chuckled.

  Before I did anything else, I wanted to talk to Javier. He knew Frank Vega better than I did. He’d be able to give me a read on the man. Plus, I had the niggling feeling in the back of my mind that Javier hadn’t been completely forthright with me about what he knew regarding the murders.

  According to Throckmorton, he’d quit drinking. After waking up the next morning to a horde of homicide investigators tramping around the bazaar and no memory of the night before, Javier had decided enough was enough—rock bottom and all that.

  So he’d checked in to a rehab facility, a thirty-day inpatient program in Fort Worth, leaving the running of the business to his CPA and a trusted cousin.

  Throckmorton got into his Suburban and sped off down the road, disturbing a pair of buzzards feeding on a mangled pile of roadkill. If I were superstitious, I’d say that was some kind of omen. But I wasn’t, so I joined Miguel in the old pickup, and together we headed east to Fort Worth.

  An hour and a half later, I parked in a visitor slot in front of a one-story redbrick building a few blocks south of downtown, near the hospital district.

  The place looked like a moderately successful law office, fresh paint on the trim, well-kept landscaping, nice cars in the parking area.

  A sign on the glass entry doors read, THE ROSEDALE FACILITY.

  Miguel and I stepped inside.

  The entryway was decorated in soft pastels like the lobby of a Ramada Inn. A woman in her forties with spiky blonde hair sat at a desk facing the doors.

  “Hi.” I smiled, tried to look friendly.

  No response.

  “My name is Arlo Baines. I’d like to visit Javier Morales.”

  One of her eyebrows rose a quarter of an inch.

  She opened a drawer, pulled out a single sheet of paper. She ran her finger down a list of some sort, lips pursed.

  “You’re his emergency contact.” She frowned. “But your phone number doesn’t work anymore.”

  “Switched carriers. I needed unlimited data.”

  She returned the paper to the drawer. “He’s gone. I’m sorry.”

  Miguel stiffened beside me.

  “Gone?” I said. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “He’s left us.”

  I didn’t speak, trying to get my head around what she was saying.

  “He checked out early.” She paused. “Against doctors’ recommendation.”

  Miguel and I glanced at each other.

  I turned my attention back to the woman. “When was this?”

  “A little over a week ago.”

  I swore.

  “Are you OK?” she asked.

  “I’m fine. Just surprised.”

  “People who seek help here have an endless capacity to surprise.” She opened another drawer, pulled out a packet of papers. “Would you like a brochure about our program?”

  I shook my head and headed toward the door.

  Outside in the pickup, I turned on the AC while Miguel buckled his seat belt.

  “We have to go back to Dallas,” I said.

  He stared outside.

  “Tenemos que ir a Dallas.” I repeated myself in Spanish.

  After a moment, he nodded.

  “I know that you don’t want to go there again. But we have to finish this.”

  “Sí.” He spoke for the first time that day. “Finish it.”

  - CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE -

  I drove straight to Javier’s house on Edgefield, circling the block a couple of times, looking for anything out of the ordinary.

  It was early afternoon, a Tuesday. Everything appeared normal. The temperature was in the midnineties, so not many people outside. Only a few cars were on the street, all unoccupied.

  I parked in Javier’s driveway.

  The grass was overgrown, the shades drawn. No different from any other day.

  The neighbor to the north was working on a VW in his driveway. After a moment, he went inside, so Miguel and I exited the pickup.

  I tried Javier’s front door. Locked. We walked around to the back, checked that door. The same. I headed for Torres’s place to the south, Miguel following me.

  The old marine was lounging on a glider on the front porch, deep in the shadows, sipping from a can of Schlitz.

  I stopped at the bottom of the steps and greeted him. He told us to come up and sit a spell.

  Miguel and I climbed our way to the porch.

  “Cómo estás, Miguel?” He smiled at the youngster. “You want to go see a movie?”

  No answer.

  The smile slowly disappeared. He looked at me, head cocked.

  “Probably best that you don’t mention we’re in town,” I said.

  He nodded. “The boy, is he all right?”

  “All things considered, yeah. Any idea where Javier is?”

  He put his beer on the porch and stood. “You know that joint on Singleton next to the thrift shop?”

  “Rudy’s?”

  “That’s the one. He hangs out there, from what I hear.”

  I sighed, not liking the fact that my friend was spending time at an establishment that sold liquor.

  Especially one like Rudy’s, which was rough even by the standards of shithole bars in bad parts of town, the kind of place where the cockroaches had rap sheets.

  Last year, a loan shark named Kel stabbed his mother at the bar and shoved her under the pool table, letting her bleed out. The pool players, one of whom was Kel’s sister, never stopped their game. Just your typical Monday morning at Rudy’s.

  Torres took a step toward Miguel, smiling again. “You want to hang out for a while? Watch some TV?”

  Miguel moved backward, wary.

  Torres looked at me, his expression puzzled, bordering on worried.

  “Thanks for all you’ve done,” I said.

  “I’m here if you need me.”

  I nodded, not wanting to say that we wouldn’t be seeing him again.

  Rudy’s occupied a windowless cinder block building, the exterior walls covered in black paint that was fading to gray.

  I parked between Javier’s pickup and a thirty-year-old Pontiac with a bumper sticker that read GET THE US OUT OF THE UNITED NATIONS!

  The Pontiac’s engine was running, the windows up, a guy with a bushy white beard behind the wheel, asleep or passed out.

  Miguel got out of the pickup before I could tell him not to.

  I met him at the entrance. “Stay close, OK?”

  He nodded, and I pushed open the door.

  The interior of Rudy’s smelled like bleach and beer and stale marijuana smoke. An old Marvin Gaye song, “Sexual Healing,” played on the jukebox.

  The bar itself sat in the back of the room and looked like it was made from painted plywood. Naugahyde booths, duct-taped to repair the cracks, lined the sidewalls, a pool table in the middle of the concrete floor.

  In a booth on the right, a heavyset woman in her forties was making out with a guy half her age and weight. The woman wore a halter top and denim cutoffs. The guy had on a sailor suit but no shoes or socks.

  The bartender was slicing lemons, using a long-bladed knife with a red grip and the surface of the bar as a cutting board. He stopped what he was doing and watched as Miguel and I entered the room.

  It didn’t take long to spot Javier, the only other person
in the place.

  He was in a booth on the other side of the pool table from the odd couple. He sat facing the door, reading a paperback, a coffee mug in front of him. He looked good, better than I’d ever seen him. His face was no longer puffy, skin tone a healthy pink instead of the gray pallor I’d grown used to.

  I approached him. Miguel skipped ahead of me.

  Javier closed the book. “I wondered when you two would be back.”

  Miguel smiled, slid next to him on the booth.

  He hugged the boy, ruffled his hair. Miguel wrapped his arms around Javier’s neck, a look of contentment on his face I hadn’t seen in a long time.

  “What are you doing in this place?” I asked.

  “I come here and read.” He held up the book, a Spanish-language version of a Sidney Sheldon novel. “No one disturbs me here.”

  “You ever thought about a library or a coffee shop?”

  Silence.

  I sat across from him. “We went to Fort Worth first. To visit you.”

  Even to my own ears, the words sounded reproachful.

  “You want me to make amends?” he asked. “That’s one of the steps, you know. To say how sorry you are.”

  I didn’t reply. Unlike his new, healthy appearance, his tone sounded familiar. Angry. Self-righteous. A pity party in the making.

  He tapped the cup. “Coffee only. Satisfied?”

  The jukebox switched songs, something twangy about divorce.

  “We need to talk,” I said.

  He ignored me, turning his attention to Miguel. “Qué tal, mijito? You’ve grown. Hardly recognize you.”

  The youngster smiled. He opened his mouth like he was going to say something but didn’t speak.

  “What?” Javier raised his eyebrows in mock astonishment. “You can’t even say hello to your old friend?”

  No answer.

  Javier looked at me, frowning.

  “He doesn’t talk much anymore,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “How much do you remember from that night?”

  “Very little.” His expression turned wistful. “Mostly the drinks. One after another.”

  I told him about Fito and Pax coming into the bar, how Fito wanted to purchase the entire operation but I cut short the negotiation by breaking his nose.

  “You were in pretty bad shape,” I said. “Quinn helped you leave. I followed a little later.”

  At the mention of someone assisting him, Javier stared into the coffee mug.

  “I was going to get Miguel,” I said. “You’d left him with Maria. But Fito and his buddy were waiting for us.”

  He looked up.

  “They knew where I’d go. They used the front entrance to circle around.”

  He frowned, the look on his face indicating he didn’t understand or didn’t want to.

  “They had the boy.” I spoke the words slowly, carefully.

  He didn’t say anything. He took a sip of coffee, still frowning.

  “Maria was part of it from the beginning,” I said.

  “I didn’t know.” He shook his head. “I left him there so I could get drunk. That’s what I am, a drunk.”

  His voice sounded mechanical and dull, the words delivered by rote.

  He turned his attention to Miguel. “Did they hurt you?”

  Tears welled in the youngster’s eyes. He looked back and forth between us.

  “It’s OK,” I said. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

  He rubbed his nose with one hand, sniffling.

  “What happened after that?” Javier leaned forward. “How did it go down?”

  I wondered how much he should know. He was as close to Miguel as I was. Maybe closer because of their shared heritage. Didn’t that mean he had a right to know what happened? Shouldn’t he know who had killed Fito?

  Some things were better left unsaid.

  “I don’t remember much, either.” I shrugged. “Took a pretty bad rap on the noggin.”

  He stared at my forehead. “But you killed Fito, and that’s what counts.”

  I didn’t correct him.

  He slid one hand under Miguel’s chin, tilting his head up, peering into his eyes.

  “Lo siento,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  The boy smiled.

  “Have you talked to Frank Vega lately?” I asked.

  Javier turned his attention my way, face blank. “Why would I talk to him?”

  “A bunch of people got killed in his building. I figured he might have something to say about that.”

  “I’m going to sell the business,” Javier said. “El Corazón Roto and the mercado. Everything.”

  For some reason, this news didn’t surprise me.

  I was about to ask if he had a buyer in mind, but I saw the bartender pick up a cell phone and move to a spot behind the bar as far away from us as possible.

  He punched in a number and held the phone to his ear, glancing our way while doing a poor job of trying to look like he wasn’t interested in us.

  “Who’s he calling?” I asked.

  Javier turned toward the bar. He spoke without looking back, his voice low. “You should get away from this place. Leave the boy here. I’ll look after him.”

  The sailor had passed out, his face resting on the tabletop. The woman was rummaging through his wallet. She glanced at the bartender, then at us. She stuffed a wad of cash in her halter top and left.

  “They’re looking for you,” Javier said. “The Vaqueros. They want revenge for Fito.”

  A knot formed in my stomach.

  The bartender’s call ended. He looked at our booth, not trying to hide his interest anymore.

  “They ask about the Texas Ranger.” Javier paused. “I’m sorry, Arlo. Truly I am.”

  “For what?”

  “That I got you into this mess.”

  If anybody had gotten me into anything, it was Throckmorton. But that really wasn’t true, either, I realized, finally grasping that I’d walked into this of my own accord.

  “You didn’t force me to do anything.”

  I liked to think that I was trying to protect Miguel, but that was only part of it. I had a need to repair problems that were better left alone, to fix the unfixable.

  Maybe that was the cop in me. Or maybe I was trying to make my own sort of amends to those I had lost.

  When all this started, it would have been so easy just to leave town with the boy. That would have been the smart move. But I chose a different path. And here I was, sitting in a joint where even the rats were armed, worrying about getting killed by an angry drug cartel.

  “I can’t stop thinking about my wife and little girls,” Javier said. “They stay in my dreams. Always there, calling for me.”

  I looked away from the bartender. It was time to leave, but I didn’t move.

  “That day we met. You should have left me alone,” he said.

  I realized that he was talking about how I had stopped him from committing suicide, an action I felt relatively sure wasn’t part of the program at the Rosedale Facility.

  “You need to go back to Fort Worth,” I said. “Or talk to a counselor. Or something.”

  He rubbed the bridge of his nose, brow furrowed.

  “Why is it so easy for you?” he asked. “My family, they’re gone, but they won’t leave me alone. At night I hear their voices. It’s like I can feel their tears.”

  Underneath the anger and the sadness, Javier was jealous of me, which was baffling. Did he think I wasn’t still grieving? Was I better able to hide my pain? To mask the suffering?

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Arlo. I’m going to make this right, I promise.”

  I wanted to ask him what he meant. I had trouble imagining what he could do to help the situation.

  “You need to leave, though,” he said. “Right now.”

  Before I could stand, the bartender approached our table.

  “You want something to drin
k? Coffee or a beer?” He smiled at me awkwardly, trying to look like this wasn’t the first time anyone had ever been offered table service at Rudy’s.

  “How long before they get here?” I asked.

  He frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  “The call you just made. How long before somebody arrives?”

  “I don’t understand.” He enunciated each syllable with great care.

  Acting was not his forte. The look on his face indicated he understood perfectly, eyes wide and innocent.

  “Give me your phone.” I held out my hand. “I want to talk to them.”

  “Look, buddy. I’m just a bartender. I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

  I slid out of the booth and threw him to the ground, cranking his arm up behind his back. If I’d had cuffs, I would have used them. Instead, I reached in his pocket with my free hand and pulled out a cell phone.

  Underneath me, he bucked, trying to free himself.

  “What’s the passcode?” I asked.

  No answer.

  I raised his arm a notch.

  He rattled off a string of numbers, the address of the bar.

  As I entered the digits, the front door opened.

  - CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX -

  There were two of them.

  Latino men in their twenties, tattooed up like the guy who’d been with Fito. Local muscle if I had to guess, members of some gang who had affiliated themselves with the Vaqueros, getting their shot at the big time.

  The bartender started bucking again. “Get him off me. I did what your guy wanted.”

  They flanked out.

  I stuck the phone in my pocket, debating whether to pull my gun.

  Problem was, I didn’t want to shoot anybody. I was tired of death, the shock waves sent out into the larger world from someone’s passing. Even a pair of lowlifes like these two.

  So I rolled off the bartender and lunged for the pool table, grabbing a cue stick.

  The one closest to me reached under his shirt.

  I swung the heavy end of the stick at his skull. He jumped back, and the wood missed his head.

  He backpedaled, pulling a gun from his waistband.

  I took two quick steps forward and jabbed the end of the stick into his face, aiming for his nose.

  I missed again. Squished an eye instead, dead center.