The Contractors Page 22

  We followed him in.

  The place was one open area, maybe a hundred feet by fifty. Except for the stage illumination at the other end, pointing toward the band, it was lit entirely by strands of Christmas lights strung from the rafters over the rows of picnic tables in the middle. A bar and small kitchen area were to one side of the front door.

  Sadie sat at the closest table, a pair of longneck bottles in front of her. Angus was nowhere to be seen.

  Maybe fifteen people total in the place, scattered about, drinking beer, watching the stage. This was undoubtedly the only entertainment in a fifty-mile radius, meaning probably a quarter of the county was here.

  The band was a band in name only. Three slightly out-of-sync players: a lead guitarist-singer, a drummer, and a bass player.

  The song ended and another began. An old Charley Pride tune. “Is Anybody Going to San Antone?”

  The smoking man walked by, carrying a fresh beer.

  I took a step toward him. “Excuse me. Do you know if there’s a service station nearby?”

  He glanced at me, but walked on.

  “You’re so charismatic,” Piper said. “Such a way with people.”

  From a side door, Angus entered, carrying a squat cylinder about a foot and a half in diameter. A hose was attached.

  “He found air,” Piper said.

  He approached us and put the object by my feet.

  “You should fill your tire and leave,” he said.

  “Thanks.” I picked up the tank.

  The front door opened and a cool breeze swept in. The band kept playing. The audience kept listening. But something changed. The air felt charged. The lights seemed brighter, then softer.

  “Guess you missed your chance.” Angus walked to where his daughter was and sat down.

  - CHAPTER FORTY-THREE -

  The hair on my arms tickled.

  Spend enough years in The Life and you develop an extra layer of perception, a radar for the bent.

  It’s like a nose for stuff that can’t be smelled, or a third eye that can spot a hood by the way he holds his head.

  You don’t get it from creepy preacher types who cart around dead bodies in their RV hearses. Or from towns named after a German chupacabra. No, you get the tingle from something else.

  The man was in his late forties. Caucasian, close-cropped gray hair. Starched Wrangler jeans and a denim pearl-button shirt. Lace-up roper boots. And a five-star sheriff’s badge pinned to his breast pocket.

  He wore a hand-tooled leather belt with a matching holster on his left hip. The holster contained a Colt 1911 with silver and turquoise grips. The weapon was carried ready for shooting, cocked and locked, a strip of leather fastened between the frame and hammer.

  I got the feeling that this was a dangerous man, just from the way he shuffled across the floor.

  His eyes missed nothing. They swept the room, taking in the band and small audience. His gaze lingered on Angus, who had moved to the table with his daughter.

  Then he looked at me and Piper and smiled as the light glinted off the badge.

  A girl came from behind the bar and handed him a Coca-Cola in an old-style, returnable bottle. She backed away.

  He took a sip and walked over to where we stood.

  “Gubmint SUV outside.” He looked at the air tank. “With a low tar.”

  His accent was pure Texas drawl, as country as a John Deere tractor. “Tire” became “tar.” “Government” became a sneer, an obscenity of sorts.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Why you in my part of the world?” His gaze drifted to the bulge on my hip where the Glock was hidden by my shirt.

  “You must be the sheriff.” I pulled out my credentials.

  He peered at them. “D. E. A.” He pronounced each letter as a separate word that tasted bad in his mouth.

  “We’re passing through,” I said. “On official business.”

  He nodded but didn’t speak.

  A table of people closest to the front entrance stood, leaving half-full beers, and headed to the door.

  “Go’on. Fill up your tar.” He snapped his fingers at Piper. “Me and your boyfriend is gonna chew the fat.”

  “Of course. You men talk about manly things.” Piper smiled. “I’ll go outside and make myself pretty. Then, I’ll get barefoot and find a kitchen.”

  The sheriff squinted at her but didn’t speak.

  I nodded at her. “I’ll be there in a minute.” She rolled her eyes but picked up the tank and headed to the door.

  The sheriff pointed to a table. “Sit.”

  While he’d been talking, a pair of men had come inside and moved to either side of the door. They were muscular without being large, fit without appearing to be. Untucked work shirts, hands held loosely at their sides.

  Piper walked past them, carrying the tank. They let her go.

  The sheriff motioned again to the table.

  I could leave now and provoke a confrontation. Or, I could take a seat and hope that I’d be able to get out of this developing situation with a minimum of fuss while Piper recharged the flat.

  Leave or go.

  I sat.

  The man slid onto the bench across from me.

  “My name is Sheriff Joe Stepanek.” He took a sip of Coke. “You ever hear of me?”

  “I’m not from around here.”

  “Damn straight on that.” He nodded. “You’re a city boy. I can tell.”

  “Dallas,” I said.

  “My daddy came from down around Waco. Used to own him a strip club on the interstate.”

  Houston belonged to what’s left of the Italian mob, mostly the aging wiseguys based in Louisiana. Dallas was still an independent region controlled by local, mom-and-pop thugs like Milo Miller and Sinclair, despite inroads by the Russians advancing across the country from the East Coast. The border region, everything from the Rio Grande to San Antonio, was controlled by the cartels.

  That left the central portion of Texas, from Waco on west past where we were at the moment, the heartland of the Lone Star State. This area belonged to the Bohunk Mafia, the crooked descendants of the central European immigrants who built the dance halls and breweries. Apparently, one of their own had entered law enforcement.

  “Whatever you got going on,” I said, “we’re not looking to mess with it.”

  His eyes grew hard, the color of steel.

  I flexed my arm without thinking, touched the butt of the Glock with my elbow.

  “Maybe I’ll just arrest you for the hell of it,” Sheriff Stepanek said. “Traveling judge comes around every week or so. You can make bail then.”

  The band stopped playing. A canned music track came on, much quieter. The musicians slid out a back exit, and the few people in the audience began to leave by the front door.

  I glanced at Angus’s table. His daughter was gone. He sat staring at a beer bottle, a wistful look on his face.

  Piper came back in, followed by another man who looked like a clone of the two guys by the door.

  She sat at the other table, across from Angus, facing us. She splayed three fingers on her knee.

  Three more bad guys outside, a total of six. At least. This was going to end in a rough landing no matter what. Might as well increase the airspeed and see if a parachute shook loose.

  “You don’t have any deputies with you,” I said. “That means you’re likely the only crooked cop in these parts.”

  He frowned but didn’t respond.

  “Your county has the population of Chernobyl right after the meltdown,” I said, “But it’s relatively close to the border, as the buzzard flies anyway.”

  Ciudad Acuña was hours from here but the closest crossing point, directly opposite Del Rio on the Rio Grande.

  “You are plumb full of yourself, aren’t you, boy.” He smiled and shook his head.

  I decided to bluff with the scant information Eva had provided. Maybe it wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but I was tired an
d didn’t really care about being smart anymore.

  “But you’re not moving product through here. No contraband.”

  “Keep going.” He flexed his fingers, still smiling. “This story you’re spinning is better than watching TV.”

  “Our intel says you’re running a bed-and-breakfast for cartel shooters. Letting ’em stage out of here before they go and do a job.”

  The smile disappeared from his face.

  I held up a hand. “Before you get your panties in a wad and start making threats, you need to ask yourself one thing.”

  “What’s that?” His voice was low, hoarse.

  “How many more white Tahoes are on their way here right now?”

  Piper stood, looked toward the door.

  The sheriff’s men had started moving our way as another pair entered. These two were Hispanic. They moved like tigers encircling their prey. They flanked out toward the empty stage, trapping us. Nobody paid any attention to the preacher.

  Piper reached under her shirt. I did the same as the sheriff grasped his Colt.

  Then the lights went out. Darkness except for the all-too-faint illumination from exit signs at either end of the hall.

  Feet shuffled. Voices raised in alarm.

  From behind me, near Angus, came the tang of metal rubbing on metal.

  A quarter second of silence.

  Then, a battle started, a climax to a feud that we knew nothing about nor ever would, the end chapter to an unwritten book about a strange man in a hearse and the crooked sheriff of a remote county in West Texas.

  Spits of flame filled the room along with the staccato crackle of two or more heavy-caliber weapons.

  I dropped to the floor, caught a glimpse of Angus on the way down.

  Two side-by-side streams of gunfire illuminated the preacher’s face, a gunpowder strobe light, as the pair of machine guns he’d evidently had under his coat fired on full auto. He was aiming at the men who had flanked out, clearly not in our direction. Yet.

  Piper was by my side on the ground. We both had our guns out but no targets.

  Return fire from the direction of the door. The pop-pop-pop of smaller-caliber weapons, semiautomatic pistols. Bullets whizzed over our heads.

  Shouts. Someone screamed. The air stunk of spilled beer and burnt cordite.

  Then silence.

  I grasped Piper’s hand and pulled her toward the rear of the building and the exit door the band had used.

  “How you doing, Sheriff?” Angus’s voice was loud in the stillness. “You on your way to hell yet?”

  - CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR -

  I ran crouched over, Piper by my side.

  The tables in Schwarzemann Hall were arranged in two rows with a wide central aisle running from the front entrance to the stage at the rear.

  The exit signs provided just enough light to navigate, a couple of candles in an underground cavern.

  Piper and I were halfway to the back of the building when the machine gun fire started again. Quick bursts strafed the other end of the hall.

  Glass behind the bar shattered.

  People yelled. Fired back.

  An alarm of some kind chirped twice and then blared.

  We hit the back door and tumbled into the night.

  The deep gloom of the bar seemed like a beach at high noon compared to the empty blackness behind the dance hall. Trees canopied this part of the structure, blocking the stars and moon.

  I grasped for Piper’s hand, found it, pulled her close. Together, we stumbled away.

  Inside, the gunfire escalated and then stopped.

  We cleared the trees and found ourselves on a gravel road that led upward away from the crossroads where our Tahoe was parked. From where we’d left the witness handcuffed.

  Boulders on either side. A crescent moon and a swath of stars overhead.

  Shouts from the direction of the dance hall. Footsteps headed our way.

  “Let’s go.” I jogged up the road.

  About fifty yards later, a break in the rock appeared on the right, a narrow path leading away.

  “Where do you think it goes?” Piper stopped next to me, breathing heavily.

  “Does it matter?” I looked behind us.

  Two beams of light bounced along the road, shaking like flashlights.

  “Wonder if the sheriff had anything to do with Angus’s wife croaking?” Piper said.

  “Might be a safe bet.” I headed down the path. “Did you fill up the tire?”

  “Yeah.” She moved beside me. “Got that going for us at least.”

  We trotted as fast as possible down the rock-strewn trail, a small gorge between two tree-covered outcroppings of limestone.

  The path ended much too soon, a half minute later, at a narrow plateau dotted with cactus. It was fifty, maybe sixty feet long by about ten feet wide.

  Except for the break for the trail where we’d just been, three of the four sides were all rock. The fourth, facing us, was open, a cliff overlooking the dark country below.

  The wind blew, rustled our clothes, the pitchy smell of evergreen trees in the air.

  “Now what, Batman?” Piper inched to the edge, looked down.

  “Don’t know.” I did the same.

  A steep drop, a hundred feet or more.

  We both turned and looked down the path we’d just come.

  A flashlight bounced in the distance.

  “Who are these people?” She stamped her foot. “And why are they after us?”

  “The town’s a cartel hideout,” I said. “Plus, they probably think we came in with Angus.”

  Schwarzemann was remote enough to be off the DEA radar. No direct route to the border either, so they wouldn’t run drugs through here. Just shooters.

  The light got closer.

  “So that hotel is full of hit men,” she said. “Fifty feet from where we left the witness.”

  “She was okay when you filled the tire?” I squinted at either end of our tiny mesa.

  “I guess so.” Piper took a step closer to the path, pulled her gun. “I didn’t stop and take her pulse though.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Buying. Time.” She aimed her Glock at the light and fired.

  Piper’s Mantra, once again in action: when in doubt, put rounds on target.

  The bullet zinged off several rocks, and the light extinguished.

  From where we stood, the wall of rock on the left side of the mesa appeared higher. It was flush with the edge, forming one continuous piece where it connected with the flat surface of the mountain. The wall to the right was not flush, a slight gap overlooking the darkness below.

  “Let’s try this way.” I headed to the right, roughly toward the area where we’d left the Tahoe.

  A small stand of desert willows grew at the edge of the plateau. By the light of the stars, I could just see a narrow ledge beyond their trunks. In the darkness, the ledge appeared too small to traverse.

  Piper and I stopped at the edge. The end of the line.

  “I don’t want to die in BFE West Texas.” She grasped my arm.

  “I don’t either.” I slid my hand into hers. “We got enough ammo, maybe we can hold them off for a while.”

  “The witness is a hottie.” She pushed my hand away. “If I wasn’t around, do you think you and her would, well, you know.”

  “I have my standards.” I shook my head. “Marked for death by the cartels doesn’t really put me in the mood.”

  “Standards?” She tapped my chest. “You?”

  We didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Nowhere to go, nothing to say.

  Shouts from behind us.

  “Why’d you come on this little jaunt anyway?” I said. “You could have just walked away. Disappeared.”

  I was in it for the money, much-needed cash for my family, an ill father and an obsessive-compulsive half sister. Not to mention that we were both in the hot seat for the two dead men back at the warehouse in Dallas, and Eva Ramirez was the on
ly person who could clear us. Hence the need to get her to Marfa, the best chance of keeping her alive and collecting the bounty.

  But Piper was different. After a lifetime in foster institutions and on the street, she had a knack for disappearing, melting away from prying eyes and official ears. She could have just walked. It would have been tricky, and she would have faced long odds, but it could have been done.

  “Gotta stand for something, Jon.” She slid her gun back in her waistband. “Besides, lots of little children depend on me.”

  I didn’t say anything. A few dollars a month for a kid in Bangladesh did not a mother-child relationship make.

  Piper whispered something I couldn’t catch, her words lost in the wind. She slid by me, pushed through the drooping limbs of the closest tree, and sidestepped onto the outcropping of rock. A few seconds later, she disappeared around a corner.

  I took a deep breath and followed.

  Away from the relative safety of the mesa, the wind seemed to blow harder.

  I shuffled as quickly as possible, one sliding step followed by another, fingers grasping for slits in the rock.

  At ten sidesteps I froze. The ledge had narrowed to a toehold, only a couple of inches wide. The wind blew harder, whipped my sweat-dampened shirt against my torso.

  One hand slipped, and I made the mistake of looking down into the blackness.

  The height became all-encompassing. Images of what lay at the bottom filled my mind. The rocks and boulders. The broken bones they would cause, the flesh that would tear.

  I hyperventilated. Began to shake.

  Noise from the mesa where we’d come. Men talking.

  I slowed my breathing. Eyes closed, centered myself. Kept going. Slower now but steady.

  A couple of minutes later, the ledge grew wider. Another few steps and it became a path several feet across. Then it grew to a broad, flat surface.

  Another few seconds and the flat surface turned between two hills and became wider still.

  I started to jog, and about a minute after that, the track ended at paved asphalt by a Texas highway marker.

  No sounds behind me. Piper was nowhere to be seen.

  The road curved to the right in a direction that felt like where we’d left the truck across from the dance hall.