Texas Sicario (Arlo Baines Book 2) Read online

  “I think you should leave now, Fito. That’ll be best for everybody.”

  He stared at me, any pretense of being friendly gone, his eyes cold and flat like a mackerel on ice. After a few moments, he reached into the breast pocket of his shirt and withdrew a crumpled bill, a twenty. He tossed it on the table and then stood.

  “How is Miguel doing?” he asked. “You gonna send him to school in the fall?”

  That was a sliver of data not available on Google, the existence of the youngster, something Javier and I went to great lengths to keep on the down low.

  “A boy who’s been through what he has, he needs some structure, you know what I’m saying?” Fito smiled.

  My limbs tingled and my mouth got dry as adrenaline shot through my system. To say I was protective of the child was an understatement, like saying the North Pole was kinda chilly at night.

  Without standing, I shot my hand out and grabbed the fleshy part of Fito’s thumb before he could react. I twisted the thumb out, a simple move that caused a lot of pain. The only way to relieve the pressure was to walk forward . . . into the table. If he tried to extricate himself in any other way, I needed only to apply a little more pressure, and he’d be wearing a cast for the next few weeks.

  Fito’s eyes went wide, but he didn’t resist or make a sound.

  “Whatever your play is,” I said, “leave the boy out of it.”

  He stared at me, nostrils flaring with each breath.

  I cranked the thumb a millimeter more, just about to the point where bones would start to break.

  His face turned red, but he didn’t make a sound, lips pressed together tightly.

  “What’s gonna happen next,” I said, “is you’ll walk out of here quietly and not come back. Comprende?”

  He nodded once.

  I let go.

  He jerked his arm away and staggered backward, cradling the injured hand. He stared at me for a long moment, then nodded slowly, like he had made a decision of some importance. Then he turned and sauntered toward the exit at the rear of the building.

  When he was out of sight, Javier dashed over to the table.

  “What happened? Why’d you grab his hand?”

  I didn’t answer. Instead, I went to the counter and asked for a to-go box. A moment later, I returned to the table with a Styrofoam container.

  “Did you scare him off?” Javier asked.

  “For now. But he’ll be back.”

  “What? How do you know?”

  “Because that’s the kind of man he is.” I used a pen to put the empty beer can in the container, careful not to smudge any fingerprints.

  Javier read my face. “Miguel? Is he in danger?”

  I didn’t answer his question because I didn’t want to lie to my friend.

  “Let’s go check on him just to be safe,” I said.

  - CHAPTER SIX -

  I’d left Miguel in the manager’s office, playing a video game, Kiki the receptionist keeping an eye on him.

  They were buddies, Miguel and Kiki. She was in her late twenties and had four children, a couple around his age. A warm, mothering type, quick with a joke, she doted on Miguel, who in turn relished the attention.

  He was pretty self-sufficient, as eleven-year-olds went, and we all took turns caring for him—Javier and his cousins who lived nearby, the people who worked at the bazaar, and myself.

  Javier trotted down the hallway, pushing people out of his way. I followed, the Styrofoam container with Fito’s beer can under one arm.

  Ninety seconds later, Javier burst through the double doors leading to the offices where the people who ran the Aztec Bazaar worked.

  Miguel sat on a sofa in the waiting area, a Game Boy in his hands. Kiki was behind a desk, tapping on a keyboard.

  They both stared at us, eyes wide.

  Javier scooped up Miguel, hugged him tightly.

  The youngster looked at me, eyes full of fear, not understanding what was going on.

  “It’s OK,” I said. “Javier, put the boy down. You’re scaring him.”

  Javier muttered something in Spanish about death and vengeance.

  “Everyone is safe,” I said. “Let him keep playing his game.”

  Kiki stood. “What’s wrong?”

  Javier put the youngster down but kept a hand on his shoulder, obviously not wanting him to get too far away.

  I described Fito. “Miguel, have you or Kiki seen this man?”

  Miguel shook his head.

  I looked at the receptionist. “What about you, Kiki?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “Who is he?”

  Javier cut his eyes my way, obviously undecided as to how much to reveal.

  “A shoplifter,” I said. “He’s probably gone by now.”

  Kiki frowned, obviously wanting additional information.

  “We’re going to take Miguel home,” I said. “Señor Javier will be leaving, too.”

  She looked at me and then at her boss, her expression indicating she didn’t believe that a mere shoplifter could get this reaction.

  I hustled Javier and the boy away from the office.

  Outside, the parking lot was about half-full. It was the middle of the afternoon, and the sun was fierce, the heat like an unseen presence, blanketing everything.

  My pickup was in a reserved space next to Javier’s, under a small carport near the front entrance.

  I hopped in the driver’s seat. Miguel and Javier climbed in on the other side.

  In the distance, on the far side of the parking lot, I could still see several police cars clustered around the spot where Alejandro Sandoval’s body had been found. At least the coroner’s van was gone.

  Miguel looked at me as I cranked the engine. “This man with the silver on his boots.”

  I backed out of the parking spot.

  “Viene por mí?” Is he coming for me? Miguel sounded frightened.

  “I will kill anyone who tries to hurt you.” Javier balled his fists, breath coming in heaves.

  Miguel whimpered, fidgeting in his seat.

  “No one is after you,” I said. “That guy was just a troublemaker we ran off.” I shot a look at Javier. “That’s all.”

  The boy nodded like he wanted to believe me.

  I put the pickup in drive and continued to glare at Javier, trying to send him a telepathic message to lay off the theatrics. We needed to speak in calm, soothing tones and not talk about people getting hurt or killed.

  He finally noticed me, but he had no response. His face was blank, eyes half-closed. Something was brewing inside the man, and I hoped it didn’t cause him to drink more. He needed to be sober, or relatively so, because I wouldn’t be able to help out with Miguel for a while.

  I pulled out of the parking lot, headed north on Westmoreland, past tiny wood-framed houses and strip centers occupied by Mexican grocery stores, pawnshops with signs in Spanish. No one spoke.

  Javier lived close by, a dozen or so blocks away, in a tidy two-bedroom brick house on Edgefield. The neighborhood, just south of the central business district, was different from the area around the Aztec Bazaar. Javier’s block was in the middle of a gentrifying area, an uneasy mix, working-class whites and Latinos giving way to hipsters and gay couples.

  I stopped several times in the middle of various blocks, doubled back twice, checking for a tail, before I turned onto Javier’s street. I paused two houses away for a full minute, just to make sure we were in the clear, then pulled into his driveway, parking in the carport at the rear.

  Javier and his wife had bought the place when they moved to Dallas twenty years ago, before the artisanal coffee shops and organic cheese vendors had started to arrive.

  The yard at one point had obviously been a source of pride, beds full of roses, trumpet vines growing on a trellis, a fountain in the middle of the lawn.

  Now the land, like the house itself, had fallen into disrepair. A stagnant soup of water and leaves filled the fountain. The lawn was pat
chy, the flower beds overgrown with weeds, and the trellis had fallen over.

  I left Javier and Miguel in the truck while I checked the perimeter.

  Nothing was disturbed or out of place. The gate leading to the alley was secure, and the doors and windows of the house were locked.

  I returned to my pickup, told them everything was OK. Miguel scampered to the back stoop and waited for Javier to come and unlock the door. When the boy was out of earshot, I told Javier to wait. He stopped and glared at me.

  “You planning to drink any more today?” I asked.

  He shook his head.

  “Order pizza for dinner. Maybe watch some movies or play checkers. Don’t talk about death or how we’re all in danger or any of that crap.”

  He stared at me sullenly. After a moment, he nodded.

  The neighbor to the north of Javier’s house was a white guy who claimed to be in the advertising business but spent most of his time tinkering with a broken-down VW and watching tennis. If Fito came nosing around, I doubted he’d be much help.

  To the south lived Torres, an ex-marine in his early sixties. Torres ran four miles a day and was built like a seasoned piece of oak, hard and damn near unbreakable. He served as the unofficial mayor of the block, sitting on his front porch, taking note of everyone who passed by.

  I waited until Javier was inside and I heard the deadbolt lock. Then I went next door and found the former marine. I described Fito, asked him to keep an eye on Javier and the boy for the next few hours. He readily agreed.

  After that, I drove to the bazaar, stopping first by the dumpsters at the rear of the tire store.

  The crime scene tape was still in place, but most of the people investigating the murder of Alejandro Sandoval had left, except for Ross and two uniformed officers.

  I got out, the Styrofoam box in one hand. Ross looked like he would rather have his gums scraped than arrange for the beer can to be fingerprinted, but he relented after I said I would owe him a solid. Cops were a lot like mobsters and bankers; they understood the value of having people in their debt.

  I left the Styrofoam container with him and then parked in my spot at the bazaar.

  It was late afternoon, and I wanted to find out what I could about the man who called himself Fito. It wasn’t going to be much fun, but the best way to accomplish that with my limited resources was to talk to people at the mercado, a one-man door-to-door.

  I planned to start with Maria, asking if she knew anything about the man in the silver-toed boots and also why she’d avoided me earlier. I’d been a cop too long to not trust my gut. And right now, my gut was telling me something was very wrong at the Aztec Bazaar.

  - CHAPTER SEVEN -

  Maria had gone for the day, her beauty parlor the only establishment on that aisle that was closed.

  I asked the people on either side if they knew why she had shut down on what was promising to be a busy evening.

  Shrugs for answers—not surprising, since both places were filled with customers and, despite my Spanish skills and close relationship with the owner of the bazaar, I was still a gringo ex-cop.

  I went back to the first place on her aisle, a discount electronics store, and asked if anyone there had seen Fito. They didn’t think so, but did I want an in-dash nav unit for my car?

  And so it went. No one had seen or would admit to seeing the man. An elderly white guy who shined shoes at one of the barbershops remembered seeing someone who sort of looked like Fito, but he couldn’t say what day that had been.

  Two hours later, I had talked to about half the shop owners at the Aztec Bazaar. I had encountered a woman going into labor; a young man proposing to a girl who looked like she was about fifteen; and a curandera, or folk healer, selling her services from a spot by the women’s restroom. What I didn’t encounter was anybody who knew anything about Fito.

  I made sure someone was able to take the pregnant woman to the hospital; gave my best wishes to the newly engaged couple; and ran off the curandera, since she wasn’t leasing a stall. After that, I debated my next move while I waited for Ross to run the man’s fingerprints.

  The best play at this point would have been to review the day’s security footage from all the cameras, a fairly arduous undertaking best accomplished on something other than a cell phone.

  Before climbing that mountain, I decided to visit El Corazón Roto to see if anybody there had seen the man.

  It was a little after six in the evening—prime time for the after-work beer-and-a-shot crowd—when I trudged around the outside of the mercado and stepped into the bar.

  I paused for a moment, letting my eyes adjust to the light, enjoying the feel of cool air rushing over me.

  The place was almost full, forty people or more, all of them brown-skinned men. The jukebox was playing one of my Marty Robbins’s tunes, “Big Iron on His Hip,” a song about an Arizona ranger who kills a notorious outlaw. An odd choice, given the crowd at the moment.

  The bartender waved me over.

  I threaded my way through the drinkers, ignoring the stares, the gringo interloper invading their space. Work long enough where you’re the only white guy, and you get used to that.

  The bartender pointed to the rear. “A man’s asking about you.”

  “Who?”

  He lowered his voice. “Policía.”

  The crowd of working-class Hispanics had given the booth at the far end of the room a wide berth, like a force field was keeping them away.

  As I made my way to the rear, all I could see was a gray Stetson, tilted down, and a gnarled hand holding a bottle of Carta Blanca.

  When I reached the booth, the man wearing the Stetson looked up.

  “Howdy, Arlo. Been a while, hasn’t it?”

  His name was Aloysius Throckmorton, a former colleague of mine at the Texas Rangers.

  He was Anglo, in his late fifties, part of a demographic that viewed dinner at Applebee’s and tickets to the tractor pull as a fine night out with the missus.

  He was also the last person in the solar system I expected to see in El Corazón Roto.

  Unless he was on the job.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I sat across from him. Aloysius Throckmorton and I had a history together—and not a good one, from my point of view.

  “Getting my diversity on.” He took a sip of beer. “We’re all the same, comes down to it, even me and a bunch of taco humpers.”

  He thought of himself as wielding a rapier wit. At times, he might have been considered humorous, except for the racism and the fact that he had the charisma of a prison guard.

  I didn’t say anything, trying to control the anger rising in my gorge.

  “You want a beer or something?” He wore the standard getup of a Ranger—the Stetson, of course; a western-style khaki shirt with enough starch in it to stop a bullet; a five-pointed star pinned to the breast pocket.

  “No.” I shook my head. “I don’t want a beer or something.”

  Age had taken a toll in the year since I’d last seen him. His mustache was grayer, and the flesh under his chin hung a little looser. His complexion was the same, however: skin creased and worn like leather chaps left too long in the sun.

  “Thought you would have retired by now,” I said. “But here you are, all badged up and ready to go.”

  “Got a few bales left in the barn. I’ll be out to pasture soon enough.”

  “I’m there already,” I said. “But you knew that.”

  Two years ago, when I was still a Texas Ranger, a group of crooked, drug-addled police officers had murdered my wife and children. The officers had subsequently been killed, their corruption brought to light, but for a short period of time, I was the main suspect in their deaths.

  The Ranger assigned to investigate me and determine my fitness for continued duty had been Throckmorton.

  He had recommended my termination, despite the fact that I’d been cleared of the murders. I’d quit anyway, two days after burying my wife,
son, and daughter. At that point, there didn’t seem to be any reason to keep working. Or doing much of anything.

  “Couldn’t you scrounge up a security gig in a better part of town?” he asked.

  He knew my job, which meant he’d done some homework, which meant this wasn’t a social call.

  “What do you want, Throckmorton?” I kept my voice even.

  One thing I’d learned over the years—anger was a choice. Right now, I didn’t want the emotion to interfere with the tasks that lay in front of me. So I chose not to dwell on our past interactions.

  “Had a little excitement next door, what I hear.”

  “Ross told you about me, didn’t he?”

  He stared at his drink for a moment and then nodded. From the seat next to him, he picked up the Styrofoam container I had given to Ross earlier in the day, the one containing Fito’s beer can.

  “Tell me about this.” He put the container on the table to one side.

  The jukebox clicked to another Marty Robbins tune, “El Paso,” the long version, a five-minute ode to a Mexican bar girl. Some of the crowd looked around, confused, obviously wondering why there weren’t any songs en español playing. A couple of people turned our way, curiosity giving way to mild irritation.

  Throckmorton smiled. “I just love me some Marty Robbins. Don’t you?”

  When I didn’t reply, he looked away and sighed, surveying the room like he was bored.

  “How well did you know Alejandro Sandoval, the vic at the tire store?” His tone was casual, somebody making conversation about the weather.

  “We were acquaintances. You know anything about what happened to him?”

  No answer. He took a drink of beer.

  “I need that container back.” I held out my hand. “The man whose prints are in there threatened my employer.”

  He patted the Styrofoam. “I’ll run the prints for you.”

  I shook my head. “Give me the box. You’re the last person I want involved.”

  He smiled, a look that was anything but friendly. “I’m not asking, Arlo. I’m telling.”

  I rubbed the bridge of my nose, stifled a yawn. It had been a long day.