The Contractors Read online

  Ten minutes later he was done. Considering the economy, it was not a small figure, until you factored in the overhead—the booze and food and payroll required to keep an illegal poker game in operation and safe from robbery.

  Fortunately, he had other, much more lucrative endeavors in place, businesses that paid extremely well. Unfortunately, with more money came more risk.

  The bigger the pot of gold, the more lowlifes out there looking to steal from you. The less obvious hazards were the intangibles, the people who talked too much, the loose ends that needed tidying up for whatever reason.

  He needed Cantrell and his little split-tail Piper to take down the warehouse he’d mentioned. They didn’t need to know why he wanted it done, or what other business needed doing there. Sinclair didn’t want anybody to know about that other business except his closest associate, Tommy.

  As if on cue, Tommy tossed a canvas sack on the table.

  “I could load up a couple of the boys,” he said. “We could take care of the whole thing for you.”

  Sinclair ignored his underling. The first part would be done by Cantrell and Piper. That was the safest way. He shoveled money into the bag.

  Tommy was good at lots of stuff, muscle and loyalty being his two best assets. Unfortunately, extensive brainpower and strategic thinking were not on the list. Tommy, bless his heart, just couldn’t quite grasp that the task needed to be kept a secret from their own people.

  “The boys.” Tommy paused. “You ought to know that they’re talking.”

  Sinclair stopped putting money in the sack. “And exactly what are the boys saying?”

  Tommy didn’t speak. He scratched his mustache, stared at the floor.

  Sinclair’s eyes narrowed. A jolt of anger coursed through his gut. He wasn’t used to people not answering him.

  “The girl at the whorehouse, your cousin’s kid.” Tommy looked up. “The boys are wondering why you didn’t send somebody from our organization to get her back.”

  Sinclair stifled the ire rising in his stomach. He’d tried earlier to explain it all to Tommy but to no avail.

  He didn’t use his own crew because he wanted to have a reason for Jon Cantrell to come to his poker house.

  He needed to look Cantrell in the eye and hear his voice in person when he asked him about the warehouse. He wanted to know for sure that Cantrell was on track to take down the building. Based on what he’d seen tonight, he felt certain Cantrell was going to deliver.

  “How come the boys got time to wonder about stuff like that?” he said. “Receipts’re way down. They ought to be hustling, not thinking about shit that don’t matter to them.”

  “C’mon, boss. You know the economy’s in the dumper.” Tommy shrugged. “People ain’t betting like they used to.”

  “Then people ought to be borrowing more money. Or screwing more of our girls.”

  Tommy looked back at the floor.

  Sinclair was an entrepreneur, a capitalist who made his living by exploiting the weaknesses associated with human desires. One thing decades on the Dallas police force had taught him: the weakness remained constant no matter what the personal cost or economic climate. Receipts were down because his people had gotten lazy.

  “You haven’t told the boys anything, have you?” Sinclair stood.

  Tommy shook his head.

  Sinclair closed the canvas sack. His hand shook slightly. He hoped his employee didn’t notice.

  “There’s a fifty-thousand-dollar bounty,” Tommy said. “They’re gonna hear about that eventually.”

  Tommy was referring to the reward being offered for a certain item that would be at the warehouse. That other business that would follow Cantrell’s business.

  “I’ll get it, um, her before then.” Sinclair stuck the sack under his arm.

  The item was a person, a woman.

  “But what if you don’t?” Tommy said. “What if Cantrell and that little slutbag screw it up?”

  Sinclair didn’t reply. The room was cool, but a trickle of sweat meandered down the small of his back.

  The woman would be in the drug warehouse Jon Cantrell and Piper were set to take down, held captive along with the illegal contents of the building.

  When they found the drugs, they would find the woman.

  The woman was rumored to have turned state’s witness. Unaccountably, she’d been walking around free on bond, an ankle-tracking device her only guard, awaiting arraignment in San Antonio and then transport to West Texas, when she’d disappeared a few days ago.

  The event that had caused Sinclair’s already-high blood pressure to skyrocket. The trial involved one of the bigger and more deadly border cartels, a fact that neither Sinclair nor Tommy could bring themselves to discuss openly. Even hard men who prided themselves on being fearless had things that caused their stomachs to clench and palms to get sweaty.

  Plus there were other forces at work, individuals and agendas that Tommy didn’t know about and wouldn’t begin to understand. Even if the threat of the cartels magically disappeared, Sinclair would still have to find the witness because these others wanted her located as well.

  Sinclair tried to control the tremor in his hands. “Cantrell’s a pro. This is what he does.”

  “We better hope so,” Tommy said. “The US Marshals, they’re gonna put the word out on the street pretty soon.”

  Sinclair groaned, tried to keep his cool.

  “That much money,” Tommy said. “People’ll be tripping over each other looking for her.”

  Sinclair nodded but didn’t say anything.

  A measly fifty K from the Marshals. He’d pay more than that to get the witness. He’d pay every dime to his name; he had no choice. If he didn’t silence the woman, he’d have to pay an even bigger price—his life.

  The woman had been kidnapped by a rival cartel because the information she possessed—smuggling routes, safe house locations, code words—was as valuable to another criminal organization as it was to the US government. She was being moved northward, as far away from the border as possible, bundled up with a shipment of contraband. Sinclair knew all this because it was his business to know, a result of his lucrative but risky sideline endeavor.

  Since the rival cartel used Dallas as a transportation hub (as they all did), moving product up Interstate 35 for distribution outward like spokes on a wheel, she would soon be in Sinclair’s area of operation.

  He could have his people get her, of course, just like they could have gotten his cousin’s kid back from the Korean pimp. He knew the roads that would be taken, the secret locations used. But to get his people involved would be an admission that the woman had some sort of power over Sinclair’s organization, almost as bad as letting her talk in open court.

  Plus, there was the danger that came from trying to intercept the kidnappers, soldiers hired especially by the narcotraffickers for their willingness to kill anything that got in the way. Tangling with a crew of cartel gunmen was like wrestling a live electrical wire in a swimming pool full of sharks.

  His men would be well aware of the danger, as was Tommy, the one person in his operation with whom he’d trusted a portion of the information about the witness.

  Jon Cantrell was aware of the danger, too, but it didn’t matter. Cantrell was paid, by Uncle Sam no less, to do very dangerous things.

  Such as go into a place full of cartel soldiers.

  Sinclair pulled a slip of paper from his pocket. “Here’s the address. When Cantrell hits the place the DPD radios are gonna light up and we’ll know about it.”

  Tommy took the paper with the location, a rough section of the city in West Dallas.

  “You and me, we’ll slide in at that point,” Sinclair said, “and take care of her ourselves. Just the two of us.”

  Sinclair’s plan was simple: Get Cantrell and his little hoebag of a partner, Piper, to take down a shipment of drugs where the rival cartel had hidden the witness. Let them discover the woman. Let them lead her out into t
he open, handcuffed, on the way to a squad car.

  Then Sinclair and Tommy could take care of her, a sniper rifle and a single shot from across the street.

  Just another cartel death, one that couldn’t be tracked back to Sinclair or to the people Tommy didn’t know about, the ones whose phone calls were becoming increasingly insistent in the past few hours. If any blame were to come from the cartel, it would go straight to Jon Cantrell.

  He smiled at the thought, allowed himself to feel hopeful.

  One of his men knocked on the door, told him they were leaving for the night. Another set of guards was outside, ready to escort the boss off the premises.

  “What’s her name?” Tommy said.

  Sinclair walked toward the door. “Who?”

  “The witness.”

  “What do you care?”

  “No reason. The Marshals didn’t release a name, just a description.”

  “Eva Ramirez.” Sinclair aimed his index finger at the wall like a gun. “Bang-bang, Eva. Now, you’re dead.”

  - CHAPTER EIGHT -

  Piper and I had met for the first time on a Sunday afternoon about six months ago, in a bar on the west side of town, near Love Field.

  We’d both been tailing the same guy, a tax cheat and serial adulterer.

  I’d been doing a little scut work for a friend who was a criminal investigator with the IRS; Piper had been working for the wife.

  The Time Out Tavern was a dim, narrow place, part sports bar, part neighborhood dive. Blacked-out windows, neon beer signs, a handful of tables, and a half dozen TVs, all tuned to the Cowboys game. Piper and I noticed each other immediately, of course, the only two in the crowded place not swilling beer and watching football.

  It was obvious to each of us that we were working the same guy. Equally obvious was that we were different from the good-natured crowd of sports fans. The life we led put an edge on you, an extra line or two around the eyes, a face that didn’t smile quite as easily or deeply.

  We nodded to each other from across the room, a professional courtesy. Then, from my vantage point at the bar, I watched the train run off the rails and explode in spectacular glory.

  The guy we were tailing, a toddler and a pregnant wife at home, had been on a date. A buxom blond with rhinestones embedded in her lacquered nails.

  When she went to the restroom, he had turned in his chair and said something to Piper, who was leaning against a pool table behind him. They were out of earshot.

  Piper replied, a few words, an indifferent shrug.

  He downed a shot of peppermint schnapps and spoke again.

  Piper shook her head, frowned.

  The guy, eyes a little unfocused at this point, said something else, a belligerent expression on his face. Then he downed the blond’s shot, reached across the aisle, and squeezed Piper’s left breast.

  What happened next occurred so fast that it might have gone unnoticed except for the fact that the pool cue Piper hit him with broke in two, and the butt end flew across the room, crashing into the largest of the televisions.

  In the ensuing melee, she looked at me, winked, and then kneed the barely standing philanderer in the crotch.

  I was smitten.

  We’d both been flush at the time, lots of hundred dollar bills as well as various badges and official-looking papers, all of which had smoothed things over in a hurry.

  After the ambulance took the injured cheater away, Piper and I stood together outside the bar and watched the traffic on Lovers Lane.

  “Not that I give a flip,” Piper slid on a pair of Ray-Bans, “but did I screw up your gig?”

  “Nah. It’s all good.”

  The guy was in no shape to be traveling overseas as the IRS had feared. Her actions had just given me an unexpected holiday.

  “So what did he say to you?”

  “It involved a menthol cough drop and oral sex.” She looked at me over the tops of her sunglasses. “Want to get a cup of coffee and I’ll tell you more?”

  Piper and I currently shared a high-rise condo near the center of town, uneasy roommates for the past month or so.

  The relationship had burned like a supernova for a few weeks. Our physical connection had been electric, our street personas similar, a couple of smart-mouthed hustlers who cared not one scintilla for what others thought, wreaking havoc across the slimy parts of Dallas.

  But this life of ours didn’t make for good relationships.

  The life didn’t usually admit emotionally balanced people inside either, if the truth were to be told, and we were no exception. Piper was an orphan—literally, raised in a group home and then in a succession of foster situations—and I might as well have been. Not a good combination.

  We had access to the condo for another week. The guy on the lease—a colleague of sorts—had died, a fact that the Dallas County coroner would not know for another six days.

  The Cheyenne was on Mockingbird Lane near the new George W. Bush Library and Museum at Southern Methodist University. The place started out as a Sheraton but fell on hard times, ending up as the world headquarters of an Indian mystic and then a flophouse.

  Since then it had been remodeled into a boutique hotel, marble and sleek wood in the lobby, a brightly lit bar that overlooked a pool and row of cabanas. The rear tower had been converted into condominiums, mostly vacant, which is where we were staying.

  I waved to the security guard, parked in the garage, and at one forty-five on a rainy Monday morning we stumbled into our two-bedroom apartment on the tenth floor, a transient’s home that had all the warmth of an airport Ramada Inn. Neutral colors, bland furniture. Dull prints on the walls.

  Piper went to the fridge and grabbed two Carta Blancas. She opened one for herself, handed me the second bottle.

  “Not tonight.” I put mine on the counter between the kitchen area and dining room.

  “I’m too wired to sleep.” She paced, swigging from the bottle as she went.

  “We’ve got stuff to do tomorrow at early thirty.” I split Sinclair’s money into two equal piles, hers and mine.

  “It’s one beer.” She scooped up her stack. “When’d you go Baptist on me?”

  After a moment, I picked up the bottle, opened it, and took a long drink, pondering my cut.

  Two thousand dollars. Plus the pair of debit cards that had been intended for Katrina victims before being diverted to other uses, each with about five hundred left. A few changes of clothes in my bedroom and a pile of guns, none of which could be sold legally.

  Not much to show for nearly four decades on this earth.

  “A guy put me on the street when I was a little older than that girl tonight. Tried to turn me out.” Piper picked at the label on her bottle. “He was real scum, used to hang around my foster dad.”

  I didn’t say anything. Late night after a job, Piper could take the conversation several different ways. Best to let her chart the course.

  “He carried this .44 derringer in a fanny pack,” she said. “Tiny little thing.”

  “Where was this?” I knew that locations were safe to talk about.

  “He took me to Waco,” she said. “Girls used to work the bars along La Salle Avenue back then.”

  I nodded, waiting for the next part of the story.

  She let the conversation lapse, staring at a spot on the floor. After a few moments, she took a drink and picked up a glossy folder from the coffee table.

  The cover of the folder was a collage of snapshots, professionally executed. The photos were all of kids, toddlers up through elementary school. The children represented a slew of ethnicities, most from various Third World countries with hard-to-pronounce names. They were all devastatingly cute, and, according to the text on the cover, available for “adoption” for the low, low cost of only two dollars per week.

  Some people drank and gambled. Others collected stamps or needlepointed. Piper sponsored kids in foreign lands. Lots of them.

  “So what happened in Waco?” I ri
sked the question that a month ago wouldn’t have been necessary. A month ago we would have talked until the sun came up. But that was a different time, a period before we became frightened of this strange feeling that comes from being emotionally intimate with another human being.

  “We fought. Yadda-yadda.” She drained her beer. “Anyway—long story short—when he kicked me out of the car, I shot his dick off with the .44.”

  I winced as the darkness slid across her face. Her eyes grew cloudy, more to the story than I would ever know or she’d be able to tell.

  “But then I was still on La Salle Avenue.” She shook her head. “And I only had one bullet left.”

  I knew the look well, from the mirror if nowhere else. The singular events of a life on the edge that are best left unremembered, the ones that scar the soul, that no amount of alcohol or therapy will ever take away. I took a long swig of beer anyway.

  Piper slid a photo from the folder. “She’s adorable, isn’t she? Her name is Hasina.”

  I took the picture.

  Hasina did peg pretty high on the precious meter, like, say, an eleven on a scale of ten. She had skin the color of fresh coffee and eyes full of wonder and hope. She appeared to be looking at something beyond the photographer, an expression of amusement on her face.

  The back of the picture said Hasina was twenty-three months old and lived in a Catholic charity ward in Uganda, near the Bokora Wildlife Reserve. She liked dolls and coloring books.

  “She’s cute.” I smiled. “What’d you send her?”

  “The usual. Plus some clothes and an extra payment.” She paused. “Oh, and a bunch of dolls.”

  Piper always sent just a little extra, no matter how tight money was or how ludicrous the claims of the charity seemed to be. That was part of my attraction to her, a warm soul underneath a cold and dangerous exterior.

  I sensed she wanted to talk more about that night in Waco. So I said, “How long were you stuck on La Salle Avenue?”