Texas Sicario (Arlo Baines Book 2) Page 8

  “Next thing I know, Austin calls and tells me I’m off the task force.”

  I digested that bit of information for a moment and then told him about the conversation with Sandoval’s widow. I also told him about the two men in the backyard with the older son and the SUV with Mexican plates.

  “That’s not good,” he said. “Management’s in town.”

  I didn’t say anything. My thoughts were a jumble, my brain trying to come to terms with the kind of people who would use a child as a hit man.

  “Who’s Miguel?” Throckmorton pulled the picture of the young woman off the plastic by the speedometer, dusted it again.

  “What?”

  “Earlier. You said, ‘Miguel. Did you know?’”

  “Never mind. It’s not important.”

  He returned the picture to its place and gave me a quizzical look. Then he pulled back on to the street.

  “How’d you know where I’d be?” I asked.

  “After I got reamed out by the DOJ guy, I followed him to a strip club. He met up with your pal Fito in the parking lot. Followed Fito here.”

  He asked me where my ride was, and I told him. He popped the strap on his holster and then drove down Alejandro Sandoval’s street.

  The Toyota was gone, as was the vehicle with the Mexican license plates. My pickup was in the same spot, appearing intact.

  I got out, peered underneath, saw nothing amiss.

  Throckmorton rolled down his window. “Maybe we should take a pass on this.”

  “Who’s in the picture?” I pointed to the dash.

  “Nobody you need to worry about.”

  Curious answer. I didn’t say anything.

  “Maybe we should just let this play out however it’s going to play out,” he said.

  “Maybe not.”

  He stared off in the distance. Then he nodded. “OK. I’ll be in touch.”

  I drove to the Value Rite Inn, making good time in the middle of the afternoon.

  My clothes were soaked with sweat.

  I had come close to killing Fito, a by-product of the anger that appeared out of nowhere, a red-hot inferno in the middle of my skull.

  The idea that my rage was that powerful terrified me, made me wonder what I had become. Even worse, what would I become?

  Alone in my room, I stuck a chair under the door handle and took a shower, leaving the Glock sitting on the bathroom countertop.

  Hot water, lots of soap, like I was trying to wash away the filth of the city. After a few minutes, I turned the tap to cold and stood under the spray until my teeth chattered.

  I dried off and got dressed, a dark-gray T-shirt, jeans, and Nikes, the Glock in my waistband.

  Then I called Kiki to check on everybody. Javier was in his office doing paperwork, she told me, and Miguel was still at the movies with Torres. If it was OK, she’d like to take Miguel home for a sleepover with her kids. They would have a great time, she promised.

  I didn’t speak, wondering what the child-rearing books said about playdates for prepubescent assassins. Was Fito even telling the truth about Miguel?

  “Arlo, are you still there?” she asked.

  I told her that was fine, and we hung up. Then I called a couple of police friends, men who worked security at the Aztec Bazaar on the weekends. I asked if they could start early, like now, describing Fito and telling them that he’d been making threats against Javier and myself.

  I asked the first one to position himself in the office, where Miguel would end up after the movie, the other to be out front and visible. I didn’t think Fito was desperate enough to try anything in the middle of the day at a crowded place like the Aztec Bazaar, but it wouldn’t hurt to have some more help. They were both off duty and agreed to head over in a few minutes.

  I sat on the bed, trying to figure out my next move.

  Despite appearing to be the work of a professional, the two murders were essentially street crimes. That meant the best source of information might be found on the streets.

  I headed to my truck. Twenty minutes later, I drove through the parking lot of the Aztec Bazaar without stopping. The lot was about 90 percent full. Javier’s pickup was in its usual place, next to my spot. One of my cop friends stood by the front door in full uniform. He waved as I went by.

  Satisfied that everything was as safe as it could be, I left the parking lot.

  This section of town had a significant homeless population, most of whom congregated behind a small strip center a couple of blocks away.

  I drove to the strip center, parking in front of a convenience store at the end of the building. Inside the store, I bought a twelve pack of Old Milwaukee.

  Ross was a good detective, and I knew that he would have tried to interview the homeless in the area, a group notoriously reluctant to talk to the police.

  I wasn’t a cop, not anymore at least, so I figured I might have a better chance of getting something useful. They knew me, sort of. I was the guy who let people sit under the canopy at the back of the bazaar when it rained. I bought food, too, when someone looked like they needed a hot meal, and I’d driven a couple of folks to the county hospital.

  There was a small encampment on the vacant lot directly behind the convenience store. The lot was partially wooded. A couple of old storage sheds sat on the back corner. Scattered about elsewhere were a half dozen cardboard shanties.

  I ambled down the alley, the beer under one arm.

  Several men sat on milk cartons in the shade, smoking, drinking from cans hidden in paper bags.

  One of them, a guy in his thirties wearing a filthy Dallas Cowboys sweatshirt and a porkpie hat, whistled when I got close, a warning to everybody else.

  “It’s all good.” I held up the Old Milwaukee. “Not looking to jam anybody up.”

  Porkpie Hat eyed me while his two friends smoked. “What’s your business here?” he asked. “We’re not fond of tourists.”

  I put the beer on the ground a few feet in front of him. “You in charge?”

  He didn’t answer. One of his buddies leaned close and whispered in his ear.

  “You’re the guy from up the street,” Porkpie Hat said. “The bazaar.”

  “That’s right. My name is Arlo.”

  “What do you want, Arlo?” He reached for the twelve pack, pulled it close.

  “There’ve been two murders in the last two days within a few blocks of here,” I said. “If any of your people saw anything, I’d like to talk to them.”

  “My people?”

  “You’re in charge, aren’t you?”

  Most groups of homeless had an informal structure—usually a mayor to provide a semblance of leadership and a person called the sheriff to keep the peace. I had no idea if the guy in the porkpie hat was the head honcho or not, but it never hurt to stroke an ego.

  “‘My people’ implies ownership,” he said. “Everyone here is free. We take care of our own, each according to their needs and abilities. Untethered by the corporate stranglehold.”

  Great, I thought. A hobo political scientist.

  “Look, Trotsky, I’d love to dialogue with you about empowering the working class, but I’ve got a little bit of a tick-tock situation.”

  “That’s your paradigm, Arlo. Here, time is meaningless.”

  His two buddies nodded.

  I pulled my wallet from my pocket and slid out a fifty-dollar bill. “Here’s another constraint for you. Ulysses S. Grant. Is he meaningless, too?”

  No answer. The three men stared at the money.

  “I got another one just like it if you find me somebody who saw what happened.”

  A dining room table sat in a clearing in the middle of the vacant lot, fairly nice and in good condition, like something from a weekend sale at Nebraska Furniture Mart. Lawn chairs surrounded the table. Several men stood on the fringes of the clearing, watching me.

  Porkpie Hat told me to sit at the head of the table. He disappeared behind a tree and returned a moment later with
a woman in her sixties wearing a rumpled business suit. The person Miguel was afraid of.

  “This is Joanie.” He pulled out a seat for her to my right. “Joanie, this is Arlo.”

  She hesitated and then sat, glancing around nervously.

  I smiled. “Hi, nice to meet you.”

  She licked her lips and looked to the left and then to the right, then up, then to either side again, anywhere but directly at me.

  Porkpie Hat said, “Joanie has been blessed with a peculiar sense of enlightenment, one that has been poisoned by the pharmaceutical industry. Her answers may be hard to decipher.”

  “But she saw what happened?”

  “She was nearby.” He held out his hand.

  I gave him another fifty and turned to the woman.

  “Do you remember me?” I asked. “We’ve seen each other before.”

  “The boy,” she said. “I remember him.”

  “Miguel.”

  “The boy named Miguel.” She nodded. “He’s not what he seems.”

  The scent wafting off her was overpowering—sour onions and cheap perfume, wood smoke.

  “What do you mean, Joanie?”

  “He speaks to me sometimes. When you’re not around.”

  I wondered if this was her peculiar enlightenment talking. Miguel was never away from adult supervision—Javier or me or someone else I trusted.

  “At night,” she said. “When I’m trying to sleep. He says terrible things to me.”

  “I’ll ask him to stop.”

  “Do you want to talk about the car?” she said.

  “What car?”

  She frowned, lips pursed.

  “Did you see a car somewhere?” I asked.

  She shook her head, eyes staring down. “Never mind.”

  “We can talk about the car if you want.”

  Silence.

  “OK,” I said. “Let’s talk about what’s been going on in the neighborhood.”

  She closed her eyes, rocked in the chair.

  “Have you heard about the murders?”

  “Do you know who I am?” She opened her eyes. “Surely you do.”

  I shook my head.

  “I am the chief comptroller for the Madison Apparel Group. I have an important meeting in a little while.”

  “I’ll try not to keep you too long.”

  She crossed her arms. “Don’t tell the boy about me. Please.”

  “Don’t worry. That’s our secret.” I paused. “The two murders. The tire store and Mariscos. Do you know anything about either?”

  “The man at the restaurant. He’s nice.”

  “Was. He’s dead.”

  She frowned. “He gives me food sometimes.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “My meeting. I need to go.”

  “We’ll be done in just a minute,” I said. “Were you anywhere near the restaurant today?”

  A long moment passed. She nodded.

  “Before the police came?”

  She nodded again.

  “What did you see?”

  “He gave me food.” She wiped her eyes. “Why would someone hurt him?”

  “I don’t know, Joanie. There’s a lot of bad people in the world.” I wondered if this was going to pan out.

  A reliable witness she was not. She clearly suffered from one or more mental illnesses, untreated of course, schizophrenia seeming to be at the top of the list.

  She stood, agitated, and looked across the clearing. “I am trying to tell him.”

  I followed her gaze. She appeared to be talking to an old, doorless refrigerator.

  She closed her eyes, pressed her hands against her ears. “Please. Stop yelling.”

  “It’s OK, Joanie. Nobody’s yelling.”

  She opened her eyes, stared at my face. “Why don’t you believe me?”

  “Believe what?”

  “The car.” She slapped the table. “The car the car the car.”

  The second time that topic had come up.

  I kept my voice low and even. “What about the car?”

  “The car killed the man who gave me food.”

  I took a deep breath and tried to keep my expression blank. Maybe the hundred dollars and the beer had not been a waste after all.

  “What car, Joanie? Think real hard and try to remember everything you can about the vehicle you saw.”

  “You know what car.” Her tone became lighthearted, almost silly. She waved a hand at me like we were playing a game.

  “Sorry, I don’t think I do.”

  She slapped the tabletop again. “The-car-the-car-the-car-the-car-the-car-the-car.”

  Porkpie Hat stepped forward, but I motioned for him to stop.

  “Slow down, Joanie. Take your time. Tell me about this car.”

  “Miguel’s car,” she said. “The boy who talks to me when I’m asleep. He was in the car.”

  - CHAPTER SIXTEEN -

  A jolt of electricity shot down my spine, circled my belly.

  I jumped up, accidentally knocked over the chair. “Miguel was in the car?”

  Joanie whimpered, held a hand in front of her face like she was about to be hit.

  Porkpie Hat touched her shoulder, tried to be soothing. He shot me a look that said—and I’m paraphrasing here—Are you happy now, you capitalist swine?

  I willed myself to stay calm, to concentrate on the facts, which were fairly straightforward:

  One: Miguel couldn’t drive.

  Two: Even if he could, he didn’t have access to a gun.

  Three: Joanie was batshit crazy.

  On the other side of the ledger was the fact that Miguel had apparently been forced to murder people for a short period, a data point that my mind refused to process in relation to what I had just learned.

  “The car the car the car.” She clenched her hands into fists, shoulders hunched, one side of her face twitching.

  “The car.” I finally understood. “With Miguel. The one he liked so much.”

  She nodded.

  About a month ago, someone had abandoned an old Honda in the parking lot of the bazaar, a Prelude from the late nineties. The vehicle was in pristine condition, tricked out like a low-end pimpmobile—curb feelers and chrome wheels, fuzzy dice hanging from the mirror.

  For reasons I would never understand, Miguel had become infatuated with that automobile, sitting behind the wheel, pretending to drive, fiddling with the controls, tapping the horn.

  It was one of the few times he’d acted like a child—happy and carefree, playful—so I’d let him hang out in the Honda for most of the day, at least until Javier had someone haul the vehicle away.

  Joanie must have seen him. No reason she wouldn’t have. Everyone else that day had remarked on how adorable he looked behind the wheel.

  I got out my phone, googled “Honda Prelude.” When a picture appeared, I held the screen in front of Joanie.

  “Was the car you saw at the restaurant like this one?”

  She nodded.

  “Did you see who was in the car?”

  She shook her head. “The windows were black.”

  I put away the phone. That was exactly how I would have described the abandoned Honda. Windows tinted so dark that they were likely illegal.

  Could Joanie have seen the same automobile at the murder scene?

  Maybe but not likely. The Honda Prelude’s design was hardly cutting edge, then or now. In this neighborhood, there were any number of small, inexpensive coupes that resembled such a vehicle. That was before you figured in the fact that the only witness was a mentally ill homeless person.

  I continued asking questions, and she continued to answer, sometimes making sense, sometimes not.

  As near as I could tell, at the time of the murder, the vehicle had been between Joanie and the owner of the seafood restaurant, the driver’s side away from her. The victim turned and spoke to whoever was in the automobile. An instant later, he fell to the ground, dead.

  Af
ter about fifteen minutes, Joanie’s replies became less and less comprehensible. Porkpie Hat said, “We’re done here. She’s answered your questions.”

  I thought about protesting but realized it would do no good. I gave the woman one of my cards. “You’ve been a big help. If you need anything, come see me.”

  She took the card, stared at it for a moment. Then she scampered away, disappearing into the tree line.

  Porkpie Hat followed me out to the alley.

  “There’s more money if you find any other witnesses,” I said.

  “I won’t. Nothing good ever happens when we get mixed up in your world.”

  Behind him, a group of men stood in the alley, watching me with blank-bordering-on-hostile expressions on their faces, much like the people in the bar the day before.

  “Thanks for your help.” I headed back to my truck.

  Kiki and her husband lived in northwest Dallas, near Park Lane and Webb Chapel Road, in a tract house built in the early fifties for returning servicemen buying their first home on the GI Bill.

  Like much of Dallas, the area was slowly changing, older white couples selling to young Latino families.

  Kiki’s house was on Gaspar Drive, a tidy, one-story home with freshly painted wood siding and an enormous live oak in the front yard.

  I’d called her after interviewing Joanie, asking if I could drop by and say hi to Miguel. She sounded confused at the request but told me sure, come on by.

  I parked across the street.

  Toys littered the yard—tricycles and bicycles, a skateboard, a half dozen balls of varying sizes and colors.

  A boy a couple of years younger than Miguel answered the door, an Xbox controller in his hand.

  Pandemonium inside the house—beeps and chirps from a video game, a ringing phone, a child crying, another yelling.

  “Your mother here?” I asked.

  He nodded and stepped aside.

  Kiki appeared in the doorway leading to the kitchen, a toddler on her hip.

  “C’mon in,” she said. “Miguel’s in the backyard.”

  Three boys were clustered around the TV in the living room. They were playing a game that involved zombies or werewolves or undead ninjas; it was hard to tell. They barely acknowledged my presence, jabbering with each other and working their controllers.