Crossing the Line (6 page)

It was hard to believe that such a man could be living free and safe here in Wyoming. In
my
state. A state where I was a drug-enforcement officer.

“You haven’t been able to turn any of his employees, or get an informant in there?” I asked.

“We had one who did get close,” Mary said quietly. “A rookie agent. Tom and I were very involved in supporting him. Hidalgo somehow came to suspect him and had him killed. Two months ago in Mexicali.”

“La corbata?”
I asked.

She nodded.

This, I realized, was the dead FBI agent my brother had alluded to on the road. The one I’d read about in the papers, but hadn’t really thought much about. The necktied agent had probably been their friend. Now he had a proximity to me, too. Now he was real. The second American cop the cartels had dared to touch. It struck me not just as murder, but as a war crime in the so-called War on Drugs. It made me feel both sick and enraged to think of that being done to anyone, especially a cop. And I realized why the FBI wanted Hidalgo so badly that they were willing to put up with my brother.

But I still didn’t know why Roberto was putting up with them.

In a low voice, and for once without rancor, Tom added, “His mother and stepfather were both killed in Newark six weeks ago. A home invasion gone bad, the local police say. A sibling in Los Angeles was found with his tongue on his chest last week. The two sisters are with federal marshals right now, and they didn’t even know their brother was working drugs for us.”

“As for traditional confidential informants, none of the smugglers or dealers we’ve arrested has been willing to talk,” Mary said. “No matter what sort of concessions we offer. We’ve even tried offering dismissal of all charges, a hefty reward, and a place in the Witness Protection Program for them and their entire extended families. Not a single one of them has been willing to take that kind of a gamble.”

This explained all the surveillance equipment I’d helped carry into the lodge. They were going to try another way in.

“I know I’m just supposed to be your local connection,” I said, not mentioning the obvious other job of bird-dogging Roberto while they pump him for information. “But what else can I do? What’s the plan here?”

“Your primary duty will be to set up and monitor various clandestine drops in town,” Mary said. “We understand that some of Hidalgo’s men go in almost every night, and you’ll be better suited for checking the drops than any of us will.”

That was certainly true. Neither Mary, a young Chinese woman, nor a New Jersey asshole/wannabe cowboy like Tom would be likely to pass unnoticed in Potash. The town did have, though, a large and itinerant Hispanic population. Because of my mixed blood and languages, and because I’d spent most of my career working in Wyoming under various covers, I was the logical choice.

“So you
do
have an informant?” I asked, surprised.

Mary looked at me and then away, the way someone does when they’re ashamed of something. She looked to where Roberto was bent over on the bench, his back to us, as he massaged Mungo’s lanky hips.

“We will soon,” she said.

FOUR

I
t was almost four in the morning when Roberto slipped out of the cabin we were sharing. If he hadn’t been betrayed by the rusty hinges on the door, I wouldn’t have heard anything at all. I slept lightly, but I’d somehow missed the hiss of skin writhing out of a sleeping bag and the sound of bare feet padding across the plank floor. My brother moved like a phantom when he wanted to. It was strange, though, that Mungo hadn’t made a sound.

I pushed a button on my watch so that I could read the oversized display.

Three-fifty-eight.

The watch was a Suunto altimeter, and it was nearly twice the size of an ordinary wristwatch. I wore it even though it was big and clunky and couldn’t be worn with a suit when I had to appear in court. It had been a Christmas gift from Mom and Dad nine months ago. Roberto wore one just like it, also scarred with gouges and scratches. That was why I wore mine—a little bit of big-brother worship.

Not for the first time I wondered if my regard for my brother was misplaced. Roberto and the FBI were putting not just him but our whole family in a lot of danger. If Jesús Hidalgo figured out that Roberto was an informant before he could be arrested, we’d all be wearing bull’s-eyes on our backs. Or, more specifically, around our throats. It wouldn’t matter that Mom and Dad were a continent away, retired and living in self-imposed exile in Argentina. Hidalgo’s reach into South America was probably even stronger than it was in the States.

But along with trepidation and fear, what I mainly felt was a thrill. Like when I was high on the rock, running out of gear, and knowing that every move up into the sky would increase the risk of a major fall. I knew too well I wasn’t invincible, and that knowledge usually only increased the sweet rush of adrenaline. But I realized I had to make very sure that this operation didn’t fail like all our government’s previous attempts to indict and arrest the Mexican narco king.

I held the watch low to the floor and pushed the button again. The blue glow was reflected in Mungo’s eyes.

She was awake, had heard my brother getting up, but instead of standing and snuffling a warning, she’d remained immobile, as if conspiring to give Roberto a clean getaway. I brushed the top of her bony skull with my knuckles.

“You little bitch,” I murmured to her. “Who feeds you? Who takes care of your every need?”

Her tail guiltily swept the floor.

I sat up in my bag and looked out the dirty window. The camp was lit by starlight so bright that it cast faint shadows from the buildings and the trees.

He wasn’t out smoking on the porch. He wasn’t anywhere I could see. The wind had died and the crater was as still as a painting. I watched for a while, shivering, thinking maybe a ghost would come gliding out from behind one of the buildings. But nothing moved.

I knew that Tom Cochran was out there somewhere, too. Huddled in camouflage clothing up on the ridge above us and peering through the telescopic lens of the camera he’d lugged up that way. Maybe even listening to the directional microphone I’d watched him unpack in the main cabin.

I didn’t get up to raise an alarm. Where would he go? Back to exile in South America? Back to being hunted? The Feds hadn’t bothered to handcuff him because there was no point in restraints. If he wasn’t going to cooperate fully then he wasn’t any use to them at all. The operation would be over. And these were Feds, after all—they couldn’t care less about the Colorado state escape charges.

I hoped he’d run. But I knew it wasn’t likely. He’d already made up his mind.

For a moment I worried that my brother was out there stalking Tom, up on the ridge. A physical confrontation between one of the Burns brothers and the surly Fed was probably inevitable. But I dismissed that concern, too, since Roberto, for whatever reason, seemed to have taken a pass on earlier opportunities to beat the shit out of Tom. I knew that he wouldn’t seek some kind of payback in the dark. It wasn’t his way. I guessed the chore of straightening out Tom—through charm or violence—would be up to me.

But I needed to be smart about it. I couldn’t blow this operation. For my brother and his deal, for the family’s safety, and also because it was likely to be the biggest case I’d ever work on. It was my chance to use the law to do some real good by ridding the world of Jesús Hidalgo.

And that was my way. That was why I’d become a cop. To enforce the rule of law. Not only the written law, but the laws of any civilized society, too. The laws that allowed people to live together and interact peacefully. Deliberate rudeness was almost as intolerable to me as selling meth to schoolkids. Even the sight of someone intentionally running a red light or cutting off another car had the potential to make the blood roar in my ears. What made them think they were so superior? What made them think they could get away with it?

Yet I could be as bad as any of them.

I’d already broken one rule that night. A breach of security that I’d be furious about if it had been committed by Tom or anyone else.

My transgression was to make a telephone call. Without a monitor, and without Mary’s permission, although I took the precaution of borrowing the encrypted satellite phone from the pile of gear before walking out into the night. Tom and Mary were busy going through papers and studying maps. They didn’t notice me take it and head outside. I wandered up the dirt road toward the gate.

The call had been to Rebecca Hersh, my sometimes fiancée and the mother of my unborn child.

“Anton! How’s the new gig?” Rebecca had asked in a light tone. “This thing with your crazy brother?”

I measured her voice for clues, knowing that she hated my job. And that she felt threatened by my brother. The two combined had not made for the greatest of good-byes when I’d left her loft in Denver two days earlier.

I considered lying, but that was a route I was incapable of taking with her, both practically and morally. She was a reporter and could scent untruths better than most cops. And although I could lie my ass off all day and night when working undercover, to lie to her would be like bringing the world of gangbangers and dealers into her bed.

“Things are a little fucked up,” I admitted. “The Feds are pretty uptight, their strategy is a risky one, and they’re treating me like a head case. But it will work out all right.”

“Risky for who?” The light tone was gone. “Are you safe?”

“Yeah. Of course. I couldn’t be any safer. Mungo’s looking out for me, you know.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously, Rebecca. It’s cool. This is a surveillance job for me. No heavy lifting. But they’re going to be putting Roberto out on the edge.”

“That’s where he likes it, isn’t it?” she asked rhetorically, her tone a little tight now, the way it got on the occasions when my brother’s name came up.

She didn’t ask for more details, knowing that I couldn’t answer. Even if she weren’t a reporter, I still wouldn’t tell her the details. Not because I didn’t trust her, but because just like lying to her, it would be bringing it too close to home.

“How’s our little girl?” I asked.

I imagined putting my head against Rebecca’s warm little belly and listening for the beat of a tiny heart.

“No kicking yet. How come you’re so sure it’s a girl?”

“My mom. When I last talked to her, she’d been working the tarot cards.”

Rebecca laughed. “I dig your mom. She’s the only one in the family with any sense. I can’t imagine how she puts up with you maniacs, your father included.”

“I know she likes you. And that’s saying something. Latino mamas don’t often go for Jewish gringo girls. They don’t want their fine, upstanding sons corrupted by all that big-city liberalness. But she knows you kick my ass, and she’s lived with Dad long enough to know a lot of that’s needed.”

She laughed again. “You’re telling me, Anton. So how’s our big girl? Are you taking care of her?”

I looked around for Mungo and caught a silver flash in the moonlight. She was halfway up one of the slopes that ringed the camp. Her head was buried in a hole large enough to take her up to her shoulders—all I could see was a madly waving tail. Dirt flew out from between her legs.

“She’s doing all right, as long as she doesn’t wake up the badger she’s after. I think she likes being back in Wyoming. She doesn’t keep her tail between her legs all the time the way she does in Denver.”

“Poor thing. She has an awful self-image. She thinks people cross the street because she’s ugly. She doesn’t know it’s because she’s big and beautiful.”

“Just like you.”

“Ha. I weighed myself today. I finally gained a couple of pounds, and I think I’m starting to show. I’ve cut way back on the running.”

“Good. Anyone giving you grief about being an unwed mother?”

“Don’t start, Anton.”

The playfulness had left her voice. A minute or two later we said good-bye.

My proposal had been accepted a couple of months earlier, but was then left hanging. It hadn’t been made in the most auspicious circumstances. I’d gotten down on my knees on top of a ridge high above a forest fire, just minutes after watching the arsonist topple off a cliff to his death. The only witnesses had been Mungo and a naked B-movie actor who’d been trying very hard at the time to cuckold me. As I probably should have expected from such a start to an engagement, no date had yet been set.

Sitting up in my sleeping bag and still looking out the window, I recalled the entire conversation again and tried to gauge what the strain in her voice at the end had meant. Was she reconsidering her acceptance?

Nothing moved out there in the night. What the hell was Roberto doing? Shivering a little, my teeth close to chattering, I finally lay back down and zipped up the bag. I wouldn’t get up and look for him. Maybe he’d managed to smuggle a little treat past the Feds. Maybe he was out there shooting up—howling at the moon, he called it. It was something I didn’t want to see.

I fell back asleep trying very hard not to worry about both my brother and Rebecca.

When I woke up there was a ray of dusty light cutting through the small cabin. Roberto lay directly in its path, his face half hidden by his hair. He’d thrown the upper half of his bag off his chest despite the morning chill. He was breathing heavily, definitely asleep. I watched him for a minute.

He looked more vulnerable than I’d ever remembered seeing him. Muscular and powerful still, but diminished somehow. Maybe from the two years he’d spent caged before his escape—his longest stretch. Maybe from too many years on the literal edge. Or maybe it was just my imagination, sparked by having seen him submit to the Feds. But whatever caused it, it made me sad. The leather cord was tight around his throat like a collar, the turquoise stone looking back at me like a third eye. I examined what I could see of his bronzed, bare skin for a fresh scab and didn’t find one.

Mungo was awake on her blanket below me. Every time I moved, her tail swished two or three times across the floor.

I could smell myself as I sat up in my bag. The sweet scent of yesterday’s sun, wind, and sweat had been turned sour after a night wrapped in clammy down. Mungo leapt to her feet when I reached down and tapped her head. She danced over to the door, her tail wagging furiously now. I shucked the bag, put on a pair of baggy shorts, found a towel, then let her out.

I meant to take a shower in the main cabin’s bathroom. But on the way there the sight of the ribs of sandstone on the crater’s slopes pulled at me the same way the thorny weeds were tugging at my trailing shoelaces. I veered up toward them.

The rock walls lined the hillside in broken, irregular rows. Some of them stood as high as thirty feet and were as long as one hundred, and many of them were vertical or overhanging. Between them were slopes of cactus, yellow sage, red dirt, and short, twisted junipers. There was also a trail of fresh-turned dirt winding up to a sheltered notch in the ridge. It was where Tom had lugged his surveillance gear last night. I decided to stay away from there—it was too nice a morning to risk running into that asshole. Instead I chose a rock on the southwest side of the crater where the early light was turning the sandstone into gold.

For a half hour I traversed the rock. Back and forth, finding small holds for my fingertips and the inside edges of my big toes. I stayed low, not venturing more than ten or fifteen feet off the deck. Going above that would be highballing, entering what’s called the coffin zone, where a fall is likely to be fatal. It’s an area I thought of as my brother’s province, not mine.

I worked up a new sweat, feeling the familiar burn of lactic acid in my forearms, shoulders, and calves, feeling the muscles tear so that they could grow back stronger, and working out the sadness that had come over me as I watched my brother sleep. The air was very still—rare for Wyoming—and it was cold on my bare skin when I moved, then warm when I stopped.

“What are you doing?”

I looked down and behind me. Mary Chang was standing at the base of the wall, blowing on a cup of coffee she held with both hands.

“Just bouldering around,” I told her.

“Why?”

“Training. You’ve got to do it to stay strong.” I paused to look at her again over my shoulder. “And when you’re feeling pissed off, it lets you work out your frustration.”

Then I moved sideways, swinging lightly on the tiny holds, diagonaling down low enough so that I could drop to the ground without landing on a cactus or a sharp stone with my bare feet. I was embarrassed to be caught half-naked and spread-eagled on the rock. I was also annoyed.

“Do you do this every day?” she asked.

“I try to do something.”

“It looks like a good way to break an ankle.”

“Better than getting fed to a guy like Jesús Hidalgo.”

On the ground now, the air immediately began chilling the sweat on my skin. I touched my hands together and bent them back in a praying motion to relieve the acid buildup while I glared at her.

She looked warm in a red fleece jacket. But like me she was wearing shorts, knowing what the day would be like later. Her legs were thin and smooth as butter. She’d obviously just showered, as her wet hair was pulled back into a ponytail. It steamed a little, like the coffee cup she held an inch from her lips as she blew on it. She looked no more than sixteen.