Southtown (19 page)

23

Just as she heard the shot inside the warehouse, Ana DeLeon’s phone vibrated against her Kevlar vest.

The SWAT team was too well trained to react to gunfire, but they all looked at her to see what was rattling.

She ripped the phone out of her pocket and stared at the display.

Ralph Arguello.

He never called her at work. She imagined the baby in the emergency room, the house burning down—what would it take for him to call like this?

There was nothing she could do. She stuck the phone back in her pocket and took out her sidearm.

The lieutenant in charge waved the team forward. Four guys in body armor moved into the warehouse, DeLeon in the rear, the unwelcome guest.

She wasn’t worried about her own safety, or about capturing Stirman.

SAPD had the whole area ringed with snipers, cordoned off with a double perimeter, two helicopters on standby. If Stirman was inside, he was screwed. The problem was getting Erainya out in one piece.

They secured the first floor in twenty seconds. Stairs led up, exactly where the schematics said they should. The shot had come from above—third or fourth floor, about where long-range mikes had zeroed in on voices.

Sixty-three seconds later, the team was in the fourth-floor corridor. DeLeon was melting from the heat and the Kevlar. She forgot about that when she heard Erainya’s voice—yelling for help.

There was an open doorway at the end of the hall.

Smaller voices—two men in conversation.

“In here!” Erainya yelled. “Anybody?”

It wasn’t the voice of a woman being held at gunpoint. But something felt wrong to DeLeon.

The SWAT lieutenant looked back at the entry team—not a question, but a silent warning. He, too, sensed the wrongness of the situation, the team’s uneasiness. But his look made it clear they would be following the plan.

Their point man moved to the doorway, threw in the flash grenade.

The subsonic boom shook the plaster. Anyone within twenty feet would be knocked senseless.

The team moved in.

Their laser sites made a cluster of red dots on the source of the men’s voices—a portable radio.

Under the window, next to an overturned table, Erainya Manos lay stunned, her legs bound and a duct tape gag half peeled off her mouth. Her hands had been tied behind her, but one of them was partially free. That hand gripped a pistol.

DeLeon scanned the scene with disbelief. Erainya had crawled from the pile of filthy blankets in the corner, managed to kick over the table, where her captor had foolishly left a gun. She’d gotten her fingers free enough to grasp the pistol and fire a shot for help.

That was what had happened. No doubt. But where the hell was Stirman?

The team checked the rest of the floor. The rooms were empty. The lieutenant radioed the situation. Within thirty seconds Major Cooper was inside with a second team. He ordered a sweep of the roof.

By the time Erainya was coherent enough to speak, DeLeon knew there was no one else in the building.

“Left,” Erainya said. “About . . . I don’t remember.”

She was clearly confused, dehydrated, scared out of her wits. She said there had been two men, Will Stirman and a young Latino Stirman had called Pablo. Stirman had left to get ransom money. As soon as he was gone, Pablo disobeyed Stirman’s orders to guard her and fled. She didn’t know where either of them went. Her son was in danger. Stirman wanted to kill him. That’s all she cared about.

“Damn it,” the SWAT lieutenant said.

Major Cooper looked equally miffed. It was all fine and good to rescue a hostage, but with no capture, no blood, DeLeon knew it was a wasted evening for him. They had a whole city to search now. Their energy had been directed the wrong way. Sam Barrera and Tres Navarre . . . she would be having a serious conversation with both of them. She hated private eyes.

Her phone rattled again. She had completely forgotten about Ralph.

She stepped to the window and answered the call.

“I found him,” her husband said.

“What? Is Lucia okay?”

The baby was fine. Ralph told her about Tres’ visit earlier in the day.

She felt the old resentment building—the near-panic that fluttered in her chest whenever Ralph got close to his old life, his old habits.

She controlled her voice. “You went out looking for Stirman?”

“No, just some calls,
mi amor
. But that’s not the thing. I know where they’re supposed to deliver Stirman’s money.”

“We’re already at the warehouse. Stirman isn’t here.”

“You’re a couple of miles off. I called Tres—”

“You gave Navarre information first?”

“Just listen, will you? I called to tell him I’d had no luck tracking Stirman. I got Tres’ machine. I was worried, so I figured what the hell, I’d retrieve his messages, see if he’d gotten anything—”

“You can retrieve Navarre’s messages?”

“How long have I known him, Ana? Shit, yes. I could use his ATM card, if I wanted to.”

She fought back the bite of jealousy. “That doesn’t matter. He played us the message.”

“The second message?”

Time slowed. Ana said, “What second message?”

Ralph laughed appreciatively. “Shit—Tres don’t change. The meet’s at the Art Museum. It’s closed for repairs but Barrera runs security. He’s got the keys. And Ana?”

She was already moving, waving frantically at the SWAT lieutenant. “Yeah?”

“Try not to shoot Tres, okay? He can’t help himself.”

24

Somehow, the gun found its way into my hand.

It may have been the one smashed out of Barrera’s grip, or the one taken from the security guard’s holster. Maybe Barrera had hidden it at the bottom of the black duffel bag.

I figured there was some inverse property to the old statistic—carry a gun, and you are the most likely one to be shot with it. Perhaps if you didn’t carry a gun, you were likely to find one you could use to shoot someone else.

At any rate, the old-fashioned .45 service revolver was lying there on the carpet. I scooped it up and ran into the gloom of the East Tower.

My ears were ringing. I was pretty sure the left side of my face was bleeding. Two blurry sets of steps kaleidoscoped in front of me, then two bathroom doors, then I was inside the men’s room, staring at a bloody handprint on the stall door, but no Jem.

I ran back into the gallery. An alarm went off—bells in the distance; the floor lights dimming red.

I wondered what kind of stupid alarm system sounds only when you try to escape the bathroom. Then I noticed the open glass doors leading to the rooftop, the stenciled warning:
EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY. ALARM WILL SOUND.

I stepped outside, sinking to a crouch. The rooftop space was L-shaped—a railed patio with a walkway that ran along the back side of the tower. Rain made the tar shingles soft under my feet.

I crept around the corner and could just make out Jem’s shape toward the end of the walkway.

His back was to me. He stood frozen, looking at something—perhaps Sam Barrera’s body below.

As quietly as I could, I called, “Jem.”

No reply.

Stirman must have missed him. Stirman had given up when he heard the alarms. The police cars would be heading this way. It couldn’t take them long.

“Jem,” I said. “Come on—I’ll get you out of here.”

I stepped closer and froze.

Jem wasn’t staring over the edge. He was staring at Will Stirman, who was crouching in front of him at the edge of the walkway.

He was telling Jem something, pointing his gun at the boy’s feet. I could’ve sworn he was giving Jem a lecture.

Stirman saw me. He rose, calmly. We leveled our guns at each other.

I could hear police cars now. Tires slashing through water, turning onto Jones. They were running without sirens, but I knew they were cops. There is something unmistakable about the sound of police engines.

“It’s over,” I told Stirman. “Let Jem go back to his mother.”

Stirman blinked slowly. He seemed to be losing his grip on consciousness.

A single police light flashed—circling once across the neon skywalk and the face of the West Tower. An officer must have hit the switch accidentally while getting out of his car.

The light snapped Stirman back to his senses. He looked around. He was backed into a corner, forty feet in the air.

“Tell me where the money is,” he said.

“It’s too late for that,” I said. “You’ll never get out of the building.”

“I owe Soledad. I can’t give up.”

“It isn’t giving up. It’s deciding to live. If you run, you’ll die.”

Down in front of the museum, car doors were opening.

I had to get Jem away from Stirman. I had to get him out of the line of fire.

Stirman held my eyes. He seemed to understand what I was thinking.

He put his hand on Jem’s shoulder, gently pushed him toward me. “Go on, boy.”

Jem dug in his heels. His hand was closed, as if he were holding something small. “But . . .”

“Go on,” Stirman ordered.

Jem shook his head stubbornly. “But you told me—”

“It’s all right.” Stirman’s voice cracked. “Just go on, now.”

When Jem was finally safe behind me, Stirman said, “Now tell me about the cash. Quick.”

I didn’t see what difference it would make. I told him where the money was.

Understanding dawned on Stirman’s face—the sense that what I said had to be true. “Goddamn Fred Barrow.”

I imagined the police inside the building, the slow pulse of the glass elevator as it rose through the galleries, filled with heavily armed men.

Stirman took one last look at Jem—hesitating long enough to erase any chance of escape.

“Bear witness, Jem,” he said. “Be good to your mother, hear?”

Then he jumped. The drop should have been enough to break his legs, but he hit the roof of the lower gallery on solid footing and cleared the other side, dropping into the darkness behind the museum. There was at least a square mile of woods and flooded riverbanks back there. The police would have to search it on foot. But they would find him. I was sure of that.

Jem stared at the spot where Stirman had disappeared—wet treetops hissing in the rain.

I wanted to put my hand on his shoulder, but I sensed the barrier he was putting up. He wanted no more hand-holding, no comforting.

“He won’t come back,” I said.

“I know.”

His tone wasn’t what I expected from an eight-year-old who’d just had a conversation with evil. He sounded wistful. He wore the same expression he’d worn the night we watched his mother’s van go floating away down Rosillio Creek.

He slipped his hand into his pocket, depositing whatever he was holding.

Before I could ask what it was, I heard a groan from the roof below us. A man’s voice said, “Hell.”

“Stay here,” I told Jem.

I lowered myself over the railing. Stirman had done it. How hard could it be?

I dropped.

Stupid, Navarre.

I lost my footing immediately and slid down the slick roof. I would have gone over the edge and into the skylights below had I not caught the wet bottom rung of a service ladder. Slowly, I managed to crawl back up to where Sam Barrera was lying on his back, his arm bent underneath him at an ugly angle.

“Damn bastard,” he muttered. “You get him, Fred?”

I sat next to him, too exhausted to correct his ragged memory. “Yeah. I got him.”

That seemed to comfort the old man. He put his head back and let the rain fall on his face. Police were popping up in all the windows of the museum now—SWAT team members on the skywalk, aiming assault rifles at me.

“Thanks,” I told Sam, “for trying to save us up there.”

“Did I do that?”

“Yeah, you did.”

“I always was pretty damn brave,” Barrera said. “I don’t know about taking the money, though. It feels wrong.”

“Maybe it is,” I admitted.

“And the baby?”

I looked at him, and asked carefully, “What about him?”

“Did your wife get him out okay?”

I was silent for a long time as the police moved in, DeLeon now visible above us, not looking happy, or in any hurry to call off her firing squad.

“Yeah, Erainya got him out,” I told Barrera. “The baby is fine.”

I looked up at Ana DeLeon in the broken glass and neon. I raised my hands in surrender.

25

The plane was a twin-engine Cessna, so old no self-respecting drug-runner would use it anymore, but it could still make the flight to Mexico below radar in under an hour.

The pilot waited in the drizzle on the tarmac at Stinson Field. He checked his watch. His client was late.

It was a crummy night to fly, but anticipating his payment made him feel better. He imagined the money in his bank account. He would make separate cash deposits, space them out carefully, keep them under the mandatory reporting limit.

He was deep in thought about a comfortable retirement when somebody put a gun to his back.

Long after the police took Erainya Manos away, Pablo had waited in the ventilation shaft.

He expected the woman to sell him out. Any second, the muzzle of an assault rifle would poke its way into his hiding place.

But Pablo kept waiting.

When he couldn’t stand it anymore, he crawled out. No one was waiting in the storage room to ambush him. His gun was still lying on the floor by the window. They hadn’t even bothered bagging it for evidence.

Why would the police leave the scene so fast?

He checked the magazine. Still loaded, minus the bullet Erainya Manos had fired to rattle the police.

Dangerous,
he had told her.

It’ll throw them off balance,
she said.
When they find out
I
fired the gun, they’ll relax their guard about everything. They’ll believe I’m alone.

He hadn’t trusted her, but he’d gone along. He couldn’t run. He couldn’t surrender. He couldn’t bring himself to kill her.

He crept down the stairs, spotted two uniformed cops at the front entrance. They looked bored, like they’d been put there to keep people out. They weren’t paying any attention to the inside of the building.

Pablo slipped out the back, onto the loading docks.

The rain felt good on his face, but he told himself he would never make it across open ground. There were probably still snipers on the surrounding rooftops. His shoulder blades tensed for the bullet he expected in his back.

He jogged down a dark alley. Nothing happened. He made it three blocks away, came out next to St. Paul Square. A bunch of tourist rental cars were parked on the street. He strolled down the line, glancing casually through windows. A Dodge Neon had the driver’s keys just sitting there on the front seat.

Too easy. Had to be a trap.

The police would surround him as soon as he turned the ignition. The engine would explode. Something.

But he got in, started the Neon, and pulled away from the curb.

By the time he got to the highway, he was crying like a child.

He had come
that
close to killing Erainya Manos, and she’d been telling him the truth.

The pilot found himself facing a young Latino with cobwebs in his hair, ragged clothes, dirt and scratches on his arms like he’d crawled out of a collapsed building.

The pilot tried for calm. He raised his hands. “I got nothing you can rob, partner. Unless you want an airplane.”

“Actually,” the Latino said, “that is exactly what I want.”

The pilot blinked. “
You’re
Will Stirman?”

“You know the Calabras airstrip, south of Juárez?”

“Sure.” The pilot didn’t feel the need to mention he’d flown heroin from that airstrip a dozen times. “You have my hundred grand?”

The Latino smiled. He nudged the pilot’s nose affectionately with his gun. “Actually,
señor,
there’s been a slight change of plans.”

Will Stirman found his money, right where Navarre said it would be.

The black duffel bag was lighter than when Will had packed it, eight years ago, but that was to be expected. Fred Barrow must’ve used a good half million.

Will stuffed a couple of hundred-dollar bills in his pocket, rezipped the bag.

He had one last score to settle.

He climbed the wooden stairs out of the basement, the knife wound in his shoulder throbbing so badly he could hardly think. He found an intact section of roof to stand under. Rain was blowing through the skeletal remains of the house. The dark hills around him smelled of wet juniper.

Will called the SAPD. He was pleasantly surprised to get a connection so far from the city. He told the dispatcher he was the outside accomplice who’d helped Will Stirman escape, and now he had a guilty conscience. He gave her enough details about the jailbreak to be sure she was taking him seriously. Then he told her where they could find one of the missing Floresville Five. A hunting cabin in the woods of Wisconsin. He gave her directions.

Will hung up, feeling satisfied.

With any luck, his guess would be right. The Guide might be stupid enough to lay low there. He might have thought Will had forgotten about the Wisconsin property, which the Guide had shown him once, years ago—his little retirement dream house. But Will never forgot a good hiding place.

He walked back to the main road in the dark—a good half mile, through mosquitoes and mud and brambles. Down toward the river, the only visible light was a kerosene lamp glowing in a curtained window. A caretaker’s cabin, maybe. Will avoided it.

He hadn’t seen another human being for thirty miles, since he exited the main highway. Every farmhouse had been dark, every road abandoned. Anybody crazy enough to ignore the evacuation orders, Will wanted to stay clear of.

He climbed into the truck and stared at the empty seat next to him.

You
failed Soledad,
Navarre had said.
You let the past stay buried.

The words weighed on Will’s heart.

Eight years ago, he had taken the coward’s way out. He’d never tried to find out what really happened to Soledad’s baby—
his
baby.

He’d assumed the worst, nursed his anger, promised himself that he would get revenge in the long run. But he’d stayed silent. In his most secret thoughts, he’d been relieved not to be a father anymore. Relieved the child was gone. And his guilt had fueled his anger.

Now . . . what had he accomplished?

He’d left hardly a ripple on the lives of his old enemies. He’d had a chance to settle his debts, salvage something from the past. But here he was again, doing the only thing he was good at—running away. He never had Soledad’s courage for staying put.

Would she forgive him?

Maybe if she’d seen Jem Manos’ face . . .

Will started the truck’s engine. He set the duffel bag next to him. All his pleasure at finding the money had drained away.

He realized bitterly that Navarre was wrong on one count. He would
not
die on the outside. Will Stirman was too good at hiding and running. Nothing could catch the Ghost.

He would make it across the border, then eventually down into Central America. He would get the shoulder wound treated and live to a ripe old age on some tropical beach, alone, dreaming every night about the people he had killed, waking up every morning with no one, remembering the face of Jem Manos, and wishing he was not a coward.

A distant rumble rattled the truck’s windows. Will thought at first it was thunder, but the rumble didn’t die. It grew louder, building toward a crescendo. Thunder didn’t do that.

Will put the truck in drive and eased forward, toward the bridge.

In his headlights, the Medina River was doing strange things. It was churning with foam, waves sloshing over the road. The ground was shaking.

Will looked upriver. He could see nothing but that single yellow light on the hillside.

He turned on the radio. Static.

It occurred to him then what might be happening—what they’d said on the news.

But that was impossible.

The roar filled his ears.

He looked north again, and this time his heart nearly stopped. The horizon was curling toward him, the earth lifting up like the edge of a carpet.

For a moment, his hand drifted toward the stick shift. He could punch the gas. He could run for higher ground.

Then a sense of calm came over him. He realized Navarre had been right on every count. So much for the uncatchable Will Stirman.

He killed the truck’s engine and got out. He wanted to be standing on his own two feet for this.

The yellow light on the hill comforted him, letting him know he wasn’t alone.

He heard Soledad’s voice:
Maybe
I’m
what was lost.

He remembered her last kiss, and waited to be scoured away with all the other ghosts of the land.

The Cessna flew above the South Side, angling into the rain.

Pablo did not relax his guard, but he couldn’t help watching the lights below—the great expanse of San Antonio, and south: the smaller towns of Poteet, Kenedy, and there, Floresville. He was almost sure he could see the prison.

He had no money. No resources. Nothing but a gun and a pilot who would betray him at the first opportunity.

But the airstrip was secluded in the mountains, in territory he knew well.

He had already used the pilot’s phone to make a call to El Paso—to an old friend who would relay a message to Angelina. It was risky, revealing his location like that. What Angelina would do with the information, he didn’t know. Perhaps she would be waiting for him. Perhaps the Mexican police would.

He had sent her instructions many times in his letters—always indirect references that she alone would understand. If she’d read the letters, if she wanted him back, she would know what to do.

She was to tell her friends and family to look for a yellow cloth tied around the front porch post—the kind people left out for soldiers overseas. That would be her signal to them—the only goodbye she could give—to let them know she had disappeared on purpose, gone to join him.

Pablo wondered if she would do that.

The Cessna climbed higher, above the flooded farms and the dark ranch land of South Texas.

Pablo thought of El Paso, and his wife’s face.

For the first time since Floresville, since the last morning circle when he’d joined hands with his five brethren and Pastor Riggs, Pablo prayed.