Southtown (3 page)

“Honey, he isn’t worth it!”

Ortiz was yelling for help. He looked . . . tangled in something. I couldn’t tell. Nothing but his head was above water.

I looked back at Jem, who for once wasn’t focused on the PlayStation.

“Pass me the rope behind your seat,” I told him. “You’re the man of the van, okay?”

“I can’t swim,” he reminded me.

His eyes were calm—that creepy calm I only saw when he tried to remember his life before Erainya, his thoughts thickening into a protective, invisible layer of scar tissue.

I shoved him the cell phone. “It’s okay, champ. Keep trying 911.”

He passed me the rope—fifty feet of standard white propylene. I didn’t know why Erainya stored it in the van. I suppose you never knew when you’d have to tie somebody up. Or maybe Dr. Dreamboat the ENT had strange proclivities. I didn’t want to ask.

I made a knot around the steering column, a noose around my waist. Then I rolled down the passenger’s-side window and got a face full of rain.

I climbed outside, lowered myself into the current, and got slapped flat against the van.

Up ahead, a few impossible feet, the passenger’s side of the Lincoln was bobbing in the current. I could see Dimebox Ortiz in the driver’s seat, up to his earlobes in water.

I didn’t so much walk as crawl along the side of the van.

My efforts spurred Lalu and Kiko into a new round of yelling. I couldn’t make out words. Maybe they were arguing about whether they could blow me up without hurting Dimebox.

I kept the rope taut around my waist, inching out a step at a time, not even kidding myself that I could keep my footing. The side of the van was the only thing that kept me from being swept away.

The worst part was between the cars, where the water shot through like a ravine. When I slipped one foot into the full current, it was like being hooked by a moving train. I was ripped off balance, pulled into the stream. My head went under, and the world was reduced to a cold brown roar.

I held the rope. I got my head above water, found the fender of the Town Car, and clawed my way to the passenger’s side.

The Lincoln’s shotgun window was open, making a waterfall into the car.

Dimebox’s hands were tugging frantically at something underwater. He was craning his ugly head to keep it above the water. His face was like a bank robber’s, his features all pantyhose-smeared, only Dimebox didn’t wear pantyhose.

“Can you move?” I yelled.

He pushed at the wheel as if it were pinning his legs.

“Lalu!” he shouted. “Kiko! Push!”

Push?

Then I realized he wasn’t struggling to get free. He was attempting to start the ignition. He expected his cousins to wade out here and give him a jump start.

“You’re underwater, you moron!” I told him. “Give me your hand!”

“Fuck you, Navarre!” he screamed. “Get the fuck away!”

“Me or the river, Dimebox.”

“I ain’t going to jail!”

I didn’t understand his stubbornness. Dimebox was up on some stupid charge like assault. He was constantly going in and out of the slammer, constantly jumping bail, which I guess you can do when your bondsman is your brother-in-law. We’d bounty-hunted him plenty of times. I didn’t see why he was making such a fuss about a couple more weeks in the county lockup.

Another metallic groan. The guardrail bent, and the Lincoln shifted a half inch downstream. My side of the car began to levitate. For a moment, a ton of Detroit steel balanced on the fulcrum, my armpits the only thing keeping it from flipping.

“Now!” I told Dimebox. “Over here now!”

“Mother of Shit!” Dimebox lunged in my direction, wrapped his arms around my neck, damn near pulled me into the car with him.

A few more seconds—an eternity when Dimebox is hugging you—and I hauled him out the window. The Lincoln seemed to settle with both of us pressed against it, but I wasn’t going to take any chances. We inched our way back toward the van, the rain driving needles into my cheeks, Dimebox reeking a lovely combination of wet sewage and Calvin Klein. On shore, Lalu and Kiko yelled wildly, brandishing their hand grenades.

We’d just reached the van when Dimebox’s Town Car rose on its side with a huge groan, flipped the guardrail, and crashed upside down in the creek bed, its body submerged, wheels spinning uselessly in the foam.

The guardrail bent like licorice. Our van would go next.

Erainya yelled at me, “Throw them the rope!”

“What?”

“The cousins!” she yelled. “Throw it to them!”

Only then did I realize that Lalu and Kiko weren’t waiting around to kill us. They wanted to help.

Forty minutes later, after Erainya’s van, Jem’s PlayStation, and a bagful of perfectly good spanakopita had been washed into oblivion down Rosillio Creek, Erainya and Jem and I sat in the Ortiz cousins’ living room, wrapped in triple-X terry cloth bathrobes, eating cold venison tamales and waiting for the police, who were coming to pick up Dimebox.

The guest of honor sat on the sofa, stripped to his jockey shorts and T-shirt, his ankles and wrists tied in plastic cuffs. He kept muttering cuss words, and Jem kept telling him he owed us quarters.

“You okay,” Kiko told me, smashing the top of my head with his paw. “Save Dimebox’s sorry ass. Put him in jail. Kiko not have t’sleep on the couch no more.”

“Won’t do you any good, Erainya,” Dimebox snarled. “Bounty money won’t help you worth shit, will it? We’re both screwed.”

“Shut up, Ortiz.” Her voice was harsher than I’d ever heard it. “Don’t curse in front of my son.”

“Stirman’s coming. He’s got plenty of friends in the county jail. You lock me up, you’re signing my death warrant.”

“I
said
shut up.”

I looked back and forth between them, wondering what I’d missed, or if my brain was still waterlogged.

Then the name clicked.

“Stirman,” I said. “The escaped con on the news.”

“I ain’t staying in jail,” Dimebox said. “You know what’s good for you, you’ll run, too.”

Erainya wouldn’t meet my eyes.

I remembered her reaction to the radio news, the intense, almost frantic look she’d given me.

“What?” I asked her. “You helped put this Stirman guy away?”

Dimebox laughed nervously. “That ain’t the fucking half of it, Navarre. Not the fucking—”

Lalu whacked his fist against Dimebox’s skull, and Dimebox slumped on the couch.

Lalu grunted apologetically. “Lady wanted no cussing.”

I said, “Erainya . . . ?”

She got up and stormed into the cousins’ bathroom, slamming the door behind her.

I turned to Jem, who was paying a lot of attention to the pattern in the couch fabric. I asked him if he still had his mom’s cell phone.

I checked the readout, but the call history didn’t help my confusion. I could make a dozen guesses who Erainya might call in an emergency, if she were truly faced with an urgent dilemma.

All my guesses were wrong.

The person she’d been so anxious to talk to when she stepped into the storm wasn’t her doctor boyfriend. It wasn’t the police, or any of our regular helpers on the street.

She’d called I-Tech Security, the direct line to the company president.

Her archrival.

A man she’d sworn never to cross paths with again, until one of them was dancing on the other’s grave.

3

Special Agent Samuel Barrera spent breakfast trying to remember the name of the ax murderer.

The guy had tortured and killed six illegal immigrants on a ranch up around Castroville, left their body parts scattered in the woods like deer corn. What the hell was his name?

Sam had a feeling it would be important in the case he was working on. He’d talk to his trainee Pacabel when he got to the office. Pacabel would remember.

The morning was humid after last night’s downpour, just enough drizzle to keep everybody sour-faced, staring at the gray sky, thinking,
Enough already.

Not even Alamo Street Market’s coffee and
migas
were enough to compensate.

Sam pulled on his jacket over his sidearm.

He left a ten on the table, got annoyed when the waiter called, “
Hasta mañana,
Sam.”

Like Sam knew the guy. Like they were old friends or something. What the hell was wrong with people these days?

Down South Alamo, yellow sawhorses blocked the side streets. Asphalt had come apart in huge chunks and washed away. The sidewalk was buried in a shroud of mud.

Sam picked his way through the debris.

The last few years, people had started calling this area Southtown. Art studios had opened up in the old
barrio
houses, funky little restaurants and curio shops in the crumbling mercantile buildings. The changes didn’t bother Sam. He liked seeing life come back to his old neighborhood. But it did make him miss the past.

His family home at the corner of Cedar was falling apart. He’d owned it since his parents died, back in the seventies. He hadn’t lived there for years, but he always parked in front of it. Force of habit. The
FOR SALE
was up. The real estate agent called him every day with glad tidings. They had their choice of offers. For this old dump. Sam never suspected he’d grown up in a Victorian fixer-up dream. To him, it had just been
la casa
. Back then, nobody lived here but the Mexicans, because this was where they could afford to live.

He opened the door of his mustard-yellow BMW.

The car was getting old. Like him. But Sam kept putting off a trade-in, irritated by the thought of unfamiliar controls, a different paint job. Too much to keep track of, when you got a new car.

He drove north to the field office on East Houston, still thinking about that rancher whose name he couldn’t remember. He’d kept the six illegal immigrants as slaves, killed them slowly, one at a time. It had something to do with Sam’s present case.

When he got to the FBI suite on the second floor, he walked into the reception area and found some rookie fresh out of Quantico blocking his way to the inner offices. “Sir, can I help you?”

Sam scowled. There was a time when he would’ve chewed out this asshole for standing in his way, but Sam didn’t feel up to it today. He felt a little off. Preoccupied. “I
work
here, son.”

Something disconnected in the kid’s eyes. It wasn’t the answer he’d been expecting. “You have identification?”

Sam patted his jacket, where the ID should be.

Hell. Was it in the car, maybe? On the coffee table?

Held up from work by a fucking
detail
.

A couple of agents came out from the interior offices and sized up Sam. One of them was an older guy—must’ve been nearing mandatory retirement. He had thinning silver hair, a big nose blazed with capillaries. Sam knew him, couldn’t quite place his name.

“Must’ve left it at home,” Sam told the rookie. He felt the situation slipping away from him. “Cut me some slack.”

The agents exchanged looks. By some silent agreement, the silver-haired one stepped forward. “Hey, Sam.”

“Yeah?” Sam said.

“Let’s take a walk.”

“I don’t want a walk.”

The old guy put a hand on his shoulder and steered him back toward the entrance.

“You know me?” the old guy asked.

“Sure,” Sam said.

“Pacabel,” the guy said.

Immediately, the name slipped around him like a comfortable shoe.

“Joe Pacabel,” Sam said, confident again. “Sure, Joe. Let me get to work, will you? Tell these jokers.”

Pacabel looked at the floor. Beige tiles, which seemed wrong to Sam. It should’ve been carpet. Green industrial carpet.

The other agents were trying not to stare at him.

“Look, Sam,” Pacabel said, the words dragging out of him. “You’re a little confused, is all. It happens.”

“Joe, my case . . .”

“You’ve got no case, Sam.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Pacabel’s eyes watered, and Sam realized it was from embarrassment. Embarrassment for him.

“Sam, you retired from the FBI,” Pacabel said gently. “You haven’t worked here in twenty years.”

Halfway across town, Gerry Far was pulling dead people out of a trailer.

He hated this part of his job, but he had to help out personally. Otherwise his employees would panic. He’d learned that from his mentor, Will Stirman.

The driver this time was a fruit trucker from Indianapolis. This was his first run. It was all Gerry could do to keep him from calling the police.

“Help me with this
hombre,
” Gerry told the trucker. “Jesus, he’s heavy.”

The smell in the truck was enough to kill—overripe mangos and excrement and body odor. When they’d opened the trailer, the temperature inside had been about a hundred and ten degrees.

As he hauled the big corpse over to the incinerator, Gerry did the math. Fifty-three illegals. Three hundred dollars a head. Twenty-one had died, but of course they’d paid up front.

The thirty-two who lived would be sold off to Gerry’s clients—sweatshops, labor ranches, brothels—to “earn credit” for further transportation to Chicago or Houston or wherever they dreamed of going. In reality, none of them would ever be allowed to leave. They’d bring Gerry a sale price of two to five hundred dollars each, possibly more for young women. That was the beauty of the Stirman system—the illegals paid to get here, then Gerry got paid again for selling them into slavery. Welcome to America.

Gerry would have to give the driver his cut, plus a little extra to calm his nerves. There would be a hefty fee to the guy who ran the incinerator. Still, Gerry figured he would walk away with ten grand from this load.

He was dragging out the last body when his spotter, Luke, ran up, looking paler than the corpses. “You hear the news?”

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Gerry said. “Watch the goddamn gate.”

“Stirman’s free. Broke out yesterday afternoon.”

Gerry dropped the body he was carrying. “You sure?”

Luke swallowed, held up his cell phone. “I just got the call.”

“From who?”

Luke hesitated. If Gerry had been thinking more clearly, he might’ve picked up on the fact that something was very wrong with the way Luke was acting.

“Just a friend,” Luke said. “Wanted to be sure you were warned.”

“Shit.”

“Where you going?” the trucker called.

But Gerry was already fishing out his car keys, running toward his TransAm.

He’d always known a life sentence wouldn’t stop Will Stirman. Not after what Gerry had done to him. But damn it—yesterday afternoon? Why hadn’t somebody told him sooner?

Gerry drove toward downtown.

He regretted what he’d done to Stirman. He regretted it every day, but there was no going back now. He had to go through with his emergency plan.

He ditched the TransAm near the Rivercenter Marriott and caught a taxi to the East Side. St. Paul Square. From there, it was a short walk to one of his properties—a place Stirman didn’t know about. Nobody knew about it except a few of Gerry’s best guys, like Luke. Gerry could lay low there for a few days, make arrangements, then get out of town for good, or at least until Stirman was recaptured.

The property was an abandoned ice warehouse, a four-story red-brick building that didn’t have anything to recommend it—no electricity, no water. Just a whole lot of privacy, a good vantage point from the fourth floor to watch for visitors, and the stash Gerry had squirreled away—a few days’ worth of food, clothing, extra cash, a couple of guns. Not much. Gerry should’ve been more serious. But it was enough to get him started, to make a plan.

He was starting to relax as he climbed the stairs. He needed a vacation anyway. Maybe Cozumel.

At the top of the stairs, two men were waiting for him in the shadows.

A familiar voice said, “Gerry Far. Been praying for you every day, son.”

The I-Tech corporate offices looked out over the wreckage of north San Antonio—streets pulsing with police lights, swollen creeks turning neighborhoods into lakes. The gray ribbon of Highway 281 disappeared into water at the Olmos Basin. On the horizon, clouds and hills boiled together in a thick, fuzzy soup.

Sam Barrera said nothing to his secretary, Alicia, about why he was late. He hoped Joe Pacabel wouldn’t call to check up on him.

He stared out at the drowned city, the streets he’d known all his life.

He wanted to weep from shame.

The first time he’d passed on his medication. One sorry-ass morning he’d tried to go without the little beige pills and the goddamn diarrhea they caused. And what had happened? A nightmare.

So you got confused,
he consoled himself.
It could happen to anybody. You were thinking about . . .

What?

Something had thrown him. Something on the television.

Sam made fists, wishing he could squeeze the confusion out of his mind.

Today was Monday. His doctor had only given him until Friday to make a decision.

It’s got to be next week, Sam. I have to insist. Think about it. Talk to your family.

But Sam had no family. No wife, no kids. His other relatives he’d had a falling-out with years ago, over something Sam couldn’t even remember now. He’d taken down all their pictures, stuffed them away in the back of his closet.

He had only his work—his talent for weaving facts into patterns, making the perfect investigation. And now, at the unreasonable age of fifty-eight, that talent was betraying him.

Twenty years since he quit the Bureau . . . Hell, of course it had been.

He’d gone into the PI business, built I-Tech from scratch, made himself a reputation.

He reviewed those facts in his head, tried to hold on to them, but it was like those tests at the neurologist’s office—name the presidents in reverse chronological order, count backward by sevens from one hundred.

The last month, work had gotten progressively harder. Case files were now almost impossible for him to understand.

Mornings were better. He tried to finish work early, get home before afternoon when his mind got cloudy.

But he relied on Alicia more and more. She knew something was wrong. She’d stopped teasing him about getting absentminded in his old age. Now, she just watched him uneasily.

Five days to decide.

He stared at his desk—a disgraceful clutter of unread reports, notes to himself stuck everywhere. The work surface had once been pristinely organized. Now it was deteriorating into chaos.

Across the room, a bank of televisions played security footage from I-Tech’s major accounts, along with news from the three local stations.

The news was all disaster coverage—befuddled weathermen predicting the second hundred-year flood in four years.

Sam doubted that’s what had unnerved him.

Why should he be surprised if the town hit a century mark every four years? He’d lost twenty years in a single morning. Time was collapsing around him. Chronology meant nothing anymore.

He got out his Post-it notes and a pen, checked his private line for messages.

There was only one—last night, 10:48
P.M.
Erainya Manos.

The name snagged on his memory as he wrote it down.

The case he was working on . . . but Joe Pacabel said there was no case.

Erainya Manos said they needed to talk. Absolutely urgent. Sam would know what it was about.

But he didn’t know what the woman wanted.

He stared at her phone number until something on the television caught his attention—a reporter breaking in, a convenience store shooting in New Braunfels. Three masked gunmen had fatally shot a clerk, made away with several thousand dollars. Police were investigating for a possible link to yesterday’s jailbreak—the Floresville Five. Will “the Ghost” Stirman, four other wanted men.

A mug shot of Will Stirman filled the screen, and the world shifted under Sam’s feet.

The convict’s face was gaunt and hard, like weathered marble. He had dark, preternaturally calm eyes, and a faint triangle of buzzed black hair. If Sam didn’t know better, he would’ve pegged the man as a white supremacist, or an abortion clinic bomber. His expression suggested the same quiet confidence, the same capacity for fanatic violence.

Sam knew this man. This was who he’d seen on television earlier. This was the news that had shaken him.

He reached into his pants pocket, pulled out a crumpled yellow Post-it note he’d forgotten.

In his own shaky cursive, the note read:

Stirman is free. He’ll be coming. I
can’t
go to the police.

Sam stared at it, then looked at the newer message from Erainya Manos.

He picked up the receiver, began to dial Erainya Manos’ number, then hung up again.

He had a bad feeling about this woman.

He had to think clearly.

Sam felt bitterness rising in his throat. It wasn’t fair for life to throw him one more problem. Not now, when he was struggling just to get by.

But it wasn’t Sam’s nature to surrender. He never played defense. The only way to survive was to plow forward, like he’d always done, right the fuck over anything and anyone who stood in his way.

He would let Erainya Manos do the talking. She would fill in the gaps. He had become an expert at covering his lapses that way, letting others talk into his silence.

He couldn’t remember why, but Will Stirman was lethal. If Sam didn’t handle this just right, if he didn’t stay in control, he would be destroyed.