The Carrion Birds (23 page)

“Would you like something else?” Dario said.

“No, I’m fine.”

Dario reached out a hand and took the empty glass
off the bar.

Kelly considered him where he sat. Whether he was
telling her the truth she didn’t know. Perhaps he’d said that thing about being
a cop just to try to get sympathy from her, perhaps it was true. She dropped her
eyes to the floor, nothing outside for her. No place for her to go. “I want your
advice on something,” she said, speaking not to Dario, but to the coffee cup in
front of him, like she was talking to herself, sounding out the question as she
asked it. “What would it take for this to go away? For this town to go back to
the way it used to be, to the peace you say it’s known for?”

Dario breathed out and for the first time she
realized he’d been holding back, letting her speak, waiting even, for what she
might say to him. “There is no going back,” he said.

“I didn’t tell you everything,” Kelly said. She
raised her eyes to his and waited. When no response came she told him about the
Bronco outside of town, about the DEA and the Border Patrol. She said it was
over. “Whatever game we’ve been playing here in this town, it’s over, it’s done,
there is nothing more for any of us,” she said.

Dario lifted the coffee cup and then put it back
down, he wet his lips with his tongue. “There’s always something to look forward
to,” he said.

“You miss being a cop?”

“No,” he said, “but I think I understand something
about it, something about that life and why you came in here looking to talk
with me.”

“Why’s that?”

“You want something more from this life,” Dario
said. “The things that go on here, that wear away at you every day, that just
keep coming. They’re all the same to you and me, to people like us. Shouldn’t we
want more, a little break from the monotony?”

She didn’t have an answer for him and pausing to
consider what this meant, she asked, “What if the rumors are true?”

“What rumors?” Dario asked.

“That you’re working for the cartel.”

“What if they are?” he said.

“You know if I find something and it leads me here,
I won’t be back just to talk.”

“I know,” Dario said.

“You’ve run a good business. Really quite
impressive.”

“Thank you.”

“But it’s slipping away from you,” Kelly said.
“Don’t you see that? Don’t you see how it’s going to end for you in this
town?”

“I’m just a barkeeper,” Dario said. “That’s all. I
don’t intend to give that up now.”

W
hen
Tom led Jeanie into the department Pierce sent them straight through to the
sheriff’s office in the back, where Tollville was waiting. He and Tollville had
been friends once, or as close to it as the distance would allow, and Tom stood
looking at the back of Tollville’s head for a long time before he finally went
in and shook the man’s hand.

“It’s been a while,” Tollville said. He was sitting
in the chair reserved for guests and he had turned slightly to look up at Tom
where he stood by the filing cabinets and papers in the corner of the small
office.

“I didn’t think they’d send you” was all Tom could
think to say.

“Edna called me directly. I was wondering when she
might, and to tell you the truth I’d been expecting the call a day ago.”

Tom looked around the room for a place to sit. The
desk in the center of the room with Kelly’s chair on one side and Tollville
sitting in the other. “I doubt she’d mind,” Tollville said, raising his hand off
his lap toward the chair opposite.

Looking around the office for a second, searching
for something to do with Jeanie, Tom lifted the desk a little, toed the grip of
Jeanie’s leash beneath the leg, and then let the desk down. When he was
satisfied the desk would hold her, he sat.

Sitting across from him, Tom thought that Tollville
looked much the same. Skinny with close-cropped hair and the hollow cheeks
suggesting he didn’t have the time for a good meal or didn’t much care. As he
used to, he wore a suit even in the heat of the late-afternoon sun coming
through the windows, the motes of dust strangely milky as the sun set away in
the west. The jacket he wore rumpled beneath the pits. The only change Tom could
identify about him was the whiteness in the man’s hair.

“You look the same,” Tom said.

Tollville offered a weak smile. He had his hand out
on a manila folder that lay flat on the desk, and he worked his fingers over it
a couple times. “Edna told me you’ve been helping her out,” he said.

“That’s right,” Tom said, watching the man’s
fingers dance over the folder on the desk.

“Well, even if you weren’t, I’d still want to talk
with you.”

Tom looked out of the office to where Pierce sat,
going through a stack of paperwork. The young deputy the only one in the
department and a collection of empty desks and chairs all around him.

“Edna faxed up a copy of some prints she took off a
dead man they found a few miles outside of town, sitting in a stolen Bronco.”
Tollville slid the manila folder across the desk and waited for Tom to take it.
“I took a helicopter down just because I thought I needed to be here.” Tollville
watched Tom where he sat, his eyes jumping from the folder on the desk to Tom’s
eyes. “Recognize him?”

Tom opened the folder and pulled out a mug shot of
a young Mexican man. “I don’t know him,” Tom said.

“The prints Edna faxed up got me pretty interested
to see what was going on down here.”

“You know this man?” Tom said, turning the mug shot
over to look at the report that followed.

“I know his family.”

Tom smiled. “Is he in the mob or something?”

“Closest we have to it here in New Mexico.”

“You have to be joking, right?”

“No joking,” Tollville said. The chair he sat in
creaked a little with his weight. Sitting, he didn’t look nearly as tall as he
was.

Tom put the folder flat on Kelly’s desk, the two
sides open and the picture facing up. The man’s name didn’t ring any bells.

Tollville leaned forward and jabbed a finger at the
picture. “This guy here is pretty small-time. A few years back he tried to boost
one of those big fourteen-wheelers. But when he gets behind the wheel he can’t
quite figure out how to drive the thing.” Tollville was smiling again, enjoying
himself. “He ends up making it about two blocks, burning the clutch all the way,
and then just loses it and dead-ends the truck in some poor guy’s pet shop.”

“That’s like something out of the world’s stupidest
criminal tricks,” Tom said.

“Probably would have made the cut, only when the
truck went through the wall of the pet shop it killed about six cats, two
Labrador retrievers, and a fifty-year-old cockatoo. Animal cruelty and all
that,” Tollville said, obviously enjoying the story. “The police found this guy
trapped in the cab, pissing himself. The doors all jammed up from going through
the front of the place.”

“So what about this file gets you on a helicopter
and gets you down here?”

“His uncle, Memo, is the biggest drug supplier we
have in the state.”

“Did Kelly say if there were any drugs in the
Bronco?”

“There’s always drugs when Memo’s involved.”

“You think he is? What if this Sanchez kid was just
up to the same old tricks?”

“What gets me down here is the body count,”
Tollville said. He was leaning forward in the chair, speaking quietly across the
desk. “Memo’s nephew couldn’t have done any of this even if he’d started
training for it the day he got out of prison.”

Again Tom looked out toward the young deputy,
Pierce’s back to the two of them where he sat at his desk. “It’s a good story,”
Tom said. “But I don’t understand why you’d want to talk to me about it.”

“Twelve years ago things started to go real bad
between Memo’s family and the Mexican cartels,” Tollville continued. “Memo had
been their guy over here, and then ten years ago, after the trouble you all had
down here, U.S. members of the cartel just start turning up dead. They walk into
a room, the door closes, and then boom, they’re gone. It happened all up
and down the border. It was a real piece of work. Fifty percent of the people we
were keeping tabs on either disappeared or ended in very bloody ways.” Tollville
paused. “I can’t prove a thing. I mean, we all knew Memo was killing people
before all this happened, but this was bad. It was all-out war, no-survivors
time. And then it just stops. No killings, no dead bodies, nothing. And that
just doesn’t happen. It drags on for years, then peters out, but it doesn’t just
stop.”

“You’re thinking it’s starting up again?”

“This is the interesting part,” Tollville said.
“Ten years ago I get called down here to check into this thing with you. It’s
the first real lead we’d had in a while. Off the record, we all knew Angela
Lopez was dirty, which is about the only reason you didn’t end up in jail. But
what’s exciting is that it was the first time we got to officially look into the
life of one of these cartel figures.”

“I’m glad you enjoyed yourself,” Tom interrupted.
“I lost my job over that.”

“You’re lucky you didn’t end up in jail,” Tollville
said. “Going after her the way you did. Without any evidence, and only a
tip—which I suspect came directly from your cousin—to rely on.”

“I was just doing my job,” Tom said.

Tollville held up his hands. “Look, I’m not saying
Lopez didn’t have it coming. She qualifies as a bad person in the DEA’s
handbook, bringing in all that dope. But she didn’t have anything but some money
and a baby daughter in that house when you came to her door. What happened to
you had to happen to you, Tom. There was no other way around it. And that’s the
thing that gets me down here. Two events like that in one small town, it’s too
much of a coincidence.”

“That and the bodies.”

“Yes,” Tollville agreed. “That and the bodies.” He
waved a hand at the file. “A guy like Sanchez doesn’t do damage like this. He
doesn’t do much damage at all, at least on purpose.” Tollville put a hand out
and picked up the picture there on the desk. “I didn’t put it together back
then. But I dug around a little this time and I did some checking. Your cousin
Ray’s files are sealed. You remember me looking into him all those years ago? We
got some good information then, didn’t we? Now his files are sealed again. Do
you know what that means?”

Tom shook his head. He knew exactly what it meant.
He’d forgotten Tollville’s smugness, how his clearance made him think he was
smarter than he was.

“Someone powerful had those files closed. Someone
with connections.”

“I don’t know anything about this,” Tom said.

“Your cousin worked for your uncle, correct? They
were in oil together?”

“Along with my father,” Tom said.

“But before that Ray was in the army, wasn’t
he?”

Tom nodded.

“The way I’m looking at this is that Memo has his
nephew, the one Edna found out in the Bronco this afternoon, tag along with a
fellow like your cousin. Figuring that the kid can’t do any damage, can’t screw
up too bad. I mean he’s in the family, Memo has to watch out for him. But then
something goes wrong, Gil Suarez gets away, makes a run for it. And all that
tension that’s been building between the cartel and Memo starts to boil
over.”

On Kelly’s desk the phone began to ring. Jeanie
raised her ears but didn’t move from her spot beneath the desk. Out in the
office Pierce turned, then rose from his desk and started toward them. After
only half a step, every phone in the office was ringing.

Tom looked down at the phone and then he looked up
at Tollville.

“Your cousin isn’t in oil anymore, is he?”

Tom watched Pierce where he stood, the phone cord
dangling from the receiver he held in his hand.

“I haven’t seen Ray in a long time,” Tom said.
Behind Tollville, Tom saw Pierce raise his radio to his lips and depress the
button.

Tollville turned and looked to where Tom’s gaze had
fallen.

“What now?” Tom asked.

“We wait,” Tollville said. “If this is anything
like ten years ago I expect there will be some cartel figures going down in very
bloody ways.”

On the radio, Pierce kept repeating the same few
words over and over again. “Tate Bulger.” “Smoke.” “Fire.”

D
ario
sat in his office. The ammonia smell of piss and bleach leaking in from the
nearby bathrooms, and the low sound of the men out in the bar. The sheriff gone
and Dario feeling a strange loneliness as he listened to the men outside and
knew he wanted nothing to do with any of them. He had been honest with Kelly in
a way he thought he hadn’t been honest in a long time.

Still, he was disappointed to hear about the body
she’d found out in the Bronco. All that he had hoped would come—his own gamble,
his test for the inevitable—now nothing but a disappointment. Kelly had not come
to talk to him about the old man they’d left beaten bloody at his house. Dario’s
knuckles still tender where he’d crushed them into the man’s face, splitting the
swollen skin and watching the blood bloom. Kelly had come because everything in
Coronado was now moving toward its end, and perhaps Dario knew that just as she
did.

He dug out the small knife from his desk, and
listening to the men outside he threw it time and time again toward the floor,
watching the blade stick and quiver. No idea if the body out there in the Bronco
was Ray Lamar’s. No hope anymore for anything. Dario’s life just the same as it
had been days and weeks before.

He heard the voices of the men rise for a moment,
and then the dissonant sound of laughter. He didn’t understand anything about
this life. Just a day before they’d been in a gun battle, and now they were
laughing about it. All he understood was that one day it would be his turn and
he doubted anyone would care.