Cool in Tucson

CHAPTER ONE

Didn’t even plan it or nothin’,
Hector thought happily, heading east on I-10,
and look how good it turned out.
 Just showed you should go with the flow and not sweat the details so much.  
I mean, look at me now.
  Rolling out of town in a top-dollar SUV,  thick wad of money in the bag at his feet.  Hadn’t even stopped to count the money yet, but he knew it was plenty. 

He really wanted to go home, but he had to get the car out of sight so he could pop the plates and replace them, and there was no shelter in his mother’s yard.  Best thing to do, even if he didn’t feel like it, was drive to Aunt Lucia’s house in Benson, make up a reason why he needed to put the car in her shed.  He knew she’d fix him some food, and let him take a snooze in her house. 

Late afternoon, he’d call the guy at the feed store in Benson who had a little side business going in replacement plates.  Julio, that was his name.  And while he waited for Julio he could call Bernie Estes back in Tucson.  Estes the Bestest he called himself, a counterfeiter working out of his house up on Princeton Road.  Big phony in a lot of ways, but Hector had seen some of his work and knew it was good.  So he’d paid a big deposit on a fake passport and visa, car registration and driver’s license.  Gave Estes his picture and told him the name would come later. 

He’d intended to boost the car of his choice when the time came, but now that he had Ace’s SUV he’d tell Estes to make the records read Adolph Alvin Perkins, read him the numbers from the records he had right here in the car.  How cool was that? 

He had Ace’s wallet and credit cards, too.  Next thing he needed was a money belt, or maybe one of them armpit bags, for all the cash he’d be carrying.  He chuckled a little, thinking about the cash.  Damn, this was more like it, y’know?

Soon as he had everything lined up, tomorrow sometime, he’d come back to Tucson.  Pick up his new papers and the roll of bills he had stashed under his bed, pack a few clothes and be on his way.

He couldn’t get over how quick and easy it had been.  Wasn’t quite five hours ago, Ace had still been ordering him around like he always did
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go here, pull up right over there, not so damn close.  Walking up to the houses and back like he owned the ground he walked on, confident and easy, moving like a big cat and hardly making a sound.  He’d walked back from that last delivery on Cinnamon Street, tapped once on the smoked glass of the passenger-side window, just that one little tap and you better be ready.  Hector flipped the lock button, Ace got in and closed the door quietly in the dark, the dome light off like it always was when they made deliveries.  Said, “Okay, that’s it for tonight.”

            “Still got a couple of eightballs,” Hector said.

            “Too late now.” One of Ace’s many rules for staying inconspicuous was that they get off the street before the bars closed at two, so there were still other cars on the street.  Tucson had a lot of old farts that went to bed with the chickens, Ace said, you had to think about these things.  He fastened his seat belt in the finicky way he had, checking that it was straight and lay flat across his shoulders.           

Hector put the Ford Excursion in gear and rolled south on Shannon and then east on River, staying two miles under the speed limit although the wide street was almost empty as far as he could see in both directions. 

“Drive like your grandmother,” Ace had said, the first time he handed Hector the keys, and it turned out he meant absolutely
como
su
abuela
, every time with no exceptions.  A few days later when Hector executed what he thought was a slick-as-snot little lane-jump to make the light on Speedway, Ace said, in a perfectly friendly way, “Pull into that strip mall up ahead there.” 

As soon as the car stopped rolling he jumped out on his side, leaned over and pulled Hector across the seat by his ears.   Stood him upright that way, beside the car, grunting with surprise and pain.  Slapped his face, forehand, backhand, twice on each side.  Dropped him on the asphalt then and stood over him saying softly, “Now walk home, asshole.  Tomorrow you come and see me in the afternoon, ask me real nice, I might give you your job back.”

Hector could still taste blood on the inside of his cheeks the next day when he walked into the coffee shop at the Congress Hotel and stood beside Ace’s table, waiting  quietly.  When Ace looked up from his New York Steak, rare the way he always took it, mashed potatoes and green beans on the side, Hector said, “Ace, I’m sorry
¾
”

“Hector.”  Ace shook his head, a scant inch back and forth.  “Don’t waste my time with sorry.”  He took the keys to the Excursion out of his pocket and held them up.  “Just do as you’re told.  Get the car out of the lot back there on Toole Street and bring it around here to the hotel parking lot.  Park as close as you can get to the door and wait.”

The man always knew what he wanted, give him that. He was over six feet tall and strong, no signs of age on him except his eyes, which looked like they’d been dead for several years.  Hector never got in the car with him again without wishing he was someplace else.  But he hid his fear and anger and hopped whenever Ace said hop because where else in Tucson was he going to make four hundred a week tax-free for a couple of nights’ work?

Tonight when Ace came back from that last delivery and buckled himself in, he put an old disc in the player, that band with the weird name, Creedence Clearwater Revival.  Singer with a gravelly voice yelling something about a bad moon rising, trouble on the way.  Didn’t make much sense really but it stuck in Hector’s mind because it described how he always felt on that job.  Every moon he ever saw while he was riding with Ace Perkins was a bad one.

Hector thought it was lousy music but at least it filled that heavy brooding silence that always followed Ace into the car.  He watched the lights as they approached First Avenue, thinking that in a few minutes he could get out of the car and put another night’s work behind him.  Got a big jolt of surprise when Ace said, “Turn south here.  Pull into that Rillito Park there and park up next to the bike path.  I need to piss.”

Hector’s chest tightened up and he felt the blood surge in his head.  Ace’s routines were, like, set in cement, he never changed anything.  He always emptied his bladder just before they started the run and never stopped again, wouldn’t let Hector stop either, till they were done.

So Hector wondered—had Ace hired his replacement?  He’d heard rumors about a boy named Ernesto who’d worked for Ace before and now seemed to be gone from the neighborhood.  Was this going to be the night Hector’s name joined Ernesto’s on the list of the disappeared?  His mind ran in circles, hunting for clues.  Everything had been going so well, why would Ace off him now? 

But with a guy like Ace you never knew.  Ride with him ten years, all you’d be sure of was he didn’t give a shit for nobody. 

It was a hot night, Hector had been guzzling water out of a liter bottle clamped in the carrier between them, and Ace as usual had the big bottle of orange Gatorade open on his side.  They’d had plenty of liquid since they left the single-wide where they packaged the product, but didn’t they always drink a lot on these runs?  So as he parked the car he dropped his left hand onto the seat, ready to reach under the loose leg of his cargo pants for the knife he kept sheathed there, a boot knife with a sturdy grip, slender in the blade and razor sharp on both sides. 

Ace got out of the car as soon as it stopped, walked up onto the crunchy gravel toward the mesquite tree, carrying his bag as always, unzipping as he went.  Set the bag down and had his pecker in his hands, watering the base of the tree, in five seconds. 
Guess he really did need to go
, Hector thought, and began to relax. 

But then, maybe because he got so wired there for a few seconds, his brain seemed to keep running along by itself, ticka ticka tick.  And what it said was,
Maybe this is opportunity knocking, ticka ticka tick. 

He had been getting ready to leave for some time.  He had the fake passport ordered from Estes and enough money to pay for it, had a friend of a friend across the border in Santa Ana who had said yes, always jobs on the supply side if you weren’t afraid to work.  He had been waiting to save more money but now he thought,
What the fuck, there’s over seven thousand dollars in that sack. 

And then the thought of never having to sit in that car with Ace Perkins again blew over him like a fresh breeze right out of heaven, so sweet that without any more hesitation he pulled the knife out of its sheath and opened his door. 

He walked up toward Ace, who was just zipping up and turning around.  Kept the knife clenched in his right fist, pressed against his leg out of sight,.  He smiled the silly fawning smile he used on Mama when he wanted a favor, and said with a little apologetic chuckle, “Just realized I gotta do that too.” 

Ace frowned and started toward the car with his mouth turned down at the corners saying, “Well, hurry up.”  Hector walked right on as if to pass him but turned as they drew even, pointed across the front of Ace’s chest with his left hand and said, “Look out!”  As Ace turned to look where he pointed Hector lifted the knife and plunged it into the base of Ace’s neck, inside the collarbone, below his ear.

He knew how to do it because he’d done it once before during his stretch in Catalina Mountain, when Ray Muñoz demanded he kill Boo Hirtz as the price of admission to the gang that ran Building Nine.  Ray had showed him how, explaining where the artery was, so deep under the collarbone and such a gusher you were toast as soon as it was cut, nobody could save you.  He had only had a shank then and was shaking with fear, but even so Boo Hirtz fell over backwards like a stupefied buffalo, never said a word and was dead by the time he hit the ground.  

Three years later under the mesquite tree in the dark, with distant city noises coming faint across the dry riverbed, Hector swiveled the handle once to make sure the artery was cut, and stepped back so he wouldn’t get blood on himself.  In the two seconds before the light went out in Ace’s eyes, Hector watched him trying to reach his gun.  Not smiling now, he leaned toward the dying face and said softly, “Shoulda been more careful who you pulled around by the ears, Asshole.”

CHAPTER TWO

North of the river, Delaney had said, a new office complex.  “Big sign, Rillito Business Park, you can’t miss it.”

 
You want to bet?  I don’t see any sign.
 Halfway across the bridge, Sarah spotted it. 
Oh hell, he meant
just
north of the river.
  She hit the brakes and turned hard right onto a gleaming expanse of fresh asphalt.

The Catalinas towered over the top of the street, a shadowed mass against a sky full of fading stars.  The cloudless eastern horizon had turned the color of pewter.  In the gray light she could see the outlines of Delaney’s Chevy and two patrol cars huddled together in the empty lot.  She parked next to the sergeant’s car and got out, moving deliberately to stay cool. 

In the last week of September, the summer rains had ended but the heat was hanging on—downtown Tucson would be sizzling by noon.  It felt good to be outside in the pre-dawn hush, the thermometer at sixty-five and small birds making optimistic noises in the dusty bushes.

Delaney’s silhouette was a darker gray shape among the trees, up by the bike path.  Sarah walked toward him at the street cop’s steady pace, confident and unhurried. Slender and handsome at thirty-five, she had replaced her youthful bloom with burnished fitness and a put-together look that said, to her peers, “Trust me,” and to malefactors, “Don’t even think about it.”

Occasionally some fool thought about it anyway, and for those times she wore a Glock nine mil in a paddle holster on her belt.  After thirteen-plus years in the Department, five in investigations, she was poised, wary and seldom surprised.

A narrow cement sidewalk slanted up through gravel beds filled with desert plants, to an asphalt bike path along the river.  Two uniformed officers were stringing crime scene tape around an area between the mesquite trees.  Beyond the path, an iron railing kept people from sliding into the sandy pit of the riverbed.