Love, Like Water (33 page)

T
HE
air down by the river was cool, redolent with the spice of pine and grass, as Joshua slowed his run to a steady jog along the Paseo del Bosque Trail. Agent Greene had introduced him to the long stretch along the Rio Grande; it ran nearly the whole length of the river as it cut through the city, and was one of the more popular spots for Albuquerqueans to escape the heat. But at this hour it was nearly deserted, just a couple of bicyclists and late runners like himself braving the chill desert night. The midsixties that had been the high today didn’t linger after nightfall. Joshua figured it was probably ten degrees cooler than that now.

Despite the darkness by the river, you couldn’t see the stars the way you could on the ranch, Joshua thought, even with the leafy trees now mostly bare of their fall color. The ambient light of the city blocked them, just the way the smells of car fumes and concrete dulled the scent of growing things. It was weird how used Joshua had gotten to the scent of growing things in the short time he’d been on the ranch.

A bench beckoned and he headed for it, dropping onto it with a sigh of relief and tugging the earbuds from his ears, shutting off the sound of Daddy Yankee’s most recent release. He’d only run a couple of miles, but that was more than he’d expected he’d be able to do, after not running for so long. It had been one of his ways to blow off steam for most of his life; until the addiction, he’d even run while in Darwin Park. After… well, it hadn’t been so easy. And since rehab, his energy levels had been pretty low.

But he’d gotten more exercise on the ranch, riding and helping out where he could, and he supposed that that was probably what had given him his energy back. At least enough to do a couple of miles. Maybe he’d be able to sleep tonight. He hadn’t had much luck with that lately. Dreams of the past, of course, as had haunted him for months, but those had been joined by dreams of Eli, battered and broken in that loading dock, frozen-faced and still as he’d leaned on the fence the night he’d discovered just what Joshua was. And then worse—dreams where the two were juxtaposed, where it was Eli dead in the warehouse, Eli battered and broken in the canyon glen where they’d made love and Joshua had danced for him. ’Chete had been there too, and the waterfall had run red with blood.

It had been nearly three weeks since he’d left the ranch. The Bureau had found him an inexpensive studio apartment not far from their headquarters; while he hadn’t come back full time, he’d been able to walk to the office for the series of intake interviews and to work on a few smaller projects. Work as an analyst, riding a computer. Not the most exciting job, but one that seemed to be custom-made for his peculiar skills—he’d already picked up some references that other analysts had missed, because his damn memory kept hold of trivia like a miser his gold. The head of the Albuquerque office had called him in yesterday and commended him on catching some data that pushed a stalled investigation into a new, more promising direction.

And then he’d mentioned an upcoming investigation into the Quintana Cartel, another fucking joint project with the DEA, and asked Joshua to work on the preliminary research.

Joshua had almost swallowed his tongue. The Quintana Cartel wasn’t a Mexican operation—it worked out of the Caribbean, smuggling cocaine from Venezuela and heroin from Afghanistan through channels in Cuba, and shipping them up the Mississippi. He knew that because it had been the Quintana Cartel that owned ’Chete Montenegro—and by extension, Joshua. Joshua’s work in Chicago had helped break their operation there and cut off their access to the upper Midwest. Now, apparently, they were expanding into the Southwest instead.

He’d spent today buried in reports, weeding through them in search of patterns, confirmations, testimony, hearsay, anything that would help form the picture he needed of the cartel’s new endeavors. He knew their modus operandi well enough: make connections with an existing gang, recruit the most ruthless as their men on the ground, and only then work out their distribution channels. The Quintaneros, as they called themselves, were careful businessmen; they made sure they had a solid foundation to build on and covered every contingency. It had been that which had made them so difficult to bring down in Chicago.

Today had been a fucking nightmare. Some of the reports had been his own, written in the dark of his apartment in the small hours, pecked out on his laptop as he downloaded the conversations, the orders, the details, from his brain—and sometimes, rarely, the photos he was able to snap surreptitiously with his smartphone. Seeing them again, in cold print or PDF, sent his mind spiraling back down into the nightmare. He remembered writing them, every one, remembered his moods, his actions that day, his reactions. Remembered the pain, and the disconnect the junk had provided.

Every word slapped him back into the Joshua he had been, and left the Joshua he was now reeling.

The river whispered, and Joshua put his head in his hands, the heels of his palms rubbing into his eye sockets, as if they could erase the things he’d seen.

“Hey, you okay, dude?”

He glanced up to see a skinny kid in a hoodie against the cool of the night. Standing between Joshua and the light reflected off the water, he was a black silhouette. Joshua tensed, and glanced briefly to either side, but there was no sign of anyone else.

“Hey,” the kid said again, and put out empty hands. “I’m not gonna mug you, bud. Just askin’. You look kinda bummed.”

“Just tired, thanks,” Joshua said.

Uninvited, the kid dropped down onto the bench a foot or so away from Joshua. “I get that,” he said. “Long day, if you’re out this late for your jog. Never got much into running, myself—too much work.” He fidgeted, his knee bouncing rapidly, and in the reflected light, Joshua saw his face: thin, wispy-bearded, the eyes nervous and the prominent Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed.

“Nervous?” Joshua asked idly.

“Nah, just amped, you know?” He shot Joshua a grin.

A pair of runners went by on the path behind them, talking in low, breathless tones, but the kid didn’t react, so Joshua figured he probably
was
just amped, not nervous. “I’m Joshua.” He held out a hand.

“Tony.” They shook, then the kid pushed his hoodie back. “Shit, it’s cold.”

It hadn’t seemed more than pleasantly cool to Joshua, but he supposed he’d been working up a sweat for the last half hour or so. A few more minutes on the bench and he supposed he’d feel the bite of the November chill. On the other hand, he’d seen a lot of kids like this one before, and they were always cold. It made him study Tony more carefully.

The kid said, “Where you from? You don’t sound local.”

“Back East. Family’s out here.”

“Cool.” Tony’s head bobbed rapidly in acknowledgement. Yeah, Joshua thought. “Amped” must mean the same thing as “hyped,” or something close. Not just hyper, not just nervous. The kid was stoked to the gills. He looked around as if expecting someone, but not towards the path.

“Waiting for somebody?”

“Uh…. Yeah. A friend, y’know.”

And I’m sitting on the bench that’s your meeting place. For your supplier, no doubt.

The thought sent a frisson through Joshua’s spine. Somewhere back in his lizard brain, José Rosales was jumping up and down in excitement, saying,
At last, at last, we can feel good about ourself again. At last, at last, sweet bliss, sweet bliss.

On the ranch, Joshua had seen the way horses could shiver voluntarily, tiny muscles between the skin and the flesh below working to shift the outer layer to dislodge flies or adjust to pressure. Now he felt like his own skin was doing that: shifting, sliding, trying to reform itself into the Joshua-that-was. He tightened his fists around the cord of his earbuds.

Feel good
? Yeah, for a couple of hours of sleepy lassitude, followed by more hours of pain and depression?
Bliss
? He pressed his fists into the flesh of his thighs beneath the running shorts, forcing himself to remember the agony of withdrawal, the agony he had felt every fucking day, waiting for ’Chete to give him the night’s dose. He’d kept José constantly on the edge, pushing him the way he did his other hypes, only letting them have the drug when they’d finished whatever task it was he had set them to. He’d told them it was because he was concerned about their safety, that being strung out damaged their judgment, but it was really because controlling men who could kill him without a second thought gave him a rush like the one his junkies got from the H.

Joshua was never going to let anyone control him like that again. He wasn’t going to let anything control him like that again. He drew in a long, slow breath through his nose, and felt José shriveling up in his head. Felt him die.

He felt like weeping.

“Dude?”

He opened his eyes. He must have had them closed really tightly, because they hurt. “Yeah?”

“Um, I’m kinda meeting someone here…. Hey, though, you know, if you ain’t feeling so good, maybe he could like, help you out? He knows people.”

I bet he does. Thing is—so do I….

“Maybe,” Joshua said. He leaned back against the bench and stretched an arm out along it. The Los Peligros tattoo was mostly shadow, but enough of it showed beneath the T-shirt that someone who knew the design would recognize it. “Mind if I hang around?”

“Okay by me. Oh, there he is now.”

Another guy, in a hoodie like Tony’s, but with the hood down. His hands were in the pockets. “Hey,” he said to Tony, then gave Joshua a suspicious look.

“Hey, Creed. This is Joshua.”

Creed nodded cautiously, then his eyes lit on Joshua’s tattoo. They widened briefly, then some of the tension eased from his face. “Hey, man. What can I do you for?”

“Nothing tonight, man. I’m cool,” Joshua said easily. He curled the fingers of his outstretched hand, feeling the rasp of wood beneath his nails, letting all the tension flow out of his body and into the wood. “Just out for a run, and a palaver with my man Tony here.”

The other guy relaxed more. “Excellent. Don’t mind if Tony and I do a little business?”

“Be my guest. Good junk?”

“Shit, yeah.” The dealer’s face split in a wide grin. “The best.”

“I heard,” Joshua’s voice dropped into a confidential tone, “that there’s a new source in town. You heard about that?”

“Yeah. Where d’you think I got the shit? It’s primo, man. Straight from the Mideast.” He held up a poly bag. Even in the dim light Joshua could see that the contents were a soft, pale color. “None of that dark shit. Pretty, huh?”

Pretty. God, it was pretty. Part of Joshua lusted after it, but he shoved that part back, stuffed it back into the black hole it came out of, and just nodded. “Nice.”

“Sure you don’t want some? New customer, I’ll cut you a deal.”

“Nah, no cash on me. Besides, I’m just a recreational user. And I got enough shit at home for now. Tell you what, though—I’m having a party this weekend. What say we meet back here Friday, same time? I’ll be here.”

“Alone, right?” Creed looked around. “I don’t like to plan that far in advance, but tell you what—you be here, and if I can make it… I’ll show up. Deal?”

“Deal.” Joshua flicked his hand at him to indicate he should continue his business with Tony, and went back to watching the river. Tony got up and walked with Creed down toward the river, talking in low tones that Joshua figured they thought couldn’t be heard. But the breeze was off the water, and carried their voices to him.

Nothing major, just an agreement that Tony would show up on Friday too and keep an eye out for trouble. Joshua expected no less, and didn’t react at all, just absorbed what they had to say. When they were done, Tony sidled past the bench with a “later, dude” and a quick grin. Creed stood a moment or two later, then said to Joshua, “Friday, then. Cash only—I don’t deal in anything else. No trades, no services. Cash.”

“I ain’t stupid,
chulo
.”

The curtness of Joshua’s reply seemed to reassure Creed; with a nod to Joshua, he set off down the slope toward the river and disappeared in the trees a hundred feet away. Joshua watched him, then got up, did a couple stretches, then headed off towards home at a slow, easy jog.

The dealer followed him a while. Joshua kept his pace deliberately slow so he could keep up, but after a few blocks he veered off. Joshua ran for another half hour, then turned his steps toward the city lot where his car was parked.

Chapter 31

B
UTTON
shifted anxiously beneath Eli’s seat, sidestepping across the sand of the arena. “Come on, Eli,” Tucker called from the fence rail he was sitting on. “You’re trying too hard. Horse is getting freaked out.”

“I know,” Eli muttered grimly, and stretched his leg again, feeling the pull of the too-tight muscle. He settled deeper into the saddle and Button relaxed.

“Better,” Tuck said a few minutes later, as Eli brought Button back to the fence and dismounted. “How’s it feel?”

“Like I been hung by my leg for a week or so.”

“You haven’t lost your form, if that’s any consolation. Once you got settled, you were looking okay. What does the physical therapist say?”