Southtown (17 page)

Will remembered something Gerry Far had told him for a laugh, years ago. Gerry had sold one of their acquisitions to a love-struck grocer, an old man who’d bought the girl for ten times her worth, cleaning out his savings and mortgaging his store to possess her. Will and Gerry had joked about how much the old man must like to squeeze ripe fruit. The man’s name might’ve been Zuniga.

The woman didn’t look at Will as she emptied his basket.

She ran her hands deftly over each item—estimating the weight of the produce, clacking prices from memory into an old-fashioned adding machine. She put everything into a brown paper bag for him, told him in Spanish it would be nineteen dollars and twenty-eight cents.

Will made up his mind. He would simply pay and leave.

He reached in his pocket, hoping to find some cash. Surely he’d overlooked at least one twenty-dollar bill.

But he didn’t have time. Lupe looked up at him—straight through the sunglasses and the dyed hair and ten years of her own freedom—and she yelped with fear.
“¡Es él!”

As if she’d expected him. Will realized the jailbreak must have dredged up her worst memories. The television would’ve kept his face constantly before her. Like thousands of others he’d brought north, Lupe must’ve been half expecting Will Stirman, her personal nightmare, to walk back into her life somehow. He had obliged her.

The rest happened fast.

The grocer Zuniga dropped his spray gun and grabbed the onion cleaver. He shouted at Stirman to get away from his wife. He told her to run, call the police.

The woman didn’t move.

Will drew his gun. He told the old man to stop, to drop the knife.

Zuniga kept coming.

It’s a fucking gun,
Stirman thought.
Stop, you idiot.

But there were years of the stored vengeance in the old man’s eyes—resentment, poverty, desperate love for a woman Stirman had scarred. The old man wasn’t going to stop.

Will fired a warning shot, but the grocer was already on top of him. The knife slashed into Will’s shoulder.

Will’s second shot was involuntary, a reflex from the pain. It caught the old man in the throat.

Zuniga went down on his knees, drowning as he tried to breathe. He crumpled onto the green mat. The spray gun he’d dropped hissed water, pushing a wave of red across the cement floor.

The woman didn’t scream. She cupped her hands over her mouth and waited to die.

Will should have killed her. She could identify him. But his shoulder was on fire. Blood was soaking his shirt. The room turned the color of beer glass. He staggered outside, back toward his Camaro.

He was three blocks away before he realized he’d forgotten his groceries.

He pulled into a flea market parking lot. He stripped off his bloody shirt and wrapped it around his shoulder as tightly as he could. He wasn’t sure how deep the cut was, or whether he’d stopped bleeding.

He made sure he still had bullets in his gun. Then he ditched the Camaro. He got lucky, found a decrepit Ford station wagon with keys in the ignition.

By the time he was on the road again, sirens were all around him, police cars racing toward the grocery store. The checkpoints would be going up soon. He had to get the hell away.

He tried to breathe deeply, lifting his bad shoulder so the pain would keep his senses sharp. Somehow, he made it back onto I-37.

He drove all the way south to Braunig Lake, then pulled over on a farm road, tried to control the rattle in his chest.

He pulled out his cell phone and called Pablo.

Five rings. Six. By the time Pablo picked up, Stirman was really pissed.

“You sleeping?”

Pablo hesitated. “No. Fuck you.”

“Tell me you’re holding the gun on her.”

A longer silence. Pablo was probably looking for his goddamn gun. “Yeah.”

“Point it at her head.”

“What for? She’s asleep.”

“Pablo, tell me you’re pointing the gun at her goddamn head.”

“Okay. I am.”

“It’s going to go down faster than I thought. An hour, maximum, and I’ll be back with the cash.”

“It’s only just getting dark.”

“Don’t turn on the radio. If I don’t call back in one hour, shoot her. Listen for cops. You hear sirens, you think they might be coming for you, don’t wait. Shoot her. You understand? Then get the hell out. You let her live, I swear to God, I’ll find you.”

“Slow down, man. I mean—shit.”

“Pablo.”

“Yeah, okay,” he said. “I understand. But listen—”

Stirman didn’t have time for more. He hung up.

Will knew what he had to do. He called the prearranged number. When Sam Barrera came on the line, waiting faithfully for instructions, Stirman told him how it would happen.

20

I almost didn’t go home.

Looking back, I wonder which lives and deaths might’ve been exchanged had I driven straight toward the money.

But Jem and I both needed to use the little
caballeros
room. I figured we could make a pit stop at 90 Queen Anne and make our plans from there.

Besides, the radio news from Medina Lake was making me nervous. The Department of Public Safety had announced they could no longer guarantee the structural integrity of Medina Dam, which had been built in 1911 and never reinforced. Water was pouring 10.4 feet over the spillway.

My friend the Castroville deputy got a quote in, when asked how worried people should be. “That dam breaks, y’all can expect a sixty-foot-high wall of water. You tell me. “

Four towns downriver were being evacuated. Most of those half-million folk would be heading into San Antonio. It was no time to be on the highway.

Up next, the radio announcer promised, a breaking story about the Floresville Five. I glanced over at Jem and turned off the radio.

As he ran into my apartment, Jem yelled, “Cat!”

Robert Johnson opened one indignant eye.

Jem had long ago refused to believe cats could have surnames, so he’d taken to calling Robert Johnson by his species. It was one of the many humiliations Robert Johnson would endure from Jem without drawing blood, because he knew I would pay him off later with a king’s ransom in kitty Tex-Mex.

“Do you have a paper bag?” Jem asked me, delighted.

As much as Robert Johnson loved playing sack-the-cat, I noticed the light on my answering machine was blinking.

I said, “Why don’t you use the restroom first, champ?”

Jem was clearly more interested in tormenting my pet, but he’d started doing the cross-legged dance pretty bad. He dashed off to the john and rolled the door shut behind him.

Robert Johnson glared at me.

“It builds character,” I said.

The answering machine told me I had two messages.

The first had come in at 1:35
P.M.

“Fred.” Sam Barrera’s voice sent a pang of guilt through my chest. I’d neglected checking on him much too long today. “I’ve found Stirman’s hideout—North Cherry at Rosa Parks. Big brick building, Carrizo Ice Co. There’s been nobody in or out, but I’m pretty sure he’s keeping the woman there. I’ll sit on the building as long as I can, but I need backup. Tell the field office to make it quiet this time.”

I stared at the machine.

How Sam Barrera had gotten to a warehouse on the East Side when his BMW was sitting in my driveway, I didn’t know. Perhaps he was imagining the whole thing from his armchair at home. But I had a sneaking suspicion the old bastard was truly mobile, and if Sam was knocking around the East Side looking for Stirman, he’d find trouble fast.

I grabbed my car keys.

The second message played.

This one had been left at 7:43
P.M
., a few minutes before I’d walked in.

“Fred.” Sam’s voice again, tighter this time. “Where the hell are you? Stirman just called. I didn’t . . . um, I tried to write it all down but I don’t have my notebook. He’s moved up the meeting time. He didn’t sound good. Something’s wrong. He wants us to bring the money to Jones and Avenue B right now. That’s the museum, right? Shit, did we talk about money? Nothing’s happening at this Carrizo Ice place, but I still think she’s in there. I mean, the woman. You know. I’d better get over to the rendezvous point and stall him. If you don’t get this— I’ll think of something. I think I can take him down. He sounded like he might be hurt. I hate damn answering machines.”

The line went dead.

“Jem,” I called.

He came out of the bathroom. “You found a bag?”

“Champ, we don’t have time—”

Red lights flashed against my windowpanes. A police car had pulled into the driveway, blocking my truck and Barrera’s BMW. Ana DeLeon and her friend from the Fugitive Task Force, Major Cooper, got out of the back. Two uniforms got out of the front. They walked toward my porch looking like Death’s Prize Patrol.

“On second thought,” I told Jem, “how about you play with Robert Johnson in the backyard for a little while?”

My hand trembled as it hovered over the answering machine. I passed up
erase,
punched
rewind
.

A knock at the door. Ana DeLeon was two steps inside my living room before she asked, “May we come in?”

Behind her, the male cops stared at me. I could sense DeLeon was keeping them on a short tether. They would’ve liked nothing better than to tear me apart.

“Always glad to see friends,” I said.

DeLeon formally introduced Major Cooper, the Task Force guy. Up close, I saw I was right about the linebacker thing. He had the cross-eyed squint of a former player, as if he’d spent too many years staring through a face plate. He wore a brown blazer with jeans and a yellow and blue tie that looked like Van Gogh had thrown up on it.

DeLeon said, “We have a problem.”

I nodded. “You’re right. He’s a fashion disaster. But I don’t think my clothes will fit him.”

DeLeon managed to contain her mirth. “Twenty minutes ago, Will Stirman robbed a mom-and-pop on South Presa. The store owner stabbed him in the shoulder; Stirman shot the old guy dead. We blocked off the entire area, but Stirman still got away. Now we’ve got a wounded armed fugitive roaming the South Side.”

“Straight down Broadway,” I advised. “When you hit downtown, keep going.”

“This is bullshit,” Cooper said. “Cuff him.”

DeLeon held up her hand. The uniforms stayed where they were.

“Tres, no games,” she said. “The media is running with the story. Every cop in Bexar County who’s not already on flood duty has been called up. We need to know what you know.”

In the backyard, Jem was kicking his soccer ball at the patio table. He was trying to dislodge Robert Johnson, who was playing goalie. The score was zero–zero.

“You said it yourself,” DeLeon reminded me. “If Stirman is forced to run, he won’t bother keeping a hostage alive. We may have minutes rather than hours.”

I glanced at Cooper. His face betrayed no surprise. He’d been fully briefed on Erainya.

I tried not to be angry. I tried not to feel like DeLeon had betrayed me by showing up unannounced with a bunch of bruisers. It wasn’t her fault. She was doing her job, trying to help. Ralph had told me I should trust her, let her handle it. Maybe that’s what decided me.

“Stirman called last night,” I said. “He thinks Barrow and Barrera stole fourteen million dollars from him. He demanded we return it.”

No one looked surprised about the amount of cash.

DeLeon said, “When and where?”

“Tonight. He’s supposed to call after midnight and specify a drop.”

“You found the money?”

“No.”

DeLeon arched an eyebrow.

“Search the house,” I offered.

DeLeon must’ve never heard of a bluff. She glanced at the uniforms. “Gentlemen?”

They tore up my apartment with gusto.

“While they’re at it,” she said, “mind if I search you for a weapon?”

Motherhood hadn’t made her any gentler when it came to frisks.

Once she satisfied herself I wasn’t carrying, and the cops found nothing more incriminating than my tai chi sword above the toilet and a cup full of HEB Buddy Buck coupons, DeLeon and Cooper exchanged looks.

“We’ll tap the line,” Cooper said. “Wait for the call.”

“No,” DeLeon and I chorused.

I’m not sure who was more embarrassed by our agreement.

“Stirman’s wounded,” DeLeon said. “If he’s listening to the news, he knows we’re on to him. He’s not going to keep a schedule. He’ll cut his losses and run.”

“We’ve got every highway under surveillance,” Cooper said. “We’ll shut down the fucking city. He’s not going anywhere.”

“Right,” I said. “You’re just toying with him now.”

Cooper took a step toward me.

DeLeon interposed. “Major.”

“You vouched for this son-of-a-bitch,” Cooper reminded her. “He knew Stirman was in town, maybe for days. If he’d given us a few goddamned details—”

“Major,” DeLeon cut in, “as I explained at the hospital yesterday, Tres’ boss may be in danger—”

“Hell with that. I should throw his ass in jail for aiding and abetting.”

“You see that boy outside?” DeLeon asked. “His mother is the one Stirman took. Tres is trying to make sure she doesn’t die.”

“I don’t . . .” Cooper stopped himself. His temples turned purple with the effort.

“You don’t care,” I supplied, “about anything except catching Stirman.”

“Tres,” DeLeon said, “if we knew where to look right now, it would be the San Antonio SWAT team who deployed. They’re the only hostage force ready. I
know
them. They would do things right.”

“If you knew where to look.”

Her eyes held mine. “Stirman still wants his money. He might’ve called you after the robbery went bad, moved up the meeting time.”

I thought about Sam Barrera, who would be arriving at Jones and Avenue B about now.
Minutes rather than hours.

Cooper grumbled, “This asshole is holding back.”

“I
know
that, goddamn it!” DeLeon snapped. She turned her attention back to me, tried to moderate her tone. “Well?”

I walked to the answering machine.

“I got home maybe two minutes before you walked in,” I said. “This was waiting for me.”

I pressed
play
.

As soon as Barrera’s voice mentioned an address, Cooper whipped out his cell phone, but DeLeon said, “Wait.”

She listened until I punched
stop,
then studied me uneasily. “Why did he call you Fred?”

“I’m the guy who works with Erainya. Sam’s got Fred Barrow on the brain. You’ve never called somebody the wrong name when you were under stress?”

She thought about that. “He told you to call the field office. You’ve been talking with the FBI?”

“He means I-Tech, his agency. Look, I gave you what you want. Now get moving, or let me do it.”

“Let’s go,” Cooper told the uniforms.

DeLeon hesitated. “You
will
stay here, Tres. You understand that?”

“I’m taking care of Jem. I have no weapon and no money to bargain with. Does it look like I’m charging into battle?”

DeLeon glanced toward the patio, where Jem was teaching Robert Johnson how to block corner shots.

“Sergeant,” Cooper growled. “Now, or I leave without you.”

Her expression was still troubled. She sensed something amiss. She said, “I’ll get her back alive, Tres. I swear.”

Their patrol car disappeared down Queen Anne Street.

I opened the patio door and told Jem to bring the cat inside.

“Time to go?” he asked, setting a relieved Robert Johnson down by his food dish.

“Time,” I agreed. “You’ve got to be brave, champ. Can you do that for me?”

He nodded. “We’ll get my mom back. He can’t take us
both
on.”

I tried to smile, despite the fact that I was betting everything—including our lives—on a guess.

I pressed
play
on the answering machine, let the tape continue from where I’d stopped it. I listened again to Sam Barrera’s second message—the one Ana DeLeon hadn’t heard.