The District Manager (31 page)

My wounds make it difficult to sleep. I get up early and leave Brenna crashed.

I go into the kitchen and pour myself a cup of coffee from the night before. Then I go to the front window, pull back the curtain and peer out to find a black and white DPS car parked in front of the house. No one’s in it however, and a dark feeling overcomes me for an instant. Then I see a tan trooper walk across the front lawn.
I guess Curlee gave me a break.

I pad outside, coffee cup in hand and grab a smoke from the Expedition. The officer is approaching me, I look up and read his nametag.

“Lovely morning, Deputy,” I say.

“I need to escort you folks to headquarters this morning. Y’all need to get ready.”

“Yes, sir, Deputy.” But before I move back inside, I finish my cigarette.

We’re all loaded up in the Expedition and ready to roll when she declines to start.
I guess she waited until we were safe to finally hang up her reins. Almost four hundred thousand miles, something tells me she’s gone for good.
No one but Brenna understands the well of emotion. I’m trying to fight back tears as we go back in the house and pull her car from out of the garage.

“Are you alright, Mason?” she asks me plaintively from the driver’s seat. I can only nod my head ‘yes.’

“I sure hope all these police can find my car at some point,” Joyce interjects. It was her car that the goons took when they abducted them.

The deputy is following us.
At least he doesn’t have his lights flashing.

The DPS headquarters is abuzz with law enforcement. A whole collection of news media vans are perched in the parking lot like vultures. Once inside, the other three go one way with a collection of officers and officials. I follow Curlee down a solitary hall.

He closes the door behind us. “Take a seat,” he points to a chair in front of the desk.

I comply.

“So when did you figure out it was Crane?” he asks. He’s sitting on the edge of the desk.

“Right before I went into the D.O. last night. A few days ago— my time frame is a bit mixed up so cut me some slack—Rusty and I discovered that a guy named Hank Garcia…”

“The PUC auditor?”

“Right. We discovered that he was killed in a hit and run accident. It was just too coincidental. Anyway, I was informed by a staffer that they’d hired a new guy to replace him…a guy named Horatio Sanchez. The staffer told me that Sanchez had had some high-level recommendations. The director was out of town or something and didn’t call me back until yesterday. When I listened to the message, it said that the recommendation was from Crane. Sanchez worked in Mexico…in Nuevo Leon, I think.”

“And it hit you?”

“Like a ton of freakin’ bricks. It just made sense. Jack Clark was in our office with all these healthy political donations. Not just us, but all over the district. But Clark was a campaign manager and consultant. He might have a good model, as Crane called it before I shot his ass, but he couldn’t administer it. That would take a guy like Crane.”

“And just to think that all this was going on literally just upstairs from his district office. Which by the way, is owned by Bowers Power, Inc.”

“Well, there ya go. Big surprise. So what about Jack Clark? Have you got him? He’s a veritable horn of plenty where information is concerned.”

“Not yet.”

“You got anything?”

“No, Clark is a phantom. And frankly, on the surface, I don’t know what he’s actually done that’s illegal. So he operated some PAC’s. That ain’t against the law. All the illegality is on fellas like Crane. Jack Clark might prove to be the genius of the century. It’ll just have to wait on the investigation.”

“For all I know you may be right.”

“For all you know I am right. I’ve been doing this shit for a long time.”

“So you got a bunch of TV assholes outside. What are you gonna tell them?”

“As little as possible.”

“But this is ‘big time,’ like you said.”

“It is, but that’ll pass.”

“How? This whole situation, left to fester, could undermine our republic.”

“Are you serious? Do you think anyone really even understands that or really even cares—particularly the public?”

“How can you say that?”

“Maybe I’m just an old cynical dog and maybe you’re just a naïve pup, but shouldn’t it be obvious? Undermine the republic? First off, most people don’t even know what that means…they think it’s a ‘democracy.’ Which means mob rule, ultimately. Like what you have on the Internet these days. Undermine? What do think the United States Congress does every day they clock in? Shit, this is par for the course my friend; just an offshoot of a virus that’s plaguing the country.”

“You really don’t think anyone will care?”

“For a moment. But in our twenty-four-hour news cycle… NO! Americans live in a fantasyland, Mason, you should know that. Let me ask you this, how often do you hear about the foiled secessionist plot from a couple of years ago? That was big time!”

“Never.”

“Right! Americans will just go back to social media and pretend to be things they aren’t and watch a football game in between commercials. Go further into debt. Nothing will change. It will just get worse. We got lucky on this one. Who knows how far and deep this actually goes?”

“Check the ship channel at the Port of Houston, by the way.”

“Why, because of the railyard?”

“That, and, as I recall one day coming out of Crane’s place of business…where I ran into his CPA, there was also a client of his who was introduced as working in shipping. I can’t remember his name…”

“We’ll figure it out through our investigation…or not.”

“You seem really skeptical about the whole thing. Was all this for nothing?”

“Maybe so,” his answer is so dry that it almost itches. “Say, on another topic…and Rusty had mentioned this to me before our meeting down on the border…at first I had some doubts, but now…”

“What are you trying to say?”

“Well, Mason, you’re officially unemployed now. What are you going to do?”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right, I am. I don’t really know to tell you the truth. I’m thinking of falling in love. And I’ve decided to sell my property.”

“Fall in love? You mean with that lovely lady out there?”

“You guessed it.”

“Well, I can’t think of a better idea than that one, but I have one that could possibly accompany that.”

“Oh, what’s that?”

“Like I said, Rusty suggested it and now I think I have to agree.”

“Agree with what, Curlee?”

“How’d you like to come to work for us?”

“What, as a cop?” I say with an air of accidental contempt.

“Not as a ‘cop,’ but a state trooper. There’s a difference. It’s considered an honor you know.”

“Is that right?” I’m still not sold.

“Think of it as a lateral move. As district manager you worked for the state, you’d just move to another area. Hell, I think we’re even on the same pension programs for the most part.”

“Your’s is a little better.”

“There you go, a step up.”

“I don’t know, Curlee…I just don’t think I could do something like that.”

“Like what? Be a part of the best law enforcement agency in the greatest state in the union?” he asks, confused.

“No. Work for an entity that disregards the Constitution and basic civil liberties as matter of course. I seem to have a tragic flaw for doing the right thing, for better or for worse.”

“That’s a load, Mason, and you know it.”

“Is it? What about the bad cops? And don’t tell me there aren’t bad cops because we both know there are.”

“Of course there are, cops are human too. Jesus Christ, what is with you liberals?”

“I’m not a liberal, not a conservative. I’m just a guy on the inside making an observation. And my observation is that there are no good cops.”

“Really?”

“Would you like to know why?”

“From anyone else I’d say ‘fuck you,’ but from you…yes, I’d like to know.”

“Because as long as the good cops circle the wagons for the bad, they can’t be truly good. How can you argue that?”

“Okay, alright…I admit you have a point. So why not join? Come on in. I will say this though, you wouldn’t be the first crusader. And…once you’re out there…doing the right thing isn’t always so obvious. And let me add this, I’ve been doing this some forty years. In that time I’ve seen young guys with families lose their lives, or lose their families because of their job. Our cars might be, but our job ain’t black and white. Jesus Christ man, it’s guys like your ex-boss that make all the laws. We just get stuck enforcing them… and some of us die doing it. You think I give two shits if some dumb son-of-a-bitch wants to fuck his life up doing drugs? Hell no! But because of legislators, I get stuck slugging it out in the trenches. I’m a workin’ man, Mason. Surely you can respect that.”

“Hell is filled with the respectable.”

“I’m sure.”

“But it’s not that I don’t respect you. I just don’t think I can do what you do, because of principle.”

“Fair enough, but just to show you I mean well, the invitation’s open.”

I suddenly feel tired and there’s still some unfinished business. “So who’s gonna care for Mrs. Reynolds?” I ask.

“Mrs. Reynolds is dead. She passed away a few days ago.”

“Rusty didn’t tell me.”

“Are you surprised?”

“No. Out of curiosity, who will handle her burial, and was Rusty’s body recovered?”

“Rusty’s wife Sally will handle the burial. And yes, we did find Rusty’s body. He was shot probably ten times. Surprisingly, they didn’t defile the body.”

“Poor woman, she’s lost three loved ones.”

“What are you going to do with his car?”

“I haven’t thought of that yet.”

“You want me to take care of it?”

“I don’t know. I have something of Rusty’s—other than his Pontiac Firebird. Maybe I should handle it. Maybe I owe him at least that much. He saved my life repeatedly.”

“Suit yourself. But if you need my help, let me know.”

Curlee and I exit the small office.

Brenna, Joyce, and Will are walking towards us with several deputies. The hall is long and white.

“What about Crane?” I ask Curlee before we part.

“I don’t think he’s gonna make it. You got him pretty good.” He turns and leaves.

“Oh, Deputy Curlee?”

He pauses without turning around, only turning his head the way Racer X used to do with Speed on Speed Racer.

“Why do you think all this happened?”

“Money and power: one and the same. And, probably just to ensure things stay just as they are, to keep young guns like yourself from coming along and legalizing everything, and maybe sealing the border.”

He continues on his way.

Brenna reaches me and gives me a great big hug. “Jeez, these jeans are falling right off me.”

“You look as beautiful as always.”

“I think I stumbled onto a new diet—the Kidnapping Diet! What do you think?” She smiles.

“Uh, you mean like a service? We could grab people… hold them for days…I don’t think so.”

“Oh come on, Mason, where’s your capitalistic spirit? Joyce asks, sarcastically.

“I think they’ll just have to deal with those few extra pounds,” I say as I grab Brenna by the waist and kiss her with everything I’ve got.

“Mason, can we go to Whataburger?” Will asks, tugging my sleeve.

Part V

JANUARY

I’m unemployed and too stubborn to compromise with corruption. Some might think me a total fool. Maybe I am.

We live in a society with no true rites of passage. No way to know when we’re ready for this or that. Oh we’ve tried setting up little things here and there, like school for instance. But the world is full of people who are credentialed and end up taking a backseat to people who are talented—someone with a piece of paper and a mountain of debt working for a dropout with an ingenious idea. No, we have no rites of passage. Nothing definitive at all, only shadows. We can only guess going forward.