Troubled Waters (28 page)

“What the hell—” The plaid-shirted man seemed to realize only belatedly that his gun had just killed a federal officer.

“Get the fuck in the car, you stupid shit,” the other man yelled.

Joaquín shrugged. “I do what I have to do,” he replied. “In my country such a man could not—”

“In your country, you torture women and children. Get in the fucking car before I forget what I'm supposed to do with you, you piece of—”

It came to Jan that the man she'd known as Joaquín Baltasar didn't talk or act like a refugee from political persecution.

“Who is he?” she asked in a small voice. “He's not Joaquín, is he?”

“Lady,” the man replied, “you don't want to know who he is. This whole mess is going to take a hell of a lot of explaining in Washington.”

The other man, having stashed “Joaquín” in the van, came over to Jan, a speculative look on his face. “I checked his ID,” he said. “DEA. This guy was after drugs, not illegals.”

“Drugs,” the other man said with a self-satisfied smile. “That'll work. This whole thing can go down as a bad drug bust, Cookie here can take the fall, and we can get
Caña Dulce
out of the country and into—”

“Caña Dulce?”
The name hit Jan in the stomach. Since going to work for the sanctuary movement, she'd learned more than she'd ever wanted to know about Central American politics.
Caña Dulce
, Sugar Cane, was the ironic nickname of a torturer notorious for his sadism even in a country where cruelty was an everyday occurrence.

So the man they'd thought was Joaquín, the man they'd risked their lives to free, was really a torturer. How in hell had he been slipped into their sanctuary stream? Who had known about it, and how had—

“You say word one about all this, Cookie,” the big man said, holding his gun to her chin, “and we—”

“No, Cal,” the other man cut in. “We can't rely on her to keep her mouth shut. There's only one thing to do. When the Ohio state cops come out here and find Junior's body over there, they'd better find hers too. Drug deal gone wrong. One dead fed and one dead dealer. Case closed.”

Jan lifted her knee in the classic female defense move she'd learned in sixth grade and took off in a dead run toward Dale Krepke's car. He'd left the motor running and the keys in the ignition. She tore away, tires squealing and gravel flying. She heard gunshots and knew they were aimed at her. But she also knew they'd have to get
Caña Dulce
out of there before any other law enforcement people showed up. They couldn't afford to follow her.

But could she afford to go back to Our Lady of Guadalupe? Could she expect that the truth she'd tell would be believed? Or would the government deny any knowledge of
Caña Dulce
, would the death of the mysterious drug cop be put on her tab?

Anything that would happen to her would happen to Ron as well. They'd pull out their tired old conspiracy laws and wrap all of them up in a nice neat package and send her and Ron and Father Jerry to jail for a hell of a long time.

She couldn't do that to him. She headed the car south, driving along back roads so obscure they had no numbers to identify them. She ditched the car along the side and walked until she reached a gas station in a little town with a civil war memorial in the middle. She cadged a ride to Fremont and spent four hours in the bus station, waiting for the first bus to God-knew-where.

As she sat on the hard bench in the tiny bus station, a tear rolled down her cheek. By now, Ron would know it had all gone sour. By now, he'd know she wasn't coming back.

Honeymoon City was far, far away.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-T
HREE

I want my life back
.

She had to pee. It was ten minutes until her break, when Teri from Housewares would step up and take the register. Her left hand swept the merch across the scanner and the green numbers lit up the console over her head.

Anybody could do this job. Hell, they could train monkeys and pay them in ripe bananas. You didn't even have to be able to add or subtract, just read the numbers on the console and make change accordingly.

I want my life back
.

It had been so long since she'd had a life. Since she'd even considered the possibility of a life. Fourteen years down the drain and all she had to show for them was a series of low-paying jobs, a lot of drunken nights in cheap motels, and a head of hair destroyed by too many color changes.

Way in the back of the bustle and noise, the chatter of customers, the wail of toddlers, the beeps and pings of machines, the canned music played an old Beatles tune.

there are

places

I remember

all my life

Places like her hometown, which she hadn't seen since that night in 1982 when she ran for her life. Places like Our Lady of Guadalupe, where she'd married Ron Jameson.

She gave the customer a big smile and said, “Thanks for shopping at Wal-Mart.” Old Sam Walton would be proud of her.

God, she had to pee. Where was Teri? She glanced up at the big clock behind the register. Five more minutes.

She flashed a smile at the next customer, a wan young woman with a huge pregnant belly and a towheaded toddler in the seat of the wire shopping basket. “What a cute little boy,” she said, infusing her voice with an enthusiasm she didn't really feel.

If I'd had a life, would I have had a child?

Not with Ron. Unless they could do some kind of medical miracle thing and extract his sperm and plant it in her belly like they did with cows.

She hummed along with the Beatles.

some are dead

and

some

are

living

Kenny was dead. Ron was living. Or at least she assumed Ron was living. What if she went back only to find that he'd died?

Two more minutes. The speaker's words from last night's AA meeting came back to her in startling clarity, almost as if she could see them on the green console: “We're only as sick as our secrets.”

Too many secrets. That was the trouble. That was why she couldn't have her life back.

But what if she told the secrets? What if she stopped running, stopped hiding, and went back? Would she go to jail? Maybe. But maybe not, if she told all the truth, all the secrets.

A hand tapped her shoulder. She froze, then turned to see Teri holding her money tray, ready to take register four so Jan could go on break.

Jan flashed a grateful smile and rushed to the Ladies. She used the toilet, then stood in front of the mirror as she washed her hands in the ugly yellow soap.

I want my life back
.

She took off her royal-blue smock, laid it carefully on the little bench in the anteroom, and went to her locker. She took her purse and walked out of the store into the Kansas sunshine, taking her first steps homeward.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-F
OUR

Tarky smiled. It was the hard, bright smile of anger. A smile like a knife, slicing through Wes's hot fury.

Tarky had always been the spider to Wes's glittering butterfly. Tark was the sinister, quiet creature sitting inside the intricate web, waiting for a victim to enmesh itself in sticky strands.

“You know, John Wesley,” he said in a tone of total unconcern, “that line's getting a little tired. Every time you hit a bump in the road, you try to fire me. I'm—”

“A bump in the road?” Blood suffused Wes's face; I began to worry that a stroke was on the way. “I just learned that I supposedly took money from people making bogus airplane parts and you call that a bump in the road?”

Tarky held up a hand. “Wait a second, Wes. I can explain.”

“I can explain, too, Tark. You ran short of money to pay off the loan sharks so you sold your most valuable possession—my name. You made some goddamn phone call quashing some goddamn investigation I never even heard about, and now I'm going to spend the rest of this campaign explaining it.”

Neither man seemed to care that I was in the room. They were both enraged, Wes in a loud and Tarky in a quiet way.

Wes shook his head. “I can't afford this, Tark. I was kicked out of the state house, remember? This is my last big chance. If I lose this one, the party won't even bother putting me up for city council.” He ran his fingers through his carefully moussed and sprayed hair.

“I gotta cut you loose, Tark. The only thing that's going to give me any credibility is standing up there and saying I didn't know what my campaign manager was doing. The voters may not believe it, and the press sure as hell won't believe it, but it's all I've got. I mean it this time, Tark.”

“No, you don't.” The cigar shifted from one side of Tarky's mouth to the other. I caught a glimpse of brown-stained lower teeth. “You don't mean it, Wes. You and I have been together too long. You need me.”

Wes let out a long sigh. He reached up and loosened his tie, letting it hang from his neck like a striped noose. He shook his head. “No,” he said in a soft, deadly tone. “No, I don't. Not anymore. I know all I need to know about winning elections. I can hire another campaign manager. What I can't do is keep you on and win this election.”

Tarky sat absolutely still. He seemed to shrink into the chair. In the dim light of the skybox, his dark skin looked sallow.

“Wes, you know nobody's ever going to hire me if you let me go.” The tone was uninflected, but there was a great sadness underneath it precisely because Tarky was trying so hard not to beg.

“You've got more to worry about than that, Tark. If you used campaign contributions to pay off gambling debts, you could face indictment.” Wes's tone was apologetic, as though he was pointing out that his friend had egg on his tie.

The words were so low I barely heard them. They were so unexpected that I couldn't process them. “So could you.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, so could you.” Tarky's face was turned toward the television sets, which still showed the stage, empty now, on which the candidates had faced one another.

“And just what do you mean by that?” Now Wes was as quiet, as dangerously patient, as Tarky had seemed earlier.

“I've got the hemo.”

“The what?”

“Oh, my God.” I put my hand to my mouth to recall the words, but it was too late. Both men turned and stared at me as though aware for the first time that there was another person in the room.

Wes pointed a finger in my face and said, “Nothing said in this room goes out of this room, understood?”

“I can't agree to that,” I replied. “What Tarky's talking about is the weapon that killed Kenny.”

Wes turned his attention back to Tarky. “What hemo?”

Tarky shook his head. “Give it up, Wes. You know what this is about. Everyone thinks Ron and Cass discovered Kenny's body under the weeping beech tree.” He pulled the cold cigar out of his mouth and pointed it at his heart.

“But that's not true. I found Kenny. I found Kenny lying dead and I found your hemostat, the one you used as a roach clip, next to his hand. I picked it up and kept it all these years. So,” he continued, putting the cigar back between his lips, “I'd reconsider that firing if I were you.”

But the man who'd just demonstrated his ability to think on his feet smiled. “The old magic twanger. I wondered what happened to it.”

“That's pretty lame, Wes.”

“No, Tark. If you give this thing even one minute's thought, you'd see that I didn't kill Kenny. If I had, why would I leave the magic twanger?” Wes's face wore the same self-satisfied smile he'd used on Sally Spurrier. “It would be like signing my name to the murder. Which means it must have been left by someone else in order to implicate me.”

Tarky pursed his lips. “It might be interesting,” he said, “to produce the hemo and see how it squares with your little speech about smoking just one joint in your whole—”

Wes made for the door. Over his shoulder, he called out, “Fuck you, Tark. Have your shit out of the office by ten tomorrow.”

Tarky forced his lips into a smile that contrasted with his gray face. “He doesn't mean it,” he said. “He'll call me first thing in the morning and ask where he's supposed to be when and what the focus group said about the debate. You'll see.”

“Maybe.” It was as far as I could go in encouraging Tarky's optimism. “But if and when he finds out that the person who gave you that so-called political contribution was Rap, I—”

“Go away, Cassie,” the former campaign manager said. “Please do me a favor and go the fuck away.”

I considered Tarky's story as I drove to the hospital to check on Jan and see Ron. We'd learned at the time that Kenny had inhaled parathion, but it wasn't clear how, since there had been none found at the crime scene. Now the pieces came together with startling vividness: poor Kenny accepting a joint from a person he considered a friend, and then dropping dead when it turned out to be laced with an extremely potent poison.

Wes had a point. If he'd been the one handing the marijuana to Kenny, why wouldn't he have taken the hemo with him? Which meant that the killer's plan to incriminate Wes had been derailed by Tarky's unexpected appearance on the scene.

And what was Tarky thinking when he removed the magic twanger? Did he believe his future candidate had killed a sixteen-year-old boy—and did he deliberately suppress that fact so he and Wes could go on to political glory together? His pathetic attempt at blackmail seemed to have failed, but Wes was facing a tough fight. Questions about a long-ago murder, a sixties act of defiant radicalism, and contributions from a drug-dealing bogus airplane parts seller were likely to bury his political career for good.