Days of Atonement Read online

Blood wailed in Loren’s ears. “Fast and quiet,” he said. “Number nine. It’s painted pink.”

  The Fury spat gravel as it spun in a short turn, then dove down the two-rut drive. Dying willows shot past them. Towers of eroded igneous rock, a miniature Grand Canyon, eclipsed the sun. There was a blue glimpse of the trout pond sitting in its meadow, the wooden structures of Joaquín’s placer mine, and then cabins started flashing past.

  “There’s the van. Number four. Right here.”

  The cabin was a square frame building plastered over and painted to look like adobe. There was a tiny front porch with a peaked roof on it that made it look like an ancient one-room school.

  The Fury skidded to a halt like a baseball player sliding into home. Loren’s door was already open, his foot ready to take the first step onto the brown soil.

  He lunged out of the car, his shotgun at port arms. The door was a flimsy frame thing, he saw, and he wouldn’t need the knock-knock. The second step took him onto the porch, and at the third he turned his body and drove his shoulder into the door.

  There was a shriek of wood and the frame tore away. Loren spilled into the room, took a cross-step, recovered his balance, brought the shotgun down. A five-foot white sliver of the door frame clattered to the floor.

  “Hi, Robbie,” said Loren. What he was actually supposed to say was something like “Police! Open!” and say it before he actually smashed the door down. It seemed pointless now. Blood sang in his ears like a swarm of angry bees.

  Three young men had been half lying on pieces of furniture in the front room. They were all dressed in tank tops and rolled-up blue jeans. One of them, a stranger, was wearing a green pachuco handkerchief low over his eyes and had a little goatee. There were prison tattoos on his forearms, and he wore Bill Forsythe’s turquoise bracelet. All three were sitting up now, staring at the shotgun with glazed eyes.

  There was a bong on the scarred old coffee table. A green mound of marijuana sat on an opened newspaper next to it. Sharing the table with the dope was the sawed-off, several piles of dirty bills, and a bunch of Riga Brothers paychecks.

  Cipriano ran through the door, followed by another pair of cops.

  Robbie and his friends seemed too stoned to react. Loren nevertheless advanced cautiously, reached down, picked up the sawed-off. He pushed the lever that opened the breech with his big thumb and broke the action. He read the inscriptions on the base of the shells. Double-ought buck.

  “Serious kind of fishing equipment,” he said. “Now, everybody get up slowly and put your hands on top of your head.”

  Shorty and his deputy came in while the suspects were being handcuffed. Loren’s heart was turning over like a smooth turbine. His body felt light, almost weightless. He knew he was invincible, that anything was possible.

  Shorty reached into a pocket, took out his six-pointed sheriff’s badge, and put it on his perfect white lapel.

  “You guys are under arrest,” he said, as if for the cameras.

  Loren looked at Robbie Cisneros. “Too bad one of you decided to resist.”

  He grabbed Robbie by his hair and pulled him across the room. “Something you forgot, Robbie,” he said, hustling the boy into the bathroom. “Nothing happens in my town without my say-so. And when you decided to invite a couple of strangers to come into my town and point a sawed-off full of double-ought in my neighbors’ faces and steal a bunch of laid-off miners’ paychecks, you didn’t ask my permission first.”

  He pushed and Robbie crashed over into the old claw-foot bathtub, unable to keep his head from slamming into the tile because his hands were cuffed behind his back. Loren raised his shotgun butt over the boy’s body. Robbie looked up with a dazed lack of comprehension.

  In his mind Loren saw his daughters, their eyes hard with need, veins pitted with addiction.

  Not here, he thought.

  “I am the sword and the arm of the Lord,” Loren said.

  *

  Some time thereafter Loren felt a hand on his arm. He shrugged it off and brought the shotgun down again. The hand came back, more insistent this time.

  “That’s enough, cousin.” Shorty’s voice.

  Loren looked down at the bloody, whimpering mess in the bathtub and took a long breath. Sweat was pouring down his face inside his helmet. Vertigo eddied through him. He rocked on his feet.

  “Time to get some air,” Shorty said.

  Loren turned and brushed past Shorty and stepped past the other officers and the wide-eyed suspects and out onto the porch. He unbuckled the chin strap of his helmet and pulled it off, then put down his shotgun and laid the helmet next to it. A breeze that carried the scent of high mountain flowers cooled the sweat on his face. Loren unbuckled the vest and dropped it, then stepped to Cipriano’s car, got the keys out of the ignition, and opened the trunk. He took out the LAWSAT kit, put it on the roof of the car, and opened it. The antenna was about the size and general shape of an attaché case. Loren took it out and laid it on the roof, then took the antenna lead and jacked it into the C.A.D. keyboard in the Fury. He leaned over the car’s keyboard, pressed a function key, and looked at the car’s little liquid-crystal display.

  ESTABLISHING SATELLITE UPLINK, it said. Then, SATELLITE UPLINK ESTABLISHED.

  Loren entered his user number and password and told the LAWSAT computer in Washington to cancel the alert for Robbie and his pickup. OK, the display said. Loren logged off and leaned his head back against the rest. Cipriano walked over to the car door and leaned down to look at Loren.

  “I think maybe I’ll go hunting,” Loren said. “I don’t have any dogs and I’m not dressed for it, but what the hell. The pigeon won’t care how I’m dressed.”

  “You gotta work on that temper of yours, jefe,” Cipriano said.

  “Fuck that. It needed doing.”

  “You can’t get away with that kind of shit anymore, man.”

  Loren pulled the antenna jack out of the computer. “It’s my town, Cipriano,” he said.

  He got out of the car and packed the LAWSAT kit and put it back in the trunk. He put on his blue blazer and went back into the cabin. He could hear the shower running as somebody cleaned up the mess. The money was still lying on the table. He reached down and picked up a couple twenties.

  “For Joaquín,” he said, just in case anyone wondered. “So he can get his door fixed.”

  Robbie Cisneros, limping, eyes swollen shut, was marched to the back seat of the second cruiser, and the two Texans were put into the sheriff’s Bronco. Cipriano and Loren followed the other two cars to the bait shop, then pulled into the parking space out back and went in the rear, through the screen door into Fernandez’s kitchen.

  Fernandez shambled toward them out of the front. Behind him Loren could see a pair of ATL security people, one a stranger, the other one of the men who had been at Cipriano’s lecture the previous day, the guy with the halo of bleached hair around his flattop.

  “Everything go okay?” Fernandez asked.

  Loren gave him the twenties. “For your door,” he said.

  Fernandez gave a grin. Loren looked up into the Ray-Bans of the two security men. “Buying some bait?” he said.

  “Potato chips,” one said.

  The sound of a starter grinding came from the front. Fernandez looked over his shoulder. “Glad my other customers didn’t show up till it was over. Hate to scare off the only ones I got.”

  “Hunters?” Loren asked.

  “I dunno, Loren. Maybe. They didn’t say.”

  The world seemed to slow down for a moment. The starter ground on. Loren drifted through the door into the little store and looked out the window.

  Fernandez’s other customers were two dark-skinned men in a cream-colored Chevrolet pickup with a small camper shell. They were towing a little homemade trailer.

  “Lookit that,” Loren said. Now Loren knew why Robbie and his buddies had come to a nowhere place like El Pinto to celebrate their stickup.

  They were waiting for so
meone to come and sell them something.

  Cipriano came up and looked out the window and gave a whistle. The ATL guys followed, sensing something significant.

  Loren mentally reviewed the search-and-seizure laws. He didn’t need a warrant for something he had an active LAWSAT tip on, and in any case the Supreme Court had pretty much abolished the Fourth Amendment for drug dealers, anyway.

  The pickup’s engine finally caught. Loren pushed open the screen door with one hand while he withdrew his pistol with the other. Cipriano was right behind him.

  “Uhh,” said one of the ATL men, trying to decide how to react.

  Aware that the security men were watching his technique, Loren stuck the Chief’s Special through the open window and put the barrel under the astonished driver’s left ear. Cipriano ran around the other side, his own pistol out.

  Loren looked at Cipriano’s face through the cab of the pickup.

  “Out of the Tchevy, Pedro,” he said.

  The expression on Cipriano’s face was like a sunrise.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Loren told the press to meet him at Fernandez’s at five o’clock, while there was still enough light to roll tape and enough time to make the feed for the ten o’clock news. He’d just made the largest drug haul in Atocha County history, and more capsules of black lightning were confiscated than at any time in the history of the state. The new drug, one of the variants on red kryptonite that had been showing up in the last few months, had only been declared illegal six days before, and a bust this big was news.

  He knew if he put the news on the LAWSAT, DEA or Customs or some other freebooting agency would try to claim the arrest for themselves, so he decided to let them hear about it on television.

  He didn’t tell the mayor, either. The less credit Trujillo was able to claim for his administration, the better.

  The conference itself went well, even though Trujillo did eventually hear the news from somebody and arrived at the last minute. Loren, wearing a fresh uniform and his photogenic flak jacket, drank grape soda with Shorty in Joaquín’s store while the reporters made their mike tests. Shorty, still in his western suit, star, and Stetson, cracked jokes with the local CBS stringer, an old crony of his. Loren had decided, in view of the election and party solidarity, to allow the sheriff’s department partial credit for the drug bust.

  Cipriano arrived in his uniform. Loren saw he had a new haircut. Cipriano stood in front of the mike stand and stiffly related the events of the afternoon. He mentioned that Loren was first through the door, and subsequent follow-up questions allowed him to give answers that made Loren seem a hero. Still cameras began clicking.

  Loren got his picture taken brandishing the Ingram Mac-11 that the smugglers had been carrying under the front seat of the pickup, a tiny gun that looked like a toy in Loren’s big hand, but that would still rock and roll to the tune of twelve hundred rounds per minute. When Loren passed out pictures of the suspects and the crime scenes, Trujillo took the opportunity to offer formal congratulations and handshakes, made an impromptu speech about the various things his mayoral administration was doing to combat drug abuse, and handed out lapel buttons that said DESIGNER JEANS, NOT DRUGS.

  Loren looked at his button for a long, hard moment. He put it in his pocket.

  Assholes always advertise.

  Afterward, while the television people started packing up cameras and microphones, Trujillo came back to shake Loren’s hand again. “You should have let my office know you were setting this up, Loren,” he said.

  “Didn’t we?” Loren looked at Cipriano and tried to imitate surprise. “I’m sure I told somebody to do that.”

  “Something of this magnitude, we should have the whole administration here. It’s important to present a united front against the drug menace.”

  “I’m sorry, Ed. I’ll try and find out how we screwed up.” Loren cleared his throat. “Ed, I’m going to have to ask for a special voucher for funds to send the drugs up to Albuquerque. We don’t have secure facilities for this big a haul here in town.”

  Trujillo blinked. “What do you mean?”

  “The evidence, Ed. Normally I’d just put it in our safe, but this is a whole camper pickup and a trailer full of black lightning and love beads and kryptonite. Right now we’ve got it all in the city garage under guard, but we can’t have it stay there.”

  Trujillo’s look was doubtful. “Can’t we destroy it?”

  “It’s evidence, Ed. We’ll destroy it after the trial, but—”

  “I mean just destroy most of it. Keep enough to convict the felons.”

  “There’s this whole principle called the chain of evidence. We can’t mess with it, otherwise a good attorney could get the whole trailerful suppressed. Sorry, Ed, but I’m gonna have to ask for special funds.”

  “I don’t know.” Reluctantly.

  Loren looked at him. “You just made a big speech about all your administration is doing to fight drugs, Ed, and you won’t give me a lousy pay voucher?”

  “Can’t we get the county to pay for some of it? They’re sharing a credit.”

  “That’s your department. But they’ve got even less money than the city.”

  “It’s just that you’ve been running up a lot of unanticipated expenses recently. And then there’s all the overtime your people pulled last night.”

  “And will pull tonight. Tonight might even be worse than last night, because people have had all damn day to get drunk and belligerent.”

  “Okay.” Trujillo looked pained.

  “Just think how much worse it would be if they weren’t just sucking up booze, if they had a whole big supply of kryptonite to chug down with their Coors.”

  “I guess it’s inevitable. If you want good publicity, you have to pay for it.”

  “What a weasel!” Loren said later, as Cipriano drove him back to the office. “We bust some scumbags who were going to peddle that designer shit in our town, and all he thinks about is the publicity.”

  “And the extra expense,” Cipriano said. He scratched the back of his neck where hair clippings were irritating him.

  “Yeah. That kind of stuff burns my ass.”

  Long shadows crossed the road ahead of them. It would be dark in another hour. “Makes you nostalgic, you know?”

  “The last mayor might have seen visions and had relations who were thieves, but at least he was solid about some things. He wasn’t a weasel.”

  “Yeah. And if Roberts hadn’t appropriated them highway funds for his brother’s company, we wouldn’t have Little Eddie to deal with.”

  “Little Eddie. I like that.”

  “People in this town have been stealing federal funds for fifty years. And all of a sudden the voters realized they were taxpayers, too, and that it was their money after all, and got offended.”

  “Took ’em long enough.”

  “Roberts just happened to be mayor when the rules changed right out from under him.”

  Loren pulled off his velcro tie and loosened his blue uniform shirt collar. For some reason, despite all the activity and lack of sleep over the last twenty-four hours, he wasn’t tired at all. The elation that had possessed him during the drug bust wasn’t about to fade away, not yet.

  “You know,” he said, “I remember going down to that old adobe by the tracks and buying paper bags of Mexican potoguaya from old man Martinez. Everybody from the high school used to smoke it and drink mescal out of smuggled mason jars that had the worm in the bottom, and there wasn’t any harm in it that I could see.”

  “You used to do that?” Cipriano seemed surprised. He slowed to make the turn onto 81. “I bought pot from Daddy Martinez, too.”

  “And now look at what’s happening with drugs. Dealers with Mac-11s. People cooking up new stuff in labs. A brand-new substance every week. Murders. Brain damage. Gene damage.” He shivered. “Foreign governments run by the dealers.”

  “It’s a new century.”

  “It’s not happening
in this town,” Loren said. He thought about people like Robbie Cisneros selling stuff to his daughters. Katrina sailing on something like black lightning, eyes hard and inward and unreachable. “Not if I have anything to say about it,” Loren said. He reached down and picked up the Mac-11. The setting sun gleamed a dull red on the blackened surface. Twelve hundred rounds per minute, he thought. A man could pack that in a gun so small no one would ever see he was carrying it.

  “Jesus, jefe,” said Cipriano. “What did I do?”

  “Huh?” Loren stared at him.

  “For a second there you looked like you were gonna blow me away.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” He put the gun down. “I was just thinking about dealers in this town. Shit, I’d even run in Martinez if he were still alive.”

  “You better start being more careful, jefe. Those two Mexican dudes could have been in the room with Robbie when you busted down that door, and that gun would have made a cheeseburger out of you. A flak jacket isn’t gonna stop a whole magazine full of nine-millimeter rounds.”

  “Not if they never reached it. Not if they were surprised.”

  “Still.” Cipriano scratched his neck again. The Fury slowed as it entered town.

  “I knew the sawed-off was there. That’s a lot more dangerous a weapon. Shotguns kill a lot more people than automatics.”

  “Jefe,” patiently, “I sure wouldn’t take chances like that. That’s what young, unmarried guys are for.”

  Loren thought about that for a moment, thought about charging through the door into a spray of 9mm rounds. Debra’s face when she heard. Katrina and Kelly standing by the coffin.

  “You’re right,” he said. “I shouldn’t do this kind of stuff.”

  “You’re the chief. Let the Indians do the work anymore.” Scratching.

  Loren grinned. “Still, I showed I could still do it, huh?”

  Cipriano didn’t grin back. “Yeah,” he said. “You sure did.”

  Loren frowned. Cipriano seemed weary. “Why don’t you knock off till ten, hey?” he said. “Then I’ll go home and you can take over till things die down.”

  Cipriano nodded. “Yeah. Okay.” He pulled up in front of the City-County Building’s deco griffins. Loren opened the door and put one foot on the sidewalk.