Saint Death - John Milton #3 Read online

  “What is this?” Plato asked, holding up the note.

  “It’s whatever you want it to be, man.”

  “A bribe?”

  “If you want.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me. You’re trying to buy me off?”

  “It’s a Benjamin, look! Come on, man!––there’s no need for all of this, right? A hundred bucks makes it all go away. I know how things work round here, I been here before, lots of times, I know the way the land lies.”

  “No,” Plato said grimly. “You don’t. You just made things worse. Turn around, both of you.”

  Garcia gave out a deep rumble of laughter. “They don’t know who they’re talking to, right, Jesus? You dumb fucks––I know this man, I worked with him, I doubt he’s ever taken so much as a peso his whole life.”

  “Come on, man, I know we fucked up, what do we have to do to make it right? Two notes? Come on, two hundred bucks.”

  “Turn around,” Plato said, laying his hand on the butt of the Glock.

  “Come on, man––let’s say three hundred and forget all about this.”

  “Turn around now.”

  The boy saw Plato wasn’t going to budge and his vapid stoner’s grin curdled into something more malevolent. He craned his neck around as Plato firmly pressed him against the bonnet of the car. “What’s the point of that? If you won’t take my money I know damn straight one of your buddies will. You Federales are so bent you can’t even piss straight, everyone knows it. You’re turning down three hundred bucks bonus for what, your fucking principles? We all know it won’t make a fucking bit of difference, not when it comes down to it, we’ll be out of here and on our way back to civilisation before you’ve finished your shift and gone back to whatever shithole you crawled out of.”

  “Keep talking, son.” Plato fastened the jaws of his cuffs around the boy’s right wrist and then, yanking the arm harder than he had to, snapped the other cuff around the left wrist, too. The boy yelped in sudden pain; Plato didn’t care about that. He opened the rear door, bounced the boy’s head against the edge of the roof and pushed him inside. He cuffed the second boy and did the same.

  “Later, Garcia,” he said to the big man as shut the door.

  “Keep your head down, Jesus.”

  “You too.”

  * * *

  8.

  THE LEACH HOTEL in Douglas, Arizona, was a handsome relic from a different era. It had served an important purpose in the frontier years, the best place to stay in the last town before the lawlessness and violence of the borderlands. The hotel, built at the turn of the century, bore the name of the local dignitary for whom it was a labour of love. Mr. Robert E Leach was a southern nationalist, a supporter of slavery and, in later years, the US Ambassador to Mexico. It was Leach, who, in 1853, had overseen the purchase of all land, including southern Arizona, south of the Gila River, for the United States from the Mexicans. His hotel, a last beacon of respectability among the gun stores and bike repair shops of hard scrabble Cochise County, was the only monument to him now. It was still a fine building; it had seen better times, perhaps, but the Italian marble columns in the lobby and the marble staircase that curled up to the first floor were still impressing newcomers as they made their way to the reception desk to check in. The place was a relic of the Wild West, of Wyatt Earp and Geronimo, and the sounds of that time still echoed around the wood panelled walls.

  Beau Baxter knew everything there was to know about the Leach. He had a fondness for history and the faded glamour of the hotel, the sense of a place caught out of time, appealed to him. This area of Cochise County had been frequented by desperados, including celebrities like Clay Hardin, who had killed forty men by the time he was forty years old, and Billy the Kid, who had laid twenty-one men in their graves by the time he was twenty-one. Local outlaws who had stayed in the hotel included Clay Allison, Luke Short, Johnny Ringo and Curley Bill Brocious. Beau had read up on all of them. And the great Pancho Villa was reputed to have ridden his horse right up the marble staircase.

  He often met his clients here––those who didn’t require him to travel to Houston or Dallas, anyway––and he had been pleased that the man who had asked to see him today had been conducting business on the border and had not been averse to coming to him.

  Beau was in his early sixties, although he looked younger. His face was tanned and bore the traces of many dust-storms and rancorous bar-room brawls. He was wearing a light blue suit, nicely fitted, expensive looking. He wore a light blue shirt, a couple of buttons open at the throat, and snakeskin boots. He was sitting at a table in the lobby, his cream Stetson set on the table in front of him. The light was low, tinted green and blue by the stained glass skylights that ran the length of the lobby.

  A man was at the door, squinting into the hotel. He recognised his client: he was a man of medium height, heavy build, olive brown skin and quick, suspicious eyes. His hair was arranged in a low quiff, a dye-job with delicate splashes of silver on each side that made Beau think of a badger. He often dressed in bright shirts that Beau found a little distasteful. He did not know the man’s full name––it wasn’t particularly important––and he referred to himself just as Carlo. He was Italian, of a certain vintage, and belonged to a certain family of a certain criminal organisation. New Jersey. It was the kind of organisation about which one did not ask too many questions, and that suited Beau fine, too; they always paid their debts on time and their money was just as good as anyone else’s, as far as he was concerned.

  He stood and held out his hand. “Carlo.”

  “Baxter. This is a nice place. Impressive. Is it authentic?”

  “Been here nigh on a hundred years. I know they make a big play of it but the history here’s the real deal.”

  “Can’t believe, all this time we been working together, you’ve never once brought me here.”

  Beau shrugged. “Well, you know––never had the opportunity, I guess.”

  They sat on a sofa in the corner of the lobby and the man took out a brown envelope and set it on the table. “That’s yours,” he said. “Good job.”

  Beau took the envelope and opened it a little. He ran his finger against the thick bundle of notes inside. “Thank you.” He folded the envelope and slipped it into the inside pocket of his jacket. “I hope you got what you wanted from our friend.”

  “We did. How did you find him?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “I’m curious.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that. That’s why you pay me.”

  “A trade secret, Baxter?”

  “Something like that.” Beau smiled at him. “Alright, then. You said you had something else?”

  “Yes. But it’s not easy.”

  “Ain’t never easy, else anyone could do it. Who is it?”

  Carlo took out his phone and scrolled through his pictures to the one that he wanted. He gave the phone to Beau. “You know him?”

  He whistled through his teeth. “You ain’t kidding this ain’t going to be easy.”

  “You know him?”

  “Unless I’m much mistaken, that’s Adolfo González. Correct?”

  “Correct. Know him by sight?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Have you come across him before?”

  “Now and again. Not directly.”

  “But you know his reputation?”

  “I do.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  “Not for me, maybe for you. A man like that’s going to be mighty expensive.”

  “Go on.”

  Beau sucked air through his teeth as he thought. “Well, then, there’s how difficult it’ll be to get to him, and with the connections he has, I got to set a price that takes into account how dangerous it’ll be for me both now and in the future if they ever find out it was me who went after him. That being said––I’d say we’re looking at an even fifty, all in. Half now, half later.”

  Beau found hi
s eye drawn to the scruffy bush of chest hair that escaped from between the buttons of Carlo’s patterned shirt. “Fifty?”

  “Plus expenses.”

  “Fine.”

  “As easy as that?”

  “You think you should have asked for more?”

  “The price is the price.”

  “You can have the first twenty-five by two-thirty.”

  “You got a hurry-up going on for this fellow, then?”

  “How well do you know him?”

  “I knew him when he was younger. Busted him coming over the border this one time.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “If he was bad then, he’s worse now.”

  “How bad?”

  “I’d say he’s a mean, psychopathic bastard. Want to tell me what he’s done so that you want him so bad?”

  “We had an arrangement with his old man––the buying and selling of certain merchandise. But then we had a problem: he changed the terms, made it uneconomic. We went to discuss it and Señor González murdered six of my colleagues.”

  Beau remembered. “That thing down south of Juárez?”

  Carlo spread his hands wide. “Let’s say we would like to discuss that with him.”

  “Alive, then?”

  “If you can. There’ll be a bonus.”

  “Understood.” Beau didn’t need to enquire any more than that. He’d been working bounties long enough to reckon that revenge came in a lot of different flavours.

  “Do you need anything else?”

  “No sir,” Beau said. “That’s plenty good enough.”

  “Then we’re done.” He rose. “Happy trails.”

  Beau followed him to his feet and collected his Stetson from the table. “You know what they call our boy over the border?”

  Carlo shook his head.

  Beau brushed the dust from his hat. “Oh yeah, this man, on account of his reputation, he’s made quite the impression. Last time I heard anything about him they were calling him Santa Muerte.”

  “The wetbacks are superstitious fucks, Baxter.”

  “Maybe so. Fifty thousand? For a man like that, my friend, I’d say you’ve got yourself a bargain.”

  * * *

  9.

  THE BORDER. They called it The Reaper’s Line. Beau Baxter edged forward in the Cherokee. The checkpoint was busy today, in both directions: trucks and cars and motorbikes heading south and a longer, denser line coming north. He looked at the trucks coming out of Juárez with a professional eye. How many of them were carrying drugs? Every tenth truck? Every twentieth? Vacuum-packed packets of cocaine dipped in chemicals to put the dogs off the scent. Packets stacked in secret cavities, stuffed in false bumpers, hidden amongst legitimate cargo. Billions of dollars.

  Beau regarded the high fence, the watchtowers and the spotlights. It had changed a lot over the years. He had been working the border for all of his adult life. He had graduated from Border Patrol Academy in 1975 and had been stationed in Douglas. His work had taken him across the continent and then to the Caribbean in the immigration service’s anti-drugs task force, eventually returning him full circle. For two decades, he had been a customs special agent in this wild and untamed corner of the frontier, patrolling the border on horseback, a shotgun strapped onto his saddle.

  He looked out at the guards circulating between the cars and trucks. Those boys doing the job today would have thought he was an anachronism, relying on a horse when he could have had one of the brand new Jeeps they were driving around in. The pimpled little shit who had given him his cards had said that he had a “John Wayne complex.” Beau couldn’t see what in the hell was wrong with that. How could those boys get down and read tracks in their four-by-fours, see the evidence that said that smugglers had been coming through? They called it ‘cutting for sign’ and Beau was an expert at it. You needed to know the difference between a starburst and a chevron imprint, when a mat of some sort had been attached to shoes, when the footprints had been brushed away by the last person in a convoy. He could read the signs that told him exactly when movement occurred, whether his quarry was near or far. Those were kinds of things a man could learn from whether the track of a bug ran under or over a footprint. You couldn’t do any of that from a Jeep.

  But Beau was a realist, too, and he knew that time had moved on. A man like him was from a different era. He’d fought regular battles with the narco traffickers of Agua Prieta over the border. During his career, he had seen the territory between Nogales and Arizona’s eastern border with New Mexico become known as ‘cocaine alley,’ and then quickly get worse. Juárez was the worst of all. The dirty little border pueblo was a place where greed, corruption and murder had flourished like tumbleweed seeds in souring horse manure. Now, with the cartels as vast and organised as multi-nationals, with their killing put onto an industrial scale and with the bloodshed soaking into the sand, Beau was glad to be out of it. In comparison to that line of work, hunting down bounties was a walk in the park.

  But perhaps not this one.

  His thoughts went to Adolfo González. On reflection, fifty grand was probably a generous quote for a job that was fixing to be particularly difficult.

  He had heard about the six dead Italians on the news this morning. Ambushed in the desert, shot to shit and left out for the vultures. He had seen the video on YouTube before it had been taken down. He recognised Adolfo’s voice. The cartels were all bad news but La Frontera was the worst. Animals. And Adolfo was the worst of all. Getting him back across the border wasn’t going to be easy.

  He wondered whether he should have turned the job down.

  There were easier ways to make a living.

  He edged the Jeep forwards again and braked at the open window of the kiosk.

  “Ten dollars,” the attendant said.

  Beau handed it over.

  “Welcome to Mexico.”

  He drove south.

  * * *

  10.

  MILTON PAUSED in the restaurant’s locker room to grab an apron and a chef’s jacket. He sat down on the wooden bench and smoked a cigarette. The room was heavy with the musty stink of old sneakers, greasy linens, body odour, stale cigarette smoke and foot spray. Familiar smells.

  He changed and went through into the kitchen.

  It was a big space, open to the restaurant on one side. The equipment was a mixture of old and new, but mostly old: four big steam tables; three partially rusted hobs; two old and battered steamers at the far end of the line; three side-by-side, gas-fired charcoal grills with salamander broilers fixed alongside; a flattop griddle. The double-wide fryer was where he would be working. The equipment was unreliable, and the surfaces were nicked and dented from the blows of a hundred frustrated chefs. Most of the heat came from two enormous radiant ovens and two convection units next to the fryer station. A row of long heat lamps swung to and fro from greasy cables over the aluminium pass. It was already hot.

  Gomez came in and immediately banged a wooden spoon against the pass. “Pay attention, you sons of bitches. We got a busy night coming up. No-one gets paid unless I think they’re pulling their weight and if anyone faints that’s an immediate twenty percent deduction for every ten minutes they’re not on their feet. And on top of all that we got ourselves a newbie to play with. Hand up, English.”

  Milton did as he was told. The others looked at him with a mixture of ennui and hostility. A new cook, someone none of them had never seen working before, no-one to vouch for him. What would happen if he wasn’t cut out for it, if he passed out in the heat? He would leave them a man down, the rest hopelessly trying to keep pace as the orders piled up on the rail. Milton had already assessed them: a big Mexican, heavily muscled and covered in prison tattoos; a sous chef with an obvious drinking problem who lived in his car; a cook with needle scars on his arm and a t-shirt that read BORN FREE – TAXED TO DEATH; an American ex-soldier with a blond Vanilla Ice flattop.

  “Our man English says he’s been working up
and down the coast, says he knows what he’s doing. That right, English?”

  “That’s right.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Gomez said with a self-satisfied smirk, his crossed arms resting on the wide shelf of his belly.

  Milton went back and forth between the storeroom, the cold cupboard and his station, hauling in the ingredients that he knew he would need for the night: three hundred pounds of French fries in waxy brown ten-pound bags; fish tubs full of breaded fillets (the cod dusted with cornmeal already going gooey in the humid air); three-gallon buckets of floury batter; boxes of clam strips; cases of calamari; rock shrimp and chicken cutlets. He looked around at the others, methodically going through the same routine that they would have repeated night after night in a hundred different restaurants: getting their towels ready, stacking their pans right up close so that they could get to them in a hurry, sharpening their knives and slotting them into blocks, drinking as much water as they could manage.

  The front of house girl who Milton had met earlier put her head through the kitchen’s swing-door. “Hey Gomez,” Milton heard her call out. “Coach of gringo tourists outside. Driver says can we fit them in? I said we’re pretty full but I’d ask anyway––what you wanna do?”

  “Find the space.”

  The machine began rattling out orders. Milton gritted his teeth, ready to dive into the middle of it all. The first time he had felt the anticipation was in a tiny, understaffed restaurant in Campo Bravo, Brazil. He needed a way to forget himself, that had been the thing that he had returned to over and over as he worked the boat coming over, the desire to erase his memories, even if it was only temporary. After five minutes in that first restaurant he had known that it was as good a way as any. A busy kitchen was the best distraction he had ever found. Somewhere so busy, so hectic, so chaotic, somewhere where there was no time to think about anything other than the job at hand.