His phone rang at one minute after nine a.m., summoning him to the office of the special agent in charge of the Tucson office. Sean walked unsteadily to the corner office of Sonny Weller, who looked nothing like a “Sonny.” Weller was another big guy. Sean was six three, and Weller had a good four inches and sixty pounds on him, none of it fat. His head was shaved bald, but he sported a wheat-colored walrus mustache. His real first name was something like Devon or Emerson or Winslow, but no one in the office dared call him that. No one screwed around with Sonny Weller.
“Sit,” Weller said. Sean could tell he was barely keeping his voice under control.
Sean sat. Weller made no move to close the office door. So he wanted the whole office to know what was about to happen. He had Sean’s file centered on the desk in front of him.
“Six months ago,” Weller said, “you sat right there in that same chair and promised me this shit was through.”
“You were going to get straightened out. You were going to be back on track, like you were when you first came to this office.”
“Let’s get it over with,” Sean finally said.
Weller barked out something that might have been a laugh. “Over with? Oh, it’s over with, all right.” He opened the file so violently that papers flew around the desk and he had to bend over to retrieve them. “Starts simple, doesn’t it, Irish? Eighteen months ago, falling asleep in a briefing. Helms was sitting next to you and said you smelled like you’d gone swimming in Jack Daniel’s. A few weeks later, you missed the briefing altogether. We had to reschedule an operation just to bring you up to speed. Your paper went steadily downhill. You conveniently
“Sorry,” Sean mumbled.
“Yeah, well. January of this year. You decided to party hearty and go get shit-faced before the op at Naco. Remember that one? The sixty illegals in the back of the cattle truck? We missed them, because you weren’t where you were supposed to be. You were so out of it you drove down the wrong road and were twenty fucking miles away!” His voice continued to rise.
“Sonny-”
“No, don’t ‘Sonny’ me. I gave you more chances than you deserved. As for yesterday, you totally skipped the operation. Arivaca is the middle of a fucking war, Irish. It’s the drug runners versus us versus the locals. Here we were, with this joint task force-us, the Bureau, DEA-doing what we’re supposed to do, namely keeping this country’s borders safe. DEA’s been undercover with Ray Acosta in Arivaca for six months. We’re ready for the raid, but see, our office’s forward observer isn’t there. You were supposed to be on the road to Acosta’s place. You were to keep us aware of his movements. But no, you were drunk off your butt, in your car-nearly a hundred miles away!” Weller took the file folder and threw it across the desk at Sean.
“There’s no need-” Sean began, picking up papers.
Weller crashed his fist down on the desk. Outside the open door, people were staring. “By not providing that support, you endangered the lives of other officers, Kelly. We’re damn lucky no one got killed. Never mind that Acosta got across the border. And you know what? They’re all screaming at me. Everyone from the local U.S. attorney all the way up the line to D.C. War on drugs, war on terror, interagency cooperation…all that shit. They want my head, and I’m handing them yours.”
Weller leaned back and was silent a moment.
“How bad?” Sean finally asked.
“Administrative suspension without pay, pending a termination hearing,” Weller said. “The hearing is in thirty days, but you’re done. There’s no way you won’t be canned at this point.” He leaned forward and dropped his voice. “And you know what’s really shitty about all this? You’re a smart kid, you have good instincts, and you’re good at putting things together with only a little to go on. Most of the guys in this office aren’t half as smart as you are.” He leaned back again, chair squeaking. “We all like a drink now and then, Irish. Most of us have even been rip-roaring drunk a time or three in our lives. But by God, you put people’s lives at stake. You put
“I did,” Sean said.
“What, once?”
“Twice.”
Weller nodded. “Right. Now get going. You’ll get a certified letter with a notice of the personnel action and the hearing date. I can’t support you anymore, not when you put lives at stake.”
Sean nodded. He stood up and numbly offered his hand to Weller. Weller stared at the hand for a moment, then shook it.
“Your weapon and your creds,” Weller said.
Sean nodded again. He didn’t normally wear the gun around the office-in fact, he only carried it during actual operations-but he’d known what was coming, so he’d brought it with him this morning. He handed the SIG Sauer nine-millimeter, holstered, to Weller, then passed him the leather case with his Department of Homeland Security credentials.
Sean walked out of the office into silence. Halfway back to his cubicle, someone said, “Hey, Irish, want to hit happy hour?” He didn’t recognize the voice and didn’t care. He just felt tired.
Sean said nothing. He picked up the black trash bag with the stuff from his desk. He stopped in to say good-bye to Dunn, and to A. J. Helms, who’d become his closest friend in the office. Helms just looked stricken. He’d been the one who arranged for Sean to go to AA, had driven him to the meeting. Sean felt a twinge of guilt-he’d even deceived his best friend. Instead of going to the meeting, Sean had sneaked out the back door, then came out the front when Helms picked him up an hour later, without having ever gone into the actual meeting.
His grandfather Seamus Kelly, who’d been a beat cop in Chicago, was fond of saying, “There’s no good Irish cop worth his salt who didn’t like a good drink now and again.”
He hoisted the garbage bag onto his shoulder and walked out into the high desert air of southern Arizona. He had no idea where he was going.
2
SEAN DROVE AIMLESSLY AROUND TUCSON BEFORE finally being drawn away from the city, south and west. By midday he was in Arivaca.
Arivaca was a tiny town twenty miles or so northeast of the border. It was a strange combination of cultures. Its heritage was cattle ranching, and there was open rangeland all around it. But he’d been told it had once been an artist’s colony as well, that various hippies and bohemians and artisans made it a home base during the winter. Some of that character still showed through-now and then roadside stands were set up with various arts and crafts for sale. Sean had once bought a tiger’s-eye gem from an old hippie couple that came right out of Central Casting, all the way down to the VW bus. He’d sent the gem to his sister.
Then there were the drug runners, the most notorious of which was Ray Acosta. An American citizen, he’d built a hugely ostentatious ranch-style house-all sleek modern lines, brick and glass- right in the middle of Arivaca, among the trailer homes and wooden frame houses. It stood out like a diamond surrounded by broken glass.
And now he was gone, over the border, leaving his palace behind. After the blown op yesterday, officers from three federal agencies had descended on the house. They found cash and they found guns, but no cocaine. Acosta was too smart for that, and now he was in Mexico.
He pulled his Jeep Cherokee back onto the road, then crossed to the other side and parked under a tree. Just driving through, no one would know that Arivaca was the center of a war zone twenty miles from the border. The town’s single business, a little general store, seemed to do a brisk trade. A couple of arts and crafts tables were set up across the road from the store, and each had a few customers. Sean watched as a weary-looking man with a salt and pepper beard explained to the three young boys surrounding him that they could each have only
Sean smiled, then it faded quickly as he was aware of the jackhammers working behind his eyes. He dry-swallowed a couple of extra-strength Tylenol, then started the Jeep again.
“I never liked Arizona anyway,” he muttered, which wasn’t true. He recognized what he was doing, the process of rationalization. Like a child who didn’t get what he wanted, then insisted he’d never wanted it in the first place. He glanced at the man with the three boys again. Same principle.
The truth was, Sean loved the desert Southwest. He’d had a choice of assignments when he joined Customs seven years ago-Detroit, Seattle, or Tucson. Having grown up in the upper Midwest, Detroit held no allure for him. He didn’t care for rain, so Seattle was out. But the Southwest was exoticism and mystery and excitement, so he’d come to Tucson. And the work had been good. Confusing since September 11 and the creation of Homeland Security, but good work. Important. Even his old man, Detective Captain Joe Kelly, who was never pleased with anything, seemed to approve.
“Fuck,” Sean whispered. “Fuck it all.”
He pulled back onto the highway, heading west out of Arivaca. He could go anywhere. The trash bag full of stuff from his desk at ICE was in the backseat. So were his laptop and a small duffel bag with a few clothes and personal items. His career was over-he knew that. Thirty years old in a few weeks and his career was done.
“Fuck,” he said again, without much enthusiasm.
He drove through the rough country, some of it open range, some of it fenced as part of the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge. It was a wild and beautiful terrain, mountains rising in hazy distance from the high desert floor. Sean drove on until the road dead-ended at the junction to State Highway 286, one of the loneliest stretches of two-lane highway he’d ever seen. A right turn would take him north, back toward Tucson. Toward “civilization,” whatever that meant.
A left turn meant Sasabe and the Mexican border. The town of Sasabe-though “town” was a generous description-squatted right on the border and was one of the two most isolated ports of entry along the southern boundary of the United States. One of Sean’s ICE colleagues-
Sean’s own take on Sasabe was that it was really a Mexican village. It didn’t matter that it was on the Arizona side of the border. The flat-top houses, the adobe, the strings of peppers and onions hanging beside front doors, the gritty poverty. Sean thought a mistake had been made somewhere along the line, that the border had been moved half a mile or so too far south. It should have been redrawn so that Sasabe would be a Mexican border town, not an Arizona border town.
He turned left. Maybe he could start over in Mexico himself. His Spanish was good after seven years down here. He could live cheap in Mexico. Whiskey was inexpensive and easy to find. Maybe he could pick up Ray Acosta’s trail. Maybe, maybe,
He slowed the Cherokee to a crawl as he came into Sasabe. A little copper-skinned boy, maybe four or five years old, wearing only a pair of denim shorts, darted across the road as if he were playing chicken with Sean. A woman with three other kids surrounding her and a baby on her hip yelled in rapid-fire Spanish from a front porch. Sean nodded toward her. She stared at Sean unblinking.
Barely crawling at twenty miles an hour, Sean took the Cherokee around a sharp S curve. Ragged laundry hung on clotheslines on both sides of the road. More half-naked kids scampered. Sean wondered where they went to school, if at all. Ahead and to the left, looking like a well-dressed stranger that had wandered into the midst of all this, was the port of entry. A sign unnecessarily read MEXICO, with an arrow pointing the way.
The port of entry was all brick and stone and glass, a modernistic complex that straddled the road. There was no southbound stop sign. It was so simple to drive into another country. You just passed slowly through the port and then were in Mexico. Northbound out of Mexico was only slightly different. All an American citizen had to do was stop at the booth and declare his citizenship.
But Sasabe was different from other crossings along the border, places like El Paso or even Nogales, just a bit east of here. Traffic snarled in both directions in those places, Mexicans and
