He cranked the master key in the ignition, and the big eight roared to life. All the exterior lights went on all around the house. The front door blew open and a pit bull charged out growling low. A rail-skinny dude wrapped in a Sleeping Beauty beach towel and nothing else stormed onto the lawn. Nothing else? Does a 12-gauge pump count?
Chaz tromped the accelerator and reversed the Escalade through some hydrangeas, leaving parallel black patches on the green-painted driveway. The front windshield starred as he fought the wheel and did a Brody over the neighbor’s sprinkler-slick lawn. Double-aught punched the suicide door glass in as Chaz got the luxury-priced beast straightened out and off the curb, snapping off a cast-iron mailbox post on his way. He settled down on the pavement and slammed the lever to D, but the pit bull was on the hood now, nails making squealing sounds on the finish as it fought to stay on board. The mailbox was caught under the trannie and throwing sparks behind the SUV all the way down the block.
The owner was in the street now, and the beach towel left behind on the lawn. Bare-butt naked, he emptied the shotgun at his own sweet candy-ass ride with a howl of fury. But Chaz was flying. The buckshot took off a rearview and sent some chrome trim flying. Finally, the car had some character.
The dog wasn’t giving up though. It frantically scratched at the starred windshield until it collapsed the glass and followed a storm of crystalline beads right into Chaz’s lap. Man and dog crammed in the close space. All Chaz knew was that he wanted to bail. Let the bank deal with this asshole and his asshole car and his asshole dog.
Out the door and rolling just like the jump instructor at Benning taught him. Hurt just as bad, too. He wound up flat on his chapped ass and watched the Escalade roll to the end of the block and into a pond.
Sirens. And the paperwork was in the car. This was no place for a black man in the middle of the night.
He trotted away down the street with the dog barking at him from its perch on the Escalade slowly sinking in the dark water.
He hiked to a Shell station off Linebaugh and called a Rainbow Cab to take him back to the garage. His cell phone was ringing the whole way, Suncoast Tow and Storage wanting to know where he was. They’d already heard from the sheriff. Maybe animal protection, game and wildlife, and the homeowners’ association, too. He was sure of that. Chaz had a story. He just was too damned tired to tell it right now. At best he’d lose his job. At worst, his bond.
“Tell you what,” Chaz told the Haitian driver. “Take me to Jalisco Pines instead.”
A ten-minute ride in the opposite direction and he climbed out at his condo and paid the driver.
“You have glass in your face.” A man, a big man, was stepping from the shadows under a clump of date palms as the cab pulled away. Chaz’s hand moved toward the .38 snubby he kept in a clamshell holster in the waistband of his jeans under the muscle shirt.
“You’re not gonna need that,” Dwayne Roenbach said. “Not unless you’re still sore over Manila.”
“That bitch?” Chaz said and brought his hand out to grip Dwayne’s arm. “Can’t even remember her name.”
“Sure, you do.” Dwayne grinned.
In the kitchen, Chaz poured them both a few fingers of J&B. Dwayne looked around at the boxes piled against one wall and the TV sitting on the floor in front of a folding chair.
“I see you settled in,” Dwayne said.
“Unless they were born here, everyone in Florida thinks they’re leaving someday,” Chaz said.
“How about tonight?”
“You got something up, bro?”
“Crazy money for a little job right here in the good old USA.” Dwayne drained the jelly glass.
“What kind of time we talking about?” Chaz said.
“Well, as I’ve come to learn recently,” Dwayne said. “Time is kind of relative.”
3
James “Jimbo” Small
The hide was broiling hot all day long. Now the sun was going down and the cold already setting in as the rocks bled their heat into the dark. Jimbo was set up under a shelf of rock below the crest of a hill with a Ghillie mat draped over him. The fat barrel of the Winchester 70 was wrapped in burlap to hide its shape.
Below him, a row of steel posts and drooping mesh topped with coils of razor wire were all that separated his hide in Arizona from a field of fire on the Mexican side. He pressed a sweaty brow to the 30x scope and the shitty little fence leaped into view. He could see the broad gully that was carved under a section of the fence by some long-ago washout. The footprints left by sneakered and sandaled and cowboy-booted feet were clearly imprinted in the dust at the floor of the gully. All going one way. All leading into the land of the Big Promise.
“International border my red ass,” Jimbo said to himself.
But no action so far today. The tip called into the sheriff at the reservation wasn’t playing out. Some mules carrying mucho bundles of primo shit up from Nogales were supposed to cross here and follow the deer trails north through the Pima reservation land. Hot lead, no lie.
No show either. But there was weather south of here earlier. He watched the dark clouds build on the horizon on the Mex side all afternoon. It might have held them up. He’d wait until full dark before calling it a day.
Jimbo slowly drew in the Winchester and put it aside. He skinned the nylon case off the Armalite. It was a sniper model with a NOD night vision scope in place atop it. He snapped open the bipod, wrapped it in burlap sacking and set it snug in place aimed down the hill toward the fence line.
The
