T. Parker - The Famous and the Dead

“Got it,” said Hood.

“When Scully calls, tell him you can go eighty grand. We’ve got a hundred in the safe. Let’s bag and tag these dirtballs.”

A few minutes later Hood caved on the eighty thousand and Skull told him he was smart. Skull set the callback for six o’clock. The next two hours sped by like minutes. The agents ate delivered pizza and watched TV, and Skull called at exactly six: Meet at the clubhouse at Buckboard Estates off the interstate in the southeast part of El Centro. Seven o’clock sharp. Skull said they’d leave the gate unlocked for Hooper and his cartel cutthroats.

Buckboard is one of the new ghost towns,” said Bly. “Brand-new six-bedroom homes, half of them with no doors or windows to keep out the squatters and coyotes. Swimming pools full of sand and tumbleweeds. They had just finished the first phase when the market crashed in oh-eight. God knows what kind of shape the clubhouse is in.”

“One of Israel Castro’s developments,” said Hood. “Maybe that’s where Scully got the gate key.”

“How can we stay out of sight, then get in fast?” asked Yorth. “It’s out in the frickin’ sand. No traffic, no cars, or people.”

“I used to run past that place when I lived in El Centro,” said Velasquez. “There’s a stone wall around it, maybe five feet high. We can use it. We can listen from the street side and they won’t see a thing. Then, when it’s time to go in, it’s up and over.”

“Can Hood’s wire penetrate solid rock?” asked Bly.

“It’s supposed to,” said Yorth.

“We should set the receivers on top of the wall. The hat trick isn’t going to work with us behind a stone wall and him inside the clubhouse.”

“Good,” said Yorth, humming the Stones song thoughtfully. “Mics on the wall for clarity.”

A year ago Hood had driven through Buckboard Estates. It was exactly how Bly and Velasquez had described it. He remembered the houses standing in various degrees of completion, some only framed and others plumbed and drywalled. Some with roofing, others open to the sky. He remembered how the construction crews were still there, pouring and pounding and sawing away, even as the first-phase buyers were jumping ship and the FORECLOSURE and FOR SALE signs were sprouting up fast as weeds.

“When you jump the wall, one of you close the gate on them,” said Hood.

“Good,” said Yorth. “We’ll need time to set up, but we’re never going to beat them there now. We have to assume they’re watching the area as we speak. So, what’s across from Buckboard?”

“Cotton and more cotton,” said Velasquez. “But there’s a park-and-ride lot that doesn’t get used that much, right across from the Buckboard entrance. There are always a few vehicles in it. We wouldn’t stand out.”

“Is there a traffic signal?”

“No. I’d remember that from my runs because I hate stopping for them.”

“Perfect,” said Yorth. “We can stage from there and jaywalk to the wall in the dark.

Hood looked at the L.A. agents. They looked badass enough to be cartel soldiers. What might cartel soldiers feel like doing before a big buy? “Do we still have that borrowed DEA dope in the safe here?”

“I just saw it,” said Yorth. “What are you thinking?”

“Say we get there five minutes late, drive by real obvious, let them make us. We’re on a standard paranoid security check, right? We loop back a few minutes later. We park near but not next to each other. All eyes on us. I wait a minute, then walk into the clubhouse, but Marquez and Cepeda stay behind because they’re cartel killers and they’re suspicious. They don’t hurry and they don’t walk into traps. They do what they damned well feel like doing, which is smoke some mota before the big deal goes down. All that’s another ten minutes for you guys to get set. Then I go out and harangue them, try to hurry them along. They argue but finally bring the money inside. They reek of smoke. That’s been another five minutes for you guys to get into position. And another reason for Skull and his friends to think they’re dealing with real bad guys, not us.”

“Janet, you remember how to roll a joint?” asked Yorth with a smile.

“I never learned, Dale ,” said Bly.

“I rolled my own cigarettes in college,” said Hood. “I can muddle through.”

This brought knowing laughter, cracks about inhalation, Slick Willie, Slick Charlie.

“Look, there’s an earth embankment in front of the stone wall,” said Velasquez. “Originally they had it irrigated and landscaped-boulders, succulents, and a lot of ocotillo and paloverde. But when the development went belly up, thieves took the sprinkler brass and the valves so everything died. They even stole the boulders and the good trees. So now. . now it’s a bunch of live weeds and dead bushes. It looks like hell but it’s a good place to squat and hide. Same with the streetlights-the thieves cut down the poles with blowtorches, stripped out the copper wire and the conduit and took the light fixtures. It’s good and dark out there now-a quarter moon. Once we’re over the wall, it’s only two hundred feet or so to the clubhouse parking lot. We can do this.”

Yorth set half a brick of mota and a packet of Zig-Zags on the conference room table. The smell was green and junglelike and it reminded Hood of his murderous days in Yucatan just four months ago. “Go get ’em, Charlie.”

• • •

Hood rolled down Imperial Avenue in his Charger. It was brawny and rigid of ride, like the IROC Camaro he’d had to sell in order to finance the wine cellar. He’d loved that car but the wine cellar was a necessity. Just this morning he’d run the Charger through the car wash, so now the black hood gleamed in the streetlights, and the reflections of the street signs rippled across it in yellow and red and blue. The engine growled. Adams to Fourth, then south again. In his rearview he saw the silver Magnum. He checked his diamonds in the mirror. The straw gambler waited on the seat beside him. He had a newly issued Glock.40 on his belt in back, an eight-shot.22 AirLite on his ankle, and a.40-caliber two-shot derringer that once belonged to Suzanne Jones in the side pocket of the seersucker coat, where it rested heavy as a railroad spike. He was hugely in the mood to purchase two shoulder-held Stinger missiles from crooked, crafty, girl-beating creeps.

One minute before seven he passed Buckboard Estates. The wall was rock and the gate was open. He came up a winding drive, past the parking lot, and stopped in front of the clubhouse. The red Commander and the raised F-150 were both there, backed up to the curb as if to stare at intruders. In the darkness the clubhouse looked large and had a spacious roofed patio out front. Faint light came from the building.

Hood watched the Magnum pull up behind him, then he continued right, past the clubhouse, following the drive. The streetlights had been blowtorched off near the ground and their gutted trunks lay about like fallen trees. The lawns were sand. The houses stood around him but they were little more than shapes. The windows with panes shone pale, and those without panes yawned blackly. Hood continued. He saw tennis courts thick with sand drifts, lines invisible, no nets. He thought of the Baghdad Tennis Club. There was a large, flat expanse of concrete with a huge black pit in the middle, and he realized it should have been filled with clean, cool water and lighted and surrounded by chaise longues and barbecues and umbrellas.

He stopped and turned on his radio transmitter and slid it back onto his belt. Looking down on it he could see the faint green LED that indicated power. Don’t fail. His heart was thumping hard and steady. He pulled into a driveway with a NO TRESPASSING sign nailed to the garage door, reversed the car, and slowly drove back to the clubhouse parking lot. It was eight minutes past seven. Hood stopped and glanced back at the Magnum. He looked toward the wall and the open gate and saw nothing of the takedown team. The darkness is a friend tonight, he thought. He swung into a space and shut off the engine, then climbed out. He set the gambler on his head and checked his look in the window, then slammed the door with his foot. The Magnum parked five spaces down and the windows lowered.