Paul Levine - Illegal

Quick movements for a big man, Payne noted, figuring he might need that information in a matter of seconds. Payne wished he still had Quinn's gun. Or a crowbar.

El Tigre pointed the knife at Payne's chest. "Stay out of my business, pendejo, or you will go back to the States without your liver."

"Just tell me where you left Marisol. Then I'll get out of your life."

El Tigre stepped closer, waved the knife under Payne's nose. "I swear I fuck you up."

"I'm already fucked up."

"Don't let him scare you, Himmy!"

"He doesn't," Payne lied.

"When I am done with the gabacho, " El Tigre said, looking at Tino, "I will take care of you."

"?Chingalo!" Tino shot back.

Just as El Tigre started to say something to Tino, Payne flipped the bowling ball underhanded. It plopped heavily on the soft leather toes of El Tigre's left boot. He yelped and hopped sideways but… shit!.. did not drop the knife.

Payne took a step toward the man. Then ducked, El Tigre on one foot, sweeping the air with a roundhouse swipe of the knife.

Payne came up from under, dug a short left into the man's gut, catching some ribs, missing the solar plexus.

El Tigre winced, staggered back a step, but kept the knife chest high.

Payne stood stone still, waited for the man to lunge with the knife. Didn't have to wait long. El Tigre stabbed the air, Payne batted the arm away by blocking an elbow, then throwing a straight left at the chin.

The punch was off, grazing El Tigre's cheek and sliding into his oily hair. But the second half of Payne's combination was just perfect. A right hook straight into the man's solar plexus.

A whoosh of air. El Tigre bent over to catch his breath.

"Hit him again, Himmy!" Tino urged, fists raised as if shadow-boxing.

Payne locked both hands and brought them up, straight under the man's chin. Solid contact, knuckles on jaw. A crunch, and a yelp of pain, and El Tigre spit out a gold tooth. Payne grabbed him, two hands on a wrist, twisted the arm behind the man's back, kicked a leg out, and propelled him facedown onto the floor.

He straddled El Tigre's back, grabbed the heavy gold chain, and tightened it into a garotte. The chain bit into the man's neck, drawing blood. El Tigre bucked like a rodeo horse, but Payne held on as the man turned blue.

"?Donde!" Payne yelled. "Where's Marisol Perez?"

The man threw an elbow backward, missing Payne's head.

Payne tightened the chain. "Did you hurt her? Did you!"

"?Chingate!" The curse bubbling out of El Tigre's throat.

"Where is she!"

"Make him tell!" Tino yelled when they got no answer.

Grabbing a handful of slick hair, Payne rammed El Tigre's face into the filthy wooden floor. Still gripping the chain with his other hand, Payne lifted the man's head, slammed it again. Blood spurted from El Tigre's nose. One more time, Payne smashed him into a floorboard, leaving behind a gold-capped tooth impaled in the wood.

"What'd you do to her!" Payne yelled.

Tears squeezed from the man's eyes. Blood pooled on the floor.

"Where is she! Where's Marisol Perez?"

El Tigre tried to talk, and Payne loosened the chain.

It took a few seconds of sputtering and spittle. " No se. Not my business. I just drop off the pollos. Someone else cooks them."

"Where'd you drop her?"

The big man coughed up a spray of misting blood. "At Wanda La Ballena's."

"Wanda the Whale?" Tino said.

"Big gabacha. Enormes chichis. "

"What's her real name?" Payne said.

"No se."

"Where's her stash house?"

"Some cabins outside a desert town north of the border."

"What town?"

El Tigre rambled in Spanish, Payne picking up most of it. A few miles west of Plaster City. A little turd of a town. Ocotillo. Sugarloaf Lodge. A dung heap next to the railroad tracks.

Payne heard a shout in Spanish from behind the bar. The bartender pointing a gun and yelling something Payne couldn't understand, though he was fairly sure it wasn't an invitation to happy hour.

Payne slid off El Tigre. "C'mon, Tino!"

The bartender, gun in hand, hustled toward them. They were cut off from the front door.

"This way." Payne pointed down the lane. They sprinted along the gutter, toward the pins, Payne in his borrowed bowling shoes, Tino in his socks. Jimmy dived at the last moment, sliding straight at the headpin, covering his head with his hands. The clattering was so loud that Payne thought the bartender had fired his gun, but it was just the pins, smashing into one another. He left a seven pin standing, but Tino came behind him and cleared it out.

"?Semipleno!" the pin-boy declared from his perch, awarding a spare.

"Where's the back door?" Payne yelled.

The pin-boy pointed into the darkness behind the lanes.

Jimmy and Tino ran that way. When they reached the alley, Stingray was sitting at the wheel of an old blue Mustang convertible that could use a paint job. The engine was throbbing, a full-throated roar of rolling thunder, Stingray giving it gas, showing off.

Payne threw open the door and yanked Stingray out. Tino hopped over the passenger door, and Payne banged his bad knee on the steering wheel sliding in. He threw the gearshift into first, popped the clutch, and floored the accelerator. The Mustang fishtailed and belched a cloud of oily smoke.

Payne could barely hear his own voice over the racket as he yelled to Tino, "Which way is north, kiddo?"

What a shithole, Eugene Rigney thought.

One hundred four degrees, shirt sticking like flypaper to the Chrysler's seat back, a blazing wind that seared your throat. Rigney had vowed to follow Jimmy Payne to hell and back. Now the detective thought he'd made it halfway.

Rigney had grown up near Hermosa Beach, surfed as a kid, and thought of California as an endless expanse of ocean. Foggy mornings and chilly waves. God, how he loved to walk barefoot through the shore-break, foamy as a margarita.

And Christ, how I hate the desert.

Endless miles of dirt, baked hard as concrete. Thorny plants that could rip your eyes out. Minutes earlier, the New River had announced its presence with the sulferous aroma of floating turds. Flowing north from Mexico, sizzling in the heat, the brown snake of a river was a steaming current of raw sewage and industrial runoff. Rocky shallows were decorated with shredded Styrofoam coolers, rusted bicycles, and tree limbs bleached the color of skeletons.

A deflated Zodiac was stuck on the rocks. The mode of transport for some illegals, risking hepatitis, flesh-eating bacteria, even polio, the poor bastards. Rigney shot a look at a nearby tract of land. Concrete-block stucco houses, a few trailers. How the hell could people live here?

He watched a dead animal float by, either a dog or a coyote, its limbs stiffened. Earlier, he'd run over an animal on Route 86. The damn thing crunch ed under his tires. Armadillo, maybe?

Wishing he could run over Jimmy Payne, hear the music of his bones breaking. But at the moment, Rigney knew he was the one up to his ass in armadillos.

Internal Affairs was investigating. He had failed to follow procedures and couldn't prove he gave Payne $50,000 instead of the $45,000 they recovered. His commander had never signed off on using Payne as the bag man. Judge Rollins's suicide had compromised the investigation and inspired the Los Angeles Times to crow about the L.A.P.D.'s "illegal entrapment" and "lethal harassment" of public officials. The preliminary I.A. report called Rigney a "reckless cowboy" and his superior suggested he should retain counsel for a disciplinary hearing.

Shit, I could end up working security at Trader Joe's, collecting shopping carts in the parking lot.

He wanted to kill J. Atticus Payne, Esquire. But only after inflicting a world of pain on the shyster. Now, just outside the shitkicker town of Calexico, Rigney was on his trail. An Imperial County sheriff's deputy had arrested Payne, then let him escape. What's with this Payne-as-Houdini shit? First he gets away from his ex-wife, and now an armed cop? Not that Rigney believed Sharon Payne's story. The woman still had a soft spot for that loser scumbag.