Steven Gore - Act of Deceit

Donnally hoped he was applying pressure, but Sherwyn’s “Get off it, Donnally” told him he’d pushed too hard.

“It’s because you haven’t told them,” Sherwyn said. “You’re not going to risk me getting caught up in the judicial system down here. This is the goddamn briar patch.” Sherwyn laughed again, this time a rough, solid laugh. “Hey, I know what I’ll do. You’ll just love this. I’ll surrender to the Mexicans and plead no contest. Get it? No contest. You know, Donnally, no harm, no foul.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“What are you going to do? Cut me up in little pieces and feed me to the barracudas out in the mangroves?”

“You’re going back to the States. Alive and in one piece, and voluntarily.”

“And why, exactly, would I want to spend the rest of my life in a U.S. prison?”

“Because it will be the lesser evil.”

Sherwyn clucked. “Poor Donnally. How naive. Eventually you’ll learn that all of life is the lesser evil.”

The line went dead, but seconds later it rang again. Donnally picked it up.

“I forgot something,” Sherwyn said. “Slick move with the gone-fishing angle, Donnally, but you’re the one who’s not getting away. Even better was using that cop to convince Gregorio’s brother that you were still in California. That is until Jago got pissed off. He wasn’t so much interested in a two-day tour of the dirt roads along the Trinity River as in leaving you in a shallow grave next to it.”

The line went dead again.

A shallow grave. A dark current flowed through Donnally as he repeated the words to himself.

He called the cafe. Marian answered.

“Have you seen Deputy Pipkins in the last twenty-four hours?” Donnally asked.

“No. And he didn’t show up for his shift today. His father was in here looking for you, wanting to know what you did with him. Real angry. I’m not sure whether it was at you or his son. He wouldn’t tell me what he thinks the kid did, but he’s convinced that you’ve got him chained up somewhere.”

Donnally thought back to the spot along the river where the deputy had intercepted him to serve him with the DA’s subpoena for Charles Brown’s hearing. He guessed that Pipkins would’ve started his search there, and then worked downstream toward the ocean.

But at some point during their search, Jago would have concluded that Pipkins’s aim had been to divert him from Donnally or to cover Donnally’s escape.

Jago would then either torture Pipkins for information that he didn’t possess or kill him.

Or both.

“Describe the Mexican to the sheriff,” Donnally said. “Tell him that he should start looking at Brush Creek Road along the Trinity and search the north side of the river down toward Salt Flat.”

“Will you meet him there?”

“I’m too far away.”

“Where’s that?”

“It’s better that you don’t know.”

L alo was flailing his arms at the hotel doorman when Donnally drove up in the rental car after mailing copies of the CDs to himself in Mount Shasta. Lalo’s high-pitched voice pierced through the early morning traffic and Donnally’s closed windows.

“ Dejeme adentro,” Lalo yelled. “ Dejeme adentro.” Let me in, let me in.

Donnally jumped out and pulled Lalo away. The boy fell into his arms, crying.

“The police kidnapped Janie. It was Jago Cruz.”

“Where? Where’d they take her?”

Lalo pointed not in the direction of the Policia Municipal Building, but toward White Sands.

“Is she okay?”

Lalo nodded. “They didn’t hurt her.”

“How did it happen?”

Lalo pointed down the block. “They stopped her van right when she got back from Merida and they pulled her out.”

Donnally led Lalo inside, and he called Corazon at the hotel where Janie had left her and the boys.

“Sherwyn and Jago have Janie,” he said. He could hear the sounds of cartoons coming from the television in the background.

Corazon gasped, then made a shushing sound and everything went quiet.

Donnally’s cell phone beeped with an incoming call. He recognized the number that showed on the screen.

“Sherwyn is calling,” Donnally told Corazon. “I want you to listen, but don’t say anything.”

Donnally connected the call and conferenced her in.

“ Usted tiene hasta el amanecer de manana,” the voice said. You have until sunrise tomorrow.

It wasn’t Sherwyn.

The man said the words with the calm inevitability of a train conductor in a country in which the trains always run on time.

“What do you want?” Donnally asked.

“Recantations. All three boys. And at the end, each will…”

The man’s voice grew distant, as if he was talking to someone else. “ Como se dice, gratitud? ”

Sherwyn answered in the background, his tone tense and strained. “It’s the same. Gratitude.”

The Mexican spoke into the phone again.

“Each will express gratitude to the police for protecting him from the American predators.”

“Let me speak to Janie.”

“Then be at White Sands at first light tomorrow.” The Mexican laughed. “Unless you’re busy fishing.”

“Let’s make a trade right now. Me for her. And she’ll return with the recordings.”

There was a pause as the man on the other side seemed to consider the proposal, then he said:

“ No es una negociacion.” This is not a negotiation.

The phone went dead.

“I think it was Jago,” Corazon said, after Donnally disconnected. “But I don’t understand why he didn’t want to make the trade. He wants revenge and that would’ve put you in his hands right away.”

“Maybe he needs the tapes as much as Sherwyn does.” Donnally accepted the inevitable, but didn’t know whether that would include the release of Janie. “Tell the boys what we need them to do.”

“Why don’t I make two tapes,” Corazon said. “One on which the boys say that they are recanting only because Sherwyn has kidnapped Janie. And then the other will contain the recant-”

“We can’t take a chance. Sherwyn may want to talk to the boys before he releases her, and they’ll be afraid to lie to him.”

“How do you know he’ll let her go?”

“I don’t. But we have no choice but to act as if he will.”

Donnally disconnected, then turned toward the hotel room door and signaled for Lalo to follow. He couldn’t take a chance that the police had snuck in when he was at Corazon’s office and bugged the room.

They took the elevator down to the lobby, then walked through the restaurant and out of the service entrance into the trash-littered alley. Donnally caught his breath when he was hit with the stench of rotting garbage and overused lard. He pointed at an open back door. They worked their way through the semidarkness of a locals’ bar, then across the next street and down the sidewalk. They slipped between two fruit carts and into the recessed entry of an empty storefront.

“ Necesito una pistola,” Donnally whispered to Lalo.

Lalo rolled his eyes upward and rocked his head side to side as if imagining a route from where they were to where they needed to be.

“Nobody will sell to you.”

“How about a go-between?”

Lalo frowned in puzzlement at the idiom.

“ Un intermediario.”

Lalo thought for a moment then smiled and said. “ Mi tio. ” My uncle. He extended his hand, but shook his head when Donnally reached for his wallet, and said, “Telephone.”

U ncle Beto’s hands rested on the mound of his belly as he inspected Donnally’s face. They were sitting at the rough-hewn kitchen table in his adobe bungalow at the western edge of Cancun.