Т Паркер - The Last Good Guy

I watched the dust settle as the window went down. Saw Burt punching away at the keypad, his white painter’s cap tilted up cheerfully. Frank sat next to him, staring impassively out at a vast desert so unlike his Salvadoran home. Burt talked into the intercom. We had predicted that getting past the gate would be easy. But getting a go-ahead to start work would be trickier.

What I’ll say, Roland, once I’m in, is somebody from SNR Security called and told me to get out to this hellhole and wash the windows. I drove eighty miles and I’m not turning around now. Look at your damned windows. Might have to charge you the extra-duty rate. How would I know who called? The boss says where to go, that’s where I go. And I don’t come back without his money. This is cash or check, I’m sure you were told.

Burt rolled up his window and the gate arm rose. That smile of his. Frank said something and smiled, too.

The old white truck came bouncing into the compound and parked outside the main house. Two camo-clad SNR men approached it, one at each door. Burt slid out, cowboy boots puffing up the dust. Burt believes that his shortness gives him an advantage over most people in most situations. Says it has to do with uncertainty. Animals love him, especially dogs and horses. Francisco didn’t move.

Muscle Blond from the hangar strode across the yard. Burt swung out his hand, but the man refused to take it. They appeared to introduce themselves. They were soon joined by a man and woman who came from the house. Pistols on their hips. The couple looked late twenties, he in jeans and work boots and a rolled-up plaid shirt. Tattooed forearms. The woman had a rural look — tight jeans and cowboy boots and a chambray work shirt. Yellow hair brushed up into a flattop.

A shadow crossed the ground in front of me. When I looked up, my rib screamed with pain, but there was no drone, only a large raven dipping in for a look at this strange human.

I sipped some more coffee, let my heart slow back down. Tried to think of something pleasant and drew a Penelope Rideout card. Penelope at my table in the candlelight, looking at PI Ford, only half covertly. I put that card back into the deck and shuffled. Came up with ten years of a faked marriage to an invented man. To keep the vultures away. It made some sense, but not enough. I could see it, but I couldn’t see it. I didn’t think I’d gotten to the truth of her yet. Only her beguiling surfaces.

By then, Burt was wrangling with Muscle Blond, Flat-Top Woman, and Tattooed Forearms, all at once. They loomed over him. He faced them, arms out, stubby fingers spread, his surprisingly big head turned up to them like a kid arguing with grown-ups. Muscle Blond shook his head decisively, Tattooed Forearms argued, and Flat-Top Woman set her hands on her hips. Burt gestured toward the house and appeared to curse.

Then drew his phone, dialed, and held it out to Tattooed Forearms, who wouldn’t take it. Neither would Muscle Blond or Flat-Top Woman.

Burt looked up at each of his opponents as he waited for his call to go through. Then he was talking again, fast. He paced, checked his watch. Listening and nodding.

After a minute of this he gave the phone to Muscle Blond, who reluctantly put it to his ear, said little, then rang off. He tossed the phone to Burt and walked toward the hangar, throwing up his hands.

Which is when I saw the roaring lion’s head tattooed on his palm.

Burt snatched his phone midair, jammed it into a back pocket, turned, and waved Frank from the truck.

Grandpa Dick Ford at Imperial Window Cleaning, an occasionally foul-mouthed geezer and not to be trifled with, had apparently spoken his piece.

They worked unhurriedly from building to building, carefully bracing the tall ladders, bearing down with dripping sponges, drying their squeegees between strokes. One of the uniformed guards followed them from wall to wall, watching for funny business, but was called away by cell phone just before the high square windows of the hangar were finished. Burt waved to him and called down as he walked off, and the guard waved back. Burt pulled a dry shop cloth from his pants pocket to scour out the dried-on bugs and conceal his phone while he took pictures through the glass.

When he climbed down, I saw a wasp nest stuck to the wall up near the eaves, where Burt had been window washing: Clevenger’s handiwork, not a nest but a motion-activated video camera that could live-stream back to us through satellite and cell signals. Clevenger was a former Irregular, an Emmy-winning nature documentarian, a terrible Ping-Pong player, but a good man. He was working on a wasp segment for Spy in the Wild . When I told him about the beating I’d taken at a mysterious date farm in pursuit of a missing fourteen-year-old, Clevenger had insisted we take four of his handmade video cameras for a better look around. And a dedicated laptop to receive the feeds. No charge.

I kept an eye up for drones. The doves were flying in this still-early part of the morning, out to get their water and feed from the Imperial Valley fields before the temperature put even them in the shade. Scores of doves, zero drones.

Sipped water, ate a couple candy bars, thought of Daley Rideout. I still couldn’t figure out who was in charge — Daley or the SNR men who couldn’t control her but wouldn’t let her go. Much like Penelope with her spirited little sister.

I watched Burt and Frank. Frank, gangly and teenaged, seemed unfazed by balance issues, breeze, heat, or altitude. I wondered if he might start his own window-washing business, but Salvadoran refugees were out of favor in today’s federal America. Asylum was rare and work permits few.

The farmworkers worked the Medjool harvest. High up in the trees, the men picked the ripe dates by hand and filled wicker baskets, then lowered them by rope to the packers on the ground. When their bins were full, the trucks carried them to the packing house.

Shotgun blasts came from my right, coming gradually closer and closer. Hunters hiding in the greasewood, like me. I shot doves with Dad when I was a boy, and I remembered how the birds would funnel through a certain spot, so you’d sneak over there when the skies were momentarily empty, hopefully unseen. Doves have good eyes. And once the first shotgun blast has broken the silence of dawn, the birds fly faster and higher and longer without stopping. By eleven a.m. all you can do is watch them fly out of range over you. By then it’s too hot to be standing like a fool in one of the world’s hottest deserts anyway, hoping to kill small birds for dinner with shotgun shells that cost twelve bucks a box when you could buy a whole cooked chicken for seven. As the shooters moved closer to me I knew I’d have to abandon my bunker, take up my shotgun — brought half for disguise and half for self-defense — and pretend to be hunting.

Burt and Frank finished the windows of the main house, the hangar, and the red barn. I saw two more new wasp nests, one on the barn and one more on the hangar, making two. Burt went back to get a few problem windows of the house, which meant photo ops that he’d not had with the guard standing watch over him.

Then on to the bunkhouses, which were small and low and looked to go quickly. Burt let Frank handle these while he used a spray bottle and shop rags to work on the dust-caked windows of the cottages. Seemed to spend a lot of time with those windows, working them over two times each. A new wasp nest appeared.

When he was finished he stood back as if to admire his work, then he hooked the spray bottle to his belt and pulled out his phone.

A moment later my own phone chimed. His pictures arrived slowly in this great sparse desert, three in all, apparently shot through a crack in the cottage window blinds: four garage-size freezers, white and clean. Five feet by four, judging by the look of them. They had been modified: intake hoses protruding from what looked like recirculation units fitted on their left-hand sides. A small timer/keypad beside each assembly. The freezers were spaced in the room for easy access. Hanging from nails in the walls were long-armed rubber gloves, protective suits of some kind, and military combat masks that defend against blowing sand, dust, and chemicals.