The Pact

A Short Story - An excerpt from my upcoming novel, All or Nothing

A warm breeze buffeted the clouds over the Catalina Mountains, obscuring the stars. I checked the time: eleven p.m. I took the Glock from the glove compartment and placed it in my pocket. I locked the car and walked to the side entrance. The light by the gate was out; I hadn’t noticed it being out of service the previous evening. I took my phone and shined the flashlight on the lock. Turning the key, I nudged the gate gently with my shoulder.

My phone vibrated as I walked into the yard. Ignacio. I’ll take it inside, too hot out here. I eased the gate closed and before I reached my casita I felt a heavy blow across the base of my skull. I slumped to the ground and dropped the vibrating phone. A hood was thrown over my head. My hands were yanked behind me, and a zip tie dug into my wrists. They took the gun. Two pairs of arms lifted me. I started to yell. I felt another blow, this time to my face, as if I’d been whacked with a two-by-four. Or a very large fist. I tried to yell again but nothing came out. I heard a man bark commands in Spanish, something about a car. I was heaved like a sack of potatoes. I retched as the trunk of the car slammed shut, striking me in the head. That’s when I passed out.

 ***

I wasn’t sure whether it was the rank odor, the heat, or the violent jarring of the car that woke me. Probably a combination of the three.

I tried to move but was constrained by the tight space. I stretched my left leg to give my knee a respite. The cramped quarters combined with the bouncing, and the humidity—it’s all relative in the Sonoran desert—caused sharp pangs to shoot through my leg, up my spine, and into my cranium. Or maybe that was just due to the blows I received on my way to this fucking paradise sauna. I was drenched in sweat.

It had to be the stench that woke me. The odor was akin to a rotting corpse, at least five days old, that’s when the flavors start to really shine, the bouquet overpowering any other scent that attempts to enter its zone of interest. I was probably in a death mobile, ferrying bodies before being disposed of in the desert. Or dissolved in vats of acid after being dismembered.

We hit a few smooth patches before the car bounced violently again. Off road. Probably heading to a remote location. Ending it for me. For the only reason I could imagine. I was doing my job. Looking for a kidnap victim, Dan Wobner, a Tucson real estate scion that had gone rotten. Maybe I’d come face to face with the kidnappers, maybe I’d come face to face with Wobner, and I could ask him to untangle this web of lies, deceit, and falsehoods that followed him everywhere. Maybe the entire riddle would be solved before they put a bullet in the back of my head. Like they had with Nellie.

The ride seemed interminable. My forehead kept hitting an obtuse hunk of metal. I strained my neck to minimize the blows. We hit a paved road again. I heard the humming of the engine, the tires gripping the asphalt. Nothing else.

We slowed to a crawl, then abruptly stopped. The car doors slammed, and the trunk popped open. The same set of arms lifted me out of the coffin and stood me up. I couldn’t tell how many there were. At least two. Maybe three.

“¡Caminas!” a voice hissed.

That I understood. I put one foot in front of the other, trying to get a feel for the terrain. One of the goons jammed a gun in the small of my back. Another gripped my arm. I picked up the pace. The stench of garlic, sweat, and tobacco induced a gag reflex. My foot hit a step, but the man’s grip kept me from falling over. I heard a door open. They hustled me inside and threw me to the ground. At least it was a carpeted floor. And it was relatively cool—I could hear the HVAC unit humming. Again there was an overpowering stench. Rotting garbage. Sweating bodies. An open sewer. Maybe this is what hell was like, extreme exposure causing sensory overload. Before you were thrown into a raging bonfire.

I lay there immobile. When I was sure the goons had left, I turned on my back and stretched my legs. My feet hit what felt like a firm pillow. I heard a shuffle. I sat up. If there was only a way to free my hands from the zip tie, I could take off the hood and get my bearings.

What a way to go.

Then a woman whispered, in Spanish.

I froze.

Indecipherable murmurs and the continued shuffling of retreating bodies filled the silence.

“Ayúdame,” I said.

More murmuring. I struggled to my feet and moved toward the voices, placing one foot carefully in front of the other. Then my face hit a wall. I fell to the ground. I lay there, breathing rapidly. My head throbbed and my teeth hurt. Goddamn it what a shitshow. Fucking Dan Wobner and his fucking whores, his fucking gambling, his fucking debts. Why the fuck did I take this case? I should have known better. Fucking Ignacio, why the fuck was he calling me right as I was getting dumped into a trunk? That fucker knows what’s going on, probably orchestrated the entire charade. That motherfucker. That fucking slimy ass. He can take his Rolex and his Cuban cigars and shove them—

I felt a hand on my forehead. A gentle hand.

“Por favor,” I said. “No puedo respirar.”

The hood slid off. As my eyes adjusted to the faint light I discerned a gaggle of faces staring down at me. Women and children. The bodies retreated like an ebbing tide and amassed against a wall. There must have been twenty of them in this one room alone. They all wore weathered tee-shirts, with torn jeans, shorts, or khakis. Some had ripped sneakers, the rest were barefoot. They were all sunburned, their skin blistered. What part of their skin wasn’t sunburnt was covered in filthy grime. Many had matted hair. Backpacks and other assorted bags were strewn about.

Must be a stash house, a waystation on the immigrant trail, before they continued in search of paradise.

I hobbled toward an open door, and as the inmates parted for me like the Red Sea, the odor of their sweating bodies engulfed me. I held my breath. I reached the door and peered into another room. It was packed with more women and children, like a boxcar transporting cattle to the slaughterhouse.

I scanned the rest of the house. I needed to get out of these cuffs and make a run for it, before the goons came back. I headed to a window adjacent to the front door, nudged the venetian blinds aside with my head, and stared out at the landscape.

In the dark I made out homes amassed on top of one another on surrounding hills. A towering, serpentine wall extended out into the horizon, bisecting the landscape. A solitary watch tower light illuminated cars waiting to cross the border.

Nogales. I figured. The car ride had lasted about two hours, slightly longer than it had taken me three days ago to reach this shithole from Tucson. The reason for the rough roads interspersed throughout the otherwise smooth ride was probably due to circling around the border patrol station in Tubac.

I waded through the migrants, who furtively glanced up at me as I passed, and found the kitchen. I stood with my back to the cabinets and opened the drawers one by one. There had to be a pair of scissors or a knife in this place. Find it, get one of the poor souls to cut me loose, then get out. As fast as I could. I didn’t want to stick around to find out what they’d do to me. It was time to turn this nightmare over to the Sheriff. A case I never should have taken. I should stick to finding lost dogs and chasing adulterous spouses, that’s what a retired cop turned private detective should focus as he nears retirement. But even if I could free my hands, I wasn’t sure how far I’d get. My knee was killing me, and my head was still spinning from the blows. Maybe I’d get lucky, find a good Samaritan, and hitchhike my way back to Tubac.

Nothing in the drawers or cabinets. I sat on a solitary foldout chair, exhausted from the ordeal. As I contemplated my next move I heard a commotion in the adjacent room. Loud voices spewed unintelligible commands. I jumped toward the back kitchen door and tried to open it. Locked. If I could—

“Don move,” one of the voices commanded. I turned and stared down the barrel of an automatic. The kid holding it couldn’t have been more than eighteen. It wasn’t him who was doing the talking. It was the man behind him, standing in the doorway, hands on hips, a wry smile plastered on his tanned face. He wore a two-piece silk suit, a crisp, starched white shirt open at the collar, and a gold necklace bearing a crucifix. The suit walked toward me, lowered the kid’s hand holding the gun, then grabbed my arms. He guided me not so gently back into the chair. “Don move,” he said again, cooler this time. The suit then left, leaving me alone with the kid, who stood there with a catatonic stare. I was hoping he’d forget that he was holding a gun. A hopped-up teen with a firearm can make for a deadly combination.

The suit came back into the kitchen holding a five-inch blade. He walked toward me and in one swift movement reached over and cut the zip tie. Just then two other men wearing matching blue tee-shirts walked in each carrying a folding chair. One of them shouldered a duffel bag. The other had his left arm in a cast, a broken nose, and a black eye. He looked familiar.

They placed the chairs around a teetering card table in the middle of the room. The suit motioned for me to move over, and I shifted my chair.

Suddenly the four men stood at attention and faced the entrance. A man in his mid-fifties entered the room. He was of average height and wore an azure dress shirt, pressed blue jeans, and spotless white sneakers—Stan Smiths. He sat down in one of the chairs. The suit took the other.

“Water?” the man asked me.

“As long as it’s not from the tap,” I said.

The man contemplated me for a moment. Then he snapped his fingers, and one of the men in blue pulled out several bottles from the duffel bag and placed them on the table. I reached over, opened one, and took a long slug. I felt the man’s eyes on me, his presence in the room, the other men waiting or trying to interpret his next command. His long black hair was unnaturally dyed, thick sideburns reached down his jawline. Otherwise, he had a plain face, one that wouldn’t stand out in a crowd: dark eyes spaced close together, thin lips, and a button nose. I surmised why he wore his hair long: his protruding ears were twice the size of mine.

“I hope the ride here was not bad for you,” the man said. Barely a trace of an accent.

“I’ve had better travel experiences.” I reached for another bottle of water. “But I like the five-star service.”

The man made a hand gesture toward the suit, who reached inside his jacket and placed a semi-automatic on the table, out of reach. It was my Glock.

“I wasn’t sure where I’d left it,” I said. The sarcasm didn’t register. Maybe it was lost in translation.

“So, you are Jack Palms,” the man said. “May I call you Jack?”

I guzzled the water and wiped my lips with my sleeve. “We haven’t been properly introduced.”

“I am Hector,” the man said.

“Hector. Has a nice ring to it.”

He shook his head and smiled. “Enough with this nonsense, Jack. I brought you here for one reason.”

“And what may that be?”

He leaned in. “I need you to do your job.”

“Which is—”

“To find that pinche pendejo, so I can take care of my business.”

“Dan Wobner.”

“Si. Dan puto Wobner.”

“What’s your business?”

“It does not matter what—”

“How am I supposed to—”

“Do not interrupt me!” he bellowed. No one moved. “I do not like it when I am interrupted,” he said, this time using his inside voice. “It is rude, especially for a guest.” He stood and paced the kitchen. All eyes in the room followed him, trying to anticipate his next move.

“Dan fucked me.” He leaned back against the counter and crossed his arms. “You fuck me, you die.”

“I find Wobner, you take care of your business, and then you kill him?”

“Not right away.”

He paced the room again, staring at the floor. “We were making progress with the transition to his business partner, Ignacio. We needed two more weeks. Then we were done. When Dan disappeared it complicated things; he holds the keys to the business. Without him we cannot finish the job.” He stopped pacing and motioned toward me. “Then you were hired to find him. We looked you up. A New York cop, now a Tucson private detective. Must know his shit. We followed you, thinking that you would lead us to Dan. And instead, here we are.”

The goon with the cast and the black eye. I recognized him now. The same guy who was tailing me. The same guy who hobbled away from the car accident. And the same guy I saw at the ransom pickup carrying the drop-off bags. “Then it was your men who took the money at the drop-off. And took the bag man,” I said.

“The bag man,” he smirked. “That pinche culero.” He sat down, picked up the Glock from the table and palmed it, gauging its weight. “That was my money he took.”

It all started to make sense. Hector had nothing to do with Dan’s kidnapping. It was the bag man, the kidnapper, who had been intercepted by Hector’s goons, the night I dropped off the ransom. They followed me to get to the bag man. Clearly the kidnapping had thrown a proverbial wrench in whatever plan Hector was executing with Dan and Ignacio. But that wasn’t my business. My business was to solve the kidnapping, find Dan, and take him back home to his wife. She’s the one who had hired me. That’s what I had signed up for. Not this circus.

“So, you gave the ransom money to Ignacio, who then gave it to me, and I then left it for the bag man at the pickup spot. Your guys were there waiting. And now you and Ignacio orchestrated this. . . this private visit.”

“Si, Ignacio. He is the one who told me about you.”

“The intent was to use the ransom as bait—”

“Si. Get Dan’s location from the bag man, and we are back in business.”

“But your guys fucked it up. They killed the bag man before he could disclose Dan’s location.”

He handed the Glock to the suit and then said, “You are smart. New York cop. I could use you on my team.”

“I’ve got a full schedule.”

“Yes, a full schedule,” he murmured.

“Why break up with Dan?”

Hector grabbed a bottle of water and sipped it. “Dan gets out of control, with the gambling, the women, the parties . . . I went to one of those once. It was too much, even for me.” He finished the water. “He became. . . how do you say. . . a liability.”

“What did you get out of the bag man?”

“None of your business.”

It was my turn to lean in. “Hector. You want me to find Dan. Alright. Your guys spoke to the bag man before killing him. He must have said something. So, what he knew is my business.”

He smiled. “See? I told you we are on the same team. We want the same outcome.” He drummed his fingers on the table. “We did not get a lot. My guys worked on him too much, too soon. They only learned that he was fucking the daughter, and that it was her idea to kidnap her father. Her name is Rally, or something like that.”

“Riley.”

“Right. But she did not know anything.”

“So you shot her.”

He looked surprised. “I did not shoot her, but yes, she is dead.”

“That wasn’t Riley. It was her friend, Nellie. They look alike. Your goons killed an innocent woman.”

Hector’s eyes bulged, then contorted into an incredulous glare. He exploded into a barrage of expletives, threw his chair against the wall, and leaped toward the goon in the cast. Hector’s face morphed from red to blue to purple as he stood over the invalid, berating him with unintelligible words. He slapped him twice, hard across the face, in rapid succession. No one else in the room moved, including me.

When Hector was done with the goon, he walked slowly around the table, picked up his chair, and sat down. He turned to the suit and uttered one word: “Mátalo.”

The expressionless gangster pointed the Glock at my face.

So this was how it was going to end, at the hands of the cartel, in a stash house in Nogales, in a stinking orifice on the Southern border—

The blast deafened me.

I opened my eyes. The shooter was wearing his wry smile again. Hector motioned toward the wall behind me.

I turned.

The man in the cast lay sprawled on the floor, blood and brain and skull splattered against the white wall, like a Pollock masterpiece. Hector barked a command, and without hesitating, the catatonic kid and his pal picked up the corpse and carried it out of the kitchen. A trail of blood followed them out the door. Shrieks and high-pitched cries filled the house.

“It is hard to find good help these days,” Hector said nonchalantly. He gestured toward the suit. “Rodrigo is the only one I trust.” He murmured something to him about Riley.

“I’ll take care of Riley,” I said, anticipating their move; I had a feeling the next bullet was for me.

They stared at me quizzically.

“You don’t have a great track record of extracting information from your captives. Your guys are zero for two—the bag man and Nellie.” I didn’t want them to be zero for three. With me.

“And what are you going to tell Riley?” Hector asked.

“That her friend was killed by people that she doesn’t want to meet. No offense.”

“None taken.”

“And that if she doesn’t tell me where her father is she’ll be buried in the desert.”

Hector glanced at Rodrigo, who nodded. He popped the clip from the Glock and emptied it onto the table. The bullets clinked together like nickels. In one fluid move he cleared the chamber, replaced the magazine, and lay the gun gently in front of me. I hesitated, then picked up the weapon, and tucked it in the small of my back.

Hector stood over me. “Find out from Riley where Dan is, and then bring him to me.”

“Where?”

“Here. I have to stay close to the border, I cannot venture far.”

“I doubt I can convince him to come to Nogales after what he’s been through.”

“Use your powers of persuasion.”

“And what you might do to him.”

“I need him alive.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said. “May I get up?”

Hector motioned toward the door. Instead of leaving, I stood before him and looked him in the eye. “There’s something you can do for me in return.”

He smiled and shook his head. “You have big cojones, Jack.” He turned to Rodrigo and said, “¡Me gusta este güero!”

Rodrigo let out a soft chuckle.

Hector continued, “Walking out of here with your life is not enough?”

“Shouldn’t be too much trouble for you.”

“Tell me.”

“There’s an Italian restaurant around here. Gino’s. In one of the strip malls. The owner is a former. . . acquaintance of mine. He goes by the name of Gino Canaglia.”

“What about him?”

“I want you to take care of him.”

“Take care of him?”

“With extreme prejudice.”

“¿Qué?”

“Make him disappear. Leave no trace.”

“What did he do to you?”

“He took away someone I was very close to.”

“Tell me about her,” Hector said. He seemed genuinely interested.

“We were walking home late one evening. I tried to protect her from the fusillade fired from a passing car. The bullets shattered my left knee. Jen was hit in the neck. She died in my arms.” I tried not to recall that evening in too much detail. “We had just gotten engaged.”

“Sounds like she was special.” Hector turned to Rodrigo, and they had a rapid back and forth.

“He is a two-bit hoodlum,” Hector said. “A dealer. Not important for us. He is like an annoying fly that buzzes around your head.” He moved close. The scent of sweet cologne engulfed me. “If he is the same guy that killed your girlfriend, what is he doing all the way down here?”

I retreated slightly but kept my eyes on Hector. “I came down to Nogales a few days ago, following a lead, looking for our friend Wobner. Fate wanted me to find my pal instead. Gino’s real name is Macario Fringuellini, we had arrested him for corruption of public officials, extortion, fraud. The list was long. He was also a suspect in the murder of a building inspector. . . we were gathering the final evidence to convict him, when Macario ordered a hit on the investigative team. I was first on the list.”

“Does not surprise me.”

“I knew he’d ordered the hit, and I was close to proving it. But Macario isn’t stupid. He figured he wasn’t going to walk, so he turned state’s witness, ratting out other New York public officials that were in his pocket, and more importantly for the Feds, several players in New York City’s organized crime rings that had been under investigation for some time. That’s what led Macario to enter Witness Protection. And the Feds put that bastard in Nogales.”

“Rodrigo will take care of him,” Hector said. “But only after you bring Dan to me.”

Rodrigo smiled.

We eased past the Pollock fresco, avoiding the blood and scattered brain matter. The cowering crowds parted for us as we walked through them and out the front door. The day was breaking, the coolness of the dawn and the crisp scent of the desert a welcome contrast to the putrid stench of the stash house. I perused my surroundings in the low light: lots in various stages of construction lined the avenue. The house we exited was one of only two that were finished.

And at that moment I wondered whether the relationship between Dan and Hector had something to do with using Dan’s developments as stash houses for migrants who had trekked miles in the barren desert, crossed the border with the help of coyotes, and then were interred in temporary way stations before being bussed or trucked or driven to destinations further north, east, or west.

The two other goons were standing next to a beat-up Chevy, smoking cigarettes. Must have been the car I came in on. Now carrying a headless corpse.

“Rodrigo will drive you home,” Hector said, motioning toward a spotless Jeep Grand Cherokee.

The thought of spending two hours with a psychopath did not give me comfort. I tried to recall when, and why, I became an atheist. “Not in the trunk,” I said.

“Only diamond service from now on,” Hector said.

“How do I get in touch with you?”

“Call Ignacio.”

Rodrigo hopped into the Cherokee. The engine turned. I opened the passenger door and as I was easing into the front seat Hector put a hand on my shoulder. “I expect to hear from you tomorrow.”