The Carrion Birds (2 page)

“Mistakes?” Ray said.

“Your cousin,” Sanchez said. “He lost his job,
didn’t he? He was the sheriff and he lost his job over what happened down here.
Killing that cartel woman just because you wouldn’t leave it alone.”

Ray sat trying to remember exactly what he’d told
his cousin Tom. What had he said? How had he put it to him? Ray’s wife,
Marianne, dead and his son in there at the table with them, sitting in his high
chair, while Ray and Tom sat talking to each other. Tom in his old cop browns,
his hat thrown out on the table next to the half rack of beer Ray was drinking
from. One after the other, like the coming day would never arrive and he didn’t
want to remember what he was telling Tom to do.

“You should have been the one down there,” Sanchez
said. He finished rolling his cigarette and placed it on the dash, dipping his
fingers back into the bag and beginning another almost in the same motion.

“At the time I was trying not to shit in my own
backyard. Coronado had its own problems; it didn’t need mine, too.”

“Memo always said it ruined you, he said you
started doing things your own way. Said you were in your prime.”

“Is that how he put it?” Ray said. “That I was in
my prime?”

“Memo said you killed the Alvarez brothers in
’82.”

“That was a long time ago,” Ray said.

“I heard about what you did in Deming a few years
later,” Sanchez went on. “I heard about what happened outside Las Cruces, about
the farmhouse north of town. My uncle said you were—”

“I’m not that man anymore,” Ray interrupted. He
turned and looked at the half-finished cigarette in Sanchez’s hands, and then he
looked up. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-six.”

“And you heard all this when?”

“I picked it up over time. I heard it from the
family. I heard you did a lot of the work in the seventies, and that you went
pro in the eighties.”

“You hear I was married, too, you hear about my
baby boy?”

Ray watched Sanchez. The younger man wouldn’t meet
Ray’s eyes—Sanchez just looking at the window now, at his own reflection. “I
heard about that,” Sanchez said.

“Mistakes,” Ray said. He put his window down and
watched his breath curl in the early-morning cold. It was one thing to do a job
with the idea that it was business and nothing more. It was another thing
altogether to take it into someone’s home, into the kitchen where they ate their
dinners, where their wives cooked their meals and their children roamed the
floors on hands and knees.

“But you dealt with it,” Sanchez said. “You handled
it.”

“I’m not that man anymore, you understand?” Ray
said, his eyes scanning the darkened landscape, searching back over a history
he’d run from ten years before and thought that he’d left far behind. “I gave it
all up.”

“And my uncle had it all cleaned up for you?”

“He was good about that sort of thing,” Ray said,
“taking care of things.”

“I’m sorry about your family,” Sanchez said,
finally. “But still, it doesn’t change anything, you should know that.”

“I’m not that man anymore.”

“Whatever you are or aren’t,” Sanchez said, “you
were given a call because you know this country, and you’ll play your part just
like you always have.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all we’re asking.”

“You think this guy will just stop for us?”

“Sitting in this thing with the flashers going,
he’ll think you’re a cop. If he tries to run it’s probable cause for a search,
and he won’t want that. All you have to do is go up there and ask him for his
license and registration. Play your part, shine your flashlight in his window,
and take the load from beneath the bench.”

Ray drew himself up in the seat. He was looking out
on the road still, listening to Sanchez. Behind him in the dark of the Bronco,
Ray knew there was a long-range hunting rifle. He knew, too, that it was a lot
of rifle for a talk on the side of the road. “You going up there with me?” Ray
asked. His own Ruger nine-millimeter tucked into the pocket of the padded canvas
jacket he wore.

A shotgun rested against the side of the door where
Sanchez could reach it, and as they’d driven down, Sanchez had flipped the
safety off, then on, repeating it every ten seconds or so, the metallic click of
the metal counting out the time. “You wouldn’t want that,” Sanchez said. “Before
I went away on a charge a few years back I worked with this man pretty regular.
He’ll know why I’m here and, more importantly, he’ll know you aren’t a cop.”
Sanchez looked over at the shotgun, pausing to reach a hand out and flick the
safety from on to off. “If I get out it will mean something altogether
different.”

“You really think he’s just going to let me take
the dope?”

“Keep the flashlight on him, don’t let him see your
face or mine,” Sanchez said. “You play it right, take the dope and let him off
with a warning, he can’t do anything about it. He’s not going to come after a
cop, and he’s not going to go back to Coronado looking for a resupply. He’s
stuck.”

“Who are these people?” Ray asked.

“The truck we’re waiting on comes up from Coronado
once a month. They take the drugs up from the border and they move it north to
Deming, then east on Interstate 10 to Las Cruces or west to Tucson. All this
through a man named Dario Campo, who has a bar in town.”

“So that’s what this is, a shakedown?”

Sanchez swept the line of cigarettes off the dash
into the envelope of his hand. “This used to be our territory,” Sanchez
said.

“I thought it was still your territory,” Ray said.
“Isn’t that what all this is about? Isn’t that why my cousin lost his job and
shot that woman, because Memo was trying to play everyone against everyone
else?”

“I don’t know what you heard, but the cartel is
taking over everything these days. Our territory is half what it used to
be.”

“You ever think maybe there’s a good reason it’s
not yours anymore?”

Sanchez put his finished cigarettes in with the
loose tobacco and began work on another, Ray just watching. After a time Sanchez
said, “You’ve been out of the loop. I’ll give you that. You think you know how
things are down here, but you don’t know shit. You’re going to need to be
careful when you walk up there, when you take the dope. Don’t get cocky because
you think you’ve been around longer than me.” Sanchez paused, admiring the
half-finished cigarette in his hand. “Be careful with anyone who works for
Dario. Dario is a real piece of work. Don’t leave him with anything. Don’t show
your face when you take the dope. Just do your job and we’ll both be fine.”

“I’ve been doing this for a long time,” Ray
said.

“That’s true. My uncle says you’re the best. He
told me there was no one better. But I think you should know that Dario is no
one to feel comfortable with. He’s out of Juarez and he’s cartel. The last guy
who tried to pull what we’re about to pull had both hands skinned wrist to
fingertips. They say Dario keeps them in his desk and wears them around like
gloves when the weather turns cold.”

“Sounds like Memo has been tucking you in at
night.” Ray laughed. “What is that? One of your favorite bedtime stories?”

Sanchez wouldn’t look over at him; he just sat
there shaking his head, tightening the cigarette in his fingers.

“Did Memo tell you that?” Ray said. “Did he think
that would keep you in line?”

But Ray knew that sometime in the last few minutes
everything had slowed. Cartel, Ray thought. There wasn’t anything entertaining
about this lifestyle anymore. Not like it used to be.

Before his eyes the light had grown grainy and pink
as the red dirt road took form out of the shadows. “This guy better be along
soon,” Ray said.

“He’ll be along,” Sanchez muttered, fitting the
last of the tobacco onto the paper and then sealing it with his tongue.

“We’ll see,” Ray said, looking out at the thicket
and marking where the dirt road ran perpendicular to his vision. “I’m not
interested in making more of a mess out of this thing than I’m willing to clean
up.”

“There’s not going to be any mess.”

Through the window Ray heard the early-morning
birdcalls, the wind pushing through the locust, and the hollow clack of the
branches as they met, then bounced apart. Government BLM land and the smell of
cows and dust—all there was now of this place, his father’s old oil property
only a few miles to the south, closer than he’d been in years, and most of the
land now rented out as grazing range to the surrounding cattle farms.

With his arm out the window, Ray let his hand
dangle there near the mirror. The whole thing made him nervous. This close to
his former life and a family he’d never been completely honest with.

He leaned forward and played with the spotlight,
wanting to get it right, wanting it to look official. If he could just get this
right he’d be free at least until the money ran out, and if he was smart, maybe
longer.

He went on adjusting the spotlight and watching the
road until the old Chevy pickup went by about fifty feet in front of them with
just its parking lights on.

It took them only a minute to chase the truck down,
Ray driving and Sanchez sitting shotgun as the pale flash of their headlights
alternated in front of them, highlighting the back of the truck bed. Ray had the
spot turned on and through the back pane of glass he saw a man wearing a
wide-brimmed hat. His skin pale beneath the spotlight. Another man beside him
that neither Ray nor Sanchez had been counting on, but the man was there
regardless.

Ray thumbed the Ruger’s safety off. “You know
something about this?” he asked. He leaned forward and slid the pistol beneath
his belt, watching the old Chevy where it sat a hundred feet in front of them,
the faint outline of the parking lights visible through the early-morning
haze.

“Doesn’t matter,” Sanchez said. “It’s the same as
it was before.”

With his forearm, Ray leaned into the door and
pushed it open. He was carrying in his left hand a flashlight, hitting it in
rhythm against his leg. The thick light of the spot falling everywhere and the
shadow he cast before him, into which he stepped, deep and dark as an abyss.

Nothing out there except the smell of desert
flowers, dirt, and cow dung. A slim line of yellow tree tobacco growing like a
weed along the side of the road, barely visible in the coming dawn. He clicked
the flashlight on, holding it over his shoulder as he came to the truck. Ray
knew men like this could be jumpy when it came to police.

He was near even with the cab now. The light raised
as he came forward. Ray knew this man. His name was Jacob Burnham and he’d been
working this land since Ray had been a kid. And in a rush, he knew, too, why
Memo had been so insistent on having Ray work this job.

Ray had known Burnham all his life. They’d run
drugs together when Ray was just getting into the business. The first meeting
he’d ever had with Memo’s family had been set up by Burnham, twenty years Ray’s
senior, pale skinned, with his veins showing blue beneath his flesh and his hair
silver as mercury even all those years before.

Burnham was the local guy. The one who had been in
Coronado all along, moving the dope up across the border. He was the one Ray
would hear stories about as a boy, whispered to him as Burnham turned a corner a
block up and fell out of sight. Now Ray worked in the same business as this man.
Had for more years than he cared to admit. Doing the same type of work, the same
profession, and he knew those same people down in Coronado probably still
whispered Ray’s name, just like they had all those years before with
Burnham.

He never let his eyes drift away from Burnham, who
sat waiting in the driver’s seat. The beam of the flashlight held up to the
driver’s-side window, blinding the old man. When he was satisfied Burnham wasn’t
holding anything, he rapped on the glass with his knuckle and waited while the
window came down.

“Morning, Officer.”

“You have any identification on you?” Ray said,
flattening his voice till it was unrecognizable as anything Burnham might
remember.

The man dug around in his back pocket. The beige
cowboy hat he wore shifted to the side, wide brimmed and flat in a style Ray
couldn’t remember seeing on any other man outside Coronado. Burnham pulled up
his wallet, thumbed out the driver’s license, and handed it over to Ray.

“Jacob Burnham,” Ray said. He ran a thumb over the
ID, looking at the picture of the man on the card. Stone white and skin
wrinkled, with gray-silver hair combed to the right and cut at odd angles like
he’d done it himself. “And who’s in the passenger seat over there?” Ray saw
Burnham’s eyes dart toward the other man, then come back to rest on Ray.

“His name’s Gil Suarez,” Burnham said.

“Is that right?” He handed back the man’s ID.
“Would the both of you mind just stepping out of the vehicle?” Ray said, still
holding the light over his shoulder.

Burnham hesitated. His eyes turned up on Ray and
his breath moved steady through the beam of the flashlight before falling away
again into the darkness. “You’re not dressed like any sheriff’s deputy I’ve
seen.”

“I’m not any ordinary sheriff’s deputy,” Ray said.
The old man squinted out past the light, trying to figure Ray, but looking to
the side where the light wasn’t as strong. “Sorry,” Ray said, “you just don’t
know these days who’s traveling around on these roads. I’d rather have you out
here where I can see you and I don’t need to go guessing what you have in your
hand or under your seat.”

The old man sighed, letting his breath out in a
long whistle like he was about to take a high fall into a cold lake. “We weren’t
doing anything illegal,” Burnham said. “And we’re within our rights just to stay
here.”

“I know what your rights are,” Ray said. He shifted
his eyes to where Gil Suarez sat in the passenger seat, judging whether the
younger man was going to be a risk, then he ran them back over to Burnham. He
watched the old man and when he moved to get out, Ray already had his hand
resting close over his hip. “I’m just checking to make sure about something,” he
said.