Death, Taxes, and Peach Sangria (14 page)

I put in a quick call to 911, rose from my seat, and made my way to the ticket booth.
As I did, the kid said, “Last chance, futhermucker.”

“Futhermucker?” The ticket seller threw his head back and laughed. “Kid, you got no
business pulling a stunt like this. Go back home to your scooter and your G.I. Joe.”

The kid’s face clouded with anger. He raised the gun level with the man’s face and
pulled the trigger.

Bang!

The bullet hit the glass and was absorbed into it, thin cracks spreading like a spiderweb
over the surface. The kid shrieked, but the ticket seller didn’t even blink. Forget
buns of steel. This guy had titanium testicles.

Mack’s arm shot out, reached through the small opening for passing cash and tickets
back and forth, and grabbed the front of the kid’s jacket. He yanked the boy forward,
slamming the kid’s face against the glass. The gun clattered to the floor at the boy’s
feet as he now used both hands to resist having his face smashed to bits.

Knowing I was useless on this side of the glass, I ran down the hall, out the door,
and into the lobby. The attendant continued to yank forcibly on the boy’s jacket,
give the kid just enough slack for him to back up a few inches, then yank the kid
forward again. The boy’s face repeatedly hit the glass.

Bam!

Bam!

Bam!

I got the distinct feeling this wasn’t the first time Mack had used this particular
technique to subdue a would-be bandit.

I snatched the boy’s gun from the floor and shoved it into my pocket. I pulled out
my cuffs and clicked them onto the boy’s wrists while his hands were stretched up
against the glass in his futile resistance effort. His puny preteen muscles were no
match for the man on the other side of the glass.

Mack let go of the boy’s jacket and I shoved the kid to the floor. “Don’t move!”

The kid struggled to a sitting position and looked up at me, terror and desperation
in his eyes. “I didn’t know the gun was loaded!”

“Really. Then why did you pull the trigger?”

“’Cause he made fun of me!”

I crossed my arms over my chest and rolled my eyes. “Tell it to the judge, kid.”

“If you let me go,” the boy said, tears welling up in his eyes, “my dad will pay for
the window.”

I looked down at him and shook my head. “Kid, that window is the least of your problems
right now.”

The boy began to cry. “I want my mommy!”

If I’d pulled something like this as a child, my mother would be the last person I’d
want. She’d tan my hide.

I looked up, my gaze meeting Mack’s through the cracked glass. “Nice moves,” I said.
“Former military?”

He shook his head. “Former Black Panther.”

Twenty minutes later, Dallas PD had hauled the boy off to the juvenile detention facility.
They’d also sent officers out to arrest the boy’s eighteen-year-old brother, who’d
needed quick funds to replace beer he’d snitched from the family fridge and put the
kid up to the stunt rather than risk adding to his own rap sheet. With any luck, the
boy would learn his lesson and wouldn’t follow in his brother’s dirty footsteps.

I returned to my review of the bus station’s records, but just like the kid’s attempt
to rob the place, my search was futile. I thanked the attendant for his time and headed
out, hoping Eddie or Agent Wang had more luck than I’d had today.

chapter thirteen

Bargain Hunting

Frustrated by my lack of success, I phoned Eddie to see if he’d had any more luck
at the money transmitters than I had. He hadn’t. And we still had a slew of MSBs left
to visit. It could take weeks to hit them all. Working our way down a list seemed
horribly inefficient. There had to be a better approach, didn’t there?

Eddie exhaled sharply into his phone. “We could spend weeks spinning our wheels.”

It had happened before and it was frustrating as hell. Eddie and I didn’t mind working
hard, but we didn’t want our efforts to be in vain. Our time was too important.

“Think there’s any point in paying a visit to the men who were arrested?” I asked.
“See if they’ll open up?”

Eddie and I knew their attorneys had instructed them to remain silent. Hell, Homsi,
the one who’d originally offered to turn state’s witness in return for leniency, couldn’t
talk now even if he wanted to. Can’t form words without a tongue. I supposed he could
write, though. I wondered how he managed to eat in prison. Maybe they brought him
jars of baby food. I imagined him eating that pinkish-gray guck that purported to
be some type of meat.

Urk.

Yeah, visiting the jail would likely be another waste of our time. Still, it wasn’t
unheard of for someone who’d been arrested to have a change of heart after spending
some time in the slammer. Using the toilet with an audience couldn’t be fun, and once
a man had suffered a few dozen lousy meals, spent restless nights on a painfully thin
mattress, and fought off repeated amorous advances from a big and burly guy named
Crazy Al, he could sometimes be more easily convinced to cooperate in order to whittle
time off his sentence.

“You never know,” Eddie said. “Sometimes a person who won’t open up to one agent will
spill their guts to another.”

“Let’s give it a shot then,” I said. “What have we got to lose?”

I phoned the terrorists’ attorneys and arranged meetings at the jail. All of them
told me they’d instructed their clients not to talk unless a very generous plea deal
was offered. Heck, it would probably be malpractice if the lawyers had done otherwise.
But I suspected each attorney secretly hoped his client would decide to cop a plea.
Better to collect their legal fees and move on to the next case than spend precious
time preparing for a trial they were sure to lose.

At five thirty, I was headed home when I drove past a pawnshop. The store was called
Strike-it-Rich Pawn and featured a rusty fifteen-foot oil derrick atop the roof. A
large sign in the window caught my eye.

Gun Sale

I braked and made an illegal U-turn. It’s not like a cop would give me a ticket. I
was on official federal government business.

Sort of.

Many women collected teacups or figurines or rare books. I, however, owned a sizable
handgun collection. To each her own, right?

I’d been worrying about Nick all day, whether he’d fall for one of the women from
the dating site before I had a chance to break up with Brett. I needed something to
lift my spirits. A new gun would be just the thing. Besides, Dallas rush-hour traffic
was a bitch. Might as well go check out the guns and let the gridlock ease up a bit.

I pulled into the drive. The only vehicles in the lot were a Harley with high-arching
handlebars parked near the door and an ancient wood-paneled station wagon parked at
the end. I took a spot next to the motorcycle.

Metal burglar bars covered the front windows and glass door, which bore a sign that
read: “FAMILY OWNED AND OPERATED SINCE 1952.” A string of bells hung from the inside
door rail, giving off a tinny tinkle as I entered. The place smelled like dust and
rose petals. Dust because the place was dusty, rose petals because of the large glass
bowl of potpourri perched on a pedestal near the door.

The place contained the usual amalgamation of odds and ends sacrificed by desperate
owners needing quick cash. Guitars in both acoustic and electric varieties lined one
wall, along with amplifiers and an electronic keyboard. Televisions of all sizes took
up at least a quarter of the room, followed by stereo and computer equipment.

I wandered farther into the store. Toward the back of the space was a wide selection
of exercise equipment, most of it nearly new, abandoned by owners who’d long since
given up on their New Year’s resolutions to get in shape. Treadmills, exercise bikes,
stair steppers, elliptical machines. Heck, there was even a first-generation NordicTrack
with the pull ropes.

Near the register was an assortment of sports equipment. Golf clubs, hockey sticks,
tennis rackets. A wooden rack displayed both snow skis and water skis. Whether you
wanted to ski on frozen or melted H
2
O, this place could trick you out.

Each of the items bore a round orange price sticker with the store’s oil derrick logo
printed on it in black. The prices were handwritten below the derricks.

I approached the register. Behind it was a short woman who appeared to be in her mid-
to late fifties, around my mother’s age. Her soft brown curls were tinged with streaks
of gray. She had the roundish figure of a woman who’d borne several children. She
wore a loose cotton shirt untucked over a pair of well-worn corduroy pants. White
canvas sneakers graced her small feet.

When the woman looked down at a stack of paperwork on the counter, her pink plastic-framed
reading glasses threatened to slide off the end of her nose. She put her index finger
on the nosepiece to push the glasses back into place. She appeared flustered as she
rifled through the documents. No wonder. A man wearing a black leather vest with no
shirt, dirty blue jeans, biker boots, and a bandana wrapped around his shaved head
stood at the counter, staring her down. His arms, adorned with sleeve tattoos, were
crossed over his chest, his underarm hair fluffed out around his pits as if his upper
arms were wearing brown tutus.

The man’s language was as colorful as his tattooed arms. “I’ve paid off my fucking
loan. I want my goddamn guitar back.”

The woman’s eyes shone with fear as she looked up at the man. “I’m sorry. I can’t
seem to put my hands on your paperwork. But it’s got to be here somewhere if you’ll
just bear with me.” She set aside the stack she’d been sorting through and pulled
a box out from under the counter. “Maybe it’s in here.” She dumped the contents of
the box onto the counter and began sifting through the stack.

The pawnshop still used old-fashioned paper records? A bit surprising in these days
of computerized data storage. The outdated record-keeping method had probably been
in place since the store opened in 1952.

The man waited a couple more minutes, though his tapping boot made it clear his patience
was growing thin. “Look, lady. You’re wasting my time and screwing me over. I’ve paid
back every cent I owe you.” He pointed to a shiny black electric guitar on display.
“That’s my guitar right there. I want it back.
Now.
”

The woman’s glasses slid down her nose again and once again she pushed them back.
The man appeared to have a legitimate beef, but at the same time this poor woman seemed
to be in over her head.

I stepped up to the counter, noting that the man smelled faintly, though undoubtedly,
of marijuana. You’d think a stoner would be a bit more mellow, huh?

I pulled back my blazer to reveal the gun holstered at my waist in case the biker
had any thoughts of getting violent. “I’m Special Agent Tara Holloway with the IRS.
Can I be of help here?”

Now the man’s eyes bore a slight tinge of fear. Unreported income from pot sales,
perhaps? He backed away a step or two, as if wanting to put some distance between
us. “We’re good,” he said, probably hoping I’d step away.

He didn’t know me very well, did he?

I stayed at the counter, looking around. On a shelf behind the register was an official
Major League Baseball bat autographed by Texas Rangers star Josh Hamilton. Next to
it was an autographed baseball signed by Rangers legend Nolan Ryan. My father would
love the ball and Christmas was coming in a couple of months. I squinted to read the
price sticker on the plastic box. One hundred and fifty bucks. That was doable.

“Phew!” the woman said, her tense features softening in relief as she pulled a loan
agreement from the pile. “Found it.” She stamped each page of the man’s triplicate
form with a rubber stamp that read: “
PAID IN FULL
” and handed him the yellow copy. He snatched the paper out of her hand and turned
to leave, grabbing his guitar from the wall as he left.

“Thanks for your help with that man.” The woman gave me a grateful look as she restacked
the paperwork. “He got me all flustered.”

“Glad to help.”

The woman scooped up the papers and plopped them back into the box. “Can I help you
with something, hon?”

“I saw the sign in the window. I’m interested in seeing the guns you’ve got on sale.”

The woman gestured for me to walk down to a glass display case at the other end of
the counter. Several guns in the case caught my eye.

On the top shelf was a nice Beretta 3032 Tomcat. I’d shot one before. Great accuracy.
Next to it sat a Ruger Super Redhawk revolver. The gun’s disproportionately long skinny
barrel gave it a comical look, as if a white flag reading: “BANG!” would pop out when
the gun was fired.

“Could you show me the Cobra?” The Cobra CA380 pistol was cherry red, my signature
color. It was also lightweight and compact, the perfect gun for a woman.

The woman pulled a stretchy coiled key chain from her wrist. The plastic bracelet
seemed like a good way to keep her keys handy. Maybe I should get a key chain like
that for when I went jogging.

Oh, who the hell was I kidding? I never actually went jogging.

The woman reached into the case, retrieved the weapon, and held it out to me. “Here
you go.”

Like the other items in the store, it bore an orange label with the oil derrick logo.
I took it in my right hand, gripping it and pretending to take aim at the clock mounted
on the wall behind the counter, testing its feel.
Hmm. Not bad.
The piece would cost about eighty bucks brand-new. According to the price tag on
this secondhand model, it was on sale for thirty dollars.

While I was examining the gun, the bells on the door tinkled behind me. A UPS courier
in a brown uniform headed toward us, a large cardboard box in his hand.