El Gavilan (2 page)

Tell waved a hand. “I get up early. I’m used to working nights and like the quiet in the morning. I’ll cover the radios until you get in. Your shift now starts at eight
A.M.
That going to jam you up on the other end, picking your daughter up?”

“I usually take a late lunch so I can pick her up and drop her off at Mom’s before I come back for my final hour.” Tell had passed the school complex on his drive in—less than three minutes from the police headquarters.

“Then it sounds like we’re all set,” he said.

Julie said, “Thank you so much, Chief Lyon.”

“What’s your daughter’s name?”

“Tiffany.”

“Pretty.”

“Thanks, Chief Lyon.” Julie looked at her new boss like she was seeing him for the first time. She was emboldened by their small talk to give him a good once-over. He stood six feet, maybe six-one. Good build. He had hazel eyes and auburn hair that was graying at the temples. She guessed he was cusping forty. She smiled and said, “You have any children, Chief Lyon?” Then she remembered to check his left ring finger: bare.

Tell said, “Not anymore.”

TWO

Sheriff Able Hawk lifted the dead bird by the neck and shook it in the elderly Mexican’s face. “Blood sports in Horton County, Luis? Not gonna fly in my corner of Ohio,
amigo
.”

Luis Lopez raised his hands, searching for words. His supply of English was wicked sparse.

The sheriff’s reputation, and his harrowing image on county-line billboards, preceded him. Luis recognized Hawk from those glowering roadside portraits. Luis’s legs were shaking, and that hadn’t gone unnoticed by Able.

The two men were standing in the shadow of a big, buckling barn at the back of an egg farm complex.

Able cast down the dead fighting cock and spat on it. A dislodged steel gaff bounced across the gravel. The big cop stooped down and scooped up the spur. He held the bloodied spur up close to Luis’s right eye.

“I don’t want you feeling singled out,
amigo,
” the sheriff said, waving the gaff in front of Luis’s face. The old Mexican saw an expanse of grayness in Able: gray hair, at least what Luis could see of it under the sheriff’s gray Stetson; gray walrus mustache and penetrating gray eyes. Able wore a dark gray uniform. The sheriff’s tunic strained against his swollen gut.

“Few years back,” Able continued, “had us some unwanted crackers come up from Georgia. Old boys raised pit bulls and fought ’em. You’d drive by their house and it looked like dogs had been hanged from their trees. Those Georgia boys would tie big knots in the ends of the ropes and have their dogs latch onto them. Then they’d hoist the dogs off the ground and make them hang there to strengthen their jaw muscles. Clever, huh? We cleared ’em out, though it took some time. Then we passed a slew of laws making it impossible to own one of those nasty hounds here in Horton County. Levied us some stiff and crazy penalties for violators. ’Course, before all that, one of those old boy’s dogs got loose and mauled little three-year-old Sydney Adler. Pretty little thing the sweetie was.” Able shook his head and spat into the dust. “
Before
the bastard’s dog got at her.”

The sheriff slapped Luis’s arm and smiled. “Good news here is your fighting cocks ain’t mauled none of my citizens yet.”

Able pulled the arm of his sunglasses from his shirt collar where they dangled, flipped open the remaining closed arm and slipped the glasses on, hiding his strange gray eyes. “But that’s about all the good news there’s to be had this day, Luis. See, we’re sending you back South, pronto, if those papers of yours come back queer.”

Able ambled over to his command cruiser. Deputy Troy Marshall, thin, fit and one year back from Iraq, smiled at the sheriff and said, “Surprise. Luis here is illegal.”

Deputy Marshall held up the Mexican’s hand-tooled leather wallet and pulled out a driver’s license and Social Security card. “I’ve seen better fake IDs on high school kids. Where do you think they’re getting these things, boss?”

“Suppose we should just be cow-simple pleased the workmanship’s so shitty,” Able said, “don’t you think?” Able nodded at Luis Lopez. “Book the son of a bitch, Troy. Slap him in county and get the damned paperwork started.”

“Usual drill?”

Able nodded. “Sure. Feds still ain’t enforcing our immigration laws. So we’ll bill the federal government for Luis’s room and board, since they let him stray across the border and all the way up here into Ohio to fight his fucking birds. ”

Deputy Marshall nodded. “And the birds, Sheriff? Destroy ’em?”

An epiphany seized Able, and he liked the attendant spin. “Nah, don’t kill ’em just yet. Call PETA and those tight-ass bastards from the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals or whatnot. Let ’em come out and shoot some footage of those birds for some of their propaganda films. We might could use those bleeding hearts to
our
ends, eh? We’ll stir up those left-leaning animal lovers and maybe get ’em to put backward pressure on those ACLU-types trying to bust my balls for our tough policies on illegals here in Horton County.”

The sheriff paused, then said, “Later, after, quiet-like, you kill those damn birds and drive ’em over to the food pantry and let ’em freeze ’em for our
legal
poor for Thanksgiving. They’re wiry, but I ’spect they’ll cook like any other bird.”

Able swung into his command cruiser and headed out to the south corporation line. He pulled onto the berm across from the newly posted billboard. Able had allocated money for the billboard from a slice of post-9/11 federal grants. In theory, the funds were supposed to be used to buy new radios or to obtain and train bomb-sniffing dogs and similar policing tools that might be useful to thwart or stave off the next terrorist attack.

But Able tended to have a more rabbinical interpretation of the guidelines set forth with the federal grants. A key, stated component of Homeland Security and the federal assistance sent Able’s way was border security and enforcement of immigration laws. To Able’s mind, he was well within the spirit of the law with his new billboards.

Able sat in his cruiser and appraised the sign:

Notice to Horton County Employers:

Hiring illegal immigrants or those with false identifications is a federal crime! It’s the law!

—Sheriff Able Hawk

Three similar billboards had already been posted at the north, east and west county lines.

A middle-aged man on a bicycle coasted to a stop alongside the sheriff’s dusty cruiser. “She’s a beaut’, Sheriff Hawk,” the cyclist said, nodding with his helmeted head at the new billboard.

Able nodded. “So you support me, then?”

Balanced on the toe of one sneaker, fists still tight on the handlebars, the man shrugged. “Why not? It’s not like Mexico’s sending us her best or brightest, right?”

Able gave the cyclist a thumbs-up and got his cruiser in gear.

Radio crackle, then DeeDee said, “Sheriff Hawk? Sheriffs Denton and Pierce wanna know if you’re up for a coffee out to Big G’s along I-70?”

The sheriff sniffled with allergies—something new was abloom—and clicked the mic. “Headed that way anyways. Tell ’em to give me a bit to get over there, Double D.”

Able hooked a U-turn on the two-lane and doubled back north. Two miles from the destination truck stop, the sheriff of Horton County saw a new message posted on the marquee above Jay Richmond’s used car lot:

Spanish Spoken Here!

Stop in new Mexican Friends!

We’re doin’ deals!

The sheriff smiled crookedly. Well, that wetback-loving cocksucker.

Able shook his head. At least dumbass “Dealin’ Jay” lacked the brains to post his message in Spanish so its intended recipients could maybe read the boldface bastard.

THREE

Shawn O’Hara took a last scan of the week’s police blotter.

There were plenty of DWIs—never a shortage of drunk drivers.

There were several stops of speeders in school zones. Lots of Hispanic-sounding names attached to those. The local cops had a new acronym, DWM: Driving While Mexican.

Smash-and-grabs and purse-snatchings abounded on the West Side. The victims and witnesses of these all described suspected perpetrators as “looking Mexican.”

Shawn, two weeks shy of his second anniversary as editor of the
New Austin Recorder
, executed a find/replace to swap out “Mexican” for the politically correct “Latino.”

The journalist selected one nugget from the blotter to develop as a headline item.

The old-timers and retired cops Shawn had consulted swore that the last Horton County sporting house in memory had been closed down in the early seventies.

Of course there were always some straying housewives and drug-addicted young single women who’d put out for cash or a fix here and there, but Horton County, and its county seat of New Austin, hadn’t had a working whorehouse in more than forty years.

But a few days back, Sheriff Able Hawk and his crew had busted up a ring of working girls operating out of a slab, run-down ranch house in a former blue-collar working tract gone mostly Mexican—make that
Latino
—on the city’s West Side.

The houses were built in the 1950s for factory families of three or four.

Now each of those dilapidated houses was home to two or three families of four or more. The driveways and sidewalks of the neighborhood were lined with rusted old Astrovans and Aerostars … two or three antiquated vans to every dilapidated house.

The sheriff’s boys arrested six women—all Hispanic—most of whom spoke little to no English.

The sheriff’s boys had booked the women for prostitution.

More striking: the women were catering almost exclusively to a “Mexican clientele.”

According to the last census, the West Side of New Austin was 45 percent Latino. And that census was already a few years old. The previous census had found the neighborhood was then 85 percent white, 14 percent African-American and 1 percent “other.”

Call it “sea change” stuff.

The parking lots in the strip malls around the West End were lately crammed with
taqueria
trailers.

The signage for the West Side check-cashing businesses, cigarette outlets and beer and wine drive-thrus all read in Spanish now.

Shawn’s desk phone rang. He scooped up the receiver and said, “Shawn O’Hara. May I help you, please?”

“You could get back here, Shawn,” a silky voice said. “It’s your day off, Shawn, you know? Our promised day together? And it’s late afternoon. You still taking me to dinner?”

A just detectable Latin inflection—the echo of her aging parents’ authentic, still-strong accents. She said, “We haven’t known each other long enough to give you the right to neglect me yet.”

He said, “Just shutting down the computer now. Give me five minutes.”

Shawn saved his changes to the police blotter and shut down his iMac. He slapped around on his desktop until he found his keys under a pile of faxed police reports. He switched off the police-band radio, shut off the lights and locked the door behind himself.

The newspaper’s office was located on New Austin’s main street, between the bakery and a tax-preparation storefront that was all but dormant six months of the year.

The newspaper editor, the youngest in the
Recorder
’s history, strode down Main Street, waving at the working barbers and druggists and butchers who waved or nodded back at Shawn from behind stenciled storefront windows.

His apartment, a shotgun loft above a bar spread along the length of a city block, was three blocks from the newspaper office. Shawn climbed the fire escape that trailed up the back of the building. Patricia Maldonado met him at the door and handed him a cold Corona with a slice of lime wedged in the lip.

Patricia, forehead and bare arms and legs glistening, was wearing one of Shawn’s T-shirts and nothing else.

He could hear the window air conditioners running, but with the summer swelter and heat rising from the business below it was a losing battle.

Patricia kissed him, her mouth tasting of lime and beer, and he squeezed her bare ass with his free hand, kicking the door closed behind him with his shoe. “Got lonely, huh, Patty?”

“Patricia,” she said. “And ‘lonely’ is one word for it.” She toyed with the snaps of his untucked denim shirt.

Patricia was a student at the vocational college in Vale County, where she was wrapping up a major in restaurant science and marketing. Her parents—two of Horton County’s rare documented, naturalized Latinos—owned Señor Augustin’s, an upscale Mexican restaurant they had launched in the mid-1990s.

Patricia was lately spooking Shawn with her frequent hints about wanting children … with stubborn marriage talk.

Now Patricia walked backward, leading Shawn deeper into his own apartment, room by room, French kissing and helping him shed his clothes along the way.

When they reached the bedroom, Shawn was naked.

The light through tall windows on two sides of the bedroom glowed amber in Patricia’s raven hair and black bedroom eyes.

She pulled off the T-shirt and drew Shawn down onto the bed atop her.

They had been dating for three weeks.

* * *

Sprawling together on the damp comforter and sheets, bathed in sweat, they stroked one another’s skin, hearts still not settled. His hand was down there. He’d been trying to talk Patricia into waxing her pubic hair. So far, she had been resistant … and annoyed.

Shawn told her about the short piece he’d just written on the prostitution bust. When he told Patricia the names of the women arrested, she jerked her head up sharply and searched his face. “Oh God,” she said. “
That’s
what happened to Luz?”

Shawn frowned. “You know her?”

“She is a hostess weeknights at my folks’ place,” Patricia said. “Luz didn’t show up for work the past two nights. We’ve been trying to reach her. Mother even called the hospitals.”

“She’s still in county lock-up, I suppose,” Shawn said. “Probably couldn’t make bail, so there she sits.” He stroked the lank hair back from Patricia’s damp forehead. “Couldn’t look good for your folks anyway, right? I mean, being linked to a hooker?”