Before The Killing Starts (Dixie Killer Blues Book 1) (6 page)

Chapter 13

Dixie
had only met Enrico Alvarez once
before and that was enough to last him a lifetime. He also knew the current
meeting was a pointless exercise—he was only going through the motions to keep Chico happy but obviously Chico didn't know that.

Alvarez was built like a
medium-sized outhouse and didn't smell much better. Dixie drew in a deep breath
to stop his chest from collapsing completely as Alvarez clamped him in a hug
and pounded on his back as if they were long lost brothers. It made him feel a
little light-headed and he was pleased he'd skipped breakfast. Crispy stood
just inside the door and one of Alvarez's men, Miguel, leaned against the wall
behind Alvarez eyeing them carefully. It seemed to Dixie that Miguel was paying
a lot of attention to his hands as he hugged the big man back. Maybe he was
watching in case Dixie tried to grab his boss by the throat and throttle him.
He'd have had a better chance trying to strangle a utility pole.

Alvarez released him and
Dixie drew the air gratefully back into the whole of his lungs. Alvarez held
up a finger and Miguel hopped to it and produced a bottle of Tequila and a
couple of glasses. Dixie shook his head and waved it away.

'I forgot, you don't
drink,' Alvarez said and got Miguel to pour him a glass of water.

'We've got a small
problem, Enrico,' Dixie said, sipping his drink, wishing it was Tequila or even
a beer, anything with some alcohol.

Alvarez smiled and
opened his hands wide. It hadn't crossed his mind yet that Dixie might be
suggesting
he
could be that problem. 'We're happy to help, whatever it
is.'

Dixie
swallowed nervously. 'A three
million dollar problem . . .' he said.

The room was suddenly very
quiet, the only sound a rhythmic lip-smacking as Miguel chewed gum with his
mouth open.

'Ah,' Alvarez said,
nodding mechanically as the implications began to sink in. The smile had faded
although it hadn't mutated into anger yet.

Dixie
took a deep breath and ran a hand
through his hair. 'Somebody hijacked our people at a gas station. The woman you
gave the money to has disappeared. With the money.'

The last remnants of
Alvarez's smile had disappeared. 'And you were wondering if I'—he touched his
chest—'know anything about that?'

Dixie
cleared his throat and shifted
uncomfortably in his chair. He felt as if his skin were two sizes too small.
Alvarez watched him, his eyes bright and mean, his breath exiting noisily
through his nostrils as his anger started to build.

'Is that what you are
asking?' Alvarez repeated with more of an edge to his voice.

Dixie
showed him his palms in apology.
'Absolutely not,' he said and shook his head vigorously. He forced a strained
it's
all a misunderstanding
smile onto his face, although he knew it only made
him look as if he was constipated. 'We just want to start at the beginning and
take it from there. Can you tell me exactly what happened?'

Alvarez raised a single
eyebrow and looked at Miguel. They gave each other a
he serious?
look.
'What about that ret . . . I mean Ricardo? He was there. Has he disappeared
too?'

No, much to Chico's regret
.

'No, he was in the
bathroom at the time,' Dixie said.

Alvarez grinned at that
and made a gesture with his hand as if he was shaking a charity collection can.
Miguel sniggered from the other side of the room. Ricardo's washroom habits
were obviously well known. 'And the other guy?'

Dixie
shrugged in a resigned,
you
can't get the staff way
. 'Somebody laid him out with a baseball bat. When
Ricardo came back from the bathroom, the woman, the car and the money were
gone. That's all we know.'

Dixie
swallowed. His throat was dry and
scratchy. He picked up his glass but it was empty. He wished he'd saved some
for now, even if it was only water. Nobody offered him a top-up.

Alvarez gave a small
shrug of agreement, one employer to another, as if to say
such are the
trials and tribulations of your everyday drug dealer
.

'They gave us the
merchandise, we gave them the cash and they left. I assumed they were driving
straight back to you or Chico or whoever.' He gave a dismissive flick of the
hand and leaned back in his chair, his dark eyes drilling into Dixie, daring him to contradict him.

Dixie
wasn't sure what to say. He options
were, one, say
okay, great, thanks for that
and get up and go, or, two,
say
I think you're a lying wetback bastard
and see where that led.

Alvarez took the
decision out of his hands. He leaned forward suddenly and slammed his open hand
on the desk, rattling the glasses and making everyone in the room jump. Dixie braced himself in his chair, ready in case Alvarez launched himself across the desk
at him.

Instead, his face split
into a massive grin. 'Miguel, make yourself useful and get us another drink,'
Alvarez shouted with a wave of his arm.

Dixie
relaxed his shoulders and noticed
he was holding his breath. He let out a slow exhale and grinned back. It seemed
the right thing to do although he had no idea what he was grinning about.

'Luckily for you, we're
not as stupid as you think we are,' Alvarez said, getting up and walking around
to Dixie's side of the desk. 'Or as stupid as
you
are.' He jabbed Dixie hard on the shoulder with a meaty finger.

Dixie
sighed and put the rest of the
water on the desk and waited for him to continue.

'We put a GPS tracking
device in the lining of the case containing the money. Simple, eh?'

The look of expectation
on Alvarez's face made Dixie think he was expected to clap or cheer. He nodded
instead. That was good to know. The thing that he wasn't so happy about was
why
had Alvarez done it? So that he could send his men after the money later?

Alvarez still had the
grin plastered all over his big face. He drained his drink and swirled the ice
cubes in the bottom of the glass. He was enjoying the fact that Dixie looked an idiot. Behind him, Miguel was smirking too.

'Have you got a Smartphone?'
Alvarez asked.

Dixie
got his phone out of his pocket.
Alvarez turned to Miguel.

'Miguel, have you got
that number?'

Miguel fished a slip of
paper out of his wallet, unfolded it and passed it over. Alvarez leaned over Dixie's shoulder and laid it on the desk in front of him. Dixie smoothed it out.

'Put that number into
your phone,' Alvarez said, tapping the paper with his finger 'and don't call it
money
.'

He slapped Dixie on the shoulder and roared with laughter. Miguel laughed too. Dixie would have laughed
if he hadn't been the butt of the joke. Crispy didn't get it. He had a look
that was a mix of confusion and suspicion that people get when they're not sure
if they're the butt of a joke. Dixie sat and waited until Alvarez stopped
laughing. In the scheme of things, he felt he'd got off pretty lightly if all
he had to worry about was this beaner drug dealer laughing at him.

They'd all see who
was the stupid one soon enough.

'It's simple,' Alvarez
carried on, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. 'You call the number; it
sends you a text message back with a link. Click the link and it displays a map
on your screen showing the location,' He sounded like he'd invented it himself.

Dixie
didn't like to show it but he was
impressed. 'Really?' he said.

'Yeah, really,' Alvarez
said, 'and it only costs about a hundred bucks. Tell Chico he should get his
ass into the twenty-first century. And tell him not to be such a tightwad.' He
laughed some more but then he grabbed the back of Dixie's chair and spun it around.
Dixie started to get up but Alvarez pushed him back down and pointed his finger
directly at the middle of Dixie's face. 'But I don't want him getting any ideas
about putting one of those things in my merchandise.'

Heaven forbid
. Dixie thought it sounded a good
idea if Alvarez was going to put one in with the money, but he decided to keep
that to himself.

'Now ring the number,'
Alvarez said, spinning Dixie around to face the desk again.

Dixie
rang the number and, sure enough, a
text message pinged back. He clicked the link and a map opened up on his
screen. He couldn't help but smile when he saw the location.

Alvarez took the smile
as confirmation of his own good sense and planning.

'There's your money,'
Alvarez said, leaning over and tapping Dixie's phone screen. 'Now all you have
to do is go get it, make sure it's not sitting in one of my'—he pointed at his
chest—'warehouses like Chico thinks, and everyone's happy.'

It seemed to Dixie that Alvarez was putting a bit too much faith in the technology. He was ignoring the
human element. Dixie didn't want to be negative, but what Alvarez seemed to be
overlooking in his enthusiasm was that what he was actually looking at on his
phone was a map showing the location of the tracker—and that wasn't the same
thing as the money. Not by a long shot. The thought set off a nasty niggling
doubt in the back of his mind.

Alvarez straightened up
and put a massive hand on Dixie's shoulder and gave it a bone-crushing squeeze.
'And you can tell that old bastard Chico there's no hard feelings because he
thought I cheated him.'

Chapter 14

'I wondered why they
moved the money there,' Alvarez said to Miguel after Dixie and Crispy had left.
He had his feet up on the desk, his hands clasped behind his head, rocking
gently back and forth in his chair. 'Did you see the look on Dixie's face when
I asked him if he was accusing me of stealing it? I thought he was going to crap
himself.'

Miguel turned back from
the window where he'd been watching them drive off and laughed. He pulled a
chair up to the desk and sat on it backward. 'Looks like the woman stole it,
eh?'

'Looks that way.'

'She must have had
somebody else working with her.'

Alvarez nodded absently,
a distant smile on his lips. 'Probably. I wouldn't want to be in their shoes. Chico's an evil son of a bitch.'

'Do you think she's
working with Ricardo?'

Alvarez stopped rocking
and looked at Miguel, his eyes widening.
Where the hell did that come from?
'What?
You think maybe the retard's trying to cheat his old man?'

Miguel shrugged. 'Who knows?
Everybody knows the kid hates the old man.'

'Do they? I didn't know
that.'

'Yeah. I think it's
something to do with Dixie as well.'

Alvarez raised an
eyebrow at that.

'There's something else
not right,' Miguel said.

Alvarez swung his feet
off the desk. They landed on the floor with a thump. A frown creased his
forehead.

'Did you see the tattoo
on his hand?' Miguel said.

'Who? Dixie?'

'Yeah.'

Alvarez shook his head.
'I don't think so. Why?'

'It's not like anything
else I've ever seen before. It's not a prison tat. Guys like him normally have
666
or
AB
or the number
12
—'

'That's Aryan
Brotherhood.'

Miguel nodded. 'That's
what I'm saying; it's not any of the normal white guy stuff—'

'So what is it?'

Miguel thought about it.
'It's like a triangle with a line across it and the number
29
underneath.' He picked a pen up off the desk and drew a picture. Alvarez looked
at the drawing.

'You're right, it's not
anything I've ever seen either. So what about it? The guy made up his own
tattoo.'

'It might not be
anything—'

'Just spit it out, for
Christ's sake.'

'—but, even though I've
never seen it before, I've heard about something that sounds like it.'

Not for the first time
Alvarez wondered if this was going anywhere. Miguel was a good man—if there was
any dismembering to be done, Miguel was the go-to guy—but he was also the sort
of guy who’d try to piss out a window without remembering to open it first.

'What did you hear?'

'It's just rumors. You
know. Rumors about a couple of guys who both had a tattoo that sounds just like
that.' He jabbed his finger at the drawing on the desk and told him what he'd
heard.

Chapter 15

The glass in Chico's hand exploded with a loud crack. He stared at his hand as if he didn't understand
what had just happened, then opened his fingers letting the shards of broken
glass fall to the floor. Tequila mingled with blood in his palm, the fiery,
stinging liquid seeking out the deepest cuts before dripping onto his pants. It
could have been water for all the pain he felt.

One of his men stepped
forward and offered a handkerchief but Chico shooed him away with a dismissive
flick of his hand, little droplets of blood and Tequila spraying across the
room. In his other hand the plastic case of his phone flexed and creaked in protest.

'What the hell was
that?' Alvarez said on the other end of the line.

'It's nothing,' Chico snapped. 'I broke a glass. Are you sure about this?' He extended his arm over his
desk and curled his fingers into a fist, clenching hard like he was trying to
squeeze the juice out of a lemon. He felt the pain now, sharp and bright, as he
watched his blood drip onto the desk. He could feel a sliver of glass caught in
his flesh and squeezed tighter still.

'Not one hundred per
cent, no,' Alvarez said. 'Miguel's a retard, a bit like . . .  but I thought I
should let you know. So you can make your own mind up.'

Chico closed his eyes
and breathed deeply, concentrating on the throbbing pain radiating out from his
hand, clean and cathartic, keeping at bay the other, far worse, torment that
waited its turn somewhere close behind.

'Chico?'

'Yes, yes, thank you
Enrico. That was the right thing to do.'

Chico
heard Alvarez chuckle softly on the
other end of the line.

'Lucky you sent him to
see if I stole your money, eh?'

Jesus wept.

Chico
cut off a strangled groan in his
throat. He held his cut hand to his brow, felt the wetness of his blood on his
skin and counted to five in his head.
No, make that ten.

'I hope he didn't give
you that impression, Enrico,' Chico said in a calm, measured tone. Where it
came from he had no idea. 'That was never a possibility in my mind.' He coughed
a cheerless laugh. 'Given what you just told me, I think we can assume he was
trying to cause trouble between us.'

Chico
didn't really care whether Alvarez
believed him or not, but it never hurt to say what people wanted to hear.

'I'm sure you're right, Chico,' Alvarez said, managing to make it sound like
whatever
.

Chico
cut the call and threw the phone at
the wall. Everybody in the room looked at their shoes, the damp patch on the
ceiling that always came back however many times they painted it, anywhere,
basically, apart from directly at Chico. He bent and picked up the jagged base
of the glass and threw that at the wall too and went to wash the blood from his
hand.

In the bathroom he
picked a long sliver of glass out of the deepest cut and held his hand under
the water until it ran clear. He couldn't believe what he'd just heard. But
then again, it didn't surprise him. In the mirror his face looked resigned more
than angry, as if someone had finally told him something he’d never wanted to
hear but had always known was coming. In the end everybody disappointed you,
everybody let you down, it was just a matter of how long it took.

We enter the world alone,
we leave the world alone.

He could see a vein
throbbing in the center of his forehead, smeared with his blood. He put his
finger on it and held it down but couldn't find his pulse anywhere. He'd been
let down before and it would happen again, but this time it hurt more than he
could have imagined. And to think that not more than a few short hours ago, he
had wished to himself that Dixie was his son, rather than that . . .

If he had been a weaker
man he suspected he would have wept but he hadn't wept since he stood in the
desert all those years ago, his father balanced on his shoulders.