Crystal Meth Cowboys (19 page)

"It's nothing important."

This was why Wes avoided calling his mother. They were too much alike. "I should be home for Thanksgiving. Unless I have to work."

"Oh
poo
. Who works on Thanksgiving?"

Wes heard a sharp call-waiting
click
on the line. "Rookie cops I imagine."

"Is that you?"

"I think so."

"Then I'll let you go," said his mother and rang off.

"Hey, man, one of the all time great
Star Trek
episodes, it just started," said Bell after Wes clicked the button and said hello. "Get your nappy ass over here."

-----

In both length and duration the Wislow was one of the shortest rivers in the United States. Its source was the runoff from the mountains that ringed the town and thus it ran its seven mile course back to the ocean only during the rainy season, December through April. The river was already a few weeks past its peak as it flowed placidly down a wide sandy bed. A light breeze scalloped the surface making the moonlit water look like snakeskin.

"That little fuck really wanted to off himself, didn't he?" said Bell over his shoulder.

Cobalt blue sparks of moonlit dew burst from the tall grass as the blonde Lab streaked along the rutted path above the river. The German Shepherd romped by in hot pursuit. "Yeah," said Wes. "You could say he was dead set on it."

"Oh, ho. You make joke, no?"

"I make joke, yes," said Wes in his best imitation of Bell's imitation of a Russian accent.

"Drowning yourself in two inches of toilet water,
man
!" said Bell, shaking his head.

"He must've hyperventilated over the bowl till he passed out," said Wes.

"Or raced across the cell, dived headfirst into the can and knocked himself cold," said Bell. "That'd work."

Frustrated with their lack of progress, Bell had returned to the jail intent on convincing Ruben the jailer to give him ten minutes alone with Ramon the dealer. Ruben the jailer informed him that Ramon the dealer had committed suicide the night before.

"There was this child molester, state prison, I think it was Arizona somewhere. One night our Lord Jesus Christ appears to him in a dream and tells him to atone…atone..
atooneee
. So he goes to the prison laundry, snatches up some wire hangers and stuffs them up his butthole." Bell marched past the heavy-set German Shepherd. The blonde Lab romped through the tall grass up ahead. "I think he got sixteen up there before he expired."

"Ouch," said Wes. He tucked left to avoid the Shepherd's lolling tongue. The diatomaceous earth plant took shape behind a wall of windswept fir trees to the right. Wes wondered whether to tell Bell about his conversation with Florence. She hadn't asked him not to.

"I talked to Florence earlier."

"Yeah?"

"She wants my input on a community based policing plan."

"Is that all she wanted to talk about?"

"Well, she asked how the meth investigation was going. I told her the narcs were working it."

"Good boy." Bell stopped to let his panting German Shepherd catch up.

"Sir?" said Wes.

Bell stooped to pluck a burr from the Shepherd's coat. "Yessss?"

"Something's been bothering me about our DUI bust, and some of our other activities for that matter, and I know, well, I assume that…"

"Spill it already," said Bell and marched on. Wes followed, muddying his Reeboks on the rutted path.

"Um, well, I know you're a vested officer and all and I…"

"I'm not. Vested."

"You're not?"

"Nope. I'm just three years out of the academy. The other cadets all called me Pops."

"Oh. But you seem so…"

"I was a cop in Yermo for a year when I was twenty but that's about it. I got too old for radio, bummed around a while, tried advertising, ended up sleeping in my car. I hated to leave Santa Barbara but this was the only halfway decent gig I could get."

Wes lengthened his stride to keep pace. "So if any of these…extracurricular investigations of ours go sour…"

"I am toast!" said Bell gleefully, throwing up his arms, marching on. "And you're not cuz, one, your a rookie just doing what your training officer tells ya to and, two, Shitamoko really truly believes you're him thirty years ago - bright, well-educated, completely anal." Bell stopped and turned around to face his baby boy. "You're here for as long as you want to be so don't go thinking I'm hanging your ass out to dry. I mean I'm sorry you got shot and
pissed on and all, but hey, you're a cop now. That's the gig."

Wes was trying to think what to say about all this when the Labrador burst out yapping and tore down the steep river bank. The German Shepherd lept to life and tumbled down the bank after him. Bell and Lyedecker followed, skidding down the sandy incline, grabbing sinewy manzanita branches to slow their descent. The diatomaceous earth plant emerged from behind the curtain of fir trees as Bell and Lyedecker clattered along the river rock. Sodium vapor lights painted the sand-colored three-tiered structure a chiaroscuro of muted reds and greens, making it look like an ancient undersea temple.

The dogs yipped and sneezed below a rusty corrugated steel pipe that spilled a sickly stream of effluent into the river. "The Department of Evil," said Bell, smacking himself in the forehead. "Of course."

Chapter 19

Bell payed for his bottled ice tea at the counter of the Circle J Mini Mart. A three-hundred-pound Samoan woman took his money and rumbled around behind the counter on a stool, the only evidence of which was the sound of steel cast rollers stressing the linoleum. The woman gave Bell his change with a gap-toothed smile and a hand that had no wrist.

Wes waited at the door. He watched two big-boned men lean over the front counter by the magazine rack, scraping lottery scratcher cards with their hunting knives. They wore gray stubble, tractor caps and bluejeans. The larger of them sported green suspenders. The two men sheathed their knives and followed Bell and Lyedecker out the door and into a blustery spring afternoon. "Behind you," said Wes as the men lumbered up.

Bell whirled, his hand on his gun. The men raised their hands. "Don't shoot," drawled Green Suspenders. "We jest need ya to sign off on a buck."

Bell and Lyedecker followed the men over to a battered pickup. In the absence of a Fish and Game warden, Wislow cops were authorized to approve a kill made in the neighboring wilderness area. Only bucks with two point horns or better were legal game and the dead animal sprawled in the truck bed was barely that.

Wes examined the carcass. The buck's blond coat was dusty and his flank caked with mud. Wes saw no blood, no entry wound, yet the animal looked just as dead as it was possible to be, his legs tucked up and stiff, his neck reared back and his mouth open. A cluster of flies busied themselves on an eye. The smaller man handed a form to
Bell, who signed his name and badge number, saying, "Looks like some good eatin'."

The men tipped their caps and the two cops walked back to their squad car. Bell stoked the V-8 and headed west on Playa Road.

"How do we know hydriodic acid isn't used in refining diatomaceous earth?" said Wes after Bell leveled off at 50 mph in the number one lane.

Bell plucked a folded-up computer printout from the pocket of his uniform pants. He shoved it at Lyedecker. "Bernie ran it for me."

Wes attempted to unfold the printout, rolled up his window, tried again. The dot matrix type was hard to read in the cloudy gray.

Bell and Lydecker had double-timed it back to Bell's house, grabbed the lead-lined cannister and trekked back to the rusty corrugated pipe below the Department of Evil. Bell gathered up a sample and drove it down to the SBSO Lab and deputy coroner Bernard Fischer, who confirmed the presence of hydriodic acid in the runoff.

"Basically it says that hydriodic acid is used as a dairy disinfectant, couple other weird medical applications and thas are it," said Bell. They passed a yellow school bus full of junior high kids. The kids peered down at them curiously but none returned Wes Lyedecker's wave. Wes faced front in the passenger's seat. Bell hummed along with Gladys Knight and the Pips, his hands at ten and two.

"Then we go to the Chief and present the evidence," said Wes.

"OK, all right, that's fine," said Bell. "But, ya know, buying off
federales
is S.O.P. where these bad boys come from." Bell slowed for a red light at J Street. Pigeons huddled in the red and green light cyclinders.

"Chief Sunomoka is a rigid rules and regs kind of guy, maybe even obsessive sometimes," said Wes. He felt himself
grinning. He had prepared for this. "The precise qualities that would make him very unlikely to accept a bribe."

Bell looked both ways and accelerated through the red light. The oldies station DJ segued from
Midnight Train to Georgia
to
Papa Was a Rolling Stone
. "OK," said Bell. "So maybe Shitamoko's not on the pad. But we go to him with what we've got now and, assuming he doesn't can our butts for continuing the investigation without his approval, the most he does is pass it along to the defectives who the
last
thing they're gonna do is act on a tip from two lowly patrol officers who've been eating dick sandwiches for lunch in public the last six weeks."

Bell waved as he passed Little Jim, who was headed east on Playa Road. Little Jim tooted his horn.

"Then we go to Florence, tell her what we've found and ask her to demand an investigation. She'd do it in a second."

Bell chewed on his lower lip and squinted at this partner. "They have someone on the
inside
, peachfuzz. We go to the higher ups with this and any evidence of a meth lab on the grounds of the Department of Evil mysteriously disappears."

Wes said, "What clues have you developed that led you to this conclusion?"

Bell said, "Very funny," and hung an immediate right on R Street. He curbed the unit under a bottlebrush tree, killed the engine and unhitched his seat belt.

"How could they
not
?” said Bell. “John Aubuchon's not gonna agree to put a meth lab on the premises of his multimillion dollar plant when he's approached by some well-heeled rep of the Sinaloan drug lords who knows he's gouged out almost all the diatoms there are to gouge out around here and sez his people are interested in a protected permament lab site so they don't have to keep shifting around from bracero camps to mobile home parks and said people are willing to pay for it with obscenely large
sums of unmarked nonsequential hundred dollar bills. John Aubuchon's not gonna say ‘Sounds good to me'
unless
he, John Aubuchon, the Prince of Darkness is 1000% certain that he's got the local Mayor in his hip pocket."

A gust of wind shook the tree. Red bottlebrush follicles slithered down the windshield. "Which is why they dosed Sherri,” said Bell. “The bad boys were upset. They were upset that we bagged some of their product and busted a regional sales rep, yes, but what really got their
cojones
in an uproar is that we blew their political protector, their
El Cacique
, out of the water in the last election."

"That's a fascinating theory," said Wes. "But it has a fatal flaw." Wes waited for Bell to ask. Bell did. Wes answered. "Political protection is worthless without the cooperation of the police. And you already admitted that the Chief wouldn't take a bribe."

Bell smiled his font-of-all-wisdom smile. "He doesn't have to be corrupt. He just has to be himself."

"Meaning…"

"Meaning Chief Frank Sunomoka would never, on pain of
death
, authorize a raid on the city's most influential citizen without first going up the chain of command and informing his superior, the honorable Lester T. Krumrie."

Wes watched an Asian woman watch them as she tossed trash bags into a dumpster. Bell made a convincing case, damn him. "So what's the plan?"

"We innocently follow my wayward dogs into the area - I know where there's a hole in the fence - locate the lab and place the evildoers under arrest."

"Wouldn't the lab be…no, I guess not."

"What?"

"I was thinking the lab would be heavily guarded but that would just call attention to it."

"
Correctamundo
moosebreath” said Bell. “I figure it's well away from the central plant, what with the smell and
all. Off in a corner someplace. And downwind." Bell refastened his seat belt and started the car. "It vill be, how you say in dis country? Piece of cake, no?" Wes did not reply. "Hey look, Braintree, some are born to push the envelope and some are born to lick it. If you don't wanna do this I'll understand."

Yeah, thought Wes, that I'm a gutless wonder. "Give me twenty-four hours to think about it."

"Fair enough. You're not gonna go crying to Florence about this, are you?"

Wes felt Bell's watery blue eyes lock on. He wanted to look away but he didn't dare. "No, no," said Wes. "What kind of partner do you think I am?"

Chapter 20

Larry Tenace led Wes Lyedecker to a musty corduroy couch in the living room. The couch made a crunching sound as Wes sat down. "Can I get you anything?"

"No thank you," said Wes, facing a smoke-blackened fireplace. The muslin curtains on either side of the fireplace were sun-bleached the color of dried blood. Three yellow roses stood in a cruet atop a varnished blanket box that served as a coffee table. Wes noted with approval that the room had no TV. His mother always said the decline of western civilization began with the introduction of television to the parlor.

"Florence'll be out in a second," said Larry, still standing, his arm draped over the back of an overstuffed chair upholstered in a grimy rose petal print. That would be his chair, thought Wes. What the hell was he doing home at 12:24 PM on a Friday? Wes braved an upward look. Larry's befuddled blue eyeballs tracked him like an orbiting satellite.

"Great," said Wes. "I'll just wait here." Well,
duh
, he thought. But Larry Tenace was making him nervous. Wes understood why Larry was a highly-regarded public defender. Those unblinking eyeballs would be very effective in court.