Authors: John Donohue
alternatives were now that Xochi had disappeared. Daley never
paused and I hurried after him as he turned right, heading past
Ike’s coffee shop toward the parking garage.
“He’s dropped out of sight,” Daley continued. If he sensed
my distress, he didn’t show it. “From what I hear, there are any
number of people looking for him.” Now it was his turn to
pause. He stopped for a moment and looked directly at me.
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“Angry people, Burke.”
But I was beyond the point where someone was going to
scare me. “Any idea where he could be?”
Daley gestured toward the glass doors we were approach-
ing. “Lots of space out there to get lost in. He could be up in
the Santa Catalina Mountains. He could’ve high-tailed it down
to the Papago Indian reservation. Then again, we’re only sixty
miles from Mexico. Take your pick. But if I were him, I’d be
burrowed somewhere way under the surface, waiting until all
this blows over.”
“All this?” We moved out into the bright white light, across
the blinding expanse of concrete, to the parking garage. His car
was a dusty black Chevy Blazer. It had oversized tires and rust
was eating away at the wheel wells. The interior was hot and
stuffy; it smelled of dust, stale coffee, and old apples.
We settled into the car. My seat was lumpy and I could feel
springs trying to sprout up through the fabric.
“You read the papers, Burke? We got quite a circus goin’
on down here. The drug cartels are at war with the Mexican
government. The local gangs are at war with each other, trying
to get control of the cross border trade. And the U.S. is on the
losing end of a war on so many things I sort o’ have a hard time
keeping track: a war on illegal immigration, a war on drugs,
a war on terror… It’s mess. But it does keep us all busy one
way or the other.” We left the airport and headed north toward
Tucson.
“My brother said you had retired.”
Daley’s head turned slightly toward me. He was wearing
wraparound sunglasses with dark lenses that shimmered blue
and bronze and green; it was impossible to see his eyes, and I
think he liked it like that.
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“Partner,” he instructed me, “I worked long and hard to get
as good as I am. It’s true that I left government employ. But the
situation down here is so fluid that there are ample opportuni-
ties for someone like me to make a little side cash.”
“How entrepreneurial,” I said.
He grinned at that; his teeth were yellow and long. “That’s
me,” he said happily. “An en-tre-pre-neur.” He spaced the word
out like he was savoring the sound.
That was when we went looking for some junkies to
question.
Mercifully, the sun was setting and Daley was done with his
informants. We sat in the Blazer, parked in the shade of a Wal-
Mart. I could feel the skin on my face, tight from the light and
heat of the desert. Daley watched me for a minute.
“You reach on into the back seat, Burke. I got a few jugs of
water stashed. You get some of that into you right now. The
weather out here’ll kill you.” I realized how dry my mouth was.
I twisted around to get the jug.
“Here’s what I think you got,” Daley told me as I got the
jug. He waived the proffered water away with a hand. “Inter-
esting situation. The street people say that the smack supply
is—sporadic. Some dealers are scrambling to supply product,
others have so much they’re discounting it.”
“What’s it mean?”
Daley reached into a sack and pulled out an apple. He sunk
his ivory teeth into the fruit and I could hear the sucking sound
as he pulled the juice out before he completed the bite. He
chewed for a minute, then continued. “If I were still writing
reports for our government I’d say that there’s a shift in distri-
bution taking place. But that doesn’t really get to the meat of it.
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There’s a turf war taking place, Burke. Coupla different groups
fighting to control the trade. Old gangs being pushed aside or
rolling over. New ones coming in. It’ll be a mess for a while.”
“TM-7?” I asked.
Daley nodded, biting the apple. “That’s one crazy bunch
of inked-up motherfuckers,” he said. “Your brother likes them
for the attempted hit in New York.” He lowered his sunglasses
and peered over them at me. “Hard to believe you walked away
from that one.”
“The world is full of surprises,” I told him. Not that I really
walked away.
Daley snorted in amusement. “Border’s always been a crazy
place, Burke. Dangerous enough as it was. But now we got
various cartels working hard at controlling a huge expanse of
highly profitable activities. And the greater the money to be
made, the crazier they all get. You’re a case in point. Why in
God’s name did they put a hit out on someone like you?”
“I stumbled on a manuscript with some pretty detailed
descriptions of old trails that crossed the border…”
He snorted again. “Lots o’ ways across the border, my man.
Every
chollo
with some ambition and a connection knows that.”
“These are ancient Indian trails,” I explained. “Long forgot-
ten. They’re not used very often…”
“So theoretically they’re off the Border Patrol’s radar,” Daley
commented, although he sounded skeptical. “Nice, if it’s true. I
suppose that fraud Xochi was involved in this?”
“What do you know about him?”
Daley slid his sunglasses down the bridge of his nose and
peered at me. “I made some inquiries. He’s a man on the
make, my friend. Workin’ more than a few angles. He’s push-
ing all that Native American desert mysticism bullshit with the
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tourists. Though I hear his backcountry skills are real enough.
He’s also been known to help out with a special border crossing
now and then. And lately, he’s been trying to peddle his alleged
knowledge of secret trails to the highest bidder…”
“TM-7?”
Daley pushed his shades back into place and stared out
through the windshield. “He was originally talking with some
other group, but I guess the negotiations got …” he licked his
lips, “co-opted by our friends from
Todos Muertos
. I don’t think
he knew what he was getting into. If he’s snowing them…” He
shrugged. “My guess is that Xochi promised that he could pro-
vide them with some cherry routes across the desert. And the
kicker is that supposedly he’s the only one who knows. ‘Knowl-
edge of the ancient ones’ and all that horseshit. I don’t know
how he conned them, but he did.”
Daley sat for a while, pausing in admiration of Xochi’s
accomplishment or appalled at his stupidity. Then he stirred
and tapped me on the thigh. “Then you come along and com-
plicate things. Ha! TM-7 are a bunch of lunatics, Burke, but
they like a nice tidy package as much as anyone. You, roaming
around with a manuscript that contains info on their allegedly
secret trails, most certainly would have pissed them off. They
thought our man Xochi had a monopoly on that knowledge.”
He grinned tightly, an unpleasant wrinkling of leather skin and
teeth like old bone. “Imagine their—disappointment. So they
went looking for you in the wilds of New York. Obviously,
from what your brother tells me, complications ensued. Xochi
realized he was probably next on their list and did a fast fade.”
“Do you know who he was dealing with?” I asked. Ulti-
mately I had to get to whoever was directing the hits.
He shook his head slowly, ruminating. “Nooo,” he said,
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John Donohue
drawing the word out as he pondered. “There are a few likely
suspects. Guy known as El Carnicero is a big man with the
local TM-7. He’s a bit of a freak. Enjoys working on people
with a blade. Hence the nickname: the Butcher. Likes to keep
things personal, ya know? But if you’re going into harm’s way, it
would be wise to make sure that it’s gonna solve your problem
and not just piss off a new set of gang bangers. This particular
circus is filled with freaks. It could take some time to narrow
down the list to anything actionable.”
“Be quicker to just find Xochi,” I said. “Ask him.”
He nodded. “I agree. Quick is good, Burke,” Daley said. “I
got this feelin’ that you’re running out of time…”
I felt a spasm of alarm. “Did you hear something from my
brother?”
Daley looked at me. “Huh? No. That’s not what I mean.
You got bigger issues to deal with.”
I sat there, saying nothing. Waiting. The daylight was going,
and the line of mountains in the distance was a black, jagged
mass, backlit by the orange flare of the sun as it burned its way
across the rocky expanse of the Southwest and into the distant
Pacific Ocean. I worked my way through Daley’s information
so far, weighing it, seeing how pieces fit together. I didn’t try
to force a solution; the effort of doing so would probably just
push it away.
I had few, if any, options. I knew that. But that made what-
ever I did that much more important. It was like the intensity
of a sword duel with live blades: each slight twitch of muscle
pulsed into the ether, an expanding ring of possibility that
opened a path to some gambits at the same time that it closed
off others. Each step held within it the potential for victory or
the seeds of your own destruction. So you push that awareness
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Kage
down deep, smother it so that the animal pleading for deliver-
ance doesn’t echo in the back of your head. There’s no time for
that; it’s a fatal luxury, because if you succumb you’ll be a split
second too slow when the blade is arcing toward you for the
decisive cut.
I sat in Daley’s car and slowed my breathing. I tried to con-
centrate on nothing, let go of intention, of urgency, and to be
in the moment. All that Zen stuff. But, of course, it was futile.
Yamashita’s students try to set themselves as still, empty vessels,
but life pushes at us and fills us as it will. I was no exception. A
lifetime of training hasn’t made me invulnerable; sometimes it
just makes me resigned.
So I sat, simply waiting for the other shoe to drop, and
determined not to let Daley enjoy the experience.
“Here’s the kicker,” he finally said. “You got the different
cartels all jockeying for dominance: Tijuana, Sonoma, Juarez.
They got local offshoots all along the border. Xochi probably
had feelers out to the local families, then TM-7 dropped by and
rewrote the rules. But now someone else is pushing at
them
.”
“Who?”
“You heard of the Alphas, Burke?” Daley took off his sun-
glasses. His eyes were a pale, haggard blue. “Alphas take this to
a whole new level.”
I was getting impatient with Daley’s act: the world-weary
expert sent to keep tabs on me, the local informant with a
wealth of knowledge that he was doling out drop by drop, the
Old Scout squinting out along the ridge line, searching for
hostiles.
“Daley,” I said. “Lose the drama. I don’t need the color on
your play-by-play. I need some concrete leads and an accurate
assessment of what I’m going to face. That’s it.”
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John Donohue
It seemed to me at that moment that I spent my life among
men who never gave you the complete picture. Maybe it was
because they somehow didn’t take you completely seriously,
like my brother Mickey. Or they harbored some secret kernel
of doubt that you’d ultimately be unable to meet the coming
test. I used to think Yamashita eyed me skeptically, scanning
me for the telltale signs of the germinal flaw that slumbered
deep within me. Over the years those feelings had faded, but
the experience still left old wounds that could flare into life.
Daley didn’t flinch. He stared off into the distance and just
started talking.
“The Alphas are renegades, Burke. Anti-drug commandos
trained in Mexico who realized they could make more money
working for the drug cartels than against them. They’ve been
involved with killings and kidnappings all over the place,
although until recently they were concentrating their activi-
ties on this side of the fence to Texas.” He snorted. “There are
mayors of Mexican border towns down there scared so bad that
they hide out in the U.S. The Alphas protect the drug cor-
ridors. And anyone who gets in the way,” his head swiveled to
look at me “and I mean anyone, gets taken out. Cops, Border
Patrol agents, you name it. These guys are killing machines.
The freaks from TM-7 are psychos. They like the rush of power
they get from scaring people or hacking them up with a blade.
Alphas could care less about that shit. They’re pros. Some of
them have been at Benning at the School of the Americas. You
know what that means?”