Absolution (8 page)

Martin waited for Logan to continue, but Logan said nothing more, just turned around and walked away.

Martin didn’t know if he was still there or not.  “Logan,” he said, but there was no answer.  After a couple of minutes he started to twist his wrists to work loose whatever was binding them together, but there was no give.  “Fuck!” he shouted, and then groaned at the pain his outcry generated in his now swollen, throbbing face.

Logan drove for ten minutes before parking off-road to make a call on Keno’s cell.  He scrolled the contacts and speed-dialed Zack Slater’s number.

“Yeah, Martin.  All taken care of?”

“Not yet,” Logan said.  “Keno and the other three amateurs made a mistake coming out to the house in Pisinimo, and a bigger one when they burned it down.  Three of them died tonight, Slater.  I let Keno live.  You’ll find him at a shut down diner about four miles south of the house.  He’ll need medical attention.”

“You’re just one man, Logan.  You’ll pay for sticking your nose into my business.”

“No, Slater, you’re the one that’s going to pay.  I may leave it a week or a month, and when you least expect it I’ll be there in front of you, to settle the score for all the misery and death you’re responsible for.”

“You’re a fuckin’ maniac, Logan.  You won’t get anywhere near Ajo without being seen.  I have eyes everywhere.”

Logan said nothing.  He ended the call, found the stub of a pencil and a small canary-yellow Post-it pad in the glove box of the Mazda, and used the cell again to jot down names and numbers from the contact list in Keno’s phone, then switched it off, opened the door, dropped it onto the hard-packed earth and put his left leg out and ground it to pieces under the heel of his boot.

Setting off back towards the Coronado National Forest, he was soon driving along the narrow track that led to the cabin.

It had been a satisfying sortie.  He had taken out the opposition, and let Slater know that he was up against a man that would use deadly force as a form of defense.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The
bottle of bourbon was depleted by almost two thirds.  All they could do was wait for Logan and hope that he was okay.

Andy felt the effects of the liquor numbing her brain.  “I’ve lost everything,” she said to Fran.  “Because of Sam I won’t ever be able to go back home or to my job.  I’ll have to start over.”

“So will I,” Fran said.  “Unless Logan deals with Slater.  But I still don’t get why a total stranger would put his own life at risk because he found a dead body in the desert.”

“Me neither, Sis.  Maybe that’s what turns his wheels; roaming around the country putting wrongs to right.”

“That would be a weird way to live your life,” Fran said before drinking the last drop in her glass.  “But then again, it takes all types.”

“I don’t think he goes out of his way to find trouble,” Andy said.  “But he doesn’t shy away from it either.”

“Maybe that’s what I find attractive about him.  He’s the kind of guy that you only find in books and movies.”

“So you
do
have the hots for him?”

Fran grinned, and then they both froze at the sound of engine noise getting louder as it approached the cabin.

Fran dashed through to the bedroom, to return in seconds with the shotgun held ready to fire, pointing it at the door as she held her index finger flat against the trigger guard.

Andy picked up the .22 pistol from the maple-topped coffee table next to her before turning the wheel on the side of the oil lamp to lower the wick and extinguish it.

“It’s me,” Logan said as he approached the door.

Fran had been unconsciously holding her breath.  At the sound of Logan’s voice she exhaled noisily and lowered the shotgun.  Her stomach was flipping and her hands were trembling, and damp with perspiration.

Andy rushed to the door, unlocked and opened it, to frown as she saw the blood on the arm of Logan’s windbreaker.

“It’s just a scratch,” Logan said as he walked into the cabin and headed over to where the empty coffeepot stood on a unit top.

“I’ll make a fresh pot,” Andy said.

“Take your coat and shirt off,” Fran said.  “I want to check out that
scratch
.”

Logan sighed and did as she bid.  Experience decreed that to give way to a woman’s will usually saved a lot of time and talking.

“Jesus!  You’ve been shot,” Fran said as she surveyed the deep, raw furrow in Logan’s arm.  “What happened?”

“Four of Slater’s goons showed up at your place,” Logan said.  “They searched it and then torched it.”

Fran felt sick.  The little clapboard house had been much more than a place to live in, it had been a home that she had loved, set in a bucolic location she had found a palliative to people and working at the bar.  She had enjoyed the isolation and peace that she could escape to.

“Looks like we’re both homeless now,” Andy said.

“We’ve got this place,” Fran said.  “What more do we need?”

Andy sighed, “Our lives back.”

Fran walked over to the kitchen area and found an old brown glass bottle of hydrogen peroxide and some yellowing bandage in one of the wall units.  She spent the next ten minutes cleaning the wound to Logan’s arm and binding it with the bandage.  She was surprised that he hardly winced as she treated the gash, but having noticed the dimpled scar on his right shoulder, it was obvious that he had been shot before, more seriously.  It was also obvious that he was in terrific condition.  His shoulders were as wide as a door, and his muscle tone belied his age.

“Do you make a habit of getting shot?” Fran asked him.

“No, I do my best to avoid it.”

“So what exactly happened?” Andy said.

“They came to find us, and kill us,” Logan said.  “Three of them are dead.  I let one live to tell Slater what had happened.”

“Do you think he’ll back off, now?”

Logan shook his head as he stood up and pulled his bloody, bullet-holed shirt back on.  “No, Andy.  He doesn’t appear to have the sense to.  This won’t be over until he’s taken out of the equation.”

“Meaning that you plan on killing him?” Fran said.

The coffeepot was bubbling on the propane stove.  Logan walked over to it, switched off the gas and then poured a cup of the coffee.  “I don’t make too many plans, but eliminating him may be the only way to resolve this,” he said, looking from Fran to Andy.

“I don’t understand you,” Fran said.  “You appear out of nowhere and get involved.  Why?”

“God knows,” Logan said.  “Some defect in my genes, I guess.  I’ve spent my entire adult life running into trouble, and I suppose it’s got me used to dealing with the type of people that I consider to be the enemy.”

“What do you do when you’re not solving crimes and protecting strangers from assholes?” Fran said.

Logan smiled.  “Not a lot.  I travel, eat, sleep, read pulp fiction, and just let each day unroll out in front of me like a carpet.”

“And that’s enough?” Andy said.

“More than enough. I enjoy the freedom.”

“But don’t you have any plans for the future?”

“No.  Everyone’s future is an unknown quantity.  A lot of people’s lives seem to be full of stress, a certain amount of unhappiness, and a daily grind to make ends meet as they work, raise a family and worry about how to get through the next month.  Nobody seems to realize that even if you live to be say, eighty, you’ll only have existed for nine hundred and sixty months, and slept for about a third of them.  Life’s too short to get bogged down with commitment, to my way of thinking.”

“So what point is there to it?” Fran said.

“Just avoiding being the type of person that you don’t want to be, and choosing to do what you want to, when you want to do it.”

“That’s a cop out,” Andy said.

“It’s my take on it,” Logan came back.  “Dealing with stuff puts it where it belongs, behind you.  Who needs baggage?”

“Everybody has baggage,” Fran said.

Logan said nothing.

“Talk to us, Logan,” Fran said.  “Make us feel safe.”

“No one is safe.  Life doesn’t come with a warranty.  You’ve just got to avoid as much hardship as you can while you’re here.”

“You seem to look for trouble,” Andy said.  “What is it with you?  Do you get off on violence?”

“I don’t seek it out, Andy.  And I don’t need it.  But I have no problem with using it against anyone that decides to come at me.”

“The police should deal with Slater,” Fran said.

“Yeah, they should, but their hands are tied or dirty,” Logan said.  “They need more than knowing that someone is guilty of a crime.  Proof of guilt can be hard to find, especially with someone like Slater, who has built up a protective barrier around his organization.  He uses intimidation and blackmail and money to ensure that he won’t get so much as a speeding ticket.  And if he thinks that anyone is a threat to him he has them killed.”

“And in your book two wrongs make a right,” Andy said as a statement.

“Prisons are full, courts can’t cope, and the state of the nation means that cutbacks affect everyone, including law enforcement,” Logan said. “Crime is on the increase, and due process is thin on the ground.  It was bad enough when I was a cop.  We had to prioritize, and the cases just mounted up.  The system is under threat of collapsing.”

“You sound as if it bothers you,” Fran said.  “I was under the impression that you didn’t really care any more about the world you’ve opted out of.”

“I don’t.  Everything is transitory.  Throughout the ages people have acted like fools.  And all I’ve opted out of is the banal day-to-day routines that I don’t consider very meaningful.”

Fran was about to say something else, but Logan put his hand up, palm facing her.  “I’m going to bed,” he said, placing his empty cup on the table.  “Which room am I in?”

“The one on the left,” Andy said.

Logan nodded and walked across to the open door, through which a short, narrow hallway separated the two bedrooms.  “Goodnight,” he said without turning back to face them.

A white panel truck stopped in the lot and two men climbed out, both armed and nervous, not knowing what to expect.  They checked the area and relaxed a little.  One of them called out, “Mr. Keno…Mr. Keno.”

Martin recognized the voice of Billy Santos.  Against the pain in his broken jaw he shouted back, “Up here.”

Billy jogged up the track with Ward Simmons just a few feet behind him.

Ward removed the blindfold first and then the two belts that were binding Martin’s wrists and ankles together.

“You okay, Mr. Keno?” Ward said.

“I’ve got a broken fucking jaw and a bullet hole in my foot; does that sound okay to you, Ward?”

“Shit, no, boss.”

Ward and Billy helped Martin into his shirt, pants and coat and supported him between them down to the truck. On his instructions they located the bodies of Al in the grass behind the diner and Strother in the car, and loaded them both into the rear of the truck.

“Get me back to the ranch,” Martin said as Ward started the engine.  “And then dump these bodies where they won’t be found.”

Zack was outside the front door pacing up and down under the brightness of the security lights, fuming as he waited for Martin to be brought back to the ranch.  It was almost beyond belief that some drifter had gone to war with him.  The guy had to be as crazy as a shithouse mouse to think that he could get out of this alive.

As headlights signaled the approach of his men, Zack allowed a part of his mind to give Logan credit for his obvious capabilities, and decided that the man
was
a real threat.  He backed into the house, suddenly uneasy, feeling like a target out in the open.  His instincts told him that the ex-cop meant every word he’d said, and that he would keep coming, and that this would not be over till one of them was dead.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Glen
Cahill grunted and tensed as the multiple lacerations produced a sharp but almost exquisite pain.  He ejaculated a second before Lucy screamed, “Oh God, Yesss!  Yesss!,” raking his bare back with overlong nails which were a brighter red than the blood that they drew.

“Jesus, Luce, that made my eyes water,” Glen said as he withdrew from her to roll over and leave prints of the fresh, deep scratches on the rumpled sheet.

“Sorry, honey, I don’t know that I’m doing it,” Lucy lied.  She liked to mark her man.  It was like a brand; a sign that he belonged to her.

Glen got up and headed for the bathroom.  Took a piss as he showered, then returned to the bedroom to get dressed for work, donning a Rough Duty uniform that looked more like military fatigues than law enforcement garb, consisting of drab green work shirt, cargo pants and a matching baseball cap.  All that looked official was the black and yellow insignia sewn onto his shirtsleeves: a U.S. Customs and Border Protection on the right sleeve, and the circular logo of the U.S Border Patrol on the left.

Glen was a PAIC; Patrol Agent in Charge, and also a well paid associate of Zack Slater.

Border Patrol Agent Roberto Perez pulled into Glen’s double driveway before dusk.  Had coffee with his boss and buddy, served up by Lucy who was now dressed in a low-necked T and tight cut-off denim shorts that were like a second skin.

“We got us a couple dozen of your countrymen being brought over tonight, Robbie,” Glen said when they were on the road in the marked Chevrolet Tahoe, heading south to a location north of the border, three miles east of Lukeville.

“Hey, watch your mouth,” Robbie said.  “I’m an American citizen, same as you, not some melon-picking wetback.  I’ve lived in Arizona since I was a kid.”

Glen grinned like a shark.  Robbie always bit.  He was a little ashamed of the fact that he had been born to a Mexican mother in San Diego.  His history was one of poverty and ridicule.  Racism was alive and well in the US of A, and its presence bred a certain amount of bitterness.  Who the hell were Americans, anyway?  All but the Indians had originally been immigrants from somewhere else.  And even the supposedly native population had migrated from Eurasia to the Americas via Beringia; a land bridge which had connected the two continents across what is now the Bering Strait.  The world was just a fucked-up melting pot.  But Glen couldn’t resist teasing Robbie.

“Any drugs coming in?” Robbie said.

Glen shook his head.  “No, this is just to show that we do our job.  Zack says that next week there’s a big shipment that we’ll need to make sure gets through.”

They parked behind a high bluff and waited for the guide to lead the desperate men, women and children along a dry gulch towards them.  It was an endless and sometimes highly dangerous game.  The illegals would be processed in Ajo and then dumped back across the border, only to attempt the crossing again, sometimes within twenty-four hours.

It was two a.m. when they heard the collective sound of many feet on the small rocks and pebbles that littered the sandy bottom of the arroyo.  Moving out into the open, both pointing model 870 Remington 12 gauge pump-action shotguns at the group, Robbie identified himself as a border patrol officer in fluent Mexican, and instructed them to lay face down with their hands clasped behind their heads, fingers interlocked.

Only one young guy bolted back the way he had come, but stopped and dropped to his knees as Glen fired a warning shot over his head.

Within five minutes all but two now screaming babies had been restrained with disposable PlastiCuffs. The guide slunk off, his mission accomplished, and Glen got on the radio to request transport for the illegals, while Robbie covered the Mexicans with his shotgun.

Logan, Fran and Andy had a liquid breakfast of coffee, before Fran drove them out towards I-19, stopping short of it at a rundown recreation area and campsite that boasted a cinderblock building that housed restrooms and a shower room.  It even had a couple of old vending machines serving hot and cold drinks out front in a timber built shelter with a plastic corrugated roof.

“How’s your arm?” Fran said to Logan as he pushed quarters into the slot to get a cup of black coffee.

“Sore, but no big deal,” Logan replied.  “You want coffee?”

Both Fran and Andy nodded.

They walked over to a rustic bench and sat down.  Watched a couple of squirrels chase each other up a tall fir tree, and just enjoyed the clean, fresh, pine-scented air that was only slightly marred by the smoke from the cigarette Andy had fired-up.

“Hey,” one of two young bearded guys – who were approaching them from a small RV that was mainly rust held together with gray duct tape – shouted. “This is a campsite, not a fuckin’ rest area on an interstate.  We have to pay to stay here and use the facilities.”

Logan said nothing.  Just finished up the weak, gritty coffee in his cup.

“Are you fuckin’ deaf?” the second guy said, stopping just a couple of yards from the table.

“We don’t want any trouble,” Fran said.

“Shut up, bitch, I was talkin’ to the fag you’re with.”

“Like the lady said, we’d rather not have any trouble,” Logan said, crushing the plastic cup and dropping it as he stood up and moved away from the bench.

“So hand over twenty dollars and get the fuck out of here,” Ronnie McKinney said.

“Yeah, pay up and piss off,” Nick Beattie added, smiling to show off his rotting teeth.

Logan sighed.  “Bad news for you two is that you don’t get the twenty bucks.  Good news is that you can walk away from the situation.”

“And if we don’t?” Ronnie said, balling his fists, not impressed by the big guy, who looked to be older than his father.

“You’ll decide that,” Logan said.  “But you need to know that being overgrown retards with a bad attitude won’t buy you any favors if you push this.”

Ronnie moved fast, swinging as he came.  Logan blocked the punch, leaned to the side and elbowed Ronnie in the ribs hard enough to take the wind out of him and drop him to his knees.  He should have stayed down, but got back on his feet, and Logan head butted him in the face with enough force to break his nose and daze him.  He followed up with a kick to the guy’s kneecap, displacing it and putting him down on the ground again.

Nick reached for his belt, drew a Bowie knife with a nine-inch blade from its sheath and advanced on Logan.

Logan took a step towards Nick and said, “You’re just a few seconds away from making the biggest mistake of your life, son.  Put the knife away, help your friend to his feet, and go away while you’re able to.”

Nick stared into the big stranger’s eyes and saw a look akin to anticipation.  He wanted to back down, but it wasn’t in his nature.  And he was good with a knife.  Had left his mark on a few dickheads in the past.

Logan kept his gaze on the lout’s eyes.  Watched them imperceptibly widen a moment before he made his move.

Nick struck out fast with an underarm thrust to Logan’s stomach, only to make contact with thin air.

Logan sidestepped out of harm’s way and grasped his assailant’s wrist, to rotate it brutally, causing the knife to fall from limp fingers.  Nick let out a howl of pain as the snap of breaking bone echoed around the tree-guarded site.

Levering the now totally subjugated young man to the ground, Logan picked up the knife and relieved Nick of the sheath for it.

For just a heartbeat, Logan wanted to inflict more damage, but held back.  The incident was behind him.  “Come on, let’s go,” he said to Fran and Andy.  “I think we’ve outstayed our welcome, and I need some food.”

They didn’t talk as Fran drove to a strip mall near the interstate and parked in the lot of a Denny’s.  All three of them ordered the same; a full breakfast and coffee.

Andy hardly ate.  Just picked at the meal, pushed the food around the plate with her fork for a couple of minutes and then gave up on it.  “You didn’t have to hurt those two creeps so much,” she said to Logan.

Logan carried on eating.  Finished up and poured another cup of coffee from the large pot before replying.  “They needed to be hurt,” he said.  “What do you suppose might have happened if just the two of you had been there?”

“You could have given them the twenty bucks and diffused the situation,” Fran said.

Logan smiled without humor.  “I don’t back down, Fran.  And I
did
diffuse the situation.  Maybe they’ll think twice before they intimidate anyone else.”

“You seem, I don’t know…comfortable with aggression,” Andy said.  “Doesn’t causing pain and injury to others bother you?”

“Not if they deserve it.”

“And you decide who―”

“Let it be,” Logan said.  “I don’t feel the need to justify my actions.  If you think that you can deal with Slater and get your life back on track, just say the word and I’ll be gone.”

Andy swallowed hard, got up and headed for the restroom.

“We need you, Logan,” Fran said.  “Andy’s scared, but I know she realizes that you’re our only chance of us making it through this.”

Logan shrugged.  “Andy needs to get real.  She took Slater’s money and a gun, and then followed the guys that had abducted her boyfriend.  She had every intention of shooting them.  Even told me to shoot one of them.  Now she’s turning into some kind of pacifist.”

When Andy came back and sat down she seemed more composed.  “I was out of order,” she said to Logan.  “It’s a dog-eat-dog world we live in.”

“Okay,” he said.  “Let’s find a Wal-Mart.  We need provisions, and I need some new clothes.”

While Andy and Fran loaded two large carts with groceries, Logan found the menswear section and picked up a couple of shirts, a pair of cargo pants, some underwear and socks and a lightweight windbreaker, all in shades of gray.  It was a subconscious way of appearing low-profile; a part of his desire to be as anonymous as possible.  He also purchased a black woolen jacket, a pair of jeans, a couple of pay-as-you-go cell phones, and paid for everything with cash.  As an afterthought, he went back from the checkout to the electronics department and asked the bespectacled Buddy Holly look-alike behind the counter to recommend an inexpensive pocket-size Dictaphone, to be advised that the digital voice recorder was far superior and had a built-in USB connection.  He bought an RCA model for thirty bucks, after having ‘Buddy’ demonstrate its functions.

Stopping at a scenic overlook on the return trip, Logan checked the list of telephone numbers he’d made a note of from Keno’s contacts.  Made a call to New York and asked to speak with Detective Arnie Newman.  Said that he was his brother.

“I don’t have a brother,” the harsh voice said after a wait of almost two minutes.  “So just who the fuck are you?”

“Your ex-partner.”

“Jesus H Christ, Logan. I thought you must be dead.”

“Not yet, Arnie.  I thought you’d have put your papers in by now and headed down to Florida with Margie.”

“Next year, buddy, God willin’.  We plan on buyin’ a condo on the Gulf and watchin’ the sun set every night.  What trouble are you in?”

“Nothing I can’t handle.  But I need a favor.”

“So ask.  I can always rack the phone.”

“You have access to reverse directories.  I need an address.”

“Where the hell are you?”

“Southern Arizona.”

“Shit, Logan, what’s out there?”

“Same as in the Big Apple, bad guys, but the scenery’s better.”

“Give me the number and get back to me in an hour.”

Logan read out the Ajo number, twice.  Arnie said, “Got it,” then disconnected.

It was a gamble, but next to the name Glen and the phone number were the letters BP.  Logan thought that it referred to the Border Patrol.  It was worth checking out.

Arnie had the name and address for the number within five minutes, after contacting Ben Calhoun, a Phoenix cop who’d traveled to New York City a couple years back with the paperwork to extradite an apprehended fugitive wanted for multiple rape in Arizona.  Arnie had shown Ben around the city for a couple of days while the bookwork was being finessed, and they had bonded, spending most of the time in bars, drinking Irish whisky and playing pool.

Ben had even given Arnie some background on the guy that the Ajo number was listed to.

Arnie hit the street and picked up a dog from a cart on Park Row near City Hall, close by the Brooklyn Bridge and just a hundred yards from 1 Police Plaza.

“How’re ya doin’, Arnie?” Ric Angelo said as he opened a bun and loaded it with a dog and onions.

“Same as yesterday, Ric,” Arnie said with a smile, taking the hot dog and squeezing a line of mustard and then an even thicker line of homemade catsup on it.  “You okay?”

“Never better,” Ric said. “I get to meet a lot of hungry people every day, and see their faces light up when they bite into one of my dogs.  That makes them happy, and makes me happier, because their bucks help pay my son’s way through college.”

Arnie went over to a bench, sat down, tucked his necktie in his shirt and leaned forward to make sure that he didn’t end up splotched red and yellow.

Arnie Newman was fifty-four, a stocky bull of a guy, now thirty pounds overweight. He had a shock of steel-gray hair, and two fingers were missing from his left hand, that had been bitten off by a knife-wielding junkie who’d been shot dead by Logan, but not before the scumbag had swallowed Arnie’s digits.

Arnie had known Logan forever, and knew that whatever he was involved in would mean big trouble for someone who would in all probability deserve it.

Logan called back after exactly sixty minutes, as Arnie was starting in on his second cup of coffee since returning to the office.

“You startin’ a war with the home team, Logan?” Arnie said.

“I don’t start wars.  I just finish them.  Why?”

“‘Cause the number you gave me belongs to a servin’ agent of the United States Border Patrol.  What the fuck has he done to have you on his case?”

“Trust me, you don’t want to know.  Just give me the name and address.”

Arnie read it out, and then crumpled the piece of paper it was written on and stuffed it in his pocket to flush later.