El Gavilan (5 page)

“Sounds fine,” Shawn said.

Able Hawk nodded at Shawn. “You and Tell here should get on real good. In my research I learned Tell has a reporter in his family. Pretty famous one. Ex-reporter, anyhow. And maybe
infamous
is the word I should have used.”

That got under Tell’s skin, as Able probably intended. And it got Shawn’s attention, as it was also surely intended to. The journalist asked, “Anyone I might know?”

“Probably,” Able said. “Kind of infamous reporter-turned-novelist who lives out to Cedartown lately, counties away. Fella name of Chris Lyon.” The name clearly rang bells for Shawn O’Hara.

Tell met Shawn’s inquiring gaze and confirmed, “Chris is my cousin. We were close as kids, then kind of drifted apart as maturity too often does to you.” But Tell had stayed with Chris and his family for a couple of nights before driving west to New Austin. Such as they were, Chris Lyon, and his wife, Salome, were as close to real family as remained for Tell.

“Your cousin has built quite a reputation for himself, for better or worse,” Shawn said.

Patricia drained the dregs of Tell’s margarita, watching him. The waiter brought Patricia another and she handed the waiter the empty glass. She stirred her drink with its two straws and sipped. Her dark eyes were still focused on Tell.

He said, “Chris tends toward mythologizing himself. Unfortunately, so do a lot of his critics and fans. When it comes to Chris, it’s best to believe half of what you hear, and less than that of what you read. And that last is true regardless of whether Chris is or isn’t the author.”

“Same be said for you, Tell Lyon?” Able Hawk arched a bushy eyebrow.

Tell searched the sheriff’s strange eyes. He had never seen anything like them. In the right light, they were so pale that Tell could imagine Able’s irises blending into the whites from a distance. They were eyes that could break a suspect just by boring into him, Tell guessed.

“No, I’m not like Chris,” Tell said.

“All the same,” Able said with a sad smile, those terrible eyes searching Tell’s face, “I’m very sorry for the loss of your family, son.”

“Thanks,” Tell said evenly. “But I don’t talk about that.” Tell felt Patricia sizing him up again. He thought he felt her leg pressing harder against his. It was probably just his imagination. Or maybe it was the tequila.

Able said, “I really don’t wanna talk shop tonight, just like I said a bit ago. But you should probably know, Chief, that I made a collar out front a few minutes ago.”

“Yeah?” Tell said. “What happened?”

“Young man was weaving,” Able said. “I figured him for DWI and sure enough, the boy, one Miguel Sanchez,
maybe
age eighteen, he failed the Breathalyzer, big time. He was carrying false paper. He’s bein’ booked at county by now.”

“Thanks for catching him, Sheriff,” Tell said. “Thanks for taking him down before someone got hurt in my city.” New Austin was mostly located within Horton County. Getting along with Able Hawk was going to be a necessity, Tell knew.

“We’re seeing a lot of these fake licenses and Social Security cards lately,” Able said. “Best estimate is that 70 percent of Horton County’s Hispanic population came illegally across the border.”

Tell said, “Maybe you could bring some samples of those bogus identifications to lunch tomorrow. Maybe some samples I could hold on to for a time. Help me get my people up to speed.”

“Happy as hell to do that,” Able said, smiling. “Your predecessor, he weren’t too aggressive on this subject. Good to know I’ve got a man with a pair here in town now who has my back. Now I should leave you two—er, three?—to your dinner and your drinks.”

Shawn, red-faced again, slid out of the booth to let Able Hawk out.

Patricia slid out too. Leaning over, she said softly to Tell, “I’ll have your check sent over directly, Chief Lyon.”

Handshakes all around, then Tell was alone again.

He looked at Patricia’s half-full margarita, traces of her lipstick still on the twin straws. Tell picked up the drink and drank it dry through the lipstick-stained straws.

SIX

“So you had to share a drink with him,” Shawn said. “Why’d you do that, Pat?”

It was half an hour since they’d left Patricia’s family’s restaurant, leaving Tell Lyon there alone in his booth. Patricia had been inclined to stay. Now Patricia and Shawn were in another booth, seated across from one another at the back of Fusion, New Austin’s sorry excuse for a hot nightspot, yet still the town’s trendiest club.

Patricia had picked their table—just as far from the dance floor and speakers as she could find. She was sick of the club scene and had told Shawn so several times since they’d become lovers. Yet here they were again.

“Wasn’t like it looked,” Patricia said.

Shawn snagged her pack of cigarettes and fired one up. “You should buy your own, Shawn,” she said, gesturing at the pack of Merits on the table between them. “I mean, rather than always bumming mine and then bitching about my brand after.”

The journalist shrugged. “I only smoke in clubs and bars, you know that.”

And after sex.

Patricia said, “You best cut back, Shawn, because I’m seriously thinking of quitting.” It was a relatively new habit of Patricia’s—the potentially deadly echo of a previous relationship with another boyish younger man who too soon rubbed Patricia wrong.

Nate had lasted just long enough to make Patricia a smoker. She said, “And anyway, it wasn’t what it looked like.” She appraised him: Blue eyes, sandy blond hair in need of cutting. An angular face and a too-ready smile. He was proud of his smile. She could see that. He used it to ends. But Shawn wasn’t smiling now.

“I know how it looked, Patty.”

“I hate Patty,” she said. “Keep it Patricia.”

“I know how it looked, Patricia,” Shawn said, looking scolded. “And I know what it was. I saw Able Hawk notice too. All those drinks while Lyon was on duty. You were covering for him, Patricia. Trying to help him save face with Able Hawk. I’m just wondering why you did that.”

“He was off duty, Shawn, but in uniform,” Patricia said. “Tell seems like a nice and decent man, and he’s lonely. Cut him some slack.”

Shawn blew a smoke ring. She decided Shawn figured it probably made him look tough. He said, “Lots of people are lonely, Patricia.”

“That is true. Sometimes even when they’re not alone.” She hesitated, then said, “But there’s something else there. Can’t put my finger on it, exactly. There’s a tension in the man. And a sadness like I’ve never seen. Maybe that’s what made me help him out with Able Hawk. The sheriff said something had happened to Chief Lyon’s family. What was that? Do you know?”

Shawn blew more smoke from both nostrils, watching distant dancers. “Did some research on him. Tell Lyon’s wife and daughter, a toddler, if I remember right, were killed in a firebombing of their house while he was on duty. Authorities in California concluded it might have been a ring of Coyotes or maybe some cartel chief seeking some kind of revenge against our new chief. So they snuffed his family.”

Patricia shuddered. Shawn’s casualness in breaking the news appalled her. She was further offended by his off-hand manner describing their deaths. Hearing the anger in her voice, Patricia asked, “And when did this happen to Tell, Shawn?”

“Late last year,” he said, still watching the dancers. “Suppose that’s how New Austin landed Lyon as chief. He probably just wanted the hell away from California and the West.”

“Lord,” Patricia said. “If I lost my family like Tell did, I’d have wiped out our stock of tequila tonight. That poor man.”

Shawn drained his Corona. “These Lyons seem to attract that kind of bullshit. Almost like they court it. On that note, you oughta study up on the chief’s cousin, Chris Lyon. It’s all craziness. And the guy’s a poster child for gone-wrong reporters.”

He stubbed out his cigarette. “Let’s hit the floor, ’Tricia.”

“Patricia.” She picked up her pack of cigarettes and lighter and put them in her purse. “Not tonight, Shawn. And I told you, the night we met was a fluke. I don’t like the club scene. And I truly hate dancing. I’m a stay-at-home kind of girl. Maybe more so all the time.”

Patricia tried to think of the right word for Shawn’s expression as she said that to him. She settled on “pouting.” Not a becoming look on Shawn, or on any man.

Shawn said, “So whose place is it going to be tonight?” She heard a tone of annoyance in his voice.

“How about neutral corners for tonight,” Patricia said.

They’d driven to the club in separate cars. Standing, Patricia slung her purse over one shoulder. “You leaving too, Shawn?”

He shook his head, watching the dance floor. “Think I’ll stay on a while. I’ll call you.”

So, it was like that.

Patricia left without saying goodbye.

On the way out, she opened her purse and pulled out her pack of cigarettes and lighter and tossed them in the trash can.

She drove to her apartment in a soft, fragrant summer rain, listening to an oldie station. Patti Scialfa’s “Spanish Dancer”:
A red dress of temptation over a long black slip of fear
.

Along the way, she passed a New Austin police cruiser pulled diagonally behind a beater, red pickup truck. The cruiser’s lights twirled red and blue, flashing on the wet pavement. Two New Austin cops were patting down two short and husky Mexican boys. Both had red bandanas tied around their heads. Gang colors.

Mexican gangs fueled more and more of the rising violent crime in and around Horton County. Patricia was glad she didn’t have a younger brother to get sucked in. Hardly any Latino males under the age of twenty were not affiliated with one or another of the new Mexican gangs.

When she got home, Patricia locked the door, threw the deadbolt and stuck a rubber wedge in the bottom crack of the door. Her neighborhood, located on the fringe of the West Side, had been relatively safe until the past year or so. Now it was a haven for home invasions, rapes and robberies.

She brushed her teeth, washed her face, and pulled on a pair of blue sweats emblazoned in white letters with the phrase “Just do it!” and a big gray sweatshirt with her college’s logo across the chest. She pushed up her sleeves, pulled on a pair of reading glasses and booted up her computer. Patricia called up Google and in quotes typed, “Tell Lyon.”

* * *

Killing time. Tell, slightly buzzed, was driving around aimlessly—getting lost in his new city. He was rambling to avoid going home to his too-quiet, anonymous apartment.

In retrospect, he wouldn’t be able to decide if it was the smell of the fire or the guttering glow on the horizon that caught his attention. Tell knew the smell well enough. He remembered the orange light and its flicker through twirling plumes of black smoke as they rose from his own burning home.

Tell palmed the wheel, driving toward the fire and the sound of the sirens. As he drew closer he could see the true scope of the blaze and gunned his SUV into the townhouse parking lot. Unable to find a proper parking space, Tell steered around behind a fire truck and drove over the curbstone, bringing his SUV to a stop on a common lawn.

At least three of the rental units were what firefighters termed “fully involved,” and smoke poured from the attic ventilation slats of several surrounding townhouses.

Nauseous, crazed, Tell fumbled with the door handle of his truck, hands shaking.

Once out of the SUV, the fire’s heat on his face set Tell’s legs to shaking. He thought he could smell charred flesh and hear screams other than those of the women and children gathered out on the lawn, watching their homes and possessions burn.

Tell’s eyes were already watering from the stinging and stinking noxious exhaust of burning plastic, textiles and vinyl siding.

Tell took slow, deep breaths, tamping down his revulsion at the familiar stench. He was bent over, hands on his knees, trying hard to breathe only through his mouth to suppress the memories triggered by the smell of the fire.

Steadier, he looked around and saw three hook-and-ladder trucks, a couple of smaller pumpers and two EMT units. A couple of overweight medics with bushy brown moustaches were working on an old Mexican woman.

Tell searched the crowd of dispossessed townhouse dwellers and gawkers and realized they were all Latinos. The only English being spoken was that exchanged between the emergency medical technicians and firefighters yelling to one another over the sound of the fire and the white noise of the water gushing from their hoses.

Tell heard more sirens and saw several Horton County sheriff’s cruisers turning into the crowded parking lot.

One of the firefighters—evidently the chief—saw Tell, noted his uniform and nodded. Tell nodded back. He looked around for something to do and saw that a crowd of Mexicans was blocking the parking lot and the sheriff’s cruisers couldn’t find parking.

The cruisers in turn were blocking the path of a squad waiting to drive to the hospital with two young burn victims.

Tell moved to undertake some crowd control, but the sheriff’s deputies hit their sirens and engaged their speakers. In English, they ordered the crowd to disperse. The lights and the sound seemed to do the trick even if most in the crowd—as Tell suspected—were too fresh to American soil to speak much, if any, English.

A toddler girl, perhaps four or five, was being given oxygen. Her right arm was heat blistered and the EMT was applying salve. She looked terrified and confused. Tell squatted down next to her and smiled. In Spanish he said, “It’s okay, honey. It’s not a bad burn and the medicine will help. Don’t be scared, darling. You’re going to be fine.”

She nodded, her dark eyes glistening. She tugged the oxygen mask aside and said in Spanish, “Antonio’s still inside. He’s one and can’t walk yet. Will you go and get my brother for me?”

Tell felt his skin crawl. His heart kicked. Wild-eyed, he said to the EMT, “She says her baby brother is still inside one of the units.”

Tell was already up as the EMT called to his chief. The firefighter Tell had exchanged nods with hurried over, soaked from the back spray of the hoses. A command radio was gripped in his gloved right hand. Tell said, “This little girl says her baby brother is inside. Or she thinks so. She says his name is Antonio and—”