Shadow Boys (22 page)

The carnies tried to entice him to play. He ignored them, and after a moment they did the same.

Raul watched for a few minutes. People came and went, dozens passing the boy like he wasn’t there.

The child appeared off somehow. His eyes were intelligent but vacant, like he was thinking about things that no one else could fathom or would even want to.

After another couple minutes, Raul approached, sitting on the bench next to him.

“How you doing, little man?” Raul pointed to the badge clipped to his belt. “I’m a police officer. Anything I can help you with?”

The boy stared straight ahead. His lips moved silently like he was having a conversation with someone who wasn’t there.

“What’s your name?” A long pause. “Mine is Raul.”

More silent mumbling. Then, the boy looked up. “Tremont. My name is Tremont Washington.”

“Where’re you from, Tremont?”

The boy hummed, eyes closed.

“You here with your family?”

Tremont opened his eyes. He stared at Raul’s badge.

“My daddy. He was police.”

“That so? What department?”

More humming.

Raul watched the crowd, looking for someone who might be a parent or guardian. Nothing. Just a river of people moving from one booth to the next, eating cotton candy.

No one paid any attention to a forty-year-old Latino man and a grade-school-age black kid.

Raul realized this is how child molesters operate. Find a target, alone, start talking to him. He hoped to locate the parents of this child and tell them the danger they were placing their son in.

“My daddy, he worked for the state po-po.” Tremont rubbed his hands together. “But they kilt him.”

“Who killed him?” Raul leaned forward. “Your daddy died on the job?”

“They didn’t let me go to the cemetery. But they gave me a flag.”

This kid was the survivor of a line-of-duty death?

Raul pulled his BlackBerry out, sent his assistant an e-mail.
Run a check on the name Tremont Washington. See if there are any ties to any LEOs.

The boy sat up, alert, staring across the midway.

Raul followed his gaze, saw throngs of people no different from the crowd who’d been there a few moments earlier.

The boy gulped. He pointed to a woman wearing camo fatigues, a soldier. The woman was pushing a toddler in a stroller.

“Mama.”

Raul stared at the woman. She was Caucasian with blond hair. She could have been a guardian or adoptive mother, but there was no biological connection between the two.

“Is that your mother?” Raul asked.

Silence.

“You want me to talk to her?” Raul pointed to the woman.

Tremont Washington shook his head. “Mama’s gonna come home on furlough. We go to the fair then.”

“Your mama’s in the army?”

The boy didn’t reply.

Raul checked his e-mail.

Tremont Washington’s father had been working undercover for the Texas Department of Public Safety when he was killed by a suspect. His mother was deployed in Iraq. His legal guardian was his paternal grandmother, address in West Dallas, the projects.

“Where’s your granny?” Raul said.

“I want some cotton candy.” Tremont looked up. “Will you buy me some?”

“If you tell me where your granny is.”

The boy frowned like he was trying to put a long string of words together.

“My grandma.” He licked his lips. “She don’t remember good.”

Raul nodded as his BlackBerry dinged with a text from the number associated with Fair Park command center. The message was about a missing child named Tremont Washington. His grandmother was at the lost-child station, frantic.

Raul replied that he had the boy. He stood. “Let’s get you some cotton candy. Then we’ll find your grandma.”

The boy smiled for the first time.

“You want to ride in a police car?” Raul patted his shoulder. “I’ll let you work the siren.”

The boy squealed with delight.

- CHAPTER FORTY-TWO -

In the bathroom of the makeshift orphanage south of Singleton, Lysol Alvarez finds some gauze, tape, and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. He cleans and bandages the wound on his leg.

The round fired by the man in the black tracksuit grazed the outside of his thigh, and the bleeding has mostly stopped, no major damage.

Jamal, the boy with the cornrows, stands in the doorway, watching.

“Don’t that sting?”

“A little.” Lysol picks up his SIG from the counter. “But it beats digging out a bullet with a pair of pliers.”

“When you get shot,” Jamal says. “Does it hurt right away?”

“You’re full of questions, ain’t you?” Lysol looks up. “You ever put a cap in anybody, little man?”

Jamal stares at the bandage and the blood on Lysol’s pant leg. He doesn’t say anything.

The rich bitch from North Dallas with the fake cigarette is in the living area, hands duct-taped behind her.

Lysol conducts a quick but thorough search of the bathroom, the cabinets, under the sink, behind the toilet. He finds nothing of value.

Jamal continues to watch him like he’s a superhero come to life, eyes tracking his every move, fascinated.

Lysol says, “How old are you?”

“Eleven.” Jamal crosses his arms.

Lysol arches an eyebrow.

Silence.

Then: “I mean ten.”

“That so?”

“Yeah.” Jamal sticks his chin out, trying for a little swagger. “In two months anyway.”

Lysol chuckles and leaves the bathroom. In the hall, he ponders where a ten-year-old would hide his stash. Not a bedroom or the kitchen, too obvious. He could ask and force the answer, but he wants to make a point.

There’s a narrow door by the entrance to the bathroom.

Lysol opens it. Jamal watches but doesn’t react. The door reveals a closet containing several almost-empty boxes of diapers. And a small duffel bag in the corner.

“You live here, right?” Lysol pulls out the duffel. “In this house?”

Jamal nods.

Lysol opens the bag.

The herbal aroma of marijuana fills his nostrils. The bag is full of loose weed, maybe two or three kilos, a lot of product for a crew of ten-year-olds, but Lysol’s seen stranger things in the dope biz, that’s for damn sure.

“This your ganja?” He holds up the duffel.

Jamal nods again, a look of pride on his face.

Lysol drops the bag, shoves the youngster against the wall. “You don’t ever, ever bring the product around where you stay.” He looks into the child’s eyes. “You feel me, boy?”

Jamal’s lip quivers.

“Lesson one. You figure out who your stupidest guy is, the one you don’t mind losing, and you hold the package at his crib.”

Jamal nods, blinks away tears.

Lysol is immediately sorry he came down so hard on the youngster. The boy doesn’t know his way around the game. That’s what adults are supposed to do, teach the next generation.

“Don’t worry, you’ll learn.” Lysol pats his cheek. “You’re a smart kid.”

The boy smiles for the first time, clearly eager for some form of adult approval other than what comes from the bitchy bleeding heart in the next room.

Lysol returns to the living area, carrying the duffel.

He’s kicked Machete Boy out of the house and dead-bolted the doors, after taking his blade and telling him if he tried to get back in he’d cut his nuts off. Lysol figures he’ll deal with the rest of the child gang in due time. Their leader, Jamal, seems to have lost a lot of toughness since Lysol pulled a gun on him.

The woman watches, face blank. The babies are all asleep.

Lysol drops the duffel in the middle of the floor and searches the rest of the house, Jamal trailing after him.

The first bedroom has two sets of bunk beds and children’s clothing in the closet, age appropriate to Jamal and his crew. Several more handguns. Cheap Korean nine-millimeters.

Lysol sticks the pistols in the pockets of his suit coat, making the garment hang strangely on his body.

The second bedroom has an overnight bag full of a woman’s things. Expensive clothing, toiletries from Nordstrom’s, and an envelope full of cash, maybe three or four grand.

Lysol pockets the envelope and then searches the woman’s purse, which is on the bed.

A Texas driver’s license is in the wallet. Her name is Hannah June McKee, address an apartment or a condo near Northpark Mall.

Next he locates what he’s looking for: a cell phone.

The cell is beside something he isn’t expecting to see but is not all that surprised to find—a nickel-plated revolver, a .38 Smith & Wesson. The gun looks like something the five-oh on an old cop show might use.

Back in the living room, he kneels in front of the woman and holds up the revolver.

“Why you packing heat, Hannah McKee?”

“What are you going to do to me?”

“I’m the one asking the questions. That’s how this situation works.”

She doesn’t say anything.

Lysol looks at Jamal. “You give her the piece?”

The boy shakes his head.

Lysol doesn’t speak, letting the silence set the tone.

After a few moments, Hannah McKee says, “The children. They sell drugs because it’s the only thing they know.”

“And where do you come in?” Lysol says. “You and your
Adam-12
gun?

“The place where I work, we tried to establish a new project. An outreach to this part of the city.”

“What do you call it?” Lysol looks around the room. “The West Dallas Baby Zoo?”

“It was supposed to be for prenatal care. Plus aid for newborns and their mothers.” Hannah pauses. “Girls who were too young to be in high school in some cases.”

“So where’re all the baby mamas?”

From the far side of the room, a child cries. Jamal goes to the crib, picks up the infant, rocks him on his shoulder.

“We, uh, misunderstood the receptiveness of the community,” Hannah says.

Lysol stares at her, trying to figure if she’s crazy or just stupid.

“They’re precious, these babies.” Her tone is edging toward belligerent now. “Each one a gift from God.”

“White lady come down here and tell everyone how to raise their kids.” Lysol chuckles. “What do you think this neighborhood is, a science project?”

“How many children have you fathered?” she asked. “And then never even seen?”

“How about none,” Lysol says. “I take care of my babies.”

He thinks about his oldest, a young woman now, though it’s hard for her daddy to see her as anything but a toddler in his arms. She’s going to college in a few months. She’ll make something of herself, something that doesn’t involve spitting out welfare babies in West Dallas. Her father has worked damned hard to make sure of that.

Hannah McKee stares at him, eyes like slits, anger wafting off her in waves.

“These little ones here.” Lysol points to the cribs. “What happened to their mamas?”

“Gone.” She whispers the word like a curse.

“Mothers don’t just leave their babies. Not this many.”

She doesn’t reply.

He pulls out the envelope of cash. “What’s this about?”

Silence.

Lysol looks across the room at the boy with the cornrows, who’s still holding the crying infant.

“Jamal, what’s the cash for? This dope money?”

The boy turns to Hannah McKee, eyes pleading. But he doesn’t speak.

“West Dallas,” she says. “They say you can buy anything.”

“You
bought
these kids?” Lysol’s mouth hangs open.

She smiles proudly. “Half of them weren’t even born in a hospital. I’m trying to save them.”

“Shee-it, sister.” Lysol stands. “Somebody done beat you with a crazy stick, didn’t they?”

The room is silent. Lysol hears the whump-whump of a low-flying helicopter.

He walks to the window, peers outside.

A police car is driving slowly down the street. Several of the boys are sitting in the front yard, watching.

Lysol holds his breath. The car slows almost to a stop in front of the house and then continues on. He realizes the five-oh is going to flood the streets south of Singleton, the last direction he was seen. He’s not going to make it to his place a few blocks away.

For better or worse, he’s going to make his stand in a wood-framed shack full of unwanted babies and a crazy-ass white woman.

- CHAPTER FORTY-THREE -

Here’s a little factoid about my life.

This was not the first time I’d been caught by a jealous ex-boyfriend in a compromising position.

Fort Worth, 2001. The mayor’s son had a thing for an ex–call girl who I’d met on Match.com. Note: I didn’t know until later she’d been a working gal or that she was dating anybody else. Honestly.

Anyway, the son caught us in a hotel room in downtown Fort Worth and stuck a .357 in my face. Unfortunately for him, he was high on cocaine and didn’t realize the gun was unloaded. I managed to take the weapon and leave him handcuffed to a maid’s cart while the girl and I beat a hasty retreat.

The funny part of the story, what the movies would call an “ironic twist,” was that the mayor’s son and the ex–call girl eventually got married and moved to Dallas. They had a couple of kids and the woman ended up being a society bigwig, chair of the Bull Wranglers Ball, one of the bigger charitable fund-raisers in town.

I was pretty sure this current scenario wasn’t going to play out as well.

For one thing, Raul Delgado wasn’t high on coke.

Secondly, I was pretty sure his M-4 was loaded.

Thirdly, there were at least another five officers backing
him up.

We were all in Hannah McKee’s office in the Victorian house off of McKinney Avenue.

Nobody said anything. The other officers were waiting on Delgado’s lead.

He aimed the muzzle of his rifle at my face. His eyes were wide, unblinking. Expression blank.

I smiled. Tried to look nonchalant. Said, “Well, this is awkward.”

No response.

Piper said, “Lower your weapon, Raul. We’re unarmed.”

After a moment of hesitation, Delgado eased the rifle down. He looked at his men, said, “Everybody out. I got this.”

The officers glanced at each other and shrugged, then exited the building.

After they left, there was an uneasy silence in the room. Then Delgado looked at me and said, “I should call the DA, file charges.”

“I left the knife where you could get to it. You made it out all right,” I said. “I wouldn’t be complaining too much.”

Delgado rammed the butt of his rifle into my stomach.

I fell to the floor, stars swimming in my vision, lungs searching for oxygen. I didn’t remember much after that.

Sunlight on my face. The rocking of a vehicle. Steel biting into my wrists.

Piper’s voice: “Where are we going?”

I opened my eyes.

I was in the backseat of Raul Delgado’s Suburban on Woodall Rodgers Freeway, the short stretch of highway that formed the northern boundary of downtown Dallas.

Raul was driving, Piper next to him in the front.

To our left lay the gleaming skyscraper canyons of downtown and the Winspear Opera House, a futuristic building made from red metal panels and polished glass. To the right, a few blocks past the Dallas Federal Reserve building, was Raul’s high-rise condo.

The Suburban kept driving, heading toward Stemmons Freeway and the county jail, the place where he’d picked me up only a few days before.

Piper looked in the back, a worried expression on her face. “You okay?”

I nodded.

Piper said, “Why’d you cuff him, Raul?”

“Ask your boyfriend.” Delgado accelerated around a pickup.

“He’s not my boyfriend. Neither are you.” She shook her head. “And when did we time warp back to the seventh grade?”

“Raul and I had a little altercation at your house.” I coughed, stomach aching like I had the flu. “After you decamped.”

“Both of you? Stalking me?” she said. “Did anybody remember to bring a bunny to boil?”

Delgado took the north exit for Stemmons Freeway, the wrong direction for the jail.

“A lovely day for a drive,” I said. “Perhaps you could give us a hint as to our destination.”

“We need to talk,” Delgado said. “The vigilante killer. I need to know what you’ve found out. Away from prying eyes and ears.”

“Where’s your cell phone?” I asked. “They can listen in that way, too.”

He glanced at me in the rearview mirror.

Piper shook her head. “Did you two ever consider that I’m not some piece of property you can trade back and forth like a damn lawn mower?”

My beeper was sitting on the front console. It went off.

Raul Delgado rolled down the driver’s window and threw it out.

“While you’re tossing,” I said. “Get rid of your cell, too.”

“It’s turned off.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“It’s the property of the Dallas Police Department. No one is listening in.”

“I’m not worried about the local heat,” I said. “You need to—”

He pulled abruptly to the shoulder of the highway, just south of the Inwood Road exit. An abandoned bar and a tire store were just across the access road.

Traffic whizzed by, a torrent of cars headed north.

“Quit telling me what to do,” he said. “I need the cell and I’m trying to help both of you out.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way.” I leaned forward. “But we don’t need your help. The way things are going, it’s likely to be the other way around.”

Silence. An eighteen-wheeler zoomed by, buffeting the SUV.

Delgado craned his neck, looking south. “You’d think there’d be a marker, wouldn’t you?”

“What?” Piper glanced at me and then back to the front. “What are you talking about?”

“They built an arena there.” He turned back around. “Where the silos used to be.”

Neither Piper nor I spoke.

“That’s where they took us. The old power plant. By the grain silos.”

“Where your brother died,” I said.

“Where they killed him.”

I didn’t reply.

Raul Delgado looked in the back like he was seeing me for the first time. He fished a key out of his pocket and handed it to Piper. “You can uncuff him.”

Piper did so as he pulled a cell phone from his pocket.

“Why were you two in that office?”

“Tremont worked for Hannah McKee.” I rubbed my wrists. “A fact you neglected to mention.”

“She doesn’t know anything about what happened to the boy.”

“How can you be so sure?” Piper asked.

No response.

“Who is she to you?” I said.

Raul opened his door.

Wind gusted through the inside of the vehicle. Piper and I were silent.

He stepped outside, walked to the front of the SUV, then tapped some keys on his cell phone.

“He’s having a breakdown of some sort,” I said. “His eyes, did you see them?”

“He’s been through a lot in his life.”

“And we haven’t?”

“This isn’t about us, Jon.”

“Then why are we here with him right now?”

She didn’t reply.

Raul Delgado returned to the vehicle a few moments later.

“We should get off this highway.” He slid the transmission into drive. “There’s somebody you need to meet.”

He drove down the shoulder until he reached the exit for Inwood. Then he took the off-ramp and headed south toward the river.

Ellis County, Texas

2011

Raul Delgado padded across the wood floor and peered outside. His unmarked squad car sat in the gravel driveway, gleaming in the summer sun.

He was at Bobby’s ranch.

The rains had been good that year, so the pastures were green, dotted with cows that were fat and healthy-looking. The cattle kept their heads low, chewing on grass, tails swishing at flies.

Bobby, nearly seventy and with a heart condition, lived in Dallas in order to be close to his doctors and the bar he’d opened years before, Sam Browne’s. The cattle operation was run by a neighbor, the house still furnished but unoccupied.

Raul was wearing a pair of boxer shorts, nothing else.

His suit and gun belt were on a chair. The chair sat underneath a Nirvana poster, the edges curling with age.

Junie lay on the bed. A tangled sheet covered her from the waist down, bare breasts exposed to the sunlight filtering into her childhood room.

On the bedside table was a nearly empty bottle of chardonnay and two glasses. Junie’d had most of it, Raul just a taste.

“Come back to bed,” Junie said.

Raul stared at the endless horizon. No clouds in a pewter sky.

“You want some more wine?” Junie poured herself another slug.

“I have to go.”

“Aw, really?” Her tone was pouty. “Don’t you want to stay for a while longer?”

Raul didn’t reply. But he made no move to put on his clothes either. Instead he turned and looked at her.

Junie was thirty-nine.

In the years since they’d met, she’d made a life that Raul would have never imagined.

Her fourth divorce was final a few months ago. Despite repeated attempts, she could never get pregnant again, not after the miscarriage during her second marriage.

She flitted around the peripheries of the North Dallas social swirl, an environment that she could ill afford. Charity fund-raisers and fashion galas, usually as the guest of her aunt, who was increasingly reluctant to pay. Girls’ trips to places like Cabo and New Orleans, weekend getaways that she financed with MasterCard.

An artificial existence that left Raul bewildered. He donated his time and money to a variety of progressive causes—environmental charities, the ACLU, immigration reform. When he mentioned these organizations to Junie, she looked at him like he was speaking Korean.

They inhabited the same city but were worlds apart.

Despite her obsession with cosmetic surgery and the latest Botox treatments, neither of which she’d availed herself of as of yet, she was still beautiful, at least in Raul’s view.

Her face was unlined, stomach taut, breasts firm. The eyes, however, showed her age. Not so much sad as they were weary. Except when she’d been drinking. Then they were animated like the old days, alive with the possibility that something marvelous lay ahead.

He turned away. Stared outside again.

A few moments passed.

From the other side of the room came the rustle of sheets, the creak of bedsprings. Then bare feet padding on the floor.

An instant later her breasts pressed against his back, arms around his stomach. Lips to his ears. Whispering.

“Don’t you want to fuck me again, Raul?”

He could smell her—perfume, sweat, and wine.

“I want to do it hard this time.”
She ran a finger underneath the waistband of his boxers.
“Fuck me hard, Raul. Real hard.”

He closed his eyes as his body responded. “Please. Don’t talk like that.”

She chuckled, nipped his ear.
“Tough-guy cop doesn’t like dirty words.”

They’d been meeting like this for two months. They weren’t dating. They didn’t have dinner together, no nights out at the movies.

Just the sex.

Fuck buddies, that’s what Junie called them.

Raul had run into her at Parkland Hospital, the location of her Junior League volunteer placement. He’d been there with Tremont Washington, the boy he’d met at the state fair a few months before. Tremont had a twisted ankle.

The next night she’d showed up at his condo. Three minutes later, they’d been in the bedroom, tossing clothes every which way.

Lately, they’d taken to meeting at the ranch, away from prying eyes. Neither could say why they wanted to keep their relationship secret. Just that they did.

Perhaps it had something to do with Tremont Washington. Could it be that they didn’t want him to know about their status as . . . fuck buddies? Or was it because they didn’t want Bobby to know?

Raul had no idea; they never talked about it. He just knew that both of them had made a conscious but unspoken decision to keep their activities secret.

He looked at his watch. He would have to hurry if he wanted to get back to the office before he picked up Tremont for dinner.

He’d been spending a lot of time with the boy, taking him to school, buying him stuff, trying to make the child’s passage in life a little easier.

Junie had been around for much of that, their only activity together that didn’t involve getting naked.

She treated Tremont like an exotic piece of art. Fragile, likely to break. Interesting only in the abstract sense, like a vase in a museum. She was distant with the boy and Raul couldn’t tell if it was because she was afraid of feeling something for him or if the maternal instinct had been forced out of her by the death of her own mother when she was a child.