SPY IN THE SADDLE (7 page)

“There aren’t.”

“We have to check for ourselves. Are you armed, sir?”

“What the hell do you think? People are shooting up the damn place.”

“Please, put your weapon down and step back from the door.”

Seconds ticked by until the guy made up his mind and they heard the metal of his gun click on the tile floor, heard him move back.

Shep pushed in and kicked the weapon to Keith with the back of his boot.

The man was in his mid-fifties, nearly bald with a handlebar mustache. He was tanned, but not weather-beaten like most cowboys and ranch hands who worked outside. His mouth was pressed into an angry line. His right wrist was bandaged, bloodstains on the white gauze.

Shep’s gaze flew back up to his face, his eyes narrowing. He hadn’t gotten a good look at the trailer park, but this one could definitely be the guy who’d ridden shotgun with Wagner. The one who’d shot Lilly before Lilly shot his hand.

“What’s your name?”

“Shane Rosci.”

“All right, Shane. I’m going to check your place to be on the safe side. You stay where you are.” Shep moved forward, farther into the apartment, while Keith stayed with the man.

The place was a one-bedroom efficiency, clothes on the floor, dirty dishes in the sink. Didn’t look as if the half-open closet held any other clothes but his. Seemed as if he lived alone here.

Shep checked for other weapons and drugs, signs of any kind of illegal activity. He went back to the living room when he didn’t find anything. Didn’t mean the guy wasn’t a user or a dealer. He could have flushed everything when he heard the police sirens.

Shep nodded toward the bandages. “What happened to your hand?”

“Burned it cooking.”

“How do you know Doug Wagner?”

“Who?” Shane’s eyes went a little too wide with supposed innocence.

“The man who came here to shoot you.”

He looked away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Shep shifted his weight, tired of playing games. “Then you don’t mind going to the police station in the back of the car with him?”

The man took a step back, outrage flashing across his face. “You can’t arrest me. I haven’t done anything.”

“How about the murder of Jimmy Fishburn yesterday?”

The man paled, sweat forming on his forehead. “I didn’t—”

“Are you involved in smuggling?”

“No. I’m an honest citizen. I swear. I work at the electronics store.”

“What do you know about the Coyote?”

“Who?”

“Why did Doug Wagner come here today to shoot you?”

The bluster leaked out of the guy, his shoulders going down. “I owe him money.”

“For what?”

The man’s gaze darted from Shep to Keith then back as a look of misery came across his face. “I want to talk to my lawyer.”

Keith stepped up to him. “You can call him from the car. We’re taking you in for further questioning. Let’s go.” He herded the guy out of the apartment as the man loudly protested.

They got down to the parking lot in time to see Ryder drive away with Wagner. Apparently, he’d won the argument with the police. Then the deputy sheriff came into view, and Shep realized why the cops had backed off. As Jamie’s girlfriend, Bree had some idea of what their team was doing here. She and Jamie had probably made some kind of a deal.

She came right over. “Everything okay?”

Shep put the man into the pickup. Keith moved over to the other side so the guy couldn’t skip out that way.

“We’re taking him over to the office.” Wagner would be at the E.R. for a while with his shoulder, which meant they could have the interrogation room for Shane.

Bree raised a slim eyebrow. “I assume at one point I’m going to be updated on what’s going on here?”

“That’s not my decision. Sorry.” If Jamie trusted her, so did he, but he wasn’t the one setting the confidentiality level of the op.

She shook her head with a long-suffering look and waved them off.

Unfortunately, as it turned out an hour or so later, Shane had no knowledge of the Coyote. He owed money to Wagner for drugs. When he couldn’t pay, Wagner insisted on his help with a job. Wagner had told him they were going to send a “message” to some guy. He’d said nobody would be at the trailer.

Shane had no idea they’d killed someone until he saw it on the morning news. He’d called Wagner in a panic, who then showed up to shoot him.

“I’m innocent here.” He was sweating buckets now. “I’m as much a victim as that Jimmy guy was. I swear. I did nothing.”

“You shot at me and my partner when we went after you,” Shep reminded him. “You hit her, actually.”

“You weren’t in a cop car. How in hell was I supposed to know who you were? You can’t spit around here without hitting a gangbanger. I thought you were maybe the guy whose stupid trailer we hit, all mad about it.”

After leaning on him pretty hard for another hour, Shep was tempted to believe him. He called Bree to come pick him up. He’d be charged with Jimmy’s murder and whatever could be proven on the drug angle with Wagner.

Once they’d left, Keith and Shep drove back to the office for their own cars so they could head back to their apartments for some shut-eye before their border shift started.

Their break passed pretty fast. Long before Shep was ready for it, they were on patrol duty. Didn’t seem as if they ever really slept lately, just ran from one task to the other.

“Wouldn’t have minded being in on the Wagner interrogation,” he told Keith over the radio as they drove along the Rio Grande, each in their own SUV.

“They’ll lean on him hard.” Keith was a couple of miles ahead of him, out of sight.

Yes, they would. His team was the best of the best. Whatever the bastard had, they’d get it out of him. He thought about that as he scanned the area, taking advantage of the moonlight, switching to night-vision goggles when something moved and he needed to see better.

But they saw nothing all night other than deer and a couple of stray armadillos. Plenty of time to think about the op, and plenty of time to think about Lilly, unfortunately.

He hated the idea of her at The Yellow Armadillo, drunk ranch hands drooling all over her. He felt responsible for her. His first instinct was to protect her. Except their relationship now was completely different than when he’d been her parole officer.

In more than one way.

Why in hell did she have to throw herself into his arms in that back alley, dammit? Now he couldn’t get the shape of her, the feel of her pressed against him, out of his mind.

She didn’t want his protection. Too bad. She would have it anyway.

But other than for the purpose of saving her life, if it became necessary, he wasn’t going to touch her again. Ever. Because it was wrong. And because—

The hell of the thing was, he wasn’t sure if he could stop again once he started.

Chapter Five

Since Lilly got the gig, she was invited back onstage to sing the last set.

The audience was pretty rowdy by then, The Yellow Armadillo still packed at close to two in the morning. Brian should be happy. The men certainly looked as if they’d had plenty to drink. The cash register should be close to bursting.

She watched her inebriated audience as she sang, searching for any possible illegal activity. She tried to figure out who the regulars were, and kept an eye on who went out to the back hallway that led to the basement, how long they stayed, if they returned.

She wished she could afford risking another try at that basement door after she sang the last song, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t get caught twice in the same evening. She got the gig, would have access to the bar again tomorrow. That was sufficient progress for her first day.

She wondered how Shep and Keith had made out with Wagner. Not that either of them had thought to call and let her know.

She finished her last song to enthusiastic applause, gave a smile and a quick bow before running off the stage, ignoring the catcalls. She thanked the band as they came off the stage behind her, bringing some of their instruments and going back for the rest.

She smiled at the keyboard player, Sam. “Can I give you a hand?”

The band was here two nights a week. They must have seen a thing or two. She could do worse than getting friendly with them.

The fiftysomething man grinned at her. “Sure.”

“Is it always like this?” she asked as she helped him take apart the keyboard stand.

“On a good night.”

“And on a bad?”

“Fistfights. Or some idiot will pull a gun.”

She tried to look scandalized. “I hope the cops don’t shut us down on a night when I’m singing. I really need the money.”

Sam shrugged. “Brian doesn’t call the cops. He has people to deal with guys who get out of hand. Shorty’s got a mother of a rifle behind the bar.”

She’d bet he did. And then there was the meat mountain if Shorty needed backup.

“You guys make a pretty good band.” A compliment could go a long way toward establishing goodwill, and maybe a connection.

“You’re not bad yourself,” he said as he walked out back with his equipment.

The back door stood propped open for the band, letting in some fresh air. One of his buddies had pulled the band’s van up to the back door. The alleyway was just wide enough to allow a single vehicle.

She helped them load. It gave her another few minutes to hang out with them. Then they were done and getting into the cab. “Hey, thanks. See you tomorrow night.”

“You bet.”

The main area of the bar was mostly cleared out by the time she went back in. She sidled up to the bar and asked for some ice water. She was hot and sweaty from jumping around onstage, but she saved icy drinks for when she was done. Anything cold constricted her throat and made singing more difficult.

Shorty put a glass of ice water in front of her. He gave a lopsided smile. “Damn if you didn’t make me feel twenty years younger.”

She narrowed her eyes as she watched him. “Are you trying to tell me you’re over twenty?”

He gave a booming laugh. “You’re all right for a drifter, you know that?”

“I prefer to think of myself as a woman of the world.”

He snorted.

She drank. “How long have you been working at The Armadillo?”

He shook his head. “Think I might have been born behind this bar. Mama used to waitress here.”

“You like working for Brian?” she asked carefully, glancing at the jumble of ads on the column by the bar, pretending that the question wasn’t important, just something to say.

Shorty shrugged as he put up the clean glasses. “Boss man’s the boss man. They come and go every couple of years.”

No big surprise there. Bars and restaurants changed hands frequently.

She grinned. “I’m just glad he likes the way I sing.” She made sure she sounded super enthusiastic, as if this was her big break.

The meat mountain she’d encountered in the basement slogged by, nodded at Shorty. “Wagner came back yet?”

“Haven’t seen him.”

Lilly waited until the man walked away before she asked, “Who is he?” He’d been down in the basement with Wagner. Maybe he was Wagner’s connection to the Coyote.

Shorty turned back to his work. “He delivers the booze for Brian,” he said over his shoulder.

A name would have been better, something Lilly could have run through the database back at the office. But she didn’t ask. Not tonight. Asking too many questions would jeopardize her cover.

She hung around until the very end, observing the dynamics among the staff, noting who was friends with whom, who goofed off, who took their job seriously. Mostly everyone just went about their job. They all looked tired. As hard as she watched, she didn’t see anything suspicious.

Yet she felt that she wasn’t wrong about the place. Something was going on here, something not quite on the up-and-up. She wished she had more time to get to the bottom of it.

Tomorrow night she would be back to sing a full set. She would get meat mountain’s name. And she would find a way to get down into that basement.

Brian emerged from his office and called to Shorty as he strode to the front door. “Don’t forget to put up the notice.”

Shorty shook out the dishcloth. “I’ll do it as soon as I’m done with the glasses.”

“Thanks.” The manager said good-night to the staff, then left for the night, leaving them to finish the work.

Lilly swallowed the last of her drink and pushed her glass to the dirty pile. “What notice?”

“We’ll be closed on the first. Need to have some electric work done. Boss wants to put in a bigger air conditioner, but first we have to upgrade the wiring. There’ll be people here working on that. We won’t have power most of the day.”

“That’s tough.” She glanced at the air-conditioning system, which looked fine to her and worked okay tonight. “Nobody likes to lose a day’s income. Hope the electrician works fast.” But her mind was turning the information this way and that, trying to see if it might fit the rest of the puzzle pieces in her head.

The bar would be closed on the first of October. The day when those terrorists were to sneak across the border.

She didn’t believe in coincidences.

* * *

S
HEP
DIDN
’
T
CALL
Ryder until he got off his shift Friday morning. He’d wanted to give the guys at the office time to work on Wagner.

“Did he talk?”

“Idiots like him, they’re only big boys while they have their big guns. Once we had him in interrogation and convinced him of the gravity of his situation, he would have given up his mother for a deal.”

“His mother is the Coyote?”

“Funny guy,” Ryder groused on the other end, probably rolling his eyes. “Anyway, the order to kill Jimmy came through a man at The Yellow Armadillo. A guy who goes by the name Tank. Know him?”

“I’ll find him. What else?”

“Wagner got ten grand for the hit, also through Tank.”

“What was he doing at the bar last night?”

“He says he just went for a drink. Maybe he needed to fortify himself before the hit.”

Shep chewed on that for a minute before saying, “Lilly will be at the bar tonight.”

Ryder grunted on the other end. “I’m not any happier about that than you are. She called to let me know about her undercover stint. Next time she does something like this, she better clear it with me first.”

She better not ever do anything like this again.

“She said the bar will be closed on the first. Supposedly they’re upgrading their wiring,” Ryder said.

“Interesting timing.”

“That’s what I thought. The bar might be first stop for the men coming across the border. Come across, lie low for a day to rest, move up north from there. That basement you were talking about has potential. Lilly wants to look into it.”

“I want to switch shifts so I can keep an eye on her.”

“Jamie asked, too.”

“Keith and I already have a cover established there.”

“Fine.” Ryder paused. “You go to the bar. But not Keith. We have a new gang-related lead out of San Antonio that might take us to the Coyote. I want Keith to be working that angle. But if you want to spend some time looking around The Yellow Armadillo, we can set that up.” He hesitated for a second. “Just don’t let yourself get distracted.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Good. That’s what I wanted to hear.”

Shep drove back to his apartment for some sleep after they hung up, then spent a couple of hours at the office before heading to the bar that evening. The band started playing at eight.

He went early to get a table that would give him a good view of most of the bar and the stage, and the opening to the hallway that led to the basement and the exit door to the alley. He ordered a beer and nursed it slowly as he observed the people around him and listened in on conversations.

When the bar began to fill up and he could do it without drawing attention, he headed to the back hallway. He wanted to check out the basement Lilly had discovered. Finding a way down there and figuring out Tank’s identity was his mission for the evening.

The band was coming in from the back, carrying their equipment through the hallway and up to the stage.

Shep moved to the basement door, as if waiting for someone, blocked the lock with his body, and tried to pick it behind his back as people hustled around with microphone stands and extension cords, drums and whatever.

A small click told him he was getting somewhere. Once the door was open, he’d wait for a moment when the hallway was empty, then he’d quickly pull in there. Nobody paid much attention to him. The band members were focused on their equipment and hurrying with the setup, which would work in his favor.

But before he could have popped the lock, footsteps drummed behind him and the door opened, whacking him in the back.

He stepped aside. “Easy there.”

The young guy who came up shot a dark look at him. He had tattoos running up both arms, his shirt covered in dust. Looked as if he’d been working hard. Doing what?

“Tank down there?” Shep improvised.

The kid had been reaching back to close the door, but the question stopped him. He stuck his pointy chin out, trying to look tough. “Whatcha want with him?”

Shep kept his face impassive. “That’s my business, ain’t it? Wagner said he’d be here.”

The kid shrugged then jerked his head toward the stairs. “Lock the door behind you.”

Shep didn’t. He wasn’t about to close his only avenue of escape, not when he had no idea what he was walking into. He might need to come back up this way in a hurry.

The stairs were badly lit. He couldn’t have seen down all the way anyway, since there was a turn in the staircase. He plodded down, going as if he had every right to be there. No sense in being tentative and looking as if he was sneaking around.

The basement room he reached was maybe twenty by twenty, four doors leading into other rooms, bare cement brick walls, cracked cement floor. Open boxes of booze stood everywhere. He couldn’t see anyone, but he could hear people talking in one of the rooms to his left.

“Anybody who’d put a grand on that kid is an idiot. He’s a greenhorn.”

“He’s been competing all year. Winning.”

“Where? Podunk, New Mexico? He ain’t never ridden in a rodeo as big as this. There’re a hell of a lot more serious riders here. Kid won’t stack up. You put any money on him, you’ll be losin’ it.”

While he had the chance, Shep passed by the nearest shelf and pressed a bug on the bottom of it, out of sight. He stepped away just in time. Another skinny, tattooed guy was coming from the back room, this one bald with a row of metal in his left ear.

The kid stopped in his tracks. “Who the hell are you?”

“Howdy.” Shep stepped forward, then cleared his throat as if he was nervous. “Someone said I could find Tank down here.”

At that, a mountain of a man appeared, his eyes narrowing as he looked Shep over. Okay, that had to be Tank. He looked as if he could take a guy out just by sitting on him.

He was breathing a little hard, probably from whatever they were doing in the back. His small eyes narrowed in his pockmarked face. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Shep glanced at the tattooed kid, then back to Tank. The two must have gone to the same charm school. “Can we talk someplace private?”

The mountain jerked his head at the kid, and the kid retreated into the back room he’d come from.

Tank stayed where he stood. “Talk.”

Shep shifted his weight onto one foot and tried to look sheepish. Not an easy task for someone who was commando to the core. He didn’t have much practice. But maybe he could pull it off in the dim light. “I’m here for the rodeo. Thing is, I really wanna win it. I’m hoping you could help me.”

Tank glared. “Who the hell told you that?”

“Guy I had a beer with here yesterday. Wagner.”

“Can’t keep his mouth shut now? What the hell?”

“I need this, man.” Shep shifted his weight again. “I’m not from around here. I don’t know who to ask. If you could help...”

Tank raised an eyebrow, waited a couple of seconds. “You got money?”

Shep dug into his pocket and came up with a roll of twenties. He’d come prepared.

The man still looked more aggravated than excited with the new business. “You stay here.”

He went back into the room he’d come from. A couple of minutes passed before he returned with a Ziploc bag of white pills, six of them. Probably performance-enhancing drugs. Shep wasn’t about to ask questions. He needed to look as if he did this all the time.

He looked at the pills. “That’d be perfect. Just what I need.”

The lab could figure out what they were. If they couldn’t get Tank on smuggling, at least they could get him on the drugs. The man named his price and Shep paid it.

“Thanks.” He held the bag as if the pills were made of gold at the very least, careful not to put his fingers where Tank’s had been. He didn’t want to damage the fingerprints. “I really appreciate this.”