The Pallbearers

Chapter 50

By the time I got home it was after ten o'clock. As I was undressing for bed, I filled Alexa in on what had transpired with Faskin and Westfall. When I finished, she told me she'd been on the Internet since I'd left doing research on the Tohono O'odham Indian Reservation.

"The Tohono Indians are one of the Arizona Mesa Tribes, like the Hopis and Apaches. They're extremely poor, and most of their reservation is a rough, unsettled place," she said. "They've got a big Mexican illegal-immigration and drug-smuggling problem. This isn't just a footnote, it's a huge deal. The seven Mesa tribes spent ten million last year on border problems."

"Really?" I stopped undressing and looked over at her.

"The Tohono reservation is a big place," she went on. "About the size of Connecticut. It spans a seventy-five-mile border with Mexico, 244 and because its on both sides of the border, its become a billion-dollar-a-year smuggling corridor. I checked with our drug-enforcement guys downtown, and they know all about Tohono O odham. Homeland sends out briefing reports on it about once a month.

"According to Captain Summerland, there are over a hundred and sixty crossing points. Thirty of those have no barriers at all. The coyotes are running drugs and braceros unchecked.

"The Mexicans who are being smuggled in are so hungry and poor, they're looting everything the Indians own that isn't tied down. Stealing livestock and vehicles. Getting into gun fights with the Indian property owners. The tribal police are completely overrun with these shootings. According to Captain Summerland, it's the biggest corridor for illegal immigration and drugs in the U. S."

I sat on the bed and looked at her. "So does the drug and immigration thing tie in to Pop's murder somehow, or is it just a coincidence?"

"Aren't you the one who always says there are no coincidences in law enforcement?"

"So what's going on then?"

"I don't know. I called the main desk at the Talking Stick Hotel and Casino. I told them I was planning to come there on my vacation but was concerned because I'd read on the Internet that there were gunfights taking place between Indian landowners and smugglers. They assured me that the Talking Stick Resort is walled off and totally safe.

"The reservation has built a nine-foot-high barrier all the way around the two-hundred-acre hotel and golf course. The resort is heavily patrolled, and there are absolutely no guns allowed on the premises."

"Does that include us?"

"I think so. I asked, and she said no exceptions."

I sat there for a long moment, trying to absorb it.

"Drugs," I said softly, trying to get that to somehow jibe. How did a mill ion-dollar embezzlement at Huntington House that led to Walt's murder also link to a billion-dollar drug corridor on an Arizona Indian reservation? I couldn't see the connection. My guess was, there wasn't one. But that didn't change the fact that, if I wanted to bust O'Shea, I had to go there. Making that arrest without jurisdiction on Tohono O'odham land only made it about ten times more difficult.

I finished getting undressed, then got into bed. Alexa joined me, and we turned off the lights.

"This doesn't feel right, does it?" she finally said in the dark.

"No," I said softly. "It doesn't."

As I lay there I kept turning it over in my mind. E. C. Mesa's connection to Pop's murder had always bothered me. I had other questions as well. Why would a rich, influential guy who buys and sells companies entertain himself with such a violent hobby as MMA fighting? Of course, there was nothing that said a multimillionaire couldn't have a fascination with combat arts, but nonetheless, it felt strange that he was hanging with O'Shea and Calabro and all the other thugs in that gym.

I also wondered why he was arranging challenge matches for his fight team two states away in Arizona, in a casino that sat on one of the biggest smuggling corridors on the U. S.-Mexican border. I didn't like where this seemed to be heading.

Instead of answers I was just turning up more questions, which is never a good sign this late in an investigation.

I finally forced my mind to stop dancing with it and tried to get some sleep. I was almost there when the bedside phone jangled. I rolled over and answered it.

"Scully?" a familiar voice said.

"Jack?"

Alexa propped herself up and looked over at me.

"Dude, we got trouble."

"Tell me."

"I'm in Arizona…"

"At the Talking Stick Casino?"

There was a moment, then Jack said, "Yeah. How'd you know?"

"I'm all-seeing. Talk to me, Jack."

"I'm with Team Ultima. I'm their unofficial roadie or gofer or some damn thing. You owe me for this, dude. These guys are a buncha steroid-popping morons. It's like hanging with the Sasquatch 'lowel Snap team. They're here in Arizona training for an event match tomorrow.

"At eight o'clock tonight I'm playing craps with a few of them in the casino and in walks Diamond Peterson. She's looking for O'Shea. He didn't come to Arizona with us so I didn't think he was here. But Chris called him 011 a cell, and ten minutes later in he walks.

"Once he and Diamond hook up, they have a big screaming match. About as subtle as an inmate wedding. Security comes. It finally got calmed down, and O'Shea leaves with Diamond in tow. I don't know where he took her because I'm stuck getting beer and pretzels for these shitheads. I had to wait 'til they finally crashed half an hour ago so I could sneak away and call."

"What is it?" Alexa asked.

I covered the receiver with my left hand. "Jack's at the Talking Stick. Diamond just showed looking for O'Shea, who's also there. She may be in trouble."

Alexa was out of bed and getting dressed before I finished the last sentence.

"Okay, Jack. You got a number where I can call you back?"

"I'm not giving you my fucking number. These guys are all over me. You call and they pick it up, I'm toast. Just take care of this. I'm not staying in the same place with most of them anyway cause there's not enough room. These fuckheads have me and Brian Bravo sleeping in a reservation trailer. A total shit hole. Here comes Calabro. Gotta go." And he hung up.

I slammed down the receiver and started grabbing clothes. I still hadn't mastered getting dressed with one arm, so Alexa was way ahead of me.

"You think Westfall and Faskin are in Tucson yet?" she asked.

"I don't know. They should be, but I'm not sending those two donkeys in unsupervised."

Alexa was completely dressed while I was still fumbling with the laces of my tennis shoes. I was having trouble getting all ten fingers to work together.

"Let me help you with those," she said, and knelt down, tying them quickly.

When she finished she stood. "What do you want to do?"

"About what?"

"The others."

I must have been looking at her like she'd just lost her mind because she said, "We're kind of shorthanded. We could use some help, don't you think?"

"The pallbearers?" I said, astounded she would even suggest such a thing.

"Think about it. We don't have much time if Diamond is really in trouble. Sabas is good backup. Vicki is tough as rhinoceros skin, and Seriana's an Army Ranger. We don't have any jurisdiction in Arizona, let alone on an Indian reservation. Out there you and I are just civilians. Since you don't completely trust Faskin and Westfall, then maybe these guys are our best choice."

I stood and gathered my jacket, keys, and money while I thought about it. I didn't want to take them, but I couldn't quite come up with a good reason why. Was Sabas right? Was I just being selfish? Was I using my cop status as an excuse to shut everybody else out?

"It's what Walt would want," Alexa prodded.

I knew she was right. He'd picked all six of us, not just me. "I'll call them," I said. "While I do that, you need to get us some transportation. The last commercial flights have already left. Unless you can scare us up something from the Air Support Division, we can't leave 'til morning."

Til get the chief's King Air," she said. "He's not using it."

I called all of Sabas's numbers but didn't get an answer. Everything went straight to voicemail. I left a message to call. I wasn't about to give the reason because I still didn't trust him not to take matters into his own hands.

Next, I spoke to Vicki and told her what had happened and what we planned to do. She didn't comment but said that she'd meet us at Van Nuys Airport in forty minutes. I gave her the hangar number for the LAPD Flight Department.

Then I called Seriana. When I finished telling her what had happened, she asked, "What kind of ordnance are you bringing?"

"Not much. Couple of 9s. But we might have to surrender our weapons at the reservation gate. Alexa checked, and they have a strict no-guns rule on resort property."

"I don't think it's smart to surrender your weapon, sir," she said.

"We'll just have to see how it goes when we get there."

While Alexa was on the phone, I went out to her car, opened the glove compartment, and pulled out her little Bobcat.25.

An idea had been festering ever since O'Shea broke my arm and I'd been sitting in that ER, wondering how I could deal with that thug given my growing list of debilitating injuries.

I went back inside the house and into the kitchen. I could hear Alexa still on the phone. It sounded like she had successfully arranged the flight because she was asking about ETAs.

I got a baggie out of a kitchen drawer, then headed into the master bath, where I opened the medicine cabinet and pulled down the cast tape I'd stolen from Dr. Ray's supply shelf in the ER exam room. Next, I turned on the faucet and filled the washbasin, putting the roll of tape into the water.

While it was soaking, I popped the barrel up and checked the breach on the little.25 automatic. Alexa had loaded it before we'd gone into the Hayloft. The clip was full, and there was still one in the breach.

I put the safety on, then stuffed the little palm-sized subcompact into the plastic baggie to protect it from the wet fiberglass. After the gun was in the bag, I palmed it into my right hand so that the barrel didn't go any further than my first row of knuckles. I pulled the wet tape out of the sink and started to wrap my wrist and palm to cover the gun. It was tough going, and I was making a mess.

"What the hell are you doing?" I heard Alexa say. I turned and she was standing in the bathroom door, hands on her hips, staring at me.

"Come give me a hand with this," I said.

She walked over and looked down at my project. "Are you out of your mind? You fire a gun inside an enclosed cast and the gas recoil will blow all your fingers off."

"That's something to bear in mind," I said, then handed her the gauze pad.

"I'm not doing that," she said.

"Honey, as you and everyone else continues to remind me, I've been destroyed by this ape twice in two days. Sad as it is for me to admit, I don't think I can take Rick O'Shea, let alone five more just like him. Especially with this busted wing. You should applaud this. I'm finally choosing guile over guts. It's a first. A sign of emotional growth."

"What a load ofBS."

"Come on, help me out. If what you said is true, we're gonna have trouble packing guns into that resort as it is. Let's just call this my little insurance policy. What's it gonna hurt? Nobody's gonna check a cast for weapons. If it sets off a metal detector, I'll just say I have pins in there holding my bone together."

She cocked her head, looking at me askew.

"Honey, I promise I won't blow off my middle finger. I know how much you like that one."

She threw a wet washcloth at me but moved over and helped me finish the job.

When we were through, the Bobcat was safely hidden in the palm of my right hand. The new extended portion of the cast went down to my first set of knuckles, just the way Dr. Ray had wanted it to in the beginning.

I'd read the spec sheet when Alexa first bought the little Beretta. The seven-shot subcompact automatic was 4.9 inches long, nose to heel. It only weighed 11.5 ounces fully loaded and now fit invisibly under the wet fiberglass.

On my way out of the bedroom, I opened my dresser drawer and retrieved my Swiss Army knife. It had eleven different features. I slid the tool into my pocket, grabbed my Charter Arms Magnum Pug out of the bedside table, and clipped it on the left side of my belt. Then Alexa and I left the house.

When we arrived at the Air Support Division hangar an hour later, Vicki was already waiting. Our pilot was a crew cut in a flight suit named Justin Cooper-Coop, for short. He had flown Alexa before, and they went inside the Air Support Division office to pick a landing field in Tucson and file the flight plan.

Seriana pulled up while Alexa was still inside. She unloaded a medium-sized nylon duffel from her green van. There was a suspicious-looking sharp object poking the fabric on one side as she slung the bag over her shoulder and approached us, then put the duffel in the luggage compartment, which Coop had left open in the nose of the King Air.

"Whats in there?" Vicki asked her.

"Toys for boys," Seriana replied without humor.

Coop and Alexa came out of the FBO. He closed and latched the luggage bay as he said, "I've filed a flight plan for Tucson International Airport. With this southeast tailwind, we should be there in about an hour and thirty-six."

Ten minutes later, we were racing down the runway. The wheels came up, and we banked east into the cold night sky.