Maybe now was the time to ask him about the dent on the front left.
“It’s a really nice car,” I said.
“My pride and joy.”
“What happened to your-”
“Oh, fuck,” Esteban interrupted and hit the brakes. Sheriff Briggs’s shiny black Escalade pulled to a halt next to us. To my surprise I found that my hand was shaking. He wasn’t on Ricky’s list but that man made me nervous.
The Escalade flashed its lights.
“What does he want?” Esteban groaned, turned off the engine, and zipped the window.
Sheriff Briggs and Klein, his skinny, nasty-looking deputy, got out of the Escalade. Unlike yesterday Briggs was in full uniform. Black boots, dark green trousers, green shirt with a gold badge on it, dark green cowboy hat, black leather jacket, nightstick, flashlight, gun. The hat flipped me. Made me think, Mierde, I’m in America.
Briggs leaned into the driver’s-side window of the Range Rover and took off his sunglasses. He stared at Angela and me in the middle seat before turning his attention to Esteban.
“Seem in an awful hurry,” he said.
“I’m running late,” Esteban replied.
“Hmmm,” Sheriff Briggs said, then caught my gaze and smiled.
“Morning, ma’am,” he said.
“Good morning, Sheriff,” I said in English.
“How do you like our little community now that you’ve had some time to adjust?” Briggs asked.
“It’s very beautiful,” I said.
“That it is, that it is,” he replied.
“Excuse me, Sheriff, but I really should get going. As you can imagine, today is not a good day to be understaffed,” Esteban said.
Briggs nodded. “Oh yeah, almost forgot, how many did you lose?” he asked.
“Apparently seven got taken to the detention center in Denver. My lawyer thinks we can get one of them out tonight, Inez-she’s engaged to an American-and there’s another girl, Juanita, who Flora says is pregnant, so we might be able to get her out too. Won’t release any of the men, of course. And that means we’re still shorthanded at the site on Pearl.”
Sheriff Briggs turned to his deputy. “Things are looking bad for our buddy Esteban here,” he said.
“Looks like it, Sheriff,” Klein replied.
“Not enough men to do the job,” Sheriff Briggs went on, still talking to the deputy.
“But Sheriff, didn’t you conquer the town of Subhan in Kuwait with just half a platoon?” Klein said, clearly having heard that particular story a couple of hundred times.
“I surely did, A.J., but it’s well known that half a platoon of United States Marines can do just about anything in this world.”
“Amen to that,” Klein replied.
“Your Mexican, though. Takes a whole army of Mexicans to do the job of a few white men, ain’t that right, Deputy?” Briggs said.
“I believe that you’re speaking the truth,” the deputy responded. “From the halls of Montezuma, as the song says.”
“From the halls of Montezuma indeed,” Sheriff Briggs agreed with a laugh.
Esteban was becoming impatient. “Sheriff Briggs, it is always a pleasure to see you, but today we are very late and some of my clients will need reassur-”
Sheriff Briggs cut him off. “Get out of the car, Esteban.”
“What is this about?”
“Just get out of the car.”
Angela started to undo her seat belt.
“No, no, you two little ladies can sit tight,” Sheriff Briggs said.
Esteban got out of the car. The deputy turned him around and put Esteban’s hands on the roof of the Range Rover.
“Nice monkey suit,” Klein said, and both he and the sheriff laughed.
“Look, what is this about?” Esteban protested.
“Shut the fuck up!” Sheriff Briggs growled and cracked the end of his nightstick into the back of Esteban’s legs.
The sickening crunch of metal on bone.
Esteban ate asphalt.
Sheriff Briggs hit him again, catching him twice more on a defensively raised arm.
“You can’t do this to me, I’m a U.S. citizen,” Esteban pleaded.
“Do what I damn well please in my town,” Sheriff Briggs said, and he kicked Esteban in the legs. “Show him, A.J.”
Klein reached into his pocket and threw a plastic bag that landed on Esteban’s chest.
I sat up in the seat to get a better view.
“What is this?” Esteban groaned.
“That is five-hundred-dollar-an-ounce British Columbian hydro-fucking-ponic quality four-twenty.”
Esteban tried to get up. Klein drew his gun and pointed it at him. I caught Esteban’s eye through the car window. He stared at me. He didn’t look scared and I gave him what I hoped was an encouraging nod.
“Is that what this is about?” Esteban asked.
“Yeah,” Sheriff Briggs said. “That is what this is all about. Our deal was for cocaine from Mexico and you’ve been dealing ice and meth and pot, bringing it in from fucking Canada. Who do you think you are, amigo? Where do you think you are? Nothing escapes me, Esteban. Nothing. I know everything that goes on in this town. Everything you or anybody else tries to do, I fucking know it. Never forget that.”
Esteban got to his feet and rubbed his forearm.
“Is that why you brought in the INS? To fuck me up?” Esteban asked.
The sheriff spat. “The feds don’t tell us when they’re coming. That’s nothing to do with me.”
Esteban nodded and closed his eyes for a second. Thinking. He opened them again and forced a smile.
“I’ll come clean with you, Sheriff. You’re right about this. It’s an angle. I brought in the first small shipment as a trial. An experiment. I was going to tell you if it worked out.”
“Apparently it has worked out,” Sheriff Briggs said.
“Yeah. So far. Risky work, though. The real stuff is coming in tomorrow and then every month, once a month. I’m bringing in ice and pot. Good stuff. With your approval, of course. I was going to tell you all about it,” Esteban said quickly.
“Sure you were,” Briggs said.
Esteban appeared unfazed. “I can show you the paperwork. I’m being straight with you. I’m laying out thirty thousand capital for an expected hundred-thousand take. That’s seventy net. I can give you twenty on this and every batch.”
Sheriff Briggs nodded and hit his nightstick into his hand. “Thirty-five,” Briggs said.
“Thirty-five? I’m taking all the risk,” Esteban protested.
“Thirty-five and I want it by the end of the week.”
“That’s impossible! That’s a month’s supply, it’ll take me weeks to deal it. I’m not unloading to some middleman, I’m selling it carefully to a very select group of people.”
Sheriff Briggs looked at Deputy Klein. Klein grinned and hit Esteban hard in the gut with his nightstick.
Esteban staggered backward, caught himself on the hood of the Range Rover, bent over, and threw up part of a croissant and coffee.
“I guess you didn’t hear me. Thirty-five by the end of the week,” Briggs said softly.
Esteban grunted.
Sheriff Briggs nodded at his deputy. “See, I told you this was nothing to worry about. I was sure we’d be able to come to an arrangement, even if it is a bad time,” he said.
Sheriff Briggs got back into his Escalade.
“What about the four-twenty?” the deputy asked.
“Oh, take the pot, I’m sure our old buddy Steve won’t mind,” Sheriff Briggs said, his dark eyes wide with pleasure.
The two cops got into the prowler, revved the engine for ten aggressive seconds, and drove off along Pearl.
No one had seen the incident, except possibly the Starbucks workers, and they knew better than to say anything about it.
“How often does this happen?” I whispered to Angela.
She put her finger to her lips. “You don’t have to worry about any of this. We’ll talk later,” she whispered.
Esteban said nothing when he got back into the car. He dabbed his face with a silk handkerchief, got his breath back, and started the engine. He didn’t look seriously hurt but I saw that he touched the wheel only with his left hand. In Cuba, where no vehicles had power steering or automatic gear-boxes, he couldn’t have driven at all, but here he managed.