“Sorry, can’t do it. Impossible,” I finally said, shaking my head vehemently.
I waited until her jaw finished dropping.
“Only kidding,” I said. “Just a little tenacious-investigator humor. Let’s see what you’ve got, Agent Parker.”
CHAPTER 11
She hit some buttons that brought up a screen and then clicked on a video. It was black-and-white footage. Maybe military. It was an aerial shot of cars and trucks moving along an abandoned desert road.
“This footage is from exactly one week ago. It was taken from a high-altitude drone above Creel, Mexico, a tiny resort town near the Copper Canyon section of Chihuahua,” she said.
“The FBI flies high-altitude drones now?” I said. “In foreign countries?”
“No, but the air force does,” Emily said. “Is it that much of a shock that the military is involved in this, Mike? This is Homeland Security priority one. Just about everybody is involved.”
I absorbed that with a nod.
“Who’s in the cars?”
“We got intel that a high-level cartel meeting was taking place, so we had a plaza boss out of Río Bravo followed.”
“A plaza boss?” I said.
“A plaza boss controls the centers of the border towns where the drugs and the drug mules congregate. After the drugs make it up from the south, they use these plazas as staging areas where they can organize, distribute, and prepare the product for smuggling across the US border.”
The phalanx of cars pulled to a stop in front of a large, compoundlike building. What looked like tents were set up in the backyard. There were a large number of vehicles already there. There must have been fifty or sixty cars parked in a field beside the structure.
“It looks like a wedding,” I said.
“Almost,” Emily said. “It’s the quinceañera of the daughter of cartel leader Teodoro Salinas.”
I knew who Salinas was from the web news. He was the leader of the only cartel left that wasn’t under Perrine’s control.
Parker suddenly hit Fast-Forward on the video.
“Watch what happens.”
She hit Play again, and suddenly people were pouring out of the building, some of them running. There was a traffic jam in the parking lot as cars and trucks peeled out.
“A Mexican fire drill?” I said.
“It’s something. We don’t know exactly what. All we know is, our guy never came back for his car. Two of the other cars that were also left behind belonged to rivals of Perrine’s Los Salvajes organization. And Teodoro Salinas is missing. There’s been no word.”
“That is a mystery. You think Perrine had something to do with it? You think he was there?” I said.
“We’re not sure,” Emily said.
I stared at the screen.
“Well, let’s see. Three dirtbags enter, no dirtbags leave,” I said. “Then a bunch of people suddenly flee in panic. Sounds a lot like the Manuel Perrine that I’ve come to know and love.”
CHAPTER 12
“How long do you think we have to stay out here?” Ricky said, watching as the beat-up Wilson football Brian tossed to him flew over his head.
“Agent Parker’s car is still there, right? So at least until it leaves, dummy,” Brian said, gesturing for the ball.
Ricky searched for the ball in the tall grass. It had been almost an hour, and here they still were, out in the back “yard.” It was no yard. It was a field you couldn’t see the end of. It was the size of Central Park-Manhattan, maybe. It had been cool at first, but now it was just like everything else out here in nowhere land. Extremely boring.
“What do you think they’re talking about in there?” Ricky said.
“Probably how this place is too visible for us, and they need to send us somewhere really remote,” Brian said.
“This sucks,” Ricky said as he finally found the ball. “Even with the delay, you know Mary Catherine is going to want us to do our schoolwork anyway. I wanted to catch Matlock. Now it’ll be over by the time we’re done.”
“No,” Brian said. “What really sucks is that you actually care if you miss a stupid, crappy eighties show about an old guy.”
Jane, sitting with her back to the car shed, dropped her book and jumped up and intercepted Ricky’s return pass right before Brian could catch it.
“It could be worse,” she said.
“Give me the ball,” Brian said.
“How the hell could it be worse, Jane?” Ricky continued. “New York had its downsides, but I had, like, friends, you know? Things I liked to do. Now I’m a hick. We don’t even go to school! I mean, if we had a washboard and a jug to blow into, we could start a band.”
“Give me the ball,” Brian insisted again.
Jane finally flicked it to him.
“He’s telling the truth, you know, Jane. Last week, I even busted Dad listening to country music. I’m starting to think there is no threat from that cartel guy. Maybe Dad’s just gone crazy and turned the whole lot of us into a bunch of crazy backwoods hicks.”
“But I thought you liked the animals, Ricky,” Jane said, ignoring Brian.
“For about five minutes,” Ricky said. “I’m going to be thirteen, Jane. Old MacDonald sitting on his stupid fence has lost his charm.”
“Exactly,” Brian said, overthrowing Ricky again by twenty yards. “It’s bad enough we’re living out here like doomsday preppers. Do we have to actually become farmers? In fact, I say we end this right now. If the peewees want to follow Mr. Cody around, more power to them. My days of waking at the crack of dawn and working for free are done.”
“You said it,” Ricky agreed, throwing the ball back to his brother. “Don’t they have child-labor laws in this state? Only problem is, how are we going to get out of it?”
“He’s right, Brian,” Jane said, intercepting the ball again. “Mary Catherine won’t sit still for that. You know how much she likes Mr. Cody.”
All three of them turned as they heard the rental car start. Agent Parker waved to them before getting in and pulling out. They stood in the field, waving back until they couldn’t see the car anymore.
“No! Come back! Take us with you!” Ricky said.
“Don’t worry, little brother. I have a plan,” Brian said, spinning the ball up in the air. “You just leave it to me.”
CHAPTER 13
I waited on the porch until Emily Parker’s sedan disappeared in the distance, and then I went back into the house and took the dishes into the kitchen.
In the corner, I saw that, despite her obvious annoyance at the federal intrusion, Mary Catherine had put on another pot of coffee. When I looked out the window, I could see her sitting on the fence behind the house, showing something green and fuzzy in her palm to Shawna and Fiona. Probably seamlessly weaving in some lesson about the life cycle while she was at it, I thought, teachable moments being yet another specialty of the ever-upbeat and unstoppable Bennett nanny.
Mary Catherine was handing the caterpillar off to Shawna when she looked up and saw me watching. She stuck her tongue out at me, but then she smiled and waved. I smiled myself as I waved back vigorously.
Friends again, I thought. Good. Lord knew I needed all the friends I could find.
I decided to pitch in and wash the dishes at the big porcelain sink. I’d washed a dish or two in my time working in restaurants when I was in college, but I couldn’t remember the last time I’d actually washed any by hand. Then I did remember. It was when my mom went back to work when I was a kid.
She got a job cleaning offices downtown, and my dad and I had to fend for ourselves. My dad, no Bobby Flay, would char some pork chops in a big, black cast-iron pan and boil some potatoes, while I got cleanup detail. It was a grim time, to be sure, but I do remember how proud my mom was of my meticulous dish cleaning.
Remember, Michael Sean, she’d always say, it’s never the job you do but how hard you do it.