I watch from the back aisle of the large Safeway, my hands on a shopping cart loaded with I-don’t-care-off-the-shelf-whatever, as I pretend to browse while following him. I whip past the meat cases to see him in the produce section, piling on boxes of all kinds of berries and even a huge sack of raw carrots — lots of sugar in carrots, tweakers love sugar — when a man moves quickly behind Ronald, bellies up to Ronald’s back like a lover, one hand in his Arizona Wildcats lightweight nylon rain jacket. Ronald’s shoulders slump, he sags against the cart but nods resignedly. The two men walk slowly, almost a sex dance, the man urging Ronald out the entrance. I’m dashing with my cart up the produce aisle to follow them, except two other guys surround me.
“Don’t be a chili pepper.”
Behind me to the left, a rough whisper, like a rasp across soft white pine. One hand squeezes the back of my neck, the other extends to pry my fingers off the Safeway cart. Hands in leather golf or driving gloves, wearing a tee, his arms rife with intricate tattoos, not prison ballpoint-pen black but professional, multicolored inks swirling around the name Dial. I can see that the tat artist who did the full sleeves on both arms used thicker ink; the word Dial covers an ancient tat reading Diablo.
I half duck, trying to turn away, but a smaller man on my right wedges his body against me, so I pull the cart toward us, taking tension momentarily off Dial’s fingers, and then shove the cart toward the organic apples, peaches, and pears, an elderly couple recoiling as it punches into a free-standing display, the man’s face puckering with indignation then quickly dropping a plastic bag of tomatoes, shrinking away from Dial’s tats and his cold stare. The tomatoes roll across the floor but nobody pays them any attention.
“She might have a gun,” the smaller man says, his voice strangely familiar, “tucked down in her back.”
“Forget the gun,” Dial responds. “Is this her?”
“Yes.”
I’m trying to see their faces, but Dial puts a martial arts grip on my upper left shoulder, pinches a nerve. I recoil, gasp, my left arm flops around, I’m staggering from the pain but they hold me upright and, like a two-person team carrying a bashed-up athlete off the playing field, they frog-march me out the wide Safeway entrance. Dial’s hand shifts from my neck to under my arm and across my left breast, almost lifting and carrying me along. Sweat pops everywhere from underneath my headband, running down my face. My body flowers with sweat that fountains between my breasts and underneath the sports bra. I’m sweating from panic but also the rapid transition from Safeway’s aircon into the muggy April ninety-degree Tucson midmorning air.
The parking lot is jammed, but nobody really notices us. I decide to shout for help but Dial squeezes my throat. I can barely breath. I can’t see an out, so I relax my muscles, trying to flex my fingers, get strength back. The other man’s hand slides under my tee and against my bare back, moving down inside my waistband.
“You still tuck that pistola back there,” the second man says.
I recognize the voice.
“Rey?” I say. “Rey?” Disbelief.
“When you went running, you carried it back there.”
He palms my Beretta from the small of my back where I carry it in an unbelted nylon rig. Dial fumbles in my handbag, grabs my keys.
“Rey Villaneuva?”
“Yeah,” he says quietly.
“Is that really you?”
Rey Villaneuva. Once my PI partner. Once my lover. I haven’t seen him in, in, I have to think, it’s been... what... five years? Seven? I cut a glance at his worried still-handsome face half hidden by that familiar shock of unruly black hair, which glistens with water as though he’d stuck his head under a faucet and run his fingers through it instead of a comb. He’s wearing brown khakis, the kind he once creased daily with his own iron, but now looking like he’s worn them for weeks without washing. The direct sunlight catches flecks of gray in his hair and his week-old whiskers.
“What do you want from me?”
“To create a legend,” he says.
They hustle me to a silver Escalade with tinted windows, parked next to my Subaru Baja. Ronald Jumps the Train sits behind my steering wheel, the other man in the passenger seat. Dial swings me hard against the Escalade; Rey’s shoulders slump, he won’t meet my eyes.
“Rey,” I say. “What are you doing here?”
“Working, working,” he answers finally. “Just working.” He still can’t look up at me, he cuts his eyes left and right repeatedly. Dial tosses my car keys to the guy in my Subaru’s passenger seat. Dial pulls out a Glock fitted with a laser sight. He pops a switch, the red laser dances across his palm, across my face.
“You know what this is?” I nod. “Right now, there’s another on your daughter.”
“Excuse me?”
“She’s vacationing up in Sedona. With your granddaughter.” I nod again, mute. He gently strokes a thumb down my nose.
“You’re a PI?”
“Yes. Yeah, yes. Why?”
“You work for the Navajo Tribal Police? The drug unit?”
“Why are you, why, why are you doing this?”
Dial nods at Rey, like, Your turn here.
“Laura,” Rey says. “Do you still find people? Create legends? New ID, everything?”
“My daughter? How is she involved in this? My grand- daughter?”
“What he’s really asking,” Dial says, “do you still make up really good ID?”
“Yes, but—”
“ID can pass any test? Even if it’s fake?”
“Yes, yeah, but listen, listen, just... listen to me. If you’ve kidnapped my daughter—”
“Don’t fuck with me,” Dial says, but quiet, he’s really confident of himself. “Don’t you fucking think you can fuck with me.”
“Rey, Rey, Jesus, Rey, what are you guys telling me?”
“You help us, nobody gets hurt.”
“Help you do what?”
“We need you to create a legend,” he says.
“I won’t.”
“I told you. I said, don’t you fuck with me.” Dial pulls my Beretta out of Rey’s hand. “You want to see what happens, you fuck with me?” Turning toward the two men in my Subaru, the passenger’s face in shadows. Ronald Jumps the Train looks at me, he’s so terrified I can smell fresh urine. “Tell me again. You’re a private investigator?”
“Yes. Yes, yes, yes.”
“Lady?” Ronald whimpers. “Lady, can you get me out of this?” But I have little sympathy for him. Ronald Jumps the Train got his name at the age of eleven when he rode boxcars pulling into Flagstaff, throwing marijuana bales out the open door. Now he deals crystal meth, the major supplier for Gila River and Casa Grande, so I try not to feel any sympathy at all. But Jesus, a sudden pop-pop, a double tap as Dial shoots Ronald dead, then pop, one more guarantee shot through his forehead before he turns the Glock at the passenger who is already starting to open his door.
“Me jodí!” the passenger shouts before Dial pops him too.
I’m screwed.
Dial tosses my Beretta onto Ronald’s lap. What’s really really scary about Dial is that he’s totally cool about just having murdered two men, and in that moment I believe him about my daughter. He shoves me into the passenger seat of the Escalade, sits behind me.