“I don’t understand why you couldn’t just tell him yourself.”
“I got my reasons. That’s all I’m asking, brother. Simple.”
“Okay. You have my word, I’ll tell him.”
“Good. Curly Boy’ll get you the address and the time of the drop.” He hopped off the bar. “I’ll get Tyler.”
Stanton watched as he left. He ran his fingers over his firearm and looked over the room. He wasn’t entirely certain that someone wasn’t about to rush in with an assault rifle. He waited a few minutes, and when no one came, he relaxed a little. He pushed away his glass and stood up. He walked over to the bookshelf against the wall and browsed the titles. They were mostly books about Nazi Germany, biographies of Hitler and Stalin, and technical manuals on warfare and farming.
The door opened, and a slim young kid walked in. He couldn’t have been older than twenty, and he looked frightened. He stood near the entrance as Brody looked at him and said, “You got five minutes, Jon. Then I’m gonna need you to leave.”
After Brody had left, Stanton walked toward the young man. He would have offered to shake hands, but Tyler’s eyes were darting around the room, and he was jittery. Stanton could smell a stink that he knew well. It was somewhere between burnt light bulbs and glue that had been set on fire-the smell of recently cooked and smoked meth.
“How are you, Tyler?”
“Fine. Fine, I’m fine.” He reached to the back of his head and scratched furiously. “Brody said you wanted to talk to me about Freddy. He was a good guy. We was at HD together.”
“Is that a prison?”
“Yeah. Yeah, he was a good guy. We was cellies. I don’t know what happened to him.”
“Did he just leave one day?”
“Yeah. Yeah, didn’t say nothing to nobody. He just took off.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Few days.”
“Brody said he left last week.”
“Yeah, that’s what I meant. He left last week. I don’t know. I’m not good with time,” he said with a slight chuckle. “Anyways, he ain’t here.”
“Is there a way you can reach him?”
“No. I don’t know where he is. He’s gone.”
“Yeah, you said that.” Stanton watched him as Tyler glanced around the room and tried desperately to avoid his eyes. Stanton ran his eyes along the door and over the walls. Behind the bar, a door led to the back. It was open a few inches, and Stanton could see the shoulder of someone who was listening in. Stanton took out his card and a pen from his pocket. He wrote “call me later if you can help” on the back of the card and set it on a table. “Doesn’t sound like you know anything, Tyler. I appreciate you speaking to me, though.”
“Yeah,” he mumbled.
Stanton walked past him and toward the door. He looked back and saw Tyler grab the card and slip it into his pocket. Outside, Brody was standing with his arms folded, a smile on his face. The men with the assault rifles had disappeared, and everyone in the commune had seemingly gone back to whatever they were doing before Stanton’s arrival.
“Get what you need?” Brody asked.
“No, he didn’t know anything. Is there anyone else I can talk to that you can think of?”
“Sorry, brother. Freddy kept to himself mostly. Tyler was his only friend.”
“Well, I’m grateful just the same. Thanks, Brody.”
“Curly Boy wrote the address down on this.” He handed Stanton a slip of paper.
Stanton realized for the first time that Brody couldn’t read. “Thanks. The narcotics detective was named Stewart, right?”
“Yeah. Ian Stewart. White dude, goin’ bald. Kinda greasy lookin’.”
“All right. I’ll give him this.”
As Stanton walked toward the gates, his back felt itchy. He was nervous that one of them might open fire, although he knew that wouldn’t actually happen. For whatever reason, Brody needed him to talk to Stewart.
Curly Boy opened the gate and waited until Stanton stepped outside to shut it. “Don’t you be comin’ back now. We love us some piggy barbeque.”
Mindi sat in the car, biting her thumb nail and spitting out little pieces through the open window. Stanton climbed in. She started the car and took off without saying a word.
“Well?” she said after they had put some distance between themselves and the compound.
“Doesn’t look like we’re going to be talking to Freddy.”
“Why not?”
“Because I think he’s dead.”
33
It was nearly midnight when Alma Parr’s cell phone woke him up. He had his ringtone set to the most soothing piece of music he could think of: Bach’s Ave Maria for the harp. Regardless of how calm and relaxing the music was, it still jolted him awake. He grabbed the phone and looked at the screen. It was Javier.
“This better be good. I was in a hot tub with Jessica Alba.”
“Home invasion on Cal Robertson good enough for you?”
“You’re shitting me? Anyone hurt?”
“Just the intruder. Got a hole in his chest about four inches across.”
“Text me the address. I’m coming right now.”
Parr jumped up and went to the closet. He put on jeans and a tight black T-shirt before grabbing his badge and placing the chain around his neck. He put on his holster and firearm and took a leather jacket out of his closet before running out the door.
As he sped down the winding road and got onto the interstate, he remembered his first encounter with Cal Robertson: a routine traffic stop when Parr was a rookie. Cal was driving a Ferrari over two hundred miles an hour down the freeway while getting a blowjob from a dancer who worked at the MGM. Parr wrote him a ticket for reckless driving and was going to let him go, but Cal took out a wad of cash and a vial of cocaine and tried to hand it to him. Parr hauled him in while Cal screamed that he would be out in a few hours.
Parr booked him, and the city attorney placed a call to the sheriff, who released Cal right away and wrote Parr a reprimand. It was Parr’s first taste of bureaucracy and the power of pull. He’d learned his lesson well. The powerful could game the system, so Parr went outside the system. If he had it to do again, Parr would have taken photos of the dancer and Cal together and threatened to send them to his wife unless he sold out his coke dealer. It would’ve meant a bust instead of a reprimand for Parr. That was the last time in his career that Parr had been reprimanded.
He drove through the open gate into the enclosed community. The homes were worth millions of dollars, but they didn’t seem comfortable, just luxurious. The entire community represented the type of home meant to impress others, despite being unwelcoming to the owners themselves. Parr found the house and parked in the driveway. He slipped under the police tape across the front door and saw two uniforms trading notes in the living room.
“What genius put tape on the front door? Get that shit down, and one of you stand out there. Reporters can slip under the tape.”
“Al, up here.”
Parr looked up the stairs, where Javier stood at the top. He practically skipped up the steps two at a time. Off to the right, near a bedroom, assistants from the Clark County Coroner’s Office were bagging up a body. The corpse was tall, around six foot four or six five, with a large black wound marking his chest like a decoration. Parr let the assistant zip up the bag and place it on a stretcher. A forensics tech went to work on the blood spatter across the wall, and Parr stepped over him into the bedroom. On a couch in a corner of the massive space, much larger than his living room and kitchen combined, Cal Robertson sat with his wife.
“Didn’t know you were into making Swiss cheese, Cally boy.”
Cal looked up, saw Parr, and cursed under his breath. “What are you doing here? I thought you got promoted.”
“Oh, I’m never too busy for my favorite power broker. How’s the casino business? Not making too many enemies, I hope?”
Cal turned to his wife and gently placed his hand over hers. “Dear, do you mind if we talk in private for a minute?”