By ten, he was in Fallbrook, where he forked over $96,000 for four more Stingers. Skip and his muscular buddy loaded the crates into the trunk and that was that. Clint stopped at the pay phone he’d used before and called Mary Kate. He’d made his plan and it was important to keep up appearances. “You coming into San Diego tomorrow morning or not, MK?”
“Yes. The bus is on time. So here I come.”
“Where you at right now?” Snuggling up to Charlie Hooper? Runnin’ your little pink tongue over them diamonds?
“Just left El Paso. What’s the matter with you?”
“What is the matter with me, Mary Kate?”
“You don’t sound very happy is all.”
“I got a lot to deal with.”
“Everybody does.”
“What everybody don’t have is a goddamned army after ’em, like I do. What you’re gonna do is get off that bus and walk across the street. It’s Sixth Street, I looked it up on a map. And then you’re gonna stand right there and wait for me.”
“What if it’s raining?”
“It don’t rain in San Diego.”
“Weatherman says big storm tonight.”
“Then use an umbrella, MK-shit, how hard you going to make this? It’s like we’re already married and sick of each other.”
“We’re about as far from married as two people can get.”
“Just get to San Diego and we’ll figure it out.”
“Don’t leave me standing in the rain, Clint.”
“Do what I said, Mary Kate.”
“Now you sound mad.”
“Maybe you’ll cheer me up.”
“Remember this is about me visiting California, not me visiting you.”
“Over and out.”
Wampler hung up and drove toward Jacumba to deliver the product to Castro. He felt humiliated by MK’s betrayal, and infuriated by the arrogance she showed in thinking she had fooled him. For a few miles everything he saw through the windshield was outlined in red. Seeing red through the windshield of a goddamned Kia, he thought. He would put Mary Kate Boyle in her place. He looked forward to it. And really, what she had done to him gave him an advantage over Hooper, and Hooper was what he wanted most. By Lake Cuyamaca the red was gone and he had begun to feel that good, cold clarity settling back over him.
• • •
This time the delivery was at Amigos, the restaurant Castro owned. Castro had told him it was out of the way and safe and to park around back by the kitchen Dumpsters. Clint pulled up and two dark, burly men in white straw cowboy hats came from the kitchen toward the Kia. He let them get close, then fully extended his arm through the open window and pointed the semiauto at them. “El-stop-o right there-o, amigos.” Clint smiled slightly as he heard the sound of their boots braking on the old asphalt. He saw Castro trot from the kitchen toward his men, then shove between them, his hands out beseechingly, shaking his head.
“Clint, you’re going to get yourself killed for no reason someday. Just by being who you are.”
“They look closer to being kilt than I do.”
“They’re our friends, Clint. Friends with money to spend. Man, that’s quite a hairstyle.”
Wampler did a fancy gunslinger twirl and retracted the pistol, though it was difficult with his arm-room constricted by the window. “Go to hell if you don’t like it.”
“I do like it.”
“Maybe I’m a little on edge. I can’t even drive my brand-new Explorer, there’s so many cops out there, all looking for me. But it’s no problem going the speed limit in this Jap piece of shit.”
“It’s Korean and well built. Considering.”
“Good-I’ll make you a deal on it.” He threw open the door and stepped out. The two big men regarded him without expression but Wampler caught the disdain in their eyes. He hit a button on the key fob and one of the men lifted the trunk lid. Clint thought again of Charlie Hooper and what he’d done to his finger with the trunk of the Charger. Hard to believe that Mary Kate had really teamed up with that diamond-toothed sonofabitch. How many ATF people worked in the Buenavista office? How many of them would be waiting for him at the Greyhound station tomorrow morning?
He raised the finger and looked at the dirty white tape around his fingertip. Soon as he changed the tape it was dirty again. Below the tape the finger swelled red and shiny and there were no visible wrinkles or marks because the skin was taut. And hot, he thought. It felt microwaved. Lucky he could still shoot with it. One of the Mexicans was looking at him and it took Clint some real willpower not to draw his gun again and shoot him.
When the two men had loaded the crates into the pickup truck Wampler lugged out his $44,000 grocery bag from the back of the Kia and looked at the men. “You wanna do the windshield, go right ahead.”
He followed Castro back into the noisy restaurant kitchen, then down a dark, short hallway and into a good-size office. It was furnished with futuristic leather-and-stainless-steel sofas and chairs, a glass-topped desk, and an art painting that to Clint looked upside down.
“That thing worth any more’n the paint that’s on it?” he asked, nodding at a framed swirl of thick red and black, lighted by its very own beam from a hidden ceiling lamp.
“I took it in trade. Here.” Castro sat behind the desk and produced two twinkling glasses and a bottle of Scotch. He filled each glass halfway and pushed one toward the open chair across from him. Clint set the money on the floor and, still standing, drank the Scotch, then clanked the glass back onto the desktop. He heard the Mexican music playing in the cantina and the distant ring of plates and flatware. “That finger of yours looks bad.”
“Maybe you could get me a doctor that can make a house call and not rat me out.”
“I can do that. But first I want you to listen to an idea. I’m going to reach into my coat now. . can you handle it?”
“Try me.”
Castro reached into a coat pocket, then set a tight roll of bills on the glass top of his desk. Clint picked it up and flipped it into the air and slapped it back to the desktop. “What’s it for?”
“I’m sorry you can’t drive the Explorer, but I’m glad you’re not. I don’t know how Hooper put you and it together. Maybe he was bluffing me. But it doesn’t really matter, because you don’t want ATF after you. And I don’t want them after me.”
Clint felt that cool, clear feeling starting to come back over him. “Everywhere I look there’s some cop.”
“You have a plan?”
“I have a plan nobody knows about.”
“You’ve made yourself some good money the last few days.”
“What did you tell Hooper about me and my new truck?”
“I told him to quit giving out guns to bad guys. Really got him on that one. I caught him on TV a few days ago, telling the government he let a thousand guns slip through his fingers.”
“By his own self?”
“The whole stupid agency.”
“How come soon as I buy a truck from you the feds show up?”
Castro nodded. “What I was thinking, Clint, is that you might want to get out of the country for a while. And I’ve come up with a good idea.”
Clint looked down at the forty-four thousand by his feet. All his. What a country this was. He’d make sure MK really got a full dose of understanding of what she had given up when she betrayed him, the most promising young outlaw in America. That might be very damned enjoyable. “I’m standing here waiting to hear this idea.”
“I have friends in north Baja who have invited you down to stay with them. They would keep you out of sight. You could leave right here tonight, out of Jacumba. I know the tunnels and the trails and the patrol schedules. One word and I can have people waiting for you on the other side. Capable men. A few hours later you’re in a guarded compound with more capable men. And some very lovely women.”
“Same friends that buy my Stingers?”
Castro shrugged.
“They gotta be, since nobody is dumb enough to do business with two different cartels at the same time.”
“No, you’re right, Clint. Nobody is.”