Callahan’s unmarked Expedition rolled by the 7-Eleven and Moco threw the pickup in gear. At least he was starting to get the “dab sweats.” Maybe he’d be thinking straight enough to kill the right person this time.
34
The thing Magdalena Rojas first noticed about Ernie Pacheco was his teeth. This would have pleased him had she mentioned it, because he’d paid a lot of money for them. She remembered that her father had had a nice smile, but this man they called Matarife was different. His perfect smile was starkly mismatched to the rest of his craggy, misshapen face. She’d heard he was injured in a bar fight, but whatever the cause, his flat nose looked like it had been melted and then smeared above his lip. An asterisk-shaped scar puckered the sunken flesh under his left eye. The ear on that same side was a mass of scar tissue. He kept his dark hair pulled back in a thick man bun. He seemed to believe the style anchored him to a more youthful appearance, but Magdalena thought it just called attention to the severity of the mess that he called a face. Oddly, while all those who followed him were adorned with images of La Santa Muerte, Matarife, the self-professed leader of her cult, did not have a single tattoo on his body.
Magdalena had met the man many times, but he never paid for her, even when she’d belonged to Dorian or Parrot. He took her just the same, always pretending like it was all her idea and that she should be happy because he was saving her from the other guys. It pissed off Parrot, but he never said anything. He just chopped her when Matarife left.
He sat across from her now, naked, chewing on a bite of rare steak and gesturing at her with his knife as he spoke. He liked to eat dinner without his clothes. Magdalena didn’t care. Like most things that had to do with sex that didn’t cause her too much pain, she’d grown numb to it. But he hit her if she didn’t giggle and raise her eyebrows up and down and pretend she was impressed. She had seen many naked men, and apart from the black hair that covered his body like a wild ape, there was nothing impressive about him.
He nudged aside a small silver cross and picked a bit of fallen meat from his matted chest hair, looking at it for a moment to see what it was before popping it between his perfect teeth.
He pointed with the steak knife again. “I should tell you of Matarife’s trip to Colombia,” he said. “It was very dangerous.”
He boasted a great deal for someone who didn’t care about impressing her. She supposed he was bragging to himself. He liked to speak of things that made him seem handsome and tough and smart. Magdalena thought he was none of these things, except perhaps tough, considering the scars on his face. Well, maybe he was a little bit smart, or else he would not have been so rich. He wasn’t smart enough to take her straight to Zambrano’s like he was supposed to, that was for sure. Ernie Pacheco was a cruel man, but Zambrano was crueler, and would kill him for disobedience. Probably.
He looked at her with his narrow pig eyes, the left one even narrower because of the scar. “You not gonna eat? You haven’t touched anything.”
She faked a smile. “I am not hungry. You want another beer?” She hoped he’d eaten so much meat and drunk enough beer that he’d just fall asleep. Guys did that sometimes, so she always asked them if they wanted more.
He pushed back from the table and clapped his hands, rubbing them together like a housefly. The man bun, the strange eyes. He looked a lot like a fly, she thought.
He rubbed his hairy belly and gave a long sigh. “Hey,” he said. “I got an idea that will help us get in the mood.”
Magdalena groaned inside, struggling to keep up the fake smile.
He put his hand behind her back and gave her a shove. It didn’t knock her over, but there was no doubt that she had no choice about going to the bedroom.
“We’ll watch one of my movies,” he said, chuckling a little. He gave her another shove, harder this time. “It’ll be fun. You might even know some of the stars.”
35
Dominic Caruso accelerated Kelsey Callahan’s Bureau-issued Ford Expedition down the on-ramp of the President George Bush Turnpike, heading toward Plano. He’d insisted on driving, despite Callahan’s objections. She already suspected him of being complicit in the murder of a couple cartel members, though she hadn’t said much about it, but the run-in with the Garland PD detective had left her leg bouncing like the needle on a sewing machine. Caruso considered talking to her about the incident but quickly decided that he was in mortal danger of getting his head bitten off.
Turf wars notwithstanding, whoever killed Aaron Bennet had come gunning for Callahan. The fact that the killer or killers went to Buttermilk Place instead of Buttermilk Circle gave Caruso a little peek into their intellect and psyche — but, in his experience, assassins hit the wrong person more than a quarter of the time. Two of the first fugitive cases during his early career — when he worked for the FBI more than just on paper — had been victims of mistaken identity. In both cases, the killers had realized the screwup and rectified it in short order.
Caruso checked the rearview mirror several times a minute as he drove, knowing that the people who wanted Callahan dead were very likely back there now. Traffic was heavy and it was getting dark, which would work to Caruso’s favor if he needed to avoid an attack but made it easy for any bad actors to blend into the sea of headlights behind him.
He took the exit toward Campbell Road, watching to see if anyone followed. Three sets of lights came off behind him. He turned left to pass back under the freeway, but instead of continuing down Campbell, he camped out at the green light, squirting through just as it turned red to make a quick left back up the frontage road to the east, paralleling the turnpike back in the direction they’d come from. No one behind him did anything crazy to follow.
Callahan turned to look at him but said nothing. She obviously knew he was working to shake off any unseen tails.
Caruso glanced across the dim interior of the Expedition. “How long since you’ve had anything to eat?”
“I’m fine,” Callahan said.
Caruso decided to press the issue. “Seriously. How long?”
She gave a dismissive shrug. “I don’t know. I had that coffee for breakfast.”
“Before that?” Caruso said. “I’ve been with you since before seven this morning and I haven’t seen you eat so much as a breath mint. You’re starting to look a little hollow around the cheeks.”
Callahan beat her head against the headrest. “We’ve known each other for what, twenty-six hours? I don’t think you’re allowed to call me too skinny.”
“What?” Caruso grinned. “You’ve called me bastard, son of a bitch, and asshole — along with pretty much every other name in the book over that same time period.”
“I did not.”
“Not even in your brain?”
Callahan laughed out loud. “That doesn’t count.”
Caruso turned his head to look at her as he drove. “So you admit it?”
“I admit that I may have thought one or two unflattering things about you.”
“Good,” Caruso said. “Then I’ll admit I am hungry. Can we please get something to eat?”
Moco pounded his hands against the steering wheel, craning his head left and right in search of the lady cop’s Expedition. He cursed Gusano for eating the dab. He’d been forced to eat the rest of his hash oil plain. Without the benefit of the coconut oil, it wasn’t doing a damn bit of good.
Taillights flashed and blinked in a confusing river of red. Oncoming headlights blinded him. She’d gotten away from him — and now the boss was going to set him on fire — or pump him full of so much dope he wouldn’t pass out while the guys cut his feet off with a chainsaw.