Joe misses you. He loves my children and they love him. He will be going to work for me soon.
Sincerely,
Bettina reads the message twice, trying to vet Godoy’s intentions and stay in her lane at eighty miles per hour.
She remembers his time-consuming caution while orchestrating his attempted purchase of Felix up in Moulton Meadows Park. All the waiting and changing of venues. All his crafty caution, turned to shit. Costing Joaquín Páez his life, Valeria Flores her freedom, and El Gordo his $200,000.
She can’t be sure, but Bettina thinks he’ll be more decisive this time around.
Speeding for home in the bumpy Jeep, Bettina tries to send El Gordo the same kind of psychic vibes she was sending out to him less than an hour ago. She pictures her thoughts as bright monarch butterflies crossing the skies by the tens of thousands. Tries to butterfly-bomb El Gordo all the way down in Sinaloa. Like the prayers she launched at God from Anza Methodist when she was small.
Her phone pings again just as she’s through her front door. Godoy:
Dear Bettina,
I will trade you Joe for a truthful story of me. The ten thousand dollars you offer back to me will be my bonus to you, if you make the story and video as great as it should be. It must be great. You can use the money for your expenses to travel of Sinaloa to pick up Joe.
Send me a message to this number when you reach Los Mochis. Remember the mountains can be cold and Joe will need his papers of vaccination in order to get into the Estados Unidos.
Sincerely,
She calls Jean Rose and says she needs a few days off. Promises to get the Rod Foster feature polished and the entertainment calendar updated for next week’s edition before she leaves. Tells Jean she’s going to bring her a story that will get picked up by every major news feed on the planet, and a video that will explode on the internet. Says Coastal Eddy will become a household name and she’ll probably be shortlisted for a Pulitzer.
“Bettina, the editor in me loves it when you talk like this,” Jean says. “But as a person, I tremble too.”
“Trust me.”
“I sense no choice.”
Throat tight and heart pounding, she calls Strickland, who answers on the first ring.
39
Strickland listens in disbelief as Bettina tells him that El Gordo is willing to “trade” a great profit center like Joe for a Coastal Eddy article and video. And has waived her attempted regifting of his $10,000. Strickland asks Bettina to repeat Godoy’s terms as his mind whirls, plotting his next move.
Which he manages to cobble together — loosely — by the time Godoy calls, five minutes later.
And orders Strickland to send Joe back to Sinaloa so Godoy can present the dog to his “lovely journalist friend” in return for fame in America.
“But he’s not your dog to sell,” says Strickland. “He’s mine. And he’s your business partner.”
“She loves the dog very much,” says Godoy. “Joe is what she is charging me for my place in history. Mr. Knowles, I’m asking you to do this to protect Bettina. So that she survives the Sierra Madre, after finishing my important story and video. We can’t let anything evil happen to her.”
“You promised to protect her!” says Strickland, his heart seething and his voice taut. “You accepted my money and my labor in return for protecting her.”
“I keep that money.”
“You rob me for your own vanity?”
Laughter. “But I continue to spare your lover’s life. Páez is dead and Valeria is detained and my money has been confiscated by the American government. So we are even. Bring Joe to the Factoria Calderon. My people will find you. I trust you to get another good dog to work with. There are many. Joe is not the only dog, Mr. Knowles. And who knows? Maybe your creative Bettina will let him work for us again someday.”
Godoy chuckles.
“I’ll be with her in Los Mochis,” says Strickland.
“It will be good to see you, my friend.”
40
“Yeah, I remember Strickland,” says Dave Bridgeman, the longstanding International Practical Shooting Confederation webmaster and historian.
Billy has tracked down Bridgeman through the IPSC website, all the way here to the Coach House in Scottsdale, Arizona. This morning he traded today’s shift with another Bike Team cop, then made the six-hour drive from Laguna in five.
The Coach House patio is busy this March evening, cool though it is. A hangover from the plague years, thinks Billy, when the indoor drinking was shut down. Tonight it’s mostly the snowbirds who pack Arizona in winter.
Bridgeman is early sixties, tall and well built, with humorful eyes and long blond hair.
“Dan Strickland was quite a talent with a handgun,” he says. “Light on his feet for a big guy, like a dancer. And he had this graceful kind of approach to the sport. This could be him in the switching yard. The posture.”
“But you’re not sure?”
Bridgeman holds the picture up again, his fifth long look. “No.”
“How many matches did he shoot?”
“Four, that one year he was with us. The big ones. Most of the shooters are regulars, you know? They grow up with guns and get good and win a few matches and they shoot almost every weekend, match or not. They’re in forever. Not Strickland. He was in and out.”
Bridgeman looks down at his notes. “He showed up back in ’08, just out of high school, if I remember right. Good-looking young man. Quiet but confident. Seemed out of place. Not really like the gun culture folks we competition shooters typically are. But man, he could handle that Glock. Shot heavy loads, too, which makes your job way harder on a rough, running course. As a cop, you know that.”
“How good was he?”
“He won the three regionals and the Western Regional finals in December. I remember he skipped the awards dinner that night. He had some young lady friends we called his blonde-tourage, so I figured they’d taken him off somewhere more fun. Never saw him again. Sent us a note in early ’09, saying he wouldn’t be competing anymore. Paid up his dues for the year, though. Said he was honored by the trophy. Asked us to put it in the headquarters trophy case, or change out the plaque and use it again. See some video of the finals?”
Billy squares Bridgeman’s phone on a Coach House coaster.
Strickland looks a lot like he did on the IPSC website “Young Talent” clip that had reminded Billy so much of the shooter in El Gordo’s photos. Billy thinks that the youthful Strickland had some extra intensity here in the regional finals. But still, plenty of that fluid grace that seems almost an affectation. A performance. Except that he’s punching through the fifteen-centimeter bull’s-eyes on the run, with heavy loads and an eerie, robotic precision.
Billy watches the rest of Strickland’s brief, final championship run, pushes the phone back to Bridgeman. “Did you socialize with him?”
“Not really. It’s all business at the matches and I don’t remember but one time he joined us old people for dinner and drinks.”
“Never met his friends or family?”
“The blondes.”
“And that was all?”
“Well, that one time he came out with us socially was in San Diego. He didn’t drink and he didn’t say much except that he was going to join the marines. Said he was looking forward to shooting at targets that would shoot back. Said he’d been waiting since he was eleven and the towers went down.”