That caused Jim Byrth to twitch his head in interest.
“So then do you want to meet someplace later?” He paused. “Okay. That works. See you then.” He was about to push END but had an afterthought. “Amy? You still there?”
He pulled the phone from his ear and looked at the screen. It showed that the call was dead.
Dammit! If she’d just been talking to someone at Temple’s Burn Unit, she might know something about that Dr. Amanda Law.
He put down the phone, then retrieved his pretzel. He glanced at Byrth, who was still looking out the window, still tumbling the bean.
The guy looks tough as nails.
I can just see him riding the range, then single-handedly driving off a mob of marauding Injuns.
But how’s he going to do here in the big city?
Then again, he did just come in from Houston.
With Byrth sitting, the cuffs of his pants rode higher, and Payne could see the upper parts of the western boots. They appeared to cover the complete calf. They had some intricate patterns of stitching and there was another representation of the Texas Ranger badge, this one in silver leather, and the red leather initials J.O.B.
Payne then looked at the pointed-toe part. The material that made up the part covering the foot was a high-gloss black, textured with a grid of little bumps every half-inch or so the size of BBs.
“Mind if I ask what kind of leather that is on your boots?” Payne said.
Byrth glanced down at his boots as he lifted the flap of the left patch pocket of his blazer and slipped the dry white bean inside.
“Skin,” Byrth corrected.
“What?”
“We say ‘skin.’ ”
“Oh. Okay, what kind of skin is that? All those bumps. They look like tiny nipples.”
There was a moment’s pause as Byrth considered that.
“Do they really?” he said.
Oh shit!
He’s taking offense to “tiny nipples”? “No offense.”
Byrth laughed. “None taken. I’d just never seen my boot skins in that light. But I believe I will from this point forward. So is that what they call Freudian?”
Payne grinned.
“Quite possibly,” he said. “I’ll ask my sister. She’s a shrink. That was her on the phone just now.”
Byrth nodded.
Payne pursued, “So, what are they? What skin?”
“Ostrich. Ugly damn bird. But pretty skin. Soft, too.”
“Is that common?”
“Not as much as cowhide. But more than some snake skins. And eel or lizard. There’s a pretty long list.”
Payne shook his head.
“I had no idea,” he said.
“Let’s talk about why I’m here,” Byrth said suddenly.
Homicide Detective Matt Payne raised his eyebrows, surprised at the ninety-degree change of subject. He said, “Sure.”
“By the way,” Byrth said, “where’re we headed?”
“The Roundhouse. It’s Philly’s police headquarters. You’ll understand why we call it that when you see it. We’re maybe fifteen minutes out.”
Byrth nodded.
“So,” Payne said, taking the last bite of pretzel, “what did bring you here?”
“Texas government code section four one one dot zero two two,” he rattled off. “Authority of Texas Rangers.” He paused and looked at Payne chewing his pretzel. “It even covers your chewy there.”
Payne glanced at him with a curious look.
“Subsection (b),” Byrth went on, “and I quote: An officer of the Texas Rangers who arrests a person charged with a criminal offense shall immediately convey the person to the proper officer of the county where the person is charged and shall obtain a receipt. The state shall pay all necessary expenses incurred under this subsection.”
“What about the bad guy Liz Justice mentioned?” Payne replied. “The one who cuts off heads? What the hell is that all about?”
“That’s only part of it. It’s my personal opinion that this guy is a ticking time bomb. He’s a psychopath with one helluva temper.” Then, surprising Payne, he made the sounds “Tick, tick, tick… BOOM!”
“This guy got a name?”
“El Gato.”
“What?”
“The Cat. That’s his street name.”
“What about a real name?”
Byrth shook his head. “Nope. Not yet, anyways. But his MO’s pretty consistent. Won’t be hard to track him down. As far as we can determine, he’s not MDTO. He just has connections with them.”
Payne of course recognized MO-the short version of the Latin modus operandi, the critter’s “method.” But the other acronym was new to him.
“MDTO?”
“Mexican drug-trafficking organization.”
Payne nodded. Then he said, “You just quoted ‘a person charged with a criminal offense.’ How does the name on this guy’s-this El Gato’s-warrant read?”
Payne glanced over at Byrth, who looked back and said, “What warrant?”
What? No warrant?
No wonder Liz Justice asked for doors to be opened in Philly.
But she would not have done that unless this guy’s a straight shooter.
“How did you track him to here?” Payne said.
“Night before last night, we bagged one of his runners in College Station.” He looked at Payne. “Where Texas A and M University is?”
Payne nodded. “Yeah. And home of the Presidential Library, Bush 41’s. Its recent chancellor, like old man Bush, used to be DCI. He left A and M to be secretary of defense.”
Byrth stared at Payne.
“Secretary of defense?” Byrth repeated. “Director of the Central Intelligence Agency? If that bit of Texas Connection trivia was meant to impress, it worked. About all I can recite about Philly is that there’s a broken bell here somewhere.”
Payne made a face. “No, not to impress. It’s actually information I’d really rather be blissfully ignorant of. At least the Bush Library part. But let’s get off this tangent.”
“If you don’t mind, I’d really like to hear what all that’s about.”
“Sorry. Maybe later. You were saying about the runner?”
Byrth raised his eyebrows in a sort of surrender.
“Okay,” he then went on, “we tracked this runner while he was en route to Houston. One Ramos Manuel Cach?n, just turned age seventeen. He’s got the usual list of priors, mostly petty stuff like truancy and assaults. He’d made a stop in College Station to service his retailers-”
“Explain that,” Payne interrupted as he changed lanes to pick up the Vine Street Expressway.
“Convenience stores, places that he wholesaled to. Some cocaine. But mostly blue cheese.”
“Blue cheese?” Payne said with some enthusiasm. “I love blue cheese. But something tells me we’re not talking about Roquefort.”
“Unfortunately, no. It’s a snortable combination of diphenhydramine and heroin-”
“Die-what-dramine?”
“Die is right. It’s a killer. Smack mixed with cold medicine.”
Payne nodded.
Byrth went on: “This cheese crap all started in Dallas, and grew quickly. The dealers began targeting inner-city kids, mostly Hispanics. That’s where this El Gato got involved. He marketed it with a friendly look and name-‘Queso Azul.’ The coloring comes from a blue sugar candy he mixes in it. But the smack in the mix makes it highly addictive. Right from the first hit.”
“How much does it cost? Heroin isn’t cheap.”
“Ain’t none of it cheap. But here’s the math. A kilo of coke costs from fifteen to twenty grand. A key of smack from Mexico-which tends to be the cheaper black tar stuff but still is every bit as deadly as any from, say, Afghanistan-can be had for about that much, and on up to fifty, sixty grand a key. All depending on supply and demand, of course.”
“Of course,” Payne said darkly.
“So, understanding the target demographic-kids-they take the cheapest black tar they can get and make the cheese. Then they sell it at an affordable two bucks a bump.”