The Cornwalls Are Gone Read online

  He replaces the battered gray receiver with stickers and decals on it, wanders off to the rear of the store, which has two green dumpsters waiting to be picked up. Preston stares at the overflowing containers and thinks, Wouldn’t it be nice if the garbage inside of me could eventually be dumped like that, clean everything out inside?

  Yeah, right.

  Some garbage inside will stay there, no matter what.

  Preston turns and starts the long walk back to his apartment, and then, on impulse, checks how much change he has left.

  Barely enough, but enough to make it happen.

  He goes back to the pay phone, slides in the rest of his quarters, dials another number, and when a timid woman’s voice answers, Preston says, “Ma, I think I can get the money to take care of you and Dad.”

  CHAPTER 48

  ROSARIA VASQUEZ has just left the Corpus Christi International Airport and is speeding north across the flattest landscape she has ever seen in her life. There are cities off the distant horizon, steam and smoke plumes from industries at work in the Gulf of Mexico, and stunted, twisted trees that look like they’ve been transplanted from some old horror film.

  Several hours earlier she was ready to jump into the shower and have an afternoon to herself, when she got a phone call from her boss, whose message was clear and to the point: “Get your butt to Corpus Christi and call me when you get on the highway.”

  Now she is on Interstate 37, speeding along at eighty miles an hour, plenty of other traffic zipping past her—including a grocery truck from an outfit called HEB Plus—and with a practiced reach of her hand on her cell phone, she makes the call to her boss, Senior Warrant Officer Fred McCarthy.

  He wastes no time.

  “We’ve finally got Lieutenant Cornwall’s trail,” he says. “A Tennessee highway patrolman was assaulted by her yesterday on Interstate 75, just north of Chattanooga.”

  “Did he make a traffic stop? Had she been speeding?”

  “No on both counts,” her boss says. “She was just pulled over, like she was taking a pee break or something. The trooper says she was traveling alone, and was going to meet up with a girlfriend in Chattanooga. He tried to search her car and then she took him down.”

  “Then why am I in Texas?”

  “Because she never stopped in Chattanooga, best I can find out, and because now she’s in Texas,” McCarthy says sharply. “This afternoon she was helping pull a car out of a flooded stream on a stretch of road on some empty landscape on Highway 59. Texas Highway Patrol took down her name and the license plate number…but the license plate was from Tennessee, not Virginia. And a few minutes ago, we got a hit from a Bank of America ATM in some little town called Kenedy. She withdrew four hundred dollars. Surveillance footage shows it was her. You head up there, find out what you can.”

  “But boss…”

  “What?”

  “Where are you getting this intelligence?”

  Even though she is hundreds of miles away from Quantico, she can feel the chill in her boss’s voice. “It’s good intelligence, that’s all you need to know.”

  She thinks it’s probably great intelligence, but its sourcing stinks. Somehow her boss has either tapped into a domestic network or has been informed of Cornwall’s travels by others in the dark intelligence arts. Getting police reports from state troopers in two states, getting an ATM hit plus video surveillance of same, that is way, way out of CID traditional information systems.

  “Understood, boss,” she finally replies. “But…”

  “But what?”

  “I’ve gone through her service record. She has relatives in Maine. Her husband has relatives in Ohio. She’s never been stationed in Texas. Why would she be going there?”

  McCarthy says, “Sounds like questions only a trained investigator like you can find out. So find it the hell out.”

  “Yes, sir,” she says.

  “Good,” he says. “Just so you know, Kenedy is spelled with one n. Get back to me soonest with whatever you can find.”

  “Yes, sir,” she says, and that’s that.

  She keeps on speeding along, thinking of a little historical display she noted at the airport while waiting to get her rental car. About a hundred years ago, a category 4 hurricane had struck right here, scouring the coast clean and killing up to a thousand people.

  Rosaria glances up at the rearview mirror. Sunny blue sky back there. No clouds. No rain. No storm surge racing up behind her to take her away from this dark day and even darker job.

  She pushes the Ford’s accelerator down as her speed jumps to ninety.

  CHAPTER 49

  IN A small house on a quiet street in Three Rivers, Texas, Antonio Garcia is pacing through the small, dirty kitchen, living room, his small bedroom, past the closed door of the other bedroom, and then back out to the kitchen. He has on stonewashed, pressed Levi’s jeans, a bright-yellow Lacoste polo shirt—one size too small to show off his sculpted figure—and specially crafted Lucchese cowboy boots worth nearly two thousand American dollars. He is carrying a Smith & Wesson Model 500 .44 revolver, one of the most powerful handguns in the world, in a Bianchi shoulder holster.

  The revolver is crap for shooting at long distances, but Antonio’s work has always been up close and personal, and besides, carrying a small cannon like this scares the shit out of most folks he encounters in his work. He remembers seeing a Clint Eastwood movie when he was much younger, and how handsome Clint used such a revolver to cut down anyone who got in his way.

  On the couch in the dingy living room, ignoring the television that’s showing a telenovela DVD, reading the Bible and carefully taking notes on a legal pad of yellow paper, is one of the other three men in this house, Pepe. Antonio doesn’t like Pepe because a month ago, Pepe found Jesus Christ and is now studying the ways he can save his soul. Slim and well-groomed Pepe says based on what he’s done and what he will be doing, he hopes if he knows enough about Jesus, his soul might be saved after all when his time eventually comes.

  Antonio doesn’t know about souls, lost his belief in Jesus and God years back, and if Pepe were to go soft on him, he’d blow his head off. But so far, Pepe has done his job, and Antonio leaves him alone. He also leaves Ramon alone, who is sleeping in the second bedroom, along with the fourth person in this house, the chicken.

  Back again on his trek, small kitchen, living room, his small bedroom, and back to the kitchen. He remembers as a boy, his father affording one day to take him and his sister to the Chapultepec Zoo outside of Mexico City, and he remembers a big black bear. The bear was pacing back and forth, back and forth, and he felt sad for the big guy. He should have been out in the wilderness, killing other creatures, eating what he wanted, humping any female bear in range.

  Instead the bear was trapped.

  Just like Antonio.

  He goes back to his pacing.

  This job isn’t like any other job he’s done for his jefe. He’s done lots of kidnapping jobs, and except for a few, most of them involved working over the victim and torturing him until his family came up with the money that the jefe was demanding.

  But not this job.

  This job is full of rules, and Antonio hates rules.

  Don’t leave the house. Don’t draw attention to yourself. Keep things quiet. One of you to be awake at all times. No drinking. No drugs.

  And worst of all…Don’t mark, harm, or even touch the chicken you are guarding.

  Where’s the fun in that?

  Most of the fun in jobs like this is seeing the fear in the chicken’s eyes, seeing how much he screams when a finger or toe is lopped off, how he begs and begs for mercy, and how friendly and forgiving he becomes at the end, when he is told that the ransom is paid and he will be released in just a short while.

  Sweet Mary, the chicken—even if short toes or fingers—will hug and kiss them all, forgiving them for doing a dirty and necessary job, and he will be in a cheerful mood until Antonio and his associates drive him to an emp
ty cornfield and toss him into a drainage ditch and shoot him in the head.

  But not this chicken.

  He is protected, and he is to stay here until some norteamericano knocks on the door, says a certain phrase, and then the chicken is to be released into this stranger’s care. Antonio, Pepe, and Ramon will leave a half hour later, cross the border, and go home to Ciudad Juárez, and then have a week off to make up for the monastic existence they’ve been suffering.

  Back in the kitchen, Antonio stops, feeling hungry, thirsty, antsy. He opens the refrigerator, sees water and nothing else. Up in the freezer is a pile of frozen dinners—he’s come to hate frozen dinners. Most times the gas stove here either overcooks or undercooks the frozen chunks of pasta or white frozen meat pretending to be chicken.

  He slams the door shut, goes back out to the living room. Pepe looks up at him. Pepe’s skin is darker than his and Ramon’s, and he’s got a beak of a nose that marks some Aztec blood, but that blood must be thinned out some for Pepe to have found Jesus.

  He says to Antonio, “What’s up?”

  “I’m going out.”

  Pepe pauses, Bible in his lap, pen in his hand. “You can’t.”

  “Watch me.”

  “The jefe won’t like it.”

  “The jefe is hundreds of kilometers away,” Antonio says, picking up a light-tan jacket from the couch to wear over his polo shirt and his Smith & Wesson. “When we came here a few days ago, there was a McDonald’s that just opened up. It’s only five minutes away.”

  Pepe says, “The jefe won’t like it.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t like that crap we’re forced to eat,” Antonio says. “I’m going up there, get some fries, two Big Macs, a nice cold drink. You can sit here and thump that Bible. I won’t be gone long.”

  He goes to the door, feeling the truck keys in the jacket pocket. Like some deranged talking doll or toy, Pepe calls out, “Antonio, the jefe won’t like it!”

  Antonio opens the door and says to Pepe, “He won’t find out. If he does find out, I will blame you. And if that happens, dear Pepe, I’ll make sure you meet Jesus at the end of the day.”

  CHAPTER 50

  PELAYO ABBOUD returns to the room in the upper-floor suite that’s been converted into his own little communications center, and a distressed-looking Casper Khourery looks to him and says, “Sir…the deadline has passed by an hour. We’ve not heard from the Army captain.”

  “Ah,” he says, walking into the room, gently touching and slapping the bulky shoulders of the other three men working here on his behalf, sitting in front of keyboards, computer consoles, and radio equipment. “Do we have a view of the Three Rivers house?”

  A young lad named Alejandro says, “Sir, over here, if you please.”

  Pelayo bends over and takes in the view from the large monitor. It’s an amazing sight, like he’s taking in a view from a sparrow or a hawk, circling over the small house. The place looks empty, looks quiet. A few bits of shrubbery are scattered across the flat yard.

  The driveway is empty.

  That’s not good.

  He says, “There is supposed to be a truck there, am I right?”

  “Yes, jefe,” Casper says, coming over to join him. “We saw it leave about three minutes ago.”

  “I don’t like that,” Pelayo says. “You should have told me.”

  “There was only one man who came out from the house,” Casper explains. “We could see his size and shape. It was clear that he was not the one we’re interested in.”

  “I see.”

  The airborne drone circles and circles over the small house. It’s an amazing thing, what the scientists and engineers can do, if given enough money and resources.

  Pelayo says, “Are we sure that this drone cannot be spotted?”

  Alejandro says, “This aerial platform, jefe, was developed for the American CIA. It is nearly impossible to detect. Four were given on loan to our Centro de Investigación y Seguridad Nacional.” The young man smiles. “Officially, one was destroyed in a training accident…but as you can see, it has recovered quite nicely.”

  “Good,” Pelayo says.

  Casper steps closer to him, lowers his voice. “About the Army captain…the deadline has passed. What shall we do?”

  Pelayo says, “We give her another hour. Why not? Sometimes it is to your advantage to show mercy.”

  Alejandro leans over and whispers something to the man next to him, and the man laughs. Pelayo grips Alejandro’s left shoulder. “I’m so sorry, would you care to repeat that?”

  “Er, it was nothing, jefe.”

  “Oh, it must have been something, for your friend there to laugh so loud. Please. Share it with me.”

  “Jefe…”

  Pelayo squeezes harder. Alejandro gets the message. He stammers and says, “It was…just a joke. That’s all. I just said…good for you that Miguel isn’t here to hear the talk of mercy.”

  He releases his grip on the young man’s shoulder, gives him a reassuring pat. “Ah, yes. My cousin Miguel. I suppose everyone knows about him, what he’s done, what he’s capable of doing. Even though he professes to be a religious man. And if he were to know that I just extended this deadline, it would not go well for me, would not go well for my company. Because Miguel would see any sign of mercy as a weakness, am I correct?”

  Alejandro whispers, “Yes, you’re correct.”

  Pelayo moves around so he’s face-to-face with Alejandro. Everyone in this small room is now staring at what’s going on.

  He reaches out and gently taps the side of the young man’s cheek. “What, you think I’m so small, so weak, that I cannot take a joke? Do you?”

  Alejandro just shakes his head no.

  Pelayo smiles, says to Casper. “This man…he’s a brave one, and smart. He will go far. Come with me, Alejandro, will you?”

  The young man is smiling at his fellow workers and follows Pelayo out to the main room of the suite, where Pelayo says, “Get two Coca-Colas from the refrigerator and join up with me.”

  Pelayo goes to the far balcony and takes in the sparkling view of the Gulf of Mexico. Another perfect day. He hears the door slide open and a shy voice, “Jéfe?”

  He smiles, takes the open Coke bottle from the young man, already open and with a straw in it. He clinks his bottle with Alejandro’s and says, “Well done, Alejandro.”

  “Thank you, jefe.”

  Pelayo looks over the grounds that belong to him. Below is a narrow parking lot and a loading dock, and there are two mothers trying to herd about a half dozen youngsters in bathing suits to the nearby swimming pool.

  He says, “Again, I admire your skills, your sense of humor. Too often there are organizations that are…too rigid. Too formal. Subordinates afraid to tell their superiors what’s really going on, what kind of challenges are out there. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, jefe.”

  “Excellent!” He takes another sip of the cold, biting, and so satisfying drink. The two mothers and their children are still moving as slow as a turtle carrying a cement block on its back.

  He says, “Tell me…you’re in that room, day in, day out. How do your coworkers feel about working here, about working for me?”

  Alejandro smiles. “We all love it. The pay is generous, the working conditions are fine…We know you are strict in your rules, about women, about the drink, about the drugs. But that is to be expected…to be so high up, to be working for such a man with such a future.”

  Pelayo puts his bottle down on the railing. He looks over. The mothers and the children are gone.

  He says, “Young man, there is one more thing you must know, and that is the role of the king. The king must be above it all, must be seen as all-knowing, all-powerful, and to be respected. Especially the respect. Otherwise words will be muttered, rumors will spread, and plots will commence.”

  Alejandro’s eyes grow frightened, and Pelayo decides to show him mercy.

  By not making him wait in fea
r anymore.

  Pelayo leans in, punches Alejandro in the groin, making him double over and gasp, grabs the man’s shirt collar with his left hand, and pushes him up and over the balcony railing using the strength of his right shoulder and his hand on Alejandro’s waist.

  A brief yelp, a heavy thump that he can almost feel in his feet, and it’s over.

  Pelayo picks up his glass bottle, gives the ground one more glance.

  Good.

  The two mothers and their children weren’t there to witness what has just happened.

  Mercy, he ponders, can show many forms.

  CHAPTER 51

  THE LITTLE mantra of We’re out of time, we’re out of time, is marching through my mind, but then it stops as I see what’s just happened. I’m hunkered down near a low and wide bush at the rear yard of the target house, binoculars in hand, gathering intelligence, and then there’s a little roar of an engine, and the big Ford pickup with the extended cab pulls out and goes down Linden Street, connecting with North School Road, and then it’s gone. I spot one bulky guy behind the steering wheel.

  Well.

  I’m in a dry field of low grass and scrub brush, with some trees scattered here and there. It’s good cover, about one of the few breaks that I’ve gotten on this heartrending mission to Texas. There’s a soft whir of insects flying around me, and I do my best to ignore them.

  Think, intelligence officer, think.

  The home is one story, like most of the homes scattered up and down the street. Probably a small living room right off the front door. There are propane tanks facing me, meaning the kitchen is right there, to the right of the living room. Bathroom, not more than two bedrooms. Even though I’ve never been in that house, I can visualize the floor plan.

  How many people can you fit in a house like that?

  Person being held, that I need to steal away. That’s one.

  Three, maybe four guards, but four is pushing it. That’d be five people in that small house. Where would you put all of them? And five people eat a lot. I can’t see these guys trucking to the local supermarket every other day to stock up. Too many eyes and ears in this small town.