The Gatekeeper, page 14
Lots of guys coming and going. News crews staging outside. Could be something. Dez rolls that way with his Popeye gait.
The Sloatville City Council is meeting. The city council chamber is a largish meeting room, very plain, that seats about thirty people facing one way, and a raised dais with five chairs and a table facing the other way. This could be an AA room in any church or a Rotary Club meeting space in any office park. There’s a round city emblem plaque on the table in front of the centermost chair—the seat of the mayor—but it’s plastic and has been mounted slightly crooked. When necessary, he guesses, the plaque gets removed and this becomes the municipal courtroom.
Dez guesses that eighty people are crammed into the hot and airless room.
Up on the dais, the mayor—or the woman holding the gavel at any rate—is maybe in her fifties and Hispanic. She’s trying to shout over the roaring crowd. The other people on the dais look pretty shell-shocked. None are leaping to her defense.
The only camera crew inside the council chamber belongs to Patriot Media, according to the logo on the camera and the microphone thrust toward the angry, surging crowd. The camera and the mic are not facing the elected officials, with their shoulders hunched, heads lowered, trying to make as small a target as possible. Patriot Media doesn’t much care what they have to say.
The spitting-mad mob, on the other hand? That makes for grand television.
People are standing, the chairs ignored. They shout over one another. Dez, squeezed into the back of the room, hears growls of “go back where you came from” and “real Americans” and “secure our borders.” Same old, same old. It’d be nice, he muses, if haters learned a new tune now and then.
A fortysomething guy leans toward Dez and shouts to be heard. “Showing ’em now!”
The guy’s T-shirt shows an American eagle, its talons laden with an AK-47 and a bandoleer of grenades. Dez leans his direction. “What brought this on? What did the city council say to rile everyone up?”
The guy shrugs, then goes back to shouting down the message he (1) is unaware of and (2) vehemently opposes.
Dez can’t easily get any closer to the front, nor does he particularly want to. He’s got a sense of the dynamics of the room, and that’s enough. He edges back out of the chamber.
A quick tour tells him that two-thirds of the building feature the city council chamber and an administrative office that looks big enough for three, maybe four full-time employees. The police station is simply the left-hand third of the building. Dez ambles through a connecting door to see what’s what.
The police station is deserted. He spots two desks, a smallish space barred off for a holding cell in one corner, and a small, spare separate office for the chief.
Dez is glad to be out of the roar of the crowd and stands in the quiet for a moment. Someone should be here, even if only a clerk. But nope—not a soul. Maybe the entire force is out trying to maintain calm. Maybe the entire force is in the council chambers yelling along with the others.
The relative silence—he can hear chanting now from the council chamber, “send ’em back, send ’em back”—is a little unnerving. Something’s missing.
Dez spots a two-way radio behind a civilian counter. He circles the counter, checks the radio.
It’s been unplugged from the wall. Inert.
He doesn’t know where the Sloatville City Police are at the moment. But out on patrol isn’t the answer.
He rifles through some cabinets. If the station has a weapons locker, he can’t find it. He spots a bottle of bourbon and a lot of municipal, county, and state forms that need to be filled out by someone but probably never will now. He sees a pegboard with room for two car keys—stenciled CAR ONE and, weirdly, CAR B. No keys on the hooks over either stencil. He thinks it likely that the same radio that the Sloatville Police would use to communicate internally would be used to communicate with the county sheriff’s office and the California Highway Patrol, but maybe not. Either way, there’s no second radio to be found.
“You supposed to be in here?”
Dez turns. Two men have entered through the street door. Both wear jeans and boots and untucked shirts, sleeves rolled up. Both look fit and thirtyish. Both wear Glocks on belt holsters at their sides, their shirts rucked up to expose the weaponry.
Dez retrieves the half-full bottle of bourbon from the filing cabinet and smacks it down on the counter between himself and the guys. “Been a long day, now.” He beams. “What’re ye drinking?”
The two guys are six-two and six-foot. Beyond that, they’re pretty interchangeable. Six-Two says, “Asked you a question.”
“Are you the chief of police, then? Badges to flash about?” He keeps smiling.
The guys take a step closer. They appear to find Dez not as charming as Dez is quite sure he is.
Six-Two says, “If you don’t got business in here, move along.”
Dez circles the counter, then hoists himself up onto it, feet dangling. He removes the lid off the bourbon and takes a swig. “Too feckin’ crowded in there.” He head-jabs toward the sound of chanting. “Can’t hear yourself think.”
He holds the bottle at arm’s length.
Six-Foot steps forward and accepts it. He relaxes a little. “Whole town’s getting crowded.”
“I want t’see Oliver Lantree,” Dez says, letting his legs kick like a little kid on the swings. “That’d be something. Me mum listens to him night and day. She’d love that.”
Six-Foot take a swig and gestures with the bottle toward Six-Two.
Who draws his Glock, a quick, professional draw, knees bent, shoulders hunched, body turtled in, left hand supporting his right wrist, finger indexed, and points it at Dez’s chest.
“Stand up. Turn around. Hands on the counter. Do it now.”
Six-Foot says, “Kyle?” He’s frozen, bottle extended, eyebrows raised in surprise.
Six-Two barks, “Do it! Now!”
Dez grins. “Course, mate!” He swings his legs and hops down and, in so doing, brushes the forearm of Six-Foot, nudging his hand and the bottle of bourbon close to Six-Two—Kyle. The bottle jostles Kyle’s arm.
Kyle adjusts accordingly, glances reprovingly at his buddy, and Dez uses his left hand to grab Kyle’s gun and right hand, both disappearing into Dez’s massive mitt. He twists and hears wrist bones break. Kyle’s eyes shoot wide.
Dez has very quick hands. His left hand is busy grinding the bones of Kyle’s wrist, so he lets pop with his right fist, smacking Six-Foot in the nose, and he still has time to snatch the bourbon bottle out of the air before the man drops it to the floor.
“Waste not, want not.”
He releases Kyle’s now-useless right hand and punches him in the mouth.
Kyle lands on the floor next to his mate, a wee second after his mate. Both well and truly unconscious.
Dez unclips both guys’ holsters, and takes Kyle’s Glock off the floor, sets everything on the counter. He takes another hit of the bourbon. He takes the men’s mobile phones and hides them in a file drawer.
He grabs Kyle by the shirtfront and deadlifts him up off the floor, dumping him behind the counter. He does the same with his buddy.
He can’t kill these two guys—well, can’t is the wrong word. ’Course, he could kill them. But he won’t, and he doesn’t want them coming to and telling the world about him. So he clips their holsters onto the back of his belt. Then he circles the counter and squats down. He unbuckles Kyle’s belt, unzips his pants, and shoves Six-Foot’s hand in the man’s pants. He undoes Six-Foot’s trousers and shoves Kyle’s hand in.
Let ’em wake up and try to explain this, then. Complicates the telling of any tale. Might make one reconsider saying anything at all.
Dez drizzles the bourbon on their shirts to make sure they smell like all have had a good time, then ambles out of the police station.
Town isn’t boring. He’ll give ’em that.
CHAPTER 39
Time is more of a factor now. Those guys might be too embarrassed by the scenario of rough sex gone wrong, but Dez can’t count on that. He needs answers.
He needs the mayor.
The city hall shouting match is breaking up. The woman up on the dais with the gavel—he assumes she’s the mayor—looks exhausted. The other two councilors are drifting away, not making eye contact with her. Patriot Media journalists are interviewing the thinning, excited crowd.
Dez waits in the back of the chamber. When the woman packs her tote bag and heads toward an exit near the dais, Dez dashes out and circles the building, to the gravel parking lot shared by the municipal building and a right dodgy bar called Pirate’s Booty. Singular possessive. Maybe the proprietor couldn’t afford two pirates.
She emerges and vectors toward a twelve-year-old Toyota with a mismatched right front quarter panel. Dez says, “Pardon me,” and her shoulders sag.
He knows what this looks like. He’s not a resident of the town. He’s a white guy, guns strapped on. She says, “Look, whatever you want to add to—”
“There was an attempted kidnapping, Monday last, at the Hotel Tremaine in Los Angeles.”
She looks at him for real now, curious. He holds his hands out, palms forward.
“Them bastards in your town attempted to kidnap this woman because she caught onto a scheme to steal … well, let’s say a lot of money to pay for all this here.” He gestures around. “I work with her. She’s trying t’stop the flow of money. I’m here to mess with ’em as much as I can.”
She studies him. Dez stands there and lets her.
She says, “Are you for real?”
“Aye, ma’am. Between Petra Alexandris—the bird they tried to kidnap—and meself, we’ve as good a chance as anyone of stopping this lot. But I need to know more.”
She nods toward the Toyota. “Come with me.”
CHAPTER 40
Her name is Renata Esquivel. When she tells him, Dez says, “Like the bandleader,” and she reappraises him. “No relation. But yes.”
He finds out she’s not the mayor of Sloatville. The mayor split. She’s the council president pro tem. Dez doesn’t know what that means, but it sounds posh. She could have/should have split, too. But she stayed because this is the town she was born in.
Those chants of send her back, send her back must have been painful, given that. He doesn’t ask. Seems a stupid question.
Dez likes her immediately.
She’s Latina, fifty-five, about five-one, with the hands and wrists and forearms of a baker, which is to say, strong. She invited him to her home, a one-story clapboard affair closer to the ocean. The inside is decorated with tons of images of Jesus and Mary. Dez expected that.
A man sits in an aged, nutmeg-brown recliner and watches fútbol on a decent-sized flat-screen TV. He’s got a coffee table next to him with an iced tea and a pencil and about a half dozen football publications. Dez can see that the man’s been marking them up, making notes with circles and arrows. He has a green-and-yellow afghan over his lap and the recliner is extended, and Dez can see that he has only one leg under the afghan.
Renata chats with him quietly in Spanish for about a minute, and explains Dez’s presence. Dez watches the match. It’s Liga MX; not Dez’s favorite league, although they play damn good football down there. He hears the old man—Dez thinks he’s maybe midsixties and as frail as a bird’s egg—ask why she would trust another white man with guns. She says she’s playing a hunch.
The man looks over her shoulder at Dez with unalloyed suspicion.
Dez juts his chin toward the set.
“Querétaro an’ Cruz Azul, yeah?” He speaks Spanish. “Nary a striker for the ‘Cement Makers’ this year, but their keeper’s for real. You see that save against Monarcas last week? Beauty.”
The man nods. “You know a little about football?”
“Know enough to put the other side on its hind foot, sir. Looking for the councilor’s help on that score.”
Renata and the man nod to each other a little. “My name is Hector Esquivel. Welcome to my home.”
“Desmond Limerick, sir.”
“You are from Spain?”
Dez’s accent. “British Isles, sir.”
Renata Esquivel says, “Would you like coffee?”
“More’n anything, ma’am.”
She leads the way to a very clean and aging kitchen. She gets coffee brewing and gets milk scalded, and presents a plate of concha, a popular pastry from Mexico. They’re shaped like a seashell; thus the name. Hers are made with real vanilla and sprinkled with cinnamon, and Dez groans a little when he tastes it.
Renata likes that, he can tell.
She says, “I’m still not sure I should talk to you.”
“Smart.” He nods, sipping his café con leche.
She asks him a lot of good, penetrating questions about himself; about Petra and the attack on the Hotel Tremaine; about the money connection. She’s smart. That’s in Dez’s favor. He could use smart right about now.
The coffee is great.
“How’d all this get started, then?”
She rubs her eyes, fatigued and saddened by what’s happened to her town. “That man from the network. He showed up in town last month and started broadcasting. Radio, TV, a blog. He was everywhere.”
Dez says, “Oliver Lantree. Patriot Media.”
She makes the sign of the cross. “I wish ill on no one, Mr. Limerick. But that man is a cancer.”
Somewhere along the line, they’d both slipped into Spanish but Renata only now realizes it. That, more than anything, convinces her to trust Dez.
“Was Patriot Media in town before the standoff started?”
She nods. “A few days before. I thought they were incredibly lucky and Sloatville was incredibly unlucky.”
Dez lets that slide for now. “D’you know the family at the ranch?”
“We know … we knew Molly. I’d say she was a good mother. She loved her kids. She was a Christian. She was an unrepentant racist but … tolerated Hector and me, I think, because I’m strong-willed and speak my mind. And I’m originally from here. She and Joe were survivalists. The ranch is off the power grid; has its own water. Mostly they left everyone alone. Then Joe burned some of his acres to reinvigorate the soil. The burn spread onto federal land. There was a warrant. Shots were fired in the air. A standoff.”
“But that happened after Lantree showed up with his media circus?”
She nods, eyes narrowed, following his logic.
“I don’t think Lantree was lucky; right place, right time. I think he engineered all this. I think he’s got soldiers at that military base out there who’re in on it. I think he’s looking to create a fifty-first state.”
Renata Esquivel says, “Lexington?”
“Aye, that’s right. They’ve the money and the guns and the inciting incident. Maybe they can make it happen.”
Renata nods. “There’s been lots of talk of that at the town halls.” She breaks off a bit of cookie and nibbles it. Dez has gobbled down two-thirds of the plate. “At first, a lot of the residents showed up. Then more of these newcomers. Men with guns. Fewer residents. Today … I saw maybe three people I knew. And they wouldn’t make eye contact with the spic.”
Dez makes a fist and isn’t aware of it. He tries to look calm; fails.
She reaches out and cups his fist, or as much of it as she can. “You seem like a nice man, Mr. Limerick.”
“Nice won’t get me far with this lot, I’m afraid. There’s a high likelihood I’ll be meting out violence, ma’am. Sorry, but there it is.”
“Violence begets violence,” she says. “‘Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”’”
“Paul. Romans.” Dez can tell he surprises her. “I’m sorry to tell you this, ma’am, but if you were hoping God sent a pacifist to placate these bastards—sorry—ye’ll find he has not. ‘Righteous indignation is a mean between envy an’ spite.…’ That’s me, then.”
She says, “Aristotle.”
Dez grins. He’s in need of some smart. He came to the right place.
CHAPTER 41
Dez gets to the heart of the matter. “Where do I find this Oliver Lantree and his empire?”
“They’ve rented space in a server farm, north part of town.”
Dez tenses at the term server farm.
“Do you know what that is?” Renata asks. “It’s just computers. Lots and lots of computers. They suck up ocean water and they run air-conditioning three hundred and sixty-five days a year. They pay well for it all, too. Nearly a tenth of the city’s budget comes from their taxes and fees.”
“Much staff?” he asks.
“Hardly any. It’s all automated. Plenty of room for the news crews to work out of.”
“Then that’s where I’ll start. Thank you, ma’am. I’ll do what I can for your town.”
She starts taking dishes to the sink, tries not to let Dez spot that she’s crying. “Oh, Mr. Limerick. Sloatville’s dead. It died when the crazies showed up and the good people fled. Or hid in their houses. It died when the mayor left. When the other members of the city council, and the school board, and the county commission turned their backs and averted their eyes. It doesn’t matter now what happens to Patriot Media, or the Ryerson Ranch, or any of these hoodlums. Sloatville is dead.”
She’s right, of course. Dez saw it at the city council meeting. Anarchy, once in place, is tough to root out. And it kills whatever existed before it. Dez has seen it in the Middle East and in Northern Africa. Fragile things, order and peace.
She looks up at a crucifix on the wall over the kitchen table. “Do you believe in God, Mr. Limerick?”
