The Cobalt City Epic, part deux

Its a brand new week, so here it is, two brand new chapters for your entertainment. Join the adventure, as The Protectorate peels away the layers of a mysterious criminal and Stardust deals with the trials and tribulations of raising a ten-year old boy. Four color adventure for the price of two shiny quarters. Truly, the best super-hero value on the web!

Cobalt City Blues Part Two

The Epic which started it all!

I've gone and done it now. I've taken the final step and released online content - self publishing last year's underground and hard to find hit super-hero novel Cobalt City Blues. It will be made available through Bitpass. Got to admit, if not for the multiple suggestions by this novel's biggest fan, I wouldn't be pursuing this route. But the sad fact is, this is a tough genre to sell. Sure, publishers love science fiction, and they love fantasy, but put it in a contemporaty setting and throw in a bit of leather or spandex and they get nervous. Well, there isn't any reason for you to get nervous.

In the true spirit of comic books adventure, I'm making the book available to the general public at two chapters for $.50. Yep. That's less than what you used to be able to buy a comic book for twenty years ago. Fifty cents. Two shiny quarters. And Bitpass.com makes it incredibly easy for you to do. Signup takes no time at all and is hassle free, even easier if you have a Microsoft Passport! I did a lot of research, and this is the only micropayment provider who really had a grasp on what I was trying to do.

The first two chapters should be available by cliking on the link below. Rather than release an overwhelming flood of material all at once, I'm electing to update on this site weekly. New sections in two chapter portions should be available every Wednesday.

So put on that cape and cowl, and join in the adventure that is Cobalt City Blues!

- Nathan Crowder

Finally, a non-novel post!

So, November was about as crazy but not as difficult as I had anticipated. The novel, Greetings from Buena Rosa has been finished, as those reading it here already know. Additionally, I found myself published in Thuglit for December with my short story "Kid Gloves". Considering it was done all in one sitting as a lark late one night, I'm particularly happy to see it find a home.

A new story titled simply "The Lake" is making the rounds now, and I'm particuarly pleased with it. It covers some tough subject matter that I was reluctant to put into print, but it was a story that kept bobbing to the surface of my consciousness. Well, if you repress things, they only get worse, so the story was born. It is making the rounds of my readers, and even pulled in some readers from outside my normal review process because of the material. I hope to have a finished draft ready by the end of the year to send off to William Jones over at the Book of Dark Wisdom by New Years Day. Nothing like examining the dark corners of our own psyche to start off the new year!

In unrelated news, my legitimate 9-5 job which graciously pays my bills has taken me off contract as of December first, bringing me on as a permenant employee. This means that I will not be moving to Chicago at years end with my lovely wife, and will instead continue to enjoy the life I have in Seattle, tearing down some old patterns and creating new ones on their bones. (So yes, I am single again. Its true, ladies. Play your cards right and all this can be yours!) I'm very excited about staying, and not really depressed about the dissolution of my third marriage. Without entropy, there can be no growth. And it will allow me to focus on my writing which is long over due. Some good stuff happened this past year. The next year will be even better.

Stay tuned, as always, for infrequent updates. :)

-T

Buena Rosa Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight
The water running through the street out of the shantytown was only water in the loosest of definitions. Manuel shuddered to think what was in the foul colored fluid which reeked of human waste and chemicals. He tried to find a place where it narrowed enough for him to cross without getting his boots wet, then finally had to trust his limited mobility to minimize the contact his boots would have with the possibly toxic runoff. He ended up getting the toes of both boots contaminated by something that didn’t want to run off, and would probably end up destroying the leather. “Well, going to have to burn these boots now,” he muttered ruefully under his breath.
The shantytown was worse than he had expected. There were more children clogging the doorways to the ramshackle homes than he would have thought possible, most of them thin and sickly. And their mothers saw him coming and glared in his direction, suspicious of his motives. He noticed the occasional square brick courtyard placed in the middle of a cluster of houses, a large water pump always in heavy use. While one child filled a bucket with pump water, one more was struggling to get a full bucket home and another was returning with an empty one.
No running water. A glance overhead showed no electrical lines had been run through the neighborhood either. It was a logical extension that there was no plumbing to speak of either, giving him a better idea of what that might possibly be running down the gutter. Definitely had to burn the boots.
There was a layer of grime and dust on every surface, sediment from the factory, most likely. And while it might not be necessarily poisonous, it certainly wasn’t orange juice. Horrible living conditions for an essentially captive work force, all for a greater profit margin; it was so much like modern feudalism that it made his heart hurt.
No one would talk to him. He had been working the handful of adults who met his eyes for an hour, trying to find out anything about Muriel Cruz, but had gotten nothing but fearful shakes of the head or signs of the cross to protect against the devil. She had been a floor supervisor, so she had to have known people, her name had to be familiar. But it was becoming abundantly clear that no one wanted to talk about what had happened.
Manuel was about to write it off as a wasted trip when he picked up the sound of a car tires on the rough roads of the surrounding neighborhood. Once his ears were aware of the sound, he was able to discern the noise of an engine running quietly. Not a truck, not even the Sheriff’s nice and new SUV. This car was quality sedan quiet. The sound of distant voices carried by the wind reached him from the direction of the engine noise. A male voice, deep, native Mexican accent, and regional as well. He was looking for someone.
Tall, thin, in his thirties, wearing a denim jacket and pants and a western shirt.
Someone was looking for him. And this person had a car that ran quietly. It could only be someone from Pegasus Motors. Looking quickly around, he saw no hiding place that he could get to quickly. And when it came down to it, the locals would easily be able to point out where he went. They were certain to be more afraid of someone from the factory that gave them whatever meager livelihood they had than of a crippled stranger.
Well, he reasoned, he did want to get a look at the factory anyway. Might as well take a guided tour. Unless, of course, the person looking for him had another travel destination in mind, perhaps something off the highway near a burned out foundation.
Just to be safe, he slid a hand into his jacket’s breast pocket and activated the tracking device concealed as a library card. If he went missing for any period of time, at least Snowflake would be able to find the body. Then, since time really wasn’t an issue, and his shoulders were starting to ache after propelling himself all over the uneven ground on the forearm crutches, he leaned against a nearby wall and waited to be discovered.
It didn’t take long to be found, but it wasn’t the driver of the Pegasus car that found him first. A woman in black denim jeans and leather vest waved to him from across the street, urging him to come inside. She was about his age, he figured, maybe a bit older, and her bare arms were heavily decorated with tattoos. Her hair was past her shoulders, but tied back to be out of her way. There was something about her bearing that grabbed Manuel’s attention almost immediately, and it took a few precious seconds for him to figure out what.
She looked him in the eye. No one had beaten her down or made her afraid. And that meant maybe, just maybe, she would talk. He hopped across the narrow street on his crutches, sending jarring pain up into his shoulders and legs, but it was over quickly and he was in the close swelter of one of the tiny homes with the strange woman.
Manuel looked at her a little more closely, inspecting the tattoos and the lines around her eyes. He figured her to be maybe five years his senior. Her hands were calloused, and there was dirt and oil under her fingers. The tattoos were quality ink-work from a cornucopia of artists, which implied that she traveled. “Who are you?”
She pressed a finger to his lips, and peeked around the corner of the doorframe, watching the Pegasus Vigilant sedan roll slowly by. When it was safely out of sight, she removed her finger, looking a little embarrassed to have initiated the contact. “I’m Anita Cruz. I heard from some friends that you were asking questions about my sister. You’re Manuel de la Vega, aren’t you?”
“Whatever I’m paying my publicist, it isn’t enough.”
She laughed, a quick throaty chuckle that put him immediately at ease. “I talked to Flip earlier. He told me all about you. Says you’re working on a book.”
“I might be. I am very sorry to hear about your sister.”
A shadow passed in front of Anita’s eyes for a moment and then was gone. “Thank you. I suppose that’s why you’re here in Buena Rosa?”
“In a round about way. The police have arrested my cousin, and I don’t think she did it.”
“No, I don’t think she did either.”
Manuel studied her carefully. No, she didn’t believe the police had the wrong person. But there was more to it. She had been in town for longer than him, and as the victim’s sister, had probably found the locals a little more open in discussing what was going on in Buena Rosa. “Do you know who killed your sister?”
Anita’s voice was so low as to be almost inaudible. Her eyes were fixed on the doorway, in the direction of the Pegasus Vigilant that had so recently passed by. “No. Nothing I can prove.”
Lowering his tone to put her at ease, Manuel still made his voice clear enough that she couldn’t ignore it. “I don’t want proof. I just want to know what you think.”
She was silent for a long time, not changing position. Finally, she turned her eyes back to his, and they blazed in the shade of the hut. “Angels.”
“Like with wings?”
She sighed, and a slight smile of frustration appeared at the corner of her mouth. “You haven’t been here long enough to know the name, I guess. Michael Angels. He’s the plant manager for the Pegasus Motors factory.”
It clicked. Aldovar had mentioned the very name earlier that morning, on the ride to the jail. He had given the police department their vehicles. He had his own private security force, and he seemed to remember Aldovar make a seemingly random comment about improved response time to his hacienda. Michael Angel made an excellent suspect.
And if Manuel’s cousin was causing problems, trying to unionize workers, arranging it so she took the fall for the murder was a coup. But one thing didn’t quite fit. “Wait. Why would Michael Angels kill your sister?”
Anita looked lost for an answer. That was what Manuel was afraid of. When in doubt, blame the rich white guy for all your problems. In so many ways, it was the right thing to do, but without proof, without even a motive, it was useless. Still, Angels did have someone out looking for him, so maybe it wasn’t entirely groundless accusation. Maybe Anita’s instincts were good, and Manuel just needed to connect the pieces.
When in doubt, he figured, suspect everybody then try to trace them back to the crime. And if he wanted to trace Michael Angels back to the crime, he would have to actually meet him.
“Thanks for the information. I need to go talk to the guy in the car now.”
She grabbed Manuel’s elbow as he tried to exit the shack. “You don’t want to do that. If he thinks you are a threat to him, there is no telling what he could do to you.”
“I can’t solve your sister’s murder from inside this shack.”
Finally, Anita let go of his elbow, a trace of nervousness still in her eyes. “Well, at least its you they’re looking for this time.”
He smiled as he headed back out into the sun. It seemed that it was always him they were looking for. Strange how that worked out.
It didn’t take Manuel long to find the gold colored sedan prowling slowly through the streets of the shantytown. He walked in its general direction, apparently unconcerned. As it pulled up alongside, he got his first good look at the driver. It was the creepy Pegasus employee from breakfast, the one Manuel would always think of as a gay lawyer from now on thanks to Snowflake. He struggled for a name, and remembered it to be Contralles just as the window rolled down.
“Mr. de la Vega. If you would be so kind as to get in, my employer would like to speak with you.”
“Why Mr. Contralles, I would be delighted to speak to Mr. Angels. Shall I sit in the back seat?” He reached for the back door and then saw heavy pistol in the driver’s hand, leveled threateningly in his direction.
“I would prefer that you sit in the front where I can be a better host.”
Ah, where you can shoot me if I burp out of turn, you mean, Manuel thought. He kept his game smile on and moved around to the passenger side. The door was open when he got there, and he slid into the leather bucket seat and fastened the belt. “Very nice car.”
“The Pegasus Vigilant ES. Mr. Angels spares no expense.”
“Of course he doesn’t have to pay for them.”
Mr. Contralles smiled. “Of course.” The smile chilled the blood in Manuel’s body, and he felt the sudden wish that he had used the restroom before he left home. He elected to say nothing else for the rest of the trip to the factory.
At the junction where Mr. Contralles turned in to the factory gate, Manuel noticed that the road continued on up into the hills, vanishing around a bend. Unlike the roads in Buena Rosa, this one was well maintained and relatively new. It could only go to Perseus Glen, he reasoned. It was not comforting to know that to get to the management housing, he would have to ride within fifteen feet of the heavily monitored front gate. If he used the road, that is, he suddenly corrected himself.
The gate security didn’t even make the Mr. Contralles roll down the window. In the dust kicked up when the car rolled to a stop, Manuel thought he saw the smallest sliver of a red laser light dance across the front window, near the dashboard. Bar code identification on all fleet vehicles, he figured. Handy. And it was something he might be able to exploit in the future. The razor-wire topped twelve-foot gate rolled open, and they were through, heading towards the office portion of Pegasus Motors.
It wasn’t until they were through the fence that Manuel realized there were two buildings on the site. The bulky, utilitarian factory building had no fence around it, and the sparse parking lot had only a handful of old, dusty cars and trucks. Then there was the administrative building, a three-story structure of bronze colored glass and steel, with decorative exposed I-beams. Completely surrounded by high security fence, the small administrative parking lot had only about a dozen cars. The building itself connected to the factory with an enclosed glass bridge at the third floor level.
There was no pretense of separate but equal here. There was no need for those illusions. There was a deliberate effort put into the design of this facility of separating “Us” from “Them.” No wonder everyone in the shantytown hated the gringos.
The space Mr. Contralles pulled into was the second closest to the door, clearly marking his rank in the hierarchy at the factory. The sign above the space showed it as “Reserved for Director of Personnel.” In the old days the job title would have been something different, Manuel had no doubt. Head bull, or chief leg-breaker, or union-buster, they all meant the same thing. Mr. Contralles was the in charge of handling malcontent employees.
And that made him a very dangerous man indeed.
They got out of the car at the same time, and Mr. Contralles didn’t even pretend to point the gun in Manuel’s direction. For his part, Manuel didn’t pretend that he was going to sprint for the twelve-foot tall security fence and vault over it. It was a relationship that seemed to work for both of them.
Then the bastard Contralles bypassed a perfectly good elevator and made Manuel go up two flights of stairs, aware that just because the gone was not visible didn’t mean that it wasn’t still there. The “Director of Personnel” made it onto the short list of people Gato Loco intended to visit before this trip was finished.
Sweating and shaking, Manuel finally made it to the heavy door of the executive suite. Made from treated pine, it was exquisitely carved around the border with what Manuel could only describe as rodeo symbols.
Mr. Contralles paused at the door long enough for Manuel to catch up, then rapped hard against it twice with his knuckles. “Come in,” crackled a concealed intercom. Without another word, Manuel’s kidnapper pushed the door open.
The spacious office was decorated in early buckaroo, complete with branding irons mounted on the walls and a saddled, stuffed white horse near the windows. Michael Angel was in his fifties, with dark hair turning handsomely to steel gray along the temples. He was not a tall man, nor physically remarkable in any way, but his hair looked great. Manuel couldn’t help but wonder if it was real, then wondered why someone would get fake gray hair and decided it had to be natural. Dressed in a tan suit with a bolo tie featuring a circle of polished elk horn as the cinch, he looked every bit the cowboy.
Manuel wondered if Michael Angel remembered the Alamo, and if so, if he looked to it as a rallying cry or an object lesson. When he spoke, however, he a hint of New England accent that even years of living somewhere else had been unable to completely eradicate. “So, you’re the little killer’s cousin, is that right?”
Manuel looked over his shoulder at Mr. Contralles, and then in mock surprise back at Michael Angel. “Oh! I’m sorry! I didn’t realize you were talking to me.” He was rewarded with a smile that had all the warmth of Rekyevik in winter.
The executive cowboy indicated one of the leather chairs before the desk, both of which were upholstered in the black and white hide of a Holstein cow. “Have a seat Mr. de la Vega. Can I offer you a drink?”
After the stairs, both sounded good, but the risk of being drugged or poisoned was not far from his mind. He worked his way over to one of the chairs and arranged himself in it, finding it more comfortable than he would have imagined. “Nothing to drink for me, thank you. It’s still a little early in the day.”
Mr. Angel held up his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “Well, that’s your prerogative, I suppose. I imagine you wonder why I had Dexter go out and track you down.”
Manuel took Dexter to mean Mr. Contralles. A sideways glance at the broad shouldered “Director of Personnel” showed a trace of discomfort over the use of his first name, confirming Manuel’s suspicions. Dexter Contralles. Good...one more name to research.
Settling in behind his large desk, Mr. Angel looked every bit the congenial host. He leaned back and put the heels of his so-shiny leather boots up on the desk and regarded Manuel warmly. “Listen, I understand that you might be concerned about your cousin. Hell, I would be too, so believe me, I feel what you might be going through. But if I’ve learned anything in my career, it’s that you have to give the police space to so their job. If you get underfoot, it just makes them angry, and then accidents happen. You don’t want accidents to happen, do you?”
Manuel hated him already. It takes a special kind of bastard to have absolutely no regard for a person’s intelligence, to just sell a flat out lie and expect someone to believe it. He set his jaw, and keeping his voice level, prepared for Dex to open up a can of pain on him. “Seems to me that an accident might have already happened.”
“Well, it might seem that way. But justice is a peculiar thing. The police here, they may not know much, but they know how to take care of business. I truly am sorry that your cousin got into trouble in Buena Rosa. And if she’s innocent I’m sure she will be exonerated. But going around my town, stirring up painful memories among the locals, well, I can’t have that.”
Manuel looked over at Dex. The big man was still looking distractedly out the windows, as though he wasn’t paying attention to the conversation, but the thin smile beneath his mustache said more than enough. “So, it would be in my best interest to just be quiet. I think that’s what you are telling me to do?”
“I am asking you politely...I am being polite, aren’t I Dexter?”
“You are the very picture of civility, sir.”
“Thank you. I’m asking you politely to not rock the boat. The police did their job. In record time, might I add. Now it’s time to let the justice system do its job.”
Manuel nodded. He had expected to be threatened off. It was a common tactic of people in power with something to hide. He couldn’t be sure if the executive was himself responsible for Muriel Cruz’s death or merely an accomplice after the fact. It was possible that this one death was merely a thread that threatened to unravel something much bigger, something Pegasus Motors couldn’t afford to have revealed. Whatever the case, Michael Angel was guilty of something. It fell to Manuel to find out what.
Manuel pushed himself up out of the chair with a visible sign of effort. “Well, Mr. Angel, I’m glad you found me in time to set me straight. I could have made a fool of myself otherwise. You know how passionate and unreasonable us Mexicans can get.” He took the two steps to the desk and held out his hand for a thank you shake as a sign of good will. If he played intimidated and lame, only part of which was true, they might not see him as a threat. How much damage could a crippled detective out of his element do in a town that Michael Angel clearly felt he owned?
Michael seemed to come to the conclusions that Manuel had wanted him too. He stood, and with an “aw, shucks” grin, took the detective’s hand and shook it firmly.
The vision knocked the feet out from under Manuel.
Those hands, those old, manicured hands. Manuel felt them on his own and suddenly his hand was a neck, soft and frail. The fingers dug in, molding the flesh and muscle like wet clay. His breath raged like a fire in his lungs, and still it would not end. Before him, Michael Angel seemed to strobe through a variety of outfits, some suits, some pajamas. And the background shifted just as quickly, from desert to mountain to rice papered walls.
Michael Angel had killed before. He had killed often. And more to the point, he had killed dispassionately, which made him dangerous. But the most disturbing thing was that Manuel was confident that Michael hadn’t killed Muriel. There were no ligature marks on the dead girl’s neck. She hadn’t been strangled. And Manuel might not be a criminal profiler, but one thing he was certain of was that serial killers, of which he felt Michael Angel qualified, rarely if ever broke pattern. No strangulation, no fit.
There was more than one murderer in Buena Rosa.
The room swam back into view, and Manuel found himself looking at the ceiling, with Mr. Contralles looking down on him curiously. It was rare that a vision hit him with such strength, enough to make him totally lose his composure, and he had no quick excuse to offer his hosts. Pulling himself up by the desk, enough that he could get his forearm crutches under him, required a little effort. He was not surprised that neither Dex nor Michael had helped him up. “Sorry about that. Got strangely light headed all of a sudden. I probably shouldn’t have walked up all those stairs on an empty stomach.”
The two Pegasus executives shared a look as Manuel got his feet back under him, and he wasn’t sure what that look said. But it made Manuel more than a bit nervous. He turned towards the door, sensing that the interview was over, and began making his way out towards the elevators. Mr. Contralles caught up quickly, then moved ahead to open the doors, a cold efficiency in his manner and voice. “I’ll take you back to town.”
“Great. It would be a long walk otherwise. But we take the elevator down.”
The heavy carved door of the office closed behind them. Manuel suspected that he would be walking through them again before his business in Buena Rosa was done.
Once on the elevator, Dexter Contralles took a strategic position near the control panel, and Manuel was suddenly pretty sure he understood the look that had passed between Michael Angel and his Director of Personnel. When Dexter reached for the 9mm pistol at the small of his back, Manuel was certain of it. They were going to kill him.

Buena Rosa Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven
Snowflake had set up camp in the shade of a large, white box trailer behind the hotel. Seated in a folding chair, with headphones on, he looked every bit the tourist. As he saw Manuel round the corner, he flipped open the little Coleman cooler at his feet and retrieved a can of beer, tossing it to the tired detective as he approached. Manuel let go of one of his forearm crutches, snagged the beer out of the air while putting all his weight on the other arm. Snowflake smiled at him from behind his wrap-around sunglasses. “Well, it looks like things went better than I was expecting.”
“Well, your expectations must have been pretty low.”
Snowflake shrugged and took a pull on his beer. “I figured you’d get arrested, at least. Maybe shot. It doesn’t even look like they roughed you up.”
Manuel tucked the sweating beer into his jacket pocket and made for another folding chair on the far side of Snowflake. “How disappointed you must be.”
Before Manuel could sit, his friend waved him away from the chair. The sparkle in his eyes should have been a warning, but it wasn’t. “Hold on. I have something to show you.”
Manuel had been covering too much ground by foot already, and it wasn’t even noon yet. He looked skeptically at Snowflake, but his friend wasn’t to be dissuaded. “Ok. I’ll bite. What do you have for me?”
Snowflake stood, smiling cryptically. “Not out here.” He motioned towards the travel trailer with a discreet tip of his head. “In there.”
It had been a long time coming. Manuel had tried getting away from his past, from the life that had chosen him. But time and time again, it had been made abundantly clear. He may have given up on Gato Loco, but no one else had. Katherine, Snowflake, the Tesla kids Xander and Tamika, even Donegal who had known for months but had never said anything. None of them was ready to give up on a part of him that he wasn’t even sure existed anymore.
But he had only seen one way to do this, to get his cousin out without causing a ruckus. Esther had pretty much scuttled that plan. If not Gato Loco, then what? Take on the systemic corruption of Mexican law enforcement, like Esther wanted him to do? She had no idea. She had been fighting the beast from the outside looking in, but had never done any lasting damage. A pinprick here, a pinprick there, but it was never much more than an inconvenience for the system.
He had gathered information to take down a corrupt department before. Just gathering the information had taken a year, from the inside. And even then, the actual prosecution dragged on forever and ultimately didn’t change much of anything at all.
Manuel had neither the luxury of time nor the advantage of political alliances. No. Esther’s way wouldn’t work.
And that left him with Gato Loco. Damn. “Ok. Let’s see what’s behind door number one.”
Any concerns Manuel might have had about the security of the trailer were quickly dismissed when he saw the set up Katherine had no doubt insisted upon. Besides a standard high grade padlock, a concealed panel housed a full retinal and voice scan security suite. He was directed by Snowflake to look into the light and say the word, “Shadow” - the name he had given to his old cycle. A quiet click, and the door popped open half an inch.
They casually glanced around to confirm that no one was watching, but Snowflake had done an excellent job parking the trailer. The wide door was close to the windowless back wall of a small western wear shop, and thus visible from only one narrow angle around the corner. With the floor of the trailer very low to the ground, stepping up into it was easy for Manuel, and it only took them a few seconds to climb inside without anyone seeing them.
The interior had flickered to light when the pass code unlocked the door, and Manuel was so stunned that it fell to Snowflake to close the door after them.
Set dead center in the 15’ trailer was his bike. Some changes had been made, yes, but they were minor and he had little doubt that they were improvements on the original design. The suspension alone was state of the art, and the power cell battery could only be more powerful than the prototype model the original Shadow used. Sleek and black, this café-racer style bike had more in common with Japanese animation than Harley Davidson, but that was the way he liked it.
His helmet hung on a rubber coated S-hook on the equipment wall. The high density fiberglass had been molded to resemble a yowling cat head, with stylized three-dimensional teeth framing the smoky visor and two eyes painted above, one tiny, one huge. The ears on the helmet were folded flat, in anger, and also for aerodynamic purposes.
“I don’t see the suit.”
Snowflake pulled out a key ring and pressed a button on a small remote. A seemingly innocuous tool chest unfolded, and held within was a new set of leathers – the new skin of El Gato Loco. “Xander figured that since he was more or less starting from scratch, he might as well make some minor fashion changes while still keeping the basic look.”
Manuel worked his way over to the wardrobe locker and inspected it more closely. Instead of boots and a one piece body suit, kid genius Xander Tesla had gone with boots, sleeveless body suit with what looked like a very breathable mesh top, and a heavy jacket with the signature Gato Loco yowling cat head emblazoned across the back. A close inspection showed the bio-synthetic muscle implants which were standard issue in Xander’s designs in the thighs of the body suit. A power pack in the lining of the jacket connected to the pants and the helmet with retractable cables to give power to onboard systems and the stage field generator which he sincerely hoped was in place.
One of his few edges in the war against crime was the stage field generator, originally designed with the purpose of keeping him safe in a high speed cycle accident. It generated hundreds if not thousands of weak, molecule thin force fields around his body that sapped kinetic energy. It was his own kind of personal air bag, and it had saved his life numerous times. It had saved him when the bike blew up, as a matter of fact. It brought up a curious conflict of emotions in him. On one hand to hate the technology and on the other knowing that it would keep him alive when nothing else would.
Snowflake seemed to sense his mood and kept back, watching Manuel take it all in. Eventually his eyes turned away from the skin of who he used to be and who he would have to become again, and took in the rest of the trailer. Whoever had designed the interior space had been ingenious, finding ways to store tools and spare parts, including two different sets of optional tires for the bike, as well as creating some lab and work space. “You said the tests on the suit were positive?”
“The simulations and the tests with the dummy showed that the stage field generators are flawless. Xander tried to calibrate the musculature as best he could, but without you coming in for fittings and tests, a lot of it ended up being guess work.”
“So it might not work.”
“And it might snap your thigh bones like a twig the first time a muscle impulse runs through it. No way of knowing.”
“Comforting.”
“We pays our money, we takes our chances.”
Manuel nodded ruefully. Well, it was better odds than he had given himself earlier in the day, so it wasn’t all bad. “Who else has access to this?”
“You, me, and Katherine has limited access in an emergency.”
Snowflake’s voice sounded grim, and it prompted a concerned look from Manuel. “What constitutes limited access and an emergency?”
“Um, an emergency would mean that you and I both were dead or arrested and someone tried to access the trailer. And limited access means that she could activate some of the security systems remotely.”
“Such as?”
“She could fry the locks, sealing it entirely closed. And if the outer shell is breached after that...” Snowflake pointed to a rectangular box on the ceiling of the trailer. It was the size of a bag of concrete and painted red. Just looking at the box made Manuel nervous.
“That looks dire.”
“It’s a shaped charge. Incendiary too, I think. I don’t know the details, and I don’t want to know. But nothing in this trailer is going to survive a close scrutiny, and neither is anyone within ten or so feet of the door when this thing goes.”
“Drastic.”
“Or we could let corrupt Mexican cops or drug lords or whoever get access to an advanced energy cell cycle, synthetic muscles, and a bullet-proof force-field body suit.”
The question for Manuel suddenly became not if Katherine should have rigged the trailer, but if she used enough explosives to do the job. He sat on the work bench and opened the beer that had been sweating in his jacket pocket. “So, there’s a new plan.”
“And that involves you coming out of retirement?”
Manuel was already too tired to fight about it so he nodded. “This afternoon, I should compile a list of places to check out more thoroughly after dark. So that means Pegasus Motors and their executive suburb. I would like to get a look at the shanty town and ask some questions.”
“I’ve told you that it’s dangerous for gringos around there, right? Just want you to know why I won’t be going with you on that one.”
Manuel saluted Snowflake with the beer can. Truth be told, he figured the locals would open up to him more without Snowflake there anyway, so he was going to suggest the panda stay behind and get some rest. “I know where the victim’s sister is supposed to be staying, so I would like to try and track her down and talk to her. Maybe she knows a little more about what’s really going on here. And then I hit anything that looks promising late tonight, including the arroyo where Aldovar met us this morning.”
“Anything you’d like me to do in the meantime?”
“Get a little rest, try to distance yourself from me in case I make worse enemies than I already have. And if you get a chance, switch out the tires for the studded off road models over there and adjust the suspension. I might not take it off road, but the roads around here aren’t the best, and I would rather be prepared.”
“Consider it done. I’ll have it ready by evening easy. I can even get in a nap if I want.”
Manuel finished his beer then stood. He knew he needed his forearm crutches, and even though he felt like he was using them just as much as always, somehow he felt stronger as well. It was a strange feeling. “Get rest when you can. From here on out, I don’t think either of us will be getting a good nights sleep.”

Buena Rosa Chapter Six

Chapter Six
They managed to find the place Flip had told them about without any problem. Little white crosses and bouquets of marigold marked the spot better than police tape could. Snowflake pulled over to the opposite shoulder and threw the truck into a rumbling idle. Manuel slid out, then went around the front of the truck to the arroyo. He looked back the way they had come, then around the horizon, squinting against the sun.
He crouched and looked at the small crosses. “Muriel” was written on two of them in magic marker. Manuel looked back towards the factory, the smokestack and southern wall clearly visible around the side of a hill. “This isn’t the place.”
Snowflake looked skeptical. He was well versed in looking skeptical. “Isn’t this where the kid said they found the body? Do you think maybe he was lying to you?”
Looking closely at the memorial revealed marigold petals strewn all over near the site, scattered by the breezes. The flowers had been there several days. “You see this?” Manuel pointed to the petals. “These are cempasúchil petals. It’s a species of marigold, and these have been here a while, probably since the body was discovered. The Aztecs used them to remember their dead, thinking they would guide the spirits of their dead loved ones to their altars or home and then to the afterlife. A lot of people in Mexico still grow them just for use as offerings. Around el Dia de los Muertos, these things are everywhere.”
“So, this was where people were, um, told the body was found, then?”
Manuel looked down the steep embankment to the bottom of the arroyo six feet below. It narrowed there, and a sand bar created a tight bend. The body snagged there. That’s why it was found here. “No, they found it here, but it was dumped somewhere else. Didn’t you say they found it after a big rainstorm?”
“Yeah, the next day.”
“Then we need to look upstream from here.” Manuel looked towards the factory tower and adjusted the topography in his head to make the hill line up with the plume of smoke. “It might be a ways. Maybe a mile down the way we’re already pointing.”
“Boss, I don’t mean to burst your bubble, but there isn’t any creek to be downstream on. Its just a ditch.”
“It might just be a ditch now, but the night of the rainstorm it was a river, at least for a few hours. Then when it stopped raining, the water had either run off or been absorbed back into the ground. If someone buried the body close to the edge of the arroyo, then the water could have broken the body free, or coyotes could have dug it out prior to the rain. Either way, we aren’t going to find any clues here. We need to go back to the source.”
Snowflake sighed, recognizing that he wasn’t the detective of the two and it was best to let Manuel do what he did. But it frustrated him that the great detective wasn’t even watching the road and instead had his head turned back towards Buena Rosa until he called a sudden halt just over a mile later in an utterly unremarkable location. With little except scrub brush, dirt, and cactus, this stretch of road offered nothing distinctive, nothing worth notice, but Snowflake was along for support and pulled over as instructed.
Hopping out of the cab nimbly Manuel forgot that his legs couldn’t hold his weight in that way anymore, and he had to grab the door to keep from pitching into the sagebrush. He felt it as soon as the factory disappeared behind the hill, the darkness spreading beneath the soil. It was almost overpowering, and he knew this was it. This is where the dead spilled their secrets. This is where he had seen Muriel the first time, in that vision back at his desk in far off Cobalt City.
The scent of sun-baked dust, sagebrush, and piñon was unmistakable. A glance up the road showed a narrow bridge, allowing vehicle access to the vast emptiness. From his vantage point on the other side of the road, Manuel could see the burned down foundation of a small house, all but lost in an overgrowth of shrubs. It was a perfect dump site. Close, but with limited access, and in an area where no one was likely to discover the body for some time.
If not for the coyotes or rain or any number of random, unpredictable events that could have led to Muriel being found, she would still be out there.
Manuel made his way to the other side of the road with Snowflake at his side. “Look out over there and tell me what you see.” Manuel indicated the other side of the arroyo with a tilt of his chin.
Snowflake looked long and hard, opening his mouth a few times to offer an answer then stopping. Finally he had to trust his first instinct. “A whole lot of nothing.”
“A good place to hide bodies.”
Snowflake’s eyes narrowed. “You think there are more people buried out there?”
“This town has an awful lot of missing people. Some of them might have headed for the border, tried to make it to America. But if that were the case, I don’t expect that their families would want to draw attention to it by putting up fliers.”
They started walking up the side of the road towards the small bridge, Manuel watching the ground closely for any kind of tracks or other clue. Other than coyote and white-tailed jackrabbit, he wasn’t seeing much of anything.
“How many people, do you think?”
Manuel couldn’t answer. He wanted to think it was maybe a dozen, two dozen at most. But he had no way to know how long this had been going on. And his feeling was that the number was much, much higher. They had reached the bridge, and there in the dirt over the bridge were tire tracks, no more than a few days old.
“Those are standard all terrain tire treads for the Pegasus Motor trucks and SUV’s,” Snowflake said with authority. Manuel raised an eyebrow as if to question him. “Trust me. You know Mexico, I know tires. I’m not a mechanic for nothing, you know.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
Snowflake’s attention had been drawn up, back towards town and his mouth tightened into a hard smile. “Speak of the devil. We have company.”
Directing his gaze casually back up the road, Manuel could clearly see the Buena Rosa sheriff’s vehicle rolling towards them through the heat haze on the asphalt. “Do you have a cover story you’ve been using?”
“Made a small fortune in investments, looking to retire somewhere cheap and buy some property.”
Manuel had to admit, that was a good cover. He wondered, however briefly, if Katherine had taken a hand in concocting it. “Good call. I just ran into you at the hotel and you agreed to be the Good Samaritan and drive me around, but you wanted to look at some property on the drive.”
“That’s what I was thinking. Now, smile big for the creepy police man.” Snowflake waved widely at the green and white converted SUV as it pulled to a stop behind his truck.
Manuel was not overly surprised to see Deputy Aldovar step out of the cab and walk across the road towards them. “Car trouble, gentlemen?”
Snowflake smiled. Nothing he ever drove would have car trouble, not as long as he had worked on it recently. “No, far from it. I was hoping to find out who owned this little parcel. I’m looking to buy some land and this little stretch has a lot of potential.”
Deputy Aldovar’s eyes went from Manuel to Snowflake and back again. He never lost his polite smile, but that same smile somehow failed to reach his eyes. “I don’t think it’s for sale.”
Undeterred, Snowflake went on. “Oh, everything is for sale at the right price. Do you know who owns it? Maybe I could get in touch with them and make them an offer.”
“I afraid I can’t help you. I don’t know who owns this parcel. It has been vacant for some time.”
“But you know it isn’t for sale.”
Detective Aldovar’s eyes grew flinty and dark. Manuel took the cue that his friend was so clearly missing. “I’m sure someone at city hall might know, Mr. Snow. I don’t see the potential, but I’m not the investor I guess.”
Deputy Aldovar gave Manuel his full attention. “No, you are a police officer, aren’t you, Mr. de la Vega.”
“I’m taking some time off to write a book, but yes, I’ve recently been a police detective.”
“Well, you’ll be pleased to know that I was looking for you.”
Snowflake licked his lips, trying to contain a nervous glance in Manuel’s direction. To his credit, Manuel kept his cool. He had been expecting something like this eventually, and it was good to get it out of the way early. “Well, I’m glad you found me. What is this about?”
“About? It is about your cousin of course. You can speak with Esther today. I have arranged it with Sheriff Bragga. I can give you a ride back to the station if you like.”
Every fiber in his body was screaming “No”, that this was a setup. But a turtle never got anywhere without sticking out his neck first. Manuel offered Snowflake his hand in a hearty thank-you and good-bye shake. “Good luck, Mr. Snow. I hope you find the owner without too much digging in public records.”
“Of course. And if you get tied up with your cousin, I’ll understand. Just beep me or whatever and we can get together some other night for dinner.”
Snowflake was in the truck heading back towards town in minutes, while it took a little longer for Manuel to get across the street and buckled in. He ran his fingers across the leather interior. “Very nice for a police vehicle.”
“It was donated by the manager of the Pegasus Motors plant. I think he meant to encourage faster response time to his hacienda.”
“Does he frequently need a fast response to his hacienda?”
Deputy Aldovar shrugged and started the truck. “I don’t know. He’s never called us. He has his own security to handle most of his police needs.”
That was somewhat of a surprise for Manuel. Two sets of cops meant double the fun and double the possibilities for corruption. This just kept getting better.
They arrived at the police station quickly, with Deputy Aldovar cutting through several side streets to a parking lot tucked behind a high wall topped with razor wire. The deputy indicated the security with a casual wave of the back of his hand. “Motor pool. If we parked on the street, these cars would be gone by morning. There are people here who have no respect for law. You should understand. I imagine it was the same in Mexico City.”
“There are similarities. Car theft wasn’t such a big priority, but it happened, certainly. Not to police vehicles so much.”
“Hm...maybe it is just here in Buena Rosa that they steal our cars or strip our tires?”
Manuel felt the urge to cry out, Maybe if you did your job, but a sense of self-preservation prevented him from saying anything. They pulled into a painted space alongside the building and stepped out onto the sun-hot asphalt of the parking lot. Already, a deputy that Manuel didn’t recognize was rolling the gate closed before retreating to the shade of his sentry booth. Whether it was a trap or not, they certainly had him where they wanted him.
The deputy selected a key from the mammoth key ring on his belt and unlocked a heavy, blue painted steel door at the back of the building. Manuel set his shoulders and propelled himself along after the deputy into the cool white interior of the police station jail. He followed Aldovar down several short halls, filled with solid doors with no windows, no bars – a jail full of solitary cells.
Shortly, they came to an interview room, the chipped avocado green paint of the walls more at home on an old refrigerator than in a police station. A broad mirror was along the left hand wall, and only an idiot would think it was actually a mirror. A pair of durable steel chairs was bolted to the floor on either side of a similarly secured steel table. A flickering fluorescent light fixture provided an intermittent, sickly light through the detritus of insect husks scattered inside plastic fronted light fixture.
His cousin, no surprise, was nowhere to be seen.
“Take a seat, please.” Deputy Aldovar indicated one of the seats and Manuel sat in the other one because he was feeling contentious. If this bothered the deputy, he didn’t react, which disappointed Manuel somewhat. He was relieved, however, that the visions didn’t come over him again. With some of the horrible scenarios running through his head already, the last thing he wanted to deal with in the face of a potential adversary was a vision of evil or pain. It felt that a vision like that couldn’t help but undermine his confidence, and that was one of the few things he felt he came into the room with.
“And my cousin Esther is where, exactly, Deputy Aldovar?”
The deputy sat in the opposite chair, a languid smile spreading across his broad face like spilled blood on linoleum. “Oh, she’s on her way. She should be here any second. I don’t suppose you would mind answering a few questions while you’re here?”
“I’ll play along for now, but if I don’t like the questions then the interview is over. Comprende?”
“Si.”
The deputy leaned forward, his hands clasped on the table before him. Manuel couldn’t help but notice that there was no stenographer, no cassette recorder, no note taking of any kind, which could mean two things: this “talk” was completely off the record, or the room was very well miked. He was leaning towards the latter.
“You left the Mexico City Police department three years ago, is that correct?”
That sent Manuel thinking. He did the math in his head and found that it had indeed been a long time since he left for Cobalt City. “Not quite three years, but pretty close.”
“What made you decide to leave the police force?”
“I didn’t leave the police. I merely left Mexico City. I was offered a job as a detective in Cobalt City, in America.”
Aldovar sucked at his teeth, a slight show of discomfort over Manuel’s answer. The detective decided then and there to remember the deputy’s reaction, treating it as a “tell” as though he were a poker player. Whether it ever paid off, only time would tell, but he wasn’t being thrown many bones. And in a pinch, he had learned to make due with what he had. “Cobalt City? Well, you must be very...”
“Proud?” Manuel ventured, knowing it wasn’t the word the deputy was looking for, but calculating it was the one which might irritate him more.
“I was going to say talented. It isn’t every Mexican police officer who is offered such opportunities in the U.S.”
Manuel leaned into the table as well, his hands crossed before him in a deliberate attempt to strike Aldovar’s same posture. “Well, I am very good at what I do.”
“And what is it that you do? What department have they put you in? Certainly not narcotics. Gang unit, perhaps? Vice? Internal affairs?” the last one said slowly, Aldovar’s eyes boring into Manuel.
So he had done his homework, Manuel thought. It was his cooperation with a major corruption investigation that helped finalize his decision to leave Mexico City. And it was more than simple finger pointing. Manuel had been building a case for well over a year, documenting every pay off, every drug transport with cops working security, everything. And then when he felt he had enough to send some people to jail, he took the file to the State Police, to someone he could trust.
There was no way he could ever be a cop in Mexico again. And not only because it wasn’t safe anymore, no, Manuel was a traitor. For all the public scrutiny on police corruption, all the big talk about cleaning up the department, it was just too widespread. There wasn’t a station that would hire him south of the border once they got his transfer paperwork.
“You might be surprised by this, but IA doesn’t have quite as much work to do in Cobalt City as it does in Mexico. So I work in homicide.”
Aldovar didn’t blink, his dark eyes locked on Manuel, his tone when he spoke utterly devoid of inflection. “Homicide. How exciting.”
“Yes. I catch killers, Deputy Aldovar. Real ones.”
The air between them reached a fascinating balance between ice cold and electric for a long moment, only to be interrupted by a knock on the door. Aldovar stood while the door swung open, revealing Esther Vega wearing an orange jumper, her hands cuffed before her. Deputy Attencio stood behind her, towering a good foot over Manuel’s hunch shouldered cousin.
Esther’s eyes brightened into sparks when she saw Manuel, but then nervously shifted to the deputies in the room. She was led to the chair and she sat without being directed to do so. She nervously licked her lips, forming the words “Thank you” without making a sound.
“Deputies, if I could have a few minutes alone with my cousin, please?”
Attencio sneered, then turned and sauntered out. Deputy Aldovar began to shake his head in protest. “I’m afraid that regulations state that she has to be accompanied at all times except when she is with a priest or lawyer.”
It was a show. Manuel could tell. “I assure you, deputy. My cousin and I won’t go anywhere. I think its probably okay to for me to talk to her, don’t you?”
Aldovar sucked on his teeth, looking at the two of them. It was more of the act, of course. Manuel was a cop in Mexico. He knew how it was played. Don’t leave your “suspects” the impression that you gave up too easily then leave, allowing the people in the room to talk freely. That was where the microphones and probably recording equipment became very handy, and Manuel had already established that the room was most certainly miked. And he knew that Aldovar would suspect that he knew. The dance was far too complicated for both of them to keep up for long, and in the end the deputy fell back to routine, and left with a satisfied nod of his head.
Once the door was firmly closed, Esther allowed a nervous smile to surface. “Manny...I can’t believe that you are actually here.”
“I was going to say the same thing.”
Fear blossomed in her eyes. “I didn’t do it, I swear, I didn’t even know what I was signing a confession for.”
“Then why did you sign it?”
The dam broke, and Esther started choking back sobs. Manuel wanted to get up from the chair and go to her, but he was afraid they were watching on the other side of the glass, afraid that Aldovar and Attencio would sweep in at the first sign of contact. “I thought they were going to kill me. God help me, Manny, I thought I was going to die. I’ve never been so afraid in my life.”
Manuel tried to catch his cousin’s eyes. “Hey. Look at me, okay?” He waited until she raised her tired, sunken eyes to his, he indicated the double-sided mirror on the wall with a slight twist of his head, and watched to make sure she got it. When he saw comprehension flicker in her eyes, he continued quietly. “Don’t say anything, but I need to know. Did they hurt you?”
Esther nodded so slightly he almost didn’t see it, but the look in her eyes was sufficient. They had dressed her in a long sleeved jumper. Any bruising, burning, scaring, whatever they did to her, it wouldn’t be visible. And anything that turned up later as evidence of torture would be dismissed as self inflicted anyway.
Manuel wanted to know how she had contacted him, who sent him the postcard that brought him here. But he couldn’t think of a way to ask Esther that wouldn’t give away that person’s identity to the police also. And when it came down to it, he wasn’t sure if she would even know who passed the information along. If she had been locked up in one of the solitary cells, it was probably jail staff. The other, far more likely possibility was that she had a friend in town who knew about him. In the end, he decided to save that mystery for another day.
“You trust me, don’t you?” He asked quietly.
“Of course.”
“I’m going to try and get you out.”
Esther’s eyes grew wide, this time with a potent alchemy of fear and hope. “How...”
Manuel spoke clearly, and in just enough of a stage whisper that he hoped the microphones could pick it up. “I have access to some money. It isn’t a lot, but it’s all I have. A few thousand dollars - U.S. dollars. I can get it here in a day, maybe two. I might be able to convince the police that this is all a misunderstanding and get them to let you go. But you’ll have to leave town and never speak of this again.”
There, he thought. The bait was out in the water. He could suggest a bribe in such a way that most anyone inclined to take it would hear the offer. He didn’t need the entire department to be crooked. He just needed one person. And finding a crooked cop in Mexico was easier than looking down and seeing ground.
But he was not prepared for the expression on Esther’s face. And he realized that he had badly, badly miscalculated how to play this game.
“You want me to WHAT?”
“I want you to forget this ever happened.”
It was too late. This was why he had always loved his cousin Esther. She was passionate. She believed in causes, usually ones she couldn’t ever win. They were her bread and butter. It drove Uncle Chui crazy. It drove everyone in the family a little crazy.
Everyone except Manuel de la Vega, that is. He was always supportive of her fire, if for no other reason than he felt she was a kindred spirit. And deep down, he believed that if enough people went tilting at windmills, then the world would be a better place.
Only now it was likely to get her killed.
And there was a better than good chance that he was going to get killed right along with her. “Please, Esther, just don’t say anything else.”
“Be quiet? Forget about it? I thought you got it, Manny! I can’t forget about this! Someone killed Muriel Cruz. She wasn’t a friend of mine, but I knew her, and she’s dead.”
“Please...”
Esther would not be deterred. “If I forget about this it all goes away. She goes away. And her death doesn’t matter. I can’t let her be one more silent victim. I need my day in court! I need you to help me expose...”
Manuel stood quickly, pulling himself up with the table for support. His voice hissed out from between clenched teeth, and he knew, he just knew, it wouldn’t do any good. It was too late. “For the love of God will you just shut up?”
With his dramatic movement, the show was over. They could both hear footsteps in the hall. Esther looked up at her cousin with the wretched expression of an animal in a snap-jawed trap. Somewhere in there, she realized what she had just done. Manuel told himself that. He had to, just to keep from hating her for the slightest second.
As the door opened, he leaned in close to her and whispered tightly in her ear so that the microphones couldn’t hear it. “Ok, so much for plan A. Sit tight and say nothing. I’m going to have to do this the hard way.”
Attencio and Aldovar were joined by two fresh deputies whose nametags read “Chavez” and “Ortega”. Manuel was separated forcibly from Esther, but he didn’t put up a fight. It looked like the fight had gone out of his cousin too, and as she was dragged slack-jawed from the room, he could only guess what she was thinking. What was the “hard way?”
Manuel sighed inwardly. He had really hoped he could avoid doing things the hard way, but that option had been snatched from his fingertips.
No. Manuel de la Vega had played his trump card and found it lacking.
It was time to see what Gato Loco could do.

Buena Rosa Chapter Five

Chapter Five
Manuel’s dreams were troubled, but he would have been kidding himself if he had expected anything else. The arroyo was back, and the body at his feet was not that of his cousin. He knew that now, based on what he had found about the circumstances of her arrest. Additionally, there was no tattoo on the base of her spine, butterfly or otherwise. No, this was the victim. And she had something to say, something she was screaming in a voice that he couldn’t hear, but which made the hair on his arms stand up.
Bodies didn’t disturb him. He had been a homicide detective for too many years, had seen too many horrible things. Yes, they affected him, but not disturbed. This body, this...girl, her death just seemed like such a waste. And at the same time, there was something strangely familiar about it.
Taking his eyes from the victim, he turned instead to the scenery, trying to place where he was, hoping that it was some real location, imparted to him through the vision. In the distance, smoke from the factory rose from over the hills. A pitted two lane blacktop stretched through the arid waste nearby, but there was nothing distinctive about right there, nothing that would tell him definitively that he had found the right spot. He considered asking Deputy Aldovar to take him out to where the body was found, but suspected that the local lawman could not be trusted.
Manuel knew he would have to take a look himself, and rely on the vision to guide him to the right spot. He would have to get as much help as he could from the factory smoke and the road in finding the spot. It wouldn’t be easy. But it wouldn’t be impossible, either.
The other dream which haunted him was far less lucid. What little he could remember of the dreams involved him being chased through dark streets which became increasingly narrow and hard to navigate. He spared one look over his shoulder and saw a figure made out of darkness pouncing towards him. And for the briefest of seconds in a moment of cry-inducing vertigo he was both the hunter and the hunted. He awoke drenched in sweat, which was as much a fault of the dream as it was the oppressive heat that refused to let up even after dark.
When the sun came up, Manuel gave up trying to sleep. Instead he maneuvered himself into the bathroom and filled the tub for a much needed bath. He had been thankful that the hotel had tubs instead of showers. If he had been stuck with only a shower, he was pretty damn sure that it wouldn’t be handicap friendly. Things down in Buena Rosa were going to be tough enough without having to ask Snowflake’s help showering.
Looking at his legs through the water distorted the details, blurred the scars enough that he was able to disconnect a bit and think of them as belonging to someone else entirely. Long claw scars covered his back and both forearms. There was a long burn scar on the back of his left hand from a super-heated muffler, and his hip still had bits of Mexico City asphalt imbedded beneath the skin from a long ago cycle accident. He felt like Frankenstein’s monster. “You’re a piece of work, Manuel,” he said quietly to himself in the dawn light, “a broken, freak of a man.”
He took the early morning silence of the street below as affirmation.
When the water became too close to body temperature to be comfortable, Manuel pulled the stopper, letting the water drain languidly out. Summoning up the strength to face the day, he hoisted himself up to a sitting position on the tub’s edge and reached for a towel to dry off. He was interrupted by a soft knocking on the door.
Manuel froze, towel halfway to his scarred body. A few seconds passed then the knock came again, followed by Snowflake’s distinctive voice, allowing Manuel to release the breath trapped within his chest. “Boss. You awake yet?”
“I’m indisposed, but I’m awake.”
“Cool. You ready for breakfast in ten minutes?”
Contemplating the task of drying, grooming, and dressing, ten minutes was pushing it, but seeing as how he had skipped dinner the night before, breakfast sounded awfully good. The grooming could wait until after food, he decided. “I’ll meet you at the truck.”
“Solid.”
A quick towel dry, a brush through his thick, dark hair that he had let go long enough that it was starting to bother him, and then jeans, boots, and gray cotton western shirt, and he was ready to go with a minute to spare. Snowflake was waiting with the truck idling at the curb when Manuel stepped out into the still morning air. The sun was already burning away pink ribbons of clouds on the eastern horizon, enough to give a hint of the day to come without being quite hot yet.
Manuel clambered up into the truck and belted himself in. “So I take it I wasn’t followed last night?”
Snowflake shook his head and nosed the truck smoothly out onto the road heading for the intersection which would take them south. “One of the deputies, the tall one, he left with a woman about five minutes after you left and locked the door behind him.”
“That would be Ray Attencio. He might be trouble, but I’m not sure what kind of trouble yet.”
“The woman with him was completely drunk, he practically had to carry her to his car. She was wearing a blue skirt and sort of puffy white shirt...”
“And she had a small blue purse.”
The panda man nodded, obviously impressed by Manuel’s deductive skills. “The deputy was carrying it, but yeah, a small blue purse. It sparkled in the street lights. You saw her?”
“I saw the purse when I was in the station. It was covered in sequins. Which direction did they go?”
“West, towards the shantytown and factory.”
“And what’s south of here?”
“Other than breakfast, there isn’t anything for miles. There used to be some ranches, I hear, but the cattle got sick a few years ago, so there isn’t much of that going on anymore.” Snowflake was silent for several blocks, watching Manuel out of the corner of his eye. “So do we have a schedule for today?”
“The sheriff doesn’t show up at the station until ten, so we have several hours to kill. I’d like to take a look at the factory and the shantytown, and Perseus Glen if I can. And time permitting, I’d like to try and find out where the body was discovered.”
“You think they missed something when they found the body? Some kind of clue, maybe?”
“That would imply that they were trying. It isn’t like they have crime-scene teams out here. I don’t imagine they even have a medical examiner. No, I think they found a body, decided it was murder because no one would be out there on their own accord, and just picked someone convenient to finger for it.”
“They can’t do that.”
“No. But they did.” Manuel stared out the truck window as houses and storefronts rolled by beyond the glass. “They do it all the time.”
How long had I been a part of the system, Manuel asked himself. How many years did I try to reconcile myself to the corruption, try to justify that one honest cop could balance out ten dishonest cops? And when I went to America with the dream of making a difference, did I abandon my own people or embrace my own potential? And were the two concepts mutually exclusive?
Snowflake could tell that his partner had a lot on his mind and remained silent for the rest of the relatively short drive to the Casa del Ranchero. It was still early, but there were already a handful of vehicles in the lot, all dusty but new Pegasus Motorcars vehicles, with security stickers in the back window. Snowflake noticed Manuel looking. “The locals, most of them don’t drive. And this place is popular with the Pegasus crowd, so you won’t see many locals around anyway. I’m not sure where the locals eat.”
“The locals probably cook.”
“Savages.”
The interior of the Casa del Ranchero was air conditioned, and other than the staff, the only Hispanics there were Manuel and a burly man with handlebar mustache and significant acne scaring on his cheeks. He was wearing a short-sleeved white oxford shirt with a Pegasus Motors logo on the breast and narrow red tie. Company man, through and through, Manuel figured.
The stranger watched Manuel and Snowflake from the moment they entered to the moment they took a seat at the counter. Even with their backs turned, Manuel could feel the pair of coal black eyes boring into his back. “I think we’ve been spotted.”
“Yeah.” Snowflake hunched his shoulders. “I’ve seen him in here a few times. I heard his name is Mr. Contralles. I don’t know what he does for the company, but he’s kind of scary so I’m leaning towards lawyer or security.”
“Lawyers don’t body build like that.”
Snowflake shrugged, catching sight of the subject of their conversation in a reflection on the napkin dispenser. “Gay lawyers might.”
“You aren’t helping.”
“So you think he’s security, then.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me, no.”
Shortly, they either got used to the evil eye or he stopped watching, because the chill was gone from their spines by the time the waiter came to take their breakfast order.
Manuel was impressed with the selection, but found the food catered more to north of the border tastes than he would have liked. After conversing with the waiter for a few minutes, he was assured that his huevos rancheros would be authentic and not gringo. The waiter’s name was Flip and claimed to have grown up in the area. Manuel chatted him up casually about the town in general, careful not to touch on any hot button topics like the missing person flyers, the factory, the police, or his cousin’s incarceration. By the time the check came and most of the Pegasus crew had left, he and Flip had managed to build a foundation of trust important in any detective / informant relationship.
Not that Manuel mentioned that he was a cop, of course. He had decided to pass himself off as a novelist. It was innocuous enough and had the tendency to get people to open up. He had found that there was nothing like the prospect of being in a book to get the stories flowing.
As Manuel was paying for breakfast, he made sure to catch Flip’s full attention, and spoke to him in subdued Spanish, in case any lingering Pegasus employees overheard. “The desk clerk at the hotel said that there was a murder in town recently, is that true?”
Flip looked nervously out over the dining area, but was quickly reassured that no one was listening to them. Even Snowflake went over to the postcard rack near the door, well out of earshot. “Si. A week ago, maybe more.”
“Did they catch the person who did it?”
Flip was on the spot and he knew it. He shrugged, and began counting out change. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Where did they find the victim? I might be able to use the information for my book.”
Flip looked out at the dining area again, then back at Manuel, his eyes refusing to settle anywhere for long. He was scared. Hell, he had a right to be, Manuel thought.
“West of town, just before the workers camp, there is a road that goes south into the desert. They found Muriel in an arroyo, four miles south, just where the road bends.”
Manuel was surprised to hear Flip know her name. His understanding was that the victim was not local, and that only Pegasus management types ate here, but clearly there was more to Flip than he knew. “You knew the girl?”
“I had talked to her a few times. She let me buy her a soda once and we talked about things a few times.”
“Things like what?”
“Like the factory, and the town, and family and things. Nothing special. Just talk. And her sister stopped in a few days ago after work and talked to me about Muriel for a while also.”
“Do you remember her sister’s name or where I might be able to find her? I’d like to be able to talk to her too, if I could.”
Flip had already clearly established that Manuel wasn’t with the police. The company he kept was a dead giveaway, for one thing. And the nasty stares he had received from Mr. Contralles had cemented that status. But now he began to suspect that there was more to Manuel than a simple novelist. Manuel could see the gears turn, each scenario getting more fanciful in his head the longer it went on. Internal affairs, or maybe state police, or the Presidente’s personal police, or, even better, CIA operatives, all scrolled past on the list of possibilities. He found himself giving in to the mystery, unable to deny Manuel anything just to be allowed to be a part of whatever was going on. “Her name is Anita. I don’t know where she is staying, but she might be at her sister’s place.”
“In the workers camp?”
“No, Muriel was a floor supervisor, she could afford an apartment. She lived in the Torrerro Court between the work camp and town. I don’t know the apartment number.”
“That’s okay. I can find it. Thank you Flip. Keep the change.”
The large tip vanished into Flip’s apron pocket so quick it almost looked like a magic trick. “If you need to know anything else, I am here until two every day.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Snowflake preceded him out into the parking lot. They still had several hours to kill and no desire to go back to the stuffy hotel rooms.
“So, we go looking for where the body was found before it gets too hot?” Snowflake said, starting up the truck with a smile.
Manuel squinted into the rising sun, already a white hot pinprick in the azure sky. “And before someone gets out there to try and destroy evidence. And then we take a look at the factory and maybe, just maybe, we track down the victim’s sister.”
“Ah, the femme fatale!”
Manuel shook his head slowly, but couldn’t help but smile. “Has anyone ever told you that you read too much?”
“All the time, my brother. All the time.”
The truck kicked up a rooster tail of dust as it left the parking lot, and within seconds they were speeding down the ill-repaired asphalt on their way to find an unmarked grave.

Buena Rosa Chapter Four

Chapter Four
There had been no serious attempt to make the Buena Rosa Police Department attractive when it had been built sometime in the ‘70s. From the glass brick entry way, to the white painted cinderblock bulk of the building itself, it was an exercise in utility, nothing more. Manuel entered alone, leaving Snowflake to watch the front from down the street.
Night was fully upon the town, and Manuel almost expected to find the glass double doors locked up tight, but they swung open with an easy push when tried. The front counter was deserted even though the lights were on. Behind the counter was a wooden divider that reached to the ceiling, and halfway to the walls on either side. “Buena Rosa” was spelled out in brushed steel letters a foot high, and suspended from the ceiling by wires a few inches from the divider. The indistinct sound of grunting reached Manuel’s ears as he pushed thorough the doors into the lobby, making a bell above the doorway jingle.
Immediately, there was a sound of cursing in Spanish and what could only be the rustle of clothes. Seconds later, a uniformed Sheriff’s deputy rounded the divider with a sour expression beneath his thin mustache. The brass nametag gave his name as Attencio, and Manuel gauged him to be in his early twenties. A few inches taller than Manuel, he also had more muscle mass and broader shoulders, giving the impression that he might have played basketball in high school. Deputy Attencio had heavy eyebrows, and they knit together with annoyance at Manuel’s interruption.
“Can I help you with something?”
Manuel gave the deputy his most conciliatory smile and tone. “Yes. I’m looking for my cousin. She’s gone missing.”
Deputy Attencio licked his lips and looked back towards where he came from for a second, perhaps regretting that he had not locked the station door. Manuel followed his gaze and saw a blue sequined purse hanging on the back of a desk chair. So he was right in assuming that it wasn’t work that his visit had interrupted, Manuel thought. The deputy rolled his head on his shoulders, loosening up his neck, and then pulled out a clipboard from under the counter.
“Name?”
“My cousin’s name is Esther Vega,” Manuel enunciated clearly and slowly.
Attencio paused then looked up at Manuel, his eyes narrowed slightly. “Esther Vega? 29 years old, 5’4” tall with straight black hair and a butterfly tattoo on the small of her back?”
“You know her?”
The deputy put the clipboard back under the counter, a thin, hard smile on his face. Manuel noticed for the first time that the deputy was wearing his gun belt, and that his fingers were dangerously close to it. “I know her. She isn’t missing. She’s under arrest.”
“She’s been arrested? There must be some kind of mistake.”
“No, no mistake, señor. She killed another woman. She’s very dangerous, this cousin of yours.”
“But she couldn’t hurt anyone, especially not killed someone. There must be some kind of misunderstanding.”
“But she already admitted that she killed this girl. She gave us a signed confession.”
“Isn’t there some kind of arrangement we can come to? I know she couldn’t have done something like this.” Manuel piled on as much charm as he could, but it wasn’t looking good. The deputy wasn’t giving any opportunity for Manuel to offer up a bribe. That’s the way the dance was done, but it felt like they were dancing to different songs. Either Deputy Attencio was new to this game or he was one of those rare breed: an honest cop. Unless. Unless there was something more going on in this town, he realized.
“Arrangement? I don’t think you heard me. Your cousin signed a confession saying that she killed someone. What kind of arrangement were you thinking of, eh?”
Clearly open bribery was not going to work, so Manuel changed tactics. “I was hoping that I could at least talk to her and make sure she’s okay.”
Deputy Attencio smiled at mention of Esther’s safety. It was a wolf’s smile, and it chilled Manuel to the bone. It was not done as a show of happiness. It was a challenge. Manuel could see it in the deputy’s eyes. “You suggesting that your cousin is unsafe in our care, Mr. – I’m sorry. I didn’t get your name.”
“Manuel de la Vega. I am not planning on being in town for long. When can I see her?”
The sneer on Deputy Attencio’s face was certain to precede a particularly cutting answer to Manuel’s question, if his reply hadn’t been interrupted by a voice from the other side of the divider. “Ray, before you say something stupid, why don’t you go back to your...desk.”
It was an older voice, calm and weathered, and it came from around the right side of the divider while Attencio had come from around on the left. Heralded by the call to reason that he had given the young deputy, a balding uniformed officer stepped out into the lobby. He appeared to be in his fifties, his hair trimmed almost to his scalp and peppered with gray. The name badge read “Aldovar”, and unlike Attencio, his smile seemed genuine.
“Are you the sheriff?” Manuel asked, trying to keep his cool. He had been certain for a moment that Detective Attencio had been seconds away from doing something stupid, either arresting him or quite possibly shooting him. And even thought Aldovar was essentially a clean slate, he still had the sense that something was off, and made the decision not to pursue a bribery angle just yet.
For his part, Aldovar came to the counter with a friendly, can-do attitude. “I would like to apologize for Ray. The passion of the young is not exactly tempered by experience. Oh, and I am not the sheriff. He left hours ago, but he will be in again tomorrow around ten. You said you were a relative of the prisoner?”
Manuel nodded and hobbled the rest of the way to the counter. He pulled out his wallet and handed his Mexico driver’s license across to Aldovar. “She’s my cousin. Her father knew I was coming through the area and asked me to look in on her. Uncle Chuy hadn’t heard from her in a while and he was getting worried. Now I see he had reason to be concerned.”
Deputy Aldovar finished recording the information from Manuel’s license and handed it back. “We have had some difficulty in reaching Miss Vega’s father.” Which Manuel took as code to mean that the problem they were having is that they hadn’t tried. His uncle rarely if ever left his workshop in Taxco where he did silverwork. If they had tried to reach him, they would have.
“I will try to reach him again and will confirm that you are related to Miss Vega.” Which was code to mean that they might call Uncle Chuy, but probably not, and they would do a background check on Manuel since he was now in town and, as they said in America, “up in their grill.”
“I understand.” Manuel said, which was code for nothing. He had no choice but to let the local police set the ground rules for this encounter. At least no choice yet, he thought, and his thoughts turned painfully to the leathers and bike that Snowflake claimed to have brought to Mexico.
“And I will let Sheriff Bragga know that you are in town and wish to arrange a visit. It shouldn’t be a problem, but in a case like this, it is best to follow procedure. Are you staying at the Soledad?”
“Yes. You can reach me there or leave a message if I’m out.”
Deputy Aldovar nodded, making notes on the same page he had recorded the drivers license number. “Once again, I am sorry for the unpleasantness earlier. If you have any questions or further concerns, please call and ask for Pedro Aldovar.”
Manuel nodded. “That would be you?”
“Si. In the meantime, enjoy your stay in Buena Rosa. If you get a chance, try the Casa del Rancho. Best breakfast in town.”
“Casa del Rancho?”
“On the southern edge of town, it’s easy to miss, but their chorizo and eggs with a little cojita sprinkled on top – I tell you, it is the best food in Buena Rosa.”
“Thanks. And my cousin?”
“She will be right here. I will take it up with Sheriff Bragga when he gets in. You should be able to talk to her tomorrow.”
It was going to have to be good enough, Manuel thought. He nodded, and saw that his apparent satisfaction was well received by the deputy. “I will see you tomorrow then.”
“Muy buien. Have a safe trip back to your hotel and we will speak again tomorrow.”
Manuel rendezvoused with Snowflake further down the block. The panda was sitting in the cab of a battered looking pickup he had brought with him to Buena Rosa. Despite his assurances to Manuel the there was a 5.1-litre HEMI engine under the hood, the trucks usefulness in a pinch had yet to be tested, and Manuel remained skeptical. Still disguised as an American tourist, the panda was contentedly munching on sunflower seeds, watching the front of the police station in the side mirror of the truck. Manuel paused for a rest at the passenger window and leaned against the scarred and pitted red door.
“How did it go in there?”
“Got a good lead on breakfast for tomorrow.”
“The Casa del Rancho? Yeah, good food. Anything else?”
Manuel shrugged, then looked casually over his shoulder in the direction of the station. No sign of any movement, but that could change. “Well, she’s there. It doesn’t look like bribery is an option at the moment, so I’m kind of winging it.”
“I like winging it. Good plan, boss. So, next step?”
“I’m going to play concerned family member for a bit. Stay here another twenty minutes or so to see if they put a tail on me. They know where I’m staying so they might just watch the hotel, in which case its best if we don’t go in together.”
“You don’t think they’ll figure out that I’m here with you?”
Manuel bought some time by making a show of stretching out his arms. “You got here a few days before me, and you’re a gringo.”
“I’m a panda, but point taken.”
“At this point, they think I’m still living in Mexico, but I don’t know how far they’re going to dig. Eventually, they will probably figure out you’re not just some tourist. But I don’t want to make it easy for them either.”
Snowflake cracked another sunflower seed. “And when they figure it out?”
“Well they might arrest you, at which point they are likely to figure out you aren’t human. That could be a problem.”
Neither of them said nothing for a several long moments, and then Manuel de la Vega pushed himself away from the truck door to finish his walk to the hotel. He only made it a few steps before Snowflake stopped him. “Hey boss?” The panda called softly from the cab of the truck.
Manuel half turned to look back at Snowflake.
“It’s great working with you again,” the panda who was not a panda said with a delighted wink and smile.
Manuel said nothing in return, but he found his sidekick - his “Sancho Panda’s” - enthusiasm just a bit contagious. He committed himself to the task at hand of humping the four blocks back to the hotel. The deputy’s final words to him concerned him a bit. He repeated them back to himself under his breath. “Have a safe trip back to the hotel.”
He shook his head. It might have been a simple warning. It might have been a threat. As long as Snowflake was watching the station, he felt relatively safe.
But he had no way to suspect that his entire curbside conversation had been witnessed by someone entirely unknown to the both of them. And as Manuel stumped down the street and out of sight, that unknown figure rolled a motorcycle silently back down the alley. Then, safely out of earshot of the truck, they started the cycle and rode off into the dark night of Buena Rosa.

Buena Rosa Chapter Three

Chapter Three
The air in Buena Rosa carried a faint metallic taste the Manuel suspected couldn’t possibly be good for him. He hoped that the impressive heat would bake any impurities out of it, even though the scientist in him knew that wasn’t the way things worked. If anything, it was probably making things worse. He tried not to think about it too hard. With luck, he would be done with this town in only a few days and back to civilization.
It was his first time back in Mexico since leaving to join the police in Cobalt City, and while he hadn’t forgotten the rampant poverty, he had forgotten how some people were so accepting of it. The longer you lived with the status quo, the more calcified the status quo became, until there comes a time when you can’t imagine anything outside of your own experiences. So many people had bought into this dream that working in a factory gave you an opportunity, that industry would solve all their problems, they were willing to overlook the miseries it brought with it.
Manuel had seen the slums. You couldn’t avoid them in Mexico City, the so called la Ciudad de los Palacios, the “City of Palaces”. With the population in the greater metropolitan area estimated anywhere from 18 to 22 million people, the desperation in some neighborhoods was so thick, you could feel it on your skin. Violent crime, kidnappings more often than not, were so prevalent that they were a way of life for everyone in the city.
In Cobalt City, the major concerns were parking and over priced coffee. In Mexico City, it was the knowledge that the next time you got in a cab, the driver could abduct you and force you to empty your bank account with your ATM card, sometimes even holding you overnight to circumvent daily withdraw limitations.
But he hated the perception that everyone in Mexico was some poor dirt farmer or criminal, just looking for some chance to make the midnight crossing into America for a better life. And he hated the admission that he had gone to America, albeit with a valid work visa, for much the same reason. The general perception that all police departments in Mexico were corrupt in some ways was prevalent and while unkind, not untrue. It was difficult to aspire to being a great cop when so often the bar was set so low.
And the fact that Manuel’s father would probably never understood why he became a cop, well, it was even more justification to move far away. The feeling that you had somehow failed your parents, even if unjustified, was made easier by never having to deal with them. But now his experience in the questionable ethics of Mexican law enforcement might be just what his family needed most. And while he was certain Esther would appreciate the help, he couldn’t help but hope that his father would appreciate it as well.
Manuel had arrived in Buena Rosa anonymously, lest he draw attention to himself. He had flown to Midland, Texas by charter plane then been lucky enough to catch a ride to the border with an elderly couple heading south for their granddaughter’s baptism. Dressing casually in a rarely worn denim jacket and jeans, he crossed the border at Ojinaga and caught a bus there to bring him the final 150 or so miles.
The bus had been virtually deserted, with only four other people making the trip to Buena Rosa from the direction of the border. This close to the “American Dream”, most traffic tended to go in the opposite direction. He felt the eyes of the other passengers on him and suspected that they might be sizing him up, weighing the ease of robbing a cripple against the apparent value of what he might be carrying. Manuel kept his dusty duffle bag within an easy arm’s reach and his attention finely tuned for the entire four hour trip, pleasantly surprised that no one decided he was worth the effort.
He had close to 200 pesos in his wallet, amounting to less than $10 American. $2,000, half in dollars, half in pesos had been tucked into two cleverly designed veladoras. One of the glass saint candles featured Our Lady of Guadalupe, and the other had an image of the Virgin of San Juan de los Lagos printed brightly upon it.
While it was a fortune for anyone who shared the bus with him, he doubted they would be able to find the release even if they were to suspect there was money hidden within. And the candles were so common among the largely Catholic Mexican community that no one would think anything of finding them in his bag.
Manuel stood on the cracked sidewalk in front of what appeared to be the only hotel in town two blocks from where he had been deposited by the bus. There were vacancies, of course. There were probably always vacancies. Buena Rosa was not the tourist town it might have once pretended itself to be. The Soledad was a two story building with faded flyers taped up in the windows. Low quality photocopies of old photos and hand drawn faces revealed many of them to be missing person posters.
Nothing official, not put up by the police, of course, but instead posted by loved ones – friends, family perhaps. A lot of people, Manuel thought. And these are just the ones who people think are missing. He wondered again about the vision he had received when touching the postcard – a field of carrion birds. Just how big was this thing he had come to confront?
He slung his dusty duffle bag over his shoulder and pushed into the dim interior of the hotel office. Light from between the posted flyers dappled the small space like a secluded grove. A desk fan was working overtime to circulate the air and having little success doing it. A small man with a pinched face looked up from his tattered paperback with a look of surprise. “Buenos dias! Can I help you with a room?”
“Gracias.”
The desk clerk turned a guests register on the counter around to face Manuel. It didn’t surprise him to see the entire operation running without the use of computers. There was only one other name on the registry that was less than a month old, a sloppily printed “Harry Snow”, who appeared to have checked in just a few days ago.
It was too much of a coincidence. “I’m here to meet my friend, Mr. Snow. Could I get a room next to his, perhaps?”
“Si. There is one across the hall. I give you that one. If I can see your drivers license...” the clerk’s eyes flickered down to the forearm crutches and he barely skipped a beat, “or your ID card or passport?”
Manuel considered the false ID card he had prepared but decided against it. It was still entirely possible that this was nothing more than typical graft and corruption, at which point his being registered under his real name would allow the police to research him if they cared to do so. If that happened, the fact that he was a decorated police officer would give him a little clout. He fished out his wallet and handed over his old Mexican driver’s license. He still had over a year left on it until it expired, and a reputation as a Mexican resident, whether it was true or not, might also be to his advantage. He had so few advantages, he realize, no reason not to exploit them all.
“Have you seen my friend recently?”
“Not since this afternoon. He left a few hours ago.”
Manuel nodded as if that was what he had expected, hoping it would mask his disappointment. “Any idea where he might have gone?”
“Si, senior. He is probably at Dos Padres, down the street. He spends much time there.”
Well, if Dos Padres was a bar, then there was little doubt who Harry Snow was. Manuel thanked the clerk and, after collecting the key, hiked up to his room. It was not as entirely dismal as he had expected. The room was small, but wasn’t used frequently, so other than a little dust, it was clean. And with the possible exception of something living in the mattress, it appeared to be more or less bug free. He sat on the edge of the narrow bed with his bag beside him and considered his options.
A long minute later, he stood with the evening’s course of action firmly in mind. The money-laden candles were placed on the small dresser. He lit them both and left them burning while he went into the bathroom and washed the travel grime from his face and neck with a wet rag. Thus refreshed, he extinguished the candles, leaving the paper book of matches from the lobby downstairs in the ashtray. He retrieved a library card from his wallet and pressed his thumb against the line drawing of the library building on the front until the line drawing flashed brightly twice. His tracking device and communicator now switched on, he tucked the card into his jacket’s breast pocket and left, locking the door behind himself.
The sun was low in the sky when he found Dos Padres, making the sky a brilliant rose color. Manuel figured that the smoke from the factory might have something to do with the vibrancy of it, but had to admit that it was spectacular. The painted window of the bar showed two robed Dominican monks, heads bowed, on either side of a wooden table with a bottle of wine between them. A neon Corona sign hummed next to it on one side, while a neon Tecate sign was on the other. He grunted and pushed open the door, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the relative darkness before going deeper into the room.
He figured picking out “Harry” would be easy, but a long look around the room turned up a lot of gringos, none of which looked familiar to him. The neon beer signs out front tipped him off that this was not exactly a “locals” bar. Locals didn’t drink Tecate and Corona, not if they could help it. This was a bar which owed its existence to American drinkers. Since most transnational corporations used their own management teams, it meant a steady supply of gringos with American money and American tastes. The owner of Dos Padres probably couldn’t print his own money faster than he was bound to make it here.
Manuel worked his way deeper into the room towards an empty booth, and saw a heavy-set man with a buzz cut and pale blue windbreaker waving him over to his table. It was no one he knew, but he trusted his instincts and altered his course. “Harry?”
“Surprised to see me, buddy?” came the all-too familiar voice of Snowflake, the panda former driver/mechanic/pilot associate of the Protectorate. This must be the backup and support Katherine sent for him. She must truly hate him for something or other.
“Yeah, surprised is a good word for it. You’re looking, um, good.” Manuel couldn’t help but stare. Snowflake was a panda, albeit a highly evolved one. A Chinese research project several years ago had tried to save the pandas from extinction by altering their genetics, essentially simulating tens of thousands of years of evolution on their test subject. The end result was Snowflake, a crass, rude, trigger happy, and generally surly individual with undeniable mechanical skills. The experiment was considered a failure and not repeated, making the panda-man one of a kind. It was a fact not lost on Snowflake, who frequently claimed that if they had made a female equivalent for him to hang out with, he would have been considerably less surly.
But before Manuel sat, very clearly, a human male in his late forties. He didn’t know what to say, but in a world of super-humans he had gotten somewhat used to being surprised. He took pulled out a seat and sat, staring at Harry who was looking very pleased with himself.
“Barkeep!” Harry waved at a young, long-haired Hispanic man in a cleanly pressed shirt and red vest behind the bar. “Two more, please.”
Manuel watched his friend closely as he retrieved money to pay for the beers, and realized that if he looked closely, there were some subtle indicators of what was going on. “So, let me guess. Kara Sparx did some custom work for you?”
Harry winked while he touched his nose. It suddenly made sense. Kara Sparx had done state of the art holographic work for the Protectorate on a contract basis. As far as Manuel knew, she had never tried to branch out into holographic disguises, but it was a logical extension of some of her other work. “I have to keep an eye on the battery, but as long as I limit physical contact, its pretty freaking foolproof,” Harry confided in a conspiratorial whisper.
A careful examination of the bar showed no one within easy earshot even if they were paying attention. Manuel took a draw on his beer despite not being a particular fan of Corona, then leaned into the table in what he hoped would appear to be a friendly, conversational manner. “So, you’ve been here a few days now. Have you learned anything?”
“Oh yeah. Don’t drink anything that isn’t fermented or distilled, if you catch my drift. I had a spiritual awakening after a tamale plate and glass of water my first night here, and believe me when I say you don’t want to go through that yourself.”
“That’s a lot of help.”
“You know, sarcasm is an ugly, hurtful trait, Manuel.”
“Okay. Have you learned anything else?”
“Well, factory town, which shouldn’t surprise you. Pegasus Motor Company has this place bought and paid for. These poor bastards here are middle management at the factory, and they live in a little gated community in the hills called Perseus Glen. Way I hear it, there are definite benefits to being management here. The actual employees, and by that I mean the local labor force lives in this shantytown between here and the factory itself. I don’t recommend going there.”
“Depressing?”
“Dangerous. They don’t like whitey too much there. And there have been disappearances which only make them more likely to get all riled up.”
Manuel nodded. It fit with the missing person flyers he had seen. He didn’t like the pattern. “Okay. So what about my cousin?”
“Muriel Cruz, one of the shift supervisors at the factory went missing for about a week. Her sister came up from their hometown, were ever the hell that is, and started raising holy hell. Then there was a rain storm, and Muriel’s body turned up in a ditch the next morning. Animals had been at it, but they were still able to make an ID based on a tattoo, if I heard right.”
“And this implicates my cousin how?”
“Your cousin has a reputation for being a trouble maker. She was trying to unionize the workforce and the plant security had her banned from the factory and tried to keep her out of the shantytown as well. Hard to - no - impossible to enforce, but they tried. The theory is that Muriel went to the floor manager about your cousin, and that’s why she was banned. So she was killed in a fit of anger or revenge.”
“That doesn’t sound like Esther.”
Snowflake shrugged, sipping on his beer. “That’s just what I hear, chief. It’s the official party line, and most of the locals seem to buy it too. She signed a confession and everything.”
“Guess I have to talk to the police.”
“I don’t think you heard me.” Snowflake leaned over the table, his shoulders hunched. “She. Signed. A. Confession.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Manuel sighed. Maybe it was easier for Snowflake to see things in black and white because he was a panda, but nothing was black and white south of the border. “This is Mexico. I grease the right palm, and I might be able to make this entire thing go away.”
Snowflake leaned back in his chair and it creaked dangerously under his weight. He pointed at Manuel with his beer bottle. “If you say so. But if you ask me, I think you’re going to need a change of clothes before the nights over.”
“A jacket and tie isn’t going to make a difference here.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Snowflake looked genuinely confused.
“I’m talking about waving money about. What are you talking about?”
Snowflake laughed hard enough to elicit curious looks from several bar patrons who quickly turned back to their own conversations. “I figured her royal kitty-ness would have told you. Damn.”
Manuel got an uncomfortable sinking sensation in his stomach. “Told me what?”
“I brought your leathers. Them and the bike, which is, if I do say so myself, a thing of absolute beauty, are here in Mexico.”
The room started spinning for reasons completely unrelated to the weak beer he had been drinking. It was as if the floor had fallen out from beneath him and he was in a sudden, uncontrollable fall with nothing secure left to hold onto. “The bike, the leathers, they were all destroyed.”
“Yeah. Rebuilding the bike was quite the little project. It hasn’t been field tested, but all the diagnostic tests have been outstanding. I got the Tesla twins to help out. Xander reconfigured the leather body suit, so it should be better than new, and the synthetic muscles in it should more than compensate for your gimpy legs.”
“My gimpy...”
“Congratulations, chief. You’re a hero again.”
Manuel only distantly heard the words. He thought he said something akin to “But I don’t want to be a hero.” The details of that were sketchy, as he was too busy falling to be sure.