Scavengers (27 page)
Wally Madrid sat by himself, turned sideways so that he could see the door. His dark, long face struck Estelle as singularly melancholy, as if he were sitting there waiting for the end of the world. The sports section of the Albuquerque Journal rested on the checkered plastic tablecloth. Other than that, the table was bare. No food, no coffee, no utensils.
Wally was not alone in the café. Across the room, another much younger man sat at the far end of the short counter. Smoke from a cigarette in his right hand curled upward, untouched by anything so sophisticated as the downwash from a ceiling fan. The man turned and stared at Estelle when she entered. The light was behind her, and Estelle’s eyes flicked a quick inventory of the room and its occupants. She didn’t recognize the man at the counter, but his expression wasn’t the idle curiosity of a man whose quiet coffee and doughnut break had been interrupted.
From behind, Bob Torrez put a hand on Estelle’s shoulder and said, “Go ahead and find a table. I need to use the restroom.” He made no effort to whisper, and what he said would have been clearly heard by Wally Madrid and the man at the counter. Torrez sounded like any other good tourist, too long on the road, rest stops dictated by the bladder. His grip on Estelle’s shoulder was firm and directed her off to the right.
As watchful as he was, it nevertheless took the young man at the counter another couple of heartbeats before he recognized the possible danger, before he realized that the giant figure walking quickly across the small café toward him wasn’t just a tourist who had brought his wife in for a midmorning snack.
Robert Torrez ducked to one side so that his head didn’t brush the fluorescent lighting fixture in the center of the room. Benny hesitated for another instant, saw that Torrez’s impassive gaze was locked on
him
rather than the small sign on the open door behind him that announced
CABALLEROS
.
From across the room, Estelle saw the man’s left shoulder hunch upward. By the time a large revolver appeared in his left hand, sweeping upward to avoid the edge of the counter, Estelle’s own Beretta had cleared her belt and jacket. But Robert Torrez was on the offensive.
As the revolver cleared the edge of the counter, Torrez barged into the man, knocking him off the stool into the lip of the counter. The sheriff’s hand clamped across both the revolver and the hand that held it. With a vicious slam, Torrez smashed the hand down, the weight of the heavy weapon crushing the man’s thumb against the Formica. The revolver discharged with a loud, sharp report and a cloud of blue smoke. The long-unused milkshake mixer on the back counter rocked sideways as the slug punched through its stainless steel housing, blew out the back, and embedded in the wall.
Torrez smacked the gun down again and the man howled, trying to bat him away with his right hand. The revolver skittered down the counter and pinwheeled to a halt, pointing toward the street.
With a deft twist, Torrez forced the young man’s face down on the counter, at the same time pulling both of his arms behind his back. With a loud clack, he slapped handcuffs on both wrists with such force that the man’s face crumpled in pain.
Shifting her own automatic to her left hand, Estelle crossed the room and picked up the revolver. Wally Madrid hadn’t moved a muscle during the assault on his son. Both hands remained motionless on top of the table. His eyes grew wide as he watched Estelle thumb the revolver’s cylinder open. The remaining cartridges clattered to the floor.
“
Como está
, Benny?” Torrez said. “Remember me?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but pulled Benny Madrid to his feet and pushed him against the counter. He kicked his feet apart and slipped two nylon ties out of his back pocket. With swift, deft motions, Torrez snapped a restraint around each of Benny Madrid’s ankles, the ties looped through each other so that the man was effectively hobbled.
“Have a seat,” Torrez said, his voice quiet and conversational. He caught Benny by the elbow and steered him toward the table in the back corner of the café, under the 1957 Firestone calendar that featured such striking photos of the Southwest that Lucy Madrid never had been able to throw it out. Benny managed the awkward, hopping journey, and fell into the chair. He glowered up at Torrez, who regarded him impassively for a moment. The sheriff rubbed the palm of his right hand, glanced down at the flash burn from the revolver, and then turned to Wally Madrid.
“You all right?” the sheriff asked.
Wally nodded and his eyes flicked nervously toward Estelle, whose Beretta hadn’t wavered. The muzzle pointed at the light fixture, a short move from any target in the room. “Give me about ten seconds,” Torrez said to Estelle, and he nodded toward the back storage room, the kitchen, and the bathrooms. He turned to Benny. “Where’s your worthless brother?” Benny didn’t reply. “Dumb as always,” Torrez muttered. He pointed a beefy finger at Benny’s nose. “If you move, she’s going to put one right there,” he said, and then rapped Benny hard between the eyes with his right index knuckle. “
Comprende, bato?
”
As Torrez rounded the end of the counter headed toward the small kitchen, he drew his own automatic, thumbing the hammer back as he did so.
“Nobody’s back there,” Wally Madrid called. His voice cracked as if it had been years since he’d used it. “They went to town.”
“Okay,” Torrez replied, and quickly checked the back rooms. He returned, weapon holstered, and walked across to Wally’s table. The sheriff stepped close and reached out a hand, the fingers touching Wally lightly above the ear. “Did one of them hit you?”
“It’s nothing,” Wally said. As he turned his head, Estelle could see the dried blood near the corner of his left eye.
“Can you stand up for me?”
Wally nodded, but didn’t move.
“I need you to stand up, Mr. Madrid,” Torrez said gently, and the older man’s hands fluttered with embarrassment.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t understand.” He leaned his weight on the table and pushed himself to his feet, the top of his head below Torrez’s shoulders.
“Just stand still a minute, sir,” Torrez said. He quickly ran his hands down the old man’s sides and legs. “No hurts anywhere else?” the sheriff asked as he straightened up. He turned and nodded at Estelle.
“No, no,” Wally said, and collapsed back in the chair. “I guess I wasn’t moving fast enough for him, you know. That’s all. He got impatient.” A hand drifted up to touch his cheek. Estelle felt a pang of sympathy for the man.
Impatient
was nowhere near the top of her list of the Madrid brothers’ failings.
“This one?” Torrez nodded at Benny Madrid.
“No. Not him.”
“Where’s Isidro, then? And where’s your wife? Where’s Lucy?”
Wally nodded. “They went into town.”
“To Posadas, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“When was that?”
Wally twisted so that he could see the small clock with the Holbein Dairies logo on the face. His eyes squinted. “It must have been about ten minutes to nine,” he said.
Torrez glanced at his watch. “Twenty-five minutes ago,” he said. “It’s twenty minutes in, twenty back.” He looked at Estelle and brushed one hand by the other. “We just missed them on the highway.” Turning back to Wally Madrid, he asked, “What was Isidro after?”
“They went to the bank.”
Torrez frowned, his left hand drifting toward the handheld radio under his jacket. Estelle had crossed to the table, and she sat down in the chair facing Wally.
“Isidro forced his mother to go to Posadas with him?” she asked.
Wally nodded. “I don’t have much,” he said, “but I gave them what I had. Lucy, though…she’s got accounts. Over the years, she’s got accounts. That’s what they wanted.”
“So they robbed you, took what money you had at the service station, and now Isidro is taking his mother to the bank?” Estelle asked. “Isidro isn’t afraid that she’ll turn him in?”
Wally pulled his shoulders up in a slow-motion shrug. “I guess she won’t.”
No, I guess she won’t
, Estelle thought.
Wally started to turn around to look at his other son, but didn’t complete the motion. “There’s been trouble, I guess you know that.” Somehow, he managed to make it sound as much his own fault as anyone’s.
“Yep, we know that,” Torrez said.
“Was Benny supposed to wait here until Isidro returned with the money?” Estelle prompted.
“That was the plan,” Wally said.
“You think Isidro will be back?”
“I don’t know.” Wally folded his hands as if to say, “what will be, will be.”
“What were they driving?”
“They took Lucy’s car. It’s that black-and-silver Chrysler.”
“Who’s driving?”
“I think Lucy was.”
Torrez looked across the room at Benny, who was studying the paint on the wall. “Your brother going to run out on you?” the sheriff asked. Benny ignored him. “Hell, I’d run out on him myself,” Torrez said. “The worthless sack of shit.” Estelle reached up and nudged the sheriff in the arm with the cell phone.
“They should still be at the bank,” she said, handing the instrument to Torrez, then rising and slipped past him. On the back shelf behind the small, open cash register, she found a crumpled phone book. She quickly leafed through until she found the number of Posadas National Bank. “If you ask for Dottie Sandoval, she’s got a good view of the entire bank from where she sits in her office.”
Torrez nodded and dialed. Estelle could hear the cheerful voice of the bank receptionist as she answered on the third ring.
“Dottie Sandoval, please. This is Sheriff Torrez.”
“I’m sorry, Sheriff. Dottie is with a customer right now. Can I take a message?”
“Who’s the customer?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Who…is…the…customer?”
“Well,” and the receptionist hesitated. “I think it’s…well, I guess I don’t know who it is. It’s an older man.”
“Let me talk with Dottie, please. It’s an emergency.”
Once deviated from her cheerful, prepared phone message, the girl’s polite good humor was quick to fade. “Well, wait just a second.”
Torrez waited, gaze locked on Benny Madrid. The phone clicked and a pleasant voice came on the line. “This is Dottie.”
“Dottie, Bob Torrez. Sorry to interrupt, but I need a favor that can’t wait.”
“Well, you just name it,” Dottie said, her voice a rich contralto.
“Without being too obvious, can you tell me if Lucy Madrid is in your bank at the moment?”
There was a brief silence. “Sure. She’s here. Do you need to talk with her?”
“No, no. I sure don’t. Where is she?”
“She’s here in the bank.”
“No, I mean
where
in the bank?”
“She’s with Mary Tuttle, the head cashier. Is there some kind of problem, Bobby?”
“Is she alone?”
“No. There’s a young man with her. I think it’s her son. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her boys, but I think that’s who it is.”
“How long ago did they come in, do you happen to know?”
“Oh gosh…I wasn’t paying attention. I just don’t know. It couldn’t have been too long now. We just opened…about eleven minutes ago.”
“Okay, thanks. Look, Dottie, I hate to do this to you, but it’s really important that we know the instant that they leave, all right?”
“Well, sure. Give me a number.”
“Let’s just leave this line open. I’ll hold.”
“Well, all right. Do I get to know what’s going on? Is there trouble we should know about?”
“How about not right now,” Torrez said. He turned and glanced at Estelle, who was frowning. Had Isidro been planning to simply rob the bank, there would have been no need to take his mother along—and he’d have been in and out of the bank in seconds. If his plan was to recover as much cash as he could without raising an alarm, he’d hatched himself a pretty good scheme…as long as the smell of all that cash just over the tellers’ counter didn’t trigger a change in plans.
“Just let us know when they head out the door. I appreciate it. I’m putting Estelle Guzman on the line.” He handed the cell phone to Estelle and said quietly, “I’ll get somebody rolling from that end.”
As Torrez picked up the café’s telephone and set it on the counter, Estelle turned so that she could watch Benny Madrid. The young man sat quietly, following the sheriff’s every move. His feet shifted as he tested the ankle ties, and she could see his shoulders hunch and then relax as he strained against the stainless steel cuffs behind his back.
“Where’s the rifle, Benny?” Torrez asked conversationally as he dialed the phone. Estelle locked her hand over the phone mouthpiece so Dottie wouldn’t hear, but Benny said nothing. “Isidro has it with him?” He lifted the receiver to his ear and waited. “Hey there,” he said when his wife Gayle answered at dispatch. “Who’ve we got on the road just now?”
“Dennis is on duty this morning,” Gayle Torrez said. “He’s standing right here with Tommy Pasquale, who
isn’t
on duty and should be home in bed. And Jack Adams is just heading out the door.”
“Holler at Jack for me.” She did so without covering the phone, and Torrez winced.
Gayle returned on the line. “You want to talk to him?”
Torrez could hear voices in the background, including New Mexico State Policeman Jack Adams’ west Texas drawl. “No. But we’re going to need him, so keep him close for a minute. Let me talk to Tom.”
“Here he be,” Gayle said.
“Yes, sir?” Tom Pasquale said.
“Your head on straight this morning?” Torrez asked.
“Sir?”
Torrez glanced over at Estelle, who shook her head. Life at Posadas State Bank was continuing apace. “Okay, this is the deal,” the sheriff said, and quickly filled the deputy in. “Now listen to me,” he said, and turned his back to Benny Madrid, walking the length of the phone cord toward the front window. His voice sank to little more than a murmur. “I don’t want any kind of confrontation at the bank, Thomas. I don’t want Isidro Madrid or his mother to see you, or to suspect that you’re anywhere nearby. I want that son of a bitch out of Posadas, away from people. I want him to walk out of that bank with his mother with all the money they want, and I want them to drive out of town. Is that clear?”
