Detective Duende prologue

A trio of young men sauntered down the sidewalk, unaware of the rheumy, anger-filled eyes fixed on them from between the slats of a yellowed Venetian blind. “Damn kids,” muttered the voice attached to the eyes. The old man in the house gripped his cane so hard that a pulsing vein stood out on the back of his hand as the high-school students tromped heedlessly on the vines from his garden that trailed across the sidewalk, crushing the tiny yellow-white flowers. “One of these days, I swear, I’m gonna…” The objects of his ire got into a car—sleek, silvery, one of the late models that were barely recognisable as related to the vehicles the old man had grown up knowing—and blasted the noise they called ‘music’ from its stereo for a full thirty seconds before driving off.

The old man turned his back on the blinds and shuffled to the middle of the room. He glanced briefly at the calendar on the wall: October 1, 2012. My God, he thought, One week from today, I’ll be sixty-five. I’ve never felt so old.

He seated himself with some difficulty on the faded brown couch and fumbled for the TV remote control. He did not see the thin, harried-looking man, apparently not much older than the three high-school students who had violated his garden, jog across the street and walk quickly toward the old warehouse at the other end of the block.

Inside the warehouse, the man slowed down slightly and wiped his hand across his forehead. He was absolutely soaked with sweat, and thought—not for the first time—that he was a moron for doing something that necessitated wearing a full trenchcoat in the still-warm autumn of central Texas. It was necessary, though, he reminded himself. He wanted to be as hard-to-recognise as possible. Just, you know, in case. Though hopefully not for much longer.

He stopped next to a nearly-ceiling-high stack of large wooden boxes, put his hands in his pockets in what he hoped was a nonchalant manner, and began to whistle “La Cucaracha”. He glanced around nervously, silently cursing the fact that he was expected to wear sunglasses indoors, and nearly jumped out of his skin when the contact emerged from the shadows behind him.

“Larry! Glad to see you made it. I was beginning to worry,” the older man said, keeping his hands deep in his own pockets. He eyed Larry up and down. “Doesn’t look like you’re carrying much merchandise. Don’t tell me you decided to back out after all?”

Larry bit his lip and took off the sunglasses so he could better look the other man in the eye. “Look, man, I’ve been thinking about this really hard, and I think it’s really best if—if, you know, we end our, um, business arrangement. Quitting while we’re ahead and all, right?”

The older man shook his head. “Larry, Larry, we talked about this. Don’t be a chicken. You trying to back out because you got one of them crickets on your shoulder? A conscience?” He chuckled. “Look, just because the law says it’s wrong doesn’t mean it really is. You know my word is good. Have I ever swindled you? Tried to cheat you on a deal? Come on, man.”

“Hank, it—it’s like this,” Larry stuttered. “I—My girlfriend— She just told me this morning that she’s pregnant. I gotta think about that now. I gotta worry about a family—”

Hank nodded. “Yeah, so, you’re gonna want a secure, steady income, right?”

“I have one. I have a perfectly secure job working in pharmaceutical sales. Which I’ll lose, and I’ll go to prison, if they find out I’ve been fencing rejected batches of pills to be sold on the Mexican black market!”

“So don’t let them find out,” Hank said, shrugging without taking his hands out of his pockets. “Worked so far, hasn’t it? And come on, you’ve gotta admit that the ‘stipends’ you receive from getting your company’s drugs to the people who need them most are each at least fifty times better than the nice, steady, wimpy little salary you pull down. I mean, you’re gonna wanna put your kid through college someday, right?”

Larry shook his head, tight-lipped. “Not like this. Not illicitly. I want to be there for Andrea and our kid. I don’t want to have it grow up knowing its dad is in jail for making a stupid mistake.” He turned stiffly, and began to walk away.

“Larry. Larry! Come on,” Hank called after him. “No. No, come on, don’t do this. Come on, we’re both adults, we can work something out.” He closed the space between them and put a hand on Larry’s shoulder. “Look, here, tell you what. We can work this out gradually. I can’t just up and stop sales on my end! I’m gonna need another contact. You give me a coupla weeks to find one, and meanwhile, you can sell me smaller and smaller shipments.” Larry glared at him. “Or…I could give the police an anonymous tip about a certain pharmaceutical employee’s under-the-table dealings…”

“You—you couldn’t. That would incriminate you too.”

“Well, yeah, I suppose it might. Or, there’s option C, where I—” Hank stepped in front of Larry, brought his knee up into the other man’s stomach, and backhanded him across the face. Larry fell backward, stunned, against a stack of wooden pallets, and Hank moved in close again as he pulled his left hand out of his pocket. He turned on the miniature cattle-prod he was holding in it and applied the charge to Larry’s neck, holding it there until the spasms of the younger man’s muscles ceased. He felt for Larry’s pulse, found none, and dragged the body to a loading dock, where he opened the rear hatch of his SUV and loaded it in like so much economy-class mail. Hank then drove outside the city, prudently following all traffic laws so as not to attract attention, and dumped Larry’s body in a part of the Hill Country where he knew a recent storm had downed a power line. He arranged the scene to look like a hiking accident, stepped back to admire his handiwork, and sighed.

“I guess I’ll need to find a new contact after all,” he muttered, and drove back to Austin.