The Fall Moon Read online

  We had booked ourselves into the Sonoita Inn, and after that we had booked a table at Hank’s Diner. Hank’s Diner, just a short walk from the hotel, was a fashionable eatery, frequented by people who talked about wine as though it was a lovably impertinent fruit salad. They would fly and drive from California, New Mexico, Texas and the East Coast to experience the genius with which Hank combined fine Arizona wines with exquisitely crafted food. As though that were not enough to bring on a gourmet orgasm, while you were eating and drinking his perfect combinations, he would explain them to you in a culinary variation of talking dirty. Hank’s Diner was also frequented, so D.C. told us, by Cesar and, when they were in town, the Camachos.

  We parked at the inn, in the farthest, darkest corner of the parking lot, behind a couple of trees, and then I checked in at the reception desk while Dehan yawned a lot and stared around at the unusual décor. After that, we walked a hundred yards down the road, under an infinity of stars, for what was billed on the website as an ‘Unforgettable Gourmet Experience’.

  As we approached the diner, she slipped her arm through mine and leaned her head on my shoulder. “If you ever tell anyone I said this, I will castrate you with a blunt razor, but being happy with you is more important to me than seeking revenge…”

  I kissed the top of her head. “I know how much that means. Thank you.”

  She turned her head and pointed behind us. “You know the other place? The Steak Out? The place we didn’t reserve a table at? They specialize in mesquite char-grilled, home-cut steak. And they don’t talk to you while you’re eating.”

  “We discussed this already, Dehan…”

  “No, we didn’t. You talked and I slept. Home cut. Char-grilled. Steak. And also margaritas.”

  “You’ll enjoy it, darling.”

  “So weird.”

  “Besides which, our boys will not be at the Steak Out, alluring as it sounds…”

  “Why are you talking like that?”

  “I don’t know. It’s since you compared me to Frasier.”

  We crossed the dusty forecourt onto the decked terrace and pushed through the door. A boy in jeans and a red T-shirt met us at the entrance, smiled and asked Dehan if we had booked. He had a face that said it would have been sexist to ask me. Dehan looked up at me and said, “I don’t know, darling. Did we book?”

  I smiled at the stud in the boy’s upper lip. “Yeah, Stone. Table for two.”

  “Oh yes, Mr. Stone. We have you by the window. We hope the view will enhance your dining experience.”

  The place was not swanky, but it was attractive in a plain kind of way. The floors were plain wood, as were the tables and chairs, and the wine racks that dotted the red brick walls. The bar was an irregular slab of wood polished to a high sheen. The décor was simple and unaffected. There were no wagon wheels.

  There were not many customers either: a man and a woman at the bar having a cocktail, a table of four women, and two tables occupied by two couples in shorts, tennis shoes and unwashed T-shirts. The waiter, who said his name was Clive, or James, or something that wasn’t ‘waiter’, led us to our window table and offered us a couple of menus.

  “Can I get you a drink while you decide?”

  I nodded. “My wife needs a margarita, and I’ll have an Irish whiskey, in a cognac balloon, with no ice.”

  He cocked a hip. “In a…” He made the shape of a cognac balloon. “With no…” He made the gesture of putting ice in the glass. “Got it.”

  He went away and we scanned the room the way first-time tourists would. Dehan shook her head. “I don’t see them.”

  “How would we know for sure?”

  She gave me a dead look that said I should engage my brain. “Well, for a start, they wouldn’t look like anybody in here right now. And they wouldn’t be driving any of the cars we saw outside.”

  I sat back and sighed. “Yes, dear. As usual, you are right.”

  Her eyes narrowed into a sly smile. “I think you get off on this whole suburban, retired-married thing. I think you have a secret desire to be one of those cardigan, pipe and slippers guys who potters around his garden while his wife makes blueberry pies.”

  “You could be right. I may have been kidding myself all these years. Perhaps it’s time to come out.”

  Zack appeared with our drinks and told us what they were as he set them down in front of us, in case we’d forgotten what we’d ordered. Dehan smiled at the margarita, sipped it and sighed, then offered her smile to Zack.

  “We’ll have the antipasto to start, then my husband will have the chef’s signature burger, and so will I. You choose the wine, but in the meantime, you’d better be fixing me another one of these.”

  He narrowed his eyes, smiled with his mouth and gave a small giggle, then he hurried away.

  I asked her, “Do you think you should have another, dear? You know how you get. It’ll be up and down all night, emptying your incontinence pants.”

  “Ass. That’s them.”

  The door had opened. I forced myself to stare at her face and laugh instead of turning, like she’d said something adorable.

  “How can you be sure, you silly monkey?”

  She took my hand and smiled into my eyes. “It’s something about the Italian suits and the scar down the side of his face.”

  “You say such lovely things.”

  “I’m serious.” She leaned a little closer. “Remind me why we have to lay this on so thick.”

  “According to you, so that I can fulfill my cardigan fantasy. Also, because if we don’t, we come across as a couple of hard-boiled New York cops from the Bronx.”

  She batted her eyelashes. “I’m going to the can. Pretend to watch my ass as I walk past them. You’ll see what I mean.”

  She got up and crossed the dining room. It was a very easy ass to watch and I realized as she passed their table that I was not the only man in the room watching it. The two men who had sat at the table near the bar were also watching. They were both in expensive black suits that had that Armani look which says you make up in money for what you lack in taste. The younger of the two had a burgundy shirt with a bootlace tie. He had hair gelled into spikes and a diamond in his left ear. The guy sitting next to him looked less Latino and more Indian. He had long black hair in a ponytail, an aquiline nose and black eyes. He wore a black shirt and a thin gold chain around his neck. I was pretty sure he was the guy I’d seen getting out of the Cessna. A deep scar ran from the corner of his right eye to the corner of his mouth.

  If D.C. was right, and I had no doubt he was, these were Cesar, who ran the Beyer Ranch, and the Sicario. It wasn’t hard to guess which was which. Two minutes later, while they were giving a pretty waitress with scruffy jeans and a red T-shirt their order, Dehan came back and sat.

  “What do you think?”

  I nodded. “I had never noticed before, but you’re right. You have a very nice backside.”

  “Not funny.”

  “Also, I think you are certainly correct. These are our boys. I think the scar is the Sicario and the guy with the gel is Cesar.”

  “So if the information D.C. gave us is right, the merchandise is at the Bodegas del Diablo warehouse.”

  I took her hand and looked at her dreamily. “You know? You talk just like a cop.” I laughed and leaned toward her. “If I were in this room with somebody else, say a coke dealer, I’d point you out to them and say, ‘look, that beautiful young woman over there is a cop.’”

  “You would?”

  I nodded. “I sure would, darling.”

  “Not a murdering, fascistic vigilante?” She sighed and sipped her drink. “It’s hard.”

  I shook my head and smiled. “You are an attractive, intelligent, interesting woman who has a lot to offer besides the ability to bring down a two hundred and twenty pound man with a flying side kick while simultaneously cleaning and loading a 50 cal Smith & Wesson 500 revolver.” I sat back. “Look, we know what we have to do, and we don’t have to
do it till after dinner. So in the meantime, let’s chill, enjoy the food and the wine.”

  She smiled, and for the first time in a long while, there was no sarcasm in her face. “And the company?”

  I nodded. “Above all the company.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  We drank a lot less than we appeared to and spent the evening apparently engrossed in each other. We took photographs of our food and of each other and Whatsapped them to imagined children and parents, and laughed at how jealous they would be. In at least four of them, Cesar and the Sicario were clearly visible and recognizable.

  I sent one to D.C. with the message, Can you identify the ingredients?

  His reply was less coy: Burgundy shirt is Cesar. Other guy could be Sicario, I never met him tho.

  By ten o’clock, they were eating roasted prime rib and we were sipping coffee. I signaled the waiter. He approached with a thin veneer of a smile on his face. “What can I do to make your dining experience more fulfilling?” he asked.

  “Two things,” I told him with no kind of smile on mine. “You can stop calling it a dining experience, and you can bring me the check.”

  His smile became a rictus and he said quietly, “Heavens…” before going away to get the check.

  Dehan was frowning at me. It was an expression of intelligent inquiry. “Why is everything referred to now as an experience? You don’t travel, you have a travel experience. You don’t go for the groceries, you have a shopping experience. You don’t go to the can, you…”

  “Yeah, I got it. It’s part of Mankind’s eternal quest to be ever greater assholes, Dehan. Or perhaps there is an evil genius manipulating society and attempting to persuade us that everything is just an experience, nothing is real…”

  She nodded. “And therefore everything is permitted. You’re probably right.”

  Zack returned with the check. I paid cash and left a generous tip. As we stood, he smiled at me with spiteful eyes and said, “I hope you enjoy your Arizona experience. Do come back soon.”

  Outside, the desert air was cold. A moon like a fat orange was sitting over the mountain peaks in the east and casting a strange, translucent blue light on the sand. It made inky shadows out of the scattered cars in the parking lot, the fence posts across the blacktop and the solitary, scattered trees in the fields beyond. One of the cars in the lot was a dark Audi RS7.

  Overhead, the sky was vast and the stars crystal clear. I shuddered and felt suddenly exposed. I put my arm around Dehan and we started to walk with loud footsteps across the gravel, toward the road.

  The road was long and very straight, and it was a good ten minute walk back to the hotel. A little over halfway, on the right, there was a cluster of stores, houses and small businesses. And right there among them was the Bodegas del Diablo warehouse. It was a big, whitewashed building, faintly luminous in the moonlight, with large, green gates leading onto a courtyard which I figured was a loading bay. As we approached, I slowed and glanced around. The whole town was silent and still—aside from our footsteps, which were loud and seemed somehow to echo in the emptiness.

  “How’d you want to play this, Stone? The coke is in there, two and half million bucks’ worth. We are ninety-nine percent sure of that. They are in the diner…”

  “The secret to a successful operation is careful planning,” I muttered. “But how the hell do you make a careful plan when all you’ve got is ifs, maybes and probablys?”

  “According to D.C., the usual routine for a New York shipment is to bring it up here and conceal it in a wine delivery to be shipped out next morning. If he’s relaxing over dinner at his favorite restaurant, two gets you twenty he already unloaded it from his trunk.”

  “If the merchandise came by car, it won’t have been his. It will be another vehicle on the other side of those doors.”

  We had stopped and were standing on the road, looking at the warehouse. It was dark and silent, like the town. The air was cold enough for our breath to make clouds of condensation. She said, “We can’t stand here staring at the warehouse. Somebody is going to spot us.”

  Behind, maybe three or four hundred yards away, voices rose on the night air. We looked back and two figures were stepping out of the diner, moving across the lot toward where I knew the Audi was. I heard Dehan breathe, “Come on!” and next thing, she was running across the dirt to the general store twenty feet from the western wall of the warehouse.

  I rasped, “Dehan!” I could see what she was thinking, and I didn’t like it. The general store had a large porch with a dense vine growing up its façade and over the roof. Concealed behind it, on the decking, peering through the leaves, she would have a clear view of the big green doors that gave access to the Bodegas del Diablo warehouse.

  I went after her, but she was almost twenty years younger than I was and a hundred pounds lighter. She vaulted over the railing and hissed at me, “C’mon! hurry up!”

  I ducked under and we crouched down in the shadows, peering through the vine. She pulled her Glock and cocked it. I sighed and did the same with my Colt. Away at the diner, I could see the Audi backing up. For a second, its headlamps glared directly at us and I had the irrational feeling we had been seen. Then they turned, pulled slowly onto the road and cruised in our direction. The moon, now turning silver, laid bright reflections across the roof of the car.

  They came level with us and for a moment I thought they were going to continue on past, but they didn’t. They slowed and turned, then rolled, crunching gravel, up to the big green doors. They didn’t get out. They waited, with their lamps making big, luminous circles against the green wood and the walls. After a moment, there was a noise of heavy iron on wood, and the massive doors swung slowly inward. From where I was crouched, I could see one guy. He looked Latino, though it was hard to tell in the poor light. The Audi rolled in out of sight and then engine died. Doors slammed like two gunshots. Then there were voices. I counted four. One of them said, “No, dejen la puerta. Si nos vamos ya.”

  Dehan breathed in my ear, “He says to leave the doors, they’re leaving in a minute.” She had her phone in her hand and took a picture of the open doors. “I can’t get the car, without the registration it’s not worth Jack!”

  Then she was on her feet, vaulting silently over the rail onto the gravel. Fear and nausea lurched in my belly. I bit my tongue. To shout to her would be a death sentence. I got to my feet. She had holstered her Glock and was holding her phone with both hands, filming, stepping sideways, trying to capture the trunk of the car. I swore silently and profanely in my head and came off the veranda, covering the door with my Colt.

  She stopped filming, stepped over to me and breathed on my other ear. “They’ve gone inside.”

  Before I could answer, she was running down into the space between the general store and the warehouse. I went after her, reaching out to grab her arm. But she was away, flattened against the wall, inching toward the open green doors. I followed, keeping her covered as best I could. She paused, inches from the opening, and I closed in behind her. We waited. There was silence. She squatted down, went on one knee and leaned forward. She smiled, filmed the trunk of the car, with the registration plate, then panned slowly around to show where it was. Still filming, she stood and took in the sign over the door, ‘Bodegas del Diablo’.

  She stopped and stared at me, chewing her lip, then shook her head. She was telling me it was not enough. I shook my head back, telling her the risk was too high. She nodded like she’d understood, put her phone away and pulled her weapon. I scowled. She ignored me and stepped around the door, scanning the area. I followed. The car was eighteen or twenty feet away, in the center of a large, dirt courtyard, maybe forty or fifty feet square. At the far end, there was a kind of raised platform from where the trucks were loaded, with steps leading up to it over on the far right. It was about eight or ten feet deep, with a huge steel roller blind and, at the top of the steps, a green wooden door. The door was open, dim light was spilling out and th
ere were quiet voices inside.

  To the left of the Audi, there was an old Terrastar backed up against the platform. There was nobody in the cab. I touched her arm and pointed at the truck. Then I pointed at the trunk of the Audi and back at the truck. She thought about it and nodded. Then I pointed at us and gestured behind the truck. We were in the middle of the yard and needed to take cover. She looked skeptical, but as the voices began suddenly to grow louder, she sighed and jerked her head toward the shadows.

  We slipped behind the Terrastar and she dropped silently to her belly. The Glock was on the ground by her side and she had her phone out again. I dropped beside her, keeping the Audi covered.

  There was the scuff of feet. Bodies came down the steps and boots came into view around the car. The car bleeped and the boots, at least four pairs of them, moved to the back of the car. We heard the trunk open. Almost simultaneously, with startling suddenness, the roller blind in the back of the truck was wrenched up, no more than ten feet behind us. Dehan half-rose, stared at me wide-eyed and mouthed, “They are loading the stuff!”

  I scowled and mouthed back, “No!”

  “Yes!”

  I held up four fingers and mouthed, “Minimum!”

  What she did next took a matter of less than a second. She clenched her lips into a tight line, narrowed her eyes and flopped down on her belly, pulling the Glock into both hands. In that moment, everything went into impossibly slow motion. I could see three pairs of legs. I noted two pairs were in dark, woolen pants. The third was in faded jeans. My brain calculated absently that the fourth pair of legs was above and behind us on the loading platform, or in the truck. In the hundredth of a second it took me to note that, Dehan had taken aim at the back of one of the legs in jeans and pulled the trigger. There was a loud crack, like a firecracker. Blood erupted from the far side of the leg. There was a scream and Dehan was rolling. Her face, a mere inch from mine, gloated for a second and she said, “Three, not four.”