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  On this trip, he arrived in Atlanta from Sao Paulo, Brazil, wearing heavy, dark-rimmed glasses, a gray mustache, and walking with the use of a cane. He waited patiently in the international arrivals line. When he was waved forward by the Immigration and Customs agent, he smiled and offered his Brazilian passport without waiting to be asked.

  “Gabino Sousa,” the agent read as he scanned the photograph, comparing it to the man standing before him.

  “Yes.” Garza nodded with a harmless smile.

  “The reason for your visit to the United States?”

  “To visit my niece … in Memphis.” His voice held just the right amount of nervousness as would be expected from someone not familiar with international travel.

  “How are you going to Memphis?”

  “Oh … yes, there is another airplane I must take, somewhere here in Atlanta.” He fumbled with the breast pocket of his threadbare sports jacket and pulled out a dog-eared ticket portfolio.

  “May I see it?” the agent asked and gave a smile of his own.

  “Certainly.” Garza handed over the ticket and waited, leaning slightly on his cane for support.

  The agent scanned the flight numbers and nodded. “Alright. Thank you, Mr. Sousa.” He made a note on a piece of paper and handed it to Garza with the ticket. “This is your gate for the flight to Memphis. Just go through that door and follow the signs for the shuttle trains to Concourse D.”

  “Thank you.” Garza fumbled with the ticket and passport, stuffing them into his breast pocket again in a clumsy fashion and nodded. “Sorry … Thank you again.”

  “Have a nice day, Mr. Sousa,” the agent said as he motioned the next passenger forward.

  Garza limped away on his cane, patting his pockets to make sure he had everything. The mannerism was clearly that of an infrequent traveler, making his way through unfamiliar territory. It was a persona that Garza maintained all the way to Memphis and to the car rental agency where he picked up a nondescript white SUV, thanked the attendant for helping him, after asking directions to a Latino neighborhood in the Berclair district.

  He then drove away with a smile and a wave and disregarded the directions, heading east on I-40. An hour later, he stopped at a rest area, took a small duffel with him to the restroom and emerged a few minutes later, clean shaved, wearing sunglasses, and minus the cane.

  It was five hours before he stopped again in Morristown, Tennessee, taking an exit that brought him into a modest residential neighborhood. As he pulled into the driveway, a man seated by a picture window in the front room folded a newspaper and came to the door.

  ***

  His name was Hermilio, a fortyish man of slight build. Dressed in a white tee-shirt, blue jeans, and steel-toed boots, he was the image of a solid working-class man in a modest suburban community.

  In fact, Hermilio worked for a local tool manufacturing company, but the tattoos on his arms and hands were evidence of his former life. Gang affiliations and a series of assaults had landed him in prison. As the time for parole approached, a church-sponsored outreach program put him in touch with the owner of a tool manufacturing company that decided to offer the man a second chance.

  The church group gave him a glowing recommendation as an example of a rehabilitated felon who found a better life in Jesus. The parole board was impressed. They were also under pressure from the governor and legislature to reduce the crowded prison population.

  After release, he quickly became one of the company’s most valued employees, always willing to work late or come in early. At Christmas, the owner always stood him up at the annual company party and patted him on the back as a true American success story and gave him a little extra in his bonus.

  Hermilio was the owner’s favorite mascot and pet project, and sound evidence of the businessman’s Christian character. He often thought of Hermilio’s success, and his hand in it, smiling benevolently as he sat in his church pew to hear the Sunday sermon.

  ***

  “How was your trip?” Hermilio asked as he opened the door and stepped aside for Garza to enter.

  Garza ignored the question. “You have what I requested?”

  “Yes.”

  Hermilio’s face remained expressionless. He had heard that this man was a serious one, not to be trifled with. Just provide what he requested and send him on his way.

  “Show me,” Garza said, his eyes moving around the small living room.

  “This way.”

  Hermilio led him through the house and out the back door to a shed in the yard. A large ring of keys jingled in his hand. He thumbed through them and inserted one in the padlock securing the shed’s door.

  Inside, he crossed the narrow plywood floor to a trunk, also padlocked, and opened it, lifting the lid and taking a step back. Garza approached to examine the contents.

  The weapons there glistened in the light from the single overhead bulb. Garza nodded. They were well maintained, oiled, and clean. He lifted several pistols, feeling the balance and checking the mechanisms.

  “I’ll take these.” He placed three pistols, a Glock 19 and two Walther PPKs in the duffel he carried with him. “And ammunition.”

  “Of course.” Hermilio nodded and opened another trunk to reveal cases of pistol and rifle ammunition of various calibers from .380 to .30-06.

  Garza selected several boxes and nodded. “What else?”

  Hermilio understood and dragged over a third trunk. When the lid was lifted, rows of knife blades glittered under the light. Garza quickly selected a large combat style knife and two thinner piercing daggers. With everything secured in the duffel, he turned for the door.

  “I … I have other weapons for you to examine … longer range, more firepower.” Fearing that he may have overstepped his bounds, Hermilio added quickly, “I mean only if you would like to see them.”

  “I would not.” Garza stopped, turned, and stared into Hermilio’s eyes. The work he planned to do would be at close quarters. “These will do.”

  “Of course, of course.” Hermilio nodded quickly.

  Garza stepped from the shed into the afternoon light. Hermilio locked the door behind them and led the way back to the house.

  A minute later, the fearsome man from the cartel was backing his car from the driveway. Hermilio breathed a sigh of relief.

  Make a Happy Life

  “Just like clockwork.” Billy Siever smiled as Isabella walked into his office. “You know you don’t have to do this.”

  “I do,” she said, reaching into her bag for the envelope that held her monthly rent check. She laid it on the desk. “I need to pay my way.”

  “I know, I know.” Billy placed the check on top of a stack of papers and motioned to a chair. “Got time for a visit?”

  “I do.” She sat in a chair across from his desk and laughed. “So, is this where all the murderers and mobsters sit when they come to consult with their mouthpiece?”

  “More like, bankruptcies, and injury claims,” he replied, smiling. “And no, I meet with clients in the conference room. Only friends visit in my office.”

  “That’s disappointing.” She grinned. “I was sure some well-known, criminal type ass previously occupied this chair.”

  “Nope. Just crotchety old mortgage bankers and shriveled up old matrons cutting their nephews out of the will.” He smiled. “You seem happy today. It’s good to see.”

  “I am happy.” She shrugged. “Or reasonably so. Life hasn’t worked out quite the way I planned.” She stopped and threw her head back, laughing. “Who am I kidding? I never planned. I was just hiding out in that west Texas dust bowl, and then John came along. But all in all, life is good.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “It took a while,” Isabella continued, settling into the chair as if she wanted to talk and get something off her chest. “Do you talk to John very often?”

  “Not often. When he calls. He doesn’t ever say where he is, but I know the plan is to continue doing what he
’s doing and make sure it doesn’t involve any of the people he cares about, his friends.”

  “He’s a good man.” She nodded and looked up, her eyes moist. “I was hard on him … too hard. It wasn’t fair, the way I treated him.”

  “He understands,” Billy said softly. “He never blames you, only asks how you are. I know he wishes things had worked out differently.”

  “I was angry at having to leave my life in Texas, but looking back, it was probably the only way I would have ever gotten away from the trap I was in. Without John, Jacinta would have been sold off or killed, and Sandy would be dead trying to save her. Whatever else happened, I know he didn’t mean for us to be dragged into it. Sometimes …” She shrugged. “It’s trite, but sometimes a river of shit happens, and you just have to wade through it and get to the other side.”

  Billy laughed. “Shit definitely happens.”

  “Is there any way I could speak to him?” she asked.

  “I can see what he says the next time he contacts me, but …” Billy shook his head. “I think I know the answer. He will say no. Once John commits to something, he doesn’t easily change his mind.”

  “Don’t I know it,” she said, a wry smile crossing her face.

  “Seriously, though,” Billy continued. “The rent is unnecessary, and besides, John takes care of it. I told him not to worry, but he insists.”

  “Well, we have that in common. I insist too. I can’t continue to live off the good graces of others. Life goes on, and as this seems to be the place where I will make my life, I have to do it my own way.” She paused, her tone becoming more serious. “That’s one of the reasons I came by to see you, Billy.”

  “I’m listening.”

  ***

  It had taken her by surprise, although looking back she couldn’t say why. She had been working side by side at the agency with Sam Goodwin for almost a year. Not once in all that time did he make any overtures or offer any hints that he had feelings for her outside of her competence as an employee.

  But that was his nature. Sam was a quiet man, good-natured and affable, but not one to be demonstrative about his feelings. Then one Friday night, as she gathered her things to leave the office after a hectic week he asked her a simple enough question.

  “Abby, do you have a second,” he called from inside his office.

  “Sure. What’s up, Sam?”

  Isabella poked her head around the corner and looked through the door. He sat ramrod straight at his desk, his palms down flat on the surface in front of him, his face shining beet red.

  “Are you feeling alright?” She took a step into the office.

  “Am I …? Oh, yes, yes. I’m fine. I just wanted to ask you a question.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Would you have dinner with me?” he hesitated and added as if some clarification was required. “Tonight … dinner tonight?”

  She hadn’t been asked on a date since … well, not for a long time. She smiled and said, “Yes, I will have dinner with you.”

  It was a natural thing, and she thought at first that she should have seen it coming. In reality, neither of them saw it coming. Sam had been divorced for fifteen years. Since then, his business had been the primary focus of his life. Isabella had changed that for him.

  As the months passed, she became more than an employee. She became a confidant and a friend. Sam had lots of good old boy buddies around Gainesville, but he didn’t have anyone he could talk to the way he did with Abby. He began to anticipate her arrival at work each day and hated when the day ended, and she went home to her life. He wondered about that life and what it would be like to go home to a family instead of an empty house.

  Isabella genuinely liked Sam. What was there not to like? Yes, he had a few more years on him, but not so many. He in his fifties and she in her forties, less than a decade separated them in age. She always thought of him as a happy soul with not an angry bone in his body.

  It was true, he wasn’t John. In fact, it would be difficult to find two men more opposite in nature. The difference wasn’t a bad thing.

  Sam always had a joke, a smile, a self-deprecating grin about some little something he had done or neglected to do. With Sam, life could be a happy, calm place. She found it refreshing to be around him, and she liked that most of all.

  She thought about that. Circumstances had ended what she had with John. There was no way to recover from it, but she could move on.

  They began seeing more of each other after hours, always platonic and in public. Dinners, movies, a picnic at Lake Lanier, they did the mundane things that ordinary people do, and Isabella loved it. Over time, she began to love Sam in her own way.

  Then one day, they had dinner at a cafe off the square in Gainesville. Afterward, they strolled, peering into shop windows, talking about nothing in particular. It was the sort of comfortable evening she had come to enjoy in his company. He went into a bakery and bought two enormous chocolate chip cookies. They were warm from the oven, the chocolate chips gooey and sweet.

  “Let’s sit and eat over there.”

  He led the way across the street, and they sat on one of the benches adjacent to the sidewalk. They nibbled the cookies in silence for a minute, and then Sam cleared his throat and spoke.

  “How’s the cookie?”

  “Wonderful.” She laughed. “How could it not be?”

  “Good, good.” He nodded, giving her the soft shy smile that she knew to be his fallback when he didn’t know what to say, except this time he did have something to say. “So, I was wondering …” He paused, mouth open as if searching for a way to push out the words.

  “Yes? Wondering what?” She turned to face him on the bench, puzzled at his hesitation.

  “I was wondering if you would … if you could … consider marrying me.”

  It took her by surprise, although it shouldn’t have. Maybe it was because she thought the question would come someday, just not that particular day.

  “I would.” Isabella nodded and looked into his hopeful eyes. “Consider it, that is, but can I have a little time to think it over … take it all in … I didn’t expect it this evening.”

  “Sure, of course.” Sam nodded emphatically. “It was probably not right of me to ask. I just …”

  “Quiet,” she ordered and leaned over to give him a kiss on the cheek. “I didn’t say no. I only said I wanted to take it all in. You surprised me, that’s all.”

  When he dropped her off at her house that night, she kissed him softly on the lips. “You are a very good man, Sam Goodwin.”

  She walked into the house. Sam floated back out to his car.

  ***

  “So are you asking me a question or simply telling me the story,” Billy said when she finished.

  “Just getting things off my chest, I suppose.” Isabella pursed her lips. “And asking you what you think.”

  “Sam Goodwin is a good man.” Billy nodded and smiled. “The very best. He will do whatever he can to make you happy.”

  “I do believe that,” Isabella said. “There’s something else, though.”

  “John … you still have feelings for him,” Billy interjected.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s understandable. I know he cares deeply for you as well, although he won’t talk much about it.” He leaned across the desk to look into her eyes. “If you came here for some sort of absolution … some release from him … it is not necessary. Whatever he feels for you, John meant what he said when he left. You will not see him again. I know he would be happy for you and would say what I’m saying now. There’s no need for guilt. You and Sam Goodwin should go make a happy life together.”

  “Thank you, Billy,” she said, relief on her face. “Will you tell … I mean, when you speak to him, can you …”

  “I’ll let John know. He’ll be happy that after all that has happened, you have a chance at a good life with a good man.”

  A load had been lifted. She almost danced from the
office.

  Billy watched her go, his feelings a mixture of happiness for her and sadness for his friend. What he told Isabella was true. John would want her to be happy, but he knew that was John’s stalwart way, wishing happiness for others but never finding his own.

  The Right Neighborhood

  He descended from the Sandia Mountains in Tijeras, New Mexico and picked up old Route 66. Albuquerque was new for him, and he had no precise destination in mind, but he knew what he was looking for. Traffic on I-40 rushed into and out of the city to his right, but on the old U.S. highway the pace was slower, giving him a chance to take in the lay of the land, get his bearings, and gather information.

  It was a game of cat and mouse. He was the mouse, enticing the cat to come after him, then darting away into a hole to reappear later somewhere else.

  It was a dangerous sport. In his police days, he would have called the game reckless. John Sole had passed the threshold of recklessness long ago.

  Leaving Tijeras, heading west toward the city, the landscape was rural at first. After a few miles, suburban housing developments began to dot the hillsides along the valley. Businesses catering to the suburbanites started to pop up—horse stables, shopping centers, and home improvement box stores. Industrial parks and large office complexes and then commercial districts replaced the housing developments along the highway.

  Route 66 became Central Avenue, a main thoroughfare through Albuquerque. He was close now. All the signs were there.

  Central took him under the I-25 overpass. A few blocks past it, he turned south toward the Barelas district and began cruising the neighborhoods. Older homes, some falling apart, and others painted in pastels, clinging to the memory of a past era, lined the streets. Many showed signs of neglect or outright abandonment. Residents with the ability to flee to other neighborhoods or other cities had done so.

  Barelas had once been a pleasant Albuquerque neighborhood. Now older residents, trapped in their homes, living on pensions and social security, watched from their windows as the world changed around them.