Drone: An Eli Quinn Mystery Read online

  We went to the middle of the mat. I bowed deeply. Master Choi bowed less deeply, being my master.

  We squared off.

  “Seijak,” he said.

  We began circling each other. Master Choi attacked quickly, stepped in with a roundhouse kick and then spun and caught me in the side of the ribs with a back spinning hook kick that nearly knocked the wind out of me. I should have blocked it but his swift aggression caught me by surprise.

  I thought I’d known Master Choi’s style well. He preferred patience and counterattacks. Though he was a head shorter and several years older, he had just reminded me that he had vastly more skill and experience.

  I reset my stance, got up on the balls of my feet and started moving. Master Choi was smiling now.

  “Focus!” he said, tapping the side of his head with a gloved hand.

  I circled him, stepping in sharply but drawing back. I lunged with an ax kick. He backed up and I struck air. I moved in, went airborne and executed a good double roundhouse kick. He blocked the first but the second delivered to his mid-section, weakly. As my second foot touched the ground I’d left my chest open and Master Choi struck quickly with a push kick. Not terribly forceful but enough to knock me off balance. Master Choi stepped in to show me what he could’ve done to an off-balance opponent, then he withdrew. I was beaten, but he let the lesson continue.

  And so it went for another five minutes. I landed a few kicks, no punches. My opponent never let me get close enough for a punch. I was in good shape. Very good shape. But I was out of breath. My ribs would be sore. My ego was bruised. The message was clear. And just to be sure, Master Choi repeated it.

  “You not focus,” he said, tapping the side of his head again. “Taekwondo only get you hurt if you not focus.”

  He returned to the center of the mat and we faced each other.

  “Kyung nae,” he said.

  We both kept our eyes on each other as we bowed.

  Chapter 14

  Amir Yalda made the best baba ghanoush on the planet. Mine was a close second. Even Sam admitted that. She was stunning in a simple black dress with a thick silver chain necklace and no-nonsense flats. Sam didn’t need more than three things to dress to the nines.

  The night air was warm, low-nineties still. Most of the patrons at Café Amir ate inside. We were on the patio, looking across the traffic circle at the intersection of Pleasant Way and Happy Lane. Ringo the saguaro stood sentry. Beyond Ringo on the northeast corner was Lulu’s Grind, and a block north sat my new office.

  I finished my glass of wine and poured another. Sam had barely touched hers.

  “It’s a small town,” I said, staring out across the traffic circle and not looking at Sam.

  “That’s what we like about it.”

  “But we like New York, too.”

  “We do,” she said.

  “We’ve never been there together.”

  “We haven’t,” she said.

  “How long were you there?”

  “Two years at NYU. I lived at the Y. Awful place, but it was home. I hung on for another couple years waitressing and trying to find my way. Would’ve stayed but when I finally got a job it was in Indiana. Which led to Arizona.”

  “Would’ve been interesting if we had met in New York.”

  “I wouldn’t have liked you,” Sam said flatly.

  I looked at her, raised an eyebrow.

  “You were Wall Street. I was living in the Y. I was idealistic, maybe a little naïve, but full of hopes and dreams.

  “And distrustful of Wall Street.”

  “Totally. I wouldn’t have given you the time of day.”

  “I’m still the same guy.”

  “No you’re not.”

  She was right. I felt like the same person in many ways, but when I looked back at the me on Wall Street, I barely recognized him. I definitely didn’t miss him. I was glad he’d invested wisely, so I could do what I was doing now.

  I asked: “You ever think of moving back?”

  “Tough place to live. Rent is outrageous. Winters suck.”

  “But if you’ve got money, a decent place…”

  “The culture,” she said. “I miss the culture, the diversity, the noise, the bustle.”

  “I miss it all,” I said. “But I do love this town. This spot. This weather, this night.”

  Sam nodded. I stopped there. I wondered what would happen if one of us left Pleasant. Would the other follow? Outwardly, we were just friends. But it was rapidly becoming much more. And if we acknowledged what it was becoming, then at some point we’d be thinking about our future together. I hadn’t thought about my future since the moment I learned that Jess had been killed. I’d been living in the past and the present, mostly wallowing in it. Chasing down Jess’ killer. Waiting for his trial. Watching him get convicted. Deciding not to go back to my job at the paper. Deciding to become a private detective, renting an office and renovating it, then finally taking a case, sort of. Every move, every decision, in the moment, no consideration for tomorrow. And every step of the way, Sam was there.

  “You have a future here,” she said. Seeing into my thoughts again.

  “And a case to solve,” I said.

  “About that.”

  The waitress brought our dinner. We both leaned back and let her put everything down. I had the chicken shawarma with rice. Sam had only side orders, which she’d promised to share with me: tzatziki, grape leaves, hummus, and of course the baba ghanoush.

  “No tabbouleh?”

  “Gets stuck in my teeth,” she said. “Remember?”

  “Vanity.”

  “Practicality.”

  “Yeah.” I asked her what she’d learned.

  “You know about the vigilante patrols at the border,” she said.

  “Militia-style methods, tactical gear, AK-47s. Rising violence, especially lately.”

  “Right. It’s gotten so bad, agencies like the BLM have been doing security training with their employees. Sheriff deputies have had guns pointed at them. The militants are targeting immigrants and drug trafficking, but they’ve become so dogmatic, everybody seems to be their enemy.”

  “Our Ted McCall hasn’t been involved in any of this, I don’t suppose.”

  “McCall may not be the angel we thought,” Sam said. “Going back to the late nineties, I found several instances of vigilantes shooting immigrants at or near the border. Three of them stood out over the years. Two immigrants were killed in the first one, one in the second, and in the other, three people were injured, no deaths. There were other cases like these, but these three had something in common.”

  “Ted McCall the shooter?”

  “Not officially, no.”

  “Meaning?”

  “McCall was a suspect in these cases, but the charges were dropped each time. I studied some other cases, and there were others in which the charges were dropped, but some at least went to court, and there’s been a couple convictions.”

  “You think McCall has someone looking after him,” I said.

  “Might.”

  My second glass of wine was gone so I poured another. Sam’s glass was half empty so I filled it. I looked at the empty bottle and wondered if I’d order another. Knew I shouldn’t.

  “What else?”

  “Oh, this gets good,” she said. “Your friend Michael Derbin Smith? He was on patrol in all three of those shootings.”

  “Mikey and McCall together. Hmm. That sounds like an authentic lead to pursue.”

  “I think so,” Sam said.

  “How would you characterize McCall?”

  “Dirtbag.”

  “Is that your professional opinion?”

  “Ah. No. That would be antisocial personality disorder.”

  “In English?”

  “Psychopath or sociopath,” Sam said. “I don’t know enough about him to say which.”

  ***

  Sam sipped her wine while I pulled my phone out and called Pauly.


  “I got a name for you.”

  “Lay it on me,” Pauly said.

  “Ted McCall.”

  “That asshole? What about him?”

  “Can you see if he’s ever been out to the club?”

  “Guest list is analogue, my friend. Paper. Might take a couple hours.”

  “You there now?”

  “Am.”

  “Doing anything?”

  “Am not.”

  “Then can you hop to it?”

  “Will.”

  I clicked off.

  “Any idea where McCall is these days?”

  “That wasn’t so easy,” Sam said. “You’re going to owe me more than dinner for this.”

  She paused. I waited. She smiled thinly. I tried to act cool. Her smile broadened knowingly and her eyes sparkled with mischief, and she continued.

  “He’s got the big horse ranch down near Nogales. And he has a smaller ranch in the foothills outside Black Canyon City, just up the 17. It’s in the name of someone he’s known to associate with, but he spends a lot of time there, and the, ah, well, some people know it’s really his. He has a few horses, but otherwise the ranch house just sits on a bunch of empty acres. Not a lot of activity that anyone has noticed. So you were right: The law is keeping an eye on him, but only half an eye.”

  “Which law?”

  “If I tell you that I’d have to kill you,” she said.

  “Keeping secrets from me?”

  “And you don’t keep any from me?”

  I smiled. We ate a bit. I drank my wine.

  “You’re hunky FBI friend help you with this?”

  “Stop it,” she said.

  “It’s not the sheriff, is it? The sheriff isn’t worried about McCall.”

  “I can’t say,” Sam said. She looked at me a little sideways. It was a hint.

  “Feds,” I said.

  “I didn’t say that,” she said.

  “I hear you,” I said. “What else you got.”

  “McCall isn’t physically tailed. They’re not watching him every step of the way. But they keep tabs on his whereabouts.”

  “Let me guess.”

  “Yep. He’s been in Black Canyon City the past week.”

  “Aha.” I tried to look and sound impressed. And I was.

  “And Mikey?”

  “Lives in a trailer park off I-17 near the 101.”

  That was in Phoenix, north side, a fifteen-minute drive west of Pleasant. She handed me a piece of notepad paper with Mikey’s address on one side and a simple map to McCall’s ranch on the other. I looked at both sides.

  “So that’s what, thirty minutes from Mikey’s trailer park to Black Canyon City?”

  “At most.”

  “Interesting.”

  “At least.”

  ***

  I was sitting in the backyard looking at the stars, having a gin and tonic I didn’t need, when Pauly called, got right to the point.

  “Ted McCall was indeed a guest of Michael Derbin Smith a few months ago.”

  “Bingo. You know what they did?”

  “I asked around. Sounds like McCall did a little flying, was a very good pilot. He mostly kept to himself, stayed close to Mikey. But one of the guys said he asked about autopilot software and hardware.”

  “Double bingo.”

  “I don’t think that’s a thing. But yeah, in my line of work we’d call that a big freaking clue. You’re welcome. So anyway, I didn’t press for details, wanted to keep the conversation casual since you asked me to be discreet. I can root around some more if you want, maybe rattle some cages.”

  “No thanks,” I said. “I’ll do the rattling. I don’t want you to get your hands any dirtier than they are now.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “Thanks Pauly.”

  Chapter 15

  Not all trailer parks in Arizona were run down. Many were surprisingly inviting, well landscaped, with palm trees and well-paved streets. Snowbirds flocked to Arizona in the winter to escape the lousy weather of the northern states and Canada. Most of them were not filthy rich, and the trailer parks, some with essentially permanent structures and some packed with motor homes that were driven down and back, offered a relatively inexpensive solution for a second home. Many were tight communities where like-minded people got to know their neighbors, enjoy their retirement years.

  Michael Derbin Smith’s trailer park was none of the above. It was a hot, squalid, noisy patch of dirt and blacktop next to I-17, sandwiched between a U-Haul center and a place that rented cranes, backhoes and other construction equipment. There were no palm trees. The homes, most of them essentially permanent structures, were faded, sagging, rusted.

  Mikey’s place was white and turquoise blue, colors you’d expect on a boat, not a house. A faded dark blue Toyota Corolla, hubcaps missing, paint rendered splotchy by years of relentless desert sun, sat in the drive.

  I decided to keep our first meeting direct, short and sweet. I was pretty sure Mikey was not a kingpin of anything, but I was almost certain that anything I said to him would get back to some other people, and I knew from experience that would probably start a chain reaction that would lead to someone getting back to me. Might be Tough Guy No. 1, might be Tough Guy No. 2, who I hadn’t met yet, or maybe Ted McCall himself. Regardless, if my theory was even close to being right, Mikey was the string to pull that would start the whole ball of mystery unraveling.

  It was five-thirty in the morning. The sun had just risen. Surprise visits were best conducted during regular sleeping hours. Bright mornings tended to be safer than the middle of the night—less chance of me getting shot. Even better, the sun was at my back. The things you learn as an investigative reporter.

  Solo hopped out of the Jeep and stayed at my side. I wondered if Smith's scent was in Solo’s nasal registry.

  I put one foot on the first of two rickety wooden steps and rapped three times with my knuckles on the plastic window of a thin metal door.

  Nothing.

  I pounded louder, four times with the side of my fist. That got a reaction.

  “The fuck!”

  I waited. Nothing. Pounded again and stepped back.

  The door swung open, slammed against the side of the humble abode. Thin man, average height, nondescript brown hair over the ears, two-day shadow on his face, white t-shirt and red boxers. He scratched his crotch, squinted into the early morning sun. The smell of propane and day-old garbage hit my nostrils.

  “Mikey. You look awful. Worse than your mug shots.”

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  Solo growled almost imperceptibly. No bark. Michael Derbin Smith had not been in the building off Tranquil Way where the drone may have been launched, but he was quickly putting himself on Solo’s watch list.

  “Eli Quinn, private detective.” I handed him a card. He didn’t take it.

  “Big fucking deal. Nobody calls me Mikey. And I ain’t done nothing.”

  “Here’s the thing, Mikey. I’m liking you for the Jackie Brand murder.” That wasn’t true, but I wanted to see how he reacted. Smith looked suddenly wide awake. As with his ill-advised Facebook post, he’d tipped his hand.

  “Don’t know no Jackie Brand.”

  “Really? Mikey, Mikey, Mikey.”

  “Don’t fucking call me that!”

  Solo growled a little louder. Mikey looked at Solo, as if he’d just noticed him. I watched the fear rise in his eyes, the way things dawn slowly on cartoon characters that’ve just run off a cliff but haven’t fallen yet.

  “I was checking out your Facebook page just yesterday. Could’ve sworn I saw you post something about the senator. In fact you seemed pretty pleased that somebody tried to kill her.”

  That quieted him down. He narrowed his eyes, trying to get a better look at me. The sun behind me made it difficult.

  “Who flew the drone, Mikey? You or Ted?”

  He paused a telling beat. Then: “Don’t know what the fuck you’re
talking about.”

  He stepped forward and reached for the door. It was an awkward move, since the door was still wide open and against the side of the trailer, the handle out of his reach. I reached over and grabbed the door, swung it around partway. He reached out for the knob and I swung it just out of his reach. Now I was just screwing with him for the fun of it. He almost tumbled down the stairs but caught himself.

  “Mikey, you don’t want to talk, that’s fine. But things are going to get difficult for you real soon. You help me, I might be able to help you.”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  “That’s not very helpful.”

  He just glared at me. I had what I needed, and I’d done what I came to do. I flicked my card at his feet and it landed on the floor inside the trailer. I wanted him to have it so he wouldn’t mess up my name when he ran to Ted McCall with his news. He just kept glaring at me.

  “You change your mind and want to help, just give me a call.”

  Chapter 16

  The bells on my office door clanged. Solo hopped to action quickly from his mid-morning nap but stayed on his bed, standing, hindquarters low and ready, probably letting me know that Tough Guy No. 1 or 2 was about to walk through the door.

  The aviator sunglasses preceded the man. Sergeant Lasko. That was quick. I’d had that nice chat with Michael Derbin Smith not two hours ago. My list of prime suspects was rounding out nicely.

  Lasko stepped in, closed the door, folded his arms. His muscles were still bulging, face even more stone-like than when I’d seen him last.

  Solo didn’t bark, didn’t growl, but he gave Lasko a mean look. It was the same as his friendly look but with his tongue in his mouth.

  “Piece of shit dog you got there,” Lasko said, tilting his head toward Solo. “Rejected from the K-9s, right?”

  “I hear he didn’t like the company.”

  “Couldn’t pass the test, what happened.”

  “Chose not to follow the rules,” I said. “All that barking. Ain’t no dog got time for that.”

  I had my feet up on my desk, hands behind my head. It was one of my favorite thinking positions. I stayed that way. It was also a good position for looking fearless. I’d read in a detective novel once, never show the other guy you might be frightened. Even a little. Even if you might be. Especially if you are. I added those last couple parts. Try as I might, fear was a sensation I could not will away. It was something to manage. Feet up, fingers laced behind my head. Fearless looking.