ECTAPEC'S DAUGHTER

By Chuck Williams

A corrupt Mexican governor sets up dummy companies that collect the government’s funds for sham public projects he’s created.  When a journalist discovers his scheme, and tries to expose his plans for self enrichment  a killer is hired to murder the journalist. An ex-cop who is missing the adrenaline rush

• Language: English
• Publisher: charles williams
• Release date: Dec 13, 2018
• ISBN: 9780578410043

Chuck Williams

Chuck's life has been warmly affected by Route 66 and the 66 books that make up the Bible. Having grown up in Oklahoma and Texas along Route 66 as a child, he experienced a nostalgic renaissance of interest in America's highway in his thirties and forties. That led to many journeys and conversations along portions of the Mother Road, and, ultimately, to make the complete 2400 mile trek with his wife, Ann. Now, in semi-retirement after forty years of church leadership, Chuck and Ann reside in the Dallas area to be near their son, daughter-in-law, and grandson. They appreciate daily opportunities to enjoy the Journey and encourage others to do the same!

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

LUCY GETS A JOB

Lucy was at the nightclub at eight o’clock, an hour before it opened, and at that hour there was no line waiting to enter the popular nightspot. Just a solitary bouncer manned the entrance, leaning against the door frame where flashes of blue light escaped along with the expected odors of spilled beer, sharp colognes, carpet cleaner, urinal deodorizers, and the odor of sweat from hundreds of randy people. Lucy wrinkled her nose and trained her eyes on the bouncer, who pretended not to see her, then glancing her way, pretended not to recognize her.

She took a step forward and to the side so that she looked past the bouncer into the cavernous room, where a stooped man danced a push broom across the floor. Lame asshole. I hate playing these stupid fucking games. Is it my fault he ended up bored out of his gourd, standing in one place all night, blocking a doorway? The bouncer looked at her, worried he might somehow be derelict in his duties. What the fuck, Lucy? More of a statement than a question.

I’m supposed to see Marco. She crossed her arms over her chest, impatient, but not going to let Garcia see it, and rested with her weight on one leg,

Garcia continued to block the doorway. What the fuck, Lucy! I’m not your personal messenger. I can’t leave the front here.

Lucy stepped forward. I didn’t ask you to. I know where his office is. She slipped past the bouncer who leaned away just enough to avoid contact. Asshole, she repeated to herself. Asshole.

. She dropped her bad mood with a smile at the janitor, and headed to the back. Her steps echoed faintly on the wood dance floor. Once the place filled up later at night you couldn’t hear a gun go off. That’s why she liked to come early, before the booming loud music started, and the spotlights and strobes sliced the blue and pink air into pieces that made no sense.

The door to Marco’s office was closed. She gave it a light rap with one knuckle, respectful. The low growl of a voice she recognized beckoned her to enter. She went in to face Marco slouched behind his desk in a top-of-the- line, executive office chair, his feet propped up on the scarred wooden desk. The top buttons of his shirt were undone and the sleeves were rolled up to reveal mats of black hair that along with his thick torso gave a quick first impression of a bear wearing a shirt. Two cell phones and an ashtray crowded with stubbed out cigarettes were the only objects on his desk. The ashtray helped explain Marco’s raspy voice. Hey Lucy, nice to see you. You got anything going on right now? I got a job for you.

She didn’t. If she had, she would have told him so on the phone and wouldn’t be there. But Marco liked to make small talk. He wasn’t very good at it, but she appreciated it anyway. If he were a mean bastard she’d be standing here just the same. Gotta make a living, one way or the other. No Marco, you know I’m always free for you. If I wasn’t I’d get free. What’s up?

Marco swung his feet from the desk to the floor to face her, straightening up for business. We got an independent, some dumb fucker, trying to go into business on our plaza. Young kid, we sent somebody by to check him out. Told him and he just said fuck you, so now we gotta fuck him up. I want this to show, so any friends he has they get the idea. You know what I mean?

Lucy nodded. Sure. I get it. Don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of it. Marco gave her directions to where to find the guy and slid an envelope pulled from the desk drawer towards her. She picked it up without looking inside. Rates were fixed depending on the type of job. Half in advance, half on completion. That was in addition to her retainer, a decent amount each month in cash, part pesos, part dollars. The retainer worked out to about five thousand dollars a month and over sixty thousand a year. She had proved herself. Loyal and never fucked up. Kept her mouth shut, tight as a clam. A good assassin wasn’t easy to come by, but the drug money you couldn’t get rid of it fast enough. Banks were full of it, but that hardly made a dent in the supply. They buried it in the ground, sealed it in walls, bought expensive cars, construction equipment, race horses and acquired banks. Sixty thousand in cash to Lucy was almost doing the drug lords a favor. She didn’t have expensive taste, saved her money. At first she bought her apartment, and then the whole building.

***

Lucy ignored the whistles and propositions of the drunk college boys. She had a job to do. Not that she’d ever be interested in those kids who lived in a different world than hers. The guy she was looking for hung out around the university and the nearby bars, an ideal location to peddle a little weed and coke. Rich kids spending their parents’ money had the cash for recreational drugs. Heroin was available as well, but the well-off kids didn’t need that kind of an escape. That was more a working class thing where you really needed to forget about your shitty life for a few minutes. Even a few minutes helped.

Lucy looked for her guy. He was five-five, skinny, with long hair to look like he might be a college student. Lucy had a photo of him that Marco’s man had taken. Pathetic, really. In the photo he was shooting the finger at Marco’s man, like he was the baddest ass in Puebla. Made her wonder. Was he totally clueless, or did he think he could take on anybody? Amounts to the same thing, really.

She spotted him talking to a couple of college boys on the corner of a popular club. She could faintly hear the music from where she stood on a sidewalk between streetlights. Brick-faced columns supporting a gate to a parking lot provided her with a shadowed recess to watch from. She’d have to wait there for the guy, because too many people came and went from the bar, and she didn’t want to involve other civilians. The voices of the college boys reached her, shrill, still shouting over the music, having forgotten they were outside now. She watched as in the semidarkness the two boys dug into their pockets and conferred, swaying a little. Their dark silhouettes coalesced with that of the dealer and then after a moment separated, the exchange of money and drugs completed, each fortified with what they needed.

The boys walked away, looking for a quiet place to have a toke, or a snort, or maybe both. The dealer looked around the now momentarily deserted corner. Lucy stepped out from the recess and took a few slow steps towards him, letting the light of a street lamp fall on her. She stood still until he started towards her and then gave a barely perceptible shrug, hiked her purse strap higher on her shoulder, and walked out of the light to the wall of the adjacent building, a defunct bar where dust patiently went about its business of choking the life from a beer sign in the window.

Lucy waited leaning against the wall until he had crossed the street towards her. Cocky bastard, the way he walked. Jesus! Where did he come from? Probably the provinces to put on phony airs like that. She straightened up from the wall and took a step towards him, opening her purse as it hung from her shoulder. What you got?

He kept walking towards her. What you want? I probably have it. He kept a hand in his jacket pocket.

You have that good hybrid weed?

He stopped three feet from her. Sure. Stuff’ll knock you on your ass. You can stick your nose in it. He withdrew his hand from his pocket and held up a plastic bag containing rolled joints and smaller plastic packets. You can tell by the smell it’s good. It’s the real shit. How much you talking about?

Lemme see how much I got. She reached in her purse and looked in. She pulled out a few bills. Hold on a second. Let me see what else I got.

Don’t fuck with me, bitch. Come up with the bread or get lost. He looked left and right as if he was through with her, ready to move on to better prospects.

Lucy pulled out her pistol in one smooth arc from purse to aimed, firing one shot in his face. The .45 slug exploded the bones in his cheek just below his left eye and came out the back of his skull leaving a crater of jellied brain matter. His knees bent as his muscles lost control and he fell stiffly over on his side onto the sidewalk. A pool of blood spread quickly on the concrete as it poured from the shattered arteries and veins in his head.

Without bothering to look at him Lucy stepped away, tucking the Glock 36 back in her purse. The Glock slimline model fit in a purse, but still carried a .45 caliber cartridge. The only drawback was the magazine only held six rounds, but that didn’t matter for this kind of job. One up close was enough. That caused the kind of horrific damage Marco wanted.

A few people outside the bar across the street looked around for a moment at the sound of the shot, but went back to their conversations when it was clear nothing was going on. Inebriated patrons walked by the body in the shadows later, thinking someone had passed out. It took a while for a passerby to finally realize it was a corpse. Somebody call the police someone said. A small clutch gathered in a semicircle around the body. One or two took out their cell phones and took photos, which created an argument about how fucked up it was to take pictures of a dead body, but others didn’t see what was wrong. Jesus! His eyeball’s hanging out of his face. A couple of girls with their dates cried at the horrible scene, and their boyfriends comforted them. Not to worry. When the police showed up, more cellphones snapped photos of the scene. After all, photos might be useful on Facebook, or for a local TV station.

***

She was dreaming again. She went to the front door of the house with the vague feeling that she knew the place. She recognized the front door, or thought she did. It was old, the rails and stiles had weakened so that the panels fit poorly, like loose teeth needing to be pulled. Painted with a blue milk paint, it showed smudges from fingers that had pushed it open and pulled it closed over the years. If she did indeed remember it, the memory had to come from childhood in the Sierras, before her family moved to the working class neighborhoods of the Federal District.

She opened the door just enough to see who was knocking and faced a man in his forties who was smiling at her with libidinous interest. Hey honey, you’re looking hot enough to eat.

What do you want? She looked past the man, and saw there were several other men lined up behind him.

Come on, Honey, You know. What are you playing at? He reached in a pants pocket and pulled out a fistful of worn peso bills, and taking his eyes off her, winnowed out ten one hundreds. She counted them with her eyes as he deftly separated them between his thumb and forefinger. It’s party time! he said, and attempted to push open the door.

Lucy shoved him back with a hand on his chest and quickly closed the door, locking it as she did so. The door rattled in its frame as the man outside tried to open it. She watched the hinges dance a loose, abandoned cumbia, and realizing how flimsy a protection it was she started to be afraid. The rattling stopped. She held her breath listening, and heard murmuring outside. She went to a window and could see that the few men she had noticed in front of her house had grown into a line that stretched to the corner of the block. A panicked feeling of being trapped overcame her.

Her anxiety heightened as she listened to the voices outside. Some of the men were offering to hold another’s place in line for a price. Some were adamant about holding out, resorting to peeing in a discarded beer bottle, rather than give up their place in the line. After a while there was shoving and pushing, then punches were thrown, and the beer bottle of piss was broken over a head. The police showed up, and began their own beatings.

The scene became increasingly chaotic until it woke Lucy. She lay motionless in bed until the images faded and she was fully returned to reality. She left the bed, rinsed her face in the bathroom sink, and looked at her watch. Four thirty in the morning. An invisible puppet master, not very skillful, maneuvered her feet, guiding her to the bed where she fell on top of the rumpled covers. After an hour and unable to fall asleep, she went to the kitchen where she heated in the microwave a cup of water, into which she spooned a measure of Nescafe. She held her head in her hands, elbows resting on the table, her hair hanging down over her face. The only remnant of her dream was the feeling of being trapped.

CHAPTER TWO

AN UNEXPECTED MEETING

I was completely caught off guard. It wasn’t my normal routine to stop in a coffee shop on a whim, but the evening was coming on, and the temperature had dropped, maybe that was part of it. I wasn’t expecting anything so unlikely: an attractive young woman seated at a two-person table against the wall smiled at me when I walked in. I smiled back, thinking she must be waving at someone behind me, but she didn’t take her eyes off me. I took off my jacket, twisting to pull my arm out, affording me a look over my shoulder. My glance confirmed I was the only one who had just come through the door, but the woman continued to look at me with an expectant expression, turning in her chair as if to stand.

I could say it was curiosity. But not idle curiosity. No. Not really even curiosity at all. It was my ego waking up. An attractive woman was mysteriously drawn to me. Was that really possible? At the moment it seemed so. The situation turned off my normally acute, cautious warning systems. Male hormones. I thought of my neighbor’s Chihuahua, now deceased, that scented a bitch in heat. He pushed open the door, ran out into the street in pursuit, and was crushed under the wheels of a truck.

I ignored the counter to my right to place an order, and turned instead left toward the wall where my admirer awaited with stars in her eyes. I told myself we had probably met in the past under circumstances I couldn’t remember and it would be rude to ignore her. If I pretended I recognized her, and we talked for a few moments, I would probably remember her name. I said, Hi! without using a name.

She tilted her head, as if a look from a slightly different angle might tell her more about me. She kept her lips pressed lightly together, showing no indication that she had anything to say, until the line of her lips turned up at one corner and she spoke. Her voice was an alto that spoke of assurance, but had a tightness that spoke of nerves below the surface. Aren’t you going to get something to drink?

I shook my head and mumbled, maybe in a minute, folding my jacket over my arm, hoping there would be some clarity soon. I couldn’t stand the silence, breaking it by asking, So what have you been up to lately? I hoped her reply would provide a clue.

She laughed easily, and said, Oh, I have some movies I want to see, but when I look for them they’re already gone.

I know what you mean! I was a real film fan at one time, and still read all the reviews, and there were a few movies I was currently enthusiastic about. There are few I’d really like to see.

She said, Really? Which ones? I opened my mouth to reply, and my mind went blank. There really were at least two I had honestly put on my list, but now I was looking like an idiot, or worse a fake.

I said sheepishly, Man, they just flew out of my head! It’s embarrassing. She laughed, and after that the tension was gone, but before we could talk further I became aware a man had approached the table and was standing patiently next to me. He was about my height with dark hair like mine and he wasn’t smiling.

The woman looked first at me, then at the man standing by us, then back again at me. Did I imagine it, or did I get a much longer second look? She tilted her head back and looked down her nose, taking in the whole picture, trying to see the forest and not just the tree, which was me. Then her eyes narrowed so slightly it was easy to miss, laughed and said, Silly me. This is my first Internet date, and as you can see I’m not very good at it. She looked at me with an embarrassed expression. I thought you were my date, and laughed again, standing up to face the other guy. You must be Jorge! she said to him. He nodded his assent, and kept his eyes on her, not moving his head in my direction.

I had to admit it was suddenly very awkward, and planned my exit, pulling a card from my wallet. She turned to me with a smile like the curtain going up, revealing perfect white teeth. I’m so sorry, she said. I hope you’re not mad.

Of course not, Not at all. It was a pleasure talking to you. And I meant it. But still it was a relief that it was going to end. I was being dismissed; even so, she had been attracted to me on first sight. I could walk out of this with my head held high. I had planned to give her one of my cards. It struck me as a classy touch. But now as I laid the card on the table I tried to recall why it was a good idea to give her one. If it wasn’t a good idea, maybe it was a bad one. My email address is on here, if you ever want to finish the conversation. I heard the guy mutter ‘yeah sure, in case it doesn’t work out’ and I added, Or if you need the services of a civil engineer.

She picked up my card and glanced at it at arm’s length, frowning to read the print. I thought My, what sharp eyes you have. She only looked at it for a moment, and then let it slip from between her fingers. She shifted her eyes to mine as the card landed with a suicidal back flip on the tabletop. What an unusual name. Baltasar?

I ignored the question in her voice, not wanting to prolong my departure. Besides the story was personal and one I didn’t feel like sharing, even though it could be summed up in a few sentences. My grandfather was a Spaniard who married my Indian grandmother, sired my father, then deserted her for Spain. My father loved to read, even though, or maybe because of, his lack of education, and Baltasar was a Spanish bishop he had read about, and my mother, who was a devout Catholic, went along with the name because it was a bishop’s name. At one time in my life I tried to shed the moniker, but without much luck. I finally decided that changing my name would be like my grandfather deserting my grandmother, and I didn’t want to be like him. Now my name and I get along well together. When I hear it coming from the lips of people I care about I feel good.

When she realized after a second that I wasn’t going to reply she said, Well, yes, Thank you. And now I hope you’ll understand… Her voice trailed off and I got the hint. I walked off with my jacket over my arm, wishing I hadn’t given her my card. What was the point? It wasn’t going to lead to anything, and anyway I didn’t want it to lead to anything. There for a moment I had let reality be swept aside, and forgotten I was married,