Death, Taxes, and Sweet Potato Fries Read online

  Our next destination was Saint Lucia Catholic School, where the second as-yet-unidentified man working under the name of Julio Guzmán was employed. I drove east, back to Dallas. The school was located in Cedar Crest, a neighborhood in the southern part of the city known for low-cost housing and high crime. Property values and crime were two variables that tended to run in inverse directions.

  I pulled into the parking lot. While the lot was open, the remainder of the school grounds was surrounded by eight-foot wrought iron fencing, to keep the students in and sin out. Given that school was out for the summer, the teaching and administrative staff were on vacation and sin had to seek the children elsewhere. Only two cars, an older model plain white pickup and a deep purple Honda CR-Z coupe, sat in the lot. I pulled into a space one row over.

  As if he’d read my mind, Eddie said, “I’ll check the car. You run the truck.”

  I ran the truck’s license plate through the system. Sure enough, the truck was registered in the name of Julio Guzmán. Good. At least I knew the man using that alias was on-site. Julio Número Dos. “The truck is registered in Guzmán’s name.”

  “The Honda belongs to a woman named Mary.”

  I climbed out of my car with a file folder containing a copy of the documentation in hand. Eddie fell into place beside me as we made our way up to the double iron entry gates. I put my hand on the lever and pushed down on it. It wouldn’t budge.

  “Locked?” Eddie asked.

  “Yes, dang it.” Still, a locked gate had never stopped me before. Heck, I’d once sneaked into an enclosed area guarded by three drooling Dobermans. I’d been armed only with fried baloney sandwiches and had come within inches of being torn to shreds. But, hey. Such was my duty to the American people. I took that duty seriously.

  No reason to climb a gate if I didn’t have to, though. The push broom leaning against the brick building told me my quarry might be working outside.

  “You see anyone?” I asked Eddie.

  “Not a soul,” he said.

  While Julio Dos might not be in sight, there was still a chance he was in earshot. “Mr. Guzmán?” I called through the fence, glancing left and right along the front of the building. “Julio?” Too bad I didn’t know the guy’s real name. When there was no response, I upped my volume to the maximum my lungs and vocal chords could muster. “Mr. Guzmán? Julio? Anybody?”

  No one appeared, though a squirrel on a nearby oak chattered at me in a scolding manner. Chit-chit-chit!

  Eddie put a finger in the air and made a twirling motion. “Let’s walk the perimeter. You go right. I’ll go left.”

  I turned to the right and proceeded to walk the fence, continuing to call out all the while. “Mr. Guzmán? Julio? Hello? Anybody here?”

  Eddie and I crossed paths at the back of the building.

  “See anyone?” he asked.

  “Nope. You?”

  “Nope.”

  “Keep going,” he said. “We can meet up out front.”

  After completing a full circle around the compound, my brain came to the conclusion that either the guy was somehow evading us or he was working inside the building where he couldn’t hear me hollering for him.

  “I’ll try calling,” Eddie said. He looked up the school’s phone number and dialed it. He held up a finger to indicate each ring. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. “I’m getting a voice mail,” he said. “Should I leave a message?”

  “Not yet,” I said, looking up at the oak from which the squirrel had chitted at us. As a girl growing up in the piney woods of east Texas, I’d spent many a day climbing trees. Time to put those climbing skills to use once again. I returned to the oak, received another scolding from the angry squirrel—chit-chit!—and reached up to grab a limb that extended over the top of the fence. I could barely reach it, my body stretched as far as it would go.

  Eddie made a stirrup with his hands. “Need a heave-ho?”

  “You calling me a ho?” I teased as I lifted my right food and stuck it in his hands.

  “One!” he called out. “Two! Three!”

  chapter nine

  All Abuzz

  Eddie’s heave-ho packed much more power than either of us had anticipated. While I’d expected him to merely hoist me up, instead he sent me sailing over the fence as if I’d been shot from a cannon. “Aaaaah!”

  Unfortunately, unlike cats with their propensity to land on their feet, I flailed in the air, inverted with my legs above me, seemingly destined to dive headfirst into the grass. If my neck didn’t snap, my brain was sure to be concussed. I did the first thing that came to mind. Curl up in a ball, tuck my head in, and prepare to roll.

  Luckily, my instincts served me well. My shoulders hit the grass and I somersaulted three times before coming to a stop on my back under the tree. The snarky squirrel stared down at me from his perch on a branch. I swear he rolled his eyes before giving me a chit-chit-chit-chit! The translation, in this instance, being what a dumb ass.

  “Holy crap!” Eddie hollered from behind the fence, his hands reflexively grabbing his skull. “Are you okay?”

  I sat up. Despite Eddie’s inadvertent attempt to kill me, nothing seemed to be broken. “I’ll live,” I told him as I stood and brushed leaves and dirt from my clothing. “You been taking steroids or something?”

  “Nah,” he said. “Just working out with Nick. We’ve been focusing on our biceps. I guess he knew he’d be proposing and wants to be ready to carry you over the threshold.”

  “That won’t be a problem for him.” Nick had played high school football and, though his playing days were long behind him, he was still ripped.

  Eddie snorted. “It’ll be a problem if you keep eating double orders of sweet potato fries.”

  I responded with a raspberry. Pfft. My inelegant retort delivered, I made my way to the main walkway, where a large statue of the blessed mother greeted students with an implicit welcome and reminder to safeguard their virginity. Though I was a backsliding Baptist, I nonetheless gave in to the urge to genuflect and cross myself. When in Rome, right?

  “What are you doing?” Eddie called from the front gate, where he stood with his hands wrapped around two posts now. “You’re not Catholic.”

  “I don’t know,” I called back. “It just seemed like the right thing to do.”

  The statue stood behind a small water garden, the angels at Mary’s feet playing trumpets that, unlike the real trumpets at Sweet Melody Music, spewed liquid streams that fell among the water lilies topping the shallow pool. The sound of the moving water both soothed me and gave me the instant urge to urinate.

  Walking past the statue, I clenched my bladder and stepped up to the double front doors. The sign read WELCOME TO SAINT LUCIA CATHOLIC SCHOOL. ALL VISITORS MUST PRESENT IDENTIFICATION AT OFFICE.

  I pulled on the doors. Like the gate, they were locked. I yanked again, half hoping the force would set off an alarm. That would bring Julio Dos running. Probably the cops, too. To my disappointment, the alarm didn’t sound. I figured it must be disengaged.

  I tucked the file folder under my arm, cupped my hands around my eyes, and put my face to the glass. I could see down a long hallway all the way to the double doors at the back. A series of narrower hallways extended to each side. To the immediate right sat an office with a plate glass window looking out onto the foyer.

  From inside, over the sounds of the trumpeting angel fountains behind me, a faint sound could be heard, a mix of a hum and a whine. The sound grew louder, and as I watched through the glass a Latino man emerged from a side hallway pushing a floor polisher.

  “Hey!” I hollered, pounding an open palm on the glass. Bam-bam-bam! “Mr. Guzmán!”

  He neither saw nor heard me, continuing in a straight path out of sight, leaving a strip of gleaming tile floor in his wake.

  “Dammit!” I cried, looking back over my shoulder and adding “Sorry, ma’am,” to the statue of Mary. Had it been my imagination or had she tossed me a disappointed look? />
  “He’s in there?” Eddie called.

  “Yeah!” I called back. “He’s polishing the floors.”

  I backed away from the front doors and trotted around the side of the building, hoping to catch Julio Número Dos as he approached one of the glass fire doors along the side. I reached the first door just as he turned around to head back down the hallway in the other direction. He didn’t see me waving my arms behind him, and my knocking fell on deaf ears. Bam-bam-bam!

  Eddie had followed along outside the fence. “Any luck?”

  “No. He didn’t hear me.”

  I ran back around the building to the other side and stood in wait at that door. I had to give the guy credit. He took his job seriously, kept his eyes on the floor in front of him, occasionally pulling the machine backward to go over a particularly stubborn spot of the floor a second time. Heaven might have pearly gates, but Saint Lucia Catholic School would have the shiniest floors God had ever seen. Is it true that cleanliness is next to Godliness? If so, I should be having an ethereal vision right about now.

  As I stood under the overhang, waiting, my ears clued in to a steady sound overhead. Bzzzz.

  Uh-oh …

  Glancing up, I found myself standing under the largest paper wasp nest in the history of mankind. Whoa! The thing was the size of a piñata. What seemed to be hundreds of wasps were working to build the nest. A wasp who’d flown in to report for work hovered an inch from my face as if questioning the presence of this oversized intruder. Apparently, the wasp determined that I was a threat and made a beeline for my nose, his stinger at the ready.

  While my dedication to duty had led me to face many dangers without complaint, my natural instincts again took over. I swatted at the wasp with the file folder and screamed. “Aaah!”

  Unfortunately, while instincts could often protect us from harm, they could also sometimes get us into more trouble. As I flailed around, I inadvertently whacked several wasps who’d been hovering about the nest. They turned their attention from their residential construction project to yours truly.

  Bzz! The first sting I felt was just below my ear. Zing! I shrieked again, clawing at my neck with one hand while trying to fend the wasps off with the folder. Bzz! The next sting I felt was on my left cheek. Zing!

  Damn, that hurt!

  “Tara!” Eddie cried from his place behind the fence twenty feet away. “Are you okay?”

  “No!” I screamed, swatting randomly in every direction. “I am most definitely NOT okay!”

  Bzz! Bzz! Bzz! When more of them came for me, I realized that office supplies were no defense against this squadron of stingers. I turned and ran for my life, the buzzing growing softer behind me as I left the wasps in my dust.

  Eddie ran along with me, removing his suit jacket and waving it over the fence in a desperate attempt to dissuade the wasps from following me. He was too far away to have any effect, his efforts thoughtful yet futile.

  As I rounded the building, I backed up to the wall and stopped to pull the stinger out of my skin. Feeling nothing but a welt, I remembered that, unlike bees, wasps did not leave their stingers behind when they struck. In other words, their stingers weren’t single-use weapons. They could be used over and over again. There’s a cheery thought …

  The wasps seemed to know this fact, too. Instead of giving up or being confused by my evasive tactic, they continued to come after me with a vengeance. Bzzzz! Bzz! Bzz!

  I took off running again, the persistent pests in hot pursuit. Bzzzzz! The squirrel chattered again, this time seemingly cheering the wasps on. Chit-chit! Chit-chit!

  What an asshole.

  I ran to the exit, where Eddie was yanking on the gates with all his might but to no avail. The lock held firm and all my partner managed to do was make a racket as the metal clanged. Clang-clang-clang!

  The iron fence had trapped me inside the school grounds. If I stopped to climb the fence the wasps could complete their aerial assault, most likely targeting my ass as it would be the largest, most exposed area. How many stings does it take to kill a person? I feared I’d find out. Or, more precisely, Nick and my parents would find out when the coroner issued my official death report.

  But no. I’d faced down a drug cartel, terrorists, and the mob, and they hadn’t been enough to put an end to me. No way would I let myself be taken down by a swarm of inch-long insects, no matter how pissed-off and persistent. This would not be how I’d die. Hell, no!

  My wounds throbbing, I ran toward the statue of Mary. I supposed on some instinctual level I wanted my mommy and, given that she wasn’t available at the moment, had decided that any mother would do, even one made of stone. I stopped at the edge of the pond and turned to face the swarm flying after me. I tossed the file folder aside and reached down to my holster, yanking my Glock from its sheath.

  Unfortunately, the weaponry issued by the federal government was intended for use on humans, not insects. Though I had quite a few bullets in my magazine and impeccable aim, a gun wasn’t the right weapon for close combat with tiny targets. Besides, the gun didn’t even act as a deterrent. While a human target might dive for cover at the sight of the gun, the bugs just kept coming in a sky-darkening cloud, a wasp Luftwaffe.

  Still, while the gun itself wouldn’t scare the wasps off, maybe noise would. I raised my hand over my head and fired a shot into the air. Bang! To my dismay, the sound only seemed to fuel their fire and I felt a trio of stingers sink into my flesh, one on my forehead and two on my raised hand. Zing! Ouch! Zing! Ouch! Zing! Ouch!

  “Stupid mother—” I caught myself just in time. Cursing was sinful enough without doing it under the watchful eye of Mary Immaculate.

  Eddie was trying his best to climb over the fence to help me, but with horizontal bars only on the bottom and top of the fence there was no way for him to get leverage. “Try your pepper spray!” he shouted.

  I returned my gun to my holster and reached for my pepper spray. It wasn’t intended for use as an insecticide, but I wasn’t going to let the product labeling stand in the way of defending myself from these insistent insects.

  I closed my eyes, held my breath, and pushed the button, waving the canister around in the air over my head. Psssshhhh!

  I turned again to run, hoping to leave a trail of retreating wasps in my wake. To my dismay, the spray only seemed to piss them off and renew their determination. They came after me with fresh vigor, two stinging the back of my neck before I could take a single step. “Ow!”

  I twirled around, flailing my arms, my eyes burning and watering from the spray. Through the haze, I saw Mary standing in front of me, her arms spread in welcome, as if she were inviting me to dive into the shallow pond at her feet.

  Smart idea, Mary! No wonder God chose you to bear his only son.

  Smack! I belly flopped into the pond, doing my best to submerge as much of myself as possible in the twelve inches of water available to me. Too bad I didn’t have a reed to breathe through.

  I rolled onto my back and flattened myself against the bottom, snorting bubbles and occasionally lifting my head to gasp a quick breath before going back under. I suffered two more stings, one on my lip and one on my ear before the wasps decided they’d taught me my lesson. They began to retreat and return to work.

  I floated on my back in the pond, my body throbbing in pain, my brain delirious from lack of oxygen, pepper spray, and the poisonous wasp venom. An image appeared to me then, much like the image that had appeared to the young girls in Fatima. I looked up at the visage, at a peaceful woman’s face, a glowing light encircling her head.

  Holy mother of God! Am I a chosen one?

  “Mary?” I croaked.

  “Sister Mary Margaret,” the fortyish nun corrected me, reaching out a hand to help me out of the pond and putting an end to my narcissistic fantasy.

  So I wasn’t chosen. Bummer. The glowing light behind the woman’s head was only the afternoon sun, not an aura of holiness. Too bad I hadn’t been wearing a habi
t like hers. It would’ve protected my neck from the wasps.

  I took her hand and together we dragged my soaking body from the water.

  “What brings you to Saint Lucia today?” the woman asked calmly, seemingly unfazed to find a woman in a business suit floundering around in the fountain. “Were you only interested in gunplay and ridding the school of wasps, or did you and the gentleman at the gate have other intentions?”

  I squeezed water from my clothes as I explained our reasons for coming to the school. “We’re not interested in prosecuting Mr. Guzmán,” I assured her. “We’re only trying to get information to stop a coyote from leading people to their deaths.”

  “I see,” she said, her expression concerned and conflicted. “And how did the IRS get involved in this matter?”

  “Two reasons,” I said, pulling off my right shoe and holding it over the pond to dump water out of it. “The only evidence we have linking Hidalgo to human smuggling is the documentation found in the car he was driving. Those W-2s and social security cards are what we’ve used to locate the people using the false documentation.” I put my right shoe back on and pulled off my left, dumping water from it into the pond, too. “The IRS often gets involved in the investigations of other agencies. Where there’s any type of illegal activity going on, there’s likely to be a tax crime. Income going unreported or money being laundered.”

  “I see.” She mulled my words over for a moment before walking over to the gate, pulling a set of keys from her pocket, and unlocking it to let Eddie in. She motioned with her arm. “Follow me, please.”

  The two walked back toward me, coughing and blinking and waving their hands to dissipate the cloud of pepper spray still hovering about.

  Sister Mary Margaret led us inside and parked us in the teachers’ lounge while she went to round up the staff member posing as Julio Guzmán. My soaked clothes felt cold now that I was inside in the air-conditioning. I dried myself off as well as I could with a stack of napkins I found on the table and sat in one of the plastic chairs, water dripping from the hem of my pants onto the floor.