Saint Death - John Milton #3 Read Online Free PDF Page B

same as them and, thirty years later, he still wasn’t.
    He looked down and saw that Emelia was laughing at him, watching him stare at his own reflection. He waved her away with an amused flick of his hand and gunned the Dodge’s big engine. One more week, he thought, flipping the visor back against the roof. He reversed off the drive and onto the street, his eye drawn to the overgrown lawn and wondering if he could justify buying that new sit-down mower he had seen in the Home Depot the last time he had crossed over the bridge into El Paso. A retirement present for himself; he deserved it. Just five more days, and then he could start to enjoy his life.

 
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    7.
    THE CALL had come through as Plato was cruising down the Avenida, Juárez’s main drag. The street had two-storey buildings on each side, the once garish colours bleached out by the sun, the brickwork crumbling and broken windows sheltering behind boards that had themselves been daubed with graffiti. The shops that were still open catered to the baser instincts: gambling, liquor, whores. East of the main street was the red light district, a confusing warren of unlit streets where, if the unwary escaped after being relieved just of their wallets, then they were lucky. Plato had seen plenty of dead bodies in those dirty, narrow streets and the rooms with single bare light bulbs where the hookers turned their tricks. But then he had seen plenty of dead bodies, period.
    The call had been a 415, just a disturbance, but Plato was only a couple of blocks away and he had called back to say that he would handle it. He knew that if he took it there would be less chance he would be assigned one of the day’s 187s and 207s. Those were the calls you didn’t want to get, the murders and the kidnappings that always turned into murders. Apart from the risk that the killers were still around––first responders had been shot many times––they were depressing, soul-sickening cases that were never really resolved, and the idea of having one or two of them on his docket when he finally hung it up wasn’t the way he wanted to go out.
    No, he reminded himself as he pulled the Dodge over to the kerb. Taking this call wasn’t cowardice. It was common sense and, besides, hadn’t he had more than his fair share of those over the years? He had lost count, especially recently.
    The disturbance was on the street outside one of the strip clubs. Eduardo’s: Plato knew it very well. Two college boys were being restrained by the bouncers from the club. One of the boys had a bloody nose.
    Plato looked at the dash. Inside was sixty degrees. Outside was one hundred and ten. He sighed and stepped out of the air-conditioned cool and onto the street. The heat on his body hit him like a hammer.
    “What’s going on?” Plato asked, pointedly addressing the nearest bouncer first. It was a man he knew, ‘Tiny’ Garcia, a colleague from years ago who had been chased out of the force for taking a cartel’s money. Plato abhorred graft and despised the weakness in the man, but he knew that treating him respectfully was more likely to get him back to the station with the information that he wanted with the minimum of fuss.
    “ Teniente ,” the big man said. “How you doing?”
    “Not bad, Tiny.”
    “You still in?”
    “Only just. Coming to the end of the line. This time next week and I’ll have my pension and I’m done.”
    “Good for you, brother. Best thing I ever did, getting out.”
    Plato looked at him, his shabby dress and the depressing bleakness of the Avenida, and knew that that was his pride talking.
    “So––these two boys. What have we got?”
    “A little drunk, a little free with their hands with one of the girls, you know what I mean, not like it’s the first time. We ain’t got many rules back in there, but that’s one of them, no touching none of the girls at no time. She calls me over and I say to them, nice and polite like you know I can be, I says to them