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  SOUTH of EVIL

  A Novel

  by

  Brian Dunford

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 Brian Dunford

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by an electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  For additional information or correspondence, contact the author at [email protected].

  Cover by J Caleb Design.

  For my mom

  Chapter One

  Curtis – Austin, TX

  Walter Curtis was neither strong nor confident, and he was about to walk into a room full of men who were. They were armed and they were professionals and they were the best at what they did.

  He pushed his glasses up on his nose. His hands were small and soft. He wore his best blue suit. Though he was in his thirties, he hadn’t been eating, so it hung on him and made him look like a kid.

  There was not one thing distinguishing about him. Overall, he looked boring and dependable. Reliable. Entirely unexciting. He looked like the world’s ideal accountant, he thought, as he walked through the door to the Austin office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  “That’s going to change,” Curtis whispered as his phone began to buzz. He caught it on the second ring.

  “Special Agent Curtis? Bill Montrose here.”

  When Curtis first arrived on the task force three years ago, he had been just another accountant from the Internal Revenue Service. Montrose would grunt and nod in his direction. That had changed. Montrose learned his name. It was after Curtis had told a region head out of DC that he anticipated a seven-figure seizure. It was after the IRS Criminal Investigation Division was told they couldn’t have him back. It was definitely after Special Agent-in-Charge Montrose had introduced him to an assistant director from Homeland and simply said, “This is my guy Curtis.”

  Curtis was here for a deconfliction briefing. Curtis loved the sound of those words. It put him in the middle of everything. He’d first heard the phrase from an old friend, a Boston cop named Marc Virgil. “We make sure we’re not all about to hit the same door at once,” he’d said.

  Montrose was eager to move. “I was just speaking with some people from Justice, and they wanted to confirm some small details with you.”

  “Fire away.”

  That was Montrose’s expression, and Curtis had started using it. Bill Montrose was black, a climber, and in his fifties. He was known for his suits and his demeanor. He was friendly and outgoing when you were on his side. He could discard you in a second if you were not. He was always the best dressed man in the room.

  “How soon are we looking to seize international assets?”

  “I can’t say, sir. As of right now, they are speculation. We know they exist, and we know they are substantial. We just can’t pin them down.”

  “You’re our accountant in charge. Even you can’t find it?” Montrose meant it as a joke. He joked with Curtis now.

  “We will know a lot more once we seize the books.”

  “I like it. By the way, how is Mr. Aston Martin?”

  Montrose was terrible with names.

  “Living large.”

  “You and I are in the wrong business.”

  Curtis had one more piece of information for the boss.

  “You asked me several months ago about a certain picture of the target. About what kind of jacket he was wearing.”

  “I did?”

  He did. Curtis had been told repeatedly: the easiest way to excite the boss was to show him how the target was spending all his money. “They need to smell blood,” Virgil had once told him.

  “Yes, sir. The target wore a very sharp, very unique sport coat. You asked me to find out what kind it was.”

  “And?”

  “It’s bespoke.”

  There was a slight pause.

  “I’m not familiar with that brand,” said Montrose.

  “It’s not a brand, sir. It’s a term. It means the jacket was hand-made.”

  Again, Montrose gave pause.

  “What does something like that cost?”

  “I spoke with an excellent tailor here in Austin. He said most of that work is done out of state. He couldn’t be sure without knowing the actual material, but he speculated based on the color and the apparent texture that it might be vicuna.”

  “Vicuna?”

  “It’s an endangered animal in South America. It looks like a llama. Very hard to find.”

  “And they make coats out of it.”

  “Extremely expensive coats, sir.”

  “How much are we talking?”

  “According to my tailor, a hand made vicuna coat can run you thirty to forty thousand dollars.”

  Montrose whistled.

  Eduardo – Austin, TX

  Eduardo Mendes was a thing of beauty.

  He wasn’t just handsome. He looked like a Spanish sculptor’s dream brought to life. His body was slim and exquisitely maintained, radiating wealth and entitlement. He sat at a cramped desk in his shabby office.

  It was four o’clock, and the bell was ringing. It rang every time the door opened, and it was ringing non-stop. It did every Friday night. The floors were no thicker than the walls, and every whisper, laugh, joke, and curse from the first floor carried right up to his office.

  Eduardo was revolted by the checks. They were grimy and marred by sweat and oil. Workmen were paid in the morning, stuffed checks in their pockets, and worked in the sun until late, finally wandering into the store with the now damp money orders. For years, he had worn gloves when he handled the checks.

  At this point, the checks almost handled themselves. He had been moving another order. This one was to a new bank, a small one, and as always, in Mexico. Processing it was no problem, but he found himself picturing the bank itself as a clean stucco and glass fixture on an otherwise deserted highway, with not so much as a car in the newly paved lot, when he saw the address of the road and instantly recognized it. It was the same road he’d travelled. He knew where it led. Images of nastiness and wetness had flooded his mind and his ears roared with screaming and tears. And the begging. The begging was the worst.

  Eduardo thought of Mexico and immediately ran to the bathroom. He walked stiff armed with his hands held before him as if covered in fresh gore, kicked the door open with his foot, and let the water run until it scalded.

  He scrubbed forcefully and on both sides as the water turned scalding. He hated the tiny little bathroom. It had been crammed into a space where it didn’t belong, and now he had to stoop over every time he washed his hands. He hated this building, but he needed it.

  The soap was exquisite, extremely hard to locate, and very expensive. He let it all run over him until Mexico was out of his mind.

  ***

  Sheldon Cashman came into his office and found Eduardo Mendes looking at two black and white pictures on the wall. One was Sheldon, fresh from Jersey riding a horse on his first day in Texas. He had a huge grin on his face and no idea what he was doing, but he was happy. He was older in the second picture, and his horse was a malevolent black Arabian named Maccabee. He had learned to ride in the years between these pictures. He was smiling confidently. Riding horses was where he found peace.

  Sheldon knew Eduardo called him the Jewish Cowboy. He had a clever nickname for everyone. He suspected that Eduardo had let him know that on purpose, just so She
ldon would understand his place in Eduardo’s world.

  “The Hillbillies are done,” said Eduardo. “They’re erratic and unreliable. Split the difference among Looney Larry and the Astronauts.”

  The clients had nicknames too. Eduardo spoke only in code. The Hillbillies were out of North Texas. They were rough and trashy and had paid late for the third time. His other clients were reliable, and always begging for more. Until now, he hadn’t been able to oblige.

  Sheldon handled the books and the numbers. He made the money move, and he made it disappear. He nodded, and asked as few questions as possible. He shifted in his chair uncomfortably. His stomach hurt. The only thing that made it better was riding.

  Sheldon hated this business. He hated himself for having any part of it. He hated himself for allowing Eduardo Mendes into his life. He put it out of his mind. Sheldon looked at his watch without realizing it.

  “Are we running out of time?” Eduardo asked with undisguised condescension.

  “No,” said Sheldon. This was all because of the watch.

  Sheldon had married a woman who was out of his league. She had been his guide to the finer things in life. Shortly after they were married, she had given him a gift. Inside the polished walnut box was the finest watch he had ever seen. It was leather and gold, and, below the finely engraved Baume & Mercier emblem the face of the timepiece featured a cut-away to expose an intricate series of gears and motors within the watch itself. Sheldon knew it was a nice watch, but he didn’t know just how nice until he went to dinner with his wife’s friends. The husband, who had made a fortune on a medical patent and seemed to know a little bit about almost everything, explained to him that this watch was an extremely rare tourbillon, an exquisite mechanism designed to offset the force of gravity itself. As this man spoke admiringly of the piece on his wrist, Sheldon’s smile melted with the realization that this watch was far, far out of his financial reach.

  He could afford the luxury condo she wanted, because it was a mere one bedroom. He could barely afford her European SUV. But when he realized that the watch had cost more than the car, he understood that he was in trouble.

  Eduardo Mendes had appeared in his life shortly thereafter, as if he had sniffed out his desperation.

  That night, Sheldon had gone riding. He pushed Maccabee until sundown. Across town, there was an arrogant little man who called him the Jewish Cowboy and convinced himself that everyone he met was his servant. Sheldon was great with numbers. He could ride the hell out of a horse. He’d give almost anything to see Eduardo Mendes put in his place. He’d give almost anything just to see the look on Eduardo’s face when it happened.

  ***

  It was a heavy leather wingback chair, just like the ones his father had in his office when he was a child. Eduardo Mendes was only one hundred and fifty pounds, and the chair was oversized, so when he sat on it, it felt like a throne.

  His chair had dark wood legs and with a light antiqued leather. Odalys’ whole room had been decorated in antiseptic white, just the way he wanted it. The chair was the only one of its kind though, and there was nothing else in the room like it. The bed and dresser and nightstand had been part of a set, but the chair was here because he wanted it.

  Its place in the room was intentional. The chair didn’t face the bed, nor did it look out the window. It looked directly into Odalys’ bathroom. Eduardo watched her as she brushed her hair in just her tiny black underpants.

  From this vantage, Eduardo could watch her shower and dress. He could watch her put on stockings. He often suggested she do just that, even while her hair was still wet, before her make-up was on. Odalys always indulged him.

  His room was on the other side of the apartment, and had been decorated in dark, somber tones, like his father’s office. As a boy, he had played in the office as often as he could. His father always had a short temper. Those chairs, with the handsomely carved wood and the old leather with the brass studs on the arms, sat in front of a huge mahogany desk. He would hear his father shouting on the phone, blazing in and out of Spanish into English and back once more as he grew angrier.

  When he was ten years old, he had found his father in that office with a light skinned effete black man who was introduced to him as Mr. Patrick. Mr. Patrick appeared to be giving his father some sort of instruction.

  “I would one day like to visit Saint-Tropez,” said Mr. Patrick. His father repeated it word for word.

  Mr. Patrick wore a gray suit with a flannel sweater vest, pattern leather shoes, and a pencil thin mustache. He enunciated each word like the teachers at his school. Effort and deliberateness were stressed into each syllable he spoke.

  Eduardo was only ten years old and didn’t know what a fag was really, only that you didn’t want anyone to call you a fag because it meant you weren’t a man, and if someone did call you a fag, you were going to have to fight him. He knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that the man in his father’s office was a huge fag. He ran off to find his mother.

  She was smoking on the veranda with a china cup filled with coffee at her side. She did not turn as he opened the door, or as his shoes clacked on the stone patio, but kept her gaze fixed on the gulf. Her hair was braided tight, as it was only at home, and he could see the edges of the tattoo on the back of her neck.

  “Mother, who is that man in the office?” he asked.

  His mother was always Mother, always formal, and always cool to him.

  “That man is Mister Patrick. He is giving your father lessons,” she said in her own distinctly European accent. Her lips returned to their usual grim position on her face.

  “What kind of lessons?”

  “He is giving your father speaking lessons,” she said.

  His father spoke normally, he had thought. He understood that his father did not speak like his teachers or his classmates or even like him and Mother. That was just his father, and until now there had been no reason to question it.

  “Why does Father need speaking lessons?” he asked.

  “Father needs speaking lessons so that he doesn’t sound like a wetback drug dealer from Tijuana,” she replied, and that was the end of that.

  He never saw Mr. Patrick again, but when he returned from school, his father’s accent was largely gone, then mostly gone, and finally, when he left for St. Paul’s, it was gone altogether. In its place was a confident, booming voice like a newsman on television.

  “Goodbye, Eduardo,” he said with a handshake.

  “When you get to school, I want you to do something for me,” his father continued.

  He would do anything.

  “No one knows you there. No one knows anything about you. This is a fresh start. When you meet people, introduce yourself to them as Eduardo.”

  “I like Eddie.”

  “Eddie is cheap,” his father said. “Be Eduardo.”

  Eduardo was most certainly not cheap, he thought while gazing at the woman he had built. She was, in her prime, without a doubt the most stunning woman in any room she entered.

  She had been so young and so naïve — a young girl with no idea at the power her smile could wield. Maybe there were beautiful girls with no money all over the world, being worn down and taken advantage of and having their beauty wasted, but not this one. This one was his.

  Odalys was looking at him now. He could see her lips moving. She wore only her underwear and it struggled to contain her. She looked amazing, and they were only going to dinner. With her long dark hair falling down her back, her warm-colored skin, and Latin curves, she was positively succulent.

  “I wasn’t listening,” he said to her. It was not an apology.

  “What was that man’s name from the club?”

  “Max.”

  “You introduced him by a different name.”

  “Max is his nickname from Saint Paul’s. He didn’t want his professional associates to know about it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Perhaps he is a different person now.”
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  “What kind of person was he then?”

  “Arrogant and ruthless. Kind of a smooth operator.”

  “You must have been good friends,” she said with a sly smile.

  “Be nice.”

  “I didn’t like the way he looked at me,” she said, her smile fading.

  “What way was that?”

  “Like he could have anything he wanted.”

  “People who come from old money are like that.”

  “I don’t like it,” she said.

  “You don’t have to like it,” Eduardo replied. “That’s just how it is.”

  He lived on the top floor in one of the finest buildings in Austin. There was a patio on the roof that he enjoyed, and a pool several floors below that he never would. Odalys would lie out in the sun by the pool, but she attracted attention, so he always recommended the roof or a spa.

  Some deals are signed in ink. Others are signed in blood. Luscious, breathing blood.

  He’d once had a partnership of sorts. Angel had been a rough man, from the streets, and Eduardo had needed his connections. Angel had admired Eduardo’s manners, his judgment, and his sense of propriety. Most of all, he had admired Eduardo’s money. He had been born poor, whereas Eduardo had been born wealthy. At the time they had met, each had been teetering toward the middle. Each had something the other needed.

  He noticed immediately that the man was proud to know him. He was a man from nothing who had built himself to a certain level. He needed Eduardo to get to the next one. He brought Eduardo to a family party to show off his new friend. Eduardo shook the hands of endless family members and forced a smile. It was loud and the music was Mexican and they were roasting a pig in a box and he might be expected to taste it if he stayed long enough. He had never imagined himself in a place such as this.

  Then he saw her-a fifteen-year-old Odalys. She was fifteen and glowing, smiling with no idea of what she was. Eduardo looked at her and saw raw, unrefined beauty and sexuality. He looked at a fifteen-year-old girl and saw in an instant everything that she could become.