But he was not headed for the quaint part of town. Shelton was headed a little farther south, where the highway hit Detroit Street and ran smack into East Cutler.
East Cutler had always been the wrong side of the tracks, a small-town slum with the good sense to remain in a state of despair and impoverished shame until the Mexicans moved in and scared everybody shitless with their willingness to work. Even the criminal among them seemed poised for ascent.
Hector himself was using his drug money to pay for a few classes at the community college. Hector was after an Associate’s in Business, whatever that was, and Shelton had sort of considered him an inspiration until he broke into his house and stole Jenna.
Hector lived on the corner of Detroit and Emmett Street, and Shelton pulled over on the curb a half block from his front stoop. Shelton shut his lights off and let the truck idle as the neighborhood spread out leaden gray around him. Four blocks of deteriorating row houses and everything was buttoned up and still, darker somehow than even the sky. Shelton noticed there wasn’t a single light on around him and figured a transformer must have blown. Transformers in East Cutler always gave out in a storm, and sometimes for no reason at all. Nobody cared, except for the Mexicans.
Shelton had a balloon and peered out the windshield. He watched Hector’s front door and wondered, should he wait a minute to see if the boy came out, or just bust right in and start breaking shit?
It was strange, but for a moment Shelton pined for the summer. He loved East Cutler in the warm weather, when the kids kicked soccer balls in the street and the men drank cold beers, cervezas, as they stood worrying over the hoods of their Chevrolets. In the summer in East Cutler the women hung laundry from their tiny balconies and stereos blared festive Mexican music. You could smell the grilled meat and the malt liquor and hear the chants of the girls skipping rope.
Shelton felt a little lonely then, thinking about the Mexican families inside their shabby homes, all snuggled up and cozy in the storm. He watched smoke rise from the slanted, weathered roofs and wondered what everybody was doing to pass the time. You could fit a shitload of Mexicans inside those itty-bitty row houses and he imagined whole families gathered around the hearth, making colorful quilts and boiling beans in oversized pots.
Shelton admired much about the Mexican culture, if he sat down to think about it. Mexicans stuck together and valued the extended family. They had a variety of uses for turquoise, which was a beautiful stone, if you wanted Shelton’s opinion. They had also invented the tortilla and had many interesting tales of ancestral suffering. Mexicans were great workers and seemed generally trustworthy, which made this slave trade business all the more disheartening.
Shelton did a blue balloon, then a red one. Red and blue make purple so he did one of those in the name of symmetry. Wha-wha-wha.
He put his helmet on and plucked the Glock from his beltline. He figured he was going to have to go in and root the little fucker out. He couldn’t just sit there all day and wait. Shelton knew how critical the first forty-eight were in the case of a missing person, but as soon as he opened the door he looked up to see Little Hector trotting down the front steps.
He flipped up his visor to be certain, but it was Little Hector all right. Shelton would recognize those baggy jeans and that dirty Dallas Cowboys coat anywhere. The boy fished a cigarette from his coat pocket and Shelton engaged the laser sight and held the red dot between Hector’s jet-black eyebrows and waited for him to notice.
The plan was to freeze the boy where he stood. Keep him still with the laser and then walk up and come across his nose with the butt end of the Glock. Once Little Hector felt the blood rush, once that hard bone and cartilage had turned to sand, he’d be ready to talk. Wouldn’t be no need for clever negotiations.
Hector lit his smoke, then looked up and saw the laser. And that fancy sight paid for itself with the slack-jawed terror with which Hector traced the red beam back to its source.
“That’s right, motherfucker,” Shelton said, and stepped toward him.
Hector shocked him then by pivoting hard to the left and running. It was perhaps the most amazing thing Shelton had ever witnessed, like a miracle or a stigmata. Hector had directly defied him and his Glock, and Shelton was so surprised he stood there for a minute with his Tron laser pinned to the snowbank where the boy had just been standing. Shelton didn’t even think to turn and retake his aim until Hector had disappeared down an alley.
Shelton knew better than to try and catch him on foot. He tucked the Glock away and hopped back in the truck. He jammed the Silverado into drive and sped away from the curb. His tires squealed and spat snow.