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CHAPTER 73

GARRISON ZEBO WATCHES the news coverage of the fire on the seventy-seven-inch television in his spacious living room.

Zebo is wearing a Neiman Marcus cashmere robe, with a pair of Dolce and Gabbana house slippers. His exposed legs are shaved clean and are orange from the tanning bed he has in his bedroom. He sips from a lemon-carrot-ginger drink as he flips through the local channels, trying to find one that has any new information.

So far, the news coverage hasn’t revealed much. He settles on one station simply because it has the best imagery: a helicopter view of firefighters hosing down the building while a huge column of black smoke rises into the sky, the haze blotting out the view of Mexico in the distance.

The reporter narrating the coverage doesn’t know anything: how the fire started, if anyone was inside, what the building even was used for. All he has to work with are colorful descriptions of the scene, which the camera captures better than he can.

Impatient, Zebo picks up his cell phone and calls Llewellyn Carpenter.

No answer.

He sends a text and asks for an update. He’s starting to feel antsy. He’s been looking for Carpenter’s van in the aerial footage but can’t find it. The existence of the fire suggests he was successful, but it’s always possible he blew himself up in addition to that Texas Ranger he was after. Zebo doesn’t care if Carpenter is dead or alive—as long as he hasn’t been arrested.

The anchor explains that the FBI plans to make a statement, and then there are a few moments of discussion between the anchors about why the FBI would be involved at all. Why isn’t the fire department making the statement?

A minute later, an agent named Logan appears on camera, standing before a bank of reporters in front of the Tigua Tribal Police Station. This is the same guy who was on the news after the raid, Zebo remembers. At that time, he looked smug and full of himself. Now, with his wrinkled suit and haggard expression, he looks like someone who would like to be anywhere but on TV.

Zebo turns up the volume.

The agent states that there is no word yet on what caused the fire—that will only be known after a full investigation—but he wanted to let the public know that three law enforcement personnel were believed to have been in the building. The reporters at the press conference bombard the agent with questions, almost none of which he answers.

Why were the law enforcement personnel at the location?

“I can’t comment at this time.”

Do they suspect the fire was caused by arson or an accident?

“We won’t know that until we conduct a thorough investigation in conjunction with the fire department.”

But there is one question he answers: Are the law enforcement officers members of the FBI?

“No,” the agent says. “The officers in question are two Texas Rangers and a member of the Tigua Tribal Police.”

The agent cuts off the interview, and Zebo mutes the sound. He pumps his fist in the air like he’s been watching a sporting event and his team just scored.

“ Two Texas Rangers!” he exclaims.

He reaches for a silver bell sitting on the coffee table. He gives it a hearty ring, and within seconds, his butler arrives. Zebo calls him Alfred, after the stuffy butler in the Batman movies. But the name is meant ironically. His Alfred is more of a bodyguard/head of security than a butler. Zebo’s Alfred is six foot six, built like a heavyweight boxer, and clad in tactical gear, with a sheath knife on one hip, a radio on the other, and a Beretta in a holster at the small of his back.

He calls the prison at the rear of his property a dormitory.

He calls the women held there his lovers.

He calls the heroin he injects into them medicine.

And when he has johns over to the house—only his highest-paying clients—he tells them how much his lovers are looking forward to pleasuring them.

“Alfred,” he says to the mercenary he calls his butler. “I want to celebrate. Bring me the new girl. The one Carpenter delivered the other day.”

“Marta?”

“Yes,” Zebo says, turning the volume of the TV back on and focusing his attention on the news coverage. “It’s time for her to start earning the medicine we’ve been giving her.”