Free The Long Fall by Lynn Kostoff

there going to be much blood with this one?” she asks, opening the beer. Her voice has the flat tones of a telephone recording.
    Ray Harp leans over and turns up the Allman Brothers.
    They leave Dobbins and head farther south into a stretch of no-man’s-land between the South and Estrella Mountains, a little side trip into a landscape that’s full of dry washes and lunar outcroppings of rock, the vegetation completely feral, stunted and twisted in some places, tangled and overgrown in others.
    Aaron Limbe taps the brakes and takes a left onto the ghost of a dirt road. Newt Deems follows in the Camino. They’re headed in the direction of the Gila River.
    The road dips and twists and then unexpectedly opens onto a large clearing of flat hardpan ringed in boulder-strewn rubble and creosote bushes.
    “Okay,” Ray Harp says.
    Limbe parks the car and throws the trunk latch. Jimmy watches Newt and him take out a folding table and a large beach umbrella. They unfold and set up both a few yards from the car, then return for a wicker picnic basket and the cooler in the back seat. Newt goes back to the trunk for some folding lawn chairs. Limbe carries a square black box and sets it on the hood of the Continental.
    “Ray, I’ll get you the money,” Jimmy says. “Gospel. I just need a little more time.”
    Ray and the woman get out of the car and walk over to the beach umbrella and table and sit down.
    Newt Deems pulls Jimmy out of the car and ties his hands behind his back with a piece of nylon rope.
    Aaron Limbe comes over, a black strip dangling from his hand, and fastens it around Jimmy’s neck. In his other hand is a remote control.
    Limbe reaches over and touches something beneath Jimmy’s chin. There’s a click, then a series of short, low, evenly spaced beeps.
    Limbe snaps his fingers and Newt takes Jimmy by the elbow and leads him a good thirty yards out in the desert, then turns and walks back to join the others.
    Jimmy’s standing out there, fronting the table.
    Aaron Limbe hands Ray the remote. The dark-haired woman begins passing out sandwiches and beer.
    Ray points the remote control at Jimmy.
    “It only takes one,” he says. “Just one deadbeat to put the wrong signals in the air and pretty soon everyone’s tuned to the frequency, all of them thinking, ‘Ray’s not on top of his game anymore. He’s getting soft.’ The next thing I know, I’m looking at a groundswell movement. The Mexicans, nobody has to take Ray Harp seriously anymore. Just ask Jimmy Coates.”
    The sun’s tattooing Jimmy’s head pore by pore. The thing below his chin is softly humming, like the sound a refrigerator makes late at night when you hear it from another room.
    A cloud of yellow and white butterflies whirls past. His shadow looks like it’s painted on the hard-packed earth. A swarm of red ants roils at the base of a stunted yucca a couple feet to his right. His throat feels funny, a slight but persistent tickle spreading upward from its base.
    Jimmy’s ears suddenly pop, and he’s knocked to his knees.
    He gets up, and a couple seconds later the same thing happens. The fingers of his bound hands begin to twitch.
    Jimmy backs off, but gets no further than a couple of steps before the air implodes. His breath is torn from him. His insides squeezed. He’s back on his feet, but barely.
    “What the hell?” he yells, but doesn’t recognize his voice. It’s raspy and dislocated, like a bad ventriloquist’s trick.
    He looks down. He’s standing in the swarm of red ants. The inside of his mouth tastes singed. His ears pop and buzz. He’s sweated through his clothes.
    “What the hell?” he says again.
    Ray waves to him from under the umbrella and calls out, “Did Aaron ever tell you he’d done some Special Forces work down in Nicaragua and Honduras before he joined the police?” Ray pauses to take a bite of his sandwich. “Those Special Forces guys, they’re a pretty resourceful bunch. They’ll take something