Free The Carrion Birds by Urban Waite

You’re half-white.
You’re not like us at all.”
    Ray watched a car go past out on the highway on its
way into town. A pounding beginning somewhere deep inside his head, the whole
world beginning to come off its axis, threatening to roll.
    “You didn’t think I knew all that?” Memo said, the
sound of a laugh lingering at the back of his palate, like Ray had joined in on
some joke halfway done in the telling. “You thought we didn’t check you out when
you first started working for us? That we didn’t start asking about you when you
got into all that trouble down there? When we kept you hidden and protected
you?” Ray heard Memo shift the phone from one ear to the other. He pictured Memo
sitting there in the Las Cruces office. The dark wood desk where Memo sat, the
chair on the other side of that desk where Ray had received his first job. “And
now you think you can come back to us any time you like, pick your jobs, and
then move on,” Memo said. “That’s not how we do things anymore.”
    Ray leaned forward and rested his head on his
forearm, putting his weight onto the glass of the booth. He sucked at the
insides of his cheeks until he could feel the flesh between his teeth. He was
done with Memo. He knew it now. “I’m staying,” Ray said. “I’m not coming back
after this. I’ll send your nephew north with the dope and I’ll do what you’re
asking, but I’m done after this. I’ve spent too long hiding from the past. No
one will be looking for Burnham’s truck if your nephew goes now. If he leaves
now it will work and I’ll do what you’re asking of me and then I want my money
and I don’t want to hear from you again.”
    “No,” Memo said. “I can’t trust my nephew. He’s
messed too much up already. I need you on this. I need you to finish this for
me. Keep my nephew’s pager and send him north, but don’t send him with the
drugs. I can’t trust him. I want you to hide the drugs and when you’re done with
everything I’ll send someone to pick them up.”
    “I can do that,” Ray said. “But you hear me on
this, I’m not coming back.”
    “If that’s what you want,” Memo said. “If that’s
what you think will solve this problem for you. But you should know it’s all on
you. If for some reason the drugs aren’t where you say they are, it’s all on
you.”
    “You’ll get your dope,” Ray said. “You’d have it
today if you let me send it north with Sanchez.”
    “You know just as well as I do that my nephew isn’t
right for this work. His balls are too big. Thinks he’ll run the business
someday. You’re untouched, you’ve never done a bit of time, and except for ten
years ago you’ve kept yourself clean. You’ve done a good job for us over the
years but staying there isn’t going to solve any of this. Coronado will never be
the same as it was when your wife was alive. It’s simply been too long to go
back.”
    Ray unwrapped an antacid and put it into his mouth.
He knew Memo was right, nothing would ever be the same, though he hoped somehow
it would. He would send Sanchez north and he would stay.
    “Antacids?” Memo asked. “All these years and you
still eat those things?”
    “Heartburn,” Ray said.
    “I told you to see a doctor about it.”
    “I did.”
    “He tell you to take antacids?”
    “He told me a bunch of stuff, only I wasn’t
listening.”
    “That’s not good,” Memo said. “That’s never good.
You should listen to what doctors tell you.”
    “Why?”
    “They’re usually trying to save your life.”
    Ray looked across the parking lot at Sanchez
sitting there in the diner, then looked away, the pumice taste of the antacid
still on his tongue. Burnham had been right—everything had changed. None of it
was the way it used to be, and now Ray was stuck in this life, one leg thrown
over the fence that divided this new world from the old, knowing he should never
have come back to Coronado for this job.
    “You ready to listen now?” Memo