Den of Snakes

by Damian Vargas

  ‘It seems you have overplayed your hand,’ Ortega said as Fernandez’s bodyguards drew closer.

  ‘Maybe, maybe not,’ said Eddie as he backed towards the chair where he had left his pistol. ‘But by my reckoning, someone wants Charlie’s case. And if he or she thinks I am here trying to sell it to you, then -’.

  Eddie stopped mid-sentence as the conference door flung open and five men burst in. It was Pickering’s crew, and they were armed with shotguns and sub-machine guns. The two police officers and five bodyguards pulled out their weapons and aimed them at the new arrivals.

  ‘Nobody fucking move,’ one of the East Enders shouted. He had his shotgun aimed at the head of one of Velásquez’s men.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’ Fernandez demanded as the East Enders approached.

  ‘We’re who you wanna be negotiating with,’ another voice said. It was Bobby Pickering. He stood in the doorway holding Veronica by her hair, Charlie’s case on the floor at his side. The East Ender kicked the door shut, and pushed Veronica forward, dragging the heavy case behind him.

  Eddie’s heart sank. How had they found Veronica? He had told her to wait with Charlie's case at a payphone a mile away, and to wait his call.

  Pickering pushed Veronica to the floor in front of Eddie, who now found himself surrounded by British gangsters, Spanish bodyguards and corrupt policemen, all of whom were pointing their weapons at one another.

  ‘I’m sorry, Eddie,’ Veronica said. ‘They must have followed me’.

  Pickering picked up the case and laid it down on the table at which Eddie has been sitting. Eddie edged backwards, trying to get within reach of his pistol, but one of the Cockneys stopped him in his tracks, striking him in the stomach with the butt of his shotgun. He fell to the floor, gasping for air.

  ‘Gentlemen and ladies,’ said Pickering. ‘We don’t want no trouble, but if trouble is what you want, my boys here are ready to dispense it’.

  One of the East End gang pulled back the bolt on his MAC10 to emphasise his leader’s threat.

  ‘Now, I gather you are all here for this’. He pointed at the case. ‘So let’s get straight to business. What are your opening offers? Do I hear two hundred grand?’

  ‘One hundred thousand. Not a penny more,’ said Velásquez.

  Pickering glared at her, gnashing his yellow teeth together. ‘Not fuckin’ good enough. I’m not leaving here without at least double that. And the longer this takes, the higher my price goes’. He pointed his pistol at Fernandez. ‘What about you, pops?’ You gonna give me two hundred grand for it?’

  Eddie scanned the room. There were now thirteen men holding guns on each other. He made eye contact with Ortega who, he could see, also recognised their plight.

  Ortega rose to his feet, his arms raised in submission. ‘Are we to understand that it was you that killed Charlie Lawson and his associates?’

  Pickering laughed. ‘Nah,’ he replied, slowly walking towards Ortega. ‘We didn’t do that. Oh, except for one of them’. Pickering glanced at Eddie. ‘I did shoot Mike. But that was self-defence that was’.

  ‘Didn’t look like self-defence from where I was watching,’ said Eddie.

  Pickering pointed a boney index finger at Eddie, a look of delight on his face. ‘I knew you was there. Hiding in a cupboard was yer? Like a fucking coward?’ He strode to where Eddie lay prostrate on the parquet floor and bent down to whisper in his ear. ‘If I had wanted Charlie or any of you boys dead, it would have happened already. I told you, I’m a businessman. All I want is what’s rightfully ours. Now, on that note…’. He stood up. ‘Which of you dagos is going to pay me my fucking money?’ he hollered, his saliva spraying Velásquez who reeled back in disgust.

  Eddie shifted towards Veronica who was sitting on the floor, swaying. ‘When I say run, you run,’ he whispered.

  Pickering was pointing a gun at Juan Fernandez now. Eddie peeked at his pistol on the chair underneath the table a few yards away. The East Enders who was guarding him was still pointing his shotgun in Eddie’s direction, but the man’s attention was elsewhere. Maybe they could make a break for it?

  As it happened, they did not need to.

  The doors burst open again and a gangly man appeared holding a TV camera, followed by another, shorter individual with a mobile lighting unit, and then a third who was carrying with a fluffy microphone. Jeremy Crampton stormed in behind them, howling at his crew to get out of his way. All four halted, realising they had walked into a veritable powder keg.

  ‘Shit,’ the cameraman said.

  ‘Get that camera,’ Velásquez screamed at one of her men. The police officer backed away from the rest of the armed men, and dashed over to the TV crew. Sensing that things were about to turn for the worse, Eddie scanned the room for an exit. It was at that moment that he spotted Kenny peering at him through the glass of a fire escape door, some thirty feet away.

  Eddie tapped Veronica on her shoulder and pointed at the grey door. ‘Kenny’s over there. Get ready to run’. She nodded her acknowledgement.

  Meanwhile, Velásquez’s henchman was arguing with the TV crew. ‘Give me the camera,’ he snarled, but Crampton stepped forward and pushed the astonished gunmen backwards.

  ‘You can’t have it,’ he shouted, but the Spaniard sprung forward and pistol-whipped Crampton across the jaw. The plump British reporter fell backwards like a sack of potatoes.

  ‘Move it,’ the policeman shouted, waving his gun at the TV crew. He kicked Crampton in the gut. ‘Get up. Get over there’. The officer moved to shut the double doors once again, his semi-automatic pistol in his hand, but as he closed it someone shoved it from the other side. It was now the policeman who fell to the floor as five Guardia Civil officers in green uniforms burst through the open doors, brandishing their weapons. One of them trained his shotgun on Velásquez’s man on the floor, who was pointing his pistol back at the Civil Guard officer. They shouted at each other in Spanish as the remaining officers advanced into the room.

  ‘Everybody drop their guns,’ their officer shouted. ‘You are all under arrest’.

  Ortega, Fernandez and Velásquez’s men pointed their weapons at the new arrivals as they edged forward, then back at each other, uncertain where the most significant peril came from.

  Pickering pointed his pistol at the leading Civil Guard officer, gripping it with both hands.

  Velásquez lowered herself to the floor along with her lawyer. A violent firefight was only seconds away, and Eddie knew it.

  ‘Go,’ he whispered to Veronica. She crawled out from under the table, took a quick glance at the scene playing out behind her, before moving towards the fire escape door, staying low. Kenny stood, beckoning at her and Eddie to come.

  The man Señora Velásquez had ordered to recover the TV camera, was now struggling to get to his feet while being shouted at by the Civil Guard officer holding the shotgun.

  Nearby, one of the East End crew had his submachine gun trained on one of Velásquez’s police officers, who pointed his Beretta pistol back at him. The policeman was shouting in his mother tongue, the Londoner roaring back in a thick cockney accent. As the man backed away, he bumped into Juan Fernandez who was attempting to take cover under his table.

  The policeman toppled to the floor, knocking a glass of water over on the table.

  The glass fell onto its side, and rolled slowly towards the edge of the table before falling off and smashing onto the floor.

  And then the shooting started.

  Eddie did not stop to see who had fired the first shots. He bent down, grabbed the handle on the metal case, yanked on it with all his strength, and bolted towards the fire door. Behind him, a cacophony of small arms fire, yelling and tortured screaming erupted. He sensed bullets flying close by, and saw holes appearing in the wall ahead of him near the fire escape. Veronica was almost through it already. Kenny was squatting in the open door waving at her and Eddie to come. Fragments of plaster and wood were landing on the floor in front of
them.

  Eddie darted left and right to evade the gunfire coming his way, with the weight of the metal case hindering his movements. A bullet flew past his ear, so close he felt the wave of hot air. He flung the case through the door and dived into the hallway beyond. A series of holes punched through the door a second later, covering him in splintered wood and broken glass.

  ‘Get a fucking move on,’ Kenny screamed from down the corridor, his arm around Veronica.

  Eddie could see who had shot at him. It was Pickering. The Cockney was scrambling to reload his pistol with a fresh magazine and Eddie froze as the leader of the East End crew lifted the gun towards him and took aim. But Pickering did not get the chance to shoot.

  Sophia Velásquez stood behind him holding a police carbine and shot the East Ender in the back. As Pickering dropped to the floor, blood spraying from his body with each bullet, Eddie heard Velásquez shout, ‘Nobody calls me a fucking dago!’ Seconds later Velásquez fell victim to a burst to her stomach from the East Ender with the MAC10.

  Some table cloths were burning, and the room was filling with smoke. A chandelier crashed to the tile floor in a crescendo of light and noise, but even that was eclipsed by the blast of what could only have been a concussion grenade. The room went black, but the barrage of gun fire and screaming continued.

  Eddie lay on his back, open-mouthed. Nothing he had seen in Northern Ireland or the Falklands could compare to this madness.

  ‘Are you fuckin’ coming or what?’ shouted Kenny.

  Eddie shook his head to divorce himself from the scenes of intensifying carnage playing out in the conference room. He grabbed hold of the case and forced himself to his feet. There was blood on his trousers, he had no idea if it was his.

  He lifted the case and started running as fast as his feet would carry him.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  The Devil You Know

  ‘You’ve got everything in that case, right?’ said Kenny as they approached the door to the Hotel Fuerte’s underground car park. Kenny held the door open and ushered Eddie and Veronica through.

  ‘Most of it, yeah,’ Eddie answered. Eddie scanned the car park but could not see Kenny’s Mercedes. ‘Where’s your motor?’ he said, panting from the exertion of running while holding the case down two flights of stairs and along several corridors.

  Kenny did not answer, but it was at that point that Eddie noticed that the older man was holding a silver revolver. Random memories were returning to him and connecting as his blood replenished with fresh oxygen. Kenny had not had his gun when he had collected Eddie earlier. ‘Where d’you pick up the shooter?’ Eddie asked.

  Kenny backed away, his finger tapping on the trigger. A voice answered from behind Eddie, and in that instant everything became clear. It was a voice he had known since his early childhood. Veronica raised her hands to her face. She looked shocked.

  Or was it fear?

  ‘I gave it to him, bruv’.

  Eddie swivelled around to see his brother ambling towards him, holding a semi-automatic pistol. Eddie was dumbstruck. A wave of nausea swept over him. Charlie stopped ten feet from his brother and pointed at the case. ‘I’ll be taking that’.

  Eddie’s fingers tightened around the handle, and he moved backwards.

  Charlie pointed the gun at his brother’s chest. ‘Don’t be fucking stupid. Gimme the case then you and her get to walk away’. He gestured at Kenny to take the case. ‘I got them covered, Ken’.

  Kenny stuffed his pistol into the back of his belt and approached Eddie. Eddie glared at him.

  ‘Why?’ said Eddie.

  ‘It was always gonna end this way. Once the money dried up’.

  ‘They were your friends,’ said Eddie, incredulous.

  ‘Villains don’t have friends,’ Kenny answered, a dirty grin on his face. ‘And the money from the drug deal goes a lot further when there’s only two of yer’.

  ‘It goes even further when there’s only one,’ said Charlie.

  Kenny froze, the sudden realisation of his staggering error writ raw across his face. He slowly lifted his hands and turned back towards Charlie. ‘But, Charlie. We -’.

  Charlie shot him twice in the sternum, the blood from the exit wounds in his back splattering across Eddie’s face. Veronica screamed as Kenny’s body went limp, then fell backwards like an toppled Spruce tree. He laid there on his back, his limbs twitching and with blood frothing in his open mouth as his life-force seeped away. Veronica fell to her knees, sobbing.

  ‘This ain’t how I wanted it,’ said Charlie. ‘That’s the honest truth’.

  ‘What did you want then?’ said Eddie, edging backwards, putting his body between Veronica and his brother’s smoking pistol.

  Charlie took a step forward, training the gun on Eddie once more. ‘You know what. For us to be a team again. The Lawson brothers - back together, like the old times’. Charlie’s eyes betrayed the rose-tinted memories to which he was referring.

  Eddie could hear the wailing of distant sirens approaching. ‘We were never together,’ he said, still shuffling back towards the car park door.

  ‘What are you talking about, bruv?’ said Charlie. His surprise seemed genuine.

  ‘Brother? You weren’t no brother to me,’ said Eddie. ‘You never gave a fuck about me’.

  ‘That ain’t true’.

  ‘You never gave a fuck about mum and dad, neither’.

  Charlie’s finger tightened around the trigger. His face twitched with anger. ‘They weren’t your parents,’ he said. ‘Now, if you want to make me really angry, you keep shooting your mouth off, and we’ll find out how far brotherly love goes’.

  ‘Give him what he wants, Eddie,’ Veronica pleaded.

  Charlie glanced at her, then back at Eddie. ‘She’s a smart one, her. Knows what it takes to survive’. He grinned. ‘Does what she has to. Does who she has to’. He laughed. ‘Now, gimme that case, and you and your slut can walk away. I promise’.

  Eddie had no leverage, and he knew it. He lowered the case to the concrete floor and backed away, taking Veronica’s hand and directing her back towards the car park door.

  ‘Clever boy,’ said Charlie as he squatted down beside the case and thumbed at the small metal wheels on the first of the combination locks, still holding the pistol in the other hand.

  ‘Go to the door,’ Eddie whispered to Veronica. She remained rooted to the spot, her eyes fixed on Charlie’s gun. He pushed her hard as the first lock clicked open. ‘We’re going,’ said Eddie, he turned around and started walking.

  The door was just a few feet away when Charlie called out.

  ‘Wait’.

  Eddie froze, his body braced, expecting the corkscrew-like impact of a bullet at any moment.

  ‘They always knew you were the better one. Mum, for sure. Dad too, though he might never have said it’. Charlie’s eyes were full of sadness. ‘Go. Fuck off’.

  Eddie did not need telling twice - he knew what was about to happen. He grabbed Veronica’s arm, pulled the door open and pushed her through, closing it behind him. ‘Run,’ he said. ‘Fucking run’. They hurried back along the corridor they had traversed only a few minutes earlier with the now-deceased Kenny. The hotel’s fire alarms were clanging as they approached the door to the stairwell that led back upstairs.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Veronica shouted as Eddie kicked it open.

  ‘I took everything out of the case’.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘I filled it up with telephone directories and free newspapers,’ said Eddie, pushing the door shut behind them. As he moved towards the stairs, they heard two loud cracks. Splinters of wood appeared in the door behind them, and holes punched into the cinderblock wall opposite it, spitting grey dust into the air. ‘And Charlie just found out’.

  They sprinted as fast as they could back up to the fire door to the ground level reception area. Eddie opened it just enough to peek inside, but spied a Guardia Civil officer standing on the oth
er side, his radio crackling with activity. Two more stood guarding the lobby entrance, assault rifles at the ready. Eddie glanced at his shirt, which was splattered with Kenny’s blood. They were not getting out that way. He eased the door shut. ‘Up another flight,’ he whispered.

  They charged up another two flights of stairs, back to the door that led into the corridor that went to the conference room that had been the scene of the mammoth firefight ten minutes earlier.

  ‘You didn’t trust me,’ said Veronica as they pounded up the stairs.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You gave me the case to look after,’ she said.

  Eddie peered down the staircase to see Charlie emerging from the car park at the bottom of the stairs. ‘How could I know who to trust? Everyone was using me. You used me’. He peered through the glass door into the conference room. The sprinkler system had engaged and was dousing the flames that still rose from the stacks of furniture that had caught alight. Bloodied corpses lay strewn around the floor in pools of maroon, a variety of weaponry surrounding them. Seeing no signs of life, he yanked the door open and, after one more check for any movement, entered. He pointed to the secondary entrance on the opposite side of the room. ‘There,’ he said to Veronica. ‘Go. Look straight ahead and go’. He pushed her forward, then grabbed a wooden chair and rammed it under the door handle. That should block Charlie’s path, he thought.

  He followed Veronica, covering his mouth to protect himself from the acrid smoke. She had slowed, trying to pick her way through the dead henchman, cockney gang members and corrupt policemen. He saw the crumpled, bloody bodies of Pickering, Fernandez and Doña Valáquez as he grabbed her hand and pulled her across the slippery surface towards a set of oak doors beyond. The intense smoke stung his eyes. ‘Stay low,’ he shouted above the din of the fire alarms.

  They were almost at the wooden doors when they sprung open and Charlie stumbled into the room, panting. He had somehow found an alternative route and outflanked them. He lifted the gun towards Eddie, wiped sweat from his eyes with his sleeve, and marched towards them.