“We’re pulling it out Sunday, in the daytime,” Schneider told the men, sweating in the basement in their wifebeaters.
Chapter Twenty-One
Barranquilla, Colombia
A taxi nosed its way to the crowded curb in front of Clínica Ángeles de la Misericordia. A vendor with a pushcart argued briefly with the taxi driver over the parking space, but when he saw a nun in the back seat of the cab, the vendor crossed himself and backed away.
In the disinfectant smell of the ground-floor ward a priest partially closed the curtains around a skeletal man and began the Unction of the Sick. A fly rose off a chipped enamel basin and tried to light on the consecrated oil. The priest saw the passing habit of a nursing sister and called to her to shoo for him. She did not respond but went on her way, handing out small candies to children in her path, refusing them the fruit in her brimming basket.
She took the basket into one of the private rooms at the end of the ward.
Jesús Villarreal lay in the bed. He was glad to see a woman, and pulled aside his oxygen mask to show her his smile. “Gracias, Sister,” Jesús said in a faint voice. “Is there a card with the basket? An envelope, a DHL?”
The nun smiled, took an envelope from under her wimple and pressed it into his hand. She pointed to heaven. She went to his bedside and moved things around on the bedside stand to put the basket of fruit where he could reach it. She smelled of perfume and cigarette smoke. It amused Jesús to think of a nun smoking on the sly. She patted Jesús’s hand and bent her head in prayer. Jesús kissed the St. Dismas medal pinned to his pillow. “Dios se lo pague,” he said. The envelope contained a money order for two thousand dollars.
In front of the hospital Don Ernesto’s black Range Rover came to a stop. The bodyguard Isidro Gomez climbed out of the front passenger seat and opened the rear door for Don Ernesto.
The driver of the taxi behind them opened the tabloid La Libertad and held it up to hide his face.
Inside the ward the patients recognized Don Ernesto at once and called out his name as he passed among them with Gomez.
The nun was leaving, handing out candy. She peered at Don Ernesto from under the edge of her wimple and smiled at the floor as she passed.
Don Ernesto knocked on the open door of Jesús’s room.
“Bienvenido,” Jesús whispered through his oxygen mask. He pulled it aside to talk. “I am honored to receive you without being groped.”
“You’ll be delighted by what I have to say,” Don Ernesto said. “Are you ready to hear it?”
Jesús made a small gesture of invitation with his withered hand. “Curiosity is killing me. At least I think that’s what it is.”
Don Ernesto took some papers and a photo from his pocket. “I can give your wife and son the house in this picture. Lupita showed it to the señora and her sister. Meaning no disrespect, your sister-in-law is extremely critical and outspoken, Jesús.”
“You have no idea,” Jesús said. “She has never seen me for the man I am.”
“Nevertheless, she was much impressed with the house in spite of herself. And your señora is in love with this house. She finds it delightfully nicer than the house of her stern sister. The señora took the deed to a judge. She has a note from the judge verifying the deed. In addition I will provide a sum of money, enough for your wife and son to keep this house forever. The money is already in escrow. Here is the bank’s receipt. In return, I want you to tell me everything: what you took to Miami for Pablo and how I can get at it.”
“The method is complex.”
“Jesús, don’t string this out. Schneider has located the cube. You can’t sell me its location; I already know. You already sold that to Schneider.”
“What I will tell you is that if it is opened wrongly, you will hear the result for miles. I would need assurances—”
“Do you trust your lawyer?”
“Trust my lawyer?” Jesús said. “Of course not. What a question!”
“But you are the caliber of man who can trust his wife,” Don Ernesto said. He rapped on the door and Jesús’s wife and teenage son came into the room. Jesús’s severe-looking sister-in-law came too, stalking in like a heron, and she looked disapprovingly at both men, and at the room, and even at the fruit, which she believed to be waxed.
“I will leave you to talk,” Don Ernesto said.
Don Ernesto, attended by Gomez and his driver, smoked most of a cigarillo on the stoop in front of the hospital before Jesús’s wife and her sister and the boy came out of the building. Don Ernesto tipped his hat to the ladies. He shook hands with the boy. Gomez helped them into a waiting car.
At the curb the taxi idled, the driver hidden behind the newspaper. Gomez walked over to the taxi and moved the newspaper with his forefinger to look at the driver. He looked into the back seat, where the nun was sitting. He tipped his hat to her. The driver was listening to a sad bachata song by Monchy and Alexandra. The driver could smell Gomez’s aroma, a mixture of good cologne and Tri-flow gun oil. He sat very still until Gomez went away.
Don Ernesto went back into the hospital with Gomez.
In the taxi the nun lit a cigarette and got out a cell phone. “Give me Señor Schneider. Hombre, hurry up!”
A wait of about five beats. The connection was not good. “Hey,” she said. “Our friend went back into the hospital. He is with the big-mouth now.”
“Thank you, Paloma,” Hans-Peter Schneider said. “I have to tell you Karla did not work out. No, keep the money and send me another one. A Russian is fine.”
Inside the ward a patient on a crutch plucked at Don Ernesto’s sleeve as he passed on the way back to Jesús’s room. Gomez would have peeled the man off, but Don Ernesto said, “It’s all right.”
The man had tears in his eyes and began a mumbled account of his problems. He tried to show Don Ernesto the sore on his back.
“Give him some money,” the Don told Gomez.
“Dios se lo pague,” the sick man said, and tried to kiss Don Ernesto’s hand.
In his room, Jesús was looking at the basket of fruit with little appetite. It took up most of his bedside stand. A little tune came from the basket. The Mexican bugle call “El Degüello.” Jesús tried to look in the basket, but his tubes got in the way and some fruit rolled on the floor. Finally, fumbling, he found the cell phone at the bottom of the basket.
“Dígame.”
The voice of Hans-Peter Schneider. “Jesús, you had a visitor. Did you tell him something? Did you tell him something you told me in exchange for my money?”
“Nothing, I swear. Send me the rest of the money, not just this pittance, Señor Hans-Pedro. I can save your life and those of your men with what I will tell you.”
“It’s Hans-Peter, not Hans-Pedro. It is Señor Schneider to you, Patrón to you. Su Eminencia to you. I HAVE PAID. Tell me how to open it.”
“You need a diagram, su Eminencia Reverendísima. I have drawn what you need. Include a paid return envelope with the rest of the money and send it DHL. I will wait until day after tomorrow, su Beatitud.”
One thousand seventy-eight miles away, Schneider’s hairless eyelids flew up, and his eyes bugged out in his head.
“Don Ernesto is there with you now, isn’t he? You are laughing together. Let me speak with him, hand him the phone,” Schneider said. He had a fleck of foam in the corner of his mouth. He was dialing another cell phone.
“No, I am alone, as we all are,” Jesús said. “Send me the money, you pinche gilipollas—you PEPA PELONA—or let me know when your balls pass Mars.”
The explosion of the telephone blew Jesús’s head all over the room, blew the door of the room into the ward. Don Ernesto’s hand was on the knob of the door when it blew open and shrapnel cut him over the eye.
Don Ernesto walked into the smoke. The body was still jerking and pulsing blood. A piece of skull had stuck to the ceiling, and now fell on Don Ernesto. He flicked it away. He looked sorrowful but calm. A drop of blood trickled down his cheek like a
tear. He searched the nightstand and found nothing.
“Dios se lo pague,” he said.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Academia de Baile Alfredo in Barranquilla, Colombia, is on a street of bars and cafés. The entrance bears the image of a couple dancing the tango, though instruction in the tango is not part of the actual curriculum.
The academy is the current headquarters of the Ten Bells school of pickpocketing, theft, and robbery. The school is named for the test of hanging ten bells from the clothing of a practice pickpocket victim to teach stealth. The pockets are sometimes lined with fishhooks or a razor blade as well to increase the difficulty of the dip.
The studio on the second floor has a large open dance floor. At midmorning a pleasant breeze came in the tall windows along with sounds of the street below.
One corner of the dance floor was set up as an airport food-court café with a cafeteria line, stand-up tables and a condiment table. A dozen people in their teens and early twenties were on the open floor in street clothing. The students were from six different countries in Europe and the Americas.
The instructor was about forty. He wore Pumas and his glasses were on top of his head. He thought of himself as a choreographer, and he looked like one when he wore a shirt over his prison tattoos. His photograph was on the bulletin boards of airport police stations in cities around the world.
Teams were practicing condiment wipes. The instructor was talking:
“In a condiment wipe you have to set up early and see the mark come into the food court, so you know in which hand he carries the thing you want to take. Say it’s a computer in its case in the left hand. Fix on it. Left hand. You must smear the mustard or mayonnaise behind the right shoulder so he can only reach it with his left hand. And, ladies, when you point out the mustard smear to him as he is walking, you must give him the tissues immediately into his free right hand, so he cannot just switch the briefcase from hand to hand before he wipes behind his shoulder. He must set down the burden. He must put it on the floor and turn his head over the smeared shoulder, away from the briefcase. Push some teta on his arm while you are helping him. A wired support bra will help conduct the sensation through a suit coat. At that moment your partner makes the snatch. You would be astounded how many people smear the wrong shoulder or are late with the tissues. And the ones that do it wrong are sitting in a little windowless room at the airport, waiting on a bail bondsman and dying to pee. All right, here we go. Vincent and Carlita, you’re up. Places! Okay, let’s have the mark. And go!” The director cupped his hand over his mouth and spoke through his nose. “Flight Eighty-Eight to Houston now boarding at Gate Eleven. Connecting service to Laredo, Midland, El Paso.”
In his office off the dance floor, Don Ernesto Ibarra could hear the excited voices, the running feet, the yelled misdirections—Carlita pointing in the wrong direction, yelling, “He went that way, I saw it!”
In his capacity as head of the Ten Bells school and its postgraduate criminal activities, Don Ernesto was writing a difficult letter to the late Antonio’s parents, and sending them a check. He thought the check, though generous, might be offensive to them. He hoped so. Then the parents could be mad at him while they spent it, and it would spare him verbal commiserations.
A tap on the office door and Don Ernesto’s secretary brought in a burner phone. She held it in a napkin and Don Ernesto used the napkin too. “It will ring in about five minutes. It’s someone you know,” she said.
At the Tour de Rêve in the busy Port-au-Prince Iron Market many old bicycles are for sale cheap. Most were obtained at night in Miami. They all have been overhauled and are guaranteed for at least a month. Proprietor Jean-Christophe had, earlier in the day, locked the big chain securing the display models out front and carried his laptop to the Café Internet, where he sent an email to Barranquilla. It said:
Mi señor, could you send me a number of convenience?
The reply came within minutes. +57 JK5 1795.
At Alfredo’s Academy of Dance in Barranquilla the phone in Don Ernesto’s hand buzzed and vibrated.
“Jean-Christophe here, sir.”
“Bonjour, Jean-Christophe! How goes the band?”
“You remember that? We play the Oloffson when we’re lucky, on the off nights when Boogaloo is playing out of town.”
“When does your DVD drop?”
“Still in the works, thanks for asking, Don Ernesto. We need studio time. Don Ernesto, I’m calling you because the fellow in Miami who ships me bicycles? He received the call of a guttural person from Paraguay. A person without hair. This person wanted some help in our port of Gonaïves.”
“What kind of help, Jean-Christophe?”
“Transshipping something very heavy out of Miami. Hush-hush. Needs to transfer from a ship to a trawler at Gonaïves. I thought it might be of interest. Is such a person familiar to you?”
“Yes.”
“The little freighter Jezi Leve sails in one week from Miami. I’ve got a pile of bikes coming on it. My bicycle friend is going to call me after a meet on the boat tomorrow night. Should I pitch this phone?”
“That would be best, Jean-Christophe. Tell your friend in Miami he might wear a kerchief around his neck. Bright orange would be good. Would you give my secretary your bank numbers? Thank you, and good luck with the music.”
A knock on his office door. It was Don Ernesto’s assistant Paolo, a saturnine man in his thirties with a pronounced widow’s peak.
Don Ernesto raised his eyebrows to ask a question and felt a twinge from the stitches above his eyebrow. “Paolo, who do we have in South Florida now? Right now, at this moment?”
“A good crew working the jewelry show in Tampa. Victor, Cholo, Paco and Candy.”
Don Ernesto examined the documents on his desk. He tapped against his teeth his note of condolence. “Have Victor and the crew done any wet work?” he asked without looking up.
In a moment Paolo answered. “They are not inexperienced,” he said.
At the boatyard in Miami, Captain Marco answered his telephone.
“Hola, Marco.”
“Don Ernesto! Buenos, señor.”
“Marco, how long has it been since you went to church?”
“I can’t remember, Patrón.”
“Then it is high time to work on your spiritual life. Go to Mass tomorrow evening. There is a nice place up in Boca. Go to six o’clock Mass. Take your helpers and pray for Antonio. Sit in front where everyone can see you. Photograph yourselves at the church.”
“Some of them, I won’t say who, can’t really take Communion.”
“Let them slink out then, or stare at their laps during Communion. Then, when that embarrassment is ended, go to a good restaurant an hour north of Miami. Send a dish back to the kitchen to piss them off, then tip big so they will remember you. And Marco, see what your friend Favorito is doing.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The station wagon rolled out of Tampa after the morning rush and headed east across Alligator Alley toward Miami.
The woman Candy rode in the back. She was thirty-five and good-looking, with some hard miles showing. The other three were men in their thirties: Victor, Cholo and Paco, all neatly dressed.
The jewelry courier they had been setting up would have to wait.
“We’ll catch him in Los Angeles,” Victor said.
“Now that we know what he likes,” Paco said, watching avidly as Candy applied some lip balm.
Candy gave him a disgusted look and replaced the lip balm carefully in the phone pocket of her purse, so it would not get through the trigger guard of her pistol.
The storage facility in west Miami was a vast building, pale green and windowless.
To Paco, who tried to write songs, it looked like a slaughterhouse. “Storage,” he said, “the slaughterhouse of dreams.”
Candy waited at the wheel of the station wagon while Victor, Paco and Cholo went inside. When the man who met them did not offer his name,
Victor said, “I’ll call you ‘Bud.’”
He showed the man a coin in his palm. Bud led them down a dim corridor lined with doors. The air smelled like sour shoes and old bedding, wadded and stained coverlets. The air of plans miscarried—divorce furniture, a child’s car seat. Paco shivered a little.
The storage cubicles had open ceilings covered with heavy wire mesh, like flophouse rooms. Bud stopped in front of a door and looked at Victor until Victor took out two banded stacks of bills.
“Half and half, Bud. Show me something,” Victor said, and gave him half the money.
This storage compartment contained a baby grand piano, a portable bar and a locked cabinet of heavier construction. Bud lifted the seat of the piano stool and took a key from between the pages of sheet music.
“Check the corridor,” he said to Paco.
“Clear,” Paco said.
Bud opened the cabinet and took out two MAC-10 machine pistols, an AK-47 and an AR-15 assault rifle.
“Selective fire, full auto?” Victor said.
Bud gave him the AR-15 with the drop-in sear that made it a machine gun.
“These are guaranteed inocentes, sinpasados—dumb gats—each of them?” Victor said.
“Bet your life.”
“No. You bet yours, Bud.”
Bud put the guns in an accordion case, along with loaded magazines and suppressors. He put a short shotgun in the case of a bass saxophone.
Victor looked at Paco. “At last an instrument you can play.”
In the afternoon they shopped at the Mall of the Americas, and Candy got some color on her hair.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Experienced at grief, Cari stayed busy.
The day after they burned Antonio’s head she had a job to do with her cousin Julieta, catering the boat tour from the Pelican Harbor Seabird Station to the rookery on Bird Key, a monthly source of income. What to give the crowd on the boat? Finger food that did not drip.
Cari Mora Page 10