“No. He’d have killed everyone, not knocked them out with some drug.”
“Anything else you can remember?”
Juan almost decided against what he was going to say next, but he said it anyway. “There is one thing. Maybe I was just imagining it, but I could have sworn I heard Boraita walking up behind me before I got sprayed.”
Rockwell squinted. “You mean to say you think Boraita opened the truck door without making a sound, got the jump on you, beat you up, got back in the car, and then gave himself a knockout shot? You remember the piece of shit he was driving, right? It’s the oldest unmarked police vehicle in the auto pool. Thing’s all rusted to hell, and the door hinges screech like a banshee.”
“I know how it sounds, but I know the sound of people’s footsteps. It was Boraita. I don’t know how, but it was him.”
“I’m sorry to have to say that it was not,” Rockwell said. “Whoever sprayed and attacked you also kicked the side of the car. Left a new dent in the paneling. Definitely would have left a mark on the shoe of whoever did it. Boraita’s boots are unmarked. Wasn’t him.”
Juan threw his hands up.
“I think you need to get some sleep, okay, Patch?”
Juan dropped his head as he heard two sets of snickering in the room.
“C’mon, Blackbeard,” Cali said. “I’ll drive you back to your place.”
Juan followed behind Cali, his hand pressed against her back. The outline of her bra strap beneath her shirt disrupted his thoughts, but his mind continued to work the problem as they walked. What exactly what was going on? Rockwell had subtly asked him if Paul had been responsible. Juan didn’t think so. Besides, Paul seemed to be in a killing mood. No one had died in the incident, but two policemen and Boraita had been knocked out with some kind of drug, most likely. So who did that leave?
Cali stopped abruptly, and Juan walked into her back.
“Hey,” she said. “Watch it.”
Juan heard the beep of an elevator being summoned and understood. The doors slid open with a heavy grating sound, and they walked in. He listened but didn’t hear anyone else get on. The only scent he smelled was Cali’s perfume. It was fresh yet aggressive. He liked it.
The elevator doors closed.
“Is there anyone else in here?” Juan asked.
“Just you and me,” Cali said as the elevator lurched and began to descend.
“Oh? No ‘arrgh, matey!’ or some other childish joke?” Juan asked. When he heard a man clear his throat from the corner of the elevator, Juan stood up straight and apologized, explaining that he couldn’t see.
“Yes, I can see that,” the man said. His voice was slightly gravelly but refined, like a doctor’s. The elevator stopped, and the doors opened again. The man exited the elevator, and Cali laughed.
“You’re so stupid,” Juan said, and then found himself laughing along with her. The door slid closed again, and Juan felt Cali take his hands in hers.
“Now we’re alone.”
“Yeah right,” Juan said. He could almost feel static electricity from her palms. “Your hands are sweaty.”
“No, they’re not—yours are,” Cali said quickly, taking her hands from his. “Gross.”
“Whatever.” Juan wiped his hands on his pants. He knew his hands weren’t sweating. “Was anyone looking at me weirdly on the way to the elevator?” He wanted to ask her if Mika had seen him, but he was too embarrassed.
“Weirdly? I don’t think that’s a word.”
“I think it is,” Juan said.
“Definitely not.”
“Why don’t you Google it? I would, but I can’t see at the moment.”
Cali snorted.
“I don’t see how this is so funny.”
The elevator came to another stop, and the doors opened.
“To answer your question, yes people were looking at you. Well, staring would be more accurate. A little kid even made a face at you.”
“Oh yeah?”
“And you should have seen the nurses. They were all looking at you as if you were the most pitiable thing they’d ever seen . . .”
Cali stopped as someone stepped into the elevator. The footsteps were lithe. A woman. Juan tilted his head up and gave a silent sniff for a familiar scent. The elevator closed and began to move.
I think it might be her, he thought. And then, Aw hell. What do I say? What do I say? He turned his head left and then right as if he could somehow see the woman from under his eye patches if he turned just right. I’ve got to say something. What if she thinks I’m ignoring her or something? What if . . .
The elevator stopped, and he felt Cali guiding him out of the elevator from behind with both hands on his shoulders. When they were a safe distance from the elevator, Juan almost asked Cali if she knew the woman who had stepped into the elevator.
He didn’t.
He wished he had.
By the time they finished dinner and Cali pulled up to Juan’s apartment, it was already dark.
Cali followed Juan up to the front door of his apartment and waited while he fumbled with his keys, trying unsuccessfully to open the door; he kept dropping the keys. “You sure you don’t want me to stick around?”
“You already paid for my dinner,” Juan said. “I think I’m good.”
“Oh, you paid for dinner. I lifted your wallet when you weren’t looking.”
Juan knew she hadn’t. He was a professional pickpocket and would have felt such a con even without the use of his sight. He played along, though, and pretend-laughed for her benefit.
“Sure you don’t need me to help you change your clothes or anything?” she asked.
God the thought of Cali’s hands on his bare skin was almost too much to bear. What was she trying to do to him? Was she being serious? Probably not, but he wouldn’t find out—he had a busy night ahead of him and couldn’t afford to be sidetracked no matter how . . . things might have turned out.
“Think I’m gonna turn in early tonight, since I can’t watch TV. Aren’t you going to yoga or CrossFit tonight?”
“I already missed it. It’s going on nine o’clock. Time flies when you’re taking care of a blind man.”
Cali’s cell phone chimed. “Shit. It’s from Rockwell. Looks like Aguilar still wants me and Sanchez to watch tonight. In the hospital room.”
“That sucks,” Juan said.
“Is Sanchez the gassy one?”
Juan laughed. “No. That’s Boraita. And he didn’t smell.”
“Well, I gotta go. You want me to clear your apartment really quick, since you can’t see?”
“Sure.”
He heard Cali draw her pistol from the clutch slung over her shoulder and the sound of her thumb flicking off the safety.
Juan stood just inside the door against the wall, listening. He could barely hear Cali creeping through the darkened apartment, waiting for the sound of the creaking floorboard just before the bathroom. The creak sounded, and then he heard her flip on the lights in the bathroom and check behind the shower curtain. Then he heard Cali flipping the bedroom light, followed by a gunshot.
Juan rushed into the apartment. “Cali!”
“Let me go!”
Juan flipped up his patches to see Cali standing over Marta, Marta’s cheap revolver still smoking and lying on the floor.
“You care to explain this?” Cali asked Juan.
Juan scanned the apartment, the light hurting his eyes. He walked up to Cali and touched her arm. “Are you okay?”
She knocked his hand away. “Considering I nearly took a bullet in my gut, I’ve been better. You know this woman?”
“Yes. She’s an old friend. Someone might be trying to kill her, so I’m letting her stay at my place until—”
“Oh, I get it now,” Cali said. “She’s the reason you missed yoga last night.”
“Yes,” Juan said, relieved that she understood. “I was going to—”
Cali’s hand came out of nowhere, smacking J
uan across the cheek and staggering him in his surprised state. She put her gun away and strode past him toward the front door.
“Cali. It’s not what it looks like,” Juan said as he watched her backside go, his hand outstretched in a futile gesture. The door slammed, blocking his view.
He turned to where Marta was standing, her pupils as wide as before.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought she was trying to rob your house.”
“You could have killed her.” The words almost stung his lips, he said them with such venom.
“I didn’t mean to. Why’d you let her in if you knew I was here?”
“I forgot. There’s a lot on my mind right now. Shit.”
He turned and ripped off his patches and went to the bathroom mirror to see how bad his eyes looked. They were quite red, and the light still hurt them. He pulled the tiny squeeze bottle of eye solution from his pocket.
A cooling sensation washed over his eyes as he squirted it in. After dabbing off the excess with a hand towel, he went into his bedroom to a locked chest sitting against the wall next to his headboard. He unlocked the chest and retrieved what he thought he might need.
Then he found Marta sitting silently out on the sofa, biting at her nails.
“I need to go out and do something. Can I trust you to stay in the house? I’ll take you to Barranquilla tomorrow.”
Marta nodded.
13
Cache
He left just after midnight.
This wasn’t the safest part of town, but he knew how to spot trouble even if his vision was a little spotty. When this was finished, he could rest his eyes.
For the most part, the streets were empty, and he avoided the areas doused with shadows where a thug could hide and jump out. He actually took more precautions than he had originally planned because even though the eye drops had helped, he still didn’t seem to have the full extent of his usual night vision.
It couldn’t be helped.
He pushed on, moving along streets in an efficient manner, his only friend the moon high in the darkness.
Wearing a casual canvas jacket over dark jeans was a good enough disguise in these parts. The jacket was also just light enough that he only sweated a pint before he reached his destination.
Juan prided himself on being able to camouflage himself within most settings by changing his gait and the position of his shoulders, neck, and head to match the locals. And if someone stopped him, he’d even change his dialect to match the region. His current slouching walk suggested that he was a down-on-his-luck line worker at a factory, or maybe a mechanic. Maybe he was a grifter.
Usually Juan could determine the required body motions and voice of a locale by simply observing its people walking and talking and interacting for a few minutes. He didn’t have to observe now—he’d done that when he’d selected this area as one of the stash locations. While he always paid others to deposit and retrieve the money, he knew there might come a time when he’d have to do the job himself.
Juan had reserved two emergency stash houses in case he ever needed to retrieve money himself. It had been years since he’d been to each, and he needed the map hidden in his bedroom chest within the false compartment of a cigar box to make sure he found the places.
Juan knew that he had divulged information on his operation to Ricky when questioned while under the effects of a truth serum a few months back, but Ricky hadn’t asked if Juan had a Cayman account or any emergency stash houses. Since only his accountant had access to the Cayman account—and that’s where most of Juan’s money was—his money was safe as long as he could reach his accountant. He kept trying to contact his accountant, but his emails kept bouncing back as undeliverable. If both of his emergency stash houses were empty, there was really only one explanation. Marta had broken into his chest, found the map, and stolen the money. She’d already broken into his apartment tonight. If she was a leak, he would deal with her.
He had already checked the first emergency stash house, and it was empty, so it was not looking good for Marta. This disturbed Juan, because the woman had always been so dependable after he’d gotten her straightened out. Maybe she had gotten the money out to pay for more drugs . . .
He pushed the thought aside, not wanting to condemn her without being certain. Still, her showing up like this and possibly being connected to the snake people . . .
Now he was working his way to the second stash house circled on the map. As he neared the doorway, he thought he saw a figure standing in the shadows on the other side of the street. He stopped and blinked, but could no longer see the shape.
Seeing things, he thought, and opened the door with a key from the chest. He stepped inside and locked the door behind him. The room before him had been a small hair salon before the owner foreclosed on it. Juan’s accountant had bought the space for cheap through a shell corporation.
By flashlight, he made his way past the dusty salon chairs at the front of the room, following a set of scuffled footprints leading back to the counter. The footprints were small and not deep on the coating of dust.
Marta.
The footprints stopped behind the counter next to an air conditioner unit attached to the wall. An outdated cash register sat on top of the counter with its drawer protruding, some of the slots still containing paper money. It was a red herring in case someone broke into the place looking for something to steal.
The flagrant temptation might cause the trespasser to overlook the air conditioner unit on the wall behind the counter. Juan bent over and pulled off the top part of the unit. Where there ought to be wires and metal and belts and fans, there was an empty cavity. Well, it wasn’t exactly empty. There was a canvas bag at the bottom. Juan lifted it.
It was empty.
A scratching sound came from the door at the front of the store, and Juan set the air conditioner lid on the countertop and raised his gun. The glass storefront and door were taped up with opaque parchment paper, so Juan could only see the distorted shadow of a figure outside. He couldn’t even tell if it was a man or a woman.
Maybe it’s just Marta following me.
He waited, his gun trained on the front door. Eventually the figure disappeared. Juan wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his canvas jacket.
He was about to turn away when something heavy thudded against the glass and then drew back out into the night.
“What the hell . . .”
He raised his gun again and focused. His eyes were starting to sting, so he blinked rapidly to lubricate them. Then he focused again.
He jumped as a solid object shot through the door in a shattering of glass, landing on the linoleum floor in front of the counter with rock-like grace, sliding a little farther on the thick carpet of dust. Juan looked over the counter; it was a chipped brick wrapped with twine, holding against it a . . .
Oh God, no . . .
He vaulted over the counter, his boots knocking off the cash register as he landed on the other side and rolled. As he was about to come out of the roll, the small primary charge detonated, spraying the salon’s interior with a misting of fuel that covered and dripped from the ceiling and walls and defunct salon stations. With his entire back sprayed by the fuel cloud, Juan fired his Achilles tendons and pushed himself toward the front door.
I’m not going to make it . . .
The door was on the other side of the room. He didn’t have time to cut over diagonally, so he pushed off with one last sprinting burst and chopped the expansive glass storefront window with the butt of the pistol as his body careened against it, his knees brought up toward his chest, his other elbow shielding his face and chest.
That’s when the fuel-air explosive’s second charge detonated, tearing a hole in the stale air of the shop like a vacuum, the rest of the storefront windows blasting outward over Juan’s prone body, his hands folded over his neck above him. The sprinkling thrust of glass peppered his canvas-jacketed back, the licking whoosh of flames exhaling ou
t into the oxygen-rich night air of the city street.
The pressure wave of the explosion rocked the very foundation of the adjoining shops next door and the apartments above. Luckily it had been a relatively small bomb, but it had completely obliterated the counter and surrounding salon equipment that had been doused by the airborne fuel. The street-facing bricks of the shop’s wall had been splintered apart around the casements and shoved against the side of Juan’s leg like Jenga blocks.
Juan stood and stumbled to the side of the blown-out glass of the shop, wondering if he had just survived or not. His chest ached like it never had before, and he wondered if his lungs had been ruptured by the blast wave as he tried to suck in a breath. He seemed to be alive.
He moved about in a daze, his boots crunching fragments of glass and stone, thinking about how the fertile layers of dust inside had fed the fire. Already black smoke and flames reached out from the side of the storefront as if to grab and choke him. He raised his sleeve to his mouth and coughed. Although he looked all around, he could see no trace of whoever had thrown the bomb inside the shop.
He still couldn’t hear much. The concussive force of the blast had partially blown out his ear drums. He hoped the hearing loss would be temporary, seeing as he’d already lost his vision for part of the day. His vision also seemed worse, and he wasn’t surprised. Internal organ injuries were common in close proximity to fuel-air explosions. He knew he ought to drop himself off at the hospital, but there’d be too many questions.
He planted a palm against the exterior brick wall and forced himself to keep moving. Lights were starting to come on in some of the apartments above the other storefronts on both sides of the empty street. Somewhere in the distance, a fire alarm screamed. He couldn’t allow himself to be found here.
Still caught in a daze, he realized his phone was ringing. He fumbled it from his jacket. “Hello?” he nearly shouted into the phone.
There was a long pause, and Juan repeated his question.
The Colombian Rogue Page 8