by Blake Banner
The white Russian was sweating hard, glancing from me to Ivanovich. “Please, Boss…”
I shot him through the left temporal lobe. He gave a small jump and went straight down on his ass before keeling over on his side. The girls gave a collective small squeal and huddled together, hugging each other for comfort. There was a platinum blonde who started babbling about doing anything I wanted her to do. They were worth a lot of money and could make me rich. The boys went very white and I smiled at Ivanovich.
“Have I got your attention yet? Or do we need to focus it more closely?”
He was scared, but he was doing a good job of hiding it.
“I keep no cash in the house.”
I shifted my smile to the kid with back-to-front hair. “What happens next depends a lot on whether you lie to me. What’s your name?”
He tried three times and finally said, “Cassius.”
“That’s very good. We’re OK now, see? So when you come and visit Uncle Ivan here, how does he pay you, check, cash, credit card…?”
This time he didn’t hesitate for a second. “Cash.”
“You’re doing great, Cassius. Now one last question. When you’re not keeping Uncle Ivan company, how do you make your living?”
He glanced at his pal. “We, me and Earl,” he pointed at his pal, “we supply…” He pressed his knees together and straightened his back, trying to infuse what he was going to say with some dignity. “We supply discerning customers with recreational commodities…”
I cut through the crap and said, “You’re pimps and dealers, you supply coke and whores.”
Cassius was going to protest, but Earl said, “Yes. And we would be happy to work with you, Mr…”
I studied him a moment and turned my smile back to Ivan. “Seems things have changed a bit, Ivan. Now, let’s try one more time. Where is your cash?”
He swallowed hard. “I don’t…”
I shot Cassius just above the bridge of his nose. His head whiplashed, spraying gore over the back of the couch. Then he keeled over sideways onto Ivan’s lap. All hell broke loose. Earl started off a shrill scream with his hands plastered over his face. It was contagious and started the girls screaming, too.
The platinum blonde broke free from the hugging cluster and started tearing at the back of Ivan’s head with her nails, shrieking, “Tell him, you fucking bastard! Tell him! You’ll get us all killed! You piece of shit! Tell him!”
I fired a shot into the ceiling and a small shower of plaster drifted down like snow onto Boris’s huge carcass. He looked astonished, like snow shouldn’t fall in New Mexico in August.
Six terrified, staring faces, twelve wide, terrified eyes, twelve tiny pupils trying to shut out the horror of what they were seeing.
I shifted my gaze to Earl. “Ivan is about to get you killed, Earl. Anything you want to tell me?”
He nodded furiously, then winced as a dark, wet patch spread across his pants and onto the suede sofa. “In the office upstairs, behind the Modigliani, in the safe. I don’t know how much or what the combination is, but I know he keeps at least two hundred grand there at any time, sometimes more. It’s what he gets from the sales…”
I nodded, let the smile fade and shifted an expressionless face to look at Ivan. Though I was looking at him, I spoke to Earl.
“You asked me my name, Earl, remember? My name is El Verdugo.”
I shot Earl through his forehead, above the bridge of his nose, and he slid sideways forty-five degrees onto his dead friend with the back-to-front hair.
There was no screaming this time. There was a deathly silence. I let it linger for a moment. Then, “Here is what is going to happen. We are, all of us, going to go upstairs to the office. You are going to open the safe and you are going to give half of the contents to these ladies.”
I waved the Glock at the four girls. Their jaws dropped slightly and they all glanced at each other. I went on.
“I will take the other half. If you cooperate from this point on, and do exactly what I say, you get to take five grand and go east. I never want to see you again in New Mexico. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that is charity or compassion. I have none for your kind of scum. You take a message back to your Bratva, that if any of you show up around here again, the Verdugo will execute them without pity.” I paused, searching his eyes. I thought I saw hope and pressed on. “Give me one, small hesitation and I will blow out every joint in your body and leave you here to die as your house burns around you.” I leaned forward, with my elbows on my knees. “Do you think I am bluffing, Ivan?”
He shook his head. “I will cooperate.”
“I know you will.”
I stood and he struggled out from under the two boys who were lying in his lap. The girls were watching me with something like awe. I jerked my head toward the stairs and the five of them filed up the steps toward the long, galleried landing. The platinum blonde kept glancing over her shoulder at me and smiling. I didn’t see any point in smiling back.
The office was the first door on the right. He pushed in and the girls followed him. It wasn’t an original concept. It was the classic, Hollywood vision of an Old-World office, with a burgundy carpet, dark wood bookcases, chesterfield chairs and a sofa set around a fireplace and a big oak desk. It reminded me of another office I had once known, but I had no idea where or when.
Across the room, I could see the Modigliani hanging on the wall. I jerked my chin at it and said, “Open it and take out everything.” To the girls, I said, “Sit.”
They sat on the chesterfields and had a full conversation with their eyes without once opening their mouths.
Ivan crossed the room and I stayed close behind him. His hands were shaking badly. He wanted to believe he was going east with my message, but something inside was telling him that the longest journey he was about to make was in the form of ash, across the New Mexico desert.
He tugged on the painting and it folded back like the cover of a book. Behind it was the safe.
As his hand hesitated over the buttons, I asked him, “What’s your pakhan’s name back in New York?”
He glanced at me over his shoulder. The question had done what it was intended to do. It had given him hope. So long as he hoped he was going to get out of there and head east with a message, he would cooperate with me.
He babbled, “Marat Balagulavich.”
“Don’t look at me. Open the safe and take out all the contents. While you do it, listen. Can you empty and listen at the same time?”
He nodded fervently and started punching in numbers. I went on.
“You tell Marat that the Verdugo owns New Mexico now. That if he stays in the East, we can live in peace, but if he sends more boys out here, I will go east and I will gut him like a fish. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
He had the safe open and he was pulling out hardback notebooks in red, blue and black, and stacks of cash in used bills. There was a lot of cash.
“Put that on the desk and sit down.”
He dumped an armful of cash on the desk and sat.
To the blonde, I said, “Take everything out and put it on the desk. Divide it into two piles. Set five grand aside for this clown. One of you go search the bedrooms, find two bags to put this stuff in.”
They scrambled like greyhounds out of the gates and I turned to Ivanovich. His face was pathetic with fear, gratitude and hope.
“Mendez.”
He waited a moment and when he realized there was no more, he said, “What about him?”
“Where is he?”
“He blows town.”
“Why?”
“He is scared of you, I think. He thinks you are going for him.”
“You have a good relationship, right? You cooperate. You’re not at war.”
“No, no!” He shook his head. “He use Chupacabras to bring merchandise across border. We have some influence with Border Control so we can facilitate, then we buy big amounts, many kilos,
and distribute in our areas, like New York, DC… Russians and Mexicans friends now in New Mexico.”
“Where is he?”
“At his ranch. I think he is go to his ranch.”
“Has he got Sole with him? Sole from the Casa Castaneda?”
He nodded. “She is his girl.”
I ignored the hot burn in my gut. “What kind of arsenal have you got in this house?”
He shrugged, spread his hands. “Couple of rifles for the boys, some handguns…”
I nodded. “OK. There’s a lot of money here. How much?”
“A million buck. We are expecting a delivery…”
“This money was for Mendez?”
He nodded again.
I asked, “Where? When?”
He sighed and sagged and buried his face in his hands. The girls came back with two sports bags and started stashing the money. I picked up the five grand and held it out to Ivanovich.
“Take this and leave, or die here right now.”
He dropped his hands and stared at the money. The girls were standing, staring at me. I looked at the platinum blonde, then at her friends. I didn’t smile.
“By loading that money into those bags, you make yourselves complicit in every murder that took place here tonight. By taking the half a million bucks, you compound that complicity and make it irrefutable. By doing it after I have explained it, you guarantee yourselves life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Talk to the cops and I will destroy every one of you. Understood?” They nodded vigorously. I said, “Get the hell out of here and do something useful with your lives.”
They ran. I heard their feet clattering down the stairs and repeated my question to Ivanovich. “Where? When?”
“Orogrande. There is RV park. Space thirty-two, there is RV with picture of Che in window, looking out, red and black, like negative. That is meeting place. Tomorrow night, nine o’clock.”
“Where is his ranch?”
“Dell City. He has plantation there. Also, so remote it is convenient for drop off shipment from Mexico. Maybe seventy miles from Ciudad Juarez, only sixty from Orogrande, but you have to go all around, down to Juarez, then take Route 62. Then there is intersection with no signpost, nothing, at eighty mile from Juarez. You turn there. But also there is quick route through desert, I can tell you.” Tears gathered on his eyelids and spilled onto his cheeks. His bottom lip trembled. “You not gonna kill me, right?”
“I’m not gonna kill you. Draw me the map.”
He scribbled it out with shaking hands on a piece of paper and handed it to me. I studied it a moment and it made sense to me. I folded it and put it in my back pocket. Then I held up the five grand and showed it to him.
“How many people have died of overdoses from the dope you sell?”
He shook his head, telling me he didn’t know.
“How many people have been killed supporting the traffic of your drugs?”
“I don’t…” He shook his head again.
“How many lives have been destroyed, even if those people have not died? How many families, how many children, how many souls have sunk into darkness, with no hope of redemption?”
“I don’t know. I am sorry. Please…”
“How many lies have you told in your life, Ivan?”
“Many…” He started to sob. “Many, many…” He dropped on his knees, as though praying. “I am sorry. Please forgive me. I will devote life to good. Please, please forgive…”
“Like you, I lied. But I can’t forgive you, Ivan. I am not a judge, I am just the executioner.”
I shot him, like the others, through his frontal lobes, where the higher mental functions take place.
I left him lying on his burgundy carpet, with his blood blending easily among the fibers, and went downstairs. I collected some weapons, opened all the gas appliances in the kitchen, then went and found gasoline in the garage. I doused the whole ground floor, taking care to saturate the dead bodies. Then I sealed the house and carried the sports bag with the cash and the notebooks out of the house.
I gave the house a good twenty minutes to fill up with gas before I made the call to Ivan’s cell. By that time, I was on my way back to Tularosa. So I didn’t hear the detonation, or see the fireball it sent up into the sky, until I watched it later, on the local news, where it was attributed once again to El Verdugo. That made me smile. I didn’t know who I was, but they did.
But before I had time to watch it on the news, I dumped the cash under the bed, along with the other sports bag. I didn’t know how much money there was under there, but I figured it was a quarter shy of a million. Assuming the girls hadn’t screwed me too badly, but after what they had seen that night, I didn’t think they’d be in the mood to double-cross me.
I slung two AK-47s in the back of the Jeep, put a fresh magazine in the Glock and slipped a second Glock in my waistband, telling myself I had to go shopping for a Sig. But before that, I would need an identity. I climbed in behind the wheel, fired up the massive, silent engines, and headed back down south, toward Orogrande, the RV park and the remote, inaccessible Dell City.
There I would find Mendez, and execute him.
Thirteen
The journey was a little over one hundred miles and should have taken a little under an hour, but over half of it, some sixty miles, was cross country in the desert, in the dark, and that reduced my speed. Sometimes I was traveling at thirty miles per hour or less. But eventually, I began to emerge from the desert into large, circular fields as much as half a mile across. Following Ivanovich’s instructions, I wound through these vast, circular fields and eventually found Gentry Road. Here I pulled off the road and slipped silently among some eucalyptus trees. There I swung down from the cab and walked under a black, starlit sky to a vast iron gate with a small plaque attached to the right gatepost, which read Casa del Diablo. The house of the devil.
The air was cold. An icy, desultory breeze crept in under my shirt, making my skin crawl. Far off, I could hear a coyote. Nearer there was an owl, and the relentless sawing of frogs.
The gate was padlocked and the black paint was peeling off to reveal orange rust underneath. Through it, I could just make out a sprawling garden of palms, bananas, yucca and bamboo. In the midst of it, there was a large, turquoise pool, and beyond the pool was a two-story colonial house with a large veranda. All the doors and windows were shuttered. I took hold of the padlock.
It troubled me that a guy like Mendez would have his ranch secured with a simple padlock. Peering through the bars, I could see no armed guards on patrol, no lights, no sign of any kind of activity, though I could hear the gentle lap of water. I wondered for a moment if he used the same rationale Ivory had, that a nasty reputation and fear of reprisals would be enough to keep intruders at bay. But logic dictated that kind of thinking would have held good until Ivory got killed, but not after. It certainly wouldn’t hold true after the TV started talking about the Verdugo.
So what was this guy playing at?
It took me fifteen seconds to bust the padlock. The gate creaked open, complaining about unoiled hinges. I slipped through, closed and padlocked it behind me.
I was on a long gravel path that led through plantations of date palms and orange groves on either side, but was lost in darkness ahead. My footsteps sounded loud on the gravel and I shifted to the left, where there was soft grass underfoot. Gradually, the hulking, dark shape of a house began to emerge from the blackness ahead, and I could make out the gabled roof and chimney pots barely silhouetted against the dark sky.
The pale balustrade of a porch was just visible, faintly luminous, at the front of the house, and beneath it the dark turquoise glow of a swimming pool, surrounded by lawns.
I made my way to the edge of the pool. The sawing of the frogs was louder here. There were no night birds. The owl had fallen silent. I stood a moment, looking at the tiny reflections of starlight on the water. I noticed absently that the water in the pool was dirty, dull and
full of dead leaves. I imagined for a moment that I could see a guy looking up at me out of the murk; a reflection of me, looking down at him, lost in the depths. I rubbed my chin. I needed a shave—and a double Irish.
Irish.
I turned and walked up the steps to the veranda. The place was desolate. It looked like it had been abandoned weeks ago. I explored the porch and found that it went all the way around the house. There was nothing open or half-open that would let me in easily, so I made my way to the back of the house. There was a back door that I guessed led to the kitchen. It was a Chubb lock instead of a Yale. It yielded to me after a few seconds and I stepped into a darkened room. I was aware that it was too easy. A voice in my head was telling me you can’t break into a Mexican drug baron’s ranch in New Mexico this easily. But somehow, the voice remained beyond my perception and I stepped further into the darkness.
I flipped the switch by the door and discovered what I had already guessed: that the power was off. Mendez had either not come here, or had never been here. The house was a front for his cross-border operations, but it was rarely inhabited.
So I closed the door, switched on the flashlight on my phone and played it around the room, but the kitchen didn’t tell me anything, except that it confirmed Mendez was not here, and possibly never had been.
I crossed the room and stood in the doorway that gave on to the entrance hall. It was a dead place. Nobody had been here, nobody had imprinted their identity on the house. I had hoped to find Mendez and Sole here, but I had discovered an empty shell. I wondered why I didn’t leave, but something inside nagged me to stay and explore further. Though what I was searching for, I did not know.
I climbed the stairs and moved from dark bedroom to dark bedroom, playing the beam of my flashlight over chairs, beds and wardrobes that leapt out suddenly from the shadows, but quickly hid again once the light had passed by, leaving no clue behind them as to Sole’s fate, or where she was. I sat on the bed in the master bedroom, switched off the flashlight and smelled the musty air, listening to the silence. Had they fought here? Had they planned scams together? Had they made love? Was I an intended victim? There were no ghosts here.