"I'll remember that. My fiancée would kill me, though."
She smiled. "Might be worth it, you never know."
"You sure don't." I could see where that big butt of hers could be a real temptation for someone, just not me. I was just being nice. My heart and head were with Caroline in a way which they hadn't been with anyone in a very long time, perhaps ever.
I got back on the road but didn't have to drive far. By now I knew the location of every phone booth on Cozumel. I dialed Carillo's number first. No answer. I tried Sanchez and crossed my fingers. He might be having a sleepover at some vacationing housewife's hotel room. He picked up on the second ring.
"Cassandra, I told you…"
"Seth Halliday, Sanchez. I need to know where Carillo lives."
"And why would I want to tell you, Halliday?"
"Because I work for Mr. Fernandez and he wants to know."
A pause.
"I need to know what's up first." Cautious.
"I'm only a couple of blocks from your station. The phone booth just East. Why don't you meet me here and we'll go there together?"
He thought about it. I'd upped the ante. If I was willing to take Sanchez with me to see Carillo, it was serious.
"Be there in ten minutes." Click.
It only took him eight minutes. He was driving a tan Chrysler Town and Country.
"I didn't know you were a soccer mom." He gave me a half-hearted angry look. He didn't like his wheels either.
"Girlfriend's ride. My Lexus is in the shop."
"Yeah, they've gone to crap since Toyota bought them. You should always buy American, Sanchez."
Sanchez was getting impatient. "Alright, enough with the foreplay, Halliday. Why do you want to talk to my partner?"
"Leave the mini-van here. We'll take my car. Ford doesn't own Jaguar any longer but they're still a good ride." He didn't move from his seat. "Trust me, Sanchez, you'll want to be in on this."
His cop instincts were telling him not to, but curiosity got the better of him. When he got out I slid the Beretta out of my shoulder holster and held it up for him to see. Then I opened the back door, and laid it on the seat. "Your turn."
"You still got one, amigo. Pant leg."
I lifted my leg and slid out the Bren Ten. I held onto it. "You first, Sanchez."
He reached into his jacket, beneath his arm, and pulled out a Browning 9 millimeter. Then he reached around his back and pulled out a smaller gun I didn't recognize. He walked over and dropped them on the seat next to mine. I tossed in the Bren and closed the door. "Now we can talk."
As we pulled away, I threw him the high hard one. It was supposed to brush him back, maybe even make him hit the deck.
"I know you crossed up old Fernando, Sanchez. I know you're taking money from Vargas. I know about the money and the ship and the two dead girls. Marquez wouldn't be any too happy about that. He likes his corrupt cops exclusive."
"What's this crap about Vargas? You mean that crazy bastard Carlos Vargas? And what dead girls? You mean those two chicks in Playa?" The reaction wasn't quite what I'd expected. I brought the Jag to a stop.
"I know, Sanchez. And if you don't want Marquez to know, you'll play ball."
Sanchez's look told me I'd read it all wrong.
"You don't even know what the hell's going on, do you, Sanchez?"
He looked like a weary Armand Assante now. "Look, Marquez has a deal with us. We look the other way on some stuff flowing through that's gonna flow through whether we look the other way or not. Why would I cross a guy like Marquez and risk everything? We aren't all dumb Mexicans, gringo."
I believed him. And it made matters worse. I told him about the money and the girls and how I'd made a deposit to the church.
He finally said, "Son-of-a-bitch! Carillo!" He rolled the Rs in Carillo like only the Spanish can do. "That stupid bastard."
"He was with you when Caroline made the call, wasn't he?"
His look was his answer. Carillo had been the only one dipping into both cookie jars.
"Caroline? She the Caroline disappeared from the hostel where that old lady got iced? Looked like a pro hit. Only reason I haven't been pressing to find her. I wanna talk to your other girlfriend."
Now he'd thrown me the high hard one.
"You mean Delana?"
"Yeah, the sexy blonde with the scooter. There were fresh tracks in back of the hostel. I had them make a cast."
"Lot of scooters around."
"Someone saw it. Said it was orange. I saw it when I came out to your boat."
Sanchez was barking up the wrong tree, but for the right reasons. He was also right that Rosita's killing had pro written all over it.
"Delana's no pro, Sanchez. She's been tracking Vargas, maybe almost had him. But he got in and out too quick."
"So Vargas is on the island and killed the old lady? Why?"
"He was after Caroline, not Rosita." I told him why he wanted Caroline dead, and how it all had to do with Sheila and Nancy.
"Damn, screwing his daughter until she thinks she's his wife. You know how Puerto Rican girls are, though."
It was the most outlandish thing he could have said about the situation and we just looked at each other and started laughing. I was almost beginning to like Sanchez.
"Hey, I'm sorry about the other girl," he finally said. "I honestly thought it was just some college bullshit or I wouldn't have let Carillo…" He cussed in Spanish. "I figured at first I'd at least check around, but Carillo kept bitching about wasting time on it. I usually run the show with him but he was real worked up about it."
"Maybe Vargas had him pressure you to lay off."
He nodded. "Why is this Delana tracking Vargas? Where does she figure in?"
"Vargas blew up her daughter while killing someone else. Collateral damage. She wants him dead. She's on her way to Carillo's to find out where Vargas and his daughter are."
"It'll serve him right if she cuts his balls off."
I nodded toward the back seat. "Grab the guns. We’ll need them before the night's over."
Twenty-Three
The blue-black of night had begun to give way to dusky purple. Purple would eventually give way to bright orange flames blanketing the horizon, as though the world had caught fire. The flames of daylight would move toward this tropical paradise until another golden morning in Cozumel had arrived. It happened every day, like clockwork.
Sanchez gave me directions and we drove in silence for a while. Suddenly he said, "I've always lived here, you know. Cozumel, I mean. I was born here. Third generation. I had the nice suits and fine home before I took Marquez's money."
It was interesting that he wanted me to know why he'd taken a bribe. It told me there was more to Sanchez than met the eye. If he hadn't taken the money out of greed, or because he was corrupt, which is how I'd pegged him and his partner, then it had to be something else.
"You can't stop it, you know, the flow of drugs. The only thing that would stop it would be for Mexico's military and all those South American countries to band together and treat it like a war. Your country would have to get involved with their military, too, take the gloves off. But women and children would be killed, just like in any other war, and no one has the political stomach for the backlash. And even if they wiped it all out, it would come right back within five years. The world's too screwed up now. Kids want to escape from a future they don't see happening, and the twenty-and-thirty-somethings want to take a recreational hit to escape the future they see happening right in front of their eyes."
"Most of them are in my country," I added, when he finished making a sense.
"Used to be true, my friend, but no longer. You've got more people over there, sure, so naturally more potheads and dopers. And your culture of wealth and excess and party-life exacerbates the lure, deadens the taboo, mutes the consequences. But look how jacked up Europe and the rest of the world is now. They want that stuff just as bad. It's coming through no matter who tr
ies to stop it. How many years has it been coming through the Keys? You haven't stopped it yet, have you? Nobody talks about the corrupt American police, though, do they? They only talk about the corrupt Columbian and Mexican law enforcement unable to stop it. There is plenty of corruption, sure, but that's not why it can't be stopped. We both know that. It can't be stopped because, like I said, no one has the guts to do what's necessary to stop it. It's Apocolypse Now."
He took in a deep breath and exhaled. "So when I discovered a load coming through Cozumel I seized it, me and Carillo. We didn't turn it in. We waited. Three days later Marquez's man approaches me. I tell him he can have his stuff back and we'll look the other way for a price, and on one condition. The condition is he keeps the stuff moving, keeps it out of Cozumel. He agrees, and everyone's happy."
"You don't sound too happy," I observed.
"It's the best of the options, and all the options suck. The stuff the kids get around here, mostly weed, is small-time stuff that slips in."
"They probably slip some of it in themselves."
"No doubt. Worthless little shits. Carillo's no better. He lives the high-life now, he's just careful not to flaunt it and get caught. Me, my family was wealthy, I didn't need the cash. But a guy like Marquez would never have understood that. He'd have been suspicious had I not asked for money to look the other way. And Carillo had to have his cut anyway."
"So where does yours go?"
"I have a cousin in Central America. He's a missionary. It's not my thing but he's happy. His wife, too." He smiled. "She's got a great ass. I'd spend all my time and money on her, if I was him. Probably why I wouldn't make a good missionary."
"It would tend to be a hindrance," I agreed, grinning.
"Anyway," he continued, "he receives a bank check every month drawn on US funds, so that he doesn't have a freakin' clue who's sending it. Got him a nice church down there, buys clothes and food for the needy, brings doctors from America and Australia down there, even built a recreational center to keep the kids out of trouble."
I laughed. "And off the drugs."
Sanchez laughed. "Yeah. There's some irony for you."
"You know, you seem to lose the accent when it suits you."
"I only get all Speedy Gonzales when I'm screwin' around, or I'm pissed off. When you talk like that, people have a tendency to think you're dumb, uneducated. It helps in our line of work."
"True, though I never had to fake it. Just act naturally." We both laughed.
"I think we both missed the mark on this one, my friend," he said. "But I don't see how the death of Nancy and the old woman, Rosita, could have been prevented."
"I don't either. I got those two girls killed, though."
Sanchez nodded, sighed. "Yeah, you did. But I doubt they were gonna become nuns and transform into the next Mother Teresa. It probably would have happened somewhere down the line for them anyway. Never makes you feel any better, but it's true, I think."
"No, it doesn't," I agreed.
Sanchez pointed to a side street up ahead. I cut the lights and made the turn. I saw Delana's Vespa parked in the driveway of a spacious but not ostentatious home built with a lot of wood and a much smaller amount of brownstone. A dim glow highlighted a curtain to the far right of the entrance. "Carillo's bedroom," declared Sanchez.
The rest of the house appeared dark and there were no outside lights. I shut off the engine about fifty yards short of the house and we coasted to a stop about twenty yards down the street. We got out of the Jag with as much stealth and as little racket as we could manage. A small dog much farther down the street was barking at something, but not at us. Normal.
Sanchez motioned that he'd take the back. I carefully made my way to the front as he climbed over a high wood fence without making even the slightest bit of noise. At the door I counted to ten, then turned the knob. It was locked. I tilted the massive pot holding the heavy sago palm sitting on the porch and found the key Sanchez had said would be there.
I unlocked the door and slipped inside. The foyer was long and in total darkness. The rhythmic squeak of a mattress to my right, in the lighted bedroom, was the only intrusion on the silence of night. A shadow moved in front of me and it was Sanchez.
Moans with an angry connotation began to accompany the squeaking. Had Carillo turned the table on Delana? If he was giving it to her, he was doing it with her gagged, which could account for the moans. I held up three fingers and bent them one at a time. We kicked the door in with the last bent finger, Sanchez going low, rolling to his left, and me going high, and to the right. Delana wasn't there. Carillo was.
He was naked, and handcuffed to the head of the bed. His legs were spread and his feet tied with rope to the foot of the bed. A snow angel stuck in one position, unable to finish the wings.
Carillo's mouth was gagged with a tie, probably his own. He'd stopped twisting and turning when we busted through the door. We holstered our weapons and Sanchez walked over to him. Sanchez slapped him so hard with his open hand that it whipped Carillo's head around. He folded the blanket back from the empty side of the bed over Carillo's privates. "I don't want to see the ugly little head you think with, Carillo."
"Tag the gag out," I said.
Sanchez reached around and untied it. Carillo spit out and made sour faces from the taste of cloth in his mouth.
"Where's Delana, Carillo?"
He took a little too long to answer and Sanchez slapped him again, just as hard. "Answer the man. What'd you tell her?"
Carillo realized the jig was up. His buddy Sanchez wouldn't be treating him like this unless he knew what he'd gotten up to. "She wanted to know where Vargas and his snatch were at."
"We're asking the same question, and unless you want to stay like this, Carillo, you'd better tell us, too," I said.
"I don't know, that's what I told her."
Sanchez didn't slap him this time. He reached down and grabbed his package and squeezed. "Alright," Carillo yelped, his face contorted in pain. "I don't know where he and that piece of ass of his are, but I have a number. A cell phone."
Sanchez had let go but Carillo was still aching, and beads of sweat had formed on his forehead.
"You gave her the number?"
"I had to. Vargas is going to kill me." He looked directly at Sanchez. "I know I screwed up, but you gotta let me get a head start. Vargas will kill me."
"I wouldn't be worrying about Vargas, old friend." Sanchez practically spit out the last word, as though it disgusted him, as though being in the same room with Carillo made him want to take a bath. "I'd be worried about Marquez finding out you were taking Vargas's money as well as his."
"He doesn't have to find out!"
"Oh, yes he does, and this man behind me? He's going to tell him."
Carillo's eyes were darting all around. He was a cornered cat searching for a way out. "Give me a head start, for old time's sake!"
Sanchez looked at me. I shrugged, as if his fate meant nothing to me. We were playing him but he was too stupid and desperate to figure it out.
"I'll think about it. First the number."
Carillo rattled it off and I wrote it down.
"Did she call him from here?"
Carillo's demeanor changed, and I suddenly realized how she'd played it. "She had you make the call didn't she?"
He closed his eyes and nodded. "Made me set up a face-to-face meeting. Made me say some weird stuff."
"What kind of weird stuff?"
"That I knew exactly where the girl was that had seen him and his lover. And that I knew how he ate the food from his own garden. It didn't make no damn sense. I think she's crazy."
It would make perfect sense to Carlos and his daughter.
"She make you ask for money?"
"Yeah, he was to bring fifty grand with him, and they both had to come or no deal. If they didn't both of them come, and have the money, I'd put the girl on a plane with instructions to tell the cops who had come looking for the Jane Doe
you found on the beach, by name, and why they were looking for her. She made me repeat the last part."
I whistled. I realized then exactly what Delana was doing. It wasn't just Caroline she'd wanted off the boat. It was everyone. No more collateral damage. Except for one person.
"She had you set the meeting up on my boat?"
Carillo looked shocked. "Yeah, how the hell?" He shrugged. "She had me say I'd taken you out and had the girl, but that I'd stashed her somewhere safe until he came across with the money. I'd call him and tell him where she was as soon as he'd delivered it to me on the boat and I was safe."
Sanchez was shaking his head back and forth, the way you do at a child. "You know, amigo, you're almost too stupid to live."
"Just a head start," he pleaded. "A few hours! For old times!"
I shrugged. Carillo took it to mean it was up to Sanchez, but we'd already decided if he was there and not dead we'd throw him in the trunk and decide what to do with him later. We'd have to untie him from the bed anyway. I asked, "One more thing. Delana's Vespa's out front. She took your car?" He nodded.
Sanchez said, "A Jeep Cherokee."
I nodded. "Untie him."
Sanchez knew him better than me and he was fooled, too, which is all I have to say by way of excuse for what happened next.
Sanchez found the key in Carillo's pants on the floor and uncuffed his hands first. Bad move. He had one of his legs untied when Carillo pulled Sanchez by his jacket in a motion quick as a cat. When he pulled, the jacket opened and gave Carillo access to the holster. As he slid it from the leather he kicked Sanchez in the gut with his freed leg, firing at the same time. The bullet caught Sanchez in the shoulder and spun him around.
My reflexes are much better than average, and I'm a good shooter, but Carillo did just the opposite of what I'd expected him to do: he shot out the slat at the foot of the bed which was keeping his other foot tethered and rolled to the opposite side of the room.
My bullet caught him in the hip instead of the chest and he came up from the floor firing. But as he did I dropped down and fired twice. Both shots caught him in the chest, dead center. Almost simultaneously, perhaps two or three-tenths of a second after the first slug that found Carillo's chest, and before the second, Sanchez, lying prone on the floor at the foot of the bed, fired from that little toy gun he carried behind his waist. It made an ever-so-tiny hole in the center of Carillo's forehead. Carillo dropped back against the closet door and slid to the floor, finished.
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