by Tom Wood
“Then call him,” Victor said. “Tell him it was a false alarm. I’m the girl’s cousin. I took her home. Tell him nothing else.”
The guy swallowed and took out a phone from his jacket with the same kind of slow and obvious movements he used to put his gun away. He unlocked the screen.
“Hold it so I can see it too,” Victor said. “And put it on speaker.”
The leader thumbed the screen a few times, doing just that. Victor saw him access call history and dial the last number received. It rang for a short moment.
The call connected and a man said, “Yes?”
The guy in the passenger’s seat said, “False alarm. No foreigner, but a light skin. A cousin. He took her home with him.”
“Follow the cousin for a few days. Make sure he doesn’t go to the police. If he does, deal with him and the girl. If he doesn’t, forget them both.”
“Yes, Señor Diaz.”
The call disconnected.
“See?” he said to Victor. “We can be friends. It’s all good. All cool.”
“When would you next speak to Diaz?”
He shrugged. “In a few days, maybe a week, after we had checked out the cousin as he requested.”
“Good,” Victor said. “Do you know where Diaz plays poker?”
“No, but I can find out. Listen, whatever it is you’re doing, we can help you. We don’t just work for the cartel. We have private clients too. You could be one.” He smiled. “No charge, of course. First job for free. Okay?”
Despite the gun pointed at his face, he looked genuine, as though he had decided Victor was the better master to serve. Which wasn’t a bad conclusion to come to, although it would have been much better to have reached it before now.
Victor was planning to shoot him in the heart. A head shot might eject brains and blood all over the windscreen. It might put a hole through the glass. A nine mil in the chest wasn’t likely to come out of the other side, but a destroyed heart had the same effect as a destroyed brain, albeit a little slower.
He said, “I’m thinking about it,” because he wanted to keep the leader calm while he waited for a car to overtake. Victor didn’t want to shoot someone with a vehicle full of witnesses in parallel, heart shot or not.
“Well?” the guy said.
Victor didn’t answer. Instead, he stiffened, all muscles tensing as his nervous system was overloaded with electricity. His face reddened and the blood vessels in his neck and temples stood out in relief through the skin. The pain was horrific. His eyes watered. Muscle spasms made his whole body shake.
He heard the fizzing clicks of the stun gun jammed against his side, but could do nothing about it. His mind was trapped in a form it could not control.
Time ceased to have meaning. The pain and paralysis seemed endless.
“That’s enough,” the leader said.
The fizzing clicks ceased as the stun gun was pulled away. The paralysis remained. So did the pain. Victor struggled to suck in air.
He glimpsed through watery eyes the blurry shape of the guy to his right, the one who had taken the elbow strikes. He was only semiconscious, but he hadn’t needed a whole lot of wherewithal to fumble out a stun gun and press it against Victor while his attention was on the guy in the passenger’s seat, who now leaned through the gap between seats.
“Nice try,” he said, and punched Victor in the face.
Whatever semblance of senses he had were further diminished by the blow, but he stayed conscious. He felt no additional pain because agony already consumed him. His vision blurred. Colors washed into one another. Sounds quietened, replaced by a piercing tinnitus whine.
Then a second punch landed and there were no sounds or colors, only silence and black.
• Chapter 34 •
Gabriel Hernandez was understandably nervous. No one enjoyed talking to cops. No one sane, anyway. He was in all kinds of trouble, and if Alamaeda could peek inside his mind she was pretty sure she would see a chaotic mess of jumbled thoughts, assailed from all sides by the single, most powerful emotion of them all: fear. Some people could hide it, but Hernandez was not one of those people. The fear oozed out of him in every conceivable way. He fidgeted. He sweated. He stumbled over his words, of which there were many. Mostly lies, but some excuses thrown in too for good measure. But only when he knew he had no other choice. He talked a lot about choice, about having none.
“Sure,” Alamaeda replied. “You had no choice but to take all that drug money. They forced it into your hands.”
“Yes,” he said, nodding. “That’s exactly how it happened.”
Though she was loath to admit it, there could be some truth in that. When the cartels came a-knocking, you did what they wanted or you suffered the consequences. However it had started for Hernandez, it had ended up with him being one of Maria Salvatierra’s most valued assets. As the manager of a large bank, he was perfectly placed to aid their money-laundering efforts, which was why they had knocked on his door in the first place. But no one had put a gun to his head and forced him to make such a good job of it. He had spent two decades establishing a high-return investment portfolio that generated Manny Salvatierra, and now his youngest daughter, so much money it made Alamaeda’s eyes water. And, worst of all, it was untouchable.
She sighed. “You’ve done amazing work, Mr. Hernandez. I can’t help but be impressed.”
He sat straighter. “Thank you.”
“It wasn’t a compliment.”
“Oh.”
Hernandez dressed in smart pinstripe suits and shiny loafers. He had long, glossy hair pulled back into a tight ponytail. A neat beard surrounded his mouth and ran in a thin line along his jaw. He toyed with the gold crucifix that hung around his neck when he wasn’t talking.
Alamaeda said, “Even if we took down every trafficker, every killer on Maria’s payroll, even if we dismantled her entire network, brick by brick, she would still be able to retire rich and live out the rest of her days in luxury.” She leaned forward. “And, worst of all, we couldn’t do a damn thing about it. Thanks to you.”
“But I can tell you how it started, how I did it. I’ll testify.”
“It’s a little late for that, I’m afraid.”
He didn’t know what to say for the first time. Which was how she wanted it. He wiped some sweat from his face with a handkerchief already sodden with it.
“Maybe,” she began, “and I really mean maybe, I could have used what you know to bring down Manny, but he’s dead. There’s a statute of limitations when it comes to indicting corpses.”
“But the portfolio, the money . . . it’s all Maria’s now.”
She nodded. “Yes, every single quetzal. Every clean quetzal.”
Hernandez slumped. He was risking his life talking to the DEA, and he was starting to realize he would be getting nothing in return.
“We don’t simply hand people a new life in the US just because they grow a conscience. We need something in return.”
Hernandez hadn’t grown a conscience, despite his claims. He had fallen in love with an employee at his bank, an American in Guatemala on a temporary visa. She was young and pretty and he had just gone through a messy divorce. He wanted to start again, wanted to run away with her back to the States. The only problem, and it was a significant one, was there was no way the cartel would let him leave. To try was a death sentence. Hernandez needed protection.
“You’re going to get me killed,” he said.
“Don’t be so dramatic. No one is going to know we’ve had this conversation. You’re just going to have to put your plans on hold for a little while.”
“Until when?”
“Until you give me something I can actually use.”
“Like what?”
She shrugged with her hands. “Give me a name. Give me someone who handles dirty money. Give me so
meone I can use.”
The handkerchief came out again. This time, he kept it in a tight fist after he’d wiped his forehead. He was silent for a while and Alamaeda let him have that silence. He needed it to take control of his turbulent mind, of his fear. She couldn’t convince him that he had no other option. Rather, she could, but if he realized it on his own he would be more cooperative, more useful. More desperate.
“Okay,” he said, eventually. “I’ll give you a name. I’ll give you someone who knows more than I do.”
“I’m waiting.”
“Will that be enough to give me a new life in America?”
“Whoa there, Nelly. You’re getting way ahead of yourself. This is just the first step on a long road, but it’s one you have to take. Give me a name and let’s see where it leads. Because it’s not up to me. Even if it’s a good name and leads to something more, it doesn’t mean it will be enough.”
“Then I’m saying nothing. I want guarantees before I put myself in danger.”
“You’re already in danger, Mr. Hernandez. The cartel could find out at any time that you came to see me.”
The reel of expletives was long and colorful. Alamaeda let him shout. She let him scream. She took it on the chin because she didn’t care.
When he had tired himself out, she said, “Are you done? Because this is going to take a lot longer than it needs to if you keep losing your cool. I’m not going to tell anyone about you, and certainly not your paymasters. I’m talking about the cartel finding out themselves. Maria has a whole network of private investigators, remember? You think they’re not keeping tabs on people like you?”
Hernandez was silent.
“Have you discussed the move to the US with your new girlfriend?”
“Of course we’ve talked about it.”
Alamaeda nodded. “On the phone? In public?”
Hernandez was silent again.
“At work?”
He looked away.
“And I’m guessing she’s talked to friends about it too. Colleagues. A chatty barista, maybe. Whoever. Have you looked at flights? Browsed houses online? I bet you have. Just for fun, right? In that postcoital romantic glow you’ve fantasized about where you might live, what you might do. Just talk at first, but then one of you grabbed a laptop or a tablet and you—”
“Yes,” he hissed. “We’ve talked about it. We’ve imagined. So what?”
“Then, Mr. Hernandez, don’t sit there and pretend the cartel can’t find out what you’re planning. That’s what’s putting you in danger. Not this conversation. Not me. Your denial is going to get you killed.”
It took three and a half seconds for him to finally break.
He took a breath and said, “Miguel Diaz.”
“Who’s that?”
“Maria’s chief money launderer. He’s in charge of all the cash that comes south.”
Alamaeda sat back but kept her expression even. “You’ve done the right thing, Mr. Hernandez.”
“I hope so.”
“Go back to your life, pretend nothing’s happened. I’ll check out Diaz and we’ll go from there.”
Hernandez said nothing more. He couldn’t. However afraid he had been before, it was nothing compared to the new terror he would have to deal with now that the betrayal was complete.
He was going to need to buy himself a new handkerchief.
• Chapter 35 •
The first thing Victor felt when he woke up was pain. Not from his jaw—which ached and throbbed—but from his side, his ribs. An intense rawness pulsated out from where the two electrodes of the stun gun had struck him. He couldn’t see the site of the wounds, but he knew there would be two red indentations where the prongs had impacted, with broken skin, maybe scabbed over, but also singed and black from the electrical current.
The second punch to the jaw had hit right on the point of his chin, thrown by a heavy fist on the end of plenty of power. Despite a lifetime of violence, it was rare for Victor to take such a shot. He could open and close his mouth without inhibition so he knew there were no fractures to his jawbone. There was a little blood in his mouth, but the bleeding seemed to have stopped.
After the pain, his other senses returned: hearing first and then sight. A slow process, made slower by the darkness he lay within and a severe lack of mobility. His first thought was injury, that they had continued to hit him after he lost consciousness, but every muscle flexed as it should. Restrained then, he realized, ankles tied together and his wrists similarly tied behind his back.
His bonds were duct tape. He could tell from the rustling sound the tape made when he tried to move his hands or feet. There was lots of it, wrapped tight around and around to keep him immobile.
He blinked and swallowed, wetting a dry throat with the blood from his mouth. His night vision had kicked in, so when his awareness had fully returned he saw that he was in a small room, maybe ten by ten. Cement floor. Unfinished concrete walls. A pale strip of dim light backlit a single door. No windows. A cell, but not designed to be, because he saw no marks on the walls and smelled no urine or feces. Either he was in a building under construction on this was somewhere that needed no niceties. An industrial space. A warehouse or factory, perhaps. The former was more likely, because Victor heard little. There were no rumbles or whines of machinery.
It was impossible to know how long he’d been out for, and he couldn’t recall how long the shock had lasted. The longer the shock, the greater the effect. Just a few seconds would be enough to drop someone to the ground and leave him disoriented and in immense pain from uncontrollable muscle spasms. A prolonged shock could impair breathing and lead to further injury and death.
They were in no rush to question him, or else he would have awoken from icy water thrown over his head or the like. No rush meant no pressure, so Diaz wasn’t involved himself. The private-security guys had tossed Victor into a makeshift cell and left him there, because they weren’t sure yet what to do with him.
There’s a guy at the hotel. . . . Find out who he is. . . .
If the crew was any good, they would be checking his credentials, finding out who he was and how long he had been in country. They would find nothing if they found anything at all. His legend was secure to all but an intelligence agency’s thorough and persistent investigation. After the incident in the car, they might feel a pressing need to learn more about him, but once they found out he was Ryan Mathus, Canadian commodities trader, they would be embarrassed at most. If they had even the slightest inclination that his credentials were phony, they would have already secured him to a chair, ready to go to work on him.
Poison’s excellent work had no doubt saved him. He’d write her a thank-you note, if she were still alive to read it.
There was a sour taste in his mouth, he noticed. Not the blood; something similar to garlic, only unpleasant. Somehow dirty. He knew why. Sodium thiopental was a barbiturate used in anesthesia, euthanasia, lethal injection, caesarean section, and medically induced coma. In low doses it made a person more cooperative under questioning, more prone to being truthful by interfering with the higher cortical functioning of the brain. The half-life of such drugs was short, a few hours, but the side effects could last long after that. He felt a little nauseated, which could be from the drug or the shock or the punch, or all three.
They had drugged him to prepare him for questioning, which meant they weren’t going to kill him yet. They wouldn’t go to the trouble of drugging him and restraining him unless they planned to keep him alive for a while. They would ask him who he was, why he was in Diaz’s suite, what he was doing in Guatemala. . . .
Lying was effortless for Victor. He lived a lie every day. He pretended to be someone he was not, someone normal, unthreatening, more than he had ever shown his true self. He had been lying since he could talk, since he knew that truth could be dangerous and used to
hurt him. He played so many parts he sometimes forgot where the act ended and he began. But he had never had to lie under the influence of barbiturates. He had no idea how well the drug would work against his own will.
He had no more time to consider how effective the drug would be because he heard movement on the other side of the door. They must have heard him too, maybe groaning or coughing as his consciousness returned.
The guy from the passenger’s seat, the leader, came to check on him. The door catch clicked and the door opened outward. In the doorway, the leader stood with his thumbs tucked into his belt loops, as if he needed the extra support to keep his gut stable.
“I expect you’re terrified right about now.”
Victor remained silent.
“You should be,” the leader continued. “I would be. And we’re the nice guys. We’re the nice guys, but you should still be scared of us because we work for guys who are terrifying.”
The guy with the gut introduced himself: “My name is Eadrich.”
A Mayan name, Victor knew.
“Who might you be?” Eadrich asked.
Victor had spent decades trying to forget who he was, decades reinventing himself, decades doing everything possible to sever connections to his past. Now his real name, his true identity, popped into his mind. The name raced to his lips, but he kept them closed, somehow.
Eadrich held up Victor’s wallet, with business credit cards in his new identity’s name.
“Ryan Mathus,” Eadrich read.
“What do you want with me?” Victor asked.
“Why were you at the hotel, Mr. Mathus? Why were you talking to Señor Diaz’s girlfriend?”
Victor wanted to tell the truth. The truth was simple. He fought to say nothing. He fought to keep his face expressionless.
Eadrich was silent for a long moment. His gaze remained on Victor’s eyes as he stepped closer to his captive. It was neither a show of strength nor a mark of frustration. He was someone who didn’t like to keep still, even if his protruding stomach suggested otherwise.