You could fall in love or become a killer, no preamble. And fall back just as quickly. It all depended on how the coin fell, and the coin was forever in mid-air. In lesser men this might be a source of nerve-wracking stress.
To Barney, it was other people’s noise, and he could click it all off, could wait with an almost conscienceless patience.
Carl emerged from the fortress building with fresh sweat on his temples. His gaze swept the street, and his manner was the manner of a man who was certainly guilty of... something. He started physically when the BMW skidded up beside him and he found himself staring down the bore of Barney’s .45.
“Get in the car,” said Barney. “Right fucking now. Not a word.”
At least thirty people saw Carl climb meekly into the car at gunpoint. It did not matter to any of them, and was forgotten even before the dust of departure had settled.
“I almost called you on the cell,” said Barney. “That might have been a nice little surprise. But it might have gotten you in trouble.”
“Thank god you didn’t,” Carl said, practically mumbling.
The gun was stowed. It had made its point, and its threat was implicit.
“You want to tell me what the hell is really going on?”
“I don’t know what you’re—”
“Don’t. Do. That.” Barney’s tone was as serious as a nuclear core meltdown. “I want to know what you’ve mixed me up in, and what you have to do with it. Not the story. The truth. Start anytime, because I’ll keep your ass in this car for a week until you come clean.”
Carl fumbled, hands uselessly grasping the air before him, trying to twist nothing into some sensible shape.
“Start with your drop-off at the building back there.”
Still nothing. Where to begin?
“All right, try something simpler. What’s your cut?”
Any pretense to standing fast collapsed, as though Carl’s face had been unscrewed. “Half.” He spluttered. “Look, it ain’t broken... I can fix this. I can pay you. I was going to pay you anyway. A lot. More than your trouble, because you came to help me. I can pay you—”
Barney pulled the pistol back into sight to shut him up. “What I want, old buddy, cannot be paid in dollars or pesos or doubloons. You are a world-class fuckup, Carl. You got yourself conned into a scam too big for you, and it could still backfire and blow your dick off. Worse, you involved your wife, and even worse, you took advantage of a friend. It’s long past the time to shrug and go oh well. Frankly, I’m not amazed you’re that gullible. I am amazed that you’d come up with such a cowboy idea and throw your wife into the pot.”
“That’s why I have to tell you about Erica,” Carl said. Contritely. “It was her idea.”
Carl had saved Erica (so he related) from a stalker boyfriend with a history of vague threats and backhanded harassment. She would get flooded with junk mail based on credit card offers or find her parked car keyed, but nothing ever tracked back to the ex, one Rafe Torgeson. By Erica’s account, Rafe had been one of those sexy, seems-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time diversions who become dysfunctionally possessive/obsessive once they graduate from cheap thrills to what desperate people call a “relationship”... once they start clinging, fighting more than fucking, struggling for air, slamming down ultimata and grabbing for some kind of illusory life preserver that was never there to save them in the first place.
By Erica’s account.
And if you’re Erica, who can you get to believe your account? No one who’s known you long enough to see you go through this cycle before. No one at all — unless, of course, you meet someone new, with whom you have no history, who will believe virtually anything you tell them. Clean slate. Refreshed story to tell. Modify as you go.
Erica was the sort of woman, said Carl, who refused to believe she was not important enough for everyone to obsess over. She needed a history of epic betrayals and close calls in order to curry her next host, like any decent parasite. To say she was a drama queen was to undervalue her wiles. She was not interested in hot gossip so much as fundamental blackmail material.
Picture it: God, Carl, I don’t know where to turn, this guy has made my life a living hell, I’m not asking you to save me, just let me stay the night. Great in a movie, awful in real life because it reminds you of the real meaning of awe. All that is needed is a few pheromones, an auto-response sense of protectiveness for those of whom you have grown fond, and time for the whole stew to rot.
Carl had come to realize that the epically evil Rafe Torgeson, along with most of the other disaster exes cited by Erica, were her idea of confections. There was not a shred of actual proof of any of the thousands of crimes against poor, innocent Erica, who only wanted to help people... with the exception of her victims, like Rafe Torgeson and whomever else was back-dated on her dance card.
Carl logically concluded that sooner or later, he would become the next evil ex, just as soon as Erica had adequately prepped a fresh host full of new, unpolluted blood. Every disagreement, every conflict, every suggestion of hers not scooped up with a military sense of command, was another notch off Carl’s clock.
Erica, in turn, had smelled that her latest host had passed his spoilage date early, and to demonstrate her skill at manipulation she preemptively proposed the Plan.
Then she screwed Carl’s brains to mush, just to show there were no hard feelings. Predators never hang onto to devalued marks, and prefer quick exits, except in the case of vendetta, where they opt for the slow, lingering demise — gangrene instead of amputation.
“I knew I was outplayed,” said Carl. Anonymous streets whizzed past the closed windows of the BMW. “But damn it, I still loved her, or thought I did. You know? She came along right when I had decided not to cut and run from relationships so easily. I had decided to work at the next one... and she came along as the next one. I was ripe and she could smell it.”
“That’s really touching,” said Barney. “I assume you have a point floating around in all that self-pity.”
“The Plan. Erica knew about Felix Rainer, in New York. I had confided enough to her for her to know that Felix was a financial exposé waiting to happen. How much do you know about the Mexican economy?”
“I’m getting impatient, Carl, goddammit.”
“No, wait!” Carl locked eyes with Barney. “It’s relevant and it’s the truth. Please.”
Barney waited.
“Do you have any idea what a hot pot it is down here? More journalists are gunned down in Latin America than in Iraq, man! There are fourteen hundred municipalities down here that don’t even have access to banks — that’s how backward things are. Meanwhile the United States is getting ready to exploit eighty percent of Mexico’s natural gas resources — and do you know what they’re paying with? Water. Access to water. Water from the United States, which also buys four-fifths of the petroleum here, and it’s all owned by two companies, Petroleos and Pemex, and guess who owns them? And it’s not just oil. It’s trucking contracts, guys buying tanker ships, drivers, loaders, storage, all of it heading for America, baby. Along with stuff like genetically contaminated corn, for which the environmental reports were shoveled under; poultry and processed eggs with phytosanitary problems, pesticide-infected cherries — all of which winds up as your chicken Caesar or in your Manhattan. A dozen wars are going on, between Mexican sugar and American fructose, between milk companies in Coahuila and Jalisco. Beer distribution here has been taken over by Heineken and Coors, and they paid over a billion dollars for the privilege: Tecate, Dos Equis, Carta Blanca and Bohemia — even the Sol we’ve been drinking. Yet guerillas blew up seven oil and natural gas pipelines last week; that’s hundreds of millions in lost production. The whole system down here is caving in on a daily basis. It’s Wild Wild West time for opportunists, and that’s where Felix Rainer’s dirty money comes into the picture.”
If Carl had been looking for an opportunity to unburden himself, he had definitely been pacing and rehearsing.
“When cellphones liberated common people — when they allowed people who had never seen phones to have phones, just like in China — the telecommunications companies flooded Latin America with networking technology. Down here, people kidnap each other for ransom. Up there, in the rarified air, executives are cutting each other’s throats over satellite placement but it’s just as gruesome. And every single company suffers skyrocketing costs, due to guess what? Security. The paranoia that keeps security a big issue is important, because that, too, translates as money.”
“Cellphones?” What the fuck was Carl talking about? This was not just babble to buy time, or misdirection. Carl sounded as though he was honestly losing his mind. “You need to start making some sense. Now.”
“Listen. Illegal systems hijack billions of call minutes per year. That’s just one of the ways Felix collects his pennies. And no matter how many Cayman Islands accounts you try to hide, the Feds will notice a huge pile of money sooner or later, and you’ve got to move it around. If you can’t launder all of it, you redistribute it.”
“So the ransom Felix supplied you with goes to the kidnappers, who aren’t really kidnappers, and trickles through into dozens of ancillary business interests down here, legal, illegal and ‘other.’”
“I’m not sure exactly how. I don’t know all the details. But the kidnappers are real. They have to be real.”
“Or no one will buy the kidnapping?”
“Nobody cares about little meat-market hostages. But if it is big-ticket enough, it’s going to attract businessmen the same as the drug trade. So, point two: the score has to be big.”
“Two million big.”
“And that’s just one grab. Felix knew a corrupt Captain in the Judicial Police down here, and made a few calls, and then a few trips.”
Barney could smell rotting strawberries, or maybe rotting psyche. The stench of gone-over bouquets in rancid gray water.
“So they set up high-priced kidnappings,” Barney said, “and Felix is able to transfer money from his legitimate accounts to ‘save’ his amigos — probably under a variety of names — and that frees up shelf space for his less-legitimate money?”
“Something like that.”
Barney briefly considered resigning from the human race, turning his back on the world, and perhaps leaving civilization for the maggots to consume. No wonder he felt like an isolationist. He tried to shuck off the weight that had settled onto his shoulders. “So how’s good old Felix making out with this scam?”
“Way too successful,” said Carl. “So successful, in fact, they’re thinking of diversifying out of Mexico. Grabbing their hostages in the States and smuggling them down here for ransom.”
The gargoyles had really taken over the cathedral. Maybe it wasn’t too late to find a red button and nuke the whole planet.
“Is the goddamned kidnapping real or not, Carl?”
“Yes and no.”
“Please don’t make me start hitting you.”
“It has to pass muster as a genuine kidnapping.
Believe it or not, even down here there are police reports, genuine investigations, paper trails. It has to look, smell, act, and shit real. Whole food chains of players who must be convinced. If kidnappers diversify, the guys above them have to believe they haven’t gone soft, aren’t cheating the system in any way. You can’t just pay off everyone to lie. The snatchers have to think they’ve abducted a real victim. The keepers have to believe they are watchdogging a legitimate hostage. The money men have to believe they are trafficking at the potential cost of a real human life.”
“I can just keep driving north until we’re at the border,” said Barney, hoping his warning was clear as distilled water.
“Yeah, yeah, okay... Erica talked to Felix. Felix talked to me. Then Erica talked to me. We invest three days, a week, tops, and walk away with a million to split, fifty-fifty. We allow Erica to be kidnapped and ransomed. We make it look so real that we get the payout doubled, and nobody on the outside suspects it’s anything but crime as usual, what a damned shame. We rescue Erica, but only after the money has changed hands. Bang — everybody’s safe, everybody’s richer, and Erica goes her own way with her new bank, and I get to go mine.”
“Wait a fucking minute,” said Barney. “That drop at the bridge. Are you telling me you knew those scumbags? They were shooting live ammo at me, Carl!”
“No! I... I... didn’t know them, personally, I mean. It had to be real. If you bought it, as an outside agent, then it would look watertight, and—”
“And you didn’t have the balls to do it yourself,” Barney overrode.
“You asked me for the truth,” said Carl. “I’m trying to give you that. You don’t have to make me feel like a shit. I’m already doing a great job of that myself. If you want to punch me out, go ahead. Yell. Shoot me. But don’t give me that child-molester look, like you’re not going to be my best friend at school anymore. I have to get free. I conned you. I’m sorry, but there you were — all capability and no connections. Certainly no connections like Erica, who I have to get free of. You see?”
“No, I do. Not. See. Carl.”
A gruesome silence settled between them. Carl had raved. Now he needed to think up something else to say — anything else to reacquire Barney’s sympathy. Carl was jabbering himself into a hole...
... which should have made the rest brutally clear and simple for Barney: Abandon Carl. Free Jesús, who was a blameless gunner needing a hospital and a few days off. Barney no longer trusted Carl to do that. Then: Get to the airport. Use another of his stack of blind credit cards. Leave. No luggage, no souvenirs. Pitch the gun so its tainted memories would not hang around. Forget Mexico. Resume being a ghost. As the Old Assassin had told him: “Between missions, I cease to exist.” Barney would be okay until he found a worthier mission. Or worthier friends.
But what Carl decided to say was the wrong thing.
“It’s not personal, man. It’s just business.”
Barney might have forgiven, though not forgotten, all of Carl’s transgressions if he had not uttered that last. It was the weaseldick rationale of the serial coward. It was the free ride clause big money could buy. It was the price for which your friends sold you out when they decided to exchange your friendship for a bargain.
“I’m out,” said Barney. “I’m already gone. Keep your money. Clean up your own mess. And after that you are never to speak to me again.”
“No, hey — wait, man, we can fix it, I swear!”
“Carl.” Barney spoke softly, motioning Carl to lean closer for a confidence. Then he crossed with his left and plowed his fist into Carl’s hopeful half-smile, dialing his lights down to dreamland. Carl flopped back against the passenger door with a busted nose and one tooth perched on his shirtfront.
“Shut up,” Barney said.
Jesús was gone.
In fact, all traces of Barney and Carl’s base of operations at the motel were gone. Fresh linens, squared sheets, the chair back at the desk and the bible back in the drawer, no blood anywhere.
Barney’s body pricked to high alert. He pulled out the .45, knowing a slug was already chambered.
“No way he could’ve gotten out alone. I taped him up myself.” He wheeled, murder in his eyes, which were now looking directly at Carl.
Carl actually backed off two paces. One of his front teeth was in his shirt pocket and his face was already swelling from Barney’s punch. He stammered, “I don’t know what’s going on. Not me.”
Footsteps. Concealed soldiers breaking cover and rallying.
A lot of men with a lot of guns — street sweepers loaded with devastating shredder rounds, machine guns with mags of fifty-plus — were boxing them in from both sides of the breezeway. Their safeties had never been on.
Barney’s eyes quickly sussed the trap. To bolt for the car would just mean a Chinese fire drill of gunplay. No way to hole up in the room — the bathroom window was heavily barred and these dude
s could shoot through the walls until the entire building fell apart. A quick glance at Carl — useless as a hostage, and honestly confused; what was landing on their heads had not been his idea. Barney had been so intent on watching Carl for the slightest new cheat that he had missed the smell of ambush, the hundred little wrong things that could tip you. They were center stage, spotlit, with no odds and no exit strategy.
Barney’s arm brought the gun around regardless, to wax the nearest oncoming gunner. Carl’s hand arrested its arc.
“Don’t,” said Carl, not looking at him.
There were at least eight men, all unafraid of wielding big weapons in broad daylight. Their team lead was a huge, vaguely Samoan monster; three hundred pounds (mostly above the belt) with a shaved head, a wooden idol face and the tiny, rapt eyes of a pit viper. His wifebeater tee revealed pale worm-bursts of stretch-marks radiating from his armpits to his shoulders — a sure sign, Barney knew, of an overdose of steroids and iron-pumping.
Nobody said a word.
In short order, Barney was divested of his armament. Both he and Carl were professionally frisked. The room was certified as clear — silently, by a guy who wore mirrorshades so thin they appeared to be growing out of his skull instead of perched upon it. Barney and Carl were marched to a waiting panel van, one badboy on each bicep doing the military-style bring-along with a vise-grip like a pit bull. They were seated roughly, heads sacked, hands cuffed, and the van door slammed shut with a crunch of finality.
The inside of the van smelled like all the guns that had been brought to bear. Humid and close. The sack on Barney’s head stunk of motor oil and acetone; somebody had used it as an engine rag. B.O. and hair pomade. Of course, somebody farted. Acidic.
Barney heard Carl’s muffled voice say, “What is this; you guys all mutes or somethi —?”
Thud.
Instantly, they were on the move.
Something was coming up, Barney knew. If nothing waited to complicate their situation, they would have been killed on the spot. So somebody wanted something from them. Maybe Jesús, spoiling for a bit of biblical eye-for-an-eye. Maybe the police, going all Gestapo to take them down for the murder of Estrella without any questions. Maybe Carl’s unknown handlers, imposing more conditions and specifications. Strictly business, amigo.
Gun Work Page 5