Spiral

by David L Lindsey

  By this method, Bias would have time to position himself in such a way as to see the exact instant when Gamboa's limousine would be directly over the rail crossing, and the twenty-five kilos of RDX.

  Over fresh cups of coffee, they rehearsed the routine several times, Rubio calling out with his lisping pronunciation the direction and new street names, executing surprise turns, leaving the designated "alert" vicinity and then returning, while Bias followed him on his own map. After numerous trial runs, they each studied their maps in silence until Bias asked, "Any questions?"

  "No."

  "All right," Bias said. When Rubio was satisfied, Bias knew there would be no mistakes. Gamboa's men would never break the code. The Indian stayed alive by his intimate understanding of each operation. "Let's go back to our hotels and try to get some sleep. When do you want to be in place?"

  Rubio thought. "No later than seven o'clock. Just to be sure."

  "Good. Then I'll check with you by radio at seven o'clock."

  "Bueno."

  Bias got up and walked out of the diner, leaving Rubio to pay. He crossed San Felipe to the parking lots of Post Oak Plaza, where another rental car was waiting. Unlocking the car, he became aware of how the tension of the past several days had sapped his energy. He had not had time for his daily workouts at a gym, and he was feeling small and shrunken from within, his shoulders seeming narrow and tight.

  Sitting behind the wheel, he leaned forward and looked at this second city within the city: the complex of banded lights composing the buildings of Post Oak Central, which were separated from one another by emerald sheets of lighted lawns; the office towers and hotels surrounding the core of the Galleria and sparkling like chunks of pyrite; and then beyond them, looming above it all like an awesome mother ship, the inner-lighted monolith of the Transco Tower.

  It was beautiful, this second city. Unreal and overpowering. So far away, in geography and in spirit, from the steep, dry gorges of the Barranca de Oblatos and the Rio Santiago, so far from the broad night sky of the Jaliscan desert with its smaller lights, more intricate, more delicate, but made large in the mind from their fullness of symbol and myth.

  He pushed himself away from the steering wheel and started the car. He had not thought about his route, just making the turns to get to the Southwest Freeway, which would take him back to Montrose. The traffic light caught him, and he recognized the intersection with a numb uneasiness.

  Richmond and the West Loop.

  He looked out his window and saw, thirty yards away in the garish lights of the underpass, the pavement where Teodoro had won his glory, borne with honor the distinction of being a teco, faithful to the Brigade and the most rigorous secret of its existence, where he had flourished his talon and ended his labor with the satisfaction that he had completed it according to his duty, obeying without question the will of the Brigade. Bias could still see the stains that had been the boy, darker than the dark pavement where his body had learned to suffer with a smile on his lips, where he had gained the satisfaction not of Victory, but of the honor of dying for God and for Mexico so that his soul could live century after century in the presence of a Holiness for whom he had killed and been killed, an honorable end in obedience to the Brigade.

  All this, Teodoro, for letting a limousine run over you.

  All this, for mixing your blood with radiator coolant.

  It meant nothing. Perhaps even less than nothing.

  When the light turned green, he drove up onto the freeway and headed east, watching the city grow larger out of the night as he approached it. Then down on the Montrose exit, but not stopping at Montrose, going beyond it to the smaller streets north of Herman Park.

  He didn't expect anything, but he approached the intersection at the corner of the parking garage with studied caution. Slowing at the stop sign, he looked across at the cement post beneath the street sign and saw the triangle of white paper. He felt as if someone had suddenly risen up out of the darkness of the back seat and lightly touched the point of a blade to the back of his neck. His weariness melted, the dullness that had crept upon him as he anticipated his bed at La Colombe d'Or dissolved, forgotten.

  There was no hesitation. A stakeout watching the intersection would have seen nothing to remark on, only a car coming, stopping, going, disappearing into heavier traffic a few blocks farther on.

  But Bias would not make the fatal mistake of passing by again, even half an hour later. He had seen that done. If a man failed to believe his eyes the first time, "making sure" could kill him. He had seen the triangle.

  He would not make the mistake, either, of entering the garage in a car. It was a good place for a dead drop, under less rigorous circumstances. But now, with the hit only hours away, with Negrete prowling the city, with the police swarming and probing the streets like confused and maddened wasps around a raided nest, he would not accept the safety of the arrangement. The drop was for an emergency, and an emergency might mean that anything and everything had been compromised... even the drop. The very fact that there was a message made the site suspect.

  Leaving the car several blocks away among the dozens of other cars in one of the parking lots of the Park Plaza Medical Center, he started walking toward the garage in the direction of downtown. The sidewalks were old, sheltered by heavy trees. Bias could hear the traffic on Main Street a few blocks to his left, and glancing back he caught a glimpse of the Museum of Fine Arts. He crossed several streets, keeping to the inside of the sidewalk, protected from the streetlights by the canopy of trees. Only his feet occasionally flashed in the pale light.

  He stopped next to a hedge of Nandina and looked at the garage at an angle from across the street. It took up half a block, and was surrounded by old brick boardinghouses and apartment buildings from the thirties. The entrance was on the other side, out of his view. He stood still. Sweating. Looking. This was not good, not good at all. They could be in the ribbons of darkness that marked every level, in the shadows of the yards, a darkened window in one of the old houses. There were moments in every operation, he thought again, when you openly subjected yourself to blind risk and you had no right to expect what you hoped you would get.

  He stepped out of the shadows and crossed the street, unhurriedly, casually, in case he was seen. He would not have been surprise to experience that scintilla of knowledge that he always believe existed at the moment of being shot in the head, that you had be killed.

  But it didn't happen, and he reentered the shadows as he approached the back of the garage. Without hesitating he crawled over the low wall into the blackness of the first floor. He felt the slight incline and knew he was on the up ramp to the second floor. He moved over until he felt the wall, and then started walking, feeling the ribbed concrete under his shoes. When he reached the second floor, stopped again, standing flat against the wall and looking at everything visible from his vantage point. There were not that many cars, and all of them had their windows rolled up, locked. A stakeout would not be able to do that without suffocating.

  Parking space 28 was around the corner to his left. He step sideways, and was on the other side of the ramp wall, looking dc the aisle toward space 28. Again not many cars. He examined them as best he could, wishing he had binoculars, straining his eyes to something out of the ordinary. And then he did. He saw nothing rows of taillights . . . and one pair of headlights. One car, two slots down from the drop and across the aisle, had backed into its space. Because of the angle of the slots, the car was facing away from but he knew the rearview mirror would be positioned for a clear of the aisle in his direction.

  He dropped down, took the Heckler from his waistband, began crawling under the front ends of the cars, squeezing between the front wheels and the concrete wall. There were six of then between him and the car he was watching. At four, he stopped to get his breath, lying on the garage floor. When he had controlled breathing, he gradually raised himself until he could look through the windows of the two remaining cars. The targe
t car had its windows down, and he could see someone slumped behind the wheel.

  Down on the floor again, he slowly reached into his suit pocket, took out the silencer, and screwed it onto the Heckler barrel. When it was tight, he carefully laid the gun on the garage floor and wiped the sweat from the backs of his hands, his wrists, and his palms. Then he picked up the Heckler, crawled under the two remaining cars, and stopped at the rear end of the Volvo. He looked along its side, and confirmed his assumption that the rearview mirror was trained on the corner of the up ramp. That meant that unless the driver turned around, he would not be able to see someone approaching from the rear of his car on that side. Crouching, Bias worked his way up to the front window opposite the driver and leaned lightly against the door. The man behind the steering wheel shifted restlessly in his seat, and the car creaked on its springs.

  Bias rose in one fluid movement, bringing the Heckler out in front of him as his hands stretched through the window and put the barrel of the silencer within inches of Daniel Ferretis's horrified face, his eyes magnified owlishly behind the thick lenses and heavy frames, his mouth dropped open in stupefaction as if he were fatalistically providing a reception for his own coup de grace.

  Chapter 42

  THEY remained frozen in position, mind and body. Bias was unable to persuade himself to lower the end of the Heckler, not yet having worked through the ramifications of Ferretis's presence. He had known men killed by trust, by friends, by compatriots. Survival was more elemental, singular. There was no room for another person. A survivor sacrificed everything and everyone for himself.

  Ferretis looked as if he were going to explode. Bias didn't think he was breathing.

  "What is this?" Bias asked slowly. He was whispering.

  "Trouble," was all Ferretis could say. He sounded as if he were strangling, his neck strained back, and locked at an impossible angle as he tried to keep his face as far away as he could from the barrel end of the Heckler.

  "Are you alone?"

  Ferretis nodded.

  "Is someone after you?"

  Ferretis nodded.

  Bias burned inside. "Are you being followed?" Even as he asked his mind populated every dark corner of the garage.

  Ferretis shook his head.

  "You're sure?"

  Ferretis nodded, but Bias thought he had detected an almost imperceptible hesitation.

  "Who?"

  "Ne... Negrete."

  Ferretis's strained response made Bias consider his Heckler, moved the barrel to the side, still crouching at the window, and regarded the professor's glistening face. The heavy frames were low on his nose, and oily strands of his straight, dark hair were plastered over his blanched forehead. Bias looked at him, his mind bouncing off the possibilities.

  He reached up with his left hand, jerked the cover off the interior light of the Volvo, unscrewed the bulb, and let it fall. Carefully, he opened the door and crawled into the front seat beside Ferretis. There was a heavy smell of gasoline inside the car.

  "Explain," he said, turning toward the professor, his back pressing against the door. He still held the Heckler in his right hand, though the barrel was now pointing roughly at Ferretis's feet. He heard the professor swallow.

  "You heard the news? On the radio?" Ferretis pointed to the car radio, as if the gesture were an explanation.

  "No."

  "Waite's . . . dead . . . two other people, too. Tortured. Jesus, tortured!" Ferretis was still trying to control his voice.

  "This was on the news?"

  Ferretis nodded, his eyes immobile.

  "What happened?"

  "It was sketchy. They were just found dead in Waite's home— violent deaths, it said, torture."

  "Three of them, it said?"

  "Yeah. Waite, another man, and a woman."

  "That's why you came here?"

  "No—I only heard that after I got here." He gestured at the radio again.

  "Well?"

  Ferretis told him everything that had happened: Haydon's visit to Cordero, Negrete's men at his office, his decision to wait at the dead drop for Bias to arrive. He talked fast, and fidgeted as he related the sequence of events. When he finally stopped, he peered hard at Bias and added, "Everything's falling apart. They're all over us!"

  Bias looked at Ferretis carefully. The great tactician was not bearing up well. It had been unforgivably rash of him to come to the dead drop to wait. It could have been a fatal mistake, an enormous miscalculation. Bias looked at Ferretis's doughy complexion, and the wild stare of his eyes behind his stupid intellectual's glasses. Where was the ruthless theorizer who had been so quick to sacrifice lives for the cause? Where was the man of ideas who burned with an inner fire of conviction? Not here. Not Ferretis. This was no Renaissance man.

  "Well, goddammit, Medrano. What the shit's going on?"

  "Keep your voice down," Bias said, his own voice low and calm. But inside he was furious at Ferretis. It was all he could do not to lunge across the seat at him and beat him with the Heckler until he had sated an emotion so real he could almost smell it. He moved the gun slightly. "I don't know," he said. "This is the first I've heard any of this."

  "We've got a leak," Ferretis said with finality, and in a tone of grim resignation.

  "There's no leak."

  "Then how the hell did Negrete's men know about me?"

  "They had probably beat it out of Ireno," Bias said. "The real question is, how did the detective get Rubio's name? And why wasn't my name mentioned with his?"

  Ferretis removed his glasses and worked them over with his shirttail. "At this point it doesn't matter. We've got to salvage what's left."

  Bias looked at him. "What do you mean?"

  "We've got to formulate a plan," Ferretis said, looking up and putting his glasses on again. "We've got to get out of here. If we stay it's only a matter of time before Negrete, the police, somebody, picks us off."

  "We haven't finished our job."

  "Fuck the job. You've already blown your chance at Gamboa. We've got to fall back, regroup for future operations. We're not any good to them dead."

  Bias looked across the aisle to the cement barrier. In the opening between the barrier and the ceiling, he could see the tops of the neighborhood trees, and the lights of downtown. He looked back at Ferretis. Fall back. Regroup. The man was hiding his fear behind a pseudo strategy. And then there was we've got to fall back, we've got to get out of here. Was Bias understanding him correctly?

  "Yes, I think I see what you mean," Bias said.

  "Do you still have the money?" Ferretis asked suddenly.

  "Most of it."

  "We'll need the money," Ferretis said, calculating, planning.

  "We'll charter a plane at one of the private airports .. . no, wait, that wouldn't be smart. Rent a car. We rent a car and drive out of here ... go to Brownsville, like Cordero."

  "What about your family?"

  "It's a sacrifice ... a sacrifice I'll have to make. I could send for them later. But I can't stay. No way. Maybe, if this hadn't happened, if Ireno hadn't run off his mouth to Negrete. Maybe. But not now."

  The car rocked slightly as Ferretis nervously wagged one foot, beating the side of his shoe against the floor. Bias felt an instant contempt for this adolescent gesture of agitation. He also thought of Ireno, "running off his mouth" as Negrete's men beat his insides to jelly. Ireno knew Negrete as well as Bias did, he had known what was going to happen to him before it happened, while it was happening, until it was over.

  "I'll have to finish the job before I can do anything else," Bias said coolly.

  "What do you mean? It's too late! Too big a risk."

  "It's already set up."

  Ferretis gawked at him. "When?"

  "Soon."

  Ferretis ran a hand through his limp hair. He seemed stunned, confused, as if this new possibility had thrown everything out of perspective.

  "You don't need me to help you get out of town," Bias said, watching
him. "Do exactly as you instructed Cordero. You'll be all right."

  Ferretis looked at Bias with panic in his eyes.

  "Wait a minute. You're crazy. This piece of garbage won't make it to Brownsville. I'll never make it."

  "Rent a car."

  "What if there's a bulletin out on me?"

  "What makes you think the police know about you? It's Negrete you were worried about."

  "Give me your false ID," Ferretis said desperately. "You've got to do that, by God."

  "I can't," Bias said, looking at him. "Drive to Rosenberg. It's on the way—-rent a car there."

  "Oh, shit." Ferretis's voice was anguished.

  Bias did not like seeing this. It was embarrassing. Cowardice was embarrassing. He opened the car door and got out, closing the door again. He bent down and looked at Ferretis through the open window.

  "Drive out of here, get on Highway 59, and go to Rosenberg."

  "Wait a goddam minute," Ferretis said hoarsely, and he scrambled out of his own door and stood on one leg, the other still inside, looking across the roof of the car at Bias. "You can't walk out on me like this. You've got a responsibility...

  "Then they both heard them.

  Two cars. One, its engine whining and tires squealing, was climbing the entrance ramp on the other side of the wall; the other was screaming up the exit ramp at the opposite end of the aisle. Suddenly its headlights burst along the walls as it shot out of the ran and into the aisle, sparks flying from under its chassis as it slammed down on the cement.

  Bias met Ferretis's disoriented, catatonic stare across the roof of the car, and raised the Heckler to his waist. He fired three she through the open windows into Ferretis's stomach, three sharp smacks as if he were being hit with fists, staggering him back against the car behind him.