Spiral

by David L Lindsey

Or would they have another room?

  Had they posted a lookout?

  If so, had he already been spotted?

  If he was able to catch them by surprise, what were the odds they would not have their firearms in hand? His mind didn't stay on the Mac-lOs.

  The sirens grew louder. He could only blame himself for that.

  He moved on until he was standing beside the door of 325. He put his ear to the door, a stupid gesture, with the expressway rumbling like a train twenty feet away. Standing back against the brick wall, he tried the door handle, which didn't budge. He moved closer to 326, stopping next to its sliding glass window to see if there were any cracks in the edge of the curtains. There weren't.

  Stepping across in front of the door, he stood with his back to the expressway, his shoulder against the brick wall on the left side of the door. A diesel trailer truck whined past, and a blast of wind and grit whipped his suit and the oily stink of diesel filled his lungs as he touched the doorknob. This time the expressway noise was in his favor, making it difficult, if possible at all, for anyone inside the room to hear the tiny clicking of the turning knob. But it was locked. Staying clear of the door, he used his left hand to slip the passkey into the keyhole, the Beretta upright beside his head. He could expect the chain to be latched. He turned the key.

  What were the odds that they would be looking at the knob, that they would see the movement?

  He was afraid to open it enough to see if the chain was in place. That they would see.

  The sirens were on Main, maybe three blocks away.XX

  He stepped in front of the door and kicked it open, the chain snapping like a gunshot, but flying apart as Haydon crouched in the opened doorway and yelled, "Police!"

  The man sitting in the chair on the other side of the naked, bloated figure was already turning, stretching for the machine pistol on the round table, had his hands on it when Haydon's first two shots caught him behind his right ear and the back of the neck, blowing his glasses through the air and hurling him across the top of the table, arms flying out against the blast. Two steps inside, Haydon's eyes locked on the open bathroom door. The stench of feces and something medicinal. Expecting something from the bathroom. Then the cold shock of gunfire from the room next door, someone running on the walkway. He whirled around even as he,feared shots in the back from the bathroom, lunged to the door and saw theTirst police car screaming, sliding, bouncing into the drive from the street, his eyes still on it when the Mac-10s opened up from somewhere on the stairs, turning the windshield white as it kept coming, crashing across the hedge, the sidewalk, into the Coke and 7-Up machines at the bottom of the stairs, the booming impact and the walkway shuddering, the unit's flashers still turning, splashing colors in the courtyard.

  As the second car careened into the drive, Haydon ran the length of the balcony to the corner of the L, sprinted through the breezeway to the railing that looked out over the back of the motel into a descending spur of the freeway, saw Negrete already on the fence and the second man turning to cover him, the muzzle bursts of the Mac-10 looking brighter than he would have imagined as he fell back against the wall. Instantly he was up again to see the second man scaling the fence, but Negrete didn't stop to cover him. He kept running, through the dead and brittle weeds, to the cover of the long slope of the descending spur. Haydon steadied the Beretta for the long shot at the man on the fence, who, suddenly realizing he was exposed, tried to fire the Mac-10 as he straddled the fence. Haydon fired four times, five, and the man was kicked backward, one foot catching in the top wire, hanging him upside down. Freakishly, the Mac-10 fired somehow, the recoil whipping his limp arm like a loose water hose spraying ,45s. Then it stopped.

  Negrete had disappeared into Montrose.

  Haydon ran back to the front of the motel courtyard to the walkway railing. There were two more units in the drive now, another one coming in, and more sirens. There were policemen running along the walkways, two coming at him.

  "There's one man down on the fence behind the motel," Haydon yelled. "He's got a Mac-10, but I think he's dead. Another one, also armed with a Mac-10, is on foot heading into Montrose, maybe Brandt, Flora, Westmoreland, those streets. Get every available unit out in there. He's extremely dangerous. They've got to be careful. If there are any questions I'll be in room 326. Send the medics up when they get here."

  "You Detective Haydon?" the officer shouted. "We're supposed to see Detective Haydon."

  "Yes, hurry." He stopped. "What about those guys in the car down there?"

  "They're dead, sir."

  "Okay, hurry," Haydon repeated, and headed toward the last room on the end.

  There were three patrolmen in the room, one on the other side of the bed squatting down, checking the man Haydon had shot, the other two staring unbelievingly at the grossly protuberant Arizpe, not sure what to do.

  "Is he alive?" Haydon asked, pushing between them.

  "I..." One of the patrolmen turned and rushed out of the room.

  Rubio's dark body had taken on an appearance that bordered on the abstract. His splayed figure alone was psychologically disturbing, bringing to mind the carcass of an animal slaughtered and dressed. Bloated out of proportion, he did not so much lie on the bed as quiver at points upon it, the torture having caused every muscle and sinew to contract in a rigid, unyielding spasm that arched his back to the point of snapping, and thrust his bulging stomach in the air so that his torso touched the bed only across the tops of his shoulders and where his heels dug into the mattress. His head was thrown back and his mouth was locked open with a rubber hose snaking from it, leading into the bathroom. The bed was soaked, some of it was water, some of it wasn't, and Arizpe glistened with an oily perspiration. The stench was unbearable.

  "Jesus Christ." The patrolman who had been examining the dead man had stood up, and turned to Rubio. He looked like a veteran patrolman, his dark hair going gray, his body a little chunky. His name was Aledo, and his eyes followed the hose into the bathroom. "Shit, damn!"

  Haydon saw the stethoscope twisted under the leg of the dead man on the overturned table, hurried over, and pulled it out. He bent down as he put it on, and placed the stainless-steel disk on Arizpe's chest. There was a heartbeat, erratic, but it was there. He turned to Aledo. "Make sure the water's off."

  "What the hell was this?" Aledo asked, but he didn't wait for an answer.

  Haydon pulled off his coat and flung it over a lamp as he looked at the second patrolman's nameplate. "Thomas, give me a hand. We've got to get the hose out of him."

  The young patrolman, who was thin and fair, almost frail in appearance, started rolling up his sleeves as he looked at Arizpe's dislocated eye.

  "Water's off," Aledo shouted.

  "What about untying him?" Thomas asked.

  "Not yet," Haydon said.

  "Son of a bitch!" Aledo gasped. He had come back to the bed. "Look what they did to his dick, will ya?"

  The young patrolman put one knee on the bed and held Arizpe's head as Haydon grasped the hose. It didn't want to come out.

  "Maybe we'd better leave it." Thomas sounded as if he was holding his breath.

  "He'll die," Haydon said, working with the hose.

  "You gotta cut him loose," Aledo said.

  "Yeah, okay," Haydon said, pulling more firmly on the hose until it began to give. A lather of dirty pink foam started boiling from Arizpe's mouth.

  "That's from his lungs." Thomas spoke rapidly. "Something's wrong with his lungs."

  Aledo had his pocket knife out, cutting the nylon cord at Arizpe's ankles, then moving up to the wrists, which he finished cutting just as the end of the surgical hose came out of Arizpe's mouth, bringing a gush of grumey fluid with it. Freed, Arizpe began to tremble, then shudder, as if someone were shaking the bed.

  "Oh, damn," Thomas said, pushing off the bed and backing away, knocking over the television as he retreated. Haydon backed too, stumbling on the man he had shot, grabbing his coat from the lamp
as he moved around the foot of the bed with Aledo, who was stunned by what was happening.

  Arizpe's shuddering became violent, his monstrously enlarged stomach with its distended navel heaving convulsively. Suddenly the Indian's good eye opened wide and rolled upward. His arms began to flail uncontrollably as he appeared to try to sit up, his head jutting forward with the effort, an awkward wallowing man-frog. Then his mouth yawned open and he disgorged, almost spewed, a thick, arching torrent that splattered the length of the bed, nearly to the wall.

  "Oh, my God," Aledo yelled, as Haydon shoved him toward the door, where the three of them stood dumbfounded, horrified. Arizpe, no longer a man but a bloated thing bucking in a broth of its own fluids, ejaculated again and again the remnants of his own tormented viscera.

  Haydon's senses miscarried. In a momentary failure of synapse, his brain simply refused to process what he was witnessing. When he recovered, he was in the room alone, and the unreal spectacle, the desolation of Rubio Arizpe's suffering and death, filled the room. The assault on his returning senses was intolerable. He backed out and closed the door.

  Chapter 55

  THERE were half a dozen or more units in the courtyard of the Golden Way Motel, as well as several ambulances, and the arriving television trucks. Haydon stood a minute in front of the door he had just closed, then looked to his right, where the rows of balconies were lined with motel guests in various stages of undress. The flashers from the police units flickered off their faces, all of which seemed to be turned toward him, their blank stares jumping off and on like neon lights.

  Haydon looked around at Aledo and Thomas, who were leaning against the railing with the freeway at their backs, looking at him as if they had had their breath knocked out of them.

  "Jesus," Aledo said. "What a . .. what a deal." The old veteran had to say something.

  The walkway of the cheaply constructed motel shook as other police officers ran up and down the stairs shouting at each other and at the ambulance attendants, herding people out of the way.

  "Don't let anyone in there until a team of homicide detectives gets here," Haydon said to Aledo. He looked at the opened door of 325. "Or in here, either."

  Aledo had to clear his throat. "Right," he said.

  Haydon stepped into 325 and picked up the telephone, using his handkerchief. He stared at the night table, waiting for Dystal to answer. Outside the radios were bouncing off the motel walls and the pillars of the freeway.

  "Lieutenant Dystal's office."

  Haydon recognized Nunn's voice. "Robert, where's Dystal?"

  "On his way over to Gamboa's. You at the motel? What in the hell's happening over there?"

  Haydon told him briefly, then asked, "Who's coming out here?"

  "Pete and Marshall, Singleton and Watts."xxx"And what's the situation at Gamboa's?"

  "The old man's agreed to wait for Dystal, but he's going for sure. I don't know any of the details about how they're going to do it, but I know the lieutenant was going to have cars all around him."

  "Okay, thanks," Haydon said, and hung up the telephone. He went outside onto the walkway and saw Lapierre and John Marshall working their way through the police cars in the courtyard, heading for the stairs. He turned to Thomas. "Let me borrow your radio," he said. The young patrolman undipped the radio from his belt and handed it over. He still hadn't regained his emotional equilibrium. Neither had Aledo, but his experience had taught him to hide at least the appearance of vulnerability; he was lighting a cigarette with an unsteady flame. "Thanks for your help in there," Haydon said to Thomas. He paused a second, wanting to ask the kid if he was all right, but then thought better of it. "I'll get this back to you."

  He started down the walkway and met Lapierre at the stairs. They talked briefly, Haydon telling the two detectives what had happened, that Negrete was somewhere across the spur with a Mac-10, and that he would use it at the slightest provocation.

  Haydon had already accepted the fact that he had made the wrong decision after shooting the man on the fence. Not knowing that Arizpe was already near death, he had bet that the Indian would be the quickest source of information about Medrano and had not pursued Negrete. Now that Arizpe was dead, as well as the other two men, he was once again in the position of having lost Negrete and the most recent information about Medrano. Assuming, of course, that Negrete's methods had succeeded in getting the information out of Arizpe in the first place. He didn't know what significance, if any, lay in the fact that Negrete and the other man had not been in the room with Arizpe.

  "I guess nothing new has come in from the tips," Haydon said.

  "No," Lapierre said tersely, looking past Haydon to Aledo and Thomas standing outside the doors at the end of the walkway.

  "Okay. I'm going to try to meet Dystal and Gamboa at the heliport," Haydon said. "I'll be back over here after he's gone and help you finish it up."

  Racing down the stairs, Haydon considered what this past week must have looked like through Lapierre's eyes. There was no doubt that he totally disapproved of the way Dystal had handled Haydon throughout. Haydon really couldn't blame him. The week had been a bloodbath, and Haydon had been bouncing around the edges of it the whole time. If you followed the rulebook, you wouldn't think the week's events had been a tidy way to handle things.

  Instead of crawling over the fence again, Haydon walked through the jumble of patrol cars in the motel courtyard, past the office, where he chose not to look toward the people pressed against the plate glass of the lobby windows, and out the drive. He hurried along the edge of the street to the cement pavement that ran under the expressway, and turned into the shadows. It was not so dark now with the lights on the patrol cars throwing splinters of ruby and sapphire through the mangy hedge separating the underside of the expressway from the motel. He unlocked the car, got in, and backed between the rows of columns to the low curb at the street. In a few seconds he was ascending the first ramp to the Southwest Freeway, heading toward the West Loop.

  For a split second he was over the Richmond intersection where it had all begun three days before, in the blistering afternoon sun. Then immediately he was in another city, the Post Oak district, where the Transco Tower loomed over everything, skewing the perspective as if to say that it was real, and all the rest was miniature.

  He continued into the sparkling heart of the district and dropped down onto the San Felipe exit. He could see Post Oak Park where the heliport was located just ahead on his right, but he turned left on San Felipe and followed the gentle curve of the street, past the Steak 'N Egg Kitchen. It tantalized him that only a few hours earlier Medrano had walked in there for a thermos of coffee. Why had he been in this area so recently, and why had he been in that diner so often? Was the obedient son indeed capable of driving a suicide car packed with explosives? Haydon thought not. It would be an unheard-of act by a Latin group, a right-wing group at that, if only because the technique had become so thoroughly identified with Middle Eastern fanaticism.

  Then why was Medrano constantly circulating in this area? He couldn't possibly have known Gamboa would decide to go to the heliport tonight. Gamboa probably hadn't even known it himself until maybe an hour ago, and yet even before that Medrano was in the area. Waiting.

  Haydon pulled into the parking lot in Post Oak Plaza and parked among the cars of people dining at Tony's. To his right was Sak's across Post Oak Boulevard, and to his left at the end of Ambassador Way was 3D International, Tri-Corp Plaza, Con-Tex Tower, and dozens of other buildings lining the west side of the Loop. He turned on Thomas's radio and called Dystal. A patrolman came on and said Dystal was outside the car on the front portico of Gamboa's house, that they were just about ready to leave. There was static as Haydon waited, then he heard Dystal.

  "Stu. Heard what happened over there. You all right, I guess."

  "I'm fine."

  "God a'mighty. I wonder how much the hell else can happen before we get this man outta here."

  "How are you goi
ng to do it?"

  "Hell, I couldn't make up my mind whether to sorta sneak him out or to go with all my parade lights on. I finally decided to do the parade. I'll have a coupla cars in front, couple in back, and every time we come to a cross street I'll run a car up ahead to block it in case they try to get at him from the side. We won't be wasting any time. Where're you at?"

  Haydon told him. "I just couldn't get over the idea of him hanging around here."

  "Yeah, I know," Dystal said. "Okay, they're coming down the stairs now. We're gonna be pulling outta here purty soon."

  "Who's with him?" Haydon asked quickly.

  "Uh, looks like his boy and some other guy carryin' a briefcase. Just the three of 'em."

  Haydon visualized the long portico with softly lighted columns, and the distinguished Gamboa coming rapidly down the flight of illuminated steps with the two other men. Policemen milling around the lawn, the squad cars idling, the limousine sparkling black in the drive, its doors open until Gamboa gets in and then they'd close, solid and dark, like a coffin.

  "I'll meet you at the heliport," Haydon said.

  "Good enough," Dystal answered, and then he was off.

  Haydon wondered where Medrano was sitting at that very moment, and whether or not Gamboa would still be alive in twenty minutes. Suddenly he was aware of the edgy energy of anticipation, a gradual realization of a change in the tempo of his emotions. He started the Vanden Plas and drove out of the lot onto Post Oak Boulevard.

  It would be twenty minutes, or less, more like fifteen, before Gamboa would be airborne. Medrano didn't have much time.

  After learning about the RDX from Cissy Farrell that morning, after all the speculation about how it might be used, it seemed to Haydon the only feasible method was remote-control detonation. It was the only way to get to Gamboa without approaching him. And since twenty-five kilos of anything was not easily carried around, the explosive itself would have to be stationary, detonated from a distance.

  But how would Medrano bring together Gamboa and the RDX? Haydon thought back to the beginning, Tuesday morning, Ireno Lopez. He had been in Houston three weeks observing Gamboa's movements, and would have gathered information about where, when, and how Gamboa traveled. That was the kind of intelligence that had enabled them to hit the limousine only minutes after it left a restaurant where Gamboa often dined. Only Negrete's cunning had saved the older Mexican. Would that data gathered by Lopez be useless after a failed attempt? Not unless Gamboa completely changed travel patterns and habits, which he had not done. In fact, unless he changed residences, Gamboa was like every other person in the city, he had to travel certain streets to get to certain places. That could not be avoided. Since he went often to the Post Oak area, what were his route choices? Without going ridiculously out of the way, there was only San Felipe, Westheimer, Richmond, Southwest Freeway. Actually, once he passed up San Felipe, he was going out of the way, San Felipe was the closest, most direct route from Inverness to the Post Oak District. It was also the closest, most direct route to the heliport, which was why Gamboa had chosen it. The less time he was exposed, the less risk of being ambushed.