Charlie thinks he’s lying but I don’t. I can’t believe the dude would choose to undergo the sort of interrogation he knows he’s in for rather than tell us the truth. The guy’s a bandit, not some idealistic revolutionary or freedom fighter willing to suffer for cause and comrades. Still, Charlie’s calling the shots.
Tumaro finishes with his call and comes over and says Mateo’s still critical and Rigo will be here soon.
And Rayo? I ask, trying to keep it casual, but he catches something in my tone and fixes me with a look. Rayo? he says. The girl? The girl is unharmed. In fact, buddy, she’s the one who killed the Sosa tail. You better be real careful about making a move on her, man. He and Charlie trade a grin, then laugh when I give them the old hand-to-bicep “fuck you” gesture.
Tumaro uses a card key to open the elevator door and we ride down to a huge basement. Its walls are stacked with crates and cartons, the ceiling’s lined with pipes and ducts.
We go to a room at the far end. Waiting for us in there is the interrogator—a dwarf whom Tumaro introduces as Rosaldo. He’s puffing a cigar and returns our nods of greeting. This is the first dwarf I’ve ever seen close up, and in contrast to the rest of him his normal-sized head looks enormous. His features are grimly Indian. He’s taken off his suit jacket and rolled his sleeves and wears a black plastic garbage bag in poncho fashion, with holes cut in it for his head and his runty arms. He’s got those bag things on his feet like hospital workers wear. A neat operator. Doesn’t want blood or whatever else on his clothes or shoes. Besides a coat rack and a couple of foldout chairs next to it, the only other pieces of furniture are a narrow metal table like the kind used for embalming—except this one’s equipped with hold-down straps for arms and legs and head—and the table-side platform on which the dwarf is standing, plus an elevated side table holding an open satchel whose top tray holds an array of gleaming metal instruments, some spear shaped, some curved, some corkscrewed. All very sharp looking.
The dwarf flicks ashes on the floor and blows on the cigar’s lit end, inspiring a bright glow. He gives Chino a smile devoid of everything a smile is supposed to convey. Prepare him, he says, his voice deep. I’d be lying if I said the son of a bitch didn’t scare me a little.
Two guys hold Chino tight and Tumaro starts stripping him.
I told you the truuuth! Chino screeches, addressing Charlie, the dwarf, everybody. I swear it, for the love of God! I swear on my mother’s head!
They strap him naked to the table. He’s screaming he doesn’t know where the captives are, that he’d tell us if he knew.
“This is bullshit,” I tell Charlie. “I’m outta here.”
He doesn’t look at me as I leave.
I know how he feels. If there’s any chance at all the guy knows where Jessie is, Charlie has to use whatever means necessary to get it out of him. If I thought there was the slightest possibility Chino was lying, I’d be in favor of siccing the dwarf on him too. But I don’t believe anybody can fake the kind of terror I saw in his eyes. Charlie would see that too if he wasn’t half-crazed with his own fear for Jessie.
I go back up to the elevator bank in the garage and see Chino’s green Focus parked close by. A guy’s leaning on the front fender and leafing through what looks like an oversized comic book. He tells me they tossed the car and didn’t find a thing of interest—no phone, no receipts, notes, nothing. Except for the book, he says, which I see is a graphic novel about Pancho Villa.
I’d hoped Rigo would be there by now but the suite’s deserted when I get up there. I pour coffee and sit on the couch and watch the pulsing map colors on the soundless TV weather show. The bright emerald green of rain still dominates the screen. I take out my phone, thinking of calling Rayo, but find the battery’s just about totally drained.
Not ten minutes later Charlie comes in, looking a touch hangdog, not a face you’ll often see on him. He sits down and tells me he put a stop to it before the dwarf could get started. Chino’s still down there but the dwarf’s gone.
“You were right,” he says. “He doesn’t know where the hold houses are. He would’ve said so. He would’ve done anything to stop what the dwarf was about to do. You wouldn’t believe what he was about to do.”
“Yeah, I would,” I say, and check my watch. “Tick tock, man. What are we gonna do?”
Our fallback hope has been that Rigo’s supposition is correct, and even if we can’t get to Jessie before the ransom’s paid, the snatchers will let everyone go when they get the money. If that happens, we’ll be glad to feel like fools for all our frantic and failed effort. But I know Charlie’s thinking the same thing I am. This bunch has already killed eight guys—one of them a partner—to reduce the odds of being identified. That doesn’t bode real well for the captives’ release. No matter how we cut it, we now know we’re not going to find Jessie before the first payoff. We don’t know where the hold houses are and she could be at either one. Even if they plan to kill the captives, though, it’s a fairly safe bet they’ll keep the first group alive as security until the second ransom’s made, and then do them all at once. All we can do is follow Belmonte to the first hold house and find out of Jessie’s there. If she is, we try to get her out while the second payoff’s on its way. If she’s not at the first place, then the Jaguaro who tails Sosa to the second hold house can give us directions as he’s on the way and we’ll go there too—with no idea if we can get there ahead of the money or, even if we do, what the hell we’ll do then.
“There’s another hitch,” Charlie says. “Chino’s guys are going to call him when Belmonte heads out with the money and tell him to get ready to tail. When they do, they either won’t get a response or our schoolboy pal will answer the phone. Christ, they might’ve already called Chino for some reason, and if they have, they’re spooked. They’ll have to assume that somebody’s on to them, and so they’ll want to keep the whereabouts of the hostages secret. They’ll have Belmonte take the money somewhere else. We’ll be tailing a dead end.”
As he’s telling me all this, I remember Chino’s phone. I take it out and check a couple of items on it, then pass it to Charlie. “Courtesy of our schoolboy pal.”
“This the phone the kid took?”
“The very one. Slipped it to me when we took off after Chino.”
He grins at it. “You know what? We should’ve hired the little bastard. Take him back to Texas.”
I tell him there’s nothing on its phone mail. I just checked. And no calls on the log since Belmonte left the bank. A half dozen calls before that, all outgoing, all to the same number. No calls that could’ve spooked them.
“Unless they’ve tried to call the other one, the Chato guy,” Charlie says.
I think about that a second. “No, they haven’t called him, either,” I say. “If they had and didn’t get an answer, they would’ve—”
“Called Chino, you’re right,” he says. “But his phone doesn’t show a record of it. We’re cool there. So far, anyway.”
We figure the thing to do is take Chino to the café with us and have him answer the phone when his guy calls. Play it like all is well, keep the Doce guys from spooking—if they haven’t been spooked by something else by then. When Belmonte comes by the plaza, we tail him in the Focus. Chino’s guys probably know the car, and that might give us an edge of some kind. Or not.
It’s a sorry-ass plan and we know it, but the hour’s late and the clock’s ticking and it’s the best we can come up with.
We’ve just decided all this when Rigo and Rayo arrive. Rigo tells us Mateo’s in critical condition but in an excellent hospital endowed by the Wolfe family. There’s blood on Rayo’s jacket and she sees me staring at it and says it’s Mateo’s. In her quick but thorough way she recounts the chase out on the hills and the gunfight that put two bullets in Mateo’s stomach and one in his leg. When she tells of shooting the guy and then tending Mateo as well as she
could until help came, her expression is much like the one she had after backflipping off the palm tree trunk. There’s a certain pride in it. I guess my own face is showing more than I realize, because when she looks at me she cuts her eyes away and it’s the first hint of blush I’ve ever seen on her.
Charlie and Rigo either don’t catch it or choose to ignore it.
Charlie gives them a summary account of our capture of Chino and what we’ve learned from him. Rigo agrees the only thing we can do is tail Belmonte, and he approves of how we intend to do it. But because Galán just might, for whatever reason, have Belmonte take the money somewhere else or have him go to the hold house by a different route, Rigo will have somebody follow Belmonte as soon as he leaves his house. If Belmonte goes a different way than the plaza route, the tail can let us know and put us on to him.
I’ll do it, Rayo says. Then gives Rigo an abashed look and says, I mean . . . I’d like to have the job, Uncle, if you think I can handle it.
For a few long seconds, Rigo just stares at her. I have to think he’s considering how she’s proved herself today. Maybe saved his little brother’s life.
Very well, he says. And you’ll do exactly as these two tell you.
She lights up. “Yes, of course,” she says. “Claro que sí.”
Rigo also wants to have a crew of Jaguaros in another vehicle tracking us on a GPS and a parallel route, but Charlie nixes the idea.
“We’ll have two vehicles tailing and that’s enough,” Charlie says. “Any more than that just increases the odds of getting spotted. Chino said there’s four guys at the hold house, plus the Espanto guy who’s going to collect the money. Rudy and I”—he cuts a look at Rayo—“the three of us can handle five.”
Rigo doesn’t like it. He says Charlie’s being foolish not using more men.
“Look, cousin,” Charlie says. “If it goes to hell and . . . they kill her, I don’t want to be blaming you guys for any part of it.”
“Charlie, for Christ’s sake,” Rigo says.
“It has to be on us,” Charlie says.
“And me,” Rayo says. “She’s my sister.”
We look at her.
“Practically,” she says.
Rigo expels a hard breath and flicks up his hands in resignation. “Okay, Charlie, whatever you wish,” he says. “Jessica’s from your side of the house. It’s your decision.”
By twenty after three, we’re at a back table in the Cuates Locos Café, Chino seated between me and Charlie and carefully spooning tepid chicken soup into his broken-toothed mouth, his grip on the spoon awkward for his busted thumb. His phone is on the table. The Focus is parked out front, a roll of duct tape in the console between the front seats, Chino’s Glock under the driver’s seat. Never hurts to have a spare weapon.
We’ve instructed Chino in his responses to questions he thinks he might get asked when the call comes, and have impressed on him the necessity of keeping cool. Charlie has promised him that if he botches things in any way, the last person he’ll see in this world is the dwarf.
At a small park two blocks over from Belmonte’s street, Rayo’s in the brown Jeep SUV Charlie and I used earlier, waiting for the surveillance guys to let her know when Belmonte leaves the house.
35 — ESPANTO
On this afternoon of persistent drizzle, there are but a handful of other patrons in the Casa Toltec, all of them seated at a distance from him. It will get dark very early. That the day has passed so slowly and seemed almost boring is testament, Espanto reflects, to how well everything has proceeded. He has received no calls from Chato or Chino since their reports that the money had left the banks, and no calls of concern or complaint from either of the hold houses since the locksmith’s arrival at the Beta site. He had thought to call Barbarosa to see what they’d found out about the stink, but decided against it. Whatever it was, it was sure to be something that could not be remedied today, and there was no need to aggravate Barbarosa with another call about it.
Just a short while ago he spoke with El Galán, who was pleased that the phones have been so idle all afternoon. In less than an hour Belmonte will call Galán to get his instructions for making the first ransom delivery, and the operation will accelerate into its final phase. Three hours from now the whole business will be done with and Los Doce will be celebrating their biggest payday ever and by far—and raising their glasses to their imminent admission to the Zeta organization. Until a few weeks ago Espanto had never envisioned himself rising so high. Not bad, he thinks, for a kid from the east-side barrios.
It’s nearly time to depart for the Alpha house. When Belmonte gets there with the first payoff, Espanto will dismiss Rubio and Cabrito to go join Galán at El Nido. Gallo and Apache will remain with Belmonte and the Alpha captives while Espanto goes to the Beta house to await Sosa’s delivery of the rest of the money. Once he gets it, he will call Gallo and they will cuff and blindfold both groups, drive them both to the Alameda park, help them out of the vehicles, and leave them to the assistance of the first passersby inclined to offer it.
And that, as they say, will be that.
He has paid his bill and as always tipped Betina liberally, and she winks at him from her stool at the kitchen entrance where she and another waitress are watching the TV news. He puts the audio receiver/recorder and the ear buds in the laptop’s carrying satchel, then turns off the laptop and closes it and puts it in the satchel too. His phone goes into his inside jacket pocket, opposite the shoulder-holstered Glock. As he gets up and hangs the satchel on his shoulder, Betina says, Oh, my dear God. She’s staring at the TV, on which a small crowd of onlookers is standing aside to give the camera a clear shot of a blackened ragged corpse in a muddy street. The camera then moves past a police car and a pair of fire department water tankers and pans up and down the block, showing damaged roofs and vehicles.
He recognizes the neighborhood.
That poor barrio, Betina says to no one in particular.
Espanto moves closer to better hear the audio. The camera is now on a young woman reporter questioning a uniformed police officer. A razed structure is visible behind them, its smoldering ruins reduced to the foundation but for a small low portion of wall. Espanto comprehends that he’s looking at what’s left of the Beta house.
The cop is saying that the cause of the explosion appears to have been a drug laboratory operated by a gang of young thugs who, according to neighbors, came and went at all hours. No, he says, there were no survivors. He doubts any of the remains can be identified, but who cares? Punks are punks, he says, all of them the same. The curse of Mexico.
The camera moves in for a close-up of the reporter as she solemnly intones that it’s one more tragic instance of young criminals trying to get rich fast but only making a fast trip to a pauper’s grave.
Espanto hastens out to the Sierra pickup in the rear parking lot and calls Barbarosa. A recording informs him that the subscriber is no longer on the network. He calls Flaco and gets the same message, and then the same thing for Cisco’s number. He had hoped at least one of them might have been out of the house when it blew up, although if that had been so, the survivor would have called him by now. So would anybody else in Los Doce who’d heard about this. Should he call Chino? Chato? What for? It would only distract them for no purpose. First see what Galán wants to do.
36 — GALÁN AND ESPANTO AND RUBIO
Business is also scant at El Nido on this somber afternoon. Other than Galán at his table at the rear of the room, the only patrons are an old man at the counter, nearly asleep over his coffee, and a young couple with eyes and ears for only each other at a table across the room.
Galán has just finished reading a magazine article about Baja California, replete with stunning photographs of the beauty of both of its coasts. He has never been there but is enthralled with the region. All that he’s heard about it, all the pictures he’s seen
, the travel programs on television, have made him believe it may be the place for him. Exceptionally attractive to him is the area around Loreto, on the Gulf side of the peninsula. He has decided to fly there next week, rent a car, drive around for a few days, and see what he thinks. Talk to some realtors.
He’s surprised by the phone’s quiver in his jacket. Belmonte is not due to call him for about forty minutes yet, a call he intends to receive in the privacy of the silver Cherokee in the parking lot. He sees that the caller is Espanto, with whom he spoke not an hour ago.
“Dígame,” he says into the phone. Then says, No, I have not. Tell me.
As he listens, he glances at the television mounted on the opposite wall, its screen dark. It is rarely turned on except for soccer and boxing matches.
When Espanto has told it all, Galán says, I see. Hold on a minute.
He considers the incalculable turns of fortune at play in the world—like a secret meth lab in the basement of your hold house blowing up and killing three of your men and half of your hostages. It’s the stuff of endless platitudes reminding us that you can’t plan for everything, anything can happen, you never know, blah-blah-blah. But as another saying has it, what’s done is done, and he turns his mind to the immediate problem. . . . When Belmonte and Sosa don’t receive the Beta captives, they’ll assume the worst and go to the police. They’ll no longer have reason not to. Given the families’ social standing and the disappearance of five of the kidnap victims, the police will give greater attention and faster action to this case than they give to most. What’s more, because the ransomed group of captives was held in a hold house in the western slums, the cops might wonder about the multiple deaths reported in an explosion on the same day in another slum on the same side of the city. They might perform forensic exams they would normally not trouble themselves with. They’ll identify the missing captives and charge their abductors with their killing. Details of no import with regard to a kidnapping in which nobody’s hurt can matter very much in a murder case. The Alpha group knows what they look like. It’s possible they have overheard things that might be of help to the police. All of them would testify.
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