Tony slowed down.
I didn’t say shit else until we got to my apartment. I removed my army field jacket and flipped it inside out, to hide the blood. “Pull over.”
I got out of the car and leaned down. “I don’t ever wanna see you again, Tony. You hear me? Stay the fuck away from me.”
I slammed his door. Tony sped off.
The bloody clothes went in a plastic bag, which I, in turn, placed in another plastic bag. I jumped in the shower. Pink water whirlpooled into the drain. I washed quickly, but thoroughly, toweled off, dressed, and headed straight for the streets again.
I moved like a big black cat, like a fly, hypersensitive to every movement, every sound. I made sure no one watched or followed. I slipped down an alley, made sure again that I was alone, and tossed the evidence in a garbage can. I quickly buried it under some other garbage.
It was too late to catch a Greyhound to Miami that night. I would have to camp out until morning. I hurried back to my room.
I pulled the chair next to the window and sat and watched every minor movement, determined to stay up all night, to keep vigil. I sat and watched, and it was quiet, but I concentrated on the exact location of every sliver of streetlight, over every dark spot, every shadow within view of my window. The changing of the stoplights—green, yellow, red, green, yellow, red—like the ticks of a cosmic clock.
It was a caterpillar’s march to sunrise, and I didn’t make it. I must have nodded off, because suddenly the Devil himself chased me through an empty house. I found doors and windows that led to other rooms, and kept barely getting away. Suddenly, I was in a room with no windows, no door save for the one I came through. The Devil walked in with a grin. My heart was atomic. I couldn’t breathe. His teeth were black, and his body was black, lean and muscular. He was so black he was almost purple. But he spoke Spanish.
“You know what I’m here for, right?”
I felt piss run down my legs. I remembered suddenly that when I was a kid, my mother taught me that if I encountered Lucifer, to simply say Jesus’ name. The Devil stepped slowly toward me. He grinned, and each tooth was etched with the live portraits of a thousand screaming souls.
“You ready to place your bet?”
I opened my mouth to say His name, but nothing came out. My heart was a flame inside my chest and I felt the metamorphosis of the condemned. My flesh burned and rotted. It felt so real.
The Devil slapped me. “Wake up, muthafucka.”
I came to, abruptly.
Coltrane and Johnson stood over me. Johnson slapped me again.
Coltrane said, “Wakey, wakey, punk.”
I looked up at them.
“Having a bad dream?”
I sat up in the chair. I would’ve asked them what they were doing in my room, but that would have been pointless.
Coltrane said, “The time for pussyfootin’s over. Sit on the floor.”
I sure as shit didn’t want to place myself so easily within kicking range, but they stood over me already, and I believed Coltrane when he intimated that I had seen the last of the soft touch. I moved to the floor.
Coltrane sat in my chair, in front of me. He gestured at my packed suitcase. “Traveling somewhere?”
“Leaving on the Greyhound tonight. I won’t be a headache for you any longer.”
Coltrane said, “Oh no?”
Johnson kicked me in the chest and knocked me onto my back. He stood over me. “Ever been to an underground spot called the Cave, hand job?”
I sank. The floor could’ve opened up and sucked me in. It would have been a relief.
“I heard of it.”
Johnson grabbed a plastic bag off the table and threw it in my face. My plastic bag. The one with the bloody clothes.
Coltrane said, “Here’s one from OJ, dumb fuck: When you wanna get rid of the evidence, get rid of it. Burn it. Bury it somewhere where it can’t be found. Get on a plane and go somewhere else and toss that shit in a river. Something. Don’t just toss it in a garbage can five minutes on foot from where you hang your head, nimrod. Especially when you know you’re under surveillance.”
Johnson said, “You are tied up completely now.”
“Not that it matters,” said Coltrane. “But we got about fifty eyewitnesses ready to pick you from a lineup any moment we haul you in. Same goes for that turd you hang out with.”
Johnson said, “You understand now? We make our careers if we bring you in.”
Maybe, I thought. But they hadn’t cuffed me.
I got up and rubbed myself where Johnson booted me. “So what’s the scenario?”
Johnson looked through my empty drawers. “Don’t talk cute anymore. What’s this?” He found the last bag of coke. He held it up to the light. “You’re so fuckin’ weak.” He tossed it at me. “Fix yourself, if you need to, junkie.”
The bag landed on the carpet. I left it there.
“Go on,” said Johnson.
“Fuck you.”
Johnson moved toward me, but Coltrane froze him with an interruption.
“The scenario,” said Coltrane, “is what it’s always been. You work for us now.”
“Get used to taking orders, Santiago. You’re our bitch.”
I looked at the bloody package on the floor next to me. The plastic bag with my clothes, my hair, my skin fibers, my DNA, and the blood that sprayed out of Chulo’s neck. It was that falling piano that Tony had mentioned earlier. And it had landed right on my neck.
I nodded. “What exactly do you need me to do?”
They told me that the day before, they had tracked Pelón to the airport. They watched him pick up his brother, who’d just flown from PR. They knew the brother had a rap sheet and that it wasn’t a social visit.
Coltrane said, “We know whatever Pelón’s got in the broiler’s ready to come out. We need you to dig up every detail and inform us, minute by minute.”
“And then what?”
“Performance first,” said Coltrane as he stood and snatched the plastic bag with the evidence off the floor. “Then maybe we talk about what we do with this cherry pie you gave us.”
“And don’t even dream about running,” said Johnson.
Coltrane pointed his pinky and index finger. “If we so much as imagine that you skipped town, we’ll phone this homicide in and there’ll be a nationwide manhunt. Won’t be no place you can go. We’ll find you. And then we’ll drop you for murder one.”
I swallowed.
“Don’t look for us, we’ll reach out to you,” said Johnson. “And yo ass better be there.”
They shut the door.
I picked up the leftover bag of coke and ran to the bathroom with it. Strange to say, but it looked like a tiny white orchid of some sort, the way it floated on the surface of the toilet water before it spun down.
I hit Pelón on the cell phone.
“¿Bueno?”
“Soy yo. Eddie. We need to talk. But not on the phone.”
In Spanish he said, “Good news?”
“What you been waiting for. I’m ready.”
“Good. Come over. We at the apartment now talking about it.”
Pelón’s hallway smelled of cooked liver, and when he opened the door, I learned his kitchen was the source. He broke into a wide, self-satisfied, friendly grin.
“I knew you was gonna wake up, Eddie. Pásate. I was just about to fix some drinks.” He walked behind the bar and went about the complicated business of making mojitos. “My brother say everyone in the capital drinking this now.” Pelón mashed leaves with a pilón. “Can you believe a drink with mint? And a pedazo de caña?” He looked up from the dicing. “You want one?”
“No.”
“Don’t look so nervous.”
My stomach was forming ulcers, but I didn’t think it showed. I wondered if Pelón really read me, or whether he just tested me. My decision to join the casino job should have been sudden from his point of view.
In an effort to show how at ease I was, I went behind the
bar and grabbed a tequila bottle. “In Chicago we drink the hard stuff.”
I poured myself a quadruple shot.
Pelón made a face. “Coño, nene. Slow down.”
I gulped down half. Pelón finished making mojitos.
“What’s different about your apartment, Pelón?”
“I got rid of some furniture.”
I noticed then that the fancy “King of Spain” chair was missing. The TV was gone. His sound system. Even the big maroon leather couch.
Pelón had three mojitos on the tray. “Vámonos al otro cuarto. They in there shooting pool.”
I followed Pelón into the other room. Tony stood at one end of the pool table. He studied the shooter and leaned against his cue. The shooter leaned over the pool table, lined up his shot. He flicked his wrist, the one with the thick gold bracelet. The balls cracked against each other in a way that made him curse.
The shooter stood erect, but his face remained twisted in frustration. He picked up his cigar.
“Let me introduce my brother,” said Pelón. “¡Cabezón!”
Pelón’s brother turned to him. He was bigger than Pelón, taller, broader in the shoulders, more muscular. He was just as black and just as bald, it seemed, because he wore a big toupee in a James Brown style.
“Cabe, say hello to our other companion. Palo.”
Pelón’s brother, Cabezón, squinted at me as he pulled a very long draw off his cigar. Muscles stretched the fabric of his lime green guayabera and his dark green slacks. The hand with the thick gold bracelet also sported a large gold pinky ring. Cabezón blew enough cigar smoke to shut down a room. He stepped toward me and extended his big hand.
“Encantado.”
What I saw when Cabezón opened his mouth made my brain pop. It felt like someone smashed a hammer right into the top of my head.
In Spanish I said, “Excuse me?” to get Cabezón to repeat the word, any word, to say anything, but just to open his mouth. “What did you say?”
“Mucho gusto.”
It was him.
My lip curled. My hand went numb as a reflex. Cabezón shook my hand and I let him, but I was in shock. His teeth were made of gold. I recognized him instantly. I almost whispered his name. Cabezón was Pelón’s brother and we had just met. But I had seen him once before.
Cabezón was the monster I saw spray my father’s brains against a brick wall.
PART V:
NIGHTFALL
CHAPTER 28:
THE FOURTH MAN
I was in a tunnel that stretched and contracted. Cabezón was at the other end of it. Beyond him there was haze or fog that suggested light, and between us there was only darkness and shade. The instinct that makes the mother bear slash at anybody who looks at her cubs vibrated like a supernova inside me. Somehow it got compressed.
Cabezón said, “Why they call you Palo?”
My stomach churned battery acid.
Cabezón looked at his brother. “Your friend looks sick.”
Pelón chuckled like he was nervous. I opened my mouth as if to say something, and a little vomit shot out, unexpectedly, onto the bright white carpet, and onto Cabezón’s crisp, lime green guayabera.
He cursed and wiped himself with a handkerchief. “¿Coño, pa’ eso bebe?” He ordered his brother to take away my tequila. Pelón took my drink from my hand and said that if I thought I would be sick again, to please go to the bathroom.
I looked at Pelón. I immediately realized that if Cabezón was the gold-toothed killer in the gangway, then Pelón was likely the accomplice, the one who snuck up on my father and fired the first shot. I felt tremendous heat in the palms of my hands. Pelón’s apartment spun under my feet.
“I have to get out of here.”
Pelón said, “¿Cómo? You just got here.”
I went out of the apartment, to the elevator, where I waited for what felt like an hour for the car going down. Pelón watched from his doorway. He asked if I wanted water.
“Go away.”
The elevator opened. I hit buttons like it could never be quick enough. Downstairs I made it out the main entrance, and as far as the gutter out front, before my knees buckled and I threw up.
I waited for Coltrane and Johnson at Buckingham Fountain. I stared at the bronze sea horse and remembered a time when I had been at the fountain with my dad, in the summer. We came by the fountain to watch the water display and the colored lights at night, and when the water shot in the air, my father walked on his hands and did cartwheels to make a real show out of it.
There was no water display and no lights that night as I waited for the narcs to show. I saw them walking toward me and I waited until they were real close before I said their names out loud.
Coltrane said, “This is romantic.”
“I chose this because it’s out in the open. I’m not in the mood for your antics, Detective. We don’t have time.”
Johnson frowned. He licked a lollipop. “Like we give a fuck about your moods.”
“There’s a lot going down tonight. I need to get ready.”
“A lot? What does that mean?”
“A heist that you never thought Pelón could pull off. Son of a bitch got an airtight plan.”
Coltrane and Johnson looked at each other.
Johnson pointed his lollipop. “Spill it.”
“In a second, narc. First I wanna set some ground rules.”
“Say what?”
I spoke clearly. “You heard me. You too, Coltrane. Don’t think the bully tactic is going to work this time. The way I’m feeling? A bullet to the head would be a relief. Prison’s the only place that feels like home anymore. I’m more desperate than you think.”
Johnson seethed a little, but Coltrane only nodded.
“Ground rules are for my own protection.”
“Go on then,” said Coltrane. “Speak.”
“You’re in it for the money, and that’s what you’re gonna get out of this, loads of cash. Only thing is: there has to be something in it for me.”
Johnson said, “We don’t negotiate with convicts.”
Coltrane said, “Easy, partner. Go ahead, Santiago. Shoot.”
“You agree? I’m entitled to get something outta this too?”
“What have you got in mind?”
I told them what I wanted, including which parts were nonnegotiable. I told them much, but not all, of what I knew. Enough juicy details about Pelón’s plan to get them really stoked. I reminded them that time was running out.
“I’m not haggling. We can drop the whole thing right now. You really think you can pin a murder rap on me—then go ahead. Arrest me. Maybe you can get a little overtime out of it.”
They were reluctant, but we agreed to terms. I’m certain they called me “sucker” and had a good laugh after I walked away. Any idiot should’ve known there was no way these two would ever honor our pact.
The crew met at Pelón’s to eat ribs and go over every last detail of the plan for Halloween night. It was painful to sit near Cabezón as he smirked and licked barbecue sauce off his fingers. Pelón kissed his ass. And Tony acted as if he felt better than he had in a long time.
Cabezón talked about life in PR. Deep-sea fishing, scuba, snorkeling, the way he still picked up lonely American women in hotel bars in the Condado. I didn’t pry or try to investigate anything more than what I needed to know, because there was no doubt that these were my father’s killers.
There was no doubt, and there was no other way out of my predicament other than to play the game the way it was designed. I had a strong impulse for vengeance, and it was something that had been there most of my life, in the back of my mind, at my core, underneath all my thoughts. It was a poor substitute for the love that I once shared with my father, but it was all that I had. I clung to it, subconsciously, for all my life. And now it was at the surface.
What could I do? It would take great cunning—not luck—to escape from this. I wanted desperately to live. And I didn’t
want any more black marks on my soul.
So I prayed and went in to the meeting with Pelón and his brother and Tony, and I ate with them, and I put up with Cabezón’s jokes. When Pelón went over the plan, I paid close attention and stayed in character as the guy whose only interest was to pull off a successful job and go home.
I was the last to arrive on the night of the heist.
Pelón opened the door with a worried look. “You really trying to give an old man a stroke.” He asked for my jacket.
“Just give me the costume, so we can get the fuck outta here.”
He handed me the box that was on top of the bar. Cabezón and Tony were ready. Cabezón was dressed as a lion, with the big overstuffed headpiece, like a mascot at a college basketball game. Tony was dressed and made up in face paint as a happy clown. Pelón, of course, was dressed as himself, since he was the getaway driver, and no one would see him.
I took the box to the bathroom to change. Pelón had bought me a gorilla costume. It was a little big on me, which was OK. Actually, it was good. I put it on and practiced moving around in it. I struck poses in the large bathroom mirror like I imagined I would during the stickup. It was hot inside the costume. I took the mask off and joined the others.
“Looking good,” said Cabezón.
I ignored him.
Pelón displayed our arsenal on the same coffee table where Tony had once spilled ten G’s for him. We had two 9mm’s for me and Tony. A sawed-off shotgun for Cabezón.
His weapon of choice, I thought, recalling how he used one before.
Pelón said, “I’m gonna repeat this: These weapons are clean. They’re untraceable. No serial numbers. Never been used on any other jobs. Never shot anybody. You gonna make sure you wear your gloves every time you handle the weapon, and at all times while you on the boat. When the job is over, you got the money, you in the dinghy coming over to the shore”—Pelón slowed his tempo to emphasize—“you drop the weapons into the water. Do not bring these guns on shore or into the getaway car. We don’t need to get caught with them later. ¿M’entienden?”
Pelón paraphrased what he’d said in Spanish for his brother. He looked at the three of us. “Any questions?”
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