“Whatever it is they’re loading, it can’t be that heavy,” I said. “They come out of there not riding much lower than when they back in. Only the brown step van rode noticeably lower on its suspension.”
He grunted back at me. We hadn’t talked much for most of the time we waited. He kept track of the vehicles in the parking lot, trying to figure how many men were inside. And like I said, I was keeping tabs on the vehicles pulling in and out of the loading bays. We figured our best chance to strike would come when they began closing up shop and the workers started to leave. It was simple math. The fewer of them on the premises, the better it was for us. But it was a tricky calculation because we couldn’t wait too long. We needed Carl Ryan to be there when we moved in. The whole first part of the damn plan was a tricky calculation based mostly on guesses and very little solid information. The second part was even shakier, based solely on wishful thinking and my less-than-encyclopedic knowledge of human behavior.
“Is the gray Maserati still in its spot?” I asked, though I knew that it was. The wait was getting to me. “We can’t let him leave.”
Spears ignored the question about the Maserati. “You’re a queer duck, Murphy, you know that?”
“How so?”
“We’ve sat here for two hours and you haven’t asked me.”
“Asked you what?”
“Don’t go thick on me now, Gus. You haven’t asked about what happened over there.”
“I haven’t asked because I’m not in the mood for lies and revisionist history. And even if you told me the truth, what would it matter? And what would you have me ask, anyway? Should I ask about how you went about it? Whether you systematically killed the older villagers first, drowned the infants, and then raped the women? Should I ask if the old people were dead before you hung them from the trees? Should I ask if the women and girls were still alive when you butchered them? What? Do you think I’d be curious about that? Should I ask why? No. I already know why. You’re a fucking monster.”
He didn’t shrink from my assessment, nor did his expression change. He wasn’t going to try to persuade me otherwise. I’m not sure he much cared about my opinion of him. For all I knew about what went on inside him, he may have brought the subject up simply to pass the time because he wanted an excuse to relive the incident. Killers do that sometimes. They agree to interviews with the press and with shrinks so they can relive the excitement of what they had done. I wasn’t curious about the details of his inhumanity. That was true, but there were some things I was curious about.
“How did they find out?”
Spears was confused. “How did who find out what?”
“Your son, to start. How did he find out about what you had done? I can’t believe it’s a coincidence that he adopted a Vietnamese orphan.”
Spears laughed a nasty laugh.
“A coincidence? No, not a coincidence.”
“You sure didn’t tell him.”
“My first wife,” he said. “Kevin’s mother told him. Let me save you the trouble of asking how she found out: a letter. I came home late from work one night and I found her beside herself in the kitchen. There was a half-empty bottle of vodka on the table. It was clear she’d been crying and she was bleeding from her forehead as if she’d smacked it into the corner of an open cabinet door or something. Her face was covered in bloody tears, but when she saw me, she charged at me like she was shot out of a cannon. She came clawing at my face, kicking, screaming like a banshee. She was calling me your favorite word: monster. She also used some rather colorful descriptors along with it.”
I guess I shouldn’t have been shocked at his continued calm demeanor and cool voice as he described what I could have only imagined was a horrible scene. I was, nonetheless. That’s the thing about real monsters, I think. The rest of us can never quite believe the depth of their depravity. We want to think they’re guilty but with an explanation, that they aren’t as evil as we think. That was why they could sneak up on us. We let them.
“When I got her slightly calmed down,” he continued, “she walked back to the table, bent over, and picked up two sheets of paper that were on the tile floor. She shoved them into my hands. ‘How could I not see you for what you are?’ she said. ‘How could I have fallen in love with you? How could I have been so blind and stupid?’ Then she started raging again, but this time at herself, tearing at her own clothes, scratching her face. I slapped her. I had to. And you know what she did? She started laughing at me.”
“She wasn’t laughing at you,” I said. “She was laughing at herself, at how ridiculous and absurd the world was. That letter was like an earthquake, tornado, avalanche, and forest fire all at once. One second she was happily married and had a family and the next it was gone. Believe me, Spears, I know. I know how that is.”
He looked at me as if he had never before considered the possibility. But if I expected this small revelation to magically transform him from Mr. Hyde back into a human being, I would be disappointed. He shrugged. So what? Next.
“I moved into a hotel that night. Kevin was away at college then. I knew she’d call him as soon as she could. They were always thick as thieves, those two.” Spears shook his head and smirked. “It was years before the kid would even speak to me again or acknowledge me, and then only because his ship was sinking and he was desperate for money when his first business was going under. He always was a fuckup like his mother. He couldn’t even get it right about where to adopt from. I wanted to take the stupid idiot and show him a map.” Spears jabbed at his left palm with his right index finger. “This is Vietnam. This is Cambodia. After what Pol Pot did, there were plenty of Cambodian orphans to go around. What a silly, guilty fool, my son. What did he have to feel guilty about?”
I didn’t want to go there, and asked, “Who sent the letter?”
“It was typewritten, unsigned, and the envelope had no return address. But whoever sent it got all the details right. I was sure it was Chris Farmer, one of the Lost Patrol.” He smiled as he said it. “That’s what we called ourselves, the Lost Patrol.”
It was all I could do not to punch the smug asshole in the face, but before I could, he went on.
“Chris hadn’t done very well after coming back and relocating. He was a hick, a real redneck from Buttfucksville, Arkansas, somewhere and just couldn’t cope out of his world. He was always after me to help him out. Before too long his requests became what they always really were in the first place: blackmail threats. So I thought he had just finally made good on the threats.”
“And who told Linh Trang?”
He shrugged. “Doesn’t really matter, does it?”
“Humor me.”
“I suspect it was Roberta.”
“The second Mrs. Spears?” I said. “Telling LT about you would have risked breaking your divorce settlement.”
He made a face that was part fury and part admiration, but said, “I would never cut her off. Unlike my bitch of a first wife, I loved Roberta. Only person or thing I think I ever loved in my life. Only loss I ever regretted before my granddaughter was murdered.”
“I don’t think it was—”
Spears cut me off. “Wait! Shut up. The van’s pulling out with three guys in it. That leaves only two cars in the lot plus Ryan’s.”
“Time to move.”
But we didn’t move, not immediately. There was always that moment for me, that moment before a drug raid, before responding to a shooting, before going through the front door at a bad domestic call, when it floods in: the fear, the risks, the knowledge that things never go as planned. Never! I didn’t know what was going through Spears’s head, whether he was afraid or worried. I didn’t care, just as long as he did what he was supposed to do and came out the other side of it alive.
61
(SATURDAY, LATE AFTERNOON)
I hopped out of the car, reaching back in
for Spears’s Benelli semiautomatic shotgun. The damned thing was as sleek and black as the Mercedes. Spears had offered me a whole range of weapons, some of which weren’t meant to kill waterfowl or elk. They were human-specific. Along with his array of hunting rifles, he had a Romanian-made AK47 and a fully operational MP5. These days I was less familiar with the gun laws than when I was on the job, but it was a pretty safe bet that neither of those two weapons was legal for a private citizen to possess in New York State, gun permit notwithstanding. I don’t suppose he gave a fuck about legality.
I slung the shotgun over my shoulder. Those two assault rifles were killing machines, and I had no desire to empty a clip and pile up bodies. I’d already killed all the people I ever wanted to, justifiably or not. Cops are comfortable with shotguns because just the sight of them scares the shit out of people. They’re loud and they’re powerful and you don’t have to be a very good shot if you’re forced to use them. With a pump-action shotgun, just the cha-ching of chambering a round was usually enough to stop someone in his tracks. But a pump-action shotgun was about the only hole in Spears’s private little armory.
“This is it,” I said, yanking the rolled-up ski mask down over my face. “You know what to do.”
Spears didn’t answer, not with words. He hit the gas and pulled out of the lot. I climbed the parking lot fence, wiggled through the hedge, and made my way across the street to the parking lot of the building that abutted Gyron Machinery. A low concrete-and-stucco wall separated the properties. I crouched behind the wall and waited. And then . . . Bang! The waiting was over. I peeked over the ledge of the wall and saw that Spears had T-boned Carl Ryan’s Maserati, crushing in the passenger-side door. Spears’s airbag deployed, but he didn’t look any the worse for wear. As soon as the airbag deflated, Spears took off his shoulder belt and laid his head down on the steering wheel.
It didn’t take long for one of the loading bay doors to roll up and for two guys to come running out to see what had happened. They were shouting at each other in Spanish, one gesturing wildly with his arm to get back into the building. I didn’t understand a lot of what they were saying, but I heard Ryan’s name mentioned a few times. It wouldn’t be long now. My heart was pounding so hard I swore I could hear it in the quiet of the failing daylight. My mouth was cotton, the sound of my pounding heart suddenly drowned out by a high-pitched ringing, the by-product of rushing blood full of adrenaline. And as if on cue, Carl Ryan came running out of the office door, the guy who’d gone to fetch him trailing behind.
“Motherfucka! Motherfucka!” he screamed as he ran. “Look what this motherfucka did to my car. I’m gonna kill you, you cocksuck—”
Ryan went silent when he got up close to Spears’s Mercedes. He was facing away from me, so I couldn’t tell anything about his expression, but his body language changed completely. He stiffened as he slowly swiveled his head from side to side. I couldn’t be sure if he was looking for accomplices or to see if there were any passersby who might’ve witnessed the crash. My guess was he recognized Spears when he got up close to the cars and then Spears, as was the plan, made sure Ryan knew who he was.
“You fucking murderer. You killed my granddaughter.” Spears slurred his words as if he was drunk or concussed or both.
Ryan didn’t deny it. He didn’t call Spears crazy. He didn’t make a move to call an ambulance.
Spears reached down and picked up the .38 he had hidden beneath his seat. When his hand came up holding it, he said, “I’m gonna kill you, you fucker. I’m—”
Ryan smacked the pistol out of Spears’s hand, balled his fist to punch Spears, but held back because Spears played possum. He plunked his head back on the steering wheel, looking for all the world as if he had fallen unconscious. Ryan was swiveling his head again, making doubly sure there were no witnesses. He waved the two men over to the car.
“Cuchillo, get this asshole inside.”
“Where we did the girl?”
“Yeah.”
“You want me to cut him?”
“Not yet,” Ryan said.
Cuchillo, I knew what that meant: knife. Knife was about five-seven, with broad shoulders and a V-shaped torso. He moved like a cat—nimble and steady on his feet.
“Alejo,” Ryan called to the bigger of the two men, the one who had gone back into the building to fetch him. “Help Cuch carry this prick inside and then come out to see if his car runs. If it does, pull it into one of the bays for now, then meet us in the utility room. We’re gonna see just how much the old man really knows.”
With that, Ryan picked up Spears’s .38, turned, and walked back toward the offices.
A minute later, Cuchillo carried Spears’s arms, Alejo his legs. They dragged him into the shop through the open bay door. Spears was good. He didn’t put up any kind of fight. He just sort of went limply along.
Five minutes later, Alejo was back. The Mercedes turned over when Alejo punched the ignition button. Good. I needed Alejo to be preoccupied with the car. When he put it in reverse, the Mercedes kind of lurched backward about fifteen feet and stalled out. The front end was pretty well crushed and there was fluid leaking all over the parking lot blacktop.
I thought out my next move as Alejo tried to get the Mercedes to turn over again. To me, Ryan’s actions were as much an admission of guilt as a signed confession, but my standards meant very little in the scheme of things. I needed proof. On the other hand, I was satisfied that neither Alejo nor Cuchillo were innocent bystanders. One of my worries going into this was that some innocent, eight-buck-an-hour schmuck would get caught up in the potential crossfire. I wasn’t worried about that anymore. What I was worried about was the one guy who hadn’t shown himself. By Spears’s count there were four men in the building. Ryan, Cuchillo, and Alejo accounted for three of the four. I’d have to watch out for the other guy, but I couldn’t wait around much longer for the fourth man to show himself. I had to move.
Alejo was cursing up a storm as he kept pushing the ignition button, the Mercedes stubbornly refusing to turn over. He stopped moving, stopped cursing when I shoved the tip of the Benelli’s barrel into his neck. In my heightened state I became acutely aware of the smells around the wrecked cars. The stink of heated rubber and plastic. The petroleum and chemical tang of gasoline, antifreeze, and motor oil. The rank odor of sweat and fear coming off Alejo. Maybe a little bit of that was from me, too. Maybe a lot of it.
“Get the fuck outta the car. Now!” I whispered, backing up enough so that he couldn’t take a swing at the barrel of the shotgun. “When you’re out of the car, walk toward the open bay door. You open your mouth before you’re told or run or call out and I will blow your fucking head off. And believe, Alejo, at this distance with this gun . . .”
But he didn’t move.
“Fuck your mother.”
I stepped back in close and smacked the side of the rifle stock hard against his ear. It was a cushioned synthetic stock, but it hurt plenty.
“That was your last warning. Now, get the fuck outta the car.”
He did it this time, still rubbing the side of his head.
“Walk slow.”
As we moved forward, I noticed that Alejo was pretty much covered in tats. Some of them were colorful—red, blue, green, even yellow—and skillfully done, but many were sloppy prison tats. And then I noticed one on the left side of his neck, a spread-winged vulture, a human skull in its beak.
“Asesino,” I mumbled to myself.
Alejo must’ve heard it, because he laughed.
“You got some big cojones on you, but you gonna die ugly, cabrón. You gonna scream like that old puta did when that baseball bat hit her the first time.”
I came very close to pulling the trigger when he said that, thoughts of what had been done to Lara and LT rushing into my head. Instead I stuck the point of the barrel into his back and shoved him so hard he toppled forward.
“Get up, shut the fuck up, and keep walking. You don’t do it, I’ll kill you right here and I’ll start by blowing your balls off.”
He kept walking. Although I couldn’t see his face, I knew he was smiling. I’d be lying if I said that didn’t unnerve me some.
“Stop,” I ordered when we got to the open bay door.
He stopped. I told him to turn around. He turned slowly, the smile I knew was there still on his face. I didn’t ask why he was smiling. I knew why.
“Call the other guy to come to the dock to help you.”
“Other guy?”
“Not Ryan and not Cuchillo,” I said. “The other guy.”
“No other guy. Just Carl, Cuch, and me.”
“Bullshit. Call him out here.”
I didn’t have time to argue with him. I kicked him flush on his right kneecap, hard. Something snapped inside his leg with a sickening sound. Alejo gasped in pain, collapsing to the concrete truck bay. I didn’t give him a chance to scream, sticking the barrel of the Benelli into his crotch. He pissed himself, a dark stain covering the front of his jeans.
“Call him out here, now.”
“Fuck you,” he said through gritted teeth. “Fuck you!”
That was it. He wasn’t going to do it, no matter what I did to him. I’d already done the worst I could, I’d embarrassed him. Once he pissed himself, he was lost to me. I relaxed my grip on the shotgun, reached into my back pocket, and got out the telescoping metal baton Lagunov had left behind in Mikel’s room. I laid it across the back of Alejo’s head. He went limp and quiet. He’d be out for a while, and even if he came to quickly, he wasn’t going anywhere with that knee.
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