by Robert Lane
“She just came up off the port bow. Followed us over here.”
I didn’t bother to look. I placed my serrated knife in the thigh rig and tucked my gun in a shoulder holster under my left arm and inside my lightweight jacket that I wore for its numerous pockets. My Boker folder knife was in the zipped pocket of my cargo shorts. I opted not to wear the short wet suit, as the water would only be about two feet deep. I laced my boat shoes extra tight. Garrett placed his Sig Sauer in his shoulder holster and stashed extra magazine clips in his pocket. His M110 SASS already had its PVS-26 night sight attached to it. Morgan again took Impulse in without any lights, cut the engine, and poled us into the black waters under the mangroves.
“Do they go on your signal?” Garrett asked.
“I text PC when we’re in position. Within a minute the show begins. He’s got yours and Morgan’s number, everybody’s on group message.”
“You’re not worried about cops?” Morgan asked.
“I told them not to overdo it. I don’t think Escobar will be calling five-oh. That’s the last thing he needs with the girls in the house.”
“We OK here?” Morgan asked.
“Perfect. But after we leave, turn her around. We may need to exit at a different pace than we came in.”
“What are their ages again?” he asked.
“Not sure. Young. Too young.”
“Ready?” Garrett said.
I didn’t answer, but slipped over the starboard side of my boat and quietly worked my way through the still waters to Raydel Escobar’s house. I never heard Garrett behind me, but I heard a dolphin blow from the deeper water. I wondered if it really was Nevis. I was only a few feet onto the shore when I received a group text from PC. Two men with guns had been let in the front gate.
That flushed my plans for a short night and another glass of wine.
CHAPTER 26
Escobar
“Cruz and Victor are here, I’m letting them in,” Elvis said as he hurried out of the study and left Escobar alone.
Escobar snatched the remote off the chess table and swelled up the sound of Pink Martini. He admired the group’s timeless orchestral sound and unending range of genres. Patrons in his clubs never guessed that they were a modern band. Tomorrow, he thought. I can go back to enjoying the music. Tomorrow.
When Elvis left, he had heard him pound on the safe room door and give the girls a generic “shut the fuck up.” He doubted it would do any good as the dozen previous such admonishments had no effect. The little one practically screamed her prayers. The same one she had said in the garage. “We are weak but he is strong.” Over and over. He thought he heard them giggling after Elvis’s outburst and then one of them yelled that she wanted a brush, and that was followed by more laughs. He should have let Ramon take them.
At first he told himself it was the damn yellow ribbon. How was he supposed to ignore that? But he knew there was more because it kept flashing in his mind even though he tried to stomp it out like a wildfire. It was the way the older girl’s eyes locked on his, as if she knew she could turn him and he didn’t like the whole mess. He felt disgusted with himself for his weak thoughts and doubts. Money walking through the door, he was certain, never entertained self-doubt. He turned when he heard Elvis enter the room with Cruz and Victor tight behind him. He backed the volume down.
“Anthony’s fifteen minutes out. His coordinates are close in this time. We’re leaving soon,” Elvis said.
“Did you text Ramon?”
“He should be here in ten. He asked if we enjoyed the nina chiquitas. I told him they reminded me of his sister, but they smelled a lot better.”
Escobar grinned, although he saw not the least bit of humor in the statement. Victor let out a two-syllable laugh, but Cruz gave no expression.
Escobar said, “Why’s Anthony so close and early? Hell, it’s barely midnight.”
“Don’t know,” Elvis said.
“You see any boats out, just head back. Understand?”
“What if Anthony doesn’t take the returns?”
“He will. He’s got his orders.”
“What he says on the phone doesn’t mean much on the water.”
“Those two don’t come back into this house or onto this property,” Escobar said and wondered what he had just implied.
“You won’t see them after tonight. I’ll wait till the last minute and take them out. You know Natalie’s still in the kitchen.”
“I thought you were getting her out of here.”
“No, what I said was—”
“You sure as hell better make sure she doesn’t see this shit. Why didn’t you dump her like I told you to?”
Elvis started to go in one direction, but said, “I can’t let her out now, she may bump into Ramon coming in. She’s OK. I told her to glue her ass in the kitchen and not move.”
Escobar rubbed his forehead with his hands, anticipating a thundering headache that hadn’t yet found him. All he wanted to do was dig himself out, but he felt himself sinking lower. Being sucked in by something he couldn’t feel, yet was as real and as strong as anything he’d ever known.
“Get the girls and—” Escobar said, but was halted by a series of explosions from the front of the house.
“Fireworks?” Elvis asked before Escobar had a chance to finish his thoughts.
“In the front yard?”
Escobar bolted past the men, who followed him down his wide-paneled walnut walls and past the woman with droplets of water on her golden naked stomach. He descended the curved front staircase of his house, passed through the Mediterranean foyer with its nod toward Spanish influence, and flung open the front door. Flashes of red, green, and white exploded in the sky above the vacant lot across the street. Escobar, Elvis, and Cruz looked straight ahead to the far corner of the lot that backed up to scrub land where another eruption of fireworks went searching for the heavens. But Victor watched the streams of bright colors drip down the black sky as if a god had sprinkled cookie glitter on the earth.
“Kids,” Elvis said. “We’ll clean them out then we’ve got to hustle out of here so we’re not late.” He started to move across the drive with Cruz and Victor behind him.
“Wait a second,” Escobar said. Elvis stopped and spun and Cruz and Victor piled into him like billiard balls.
“What?”
“You stay here,” Escobar said. “Cruz, you and Victor flush them out.”
Cruz and Victor sprinted across the drive just as a series of green and white sparkles rained from the sky.
“Pretty solid stuff for some kids,” Elvis said.
“That’s what I’m thinking,” Escobar said, although it wasn’t. He just didn’t want to greet Ramon by himself if he showed up early. His words ran into the throttle of an engine and the squeal of car tires. A final flash of white erupted in the sky and illuminated a Camaro with a flame-painted side just as it jumped away from the curb about two hundred feet down the road.
Elvis said, “That car was in the neighborhood a few days ago. I saw it while taking my run.”
“Think it means anything?”
Elvis didn’t answer. He spun and tackled the stairs three at a time.
CHAPTER 27
Sophia had stated the keyhole was behind the picture of the nude female bronze belly with the enticing water droplets that I wanted to lick.
I had entered through the rear door and texted PC from the butler’s pantry. During the fund-raiser, I had noticed it was sequestered from the main traffic pattern of the house. Within a minute of texting PC, the fireworks had exploded, followed by heavy feet descending the stairs. I was betting on the fireworks giving me enough time to spring the girls. The addition of two more men to the equation, while not welcoming news, didn’t alter my plans. Arrogant people do denial well.
“Come on, baby, be good to me,” I whispered as I lifted the picture off its hook and set it on the floor against the wall.
A flat electronic keypad barely broke
the surface of the wall where the picture had hung.
There was no place for a manual key.
I picked up the frame. It was heavier than I expected. I ripped off the brown paper backing. No key. No lock for a key. There seemed to be another backing to the frame, but before I ripped the house to shreds, I wanted to make certain they were inside. For all I knew they were surfing videos games in a bedroom. When they spoke the night I saw them, the older girl was called Maria and the little one Rosa. I didn’t want to be a one-man band, but I had to know.
I knocked on the door. “Maria? Rosa? Can you hear me? I’m here to help you.”
I listened to my heart pounding. Fireworks exploded. And music. Always music. I knocked again. Double Kevlar. Was it soundproof?
“Maria? Rosa?” Louder this time. I leaned in hard and pressed my ear to the walnut wood. Morgan told me he had found Kathleen that night on the beach by channeling all his senses into listening. Some Zen shit. I tried to shut out the music and closed myself to everything except what might come from behind the door. I pounded on it.
“Anybody in there?” I shouted somewhere between loud enough for them to hear over the music and through double Kevlar, but not loud enough for the men standing outside to pick up. I was in no-man’s land and knew the mortality rate there was high.
“Maria, Rosa!” I shouted.
“Jesus?” It was the voice of a young girl from inside the room.
“Turn around.” It was the voice of Elvis from behind me.
I spun and was met with the extended barrel of a .35-caliber handgun pointing between my eyes from a few feet away.
“Elvis, I thought you left the building.”
“Keep your hands out in front of you.”
“You don’t have the code do you? If so, I can be out of here in no time.”
“Who told you to look there?”
“Logical place for a lock.”
“We changed to the pad months ago. You’re going to turn back around and walk slowly to the study.”
“I was thinking more like a beer by the pool, like we did in the old days.”
“Move.”
“Your choice,” I said. “But I want you to know that you can still get out of this alive.”
Elvis looked at me and took aim at my forehead. I like my forehead. I turned around and moved toward the study. A young voice from behind the walnut panel shouted for Jesus. Richard Harris’s pained voice came through the cranked house speaker. He was lamenting that someone left the cake out in the rain and things could never be the same again.
We’ve all got problems.
CHAPTER 28
“You packing?” Elvis asked me. We were in the middle of Escobar’s study. At least I knew where the girls were. There’s a bright side to everything.
“I am. Do you want me to shoot you now or later?”
“I ought to blow your jaw off just to shut you the fuck up.”
“It wasn’t rhetorical. I was being polite.”
Garrett expected me within five minutes and if I didn’t come down, he was coming up. I didn’t want to be standing there staring at Elvis’s .35—that would just be flat out embarrassing. Garrett would blame it on the glass of wine. I didn’t need that shit in my life.
“Get it real slow and drop it on the floor.”
I reached under my jacket and retrieved my gun. I tossed it on the floor and it slid over to Escobar’s desk.
“I said to just drop it.”
“Impressive wax job.”
“Take your jacket off and place your knife on the floor.”
I reached down and unsheathed my knife and let it fall. I took off my jacket and tossed it to the side.
“What do you think the congressman will say about me going AWOL on your property?”
“We’re going to the docks and you’re going for a midnight swim. You were never here tonight. Hands in pockets and walk in front of me.”
“What are you boys up to? Another shipment of prepubescent girls? What do they fetch these days, Elvis, ten, twenty thousand apiece? And then what, out to the street where they decorate their arms with needle marks and finally OD at age sixteen?”
“How’d you know about them?”
“Purely by accident. I was doing laps in front of the house a few nights ago and thinking about how to yank the letter out of your grasp when the shipment came in.”
He hesitated a second as if he was going to pursue that line of questioning, but then just said, “Move.” He waved his gun toward the steps.
I didn’t move.
“You can walk or I can drag you, and I don’t give a rat’s ass either way,” he said. He pointed the gun at my right knee.
I like my right knee. Not with the same affinity I have for my head, but I didn’t want it shattered. I considered the probability of him popping me in the knee far greater than a slug to the head. I put my hands in my pockets and approached him at a leisurely pace. He backed up and let me through to the hall. I felt the Boker knife with my right hand and opened it. I didn’t know where Escobar and the other men were, but assumed that Garrett had them contained.
Of course, Garrett assumed that I had a girl under each arm and was doing my impersonation of Usain Bolt making a mad dash for the boat.
I strolled down the hall with Elvis, who unfortunately maintained a safe distance behind me. When I got to the paneled door of the safe room I stopped. Elvis did likewise, but not until he took another step and closed the gap. It’s all about speed: distance divided by time. I pivoted halfway around to my left and looked him straight in the eye. With my right hand I slid the Boker knife out of my pocket and held it tight against my right leg.
“I’ve got friends,” I said. “They’ll pay for my release. A lot of money for a guy like you.” I saw a faint smile on his lips. I wanted him to let his guard down, if not visibly, at least subconsciously. I needed his reaction time to slow down. Distance divided by time.
“Keep walking.”
“It could mean some serious money to you.” I kept my eyes on him and turned around as if I was going to start walking. “I’m not talking just a few…” I never finished. I crouched low and brought my left hand out of my pocket and swung around fast, reaching out for his right wrist to neutralize his gun. With my right arm I brought the Boker straight into his midsection. Not a sweeping arc, but a direct line. Distance sliced by time.
Elvis coughed out a surprised gasp and his eyes almost came out of their sockets. But a three-inch knife wasn’t going to bring him down. I left the knife planted in his stomach and with my right arm reached out to his left fist that was coming in at me. We locked hands and I hooked my left foot behind his right ankle and shoved him backward, falling on top of him. My stomach landed on the handle of the blade and I felt a rush of air blow out of him. Elvis was a street fighter and the surprise and fear in his eyes quickly vanished. His strength came back despite the presence of a steel blade embedded in his upper intestines. We were locked together with me on top and our faces inches apart, our eyes glued together. That is when I seized the opportunity to do what I wanted to do the first time we met.
I opened wide and clamped down fast and hard on his nose, using my jaws as a vise grip.
The cartilage from his nose crackled in my teeth. I whipped my head violently side to side. His warm blood gushed and made everything slippery. I summoned my emotions from the sunken concrete, squeezed my jaws for the sake of humanity, and gave everything I had to trying to tear a hole in his face. His lessened his grip on his gun and I wrestled control of it.
I released my jaw and spit blood, tissue, and bone into his face. His nose rested somewhere below his right eye. I felt the handle of the knife in my stomach, and his warm blood invaded my skin. I brought his gun up tight to his right temple.
“Do you want me to shoot you now or later?”
He spit blood in my face.
“Your eye’s next,” I said.
His eyes ballooned.
I stood. There was a growing pool of blood on the floor, being fed by the stream from his nose that was leaking blood faster than the knife wound. The new owners would need to get that spot professionally cleaned. His breathing was labored. I reached down and cleanly withdrew the knife from his torso. It hadn’t gone in as far as I had thought. “The key or the code to the safe room. Live or die.”
“Call me a doctor.” His words came out like garbled Springsteen lyrics. With his right hand he hesitantly felt what used to be his face.
I said, “You’re a doctor.”
“Asshole. Call me a doctor.”
“I won’t ask again.”
He hesitated. “Three-six-d.”
“That’s the best you guys could do?”
“Three-six-d. Call me a doctor.”
“Sure, Elvis, but first I’ve got to make sure that three-six-d will do the trick.”
I yanked a cord out of Escobar’s desk lamp of a monkey climbing a palm tree and bound his wrists together. I tied his ankles with an extension cord. I shredded a curtain—it surprised me with its softness—and stuffed it in his mouth. I tightly wrapped another piece of curtain around what used to be his nose to stem the bleeding. His midsection wound didn’t look that threatening, but I took his belt off and placed it around his stomach and drew it tight to apply as much pressure as possible.
“Breathe out of your mouth,” I said. “Or don’t breathe at all. It doesn’t matter to me.”
I started to walk toward the safe room when his phone indicated that he was receiving a text. I returned and searched his pockets until I located his phone.
there in ten
It was from Ramon, whoever he was. If he was part of the same group that came the other night when there was a shipment, then it would mean three more guys. I texted Garrett and told him we had a party. I texted Ramon and said “ok.”
“I’ll keep this for you,” I said to Elvis as I put his phone in my pocket. I reclaimed my jacket and put my gun in the shoulder holster. I wiped the Boker, closed it, and put it in my right cargo pocket. Elvis’s gun went in my left pocket.