Debris Line (Gibson Vaughn)

by Matthew Fitzsimmons

  Gibson realized he’d misread her. She wasn’t angry, only embarrassed to be seen like this. She had spent the last two years at war with Cold Harbor—the private military contractor that had held George Abe captive following the death of Benjamin Lombard. Gibson knew she was having a difficult time transitioning back to peacetime. It was a hard thing for a strong person to admit, and she’d done her best to hide it. Gibson would have liked to tell her there was no need. She’d seen him at his absolute worst and hadn’t blinked. Far as he was concerned, she could do no wrong. Or at least no wrong that he wouldn’t accept. He would have told her all that, and more. He owed her no less. Problem was, telling her would’ve only made matters worse. So instead, he asked her if she knew what was going on.

  She shook her head. “Only that I couldn’t take a shower.”

  They walked on.

  “Anyone ever tell you that you talk too much?” he said.

  She cracked a smile and bumped his shoulder with hers. “That’s me. Won’t shut up, can’t shut up. How was your run?”

  “Got hit by a car.”

  “I know just how you feel,” Jenn said, misunderstanding.

  Up ahead, they heard angry voices. Men came out of the house and squared off trading insults. They stood toe to toe, taunting each other—their loyalty divided between Silva and Peres—while the guard at the front door attempted to play peacemaker. None of them seemed inclined to give peace a chance. Anibal spat on the ground and strode forward, stepping between them before the men came to blows. Reluctantly, both sides shrunk back from him, but not fast enough for Anibal’s liking. He slapped one and shoved the others roughly away, berating them.

  Jenn and Gibson traded a look. Twenty years ago, the Algarve had been divided between four rival syndicates. Baltasar had controlled one, Anibal another, Peres and Silva the remaining two. Then in 2001, Baltasar had bound them all together into a single organization in a bloodless coup that had become legendary. Anibal, Peres, and Silva had become his lieutenants, but they each maintained control over their territories. The peace had held since then, but it didn’t bode well for the “Pax Algarve,” as it had come to be known, to see infighting among the factions on Baltasar Alves’s doorstep.

  Anibal sent the men packing with a final stern reprimand. He watched them get into their cars and drive away, clearly troubled. Fernando watched it all with a smirk and looked almost disappointed when a fight didn’t break out. When he caught Gibson watching him, he shrugged as if to say, Can you blame me?

  At the front door, Anibal questioned the guard before turning to Jenn and Gibson. “The other Americans are already inside. They are waiting.”

  “How many guys did you lose rousting Hendricks out of bed this early?” Gibson asked, a failed attempt to lighten the mood.

  Anibal ignored him again.

  When Fernando moved to enter the house, Anibal’s young associate blocked his way, fingering his shotgun with the eagerness of someone who’d never fired one before. Fernando took a step around him, but the boy stepped with him as though the two men were practicing a dance neither knew well.

  A smile crept onto Fernando’s face. “Who is your young friend?” he asked Anibal.

  “Tomas. My nephew,” Anibal said with an apologetic shrug. “He is still learning.”

  “The golfer? What happened?”

  “It didn’t work out,” Anibal explained diplomatically.

  “Couldn’t cut it, hmm?” Fernando asked and switched to Portuguese, smile never wavering. The boy’s face colored and his hands tightened around the shotgun. Anibal sighed apologetically and switched back to English to shield his nephew from Fernando’s insults. At least ones that he would understand.

  Anibal put a hand on Fernando’s shoulder. “He means no disrespect.”

  “But it comes so naturally to him. Perhaps he is a prodigy?”

  “You know how young men are. He hopes to make a good impression.”

  “Well, he is lucky to have you for a role model.”

  Anibal took a deep breath and let the slight go unanswered. “He is only following orders.”

  “Orders?” Fernando asked without breaking eye contact with Tomas.

  “Your father asked that you not come inside today. Only the Americans,” Anibal said.

  Gibson saw anger flash in Fernando’s eyes, disappearing so quickly that he questioned whether he’d seen it at all.

  “It’s for the best. Trust me,” Anibal said.

  “I am fortunate to have you looking out for me,” Fernando said coolly.

  The front door opened, and a woman stepped out onto the threshold. Her name was Luisa Mata; the men called her Senhora Mata; Baltasar Alves called her his niece and right hand. She ran the criminal arm of his empire in the same manner that Fernando ran the legitimate side. Although Baltasar had not officially anointed a successor, it was expected that she would assume control when he died.

  Luisa was a tall reed of a woman. She never wore heels but still towered a good five inches over Gibson. As was her way, she didn’t speak immediately but stood quietly, taking in everything. She looked each of them over, pausing to consider Jenn Charles with considered disdain. With her long nose and disappointed eyes, Luisa reminded Gibson of a crane in shallow water choosing its next meal from among the hapless fish darting around her ankles.

  “Thank you, Anibal,” she said.

  Anibal took his hand off Fernando’s shoulder. Tomas stepped aside.

  “Cousin,” Fernando said. “Come to my rescue again?”

  Gibson didn’t know the entire history but could hear the simmering tension in the question. Both their mothers—sisters, twins, and best friends—had died in a car accident returning home after a night out celebrating their birthday. No one knew why neither had been wearing seat belts, and it had been impossible to say which sister had been driving. Only a last-minute emergency had kept Baltasar from being in the car himself. Everyone said that it was a turning point for Alves, who took in Luisa and raised her as his own. Luisa had been eight, Fernando six.

  “Thank you for bringing the Americans,” she told Fernando, ignoring his question.

  “American,” Fernando corrected. “Anibal informs me that I’m not welcome inside.”

  “It is an unusual day. Your father wants to maintain your distance from this morning’s events.”

  Fernando played it off, but Gibson could see his disappointment. “That’s very thoughtful of him. A shame, though. I am dressed impeccably. Perhaps I could be of some help.”

  Luisa didn’t answer immediately. Finally, she said, “Actually, there is something. Dani Coelho.”

  “With the computers?” Fernando asked.

  “Yes. With everything happening, we need him somewhere safe. Out of sight. Will you take him to the hotel? Keep him under wraps?”

  Even a fool could see Luisa was giving Fernando a graceful out. Taking a menial task and dressing it up to let her cousin save face. Fernando was accustomed to being the one doing the patronizing, so it was impossible to predict how he would react. To Gibson’s surprise, he chose to take it seriously.

  “Yes, that’s a good idea. No one would think to look at the hotel.”

  “Exactly my thought,” Luisa said.

  “I’m on the case.” Fernando winked at Jenn and clapped Gibson on the shoulder. “You’re on your own, my friend. If you live, let’s have drinks tonight at the hotel. I have another woman I want to see you embarrass yourself in front of.”

  “You’re a dick,” Gibson said.

  “And you are like a nature documentary about an endangered species.”

  And with that, Fernando left them at the door and strolled back toward his car.

  Gibson felt immediately exposed, as if nothing terrible could happen so long as Fernando was there.

  Luisa cleared her throat to get their attention. “My uncle is waiting.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The wide entry hall of Baltasar Alves’s home had an exact
ing, minimalist feel. Tasteful if “nothing” happened to be your taste. The French limestone floors gave way to tall ebony walls and ceiling. A block of text in a large, bold font had been chiseled into one wall. It quoted Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa: “Any wide piece of ground is the potential site of a palace, but there’s no palace till it’s built.” Seemed fairly self-evident to Gibson, but it made sense for a man who had built himself up from nothing. Though why a Portuguese gangster would want an English translation of Portuguese poetry on his wall, he had no idea at all.

  As they entered the house, a familiar figure stepped out from the shadow of the door and fell in behind Luisa. He was powerfully built with a trowel for a nose, thick forearms, and fingers like sewage pipes. His head was shaved, and a prominent vein at his temple pulsed like a river swollen after a storm. Gibson guessed his age to be between forty and fifty, but fifteen years as a super middleweight had dulled the edges of his face, making it hard to judge. All that was important to know was that where Luisa went, he followed. His name was Marco Zava, but the men called him “Fera”—the Beast—and most would have begged for a bullet before going five minutes alone with him.

  With nowhere to sit, the dozen armed men in the entry hall milled about. One even sat cross-legged, cleaning his pistol on the expensive limestone tile. All seemed dour and restless. Hard men acting hard because they didn’t know what else to do. They reminded Gibson of soldiers awaiting an emergency deployment. The higher-ups never told the grunts what was going on until the last possible moment, which kept everyone on edge. Rumors would spread like a virus among the rank and file. Whispers and conjectures about where they were going and what they would do when they got there. And just to get your hopes up, there was always the chance that the whole thing was a preparedness drill and everyone might be turning around and going home instead.

  But this wasn’t the military, and it was definitely no drill. Jenn and Gibson wouldn’t be here if it were. As Luisa Mata passed, the men fell silent. She paused before the man sitting on the floor and looked down at him. Zava stood placidly at her side like a leashed dog. It said something about Luisa that the man on the floor never so much as glanced at the Beast at her side. When Luisa spoke, it was in Portuguese. Gibson didn’t understand it, but the tone was of a concerned mother speaking to a child. Calm and even, but its condescension showed on the pale face of the man, who climbed hastily to his feet.

  Under her breath, Jenn, who spoke enough Portuguese to follow the conversation, murmured, “Goddamn.” Only minutes earlier they’d watched Fernando do much the same thing to Tomas. It was easy to forget that Luisa and Fernando had grown up together. They looked nothing alike, and on the surface, couldn’t have been more different. Fernando was all elegant, polished surfaces where Luisa had the awkward depth of a philosopher. But Baltasar had raised them together under one roof, and you occasionally saw that shared bond in their mannerisms, and in their cruelty.

  Luisa ushered Jenn and Gibson through the house. It hummed with activity. In each room they passed, men were busy working the phones or typing at computers, voices low and serious and determined. They turned a corner and found two men practically at each other’s throats. They stopped at the sight of Luisa, offered perfunctory apologies, and hurried away in opposite directions.

  “Something is not well in the house of Alves,” Gibson whispered to Jenn.

  “Getting that feeling myself.”

  “That’s the second fight we’ve seen since we’ve been here.”

  “They’re scared of something,” Jenn said. “Discipline’s always the first thing to go.”

  Luisa stopped, then turned slowly back to face them. Ordinarily, she was nearly as unflappable as her cousin, but Jenn had clearly hit a nerve. “I am so glad Sebastião’s whore dragged herself from his bed to evaluate my men.”

  Gibson, caught between them, thought invisible thoughts and prayed for a foxhole. Luisa, who was also close to Sebastião, had never masked her contempt for Jenn. Although until now, she hadn’t said so in quite such explicit terms.

  Jenn didn’t reply immediately, only nodding to herself as if she’d received confirmation of some inconsequential detail. “Believe me, I’d rather be in bed. It’s a really nice one.”

  “We all feel the same,” Luisa said.

  “Then what are we doing here?”

  Luisa hesitated as if Jenn had scored an unexpected point. “I don’t know,” she admitted.

  “Well, then quit wasting our time,” Jenn said. “And take us to someone who does.”

  The two women lingered a moment, neither willing to be the first to break eye contact. Gibson didn’t know what to make of the fact that Luisa didn’t know why they were here. She and Baltasar were fused at the shoulder, and one always knew the other’s mind. The men joked that if Baltasar had an itch, Luisa scratched. So, what did it mean that Luisa didn’t know why Baltasar had summoned them?

  Baltasar’s living room was as wide as an African savannah. In keeping with the minimalist décor, hardly any furniture broke up the floor plan. It could comfortably have hosted a party for hundreds. There weren’t nearly so many now. Only a handful of underlings who lurked in the margins of the room, deferentially out of earshot of Baltasar Alves, who stood holding court with Peres and Silva. The air felt poisonous. At Baltasar’s back, a wall of glass offered sweeping views of the Atlantic. While the lieutenants talked, Baltasar glanced out at it wistfully.

  Gibson couldn’t make out what was being said, but he knew an argument when he saw one. Without a word, Luisa and Anibal peeled off to join Baltasar; Zava remained behind to chaperone the Americans.

  Baltasar greeted his niece with a relieved nod and stepped back, leaving her to wrest control of the debate from Silva and Peres. It quickly turned heated, but Baltasar kept his back to the room, gazing out at the ocean again. In his Bermuda shorts, he looked more like a tourist than a gangster. His floral-print shirt was unbuttoned to his navel, accentuating the long vertical scar that cleaved his chest in half.

  Five years earlier, he had barely survived his own lifestyle. Food, drink, chain-smoking cigars, and a pathological avoidance of physical exertion had left him obese. The predictably massive heart attack should have killed him, would have killed him, had it not been for the cardiac surgeon dining at a nearby table. Five hours of surgery and a pacemaker later, Baltasar had emerged a changed man.

  The story went that he had awoken from surgery to the sight of Fernando, Luisa, and Sebastião—who had flown in from a match in Italy—gathered around his bed. In a trembling voice, Baltasar had sworn off all of his vices. Then, with the help of Sebastião’s trainers and chef, he’d crafted an entirely new lifestyle. To everyone’s surprise, Baltasar’s most of all, he had followed it faithfully ever since. Since the heart attack, he had lost more than 150 pounds. The transformation was nothing short of miraculous. However, it had not left Baltasar glowing with good health. His gaunt, weary face always looked hungry, and his skin didn’t fit anymore. It hung off him like an old, stretched-out sweater.

  Baltasar’s recovery had also marked the beginning of his stepping back from the organization that he’d created. From what Gibson could tell, he was more or less a figurehead at this point. The symbol around which the peace orbited. His was still the final word, but it was Luisa who did the heavy lifting now. Anibal and the other lieutenants reported directly to her, and Baltasar no longer involved himself with day-to-day operations. Another indication that today was out of the ordinary.

  The door opened, and George Abe and Dan Hendricks were ushered inside. George wore his trademark jeans, crisp white oxford, and sports coat. Not a wrinkle. Not so much as a hair out of place. Even his jeans looked like they’d been pressed. So close to the old George—the six months had been good to him—but all the dry cleaning in the world couldn’t conceal the limp. Any more than the plastic surgeons had been able to erase the damage done by Cold Harbor during George’s two-year imprisonment. Gibson had known him s
ince he was a boy, when George Abe and Duke Vaughn had both worked for Senator Benjamin Lombard. George had always had an ageless quality that made you question whether he was forty or sixty, but Cold Harbor had shattered his youthfulness. Gibson doubted whether he would ever be whole again.

  The more immediate mystery was how Hendricks, who never rose before noon, was wearing a suit and looked like he’d been up for hours.

  “Way to dress for the occasion,” Hendricks said.

  “How the hell are you so put together?” Gibson demanded.

  “Excuse me for taking pride in my appearance.”

  “I was jogging.”

  “Hmm?” Hendricks said as though the word were unfamiliar to him.

  “Seriously, when did you buy a suit?” Jenn asked.

  Hendricks shrugged and spread his hands noncommittally as if Jenn were inquiring about one of the great mysteries of the universe. He didn’t look like a twenty-two-year veteran of the LAPD, much less one of the most efficient detectives in the history of the department. He was a short, slight man—perhaps 160 pounds if you fed him a steak dinner first. The last few years had aged him beyond his fifty-one years, as he’d been forced to live a cloistered, paranoid existence, waiting for Calista Dauplaise’s killer to return and finish what they’d started in Atlanta. The stress had played havoc on his vitiligo, and what had once been small white patches at the corners of his mouth and eyes had been plowed into wide, pigmentless tracts across his black skin. It gave him a clownlike appearance, but you would be making a grave error to treat him like one. Hendricks didn’t suffer fools gladly and gave the impression that he found himself surrounded by fools most everywhere he went.

  “That’s enough,” George said sharply, and the banter ceased.

  Once upon a time, Jenn and Hendricks had both worked for George at Abe Consulting Group. The business bearing George’s name had long since ceased to exist, but George still commanded their loyalty. Gibson, whose history with George had never been fully resolved, didn’t feel the same devotion to the man. But he knew that George was a talismanic figure, especially for Jenn. She needed the idea of his leadership as much if not more than the actual guidance he provided these days. Truth was, Jenn had been calling the shots for a long time now, whether anyone cared to admit it or not. Or maybe it was George who needed to feel valuable, and deferring to him was an act of kindness by Hendricks and Jenn. Either way, Gibson was content to play along.