Triple Crossing

by Sebastian Rotella

  What now, Valentine? He calculated angles. They had taken away his new Paraguayan passport. He had no vehicle. No one he could trust. On the positive side, he had a couple of hundred dollars and a pistol. Also tucked into the pockets of his vest were Pelón’s useless cell phone and Garrison’s USB flash drive.

  Otherwise, Pescatore had nothing. He was your basic undocumented alien. A tonk. What a joke on him.

  Squatting on their haunches or sitting cross-legged in the dirt, the possible Bolivians listened to a man in a brown hat. The man apparently held rank in the microsociety of the loading depot. His seat of honor was an empty crate. His bony knees protruded from cutoff canvas shorts. His hat was a wondrous thing: a jaunty shape that evoked Fred Astaire or Frank Sinatra, but corduroy, decrepit, too small. It perched on lank gray hair. Tropical feathers poked out of the band.

  “You’re not getting across today, compañeros,” the man said. His age was indeterminate, but they had clearly been hard years. His rust-colored, nearly toothless face collapsed from his cheekbones to a pointy chin. Though he spoke Spanish, he sounded and looked Brazilian: a pretty even mix of European, Indian and African. “Another damned riot at the bridge. Might as well get some rest, get out of the sun. This mess won’t clear up for a while yet.”

  Someone asked why.

  “Politics.” The man rubbed stubble, a street sage with skeletal wrists and elongated, misshapen fingers. “Politics. A big fight going on. Some Mexican mafiosos trying to take over. The Chinese are against them. The Arabs are divided. The police in the middle. And us little working people suffer. You try to earn a living…”

  Pescatore scanned the slope leading down to the water. He could swim for it. He could find someone with a raft and pay his way over. Maybe there was a way to fly out. The place was full of secret landing strips. But he’d have to wait for nightfall. It was risky. If he got caught, chances were he’d get handed over to Junior’s people or to Méndez’s people. If he actually escaped, he’d have no control over what happened between Méndez and Junior. And he would break his word to Isabel one last time. Though that didn’t mean much now that he knew about her affair with Méndez. Who really deserved his loyalty at this point: Isabel or Buffalo?

  “And you, argentino?” The man in the hat gave Pescatore the once-over. “What’s your story?”

  “I need to cross,” Pescatore blurted instinctively, affecting an Argentine accent.

  “No papers?”

  “No.”

  “You are Argentine, yes?”

  “More or less.”

  The toothless mouth masticated that response. “Just you? No packages? Nothing complicated?”

  Pescatore nodded, the flat eyes of the Bolivians on him. He felt a rush of hope. Maybe Mr. Hat could get him across. Pescatore needed a coyote.

  “I can pay, no problem,” Pescatore said.

  “Well, that’s good. You can pay. Congratulations.” The man in the hat sneered, aware of their audience. Pescatore had breached etiquette, gone too fast. The man made a face as if preparing to sniff him. “You wouldn’t be some kind of milico, would you? Snooping around?”

  Milico, Pescatore figured, meant “cop” or “spy.” He heard muttering. The unloading and loading had come to a stop. People were listening.

  “Not me, man,” Pescatore said, as nastily as possible. He reached into his vest and gripped the butt of his holstered gun. He left his hand there. “How about you?”

  He got a rise out of the way the man in the hat faltered, the sneer wilting. Pescatore considered drawing down on him, jamming the Glock into his ear just for fun. Pescatore no doubt looked as mean and desperate as he felt. The heat alone made him want to shoot somebody.

  Macho thrills aside, he had worn out his welcome. Nobody here was going to help him.

  “A very good afternoon to you, friends,” Pescatore said. He straightened out of his crouch and left the shelter, ignoring the chatter in his wake. “Buncha criminals.”

  Pescatore advanced toward the bridge, scanning the river for smugglers on the move. Nothing. The Brazilians and Paraguayans had shut the line down cold. No wonder the citizens of Ciudad del Este were rioting. No wonder Junior was getting a bad rep. But still, how hard could it be to get out of town? Pescatore was an expert on border-crossing, wasn’t he? In San Diego, he had seen it all. He had seen people use tunnels, speedboats, car trunks, human pyramids, truck-borne ramps that sent load cars soaring right over the fence.

  The bridge to Brazil was guarded by a contingent of gas-masked riot cops who checked the endless single-file traffic and tossed occasional tear-gas canisters at the rock-throwing demonstrators. He caught a whiff of the stuff. That was all he needed. He reversed direction. He was in way over his head; too far to escape now.

  He retraced his steps uphill. He couldn’t spot anyone tailing him in the crowds. The locutorio was on a street corner near Galerías Alhambra, the shopping arcade where he had gotten his passport. The locutorio was a public-phone business. The red letters on the barred front window advertised cheap calling rates and wire transfers all over the Americas, the Middle East, Asia and Africa. There was a counter in front and six glass-partitioned cubicles with phones.

  It was his third visit of the day, but the dour Asian lady behind the counter gave no sign that she appreciated his business. She handed him a slip of paper with the number of a phone cubicle on it.

  The air-conditioning was not getting the job done. In the solitude of the cubicle, Pescatore dried his sweaty hands on his jeans. He wiped his upper lip with his sleeve. If he lived through this, the mustache was history. He closed his eyes and held his head in his hands. The pulse in his temples drummed against his palms. He pursed his lips and blew hard a couple of times. He remembered what Buffalo had said on the day Pescatore drove Garrison’s corpse into Tijuana: Kick it. Kick it stone cold.

  Pescatore placed a collect call to San Diego, California, USA. By now, the operator at the task force knew exactly who he was. She had been prepped for the call.

  “Mr. Valentine, right?” she chirped. “Have you connected in a jiffy.”

  This time, the triangular patch-in to Isabel Puente back in Ciudad del Este took less than a minute.

  “There you are,” Isabel said.

  “On time, right?”

  “Ready?”

  “To see you, yeah.”

  “Where?” He could tell she was wound up, forcing herself to go soft and smooth.

  “There’s a little department store. Minerva Mall. The only swank place in this sleazoid town. You know it?”

  “Yes.”

  A tingle of confidence: It was the first time he was calling the shots. “Alright then. Let’s say the fourth floor. Where the pianos are at.”

  “What time?”

  “In an hour.”

  “OK.”

  “Just you and me, right?”

  “We went through that already.”

  “I don’t surrender to anybody but you.”

  “OK.”

  “What I’m saying is, I know your precious Méndez has got your back. I know that fucker don’t trust me. But you keep him away until you and me can talk. I ain’t talkin’ to him. If him or his dirtbag judiciales get in my face, it’s not gonna be pretty. You understand?” Pescatore fought the tremble in his voice.

  “Just you and me, Valentine.” He wanted to think he heard a glimmer of warmth when she said his name. “I hope I can trust you.”

  “Like old times, huh?”

  “Six-thirty p.m.,” she said. The line went dead.

  Pescatore hung up. He picked up the receiver again. He punched out another number. It was difficult: His hands were out of control and tears blurred his vision.

  26

  ISABEL PUENTE ENDED THE ARGUMENT by getting out of Facundo’s car and marching toward the Minerva Mall.

  Méndez regarded Porthos and Facundo. They looked like uneasy witnesses to a domestic dispute. Méndez lifted his narrow shoulders.

&n
bsp; “What can I tell you?” Méndez said. “In the final analysis, she’s the boss. What do you think of the setup, Facundo?”

  “My men walked the store, top to bottom,” Facundo said, shifting a toothpick rapidly from one side of his mouth to the other. “Seems clean. Could be worse.”

  “We could check it once more,” Porthos said, glancing at his watch.

  “The Minerva Mall is supposed to be neutral territory,” Facundo said. “A gentlemen’s agreement. The bosses want a place where they can take their mistresses without walking into a massacre.”

  “So you don’t think Khalid would pull anything in there.”

  “Not Khalid. But I can’t answer for young Mr. Ruiz.”

  “Or Pescatore,” Méndez said, turning to Porthos. “He has a talent for catastrophe. If he so much as blinks, we shoot to kill, Comandante.”

  “With pleasure, Licenciado,” Porthos said.

  “Stay in constant touch by radio or I’ll get neurotic,” Facundo said. “Let’s be quick about this.”

  Méndez adjusted the gun in his belt as he and Porthos hurried after Puente.

  “It would be nice to have Athos here,” Porthos said.

  “Someone has to watch the hotel,” Méndez said. “It’s a calculated risk, I know. But Isabel is right: If Junior moves, we want to be on top of him.”

  Porthos glowered in a way that indicated he had had enough of Puente giving the orders. And I’m the one he expects to take control, Méndez thought. The apprentice pseudo–police chief.

  The Minerva Mall was an apparition. A rectangular six-story salmon-walled alien spaceship. A cosmic joke plunked down in the middle of Ciudad del Este. The revolving door whisked them out of the rowdy streetscape into a marble-and-glass refuge. A pair of security guards, one male and one female, flanked the inside entrance. They resembled mannequins in crisp blue uniform suits. Their wet-look hairdos seemed frozen into place by the air-conditioning.

  A multiscented blast of perfumes assaulted Méndez. The ground floor was devoted to cosmetics; the sales pods had neon-strength signs spelling out brand names in pink-and-white script. Like the security guards, the salespeople were young, well-scrubbed creatures from a different planet than the mob of peasants, merchants and pirates outside. Members of a Korean tour group were the only visible customers. They wore yellow visors and T-shirts adorned with the name of a Christian fundamentalist church in English and Spanish. They clutched thin bricks of cash.

  Méndez caught up to Puente on the escalator. He felt the same flustered anxiety he had experienced once when his wife had blown up and walked away from him in public. He thought: What fun is a lovers’ quarrel if we aren’t lovers?

  “Have you seen the prices in here?” he said. “The stuff must be real. They’d get shot selling fakes for that much.”

  When Puente turned, she was under control. The knuckle-biting, wet-eyed, name-calling fury had been wiped away. They glided onto the second floor: designer watches, jewelry, pens.

  “I feel bad about losing my temper,” she said.

  “Me too.”

  “You admit that if we get Valentine back he’s an incredible witness for us.”

  “Theoretically, yes. I’m just concerned about your safety.”

  “As usual. But you seem to have forgotten who’s in charge.”

  “I remember being told this was a Mexican operation.”

  She snorted. “First, that doesn’t mean you get to tell me what to do. Second, don’t always believe everything they tell you in San Diego.”

  The third floor offered men’s and ladies’ garments and fur coats. Piano music got louder and closer above them.

  “So in the final analysis,” Méndez said, “you are an American.”

  “And proud of it.”

  He stumbled when the escalator reached the fourth floor; she deftly adjusted her feet to negotiate the landing without breaking eye contact.

  There was a real live pianist. He was playing “Take the ‘A’ Train.” Ordinarily a tune Méndez liked, but the interpretation was full of cheesy flourishes and rococo ripples. The pianist sat at one of six grand pianos arranged in a circle at the center of a marble mezzanine. The music echoed upward in an atrium topped by a skylight two floors above.

  “So that’s what gangsters buy for their mistresses,” Méndez said. “Pianos.”

  “I wonder if anyone has ever bought one,” Puente said.

  The pianist was a senior citizen with a somewhat mildewed dignity. His backswept gray hair aspired to a Beethoven-like mane; he shook it occasionally for emphasis. His three-piece suit had a velvety sheen and looked no younger than him. A placard in Spanish, Portuguese and English informed shoppers that the pianist’s name was Johann and that he gave private lessons, tuned pianos, performed at weddings, baptisms and funerals, and offered “musical consulting services” in all three border communities.

  “Licenciado, Miss Puente, I’m going to take my position,” Porthos said. “Where do you plan to meet… the young man?”

  “I’ll wait in that coffee bar. There’s a wall to cover my back and it has a view of the escalator,” Isabel said, indicating half a dozen tables and a counter.

  “We’ll monitor you from the fifth floor,” Porthos said.

  “Fine.”

  Porthos hurried off. The pianist segued into “The Man I Love.”

  “I had better get out of the way too,” Méndez said.

  Puente did not seem in a hurry to sit down. She looked exhausted. Méndez thought: After all that arguing, she’s got doubts too, I know she does. She’s afraid Pescatore will let her down once and for all.

  “Isabel, do you believe him?” Méndez blurted. “You still trust him?”

  She sighed. “His story is credible.”

  “So you think he managed to escape from Junior’s entourage, just like that, and spend the night in hiding? And call you repeatedly without being detected?”

  “That’s not so hard to believe.”

  “You don’t think Junior and Khalid could find him if they wanted to?”

  “Maybe they aren’t that interested. Junior’s a wreck, we know that. And Khalid is keeping Junior at arm’s length.”

  Méndez nodded dubiously.

  “Good luck,” he told her.

  “This is about work,” she murmured, eyes roving the atrium. “This is about the operation. My personal feelings are secondary.”

  Méndez covered his radio with his hand. He said: “Look, we’re here because I lost a friend. I don’t want to lose another. Please be careful.”

  She nodded, wide-eyed.

  Méndez rode the escalator up to the fifth floor. He positioned himself at the railing near the down escalator, overlooking the pianos. Porthos was in place at the opposite railing. Méndez checked in with Puente, Porthos, and Facundo on the radio. He raised Athos, who was camped out at his surveillance post outside the El Naútico.

  “Signs of movement here, Licenciado,” Athos reported. “They brought vehicles in front, ready to go. Whether it’s the fat boy or not, if they proceed in your direction, I will too. We are only five minutes away.”

  “No,” Méndez said. “You stay on the fat boy. Don’t let him out of your sight, whatever happens.”

  Méndez watched the woman behind the counter bring Puente a cup of coffee. Puente stirred it without drinking.

  The pianist had stopped playing. The silence in the atrium was startling.

  The pianist sipped water. He stretched his arms, shooting his wrists out of frayed sleeves. He did a little head roll to work the muscles in his reedy neck. He gave a ceremonious nod and smile to Isabel, who was sitting about twenty-five feet away from him.

  Hair bobbing and shining, the pianist hunched back toward the keyboard and got back to work. He played the opening bars of “Hello, Dolly.”

  27

  AS PESCATORE STEPPED OFF the escalator in the atrium of the Minerva Mall, the first thing he saw was a weird geezer at a piano playing “Hello
, Dolly” and making a real racket.

  The second thing he saw was a guy who looked like Méndez at the railing one floor above, pressed into the shadow of a pillar.

  Which didn’t surprise or bother him, because the third thing he saw was Isabel Puente. She wore tight leggings and a loose shirt. Her hair, black and abundant, was arranged with a barrette, bringing out the cheekbones that he remembered caressing once with his knuckles.

  As she rose behind the table, it struck him how small she was, a tiny thing, really. And young—even though she always acted like he was the kid. She looked pale and unnaturally bulky; he spotted the outlines of a bulletproof vest under the shirt. Her right hand hovered near a shirttail, ready to draw. She was taking no chances with Valentine.

  Nice reunion, he thought. Real touching.

  When he embraced her, though, it blotted out everything else: Méndez above them like an ill-fed vulture, the images of Junior and Buffalo, the terrible things that had happened and that were about to happen.

  Her left hand planted itself on his chest as if to fend him off. But she kissed him back. Her mouth hot, her teeth gouging his lip. He held her close, dizzy with the cinnamon taste, her flak vest hard against him. He heard and felt her sobs. He clung to her, and the moment, as long as he could.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”

  “Easy,” she said, giving him a sweet final kiss. The small hand riding his chest propelled him backward. She disengaged. “Enough.”

  “Isabel, I never wanted to hurt you,” he said. “I never ever had a choice. You just gotta trust me.”

  “Are you alright?” she asked curtly, still in a stiff-arm tactical stance.

  “Isabel, we gotta get out of here. It’s all gonna hit the fan.”

  “What do you mean?” She reached back, the moonlike eyes drilling him, and picked up a two-way radio from the table.