Evan followed his eye line and saw the man return the wave with a nod before turning back and finishing his conversation. The man looked angry, and the boy on the other end of the conversation looked frightened. When the man doing the talking punctuated his remarks with a slap against the side of the boy’s face, the kid cowered long enough for the man to turn away, and then he went back to work doing whatever he was doing. Something that involved cloth suspended over a tub.
The angry man walked with long, quick strides directly at them-so sternly that Oscar took a step away from Evan, who took a step the other way. Evan was not going to let himself be slapped by a stranger. As he closed the distance even more, the man’s pockmarked face drew back into a wide grin that looked more menacing than friendly.
“So this is the famous Evan Guinn!” the man proclaimed. “You look like crap.” He turned to Oscar. “What the hell have you been doing with him?”
Oscar responded in Spanish. Evan couldn’t understand the words, but the hand gestures said he was talking about a long damn walk through the jungle. The angry man just seemed to get angrier. He turned to the gathered crowd of workers and barked something at them. A few seconds later, someone hurried over with a white block in his hand. The man snatched it away.
He handed it to Evan. “Here,” he said. “It’s soap. Go use it.”
Evan stared. He understood the words, but they didn’t make sense to him.
The man took a step closer and shoved the bar at him again. “Take the soap and go wash all that shit off your face. Your hair, too. Before I cut it off with a pair of scissors.”
“What’s your name?” Evan asked.
It was the man’s turn to look confused. Then he laughed. “My name? Dios mio, did I forget to introduce myself?” He bowed deeply from the waist. It was an exaggerated motion that Evan knew was designed to embarrass him in front of people. “ Me llamo Antonio. But you can call me jefe.”
It sounded like “heffay.”
“Now, por favor Mister Evan Guinn, would you please be so kind as to wash that shit off your face and hair?”
Antonio had dead eyes that scared Evan. He decided it was not a time to argue. “Where?” he asked.
Antonio laughed again. He pointed out to the rain. “Welcome to the jungle,” he said, “where you never have to find a bathtub because a shower finds you every day.”
Was he kidding? He was supposed to just stand in the rain and scrub himself down in the middle of everyone?
Antonio leaned down to look Evan square in the eye. “I have a job to do, Mister Evan Guinn, and it requires you to be clean. If I have to do it for you, I will use a wire brush, and you will not like it.” His breath stank with an odor that Evan had never smelled before-sort of like medicine, but not really.
Not seeing a choice, Evan turned. He walked back into the rain and down the stairs, the bar of soap clutched in his hand. What the hell, he figured. Water was water, right? He could keep his pants on like he did in the dorm showers at Resurrection House (okay, that was a swimsuit, but still) and wash around them. As he started scrubbing his chest and his face with the soap-it was Ivory, his favorite-it actually felt pretty good. He did his arms next, but decided to forgo his legs and feet. Didn’t make a lot of sense when you were standing in a mud puddle. He finished by lathering up his hair, and then put the soap on the step while he allowed the rain to rinse him.
When he was done, the ground around his feet frothed white, and he felt a lot better. It wasn’t until he started to climb the stairs again that he realized how many people were watching him, and how desperately filthy they all were.
Antonio noticed it, too, apparently, because when he barked out an order, they all went back to work.
Under cover again and out of the rain, Evan handed over the bar of soap and stood there, dripping onto the floor. “Better?” he asked.
Apparently not, judging from the look on Antonio’s face. He barked another order, and a towel appeared-a ridiculous purple one with a picture of Mickey Mouse on it. “Dry yourself off,” he ordered. “And come with me.”
He led the way to the middle of the big covered platform, where an area had been cleared. Grateful for the opportunity to at least try to be dry, Evan employed the towel and watched as Antonio opened up a three-foot-long black tube and removed what looked like a stack of aluminum rods with black plastic on the ends. Evan was fascinated, in fact, as Antonio pulled on the rods and they expanded to form a tall framework of aluminum that stretched to six feet tall when it was set on its end. With the framework erected, Antonio reached into the tube again and unrolled a picture onto the frame. When it was all done, they had a tall picture of a seaside resort, with lots of buildings built into the side of a steep hill and impossibly blue water in the foreground.
“That’s the Amalfi Coast,” Antonio said. “Very beautiful.”
With the picture set up, Antonio opened a padded envelope and removed a royal blue T-shirt with a Puma logo on the front, under an embroidered green, white, and red shield that sat dead center, just under the collar ring. The middle of the shield featured a stylized soccer ball with the letters FIGC in the middle.
“Put this on,” Antonio said.
“Why?” As soon as the question escaped his mouth, Evan pulled it back. He slipped the shirt over his head.
“You recognize?” Antonio said. “That’s the shirt for the national futbol team of Italia. ”
Evan didn’t care. He didn’t even know that they played football in Italy.
Antonio pointed to a spot on the floor in front of the picture. “Stand there.”
Evan did as he was told while Antonio produced a little camera and a newspaper from the padded envelope. The paper was called Il Golfo, and it featured a picture of a man Evan had never seen before.
“Hold the paper up next to your head and smile,” the man commanded.
Evan remained stone faced.
Antonio’s expression grew colder. “Mister Evan Guinn, we do not know each other good yet, but in the coming years, we will get to know each other very good, and as we do you will find that I am not a nice man. I am a mean man who does not mind hurting people. I do not mind hurting you.”
Evan’s stomach iced over. Did he just say in the coming years? Could that possibly be true?
“Evan Guinn, you will smile for this picture one way or the other, but I promise you that it is far harder to smile when you are in pain.”
Evan stood tall, raised the paper next to his head, and smiled.
The camera flashed a total of five times as Antonio took the same picture again and again.
When he was done, he slipped the camera back into the envelope, and he snatched the newspaper out of the boy’s hands. “Give me back the shirt,” he said.
Evan nearly asked why, but stopped himself. He retracted his arms from the sleeves, then slipped the neck ring over his head and handed it back.
“Very good,” Antonio said. He carefully folded the shirt and eased it back into the envelope, which he then placed on a nearby table.
“It’s good to have that done,” Antonio went on. “Now we put you to work.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Mitch Ponder ordered a Modelo beer to go along with his fourth club soda and lime. With his guest running late and the restaurant filling up around him, he figured he had to order something with a price tag just to keep from getting thrown out.
The fact that he hadn’t yet heard from Jose meant that the man had either had a change of heart, or he had gone to the other side. Either way, his family would be dead by morning. A promise is a promise, after all, and actions must have consequences. Mitch wouldn’t handle the details himself, of course-finding street thugs willing to kill was not a challenge in this godforsaken country-but they would be handled. Mitch intentionally did not immerse himself in the minutiae. Whatever itch he had for taking lives was more than adequately scratched by people who were willing to pay for the service.
Contin
ued good pay, however, required continued competent service, and by any measure he’d come up short of that on the Lincoln Hines hit. Who knew that something that happened so long ago could have legs for so many years?
It wasn’t even a complicated hit. Sure, it was high-profile, the guy being a Senate wannabe and all, and the guy who paid for the hit was naturally the first suspect, but engineering a fake suicide was the easiest thing in the world. You plant a few distressed e-mails in the guy’s past, establish a tawdry double life he never had, and then make sure that someone finds the bogus blackmail letters that drove him to do the dirty deed. With the pieces in place, you follow him closely enough to know when he’s going to be alone, and then you pop him. People find the body, they find the fake evidence, they force two and two to equal four, and you’re done.
The fact that the financier-Jacques Leger, in this case-was such an obvious suspect actually worked in his favor in the end. Everyone assumed that no one would be foolish enough to bring that kind of attention down on himself.
Mitch had been doing this shit for years, and he was damn good at it. Good enough that on the rare occasion when things went wrong, he readily and easily cleaned up after himself. Where third parties were involved-like today, for Jose’s family-the hoods who jumped at the opportunity to work for El Matador were so paranoid about ending up on Mitch’s shit list that they would figure out a way to violate the laws of physics and chemistry if they had to, to make sure that nothing went wrong.
Mitch had worked long and hard to establish his reputation as a harsh master. In his business, fear kept you alive. That universal business truth explained why he’d always been comfortable working for Sammy Bell and the Slater family. People were at least as afraid of them as they were of Mitch Ponder. With fear up and down the chain of command, things worked like clockwork.
Given all the moving parts that are involved in a hit, who would have ever thought that a smooth operation would break down at the payment phase? What special breed of idiot would a person have to be to abscond with money from a crime family on its way to a hired killer? And who would ever have guessed that that special breed of idiot could actually get away with it?
The Slater organization made good on covering the debt to Mitch, of course, but it was a stupid career decision on the part of the lawyer who took it. Bruce Navarro.
Except Navarro wasn’t the thief.
The real thieves were Navarro’s secretary and her boyfriend. Some bitch named Schuler. Mitch had deduced that connection within an hour of hearing that she’d turned up dead. The boyfriend killed the secretary and got away with the cash. In Mitch’s book, the buck twenty-five wasn’t nearly enough dough to sentence yourself to a life of looking over your shoulder, but he had to admire the boyfriend’s originality. It was a pretty slick move how he pinned the murder on the husband. Damn good job, too, all things considered. Hubby got sentenced to death, for God’s sake. How much better could you get? Having gotten away with murder, all the boyfriend had to do was try his best to prevent his own.
From Ponder’s perspective, the whole cluster fuck had evolved into an amusing stability. Navarro kept his head down because of the active contract on it, the boyfriend was living the high life on the run, and Schuler’s husband was going to be offed by the state. Jacques Leger’s involvement was protected by an armored shield of secrets. Everybody could relax.
And then Arthur Guinn got himself arrested.
Good God almighty, of all the shitty luck. When old man Slater passed away in the late nineties, and Sammy Bell ascended to the throne of the organization, Arthur ascended to number two, the position originally held by Sammy. That made him heir apparent, and the fact of his arrest sent Sammy into a panic. He put out a contract on Guinn within two hours of him being taken into custody, but by then the window of opportunity had slammed shut. The FBI knew what they had in Guinn, and they knew how many people were gunning for him, so they made him invisible. When he moved from one place to another, the security was like something you’d expect for the president of the United States. They even shut down airspace, for God’s sake.
Mitch had done a lot of business with the Slater family over the years-as he had done business with their competitors and, once upon a time, for the federal government-but he’d never seen Sammy Bell as shaken as he was in the months following Guinn’s arrest. The details were none of Mitch’s business, but it was clear that Guinn knew everything.
The silver medal for panic response came from Senator Leger. When you’re a powerful man and you hire powerful criminals to do your dirty work, you expect absolute confidentiality. Mitch was sure that Leger paid dearly and regularly for that kind of confidence. It was no wonder that he went into orbit when he learned that Guinn was in custody.
But then absolutely nothing happened.
After the initial panic had gone unrequited, and no one else had been arrested in the next twelve months-and then twenty-four and thirty-six months-Sammy had begun to relax. He’d talked himself into believing that maybe Arthur would honor his friendships and keep true to his loyalties. Mitch had tried to believe it, too, even though he knew from experience what hard time can do to a man. Mitch had known all along that it was just a matter of time.
Then the new administration was elected into power, Leger became secretary of defense, the rise in profile started to make people nervous again.
Apparently Sammy Bell had good sources within the FBI or the prison system-maybe both-and about a week ago, those sources told him that Guinn was ready to cut a deal in return for protection. He was driving a hard bargain, too-he’d give everything if his conditions were met, and nothing at all if they weren’t. Mitch had heard rumors that the ultimate decision went all the way to the White House, and part of him really hoped that Leger was in the room when the attorney general or FBI director made the pitch. That must have triggered a special breed of panic.
It certainly triggered an urgent phone call to Sammy Bell, who then passed the urgency to Mitch. At the end of the day, this mess was his loose end to be tied, and everybody expected him to finish his job.
So, how do you keep a man from spilling his guts to people who are willing to give him whatever he wants? You threaten his family. The tactic works just as well with big shots as it does with peons like Jose. Family in general-children in particular-are everybody’s Achilles’ heel, from hero to sociopath. The tricky part was to make the threat viable, and to keep it perpetual. It’s the threat of violence that motivates silence in a case like this, not violence itself.
They knew that Guinn had a kid somewhere, and research led them to a school in a little Virginia town that no one had heard of. The most logical solution was to grab him and hold him hostage, but that strategy came with huge risks-not the least of which was the involvement of the FBI, whose mission it was to solve kidnappings. This one would be rendered even more challenging by the need to constantly remind Guinn of the stakes. Snatching someone and disappearing with him was difficult but doable. Keeping them disappeared while at the same time remaining in frequent contact raised the stakes enormously. Each new communication created an opportunity for the FBI to dial into the chain of evidence-and there was always a chain of evidence, no matter how careful you were to prevent one.
The solution came from Troy Flynn, the man who nominally succeeded Arthur Guinn after his arrest. (Jesus, you think too much about this stuff, and it starts to sound like a royal chain of succession.) Flynn suggested an offshore kidnapping. He said that he had assurances from very reliable sources that if they chose the country carefully, the FBI would be unable to follow, and if they did, they’d be unable to secure extradition.
And wouldn’t you know it? One of the leading countries suggested was the very one in which Mitch Ponder had a number of existing business interests that were always looking to prosper from an addition to the labor pool.
Mitch read that as a guaranteed safe zone to spirit the kid off to after they snatched him. But first they
had to get their hands on him, and for that Mitch needed a team. He hated working with teams. The extra players posed that many more opportunities to screw things up, and that many more people whose loose lips could sink the Steamship Ponder.
In this case, though, having a third party involved actually helped Mitch with another problem. Because of the complexity of what they were attempting to pull off, and the fact that Leger and his contacts were going to be giving him some backup, he needed a way to communicate directly with the secretary. Troy Flynn and Sammy Bell didn’t want to be seen in the halls of the Pentagon any more than Leger would have wanted them there. For all the same reasons, the further away Mitch could stay from direct contact, the better off he was going to be.
Enter Jerry Sjogren, the hulking Bostonian who, as far as Mitch could tell, feared no one. Mitch had never worked with him before, but he certainly knew the name. Sjogren looked and sounded like a barroom bouncer. He’d approached Mitch, in fact, and, without actually saying the words, made it extremely clear that he considered himself to be Secretary Leger’s go-to guy.
Sjogren was the one who’d first noticed that Marilyn Schuler’s kid went to the same school as the Guinn kid, and brought word that his boss wanted the Schuler boy snatched at the same time. Mitch had argued against it if only because of the daunting logistics of snatching two at once and getting them out of the country. When you double the scope of an operation like that, you square the logistical hassles. To risk success with a high-value target like the Guinn kid by snatching a low-yield target like the Schuler boy-honestly, what were the chances that the kid knew anything that could hurt Leger? — was a special brand of foolishness.
But Sjogren had been firm. Besides, he’d argued, Mitch would never have to worry about the second kid because they were going to pop him after they snatched him. For Mitch’s little corner of the operation, nothing would change.
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