At 12:45 Vincent called Rick Robbins from his portable telephone. Robbins said he didn’t know what had gone wrong, but he’d call him, he’d find out. Vincent calmly said no, he would handle it himself.
The maid at the Salazar house told him, Lo siento, el señor Salazar está fuera del país. Out of the country. Where? No se, señor. He had slipped through their fingers.
“Vince, what about the tapes?”
It took a second for the question to work through. Vincent looked around. The engineer, Willy Silva, was holding a cardboard box filled with reels and cassettes and plastic cases.
“What about them?” Vincent asked.
“These are the tracks that the band cut over the last few weeks. I’ve got some mixes as well, and the final demo tape. I finished it last night.” Willy took out a cassette in a clear plastic box. “I don’t mean to brag, but considering that I had to do overdubs on a new bassist, new drummer, and a new lead guitar, this is a great-sounding tape.”
Vincent took the cassette from him, turned it over. It was labeled Mayhem Demo, Manatee Studios, W. Silva, Sound Engineer. The cassette was dark gray in color and oddly sized. “It’s smaller than usual.”
“It’s a digital tape,” Willy said. His hand was poised to take it back. “What are you going to do with it?”
“I can’t let you keep it. We might need it for evidence. All of these tapes will have to remain in our property room until the U.S. attorney’s office tells us what to do with them.” Vincent nodded toward the boxes stacked in the corner. “Put it over there for now.”
Willy Silva made an expression like Vincent had told him to leave his newborn son in the snow. “Well … let me make a copy,” he said.
“Sorry. Tell you what. You get in touch with me in a couple of months, I’ll have an answer. Don’t worry, it won’t get lost.”
“You ought to make a copy for yourself, Vince. This demo might be valuable someday.”
“Not my thing, Willy.”
Two DEA agents were up on ladders taking out wiring and speakers. Vincent lit a cigarette and watched.
Last night he had called Elaine. She hadn’t answered. Or hadn’t wanted to answer. He was going to tell her … something. He wasn’t sure what. He had believed, truly, that Elaine understood what kind of a life he had. The things he had to do because there was no one else to do them. He didn’t feel betrayed, just disappointed. He had thought she was stronger than that.
Vincent noticed one of the agents point toward the door and laugh. The other whistled.
Scott Irwin stood there grinning. He extended his arms and made a little curtsy, then waved the men quiet. He had shaved his head. The blue hair was gone, and so were the ragged jeans and T-shirt. He came over to speak to Vincent.
“Cute,” Vincent said.
“Like it? I look like Bobby Doyle. Give me a cigarette.” He drew one out of Vincent’s pack and borrowed his lighter. “Tough luck about Salazar,” he said. “The SAC have anything to say about it?”
“The usual. He’s catching it from the Feebies. Told you so, that kind of thing.”
Scott Irwin thumbed the lighter and drew in smoke. He exhaled, then looked at Vincent. “What are you going to do?”
Meaning, what will you do if you get transferred to a desk job. Vincent didn’t know what he would do. He had run out of ideas. He knew he ought to leave. Go to the office, start on his reports. He was tired. Standing and talking to this kid made him feel old. Vince Hooper had been chasing Pablo Escobar over the rooftops of Cali when Irwin was still at the academy.
“Do? We’ve got two dozen dopers to pick up, and that’s starting tonight.”
“I thought Wednesday.”
“No. I talked to John Paxton. He says let’s do it. Salazar didn’t make the meeting, so he’s probably on to us. That means the others could start taking off. Salazar might still be around, though. We’ll drop by his house tonight and see if he’s home.” Vincent looked at Scott Irwin’s head again and laughed. “Jesus. We were all getting used to the punk haircut. I assume the concert is over.”
“Mayhem won’t be there. The band is over, as of last night, and I’ll tell you about that in a second. Where’s Willy Silva? I’d like to get the demo tape, or a copy of it. My life as a rocker.”
“The tape’s over there in one of those boxes.” Vincent tilted his head toward the stack of them. “Willy wanted it too. I told him we needed it for evidence, but go ahead and make a copy for yourself. Not for general release.”
“Thanks.”
Scott Irwin watched the men loading the mixing board onto a dolly. “Martha Cruz is gone. Vanished. I can’t find Dan Galindo either.”
Vincent drew on his cigarette and said nothing. Scott had a way of drawing stories out. Making them into a TV action drama. “Just cut to the chase, will you?”
“Last night during a break Martha went to the ladies’ room and didn’t come back. Salazar was here and he started asking, Where’s Martha? Nobody knew. So he left and took Arlo Pate with him. I decided to follow. I lost them, but they’d been heading south, so on a hunch I went by Dan Galindo’s place. His car was out front, and so was Salazar’s. A few minutes later, Salazar and Arlo come out, they take off. I had two choices, see where they went or check out the apartment. I went inside. The back door was unlocked. Galindo wasn’t there. I saw water and fish all over the floor. The glass in his fish tank was broken. His clothes were all over the bedroom, thrown into boxes. Looks like he had to leave in a hurry.”
“With Martha?”
“That’s my guess. When I saw Martha yesterday, I noticed she had a bruise on her face. She took me aside and said that Salazar had beaten her up the night before, and she wasn’t going back to him. I’d say she went to Galindo’s house. Before she left the studio, she told me that Bobby Doyle thinks Victor Ramirez is a narc. I said, ‘Yeah, he told me the same thing, but don’t let Miguel know.’ And she said she wouldn’t, that she never told Miguel anything she did.”
Scott turned his back on the room and flicked ashes onto the bare concrete. “Martha said that something was about to go down, and Rick was going to be arrested. I said, ‘No way. Martha, what’re we gonna do?’ She said not to worry because she had a way to save the band. I pressed her to tell me more about it, but she wouldn’t.”
Scott Irwin’s voice had dropped to barely a murmur, which Vincent had to strain to hear over the wrenching metal noises from the control room. They were ripping out an aluminum stud to get to the wiring under the floor.
“I called Rick this morning. I said, ‘Rick, what’s going on? Martha split. What about the band?’ He said, ‘Sorry, man, Mayhem is history.’ He said it was too bad and so forth and so on, thank you, good-bye. I said, ‘Rick, where’s Martha?’ He told me not to worry about it, she was fine. Then he hung up.”
Vincent looked at him. “Any ideas?”
The dolly and mixing board moved toward the door. The wheels squeaked, and the sound echoed on the bare walls.
“I thought of the tape that Kelly told you about.”
Vincent could feel the weight of it coming down on him again. “Scott, there is no tape. I told you that.”
Scott dropped his cigarette on the floor and stepped on it. Black leather shoes with heavy soles. “Okay, Vince.”
Vincent said, “Looks like Salazar is after Galindo. Might save me the trouble. I was thinking Galindo might have tipped Salazar off. Now I’m not sure.”
“No, it was Bobby Doyle’s narc radar that picked you up, Hooper.”
“Really? How come it didn’t pick you up?”
“Because when Bobby passed around the joint, I inhaled.”
“Very funny.”
The debris was piling up on the floor now. The agents came down off the ladders and started rolling the wires onto a spool.
CHAPTER 37
Elaine waited for Dan to say something as he stood looking at the remains of his aquarium. It must have been a nice tank. The sides and bac
k were still there, so that it looked like a stage set. A humming noise came from a small black box, uselessly blowing air through a clear plastic tube. Jagged pieces of glass attached at the corners hung downward, and sea grasses were draped over the front, washed forward by escaping water. The dead eyes of small striped fish stared up at the ceiling.
Dan turned off the aerator, then squatted on one heel, picking up the dead fish by their tails and placing them in a bowl. He got up and carried the bowl into the bathroom. Elaine heard the repeated sound of the toilet flushing.
They had driven to Dan’s place so he could change into black pants and a navy blue sweater. He would be walking onto Salazar’s property after dark, and in case anyone was home, they would be less likely to see him unlocking the door to Martha Cruz’s rehearsal room if he blended into the shadows.
A telephone call that afternoon had determined that he and Martha could not simply drive in and retrieve the tape in broad daylight. Salazar might be there. Elaine had called John Paxton to ask if the DEA had taken him into custody. Paxton replied that Salazar had not shown up at the meeting with Victor Ramirez. “The DEA is pissed off. They know someone warned him, but they’re not sure who. By the way, have you heard from Dan Galindo in the past twenty-four hours?”
“No, John, I haven’t. What’s going on?”
“He seems to have disappeared with Martha Cruz. The DEA can’t find either of them. Vince Hooper wants to ask him some questions.”
Elaine told him she would call Agent Hooper the minute she heard from Dan, although she couldn’t imagine why he would call her. Then she asked, “Where is Miguel Salazar?”
“The staff at his house say he’s gone back to Ecuador, but they could be lying.”
Lies. Feeling sick, Elaine had hung up the phone, then wiped her sweaty palm on the thigh of her jeans. Now her job was on the line. If they didn’t get the Barrios tape, she would be fired, and that would be the least of it. She could also be criminally prosecuted for assisting in a burglary.
Elaine looked at her watch: 6:15 P.M. It would be dark in another hour. Leaning over the sofa, she looked through the crack in the curtains. Dan had already moved his car around the corner, and Martha had taken hers; she would leave it in a parking lot near Elaine’s house.
Water was running in the bathroom sink.
“Dan? We should go.”
He came out drying his hands. “I’m getting bulletproof glass in my next aquarium,” he said.
At Elaine’s house Martha Cruz spread a map of Broward County on the kitchen table and showed Elaine the route. Dan would have Martha’s electronic gate opener, allowing them to get through the security gates at Lakewood Estates and the Isles of Lakewood.
Dan looked down at the map, hands on his hips. Elaine traced with her finger the access road into the Isles of Lakewood. It was a narrow road, more like a causeway a few hundred yards long, water on each side, ending in a free-form piece of land in the center of a lake. The road made a loop, with room for no more than a half dozen estate-sized homes. Salazar’s was one of them. She remembered how isolated it had seemed as she looked across from the surveillance house. She recalled the soaring red-tile roof, the tennis court and pool, two-acre lawn sloping down to a small white sandy beach, the luffing sail of a beached catamaran, the children running happily on the back terrace. To the south a separate guest quarters had been converted into a studio for Martha Cruz.
“It’s a narrow road,” Elaine observed. “Where can we park?”
“Go around the loop,” Martha said, tracing the road with her finger. “Let us off at a vacant lot about here, then we’ll go straight to the studio—”
“We?” Dan shook his head.
Still leaning on her elbows, Martha looked up, her brow furrowing. Her black hair was twisted into a braid, and she had removed all her jewelry. “I’m going with you.”
“Rick is my client; I’ll handle it. I don’t want you along. It’s potentially dangerous.”
“Miguel’s not even home.”
Elaine asked, “What about Arlo Pate?”
Dan said, “I’ll take along a steak to throw at him. This won’t take more than five minutes. I’ve seen the house. You and Martha park down the street at the vacant lot. I’ll walk back, get in the car, and we’ll leave.”
“How will you know which is the right tape?” Martha sat back in her chair with her arms crossed. “Kelly didn’t write ‘DEA raid’ on it. There are dozens of tapes, and I’m the only one who knows where it is. Even if I tell you, you might pick up the wrong one, and we’re not going back.”
Cocky bitch, Elaine thought.
Dan’s face was tight with anger. Or fear perhaps. He knew what this involved. Martha had no idea. Even so, she had a point.
“Dan, she’s right.”
He was looking at Martha Cruz. “If Miguel is at home, we’re taking off. Understand? The tape isn’t worth our lives, and I don’t care what’s on it.”
“He isn’t home,” she insisted. “While you and Elaine were gone I called the house and made sure—”
“Oh, my God. Caller-ID,” Elaine said.
“I used a pay phone, Elaine. Look, I’m not stupid. Believe me, I know what Miguel is. I saw him shoot Leon Davila.”
They both looked at her.
“It was on the second-floor terrace. Miguel shot Leon in the chest three times, and he fell into the hot tub. Miguel doesn’t know I saw. I’d gotten out of the tub, but I came back to see what Leon had to say. He had been on an errand for Miguel, delivering some cash. Arlo was up there fixing the plumbing, and he saw it too. I never asked, but I’m pretty sure that Arlo buried Leon’s body out where they’re widening the lake. Arlo used to work over there on the dragline.”
“Why did Miguel shoot Leon?” Dan asked.
“Well, basically, aside from the fact that Leon was a cokehead and becoming undependable, he saw me naked and he was bragging about it. That tells you how coked out he was. I was surprised when Miguel shot him. I thought he’d just send him back to Ecuador. Maybe—now that I think of it—Miguel did it because of what I said about Leon. That he was ruining the band, and we’d never get a record contract with him in it—which was totally true.”
Dan was staring at her. “Leon died because of what you said?”
She made a small laugh. “It’s too bad what happened to Leon, but it wasn’t my fault.”
“No, you didn’t shoot Leon. You expected Miguel to take care of it. Hadn’t you already proved to yourself how much he would do for you? He turned his guest house into a studio, bought you a new keyboard. Paid everybody in the band. Gave you a car, jewelry, clothes. No, let me finish. What did you want most, Martha? You wanted to be the star. When it came to a choice between your best friend and your career, hey, too bad for Kelly Dorff.”
“That’s a lie! I never told him to get rid of Kelly!” Martha was on her feet now, fists clenched at her sides.
“I’m sure you didn’t say to him, ‘Miguel, kill Kelly for me.’ What was it you said? I remember that last Sunday morning we were on the terrace of Miguel’s house. I’d brought over a box of Kelly’s things. Miguel didn’t seem happy to have her as a guest. Then you said, in his presence, that you were afraid that Kelly would ruin the concert. That you wished she weren’t in the band. How many other times had you said that to Miguel? And last Sunday were you holding back more than usual because I was there?”
Martha laughed, a single short peal of astonishment. “You think I wanted her dead?”
“You still needed her for the concert, but Miguel couldn’t wait. Lucky thing that Rick came through with a new guitarist.”
She rushed at him, screaming. Dan deflected her fists, spun her around, and held her around the middle. Her flailing legs kicked over a kitchen chair.
Elaine moved quickly out of the way. “Martha! Stop it!”
She went limp, crying. “He didn’t do it. He was upstairs with his sister.” Dan let her go, and Martha stumbled back into
a chair.
Elaine said, “No, Scott Irwin saw Miguel leave shortly before Kelly. And he knew where she was headed, correct? He could have arrived first, waited for her to let herself in using the spare key, then shot her with Dan’s speargun. He hated Dan. Why not try to frame him for Kelly’s murder?”
“Kelly was my best friend.” Martha took the tissue that Elaine gave her, but kept her head bowed. The braid had come half undone, and her hair hung over her face. After a minute she looked up at Dan. “Are you still going to help me?”
“Let’s get this straight,” Dan said. “I’m going to get the tape, but I’m not doing it for you, Martha. It’s for Rick. If you indirectly benefit, great. But I don’t care.”
Elaine put a hand on Martha’s shoulder. “I’m going to talk to Dan for a minute. We’ll be right back.” She pulled on his wrist. In her bedroom, she closed the door and leaned on it. “I’ve never seen such a perfect match. That girl’s as ruthless as Salazar.” She opened the nightstand by the double bed. “I want you to take this.” She handed him a .38 Smith & Wesson revolver in a brown leather belt holster.
“You want me to shoot Martha with it?”
“Be serious.” Elaine flipped out the cylinder, unloaded the six bullets, then closed the gun and pulled the trigger. “Don’t take it out unless you mean to shoot. Hold it with both hands, arms extended. Squeeze slowly—”
“I didn’t know you were such a tough broad,” Dan said. “Thanks, but if they catch me for an armed burglary, I’d be in real trouble.”
“Yes, and if Salazar is at home, he’ll kill you, and you can avoid jail completely.”
“Give me the gun.” He dropped it into the holster, then put it back into her nightstand.
She threw her arms around his neck. “Please, Dan. I know you want to help your client, but don’t risk yourself for him. For me either. What I’ve done has been my choice, and I’ll live with it.”
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