by Jack Barnao
"Remind me not to get my picture taken,” Kelly said, and we all laughed politely. And then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a big, low American car slide into the lookout point. I bent my head toward Kelly as if I were listening carefully, but I was watching the car. The rear window slid down smoothly under power controls, and I saw the double glint of binoculars, aimed at us.
Amadeo surprised me. He hadn't shown any fear, but he picked up the vibes of what I was doing. I glanced at him, and he inclined his head sideways minutely toward the vehicle he could not see. I nodded back, a quarter-inch movement of my forehead, smiling at Kelly as I did it. Amadeo forced himself farther back, tighter against the wall, and casually raised his right hand to his cheek, as if he were being thoughtful, masking his face from the binoculars he had not seen but knew existed. His face was drawn and some of the color was seeping out of it, as if he'd just been punched in the stomach again.
I kept the conversation going, watching to see whether the Orphan Annie eyes of the binoculars changed to the lean muzzle of a sniper's rifle, but after another minute the binoculars dropped and the window rolled up. The car made a neat turn and headed back down the hill toward the town, honking at a kid leading a donkey with two water cans on its panniers.
I turned back to the crowd and smiled a big, happy smile that put new heart into Amadeo. He drew in a quick, shuddering breath and said, “How'd you like to be that Debra Steen anyway? Never home, always in the tub or gettin’ your hair done or stuck in a mink coat under lights that'd scorch your eyes out?"
"Very gallant, Greg,” Kelly said. She was warming to him now, seeing that Beth had singled me out. “And all the time I thought my job was dreary, dispensing secondhand knowledge to undergraduates."
"Fount'f all wisdom,” he said and spread his arms, very much the Godfather.
We sat and chatted for about twenty minutes, and then Beth looked at her watch and said, “An hour to dinner. Are you two eating in tonight?"
"At the price they're chargin’ who can afford to eat anywhere else?” Amadeo asked, and we all chuckled. He had thrown himself into the role now. Perhaps he was working at turning Beth's interest from me to himself. That was about his speed. He didn't know she had him down as a loser with a hungry nose. All that mattered to him was making a monkey out of me.
The two women thanked us politely for the drink and excused themselves to go and change. Amadeo smiled and ducked into the room, and I walked the pair of them around the corner of the building to the walkway. Beth squeezed my arm, affectionate under the influence of the wonderful sunshine and my fairy story about Amadeo. “We'll be in the dining room at seven,” she said, and I tapped her on the cheek with one finger.
"See you there. Thanks for the support.” That last wasn't spinach. It was easier to keep a rein on Amadeo while we had company.
I let myself into the front door and found him sitting on his bed, pulling on his second beer as if he'd been dying of thirst. “What'd you see?” he demanded.
"A guy in the back seat of a Lincoln Continental. He stopped and used binoculars, checking us out."
Amadeo put his beer bottle down on the floor and stood up, batting his arms around himself as if he were cold. “Shit,” he hissed softly. “I didn't figure they'd send nobody."
"You had to know better than that,” I argued. “The horsemen told me they smashed your front door down when they went in. The whole neighborhood must've known you'd been busted."
He turned and frowned at me. “You don’ understand. I've been busted before. I've been outa sight before. They don’ expect me to punch no fuckin’ time clock."
"The other times you must have called a lawyer they deal with. Right?"
He turned and sank down on the bed. “That's it,” he said simply. “When they come in an’ found the stuff, I was scared. Shit. You got any idea what it's like inside? For eight, ten years? Hell, I'd come out old ‘n’ queer."
"You'd be thirty-six, which is a year or two shy of your pension, and if you don't kick with the other foot now, you wouldn't then.” Easy, Locke, don't sell him on jail. He's about to rip the underbelly out of the organization for Cahill and the boys. I added a happy little postscript to the story. “Of course, you might always run into some guy whose kid OD'd. And then they'd shiv you or pour gasoline on you and set you alight like a big Italian Christmas pudding."
"All right,” he snapped. “I made the deal. I ain’ gonna back out."
"Tell me one thing. Smart as you are, why did you come to this hotel, if your contacts know you use it?"
"Because the connections I need are all here. Once the reservation was made from Canada, all my people here knew what to do."
"You mean Maria and the guy in the speedboat?"
"Yeah. Yeah. Everybody."
"And the guy in the Continental isn't one of them?"
"No. He's not. He's the Man here, my connection with Canada.” He stopped. “I shouldn't be telling you all o’ this."
"If I'm going to keep your ass intact, I need to know everything.” I pointed my index finger at him as if it were a gun. “I know you're looking to get me wasted and then vanish. But there's more players in the game than you can handle. You want me out of the way, but not half as badly as your people in Canada want to see you holding up a big mound of flowers."
I guess that image got to him. There had been a heavy Mafia funeral in Toronto a few months previously. A realtor with mob connections had been found in the trunk of his car at the airport, and there were flowers enough to fill a cathedral. He looked up at me and I shook my finger at him. “I'm good at what I do, Greg, but if I don't know half the story, I can't do my job. You won't live long enough to get your money. You'll never be able to disappear with Maria."
"Her?” Suddenly his terror evaporated. He laughed in my face. “That dumb bitch. You think I'm takin’ her anyplace?” He shook his head and got control of himself. “You guys!” He snorted again. “Cops! Buncha goddamn Dudley Do-rights."
I kept the disgust out of my face. Maria was in love with him, and he treated her this way. He was a twenty-two-karat jerk. I would get him home safely, if possible, but after that I wouldn't care if somebody painted a target on his back. “I need to know your organizational setup,” I said.
He wiped his eyes and shook his head again, still grinning. “So, okay, this is more'n I told your buddy in the Mounties. Listen up.” I sat down on the bed opposite and he started talking, coolly and calmly, a businessman instructing the new employee.
"Our product starts out in Colombia. Everybody knows ‘at. So you need a back door outa there and into Canada. From Canada, some goes over the border into the States, but they mostly use their own pipeline. My job is here. I pay the mules t’ bring it this far, then arrange shipment to Canada."
"How's that done?"
He shook his hands carelessly. “Don’ matter to you. It's done, ‘kay? So the guys I work with here are from Colombia, an’ some Mexicans an’ a couple Canadians. The way I see it, the Colombians ain’ interested if I get turned around. It's always cash ‘n’ carry. If I don't show up, somebody else will. That leaves the Mexicans an’ the Canadians."
Great. We'd narrowed the list to two hundred million people. “So keep it simple. Who owns the Continental?"
"That's Edmundo García. Like I said, he's the Man. He doesn't like me a whole helluva lot because I got my own connections this far. Generally he handles the purchase an’ arranges shipment. I got my own mules, so he gets a smaller cut. He was no friend o’ mine to start with. He'd be the first in line to blow me away if the guys back home wanted it done."
"And what does he look like? Him and his heavies, all of them, anybody who'd want to take a shot at you?"
"He's little an’ very Mexican looking, mestizo, like, you know, mostly Indian blood. He's got a mustache looks like he drew it on with a pencil, an’ bad skin. Believe me, this guy sticks out like dog's balls anywhere he goes."
"And who's his hit man?"
"Dark-skinned guy, pretty near black. Always wears a suit so it covers his piece. Carries a .45 under his armpit."
"There's a lot of guys in suits. How will I recognize him?” I needed all the details. These men would kill me if they had to, just to get to Amadeo. I wanted to be able to recognize them. I couldn't wait for him to notice them and point them out to me.
"Well lemme put it this way. His name's César but everybody works with him calls him El Grande. Like this guy is heavy. Not fat exactly, just big through. D'ya ever see a guy like that?"
Plenty of them, and they were mostly bad news. Dark, heavy. Most Mexicans are in better shape than Canadians, he should stand out. “Anything else about him? How tall is he? Any scars? Anything?"
"He's tall for a Mexican, goin’ on six foot."
I closed my eyes for a moment and composed a picture. A big, dark Mexican, almost my height but thick through, that would make him possibly two hundred pounds, two-twenty. And he always wore a suit. Good. I could pick him out instantly anywhere except possibly at a Weight Watcher's ball.
"They know we're here. We have to change hotels, duck under cover,” I said.
"We can't, not before tomorrow."
"Why not? If you're counting on meeting a guy here, you can leave him a message."
Amadeo shook his head impatiently. “That's not the way it works. He shows ‘n’ I ain't here, he's gone. Period. He ain’ gonna pick up no goddamn message."
"What time are you seeing him?"
"Tomorrow. Just tomorrow. I told you a'ready. We don't punch time clocks in my business."
"He may not be your first caller. The way I figure it, these other guys will drop by in the night. Maybe El Grande will come alone, with his .45, or maybe they'll shake a can of tarantulas loose on the floor. Depends on how they feel about waking up the rest of the guests."
Amadeo sucked his teeth. “It won't be fancy. They don’ fool around. Sawed-off shotgun's their tool."
"Then we have to change rooms. And we can't leave anybody in this one because they'll get blown away instead of you."
"I was thinkin’ the same thing. I don't like that walkway out back there. A guy could blast me from the hill, be on the road an’ gone before I hit the ground."
"Good thinking. So let's talk to management, try to get a room on the inner wing, the other side of the office."
"They keep that for VIPs,” he said.
"A VIP is a guy who can afford the price,” I told him. “How much money are you carrying with you?"
He flashed a suspicious look at me. Asking a mobster about money is like asking a priest about his sex life. “Just say I can handle it, all right,” he said.
"Yeah, partly all right. But I want my pay. So knock ten grand off your total and give me my cash."
"Look, we gotta deal,” he began, but I stuck my finger in his face.
"I've seen the way you deal, Greggie. How much cash are you carrying?"
He pursed his lips and didn't answer for a long moment. Then he took his belt off. It was a money belt, the same as my own, innocent looking from the front but zipped along the inside. He tugged the zip open and laid the belt on the bed. It was lined with green bills, and he pulled out about half of them, each folded. He handed five of them to me without speaking. I opened each in turn, two U.S. thousand-dollar bills folded together.
"Ten of the best. And you've got, what, another ten in there?"
"Twelve,” he said sullenly. “How do I know you're gonna do your job, now you've been paid?"
"Because I'm a professional. I don't fool around with my jobs, and I don't back out, even when they get heavy. Thanks for the pay. Now put two of those other thousands in your pocket and we'll go talk to the manager."
"I wanna shower an’ change first. You gotta look like money when you're putting up a front,” he said.
"Good. Go ahead. Then we move."
I waited while he showered and shaved, using an electric razor that left his chin a natty violet color, and we went out into the dusk and walked quickly to the office.
The man on duty was fairly senior, enough so that a minute of Amadeo's rapid Spanish and a discreet handshake, ending with the manager's hand in his pocket and a very happy smile on his face, scored us a second room. That was the story, our old room was for me, the second was for Señor Amadeo. That way nobody was going to get blasted in error.
We thanked him and went out of the office, turning right instead of left, heading down the corridor toward a middle room.
"Cost me a hundred bucks over the rate.” Amadeo complained. “But he's put us in next to the model. Class, eh?"
"Discreet, anyway. You saw the kid on the end of the corridor, he's to keep other people away from her. He'll make a fuss if anybody tries to bully their way in here."
"Good,” Amadeo grunted and put the key in the lock. He turned it, and at the same instant, the door next to it exploded open. I spun to face it, crouched, the pistol in my pocket aimed waist high. But it wasn't El Grande who came storming out. It was Debra Steen and she was naked from the waist up.
Eight
I let go of my gun and spread my arms as if I were trying to head off a stampeding steer. She yelled and tried to duck under them, but I bent my knees and she gave up, sobbing in frustration, and turned back again into the arms of the woman who had been with her outside.
The other woman ignored us. “Debbie, honey. Come back,” she said, almost crooning. Either a lover or a very worried agent was my reading. She turned to us, smiling a formal smile that was almost a snarl. “She's overwrought, too much sun. Thank you. Can you leave us now, please?"
"I know what the problem is,” Amadeo said in a gravelly voice. “Don’ try bullshitting me, lady. I got the answer to what she needs."
Debra turned and grabbed his arm. “Have you, have you?"
He was beaming, a big, Godfatherly smile. “Sure have, don't you worry none. Just ask us in."
"Come in, come in.” She tightened her grip on his arm and tugged him into the room. The other woman tried to head me off, but I said, “I'm his bodyguard."
She scowled, but she let me through, shutting the door behind me and locking it. I checked around in a glance. There were just the four of us present. The room was the same as ours, except for a female clutter on the dressing table and a number of suitcases lying around. Debra was standing in front of Amadeo, who was looking at her breasts, greedily, not speaking.
The other woman picked up a shirt and handed it to Debra, who made no effort to put it on until the other woman started helping her. Then she stood, like a child, letting the woman slip both her arms into the sleeves and then button it.
"You can help me?” she asked at last, her voice trembly.
"Sure. Coke, is it?” Amadeo asked in the same gravelly voice. He was enjoying himself, King Cool, watching the girl the way snakes watch mice.
"What makes you ask a thing like that?” the other woman demanded. “Who are you creeps anyway?"
"This man's name is Amadeo, he's in the business and in a whole lot of trouble,” I said. “I'm here to get him back to Canada in one piece."
"Bastards,” she hissed. I liked the look of her. She was lean and fit, a weathered, outdoorsy thirty-something-year-old, born beautiful, but careless of it, wearing her body like a suit of clothes. And she was tough. A hell of a combination.
Amadeo shrugged, spreading his hands. “You don't like us, we can take off, leave your pretty friend here in a mess."
"She's already in a goddamn mess, thanks to your dirty business."
"Shut up, Helen.” Debra Steen was regaining control of her voice, with an effort. “Shut up,” she said again, softly. “I know what I need, better than anybody."
"Then why don't you tell me what you need,” Amadeo asked, his voice sweet with reason.
Debra looked at him and bit her lip. “I want a setup."
Amadeo smiled. “There. That didn't hurt, now did it?"
"Have you got
any?” Her face was tight.
"Of course,” he said easily. I wondered how, and where. I'd checked the room when we took it. There hadn't been any unexplained packages or canisters of talcum powder or foreign objects of any kind in there. And he'd come straight from the care of the Mounties. They would have searched him right down to the skin and beyond. Had he picked up something on his boat? In any case, he was in command of Debra Steen.
"How much?” she asked, then turned to the other woman. “Helen, give him the money."
Helen scowled at her and was about to speak, but Amadeo cut her off. “No need for that,” he said. “This one is on the house.” He reached into his pants pocket and came out with a small brown envelope made of coarse paper. He opened it and walked over to the dressing table to tip out the contents. He let one small folded piece of foil slide out, keeping the other contents under his thumb, “We don’ have to talk about money anyways,” he said. “We can work somethin’ out between the two of us."
Debra was staring at the foil, but his voice made her gasp softly and flash an anxious look at his smiling, smug face.
I took two steps forward and kneed him in the testicles, and he collapsed, rolling into a ball, clutching himself, unable even to speak. Debra shrieked, and I turned and slapped her face, not hard, just a schoolmarm rebuke. “See what you've got yourself into?” I hissed at her. “Any two-bit slimeball can have you on your knees because of your stupid, goddamn nose. Is that the way you want to live? Is that how you want to die? Standing on some city street obliging guys in cars for the price of a hit?"
She wailed like a baby and turned to Helen, who came forward and put her arms around her shoulders. She stood looking at me, bumping Debra on the back and saying, “Don't cry, baby. Don't cry. You can handle it."
I turned away and looked down at Amadeo. I hadn't put any real force into the knee. He would be in pain for a little while, but in no danger. I prodded him with my toe. “How much more have you got?"
He stared at me, his mouth open, trying to speak. I bent down and pulled all his pockets inside out. He had nothing else in them except for money and a handkerchief and his cigarettes and matches. I picked up the envelope and took it into the bathroom, standing there whistling softly while I flushed the six packages of foil away, then tearing up the envelope and flushing the pieces down after them.