Reliable sources.
There was a knock on the door. The signal Diggs said he'd give when he came back. Olivia froze in mid-stride. She went for the gun on the bed that Diggs had given to her. It was a semiautomatic, fully loaded. She pushed the safety off and aimed at the door.
Diggs said he'd knock four times.
Whoever was behind the door just knocked twice. Olivia's jaw tightened. She steeled her nerves, spread her feet. She frowned and waited.
The knocking came again, lazy and unhurried. Could it be the motel owner? The guy with lizard eyes and half his face covered with acne scars. He was the second disagreement Olivia had with Diggs that night. The man looked like a rat, literally. He had known they were Americans.
The first breach was the motel itself: it was just two blocks from the hotel where they had found the stiff body of Rodriguez. Diggs said it was the last place the cops would look for them.
"Diggs?"
The knob turned again, very slowly. Olivia stepped back; her bottom hit the small refrigerator against the wall. She glanced out the window. The road was a lonely strip. Streetlights turned the street yellow.
She called again, "Diggs?"
The door opened, and the motel owner was standing there. He raised his hand, "Oh no, I look for no trouble, American. No trouble."
Olivia kept the gun up, her eyes narrowed, her jaw tightened even more. She looked into the guy's rat eyes, and his dark, oily hair combed back on his head. Olivia couldn't help but think of the man sniffing white stuff up his pinched nose and gawking at underaged girls as they curled around poles. She saw the lights, blue and red, and heard the irritable music.
"Why do you want?"
The guy smiled. There were so many teeth in his mouth. He thumbed at the air behind him. "You and your friend are on TV."
Olivia felt weak in her knees. The gun came down slowly, and her frown faded. Her hands hung limply, and she sighed.
"So, what are you going to do about that?"
"Nothing. I see your friend is not here." The guy looked around the shabby room with its sparse décor. He shrugged, tore his mouth in that fink smile again. Olivia's gun went up again.
"Get out!"
"The police have put a lot of money on your head—"
"You don't know who I am."
"I knew the moment you entered my motel," he said in English heavily laced with a Portuguese tongue and took one step in. "I can call the police just now, get the bounty for you two and be rich for a while—"
"Or what?"
Olivia stepped away. Her back was now to the window, gun progressed back up to aiming position. Her finger curled around the trigger. Murderers. Reliable sources said…
"Certainly, you are not going to shoot me. I see it in your eyes. You are not a murderer."
"How do you know that? The news said we already killed someone before. Get out now while you have the chance. I will shoot you if you take another step."
The man stopped walking. Olivia watched him swing his right foot back. He used it to kick the door. The door moved but stopped halfway through. Something prevented it from completely closing.
The man took a phone and started dialing.
"Here, I call 190, the police come and arrest you." He shrugged. "Or…you give me half of the bounty, and I act like I didn't see you. This is my motel, I could—"
Suddenly the door opened, and Lawrence Diggs was almost spectral in the dim light of the corridor. The motel guy didn't get a chance to see who it was because his body jerked forward, his mouth opened, and he croaked, stiffened, and fell on his knee. His phone tumbled and fell face down on the carpet.
The handle of an enormous army knife was sticking out of the man's back. He clawed at the carpet; his throat made wheezing sounds.
Olivia stared in shock as Diggs stepped over the body and picked up the phone.
"Shit!" he breathed. "He dialed it. We've gotta get out of here, now!"
Olivia glowered at him. Diggs handed over a bag of provisions, food; Olivia took it. It became clear to Olivia that they were about the only customers in the motel that night. There was only one truck in the parking lot. The lighting there was worse than the one in the motel corridor. Diggs crushed the motel guy's phone, put it in a small rubber bag, and flung it in the back of the Jeep.
"We head south," Diggs said, as he started driving down the road. "I made some contacts. We go to a safe house. From there, we get out, get back to Miami."
"What? Why Miami?"
He looked at Olivia, his cobalt eyes dark in the semi-light of the truck; he drove with one arm on the wheel and the other on the window. Now he brought both arms and placed them on the wheel, his face set.
"We are both murderers, Olivia. You saw it on the news, didn't you?"
"Don't you want to know what happened to Rodriguez?" she asked; her voice rose.
Diggs said calmly, "I don't care."
There were no police roadblocks for about two miles. Olivia's eyes caught a sign on the road as the road dipped down two blocks that said Ipanema. The song by Nat King Cole of the same name played in her head.
Tall and tan and young and lovely
The girl goes Ipanema goes walking
And when passes, each one she passes
Goes 'Aaah'…
She looked away from the rushing road and to the blocks fleeting past, dark and light shades mixed in the flying breeze. People were sleeping peacefully or dying slowly, all on a journey whether they lay prone or prowling the streets like the cops searching for her and Diggs.
The duo was death on wheels, too. Diggs was one of the most dangerous men she ever met. He had never talked about a woman; Diggs didn't strike her like a man who might know Nat King Cole's "Ipanema Girl" song.
"You didn't have to kill him, you know…"
His face remained waxen, his eyes two frozen crypts, sepulchral. She didn't even know who Diggs was, what he did when he was not with the team, what he did in his free time.
"I had to," he said.
"We have two bodies now, all on us."
There was a twitch on his temple. He looked at Olivia and said, "He was going to blackmail you, us."
"But he didn't now. Did he? He was. We could have talked him out of it." Her voice was rising. "You could have probably talked him out of it."
Diggs shook his head. Olivia glanced at the dark face, and she threw her hands up and down in frustration. Hot air blew through his nose, and a part of her felt like throwing Diggs out of the car. Or maybe just ditch him somewhere and disappear.
"Here's our stop." He pointed left.
He nosed the car into a side street and parked the car beside a tall building. "Stay here," he said and walked into the dark corner of the building.
Olivia checked to see the key was dangling from the ignition. Diggs was still gone. The dark alley there remained still, the road opened behind her, lighted. Behind her, across the road, a metal gate crashed on the concrete as the storekeeper, a big man in shorts and a red t-shirt, held a brown satchel bag. Olivia ducked down into her seat.
"Shit!"
She kept her hand on the key, ready to move the moment the man in the street went out of sight. She heard whistling, and she looked up. The man was leaving, walking up the street. Damn, that was the way she intended to go, not go back the way they came.
But then what? Where did she hope to go from here?
The man went out of sight finally, disappearing behind the dark wall separating the two alleys she was hiding in.
Her hand went to the key, and she started moving over to the driver's seat.
"What are you doing?"
She looked up at Diggs's face. Olivia let out a small yelp; he had crept up on the car from behind. Her face reddened, and she gritted her teeth.
"Nothing, just watching the road."
Diggs showed no emotions. He leaned into the truck, reached around the steering wheel, and groped around in the dark. He turned on the radio. Olivia cast
an inquiring swivel at him.
"We are on the news again," he said.
The news sputtered into the dark truck. Olivia felt herself stiffen at the mention of the Americans. The motel guy had called the police department in the Copacabana area shortly after the Americans entered his establishment. He notified the police that they had paid for a room. But before the cops arrived, the motel owner had been killed, and the fugitives remain at large. Citizens were encouraged to report any sighting and make no contact because the duo was armed and dangerous. The woman was an American journalist, the man was former CIA, and their relationship is unclear. Anyone with valuable information leading to the capture of the two would get a thousand dollars—one thousand dollars for each of the fugitives.
Diggs smiled. "You are worth a thousand dollars. How about that, huh?"
Olivia closed her eyes. She opened the door and got out of the truck, weary, with the thought of the implications of the turn of events.
She followed Diggs down the alley.
"This is a safehouse long out of use, but it's safe. Come on."
"You said the same thing about the motel," Olivia said, catching her breath as they went up the back stairs, "and then you killed the guy."
"He killed himself when he ratted us out and still tried to blackmail you."
The stairs led to a short hall. There was a metal door at the end of it. There was a digital console beside the door, like the ones she'd seen in movies. Once again, she was reminded of a movie, the Bourne movies. Diggs was worse than Jason, though, and she was no Nicky Parsons. This was Brazil, Olivia's first time in the city, looking for a man that had been murdered by a killer trying to set her up.
There was a long, black soot-covered fluorescent tube shining from the ceiling. Cobwebs covered the sides of the wall; some of them got on Diggs's shoulder, but she did not feel the urge to get them off him. The walls were painted grey; in the dark, they looked that way, but they could have once been green. There was an oddly comforting and dry smell of hay.
She felt alone and, suddenly, cold too. She hugged her bag closer and felt the hardness of Rodriguez's book against her arm.
That book…could it have something to do with why Rodriguez was murdered? Every time someone was trying to kill the team, it meant something huge was involved. Olivia felt adrenaline pump through her chest and feet.
Diggs got the metal door open. It was dark in the room; he put his hand in and flicked a switch. Bright light showered a tastefully furnished living room. It looked like the last occupants only left the other day.
Olivia took in the décor. Red was the dominant color; two red sofas facing each other, a table with magazines. One section of the wall was painted red, and the other three were painted grey. There was a large painting on the wall, a Rembrandt she was sure. The frame was red, and the work on the canvas was a combination of grey, blue, red, and a blend of black in the turbulent sea. The boat rocking on the white waves was a mix of black and green. Olivia thought the work was crude and tasteless.
Diggs was mixing drinks at the small bar by the wall. Next to that was a huge TV. Olivia hoped it was a TV, though, for she was tired of seeing her face.
She dropped her bag on the sofa and strode to the bathroom.
She poured water on her face and wiped it with a towel she found on the rack there. She stared at the woman in the mirror. Her eyes were wide, the corners streaked with red tributaries of veins, fine lines were erupting around her eyes, but some of the suppleness remained around her cheeks. Yet, she could not ignore the dark stress lines around her eyes.
Back in the living room, Diggs was sitting on the other sofa. He gave her a glass of bourbon. Olivia swallowed it before sitting. The warmth ran down her throat and lit up her weary soul.
She sat, rested her back, and thanked the heavens for her life.
She put the glass away and reached for her bag. She opened Rodriguez's book again since the first time she received it in Miami.
"One thing's for sure," she said to Diggs, who showed not one sign of physical strain. "Rodriguez was not here in Brazil for pleasure. His murder proves this. And that's why the killer is trying to cover their tracks by framing us for the crime, right?"
Diggs said he was following.
"Good. Why would Rodriguez come here to Brazil? Was he running from something? Or—"
Olivia froze. She frowned.
"What's the problem?" Diggs asked.
"Tami. Tami is still in Peru, right? We need to find out if she's safe."
Diggs went for his laptop.
—
3
Tami was trying to keep up with the two men. Reno took the lead; José was behind him. They were walking through Cusco. The open street was not safe; Reno had made that clear. Tami Capaldi's mind was racing. Her heart pumped, her thighs burned.
It was past midnight when they left her place because it was not safe there. If there was anything hard-learned recently, you didn't assume that they would not come back, because they definitely would.
And she would be foolish to trust the police of Cusco. Even Detective José Hanna didn't wish to go back to the station until he was sure Tami was safely tucked away for the night.
But where was safe?
Reno was a CIA agent, what a shock that was, and quite relieving.
They rounded corners, went down dark alleys, disturbed huge rats having a go at rotten food in garbage cans, and there was a dog incident two blocks away. Reno had almost shot it when it would not let them through. By all means, the main street was to be avoided.
The two men Reno killed were Cusco cops. Men José himself knew. But they were some of the most corrupt of the lot.
"Where are we going again?" she panted.
"A safe house I usually use in times like this," Reno said.
"I'm tired."
"Do you want me to carry you?" José asked.
"No."
That was when her phone started ringing. She looked at the number, and she knew instantly that what was going on had spread around. It was Olivia.
The two men stopped. The alley they were in was hedged on both sides. A story building lay on the left, and a high fence was on the right. The alley was a long one; strewn with garbage cans, rodents, rotten smells, and stray dogs and cats. It was dark too. She could see the backdoors and windows too—some dark, others lighted.
"Hello, Olivia?"
"Tami, are you alright?"
"They tried to kill me—" she said.
"Who tried to kill you?"
Tami looked at the men with her. She sighed. Olivia didn't ask the question to know, it was a tone for confirmation. Tami shivered.
"Cops."
"What the hell. Cops?" Olivia said something to someone with her. Tami heard the male voice, but it was too distant to place who it was. "Where are you now, are you safe?"
"I'm with Reno and Detective José. We are going to a safe house. Reno thinks something bad is going to happen to us all. I think it is the gold we took from the mountain, the temple—"
"Tami, you get somewhere safe and hide, alright? I'm in Brazil with Diggs—"
"Brazil? What are you doing in Brazil?"
"All I can say right now is I think we may all be in grave danger. We don't know who is after us yet, but our assailants will show their faces in due time. And Tami…"
"Yes?"
"Rodriguez is dead."
"What!"
"They killed him in his hotel here in Brazil. He sent me a book before he left Peru, I think. A red book about treasures. Reno may know something about the book, or maybe you. But I guess I'll just do with myself for now. They are after us. Hide."
Tami turned sharply around. She had heard movement down the entrance of the alley where they had just come through.
"What's that?" she said.
"Hello, Tami, is everything okay there?"
"I have to go, Olivia, I'll talk to you later," Tami said and put her phone away.
Reno
removed his gun and started moving. "We have to go, come on."
An unmarked sedan had stealthily rolled in on their position. Three policemen in plain clothes, with automatic rifles with scopes and silencers, crept down the alley. They flipped on their night goggles.
They started shooting.
"Oh God," Tami screamed.
She crouched down on the grimy floor, but Detective José seized and dragged her along the floor. "Get up!"
Reno pulled the two people aside, pushing them into a doorway. The walls there exploded in stones and dust. They ducked, but even as Reno went down, shielding José and Tami with his body, a bullet found his shoulder, grazed it, and sank in the doorway, just inches from José's head.
Reno knew the men that were after them used night goggles. The Cusco police didn't have that kind of hardware. It didn't make sense; this was a high-end execution-style attack. And how did they find them so soon?
Reno started shooting. It was dark, but the shot impeded the attackers, giving him a moment to think of his next move. José cocked his gun too. He said, "Let me cover you. Take Tami to safety."
The detective tried to rise, but José pulled him down hard. "Don't be foolish! They have night vision goggles!" he hissed.
"Fuck me."
José experienced his first real fight of the night just then; Tami was shaking. He felt her trembling hands in his side.
The killers were hiding in a doorway, too, waiting.
Reno listened for footsteps. He got one; they were coming. The killers wore dark clothes. It was difficult to make out their outline as they approached. Reno rolled on the floor, stopped in what he supposed was the middle of the alley's breadth, and aimed his gun at the dark air.
Bang!
Someone uttered a grunt and fell; shots came from the darkness like a cobra's spit. Bullets pelted the ground to Reno's left on the floor. He rolled away to the right, hitting either Tami or Jose's feet. From that position, he started shooting again into the spitting darkness, the aphotic death coming to get them. Bullets were bouncing off the ground. Soon, one of them would get him. Tami's scream was drowning everything, and somewhere in the neighborhood, dogs started barking.
Then the spitting gun in the dark suddenly stopped.
King Solomon's Tomb Page 4