Nine Days: A Mystery Page 18

  “Listen,” I said, “I don’t know what you’re really hiding from, but it’s obviously not some South American drug lord with a summer home in Mexico.” I paused, in case he wanted to respond. He didn’t. “You know, if you told me the truth, I might be able to get you out of here. I’ve got access to stuff the cops don’t.”

  Hector’s visible eye jumped toward me before he could stop it. He stayed quiet, though.

  The hallway was tall, maybe twelve feet, and about eight feet wide. There were six cells on both sides, all standing open. At the far end was another iron gate just like the one behind me, and another plate glass door.

  “I should have brought you a cake with a file in it,” I mused aloud. “Wouldn’t take much more than that to break out of here.”

  Other than the rise and fall of Hector’s broad chest, there was no sign of life from the bunk.

  Right about the time I’d decided to leave, the guard jingled around the corner with a serious-looking Mike Hayes in tow. Mike gave me a silent chin-lift greeting as the kid let him in, then stepped over to the bars separating Hector from the rest of the world.

  “Hey, man,” he said through them.

  Hector sat up quickly, and began speaking to Mike in a language I didn’t recognize. It sounded like Spanish, but none of the words were familiar, and it seemed to involve more vowels. Mike listened, then, to my surprise, replied in the same language. They went back and forth for a little while, then stopped, staring at each other through the bars and breathing like they’d just run a marathon.

  “What’s going on?” I said.

  Both men turned guarded eyes on me, not saying anything, and suddenly, just like that, I’d had enough.

  “You know what? Forget it.” I got up, grabbing my wallet off the floor. “Good luck.”

  Neither of them tried to stop me as I called for the guard, or when he unlocked the gate.

  The square was dark and silent, except for the hotel, gushing light onto the sidewalk from the night lobby. The buildings peeked at me like old ladies behind lace curtains, murmuring their censure to one another. I wanted to scream at them.

  TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6

  I

  I took a long bath when I got home, lying half submerged like a lazy crocodile and sneering silent epithets at the brain when it tried to do anything but keep my skull from caving in.

  I’m not sure why I was so pissed off. My situation was completely self-generated. I should have just kept my head down after finding Teresa, and let the chips fall wherever they were headed. Although, even if I had, I probably would have ended up in the same place. I’d just know less. That depressed me even more. All the shit I’d gone through over the last week, for nothing.

  The thing that stung the most was how gullible I’d been about Hector. Who the hell knew what his story really was? All I was sure of now was that it wasn’t the one he’d told me, which meant that my worries about the radar were probably well founded. Having my libido engaged always makes sussing out a con a little more difficult, but I can usually look back and see where I ignored signals, and I couldn’t find any with him.

  The warm water finally started to relax me enough to feel sleepy. I closed my eyes and leaned back, considering the pros and cons of heading for Mexico myself. I could probably make the border before anybody even realized I was gone, and sixty thousand would set me up pretty well there. For a while, anyway. I could find someplace way off the grid and build my own little hacienda. There were some interesting new adobe technologies floating around that would be fun to play with, although that meant spending more on the foundation than—

  The brain picked that moment to lob a fact up into my consciousness, where it exploded like a Molotov cocktail: Richard had been keeping Hector’s malquis in Teresa’s basement. That’s why he’d been so freaked out when Jesse told him he’d found the door open.

  I sat up in the tub, my pulse accelerating. That meant whomever I’d heard going in there around four on Thursday night was after the remaining hand—to leave it with Teresa’s body—and it couldn’t have been Richard. He was still with Benny Ramírez at four.

  I willed myself to stay calm until I’d thought it all the way through.

  Richard wouldn’t have hired someone else to kill Teresa and leave the second malqui with her body—his whole scheme with Hector was dependent on secrecy. If anyone else found out, all his leverage would be gone. The only other person who might be in on it was Jesse Reed, but the only reason Jesse would kill Teresa was if she’d found some evidence connecting him and Richard, and that didn’t seem to be the case. Unless Maines was keeping it quiet to protect his cousin.

  My fingers were turning to raisins, and the bathwater had gone cold. I opened the tub drain and got into a towel, feeling schizophrenic. Knowing that the Inca and his crew had my back had bought me some breathing room regarding the Silvia Molina–Nick Olmos thing; I should be spending it figuring out how to save my ass, not Hector’s.

  I made an industrial-strength cup of tea and took the laptop into the bedroom, forcing my attention back to the problem on the top of the pile. Fifteen minutes into researching how to cross the border undetected, I was asleep.

  My dreams were weird, Freudian snippets of a trip to Mexico with a man who was supposed to be my father. He had Red Bradshaw’s face, and machetes where his hands should have been. We raced through surreal streets on an old BMW motorcycle, pursued by a doll with an apple head and steel-colored braids.

  I woke up early with that weird sense of heavy time having passed that you get after an epic dream, and milled around for a while, waiting for my head to clear. I still couldn’t decide whether to cut my losses and take off for parts unknown, or stay put and see which way the wind blew.

  After a couple of cups of fresh tea, I decided on a third option.

  II

  Pulling up to the stop sign at Silvia’s cross street, I saw her getting out of her car with Alex Méndez. I idled there, my stomach knotting. Not because Silvia and Alex knew each other—in this little town, that seemed to be the case with everyone—but because Silvia was striding around the car upright, shoulders back, looking fifty instead of seventy. With him there.

  I shifted into first and made the corner. As I pulled up, Silvia shrank back into her curandera persona. I parked the truck and got out, not bothering to arrange my face.

  Alex gave me his mack daddy once-over and lifted his chin. “What you want?”

  “I want to know what the feds are doing in town.”

  He glanced quickly up the street. Silvia took a fast, light breath, staying in character, and said, “We should go inside.”

  Alex nodded wordlessly, and the three of us trailed up the narrow sidewalk and into the fragrant botanica. We passed through the small front room into the bigger room off the kitchen, where Alex stopped in the middle of the floor and turned to give me a bright, hard look.

  Silvia eased onto the sofa, muttering, “I told him it was a stupid idea.”

  Alex crossed his tattooed arms over his chest, looking away from us.

  Silvia said to me, “We were supposed to scare you into thinking you’d been clocked, WITSEC would shut you down at the other end, and you’d go right to Torres.” She gestured at the ceiling. “This was the brilliant plan.”

  I didn’t point out that things had gone almost exactly that way; I just said, “Plan for what?”

  “We’re information-mining the narcotics distribution route through here from Mexico, trying to get a handle on the situation along the border,” Alex said. His O.G. accent had disappeared. The tattoos still looked real. “I fucked up pretty good a couple of months ago—that’s why Torres put me back on shit detail, working street deals. I may have to be rotated out, and we needed a replacement that we knew Torres would accept immediately.”

  He watched me with those flat, bright eyes, leaving the rest unsaid. I was so focused on the intersections with Hector’s cartel story that it took a couple of heartbeats for A
lex’s meaning to sink in. When it did, I almost laughed, it was so absurd. “You think I’m going to work for you?”

  “It’s that or do your time.”

  “That’s not the deal I made.”

  “So call a lawyer.”

  When I felt like I could talk without screaming, I asked him, “You’re Torres’s source?”

  “He’ll never know it’s you narking him,” Silvia said. “They’re careful not to hit close enough for him to figure out that the leak is from inside his own organization.”

  “And what’s the plan once the feeding frenzy for his territory starts?” I said. “With Teresa gone, it’s going to be open season, and I’m walking around with a target pinned to my ass.”

  Alex shook his head. “The feds supply more money and soldiers than we know what to do with. We let Torres think it’s his reputation bringing everything in, and he makes sure to crow about it wherever he can. The smart guys know it’d be suicide to try and move in here.”

  My irony receptors were going off. “Let me get this straight. I put a bunch of skinheads away in California so that I could come down here and help you guys keep another crew in business?”

  “What, you’re growing a conscience now?” Silvia mocked.

  Alex held up a hand, glaring at her. “The point,” he said to me, “is that your federal protection contract is with us now. So it’s play ball or walk.”

  I got the photo Pete had sent out of my wallet and handed it to him. Alex peered at it for a few puzzled seconds, then went over to the sofa and showed it to Silvia. He watched her eyes widen, then asked, “¿Quién es?”

  “No sé,” she said, lifting her shoulders. “Just some guy I see at the farmers’ market down in San Antonio. He’s one of the vendors, I think.” She lied well, but then, you’d expect that from somebody in her line of business.

  “Try again,” Alex snapped, flicking the edge of the photo with one finger. “You’re not in drag there.” I saw a flicker of something dangerous cross Silvia’s face. “¿Qué pasa, amiga?” Alex said. His voice was quiet, but he was clearly not in the mood for any foolishness.

  She sat back on the sofa, cutting her black eyes at me. “Mama put me on another operation down there a couple of weeks ago.”

  Alex tsked, turning his head. “Without letting me know? Come on.”

  “They wanted a closed set,” she said to him, lifting her shoulders again.

  “Why?”

  “How the hell should I know?” she scoffed. “You know they don’t tell us field meat jack.”

  Alex was wavering, but he didn’t have everything yet. I gestured at the photo and said to Silvia, “Now explain the fact that this guy was one of the Rizzoli suppliers back in California.”

  Alex’s eyes shot back to Silvia, who was staring at me with her mouth open. She held up both hands, protesting, “No. No way. I got the assignment through the usual secure channels and ran all my checks and balances. Nothing pinged.”

  Alex rubbed his hands down his face and stood with his fingers on his chin, then said to me, “How sure are you about this?”

  “As sure as I get.”

  “Damn it,” he muttered, turning away from us to take a walk around the room. I gave Silvia a knowing look. She pretended not to notice.

  “You got a name?” Alex asked me. His voice was thin and grim.

  “Nick Olmos. My information is that he went AWOL when he left California. That should be easy enough to check.”

  Alex went over and stood in front of Silvia, arms crossed, feet planted. “You’d better fucking hope she’s wrong.”

  “Like I said—everything came through legit,” she told him, eyes wide, then looked at me. “Maybe he’s part of the big scare plan that they didn’t tell us about.”

  “What was your assignment in San Antonio?” I asked her.

  “It hasn’t dropped yet, which is standard. We always meet first to establish contact.”

  “That was taken last Wednesday,” I pointed out. “Teresa was killed the following night.”

  Alex shot Silvia a look that would have fried bacon, and she stood up and put some distance between them. “I didn’t say nothing to him about her.”

  He blew a fast sigh out through his nostrils and crossed his arms again, looking away. “I’m going to have to get with the home office, find out what the hell’s going on.” He glanced sharply at Silvia again, holding up a pair of crossed fingers. “Until I do, you and me are gonna be like this.”

  Silvia shifted on the patterned rug, giving me a thanks for nothing look, which I might as well have given myself. By trying to play hardball with Alex, I’d effectively placed Silvia off-limits to further interrogation for the time being. One of these days I’m going to learn when to shut up.

  III

  The brain did a few laps as I drove back to the apartment. Maybe there was some truth in Hector’s story. The feds might have figured out who he was, and sent Alex and Silvia—and me—down here to keep an eye on him, in hopes of snagging Escobar. It would explain a lot: the nonregulation arrangement with Teresa, how my identity had gotten out so fast, the push to employ me at Guerra’s despite my lack of experience.

  What it didn’t explain was why Hector had headed straight into the arms of the cartels in the middle of the night. The brain speculated that he might have run without thinking too hard about where he was going, but my gut didn’t like it much, and I still didn’t know how he’d gone from postcoital bliss to flight mode in less than an hour.

  How Olmos fit in was anybody’s guess. Getting me yanked was just a phone call—it didn’t require a trip to San Antonio. So maybe Silvia was right and he’d been brought on as part of the scare-me-crooked-again campaign. That worked only if Olmos was still in good standing with the feds, though. In which case, it sure seemed like they would have clued Silvia and Alex in.

  When I turned in at Teresa’s, there was an unfamiliar vehicle—a white Jeep—parked under the oak tree. Mike Hayes was sitting on the porch steps, waiting for me. He looked tired, and didn’t get up as I walked over.

  “Tough night?” I asked him.

  “I need to talk to you,” he said.

  “So talk.”

  He seemed nervous. “Can we go inside?”

  “No,” I said.

  He put his elbows up on his knees, squeezing one fist and then the other. His knuckles crackled like popcorn. “Hector thought you were in with them,” he said, squinting up at me, “but I talked him out of it, after he told me who you were.”

  “Call me when there’s a ‘For Dummies’ version,” I said, starting up the steps.

  Mike jumped up and got in my way. “If you really want to help Hector, tell me what you know about this guy Olmos.”

  “Olmos?” I frowned, then saw it. “Hector read my e-mail?”

  “You searched his apartment,” Mike shot back.

  I was trying to recall exactly what Pete’s message had said. “Why are you interested in Olmos?”

  “He’s one of the guys who hacked up Hector’s family,” Mike said.

  I snorted. “I don’t think so. Olmos is—or was—a federal agent of some kind.” Mike shuffled on the step, looking impatient but not surprised, and a thrill chased up my throat. “Are you saying that’s who Hector is really hiding from?”

  “When he heard you were coming, he thought maybe—”

  “I could help him? Find out what the feds know?” I shook my head as the facts rattled into place. “If I ever had an in, it’s gone now. Maines told WITSEC I’m mixed up in Teresa’s death somehow, and they threw me out.”

  Mike fell back against the railing. I paused, then asked, “So this Escobar story that Hector told me, that’s all bullshit?”

  “No. Olmos is Escobar.”

  I held up a hand while I got the photo out and pointed to Olmos. “This guy? This guy is Jorge Escobar?”

  “Yeah,” Mike said. “He went in with the feds as part of his deal when they broke up the Medellín
Cartel.”

  “Hector told me he was with the Gulf Cartel.”

  “Yeah. He’s a government mole.”

  “So why’s Hector heading right into Escobar’s territory, after seeing this picture? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “He wasn’t heading into his territory.”

  “Maines said he was trying to hire a boat to take him to Mexico.”

  Mike chewed his lip, then said, “You can’t go direct to Cuba from the U.S. He was gonna go down to the Yucatán and cross over from there. That’s safer than trying to go across the border. The Gulf Cartel operates along there but not further down.”

  That made sense to the radar, as did his choice of Cuba, given who was after him. It did tickle my curiosity a bit that Silvia Molina was Cuban, but I was frankly too relieved that Olmos/Escobar wasn’t here to get me killed to care much.

  “Marie Hooks says you were out at Richard’s looking for him the other day,” Mike was saying. “Did you find him?”

  I hesitated, puzzled. “You mean Charlie’s girlfriend? How would she know that, and what’s she got to do with Richard?”

  “She’s his housekeeper,” Mike told me.

  The radar found that interesting, but—as usual—it didn’t tell me why. I put it on the back burner and said to Mike, “Hector’s not seriously going to try and play ball with Richard, is he?”

  Mike looked off across the yard with an impatient frown. “Just tell me where he is.”

  “Listen, giving in to blackmailers is just extending your torture. You show them your soft underbelly, they just take their time tearing you to pieces instead of doing it all at once.”

  “I know how to shut him up,” Mike said. His hands were squeezing open and closed at his sides.

  I gestured at them. “All that’ll do is make him take a bigger bite later.”

  “I’m not gonna hit him.”

  “Then I hope you’ve got something else to keep him quiet,” I said.