by Sam Jones
Maria slapped him on the arm with the back of her hand.
“Dude,” Billy said, clutching his arm, “really?”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Maria whispered.
“How is hitting me okay?”
“I’m serious, what is wrong with you?”
A click sounded from the intercom. “Come on in,” the female voice said.
Billy looked at Maria with a satisfied expression and a “hey look at that” grin as the gate buzzed and then began to swing out toward them.
He skipped toward the gate. “Circle gets the square!”
He slipped inside and started up the driveway, Maria following close behind him. “Don’t do that again,” she said.
“Do what?”
“What you just did at the call box.”
“Why are you complaining? It worked.”
“Just don’t do it.”
“Just don’t hit me.”
“Fuckin’ infant.”
“You curse more than my old man. Jesus Christ.”
“Billy, I mean it—I might actually hit you in the face if you don’t stop.”
Billy wagged a finger as they worked their way up the last leg of the driveway. “You know,” he said. “It’s the fact that you resort to physical violence as a means to express your frustrations that bothers me…”
Both of them were only half serious with their jabbing.
They just needed a moment to blow off steam if nothing else.
Billy knocked twice on the front door.
No one answered.
“We can just go in, right?” he asked.
“Well, as you know, Special Agent Reese, we were just given an invitation by the person currently occupying the inside of the house to come in. So according to the rules when it comes to this kind of stuff—yeah, we can go inside.”
Billy turned the handle. “I see what you did there.”
“Yeah,” Maria said. “I called you an idiot.”
“Yes you did…”
Billy took out his Colt. Maria caught the bug from him and did the same with her Beretta. “Let’s go on three,” she said.
“Okay, cool,” Billy replied as he opened the door and slipped inside.
Maria made a puttering noise with her lips.
Music was playing, bouncing, and coasting through the entire house as they stepped into the marble-floored foyer. It took Billy a moment, but he was able to recall the title of the hypnotic, reggae-inspired hit after listening in for a couple of seconds.
“Wrapped Around Your Finger,” he thought. The Police.
Good memory, lad.
“Where’s it coming from?” he asked Maria.
She motioned to the left past a sprawling living room that jinked right to a hallway that led into the kitchen. They cruised toward the kitchen, slow and smooth, both of them covering the other as they emerged into an area ripe with top-of-the-line stainless-steel appliances and red Spanish tile. In the center of the kitchen, dancing barefoot to the Police with a ribbon-like twist and twirl of her tight and tan figure was a gorgeous woman with puffy lips and nothing but a blue kimono covering her body. She was in a trance-like state, oblivious to Maria and Billy as they approached her, her eyes closed as she coasted to the beat across the Spanish floor tiles and past the syringe next to the baggie of heroin on the kitchen island.
Maria lowered her Beretta. The woman wasn’t a threat.
She was just high out of her mind.
Billy holstered his piece. “Who is she?”
Maria said, “I think her name is Helena. I believe she’s Hector’s mistress.”
“Former mistress,” Billy clarified.
He spotted the radio resting near the stove, walked over and clicked it off. The woman stopped dancing and then swayed in place, still lost in her own little world even without the music. “Hey,” Maria said with some gruff to try to snap her out of it. “Is there anyone else in the house?”
The woman was still swaying.
Maria grabbed her gently by the wrists and stopped her.
“Hey. Look at me…”
The woman turned her head up, eyes glossy and spaced out.
Billy whistled. “Man. She’s on the moon right now…”
“Is there anyone else in the house?” Maria repeated.
It took the woman a moment, but eventually she shook her head.
“I’ll go check out the upstairs,” Billy said.
“You sure?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Just keep an eye on her.”
He retreated to the curving stairway in the foyer past the front entrance. Maria took the woman and gently sat her down on a stool. “Take a second,” she said, noting, once she got her under the light, that she was much younger than she initially appeared, just past the cusp of being able to call herself a woman.
“Is your name Helena?” Maria asked her.
The woman continued to careen from side to side.
Maria tried again. “Is your name Helena?”
This time the woman nodded. Slowly.
“You’re with Hector,” Maria said. “Right?”
“Where is he?” the woman asked weakly.
“Hector’s dead,” Maria said, not feeling the slightest bit bad about it when she said it aloud.
A sliver of a smile peeked out through the corner of the drugged-up woman’s lips. “Good,” she said. “Now I can have the house to myself…”
She drooped to the side and nearly fell off the stool. Maria grabbed her and corrected her posture, shaking her a little bit to bring her back to whatever slices of reality were still lingering. “Look at me,” Maria said. “I need you to try and focus. Okay?”
The woman settled. Nodded.
“Does the name Analena sound familiar to you at all?” Maria asked.
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” the woman said. “I don’t know that name.”
Maria took a breath.
Another dead end.
“Hector said something about leaving town,” she said. “Does that mean anything to you?”
“He said he was flying to Chicago tomorrow,” the woman said.
“Chicago? Did he say why?”
“He said he was going to settle some business with somebody.”
“Did you get a name?”
“Hector just kept calling him ‘cocksucker.’”
“How colorful…” Maria sighed.
Billy was walking up to the last bedroom on the second floor—Hector’s. He passed by a painted portrait on the wall adjacent to the double-doors leading in of Hector himself, a crude piece of artwork unworthy of the overly elaborate gold frame it was boxed in, done up with a stroke of the brush more privy to something a younger child or adolescent would come up with in art class.
“What an asshole,” Billy said with a wince as he moved inside the bedroom and began his search.
Calculation.
There were clothes packed in a Gucci bag on the king-sized bed. There was a single airline ticket on the nightstand next to the bowl of coke with Hector’s name on it, scheduled to leave just a couple of hours from now to Chicago.
“Bingo,” Billy said as he eyeballed the ticket.
Something caught his eye resting near the lamp just above the ticket: a pink plastic key.
Hello there…
Billy picked up the key and looked it over and saw the stretched white outline of the Greyhound bus line logo. On the back of the key: a phone number with a Chicago area code.
He moved back downstairs to join Maria, walking into the kitchen and holding it up for her to see.
“What’s that?” she asked.
Billy handed it to her. “Found it upstairs.”
Maria looked it over. She flipped the key around and spotted a phone number etched in white on the reverse side of the key with a three-one-two area code. “Chicago,” she said.
“Chicago,” he said.
“Hec
tor’s entertainment here said he was taking a little business trip to Chicago.” Maria gestured at the Helena, who had wandered from the stool and crouched into a fetal position near the dishwasher.
“I saw an airline ticket upstairs that said the same,” Billy said. “Looks like he was going to get something from that bus station, no?”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
“I’m going to call Ferris to see if she can find anything on those bodies or that helicopter in the meantime.”
“How are we not going to get pulled off this case the second you tell her that? The insurance claims tied to this case are starting to pile up. We’re taking wild stabs as opposed to chasing leads now. If my lieutenant knew, I think I’d be off the streets already.”
“Quite true. It’s very possible they might pull us off the case. But we’ll be in Chicago by then, so it’ll take us a while to get back.”
Maria gave him a look. “You want to go to Chicago?”
“Windy City, baby.”
“Why?”
“That’s where the locker is. Where have you been the last ten seconds?”
Maria held her hands up in protest. “Billy—”
“That key is our only lead,” he cut in. “We’ll head over there and check it out. If it’s a bust, all we did was waste the airfare.”
“Let’s just call the Greyhound station in Chicago and get them to check out what’s inside the locker for us.”
“What for?” Billy said. “That’ll take time, patience, cooperation, and maybe a warrant.” He held up the key. “Let’s just circumvent that whole process and do it ourselves. It’s more fun that way anyway. Plus, there’s this sushi place you have to check out in downtown when we go. Holy hell.”
Maria put the key on the kitchen island and began lingering by the window near the sink, anxious and unsure, needing a few feet of distance from Billy. “And what’s your plan after that?” she asked. “We go there, and then what?”
“I’m not sure.”
She opened her mouth.
“I know what you’re going to say,” Billy said. “But proper procedures and playing the waiting game isn’t going to work on this little ‘case’ of ours. Time is of the essence, so we gotta move with the tide on this one, otherwise we’re gonna drown.”
“Poetic,” she said.
Billy squinted. “Too much?”
He picked up the locker key from the island and held it up. “This is what we’ve got to work with, Delgado. Until we hear something back about that helicopter crash, that is. We’ll give our people some head’s up, but we need to be willing to bend the rules a little bit here if we’re gonna see any movement.”
He held out the key, waiting for Maria to take it.
She took her time thinking it over.
Eventually she accepted it.
“Pretty shitty lead to finding your killer and my missing girl,” she said. “Don’t you think?”
“Very shitty,” Billy said. “But it stills screams out as being something relevant, no?”
Maria looked at the key.
It did.
She looked away and contemplated her next play for a solid stretch of time. There was only so much she could do with the hand she was dealt. She was playing with a 7-2 offsuit, and she could either walk away or go all in.
After a few beats, she looked back at Billy.
“Chicago, huh?” she said.
“Chicago, amiga. Come on. I’ll buy you some deep dish.”
Maria motioned toward the woman on the floor. “What about her?”
“What about her?” the woman blurted out, crashing from her last dosage and now falling into a slumber.
Before leaving the house, Maria took a glass from one of the cupboards, filled it with water, and placed it down a few feet away from her on the floor and said, “Deja el hábito cuando te despiertes, cariño.”
Billy spoke Spanish, so he didn’t need to hear the translation.
18
FORTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER.
Miami National Airport.
Billy and Maria took a cab to get there, flashed their badges at security, circumvented the security line, and headed straight for the terminal gate sponsoring the next departing flight to Chicago. While Maria was greasing the wheels at the check-in counter for a ticket at the F23 gate, the gate number Billy had spotted on Hector’s airline ticket, Billy was on a pay phone just outside the gate with Ferris, updating her as he turned his head over his shoulder every few seconds to clock the faces of the people passing by him in the terminal.
“You’re going where?” Ferris asked him over the receiver.
“Chicago,” Billy said. “Great food. Terrible winters.”
“Why are you going to Chicago?”
“I was thinking about taking an improv class.”
“Billy—”
“Hector Fuentes had a key for a locker at a bus stop in Chicago. We’re going to check it out. I’ll call you once I get a line on something.”
“Hold on a second. I’m in the middle of trying to sort out this mess with the helicopter back in Little Havana. What the hell happened?”
“I don’t know. We had Hector in custody and they just showed up and starting raking us. I’m pretty sure they were military trained.”
“How so?”
“The way they were flying and shooting. It’s just a hunch.”
“Ship sounds like it’s hit an iceberg now, Reese…”
“I’m thinking that I’m pissing off the right people and riling them out of hiding, and that means I’m getting close to something. I’m taking me getting shot at as a positive.”
A guy with shades and a gravely face was approaching the pay phone.
Billy started moving a hand toward the Colt tucked away in his waistband and covered by his dirty Hawaiian shirt.
The man looked at him.
Billy was ready to draw.
A woman then brushed past Billy and hopped into the gravelly man’s arms, the two of them immediately embracing and making out in the terminal—just a girl meeting her guy.
Billy relaxed. “Look,” he said into the phone, “I gotta go. I’ll touch base with you when I can.”
“Don’t wander too far out there in Chicago. Check in with me when you can. I’m getting a sense I’m only going to be able to run interference for a little while longer…”
“Yes, ma’am. I understand. I’ll call soon to check in and see what you found on the helicopter.”
“Good luck.”
Billy hung up.
He took a look around and moved toward the ticket counter, Maria in the middle of talking with the lady working the computer. She had her hands on her hips and her fist clenched. Based on her body language, Billy could tell that the less-than-empathetic woman behind the counter with an “I don’t have time for this” scowl etched onto her face was clearly stonewalling Maria.
“What’s going on?” Billy asked.
Maria motioned to the woman, feverishly typing away at a keyboard with a rhythmic clacking of her acrylics against the keys.
“Flight is sold out,” she said, suppressing her irritation. “No open seats. Next flight leaves in seven hours.”
“What? That’s ridiculous.” He lowered his voice and leaned in to Maria’s ear. “Hector had a seat in first class. His two bodyguards were probably coming with him. There’s got to be a least two seats open for sure.”
Maria lowered her voice. “The ice queen here says there were three first-class passengers that didn’t check in, but their seats stay booked even if they don’t show.”
“Ah, Christ…”
Billy looked at the woman behind the counter and read her name tag: Kathy.
He approached the counter. “Why hello, Kathy!” he said jovially. “So rumor is there’s no open seats on the flight. Is that true?”
“The rumors are true,” Kathy said with a little chafe in her tone, clearly having repeated the response a number of times already with Maria
as her fingers continued dancing and clacking along the keyboard.
Billy discreetly took out his badge and placed it on the counter. “Ma’am,” he said in a grave tone, “we’re on official FBI business. I’d appreciate it if you could help us out.”
Kathy didn’t look up. She just kept typing.
The shield meant nothing to her.
“A badge doesn’t make new seats appear,” she said. “Next flight leaves in seven hours, but it’s sold out too. I can put you on standby. Best I can do.”
“You sure you can’t find us some wiggle room? I’ll buy you a drink when I get back into town.”
“I don’t drink, bub.”
“Sounds like you should start...”
“Next flight leaves in seven hours. Please move away from the counter.”
Billy lightly pounded his fist on the counter. Smiled. “Stay classy, Kathy.”
He looked away. He met enough people like Kathy in his life to know that she wasn’t in the mood and wasn’t going to budge. Based on her slightly frazzled demeanor and the weary look in her eyes, she was most likely in the later hours of her shift and eager to go home. He could push it, but the amount of static he’d get from Kathy before jurisdiction and authority finally bested her would have them surely missing the flight.
Find a different route.
Calculate…
He looked around the terminal for a few seconds before his eyes landed on an older couple sitting near the gate. Based on the gray in their hair and the complacent look on their faces, he sensed that they were well past their pearl anniversary.
“We don’t have time for this,” Billy said as began digging in his pockets. “How much money do you have?”
Maria searched her own. “Enough.”
Billy discreetly pulled out his money clip stuffed with hundred-dollar bills and began peeling his way to a grand as he walked over to the pearl couple with a welcoming smile on his face and a wave to accompany it.
19
LENNY AND JEANETTE Ashton sold and transferred their tickets to Maria and Billy for a grand total of twelve hundred dollars. Billy initially offered them one thousand, but Lenny managed to squeeze out another pair of Benjamins after applying his retired watch salesman’s skills that were still as sharp in 1985 as they were when he retired ten years before.
