The Colombian Rogue

by Matt Herrmann

  As he surveyed the black robes surrounding him, he wondered just how many people had been abducted from the streets of Barranquilla in anticipation of this ghastly meeting tonight. The men and women gathered here did not care about life and thought only of money and power. Where did these people come from? Would he recognize any of them if they drew back their hoods and took off their masks?

  Paul was one of them, but which one was he?

  And had he been injected with this ELEPHAS serum the showman had displayed? That certainly would explain Paul’s behavior. Maybe he should try to procure the cure for the serum just in case . . .

  The thing that bothered Juan the most was that these people didn’t seem like a bunch of cultist fanatics. These were hardened criminals shopping for new weapons.

  “As a reminder,” the exhibitor called, “the serum is not for purchase tonight, but if you give us a means of contacting you, we will be in touch shortly. Please see me if you are interested either before or after the talk.”

  Talk? Juan thought.

  Juan melded with the crowd as it dispersed from the glass case so he wouldn’t stand out on his own. As he made his way around the room, he passed a man bound to a chair who was being injected with a poison that turned his skin black and bruised around the injection site. The injection seemed to dye the man’s blood vessels with tar, like a scene from a sci-fi horror movie. A masked man was explaining that this was a new type of developmental toxin, and that it was available for purchase tonight although it wasn’t as fancy as the serums offered by ELEPHAS.

  Juan walked on, knowing it was probably too late to help the man in the chair, and stopped at a table with various knives and cutlery that looked like they might be for butchering meat, but Juan didn’t think that was their intended purpose. Juan thought that if Ricky Serrao was in attendance, this would be the table for him. He considered the thought that Ricky might actually be in attendance. No one would even know.

  A small black device resembling a portable charger or cell phone power bank caught Juan’s eye, and he inquired of it.

  The robed man behind the table had a portly face beneath his mask, jowls quivering as he spoke. “That, good sir, is a very potent taser device. Seventy thousand volts. Completely safe to use as long as you don’t bring it into contact with water.” He laughed.

  Juan glanced over his shoulder to make sure he wasn’t missing anything in the room behind him. He tried to sound casual when he turned back. “How do you use it?”

  “Simply press the button and jab someone with it. Works over clothes, too. They fall over stunned for a few minutes. Or they might die. It’s like getting hit by lighting. It’s a new product, and it can be yours for the low price of seven thousand dollars tonight only. Limited batch. Handcrafted in Italy and—”

  “How about two thousand?” Juan said, wondering what reaction he might get. He could still read people’s eyes and mouths under these simple masks.

  “You insult me,” the seller said. “I’d take three thousand.”

  Juan reached into his robe and drew out his wallet, counting off twenty-five hundred-dollar bills.

  “Twenty-five hundred,” he said.

  The man nodded, and Juan exchanged the bills for the taser.

  He slipped the taser inside his robe and walked off. As he walked, arms swinging casually to match those around him, Juan noticed a small line of people at a back door with a guard standing before it. When they reached the door and guard, they raised a knife with a black pommel. They were then admitted through the doorway and into a thick darkness beyond.

  Juan did not have the black knife required to enter, and everyone’s robes were so loose it was difficult to tell who carried the knife or not. He stood off to the side of a booth with a man selling amulets. As Juan observed the crowd, he saw a black-robed figure standing off to the side by the door. The figure’s delicate hand drew out the black-pommeled blade required for entry, but she didn’t join the line. Instead, she looked about in a cool sort of way as if waiting for a sign.

  The black-pommeled knives unnerved him. He knew he had seen one somewhere before, but he couldn’t remember where. He was glancing about at the milling black robes in the room when he remembered: Ricky wore a knife belt the night he had almost killed Juan in the basement of one of his estates. Juan distinctly remembered one of the knives having a black pommel—he had even tried to reach for it at one point to use to attack his rival.

  So, maybe Ricky was here. If he happened upon him, Juan would deal with the man who had threatened him and Mika, but Ricky wasn’t his priority right now. It was Paul, and he was running out of time. He still hadn’t seen anyone with Paul’s shoulders or gait. Maybe his brother was consciously changing his body movements the same as him.

  Juan’s watch said he’d been down here for almost two hours. While he was still aware of it at intervals, the screaming of the two women in the glass box had mostly blended in with the background noise. He glanced again at the line by the back door. He had a feeling there was a cutoff time to get into the back door, which probably led to the talk the serum hawker had mentioned. Whatever was in that back room, Juan needed to be there.

  Paul would be there.

  Since the serum hawker didn’t have any cures on him tonight, Juan didn’t waste time in approaching the man. Instead, figuring he had nothing to lose, he approached the woman in the mask fondling the black-pommeled blade.

  He saw her eyes and round nose and small cherry mouth under her hood as he closed the distance. She equally seemed to be sizing him up. Juan opened his mouth to say something, but before he could get the words out, she rushed forward in a darting butterfly step and drove the knife’s tip up under his ribs, the fabric of his robe torn soundlessly as the tip drew blood. And before he could react, the woman’s mouth was on his, and her wet tongue was plying about the inside of his mouth, sliding over his teeth.

  Juan pulled away.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked in a harsh whisper like sin.

  He didn’t know what to say, so he just let his mouth say whatever blind instinct told him to say, given the situation. “I lost my piece of admission.” He pressed his hand up between their sandwiched bodies until it found her hand around the pommel of her knife.

  “You what? That’s a clumsy thing for you to do, Paul,” she said. Her eyes were like black death trapped under ice, and suspicion suddenly enveloped them like a corona. “Wait, you are Paul, right?”

  Her hand came up to grasp his chin, and he broke apart from her, swatted her hand away silently without drawing any attention. It wasn’t difficult; there were many distractions in this room more interesting than two figures spatting near the maroon wall.

  “Of course it’s me,” Juan said.

  “Did you kill him yet?”

  Juan recognized her voice. Her smell was familiar, too, and he realized that this woman had tried to kill him before. Behind the mask was Anita Chou, nicknamed Switchblade Anita, Bloody Ricky Serrao’s ex-girlfriend.

  And she thought he was Paul.

  Again, Juan let his instincts provide the words as he presented her with a perfect actor’s face. Since he had limited knowledge about the situation, he had to remain vague enough to string her along while he collected information and made calculated inferences. He knew the easiest way to be convincing was to keep her off balance so she couldn’t think about anything that might not seem right about him.

  “Kill him? You mean like how you tried and failed? Multiple times?”

  “Ugh. Don’t remind me, babe. But he’s not my target anymore. Are you going to be able to do it or not?”

  Juan disregarded the question. He had to keep her off balance so she wouldn’t see past his guise. She obviously knew Paul a little more intimately than he did, although why Paul would be with Anita, Juan could not fathom. “Is Ricky here?”

  “Ricky? Fuck no. Why would he be here?”

  “So, he’s still in hiding?”

  “Last I
heard, he’s somewhere in Ecuador. I think he’s got an aunt or cousin down there.”

  “You don’t keep in touch with him?” Juan said in a voice laced with sarcasm to antagonize the answer from her. If he had a chance to learn Ricky’s whereabouts, he was going to take it.

  “Why would I, after he caught me with you? Besides, I was never really working for Ricky. I was just doing undercover work for old Scarface.”

  Scarface?

  Juan thought that perhaps it was the mysterious third-party who messed up his smuggling operation. But why would Paul have gotten with Anita? This woman was crazy and unstable.

  “I’m kidding,” Juan said, gritting his teeth as if angry with . . . Ricky, he guessed. He drew Anita’s body closer to his. “I need to get me one of those knives.”

  She wrapped her arm behind his back—the one with the knife—and then hiked up one leg, pressing him up against the wall, throwing passionate, crazed kisses against his stubbly chin and neck and around the lobe of his ear under his hood. Then she grabbed his hands and brought them up to cradle her breasts as she pulled him even tighter to her and bit his lower lip so it bled.

  “You smell different,” she said. “I miss you. After tonight, I need you.” She pulled his waist against hers. “I can feel you need me, too.”

  “Yes,” he said, pulling apart from her. “But first I need a black knife.”

  She lowered her leg from around his thigh and pointed out a man to him. The man was checking his watch and looked to be about ready to get in line for the back door. “Go wait in the bathroom. I’ll send him in after you to get me a paper towel or something.”

  Juan looked back at her devil-dark eyes. This woman was trouble incarnate. A crazy energy emanated from her like a stubborn candle held before a bellows. Juan nodded and looked for the bathroom.

  She slid up behind him and pointed toward a recessed portion of the wall with two illuminated squares above a set of doors, one with a stick figure of a man, the other a replica in a dress. She rested the wrist of her pointing arm against his arm and reached around him from behind with her other hand and patted his tight crotch.

  He grunted.

  “Be ready, dear,” she said with wicked delight, and Juan walked toward the bathroom.

  The bathroom was completely dark. He wondered how in the hell you were supposed to find the stalls, or the paper towel dispensers for that matter, and he wondered if maybe Anita had led him into a trap. But then he heard the click of a sensor, and lights lit up the room in a terribly bright phosphorescence, revealing an ordinary bathroom with tiled floor, a urinal, and a stall.

  He checked the stall to make sure he was alone and then turned to find the sink and paper towel dispenser. There were none. There wasn’t even a mirror on the wall to see if you had anything in your teeth.

  The door opened, and a black-robed man strode in as if he was looking for something. Juan flashed his teeth and stepped past him as if leaving. However, instead of reaching for the door handle, he pivoted and jabbed the pronged end of his newly purchased taser against the small of the man’s back. There was a spark, and the robe flickered with a tiny flame as the man’s arms came up and he fell back upon the tiled floor, the back of his head smacking the stall door.

  Juan swatted at the flame. Already acrid fumes had wafted up into the air as if someone had just lit up a smoke. The man’s body slid to the side of the stall and lay on the floor, motionless. Juan rolled the man’s body over onto his back to put out the flame and felt the man’s neck for a pulse.

  There was none.

  Juan looked down at the taser in his hands. “Jesus,” he said, and dragged the man into a stall. With some effort, he hauled him up into a seated position on the toilet seat.

  He heard the bathroom door open again and the sound of dress shoes on the tiled floor. Juan turned in the cramped stall and closed the door.

  The footsteps stopped just in front of the stall, and the man said, “Goddammit,” and walked back out of the bathroom.

  Juan waited as he stood in the corner of the stall counting to sixty. Then he slipped under the stall while leaving the door locked and exited the bathroom with both knives now holstered under his robe.

  “What took so long?” Anita said as she met up with him and put her arm around his elbow as if he were escorting her to the line at the back door.

  “Did I miss anything?”

  “Yeah. One of those women killed the other one inside the glass. Throttled her on the floor. The brunette one. I liked her. Which one did you like?” she asked, genuinely interested in his answer.

  “I liked them both,” he said disinterestedly, feeling it was a safe answer.

  “I did, too,” she said and placed a hand on his rear. “I have an idea for later,” she said, and together they walked to the back door as if there was nothing out of the ordinary about this place. As they reached the guard at the door, Juan realized that the screaming had, in fact, stopped. He wondered if there would be screaming on the other side of this door.

  20

  Kingsnake

  More black robes stood on this side of the door. They seemed to be awaiting the arrival of an important person as people wait for the band at a concert. Juan checked his phone for the time; still no reception.

  “Put that away,” Anita said. “You know there’s no pictures allowed. They’ll kill you on the spot.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You keep messing up, you’ll get yourself killed.”

  “When’s this talk supposed to happen?”

  “Should be anytime.”

  “You worried it might just be a trap? They lock the door behind us and pour gas into the room?”

  “A macabre thought,” she said, considering. “I wouldn’t think so. There are followers in here, along with businesspeople and freelancers like us. Some real true believers. Why kill your followers?”

  “I’m just saying,” Juan said, unsure about any followers or what they were even doing here.

  “Just stop talking, doll.”

  They were standing near the back of this new room, and Juan let his eyes wander over the hoods of the people in front and to the sides of him. There were more of the imitation-torch bulbs on the wall, lending a primordial touch to the room. However, this place seemed colder than the last room. Juan thought he could almost see his breath. The stone walls, floor, and ceiling, coupled with the coldness, made it feel very much like a crypt.

  The room grew narrower the deeper in you went, funneling everyone’s attention to a stage at the front. Frosty mist swirled up from the stage like a fog machine at a concert. This was an odd arrangement, Juan thought. Who were these people? Teenagers?

  Suddenly the lights went out. A darkness thick as a jungle on a moonless night swallowed them. It definitely felt colder now. Then there was a gush of heat as a lone geyser of flame shot up in front of the stage, sending a heatwave washing over the room. Someone clapped from behind Juan, and scattered applause broke in from all over the room. The pillar of fire went out, and for a few moments Juan could still see the ghostly tracings of the flaming tendrils reaching up and flickering like fingers trying to reach the stone ceiling.

  For a while there was silence, and then the lights started to come back on one by one at the sides of the room. When they were all lit, they went out again, and live torches were carried out onto the stage by two black-robed acolytes with red slashes down each side of their hoods over their ears. The red slash marks glowed faintly in the torchlight, giving the appearance of giant snake eyes glaring out from the darkness.

  Two more men in black robes with red slash marks over their hoods appeared at the front corners of the room holding crates. Juan turned and could just make out two more at the back corners of the room with crates in their arms as well. The red of their eye slashes glowed phosphorescently in the darkness even though there was little light back there; the eyes seemed disembodied or part of an enormous invisible snake coiled in the shadows.

/>   A hissing sound penetrated the room. It was soft at first, then rose as it reached a crescendo. It didn’t seem like it was coming from a sound system. From on top of the stage, the two men with the torches turned to face the wall, the flames hidden from the sight of the crowd but reflecting a ruddy glow against the exposed stone of the wall. Juan noticed a side door to the right of the stage and wondered where it led; besides the door he had entered, it appeared to be the only other exit.

  When the two acolytes on the stage turned in unison to present the torches to the crowd again, a new figure stood at the center of the stage as if he had materialized from the brick wall behind him, or from the shadows pooled on the floor where he stood.

  He was a large man, and the entire length of him was covered in a black robe. He wore black gloves over his hands and a solid black facemask under the hood, so it appeared his face was comprised of shadows. Two slashes of paint marked the sides of his hood as well, except his were white instead of red. The white slashes had the intimidating effect of making the large figure seem like a great hooded snake.

  “Welcome, brothers and sisters,” the voice behind the black facemask boomed. “I am glad you are all here. Since you are standing before me, you have been deemed worthy to join us. Who are we? We are ELEPHAS. And I am your Kingsnake, a humble servant to the gods of chaos—”

  There was a commotion about halfway into the room as the glint of a gun flashed high over the heads of the crowd. With a sprout of fire, the large man in the black robe, the Kingsnake, fell back a step, clutching at his chest. One of the torch acolytes reached out to assist the man, but he stood back up as if only inconvenienced and not shot by a gun. He stood proud and tall as he rolled his shoulders and flexed his arm muscles, exhibiting the hole in his black robe and the whitish-tan skin of his chest underneath. There was no blood.

  The Kingsnake laughed.

  “Someone please put a knife in that one,” he said, and the crowd seemed to all turn as one to face the man with the gun. Then they were on him like a German shepherd on a stick of meat. The man went down without uttering a single word, the air alive with the nicks and slices and plunges of blades.