The Terror of Tijuana

by S. J. Varengo

  Even with these precautions, Darlene rarely ever spoke to a cleaner once he or she was deployed. So she didn’t reply to Manny’s text, and she didn’t call him when a follow-up wasn’t forthcoming.

  There were policies in place for this sort of thing. The first was that after a twenty-four-hour silence, you didn’t lose your shit. Alright, Darlene thought, maybe I just made that up. She knew that it was not uncommon for a cleaner to go dark for several days, especially when working out a plan for scrubbing the stain. But he said “soon,” she thought.

  The sort of detail Manny had been assigned almost always extended the radio silence for even longer periods. He had been sent to develop the mark, to do the leg work that the official channels, both U.S. and Mexican, were either dancing around in wide circles or avoiding, leper-like, altogether. In other words, he’s been sent, primarily, to solve a mystery, she reminded herself. Then with a chuckle she thought, And once solved, he’ll leave behind a mystery of his own.

  If all went well.

  The problem was her gut was telling her something had already gone – not well. So she relied upon policy yet again. She got out her phone (the one that triggered the grumpy face on Nicole’s screen) and returned to the text from Cruz. She typed a single letter “P.” This was just short for “Ping.” But the cleaner receiving it would know it was a call for him or her to check in. The correct response was also a single “P,” in this case meaning, according to Nicole, “Piss off, I’m fine.”

  Her finger hovered over the send button. Twenty-four hours was not really waiting long enough, and she knew it. But she also knew that her instincts were generally right on the money. She sent the text.

  Then for the next four hours, she was picking the device up constantly, opening the texting app and frowning. No reply.

  No reply.

  No reply.

  Finally, she said, “Fuck this,” and she closed the texting app. Hitting her #1 speed dial and pressing the phone hard against her ear, she heard one ring.

  “Hey, girl!” came Nicole’s voice.

  “Jesus, I thought you’d never answer.”

  “I think my phone buzzed once,” Cole replied. Darlene could see her in her mind’s eye making her scrunched-up “Are You Crazy?” face.

  “I know. I’m just jumpy. Cruz has gone dark.”

  “You called me this time yesterday to say he was onto something.”

  “I know.”

  “This time yesterday,” Nicole repeated, placing verbal stress on each word.

  “Coley, something’s wrong.”

  “Yesterday.”

  “Stop it, Cole. I know that something is not kosher. Manny’s text said he’d be sending more info soon. Twenty-four hours is not soon.”

  “It’s not particularly long either, Darlene.”

  “Nicole! I get it. Hell, when you’re in the field, I’m lucky if I get anything more than a ‘Wish you were here.’”

  “Exactly. Because that’s the only message that matters.” The clichéd phrase meant the mark had been successfully cleaned.

  “I don’t think we’re going to read that message from Manny.”

  “Dar.”

  “Cole, he’s in trouble.”

  Nicole started to respond but stopped, her mouth already open to deliver the words. Darlene, as a rule, did not overreact. She often reacted more than other people might, but in the end, it always proved to be in just the right amount. And, yeah, maybe she had a tiny crush on the gorgeous cleaner, but it was nothing more than an amusement, a joke between two girls. She wasn’t overreacting. She was genuinely concerned. “Did you ping him?”

  “Four hours ago.”

  “Okay. The procedure, which you and I co-authored, I hasten to add, calls for waiting … oh, goodness. The number of hours escapes me.”

  “Six,” Darlene mumbled.

  “Pardon?”

  “Six,” she repeated, clearly this time.

  “I’m sorry. You’re breaking up. How many hours did we decide should pass before elevating?”

  “SIX FUCKING HOURS, NICOLE!” Darlene screamed into the phone.

  “I heard that,” Nicole said, laughing at having gotten to her friend. “But yes, baby. Six hours. Because, and I believe I’m quoting you directly here, ‘Any cleaner worth the powder to blow her to hell should be able to climb out of the shit long enough to type a “p” within six hours. After that, we may have a problem.’ I may have muffed one or two words, but I think that was the gist of it at least.”

  Darlene said nothing. She pulled the phone away from her ear and glared at it, as if Nicole would somehow know and be hurt by it.

  “Stop glaring at your phone,” came Nicole’s voice, just loud enough for Darlene to hear. Her face softened.

  “Alright. But in less than two hours…”

  “If you don’t hear from him by…” Darlene heard Nicole pause, looking at her watch no doubt. “…by seven thirty, you call me back and we’ll decide how to elevate.”

  “K.”

  “Dar?”

  “What, Coley?”

  “Manny’s probably getting laid.”

  “You shut your whore mouth!” Darlene said, laughing loudly.

  “Four hours, too. Some lucky chiquita.”

  “I hate you,” she lied. “I’m hanging up.” She mashed the end button and set the phone down. Nicole was right, of course. They’d developed the procedures that were now standard across the agency, based upon their own considerable experience and a good deal of input from former high-ranking CUC operatives. She knew that. But even in the days when Darlene had herself been a cleaner, she had shown one characteristic that had given her controllers fits. She would deviate from procedure in a heartbeat if her instincts told her that she should. It wasn’t even the aberrations themselves that caused the vexation. It was the fact that when she followed her gut, she was always right. Every time.

  She picked the phone back up and opened the text thread with Cruz. The last message was her “P.” Still no response. She looked at the time. It wasn’t yet six. Setting the phone on her desk once again, a little roughly this time, she said aloud, “Darlene Mason, get a grip. Until we know otherwise, your pinup boy is still alive.” She picked up the phone again. “Until we know otherwise,” she whispered.

  Almost the entire time Nicole had been on the phone with Darlene, she’d been packing. Her normal always-ready go-bag had been pulled from beneath the bed and had been joined by a small case. Into this, she threw enough clothes for a few days more than the two changes in the duffle-style go-bag. Even as she was talking Darlene off the ledge, she’d been thinking, If Manny is down and we have nothing more than one name to go on, I’m likely going to be there for a while. She also added what appeared to be a black tube, not unlike some exotic, caviar-coated burrito. It was a tightly compressed set of all-black top, leggings, and ski mask. She’d thought more than once that many people would call it a “cat-burglar outfit,” but she didn’t like the term. She was not some common thief. She’d never stolen anything. Unless you counted lives. Besides, she was more of a dog person.

  Cole knew that her phone would ring at exactly seven thirty. She walked to her nightstand, opened its dark wooden drawer, and extracted a set of identity credentials, including a driver’s license issued in Oklahoma and a United States passport. Both showed the name “Sally North.” Nicole looked at her picture in the fake but flawless passport. Her own unsmiling face glowered up at her. Was that a hint of reproach she detected?

  “Don’t give me your attitude, Sally North,” she said. “I’ve obviously been listening to my own gut, getting the papers in line the day after Darlene’s first call about the killings. Not that I expected Manny to hit a snag, but…”

  She closed the suitcase, then gave the well-worn canvas go-bag an affectionate pat with her slender hand. “Can’t let Darlene off the hook that easily, though. She needn’t know I was this ready.”

  “Who are you talking to?”

/>   Dan’s voice startled Nicole and she spun around. Dan saw she was holding a passport, triggering a cascade of emotions, all of which came too quickly and in such a jumble that he realized he’d need time to sort them out. I suppose I should be happy that she was holding a passport and not a pistol, the way she whirled on me, he thought.

  “Myself, actually,” she responded, feeling the instant blast of adrenaline gradually become reabsorbed by her body. “Darlene is freaking because an operative hasn’t answered his ping.”

  Dan chuckled. “Cleaner-speak borrows a lot from Geek-speak. Do you realize that? Ping! Pfft!”

  “Could be nothing,” she went on, ignoring his attempt at humor. “But Dar thinks…”

  “That it’s not nothing.”

  “Geek-speak borrows a lot from that’s-not-even-fucking-English-speak. Do you realize that?” Dan heard no trace of testiness in Cole’s voice, so he ventured a smile.

  “It looks like you might be thinking it’s not nothing too,” Dan said, pointing to the two bags on the bed.

  “We’ll see. Seven thirty deadline,” she answered, glancing at her watch. She returned to the nightstand drawer and pulled out some folded papers. Dan recognized them as an airline ticket.

  “What time is that flight?” he asked, feeling the untamed mob of emotions well up again.

  “Ten.”

  “Ten … tonight.”

  Nicole nodded. “Just in case.”

  “Just in case,” he repeated.

  They looked at one another for several seconds in silence.

  “I don’t want to go this time,” Dan said at last.

  Nicole felt a weight that had been sitting on her shoulders since Darlene’s initial call suddenly lifted from her. “I was kind of hoping you’d feel that way,” she said, taking a step towards him.

  “You still don’t like having me in tow, do you.” He was cognizant of the fact that there was only one set of papers. The decision had already been made.

  “Honestly, I can’t see the two times you’ve been with me turning out positively without you. But this job, if it happens, is going to be a little different. I won’t have a clearly defined mark. The first thing I’ll have to do is identify the target.”

  “Okay,” Dan said. “With you so far.”

  “Well, that calls for the sort of flexibility you can’t have with another person to consider. Even a trained professional would be a hindrance in this case.”

  “Which, of course, I’m not.”

  “No, you’re not. But you’ve got good bones.”

  Dan laughed. “You’ve complimented me many times in our decades together, Nicole Porter, but I think that’s the first time you’ve applauded my skeleton.”

  “It means you’ve got good instincts on which to build,” she said. Then she added, “In Cleaner-speak.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Dan replied with a shake of his head. “I think someone with the right instincts for your line of work would carry less guilt about it than I do.”

  “Danny. We’ve talked.”

  “I know, I know! And you’ve been great. You probably would make a decent therapist if you’d decided against being an assassin.” Dan saw her flinch. “Cleaner,” he corrected.

  “You’ve never done anything you need to feel guilty about.”

  “Respectfully disagree,” Dan said, prompting another round of silence, which he broke himself after a moment. “Now, J.J….”

  Nicole took another step towards her husband and was now close enough to put her finger on his lips to stop him from finishing the sentence.

  “We’re still a long way from having that conversation,” she said.

  Dan nodded. “I’d be fine with never having it. But I saw her too, Cole.”

  Now Nicole’s head bobbed. “No denying it. But we can delay it. For now.” She tucked the plane ticket in the pocket on her go-bag that already held the passport and looked again at her watch. She retrieved her phone from its resting place on the bed. Five seconds later, it rang.

  “Hey, girl!” she said.

  Dan went to start the car. Nicole would want to eat dinner before her flight.

  5

  Two Dinners

  There were few things Nicole enjoyed more than dinner at The Western Wine Bar. It was, after all, the place she’d met Dan.

  That night, the first night she’d seen him, she’d been with another man and he’d been entertaining investors in D-Soft. No one at the Western knew them then. Nicole had chosen it for practical reasons. Her instant attraction to the easy-going guy at the table, peopled otherwise by four well-dressed Japanese businessmen, had taken her by surprise, and had been a dangerous, in fact nearly-fatal distraction.

  The next time they’d seen one another, (for Dan had noticed her as well), they were each alone. There were proper introductions, a lovely dinner, many drinks. And later that night, for the first time in her life, she understood what Carole King was talking about: she felt the Earth move.

  Now they were well-known patrons and they’d been back over the years enough times that they no longer had to ask to sit at their favorite table. They always got seated at the four-top where Dan had conducted his meeting. It was the one Nicole would have chosen if she’d gotten seated first. There was a perfect view of the door, cover on two sides from tastefully decorated walls. The table itself was thick, made of a dense wood, and would give her a fighting chance if she had to tip it over for use as a shield… tactically, it was the best board in the house.

  But now it was just “their” table. They didn’t necessarily need tactical superiority, but they did appreciate the privacy, and the wine was always on the house.

  “You brought two bags,” Dan said after the first bottle of white had gone the way of all things.

  “There’s a good chance I’ll be in place for a while.”

  “How long is a while?”

  Nicole didn’t answer. Instead, she filled their glasses from the second bottle. It was still two hours until she needed to be at the airport, and though Dan had pointedly not asked her destination, she knew the flight would take over ten hours, with a layover in Houston, and a quick hop from there to Monterrey, then perhaps the most grueling part, back to the northwest. To Tijuana.

  “I would love to give you a truthful answer to that question. One that you’d like. But the only honest answer is going to be one you’re not going to be at all crazy about.” She sipped her wine, and Dan stopped his fork’s movement toward his mouth in mid-air to watch her. He could never resist watching her lips curl around the rim of a wine glass, and the subtle motion of her throat as the wine moved toward her stomach. And liver. And brain.

  “Because the honest answer, love of my life, is that I don’t know.”

  Dan’s fork finished its interrupted journey, and he nodded his head as he chewed his chicken marsala. “I was pretty sure that would be the case. And you’re right.”

  “I always am.”

  “Almost always, but definitely in this case. I don’t like that answer.”

  “Sweetheart. I’ve already explained everything.”

  “I know. And I get it. One good clue, and your man went dim.”

  “Dark, Danny. He went dark.”

  “Wow. That’s even worse than dim, isn’t it?” Dan grinned to indicate that he’d just been teasing her, but she didn’t return the smile.

  “I’m afraid it’s much worse in this case.”

  “Where does that leave you? And I don’t mean geographically. You haven’t told me where the mission is, and I don’t even want to know.”

  Nicole again paused before answering. There was really no reason to keep secrets anymore, and for the most part, she was pretty straight with him these days. After revealing the truth about Cleanup Crew and then about her childhood, the scariest stuff was in the rear view. But she felt there were details that Dan just didn’t need to know.

  And for all the great strides Dan had made since finding the body of
a man (a man who had paid to have his entire family killed), in the trunk of his wife’s car, he still couldn’t quite accede to every facet or, for that matter, the totality.

  So sometimes silence was the best reply.

  But Nicole felt she owed him at least a little nugget of an answer. Now she just needed to come up with the right one. “Before I answer that, I have to go pay the rent on the first bottle of wine.”

  Dan, who’d been taking a sip of his, nearly choked. Laughing around the edges of his near-white-wine-nostril-fountain, he said, “You’re a class act, Nicole Porter. A class act.”

  As she excused herself, Dan suddenly experienced a flashback to the mission in Bucharest that had served as his introduction to the world of cleaning. They’d been sharing an intimate dinner very much like this one when Nicole had sent Dan to the restroom to cover up a tactical mistake he’d made and had snuck out of the restaurant while he was gone, following a woman who turned out to be the security chief for the mark she’d been sent to eliminate.

  He didn’t anticipate that she wouldn’t return this time, but it did weaken his resolve about knowing as little as possible about the current case. Now conflict raged inside of him. Should he ask? Should he let it be? He’d just told her he didn’t want to know the location of the cleaning. But, dammit, he did want to know. He always wanted to know. And he did want to go with her. He always wanted to go.

  None of his decision to let her go alone had anything to do with not wanting to be by her side when she was in danger. But Dan had realized something crucial. He’d seen Nicole at her professional best in Romania. And he’d seen her at her worst in South Carolina. Although everything had turned out well in Greenville, and Nicole had kept it together well enough to get them out alive, she’d been badly shaken by everything that had gone down.

  And now she needed a win. She needed to go on an assignment by herself, zero distractions from him or J.J. or anyone else, and do what she needed to do. So he’d decided to stay back and had almost convinced himself that he didn’t want to go. He looked to where she’d been sitting. Cole had taken her bag to the ladies’ room, but her phone was on the table, face down. He looked at it there and debated for only a second before grabbing it.