Sam assumed that Eduardo and the other two on the bench seat didn’t understand much English. He asked Alberto to repeat his instructions in Spanish.
“I want you to stay in the van,” Sam said to Heather.
“Hey, look, cowboy, how many times do we have to go through this?” she said. “I go where you go. We’re a team.”
“Not anymore,” Sam said. “I can’t afford to have Alberto worrying about you once this thing starts. I know you can take care of yourself, but he’s likely to get himself hurt trying to protect you. You want this to go well? You want Alberto and his mother to come out of this alive? Stay in the van.”
Sam expected an argument, but Heather looked toward the front seat, and saw Alberto looking back at them. He nodded at her.
“All right,” she said quietly.
Sam had never seen Heather show fear, but he thought he’d caught a glimpse of it in her eyes this time—and the fear seemed to be for Alberto, not for herself.
The van began a gentle climb at the edge of the city, and then a steeper ascent as the road became rougher. Soon they were beyond the pavement, and the dirt street wound narrowly through two- and three-story houses, duplexes, and apartments with adjoining walls, some with slivers of sidewalks, most right up against the road. Second-floor windows and small balconies hung just above the passing van. Many of the windows were covered by wrought-iron bars to keep out intruders, even on the second floors.
The crumbling houses were all slightly different—broken brick fronts or cracked concrete, some painted burnt red or blue-green, many left unpainted—and yet indistinguishable from each other in their relentless neglect. People milled around outside, mostly women and children, with little evident purpose.
“This is the good part of the barrio,” Miranda said. He turned to look at Sam and Heather. “The shanties are far worse.”
Pedro drove on for several miles, continuing to climb the hill until they could see downtown Caracas below them through the occasional gaps between the buildings. At one point, where the road curved up the hill to the right, they had to drive around a public works crew with a cement mixer, wheelbarrows, picks, shovels, and a gravel truck, attempting to put a surface over the dirt.
“Chavez promises to pave all the streets,” Miranda said. “At this rate, it will take a thousand years.”
Pedro slowed down just past the crew, pointed to his right and said, “Eso es la casa” to Miranda. It was a white concrete building with a second-floor apartment that extended several feet over the sidewalk. To the left was a two-story brick building with a three-by-six-foot hole in the exterior, which someone had attempted to patch using larger bricks and mortar; to the right of the house was a one-story entranceway, covered by scrap lumber for a roof, and next to that was a two-story house with a façade made of small, painstakingly laid stone—which would have been an elegant look, had the three street-level windows not been covered with plywood, while the three second-story windows were covered with iron grates.
The houses were fortresses, Sam realized, though it was hard to imagine what the occupants owned that was worth stealing. Except in Jefe’s case—he was protecting something worth $50,000,000.
“Drive around again,” Sam said to Pedro. Pedro maneuvered through the street repair crew, accelerated up the road and turned around at the next crossroad, while Sam looked over the buildings on the block for any ideas on how to get at Jefe without costing Elena Miranda her life.
“What would happen if you just knocked on the door?” Heather asked.
Sam thought about that, but before he could answer, Pedro said, “If he expecting no one, he not answer. Or he shoot.”
“Well, that’s no good,” Sam said, mostly for Miranda’s benefit. He knew the ballplayer was getting nervous, scared, and angrier with each passing moment. Sam needed to keep him calm. An enraged son tearing a house apart to find his kidnapped mother would be of no help.
By the time they had driven back down the block and approached the house again, Sam had an idea.
Chapter Thirty
Señor Bruce had not called.
It was past seven now, two hours beyond the deadline. Jefe could understand if Kenwood wanted to wait until the last possible minute to transfer the money; it would take a bit of time for the transaction to go through and the money to show up in the account Bruce had created. That could take a half-hour, perhaps. But two hours? Something had gone wrong. Jefe tried to call Bruce, but Bruce did not answer his phone. Jefe was not supposed to call Bruce—ever—but now he had to know. Had the plan fallen apart? Was Bruce in jail? Was he dead? Did Kenwood refuse to pay? Did Miranda talk? What about Frankie Navarro—where was he?
Two hours—that was too long. The agreement was always very clear: Bruce would call immediately after the deadline. When the money was paid, kill Elena Miranda. If Bruce told him the plot had fallen apart, kill her. If Bruce said Miranda was going to “confess” to throwing the World Series, wait for the public statement—then kill her.
It would almost be unnecessary. Elena now lay limp on the bed in Hector’s second-floor duplex. Her breathing came in shallow spurts, she could no longer eat, and her collarbone protruded like that of a starved corpse. Even Hector seemed to have lost interest in her. Now that Elena was a sack of listless bones, he thought only of the money.
It was time to get rid of him.
They sat in the upstairs room together, Jefe and Hector. The house was a pig sty, with dirty clothes, dishes, and garbage everywhere. Hector had not so much as picked up a sock or scraped a plate since his wife, Gloria, had taken their children and left. He told Jefe that once he got his money, he was going to walk away from this house and never come back. Let the squatters take it, as they had taken so many of the houses in the barrio.
“But things will be better here, now that Chavez is firmly in power,” Jefe said to him, less from conviction than as a way to fill the idle time with conversation while Elena slept. “Look outside. They are fixing your street. A little paint, some patching, a new front door, and once again su casa es muy bien. Gloria, she will come back. You’ll see.”
Hector didn’t want her back. She could have the kids. He wanted his money, and he wanted to go as far from Caracas as possible.
In the meantime, Hector drank. He was drunk now. Jefe would not have permitted that while Hector was watching over Elena, but now it served Jefe’s purpose. In fact, Jefe poured Hector’s last three glasses of rum for him. Celebrate, Jefe told him. It’s almost over. The money will soon be ours.
“To Elena Miranda, the whore who thought she was too good for me,” Hector said, raising his glass. “Soon she’ll be dead, and the worms can have her.”
“Si,” Jefe said. The thought made him a little sad—but not as sad as he was about the very real possibility that he was not going to get his money.
“I want to do it, Jefe. Let me shoot the puta.”
“Of course,” Jefe said, shrugging. “I always intended for you to shoot her. We became friends, Elena and I—as much as ones such as she and I could become friends. It would not feel right for me to kill her. I’d rather you do it.”
Hector smiled and poured himself another drink while Jefe drew his pistol from its holster and attached the silencer, the one he’d used in the tunnel to shoot the cabbie. He wore a pair of blue gloves, something Hector neither noticed nor would have cared about.
The silencer was hardly necessary, with all the noise from the jackhammer, the cement mixer, and the dump truck in the street below. Yet Jefe was a careful man, so he waited until the tailgate of the dump truck began banging after depositing a load of rock. He timed the bangs, and on the third one, he put the gun to Hector’s left temple and pulled the trigger.
Hector’s body crumpled off his chair and onto the floor. Jefe stood up quickly, bent over and put Hector’s fingers around the butt and trigger of the gun. He had wiped it down carefully; there would be no fingerprints but Hect
or’s on the gun. Jefe pulled out an envelope that he’d kept for this very purpose, and scrawled in a sloppy hand, “Life means nothing to me without Gloria.”
Jefe put the note on a half-eaten plate of frijoles. Now, to attend to Elena.
He could not bring himself to shoot her. Bullets were for men who could fight back. Firing a bullet into Elena’s head would be like using a grenade to kill a dog. A pillow over the face was sufficient—a decent, civilized death for a woman who had done nothing to bring this upon herself, except to give birth to an exceptional baseball player.
Jefe stood over Elena’s bed, listening to her shallow breathing, and wondered if he ought to wake her up, to talk to her one more time, to explain. It would be the honorable thing to do before sending her to her permanent rest. Yet, in the end, Jefe knew he was too much the coward to look her in the eye before killing her. All the rest of his life, whenever he watched Alberto Miranda play baseball on television, he would have to see her eyes. He had to kill her, but he didn’t need to have her look at him. That much, he could spare himself.
Part of him was angry with her, too. He had risked and sacrificed so much the past few weeks to watch over her, all in the certainty that it would make him a rich man. Now? Maybe it had all been for nothing. It was not her fault, but it made Jefe bitter to think of the pains he had taken to keep this secret, to keep Elena alive, to keep her from escaping. He was owed much, and someone had to pay. For now, it would be Elena.
Hector’s linens were as filthy as the rest of the house. The two pillows on Elena’s bed were spotted and gray, and Jefe was glad he had the gloves on when he picked up one of the pillows and held it over Elena’s face.
At that moment, he heard someone pounding furiously on the door downstairs.
“Out! Out! Everyone out of the house!” the male voice yelled in Spanish. “We hit a gas line! This house is going to explode! Get out!”
Jefe panicked. The street crew had provided convenient background noise, but now their stupid digging was going to kill them all. He dropped the pillow and was about to run for the door, but then he thought: If I evacuate, and the house does not blow up, they will not let me back in until the house is searched. They’ll find Hector’s body, and they’ll find Elena.
He couldn’t let that happen. She could not be found alive, able to identify him.
What could he do? Shoot her? Then put the gun back in Hector’s hand? They might hear the shot, and how could he explain escaping such a tragedy? But wait—a fire. Even if the house did not blow up, who was to say the work crew didn’t accidentally start Hector’s house on fire? Yes, that was it. Jefe could set the blaze, walk out the door, and never look back.
He found a book of matches by the stove and hastily lit a pile of newspapers under the sink, where Hector’s wife had kept a few bottles of household fluids and some rags. Then he lit the curtains. The house was a tinderbox, Jefe knew. It would be ablaze within minutes.
He ran down the stairs and out into the street, expecting to find the work crew frantically running up and down the block, warning people to evacuate. But the workers were standing across the street, shovels and picks in hand, watching him come out the front door and into the arms of five strong young men, none of whom was wearing a hard hat.
“Where is she?” the largest of the men demanded. The other four held Jefe by his arms.
“Where…who?” Jefe stammered, though he knew who the large man was. He’d seen him on television dozens of times, pitching and hitting for the Cardinals and Dodgers. He’d seen Alberto Miranda with a bat or a glove, but never before with a machete.
“Are you the one called Jefe?” Miranda shouted. His friends jostled Jefe and waved their own machetes close to his face.
“No! No! I don’t know what you’re talking about! Run, you fools! The house is going to explode!”
Some of the young men grinned, and Pedro—who had pounded on the door and screamed about hitting the gas line—took an exaggerated bow. Jefe looked across the street at the work crew, most of whom were laughing. It had been a trick—how could he have been so stupid? Could he somehow keep them from going into the house until the fire consumed it?
“She is not here,” Jefe said.
“Who?” Miranda demanded.
“Your mother. I’ve been looking for her everywhere. I found her in a shanty—I was going to her when you began banging on the door. Come on—there isn’t much time. She is dying.”
Jefe could see in Miranda’s eyes that he wanted to believe the story—that if they moved quickly enough to this other location, he could save his mother. Jefe could lead Miranda and his friends back to the empty shanty where they’d kept Elena for nearly a month. Forensic evidence could prove she’d been there. By then, Hector’s house would have burned down, and perhaps many would be killed. In the chaos and confusion, he might be able to escape. Perhaps Elena’s body would not be identified. At any rate, Elena would never be able to identify him.
Sam stood across the street, his hand on his holstered gun. Pedro had carried out his role to perfection, and the street crew had been more than happy to back off and watch after they recognized Alberto Miranda, heard the story about his mother, and received $500 in cash, apiece. Sam didn’t want to risk getting detained by the local police, so he allowed Miranda’s friends to jump Jefe when he emerged from the house. But now the Venezuelans were exchanging a flurry of Spanish, and both Jefe and Miranda were looking up the street, as though they were about to go somewhere else.
Then Sam saw Heather sprinting from the van, which had been parked down the street. She dodged between parked cars and ran to the entrance of the house Jefe had come from, pointing up to the second floor windows as she entered.
“Fire!” she screamed.
She raced into the house and up the stairs. Sam ran across the street and started to go up after her, but then turned to Miranda and said, “Don’t let him go! All of you, stay here and keep that man from leaving!”
Then he took the steps two at a time, reaching the door that led to the second-floor room that Jefe had just left. Black smoke billowed out, and Sam pulled his jacket over his mouth, trying to keep the acrid air from overwhelming him. Heather was somewhere in that small house, trying to find Elena, but he couldn’t see two feet in front of his face.
“Heather!” he called out.
“Back here!” she called, her voice choking.
Sam followed the sound, and tripped over something that felt like a body. He fell to his knees, where the air was somewhat easier to breathe and he could see a bit better. He was afraid the body belonged to Elena, but after grabbing an arm and rolling the body over, Sam could tell it was a man, with a gaping bullet wound to the side of his head. There was fresh blood on the floor, and the man was clutching a pistol.
Heather uttered a choking scream somewhere ahead of him.
“Get down on the floor and crawl to my voice!” Sam yelled, and then he crawled forward. They bumped into each other as the smoke got darker, and Sam could tell that Heather was trying to drag the small, wilted body of Elena Miranda along with her. He managed to get an arm around Heather’s waist, the other arm around Elena, and they crawled together toward the door. They all became smeared with Hector’s blood as they passed his body. Sam took the gun out of Hector’s hand and tucked it into his pants.
The air improved as they stumbled down the stairs, and once they emerged from the smoky entrance, they were able to carry Elena across the street from the building and lay her down on the cracked sidewalk. Miranda rushed to them, crying, “Mama! Mama!” Elena opened her eyes at the sound of her son’s voice. She was coughing and streaked with blood and soot, but she was trying to smile.
“Albertito,” she said softly. “Te amo.”
Sam drew himself away and tried to cough the smoke out of his lungs. Heather was coughing, too, but she had no intention of leaving Elena and Alberto.
Jefe had other ideas, but he was
still being held by Pedro and his friends, and could not break away.
“I am an officer of the law,” Jefe said, playing his last card. “I demand that you release me at once.”
Pedro looked at Alberto, kneeling next to his stricken mother, looked at the smoke pouring through the bars over the second-floor windows, and then looked back at Jefe.
“You are a murdering pig,” Pedro said.
He raised his machete and brought it down violently on Jefe’s upper arm, slicing through the policeman’s blue shirt and causing blood to spatter onto the others. Eduardo was next, hacking Jefe’s leg as he writhed and screamed. They each took turns, three holding Jefe while one furiously slashed at him with a big blade. Blood poured from Jefe’s gaping wounds and he could no longer stand. The street workers were now somber as they watched the assault, but they did nothing to try to help Jefe. Neither did the many neighborhood residents who had come out onto the street when the commotion began. Twenty-foot flames now leaped toward the sky from the roof of Hector’s house, but as yet there were no sirens, and no one seemed to be concerned about saving the house. Instead, all eyes were riveted on the drama of the bloody police officer, and the young men who were in the process of killing him.
“Alberto!” Pedro called. “Finish him!”
Pedro held a machete at arm’s length, blood dripping from the blade onto his fingers and arm. Miranda put his fingers to his lips, touched them to his mother’s lips, then rose from the sidewalk. He walked slowly across the street and joined his friends in their circle around the fallen Jefe.
Jefe’s eyes were open and he was trying to speak, but he struggled to form the words that were in his head.
“Alberto,” Jefe managed to say, looking up into the eyes of the Venezuelan hero. “Do not do this. You are a great ballplayer, not a murderer.”
Miranda glanced back at Heather, who had his mother’s head cradled in her lap. If he was looking for a sign from her suggesting what he should do, he didn’t receive it. Heather simply held his gaze, then looked back into the eyes of his mother. She stroked Elena’s hair and said, “You’re going to be all right. Alberto’s here now.”
Green Monster Page 27
