by Ted Galdi
They pay, then drive to the FBI’s motel. “Yo,” Tommy says, entering the room with the bags of supplies.
Clyde sits at the desk clicking the laptop mouse. “Almost done.”
“Nice.” Tommy sets the new cooking pot on the room’s one-burner stove, fills it with water, and flips on the heat. Jordana watches at his side. He dumps the package of matches into the water.
“What’s that for?” she asks.
“The match tips. We want to boil them down. Creates an explosive residue.” He opens the box for the volleyball net and raps his knuckles on one of its two PVC posts. “We seal the residue into a length of PVC with the right combo of cleansers…voila, we’ve got a pipe bomb.”
He saws the end of the post into a six-inch segment. Then walks to Clyde, staring at the computer screen over his shoulder. A video-editing application is open.
“That is looking fresh,” Tommy says.
“Get up close to Ayala,” Clyde says. “Tell him you have a copy of the surveillance video online, then open this URL on your phone. I’m about to send it.”
In a few seconds Tommy feels a vibration in his pocket. He pulls out the secure phone Jordana gave him, taps the link Clyde just sent, then a play button. A white circle spins against a black background, beneath it the caption “Loading.”
“How long you think you can stall him with that before he knows something is up?” Clyde asks.
“A half-minute maybe.”
“Agent Quick?”
Jordana steps to them. “Yeah?”
“I’ll drop you off first to get in position.” Clyde closes the editing window on the computer and pulls up another one. On it is an aerial image of the business address where Tommy is supposed to meet Ayala. It appears to be a junkyard. Clyde points at an alley behind the office. “This seem okay?”
“Yeah, that’s close enough,” she says.
“Thought the same. So you spot up there. Then me and Dapino will drive to the front. I’ll watch him from the car’s tinted windows. The moment Ayala reveals himself, I’m going to text you. That’s when the count starts. Thirty seconds. When the time is up, light the pipe bomb.”
“Not technically,” Tommy says. “I’m giving it a fuse. Ten seconds of burn. So light it twenty seconds in for a bang at thirty.”
“Dapino’s right,” Clyde says. “Spark at twenty. Good?”
“Good,” Jordana says.
“As loud as that bomb might be,” Clyde says to Tommy, “Ayala’s head may only turn toward the noise for a second. You going to be able to grab the phone in that tight of a window?”
“I’ll make the grab.”
“You miss the grab, this whole thing is shot. And if he sees you doing it, he probably shoots you.”
“I’ll make the grab.”
“I’m zipping up in the whip either way. You get your ass in. Quick, go a block east on foot. I’ll pick you up. Then the three of us get the hell out of there before Ayala has a chance to realize what went down.”
Clyde hands a flask to Jordana. She has a sip and passes it back. He drinks and gives it to Tommy. He has a swig twice as long as theirs.
Seventeen
Tommy gazes out the passenger window of the unmarked FBI Chevy Tahoe. The bright, busy scenery of Tijuana’s red-light district transitions to the shadowy stillness of an industrial one.
Clyde pulls over at a corner, asks Jordana in the backseat, “Ready?”
She nods, then steps out with the pipe bomb, paces down the dark sidewalk.
“You really think this is a good call?” Clyde asks Tommy.
“Not if we all die.”
They laugh.
“When my basketball team is down late in the game,” Clyde says, “I always tell the kids you got to try anything to win. Guess this is no different.”
“Hold on. You coach a basketball team?”
“Damn straight. Twelve-and-under league.”
“Huh.”
“Played back in the day too. All-county senior year.”
“Didn’t take you as a hoops guy.”
“What sort of a guy did you take me as?”
“I somehow pictured FBI agents capable of only playing squash.”
“I’ll squash you in one-on-one. We both make it back to San Diego intact, it’s on.”
“How many points should I spot you due to your severe old age?”
“With age comes experience. And in my experience, most guys who talk trash do it to mask their weak-ass game.”
“I’ve been playing prison ball the last two years. Every time you go up for a rebound, three psychopaths are trying to elbow your lights out. What do you do, strap on knee braces and take leisurely free throws once a week in some health club? We’ll see who’s got the weak game.”
“The more trash that comes out of your mouth, the more trash your game likely is. Got anything else to add?”
“Just points. A lot of them. Tomorrow.”
“We’ll see.”
“Yeah, we’ll see all right.” Tommy glimpses the console clock, 10:55 PM. “Okay, let’s rock.”
Clyde drives a block and turns left onto Calle Toro. A junkyard on the horizon. A squat brick office next to a fenced-in field packed with the carcasses of about a hundred automobiles. Stacks of tires. Piles of hubcaps.
Clyde idles a few dozen feet away. In his mind, Tommy snaps back into the Italian-mobster character he played earlier, then treads the pavement to the office. Knocks on the door.
It opens. A tall, muscular man in the doorway. He wears a Larry Johnson Hornets basketball jersey. Tommy recalls a similar physical description from Danielle’s statement. This is likely the second shooter from the woods. In his grip is an AK-47.
“Where the hell is Carlos Ayala?” Tommy asks in his mobster accent.
The gangster says some Spanish into the building. Ayala and the pimp loom at his sides.
“Show us,” Ayala says.
“You got my boss’s fifty Gs?” Tommy asks.
“Show us video, I get you money from safe.”
From his suit pants Tommy removes the phone. The three gangsters circle him, eyes fixed on it. Tommy clicks the play button. They all watch the spinning circle.
“Shit,” Tommy says. “Bad internet connection.” He keeps a seconds count in his head. Twenty down. The fuse should be lit.
Ayala’s jaw tightens. “You playing games with me?”
“Goddamn international roaming on my phone. I don’t know.”
Thirty seconds pass. Tommy waits for the explosion.
It doesn’t come.
He peeks inside. Out a window aback the building is Jordana in the alley. Four preteen boys with skateboards surround her. She waves at them as if to leave, but they stay put. She must be hesitant to light the bomb with them around.
“Come inside,” Ayala says. Tommy’s eyes flick to him. “I have internet in office. You go on it, you show video.”
Tommy can’t go in there. Too tight a space. He has a better chance taking them on over the fence, more room to work.
“Good idea,” he says. “I’ll show you inside.” He takes a step toward the doorway. “No AC in there, huh?” He slips off his suit jacket. “That’ll be better.”
Tommy wraps the jacket around the head of the gangster with the AK and sprints toward the fence. He moves in a zigzag pattern, making himself a hard target for the gunfire he anticipates. He shouts toward the back alley, “Jordana, run.”
Buchoo. The fence shakes as a bullet strikes it. Tommy leaps into it, clutching the metal diamonds with his right hand, then left. He climbs it and drops to the dirt. In his periphery the three gangsters barrel toward him. Ayala and the pimp grip pistols. The tall one’s head is no longer concealed with the jacket, on it an enraged expression.
He points the AK. Tommy dives over the hood of a scrap sedan. Its shell vibrates as automatic rounds pummel the other side. He peers through the gutted wheel well. The three gangsters are climbing the fence.
>
Tommy crawls to a heap of tires and rolls one along the ground. They turn to it. The AK goes off, dirt kicking up. Tommy runs the opposite way and hides behind a wall of hubcaps. Glances through a sliver of space.
The gangsters check for him behind the sedan. Then look around with confused expressions. They talk. And split off in different directions, Ayala north, the one in the jersey east, the pimp west toward Tommy.
Careful not to make noise, Tommy grips a hubcap. He watches the pimp search for him behind cars, watches him get closer. Once he’s about ten feet away, Tommy springs out and hurls the hubcap at him. It knocks the back of his head. He crumples to the ground. Motionless.
One down.
Tommy spots Ayala. Since he doesn’t have a gun, he’ll have to fight him close-range. So sneaks up behind him. Ayala must hear his footsteps. He spins around. Shoots. Sparks spray from a nearby Ford Explorer.
Tommy jumps through the hollowed rear windshield. A bullet passes through it. He slides out of the backdoor opposite Ayala, maneuvers under the vehicle. Stares at his shoes. They stop beside the car, as if Ayala’s looking inside for him. Tommy reaches to the rear of his waist. Pulls from it his new axe. And swipes the blade at Ayala’s ankle.
A scream. Tommy scrambles out from under the car and says, “Let me give you a hand.”
Ayala points his gun, but Tommy rams the axe into his head before he can pull the trigger. Blood cascades down to his eyes, the flicker of life still in them fading. Tommy yanks the blade out of Ayala’s skull, the corpse falling belly down.
He snags the cellphone from Ayala’s back-right pocket. Along the dirt he notices the shadow of a running body, an AK in its grip. A gunshot booms. He braces for the pain of a bullet tearing through him.
But it doesn’t come.
He turns around. The gangster in the jersey is about five feet away. No longer running. Blood spills from his mouth. His big body drops to the dirt, revealing a smaller body behind it.
Jordana. Her gun in front of her. Her eyes wide.
Tommy hurries toward her, says, “Let’s get out of here.”
She stares at the gangster she just shot in the back for another moment, then shakes her head as if breaking out of a state of shock and joins Tommy racing toward the headlights of Clyde’s Tahoe.
He climbs the fence, lands. Waits a couple seconds for her to do the same. He notices the pimp has regained consciousness. He staggers around a cluster of tires. Aims his weapon at them.
“Down,” Tommy yells. He wraps himself around Jordana like a shield and lowers them to the ground. A bullet flies overhead, shattering a light on the brick building.
Tommy and Jordana dart toward the Tahoe. He opens the backdoor and dives in. A moment later she does too. He hooks his foot around the door and closes it. The sound of a bullet nailing it.
“You guys good?” Clyde yells.
“Go,” Tommy shouts.
The Tahoe roars away.
Eighteen
Tommy throws cold water on his face in the bathroom of the FBI’s Zona Norte motel room. Reflected in the mirror are Jordana packing a bag and Clyde speaking on the phone. He says into it, “It can’t be logged as an official piece of evidence…Long story…Just unlock it and email me a file of all its data…Really appreciate it…Yep, see ya.” He hangs up.
“Who was that?” Jordana asks.
“My old friend Gary in Computer Forensics. He owes me a favor. I’ll text you his home address. Can you drop the phone off there on your way back while I deal with Dapino?”
“No problem.” She glances at her watch. “The gang might be a problem if we don’t get on the road soon, though.”
“Let’s boogie,” Clyde says toward the bathroom. He picks up two bags.
The three leave the room, walk down to the street. Jordana says to Tommy, “Nice work tonight.”
“Right back at you.”
She paces toward the Tahoe, the men the Chevy Cruze. Tommy pops the trunk, drops in the axe, wiped of blood. Clyde loads in his bags. He gets in the passenger’s seat, Tommy the driver’s. They head toward the US border.
“When does your boy think he can break into the phone?” Tommy asks.
“Shooting for tomorrow morning.”
“Beautiful.”
“Only if he finds something useful. If there’s not enough evidence on there to lead us to Ayala’s boss, more homeless could get chopped down.”
“Whoa. You’re telling me this isn’t over?”
“The shortest gap between our missing-persons reports is April nineteenth to twenty-sixth. One week. We should assume we have no longer than that to dismantle the ring before they murder again. Taking into account the four days that already passed since your sister’s incident, we’re potentially looking at just three more before another.”
“Ayala is dead.”
“The boss will just replace him. His death isn’t necessarily a win. He was the best piece on our chessboard. And now he’s off it. That phone is all we have. Let’s hope it’s fruitful.”
“What is this? Some passive-aggressive bullshit targeted at me? Because I killed the son of a bitch? Jesus. He was trying to kill me. It was self-defense.”
“Did I even mention you?”
“Sort of.”
“Not at all. Just saying I can’t make an assessment about the quality of evidence until I go over it. If there’s anything I’ve learned after twenty-three years with the FBI, it’s that.”
“Twenty-three, huh? At the FDNY, they let you retire and start collecting at twenty.”
“FBI lets you with your twenty too. But I’m not planning on leaving until they force me out in a few years. Fifty-seven. Our mandatory retirement.”
“What’re you going to do after?”
“Travel with my wife.”
“Nice.”
“How ’bout you? Now that you can’t be a fireman anymore, what’re you going to do?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“For work. You can’t get a job in a fire department again, right? Now that you have a felony on your record for the attempted robbery.”
“What ever happened to the right to privacy?”
“There’s no such thing as privacy anymore. Get used to it.”
“Apparently there’s no such thing as accuracy either. I never attempted to rob anything. Don’t always believe what you read.”
“So what, you were framed?”
“Not technically. No.”
“So you did it then?”
“I just told you I didn’t.”
“You’re not making any sense.”
Tommy’s grip tightens on the steering wheel. “Sneaker Emporium. Ever hear of it?”
“Nope.”
“Maybe it’s just a New York thing. Sneaker stores.”
“I got that.”
“About six years ago branches started closing. Competition from online stores. Then one of them burnt down.”
“You took the call?”
“Luckily me and my crew got to the scene and contained the flames before they spread. But this was no ordinary fire. The smoke. It was high. And black.” A pause. “Like the sky had a shadow.”
“Is black smoke really bad or something?”
“It can mean flammable fluids were involved. Can mean someone added an accelerant to make sure the fire moved faster, to make sure it was more destructive. I still remember its heat was on my face. Never felt hotter. Arson.”
“There must’ve been an official investigation, right?”
“It ruled no arson.”
“So maybe it was an accident.”
“Black smoke does the same thing as any other type of smoke. It floats off. Disappears. By the next morning when the investigator showed up, it was gone. But I saw it. That was no accident.”
“Other evidence?”
“The owner of Sneaker Emporium is loaded. If he was going to torch the place, he was hiring pros. Not dopes who’d leave behind jugs
of empty gasoline.”
“I supposed that adds up. But what does any of this have to do with attempted robbery?”
“The day after the fire, I called in sick to work. Spent the morning staking out the owner’s house with binoculars. When he got in his car, I followed it. A few regular stops. Coffee. Walgreens. Lunch. Cigar shop. Then he went to the bank. And pulled a duffel bag out of his trunk. He went inside. Came back, bag looked heavier.”
“Huh. You thought a cash payment for whoever lit up his building?”
“I saw who lit up the building. He met him back at the house.”
“Who was it?”
“Don’t know his name. Looked Russian mob. The tracksuit, the jewelry. I watched this guy knock on the front door, get let in. I checked the time. Exactly two PM. Like they had an appointment.”
“So you did what? Lost your temper and barged into the house behind him?”
“Come on. Give me more credit than that. I climbed in. Second-story window in the back.”
“You’re nuts man.”
“Wasn’t nuts at all. Had the whole thing worked out. I was hiding behind a corner in the house. About to film them talking. Capture the money changing hands. That would be my proof.”
“But they never spoke about the job?”
“They more than spoke about it. Laughed at getting away with it. Just as I slip my phone out of my pocket to record, the owner gets a call on his. He freaks. Runs through the house looking for me.”
“Someone knew you were in there?”
“His wife. Who I later learned was sipping iced tea by their pool in the backyard. I didn’t even look that direction when I snuck behind the house. She saw me climb in.”
“Brutal.”
“He pulled a gun on me. And kept it on me until the police showed up. I explained to the cops my side of the story. But the Russian was long gone with the cash by then. The cops told me I sounded insane.”
“I would’ve thought the same thing.”
“Thanks. Well…jury did too. Security-camera footage from the bank parking lot showed me following a well-known, wealthy businessman to a cash withdrawal. Prosecutor sold it as an attempted robbery. Even though I had no priors, they threw me in one of the roughest prisons in the country. I guess to make some point of me. About what happens if you take justice into your own hands.”
