by Mark Pryor
“Quite a handful, I’m sure.”
“Oh, I was an angel,” Bhandari laughed. “Most of the time, anyway.”
She talked about her childhood and her brother, Hugo paying attention because he was interested but also keeping the shadows of their conversations under scrutiny, listening for tone and context in case something important tried to slip past unseen. He did this almost without thought, and absolutely without guile, because looking behind words, and indeed actions, had long ago become second nature to him. It wasn’t that he intentionally mixed work into his leisure time, it was more a case of the two becoming utterly inseparable, at least in this regard.
But for once, when she was done, Hugo talked about himself. She was a good listener, and somehow the way she asked him questions made it easy for him to share. He was, he also knew, at a time in his life when he wanted to talk about Ellie, release some of the pain he’d built up in the years since she died. But also share her in the way a child boasts of his dad’s job as a policeman or doctor, because he was proud to have known her and wanted her remembered. For her part, Bhandari smiled at his recollections and encouraged his stories. On the few non-Claudia dates he’d been on over the years, women had seemed to tense up at any mention of Ellie, as if inevitably in competition with the dead woman. Nisha Bhandari didn’t do that, just refilled their glasses, laughed at his jokes, and shimmered in that cream dress as her eyes and smile broke down Hugo’s barriers. He’d mentally put aside the investigation, telling himself that after three glasses of champagne, his judgment was not to be trusted, and so he let himself enjoy the evening as a civilian, where a man sitting across from a beautiful and flirtatious woman was allowed a sliver of poor judgment, especially in a place like this.
At the end of the meal, the waiter piled their plates along the length of his left arm and spoke in English. “May I suggest a dessert? Perhaps one more dish for you to share?”
“I’m pretty full,” Hugo said. “You?”
“We’ll have a large slice of your famous chocolate cake,” Bhandari said. “But please, send it up to my suite.”
“Yes, señora, of course. And the bill?”
“That, too. Gracias.” She looked at Hugo and giggled, her hand over her mouth again. “Don’t look so shocked. We keep a suite here, on a part-time basis. When the hotel’s not full, they let us use it for business meetings, or comp it for a night or two for important clients.”
“I had no idea.”
“It’s not as impressive as it sounds. Most of the time this place is full.” She drained her glass and smiled. “But occasionally, I get lucky.”
Hugo opened his mouth but didn’t know what to say, and when she saw his face, Bhandari laughed again.
“Oh, goodness, I need to be more careful about what I say, I’m sorry.”
“It’s quite alright,” said Hugo. “I’m just not used to . . .” He shrugged. “To mixing business and pleasure, I suppose you could say.”
She reached across the table and put a hand on his arm. “You are a little too easy to tease, Hugo. I really think we can talk better in private, I mean it.” She withdrew her hand and dropped her napkin on the table. “And there’s no way we can leave this place without trying some of that chocolate cake—that would be a sin.”
Hugo stood when she did. “If you say so. Lead the way.”
He sat on the small sofa as she thanked and tipped the waiter at the door. Once the young man left, she locked the door and walked over to the side table, where two small plates and a slab of chocolate cake sat—a bowl of strawberries and a fresh bottle of champagne arriving with their order.
She turned to Hugo, and their eyes locked. “Hungry yet?” she said, her voice barely a whisper.
“No, not really.” His own voice was thick, from the champagne but also from an evening of flirting, being teased, and feeling a raw desire that had been away from him for a long time. Her dress clung to her body, moved with her, and in the low lighting of the hotel room, the contrast with her dark skin exaggerated every curve and dip of her figure. She perched on the little table behind her, still holding his eye, and Hugo knew that there was no longer any pretense at business, that only one thing filled their thoughts. She moved first, reaching up to her shoulders, fingers sliding under the straps that held up her dress. She slid them sideways, and her dress slipped down her body in slow motion, rippling as it fell and holding Hugo mesmerized, as if he were watching the unveiling of a perfect statue. The silk pooled around her ankles, and she stepped out of it, naked, and moved toward Hugo. His breath caught in his throat, and something in his mind was telling him to stop this, pleading with him that this was wrong, a mistake he would regret. But he stood and went to her, cupping her face with his hands, stopping to kiss her hungrily as she circled his waist with her arms and held him tightly.
“Come with me,” she said, taking his hand. He watched her body as she led him into the bedroom, the muscles of her legs, her back, her bottom, admiring her beauty and confidence, her skin absolutely flawless. She knelt on the bed and turned off one of the lamps, throwing Hugo a look of pure devilment, her lips curled in a smile and her eyes open and hungry.
“Give me two seconds.” Hugo took out his phone and tapped out one quick text to Tom, the number 2. Then he threw off his jacket, letting it fall to the floor beside the bed as she pulled him down on top of her. They kissed for a full minute, and then her hands began working at the buttons on his shirt, flicking them open like they were snaps. Beside them, Hugo was dimly aware of his phone ringing, an insistent reminder of the real world, the place he ought to be instead of here. The phone stopped, and Hugo rolled onto his side to allow her to undo his belt, hearing her sigh with pleasure at the sound of it slipping free of its loops. Again his phone rang, but it went quiet after three rings, the silence not the ringing finally bringing Hugo back to earth. If he was right, it would ring again in five . . . four . . . three . . .
“Wait, hold on,” he panted as his phone sang once more. “I’m sorry, I have to get this.”
He swung his legs over the side of the bed, his fingers scrabbling for his jacket and then dipping into its inside pocket.
“What is it?” he snapped. “This better be good.” Nisha Bhandari curled her naked form around his body, the warmth of her making him dizzy with desire.
“Dude, it’s me.”
“Tom,” he said, for Bhandari’s benefit. “What do you want?”
“This is your wake-up call. And while you’ve been wining and dining one of our suspects, another one has gone off the deep end.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The cops located Delia Treviño’s most recent place of habitation, such as it is. They went through her stuff, didn’t find much until they sent the crime-scene tech in. He pulled some interesting finger prints.”
“Whose?”
“Our very own Leonardo Barsetti.”
“Are you serious?”
“Aren’t I always?”
“We need to find him, and now.” Hugo didn’t want to say Barsetti’s name, invite questions from the man’s boss, who now lay on the bed, her head propped in one hand, watching him intently.
“Way ahead of you, that’s why I’m calling. Well, one of the reasons. Your buddy Garcia thinks your particular brand of sweet-talking might come in handy.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The dumb fuck Italian is sitting on the roof of a parking garage, six floors up. I think he’s admiring the skyline, but the chief inspector thinks he’s deciding whether to spill his guts to us or take a swan dive and spill them on the plaza below.”
“Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes. I’m with Garcia now, you wanna head over here? I’ll be taking bets any minute, so be thinking about which way your Euros are going.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The Barcelona police had surrounded the parking garage and emptied the plaza below, and then turned off the flashing lights of their
cars and the two ambulances that waited, so as not to cut deeper into Leo Barsetti’s knife-edge condition.
By the time Hugo arrived on the top floor, Barsetti had been there almost an hour. Chief Inspector Garcia and half a dozen cops stood at the back of the roof, giving Barsetti all the room he wanted, all the space he’d asked for.
Hugo spoke to Garcia in hushed tones. “How did this happen?”
“We ran the prints from Treviño’s place, made some specific comparisons to the people in the case. He was an easy match.”
“He told me he didn’t know her, but if you remember,” Hugo said, “when I showed him her photo, he got weird, more or less ran out of the café we were in.”
“Now we know why.”
“Yeah, but this is a little extreme. How’d he end up here?”
“We went to his house to talk to him, didn’t Silva leave you a message?”
“I didn’t notice, honestly.”
“Anyway, he was leaving as we were arriving. When we tried to pull him over, he took off, led us on a kind of low-speed chase to here.”
“That’s not good,” Hugo said.
“What do you mean?”
“In high-speed chases, the bad guy hopes to get away. Hence the high speed.” He shook his head. “The low-speed ones, they don’t. They’re buying time, nothing more.”
“They expect to get caught?”
“Right.”
“Which means they’re guilty.”
Hugo shrugged. “Of something, yeah, usually.”
“Of lying to us, at the very least.”
“Maybe, but people lie to the police all the time, and they don’t threaten to jump off a building when caught.”
“Good point.”
“What about his wife, does she know?”
“Not yet,” Garcia said. “The cars that went to his house all followed him here. I’ve just sent someone over there to bring her here.”
“OK, but make sure she doesn’t see any of this, take her to a lower floor or something. She could be one of the reasons he’s up here, and if that’s the case, them seeing each other isn’t going to help matters.”
“We’ll be careful with her.” Garcia sighed. “I’ll be honest, Hugo, I should probably call in one of our hostage-rescue experts, they’re the ones we use for talking down people like this.”
“I know, but they don’t know the case, they don’t know what’s going on. I do.”
“Exactly my thinking.” Garcia grimaced and, in the flat light of the parking garage, his face looked tired and gray. “Go do your thing, and don’t make me regret sending you over there.”
Hugo took a deep breath to clear his mind. Flashes of the evening circled his consciousness, the dinner, Nisha’s dress, her soft skin. He willed them away and moved slowly toward the low concrete wall where Leonardo Barsetti sat, his legs dangling six floors above certain death, his shoulders slumped forward as if he’d already made up his mind and was just waiting for the right moment. A cold wind had picked up, and Hugo pulled his jacket around himself for warmth.
“Leo,” Hugo called out, when he was thirty yards away. He kept his voice soft so as not to startle the man.
Leo Barsetti turned his head slowly, his eyes blank as they settled on Hugo, then flickering with recognition. “What do you want?” he said.
“Can we talk? Just for a moment, just talk.”
“No.”
“Why are we here, Leo?”
Barsetti turned his head away, staring once more at the open space beneath his feet. “Why are you here?”
“Well, I guess the main reason is because I don’t want you to jump off that ledge.” When Barsetti didn’t respond, Hugo moved in a wide arc toward the roof edge. When he got there, he leaned on it, about twenty feet from the Italian, who sat to his right as if he didn’t know Hugo was there. “Leo, talk to me.”
Barsetti snorted. “Because you care so much?”
“Yes, I do. I don’t want you to jump, Leo, because whatever has you up here isn’t as bad as you jumping. Whatever it is, it’s fixable. But if you let go now, that isn’t.”
“Fixable?” Barsetti looked at him, and Hugo wasn’t sure whether he didn’t understand the word, or thought Hugo was insane.
“Whatever the problem is, we can get past it. I’ll help you figure a way out, I promise.”
“How can you do that when you don’t know what the problem is?”
“Then tell me,” Hugo insisted gently. “That’s all I’m asking.”
“Why?” Barsetti turned his head to look at Hugo. “Why did they send you to talk to me?”
“The truth? Because I’m good at it. I’ve been trained to talk to people who are in this situation.”
“Just that?”
Hugo smiled softly. “You’d have to ask them. But I’m glad they did, Leo, because what I said before is true. I don’t want you to jump, and I very much want to help you. No matter what.”
Barsetti stared at him for a moment. “There’s nothing you can do. Even if I get down and we go for a nice drink, there’s nothing you or anyone can do.” He sighed. “I would like a drink right now.”
“So let’s go have one. I’ll buy.”
“I don’t think so.” Barsetti looked away again. “If I come down, I’ll be straight in handcuffs and taken to a jail cell. If you want to be honest with me, tell me that.”
“Not if I can help it.”
“You’re not in charge, Señor Marston. Anyway, it doesn’t matter.”
“Why do you think you’ll be going to jail?” Hugo asked. His first priority right now was to save Leo Barsetti’s life, but the fact that this man was threatening to kill himself meant that something had changed in the investigation, and Hugo could only imagine that change meant that either Amy was in more danger than before, or they were getting closer to finding her. Either way, this was no time to put the brakes on. And the truth was, if Barsetti had something to do with her disappearance, he was welcome to take a nose dive off this parking garage. But before he did, Hugo wanted to find out why the man was up here, get whatever information he could about Amy’s whereabouts.
“Oh, I’m not going to jail.”
“Leo, do you know what happened to Amy Dreiss? I promise you, if you help me find her, I will do everything in my power to help you, no matter what you’ve seen or done.”
“Give it up, Señor Marston. Let her go and get out before they lure you in, too.”
“Lure me into what?”
Barsetti’s head snapped around, and his face reddened with anger. “You think I’m here because I want to be? You think this is how I planned my life to end?”
“No, I just don’t—”
“I didn’t claim to be perfect. I’m weak like . . . like everyone else.”
“Leo, what did you do?”
“They tricked me, oh my God, they tricked me and I made it so easy for them.” His voice calmed. “That’s the thing about being weak, I suppose. It doesn’t harm anyone but you, not until someone finds out. Then it’s not weakness anymore, it’s a wound and they can dig into it, make you scream and cry, make you do whatever they want. Even be silent.”
“Be silent about what? Is that why you’re up here, Leo, because someone is trying to keep you quiet?”
Barsetti looked ahead, out over the city, and his tone was almost wistful. “This place, it’s so beautiful. But you don’t know, do you, what goes on in the streets, in the houses, in people’s heads? You don’t know what they’re planning. And when you do, it’s too late. Too late for you, too late to help the people you should help, and too late to see this city as anything but ugly and broken.”
“We can protect you, Leo, you must know that.”
“Do you know who the matadors are?” he asked.
“Sure, they’re the guys who kill bulls. What do they—?”
“‘Kill bulls,’ that’s almost funny. Those matadors are extinct, they can’t harm anyone.”
“The
n who?”
“They are people who kill. What is the American word, a gang?”
“Right,” Hugo said. “A gang. You’re involved with them?”
Barsetti shook his head sadly. “I didn’t know it.”
“Leo, we can protect you. Take you back to Italy, or go to America. Wherever you want, just tell me what’s going on.”
“There are some things you can’t be protected from. The things you have done, the things you have seen. The things you have allowed to happen.” He slammed his fist against the wall but didn’t seem to feel it. “They tricked me and I let them do it.”
Hugo stood slowly and moved a step closer. “All I want to—”
“Stay away from me!”
“Fine, OK, I’ll stand here.” Hugo leaned his hip against the low wall and faced Barsetti. He shot a look over to Tom and Chief Inspector Garcia. They stared back at him, unmoving, like they were carved out of stone. There was nothing they could do, Hugo knew, it was all up to him. He stood quietly for a moment, gathering his thoughts. “Leo, do you want to talk to your wife?”
“She’s gone.”
A cold chill ran through Hugo. “Gone where?”
“Away.”
“Leo, did you do something to her?”
“She was good to me, you know. I mean, it was an odd marriage and we both knew why we were in it. She held up her end of it all better than I did, I know that, but don’t think I didn’t try.”
Hugo pulled his phone from his pocket and surreptitiously sent Tom a text that read, His wife? “Leo, what did you mean by ‘she’s gone’?”
“Do me a favor, Señor Marston. Stop. Please, just stop.”
“I can’t do that, Leo. I need to find my friend Amy, she’s just a girl, and wherever she is, I’m going to find her and bring her home.” Please, just let her be alive when I do.
Hugo’s stomach lurched when Barsetti waved a hand in front of him, but he was gesturing to the skyline. “It’s funny how I’ve spent the last couple of years leading people around this city, showing them the things that make it great, making it bright and open for them. All that time, I didn’t see that there was another world operating here, people trading in the shadows while everyone around them wanders through looking at the light, seeing nothing of the blackness around them.”
