On the other bunk, Rickie had let Montana put his arm around him, and Montana spoke to him earnestly. “We’ll get in the van. We’ll go someplace with a shower and a television. We’ll—we’ll sing. Do you know ‘A Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall’? Rickie?”
Laura kissed Trace’s cheek, right beneath the red streak that marked where the bullet had creased him. When he flinched only slightly, she kissed him again. His sobbing lessened. “Laura’s here,” she said. “And Laura will take care of Trace. Trace knows that.”
Montana sang:
“A hundred bottles of beer on the wall,
“A hundred bottles of beer—
“If one of those bottles should happen to fall,
“Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall.”
She was surprised that he had such a good voice, a strong, melodious baritone.
“… If one of those bottles should happen to fall,
“Ninety-eight bottles of beer on the wall.
“Ninety-eight bottles of beer—
“Come on,” Montana urged. “You sing, too.” He squeezed Rickie’s shoulders and nodded encouragingly.
Laura saw Rickie wince at the hug, but he tolerated it. His face stained with tears, he wiped his nose with the back of his hand. Then, in a quavering voice, he began to sing along with Montana.
“Ninety-seven bottles of beer on the wall.
“If one of those bottles should happen to fall—
“Ninety-six bottles of beer on the wall …”
“Good,” Montana said. “That’s it.” The two of them kept singing, and Montana took out a handkerchief and wiped the boy’s nose properly.
Trace went even more quiet in Laura’s arms. He was listening, she could tell. When Montana and Rickie reached ninety-three bottles of beer on the wall, Trace pushed away from her and began to tap his fingers against his cheek.
His voice, wobbly and stuffy from tears, joined theirs.
“Ninety-two bottles of beer on the wall.
“Ninety-two bottles of beer—
“If one of those bottles should happen to fall …”
Laura threw a grateful look at Montana, dug in the pocket of her slacks for a tissue, and cleaned Trace’s runny nose. He shook his head, fighting off her attentions. He was becoming caught up in the song.
Montana flashed her a conspiratorial smile. She smiled back and began to sing in her off-key alto.
“Ninety-one bottles of beer on the wall …”
Rickie was nodding drowsily at seventy-nine bottles of beer on the wall; he was fast asleep by seventy. Trace lasted through the sixties, then sighed, lay down, and closed his eyes at fifty-eight.
“Thank God,” Montana said. Laura pulled the covers up to Trace’s chin, while Montana set the crate upright again and placed the Bugs Bunny lamp back on it.
“Bugs is starting to show signs of wear,” said Montana.
“So are the boys.” She stood, and he did, too.
She gazed up at him. “Thank you. You were a genius.”
He smiled. “You won’t think so when they’ve sung it for the thousandth time.”
“I’ll be like Scarlett O’Hara. I won’t think about it now. I’ll think about it tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll be able to stand it.”
He touched her affectionately on the jaw. “Come on, Scarlett. We’ve got to plan a way out of Atlanta before the Yankees get us.”
The three of them sat at the scarred table by lantern light.
“What’s the weather like?” Montana asked Jefferson. “Have you looked?”
“The snow’s stopped. I went to the van, listened to the radio. It’s supposed to be clear tomorrow. Clear and sunny.”
Montana studied Jefferson. “We should leave. You up to it?”
“Man,” Jefferson said, “I’d be up to it if they’d shot my arm off You know what the most beautiful words in the world are? ‘Central heating.’ ”
The corner of Montana’s mouth turned up slightly.
“I mean it,” Jefferson said with feeling. “Happiness is a real toilet. Made out of real porcelain. I’m tired of whizzing in that overpriced bucket.”
“We’re upgrading accomodations,” Montana said. “We’ll establish ID’s, get ready to leave the country.”
Laura’s emotions warred. All of this seemed so uncertain, so dangerous; what if they were caught?
In contrast to her, Jefferson seemed calm, almost stolid. “All right. Go on.”
Montana nodded. “We keep the kids out of sight. The World Weekly Record hits the stands in two days. Once it does, the whole country knows what they look like.” He looked at Laura. “And you. They’ll know your face, too.”
Laura winced. Whenever she thought of the paper, she was angry, sick, and frightened.
“I drove to Manchester this morning,” Montana said. “It’s the biggest city in New Hampshire. There’s a village north, more of a suburb. Hooksett. That’s where we’re going.”
“But where will we live? And how?” Laura asked.
Montana said, “I saw a realtor. We’re renting a place in the country. North of Hooksett. We’ll be off to ourselves.”
Laura was appalled by his audacity. “Renting? Talk about dangerous. Talk about conspicuous—”
“We need a place, we need an address. What are we supposed to do? Check into a motel? We can’t do that. You said so yourself. It leaves a paper trail.”
“He’s right,” Jefferson said without emotion.
Montana gave her a challenging look. “Stay with friends? We haven’t got any here. And if we did, would you move in on friends if you knew the Colombians were after you? What do you say? ‘Oh—don’t be surprised if some guys with Uzis come in shooting.’ ”
“We can’t break into an empty house,” Jefferson said. “A neighbor might notice. A cop. Or just somebody passing by.”
“So we rent,” Montana said. “It’s chancy, but it’s all we can do.”
She tried to fight the anxiety that threatened to choke her. “What do we tell people?”
“As little as possible,” Montana said. “I told the realtor we’re a couple with one kid. We’re back from three years in Berlin. I’m a computer programmer. I’m starting my own business.”
“But what about Jefferson?” she protested, looking at the big man. “And there are two children, not one—”
“They don’t know that,” Montana said. “We keep to ourselves. Don’t worry about cover stories. I’ll come up with them. I’m used to lying. I can do it. You’ll have to trust me.”
“But who are we?” she asked. “I’m not a good liar. I don’t know if I can—”
“You’re Anne Orsi, and I’m Mike Kominski,” Montana said. “We’re married. If anybody there asks, we say we have just the one kid. We cross the border at night, with the kids asleep. We won’t say they’re twins, just flash their documents and split.”
Laura put her hand to her forehead in frustration. “Wait. Slow down. If we’re married, why is my name different from yours? What documents?”
He took her hand in his. “We say you kept your name when we got married. Lots of women do. I’ve sent for a birth certificate for Anne Orsi.”
“A birth certificate?” she said.
Montana nodded. “Once you have the birth certificate, you can get a driver’s license. And in this country, once you’ve got a driver’s license you can get anything.”
“That’s right,” Jefferson said.
Laura found it hard to think, hard to get her breath. “Who’s Anne Orsi?” she managed to say. “Why that name?”
Montana held her hand more tightly. “My Uncle Dom’s daughter. She died of a heart defect when she was a baby. I already wrote to the county records office for the certificate. It’ll arrive in a couple of days. At the house in Hooksett.”
“I’m a dead person?” she asked. It seemed ominous.
“It’s the safest way,” he said.
She licked her lips, which were dry. “
And you’re Mike—Kom—Kom—Kom—”
“Kominski,” he said. “Marco’s grandson. My friend Mike. Marco gave me his birth certificate and his social security card. I applied for a New Hampshire driver’s license today. You get yours as soon as you get the birth certificate.”
All this duplicity, all these identities had her confused. “And the boys?” she asked, shaking her head helplessly. “Will they have dead people’s names, too?”
“No,” Montana said. “In Manchester I stopped at a religious supply store. I said I was a parish priest from upstate. I bought a box of baptismal certificates. We can name them anything we have to.”
Jefferson said, “You four go over the border together. I’ll rent a car and follow, meet you in Quebec. My name’ll be Warriner. Sidney Warriner.”
Laura eyed him warily. “And Sidney Warriner is …?”
“A guy I went to college with,” Jefferson said. “He died of leukemia.”
She turned to Montana. “You’ve sent for that birth certificate, too?”
“Yes,” he said. He nodded at Jefferson. “We talked about it yesterday.”
“I—I feel like this is a séance,” she said. “We’re all turning into ghosts.”
“It’s how it’s got to be done,” Montana said.
Jefferson nodded.
“Aren’t you worried about using Mike Kominski’s name?” she asked. “Afraid of implicating Marco?”
“There’s not a lot of choice at this point,” Montana said. “I’ll change it again after we get to Canada.”
“More changes in Canada?” she asked in dismay.
“Yeah,” he said. “A few.”
“This friend of yours? In Quebec? Who is he? How do you know him?”
“Florent Porrier,” Montana said. “He’s Indian. I met him when he came to New York to claim his sister’s body. She was a kid, she got in with the wrong people. Colombian coke dealers killed her. I helped take them down. Florent said, ‘You ever need help, you come to me.’ I’m doing it.”
“But who is he?” she asked. “And how can he help us?”
Montana held her gaze. “He’s a priest. He can get us papers. He can make connections for us that need to be made.”
She pushed fingers through her hair in exasperation. “A priest? You’re dragging a priest into this? How do you know he’ll agree?”
“He’s a very militant priest,” Montana said. “He’s got no love for the Colombians. And he doesn’t like the government because of what it’s done to his people. He’s not afraid to break laws when laws need breaking.”
“It seems like too big a risk,” she said.
Jefferson shrugged philosophically. “Everything we do’s a risk.”
“We do what we have to,” said Montana.
Mesius Estrada knew as much about the twins’ whereabouts as the authorities did, which is to say that he knew precisely nothing.
Until now, Estrada had been able to buy or extort almost any information he wanted. But, when it came to the twins, he’d lost his best and most reliable source in the gunfire at Valley Hope.
He had no knowledge of the twins simply because none existed. It was as if the children had dematerialized.
Estrada, not a man to dawdle, had phoned Don Diego Carmago, the head of the Cartel in Bogotá. Don Diego had sent the Cartel’s best man to New York from his base in Atlanta, Georgia: Jorge Hepfinger.
Jorge Hepfinger was plump and jolly-looking, with a round face, thick glasses, and thinning fair hair. His disarming appearance gave no clue of his profession. He was a hunter of human beings; he hunted them down for torture and killing, and he excelled at his work.
Now Hepfinger sat in Estrada’s living room, his legs crossed, a mug of beer in one soft hand. In Atlanta he ran an “electronic information service” whose sole customer was the Cartel.
“What’s this about, Don Mesius?” Hepfinger asked, smiling. He spoke perfect English.
“Don Diego didn’t tell you?” Estrada asked, not believing him.
“I was told to get the story directly from you.”
He wants to hear it from me, thought Estrada, his nerves prickling in suspicion. Does he suspect I’m responsible? Does the Cartel?
Hepfinger only smiled more amiably. Estrada smiled back but was not fooled by the plump man’s resemblance to a clean-shaven Santa Claus.
Hepfinger was half German and half Venezuelan, and from boyhood he had been educated at the best schools in the United States. He was formidably intelligent and absolutely relentless. In Spanish his nickname was el Podenco de Infierno, the Hound of Hell. The superstitious said his sinister powers came from witchcraft.
Estrada chose his words carefully. He had painstakingly constructed a lie to hide his own guilt, and he must tell this lie just so.
He said, “We have a warehouse man named Nunez. A man came to him on behalf of one of our customers, Dennis Deeds. Deeds runs a large operation in marijuana and is expanding into cocaine. He wanted a favor.”
Hepfinger picked at a stray thread in his sweater, which was well-worn, unfashionable, and slightly dirty. “Umm,” he said mildly, a signal for Estrada to go on.
“It’s a complex story,” Estrada said with distaste. “Deeds came out of nowhere, a nobody. But he has boats—yachts, fishing boats, even freighters. He tried to buy a pier in New York.”
“Enterprising,” Hepfinger said and picked harder at the pesky thread.
Estrada plunged on. “One of Deeds’s men, a certain Elton Milton, arranged to buy this pier. Deeds had a freighter on its way with fifty thousand pounds of marijuana. He had a fleet of eighteen-wheelers ready to roll up to the pier and be loaded.”
“Marijuana,” chuckled Hepfinger, as if the thought amused him.
Estrada smiled as if he, too, were amused, although he was not. “At the last minute the owner of the pier changed his mind. Instead of selling to Milton, he leased to a man named Scarlotti, the owner of a fishing company.”
“So Deeds didn’t get his pier,” Hepfinger mused. “This Milton must have been in a sweat.”
“He was,” Estrada said. “The freighter was due with no place to dock. So, acting like a legitimate businessman, Milton approached Scarlotti. Milton claimed he had a ship in need of repair and asked to rent the pier.”
Hepfinger pulled the wrong thread in his sweater, accidentally unraveled it, and sighed. He hardly seemed to be listening to Estrada.
Estrada’s heart quickened with anxiety. The tale of Deeds and the pier was a comedy of errors, and he imagined Hepfinger was full of carefully disguised scorn.
“Scarlotti agreed to let Milton use the pier—on the condition Milton’s business was legal. Scarlotti was emphatic about this. The business must be legal.”
Hepfinger was still engrossed with the threads of his sweater, but he nodded. “Um-hmm?”
Estrada sighed. “The freighter came in at three in the morning. It was unloaded, went its way. The trucks went theirs. Milton went back to his apartment. But Scarlotti’s men came for him.”
Hepfinger looked up at Estrada with a conspiratorial smile. It was as if Estrada was telling him a joke, but Hepfinger had already guessed the punchline.
“Scarlotti is—?”
“Mafia,” Estrada said. “He’d leased the pier for Mafia, and he didn’t want it dirtied up. Milton and Deeds had done just that, right under his nose. The Mafia was angry—and curious. Who was Deeds? Rich enough to buy a pier, to have his own freighter, to bring it so arrogantly to a borrowed pier.”
“Oh, yes, arrogance,” Hepfinger observed mildly. “It brings people down. It does.”
Estrada toyed with the gold chain at his throat. He paced the room, then glanced back at Hepfinger, concentrating once again on his loose threads.
“So,” Estrada said, “to teach Deeds a lesson, the Mafia kidnapped Milton. They phoned Deeds and said they wanted five million dollars ransom. And Deeds paid. That’s the amazing part. He paid. The Mafia set Milton free. Bu
t they’d just begun.”
Hepfinger looked up and smiled his cherubic smile again.
Estrada shook his head. The Cartel would never have paid such a ransom. They would have let the man die to punish him for being stupid enough to get caught.
“Now the Mafia was really wondering about Deeds. How could he hand over five million, just like that? Why did he have no fight in him? They began to stalk Deeds and try to steal his business, bit by bit.”
“As well they should,” Hepfinger said primly.
Estrada gave a sigh of weary sophistication. “They kept pushing Deeds. Finally, he felt he had to push back. Scarlotti’s superior was Francis Zordani. Deeds was hiding in Florida by then. He told his New York people to hire him someone to teach Scarlotti and Zordani a lesson. That’s why Deeds’s man came to Nunez, asking for help.”
Hepfinger plucked at his thread, his mouth pursing. “The Cartel has no business in such quarrels.”
Estrada’s stomach tightened queasily. “My thinking exactly. Nunez asked me to help Deeds. I told him it wasn’t our place.”
This was a lie, and Estrada was terrified Hepfinger would divine it. Carelessly, mechanically, Estrada had told Nunez to hire Paco Paredes and his friends. No one could confirm this but Nunez, and Estrada had made sure Nunez would never tell.
Nunez’s friends and family believed he was on a business trip to purchase a fishing boat. In truth, Santander had driven him to the New Jersey pine barrens, shot him, and dismembered his body.
“But the story’s not over, is it?” Hepfinger said with a twinkle in his eye. He waved his forefinger teasingly at Estrada. “This Nunez at the warehouse, he went against your wishes?”
Estrada’s stomach knotted, but he kept his demeanor cool. “Yes. Nunez told Deeds’s man the names of some amateurs, men who would work for hire. Colombians, unfortunately.”
Hepfinger shook his head in disapproval.
Estrada made an impatient gesture. “Three fuck-up university students playing tough. Wanting to be coqueros. So Deeds had them hired. But—” Estrada paused, hating what he had to utter next.
“But what?” Hepfinger prompted.
“They were idiots,” Estrada said bitterly. “Deeds wanted Scarlotti and Zordani to back off, that was all. Instead, the fools killed them.”
See How They Run Page 16
