"How far is it?" Bias asked.
"Not far," Waite said from the darkness. They heard him crashing through the weeds, and then the hollow thunk as he hit the fiberglass hull of the launch.
When they got back to the parking lot, the pickup was already pulling out of one of the aisles. It was jacked up on mud wheels, and a whip antenna mounted on the side of the bed behind the driver was bent over and snapped into a catch beside the rain gutter. Two chrome fog lights were mounted on top of the cab.
Bias stayed a short distance behind the truck, leaving enough space to avoid being pinned in if someone cut them off from behind. The cross streets and trees grew sparse, then disappeared altogether and gave way to flat, grassy stretches littered with occasional abandoned sheds and shacks, and pieces of rusting machinery. They crossed two rail spurs and moved into the tinted glow of a chemical plant and oil company terminal whose tower lights reflected off the clouds of their own effluent.
The long ascent of the Sherman Bridge on Loop 610 rose in front of them, and they passed under it, coming once again into streets and trees and houses, a shabby district of shotgun shacks, a few bars and cafes and vacant lots surrounded by a shallow loop of the ship channel, wharves, a rail terminal, and Sims Bayou.
An arm came out of the driver's window of the pickup and indicated a left turn. Bias followed, but dropped farther back.
"Why didn't he use his blinker?" Rubio asked warily.
Bias shook his head. He was wondering too. He had carefully watched the side streets, waiting for the tail that never appeared.
Again the arm came out of the pickup window, this time a right turn. They were entering the wharves now, rows of sheds, and alleyways and beyond that the mammoth cylindrical profiles of oil storage tanks. They passed the warehouses and slowed to an idling crawl as they came into a long corridor of tanks. In the crossaisles Bias could see an occasional small pier on the channel, less than a hundred yards away.
When the pickup turned into one of the aisles, Bias and Rubio lowered their windows. The car filled with the sour air from the petrochemical plants and refineries farther down the channel toward Pasadena. They stopped at the last storage tank on the aisle. In front of them a small road, white with crushed shell, ran along the edge of the channel where a short wooden pier jutted into the water. At the end of the pier Bias saw a tin shed, and the rear of the launch peeping out of the shed.
The pickup door opened and a gangly young man stepped down out of the cab and looked back at them. He also wore the ubiquitous gimme cap, and a dark T-shirt tucked into jeans which were themselves tucked into high-topped cowboy boots. His jeans were cinched to his thin hips by a western belt that sported a buckle half as big as a hubcap. As he looked at them, he reached into his hip pocket, took out a round tin of Skol, and put a pinch into his bottom lip. Then he started toward them.
Bias opened the door and got out before the young man reached the front of the car.
"Ya'll ready?" the kid asked.
"Yes."
"Okay. Tucky's down there in that shed. He's got what you're lookin' for."
"Is he alone?"
The kid nodded. "Your man goin' with us?" He looked at Rubio in the car.
"No." Bias motioned for Rubio to get out and said, "I think the two of you need to stay here. I'll go alone."
"That's not how Tucky said we was gonna do it," the kid said solemnly. His bottom lip was stretched tight, holding in the Skol.
"I can't leave the car alone," Bias explained.
The kid looked at him with an uncertain frown, and gave a flashing glance at the rental car. The jaundiced reflected light that filled the sky rippled across his face as the clouds from the chemical plant drifted like a foul fog above them. "I see what you mean," he said.
Bias was sure he didn't, but it was a good sign that he wasn't going to make it a point of protest. Then in the sky-glow Bias saw the wire, and the plug in the kid's ear. He was sure, too, that he was hiding a transmitter as well. These people were careful.
Rubio leaned against the fender of the car and laid the Mac-10 across the hood. The kid looked at it, looked at Rubio, then at Bias.
"When you get out there on the pier, stick to the right side," he said. "They's some shaky boards about halfway to the shed." He looked Bias over. "You ain't takin' a Mac," he said. It wasn't a question.
Bias didn't respond, knowing the kid had said it for the benefit of Waite on the receiving end of his wire. He looked at Rubio and then started toward the crushed-shell road. As he crossed, he looked both ways. To his left, the city; to his right, a weedy stretch of flat bayou bottom, and a little farther down scattered freight cars on the edge of a rail terminal.
He had no doubt there were others out there, not just the redneck and the skinny youth. He kept to the right as instructed, and approached the dark opening of the shed. As he got closer he made out the green glow of a kerosene lantern shimmering off the water onto the shed ceiling. He paused ten feet from the opening.
"Come on in," he heard Waite say. "It's all right."
There were moments in every operation when you openly subjected yourself to blind risk. There was no other way to do it, if it was going to be done. You put your trust in something senseless, and you had no right to expect what you hoped you would get. These were the moments he used to live for, but now he only feared them. His mouth filled with the dreaded and familiar taste of iodine as the image of Teodoro, firing and falling under the roaring limousine, played across the green haze that filled the doorway.
As he stepped inside, he saw the stocky hulk of Waite sitting on the prow of the launch, one foot on the pier. He quickly surveyed the layout of the shed. There wasn't much, only the pier and the launch. Unless someone was hiding in there, they were alone. The only sounds were the soft lapping of water against the fiberglass hull and the hissing of the lantern which hung by a wire from one of the rafters.
"This is the sticky part." Waite grinned.
"I need to see what you've got, first," Bias said. He saw the wire coming out of Waite's shirt pocket and snaking up to his ear.
"At's what I mean." Waite laughed. "I wanta see what you got."
Bias began unbuttoning his shirt and pulled it open to reveal the money belt.
"Well, I'll be goddamned," Waite said, genuinely surprised. "Just like that." He stood and stepped over to one of the stubby pilings. Grabbing a cotton cord, he hoisted up a crab basket and plopped it up on the pier. He squatted down over the basket and took out a brick-shaped package wrapped in black polyethylene. From a scabbard on his belt he took a single-blade K-Bar knife and flipped it open. With a delicate flick of the blade, he made a clean three-inch hole in the plastic. He stood and stepped back, grinning at Bias.
Bias knelt and pinched off a pea-sized piece of the gray putty-textured block. He tasted it, then took a small vial from his pocket and dabbed some of its contents on the sample.
"There's thirteen point seven five pounds in that cake," Waite said. "There's three more cakes in the water here. Fifty-five point one one five pounds. Twenty-five kilos of RDX, on the nose."
Bias stood, took off the money belt, and handed it to Waite. "You count," he said.
While Waite emptied the money onto the prow of the launch, Bias hauled up the other three cakes and tested them, laying them in a row on the boards of the pier. When he was satisfied he rewrapped them and started buttoning his shirt, tucking it into his pants.
Waite finished, and swung around on the launch.
"I'm satisfied," he said. "How about you?"
"Not quite. The primer."
Waite looked slyly at Bias and produced his slow grin. "That's right," he said. "That was in the deal." Taking the money with him, he crawled into the back of the launch and rummaged in a wooden crate until he came up with a coffee can with a plastic lid. "Catch," he said, and tossed it to Bias.
"PETN," Waite said. "The best."
Bias checked the contents of the can and nodded. The
y were good products, fresh and stable. Sometimes the fabled "arms merchants" of the underworld could come up with some garage-sale- quality materiel.
"I brought somethin' for us to haul your shit in, too," Waite grunted, picking up a small blue ice chest. He jumped onto the pier with it and took out a sack of crushed ice and a six-pack of beer. He put the four cakes of RDX in the bottom of the chest and covered them with the ice, then took the cans of beer out of the cardboard container and put them on top. "You better carry the detonators," he said. "Wait a second." He took one of the beers off the ice and popped the tab. "You want one?"
Bias shook his head. Jesus Christ.
Each of them took one end of the ice chest, and they started out of the shed. They walked the length of the pier, taking it slow around the loose boards in the center, and then crossed the road to the pickup.
"Bueno," Bias said to Rubio as they approached the car.
Rubio backed around the car, opened the trunk, and held the lid while Bias and Waite set the ice chest inside. After he slammed the lid, the three of them walked around to the front of the car.
"Well, it was sure good doin' business with you boys," Waite said, summing up the deal as he sipped the beer, one hand resting casually in his uniform pocket. He acted as if they had just come in from running their trotlines together. "Now I'm goin' to tell my folks to let you out. We had us a little backup," he explained almost apologetically, nodding at the tops of two of the storage tanks that flanked the road. "Cissy, Ruby," he said, speaking into his shirt pocket. "Ya'll let 'em out. We got ourselves a deal down here." Then to Bias, grinning, "Those gals got infrared scopes. Couldn't do shit without the little ladies." A loud suck at the beer. "Can ya'll find your way back?"
Bias nodded. "We'll be all right." If this man was for real, they had made a discovery. He and Rubio turned and got into the car.
"Good enough," Waite said, congenially stepping to the car window and leaning on the door in a neighborly fashion. "Ya'll tell your people if they ever need anythang else, look us up. We're purty good folks to do business with."
Bias started the car and put it in gear as Waite stepped back to let him pull away.
"Ya'll have a bang-up time." Waite grinned and saluted them with his beer can.
Rubio didn't put the Mac-10 on safety until they had once again passed under the Sherman Bridge and turned onto Broadway.
Chapter 21
SHE lived on a small side street just off Canal in one of five bungalows that faced onto a common courtyard. The compound was partially shielded from the street by a row of filmy-leafed castor bean trees. A sidewalk ran from the street, under the trees, to the center of the courtyard, and then radiated into five separate walks, one leading to each of the cottages. The pie-shaped interstices between the sidewalks were planted with a well-tended but seemingly random mixture of flowers and vegetables: orange and red zinnias with okra, mauve petunias and tomatoes, yellow squash and lantana, cantaloupe and narcissus, beans and hibiscus. The evening air was rich with the smell of dampened plants.
All the cottages were open to the coming night. A couple of them were dark; the front room of another flickered with the pastel reflections of a color television. On the far side, several people sat behind the railing of their front porch. Haydon chose the center sidewalk that led to cottage number three. He caught the dinner smells of hot corn tortillas and onions as he stepped up on the small cement porch. The porch and its railing of patterned cement blocks were painted a faded salmon, and were crowded with terra-cotta pots of begonias whose tiny blossoms persistently retained their pink hue in the waning light. Spaced occasionally among these were heavy clay pots shaped in pre-Columbian motifs, and in them he was surprised to see the brilliant efflorescence of bromeliads: Guzmanias, Neore-gelias, and Tillandsias.
Haydon was bending over one of these when he sensed a movement behind the screen door. He did not turn around, but continued examining the scarlet flower in a fountain of long, languid leaves. He let her watch him from the protection of her anonymity, as if he were allowing a suspicious animal to observe his benign intentions to disarm its fears. She remained silent as he moved to another flower, and after a moment he began to wonder why she hadn't spoken. Then he had the unsettling feeling that she knew that he was aware of her standing there, and was herself wondering at his reasons for deliberately choosing not to acknowledge her.
When he turned around, he was surprised to see, through the softening filter of the screen, a woman who appeared much younger than the forty-five years he knew her to be.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm Stuart Haydon."
"Yes." She opened the screen door and stepped out on the porch, extending her hand in a way that conveyed a simple, innate dignity. "I am Renata Islas."
She was a head shorter than Haydon's six feet, and stood before him with the straight back of self-discipline. She wore a simple black cotton dress that reached nearly to her bare feet and fit at the waist in a way that made it quite clear she had not given in to the plumpness of middle age. Her black hair was shot through with gray, though on her it seemed premature. It was long, and fell over her shoulders, yet Haydon had the impression she usually wore it up and had just combed it out.
"I hope you don't mind sitting out here," she said, gesturing to two old-fashioned wooden porch chairs. "I have no air conditioning inside." She smiled, her large dark eyes fixed on him with greater interest than was implied by the casual manner in which she spoke.
"That's fine," Haydon said, waiting for her to sit down first. "I was admiring your bromeliads."
"They remind me of home," she said, gathering her dress as she chose the nearest chair. "To be alive is to be colorful. They know no other way." She wore no makeup, but her coloring was elegant, with the subtle variety of shading that he often saw in the cinnamon complexions of Latin women.
"They remind you of Jalisco?"
"No, not Jalisco. The home of my girlhood, Acala in Chiapas, near the Grijalva River. They grow wild there."
They sat for a moment in the bruised lavender light that preceded dusk, in that hour of day during Houston summers when it seemed as if time had ceased, and night would be held forever in abeyance.
"You want to talk about the tecos ." She spoke with the unflinching directness of one who had decided not to be intimidated by misfortune.
"That's right," he said.
"He told you how I know them?" she asked, referring to Garner.
"Only that there had been a personal tragedy."
" 'A personal tragedy.' " She repeated the phrase as if it were a reference to someone else. "How much do you know about them?"
She listened quietly as he told her. She didn't look at him as he talked, but stared straight ahead almost as if she were trying to ignore him, or what he was saying.
When he finished she said, "I saw the news last night and tonight, about the attack on the limousine. This is what you are investigating?"
"Yes."
Laying her head against the white boards that formed the high back of the old chair, she gazed out to the darkening courtyard. She seemed to be trying to calm the noticeable rise and fall of her breasts, a sign of emotion she apparently could not control as easily as the placid expression on her face.
Using the thumb and middle finger of her right hand like a comb, she ran her hand from her brow to the back of her head, clearing the wandering strands away from her dark eyes. She said something to herself in Spanish, and then, "What do you want from me?"
"Anything you can tell me about the tecos."
"They are madness," she said. "Madness. That is what you should know first of all. They are blind in one side of their brain, and in the other side they have a fire. God's favorite sons, defenders of all that is right and holy." She looked at Haydon. "Do you know... God could save His world immeasurable agony if He would allow all His favorite sons to be stillborn. Then the rest of us, the less loved, would not have to cry so much for mercy in this life, as well a
s in the next.
"Mr. Garner told me the policeman who was killed last night was your good friend. I am sorry for you. It is the only reason I agreed to talk to you. I don't know your heart, Mr. Haydon, but I hope you are a man capable of hating. If you had not had . . .'a personal tragedy,' I would not have seen you. I do not want to be around dispassion. If you hate, even in a small way, I want to help you. Perhaps you will learn to have a great hate, as I have."
She turned away, swallowed, and ran her tongue lightly over her lips as she stared at her lap. Then she looked up again, in control, and said, "If you think you are dealing with the tecos , then you will be dealing with a particular element of the tecos. Los tecos de choque, the shock troops, the truly secret part of the Brigade.
"The owl was chosen as a symbol of the Anticommunist Brigade of the Autonomous University of Guadalajara because this bird's eyes are always open, vigilant. The 'anticommunist bastion in Mexico,' they call themselves. Their detractors interpret that symbol quite differently. They say it was chosen because they do their filthy work under cover of darkness."
She shrugged, and shook her head wearily. "The simple fact is, they are the death squads. Who do they kill? Communists. How do they know when someone is a communist? After all, the Communist Party is legal in Mexico, just as it is here. Do they kill those communists in the Communist Party? No. The tecos make their own list. And since the tecos are an extreme-right-wing entity ..." She left the sentence hanging.
"Can you tell me anything about their method of operation?" he asked.
"The attack on the limousine was typical," she said. "Mexicans, all Latin American killers, have always favored the gun. The terrorists in the Middle East have been using bombs for over a decade, but the Latin Americans? No, for them it is still the guns. And they like the motorcycle. Aside from its obvious advantages of mobility, it suits the image of machismo. Cowboys. The bombs are too . . . impersonal. Latins like to be personally involved with the people they kill. It's more visceral. Mario a manol "But that could be changing," she added. "In March two Chilean government security men were killed by a bomb in a hotel room in Conception. They were lured to it by an illegal radio broadcast. In June a car bomb exploded outside the presidential palace in Lima. It was attributed to the Shining Path group of leftists. I think there will be more and more of this kind of thing, the bomb."
Spiral Page 15
