“Gotcha, you sick freak,” I whispered.
I had no idea how right—and wrong—I was.
I would have loved to see Gustavo Escobar’s face when he found my note on his windshield, but I lacked equipment and prep time for that. Instead, I parked half a block down the quiet residential street outside the gate to wait for the end of the shoot.
After an hour of waiting, I was climbing out of my skin. Dad had always come home in a bad mood when he had to spend long hours on surveillance, and I understood why. At least fifteen cars streamed out before Escobar’s. I was wondering if he’d decided to ditch the Hummer when it came racing around the corner, turning toward the stop sign with a screech of brakes. I’d kept my infrared binoculars trained on the gate, but he’d left so fast that I’d missed the driver’s face. Was it a decoy, or was it Escobar himself?
Cursing to myself, I followed the Hummer.
At the stop sign, I got my positive ID. I could tell that Esocbar was driving the car by the shape of his head, but he wasn’t alone. Louise Cannon was sitting beside him, talking in an animated way. Escobar kept his eyes straight ahead. Had he shared the note with her? If so, it wasn’t likely he was the killer.
“He’s out,” I said after I got Dad on the phone. “Heading for the causeway.”
“Remember—two or three car lengths,” Dad said. “Don’t get antsy.”
Dad sounded more alert than he had in months. Gleeful, really. He’d given me a lecture on exercising caution, but he loved the chase as much as I did. Maybe more. He knew I’d had surveillance training, but he couldn’t help acting like my CO.
“Yessir,” I said, just to give him the thrill. “I’ve got him.”
Because there was so little traffic, I stayed far behind him. Star Island is tiny, so Escobar only had to turn twice before he reached the guard gate leading to the MacArthur Causeway. We were all familiar faces by now, so the guard waved us past, Escobar first and then me a safe distance later. On the causeway over Biscayne Bay, I drifted back eight or ten car lengths.
I expected Escobar to keep driving east toward the hotel-laden shoreline, maybe even to the Fontainebleau, but instead, he turned north on Alton Road, away from the tourist district, into a neighborhood of modest homes under canopies of coconut palms and shady ficus trees. Six-foot bougainvillea hedges flamed in hot pink and orange under the streetlamps, both street décor and privacy fencing. The quiet area nudged a memory free: I’d heard that reclusive novelist Thomas Harris had a house somewhere on Miami Beach, a thought that brought unwelcome visions of Hannibal Lecter from The Silence of the Lambs.
Escobar stopped in front of a gated home slightly bigger than the others, set back from the street, and I realized it was probably a bed-and-breakfast. Orange solar lamps lit up the coral rock walls and terracotta roof tiles wrapped in tropical plants. Was this where Escobar was living during the shoot? I pulled over to the side of the road and turned off my headlights, watching through my binoculars.
Neither of them climbed out of the Hummer right away. Cannon was still talking to Escobar, and she seemed upset. Finally, he leaned over and kissed her lips. It was a quick kiss, maybe only a friendly good-bye, but my instincts voted otherwise. Finally, Cannon got out of the vehicle, fishing for her gate key in her purse. Escobar idled in the driveway while she let herself into the yard and waved good-bye.
Even once Cannon was gone, Escobar didn’t move. He sat in his car, head bent down. He was probably reading my note, I guessed. Had I given him something to think about? I hoped so. Escobar made a sudden movement that looked as if he was pounding his palm against his dashboard, and I thought I could hear him shout a single word even from a block down the street: “Mierda!”
Gustavo Escobar was not a happy man.
“That’s right, asshole,” I murmured. “You are in deep shit.”
“What?” Dad’s voice said in my ear.
I’d forgotten that I still had my father on my cell phone. The Hummer suddenly lurched away from the curb, racing down the street, turning east. It was nine thirty.
“With any luck, we’re about to have company,” I said.
DO YOU THINK you frighten me, pinga?” the killer said to the empty air. “Am I too stupid to see through your games?”
The familiar compulsion seized his body, every nerve and sinew itching as the moonlit night called to him, inviting him to dream. But he could not. Not now. The infestation of cheap grillas selling their diseases and perfumed lies would have to wait until his business was concluded with Mr. Vandamm.
The killer chuckled to himself. Didn’t this fool know that he’d specialized in Hitchcock at Tisch, that he’d memorized every frame of North by Northwest? That, in fact, Hitchcock’s sequence with the crop duster had deeply influenced his decision to use a prop plane instead of a raft for the escape at the end of Nuestro Tío Fidel?
Maybe he did know, but did he know the rest? He couldn’t, or he would not dare toy with him.
He couldn’t know that Papi had fought at Fidel’s side in Santiago de Cuba in 1953, his gun thundering during the assault on Moncada Barracks. While others were only fantasizing about la revolución, his father had helped plant the seeds. And Papi had survived Fidel’s betrayal and five endless years in his hellhole of a prison cell, hungry and sick, choosing to go naked rather than wear the blue uniform of a common criminal.
His father’s courage lived in his name. He would not cower. He would not beg and offer to pay for silence. Like his father, he would fight.
Like his father, he also was not perfect. No man could grow up perfect in an imperfect world. Papi had returned from prison a changed man—quick to strike him and even his sister with a broom handle because he was so full of rage. He had not protected his frail son from neighborhood bullies, boys and girls alike, who beat him black and blue, calling his father a traitor and trash, escoria. He had not kept him and his sister away from his perverted chulo uncle, whose lessons were never gentle.
And Papi had not stood up to the hit squad that had stormed their house in the middle of the night, thrown him up against the wall, and shot him in the forehead. With only a few words, a few lies, Papi could have saved his own life, but he had been too stubborn to lie about his allegiances, even to spare his family from trauma. Even to spare his children the sight of his brain matter painting the living-room wall.
No, Papi had not been perfect, either in life or in death.
And his son had inherited imperfect traits. Self-indulgence, for one, as his girlfriend forever reminded him. He had been too arrogant and sloppy, and now he had brought himself a problem. He had invited his problem to his doorstep.
But every problem had a solution. Mami had taught him that. Mami’s fist in the air as she sank into the ocean’s embrace, her brave sacrifice, had taught him everything he needed to know to survive in a new land, a new life. As a new man.
“You think you frighten me?” he said. “You’re nothing to me.”
The killer’s skin tightened across his face and chest, urging him to hunt again. The ocean waited. But he must postpone his duty and do away with the nuisance actor.
Unavoidable destiny had brought them together, not just his own act of hubris in seeking the actor out. After all, the actor’s daughter looked just like Rosa—and behaved like Rosa, polluting the night with her empty beauty, a mockery of purity. He had never known that the actor had a daughter until he was introduced on the set.
Wasn’t it destiny, then? How could Chela be a coincidence?
But he would not be lured into a simpleton’s trap. He would need patience. Luckily, he knew the Fontainebleau and its perimeter well. He could call his boatman, who did as he was told without asking questions. He would need access to the hotel room. He would need a primary plan, a secondary plan, and an emergency plan.
So much to think about, so much to ponder.
But solving puzzles was his life’s calling. He was a director, after all.
Escobar secured h
is own key for Phillip Vandamm’s room. He had the good fortune of reaching a young actor on the hospitality staff who had scored him coke during the Nuestro Tío Fidel shoot. Good Colombian was hard to find, and the coke’s purity was so distracting that Escobar was glad he did not have daily access. Roland mentioned that a key was already set aside in his name for that very room, which was unfortunate for him—if Escobar was able to carry out his plan, his name was already waiting for the police. But since he would never claim the key, he should have a degree of plausible deniability. Roland presented him with a card key that a careless housekeeper might have dropped—and a tiny vial of white powder, for old time’s sake.
He would celebrate later. First, work.
As he did when he was directing, Escobar mulled over the actor’s motivations. What was his end game? Did he truly expect to blackmail him, as he’d implied? Wouldn’t he expect Escobar, a dangerous “predator,” to come prepared?
Roland had told him that the man calling himself Vandamm had reserved the room earlier that evening, so his plan might have been a hasty one. If the actor was expecting Escobar to come to his room early in the morning, he might spend the night there. Escobar would have a great advantage if he surprised him. The ideal arrival time would be in the dead of night.
So instead of trolling for the filthy fallen, Escobar drove his Hummer aimlessly through Miami’s streets to exhaust anyone who might be tailing him. He toured the glowing high-rises on Brickell, the astonishing murals in the Design District, wooded Old Cutler Road. Hour by hour, he drove, only stopping for gas. When he was bored, he imagined the urgent bubbles rising in the water from Maria’s last breath.
But the memory had less and less power to transport and satisfy him. He had grown greedy in Miami. The pressures of the new film had awakened a demanding appetite, a need for more constant hunting. Memories no longer nourished him. He cursed the actor for interrupting his evening’s plans. He was glad he did not see the night women strolling the streets, or he might not have been able to maintain his discipline.
At 2:00 A.M., Escobar finally made his way back toward South Beach.
It was nearly three by the time he walked to the lobby of the Fontainebleau from the public parking lot six blocks south. The lobby, mostly deserted, reminded him of an ancient royal catacomb, each room above him a gilded tomb.
A security guard he did not know glanced at him curiously as he walked toward the elevators, but Escobar held up his key to put him at ease. Would the rest be so easy? All of the elevators except one were closed for repairs, but the doors opened for him right away.
When the elevator deposited him on the tenth floor, Escobar realized that his heartbeat was racing in a nervous frenzy. Fantástico. When was the last time he had been truly nervous? Nervousness sharpened him, as it had on the raft and in those first bewildering days when a simple escalator had the power to stupefy him, a majestic mechanical beast with moving teeth.
Escobar listened at the door but heard nothing. No light streamed beneath the door. If the actor was in the room, he was probably sleeping.
Escobar never prayed since Mami’s death, but he wished himself luck as he quietly inserted the key card in the lock and swiped it, igniting the desired green pinprick of light. The click when he opened the door was far too loud, but nothing in the room stirred, so Escobar breathed and let himself in.
His mother used to say he had the vision of a cat, and maybe she was right: Escobar could see the room clearly in the moonlight. Could see his face. The actor was in the queen-sized bed with his face toward the door, tucked beneath his blankets in a sleep of the dead.
Escobar’s breath went shallow in his throat. For a short instant, he pondered the act he was about to commit, surprised by his hesitation. He had no fear of security cameras, because he was wearing the wig and disguise he usually reserved for hunting. What, then? What did he care about the life of a talentless actor?
The actor was no different from the street women, just another whore who had shamed himself for pay. He had earned his death sentence.
Escobar brought out the knife from the sheath on his belt. The nine-inch knife had a beautiful mother-of-pearl handle, but he had only used it once on his hunt, in Mexico, when he had found himself without a proper pool of water. At the time, he had judged the knife as too messy, with none of the gratification provided by drowning. But it would have to do.
Walking lightly, he approached the bed . . . and plunged. The knife slipped into the side of the actor’s neck, where it would slice straight through his carotid artery and trachea—
But something was wrong. The actor’s flesh offered little resistance, as if he were stuffed with cotton. Standing over the bed, Escobar saw the lie—the actor’s head was one of the special-effects dummies. Escobar flung away the blanket and found a crude collection of pillows underneath. The phony head dropped away, the knife falling with it to the floor. He had been fooled by his own creation!
Suddenly, a door beside the bed flew open from an adjoining room, and a too-bright light assaulted his eyes.
“Don’t move,” a voice commanded. “Or I will shoot you dead.”
The voice was low to the ground. Not the actor—someone else.
Escobar blinked to see past the powerful flashlight beam, and he made out a man sitting in a wheelchair. He saw the metallic gleam of a gun before he heard the chambered round.
“Don’t test me, son,” the voice said. “This bullet can run faster’n either one of us.”
Was this a bad dream? Escobar felt dizzy. What was happening?
“Who are you?” Escobar whispered.
“Keep your mouth shut,” the old man in the wheelchair said, his voice full of practiced command. Although he had never felt such a strong impulse to run, Escobar’s limbs were rooted. Then the man’s voice changed slightly, as if he were speaking to someone else. “Ten? I’ve got ’im.”
Escobar heard a tiny voice, barely within his hearing, like a mosquito, or like the unlucky scientist at the end of The Fly, trapped in a spider’s web. From a cell phone’s ear bud.
“Hold tight, Dad,” the tiny voice said. “Almost there!”
The man in the wheelchair was the actor’s father.
“Be careful, abuelo,” Escobar said in a soothing tone. He tested a step toward the door.
“You be careful, shithead,” the old man said, raising the gun with a too-steady hand. “I just saw you try to kill my son. My warning shot’s gonna be right between your eyes.”
Escobar didn’t doubt the old man’s resolve. The wonder was that he hadn’t fired already.
Es un arroz con mango, as Mami would have said. It was rice with mango, a complicated thing.
His first plan had failed.
On to the next.
I WAS SWEARING as I ran up the stairs.
Why hadn’t Dad stuck to the plan? His job had been to monitor the video feed from the adjoining room and keep a record of Escobar’s arrival. We had been in constant communication since Escobar first began his drive toward South Beach, when I was almost sure I’d roused Dad from sleep with my warning call. Dad knew Escobar’s every movement, so he had been ready.
But I wasn’t. In the hotel lobby, I’d caught bad luck.
I couldn’t take Escobar’s elevator car with him, and the others were delayed for overnight servicing. I waited for the elevator to return after it reached the tenth floor, but after a brief stop, it kept going up instead of coming back down. The main building only had fifteen floors, so I decided to wait it out. But then the elevator car’s light got stuck on the fifteenth floor and seemed to stay forever. Somewhere above me, drunken revelers were deciding my future.
I started swearing.
“He’s got a knife!” Dad whispered to me on his phone while I waited. He was so excited he sounded thirty years younger.
I ran for the stairs then. Escobar was already in my room, and Dad sounded as if he was enjoying himself too much, reliving a stakeout from his you
th.
“Just hold on,” I said while I ran. “Wait for me. You hear me?”
But Dad hadn’t waited. The next thing I’d heard was the commotion as he surprised Escobar in the hotel room. I braced for the sound of gunfire. My legs felt like jelly, not moving nearly fast enough. My heartbeat pounded my eardrums.
I’d known my luck was plummeting as soon as I got stuck in the lobby, a line of dominoes falling one by one. It would all go to hell somehow. I’d known it as soon as the elevator refused to come back.
Dad had thirty years of police experience before he retired, but he hadn’t been in the field for years. He’d seen combat in Vietnam, but he might have forgotten some of the lessons he learned. And Escobar was no ordinary perpetrator—he might as well be an illusionist.
I ran up the stairs two at a time, my mind racing with the dangers. “Don’t get too close to him,” I told Dad. “Make him show you his hands. He might have another weapon.”
“Show me your hands.” Dad’s voice came from my phone. Talking to Escobar.
I wished I hadn’t given Dad the .22 I’d swiped from Raphael. I should have kept it. The gun had made Dad too bold, and now I didn’t have one.
Eighth floor. Ninth floor. I panted, flinging myself up the stairs as fast as I could go.
“You’ll shoot me in cold blood, abuelo?” I heard Escobar say faintly.
“Tell him to shut up!” I shouted to Dad. “Get him on the floor with his hands behind his back. I’m almost there!”
A beat later, I heard Dad repeat my instructions.
Tenth floor. I threw the door open and raced down the carpeted hallway, perspiration stinging my eyes. I pulled my card key out of my back pocket. One ear bud fell free, but I was close enough to see the room, so I let it go.
In slow motion, I swiped the card to let myself into the room. The light showed red. The door was still locked. Once it was on my trail, bad luck never let me go.
I swiped the card again, and this time the light was green.
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