Inside Man

by Jeff Abbott

  “Zhanna? Did you hear me?”

  She looked at me again. Then she pushed the horrified, anxious expression off her face. A calmness returned. The change was startling. She’d slid her emotional mask back on. “What do you want?” She even managed, crazily, to sound a little bored.

  “Here’s the deal, Zhanna. The clients are never going to let you run the smuggling. Ever. Shooting the messenger in Puerto Rico only pissed them off. They’ve gone nuclear on you.”

  “I didn’t shoot her,” she said.

  But I kept going: “And I don’t think the rest of the family is going to react well to you having killed your mother. So. Here’s the offer. I can hide you where neither the clients nor the Varelas will ever find you. We’ll set you up someplace where you’re free from Kent and Galo and Rey. You tell me everything about the operation. What they’re smuggling, who they’re doing it for, why it’s so important.

  “That is my offer. If you don’t take it, it’s quite likely that the clients will crush you; Kent will leave you; the Varelas, the family who matters so much to you, even more than your own actual father, they’re going to shun you. You’re finished. So. One minute to decide.”

  She broke into laughter. “I’m not interested in your offer, Sam. You are a bad investment. And a terribly ineffective liar.” She shook the tea, cracked open the bottle.

  “I know about you and Galo,” I said. “I’ve seen you together.” I didn’t need to add that Sergei had confirmed it.

  Ten seconds ticked by. “Or. At the Corinthian Hotel. I saw you there,” she said.

  “It’s over, Zhanna,” I said. “Everything. It’s over.”

  “No it’s not,” she said. “I’m golden. The clients will have to accept me.” She took a big sip of the tea.

  “You heard it yourself,” I said. “They have a recording of you killing your mother.”

  “It’s a lie.” It was the item she was least worried about and I thought, She’s a monster. The kind clothed in human skin, masked by a lovely face and an engaging mind and a warm smile. But underneath that, darkness deeper than night.

  “You called her a traitor,” I said. “You said she betrayed Rey. And why would the clients have a tape of this? The one answer is that your mother was their informant.” I let the words hang in the air. She looked at a spot slightly above my left shoulder. “I think the clients keep a spy near this family if they can. To make sure the Varelas are holding up their end of the bargain, not losing their nerve, not wanting to stop the smuggling. It used to be your mother, now it’s someone else.” Ricky, I was sure, but I didn’t say. “And you found out your mom was spying on your stepfather. You could have warned her, let her run or even let her quit. Instead you killed her. You fixed the problem for your precious stepfather.”

  The warm smile glinted like a knife. “I’m pregnant, Sam.”

  I stared.

  “Don’t you want to be the first to congratulate me? No one will hurt me. I’ll run the smuggling.”

  “Is…is that what you and Galo argued about?”

  She ignored my question. She took another sip and coughed, made a face. “I can’t wait to have wine again.”

  I made my voice cruel. I wanted to break her; I wanted her to take my offer. “Only Rey considers you family. And even he’s using you. You’d take the fall if the smuggling ever got exposed. Not Galo. They don’t much love you, Zhanna. There’s no blood tie.”

  She ran a hand along her stomach and took another long drink. She recapped the bottle. “There will be.”

  So not Kent’s child. “How do you know it’s Galo’s?”

  “A woman knows.”

  She dropped the plastic bottle of herbal tea. It rolled to my feet and I picked it up and handed it back to her. “The Varelas all want to be free of you,” I said.

  “You…you are the worst liar I have ever laid eyes on,” she said. Her voice slurred a little.

  “Thirty seconds left on the offer.”

  She suddenly gasped for breath. “Morning sickness. My first time, thanks to you stressing me out.”

  “Stop faking,” I said. It was just like her to play on sympathies rather than face the truth. She killed her own mother, I told myself. She has to see it’s over.

  And it was over. She fell off the stool, eyes rolling into whites. I caught her as she tumbled across the carpet. She convulsed, violently, in my arms.

  “Zhanna! Zhanna!”

  The convulsions worsened. Her eyes met mine, shocked, afraid. Her hands closed on mine. Then her eyes widened and the final choking convulsion took her.

  I felt for her heart. Booming like it would explode. Then it went still in her warm chest. “Zhanna!” I called her name. Again and again.

  She was dead.

  I glanced at the bottle of herbal tea. Poisoned. Done in like her own mother.

  And you touched the bottle.

  I wiped the bottle clean. I pulled the mangled MP3 player from the sink. I put it in my pocket. I searched the apartment for any clue as to who the clients were, but this place was an escape, a retreat from the pressures of the Varela world. I found nothing—no laptop, no files, nothing.

  I found a pregnancy test in the bottom of the trash.

  But…why poison her if they were blackmailing her to resign? Insurance? Or…the clients hadn’t done this. Someone else had planted the poisoned tea.

  Who knew about this place? Galo and Ricky. Who else?

  I could run, I thought. Leave behind the recording, call the Varelas. Maybe Zhanna would look like a suicide. But then I wouldn’t have the clients, and I was damned if I’d just do their bidding, the murderers who’d killed Steve. I wanted them put down, broken, out of business.

  There comes a moment, the burnt man told me. There comes a moment you stick in the knife. And then he pointed to his ravaged face and said, “I missed my moment. I waited. Don’t wait.”

  I wiped my prints from everything I’d touched and went downstairs to drive to the Varelas’.

  51

  THE GUARD WAVED me through, and Galo and Ricky stood in the driveway. My heart nearly stopped. If Ricky had seen me…he’d probably shoot me on sight. But as I got out of the car, he just gave me his usual unfriendly stare. I wondered whether he still smelled like hospital laundry.

  “You’re supposed to be in New York,” Galo said. “Where’s Cori?”

  “She’s safe,” I said. “I got a visit last night. From the clients.”

  They both stared at me, and it took all my self-control not to glance at Ricky, measure his reaction. I was playing my part, being the messenger for his bosses. “I need to speak privately to you and Kent. Now. Is he here?”

  Galo nodded. “None of us went into the office today, we’re all working from home. Ricky, stay here.” Ricky frowned but obeyed. I’m sure he knew I’d been grabbed and he wanted to be sure I followed my orders from his masters.

  I followed Galo to the third house on the cul-de-sac—a massive waterfront affair, with a pier with two speedboats attached and a small fishing boat.

  Kent was in the large living room, sitting in a large plush chair, tapping on a Braille keyboard attached to a laptop. I walked toward him and he said, “Sam, Galo,” at the same time I announced myself to him.

  “My walk or my smell?” I asked.

  “Your walk,” he said. “You’re freakishly light-footed. Galo, Rey, and Zhanna are all stompers. Why are you here?”

  I sat across from him. “You can’t see the bruises on my face, but I got a visit. The clients who will not accept Zhanna running the smuggling.”

  Kent closed the laptop, put his hands at his side in the chair.

  “And since the last messenger about firing Zhanna got shot, they decided this hireling who’s hanging out with Cori and charged with keeping her out of danger…they decided I would be a good messenger now. So. They gave me a recording of Zhanna forcing her mother to take an overdose. I was supposed to play it for Zhanna to get her to step aside. I t
ook it to her.”

  Kent got up, went to the bar, felt for a bottle, measured out a drink. Galo didn’t move.

  “And what did she say?” Kent asked.

  “I’ll tell you what she’s decided to do. Where she’s decided to go. I think you both want to know that.” I let that threat hang in the air for a few moments. “But I want to know who these clients are. I want to know who is after me. No more dodging it.”

  I waited for Kent or Galo to argue or object to this demand and instead Kent just calmly said, “This is fascinating, but I certainly don’t believe Zhanna was ever capable of hurting her mother. I don’t like to comment until I’ve heard the whole story. Go on.”

  “Really,” I said, “the bigger question is who has been bugging rooms in the Varela house from so many years ago, and keeping the recordings.”

  “Oh my God, oh my God,” Galo said.

  “That is a mystery,” Kent said.

  “The clients? Or a member of the family?”

  Kent considered. “God, I hope not.”

  “So this is what I think. I think Zhanna’s mother was an informant for the clients. She activated the taping. She could do that whenever Rey or anyone else with critical information she needed to know was there in the room with her. And maybe she was afraid of her daughter when Zhanna caught her spying. She didn’t have the loyalty of her own child.”

  The silence was awkward.

  “I suppose because she was, legally, a child, and accusing her would reveal they knew what was going on in this house—they said nothing. Or maybe there was already another spy inside they didn’t want to risk. Someone had to hand them the recording. And they’ve kept it for all these years, until they needed it.”

  A thoughtful frown crossed Kent’s face. He opened a drawer and groped for an item inside, then stopped. Galo rubbed his face with his fingertips, anxious, upset.

  “Let’s say she did this,” Galo said. “Then the clients win. She can’t run it.”

  I tossed the MP3 player onto the coffee table.

  “What happened to it?” Galo said. “It’s all chewed up.”

  “Zhanna panicked and tried to destroy it. I think maybe she’s not so confident in your loyalty as you think,” I said. “But the problem is that you have another informant already here.”

  “Who?” Galo said.

  “Ricky. I think he shot the woman in Puerto Rico. I think he has been spying on you for the clients. Maybe for a long time.”

  “Can you prove it?” Kent asked.

  “Tell me who the clients are, and I will.”

  Kent said, “Galo, perhaps it would be useful if you brought Ricky here.”

  “Make sure he’s unarmed,” I said.

  Galo looked at us both, then left.

  “So Ricky shot the woman who worked for the clients, same as him. That makes no sense, Sam,” Kent said, almost gently.

  I opened my mouth then closed it. I thought of the scene in the plaza: Marianne walking toward the three men, the stone fortress, the tourists in their little clumps, Kent’s cane tapping, going still, then waving slightly, the tour guides in hoop skirts, flashing their fans in their secret language…

  Then I realized it, with a jolt along my spine.

  I said, “Ricky shot her because you signaled him to do so. With your cane.” I remembered. Taps, shakes. It struck me as odd that he was moving his cane during the conversation. He’d spent enough time in Puerto Rico to borrow the idea from the tour guides, who showed how the ladies once used their fans to send secret messages to their lovers. “Why did you…?”

  “Because it would mean the end of the negotiations. The end of the chance of Zhanna running the smuggling,” he said. “Really, I thought you were smarter. You’re not.”

  And he was right.

  Because no one expects to get shot by a blind man.

  He raised the silencer-capped Glock up from the open drawer and with a steady hand he fired. I was five feet away. I vaulted over the sofa and he tracked the noise of my movement, my breath, the murmur of my palms touching the couch’s fabric, the scratch of my shoe against the floor as I landed. I felt a bullet tear through my jacket, burning along the skin.

  He fired again, the bullet hissing past my head, heating my ear. And again and again, firing steadily so I couldn’t rush him without him scoring a lucky hit. I could only run away.

  Splinters from a bullet hitting the edge of a doorway shot into my face. I stumbled, felt blood on my forehead. I ran into the dining room. And through the window I saw Ricky and Galo, running toward the house, Ricky holding a gun. Galo with a phone pressed to his ear, screaming Zhanna’s name, for her to answer her phone.

  No one was interested in what I had to say anymore.

  I hit the back door. Ran out onto a wide yard, facing the bay. Kent couldn’t see me, but he could guess where I went and within a minute or two they’d be on the wide lawn searching for me.

  The Varela boats were on a private pier. I picked the smaller speedboat and slipped the ropes. I cracked open the ignition and hotwired it, staying low, keeping hidden.

  I heard Ricky shouting. They wouldn’t want to shoot, out here where the respectable folks would call the nice guard up at the gatehouse and report gunshots. It might buy me precious seconds.

  The boat roared into life and I eased it back from the pier. Faster than I should have, I heard a tearing scrape along the boat’s side. Then I sensed movement and glanced up. Ricky leapt from the pier to land in the boat, swinging the gun toward me.

  I slammed a hand into his chin, an uppercut, and his feet lifted off the deck. We were clear of the pier but just backing into the bay. He fell, blood gushing from his lip, but he leveled a kick at my groin. He caught me on the hip and I fell, hitting the steering wheel for the boat, and we spun out, the prow now facing the water. He swung the gun toward me and we fought for it. I grabbed his hand, powering his aim toward the deck. He tried to head-butt me but he didn’t commit and instead slammed my shoulder: but it was the shoulder that had been cut in Puerto Rico. Agony surged along my skin, but I pushed it aside and focused on the gun. He shoved me into the throttle as we grappled, and the boat revved ahead at full speed, the hotwire having bypassed the safety features. The boat veered into the bay, the throttle on full.

  Ricky was strong. He was trying to aim the gun at my foot. I moved it and the gun fired, the bullet punching into the deck. Hopefully not through it. I hammered an elbow into Ricky’s gut, got a moment of breathing room.

  “Let it go, Ricky. I’ll hide you like I can hide Zhanna. Galo will kill you for working for the clients.”

  He didn’t answer, intent on fighting me. He broke free, still holding the gun, and in the background I heard the blast of a warning horn from another boat and hoped we weren’t dashing into someone else’s path. Our boat barreled through a wake, narrowly missing another speedboat—a woman screaming, the wake launching us into the air. Both my feet and Ricky’s feet left the deck. I couldn’t tell if we were taking on water or not; the world was a whirl between bay and sky and the fury in Ricky’s face. I tried not to think that maybe he’d killed four people who had teased him as a kid. That kind of rage, that kind of anger, he wouldn’t hesitate to murder me. There would be no deals, no surrender.

  I heard the drone of another speedboat approaching but Ricky slammed us both back to the deck. Ricky hooked his fingers toward my eyes. I grabbed one of his fingers, twisted it back, broke it, and he howled.

  Where was the gun? I saw it sliding down into the deck well and scrambled toward it. Then he was on top of me trying to bite my ear, his teeth closing more on my hair. I kicked him away and grabbed for the gun. Found a solid grip on it and then he looped the rope around my throat.

  The rope was bright yellow; he’d grabbed it as the next weapon. He yanked me back, fueled by adrenaline. The rope scored my throat. I fired the gun downward and hit his foot, the easiest target, and he screamed again and we struggled. He tightened the rope and I m
ade a choice of survival: I inched one finger, barely, under the rope to keep him from cutting off my air.

  He yanked me, violently, toward the edge of the boat. I dropped the gun. We hit something else, I never knew what, and he slipped his grip on the rope. I forced my whole hand under the rope around my neck, then with my free hand lassoed another length of it around Ricky’s throat. We were trying to strangle each other. The contest would be won by whoever didn’t pass out first. I didn’t like my odds. I tried to tighten the rope, but he pulled back from me in a panic and we both went over the edge, the rope binding us together.

  The water was cold and yanked us along, me still gripping the noose around my neck, which kept me from total strangulation. Ricky flapped his hands at me but then I saw his eyes, wide and bulging in the froth of the water. He was dead, his neck snapped by the rope.

  With one hand I was clenching the rope and fighting to free myself. The boat was moving too fast and dragging me along. I summoned all my strength and forced the noose wider and ducked my head out, every muscle in my body screaming. Free. The boat and Ricky tore away from me, heading out toward the open bay.

  I had no flotation device, and exhaustion poured through me. I heard an approaching boat and turned. Galo and Kent and another guard came up in the second Varela boat behind me.

  The guard reached out and pulled me up onto the deck.

  “Don’t hurt him!” Galo yelled. “Let him explain, let me talk to him…”

  Then Kent knelt down toward me and his hand found my throat. He said, “Oh, what are we going to do with you, Sam?” And the bright Miami sun went dark.

  52

  I AWOKE IN darkness and for the first few moments I thought, I’m dead.

  I closed and opened my eyes repeatedly and the darkness held firm. No hint of light. It was all-consuming. I pulled in breath and my chest was tight; the air smelled of metal. I tried to pull up my arms and I could not. My legs—the same. I could not move.

  Panic seized me—blind, surging terror: I’m paralyzed and the Varelas buried me alive. I started thinking of how slow death would be. Days, maybe, in this eternal blackness. It took every fiber of my being not to scream my throat raw.