He pushed out the driver’s-side door and made his way up the driveway to the side of the house, stepping over a coiled hose to get to the cedar gate. He unlatched the gate and stepped into the backyard, which was sheeted with brownish grass.
He walked to the northeast corner, where a young ironwood had recently been planted. The dirt around it was covered in mulch and the mulch framed in by a circle of stones. One of those stones, unlike the others, was polished obsidian. He sat on his haunches, picked up the obsidian, and set it to the side. Beneath it lay a small square of plywood, which he also lifted and set aside. Under the plywood was a hole, one foot square, maybe two and a half feet deep, and lined with sheet metal to keep it from falling in on itself.
Inside the hole, shoved in sideways, were two cash boxes.
George reached inside and pulled them out. Set them down side by side on the grass. Flipped them open.
The one on the left was packed with banded stacks of hundred-dollar bills. The one on the right had enough space for maybe two more stacks before it too, was full. Each stack held ten thousand dollars.
George dumped the cash boxes into the grass, and after counting them, put the stacks of money back inside. There were twenty-two of them, which translated to two hundred and twenty thousand dollars. For a moment—for no more than ten seconds—George thought about keeping the money. He was a good person and this was dirty money, but dirty money spent just as well as clean money, and sometimes it was much easier to come by.
But in the end he knew he couldn’t keep it.
He closed the cash boxes, latched them, and with one in each hand, got to his feet and walked back to his car.
* * *
He arrived in La Paz about ten minutes to seven, still thinking he had enough time to get to work if he made this quick. He parked his car on the street, and with one banded bundle of cash tucked into the inside pocket of his suit coat, strode toward the apartment building Rocha’s employees lived in.
He walked to apartment 223, knocked on the door, and stood there waiting. He was about to knock a second time when he heard the dead bolt retract. The door swung open, revealing Diego Blanco’s oldest daughter.
The girl was sixteen years old and very pretty. She had short black hair and wore a pair of black tights, a red skirt he’d be upset to see Meghan wearing, and a black T-shirt.
“My dad isn’t here,” she said in Spanish.
“I’m not looking for your dad,” he said in very poor Spanish. “Do you speak English?”
“Yeah—who are looking for?”
“Are you Sophia?”
The girl took a step back. “Who are you?”
“That’s not important.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to talk to you, but before I can, I need to know you can keep a secret.”
“If you’re some kind of pervert, I swear to God—”
“I’m not. I have a daughter not much younger than you. This isn’t about anything like that. Can you keep a secret? I’m serious.”
The girl nodded.
“Your dad got himself into a little trouble. He doesn’t want anyone to know about it, especially Rocha, but he wants to make sure you and your sisters are okay. He asked me to bring you some money.” George reached into his pocket and pulled out the stack. “He said this should be more than enough for you and your sisters to take care of yourselves while he’s away. It’s ten thousand American dollars. But if he has to stay away longer than expected, he’ll get you more. You have to be the grown-up right now. Can you do that?”
The girl nodded.
“Good.” George held the money out and she took it. “Your dad is counting on you.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.” George turned around and walked back to his car.
He wasn’t sure how he felt about lying to the girl, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about putting so much responsibility on her shoulders—she was only a child and now expected to take care of other children—but he didn’t see an alternative.
He unlocked his car, got in, and started the engine.
32
Gael Morales stepped out of his apartment in time to see an ingot silver Ford Taurus pulling away from the curb, and while he knew George Rankin had one in the same color, he couldn’t see who might be behind the wheel. He looked right and saw Sophia, Diego’s oldest daughter, standing in her front door, looking out at the street.
She glanced toward him and raised a hand. He nodded. She stepped back into the apartment and swung the door closed. It latched with a click.
Gael walked down the concrete steps and out to the street where his Honda was parked. He put on his helmet and kicked the motorcycle to life. Toed it into first, throttled out into the street, and made his way east, toward Rocha’s estate.
The sun was floating over the horizon, a bright hole-punch in the sky, and he had to squint to see as he rode toward it. When he reached the estate, he parked his bike, walked up to the front door, past two armed guards, and made his way inside. His stomach was a knot.
Rocha didn’t know what he was, not yet, but the man wasn’t stupid, and things had already started to go bad. Gael wasn’t certain—he didn’t know what Rocha knew—but he might have enough pieces that, if he decided to put them together, he’d be able to figure out Gael Morales wasn’t who he said he was.
Which meant every day was dangerous.
Rocha was sitting on the couch in a pair of boxer briefs and a terry cloth bathrobe, his feet kicked up on the coffee table, holding a mug of coffee in his hand and watching the morning news. He glanced toward Gael as he took a sip.
“Have you seen Diego?”
“Today?”
“Of course today.”
“No.”
“He’s supposed to be here.”
“I haven’t seen him.”
“So you said. Did he talk to you about the pickup?”
Gael shook his head.
“Motherfucker. He was supposed to talk to you about a job.”
“What kind of job?”
“If he doesn’t show up in the next fifteen minutes, I’ll talk to you about it. You’ll have to do it alone. In the meantime go to the kitchen and have a cup of coffee. I need to be left alone.”
Gael nodded and walked to the kitchen. He poured himself a cup of coffee and stood by the counter sipping it, waiting for Diego to arrive while knowing Diego wouldn’t arrive.
The coffee was good.
* * *
An hour later, Gael was pulling Rocha’s BMW into an alleyway behind a warehouse in Juarez, a Remington 1911 sitting on the passenger seat beside him. He was here to pick up heroin, heroin put into condoms that Danielle and Monica would swallow. Danielle would then fly to Los Angeles and Monica to Chicago. What made this dangerous was the Juarez cartel. If they knew about this shipment—and it had passed through enough hands that someone might have talked—they might take this opportunity to steal it. It’d happened before. Wait until the heroin is out of the warehouse and make your move. Shoot everyone you see, get the junk, and get the fuck out. Here’s a little taste of death, teach you to operate in our city.
No suspicious cars on the street, no one who might be checking out the place standing around suspiciously, but still: he was wary and his stomach was in a knot. He parked the car, grabbed the 1911, and pushed open the driver’s-side door.
As soon as he stepped into the morning sun, he tucked the Remington into his 527s and looked toward the warehouse.
It was a concrete structure with three loading docks in back, a rubber bumper bolted to the concrete in front of each, so that when trailers were backed up to them, no damage would be done either to the trailer or the concrete. The roll-up doors were all closed.
Rocha didn’t like drugs in cars with his name on the title—he tried to keep all illegal substances away from anything that could be connected to him as a person—but nobody seemed to know what had happened to either Diego Blanco or hi
s truck.
Gael knew, of course, but he wasn’t talking.
He was, however, thinking. The truck was parked in the department store lot. It was surrounded by other vehicles, which meant it might not be discovered for a while, but it would be discovered. The question was what would happen next. Gael didn’t know the answer to that question, but he disliked at least one of the possibilities. If not all of them.
He had to get rid of it. Tonight, after dark, he had to go to the department store, get into the truck, and drive it somewhere it wouldn’t be discovered. If it was found in town, Rocha would know something had happened to Diego. He’d know it was a possibility, at the very least, and that was troublesome enough. Rocha would start asking questions and some of the answers could get Gael killed.
Could get Gael Castillo Jimenez killed. But he wasn’t Gael Castillo Jimenez today. He was Gael Morales, and he had a heroin shipment to pick up.
He walked to the warehouse, up three concrete steps, and knocked on a brown-painted metal door just to the right of the loading docks. The dead bolt retracted. The door swung open. Standing on the other side was a Mexican man of about forty-five years old, a few inches shorter than Gael, Glasgow smile etched up both cheeks.
“I’m here for the shipment,” Gael said in Spanish.
The man nodded him into the warehouse, closed and locked the door behind him, and started walking away.
Gael followed.
* * *
Next time Gael got in behind the wheel, he had a cardboard box on the passenger floorboard with fifty condoms in it, twenty-five for each of the women traveling tomorrow. Each condom held twenty-five grams of heroin at a wholesale value of a hundred and twenty dollars per gram, meaning each woman would be traveling with about seventy-five thousand dollars’ worth of junk in her stomach. If even one of those twenty-five condoms broke, someone was dead. On the other hand, Gael now had inside information—absolute proof—of Rocha’s international drug running. This was only a small part of his operation, but even this was enough to put him away for a very long time. Every day Gael might be in more danger, but every day he also got more evidence against Rocha. Soon it would be time to wrap up this case.
He started the car, shoved it into gear, and pulled out of the alleyway, making a left onto the sun-faded street.
* * *
The powder-blue Ford pickup was parked on the cobblestone driveway in front of the house. Gael saw it as he drove up toward the pissing fountain: a dinosaur of a vehicle, dented, battered, rust eating away at the front-left quarter panel. His heart pounded in his chest, and despite the BMW’s air conditioner blasting against him, sweated beaded on his forehead. His first thought, stupid though it might be, was that Diego had come back. His second thought, equally as panic-inducing but much more likely, was that Rocha had found the truck and knew that something had happened to Diego.
He could have done something about it last night. He’d had both the time and the opportunity to get rid of the truck, but he hadn’t thought to do it. It was an idiotic oversight, but also one that anybody could’ve made. He was juggling a dozen balls. That he’d dropped one was unsurprising. But that didn’t mean he’d forgive himself for it. He’d fucked up big and his fuck-up had the potential to have serious consequences.
The BMW came to a stop in the shade of the garage, and after shoving the transmission into park, killing the engine, and picking up the box of heroin, Gael stepped out of the vehicle.
He told himself the consequences wouldn’t be for him. They’d be for Gael Castillo Jimenez. He’d heard of the guy, of course, but his name was Gael Morales. Maybe distantly related to that other fellow, but so fucking what? They lived separate lives. Let Castillo Jimenez deal with the consequences of his own actions.
He inhaled, exhaled, and made his way into the house. Walked to the kitchen and set down the box. Turned around—and there was Alejandro Rocha, standing in the doorway.
“Diego finally showed up then. Where’d he say he was?”
“Diego’s not here.”
“Saw his truck out front.”
“The truck is here. Diego’s not.”
“I don’t understand.”
“When’s the last time you saw Diego, Gael?”
He tried to read Rocha’s expression but found he couldn’t. The face was expressionless, the eyes dull as unpolished stones. He might have been thinking anything.
“Yesterday—not long before I took the girls out, I guess.”
“You sure?” The tone suggesting that Rocha knew otherwise.
“Yeah, why?”
“Do you know where his truck was?”
“How would I know that?”
“Now isn’t the time to be a smart-ass. Do you know where his truck was?”
“No.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t see it yesterday.”
“Where was it?”
“Care to take a wild guess?”
Gael shook his head. “No point in it. I got no idea.”
“Why do I feel like you’re being less than honest with me?”
“I don’t know. I’ve got no reason to lie to you.”
“I’m not quite convinced that’s true. Do you know how long Diego’s worked for me?”
“No.”
“Twelve years. Do you know how long you’ve worked for me?”
“Six months.”
“That’s right. Six months. You don’t really know a person after six months, do you?”
“I guess it depends on the person and how much time you spend together.”
“No, it doesn’t. You can’t really know a person after six months. Most people present a simplified, shallow version of themselves, a version that’s easy to understand. It’s how we function in society. But everybody knows that a man’s public image—how he projects himself—is at best only a small part of him, the part that others might accept in a civil society. Leave out the instinctive racism. Leave out the rape fantasies. Leave out the violent urges and the complex feelings you have about yourself. People amongst other people are playing a role. If they’re honest people the role they’re playing is a part of who they are. If they’re dishonest, the character they present is an outright lie. Which is why people wait years to get married. People hide themselves, Gael. Some people hide themselves so well even they don’t know who they really are, but I don’t think you’re one of those. You strike me as being too self-aware for such obliviousness. But that doesn’t mean you haven’t hidden yourself from me. It doesn’t mean you didn’t hide yourself from Diego. Who are you?”
“Mr. Rocha, I swear to God, I have no idea what’s going on here. I don’t know what you’re talking about. But there’s been some kind of misunderstanding.”
“What’s going on here is we’re having a conversation. Is Diego still alive?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know where he is, I don’t know where you found his truck, I don’t know a fucking thing, so how could I know whether he’s alive or not?”
“His truck was in the department store parking lot.”
“Okay.”
“People say it’d been there since yesterday—and you were there yesterday.”
“But I had no idea it was there.”
“Danielle Preston told me a different story.”
“Danielle Preston’s a lying bitch.”
“Maybe,” Rocha said. “But I’m not convinced.” He reached forward, pulled the Remington from Gael’s belt, and pointed it at his face. “So convince me.”
33
Coop drove the armored truck while Pilar sat in the passenger seat beside him and Bogart, in back, looked through weapons and ammunition to see what they had available, duffel bag unzipped at his feet, the engine rumbling deep as they rolled along cracked asphalt. Coop looked in his side-view mirror to the rented Toyota, Normal at the wheel. The breakout had been Coop’s idea, and he still thought it was their only option—they couldn’t let James die—but a large part of him cou
ldn’t quite believe they were doing this. A large part of him still hadn’t processed what went down last night at the pawnshop, and now they were rolling toward something even more dangerous—much more dangerous—facing not one man, but at least four armed guards in towers and another half dozen in the yard.
The street ahead bent right. Coop turned the wheel and felt a throb of pain in his right pectoral muscle and shoulder as shotgun-damaged muscles worked. Pilar had pulled the pellets out last night with a tweezer—what pellets weren’t too deep to get to—and he’d cleaned and dressed the wounds. Didn’t think he’d have to be treated by a doctor—hoped not, as doctors were required to notify authorities of gunshot wounds—but for now it was uncomfortable.
They continued another five miles before Coop swerved off the asphalt and rolled through desert toward a large rock formation in the distance that jutted from the flat earth like some ancient culture’s church.
Normal followed in the Toyota, staying back a good distance to keep the thick cloud of dust kicked up by the armored truck off his windshield, weaving left and right around rocks and shrubs. The windshield wipers swept back and forth across the glass.
When they reached the rock formation, both vehicles came to a stop. They were about a half mile off the road.
Coop cracked his window and lit a cigarette. He glanced toward the side-view mirror. Normal stepped out of the Toyota, locked it, and shoved the key into his pocket. He limped toward the back of the armored truck, and then disappeared behind it. Bogart opened the back for him and he climbed inside.
Coop looked over his shoulder as Bogart swung the door shut. He exhaled through his nostrils, smoke swirling around his head.
“How you guys doing?”
Normal shrugged.
“Good, man,” Bogart said.
Coop had seen Normal like this several times before. It was how he got before an assignment. He switched off emotionally, like a house at night, one light after another going out, one room after another going dark. He functioned, but he wasn’t really there. It meant he was ready to do what he had to do to get the job done.
Coop looked at his Timex. It was ten o’clock, still an hour until inmates hit the yard. They’d stay here for the time being, hidden from view, and prepare.
The Breakout Page 21
