The Wrong Hostage sk-2

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “They like your shoes.”

  “Great. I’ll swap them for one of those rifles.”

  The guard’s mustache twitched. Definitely a small smile.

  They were escorted through the barracks to a separate wing of the house. Two men armed with Uzi submachine guns blocked their way.

  The Mexican with the mustache barked out staccato orders and used Hector’s full name.

  The guards stepped back and let them pass.

  Faroe, Grace, and Mustache walked down a long hallway lined with bedrooms. Each had been turned into some kind of work space. Through the open door of one bedroom, Grace saw three young, well-dressed women working at machines on a table.

  “They look like bank tellers,” she said softly to Faroe.

  “They are. Banco de Hector. The machines are mechanical currency counters.”

  Bales of counted, sorted, and banded bills were stacked waist high along one wall of the room, like so many yards of green paper.

  For an instant Grace couldn’t believe what she was seeing. There was more money in this upscale suburban bedroom than she’d ever seen short of the Federal Reserve Bank vaults in Washington.

  “So, Judge, what you think? You like my pinche casa de dinero? Huh?”

  Hector Rivas stood in the hallway in front of them, smoke curling up around his face from a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. He looked like a character out of a noir magazine.

  And every instinct Faroe had told him that Hector was screwed up on something-as unpredictable as hot nitroglycerin.

  The Butcher.

  Jesus, Grace, why didn’t you go back to the hotel when you could?

  “Is ver’ grande, no?” Hector said.

  “I’ve been inside the Federal Reserve Bank in Washington,” she said calmly.

  Hector stared at her, sucked in a breath, held it, smiled like a fallen angel, and let the smoke trickle out. One of his eyelids drooped almost shut. The other eye glittered in the light like a snake’s. When Grace didn’t back up, he grinned and stepped out of the doorway.

  “Bienvenido,” Hector said, with a bow and a flourish.

  And a close appreciation of her body.

  She swung her hips past him into a big room with a twenty-foot ceiling, brick walls, and a huge fireplace at the far end. Despite the heat inside the house, the elaborate gas logs were burning fiercely. The furniture in the room was dark, oversize, and too ornate for her taste. One of the walls was covered with hand-painted tapestries depicting bloody scenes from the bullring. Another wall was loaded with Spanish art depicting various moments of the Crucifixion.

  A blond boy sat near the hearth, working over something on a silver tray. He could have been an acolyte or a sacrifice.

  “Do we pray or laugh?” Grace asked Faroe very softly.

  “Pray.”

  There was an obviously new addition to the stately room. In the far corner, a high-tech communications center gleamed with glass, plastic, and status lights.

  Hector’s nephew, Jaime, sat at a long desk talking softly into a telephone and staring at one of the three computer screens in front of him. As he talked, he scrolled through web pages, reading figures into the phone. There were two more hardwired phones within his reach, as well as a handheld radio and a satellite cell phone on their charging cradles.

  Slowly Grace walked into the room. As she watched, Jaime hung up the phone and hammered intently on the computer keyboard. He looked more like an international business technocrat strumming the threads of an electronic spiderweb than a drug smuggler.

  When Faroe moved past Hector to follow Grace, the drug lord grabbed Faroe by the arm and turned him toward the light.

  “Hey, mon, don’ I know you from the joint?” Hector asked.

  “No, jefe. I would remember you.”

  Hector turned his head to bring his good eye to bear. “Din’ you one time try to buy some chiva from un hombre named Ramon Posada in the back room at the Blue Fox? I sure I see you.”

  Faroe smiled slightly. “Jefe, you’re remarkable. That was more than seventeen years ago. There was a deal with a man named Posada, but I was just along for the ride. The buyer was an East Los Angeles dope dealer named Jorge Chula. But I don’t remember seeing you there.”

  Hector smiled, revealing a rich man’s teeth-gold and silver and steel replacing teeth lost to brawls. “I watch by a pinche hole in the ceiling because I din’ trust el cabron Chula nada mas que I can piss on him.”

  “I heard later that he was some kind of a snitch for the gringos in San Diego,” Faroe said. “Whatever happened to him?”

  “I take his balls and feed them to a dog.”

  With that Hector turned and walked into the great room.

  Grace didn’t look at Faroe.

  He didn’t look at her. Jorge Chula had indeed been an informant. Faroe’s informant. He’d been using him as a stepping-stone to Posada, who dealt ounces and half kilos of heroin from various Tijuana bars. Faroe hadn’t known that Hector was running Posada. Hector hadn’t known that Faroe was running Chula.

  When el jefe came closer to the hearth, the fair-haired boy glanced up anxiously.

  Hector ignored him.

  Without seeming to, Faroe examined the jefe de traficantes. In some ways Hector was old-fashioned, like the guard outside the chapel at All Saints. Hector wore a full, bushy mustache that curled down either side of his mouth, bandito style. He carried his Colt pistol backward in his belt, like pistoleros had done for fifty years.

  The solid gold diamond-studded pendant he wore on a heavy gold chain around his neck was stamped with the likeness of Jesus Malverde, El Narcosanton, Mexico’s patron saint of drug smugglers. Although the Catholic Church disavowed Malverde, there were roadside shrines honoring him everywhere in northern Mexico, and every shrine had its pilgrims and whispers of miracles.

  As Hector crossed the room, he moved with the faintly dragging gait of a drunk or an aging rodeo rider, someone with old injuries that had never fully healed. Yet his shoulders were still powerful, his hips narrow, his belly under control. His head seemed too large, like a bull’s, but it only added to his impact.

  Faroe decided that Grace was right. Hector had a raw, animal charisma that was perfectly suited to his life. His self-assurance alone would draw lesser men to him like pilgrims to a shrine.

  Hector gave Grace a sideways look as he circled her, squinting past the smoke curling from the cigarette in his mouth. His black glance ran over her like hands.

  “Your Honor, you have changed,” he said.

  Grace’s smile was a double row of teeth. “Not really. This is what I usually wear under my black robes.”

  Hector gave a drunken hoot and looked at Faroe. “Gringas. Sometimes they think they smart, yes?”

  Faroe nodded and shot Grace a quick look of encouragement. She’d found precisely the right tone to charm the traficante. Faroe didn’t know how long it would last, but he’d take every advantage fate threw him.

  Hector took the half-smoked cigarette from his lips. His fingers opened, the cigarette dropped to the glossy marble floor, barely missing a beautiful Persian rug. He ground out the ember under the heel of his ostrich-skin boot. His next move was to reach for a leather cigarette case in the breast pocket of his white linen cowboy shirt. When he discovered that the box was empty, he cursed savagely.

  The blond boy leaped up and rushed over with a silver tray holding ten filter-tipped cigarettes, a small pile of tobacco, and a smaller pile of white powder. The cigarettes were an inch shorter than normal. Their white tips had been twisted like those of a hand-rolled joint.

  Faroe recognized the doctored cigarettes and knew his instincts had been right-Hector was an explosion looking for a fuse. The special cigarettes had different names in Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and everywhere else they were smoked. In Tijuana, the cigarettes were called cocaina a la mexicana. Their crimped tips were loaded with powdered crack cocaine.

  They were bad news.

&
nbsp; Hector tossed the empty case to the boy, selected a smoke from the tray, and stuck it in the corner of his mouth. As the acolyte carefully transferred the rest of the cigarettes to the leather case, Hector fired up a gold Zippo and sucked in vaporized cocaine. He held the smoke in his lungs. An angelic smile spread across his blunt features.

  Instant bliss.

  Faroe hoped that Grace didn’t understand just how slender their hope of survival was. Hector finally had fallen in love with the white lady. Traffickers lived frantic, pressure-filled lives. Cocaine gave them the feeling of endless energy, endless strength.

  But the white lady was a bitch mistress, all black lips and whips, bloody spurs and knives. She could keep a man like Hector aroused and focused for days.

  Then she’d drop him off a cliff.

  Faroe wondered where the smuggler was on the inevitable arc from euphoria to murderous irrationality. Then he wondered what had driven Hector into the deadly lady’s arms. There had been no hint in any files that the narcotraficante had become slave to his own wares.

  Hector drew again on the cigarette, sucking the last residue of crack from the tobacco. Then he dropped the half-smoked butt on the tile and ignored it. His good eye flickered open. He grinned drunkenly. He looked at Grace’s breasts like a boy who had just discovered girls were different.

  “So you have un amado, like su esposo,” Hector said.

  “My ex-husband has many women.” She shrugged. “I stopped caring a long time ago.”

  “Ah, but your husband mus’ be ver’ angry. Tha’s why he no care for his son. Maybe he punishes you?”

  “He stopped caring a long time ago, too.”

  Faroe thought fast and mean. At the rate Hector was blazing through crack cigarettes, they didn’t have much time left to work with even a marginally sane man.

  “We saved your life,” Faroe said, “because we have a deal to offer you. You interested?”

  Hector’s hand paused on the way to his cigarette case. “Digame.”

  “We’ll trade you Ted Franklin for Lane. Straight across. No side deals.” Faroe’s voice was calm. The rest of him was on red alert. It was make-or-break time, and he didn’t know how well Her Honor could lie.

  It had to be good.

  Hector looked skeptically at Grace. “You can do this?”

  “Give you Ted?” she asked.

  “Si.”

  “On a golden platter, with a roll of hundred-dollar bills in his mouth.”

  It was good.

  37

  TIJUANA

  SUNDAY, 10:41 P.M.

  HECTOR LAUGHED ROUGH AND loud. “Aiee, a ball-breaker.”

  “You’ll never get the chance to find out,” Grace shot back, her face a cold mask.

  “No, no, Your Honor, I say it con respecto,” Hector said.

  “Bueno, jefe,” Faroe said evenly. “Now speak to me, because I’m the one who will cut off Franklin’s head and carry it south in a box. ?Comprende?”

  For several long seconds Hector studied Faroe. Then he nodded. “Usted es un hombre fuerte y formal. We make deal.”

  “Good. Why do you want Franklin?” Faroe asked.

  Hector didn’t bother to hide his surprise. “The judge? She don’ know?”

  “She was never part of Ted’s business. He was never part of hers.”

  Hector squinted at both of them for a long time. He pulled the leather case from his pocket and stuffed another cigarette into his mouth. He toyed with the lighter like a pipe smoker buying time to think.

  “?Es verdad?” he asked Grace. “Is true?”

  “I tried to tell you that the other day,” she said. “Ted’s business with you and Carlos is his own.”

  Hector made a face, as if hearing Calderon’s name left a bad taste in his mouth. “He is un hijo de la chingada,” Hector said bitterly. “Carlos cause this, him and todos los jefes politicos. Strong men like me take all the bullets and los politicos sit clean and pretty and collect la mordida-the bite, you know?-for the plaza.”

  “I understand,” Faroe said.

  Hector hissed through his teeth and stared down the hallway toward the counting room.

  Faroe wondered if the explosion had finally found a fuse.

  “You are politico,” Hector said to Grace. “How much you take for the rent of the plaza?”

  “Bribery?”

  “Si, si,” he said impatiently.

  “We don’t do business like that in America.”

  “Boolsheet! All government like that. How much you take from men like me?”

  Grace looked at Faroe. What now?

  Fortunately Hector kept talking. “Los politicos in Tijuana and Mexico City bite me good. That room has more than twelve million gringo dollars, if the smugglers and facilitadores don’ cheat me much. You hear me, Judge?”

  “Yes.”

  “That is-?como se dice? Loan?”

  “Rent,” Faroe said, hoping to defuse Hector’s rage.

  “Rent. Two weeks.” Hector’s voice rose. “That is what the plaza de Tijuana cost me. Two focking weeks.”

  Grace’s eyes widened. She looked at Faroe.

  “That sounds about right,” Faroe said evenly. “The politicians charge Hector six million a week so that he can risk his life and the lives of his family running a dangerous, violent business.”

  “Si, si. ?Exactamente! I pay todo el mundo. Guns and men and food and women-these not free. I am a great milking goat,” Hector yelled. “And then they put horns on my head and fock me in the ass. ?Aiee!”

  Grace tried to look sympathetic, but doubted her acting skills were up to it. Hector screwed the men beneath him and the politicians screwed Hector.

  She wouldn’t give a pile of dog turds for any of them.

  “Where does Ted Franklin fit into this?” Faroe asked.

  “He stole from me, the pinche money los politicos don’ take!”

  With that, Hector erupted into the kind of Spanish Faroe didn’t want to translate for Grace. Instead, he provided a running commentary on the core of Hector’s rant.

  “Carlos and Jaime talked Hector into buying a bank from Ted,” Faroe said softly. “Hector didn’t want to. He has a cash business, so he ‘don’ need no focking bank.’”

  Hector took a breath, spotted Jaime, and yelled, “Jaime, Jaime, ?andale pues!”

  Jaime spun around in his high-backed executive chair. He looked angry but he kept his mouth shut. Obviously he had experience with his uncle’s drug-fueled rage.

  Hector gave his nephew a one-eyed glare. “Jaime, tell your plan grande, the plan you make with that cabron Carlos and his cabron amigo, Franklin. Tell how el Banco de San Marcos feex everything.”

  As he spoke, Hector made moist, scornful noises and pumped his hips to demonstrate his contempt for his nephew and his big ideas.

  Faroe had been watching Grace. She’d ignored Hector’s crude sign language, but her eyelids flickered at the mention of Banco de San Marcos.

  Jaime came to his feet like a feral cat. He glared at Faroe, then at Grace, but when he turned to his uncle, his face was neutral, blank.

  “This Jaime here, he genius,” Hector went on sarcastically, his accent getting thicker the madder he got. “Beesness degree. Aiee, cabron. He need machines to make a beesness I make out of my head.”

  “Times have changed, jefe,” Jaime said evenly. “We can’t compete with other organizations if we don’t-”

  “No,” Hector said, waving his cigarette wildly. “You want to own this beesness I shit bullets to make.”

  “I simply want to rationalize it,” Jaime said. His eyes said they’d been around this track as many times as any greyhound.

  “Boolsheet! Beesness is blood and fear and power!”

  “I don’t think our business should be discussed in front of strangers, people who do not wish us well,” Jaime said.

  Hector turned a torrent of Spanish on his nephew.

  Faroe translated the meat of it for Grace. “Listen, pend
ejo, you don’t have any problem talking about our business to Carlos Calderon. Who are you to tell me who I can talk to?”

  A man hurried into the room, a burrito in one hand and a piece of paper in the other. He circled the shouting Hector to put the paper on Jaime’s desk.

  “You talk to that cabron Ted Franklin,” Faroe continued translating. “These people-that’s you and me, Grace-aren’t dangerous to ROG. We have what they want. They have what we want. So tell them our secrets, just as you have already told our enemies.”

  Jaime looked uncomfortable. “Uncle, you are tired. Your judgment is-”

  Hector drew his pistol and fired four times at the man armed only with a burrito. He was dead before he hit the floor.

  Grace made a choked sound.

  Faroe grabbed her and pulled her away from Jaime, who had the look of a man marked for immediate death.

  Armed men poured into the room.

  “Uncle, I swear to-”

  Hector backhanded Jaime across the mouth, sending the younger man staggering.

  Faroe went back to translating Hector’s words in a voice only Grace could hear. “Don’t, burro. Don’t presume to talk to me. You are very bright. You have a very good education that I paid for. Someday you might make a good man in our business, but you are not ready yet to take over from me. Until you are, never again question my judgment. Never.”

  Faroe waited.

  So did everyone else in the room.

  Hector shoved his pistol back into his belt and gestured toward the body on the floor.

  Faroe murmured along with Hector’s words. “Take that cabron and dump him with the garbage. A little warning for other traitors who walk past me to do Jaime’s work.”

  Flushed, all but choking on rage, Jaime waited for whatever came next. He watched Hector with the eyes of a man looking for the best place to slide in a knife.

  While the body was hauled away, Hector dug out the leather box and stuck a new cocaine cigarette in the corner of his mouth.

  “You okay?” Faroe asked Grace very softly.

  “No.”

  “Can you keep it together a little longer?”

  “Yes.”

  He squeezed her arm and wondered if she understood the dynamics of cocaine intoxication. Irritability and irrationality were just the beginning. Paranoia and delusions followed close on.