“Are you threatening me?”
“Hey, you’re listening. Give the son of a bitch a cookie.”
“I thought all you professional security types were cold and dispassionate,” Sturgis muttered.
“I am. That’s why I’m alive and you’ll be looking over your shoulder.”
“Christ, man, lighten up. Under other circumstances, I might like you. I certainly could find some work for you.”
“Ted’s number,” Faroe said. “Now.”
“I can’t. Professional responsibility to my client and all that.”
“Say hello to hell for me.”
“Wait! I’ll call Ted. I’ll tell him you have the files. It’s up to him whether he calls the number Grace gave me or not.”
“Ted calls in the next five minutes or he’s out of the game.”
“But-”
Faroe punched out of the conversation.
“Well, Your Honor,” he said roughly to Grace, “you got your way. You are now finally and fully a party to what may become conspiracy and murder in the first degree. How does it feel?”
Without a word she got up and disappeared into the back of the coach. Faroe followed as far as the salon, which was now empty. He grabbed a sandwich from the platter on the counter and made short work of it.
As he was chewing the last bite, she came back with her purse and sat down on the couch next to him. She lifted the flap of the heavy leather shoulder bag and produced a clean black steel semiautomatic pistol. She checked to make sure the safety was on, then reversed the pistol and presented it to Faroe, butt first.
“It’s fully loaded,” she said, “and there’s a round in the chamber.”
64
SAN YSIDRO
MONDAY, 7:44 A.M.
FAROE SLIPPED THE SAFETY on Grace’s gun and pulled the slide on the Browning just enough to confirm her warning. He reset the safety and released the magazine from the butt of the gun. The round brass shells of a dozen cartridges gleamed through the side slot of the magazine.
“You shouldn’t keep them stacked like this,” he said. “The magazine spring gets fatigued under a full load. The last two rounds might not mount properly.”
“How many bullets does a good shot need?”
A corner of his mouth kicked up. “You won’t mind if I have Harley tune this thing up?”
“Not if you get me a smaller gun in return. The Browning has always been too heavy for me.”
Faroe hit the intercom on the coach and asked for Harley. The bald bodyguard appeared from the part of the bus reserved for Steele.
“Look this over,” Faroe said, handing him the Browning. “Grace has been keeping the magazine fully loaded. She needs a smaller gun.”
Harley gave her a quick look. “You qualified with this Browning?”
“FBI all the way,” she said. “If the gun was going to be around the house, I wanted to know how to handle it.”
“Wish more people felt like that,” Harley said. “Let me see your hands, please.”
She held up both hands, palm out, fingers splayed.
“I’ve got just the thing,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
“What?” Faroe asked, looking at Grace’s expression.
“Just surprised that you agreed to carry a gun.”
“And I’m surprised I’m letting Harley get you a new one.”
“Guess we just keep surprising each other.”
“Yeah.” Faroe rubbed a knuckle gently along her chin. “If-when-Ted calls, I want you to talk to him.”
“I’m not sure I can be civil to him.”
“Hey, at least you’re not sure. I flat know I wouldn’t be.”
She almost smiled. “What do you want me to say?”
“Tell him that if he wants the computer files, he’ll have to look Lane in the eye to get them. We’ll arrange the time and place and let him know where and when. And get a callback number in case our trace can’t.”
The satellite cell phone on Faroe’s lap rang. He glanced at the caller ID and shouted over his shoulder, “Harley, have communications trace this. Get on it now.”
“Yo!” came from somewhere inside the bus.
Faroe mounted the phone in a cradle, turning the unit into a speakerphone.
“I’m guessing it’s Ted,” Faroe said to Grace. “I’ll try to stay out of it.”
The phone rang for the third time.
“Keep him talking until we have a trace,” Faroe added.
He punched the button on the phone and leaned back, inviting her to speak up.
“Hello,” she said.
“Grace?” Franklin asked. “I thought this number belonged to someone called Joseph Faroe. Let me talk to him.”
“When it comes to Lane, Joe and I speak with one voice.”
There was an empty silence on the line, then unpleasant laughter.
“So he was your shack job before we were married?” Franklin said. “Tell him thanks for leaving his get in my-”
“We’ve been around this track before,” Grace interrupted. “I was faithful after we were married, which is more than you can say.”
“And that’s supposed to make up for all the years, all the support, all the money I lavished on you?”
“In the beginning I more than earned my share. I never asked for the rest of it. Not even for all that political currency you spent to get me appointed to the bench. That was your idea, not mine.” She smiled thinly. “And guess what? You won’t be able to use my judicial status to your benefit anymore. I resigned.”
“What?”
Faroe wanted to ask the same question.
“Resigned, quit, stepped down, adios, muchacho, I’m history,” she said. “I faxed a letter to the presiding judge an hour ago.”
She glanced sideways at Faroe to see how he was taking the news. He looked like a man who’d just gotten a fist to the gut. She had a feeling it would be a while before he let her out of his sight again-especially to go to the bathroom that was next to the fax machine.
“Is it because they put your circuit court appointment on hold?” Franklin asked quickly. “That’s just a temporary-”
“No,” she cut in. “Having Lane held hostage reminded me about what’s important and what’s crap. Being a judge because somebody corrupt pulled wires is crap.”
“Get real,” Franklin said. “Life is all politics, all of it, right down to this criminal case. That new director of the FBI belongs to the Dinosaur Party. He won’t take guidance from the White House on anything. But he’s going to come to heel shortly. Trust me on this. Then this whole mess will all go away. Even the Mexicans will sign off on the deal Sturgis and I are putting together.”
“Mexicans?” Grace asked. “By that you mean Carlos Calderon and Hector Rivas Osuna?”
Franklin laughed. “I mean Mexico City, Gracie-girl, the top tier of government. They can’t afford to have an international airing of one of their most influential bankers’ dirty linen. Carlos has lots of juice in Mexico City, and damn near as much in Washington, D.C.”
“Washington? What does that mean?”
“Former Senator Ben Carson, that’s what it means. When he decided not to run for the Senate again, it was because he was set to become Grupo Calderon’s registered lobbyist. He’s on the payroll to the tune of about a million bucks a year. He takes care of Calderon’s business just fine.”
“What about Hector?” Grace asked. “He’s the one with a gun to Lane’s head.”
“Hector Rivas Osuna? Bad news, there. He’s a real liability. Some of his own are going to take him out.”
“Will that be before or after he executes Lane?” she asked acidly.
Faroe winced. Her voice could have taken the hide off an elephant.
“Don’t be hysterical, Gracie-girl,” Franklin said. “Hector’s not going to kill the boy. It would be bad for business. Jaime’s a businessman.”
Grace glanced at Faroe and gestured toward the phone. She was pale
to the lips and her fingers were curled into claws.
Faroe shook his head and mouthed, Not yet.
“Jaime may be a businessman,” she said, “but Hector gives the orders. He’s perfectly capable of killing Lane just because you dissed him. Hector is an irrational crackhead and he’s the most powerful man in Tijuana.”
“That’s like being the biggest turd in a septic tank,” Franklin said. “He’s nothing.”
“The king of the cesspool is holding our son. Hector is a family man. He can’t imagine a father who wouldn’t move heaven and earth to save his boy.”
The sound of ice swirling around a glass came clearly over the speakerphone. Then the sound of Franklin swallowing once, then again. It was followed by a faint, musical tinkle, ice cubes floating in a crystal glass. He drank, sucked noisily on an ice cube, spat it back into the glass, and sighed.
“I’m sorry as hell that Lane is in the middle of this,” Franklin said finally. “He’s a nice enough kid, but even if he had my DNA, I still couldn’t help him. Maybe his real dad could do something. He looked like a nasty piece of business.”
Grace tried to speak. Nothing came out.
He’s a nice enough kid, but even if he had my DNA, I still couldn’t help him.
Faroe leaned toward the speakerphone. “Yeah, you sure are sorry. You’re as sorry a piece of shit as I’ve ever scraped off my boots.”
Franklin sounded like he had just swallowed wrong. He sputtered and gasped and coughed.
“Faroe? You’ve been listening?”
“To a coward writing off a kid? Yeah, I heard every word.”
“You expect me to apologize for the truth? Hold your breath, asshole.”
“Apologies from cowards are worthless. I wouldn’t use yours for butt wipe.”
“Hey, you-” Franklin began hotly.
“Shut up,” Faroe said in a lethal voice.
Silence.
“Now listen like your sorry life depends on it,” Faroe said, “because it does. I have every file you hid on Lane’s computer. The boy is good. He saved the FBI the trouble of hacking into those files. He did it himself.”
The sound of Franklin’s shocked gasp was very clear. “You’re lying.”
“Account numbers in Vanuatu and Sparbuchen in Vienna.”
Silence.
A long swallow.
A whispered “Shit.”
“If we can’t cut a deal with you,” Faroe said, “those files go straight to the feds and we collect a ten percent bounty for finding laundered drug money.”
“Those are my files!”
“Do you think the feds care? Once we give them the files, the feds don’t need you. Next thing you know, you’re in Lompoc and some bull is calling you sweetie and using your fat ass for a punchboard.”
Silence.
The sound of a man swallowing.
Ice clinking.
Liquid gurgling.
“While you’re drinking too much,” Grace said bitingly, “think about this. If we don’t get Lane back in good working order, I’ll tell Hector Rivas Osuna that you’ve been talking to the feds.”
Faroe smiled. “Good idea, amada. Then Ted wouldn’t have to worry about being someone’s prison bitch. Hector has shooters in Logan Heights. If I don’t get to Ted first, they will. Either way, he’s dead meat.”
More swallowing.
More ice clinking.
“Suck up something more useful than booze,” Grace said coldly. “Suck up some guts.”
“Fuck you,” Franklin said.
“She has,” Faroe said.
The silence spread.
“Okay, okay,” Franklin said. “She was useful but that’s over. What do you want from me?”
“Be ready to go south on very short notice,” Faroe said.
“Oh no. No way. I’ll cooperate, but I’m not going into Mexico.”
“You’ll do what we tell you to do,” Faroe said. “If we’re lucky, none of us will have to leave U.S. soil.”
“What about the FBI?” Franklin asked anxiously.
“String them along for a few more hours.”
“But-”
“Do it or die,” Faroe said ruthlessly. “Your choice.”
“I-God-okay. Okay. I’ll do it.”
65
NORTH OF ENSENADA
MONDAY, 8:30 A.M.
THE HELICOPTER DARTED STRAIGHT into a green-brown hillside bowl, then banked sharply and flared over a flat landing spot just outside a rectangle of crumbled walls. Sun-bleached grass inside the ruins flattened in the prop wash as the pilot skidded the machine to a hovering halt twenty-five feet above the ground, then began to settle stiffly to the ground.
Faroe let out a breath. He was glad that Steele had talked Grace into staying in San Ysidro in case Franklin or even Lane called again. The whole flight had been fast and furious.
And low.
Really low.
They’d been flying nap of the land to avoid Mexico’s air-control radar.
So far, so good.
A black Toyota Forerunner was parked in the shade of a scrubby oak tree near what once had been the front door of the mission church. Dressed in jeans, a guayabera, and a broad-brimmed Panama hat, Father Magon leaned against the front fender of the truck. Holding on to his hat with one hand, he turned his shoulder to the prop wash.
“He looks more like a campesino than a priest,” the pilot said.
“I should have told him to wear his cassock. But he knows what I want, and he knows the Pai-Pai. He must have thought civilian clothes would get the job done quicker.”
The pilot eased down on the power. The heavy blade spinning overhead slowed, but it still was going fast enough to cut through a man’s skull.
Faroe undid straps, set aside the noise-canceling earphones that allowed pilot and passengers to communicate, and popped open the door. A moment later he was on the dry, dusty ground, running out from under the chopper’s deadly, whirling umbrella.
“Glad you showed up,” Faroe said, shaking Magon’s hand. “Let’s go. We’re on a short clock.”
As soon as both men were strapped in, the chopper leaped for the sky.
Faroe tapped his headset, signaling Magon to put his own on.
“One of Beltran’s men, a cousin of a cousin of a cousin,” Faroe said, “will meet us. He knows the local dialect.”
“So do I,” Magon said. “As you guessed, I was born in the village. But Hector doesn’t know that. He thinks I’m a chilango who pissed off a cardinal.”
Faroe smiled.
“You really think this miner will risk his life to help you?” Magon asked. “Because if Hector finds out about this, we’re all dead.”
“True fact,” Faroe said dryly.
He dug into the hip pocket of his jeans and pulled out a chamois drawstring bag the size of his palm. Gently, shielding the contents as best he could from the helicopter’s rough ride, he opened the drawstrings.
Then he spilled a thin stream of white fire into his palm. The gems caught the late-afternoon sunlight before Faroe made a fist over them. He held his fist out to the priest, who automatically opened his own hand.
Faroe dribbled twelve diamonds one by one into the priest’s palm. Most of the stones were pea- or bean-sized. One was as big as a man’s thumbnail.
“They are real?” Magon asked.
“As real as death. Five hundred thousand Yankee dollars in very portable form. Here, take the bag. You’ll need it to keep the stones corralled.”
“But why are you giving the diamonds to me?”
“They’d frighten a poor miner even more than the prospect of death. You’re not intimidated by wealth. Take those, convert them into cash, and help the families of the seventeen men who were killed, and the one who survived.”
“And in return?”
“The tunnel.”
Narrow-eyed, Magon glanced from the stones to Faroe.
“Don’t worry, padre. I didn’t kill anybody for them.
”
“The thought had occurred.”
“No blood on these so far.” Faroe’s smile was thin. “Not that church jewels have always been clean.”
Magon shook his head sadly. “You are indeed a cynic.”
“A realist. So how about it? Will you persuade the miner to help?”
Magon looked at the diamonds for a long time. “El Alamo has no well. That would be a good place to start.” He looked at Faroe. “You are very generous. I’m sure the miner could be persuaded for much less. Perhaps you are not as much of a realist as you think.”
Faroe didn’t answer.
The priest tilted his hand so that the morning sun fell on the stones, turning them into fire. Then, slowly, he poured the stones back into the chamois bag, tied it securely, and pushed it deep into a pocket of his jeans.
“I will do what I can,” Magon said.
“That’s all anyone can ask. Even God. Did you bring a dog collar? It might comfort the poor bastard we’re asking to risk his life.”
“No collar. Just this.”
Magon reached inside the neck of his cotton shirt and pulled up the heavy gold chain he wore around his neck. A splendidly baroque gold crucifix hung from the chain. The cross was almost as big as his hand.
“The gold in this cross was mined in El Carrizo a century ago. It is well known among the Pai-Pai. One of their martyred leaders wore it. He was my great-grandfather.”
Faroe looked at the antique crucifix and hoped it would be enough.
66
EL ALAMO
MONDAY, 8:58 A.M.
BELTRAN’S COUSIN OF A cousin of a cousin was a thin man named Refugio. He met them at the dirt runway in a black Dodge crew-cab pickup that gleamed despite a coating of back-road dust.
Faroe recognized the smuggling type, if not the individual. Refugio had the blunt, hard features of an Indian. The two halves of his mustache didn’t meet on his upper lip. Wispy hair curled down to both corners of his mouth. He was dressed jalisqueno style-cowboy boots, jeans, a wrangler’s shirt, and a sweat-stained Stetson with a single tassel on the back brim.
He carried a Colt semiautomatic pistol, cocked and locked.
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