Jungle of Glass

by Gerald J. Davis

  I glanced out the window. Some clouds had drifted by and obscured the sun. A Hummer was pulling into the hotel driveway. It started to pick up speed. It rolled up the curb, over the lawn and through the flower garden. It was going really fast now. Then it turned abruptly. The sonofabitch was heading straight for the plate glass windows in front of us. As it came, time slowed down and stopped ticking off seconds.

  "Jesus Christ," I said.

  The Hummer crashed through the wall of glass. Shards of the windowpane went flying through the air like a slow-mo kaleidoscope. The Hummer rolled over a couple of tables before it stopped in the middle of the room. Four guys jumped out. They were wearing civilian clothes and bandanas over their faces. One guy pulled the pin of a grenade and tossed it onto the floor. They retreated behind the vehicle for cover and started firing bursts from their automatic rifles into the ceiling.

  I didn't wait for a hand-delivered invitation. I dove behind the waiter's station with my back to it, hunched over and closed my eyes and covered my ears. The exit was five meters in front of me.

  The grenade went off with a huge noise and a brilliant flash. I knew what it was. A concussion grenade. The people in the room screamed in panic. They staggered around the room, blinded, deafened and stunned.

  Exactly what the bastards wanted.

  I got down on the floor and snuck a look out from behind the station. The guys were striding around the room, their weapons at order arms, looking for something.

  Or someone.

  I pulled back, then stuck my head out again and took a quick look at the guy nearest me. He was holding what looked like an AR-15. The bastard looked familiar behind the bandana. I'd seen him before.

  Then I remembered where.

  Right in this same goddam hotel. He was Armando. Lightener's bodyguard. The guy who lent me his tie.

  The tie that contrasted with the sophisticated fashion statement I was trying to present and made me look like Joe Six-Pack.

  I dropped back behind the waiter's station and pulled out my .38. The people were still screaming but the guys had stopped firing their weapons. I looked out again and took aim at this Armando and was about to squeeze one off when a guy behind me yelled, "Look out. There he is."

  I hadn't seen him.

  He fired a burst that tore off the top of the waiter's station.

  I rolled back in his direction and took a shot at him. It missed but it made him lose his balance and fall back onto the floor. I glanced in the other direction. A man next to me had been hit by some of the rounds. Most of his face had been blown off. He had no eyes or nose. Only a part of his jaw was intact. He wasn't moving.

  I looked around, trying to spot Armando. He wasn't anywhere I could see. Everyone was in a general state of agitation. It was time to depart this scene before they could do any more damage.

  I got into a crouch and started for the rear exit, pulling off a shot over the head of that bastard who'd fallen. That kept him on the ground for another couple of seconds. It was enough time for me to make the door. In the process I had to step over a couple of men who were curled up in a fetal position on the floor, hoping this wasn't the day they were going to that great big businessman’s luncheon in the sky.

  CHAPTER XXIX

  Lightener's girlfriend's house was located in the Colonia Escalon at the end of a cul-de-sac. I got there in a taxi I’d picked up at Metro Centro across the street from the hotel. Lightener's Mercedes was parked in front of the house with the engine running and the chauffeur deep in slumberland. It didn't look like any of his bodyguards were around.

  I told the taxi driver to pull up on the other side of the street. We waited there for fifteen minutes without seeing anything. It was a quiet lower-middle-class neighborhood with well-kept little houses and neat lawns. The houses had little flower gardens in front and hanging baskets with orchids trailing down.

  Some kids were playing a running and jumping game a couple of doors down and their laughter sounded across the early afternoon streets. It reminded you of a more innocent time when the important things were less important.

  After a while Lightener emerged from the house across the street and shut the door behind him. He hunched over and locked the door twice with two keys, as if he was protecting his most prized possession. He moved slowly, dreamlike. He seemed older and there was a weightiness in his step. He turned and moved away from the door.

  I got out of the taxi and crossed the street toward him. There was no traffic. Matter of fact, there hadn't been a moving car on the street in all the time I'd been waiting. I got within ten meters of Lightener before I yelled out to him. He hadn't even seen me.

  "Lightener, I want to talk to you."

  He blinked in surprise. A flash of fear and rage moved across his eyes. Perhaps a sudden realization that the game wasn’t playing out the way he had planned it. I wasn’t supposed to be standing where I was, interrupting his pleasant afternoon schedule.

  Then Lightener said, "Rogan, you..."

  He reached inside his suit jacket with an abrupt motion. But his timing was off. After a man has pumped out his ejaculate, a certain lassitude comes over him. It slows him down. Maybe it was just the smallest fraction of a second, but it was enough to give me the advantage. Out came his gun. He tried to steady his aim. His grip was shaky. He seemed to have trouble with the safety. I had my weapon out at the same time he did. I got my shot off just before his. The slug hit him square in the chest. The impact deflected his aim.

  His shot went wide.

  The sonofabitch was finished. He wouldn't be killing anybody for a very long time.

  CHAPTER XXX

  Broadbent pulled the Ford up to the curb in front of the hotel. "Get in," he said. "There's something I want to show you."

  I climbed in and sat next to him. "You heard about Lightener?"

  He nodded. His face was grim. "Tell me exactly what happened." He put the car in gear and we rolled out of the driveway and into traffic.

  I laid it out for him by the numbers. About the competition for the drug trade with the ex-military officers, the killings in New York, the money-laundering through the bank in Miami, the thugs in the Hummer trying to whack me. When I was finished, he took his eyes off the road and turned toward me and said, "That's all fine and good, but where the hell is Roderick? And where's the money?"

  "I don't know, but you can make book I'm going to find out real soon."

  He nodded again but didn't say anything. We drove for a while without talking. Broadbent kept gunning the engine and taking chances on the curves. He headed out of town toward Santa Tecla, then took a left turn in the direction of the coast. We drove past women on the side of the road hawking watermelons, the insides split open to display the red pulpy ripeness.

  "Where are we going?" I said.

  "To La Libertad," he said, his eyes straight ahead.

  "Why?"

  He didn't answer for a minute. "You'll see," he said.

  La Libertad was the old port of San Salvador. Now superseded by the new port of Acajutla, it was a sleepy dusty town where nothing much happened. I had no idea what was there but, knowing Broadbent, this was going to be worth seeing.

  The road narrowed as we started to descend to sea level. It would have been charitable to describe it as a two-lane highway. The other side of the road hugged the wall of the mountain and our lane fell away in a steep decline. There was no barrier on the outside of the lane.

  Broadbent always drove too fast. I remembered that.

  The oncoming traffic brushed by the side of the Ford and forced us closer to the edge. It was a ten or twenty meter drop to the next level and then another long fall to the bottom of the valley below that. But Broadbent had good control of the car and drove like he knew the road.

  As we swung around a curve, he glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. "That Marta's a wicked-looking number," he said. "Hot little cunt, she is. Did you slip it to her?"

  "What?"

  "Yo
u give her the high hard one?"

  I hesitated. There was a part of that old-fashioned gentleman in me that still thought discretion was a quality to be valued. "Yeah," I said finally. Then I realized why he asked. "You're the swordsman. Unless I miss my guess, you were in there too. Am I right?"

  He turned to grin at me. "Yeah. I was in like Flynn. But only once. You know why?"

  I shook my head. "Because you didn't meet her exacting standards for performance?"

  He guffawed. "No, no,” he said. "I heard this from other suckers like you and me.” And then he tapped me on the knee. “Because she only fucks you once, and then she discards you like a used scumbag."

  I shook my head. "That a fact?" I said. "Well, at least it's better than humping a black widow."

  "Why's that?"

  "Because a black widow kills you after she mates with you."

  ***

  We drove for another ten minutes. Then Broadbent leaned forward and swiveled his gaze to survey the road front and back. The sunlight glinted off his shaved head like a high beam as he turned to look. He slowed down and pulled off the road onto a small grassy space that was just big enough to hold the car.

  "What's up?" I said.

  "I have to take a leak," he said. He climbed out of the car and took a couple of steps to where the ground fell away in a steep rocky incline and lowered himself over the edge.

  I couldn't see where he'd gone to relieve himself. But I could hear his stream as he pissed on what sounded like a large flat rock. He took a long time to finish.

  There wasn't much traffic going by at this hour of the afternoon. Probably siesta time all across the land. The air was heavy, humid and dusty. It felt like you could grab large chunks of it with your bare hands.

  I considered whether or not to get out of the car. Broadbent would probably be back in a minute. So I sat there and pondered the eternal verities that had guided civilizations since the dawn of time.

  It wasn't too long before Broadbent climbed back up to where we were parked. Only now he was holding something in his hand that he didn't have before, and it wasn't his dick. It was a big black forty-five automatic. And he was pointing it right at me.

  I wasn't very surprised.

  "Don't tell me you're pissed off because I fucked your girlfriend," I said.

  He didn't laugh. He didn't even crack a smile.

  "Where's your celebrated sense of humor?" I said.

  He shook his head. "End of the road," he said. "Move over." He pointed with the muzzle to the driver's seat.

  "My license is expired," I said. "It's against the law for me to drive."

  He begrudged me a small smile. "You'll be expired, all right. Now get behind the wheel."

  In a way, it was what I wanted. But not exactly this way. It was pretty clear Broadbent was hooked up with Lightener. Two superannuated cold war veterans with enlarged prostates and no enemy to fight anymore. The problem was proving it. There was no direct evidence and they were both such competent spooks, the odds were good I'd never be able to tie them together. Broadbent knew I was coming after him, so he took a preemptive step to stop me before I got there. And I held his hand and let him take me for a stroll down that primrose path.

  I slid over to the driver's seat and looked out at him. His eyes were very small. "What's the drill?" I said.

  He nodded at the cliff. "You're going over."

  "And if I don't choose to?"

  His eyes got smaller. "I'll put a big hole in your head right now."

  I nodded. "That's not a very appetizing choice."

  "Hobson's choice," he said. "No choice."

  I tried to give him an innocuous look. After all, this was a dive I wasn't particularly eager to take. "What if I say let's forget the whole thing and I'll go back to New York and take up ballet and needlepoint and haute couture. You can go on with your business and I'll make believe this never happened and pretend we're still friends."

  He shook his head. "Not a chance. I know you. You're a relentless bastard. You never stop." He held the gun out in front of him and squinted along the barrel. "It's time for you to go over."

  I considered the options. There were few. I could reach for my gun, but my head would probably be blown away before I even got to it. I could respond like Bartleby the Scrivener — I prefer not to. But that would also just lead to the loss of my head, something I preferred to keep intact, if at all possible. And he was too far away for me to grab the gun from him.

  "Put it in gear," he yelled.

  He didn't say which gear, so I put it in reverse. As I jammed the accelerator, I ducked my head as low as I could and turned the wheel away from him as far as it would go. I heard a shot. The tires squealed as the car broadsided him with a loud thump. The car spun around and ended up facing the road.

  My heart was pounding against my rib cage so hard I thought I was hit. Sweat was rolling down my face and the back of my neck. The sweat stung my eyes and made me blink. I pulled out my gun and looked around.

  I couldn't see him.

  I opened the door slowly and got out of the car. He wasn't anywhere I could see. I took a short walk around the car. I squatted and looked under the car.

  There was no sign of him anywhere I looked. This guy was better than Houdini. I walked over to the road and looked in both directions. He'd really disappeared.

  I went back to the car and leaned against the trunk, trying to figure out what a semi-articulate private dick does when a killer vanishes. It wasn't very tough to figure out. He goes to the edge of the incline and sneaks a peek over.

  Broadbent was lying on an outcropping of rock about ten meters below me. He was still. His body was twisted like a contortionist. His eyes were open but blood was oozing out of his nose and mouth. The gun was on the ground about three or four meters from him, stark black against the brownish-green grass.

  I climbed down slowly, grabbing hold of the rocks and bushes as I descended. When I got to him, I could see his back was probably broken. Nobody's back could bend at that kind of angle. His mouth was moving but there was no sound coming out. I bent down and moved my hand over the smoothness at the back of his shaved scalp.

  His head was split wide open. I put my finger inside and touched something soft and wet. It was a raw gaping wound. Blood was flowing from the opening in his skull and collecting in a pool in the rock under his head. At the rate he was loosing blood, he wasn't going to be present very much longer.

  I took off my jacket and folded it and put it under his head. I had another suit of the same color that could use an extra pair of pants.

  "You don't have a lot of time," I said.

  He nodded weakly. It took a lot of effort.

  "You were partners with Lightener?" I said.

  "Yeah," he whispered.

  "Lightener had the money and the business cover to move the cocaine. You had the CIA contacts to get it at the source. Right?"

  He didn't nod. He didn't have the strength. "Right," he said softly.

  "Where's Roderick?"

  "I don't know." I could barely hear him. His life was taking leave of his body. I moved closer to him.

  "You have the ransom money?"

  His eyes fluttered. "Yeah."

  "Where is it?"

  "In my apartment in Washington."

  "You wrote the second ransom note?"

  He sighed. His breath was coming harder. "Yeah."

  "Who wrote the first ransom note?"

  "I don't know," he said.

  "Who kidnapped Roderick?"

  He blinked a couple of times. "I don't know."

  "Is Roderick alive or dead?"

  He choked. He was drowning in his own blood. He could barely get the words out. "I don't know."

  "What is Atlacatl?"

  His eyes went sightless.

  Then he was gone.

  There was nothing more I could do for him. I climbed back up to the road and began the long ride back to San Salvador.

  CHAPTER
XXXI

  "Where's your father?" I said.

  Antonio glanced up from the papers on his desk. It took a long minute for my question to register. His eyes were bloodshot. "He is dead," he said in a low voice. He looked down at the desk. Then he started to cry softly.

  He covered his face with his hands. They were trembling.

  "It wasn't a kidnapping, was it?"

  He shook his head. "How did you know?"

  "Because you were the only one who spoke well of your father. Everybody else hated his guts. And you looked like you were as poor as a churchmouse. I figured he kept you on a tight leash. You couldn't wait till he was dead and gone so you could collect your money and take over the operation."

  "He would tease me. He would say he would live until a hundred and twenty and I would never have the business. He never gave me a centavo. I had to beg for it. And that whore, my stepmother, would always take his side. I hated him. And I hated her because she could never replace my beloved mother."

  "Where's your father's body?"

  His voice choked up. "My men buried him in a shallow grave near La Palma. I saw it. It is just a small mound of dirt."

  "What is Atlacatl?" I asked.

  He shook his head in dismissal. "It means nothing. It was just a name I took from a history book. It has no significance."

  His hand reached down to open a desk drawer. "Please let me do the correct thing," he sobbed.

  I stepped around behind the desk and opened the drawer and took out the gun.

  "You're obviously not cut out for this line of work," I told him. "That's not the correct thing."

  There had been enough dying today.

  I grabbed his arm and pulled him to his feet. "Let's take a walk." You can be sure you wouldn't want to be in his place. A jail cell in El Salvador could be a mighty unpleasant residence if you planned to spend a number of years there.