Quarter to six. I could not see another human being, but there were scores of doorways, alleys, and walls that could have hidden an army. The fact that I couldn’t see them didn’t mean they weren’t there.
Twelve minutes later, an SUV slowly made the turn off 126th Street and approached, bumping and lurching over the cracked asphalt. It stopped twenty feet away. A black SUV today. The midsized Ford. The Escape. I chuckled. Not today.
The front passenger door opened and Castillo got out. He looked both ways before crossing the street, as though we were standing at a busy Midtown intersection.
“You are alone?”
He was nervous. So was I.
“We’re being watched,” I said. “You won’t see them if you don’t screw up.”
He stared into my eyes—it felt like he was fitting me for a coffin. “How shall we do this? Do you want to check your merchandise first?”
“No. You come over and check the bonds. They’re in the trunk.”
He scanned the street again.
“No worries,” I said. “If I wanted you dead, it would already have happened.”
He nodded once, then strode with me over to the car, head up. An aristocrat and unafraid.
I popped the trunk and stood back to let him look. The bonds were stacked in short piles, bound with wide rubber bands. Two hundred odd certificates in amounts ranging from two hundred and fifty thousand to one million. One hundred million dollars. Almost all of them were legit. A few were not. I knew that because I was the one who had made the fakes. All it took was a few packages of parchment paper and the color copier at Staples. I had spent a couple of hours there the day before. The fake bonds wouldn’t pass a bank inspection, but I strongly doubted that they would ever have to.
“You need more light?”
The pale gray sunlight cast more shadows than illumination across the documents, and the trunk light was not much more than a glow.
Castillo bent over the pile and examined the top document. Then he looked up at me. “Do you have a flashlight?”
“No problemo, señor.” I withdrew a heavy flashlight from a paper bag, turned it on, and handed it to him. The bag made a heavy thunk when I put it back down.
Castillo looked at the bag and then at me, questioning.
“It’s not a gun,” I said.
He nodded and went back to examining the documents. I tried burying my anxiety under thoughts of one million dollars a year for life. It wasn’t perfect, but it was working. I felt calm. Castillo raised his head, turned to me and smiled. He looked relieved.
“Excellent, Mr. Stafford. My clients should have no complaints.” He gathered up the bonds.
My artwork had not been discovered. “I hope not.”
“No problemo,” he mocked. “What will you do with Hector?”
“Is that his name?”
“Hector Sanchez.”
“Do you care? He’s just another foot soldier. There are probably ten poor, ignorant, desperate, angry men ready to take his place.”
“Hector will be missed. He is a captain. A leader. Trusted. It is a big price my clients have paid.”
“Fuck that. They tried to kill my son.”
“Return the man unharmed and these people will be forever in your debt.”
I reached into the paper bag and pulled out the hammer.
“This is a framing hammer. Thirty-two-ounce head. But it’s not the weight that does the damage. A thirty-two-ounce head delivers only twice as much punch as a sixteen-ounce. It’s the speed that matters. You see this long handle? Fifty percent longer than a standard hammer. That increases the arc of the swing and therefore the speed. Are you following this? I can diagram it, or give you the formulas.”
“That is not necessary. I understand.”
“Speed of delivery produces a geometric increase in energy. A twelve-inch handle travels over a ninety-degree arc of six times pi, but an eighteen-inch handle travels nine times pi in the same amount of time. Energy equals mass times velocity squared over two. You see? Holding mass constant, your eighteen-inch handle is going to land with two hundred and twenty-five percent greater force. You don’t look so good.”
Castillo looked almost green. Despite the business he was in, he was a man of delicate sensibilities.
“Sorry. I get carried away. You get the idea. Combined, it’s a fucking killer. You don’t have to stay to watch. Just have your soldiers bring him here and put him in the trunk. I’ll take it from there.”
“Shouldn’t you inspect your suitcases first?”
“Shucks,” I said. “I plumb near forgot you were bringing me a million dollars, too.”
“And ten kilos of finest-grade uncut Colombian heroin.”
“Let’s go see,” I said.
This was the moment, I thought. If Castillo planned a double cross, this was when it would happen. Both of us in the street. The bonds in his hands. The prisoner and the two suitcases still in the truck. It would not change the outcome, but I might not survive the play.
“Wait.” He stopped me halfway to the SUV. “You don’t want this. Let him go. Let me take him back. If you kill him, his people will have to come after you. You will never be safe. Take the money, take the damn drugs if you have to, but let me take Sanchez.”
I looked him in the eye. The argument was close enough to the truth to be tempting, but we both knew he was lying. They would come after me whether I killed Sanchez or not. My way was the only choice I had.
“No deal,” I said.
His eyes flicked away.
Was I wrong? Had he been trying to save me, not the gangster? But they weren’t going to let me have him. There was going to be a switch. I smiled. It was the right move. But it didn’t matter.
“Let’s finish this up,” I said. Castillo was playing a role that he didn’t want any part of. I almost felt sorry for him.
The driver was an older man, mid-thirties, with a heavy black mustache. Muscle only, it seemed. But in his business it took luck or brains or both to survive into a fourth decade. His eyes were searching the doorways and dark alleys, but he lowered them as I approached, feigning disinterest. He might be more than he appeared.
I looked in the backseat. There was a round-faced boy of about fourteen holding a black pistol in his hand, with an attitude of sullen nonchalance. Next to him was a man whose head was shrouded in a dingy pillowcase. His arms were pulled behind him and bound with plastic strip ties.
I wanted to take the boy by the arm and tell him to go home. That he hadn’t lived enough to risk his life for these men. He should be out playing soccer, or trying to get laid, or studying math. He should be anywhere but where he was.
“Where do you guys do your recruiting?” I said to Castillo. “Elementary school graduation?”
Whether he understood English or not, the boy knew he was being talked about—and patronized. He turned flat killer’s eyes on me and I saw the rest of their plan. He would be the one to kill me. He was expendable. The viejo in the front seat was there to see it happen.
“These people grow up young,” Castillo said.
“Take off his hood,” I said to the young killer.
Castillo rattled off a quick order. The baby face pulled the pillowcase away. It was the man who had threatened me on the street. The man who had ordered the hit on my son. The driver of the van.
“Eh! Hector Sanchez?” He did not respond. “Maricón! Mira. Mira esto.” I held up the hammer. “Hey! Say hello to my little friend,” I said in an atrocious Scarface imitation. If I hadn’t been scared shitless, I might have enjoyed myself.
He looked at me and glared with supreme confidence. He wasn’t bothering to play his assigned role—the sacrifice. He was impatient, uncomfortable, and he wanted to see me dead.
“Let’s see the product,” I said.
Castillo led me around to the trunk and opened the rear door. There were two dark gray, oversized, hard suitcases in the cargo area. Castillo gave a sweep of his arm.
“All yours.”
I hefted the big one on the left. Very heavy. The money. I grabbed the other, swung it around and opened it. The bag was packed with ten clear plastic bags of white powder. It could have been heroin. It could have been talcum powder. I wouldn’t have known the difference. Sometimes you just have to go on faith.
I stepped back. “Looks good. Have them bring it over.”
Castillo hesitated. He knew that the moment for avoiding more spilled blood had passed, had possibly never truly existed, but still his natural inclination was to find an alternative. Money had always been able to set things aright—it was his credo—and there was plenty to go round. But he had already sold his soul and my body to the ghouls of the drug trade, and they were not selling. When he spoke, it was much too fast for me to catch much more than “rápido.”
The driver got out, came around to the back, and took both suitcases while the beardless Latino with the gun pulled his charge out of the backseat. Sanchez staggered for a moment as his feet hit the ground, his hands still bound behind him. The young gunman, briefly shaken out of his assigned role, reached out and steadied him with the kind of concern reserved for a despotic superior. It didn’t matter. Events had their own momentum.
Black-uniformed men, wearing helmets and carrying clear shields and shotguns, appeared from those doorways and alleyways and began running toward us. The gate on the abandoned paint shop swung open, and a handful of black windbreaker-clad men came out bearing automatic rifles. Two large black SUVs pulled across the intersection at 126th Street, a long yellow bus and another pair of SUVs blocked the other corner. No helicopter. It was a low-key operation.
A voice blared from a bullhorn ordering us all to drop to our knees and place our hands on our heads. I did what I was told.
Castillo whirled and glared accusingly at me. I glared back.
The driver proved to have more brains than I had given him credit for. He dropped the two suitcases, sank to his knees, and placed both hands on top of his head. Youngblood didn’t take it so calmly. He pushed Sanchez to the ground and stood in front of him, protecting him to the last.
“You!” a shield-bearing officer with three stripes on his sleeve yelled. “Drop the weapon! Drop the weapon. On your knees. Down!”
Castillo was still looking around. He was the only other one standing, making him as good a target as the boy. He fell to his knees and assumed the position. But the boy wasn’t getting it. I couldn’t make myself stop watching. He swung the gun up toward the shielded officer, like he must have seen some actor do it on-screen once upon a time. His face was blank. He wasn’t angry or afraid. If he knew it was hopeless, he gave no sign. Five hundred years of exploitation had brought him here. He was bred for dying. And there were lots more at home waiting for their chance. He was just making room for the next one.
They didn’t let him fire the gun. Three or four rifles cracked as one and he was dead standing up.
It was over.
FBI Agent Marcus Brady came striding across the street toward us, leading a phalanx of black-uniformed men. They rushed us, handcuffing the driver, Sanchez, and me. The whole operation had taken seconds. A ring of uniforms, weapons at the ready, formed around the body of the boy. The man with the bullhorn arrived, still bellowing out instructions. No one was paying attention. We were all caught already.
Brady walked directly over to Castillo, helped him to his feet, and brushed imaginary dirt off the knees of his trousers.
“Muchas gracias, Señor Castillo. Bueno. Bueno.” Brady’s Spanish accent was worse than mine, but it made for grand theater. “Nice work. Now, let’s get you out of here, shall we?”
Castillo was both horrified and too confused to protest. Brady walked him away, an arm around his shoulder as though they were old friends, and helped him into the backseat of one of the waiting cars. Two agents in suits joined him. The driver and Sanchez saw it all and I could see the gears working behind their eyes.
Then the cops wrestled the three of us into waiting vehicles. I stumbled along, two cops holding me up by the arms, my feet barely touching the ground. They tossed me into the backseat of a black car and forced my head down. The doors slammed and the car bounced away over the broken pavement.
We lurched along for about two blocks, took a sharp left onto a smoother road and raced down another block or two. I was staring at the floor, my head was reeling.
The car slammed to a stop and the rear door opened. Brady reached in and pulled me up onto the seat.
“You okay?”
“Damn! One of those guys almost broke my nose throwing me in here.”
Brady turned me around and removed the handcuffs. I flopped onto the seat and pulled myself up.
“Did that boy have to die?”
“You know the answer to that.”
“You said there’d be no shooting,” I said.
“No. I said that you didn’t have to worry about shooting. And you didn’t.”
“He was a kid.”
“The cop he was going to shoot is a father. Just like you.”
“Castillo knows he was played.”
Brady was chuckling. “Doesn’t matter. He’s already a dead man if he doesn’t cooperate with us, and he knows it. Possession of ten kilos of heroin, one million dollars in cash that is probably covered in cocaine dust, and one hundred million in bearer bonds that we have a good chance of proving are part of a money-laundering conspiracy. He deals or he goes down. And after what the two cholos just saw, he won’t last a long weekend in detention. I’m happy. Are you happy?”
I leaned back. “You think they bought into it? If they didn’t, I’m prime for witness protection. And you know I don’t want that.”
“You didn’t see the driver’s face when I walked Castillo out of there? No? Beautiful. He looked like he would have bitten off Castillo’s leg if we’d let him go.”
“What about Sanchez?”
“I’d like to turn him, but it’s not gonna happen. He’ll do serious time, where he will be treated like visiting royalty, and when he’s a lot older than he is now, he will be given a one-way ticket back to Honduras.”
“Lean on the driver,” I said. “He knows more than you’d think.”
“I don’t know. I think he will dummy up and take his chances. Unless Castillo gives us something else on the guy, his lawyer will plead him out. He’ll do short time, get deported, and go home a minor celebrity.”
“You owe me a million dollars, you know.”
“I’m dying to hear how you make sense out of that.”
“That was my finder’s fee for their hundred mil. I’ll put in a claim against it.”
“And I wish you all the best with that, Jason. Really, I do.”
“Sarcasm does not become you.”
| 40 |
French toast. Sunday morning. The bells at Saint Fidelis had rung and rung again while I sat and answered questions for Brady and his team. They finally let me leave—we all had more pressing business that day.
I could smell breakfast cooking as I came up the stairs. Tom and Ivan were no longer waiting in the hall. The danger was past. My son was safe. So was I.
The Kid was up, sitting at the kitchen table with his bodyguards, all three huddled over a board game. Roger was at the stove.
“You’re up early,” I said.
Roger gave the Kid an evil glance. “His majesty ordered breakfast.”
“Thanks. I owe you one.”
“Ha!”
“Okay, I owe you another one. Put it on my tab.”
None of the players had looked up.
“Pop still asleep?”
Roger nodded. “Any glitches?
”
One dead juvenile. I didn’t want to think about it. “No. No glitches.” I was too exhausted and disgusted to explain.
Ivan suddenly leaned back and threw his hands in the air. He said one word. I didn’t need a translation. The Kid glowered. He didn’t need a translation, either. Playing a cooperative game was enough of an effort for him, playing with a sore loser was painful.
Tom harangued Ivan. Ivan pointed to the board, demonstrating his frustration. As near as I could understand, this was the third time he had landed on the broken window and slid twenty spaces back down the chute to empty his piggy bank. Tom slapped himself in the forehead, the universal gesture for “What? Are you stupid?” Ivan tried to repeat his complaint, but Tom wasn’t having it.
“Has it been this exciting all along?” I asked.
“Ivan’s the John McEnroe of Chutes and Ladders,” Roger said. He flipped the French toast. Golden brown. Perfect.
“Where did you find the game?”
“Your Pop’s girlfriend brought it over last night. I went through the pile of stuff in your old closet. Two chess sets? Oh, and I thought we’d leave Risk and Scrabble for another time. What’s Star Conqueror, by the way? I saw that in there, too.”
Star Conqueror was a four-dimensional war game that takes place across galaxies. It was in four dimensions because time travel was possible. Players needed to do trigonometric and geometric calculations in their head. Using a calculator was legal, but then you’d be giving away your strategy. I had been very good at it, but it hadn’t always been easy finding someone to play with.
“I don’t know. I forget.”
“You were kind of a geek as a kid, weren’t you?”
“You’re just figuring this out?” I said.
It was Tom’s turn. He spun the needle, got a five, and landed on the girl writing with crayon on the wall. He slid back down to 73—two spaces in back of Ivan. More hand gestures and unintelligible words. “See! You baby! Quit your crying. You’re still ahead of me.”
Mortal Bonds Page 30
