by Todd Merer
I carried out Dolores’s tradecraft as instructed.
When I returned to bed, she was already in it. Naked. She reached across me—her small, perfect breasts pressing against my body—and turned the clock radio on. She fiddled a moment until she found Coltrane, set the volume on low.
She said, “At dawn, we’re leaving.”
“Now? It’s still L-Day minus—”
“That’s Richard’s lingo. Forget Richard, Benn. It’s you I want.”
I, a veteran of a thousand one-night stands, was too stunned, too conflicted to react. She’d been Sara, my old friend and client’s little girl . . . I was old enough to be her father . . . she’d been Sombra, a murderous narcotrafficker . . . and Laura Astorquiza, the phony antidrug activist who’d deceived me . . . now she’d morphed into Dolores, horny and hellbound and inviting me along for her ride—
She fitted her mouth to mine.
Her lips were soft and sweet.
I, ah, rose to the occasion.
While Coltrane’s sax crooned “My Favorite Thing,” I lost myself dancing with Dolores doing the leading . . . until “Blue Train,” after which I led our coupling.
Spent, we lay entwined, silent until daylight seeped through the shade seams.
Dolores turned so we were face-to-face. As a child, she’d had the enormous dark eyes of a kid in a Keane painting; yet somehow they’d never revealed her thoughts. Her gaze, then and now, reflected only those things she chose to see.
Now, in her eyes, I saw myself.
Abruptly, the image was gone, her gray eyes again opaque, as if her thoughts had transported her elsewhere.
“Richard.” She whispered the name disparagingly. “He now thinks of me as he does you: disposable, since he got his merit badges for my destroying the cartels.”
I won’t let him hurt you, I thought. Or me. Us.
I left the bed, flattened against the wall, inched the shade away, looked at the street. The streetlamps were still on. Beneath one a dark sedan was parked. Its steamed-over windows were cut by the shadowed arc of a hood-to-tail antenna.
“Hard to believe,” I said. “I knew the feds broke rules, but . . . assassinations?”
“A few, but Richard’s too smart to trust the suits with doing wet work. He’s using his own people now. Men blooded in Eastern Europe and Africa. We can deal with such scum. It’s the others that concern me.”
“Others? You mean Missy and the Chinese Reds?”
“Them. No matter. Together, we’re unstoppable.”
I sat on the bed and gripped her arms. “Together?”
“For the long run, Mr. Bluestone. Think of me as your personal Plan Colombia.”
I laughed. “Plan Colombia” had been the highly publicized joint effort by the United States and Colombia to eliminate the cartels. It began in the ’90s, when Colombia legalized major miscreants extraditable to the States. Didn’t matter. Despite the billions spent breaking cartels, they’d quickly reconstituted. The only real benefactors of Plan Colombia had been those who lived off its largesse: the employees and collaborators of the American criminal justice system, the Colombian politicos and generals who diverted funds their way, and of course, lawyers like myself. Plan Colombia would have been a joke were it not a tragic failure that to this day leaked blood and money.
But maybe Plan Colombia wasn’t the proper analogy; from its inception, it had been rife with secrets and betrayals. But Dolores and I truly were on the same side . . . weren’t we?
In her gaze, again I saw my own reflection.
“Together,” I said, and kissed her.
CHAPTER 44
The clock alarm went off at 5:30 a.m. The tiny bathroom was neat as a pin. Sonia had set out two new toothbrushes. Hmm. Not only did Val know I was into something fraught with peril, but he had also known Dolores was coming. It didn’t bother me. Val’s instincts for people were unerring, and he’d chosen to trust Dolores.
Dolores bathed first. She came out finger-combing her wet hair and zipped into her black bodysuit. I had an urge to unzip her but remedied it with a cold shower. Business before pleasure. When I came out of the bathroom, Dolores and Sonia were seated on the edge of the bed, drinking coffee.
I was surprised. “Sonia? You’re with them, too?”
“Who is them? I’m with you, Mr. Benn.”
“Ditch the paranoia,” said Dolores.
The bedroom door was open. I could smell Val’s Gauloises and hear a TV newscast about an incident that had left one FBI agent dead and another grievously wounded in a vestibule in Greenpoint.
I hit the bathroom. In the mirror, my face looked the same as always. Why shouldn’t it? Nothing special had happened. I’d conspired to kill men. Again. I had no choice. I had no choice. And I wanted them dead. I had nothing else to say.
I joined Val. He lit a fresh butt from the stub he’d smoked down.
The world news came on next: stock footage of atolls in a tropical sea, a voice-over: “In the South China Sea, a Chinese frigate passed within yards of an Australian patrol boat, which that country’s government has called a provocation. Both nations have lodged formal protests and warned of armed responses. The Secretary of State has just reaffirmed that an attack on Australia will be considered an attack on the United States. Pundits have noted that this is the first confrontation between nuclear powers since the Cuban Missile Crisis.”
“Oy vey,” said Sonia.
Two Logui appeared from the fire escape: the ones Dolores called Older and Younger Brother. They too wore black outfits, their cargo pockets stuffed with banana clips. They set down two duffel bags, then left me alone with Dolores.
From the one duffel, Dolores took a black bodysuit and tossed it to me. I took off my boxers—Jesus, I’d been wearing nothing but rumpled, stained underpants while talking to Val’s wife. Dolores tossed me pairs of heavy socks and lightweight combat boots. I laced them up. Also in the duffel was a Dopp kit . . . and two hard plastic cases whose shape betrayed their contents: a long gun and a handgun.
I stared at them. The killing wasn’t over. It had just begun.
The newscaster’s voice jarred me back to the present:
“This just in: North Korea has warned of a preemptive strike if US warships interfere—”
Dolores shut off the TV. “Let’s go, Benn.”
A window was open to a fire escape, the blank wall of the adjoining building beyond. Dolores tweeted softly, like a night bird seeking a mate, and Older Brother again appeared in the window.
Following Dolores’s lead, I handed him my duffel. Sonia kissed my cheek. Val kissed the other cheek. Older Brother disappeared down the fire escape, and Dolores and I followed. He scrambled down and stood below, waiting for us. He wore faded work jeans, a corduroy jacket with a fake fleece collar, and shitkickers with run-down heels. If I didn’t know otherwise, I’d have made him for a Mexican laborer seeking day work.
He wasn’t a laborer but had been working. I knew there were probably cameras in the surrounding backyards, then realized he’d somehow scrambled up sheer walls and covered their lenses with duct tape. He’d also cut a flap in the chain-link fence enclosing the yard. We went through the flap into an alley lined with garbage cans, then stopped when Older Brother held up a palm just short of the street around the corner from Val’s place.
There, another dark sedan idled at the curb.
Dolores spoke quietly. “The next shift. In another minute, the guys in front of Val’s apartment will leave. These guys will take their place.”
“Li’l Abner’s Freaking Fearless Fosdicks,” I said.
She stifled a giggle. “So many years, and you still make me laugh.”
I wasn’t trying to be funny. God help me, I was amped.
The sedan’s headlamps came on. It pulled from the curb, drove to the far corner, turned from view. Immediately, from the opposite side of the street, an old Nissan appeared. It pulled over, and the three of us got in and it pulled away. We turned
at the corner and went in the opposite direction of the watchers. The driver was Younger Brother.
He and Dolores conversed in Anchiga, their soft, avian-sounding language.
We drove crosstown west before turning south. Instead of taking the West Side Highway downtown, we stayed on its parallel side streets. Younger Brother had the same street smarts as Val. If somehow the watchers had learned we’d fled, they’d put out an alert on the major byways, which, knowing Richard’s resources, would be heavily enforced. Short of the Battery, we turned east, looped the tip of Manhattan, and emerged parallel to FDR Drive, heading north, uptown—
At the last moment, Younger Brother swerved onto the Brooklyn Bridge ramp. He kept at a steady 45 mph, so as not to chance a random traffic stop. Still nothing suspicious behind us, but the tension in the car remained palpable. We exited the bridge, drove side streets to the LIE southbound, drove around the wide bulge of west and south Brooklyn—the Heights, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Gowanus, Bay Ridge—slowed in Fort Hamilton, and from there swooped onto the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge that crossed to Staten Island.
Across the wide sweep of Upper New York Bay, Manhattan’s downtown towers glittered in the morning light, but to my eyes, they’d never be the same. Not since 9-11, when the Apple’s two front teeth had been so foully knocked out. The world in general and mine in particular had changed since then. Gotten far more dangerous and much too dumbed down . . .
I wondered if ever I’d see New York again.
Was I leaving someone dear behind? Nope.
Was I leaving a career behind? Nope.
I had nothing left to lose. I was free.
Once in Staten Island, it was the same routine: avoiding the major thoroughfares, staying on sleepy side streets. After a quarter hour, Older Brother, who was riding shotgun, whistled. A word or a signal? Whichever, Younger Brother pulled to the curb. We were in a deserted zone of empty buildings, an industrial park devastated by Hurricane Sandy and never rebuilt. Already, it was being consumed by marsh grass.
Younger Brother got out carrying a long plastic case like the one Dolores had put in my duffel. He disappeared in the tall grass. Older Brother resumed driving.
“Stay aware,” said Dolores.
It’s begun, I thought.
We turned onto another empty street. Suddenly Older Brother stood on the brakes, simultaneously turning the wheel. As we skidded sideways and turned around, headlights came on at the far end of the street.
Searchers.
I hadn’t the slightest idea how Older Brother sensed their presence, or how they’d found us. Then something flickered above.
They had a drone.
CHAPTER 45
We burned rubber back the way we came. The searchers were gaining ground. One leaned from the shotgun window. He held something—
A moment before it flashed, I yanked Dolores down—
Our rear window shattered; glass pebbles hailed.
Dolores spoke in Anchiga, her voice calm, as if neither surprised nor concerned. The damn woman never failed to lift my spirit. Given her manner, I figured this was her preplanned move.
Older Brother pulled over near where we had left Younger Brother, who was nowhere in sight. I was astonished. We’re surrendering? But then Dolores winked at me.
I’d figured right: the woman who’d risen from obscure poverty to the throne of the mighty Sombra wasn’t about to be undone by a small-time shooter on a desolate roadside.
The searchers pulled over twenty yards behind us. They had a loudspeaker that boomed:
“Everyone out! Hands up high—”
Two shots rang out. The searcher’s windshield shattered. Where it had been, two men slumped.
Younger Brother reappeared, long gun in hand. He went to the searcher’s vehicle, fired a head shot to both men, then climbed back into our car cool as the underside of a pillow. Older Brother drove off.
“What about the drone?” I asked.
“Relax, little boy,” said Dolores.
“You’re not my mother.”
“But you’re my baby.”
Comfort amid chaos. True that I needn’t have worried about the drone, for another few blocks ahead was a Yellow Cab garage. We drove beneath its entrance canopy, out of view of the drone camera. The driver shifts were changing. We got out of our car and got into a cab whose driver was about to start his long day’s work. His Taxi & Limousine license was inserted in the plexiglass dividing the front from the rear seats. It was upside-down on purpose, the better to deter customer complaints. I cocked my head and made out his name—Mohammed Chaudrey—an NYC generic cabbie moniker if there ever were one.
He blinked as Dolores handed him five Franklins.
“That’s for starters,” she said. “Now go!”
And off we went, just another anonymous cab among dozens streaming from the garage, indistinguishable to the drones—there were multiple drones now—buzzing aimlessly behind, like mosquitoes searching for prey.
We went down a lightly trafficked highway.
Dolores, ever possessed of the ability to control her emotions, relaxed. Leaning her head against my shoulder, she closed her eyes. Me, I was anything but relaxed. I knew Richard would manipulate the facts so the dead men became federal employees whose killing during the commission of a crime was punishable by death. Not that it mattered, for Ianucci was enough for them to fry me.
But then Dolores’s hand squeezed mine.
And just like that, my fears vanished.
We drove through a neighborhood of small frame homes in need of paint and whose patches of lawn needed trimming. One home appeared abandoned. In another’s dirty window was a fading MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN sign.
The cab wasn’t old, but the city’s potholes had taken their toll, and the ride was not smooth, although Chaudrey was doing a good job avoiding the big axle-breakers. Younger Brother hand-signaled directions.
He pointed at a darkened house.
Chaudrey pulled over in front of it. We got out. Dolores leaned into the driver’s window and spoke to Chaudrey:
“You aren’t going to record the trip, because why split five hundred bucks with the boss, right?”
“Right.”
“Say goodbye,” said Dolores.
“Goodbye,” said Chaudrey.
Still again, I marveled at Dolores’s machinations. She’d set up a win-win situation. If Richard’s searchers found the cabbie—and they would—no doubt he’d immediately vomit everything up. Including us being in a place we weren’t any longer.
When the cab was gone from view, Older Brother whistled. A moment later, headlights came on in a parked Honda. It started up and drove to us. The driver was another Logui who could have been the brothers’ cousin. He drove us onto a main drag. The Honda was a small SUV. Not new, not old. Needed a wash. Younger Brother up front with the driver. Older Brother behind the driver, Dolores in the middle, me behind Younger Brother.
Again, Dolores rested her head on my shoulder. I took that as a sign that all augured well for the immediate future. Yes, a fact, for I was now convinced—that whether by witch- or tradecraft—Dolores possessed a third eye. Uncanny.
Or maybe not uncanny, considering she’d grown up in constant threat of attack. Yet this woman of steel was sleeping on my shoulder like a kitten. I admit to having narcissistic tendencies, but it was difficult to accept I was the man she’d loved since she was a girl.
The punch line was not that I wanted to believe her . . . but that I did.
We drove to the west end of Staten Island. Not exactly God’s little acres. Old warehouses, rotting piers. We crossed the Bayonne Bridge over the oil-sheened Kill Van Kull. Wended through industrial Jersey, then got on I-95 headed north. Here and there on the roadside were still patches of swamp grass that had survived the great pave-over creating parking lots and malls. We passed the Meadowlands Racetrack and MetLife Stadium, both in their own ways temples of mass dementia.
Traffic our way was lig
ht; the city-bound lanes crawled. We exited I-95 at Washington Avenue and drove north.
It began raining as we passed a sign: WELCOME TO TETERBORO AIRPORT. No one asked to check our creds, and we drove directly onto the tarmac, stopping at the boarding steps of a gleaming Gulfstream. Much as I was impressed by Richard’s seemingly endless capabilities, I was starting to think he didn’t have much on Dolores. I mean, No airport security?
Again, Dolores read my mind. “Three things about business my father told me. Both money and power are the keys to success. The third thing is the most important. Money always trumps power. I have a lot of money, Benn.”
None of this was a news flash. Dolores was loaded, and everything and everyone had a price tag. Complication being, that for better or for worse, she’d bought me.
We and the Logui boarded the Gulfstream and buckled up. Quickly, we were cleared for takeoff. Scarce minutes later, we pierced the morning awakening murk into the new day’s flawless blue sky. The sudden change felt as if I my life were starting over.
Dolores and I had a private rear compartment. We sat side by side.
After a while she said, “I went along with Richard to protect the Logui homeland from the Chinese. If I didn’t cooperate, it was only a matter of time until I was captured, and without me, the Logui . . . well . . . In dealing with Richard, I learned about his Chinese mission, which provided a way for us to save my people.”
“Us?”
She took my face between her hands. “I slept with Richard. Maybe that makes me a whore. But the currency passed both ways. Richard and I used each other.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but she put her finger to my lips.
“He meant nothing to me. You did it with Stella, didn’t you?”
I nodded. “Yes, but that was before we—”
“Richard was infatuated with me. Maybe because he knew I was as ruthless as he was. Doesn’t matter. What did matter was that he got careless with secrets. Or perhaps it was intentional, his way of boasting. Doesn’t matter, either. What does matter is that through Richard, I learned enough to gain a foothold in the game.”
