He improvised wildly, remembering bits of what he had scripted in his head. “On my way in I saw some of Khalid’s boys in a vehicle. I think they saw me. We don’t got much time.”
Glaring at him, she spoke into the radio. The radio gave off agitated voices, street noises. He saw Méndez moving along the railing above, radio at his ear, and on the other side of the atrium the bearded judicial he had met in Isabel’s apartment. The beefy cop had a gun in his hand, apparently not giving a shit about what anyone in the store might think. The piano music was driving Pescatore crazy.
“Facundo? Facundo, what’s going on?” Isabel demanded.
An extremely loud voice echoed over the radio. Pescatore heard the faint but unmistakable crack of gunshots in the background. The Mexicans above sprinted for the escalator. Puente cursed.
“Come on! This way!” Pescatore exclaimed. He bolted, running past the pianos, hearing “Hello, Dolly” falter and finally come to a stop.
Puente called his name and gave chase, as he had known she would. A saleswoman in blue pitched backward out of his way. He blazed over marble past a row of female mannequins in bridal and communion gowns.
If there was one thing Pescatore was good at, it was running. He took sprint-relay strides, hands half-clenched as if pulling down strings, head pumping, back straight, despite the prospect that someone was about to put a bullet in it.
He rounded a corner hard, knocking a pile of boxes off a table, throwing a glance over his shoulder. Isabel pelted after him with Méndez and the big man well in the rear.
Pescatore found the freight exit by the elevator, just as they had planned it. He slammed through double swinging doors, skidded to a stop in front of a dank freight elevator fronted by cagelike mesh. He turned and drew his gun.
Seconds later, Puente kicked through the doors. She came in low and fast in a shooter’s crouch. Pescatore made no move to raise his gun. His eyes locked on hers as she drew a bead on his chest. Right on the ten-ring. The best thing that could possibly happen would be for her to pull the trigger.
She didn’t get a chance. Momo and Buffalo jumped her from either side of the doors, where they had been hiding.
Buffalo hadn’t told Pescatore exactly where they would be. But his orders had been clear: Don’t worry about us, we’ll be there. You just lead ’em where I say. They’ll be expecting a bunch of us outside, so we set up a diversion in the street. Meanwhile me and Momo sneak in and do our Delta Force thing.
The problem was that Junior had ordered them to capture Puente alive. So Momo grappled with her gun arm. Buffalo, holding his sawed-off shotgun, tried to help as he kept watch for the pursuers. She ducked and twisted, resisting furiously. She turned Momo in a circle. She headbutted him under the chin, driving him up and back.
Puente’s gun hand pulled free. She shot Momo twice in the belly at flesh-scorching range. Buffalo slammed a fist on her head as if he were pounding a table. Puente and Momo went down together. Her gun clattered away on the floor.
Pescatore rushed up and got her in a chokehold. He backpedaled toward the elevator, dragging her. Buffalo bent quickly over Momo, who was motionless on his back. Buffalo rose and trained his shotgun on the swinging doors.
“You did good, homes,” Buffalo rasped at Pescatore. “Aguas, they’re comin’.”
When Méndez and the other Mexican appeared beyond the swinging doors, advancing behind their pistols, Buffalo cranked off a shotgun blast that shredded wood and eardrums.
“That’s as far as you get, cabrones,” he snarled. “Or we blow this lady’s brains out. No closer.”
Puente stirred and wriggled in Pescatore’s grip. He put his mouth against her ear and hissed: “Just trust me. Hold still and don’t do nothing.”
Incredibly, Méndez showed himself in the doorway, straightening, his gun pointed down at the floor. He’s got a death wish, Pescatore thought.
“Wait!” Méndez called in that schoolteacher tone that Pescatore hated. “Don’t do anything stupid. I offer myself in exchange for her.”
Lame dumbshit wannabe hero, Pescatore thought. Sacrifices himself for his chick.
“You’re in no position to negotiate, motherfucker!” Buffalo retorted in English, his Spanish deserting him in the heat of the moment. “She just killed one of my boys. I oughta smoke her and you both.”
Pescatore flinched, thinking the big man would turn the shotgun on Puente. But that wasn’t the plan, and Buffalo knew it.
“You know what will happen if you kill an American agent,” Méndez said. “Listen to me.”
Pescatore could feel Isabel reviving, her small hard muscles bunching, elbows jabbing him. His mouth was full of her hair. Her shoes scrabbled for leverage, planting her weight to unleash some kind of martial-arts move on him. Pescatore yanked her savagely up and back. He tightened his forearm against her throat. She gagged, a sound that made him feel as if he were being torn in half. Fighting down shame and revulsion, he put the barrel of his pistol alongside her head.
“Méndez,” Pescatore heard himself shout in a faraway nightmare voice. “You want Isabel to live so damn bad, you shut up and do what we say.”
28
PORTHOS IMPLORED HIM NOT DO IT.
The stucco walls of the service hallway beyond the double doors created an echo. It was hard to hear. Pescatore and the massive pocho shouted threats and commands simultaneously. The radio on Méndez’s belt gave off the frenzy of a gunfight in the street: Facundo’s men versus a swarm of adversaries. He could hear Athos on the radio as well. And through it all, the gentle husky voice behind him begged him to stop.
“Please, Licenciado,” Porthos said from behind the pillar where he had taken cover. “It’s suicide, Licenciado.”
But there was no doubt in Méndez’s mind. It was his duty and his punishment. He had put too many others at risk. He stooped and laid the gun on the linoleum. The doors settled shut behind him, leaving Porthos on the other side.
“Now kick it over! Hurry up and kick it over!” Pescatore’s face emerged from behind Puente, his gun arm stiff and shaking. He appeared to be choking her into unconsciousness.
Méndez put his foot on the gun and sent it skidding toward them. Buffalo roared at Porthos to keep back or he would blow a hole in his boss. Buffalo reached out, grabbed Méndez’s shoulder and yanked him forward in a single motion that sent Méndez running-stumbling into the room-sized, roofless freight elevator. They dragged Puente inside. The cage clanged shut. The elevator began to descend.
Watching Pescatore dump Puente into a corner, Méndez said: “Look, let her go while you can, before it’s too late.”
Pescatore whirled. Their faces were inches apart. Pescatore shifted his gun to his left hand, opening himself to attack, silently taunting Méndez to try something. Pescatore was half a head shorter than him; the young man’s eyes strained up in their sockets.
“The fuck you think you’re giving orders to, asshole?” Pescatore said.
Pescatore hit Méndez with three whip-fast punches that bounced Méndez off the wall. Méndez swung back feebly and Pescatore sidestepped. Still using only one arm, the agent delivered a methodical barrage of blows, chopping and pounding through Méndez’s defenses. Pescatore was brutally strong for his size.
Méndez didn’t remember falling. But the fact was that he was lying on his side. The floor smelled: grease, cigarettes, ammonia, work shoes. Blood filled his mouth and seeped from the back of his head. He was coated in sweat; the elevator was an oven. He saw Puente huddled in the corner, her knees drawn up, hair disheveled. Buffalo stood guard over her with the shotgun, legs planted like columns. A spectator to Pescatore’s business with Méndez.
Méndez pointed up at Pescatore and spat blood. He enunciated carefully: “Fuck your mother, yanqui, traitor—”
Pescatore kicked him in the belly, cursing in Spanish and English. He was wearing hiking boots. The impact ignited a flame of pain that spread until Méndez’s torso was a single fire. Méndez croak
ed, mouth open wide.
The lights of the elevator shaft starred and blurred above him, the way lights did when he wasn’t wearing his contact lenses. Maybe one of his lenses had slipped off. He was going to need a new contact lens. Now that’s a real problem, he thought.
Méndez started shaking his head and found he couldn’t stop. Gears clanked and scraped as the elevator descended. A private rectangular hell.
“Valentín, that’s enough.” The big pocho’s voice was obscenely calm. Méndez saw the legs shift, the shotgun barrel dig into Puente’s neck. Buffalo said: “Hey lady. Don’t you get slick or it’s over, understand?”
Puente sagged back in the corner. She had been watching from under her lashes, bracing for an opportunity. Buffalo said: “You beat him down good, Valentín. Like you wanted. Now finish him.”
“Fuck that.” Pescatore’s boot lashed into Méndez’s chest. He thinks I’m a soccer ball, Méndez told himself. Do I look like a soccer ball to you, gabacho? Méndez wanted to say, his jaw working against the filthy floor. He couldn’t get enough wind.
“Come on, ese, Rufino’s got the car waiting. The fellas got their hands full out in the street. Let’s finish it. What’re you doin’, Valentín?”
The elevator groaned to a sudden stop. Pescatore’s doing, Méndez assumed.
“You heard Junior,” Pescatore declared. “Junior said he wanted us to cut off Méndez’s ears. Cut ’em off, and make him eat them. And he said to call so he could listen while we did it.”
29
THE ONE THING PESCATORE hadn’t counted on was Buffalo punking out at the moment of truth.
Not Buffalo: the mechanic, Junior’s pet robot killer. Now look at him: disobeying orders, hemming and hawing. Talking about let’s just shoot him and get it over with.
Pescatore stood so he half straddled the prone Méndez. He looked incredulously at the big man, who had the shotgun trained on Puente.
“Whattaya mean, Junior won’t care?” Pescatore demanded. “He said he was gonna make me eat my own ears if I messed up.”
“Junior says a lotta crazy shit,” Buffalo muttered.
“He was real clear about it. He said we keep Isabel alive. She’s our insurance, a bargaining chip.”
Pescatore glanced at Isabel. Her shirt top was askew, her cleavage swelling out of it just to torture him. Her eyes were luminous, implacable.
“Cuanto te odio,” she spat. How I hate you. A spear right in the heart, but it only took Pescatore a second to shake it off.
“Shut up, bitch,” Pescatore retorted. He turned back to Buffalo. “And then Junior said we do the thing with the ears. On the phone, give him the play-by-play. Remember?”
Buffalo glowered. Méndez moaned at Pescatore’s feet. The Mexican had sure fooled him. In San Diego, Méndez had come off so cool and mean that Pescatore assumed he could handle himself. But it was a front. Méndez was a wimp. He probably hadn’t been in a fight since the eighth grade, and lost every one before that.
Pescatore noticed that the knuckles of his own right hand were torn and bloody. The after-jolts of the beating he had administered to Méndez were still tingling through him. It occurred to him that it wouldn’t take more than another round or two of punishment to finish off Méndez.
“Look Valentin, it ain’t personal for me,” Buffalo said. “Maybe for Junior. For you because of the girl. For me it’s just work. Otro jale mas.”
“But Junior said—”
“I know what he said,” Buffalo snapped. “We can tell Junior Méndez got shot and we couldn’t do nothing, this and that. No ear cutting. I hate that psycho shit.”
“You want me to lie to the man?” Pescatore whooped shrilly, sounding to himself like Junior.
“No but…”
Pescatore was awed by his own recklessness. He was mouthing off to Buffalo a day after the big man had been on the verge of wasting him. Pescatore had turned the whole thing upside down. Buffalo put up with it only because the thought of lying to Junior tied him in knots.
“All I’m sayin’ is, I think we better get with the program. Do what we were told.”
“Alright.” Buffalo’s face twisted in disgust. “You’re right. Shit. Fuck.”
“You got a knife, right?”
“Yeah. Here. Wait.”
30
MÉNDEZ’S PALMS WERE flat on the floor of the elevator. He pressed down as hard as he could. He got no results, like a man who has done too many push-ups.
He had decided to work up the strength to attack, force them to shoot him. He did not intend to provide Junior with any telephone-sadism thrills. And, a journalist to the last, Méndez did not want his son to grow up one day and read the stories about the way they had killed his father. Juancito’s life would be hard enough without that kind of crime-tabloid indignity.
“Cover the girl, Valentín,” Buffalo said, his voice floating somewhere above.
“I am. You gonna call Junior?”
Méndez couldn’t get his body to cooperate. His mind either. He was having trouble staying focused on the duo of subhumans discussing the barbarity they were about to inflict on him. One too many blows to the head; he was drifting off.
An image took shape. From about a year ago: He had just been named chief of the Diogenes Group. He had kept an overdue promise and driven with his son to an empty beach near Ensenada. They had kicked around a soccer ball on a warm overcast day. Nothing elaborate, they hadn’t even played that long. But his son had talked about it for weeks afterward.
Méndez was back on the beach now. But the memory slipped and mutated in ways he didn’t like. The beach was no longer idyllic and solitary. It was crowded with strangers and people he knew. Instead of playing, Méndez was fretting. He scanned the crowd for enemies. He warned his son about getting too close to the water. He glared at all the idiots ruining his beach.
His son watched quizzically. Finally, Juancito trotted up to him with the ball under his arm.
“Don’t worry so much, Papa,” the boy said. “Just play.”
Méndez laughed with relief. The boy tossed the ball. Méndez caught it on his foot. He started juggling, enjoying the simple pleasure of it. They headed the ball to each other. They kicked harder and harder, spreading out. His son’s sturdy brown feet slapped the wet sand as he ran. They played and played until the beach emptied out and it was just the two of them again.
“Was he laughing just now?” Buffalo said.
Méndez wasn’t sure what Juancito had really said. The ache of regret was so acute. The sensation that he had kicked the ball too far, that the game was over, was so real. Now he wasn’t sure if the visit to the beach had really happened at all. If it was a memory or a dream.
“He ain’t laughing. Look at ’im, he’s crying,” Pescatore scoffed. “Least he will be in a minute. When he’s chewin’ on them ears.”
31
PESCATORE WATCHED BUFFALO lean the shotgun against the wall. He watched Buffalo pull a hunting knife and a cell phone from his belt. Time to call the boss, as ordered.
Buffalo squinted at the phone. He pressed numbers one-handed. He made a quick pass with the flat of the knife on his denim-clad thigh, wiping both sides of the blade.
That was when Pescatore extended his gun arm full-length. He opened fire from a distance of two feet. Maximum. So easy. Nothing to it.
The shots were explosions within explosions within explosions. The echoes were magnified hugely by the elevator shaft. The bullets spun Buffalo around and slammed him into the wall. Pescatore fired and fired, feeling the sound vibrate in his teeth and bones.
Buffalo shuddered and twitched. He slid down the wall. He came to rest in a slump, his weight on one knee. His thick, muscular haunches and legs bunched under him, forming a fulcrum that kept him upright.
His eyes full of smoke and his ears full of pain, Pescatore counted nine discharges. He stopped shooting. Buffalo stayed where he was. Half on the floor, half against the wall.
Pescatore stepped c
lose and inspected him, gun at the ready. There was no doubt the big man was dead.
Even though he hadn’t really fallen. Even though his face was pressed up against the metal as if he were listening intently to something on the other side. As if he were taking a quick breather before getting back to work. He was suspended in time and space forever.
Nobody’s badder than Buffalo, Pescatore thought. Dead, but not down.
Pescatore reached into his own shirtfront with his left hand. He extracted the woven jailbird crucifix he had bought from the old Maria at the border crossing in Tijuana. He ducked his chin and worked the black necklace up over his head. Gingerly, he draped the cross over Buffalo’s shoulder.
32
THE THUNDER OF THE GUNSHOTS was like another beating, a giant stomping his skull.
When it finally subsided, Méndez opened his eyes. He came slowly to the realization that the shots had not been meant for him.
Porthos saved the day, he thought for a moment. But the elevator was between floors and the doors were closed; no new arrivals.
It occurred to Méndez that perhaps Puente had grabbed a gun. But she was still slumped against the wall. Like Méndez, she was trying to make sense of what she saw: Pescatore standing over the grotesquely crouched hulk that had been Buffalo.
Pescatore turned. He went on one knee beside Puente. He touched her cheek with two knuckles. He whispered to her.
She closed her eyes. She kept them shut tight, tears spilling from beneath the lids.
Pescatore stepped over to Méndez, who cringed. But there were no more kicks or punches.
Pescatore bent close. His voice was almost unrecognizable. It had acquired a fearful serenity.
“See that, Méndez?” Pescatore said. “He looked out for me. Saved my life a couple times. That’s what he gets for trustin’ me. And I liked him a whole lot better than I like you.”
Part Five
IN THE LABYRINTH
Triple Crossing Page 33
