Mortal Prey ld-13

by John Sandford

  "Don't like those body-cavity searches, eh?" Lucas asked.

  "American security is sometimes… unusual," Martin said.

  When they got out of the truck in Mйrida, Malone took Lucas by the elbow and stood on tiptoe, her mouth by his ear, and said, "If you talk for one more fuckin' minute about fashion, I'll fuckin' shoot you."

  "Hey…"

  Raul Mejia's house was surrounded by an off-white stucco wall, with access through what appeared to be a simple Spanish wrought-iron gate. As they were passing through, Lucas noticed that the bolt was electronic, that the wrought iron was actually steel, and that the black faux wrought-iron leaves at the top of the gate, eight or nine feet up, were essentially knives. If anyone were to scale it, he would need serious protection-like a Kevlar quilt. Without it, a climber's fingers would be lopped off like so many link sausages.

  Inside the wall was a small, neatly kept yard, grassy in the North American style, with a stepping-stone walk to the front door of the house. The house itself, from the front, seemed as modest as the outer wall, a high single-story, and was made of the same off-white stucco, pierced by tall dark windows.

  Martin led the way through the gate, up the stepping-stone walk, and pushed the doorbell. A moment later, a young man opened it, smiled, and said, "Come in, come in-I'm Dominic Mejia. My father's waiting in the library."

  The house was much larger than it appeared from the outside, Lucas realized. From the outside, there was no way to see how far back it extended-but once inside, Dominic led them through a public reception room, across a large interior courtyard, open to the sky, with a small swimming pool, into the back of the house and down another hallway to a library. The library looked as though it might be a hundred years old, all of dark wood with thick shelves set at different heights, to accommodate the books. The bottom two feet of each wall was taken up by cupboards. The books themselves were varied, and included several hundred paperbacks and perhaps three thousand hardcovers. The room smelled faintly of lemon-scented furniture polish and leather soap-it smelled good.

  An old man was sitting in a wheelchair at a library table, a book in front of him. He smiled when they entered, pushed back from the table, and said in English, "Colonel Martin, a pleasure, as always. Your friends, as well. Come in. Sit." He gestured at a circle of chairs at the back of the room: two leather reading chairs, and three easy chairs that had apparently been brought in for the guests. Mejia wheeled himself over.

  Lucas went along the shelving and said, "This is a good room. I'm building a house now, with a library." He was looking at the books-they all appeared to have been read. Most were on history, culture, and economics, with a selection of Latin American and Spanish novels; all the bindings were modern. Mejia was a reader, rather than a collector.

  Mallard was settling into one of the leather chairs, while Malone took the other. Mejia wheeled to get a better look at his shelves, then said, "A library. I envy you the task; the thought. The difficulty is to make the library comfortable and distinguished at once. Much thought and a good architect." He tapped his temple as he said "Much thought." Mejia spoke English well, but not quite as well as his son. He looked at his son: "Dominic-open the folding doors. And find Anthony."

  At the far end of the room, two large, four-panel folding doors dominated the center of the wall. Dominic opened them and revealed a built-in desk with a computer console, and an overhead shelf lined with software boxes, then went to find Anthony, whoever that was. "Internet," Raul Mejia was saying. "A wonderful thing, even for an old man. I have this beautiful library where I can sit with my books… and a high-speed Internet connection behind harem screens made in Andalusia."

  Lucas took one of the fabric chairs as Mallard asked, "Have you ever put 'Clara Rinker' into a search engine?"

  "Three thousand references now, on Google, beginning with the investigation in your Kansas and Minnesota," Mejia said. "There is discussion of a movie or perhaps a television show."

  "You were surprised to see them all? The references?"

  "I was…" Dominic came back into the room, trailed by a man who might have been a year or two older, but was obviously his brother. Raul Mejia looked at his sons and said, "Asombrado?"

  "Astonished. Amazed," Anthony said. His English was as good as his brother's. They sounded Californian.

  "More than surprised," Mejia said. He sighed. "I wish she had the baby. This is the real assassination. A baby from my son and a woman like this. This would be a baby."

  Malone jumped in: "As we understand it, you have had enemies in business, but can find no sign that these enemies made the attack on your son and Rinker. With the St. Louis connection, it seems now that the attack was aimed at Rinker and your son was killed accidentally. Does this change your… your… feeling toward Rinker?"

  The old man shrugged. "Of course. But. I can also understand this attachment. Paulo was a good boy, but wild. Crazy, sometimes. This woman, Clara Rinker, there must have been a fire between them. She must also have this craziness somewhere inside. I could feel it myself when I spoke to her. So. I am angry that she did not tell us, but I understand why she did not. Now… what is to be done?"

  "You could help us catch her," Mallard said. "You have commercial connections everywhere in Mexico. She needs money and shelter, and she will go places that the police may not see."

  "We would also like to know from you… this man who was murdered at the airfield-what is his connection with these criminals in St. Louis? He is a Mafia?"

  "He has connections with St. Louis organized crime," Mallard said.

  "You think some Italians from St. Louis came to Cancun and shot my boy," Mejia said. "By mistake."

  "Not so many Italians anymore, but that's basically what we think, yes," Mallard agreed.

  "You will tell us their names?"

  Now Mallard showed a little nervousness. "We can't do that. But as the investigation progresses, I'm sure you will… learn a few of them. We wouldn't want you to take, ummm, any active role in the, ummm, investigation."

  "But, perhaps, through my family commercial connections-I have connections with hotels, motels, friends in the States… perhaps I could find information for you. If I had the names."

  "We really can't bring in civilians."

  "He's afraid you would send gunmen to St. Louis to kill the names," Lucas said to Mejia. "He might not mind if they did that, if it would help catch Rinker. But he couldn't tell you the names, because that might turn out to be technically criminal and he would be purged."

  "That's not exactly accurate," Mallard said irritably.

  "Besides, you don't need him to tell you," Lucas said, still talking to Mejia. "Watch your computer. The FBI leaks like crazy and the names will appear. If Rinker starts shooting, there will be lists in the newspapers. In your search engine, put in 'organized crime,' 'St. Louis,' and the word 'shot.' "

  "Goddamnit, Lucas," Mallard said.

  Mejia looked at Lucas for a long five seconds, then turned to Mallard. "So, then, from me, you need clues to Clara Rinker."

  Mallard nodded. "Yes."

  Mejia nodded back. "We will look. If you will give us a telephone number, we will call when we find anything."

  Mallard took a card from his pocket, scribbled a number on it, and handed it over. Mejia glanced at it and held it out to Anthony, who, like his brother, was leaning against the library table. "That's my secure cell phone," Mallard said. "I sleep with it. You can call me twenty-four hours a day."

  "You're not married," Mejia said.

  "Not anymore," Mallard said. "The job was more interesting."

  They talked for another ten minutes, but not much came of it. Mejia and his sons gave them impressions of Rinker. She was a happy woman, they said, and had made Paulo happy. Although she said she was younger than Paulo, they thought she might have been a couple of years older. Would they have married? Perhaps.

  Mejia seemed to lack any real information about the crime, which wasn't surprising, s
ince the FBI and the Mexican National Police had the same problem. As they left, Lucas and Mejia talked a few minutes about library shelves, and how to prevent unsightly sagging, and the arrangement of books, which the old man called an enjoyable but impossible task. On the way out of Mйrida, Malone said, "Nice old man. For a ganglord."

  Martin's eyes flashed up to the rearview mirror to catch hers, and he said, "Maybe not so much ganglord talk outside the car. And I do not think many people would agree that he is a nice old man."

  "Do you think he'll help us trail Rinker?" Mallard asked.

  "If he sees some benefit in it," Martin said. "Benefit for him. He will analyze, analyze, analyze, and if finally he is sure of the benefit, he will help. Realpolitik."

  Lucas smiled at the word. "You speak really good English, you know?"

  With Martin as a guide, they returned to Cancun and toured the restaurant where Paulo Mejia and Rinker had been shot, interviewed the restaurant owner, and climbed into the loft of the church to see the shooting position taken by the assassin.

  "Had to have local help to find this," Lucas said, as Martin explained how the shooter had probably fired once, then retreated down the stairs and out the back door to a waiting car.

  "There would have to be a driver," Martin said. "You couldn't park a car back there-it would block the entire street and bring attention."

  "You know the driver?" Mallard asked.

  "We are looking for a man… He is unaccountably absent. Normally, he would go to relatives to be hidden, but they do not know where he is. They knew where he was three days ago, but then he went away."

  "Running," Malone suggested. "Maybe he felt you coming."

  "He went to a business meeting, his mother says. He didn't come back."

  "Mmm."

  The loft was hot as a kiln, and smelled like hay, like a midwestern barn loft in summer. A wasp the size of Lucas's little finger bumped along the seam of the ceiling and wall. They looked out on the hot street for another minute, then trooped back to the restaurant for a light lunch. The service was wonderful, which Martin seemed to take for granted. Lucas again noticed the body language between Mallard and Malone, an offering from Mallard, equivocation from Malone. He smiled to himself and went back to the pasta salad.

  From the restaurant, they went to the hotel where Rinker had worked as a bookkeeper. She'd worked off the books, illegally, but nobody was being coy about it. With both the Mejia family and the national cops involved, the hotel manager simply opened up and told everybody everything: He'd hired her because she had the bookkeeping skills-she knew Excel backward and forward-and was willing to work whenever she was needed, for as long or as little as she was needed, and there were no benefits or taxes to pay.

  "She said she just needed an extra squirt of money to supplement her disability pension," the manager told them. "She was very good. The arrangement was convenient for everybody."

  "Is there any possibility that she took the job because she knew she would meet Paulo Mejia?" Lucas asked.

  The manager shook his head. "Mr. Mejia never came here-only the once, to look at the parking for an appraisal he was doing. I introduced them when he needed some numbers."

  "Purely by chance."

  He nodded. "By chance." He explained that he didn't know Mejia was coming that day, and that she'd come in at the last minute to deal with a money problem involving a group of Americans who had asked to extend their vacation stay. "She could not have planned it."

  He also characterized her as cheerful and hardworking, and said that her hours were increasing each month. "I would have liked to employ her full-time, if she had not been a foreigner," he said. "She worked very well."

  Mallard asked about pictures, and the manager shrugged. "How often do you take pictures of people in your office? We're not tourists-we work here."

  On the way back to the hotel, all four of them were quiet, thinking their own thoughts, until Lucas asked Martin, "Why is it that everybody speaks English? Everybody we've seen…"

  Martin sighed. "Gringo imperialism. Cancun business is Americans and Canadians. And English people, and now some Germans. Always Israelis. There's a story-not a story, you would call it a line- about Cancun," Martin said. "It's that Cancun is just like Miami-except in Miami, they speak Spanish."

  At the hotel, Martin got out of the truck, shook hands with the three Americans, and asked Lucas to get the name of the San Francisco store where he'd bought the jacket. Lucas said he would find it and call back.

  "Not much here," Lucas said, as he watched Martin drive away. Then he, Mallard, and Malone crossed into the cool of the hotel.

  "But we got a deal with old man Mejia, which is the main thing," Mallard said. "If he decides to put a price on her head, Rinker's gonna have a hard time getting any help from the underground. Word'll get around."

  "You have more faith than I do," Lucas said. "Most of the fuckin' underground can't read a TV Guide."

  "I'm not talking about the assholes on the corner," Mallard said. "I'm talking about the gun dealers and the moneymen and the document people. They'll hear. She'll have trouble moving."

  Lucas shook his head; he disagreed. The disagreement was fundamental, and generally divided all cops everywhere: Some believed in underlying social order, in which messages got relayed and people kept an eye out, and bosses reigned and buttonmen were ready to take orders, and a network connected them. And some cops believed in social chaos, in which most events occurred through accident, coincidence, stupidity, cupidity, and luck, both good and bad. Lucas fell into the chaos camp, while Mallard and Malone believed in the underlying order.

  When working out the trip to Mexico, Mallard had allowed extra time for a certain inefficiency; but Martin had been so ruthlessly efficient that they were done at two o'clock, mission more or less accomplished.

  "Swim?" Malone asked.

  "Too hot," Lucas said. "I'm gonna get a beer at the bar, then a couple of papers, and lay up in my room with the air-conditioning on. Maybe swim before dinner?"

  "Not bad," Mallard said. "I'm for a beer or two."

  "I'll join you," Malone said. "But I gotta run up to my room for a minute."

  Lucas and Mallard stopped at the hotel gift shop and bought copies of the Times and the Wall Street Journal, carried the papers into the cool of the bar, got a booth, and ordered Dos Equis.

  "You read the editorials?" Mallard asked.

  "Yeah, though I know it's wrong," Lucas said.

  "You want the Fascists or the Commies?"

  Lucas considered for a moment, then said, "Fascists," and Mallard passed him the Journal. They both opened to the editorial pages, looked over the offerings, and then Lucas asked, casually, "How bad you got it for Malone?"

  Mallard's newspaper folded down. He looked at Lucas for a long moment, then sighed and said, "Is it that obvious?"

  "Yup," Lucas said.

  "The goddamn woman drives me crazy. I know you guys…" He didn't say it-that Lucas and Malone once spent a happy weekend together. "That's not a big deal. I just… hunger after her. I thought I was hiding it pretty well."

  "I'm a trained investigator," Lucas said. He looked at an editorial headline that said, " 'Sweatshops' Often Build Sustaining Family Businesses." After a moment of silence from Mallard, he added, "I suspect nobody else knows, except any trained investigators you might have at the FBI. And Malone, of course."

  Mallard's eyebrows went up. "You think she knows?"

  "Jesus Christ, Louis, she knew before you did," Lucas said. "Women always know that shit first. And she's not backing away. If I were you, I'd set up a moment somewhere. Have a few drinks around the pool tonight, tell her a few stories, give her a chance to tell you a few, and you know, going up stairs, put a hand on her."

  "What about the drywall guy? The Sheetrocker?"

  "Fuck the drywall guy. You're not playing tennis."

  "Have to be more than a few drinks," Mallard said gloomily. He looked scared to death.

>   "It's no big deal, Louis," Lucas said. "People do it all the time."

  "Not me," Mallard said. "I'm not exactly your romantic hero."

  "Yes, you are, Louis. You're a big wheel in the FBI. You're involved in international intrigue. You carry a great big gun. You spend the taxpayers' money like it was water."

  "I'm paying for the beer personally."

  "Louis, what the fuck are you talking about?"

  "Yeah, yeah." The phone in his pocket rang and he slipped it out, answered, listened for a moment, then said, "Oh, boy. When? We'll be out front." He clicked it shut and said, "Martin's coming back. They found that guy who might have been the driver."

  "Dead?"

  "Not yet. But he's in terrible shape. Martin says he was tortured."

  "Where is he?"

  "Here. Cancun. He was dumped at a hospital. Martin'll be here in five minutes."

  Malone came out of the elevator as Mallard was ringing her room. Mallard explained about the phone call on the way to the door. Martin roared in three minutes later, parting the clouds of Volkswagen Beetles like a wolf going through a flock of sheep. "He's at the hospital now," he said, as they scrambled aboard.

  "How bad?" Lucas asked.

  "He could die before we get there," Martin said. His face had gone grim as a crocodile's, and the easy charm had vanished. They bounced over a curb going out of the parking lot, onto the strip. Lucas had no idea of where they were going. The GMC was rigged with a siren to go with the flasher lights above the bumper, and Martin punched the truck through the traffic.

  An unknown person had driven an old Toyota Corolla over a curb at the hospital emergency entrance, Martin said, had left the motor running and the passenger door open, and walked away. When a cop inside the emergency room noticed the car, he'd gone out to order the owner to move it-and found the tortured man sitting in a blood-soaked passenger seat. Nobody saw where the Corolla's driver went. Nobody remembered what he looked like.