by Taylor Smith
Hannah shook her head. She didn’t know art, but she knew for sure that this splotchy mess wasn’t worth the lives of an entire household of innocent people.
Another thought struck her. Maybe it wasn’t the canvas at all. Maybe the painting was just an excuse to transport the frame. After all, people who wanted armaments traded what they had, sometimes in elaborate, multilevel deals involving many other commodities as currency. The inventiveness of thieves and smugglers was legendary, with items like cocaine or heroin resin often reconstituted, shaped and camouflaged to look like something else.
She hefted the frame in her hands, trying to gauge the weight of it. Not wood, she thought. Some kind of molded synthetic? She scratched at the paint with her fingernail, then sniffed and tasted the flake that came away. Nothing obvious. She ran her fingers along all the surfaces, then set the picture down on the floor once more and crouched in front of it, frowning.
Her stomach rumbled. She needed to eat, and she needed a knife. The café across the way would do for both purposes. She tucked the painting under the bed and, after double-checking the lock on the door behind her, made her way downstairs. There, she found Miguel, the clerk, dozing behind the desk as yet another overheated telenovela played itself out on the TV screen.
At the café across the road, the tables were mostly occupied by couples and groups, but a four-seater bar was wide open. She took a stool there, ordering up carnitas and a coffee. Only about half the people in the place seemed to be foreigners, while the rest looked like locals. That was always a good sign.
When the roasted pork came, she asked for a knife to go along with the fork the barman had left on a paper napkin. She laid strips of the spicy meat on a fresh corn tortilla, added rice and beans drenched in hot salsa, then wrapped the thing up. She devoured it in about five bites and set about rolling up seconds. The food was awesome, and not just because she was starving. The old barman smiled at her healthy appetite as he poured her another cup of coffee.
By the time she was done her meal, he was off mixing margaritas in a blender further down the bar. Pulling some wadded bills from her pocket, she smoothed them out next to her empty plate. She glanced around to make sure no one was watching, then slipped the knife up her sleeve and headed out the door. The money she had left on the bar was more than enough to cover the meal, a good tip and the knife.
Back in her room, she pulled the painting back out from under the bed and used the steak knife to raise the pins that held the canvas in place. Setting the canvas aside, she went to work on the frame. The tip of the knife broke off as she pried apart the four sides of it, but it did the job. Taking one of the long sides in her hands, she cracked it over her knee. Ten minutes later, the molded frame lay in a dozen pieces and she had a cut on her thumb and the beginnings of a bruise on her knee. If the frame was made of anything other than a high-end synthetic resin, it wasn’t obvious, and she was still none the wiser as to whether there was a link between this and the murders at Gladding’s villa.
Frustrated to the max, Hannah turned to the portfolio, tearing out the lining, cutting open the pockets and padded handles, looking for anything—drugs, papers…hell, even a microchip. Zip.
Next, she reexamined the canvas yet again. She was tempted to take it off the stretchers to examine those wooden pieces, but sanity prevailed. She had taken this job because she’d empathized with Rebecca over the financial and emotional mess she was in due to her schmuck of an ex-husband and messy divorce. Damaging the painting by ripping the canvas or chipping paint was doing no one any favors.
As it was, she thought, ruefully examining the mess she’d made of the frame and portfolio, it might be a problem carrying the picture back into the States. She had no documents for a northbound entry. It wasn’t so much border guards she was worried about. U.S. Customs rarely gave much attention to the souvenirs carried by returning tourists from Mexico. If she did run into problems, she could always contact FBI Special Agent Towle and have him vouch for her.
But if American officialdom wasn’t really a concern, she continued to be vexed by the notion that the villa murders might be linked to the painting. Neither Moises Gladding nor his would-be assassins were characters to be trifled with. What if someone was watching the airport, waiting for a courier carrying a painting to show up for a scheduled return flight? After seeing what had gone down at the villa, did she dare risk being caught with the thing?
Why hadn’t she just left it at the villa?
Right. Toss a quarter of a million dollars on the bed in the middle of a bloodbath and hope for the best. Between the killers, Gladding and the police she’d passed on her flight from the villa—who were probably even now looking for clues to what had gone down out there—all she needed was to broadcast her own presence. She’d been careful to watch where she stepped at the villa so as not to pick up blood on her boots or blend her footprints with those of the intruders.
She gathered up the broken pieces of the frame and stuffed them into the bottom of the portfolio. She rewrapped the painting in the cloth Rebecca had provided, then packed the canvas back into the ruined portfolio as best she could. After that, she sat on the edge of the bed, thinking.
She checked the time on her cell phone once more—nearly ten. Towle had told her to contact Donald Ackerman if she ran into any problems down here. Well, if the adventure with Sergio the thieving chauffeur was a slight contretemps, it was nothing compared to the mess she found herself in now.
She thought about the ex-spook who’d kept insisting he was just a barkeep these days. Protesting a little too much, perhaps?
On her way out of his bar, when Hannah had spotted him dialing his cell phone, she’d thought he might be calling whoever he dealt with in the government these days, checking out the story of the gringa who’d shown up unannounced. Now, she wondered whether Ackerman might be playing both sides of the street.
How was she supposed to know who to trust?
One way or another, she had to figure out how to get out of here in one piece. Since she was short on other options, her best bet might be to pay Ackerman another visit, ideally when he wouldn’t be expecting her. That meant catching him alone after the bar closed.
And August Koon’s picture?
As she looked around for a secure place to hide it, her gaze rose to the ceiling. It was composed of acoustic tiles suspended on one of those cheap aluminum frame systems. She could stick the picture up there, maybe, but as a hiding spot, it felt a little too exposed.
On the other hand…
She went to the closet. The tiles extended in there, and there was a wide shelf over the hanging rod. That might do. Pulling over a chair, she climbed up, lifted a couple of tiles and set them aside, then slipped the portfolio into the space overhead. After resetting the tiles, she returned the chair to its place next to the bed and double-checked that there was no sign that she had disturbed things. But the linoleum floor, if worn, was clean, in the closet and in the room itself, so there was no dust in which to leave a trail. She wouldn’t leave the crown jewels in a place like this, but as a temporary hiding place for Koon’s painting until she could figure out her next move, it would do.
Setting the alarm on her phone, she stretched out on the bed once more to grab a couple more hours of sleep. She might have a long night ahead.
Thirteen
Los Angeles
The sun had long set by the time Travis Spielman made his way home to Silver Lake, exhausted yet wired. The half-dozen cups of coffee he’d drunk during the day probably contributed to the buzz, but it was more than that. There was utter confusion—and a little fear—about the way the day had unfolded.
After Ruben had gotten back from the market, where he’d hung around for a while, hoping in vain that Hannah would get back to his cryptic message from Monica, Spielman had headed back into the office. He’d spent a couple of hours twiddling his thumbs before being startled by the beep of his computer terminal telling him the system was up agai
n. He was none the wiser as to why the network had gone down in the first place.
It was probably paranoid to think he’d been targeted because of Hannah’s mission for Moises Gladding, or because he’d offered to check for recent intel updates. After all, if he were suddenly under a cloud of suspicion, he would have been frog-marched out the door by internal security goons. That was how it worked, right? Instead, as the screen in front of him showed, he once again had full access to the network.
Or did he? Now he was afraid to try to navigate beyond the implementation protocols for the new Daxo software, fearing he’d find himself as blocked as when he’d attempted to access information on Moises Gladding.
If he had suddenly become the subject of a security investigation, what would that say about what was up on his terminal now? Was it a fake access port to Daxo, some elaborate Potemkin cybervillage created to lull him into thinking he was above suspicion? Isn’t that what they’d done to the FBI spy Robert Hanson, keeping him busy with make-work projects, isolated from critical files, completely unaware and unsuspecting while they built an airtight legal case against him?
Spielman pulled into his garage. But he wasn’t a spy, dammit!
“Argh!” He pressed his forehead into the steering wheel, tugging his hair. His entire day had been nothing but crazy-think. Working in this business could make a person nuts.
Sighing, he climbed out of the Jeep and reached for the door button on the garage—then froze at the sight of a white utility van across the road. Surveillance? On him? On Hannah?
He stood there in the dark garage, hand still poised over the door button, afraid to move. Only when a man in overalls came out the front door of the house opposite, carrying a toolbox and plumber’s snake, did he realize he’d scarcely been breathing. Idiot! He pressed the door button and headed for the house.
That was it. He had to mend his ways. He really liked Hannah and wanted to help her out, but he couldn’t be cutting corners on security anymore. No more snooping, putting his family at risk.
The tantalizing smell of Ruben’s marinara sauce greeted him when he opened the door to his condo. Melanie was on the floor of the family room, tucking her stuffed Snoopy into his bed. Ruben was in the nearby kitchen area, dancing a samba to an MTV video of Ricky Martin.
“Hola,” Ruben called. “Mellie, look! Daddy’s home.”
Mellie held up her arms and Travis picked her up, kissing her. He carried her into the kitchen, where he leaned over and gave the spaghetti sauce an appreciative sniff, then planted a kiss on Ruben’s cheek.
“Did Hannah call back?” he murmured, thankful for the loud music, conscious still of the fear that had plagued him all day.
“No,” Ruben whispered, obviously enjoying what he thought was a great game. “I didn’t see her around, either. Maybe she took the job after all?”
Travis leaned wearily against the counter, head shaking.
Ruben obviously saw the change in him. His playful expression evaporated. He went to the fridge and got an open bottle of red wine, poured out two glasses and handed one to Travis. “She’ll be okay, mi amore.”
“God, I hope so. I shouldn’t have told her I’d check things out. Now I feel like I let her down, and for what?”
“Oh, come on. I can see you’ve spent the whole day fretting. Hannah’s a smart cookie. She wouldn’t have taken the job if she had any real concerns about it. Who knows? Maybe she didn’t even go. Don’t worry. Let’s have dinner and relax.” Ruben tickled their daughter and she laughed. “Right, Mellie? Daddy’s worrying for nothing.”
The toddler must have agreed, because she laughed and patted Travis’s cheek.
You had to hand it to the Germans, Moises Gladding thought. They were masters at engineering comfort.
He knew people who had refused to buy anything German-made ever since the Holocaust, but he himself was a pragmatic man. He traded wherever it suited him. Not to do so smacked of fearfulness, and he feared no one and nothing.
His personal silver Mercedes SLE had rich leather seats and dark-tinted windows, the better to go about his business discreetly. Although he kept a Cadillac and driver for the use of his mistress and other household business, his own car was always kept at a distance from the villa. It was the same at all of his homes no matter where in the world they were located. His father had escaped the Nazis a week after Kristallnacht in a boat secretly purchased in 1937, and had impressed upon young Moises the need to plan and be prepared for the unexpected. Gladding felt sure the old man would be pleased to know his lesson had been taken to heart.
He would not have approved of his son’s present action, but that couldn’t be helped. Gladding moved in dangerous, ruthless circles. If word leaked that he could be defied with impunity, he was finished.
His bodyguard parked the Mercedes at the end of Via Allende, a narrow street north of the cathedral. The small houses of the working-class neighborhood were peopled by the maids, waiters, bellhops and taxi drivers who underpinned Puerto Vallarta’s busy tourist economy.
When Gladding had bought his oceanfront villa, he had asked another expatriate, a sometime professional colleague, to recommend reliable household staff. Among the locals Donald Ackerman had suggested was a couple who lived on this street.
Gladding had taken on Clara and Sergio Chavez as cook and driver/handyman respectively, but now he regretted taking Ackerman’s advice. After he’d fired Clara for insubordination, had Sergio stupidly attempted payback? Gladding had sent the man to watch for the courier coming in from Los Angeles with his painting. Sergio had called at midmorning to say she’d apparently rescheduled her arrival, so Gladding had had him remain in town to wait for her. When they still hadn’t shown up by late afternoon, however, he’d become suspicious. It would be just like one of these Mexicans to try to avenge himself out of misplaced machismo over a perceived an insult to his woman.
If he wasn’t up to no good, where was the man? Sergio hadn’t shown up before the attack on the villa, but perhaps Gladding had simply missed seeing him in his own rush to get out of the place.
His visiting associate had charged into his office just as the first shots sounded from the veranda. Outgunned and outnumbered, the two of them had made it out alive by the skin of their teeth, and even then, only because Gladding had had the foresight to install the escape tunnel. Now, the man was inside the Chavez house to find out if Sergio had ever come home. If he had, Gladding had told him to find out what, if anything, he knew about the assault on the villa and, most important, what had happened to the courier and his painting.
While he waited for his man to return, he studied the drab houses up and down the street. The smells of dozens of family dinners drifted on the night air. The light from TV screens flickered in every window, banal entertainment for people with dreary lives. Mixed with the sound of canned laughter came the shouts of scolding mothers, the cry of fretting babies and loud music with a Latin beat. It was a ramshackle, crowded and noisy neighborhood.
Good, Gladding thought, turning back to the door where his man had entered. The residents of Via Allende were too preoccupied with their telenovelas and their miserable little lives to notice the real-life drama now unfolding at the home of Clara and Sergio Chavez. Only Gladding, watching from the backseat of the Mercedes, saw when an exhausted-looking Sergio suddenly appeared at the corner and stumbled through his front door. Where on earth had he been? Gladding wondered.
He heard the cry of surprise as Sergio no doubt caught sight of his man inside, and he heard Clara whimper as the door slammed behind her husband. There was a crash—something falling perhaps. A child began to wail inside the Chavez house, but its cries were quickly muffled, perhaps by Clara’s frightened clasp.
Gladding heard nothing more for several minutes. Suddenly, there came a sharp cry—only one—then a rapid series of strobelike flashes at the windows. The gun his man carried in had been fitted with a noise suppressor.
Life went on in all the other ho
uses on Via Allende, and none of the Chavezes’ neighbors seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary.
An ugly business, Gladding thought, but unavoidable. He sighed as his man opened the front door of the house, glanced around, then closed it behind himself and hurried back to the Mercedes.
Empty-handed, Gladding noted with irritation. Where was his damn painting?
The alarm on her cell phone jarred Hannah awake from the sleep of the dead. For a fleabag hotel, the room was reasonably comfortable. Or maybe it was just that she was unreasonably exhausted.
She roused herself with regret and checked the time on her cell phone. Nearly one in the morning.
She flicked on the bedside lamp and walked to the closet to double-check her hiding job, but no telltale signs gave it away. The painting was safe there for the moment. The more she thought about it, the more she couldn’t see why it shouldn’t just stay there until she knew for certain what was going on.
