The Blood Betrayal

by Don Donaldson

  “What should we do?” Beth asked.

  “Absorb the loss. It shouldn’t be a problem. We’re a long way from Meggs and Artisan. I just brought it as insurance. Let’s hope there hasn’t also been a screw-up with the car I reserved.”

  AT THE PILLAR by the escalator, Mahler saw from the expression on Martin’s face when he looked in his bag, that Guardiola had done his job. In a way, Mahler wouldn’t have been too upset if he hadn’t . . . then the targets would be more of a challenge. But at least this way, he would be assured of being able to get at their eyes while they were still alive.

  THE AGENT AT the Dollar Rent-A-Car counter spoke English, and Carl’s reservation was in their database, so at least that part of their arrival went smoothly. In less than ten minutes they were on the shuttle heading over to the lot for their car.

  THREE CARS BEHIND the shuttle, in a tan Ford Taurus, Guardiola and Mahler followed. As they drove, Mahler opened the briefcase to see how well Guardiola had carried out this part of his assignment.

  Inside, nestled in crumpled newspaper so things wouldn’t rattle around, Mahler found an H & K USP compact .45 just like the one he’d had to leave back on the mainland. The gun was already seated in the Brigade inside-waistband holster he’d ordered. Sorting through the newspaper, he also found a sound suppressor, two extra magazines, a box of shells, and some plastic wrist and ankle restraints.

  He looked further and found nothing more.

  Angered, he turned to Guardiola. “Where’s the opener?”

  “In the little compartment with the snap on it,” Guardiola replied.

  Mahler unsnapped the only leather flap in the bag and reached into the pocket beneath. There he found the last item: a piece of metal, bent and stamped into a combination bottle top and paint can opener. After trying a variety of objects in the past, he’d found that the end for paint cans was also excellent for scrambling a human eye.

  “So what do you think?” Guardiola asked. “I did well, eh?”

  Mahler gave him a frigid stare. “Why do you seek approval like a dog just for doing your job?”

  At home, Guardiola regularly told his wife what to do and then complained about how she did it. Accustomed to that kind of control, he was ready to tell Mahler to mind his tongue, but seeing not a hint of a human being behind the German’s taxidermy eyes, he swallowed the thought.

  They followed the shuttle through the gate to the rental lot, where Guardiola swung left, circled behind a long row of rental cars, and parked beside a mint-condition old Cadillac at the end of the row, angling their car so they could see the rental office.

  There ensued an awkward interval in which Guardiola couldn’t find a comfortable place to rest his hands and didn’t want to say anything for fear of incurring another rebuke. After a six-minute wait that felt longer than the interminable labor his wife went through before delivering his worthless son, Miguel, the targets appeared from the rental office and headed for the car Guardiola had arranged for them to receive.

  Energized at the prospect he’d soon be rid of Mahler, Guardiola reached under his seat and brought out a small device that resembled a laptop computer. He flipped the hinged cover open and touched a button. Instantly, a map appeared with a blinking red dot in the center, close to a steady glowing blue one. He turned the device to Mahler.

  “We’ve put a GPS tracker on their car. The red dot is them, the blue one is us. So even if you lose the car in traffic, you can always relocate them. The distance between them and this receiver is always displayed here at the bottom.”

  He handed the device to Mahler. Knowing he had no chance of hearing a “well done,” he didn’t wait for one, but popped his door open and got out. Leaning down for a parting word, he said, “When you’re finished with the car, just drop it off back here. Leave the receiver in the trunk.”

  Guardiola went around to the driver’s side of the Cadillac and got in. As he drove away, he gave Mahler the finger, making sure he kept that hand in his lap.

  Chapter 34

  WHENEVER YOU ask anyone what another city is like, they almost always tell you how crazy the drivers are. It’s really true for San Juan and its environs, to the point that any inhabitant with a car or truck seems intent on committing vehicular homicide. If you doubt that, ask Carl and Beth, who in the first mile they traveled on the interstate, were nearly sideswiped on two separate occasions, and in a third incident, had their bumper jostled by someone cutting into their lane too soon. But at least those were moving violations. Barely four minutes into their visit, traffic stopped completely.

  They had arrived at the airport at three thirty in the afternoon. That hadn’t left a lot of time to find a place to buy a shovel and drive the forty miles to Loiza before dark. There was no time for a traffic delay.

  Unable to see what the problem was because of a big tractor-trailer rig blocking his view, Carl got out and stepped to the side, where even without the truck in the way, he still couldn’t tell what was holding everything up. He walked alongside the truck and knocked on the driver’s door.

  The guy behind the wheel, an apparent native Puerto Rican smoking a little cigar and wearing a red bandana tied around his head, rolled down his window.

  “What’s going on up ahead?” Carl asked in English.

  The guy shook his head. “No English.”

  Falling back on his high school Spanish, Carl haltingly asked again.

  The guy’s eyes lit up and he nodded. “Un tapon,” he said.

  This time it was Carl’s turn to wonder what he meant. Carl turned his palms upward and shook his head.

  “Un tapon,” the guy repeated. Then he put his cigar in his mouth and rammed his two fists together. “Un tapon.”

  Now Carl got it . . . two somethings had run into each other. He waved at the guy. “Gracias.” And went back to his car.

  “What’s the problem?” Beth asked.

  “Un tapon,” Carl said. “An accident.”

  “And with everyone on the highway so polite and careful? Shocking.”

  Ten cars behind them, Ernst Mahler sat quietly, accepting the delay calmly.

  After about fifteen minutes, traffic began moving again, but slowly and in alternate lanes. Fortunately, the 187 along the ocean to Loiza came up on their right just a mile later, and they were able to leave the infuriating mess of cars behind and lay on the gas.

  “Watch for a hardware store,” Carl said.

  “What’s Spanish for hardware?”

  “Ferreteria, I think.”

  It was hard for Beth to carry out her assignment, because on the left, the road looked out over the ocean, a vast rolling plain of green with the wind blowing the white tops off the waves. Overhead, the blue sky was filled with huge cauliflower clouds tinged with gray. She found the immensity of the sky and sea exhilarating and frightening at the same time. After living for so long in Artisan, where the limits of her world were tangible and close, the endless vista stretching away to a horizon that looked as though it could never be reached filled her soul to where she felt she couldn’t hold it all.

  At the same time, something about this place . . . the sea, the soaring coconut palms, and the much shorter and stubbier variety of palms dotting the land on the right, made her uneasy. What was that all about?

  Carl slowed the car and pulled off the road into a rutted parking area in front of a simple wooden building with a side yard filled with rolls of different kinds of metal fencing and galvanized metal watering troughs. In front of the fence surrounding the side yard were three old tractors with FOR SALE signs on them.

  “It isn’t a hardware,” Carl said, “But there’s a chance we could get a shovel here.”

  WITH THE TRACKING device Guardiola had provided, it wasn’t necessary for Mahler to keep the targets within sight. So he tried to maintain about a ha
lf mile of highway between his car and theirs. But seeing the red dot stop moving, he stepped up his speed to see what was happening.

  Less than a minute later, he saw the targets’ empty car sitting in front of what looked like a place that sold farm equipment and supplies. And in fact, that’s what the sign over the door said in Spanish . . . granja equipo. What the hell were they doing in there?

  He drove on by and turned around in the driveway of a rundown little place not much bigger than a phone booth that sold tacos and ice cream from a small window. He eased back past the farm store and parked out of sight in the lot of a brickyard where the targets couldn’t see him when they came out. Of course, he couldn’t see them either, but Guardiola’s tracker made that unnecessary.

  INSIDE THE FARM store, because Carl’s Spanish was so rudimentary, he had to mime digging a hole to get a shovel. But after that, the clerk, a short guy built like a fireplug, knew exactly what Carl wanted, and they were soon back in the car heading for the Loiza Facility and what lay along the path behind it.

  MAHLER LET THE targets get well down the road before he left his parking place and drove to the farm store. His Spanish was better than his English, so he quickly learned what Carl had bought. Though it was a puzzle why they would need a shovel, Mahler was more interested in the knowledge that they hadn’t purchased anything more threatening than that. A shovel . . . hardly a match for his .45, which he was now wearing under his flowered shirt.

  His positive frame of mind quickly took a turn in the opposite direction, because when he came out, he saw that his car was blocked by an ancient behemoth of a truck whose sides had been extended by salvage planking. Luckily, the driver, an old man in coveralls, who looked as though he had as many miles on him as the truck, was still behind the wheel.

  Mahler went off on the old man, railing at him in Spanish and telling him to move that piece of shit he was driving.

  Offended at Mahler’s attitude, the old man pulled the choke on the truck all the way out and tried to start it, knowing there was no way it would fire up fully choked.

  It took Mahler over eight minutes to discover that the old man in the truck had intentionally sabotaged it so it wouldn’t start. Under other circumstances, Mahler would have broken a few of the man’s ribs for being such an asshole. But because Mahler was on assignment and didn’t want to draw attention to himself, he just moved the truck himself and left the old man standing beside it still able to breath normally.

  Back in his own car, Mahler shot out of his parking space in reverse, spun the wheel to the left, and fishtailed onto the road, where he flipped up the cover on the GPS tracker and hit the activate button.

  Okay . . . things weren’t so bad. The targets were farther ahead than he wished, but were still on 187. He’d already seen one police car since turning onto this road, and there was no telling what kind of shit he’d have to deal with in this turd of a country if he were caught speeding. The only prudent course was to try and make up the time he’d lost, but stay legal.

  PORTOBELLA ROAD intersected 187 several miles outside Loiza. Turning onto this final leg of their journey and heading inland, Carl and Beth found themselves on a small asphalt road running for long stretches through undeveloped, weedy land that occasionally gave way to poorly maintained little houses where the chickens ran free in the yards and occasionally strutted across the road, daring Carl to hit them. Rarely could they read a number on the weathered mailboxes, so it was difficult to know when they should start looking for the facility.

  THE RED DOT ON Mahler’s tracker suddenly left 187 and turned onto Portobella Road. Since the incident at the farm supply, the targets, too, had been driving right at the speed limit, and he was still eight minutes behind them.

  THREE MILES ALONG this new road, Beth pointed to the left. “There.”

  Carl stopped the car.

  Through a gap in the scrubby trees and other vegetation lining the road, Carl saw an abandoned two-story red brick building. On an old concrete post that had nearly toppled over, he could barely make out the numbers 1430, the address on the map they’d found in the metal box.

  Chapter 35

  UNDER THE WEEDY drive, there was a layer of crushed stone, and as Carl drove onto the property, the tires made a crunching sound. The driveway led to a similarly graveled parking area, where the weeds were staging a major counter offensive, growing up through the rocks so effectively the boundaries of the space were difficult to see.

  Carl pulled the car around so it faced the brick building, and they sat for a moment looking at a flat two-story structure that had been savaged by time and the local protoplasm. Weeds a foot tall were thriving in the gutters. At the upper right, near the downspout, a large white Rorschach of bird crap stained the facade. All the multipaned windows on both floors were broken. Up as high as a miscreant could reach, the brick was covered with red and black Spanish graffiti. Down low at the left corner, a few dozen bricks had been knocked loose and scattered, apparently by the vehicle that had left its bumper behind on the ground. The front entrance gaped open, all traces of a door, gone.

  Carl pointed to a large rectangular light spot on the brick over the entrance. “Wonder what was on the sign that used to hang there.”

  “Loiza Facilty, maybe,” Beth replied.

  “That wouldn’t help. Let’s look inside.”

  They got out of the car and went up the sidewalk to the front entrance. They found the interior a little cooler than outside and most of it a lot darker. Despite the gloom, they could see that the graffiti artist had spent more than a few happy hours in there, too.

  This room seemed to have once been a reception and secretarial area, because opposite the entrance, inside a low partition wall, they saw a couple of upside-down wooden desks with their drawers strewn across the floor. A bank of wooden cubbyhole mailboxes lay against the back wall, a big gray area above them showing where they’d once hung. Oddly, three gray file cabinets sat straight and prim against the left leg of the partition wall, none of their drawers open.

  Knowing it was unlikely he’d find anything inside, Carl entered the space and headed for the gray cabinets, wondering why they were still there, considering they could have been sold for a few bucks by anyone willing to cart them away.

  Occasionally in life, even when the odds are hideously long, something wonderful happens. Today was not one of those moments, because Carl found the cabinets as empty as he expected.

  With Beth now leading the way, they left that room through a wide opening partially closed by a pair of graffiti-defaced pocket doors. The hall beyond was gloomy and dank. About twenty feet ahead they could see light streaming in from a pair of wide doorways facing each other on opposite sides of the hall.

  Moving down to the light, they found a big space that had apparently once functioned as a kitchen. Of course, all the appliances were gone. The room across the hall contained a few broken wooden chairs and one long table with two legs missing.

  “This must have been a dining area,” Carl said. He turned to see what Beth thought of his conclusion and found her slightly bent at the waist, her hand on her stomach. Even in the dim light he could see that her face was pale and drawn.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Don’t know. I just suddenly feel sick to my stomach.”

  “Let’s get you into some fresh air.” Carl helped her back down the hall into the reception area and out the front door, where after taking a couple of deep breaths, she looked a lot better.

  “Want to go to the car and sit down?” Carl asked.

  “No. I think I’m okay. Maybe it was the dust in there or some kind of mold.”

  “I’d like to look around a little more inside. Do you mind? You don’t have to come.”

  “I think I will wait out here.”

  “I’ll be quick.” Carl darted back into the buil
ding.

  THREE MILES AWAY, Mahler turned onto Portobella Road, eager to see why the red dot on his tracker had stopped moving.

  WHILE BETH waited for Carl to return, she wondered if what had just happened was the first sign of the process to come. But she’d only been gone from Artisan a little over forty-eight hours. She should have at least two weeks before it started. Unless Hanson and Meggs had lied about that, too.

  The sun was now behind some tall trees, so Beth didn’t have to wait in its glare for Carl. Nevertheless, the humidity and a cloud of tiny gnats were on the verge of driving her to the car, when he returned.

  “I think this was a boarding school,” he said. “I found a classroom upstairs with some broken blackboards. There’s also a gym, an auditorium, and a large room that looks like where the kids used to sleep.”

  “I don’t like it here. Let’s see what’s buried in the back and get going.”

  Carl went to the trunk and got the shovel. Then they walked around to the west side of the building to pick up the path on the map.

  The trail they found was overgrown and weedy, but its course was still evident as it curved through an exuberant stand of vegetation that rose a foot above Carl’s head. The humidity here was worse than in the open and the gnats had followed, making their little expedition an obnoxious experience. In the haste of packing, Carl hadn’t considered that Puerto Rico would be warm even in November, so he had brought only long-sleeved shirts. He now silently cursed that decision.

  Two minutes after entering the path’s odious world, they came to a gate in an old fence made of rabbit wire. Inside the fence on the right was a decaying shack with gaping holes in the roof and a porch that had collapsed on one end. Straight ahead, against the far edge of the fence, they could see an old well. To the left, through the vegetation reclaiming the site, the dim outlines of garden furrows were evident.