The Rules of Silence

by David Lindsey

  He crouched at the gate a long time, holding the little duffel bag with his clothes and a few other things. When he heard no one talking, he carefully unlatched the louvered gate, which opened up into a blind corner of the pool area, and moved inside. He laid the duffel bag in the shadows against the house, unzipped it, and took out the small, dull gray automatic pistol that Burden had given him. It was specifically modified to fire subsonic “cat's sneeze ”loads. The rounds had soft lead noses that exploded on impact.

  The pale light coming through the glass walls—it looked like television light—threw too much illumination onto the deck and pool. He wouldn't be able to cross to the other side from here. Leaving his duffel bag, he went back out the gate and made his way down the first flight of steps. At the first turn left, he stepped right into the brush that separated the houses along the cliff. To avoid the noisy vegetation as much as possible, he hugged the outside walls of the house.

  When he reached the front corner of the house, he snuggled up under a large shrub and waited. He knew Luquín's security. At night, someone always stayed outside in the dark. He waited. The living human being made noises.

  He waited. He heard his own blood in his ears. Not too different from the whirr of passing time. He waited.

  The guard farted. The man adjusted for the distortion of the architecture and vegetation. The front of the house was a U-shaped courtyard. And luckily, there were hedges. He eased down on his side, his bare back against the house, and advanced under the hedges, groveling inch by inch.

  The guard yawned with a groan. The man corrected his audio perception. He was closer than he thought. A few more feet, mulch and twigs digging into his skin. The hedge took a left turn at the patio's edge. The man waited, then slowly eased his head from under the hedge. He saw the guard about two and a half meters away in a lawn chair.

  When he shot the guard, there was only the muffled pop of his skull and a soft splash on the stones. The man was quickly on his feet. He took the AK out of the guard's lap and laid it on the stones. He left him lolling in the chair.

  He went to the front door and tried the knob. It was unlocked. He opened the door by millimeters and heard the television. Good. He eased his head around the door. A foyer, lucky. Roque would be within twenty feet of Luquín. As he made his way through the foyer, the television threw a pale, flickering light through the opened doorway. There were no other lights on. Lucky again.

  He saw through the room's glass walls to the lighted deck outside where he had just been standing a few minutes before. Making sure there were no lights behind him, he eased forward and saw Luquín lounging on the sofa, facing the television. He was nodding off, hardly awake. Another step forward, but no Roque.

  Suddenly he heard a toilet flush down the hall and turned just in time to see Roque coming around the corner at the other end of the hallway, fumbling at the zipper of his pants. He was hardly on his guard and probably had been nodding off in front of the television too before he got up to go to the bathroom. The man straightened his arm out horizontally in the dark hallway, and Roque walked right into its muzzle.

  The cat sneezed, and Roque's head flew back as if he'd been hit with a mallet, and his feet shot out from under him. He hit the floor with a sloppy whump, half a second after most of his brain hit the hallway wall.

  The man wheeled around and was standing in front of the huge entertainment screen facing Luquín while Luquín was still trying to get to his feet. When he finally righted and steadied himself, the man was holding the remote control on the screen. The sound went off.

  They stood facing each other in the silence, the coffee table between them.

  “Siéntese, ” the man said. Luquín's expression was slack, and the pale light from the screen was jumping all over his face, heightening his expression of shock. “Sit down, ”the man repeated in English.

  Luquín dumbly complied, collapsing into the exact spot from where he'd struggled so hard to get up a moment before. The man walked to the coffee table. Then he stepped around it, looming over Luquín, his camouflaged genitals dangling an arm's reach away from Luquín's face. The man sat down slowly on top of the coffee table, his knees almost touching Luquín's knees.

  “Take off your shirt.”

  A couple of beats passed before Luquín began unbuttoning his guayabera. When he had it off, the man reached out and took it from him. Slowly he began wiping his face with it, smearing away the paint, his eyes latched on to Luquín's eyes as firmly as if they had been little hands holding him. Luquín stared, watching as the color of the man's flesh emerged from underneath the paint. His eyes narrowed a couple of times involuntarily as he tried instinctively to recognize the man underneath the paint.

  Suddenly he realized who it was.

  Luquín went limp and sank back on the sofa. The odor of feces filled the room as Luquín's mouth sagged in stupefaction. Some men have a sixth sense about their last moments, something that tells them that this time it will not be a close call. Often such an intuitive certainty is dumbfounding, and that moment of realization sucks everything out of them. That's the way it was for Cayetano Luquín. Now there were only two things left: death, and the fear of death.

  The man was surprised by this sudden collapse. He had always anticipated that Luquín would fight insanely, like a rabid coyote. This was unanticipated. But it meant nothing, one way or the other.

  “Get on the floor.”

  Luquín looked at him blankly, without comprehension.

  The man stood. “Get on the floor.”

  Luquín hesitated, then slid sideways off the sofa and onto the floor. He didn't know what position to take on the floor, so he kind of knelt there, almost on his side, eyes rolled at his adversary.

  “On your back, ”the man said. Then, standing over Luquín, he bent and unbuckled Luquín's belt and then the waistband of his trousers. Then he flipped off Luquín's expensive alligator loafers. He grabbed the bottom of his silk trousers and pulled them off. He stood back, looking at him.

  “Pull off your underwear.”

  Luquín rolled around on the floor, squirming out of his feces-soaked underwear.

  “Stuff them in your mouth.”

  Luquín did, without hesitation.

  Then the man went back to the coffee table and sat down again. He looked at Luquín, studying him. His body was surprisingly well kept for a man his age. Almost athletic.

  “What do you think, Tano, ”the man asked, “is fear different for different people? Is there only ‘fear,’a single thing that is the same for everyone? Or are there fears? ”He thought a moment. “A child's fear. Do you think it's different from a man's fear? ”He paused as if he were letting Luquín contemplate that. And then he said: “How could it not be?

  “And how long can a human being be afraid, Tano? ”the man asked in a quiet, conversational tone. He waited for an answer, as though he actually expected Luquín to respond. “A few days? Weeks? Months? ”Pause. “To me, it seems that after a time, and that time is probably different for different people, fear turns into something else. For you, a person so experienced in such things, who knows, that period of time might be … endless.”

  He pondered this a moment.

  “What do you think? ”he asked Luquín again. “You're something of a philosopher on the subject.”

  Luquín lay on the floor transfixed, his fecal-drenched underwear hanging out of his mouth, his forearms raised, wrists cocked back in a posture of benumbed disbelief.

  “Here's what I think, Tano, ”the man continued. “I think that after a lengthy time, if that thing which causes fear continues and does not go away, then fear itself is transformed, almost like a chemical reaction. It turns to horror. And that, I think, is a more intense experience. Horror is miedo profundo.”

  The man noted that Luquín's eyes were beginning to acquire the glassy look of disassociation. A film covered the eyes in such moments, like a cataract, though not milky in that way, but rather glittery, reflect
ive, so that the film caught the light and obscured the eye behind the reflection.

  The man studied Luquín in the pale, flickering light of the television, the perfect aura for what was about to happen. It was just the right shade of pale. And its jerky light was just the right modulation for horror.

  Luquín was motionless, his forearms still raised, wrists still cocked back.

  “Let us explore together these philosophical questions, Cayetano, you and I. You, el maestro del horrible. And I the novicio. Between us, surely, we can come to some deep and secret understanding of this timeless subject.”

  Chapter 52

  Jorge Macias produced his own cell phone and pushed a button. “Bring the car around, ”he said, his eyes never leaving Titus.

  In an instant Titus felt everything shifting. His own stupidity had triggered something here, and he had the sickening feeling that he had turned a very serious corner.

  Speaking carefully, Macias said, “You're going to go with me now. At this moment someone is pointing a gun at you, so please cooperate. No problems. Let's go.”

  Titus's options were few. If nothing else, Burden had hammered into his head the downside of making a scene. A scene had an aftermath, it had ramifications. They didn't want ramifications. Doing as Macias wanted seemed the prudent course. If it wasn't too damn late to be prudent.

  With a sure and casual air, Macias guided Titus through the courtyard and into the waiting area just outside the bar. A Mexican man was waiting there for them.

  “Luis isn't answering, ”the man said. “What's going on?”

  “I don't know, ”Macias said.

  Titus's phone rang.

  Macias's head snapped around as he took Titus's arm. “Answer it, ”he said. “And be very careful.”

  As Titus answered the phone, Macias and his man walked him toward the men's room.

  “Yes, ”Titus said.

  “There's been a glitch, ”Kal said.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  They were inside the men's room now, and Macias's guard put his foot against the door as Macias grabbed the phone from Titus.

  “Who is this? ”he snapped.

  Hesitation. “This's Kal.”

  “My driver isn't answering his phone, Kal, ”Macias said.

  Hesitation. “Who is this?”

  “Jorge Macias.”

  Hesitation. “I don't know what you're talking about … a driver … ?”

  “Listen to me. Cain is standing right here with me, and I've got a gun pushed into his stomach and he's going to stay with me until we get something worked out here. Now do you know what I'm talking about?”

  Hesitation.

  “I can think faster than that, ”Macias said, “and you wouldn't like what I'm thinking. Now. Where is my driver?”

  “He's been removed.”

  “Removed. ”Macias felt as if he were hyperventilating. “Listen to me, you fuck”—he was rigid with tension—“you tell your people that we're going to leave here. I want my car brought to the front door of this place. When the driver gets out, have him leave the front driver's door open, and then open the back door. Then tell him to get the hell out of the way. And remember this: I do not want to see anybody following me. I assume you have a bug on the car, fine. But I do not want to see any surveillance.”

  He punched off the phone without waiting for a response and put the phone in his pocket.

  “You heard what's going to happen, ”Macias said. “Stay close to me. Be careful, I'll blow your liver all over this place.”

  Macias was sweating. He was scared, but he was the kind of man for whom personal danger was a fierce motivator to concentration. It didn't rattle him. He became keenly focused.

  “When we get outside, ”Macias said to his bodyguard, “you get in the front passenger's seat. Cain, you get behind the wheel. I'll be behind you in the backseat.”

  Titus stared at him. This sounded like a disaster in the making.

  “Hey! ”Macias barked, jamming a gun in Titus's ribs. “You understand?”

  “Yeah, okay, I've got it. I've got it.”

  They walked out of the rest rooms and down a short corridor to the main entry. People were milling around, leaving, arriving, waiting for friends. The three of them went to the front door. The courtyard was two steps down. Titus could see the arched entry that led from the courtyard to the parking area.

  The casual ambience of the people in the foyer seemed ridiculously innocent to Titus, so enormously rich in its banality and thoughtless ease.

  Then the Navigator appeared in the arch of the gateway, and he felt Macias's automatic gouge into his kidneys, and they were moving. Most of the tables in the front courtyard were occupied, people waiting for tables inside, talking quietly over drinks.

  No one paid any attention to them as they crossed to the stone arch where the wrought-iron gates were thrown back. The man who got out of the Navigator threw a meaningful glance at Titus as he turned and opened the backseat door, and then he walked away. Titus and Macias got into the Navigator and closed their doors simultaneously.

  “Go to the highway and turn left, ”Macias said, “and be very careful.”

  Titus eased down the narrow gravel drive from La Terrazza to Loop 360. The loop was a divided highway through the hills, and the restaurant drive came out onto the northbound lanes. Titus crossed these two lanes, continued on the crossover to the southbound lanes, and turned left.

  The bodyguard kept his eye on the outside rearview mirror, but Titus could only guess what Macias was doing behind him. He could hear him breathing, and the tension inside the Navigator was so dense that it replaced the oxygen.

  “What are you going to do? ”Titus asked as he picked up speed.

  Macias didn't answer.

  Titus drove with his right hand and reached up with his left hand, feeling for the mole in the bend of his arm. It was still there.

  Macias was silent behind him, and Titus imagined his mind was going wild with calculation. Titus reviewed his options. Macias could kill him. But why? That would only bring him grief and leave him vulnerable. Macias might kidnap him for the ransom that he wasn't going to get now, but Titus guessed that Burden would never let them get out of the United States with it. Titus couldn't even come up with a scenario for what might happen. But whatever it was, he was reasonably sure that Macias knew it was likely they would try to kill him. That had to dominate his thinking right now and determine the scope of his options.

  The Navigator was eating up the miles. Titus shifted in his seat, thinking of the pistol pointed at him. He thought of the man who had pulled the Navigator up to the gate. What in the hell had his expression been trying to convey? Or had his face simply reflected the intensity of their situation?

  The seat belt was digging into his right hip where the buckle side was anchored to the car seat. He hadn't even remembered putting it on and was surprised that he had. He put his right hand down by his right hip to shift the seat belt clasp and felt something in the crack of the seat. He put the back of his hand against the clasp to shift it from rubbing him … and felt the grip of a handgun. Shit!

  Suddenly he began to recalculate everything.

  “Turn off at the next exit, ”Macias said, “and then turn back under the highway and head toward the city.”

  Titus turned off on Highway 2222 and did as he was told. The bodyguard said something to Macias, and he replied, “Bueno. ” Titus guessed that Kal and Burden were following Macias's instructions to keep their distance.

  “So you are working with professionals? ”Macias asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Who?”

  “A guy named Steve Lender.”

  “Do they know everything?”

  “Everything I know. Which obviously isn't everything.”

  Macias said something in Spanish to the bodyguard, who took out a cell phone and dialed a number. He listened.

  “Nada, ” he said.

  Macias said something
else. The guard dialed again.

  “Nada, ” he said again.

  Without being told another time, he dialed again.

  “Nada, ” he repeated.

  “¡Chinga” Macias swore. “How many people are involved here?” he asked Titus.

  “I don't know.”

  He felt the barrel of Macias's automatic at the base of his neck.

  “He said it was best if I didn't know, ”Titus said. “I just don't know.”

  Titus was panicked about the safety on the automatic. He had felt it on the left side of his thumb, but he didn't know if it was on or off. How would the guy have left it? Cocked, he thought. Safety off and cocked. This thing was ready to go.

  “How long's this guy Lender been involved?”

  Titus hesitated. The barrel of Macias's automatic dug into the base of his skull again. He could feel it twisting.

  “From the beginning.”

  “Fuck, ”Macias said.

  In the following silence, Titus tried to guess where Macias's mind was going. Obviously the bodyguard had tried to contact their other people, with no luck. Now he had to know that by some quirk of chance he had escaped the same fate as his other crews by only a few moments and that his whole elaborate scheme had completely disintegrated. He had to be just about as desperate as a man could be.

  Chapter 53

  Burden's surveillance van stayed on Loop 360, pulling off on residential streets whenever they needed to be out of sight. Besides his driver, there were two technicians, himself, and Gil Norlin inside the van, monitoring the rapidly changing events as each element in their four-phased operation was accomplished. In spite of their disadvantages, everything was going unexpectedly well.

  Until the last few moments at La Terrazza.