face-to-face since the operation.
“Not hardly,” the man said, raising his chin. “Behind you.”
Martin was indeed there when Lallo turned. The Latin broker almost had trouble drawing a steady breath. How Martin had come up the gangplank without rocking it, and so soundlessly, Lallo couldn’t imagine. He was dressed in a black turtleneck and jeans. His face was smeared with something dark and moist. Lallo didn’t recognize him at first. And not because of the face paint-the face was vastly altered from the one he had last seen, years before.
“How did you do that?” he said, trying to inject levity in his tone. “You took ten years off my life. And this one”-he nodded at the other man-“who looks strangely familiar to me, I must say.” He made the sign of the cross and put his hands on Martin’s shoulders.
“You’ve met before,” Martin said. “Years ago. In our training facility in Colombia.”
“I see. Now, Marty, we meet and speak face-to-face again like old friends.”
“Well, my friend, I delivered my end on schedule, and we agreed on a price up front,” Martin said in flawless Spanish. “Weren’t you pleased with the quality of the merchandise? All you had to do was connect the Semtex and set the clocks. Sweet as it gets, and so any fool becomes a professional bomber. Pablo is having a cash-flow problem, you said?”
“Si,” Lallo said. Then he reverted to English, looking from Martin to the other man as he spoke. In his mind he prayed that the shooter waited and got both of them. The additional man was a problem, but one Ramon could handle easily. “A small problem getting his money moved around. Very temporary, he assures me. He moves from Guatemala to Colombia, and he is never where I look for him. Communication is a terrible problem, but as history has shown us, he is always good for it.”
“I saw where his cousin and brother met with an accident.”
“Police bullets, very bad for the digestion.” Lallo shrugged and laughed. “And that didn’t help with these troubles.”
“That was just a few weeks ago. I’ve been owed my money for six months now. Am I some worrisome dog who sneaked under the table?”
Lallo opened his arms expansively. “Oh, no! You are like my own family! I never thought that!”
“Still, Uncle Lallo, I haven’t been paid. In the old days I was always paid, and well. Information I gave saved many lives in Pablo’s organization. And millions upon millions of dollars in merchandise that would have been lost to seizure.”
Martin smiled, but the smile was not a pleasant thing to see.
“But, my friend,” Lallo said, “I have brought you your money, after all. That is why I wanted to meet out here this time of night. To pay you what Pablo owes you. He told me to wait… but I said no, Martin Fletcher is my dear friend, and I will pay him. If he doesn’t like that”-Lallo put his fingers to his chest-“too bad. It’s not your problem. I’m paying you out of my pocket, and I must collect later. You have changed so much! You look so many years younger. Handsome!” Lallo’s eyes related that the familiar voice coming from this stranger was disconcerting. He tried not to look at the warehouse roofline, but he did, just fleetingly.
“Oh, Lallo, you make me feel guilty.” Martin smiled sheepishly. “And I wasn’t certain I could trust you any longer.”
Lallo patted him on the shoulders, and the nervous smile grew larger. “It’s nothing.”
“Where is it? The money?”
“In the car. You come and I will pay you now. All this fog is like vampire movie, no?” Lallo laughed.
Martin smiled. “Blood from the neck.” He laughed. “In the car, you say?”
“Yes. Come.”
Martin walked behind Lallo until they made the dock and on to the car. Lallo was nervous. What about the other man? Will he be shot at the same time?
He opened the door slowly and said, “Your money is in there, Marty.”
As he pulled the door open, he stepped back so Ramon, the man in the rear seat, would have a clean shot with the double-barreled shotgun-and the other man a shot from the warehouse roof. But as he stood there braced for the explosions, nothing happened. Martin Fletcher stared at Lallo, who stood holding the door handle with his left hand. Martin waited a full thirty seconds, eye to eye with Lallo, before he bent down and reached into the open door, grabbed an ankle, and tugged a limp body from the car to the dock, where it landed with a squishing sound not unlike that of a foot being pulled from the mud. The left side of the man’s face had exploded out. There was a small hole in his left temple, and the window he had been seated against was perforated with tiny cracks that formed a spiderweb of shattered lens radiating from a small hole.
“Imagine my surprise when I found Ramon here! Was this sorry sack of shit supposed to give me my money, Lallo? Or was he supposed to give me something else? I have to tell you the money wasn’t inside the car-only this.” Marty reached behind him, under his jacket, and pulled a pistol complete with a silencer from his belt. “And a shotgun. So is the money in the trunk? All I see in there is two dead pieces of shit, your driver and a dead pistolero of dubious lineage. But money? No, I don’t see my money.” Martin’s face was twitching, the anger floating from him. Lallo prayed for the man on the roof to shoot and end this. He scanned the roofline of his warehouse.
“The man up there had to leave early,” Martin said.
Lallo’s face melted toward his tie, and his lips trembled like his knees. “Marty, they made me do this! They threatened my family!” Lallo beat at his chest. Don’t give up the spooks unless you have to. “This was Ramon’s order from Pablo! That evil man was his personal assassin. I’m glad you killed this pig, because he was forcing me into this. They threatened my family. Even my grandbabies.”
Martin pulled a knife from his ankle and reached down and worked on the dead hit man with the blade. Lallo retched deeply when he saw what Martin was doing.
Martin finished, stood, and Lallo was horrified at the sight of his blood-covered hands, the knife reduced to a darkly wet conical shape extending from the right fist. “I knew this man Ramon, Lallo. A student as poor as this shouldn’t be sent against his teacher. He looks awfully good in a tie, though.”
Lallo could hardly breathe. He hoped his heart wouldn’t explode.
“What do I smell?” Martin said as he sniffed at the air loudly. “Shit? You ruined a thousand-dollar suit? Are you so afraid of me, who is like your own son? I thought we were friends. What, fifteen years I’ve known you? We have had some times, Lallo. You introduced me to my love, Angela. You were to be godfather to my baby, Macon. You know,” he said softly, “the anniversary of his death is coming up very soon.”
“Please, Marty. I can help you. I can get you almost a million dollars. Now, tonight. I wanted to bring you your money, but they would not allow it. I swear.”
“Who put you up to this? Perez?”
“Not Perez. A man named Spivey.”
“Spivey? Who is he?”
“A company man, I think. He got Ramon and the man on the roof.”
“Lallo, I find it difficult to trust you in light of all this.” He spread his bloody hands eloquently. “Someone who forgets who I am… what I do? I can’t be killed by fools like these. I’m bulletproof, Lallo. I can smell the breath of my enemies at a thousand yards. I can see their nostrils flare, their eyes move. I can hear their thoughts, I can feel them, Lallo.”
“There is a million dollars in my office-in the place under my desk. You pull the rug back and there it is. I give it to you. Just let me go. We forget this and stay friends. For Angela and Macon’s sake.”
“Angela is with the dead, Lallo. Don’t speak of her here among this shit.” With the dripping blade he indicated the pistolero. “Here’s the deal, Lallo. You are right that we are good friends. So climb into the trunk, and I’ll send my pal to your office to get the cash. If the money is there, we can say good-bye as friends.”
“Excellent,” Lallo said, nodding rapidly. “Combination is three-two-four-four-five-oh. Here are the keys to my office in Place St. Charles.” Lallo pulled a set of keys from his pocket and handed them to Martin.
“Security?” Martin asked.
“The system has a forty-second delay after the door opens. Keypad is on the other side of the door, and it is set for one-one-one-one. Then we say it’s even?” Lallo’s face was running with sweat. “I will explain these bodies.”
“We’ll just toss them into the river. So I can forgive you for the money. The other cash in your safe I will put to good use. Fund an orphanage, maybe. You know how much I love children.”
