“I deserve your disdain because I am a weakling.” Lallo frowned. “I trust you, Marty. You have always been a man of your word. The money is there. I swear on my mother’s eyes.”
“All we have is our honor, my friend,” Martin said as he opened the driver’s door and reached over the dead man for the keys. He walked around and opened the trunk and Lallo climbed in. He looked up at Martin, a frightened bird in a dark nest. “I trust you, Martin. I trust you,” he said. He watched as the other man joined Martin and stood just behind him.
“And I trust you. Haven’t you seen my face? You are the only man on earth, aside from my compatriot there, who knows what I look like. We must trust each other. Watch your hands, Lallo. Will you be comfortable in there?”
“Yes.” He nodded rapidly. “I will be just fine, Martin. And your friend-Steiner, Kurt Steiner. Of course,” Lallo said. “Now I remember him. It was nice to see you again, Mr. Steiner.” Lallo stared at the other man.
Kurt Steiner nodded formally. “My pleasure, Senor Estevez. Maybe we will meet again under more pleasant circumstances.”
“I’ll put in some holes so you can breathe better,” Martin said, taking the shotgun from Kurt and swinging it up to his shoulder. He aimed it at Lallo’s chest. Lallo jerked his arm up and covered his eyes. Martin shrugged, raised the barrel to the open trunk lid, and fired both barrels, the pellets punching through the sheet metal and shattering both the rear and front windshields en route. The short gun’s discharges sounded like dynamite going off; the sound overflowed the small trunk. Lallo was sure his ears were bleeding as he pulled his arm away from his eyes. There might have been some relief in his expression, but very little. He was a man separated from his Maker by the thinnest of threads, and they were being held by a psychopath.
“Sorry about your pants,” Martin said as he closed the trunk gently until the hydraulic mechanism caught and sealed it tight. Martin put the shotgun on top of the car, grabbed the pistolero ’s legs, and dragged him to the side of the dock, leaving a wide, dark trail. The body of the short, thin sniper from the roof was now lying beside the Cadillac, having been recovered by Kurt Steiner. The rifle he had been carrying was tossed into the water without a second thought. The sniper’s throat was opened like a mouth. Martin reached into the slit in the man’s throat and pulled his tongue out as he had the pistolero ’s. Then, after admiring the thick purple necktie, he rolled the would-be assassin off into the Mississippi River. Martin and Kurt maneuvered Ramon to the side and pushed him in as well. They watched him float away, shoulders above the waterline, for a few seconds before he sank.
“See that, Kurt? Proves a very important point.”
“What point, Marty?”
“Shit doesn’t always float.”
Martin walked back to the driver’s open door, reached inside, started it, and then put the Cadillac into drive. He cocked his head slightly and watched the car roll slowly toward the ship’s stern, gathering speed as it went. It rolled off the pier at an angle, the front passenger quarter hitting first, and sank in a fury of bubbles. Lallo’s muted screams escaped the holes in the trunk as the car bobbed and the rear end moved along the pier, pulled along by the current. Then it slipped under for good, leaving a momentary churning of bubbles that moved downriver.
“I didn’t touch you, Lallo, old friend,” he said. Then he tilted his head back and filled the night with his deep, black laughter.
Martin changed into clothes he had in the trunk of the Caprice. He strolled out of the parking garage off Canal Place, crossed Canal Street, and walked to St. Charles Avenue, where he stopped to look at the displays in the windows of Rubenstein Bros. He slowed to savor the elegance of Italian suits, linen shirts, and sports coats as he walked toward Lallo’s building. The expensive clothes appealed to Martin. He wondered why he had not worn such suits before now. He thought he would adopt a personality with a sense of style and taste. After the smoke cleared on this deal, if he was still alive, he’d come back to this store and outfit himself for just such a life-a new identity. Maybe he would rent an elegant house here for a few months and relax.
By the time Martin passed the final shop window, his thoughts were back to his business. His reflections on fine clothing and a house uptown no longer existed; they were as completely forgotten as the bodies he had slipped into tike Mississippi River an hour earlier. His mind had locked on his errand again.
Lallo’s office was located on one of the top floors of Place St. Charles on St. Charles Avenue, a block uptown from the French Quarter. His family owned coffee plantations, and he was officially a coffee broker. Lallo’s brother had introduced him to the money to be made in the powder trade on the cleaning end, and with the friendship of certain American-government accommodations it had seemed perfectly safe. Money shuffling for both ends meant a percentage of the gross. A nice pad for a man with so many businesses set up all around the world and so many accounts in so many places. Lallo had banking relationships in the Bahamas, New Orleans, Miami, New York, Panama, Peru, Argentina, Bolivia, Honduras, London, Tokyo, and Paris.
Martin slipped easily into the building and up the stairs without being seen. He used Lallo’s keys to open first the receptionist’s office and then Lallo’s. There was an alarm, but it wasn’t on.
The office was large and expensively decorated. The desk, the entertainment center complete with leather couches, and the conference table were set on a carpeted platform-a platform built expressly to hide the floor safe under Lallo’s desk. The combination worked perfectly. Martin stared in at the blocks of cash. He roughly counted the money, using the desk to stack the bundles.
Pablo would know Martin had killed his most valuable money man and taken many times what was owed him. And the drug king would spend the time when he wasn’t looking over his shoulder for the Colombian army, instead looking over his shoulder for Martin. Martin knew he would haunt Pablo’s dreams, because Pablo had seen him at work, had hired him for the wettest jobs he’d had-work where sophistication was necessary, where the target was covered over in security. The trouble with Latin muscle was that there was no finesse. Cut throats, sloppy torture, like the raping of proud, macho men by lesser men, machine guns, bombs, and chain saws. Martin believed that the Colombians and the Peruvians were pie-faced Indians without the imagination God gave frogs. Inferior beings. Martin knew this because he had trained them-or tried to-but they were, for the most part, ruled by their emotions. Most men were inferior to Martin. Most men had emotions to deal with. Martin had exorcised all but a few.
Martin put the money into a plastic garbage bag he had brought along and went back out into the night with the cash slung over his shoulder.
Back in the parking garage he handed blocks of the money to his comrade. “One more big job before we close this one, Kurt.”
“No sweat,” Steiner said.
“There can be no mistakes. You have everything you need. The package is waiting for you.”
“I understand, Martin. I’ve done lots of shit harder than this cakewalk.”
“You have never had a more important job in your life. The absence of danger may give you a false sense of safety. Remember, you are the only one I would trust with this.”
Martin embraced the man and hugged him tightly. The killers put their heads together.
“I won’t fail you,” Steiner said.
“Go,” Martin whispered. “Go, now, and make me proud.”
Martin watched as Kurt stepped from the car and made his way to the elevator. He knew that the younger man was in awe of him. It wasn’t a physical love, but a worshipful love, a reverence of the student for the master. Martin put two pills on his tongue and swallowed them without water. “Of course he won’t fail me. Because I’d cut out his fucking heart if he did.” He smiled at the thought that soon he would be traveling lighter than he ever had before. After this was done, he would have no further use for Kurt Steiner.
28
Kurt Steiner drove up magazine toward the Garden District.
The rain stopped as suddenly as it had started, the windshield clearing the final drops of water. He thought about the money in the trunk, and for a split second he fantasized that he would leave for the airport and simply be gone. He could be home early with a king’s ransom. Then he dismissed the thought and cursed himself for such a treacherous idea.
He turned his mind back to the airport in Dallas, where he had been dispatched on an errand by Martin. As usual he had no idea why the trip was important, because Martin never told him more than he absolutely had to
