some. Otherwise they gonna be sending your friend back a piece at a time.”
“Do the police have the note?”
“No. It was slipped under my door early this afternoon. All they know is Tolt’s gone and his room’s a mess.”
This sends a lot of silence from my end of the line.
“Hey. You there?”
“I’m here, Herman.”
“Tell me. Where exactly is here?” he says.
“I’m across the street in the plaza.”
“What the fuck you doin’ there?”
“I don’t have time to explain. Can you get out of the hotel without the police seeing you?”
“Yeah right, six-foot-five, three-hundred-pound bro’, I’m gonna slip through the lobby unnoticed like Tinkerbell.”
“There’s gotta be some way.”
“Yeah. I can do it. It won’t be easy. First tell me why?”
“I’m going to need your help.”
“Take me a minute to get dressed,” he says. “In my Skivvies.”
“I’ve got some bad news,” I tell him.
“What?”
“Julio is dead.”
Silence on the other end. “What you talkin” bout? Ay don’t believe ya. Bullshit.”
“I just saw him. He’s sitting behind the wheel in one of the Surburbans down in the garage with half of his head gone. Do you know where the rest of your people are?”
Nothing but the sound of his breathing on his end.
“Herman?”
“What?”
“Where are the rest of your people?”
He hesitates for a second. “Ay don’t know. Called the condo four or five times. Nobody answers.”
“Then we have to assume they either bought them or they’re dead. And one of the cars is gone. Do you know where it is?”
“No.”
“Do you have keys for the other two?”
“Got keys for all of ’em.”
I tell him to meet me in half an hour on the sidewalk behind the plaza. Then I hang up.
I buy a pair of pants, a couple of shirts, some underwear and socks at one of the men’s clothing shops in the mall, then head for the men’s room. Inside I wash the blood off my neck and clean away some of the crusted blood from my ear, being careful not to reopen the wound. Then put on one of the new shirts.
Out in the mall I wait inside, watching for Herman through the glass doors I had entered forty minutes earlier. A few seconds later, I see him hoofing it up the sidewalk and coming this way. He’s wearing black high-top shoes, a pair of black chinos, thighs bulging, and a tee-shirt, stretched in every direction. Around his waist is an oversized fanny pack on a thick web belt sagging from the weight of the forty-five and the clips of ammunition inside.
Carrying the shopping bags with my clothes in them, I head out and meet him on the street.
“I don’t believe you, man. Fuckin’ shoppin’ at a time like this,” he says.
“I had blood all over my clothes.”
“Oh. That’s different,” he says.
“Everything I brought with me is locked up in the room, including my passport.”
“Looks like you gonna be talkin’ to the powlice before you go home,” he says.
We head down the hill.
Five minutes later we’re standing in the garage under the condo, Herman with the leather pouch on his left side unzipped. His right hand is in it under the flap.
The Suburbans are parked where they were when I left, the smell of exhaust still lingering in the air.
“Which one’s Julio in?”
“One on the right.”
“Stay here.”
“Herman.”
“What?”
“Leave it. Don’t touch it.”
“Can’t just leave him here,” he says. “Besides, my fingerprints are all over that car.”
“There are things besides fingerprints,” I tell him. “There’s nothing we can do. As soon as we get the other car and get out of here, we can stop and call the cops from a pay phone. Tell them some kids saw the body in a car in the garage. Give them the address and hang up. They’ll take care of it.”
“I at least want to see him,” he says.
“I understand. Look, don’t touch.”
Herman goes up and looks at Julio through the driver’s side window. “Fucker did this is dead,” he says. “Now I gotta go tell his wife and kids.”
“He was married?”
“Yeah. Gal named Maria. Nice lady. Three kids. Two boys and a girl.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. So am I.”
“We need to go,” I tell him. “Do you have the keys to the other car?”
“Yeah.”
“Then we should go.”
“Not yet.” He turns and walks back the other way, right past me.
“Where are you going?”
He doesn’t answer.
“Herman!”
“You wanna go, go,” he says.
“This is crazy.” I follow him.
He leads me through a door and up two flights of stairs, man on a mission. Herman has to use a key from his pocket to unlock the door upstairs. Once inside, he heads down a hall, past several doors. He holds out a hand for me to slow down, pops the snap holding the handle of the gun in the fanny pack, and pulls the stainless automatic out, holding the muzzle up toward the ceiling, the gun near his right ear.
He stops in front of one of the doors and puts his ear to the wood, listens for a second, then slips a key into the lock. Motions for me to stay where I am in the hall. A second later, he is inside.
I wait outside listening. Nothing. A few seconds later, Herman swings the door open. “They’re gone. And all their stuff. Like they checked out. Bags, everything.”
“Why?”
“Sold out’s what I figure. Otherwise, Ibarra’s people killed ’em, their stuff would be here. The way business is done down here,” he says. “It’s either buy you or bullets. There ain’t no other way.”
Back at the car, Herman fishes for the key in his pocket, then steps around to the passenger side window and, without opening the door, looks across toward the driver’s side of the front seat.
“What are you doing?”
“There’s things besides fingerprints,” he says. “There’s things besides bullets too.” Then he opens the door, pushes the button that unlocks the other doors, goes around to the driver’s side and pulls the latch to pop the hood. It takes a minute or so, looking around the engine block, then underneath before he’s satisfied.
“Where you figuring on going?” he asks.
“The glass pyramid.”
“See Papa Ibarra?” he says.
