Dead Six

Suddenly the room was bathed in scalding light, blinding me. It had to be one of those eyeball-melting police flashlights. “Don’t move!” a deep voice bellowed. It was a command voice that was used to being obeyed. I slowly raised my hands to the surrender position.

“It’s me, Bob.” Hands open, I turned toward the giant in the doorway. “Shoot me, and Mom will be pissed.”

The brilliant light moved to the side, leaving white ghosts floating in my eyeballs. “Hector?”

It had been a long time since anybody had called me that.

Robert Lorenzo was big man, six and a half feet tall, broad and barrel-chested. He looked nothing like me at all, which wasn’t a surprise, considering that I was a foster kid.

The Lorenzos were good people. I’d never really felt like I had fit in, no matter how hard I’d tried, but they had loved me as if I were one of them regardless. They were hard-working, honestly religious, salt-of-the-Earth decent folks. My real father had been a petty criminal, crackhead, piece of filth, and Gideon Lorenzo was the judge who had finally sent him away for murder.

Gideon had never confided in me the logic behind taking me in. I just remember him staring down at me from that tall judge’s seat while I had been giving my eyewitness testimony against my real father. His kind eyes had filled with involuntary tears as I’d talked about how I’d watched my mother get her head kicked in, even after I had tried to defend her by stabbing my father with a fork. I had been twelve.

Four years. For four years I had lived with the Lorenzo family. Then something terrible had happened, popping the happy bubble where I’d briefly gotten to live like a normal person. I had violated Gideon’s deathbed final wish, but my services had been needed to make things right, and I did what I had to do.

While in their care, I had never officially taken their last name. After I dropped off the grid, I’d lived under many different names, changing identities like clothing. Eventually I’d started going by Lorenzo. It had seemed like the thing to do at the time. It had seemed right. If only I had realized that it would eventually come back to haunt me.

“So, you want to tell me how you broke into my house?” Bob asked as he settled onto his couch. He put his bare feet up on the coffee table. His Remington 870 was leaning against the arm of the couch.

“Always right to the point with you, wasn’t it?” I dodged. “Where’s the wife and kids? How’s Gwen?”

“Visiting her mom. You’ll like her. She’s nice. Now back to the B and E.” Bob looked like Dad before he had died. The resemblance was almost eerie. The last few years had rendered him totally bald, but that wasn’t a surprise, as he’d starting losing his hair at sixteen. “You could have knocked. I almost plugged you back there. I’m a light sleeper.”

Real light, apparently. I had been in full ninja mode. “The door was open,” I lied.

“No, it wasn’t,” Bob said with finality. “It was locked, and the alarm was armed. It’s been forever since I’ve seen you, and you sneak into my house in the middle of the night. Why?”

I had to be careful here. He was my older brother, and he was damn smart. I had known him very well once, but we were almost strangers now. “I need your help.”

“What’s going on, man?” Just like his father, there was no way I was going to be able to lie to this man and get away with it. I just hoped that he wouldn’t try to arrest me. That could get messy.

“I had to sneak in because there are people watching your house. You’re in danger, the whole family is in danger, because of me, and I’m here to warn you.”

Bob laughed. “You always were a hoot. No, serious, what’s going on?” After a moment of studying my grim expression, he realized I was for real, and then there was a hint of anger in his voice. “What have you gotten into?”

The Lorenzos had always been a real law-and-order bunch, except for me, obviously. I leaned back on the comfortable couch and groaned. This wasn’t going to be easy. “Do you know what I do for a living?”

“You work for some international-relations firm. That was what the last Christmas card said, which, by the way, is the only reason any of us even realized you were still alive. You’ve only visited Mom, what, once since you ran off and joined the Peace Corps.” He said that with just a hint of disdain. Bob had joined the Army.

“About that . . .” We had been close once. He was only a couple of years older than me, and after Dad had died Bob had become the family rock, while I had run off. This was a lot more difficult than I had thought it would be. “I’m not a businessman. I was never in the Peace Corps. I think they’re a bunch of hippies. Look . . . I’m . . . I’m a crook.”

“Crook? Like a criminal?” The last little bit of a smile faded. His normally jovial face grew hard, and now he really reminded me of Dad. “What kind of crook?”

“A very good one. Ever hear of the Cape Town diamond-exchange robbery?” I asked. He slowly nodded. I was sure the FBI had passed around a memo about that one. It had been rather impressive. “That was me. Bangkok National. Me. Bahrain Museum of Antiquity. Me. Vladivostok gold-train heist, all me.” Bob’s eyes grew wide. Of course he had heard of those. They were some of the more infamous robberies of our generation. “After that, I decided I didn’t like robbing normal people and I started to rob from other bad guys. Those jobs you probably haven’t heard about, but I’m pretty good at this stuff.”

“You can’t be serious,” he stated.

“I worked for a man called Big Eddie for a long time, the crime lord who has a piece of everything in Asia. I’m assuming the FBI’s heard of him?”

“Of course. The organized-crime guys have a task force dedicated to just that group. Personally, I thought he was a fairy tale.”

“Oh, he’s real.” I tossed the manila folder from Thailand on the coffee table between us. Bob picked it up and started to leaf through the family pictures. “He had one last job for me, and he gave me this to assure that I’d do it. I know he’ll hurt every single person in there, and I need you to get to them first, as quiet as you can.”

My brother crumpled the edges of the folder as he read. I could see the realization that I was telling the truth dawning on his face. “I can’t believe this. This . . . this is nuts. Sure, you were always pushing the boundaries, petty theft, joyriding cars, stupid crap, but this?”

“Bob, I know this is a shock, but listen to me. You can’t be obvious. Big Eddie will find out. You can’t bring in the FBI. Eddie has men on the inside. He will find out. This man sits on Satan’s right hand. You have no idea what he’s capable of. I need you to help me stop him.”

“I can’t believe you’re some sort of international super thief, I mean, come on man, you were such a . . .”

“Dork?” I offered. It was true. Bob had been the tough one.

“No offense, but heck, when we were kids, when I played football, you did gymnastics.”

“It comes in handy. I’m a good second-story man.”

“You were in the drama club. You were really good at it too, before you dropped out.”

I shrugged. “Playing pretend comes in handy,” I answered, my voice a nearly perfect impression of his own. I’d always had a gift for being someone else. Compared to some of the cons I had pulled off, sophomore-year Hamlet was a piece of cake. “Do you believe me?”

He rubbed his face in his hands. After a long pause, he looked me in the eye. “Yes. I can see it. You always were the crazy one.” I could tell that this was breaking his heart. He had always looked out for me, like a good big brother. “Hector, you’ve got to come in with me. The FBI can protect you. I can protect you. You can testify against this Big Eddie. I can get you into the witness-protection program.”

“Bob. This is bigger than that. Way bigger.” I stood. “Please, just get everybody to safety. You don’t have much time. And you’ve got to keep it low profile. Nothing official, because he will know. You’re the only one that can do this. Eddie tried to kill me. He shot one of my friends and murdered the others. He cut one’s head off. I’ve stalled him for now, but the man is a snake, and he’ll bite soon. It’s his nature.”

My brother stood, too. He towered over me, and his face was dark, clouded with anger. The shotgun was still leaning against the couch.

“You gonna try to arrest me?” I asked. Bob was a good and honorable man, and I did not know what I would