bottom of my eyes, but everything else was black.
I adjusted to riding in the dark and tried to listen for sounds that might give me an idea of where we were headed. The only thing I could make out was the hum of the air conditioning and the constant whir of the wheels on the road.
We rode in silence for what I thought I calculated to be about an hour, but I knew that my sense of time was tenuous because of the silence and lack of vision.
The car slowed to a stop, the tires crunching over gravel.
“Please remove the mask,” Ramon said.
I did, and the light felt violent and unfriendly.
35
I stepped out of the Mercedes, Ramon behind me. We were at the bottom of a small grassy hill. A dirt trail bisected the slope to the top. I looked around and saw nothing else. A small mountain in the middle of a field that looked as if it extended for miles in every direction. I couldn’t even tell which way we’d driven in from.
“I need to check you,” Ramon said.
I stood still and extended my arms. He patted me down quickly and efficiently, finishing at my ankles. He was better than most cops.
He stood up. “Follow the trail to the top.”
I turned and headed up the trail. It looked to be about three hundred yards, a gradual ascent that wasn’t too taxing. I turned around once to see Ramon standing at the bottom of the trailhead, watching me.
About midway, I could see the ocean out in the distance to the west. The field and hill were actually on top of a bluff, maybe half a mile from the coast. In Southern California, it would’ve been prime real estate, developed to the hilt. Here, it was simply a pretty piece of land.
I reached the top and found Alejandro Costilla waiting for me, sitting on a wooden bench, facing me. He wore white cotton pants and a long-sleeve burgundy dress shirt. I could see a small gold cross at the base of his neck. He was surrounded by three men, all dressed in shorts and T-shirts, all aiming machine guns at me.
Costilla gestured in my direction. “Check him.”
The one to his left stepped forward, slung the gun to his back, and patted me down, just as Ramon had done.
“Ramon cleared me already,” I said.
Costilla said nothing. The man finished patting me down, then nodded quickly in Costilla’s direction. He backed away from me, returning to his original spot, his gun again pointed at me.
“I’m surprised you came,” Costilla said.
“Needed to see you.”
He rose from the bench. “You don’t think I’m going to kill you?” he asked, shoving his hands in his pockets.
I wasn’t sure how to answer that, so I was honest. “I have no idea. I hope not.”
He smiled. “Good to have hope. How is your friend?”
“Alive,” I said. “How is your man?”
“Alive,” he said. “You know, it was supposed to be you that ended up in the hospital. Or the grave.”
“Figured that,” I said.
He laughed, shaking his head. “You’ve got balls, Mr. Braddock. Bigger than your brain, probably.”
I shrugged.
He extended his arms out to the sides, palms up. “So here I am. What is it you want to talk to me about?”
I felt isolated on the hill, probably as they intended. If they were going to kill me, there was nothing I could do about it. I figured I should at least try to get what I came for.
“Are you responsible for Kate Crier’s death?” I asked.
“You are still working on this? Even after I told you to stop?” Costilla looked incredulous.
“Yeah.”
“And now you think I killed this girl?”
“I think it’s a possibility.”
He smiled, squinting into the sun. “And if I tell you I did, what are you going to do?” He waved his arm around. “What are you going to do to me?”
There was nothing I could do at that moment and he knew it, too. I didn’t say anything.
He shook his head and ran a hand over his bald scalp. “You think I killed your friend because she was working for your government?”
“So you did know what she was doing,” I said, his statement confirming my guess.
“Of course,” he said, as if only a moron wouldn’t have known. “I knew immediately.”
“How?”
He frowned. “You think I’ve gotten to this point without being smart? Without being careful? No one gets close to me without my knowing who they are.” He shook his head again. “You disappoint me, Mr. Braddock.”
A knot formed in my stomach, and I couldn’t untangle it. I waited for him to continue.
Costilla walked back to the bench and sat, leaning back on his hands and crossing his outstretched legs at the ankles. “I didn’t kill her.”
That surprised me. He had no reason to lie to me. I was at his mercy. I thought he would enjoy telling me about her death, how he’d done it and how he was happy she was gone. And how I was next.
“But you knew what she was doing,” I said. “That she was an informant.”
He nodded. “Yes, I did. I made a mistake the last time your government tried to get inside my people. I killed that person.”
It wasn’t making sense. “Why was that a mistake?”
His head gleamed in the sun. “Let me ask you a question. Let’s say you are trying to hide from someone. That someone tries to get information about where you are going to hide.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Tell me, is it easier to just try and hide or to give that someone information that might make them look elsewhere?” He raised his eyebrows. “Send them looking in places where you aren’t.”
Now I was getting it. “So you fed Kate bad information?”
“Ask your police friends,” he said, laughing. “Ask them how they like looking for ghosts.”
“They wired her,” I said, still not entirely believing him.
He rolled his eyes. “Naturally. Ask them about what they heard, if anything they heard helped them catch me.” He looked at himself, mocking. “Oh, wait. Here I am.”
I don’t know how one comes to trusting someone that can’t be trusted, but there was no doubt in my mind that Alejandro Costilla was telling the truth.
36
“Do you know who killed her then?” I asked.
Costilla pointed a finger at me. “Therein lies the problem, Mr. Braddock.”
“I don’t get it,” I said, shaking my head.
He stood and motioned for me to walk to the edge of the plateau with him. I looked at the men and their guns, hoped they weren’t going to shoot me, then joined Costilla where he stood.
“I don’t know who killed her,” he said, gazing out in the distance toward the ocean. “If I did, I would’ve already taken care of it.”
“Mr. Costilla, I don’t understand a word of what you’re telling me,” I said.
