I went back upstairs to the courtroom. The medical examiner team was just about to zip up the green body bag over the assassin when I noticed a ribbon of green tattoo ink on the man’s neck.
“Hold up a sec,” I said to the medical examiner’s people as I unbuttoned the man’s work shirt.
I nodded to myself as I squatted over the dead guy. The man had another tattoo, this one over his heart. It looked like a skull wearing a woman’s red shawl. I’d seen it before on the chests of both Perrine’s driver and the shooter I’d killed at Madison Square Garden.
The tattoo was a depiction of Santa Muerte, or Saint Death, a deity at the center of a religious cult that many of the cartels were involved in. The cult was a weird mix of Catholicism and Aztec religion, and Santa Muerte was a kind of evil Virgin Mary figure. Some of the cartel people would offer blood sacrifices to her in exchange for a peaceful death. Sometimes, Mexican drug dealers would even be found shot dead on altars dedicated to Santa Muerte. It was primitive, out there, very spooky stuff.
I was still squatting and staring at the tattoo when my phone rang.
“Bennett here,” I said.
“Hey, pig. How’s your morning? So far so good?” a woman said in Spanish-accented English.
No! I thought, immediately jumping to my feet. My heart started beating like crazy. Though I’d never heard her speak, I knew exactly who it was.
I was talking to the gold-eyed witch who had killed Hughie.
“Look around and take in your world now,” she said. “Death has come, and she is thirsty. She will not leave until you let him go.”
“Ma’am, that’s not how it works here in the good ol’ USA,” I said, trying to recover. “This is how it works. First, we’re going to catch every last one of you, and then we’re going to put you either in jail or the morgue. Got it? Jail or morgue.”
It put
“You think you have authority over him because we are in America? You think those bars and walls can actually contain him? You think you are teaching him a lesson, but it is you who will learn. You have offended him. Do you know what happens when you offend a living god?”
“Let me guess,” I said. “Um… floor seats for the Knicks games?”
“Laugh now. You will cry later, I assure you,” she said, and hung up.
“Unbelievable,” I mumbled as I closed my phone and my eyes.
CHAPTER 37
I MADE SOME calls and found out they were keeping Perrine in a maximum-security protective custody unit back at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, around the corner from the courthouse.
It was about two in the afternoon, after a lot of favor collecting, when I was allowed to conduct an interview with Perrine concerning the murdered judge.
In an interview room on the second floor, with a one-way mirror along one wall, we sat on plastic chairs on opposite sides of a table. As the guards brought him in, Perrine didn’t look concerned in the slightest about the bloodbath at the courthouse. In fact, he looked happy and at ease, as relaxed as a man who’d just gotten his hair cut.
“You wish to speak with me, Detective?” Perrine said in his weird, accented English as he was handcuffed to the cinder-block wall.
The guard left and closed the door.
“It’s so nice to have a visitor. What shall we talk about?” Perrine said, crossing his legs and leaning back.
“I don’t know. The usual,” I said. “Sports, the weather, your upcoming lethal injection.”
Perrine laughed.
“You think I ordered this hit of the judge, yes?” he said, rocking his chair back and forth. “But you are wrong. I had nothing to do with it. Some men get excited, and they do things. It is the same with a beautiful woman. People fight over her. Is she to blame if someone is hurt?”
“Interesting analogy,” I said, raising an eyebrow. “Since you’re such an insightful guy, maybe you could shed a little light on that skull chick you guys keep drawing on yourselves. She’s what? A cartoon? Like SpongeBob SquarePants?”
He looked at me hard, with a funny smile on his face.
“I would not take La Santa Muerte, or, more properly La Santisima Muerte, so lightly, my friend. Some say the old gods of Mexico are still alive. Who is anyone to dispute it? La Santisima Muerte may seem repulsive to your stale, modern mind, but she and her message and her protections are sound. Death is the only truth in life. Even Catholics believe this.”
“Wait a second. You actually worship death?” I said, raising a skeptical eyebrow.
“In a way, yes,” Perrine said. “Death wins eventually, always, and every time.”
“But I don’t get it,” I said, shrugging my shoulders.
“Get what?” he said.
“If death is so great, why don’t you put your money where your mouth is and kill yourself? I mean, go for it. Please.”
He shook his head.
“You do not understand,” he said.
“I understand perfectly,” I said raising a finger and pointing it at him. “It’s you who doesn’t get it. You don’t worship death, Perrine. You worship murder. You worship power and evil and hurting people.”
Perrine sat up with a loud snap of his chair.
“What I believe and what my men believe is… ”
He suddenly stopped and caught hold of himself. He smiled as he smoothed his jumpsuit.
“My apologies, Detective. I promised myself that I would not lose my composure, but here I am letting my temper get the best of me.”
He dropped his voice into a whisper as he leaned forward, staring into my eyes.
“Now, let us stop fucking around, yes? I have a one-time offer for you, and it is quite a deal, so consider it closely. I give you two hundred fifty million dollars. Let me repeat, that is two hundred fifty
“What?” I said, stifling a laugh.
“You do not think I am serious?” he said, light flashing in his weird, faded-blue eyes. “I am a man of very considerable means, but what can money do for me here in this place? We need to get rolling immediately. What’s the American expression? ‘Window of opportunity’? Our window of opportunity here is closing very rapidly.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Or, more precisely, I couldn’t believe how open and confident Perrine was as he offered his bribe. He truly seemed to believe that I would take his blood money.
Since time was of the essence, I decided to give him my answer right away. My right hand suddenly reached under the table, grabbed one of the legs of his chair, and pulled it. Perrine yelled as he slammed down backward onto the concrete floor.
I heard the guard, watching through the one-way mirror, come running. Perrine cursed a blue streak at me as he tried to scramble to his feet.
“When are you going to get it into that thick skull of yours, Perrine?” I said as the locks on the door clicked open. “You’re in the big city now, and no matter how much money or how many freakish drug soldiers you have, I’m going to make you pay for all the evil you’ve done.
“Do you know why? It’s simple. I’m going to do it because it’s my job. I’m the garbageman and you’re the garbage, so into the back of the truck and on to the dump we go.
As the guards took him away, Perrine tried to spit on me but ended up just spitting on himself. As he began to curse at me again, I smiled. I knew all along that talking to Perrine would be useless. The only reason I’d come up
