could change, with some help from her. Now that she knew what a real man was, maybe she could nudge him somehow in the right direction. In any case, she couldn’t just ditch him, the jerk!
“All right,” she said, “but I’m coming with you.”
“No fucking way.”
“Then pull the trigger.” She took the rotor out of her pocket. “And hurry up, because I’m about to fling this thing into the pond.” They stood that way for some moments. Then Kevin cursed and shoved the pistol into his waistband. “Okay, okay, let’s go, then. Put that thing back in the engine!”
“Give me the keys first,” she said. “I’m driving.”
In the dark van Prudencio Rivera Martinez felt his cell phone vibrate. The number showing was that of Garcia, who was crouching behind a tall hibiscus hedge directly opposite the property they were watching.
“That painted van is coming out,” he reported. “The girl is driving, and that little blondie maricon is with her.”
“Which direction?”
“Just a second.” A pause. “North.”
“I’ll have Montoya pick you up,” said Martinez. He had stationed two cars in blocking positions, one at each end of the short road called Ingraham Highway. His own van was lodged in a driveway in the approximate center of this road. Now he formulated a plan and mobilized his vehicles. In a few minutes, the VW van rolled by and Martinez’s driver, Cristobal Riba, swung behind it. Traffic was moderate.
“Where are we going to lift them?” asked Riba.
“Just ahead. This road goes under some heavy trees. It’s like a tunnel, pitch dark. We’ll do it there.”
“A lot of traffic for a lift,” said Riba doubtfully.
“They’ll think it’s a little accident. Iglesias will jam on his brakes, and you’ll run into their ass. We’ll get out, they’ll get out, we’ll show them guns, they’ll get in with Iglesias and Rascon, and I’ll get in with them and we’ll drive to the garage. One two three.”
Jenny gave a little cry and jammed on her brakes when the black van shot into the road from a hidden driveway and was thrown against her seat belt by the impact.
“Oh shit!” cried Kevin, and the same again when the following van rammed against the rear bumper. Dark- skinned men emerged from each van and walked toward the VW.
“Move the car, move the car!” Kevin screamed. He popped his seat belt and shifted in his seat, looking frantically to either side of the VW, watching the men approach.
“I can’t, we’re stuck,” she shouted back at him, and then she saw the man just outside her window, a thick man with a round hard face, heavy brows, pockmarked cheeks, black hair worn in a brush cut. He was dressed in tan slacks and a white short-sleeved shirt, untucked at the waist.
“You hit my car,” he said in clear but accented English. “You come out now and we show insurance, all right?”
She started to open her door, but Kevin shouted something she didn’t catch and heaved himself across her. To her horror he had his gun out and was pointing it at the man. “Move your fucking car, motherfucker, or I’ll blow your head off.”
Jenny saw surprise register on the man’s face. Kevin’s pistol was trembling right before her eyes and she saw that the safety was still on. She was about to mention this to Kevin when the pockmarked man reached under his shirt, drew out a semiautomatic pistol with a strangely long barrel and shot Kevin twice in the face, making less sound than the popping of two birthday balloons. Kevin collapsed, his dead head fell right on her thigh, gushing volumes of blood. She looked down at it, at the great obscene bulge of blood-matted hair, bone splinters, and ropes of gray brain, and drew in breath for the scream of her lifetime.
Whether she made a sound or not she never knew, for between that moment and the next she felt the familiar shaft of coldness shoot through her center and the sounds of the uncaring traffic faded and the face of the killer and everything else contracted to a bright dot and she went away into seizure land.
Tuesday morning, Lola Wise was still sound asleep, and her husband forbore to wake her. He called the hospital and had a brief conversation with Dr. Kemmelman, the chief resident, in which he said that his wife was suffering from exhaustion and would be out for some days. The doctor said he understood, that such things happened often in ER work, and not to worry. He asked if Paz wanted to pick up some meds; Paz declined. Paz then prepared his daughter for school, dodged a series of questions about what was wrong with Mommy, and took her to Providence. On his way back, he received a call from Tito Morales.
“Did you hear yet?”
“Hear what?”
“We should’ve gone over there last night, man. I had a bad feeling about that. I should’ve gone myself.”
“What’re you talking about, Tito?”
“Around nine-thirty last night a van belonging to the Forest Planet Alliance-remember them? — was jammed up on Ingraham Highway by a couple of vans. Witnesses thought it was a fender bender. A man named Kevin Voss took two through the head from a silenced nine and his companion, a woman named Jennifer Simpson, aged nineteen, was abducted by persons unknown. How do you like that shit?”
“Not much. I presume you’re all over the Forest Planet office by now.”
“You could say that. It’s based out of a big property on Ingraham south of Prospect, the bay side. Owned by a guy named Rupert Zenger, who’s conveniently out of town. Left just the other day, ho-ho. The only residents are a James Scott Burns, some kind of yard man, and a fellow named Nigel Cooksey, he’s an adjunct professor at the U. and the organization’s scientific guy. A Brit. Nothing on either of them, but this Simpson woman has a sheet, did six months in Cedar Rapids for guess what?”
“Impersonating a large spotted cat?”
A silence on the line. “You need to take this shit more seriously, amigo. She was muling dope, felony weight, but she caught a break as a first offender. And a cooperative witness. Also, we found a nine-millimeter pistol in the van that Voss and Simpson were in, unfired, with Voss’s prints on it. We traced it as stolen from a gun shop in Orlando last March.”
“So what’s the thinking now with all this?”
“Oh, thinking is not the word, my man. Finnegan and the county are having conniption fits that we found this FPA outfit and didn’t tell them like immediately. They’re moving to pick up a bunch of Colombians been hanging out on Fisher Island with the surviving Consuela guys. Oliphant is ballistic. How come we weren’t on them yesterday? And like I said last night, the feds are interested because of this Hurtado character. I hear they’re working on a warrant to raid your sister’s company.”
“Uh-huh. I think she’ll be forthcoming. By the way, did you find the Indian?”
“No, but at this point fucking magical invisible Indians are not high on the priority list. Everybody’s pretty well focused on Colombian gang war in the Magic City just before the tourist season.”
“None of which explains the two funny murders.”
“No, but the bosses got the bone in their teeth now. They want some Colombian pistoleros in the cells and we’ll figure out how they did it later.”
“So am I fired from being a funny-murder consultant?”
“Not that I heard. Why don’t you come by this Ingraham place and we’ll consult. They got a pool with piranhas in it. It’s something to see.”
“Twenty minutes,” said Paz. By this time he was on his own street. He went into the house and checked on his wife. She hadn’t moved since the last time he saw her, and he watched her for a considerable time, comforted by her slow, steady breathing. Then he left a note saying “Mi amor se nutre de tu amor, amada. Call me when you get up,” and left.
Driving north on Coral Way, Paz had a thought and put it into action. He called his half sister’s cell number on his own cell phone.
“It’s Jimmy,” he said when she answered. “The feds are about to raid your company.”
To his relief she was not flustered by this news. “What’s their interest?”
“Dad, if I may call him that, apparently spent a lot of time on the horn to Cali, Colombia, talking to a fellow named Gabriel Hurtado. He’s a drug lord.”
