The cell phone pressed to his ear to block out the hiss of the shower, he listened to the familiar trill. Someone picked up. Lock was so startled that he almost dropped the phone. He stood and walked to the window. ‘Hello?’
A woman answered him, in English, but with an accent. ‘If you want to fuck me, why don’t you just come up to me like a man and ask me?’
Of all the responses, this was one that he hadn’t been fully prepared for.
‘My name is Francis Brady. I found your number in the personal effects of my brother Joe Brady. He was murdered in Mexico.’
Lock had no idea if Brady had had a brother or not, never mind what his name might be if he had, but he had figured that a family member wishing to ask some questions was about as plausible an explanation as any. Also, he didn’t want the person at the other end to know who he was. Her response, though, suggested that perhaps Brady had had a little more going on south of the border than the hunt for Charlie Mendez.
There was silence.
‘Hello?’ Lock said again.
He could hear the woman clear her throat. ‘You are his brother?’
At least she’d heard Joe Brady’s name.
‘Yes, that’s correct,’ he said.
Ty had emerged from the bathroom, a towel around his waist. He scratched his chest. ‘Think we got bedbugs or something.’
Lock waved at him to shut up. ‘I found your number in his office. I’m trying to work out exactly what happened to him when he came down to Mexico. I thought you might be able to help.’
More silence, more hesitancy.
‘Can I at least ask your name?’
‘Where are you now?’ the woman said.
‘Santa Maria,’ Lock lied, unwilling to give away the precise location to someone he didn’t know.
‘Are you crazy? You already know what happened to your brother, right? You want to join him?’ she asked.
‘No, I don’t. But I need to know why it happened.’
‘Go home, Mr Brady. That’s my best advice to you.’
Lock took a breath. Beneath him he watched a crowd of workers clamber on to a bus. He picked out a middle-aged woman who took a seat by the window. She had the worn-out look of someone who didn’t so much live as exist. ‘I can’t do that.’ He paused. ‘You knew my brother but I don’t even know your name.’
More silence. He could hear her, though.
‘Meet me in an hour.’ She gave him an address in Santa Maria. His lie had caught him out. The drive last night when the roads were quiet had taken an hour and ten minutes. Now it was rush-hour.
‘Wait, can we make it a little later?’ he said. But she had already hung up.
Thirty-two
An hour wasn’t long enough for them to get there. But it was plenty of time to organize their execution. Under normal circumstances, whenever he met with someone he didn’t know and was unsure of their motive, Lock liked to check the location ahead of time, find the entry and exit points, have a plan for action on attack. All he could do now was show up. If he was walking into an ambush, he and Ty would have to improvise.
Fifteen minutes after the call, they were only just clearing the outskirts of Diablo. They still had forty plus miles to cover. Then they had to find the place. As Ty drove, Lock navigated.
Ty had his foot pressed hard to the floor but they were still barely touching eighty miles per hour. As they closed in on the outskirts of the city, scrub desert shifted to dense urban jungle. Green and white taxis vied for space on the road with old American school buses ferrying workers to the factories.
Blasting the horn, Ty navigated the crush of traffic as the minutes ticked down. Lock switched to a city map, his attention shifting between it and the vehicles around them. They were on city streets now. Ty swore under his breath.
Lock glanced over the edge of the map to see road works and a road-closed sign. Ty immediately began to turn. It was a firm rule of close-protection work that it was always better to be moving than stationary. It might just be road works. It might be something else. Right now, even though Lock was sure that no one who mattered or wished them ill even knew they were in Santa Maria looking for Mendez, it was safer, and simpler, to assume the opposite was true. ‘Prepare for the worst’ was a good mantra if you wanted to stay alive.
Cars horns raged as the Durango blocked the intersection. Ty spun the wheel, reversed and roared back in the direction they had come from. They had lost thirty seconds they didn’t have.
‘Left here — we’ll loop back around,’ said Lock.
They were parallel to a railway line when he realized he was taking them in the wrong direction, a rare mis- step. ‘Sorry, brother, we need to be over there.’
Not missing a beat, Ty pulled the wheel down hard, the Dodge bumping straight across the tracks. Lock felt the blood drain from his face. His partner looked at him and laughed. ‘What? You said over there.’
‘I’m driving next time.’
Ty shrugged. ‘The way you’re navigating, that might not be a bad idea.’
They reached the address five minutes after the deadline. It was a shopping mall. As an RV, Lock liked it. Lots of traffic. Lots of entry and exit points. Lots of innocent bystanders, not that narco-traffickers worried too much about that, but an empty parking lot with nothing nearby would have had him more on edge than he might normally have been.
The only question remaining was whether the woman had waited for him. His cell rang. It was the number.
‘Where are you?’
‘We got lost.’
‘I gave you an hour,’ the woman said.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I’m on the third level. In the cafe opposite the elevators. You have one more minute before I leave. I don’t have time for this bullshit.’
She hung up. Ty had his arm out, waiting to get a ticket from the machine and then for the barrier to rise.
‘Catch me up.’ Lock grabbed the door handle and jumped out.
Ty called after him but Lock kept going, running hard towards the entrance, almost catching himself on the automatic doors as they glided open. Dodging around a woman pushing a baby in a stroller, he looked about. People were waiting for the elevator but the display signalled that it had only just begun its descent. He headed for the stairwell, exploding through the doors and launching himself upwards, heart pounding and gasping for breath.
Head throbbing, out of breath, he made it to the third floor, pushed through another set of doors on to a walkway and out into an open courtyard of stores. Frantically, sweat running down his back, he looked for a cafe.
Nothing. No restaurant. No cafes. Only stores. So many of the names were American that you might think you were still on the other side of the border.
He began to walk past the stores, people shooting glances at the sweaty gringo. He called the number.
‘There’s no cafe on the third level,’ he said, when she answered.
‘And Joe Brady didn’t have a brother. So why don’t you tell me who you are and what you want?’
Decision time. He took a breath. Whoever she was, she was smart. If she was linked to a cartel or someone protecting Mendez she knew that he’d lied, and would probably be able to guess that his intentions towards Mendez were unlikely to be favourable.
‘My name is Ryan Lock. I’m here to find Charlie Mendez and bring him back with me to the States.’
‘Who are you with?’ she asked.
