EPILOGUE
FOUR YEARS later …
“HEY, BUDDHA, you seen Princess?” Rhino asked, his nearly five-hundred-pound body visually enlarged by the gray jumpsuit he habitually wore. The overall effect was to make the back door of the poolroom behind him seem nonexistent. “He didn’t come back to the spot last night.”
“Maybe he got lucky,” the short, pudgy man offered, glancing up from a white sheet of oilskin he had spread out on a desk made from a solid-core door positioned over a pair of sawhorses. On the cloth he had arranged various parts of an automatic pistol next to a micro-tool kit any surgeon would have envied. For illumination, three parallel tubes of the sunlight-replicator used to treat seasonal affective disorder hung overhead. “Even a full-bore maniac like him has to score once in a while. Law of averages.”
“What’s your problem with Princess anyway?” the giant demanded. “He doesn’t mean any harm—you know that.”
“He’s like a little kid, Rhino,” the pudgy man said, in a “How many times do I have to say it?” tone. “A little kid, playing games. I’m a professional—so are you. Fact is, I can’t figure out why Cross puts up with—”
“You want to know, why don’t you ask him?” the giant responded. His voice was an incongruous high-pitched squeak, but to those who knew him, no less threatening than the grunting of a flotilla of angry alligators.
“Take it easy,” Buddha said hastily. “What’re you so worried about? This can’t be the first time Princess didn’t show.”
“Yeah, it is,” the huge man replied. “At least, he always left word.”
“Hey, he’s a grown man,” Buddha said, suddenly turning gentle as he saw the genuine anxiety on his partner’s face.
“No,” Rhino replied, shaking his head sadly, “you’re right—he’s a big kid.” The giant glanced quickly around the room. “Cross around somewhere?”
“He’s always around somewhere,” Buddha said, not a hint of interest in his voice. “Either he’s up on the roof playing with those stupid birds of his, or else he’s down at the Double-X checking out the new shipment.”
“I’ll go look,” Rhino said. “Maybe he—”
“You’re on duty, right?” Buddha told him, his voice softening again. “What if someone comes around? Me, I’m not doing nothing—just modifying the counter-balance on this piece. Let me go see if I can scare him up.”
“Thanks, Buddha,” Rhino said gratefully, a lower-register note of surprise in his usual squeak. He backed out the door and took up his post again.
Buddha quickly reassembled the pistol, slipped it into a shoulder holster, buttoned his charcoal-dyed field jacket, and exited through another door.
BUDDHA TOOK the back staircase, then used a key to open a heavily braced steel door. The floors he passed had all been empty, as expected.
He made his way to the roof, musing that being the registered owner of several pieces of property didn’t amount to an actual cash flow … as his wife constantly reminded him.
“You need make more money!” was her endless refrain, as if her shrill voice was on some permanent loop of unbreakable tape.
“How much more damn money could you possibly spend, So Long?” was Buddha’s tired retort, memorized from constant repetition.
“You watch,” she would say.
And proceed to prove her point. Again and again.
I don’t know why I do it, Buddha thought to himself. Meaning, why go home at all? He was no stranger to shrewish women, but So Long made them all look like geishas. He could just walk away, find another place to sleep.
I can just hear Cross now, Buddha thought. She knows too much. He knew the gang leader’s solution to any such potential problem would be a lethal one.
So what do I care?
Buddha could never answer that question, despite endless attempts. Introspection wasn’t one of his skills.
BUDDHA OPENED the door to the roof and stepped out gingerly. He scanned the terrain, his eyes sweeping over a lengthy wooden box that looked as if it had been carelessly discarded. He moved carefully, approaching the box the same way he had walked jungle trails years ago, always alert for trip wires.
A bird’s head popped up from the center of the box, its yellow-orange eyes gleaming with malevolence. “Don’t get all excited,” Buddha said softly. “I’m not messing with you—I’m just looking for Cross.”
The bird’s eyes tracked Buddha’s every movement. It fluttered its wings briefly, as though considering flight. Buddha registered the flash of blue on the wings, confirming this was the male of the mated pair of kestrels that Cross maintained on the roof. Kestrels are small birds, less than a foot in total length, even including their long, stabilizing tail feathers, but they are fierce, relentless dive-bombers.
Much larger birds run for cover when a kestrel’s shadow darkens the sky. The hunter-killers are blessed with incredible eyesight, awesome dive-speed, and deadly accuracy—the “one shot, one kill” snipers of the avian world.
Satisfied that Cross wasn’t on the roof, Buddha carefully backed up until he was on the stairs. He gently closed the overhead hatch after him.
THE LIVE GIRLS! sign on the Double-X flashed its blood-red neon against blacked-out window glass. Buddha opened the door, grateful for the sudden blast of air conditioning.
The doorman greeted Buddha by nodding his head a couple of inches. He knew better than to demand the cover charge—Buddha was the nominal owner of the joint. “We need a place where we can meet with people—a place we can control,” Cross had argued.
“You got a thing for pole dancers, that’s your problem,” Buddha had responded. “How come we gotta chip in?”
“It could be a real moneymaker,” Cross said.
“I don’t know anything about running a strip joint,” Rhino squeaked. “I’d rather do what we do. What we all do.”
“I can get someone to run it,” Cross said, thoughtfully. “Tell you what … if it’s not making money in six months, I’ll buy out all your shares. Deal?”
Cross then turned to the rest of the crew, opening his hands at his sides to indicate he was ready to listen if anyone else had objections.
Ace pointed a finger at Cross, then at himself. He didn’t need to say more—the two men had been partners since they were kids. Children too young for prison, but old enough to be incarcerated in one of the “training schools” that made Illinois nationally infamous.
“Come on, Rhino. It’d be fun,” Princess had begged.
The giant reluctantly agreed, shaking his head at what he was sure was his own stupidity.
But after a rocky start, the joint was coining money. It always attracted the best girls, but not necessarily the most accommodating ones; its furnishings were decent, but hardly worthy of a sultan; and its cover charge was a ridiculously high fifty bucks. But what the club did have was some features not offered anywhere else in Chicago.
Word got around fast—if you danced at the Double-X, you never had to worry about the patrons getting out of hand. You didn’t have to put out for the “manager,” and if you didn’t want to turn tricks—just strip and “dance”—that was okay, too.
Best of all, if you were having trouble with your boyfriend, the club instantly transformed itself into the world’s only domestic-violence shelter for strippers.
“He started it!” Princess once said, explaining to the others why he had fatally fractured the skull of a low-level pimp who had slapped his one-girl stable. “He slapped Marisa, so I just slapped him back.”
The pimp had noted Princess’s hyper-muscled body—it was impossible to ignore—but had overlooked the physique because of its packaging: Princess had been wearing his usual rouge, eyeliner, and lipstick, highlighting his chartreuse tank top. In fact, he had been discussing makeup complexities with two of the dancers when the pimp had just walked into the dressing room.
Why Princess dressed so outrageously—and camped it up at every opportunity—was known only to a few. In his deranged mind, he could only act when another individual “started it.” This brain-wave malfunction developed from his teen years, spent as a cage fighter in the headquarters of a Central American drug lord. Because he had been taken as a child, and fought so viciously that even his captors had been impressed, he was trained as a modern-day gladiator. After that training, he was kept for the amusement of those who enjoyed watching two men go at each other like bull elephants in mating season.
But Princess never wanted to fight—he wanted to make friends. Each and every time his opponent was led into the cage, Princess would ask if they couldn’t be friends instead of fighting. When his offer was sneered at—and followed by an attack of some kind—Princess absorbed disappointment after disappointment until his mind finally developed the “He started it!” implant.
After he was pulled from the jungle by Rhino—who never explained why, and was never asked—Princess quickly realized that getting into fights was a lot more difficult when his opponent actually had a choice. Thus, the outrageously overdone presentation evolved. Another thing Princess had learned was that far too many tough guys actually believed homosexuals wouldn’t fight.
The other man—or men; it made no difference to the muscle-armored terror—had to “start it.” But once that fuse was lit, Princess could pull any adversary apart as easily as a loaf of fresh-baked bread.
RHINO ALSO worked the floor sporadically—protecting his investment, he claimed. But it was an open secret that he stayed close in case Princess’s protective instincts went too far.
Bruno, the man who worked the door, had a reputation of his own. He was a notorious life-taker who’d already served two terms: one for grievous bodily harm, the other for manslaughter. But compared with the Rhino-Princess combo, he was considered a mild-mannered gentleman.
None of the girls were paid for working the club. They rented “stage time” from the management, split their nightly take, and got to keep all their “tips.” The cover charge and the insanely priced champagne and cigars kept management deeply in the black, to say nothing of its piece of any “special services” the girls chose to provide in the VIP Room.
As in all upscale strip clubs, the booze and cigars were a major source of untaxed revenue. The bartender was a short, thick-set Mexican, improbably known as “Gringo.” An exboxer, he was still quick with his hands. He was quicker still with the .357 Magnum he kept under the bar, as two would-be holdup men had discovered the year before. The club’s basement didn’t just store stock, it doubled as a body-disposal system.
Everybody knew the deal: You get to the Double-X any way you can, and at your own risk. But once inside its parking area, you were as safe as in church. Safer, if the stories about the local archdiocese were to be believed.
BUDDHA FOUND Cross at his private table that had been built into a triangulated corner of the joint. The unremarkable-looking man was watching a naked redhead table-dance for three guys in business suits, his face as expressionless as usual.
“What’s happening, boss?”
“No incoming, either direction,” Cross replied. “No business, no hostiles.”
“Rhino says Princess hasn’t been around. He’s worried out of his mind about that looney-tune—wanted to speak to you. He’s on duty, so I volunteered. Uh … you seen him around anywhere?”
“No,” Cross said, stubbing out a cigarette in a black glass ashtray. The smoky light in the bar was just bright enough to illuminate the bull’s-eye tattoo on the back of his hand.
“Yeah. Well, that guy’s a stone head-case anyway. I mean, I don’t see why you—”
“That’s enough, Buddha. Princess is one of us. And that means”—Cross paused to look directly at the pudgy man—“he brought some baggage with him when he signed on. But he’s stand-up to the max. Everybody in this crew has a reason to be here, right? The same reason.”
“Right,” Buddha admitted, as Do you hate them? Do you hate them all? flashed across the screen of his mind. “But he’s been with us for years and we still don’t know his MOS?”
“That, I haven’t figured yet,” the man called Cross acknowledged. He lit another cigarette, took a deep drag, and placed it in the ashtray. “There’s a new girl working—she goes on soon. I’ll be back to the joint in an hour or so.”
SIX HOURS later. An elderly man was semi-reclining behind the battered steel counter standing at the basement entrance to the Red 71 poolroom. He was watching a small black-and-white TV from under a green eyeshade.
A tall, handsome Latino entered, dressed in a full-drape pink mohair jacket over a silky black shirt. He tapped on the counter with the underside of a heavy gold ring. After a long minute, the elderly man swiveled around to have a look.
“What?” he said, his voice a model of neutrality.
“I got a message for Cross,” the Latino replied.
“Who?” the elderly man asked, a puzzled look on his face.
“Cross. You know. El jefe.”
“I don’t speak no Italian.”
“Hey, old man, I don’t have time for your little jokes—you just give this to him,” the Latino said, sliding a folded square of white paper across the counter.
The elderly man made no move to pick it up. He readjusted his eyeshade and turned his attention back to the TV. The Latino waited and waited, but the elderly man never moved. Angrily, the Latino spun on his heel and walked out.
CROSS UNFOLDED the square of white paper in the back room. He looked at the writing for a minute, shaking his head.
“Buddha, take a look at this.”
The handwritten note was on heavy, watermarked paper. The script was flowery, ostentatiously serifed, obviously written with a calligraphic fountain pen.
We have el maricón. We know he is one of yours. We also know he did not join your team; he was taken. We know where you stole him from. We tell you this so that you understand. We know everything, from the beginning.
El maricón is now our property. If you wish to purchase him, for a fair price, you must call 29-504-456-5588 tonight before midnight.
If you do not call, the next delivery will be a piece of our property, the work of our macheteros.
“They got Princess,” Cross said, his voice barely audible.
“It don’t sound like they know what they’re doing, whoever they are,” Buddha reflected. “I mean, Princess plays the role and all, but that’s just to get into fights—he’s about as gay as a damn tomcat on Viagra.”
“If it’s the people I think it was, they do. I saw the light was on,” Cross said, nodding his head in the direction of a red bulb hanging from an exposed wire. “So Rhino took off. Maybe he’ll be able to tell us something when he comes back.”
“What do you think they want, boss?”
“Money or blood,” Cross answered, closing his eyes. “There’s nothing else people like them could want.”
“HE JUST rode around,” Rhino reported an hour later. “Fancy car. Red Ferrari—I couldn’t have lost him if I tried. But all he did was drive. Finally, he pulled into an underground garage, a high-rise on the lakefront. No way to tell if he lives there—the garage was open to the public, too.”
“How come you came back?”
“Tracker’s on him now. I reached out on the cellular while I was still rolling. You were right to pull him away from those government guys. Tracker, he’s one of us, no question.”
“The guy in the Ferrari had a cell, too,” Cross said. “See this note? The number they want me to call, that’s a sat phone. Looks like it started in Honduras, but it could be bounced from anywhere by now.”
“I didn’t know—”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s SOP, follow anyone who comes in here asking for me, right? You were already gone by the time I even saw the note. Maybe Tracker will come up with something.”
“I find that fancy-boy, he’ll tell us where Princess is,” the giant muttered.
“If the guy who wrote the note was who I think he was, this guy in the Ferrari, he was just an errand boy.”
“Who do you think was behind this? Who’d want to snatch Princess?” Rhino said, genuinely puzzled.
“It smells like Muñoz,” Cross answered, lighting a cigarette. “And Muñoz always smells bad.”
TEN O’CLOCK that same night. Cross and Rhino stepped out on the darkened roof of the Red 71 building. They did a rapid circuit of the roof, ignoring the large wooden box with its several round openings. Satisfied, Cross took a heavy-looking hand phone from his pocket, punched in a number.
“Yes?” A voice in Latin-flavored English.
“Calling before midnight,” Cross said.
“We have a package. And we think, maybe you like to trade us something for it?”
“I’m listening.”
“A job. That’s all. One job. You do it, you get your package back.”
“Still listening.”
“Not on this phone—you know better. Land line.”
“Say it.”
“There is a phone booth. Just off Lake Shore. You know where Michigan Avenue takes that big curve? Across the Drive, on the other side, there’s a phone booth. It has a big red circle painted on the side. Tomorrow morning, at first light. You be there—you’ll hear from us then,” the Spanish-accented voice said, breaking the connection on the last word.
Cross looked at Rhino. “It’s Muñoz all right,” he said. “We should have thrown that basura in for free the last time.”
IT WAS 4:45 a.m. The city-camo’ed, blotchy gray-and-black sedan known as the “Shark Car” throughout the Badlands swept along Michigan Avenue, Buddha at the wheel.
Cross spotted the open-air phone booth marked with the promised red circle. Standing a few feet away was a black man in his late teens, dressed in the latest gangsta chic—gleaming gold high-tops on his feet, an L.A. Dodgers cap on his head, the brim turned to the side. He was walking in tiny circles, constantly glancing down to consult a beeper in his hand. Two members of his posse lounged nearby, leaning against a black Escalade with bright-blue rims.
Cross exited the Shark Car and starting walking toward the phone booth.
“Yo! Don’t even think about it,” the gangsta-garbed man snarled. “That there is my phone. Go find yourself another one, whitey—I got business.”
Cross turned as if to walk away, and pulled a black semi-auto pistol from his coat in the same motion. “Me, too,” he said quietly, holding the pistol aimed at the man’s stomach.
The leader glanced over at his crew, but their hands were already high in the air. Buddha stood across from them, the three forming an isosceles triangle. It wasn’t the tiny Sig Sauer P238 in his hand which had riveted the other two men; it was the laser dot Buddha was languidly playing across their chests.
“No disrespect,” Cross told the leader, almost eerily calm. “Like you said, it’s your phone. I’m waiting on this one important call, okay? Soon as it’s over, you get your phone back, permanent. And you never see us again. Okay?”
“Yeah, all right, man,” the leader said, his eye on the pistol.
“Only thing, I need privacy for my call, understand?”
“Yeah. Yeah, man. Don’t get crazy. We just jet, all right?”
“I’d appreciate that,” Cross said.
The leader backed away toward the Escalade. He climbed into the back seat, keeping his hands in plain sight. The other two jumped into the front. The big SUV took off, scattering gravel.
Any thoughts its occupants might have of turning around vanished when each side mirror of their SUV popped its glass, as if a pebble had been thrown up from the gravel by the huge tires. A soundless pebble.
Cross stood next to the phone booth, again visually reconfirming the large red circle spray-painted on its side. He picked up the phone, tossed in three quarters, listened for a dial tone to verify the line worked, and quickly replaced the receiver.
He lit a cigarette, took a deep drag.
Traffic was still sporadic. The partygoers were all off the street, and the commuters still hadn’t made their appearance. Cross took a third pull on his cigarette, then snapped it away.
The sky began to lighten. Cross and Buddha didn’t speak, didn’t move from their spots. Their pistols were no longer in sight. Only their eyes were active, working in the overlapping full-circle sweeps they had learned together many years before.
A LUSTROUS gray-white pigeon swooped down and perched atop the phone booth. Cross eyeballed the bird closely. It was markedly different from the winged rats that so thoroughly populated the city. This one had the same characteristically small head, short neck, and plump body, but its bearing was almost regal. And it was groomed to the max, every feather in place.
Cross nodded to himself as he spotted the tiny cylinder anchored to one of the pigeon’s legs. He approached cautiously, even though the pigeon showed no signs of spooking. Cross reached up and stroked the bird before pulling it gently against his chest. He opened the cylinder, extracted a small roll of paper. The pigeon fluttered its wings once, hopping back onto the phone booth.
Cross unfurled the paper, his eyes focusing in on the tiny, precise writing.
WE ARE PROFESSIONALS, LIKE YOU. A MEETING MUST BE MADE SAFE FOR US BOTH. WE WILL NOT COME TO YOUR PLACE, AND YOU DO NOT KNOW WHERE WE ARE. WE WILL MEET AT NOON TOMORROW ON STATE STREET, AT THE OUTDOOR BISTRO CALLED NOSTRUM’S. YOU KNOW WHERE IT IS, WE ARE SURE. IF YOU ARE COMING, YOU MUST COME ALONE. WRITE YOUR DECISION ON THIS PAPER. IT WILL BE RETURNED TO US.
Cross took a felt-tipped pen from his jacket, scrawled the single word “sí” on the bottom of the note, and replaced the paper inside the pigeon’s courier pouch. The bird preened itself for a few seconds and then took off, climbing higher and higher into the morning sky with powerful thrusts of its wings.
LATE THAT night, the crew was gathered in the basement of Red 71.
“You did the recon?” Cross asked Buddha.
“Yeah. And I don’t like it, boss. The tables are all outside, pretty spread out. It’s only set back maybe ten, fifteen feet from the sidewalk. All wrong for a drive-by: too much foot traffic, and half of those yuppies must have cell-phone cameras. Wrong neighborhood. Too upscale—cops’d be all over it in seconds. But, even with all that, if they wanted to give it a try, you’d never see it coming.”
Cross turned to the giant standing against the wall, watching. “Rhino?”
“The rooftop across the street’s even worse. Anyone could get up there easy enough. But there’s more than one way to do that, and we couldn’t cover every spot.”
Cross drew a series of intersecting lines on the pad in front of him, eyes down. He took two final drags from his cigarette before he stubbed it out.
“What it comes down to is, who’s gonna make the meet for their side? If it’s Muñoz himself, he’s got to know we can blow him away if he tries anything. Even if he nailed me, he’d be a dead man a few seconds later. But if it’s some flunky, Muñoz wouldn’t give a rat’s ass what happens to him. For all we know, Muñoz could be over the border, giving his orders from there.”
“So …?” Buddha queried.
“So this. Rhino, you take the roof across the street. Take it early. Anyone else shows up after you, just leave them there. We get Ace to work the sidewalk. They won’t make him for our crew—he wasn’t on the bust-out down in their territory. Buddha, you get us a cab from someplace, all right? Park it if you can find a spot, cruise it if you can’t. Short loops, okay?”
“But what if they—?”
“Doesn’t matter, so long as we move before they do. I’m gonna roll up just at noon, like they said. If I spot Muñoz at the table, I go ahead and sit down. So, if you don’t see me take a seat, that means it’s me they want. Rhino already has the target locked on, so he takes out whoever’s at the table in place of Muñoz.
“I’ll handle anyone coming toward me. Ace will have my six. And Buddha can spray a lot of lead from the cab, if it turns out we need cover fire.”
“And me?”
“You’re on the roof, too,” Cross told Tracker. “But on the roof of Nostrum’s, so you’ll be shooting straight down.”
“You think it really could be like that, boss? Personal?” Buddha asks.
“Anyone else, I’d say no. But with Muñoz, it could be,” Cross replied. “He talks professional, but he always was unstable.”
THE NEXT day, Cross emerged from the underground train station on State Street at 11:56 a.m., and headed east. It was already 11:59 when he first spotted Nostrum’s, and a few seconds before noon when he saw a man he recognized, sitting at a table by himself. Cross kept his eyes only on that man as he approached, hands empty at his sides.
He sat down across from a copper-complected man who wore his thick hair pulled straight back, tied in a braided ponytail.
“Cross,” the man said, not offering to shake hands. He wasn’t engaging in any welcoming ceremony, merely stating a fact.
“Muñoz.”
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” a voice interrupted their stare-down. “My name is Lance. I’ll be serving you today. Our house specials today are a baby-spinach salad with a mild vinaigrette dressing, together with—”
“That will be perfect,” Muñoz said, his English laced with a regal touch of Castilian. “Bring us each one of those. But first … you have Ron Rico?”
“Yes, we do,” the waiter replied. “But if I could perhaps suggest—”
“Bring me a double,” Muñoz cut him off again. “And for my friend here …”
“Water,” Cross said.
“We have San Pellegrino, and also a new—”
“Water,” Cross repeated.
The waiter flounced off. “I hate them,” Muñoz spat out.
“Who?”
“You know what I mean. Los maricones. You must know. After all, one of your own crew—”
“Princess. Yeah. He went along nice and easy?” Cross asked, his face still an unreadable blank.
“Dios mío, no!” Muñoz smiled, showing off a very expensive set of teeth. “That is one hard man, no matter that he is not really a man at all. First, he pulls out a pistol the size of a small house. The noise … like a cannon. It blew up one of our cars like a mortar strike!
“And then he killed two of my best men. With his bare hands! I held an Uzi on him, but he only laughed. If Lupe had not shot him, we would still be—”
“You shot him?” Cross asked, suddenly very soft-voiced.
“With a tranquilizer dart, amigo. Like you would use on a mad dog. It was loaded with enough juice to drop a gorilla. But even with the dart still in him, he continued to fight. I wonder how such a magnificent warrior—”
“What do you want?” Cross interrupted, no impatience in his voice.
“I already told you, hombre. I want you to do a job for us. Then you get your merchandise back.”
“I don’t read minds.”
“You see this?” Muñoz asked, as he slid a tiny microchip across the marble tabletop.
Cross didn’t touch the chip. “So?”
“So this is what we need,” Muñoz answered. “Watch closely.” He grasped the chip with the thumb and forefinger of each hand and pulled it apart, revealing one male and one female coupling. “We have this one,” he said, holding up the male piece. “The other one, the mate, that is in the hands of another.”
“Who?”
“Right to the point, yes? Justo lo suficiente. You know Humberto Gonzales? He works out of a bunch of connected apartments on the West Side.”
Cross shook his head.
“No matter. We will tell you where he is, and you will take our property from him.”
“How can you be sure—?”
“It is always with him, Cross. Always on his person. There was no one he could trust with it. But we have very good sources inside his organization. We know exactly where to look. It is in his right arm.”
“In his arm?”
“On his right arm, right here,” Muñoz said, patting his right biceps to illustrate. “He has a big tattoo. Of a dancing girl. Very pretty. The chip is somewhere under that tattoo. Implanted. A fine piece of surgery. So. We need his arm. You bring it to us, your job is done. That very instant, we return your … friend.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no? Why do you say this?”
“What am I supposed to do, Muñoz? Pack the arm in dry ice and send it FedEx? You wouldn’t give me a delivery address. And I’m sure not meeting you to hand it over in person.
“So here’s how it’s gonna happen,” Cross continued. “Send that pigeon of yours—the chip would fit in his carry-pouch easy enough if it’s the same size as that one there,” Cross finished, pointing at the microchip lying on the tabletop.
“Bueno! That is a good plan, hombre. As soon as our bird is home, we will release your man … or whatever he is.”
“What’s on the chip?”
“That is not your business, my friend.”
“Then get somebody else to do it.”
“I do not think you understand.…”
“I understand just fine. I don’t think you do. Things have changed around here since nine/eleven. There’s jobs I don’t take. Now, what’s on the chip?”
Muñoz stroked his chin. Cross lit a cigarette and took a deep drag. A long minute passed, during which Cross took two more drags and stubbed out his cigarette.
The waiter approached with a pair of glasses on a tray. “Here you are, gentlemen. Your salads will be along in a few minutes.”
Muñoz waved him away, leaning forward so his eyes were locked on Cross. “You speak español, yes?”
“Poquito.”
“You know the word favela?”
“No.”
“It is Portuguese. A language half shared. It means ‘slum,’ but not as you Americans speak of such places. I was born in a favela. In the hills just outside of Rio, built on land used to bury toxic waste, right next to a huge dump site for garbage. A mountain of people, one tiny shack of tin and wood on top of another. Just to get water would take a whole day.”
“Why tell me?”
“A favela makes your prisons look like palaces. There are three ways out. I do not play football—what you call ‘soccer’—and I cannot sing.”
“So you went into dope. That’s what you think I need to know?”
“No, hombre. What you need to know is only this: I would kill a thousand times—a thousand cities—rather than return to the favela.”
“There’s no reason to kill a man more than once.”
“Ah, you joke when I try to … explain myself. Muy bien. So now you listen: Herrera had a couple of dozen locations. Locations where he stashed money. Money and product. He and I were partners. I have half of the microchip, but mine only works if snapped into his half. Same for him, of course.
“Now, Herrera, he was having a problem. I know he himself hired you to retrieve a certain book. But, after that, I hear nothing. Then I learn Herrera was killed. His car, his bodyguards … everything blown to pieces. So I know even more now. I know you were paid. Paid twice.
“Why do I say ‘twice’? Because it is Humberto who has the chip, not Esteban. Why? Because we knew all along that Esteban was secret partners with Herrera. We speak of honor, but betrayal—that is the life we live. Partnerships mean nothing to a savage like Herrera. That old man, he was ready to eliminate Esteban, so perhaps Esteban also paid you to eliminate Herrera? That would be your style, would it not?”
Seeing Cross was not going to respond, or even change expression, Muñoz continued:
“My partnership with Humberto is no different than the one Herrera had with me, or Esteban with him. That is why we use the chips, so that each of us has nothing without the other. But our negotiations with Humberto have proved fruitless—he is greedy beyond tolerance. I want to go back across the border, and I want to stay there. But, first, I need Humberto’s arm.”
“What’s my piece?” Cross said, his voice as expressionless as his face.
“Your piece? Your piece? I told you … you get el maricón returned to you.”
“You got a good sense of humor, Muñoz. You want me to do all kinds of risky stuff to score something worth tens of millions to you, and you want to trade a POW in exchange? Do the math.”
“This … Princess. He was your man. We have—”
“What you have is a soldier. A soldier who knew the deal when he signed on. I wouldn’t want to lose him, but I could live with that a lot better than if there’s anything on that microchip that would ring the wrong alarm bells. Those Homeland Security boys all carry open paper—they fill it in after they do whatever they want to.
“Don’t get me wrong. In our country, nobody gives a damn about flags or uniforms. When we fight, we fight for only two reasons: self-defense or money. So I’ll make it simple. Half a million. Cash. And Princess. For that, you get your little chip.”
“You will trust me to—”
“You should take that act onstage, Muñoz. Sure, I’ll trust you to release Princess. It wouldn’t do you any good to dust him. You wouldn’t make a dime, and you might get some of the wrong people angry at you if you did. People who can travel south anytime they want.
“But the cash … no way. You send a man. Your man, okay? We hand him the chip. He puts it in the pigeon’s bag, and hands over the cash. The bird takes off. It lands wherever you taught it to. When it touches down, you try the chip. You see that it works, and then we’re done. We hold on to your man until we see Princess, then your guy walks away. Got it?”
“What is to prevent you from killing my man and keeping the money? And the chip?”
“Don’t play stupid. Half of that chip’s no more use to me than it was to you. What I want is the money. And I want you back over the border, too. This job’s gonna draw enough heat as it is.”
“Your salads, gentlemen,” the waiter interrupted again, placing a plate in front of each man. “Will there be anything—?”
“No,” Muñoz snapped, eyes still on his opponent. Finally, he slid a folded piece of paper over to Cross. “It is all there. Everything you need. Muy pronto, eh?”
Cross lit another cigarette, ignoring his salad as he pocketed the paper. Then he leaned forward slightly, dropping his voice a notch. “You’re a professional. So am I. We understand how these things are done. Money is money. Business is business. I’m gonna get you your little chip, Muñoz. You’re gonna pay me my money and let my man go, are we clear?”
Muñoz nodded, warily.
“You know how soldiers are,” Cross said, just above a whisper. “In war, you don’t look too deep. A guy’s good with explosives, another’s a top sniper, maybe another’s a master trail-reader. It all comes down to what you need. Turns out one of the guys you recruit is a little bent, you don’t pay much attention to what he does when he’s not in the field, you understand what I’m saying?”
Muñoz tilted his head slightly forward, waiting.
“Some people, they’re in because they like it. It’s not for the money—it’s certain … opportunities they want. I got nobody like that in my crew. But maybe, just maybe, you do. Guys who might do something unprofessional, just because they like doing it. You can always spot them: the first ones who volunteer to do interrogations. Rapists. Torture freaks. You always got them sniffing around, looking for work, right?”
“So?” Muñoz challenged. “What has this to do with what I—?”
“You got my man, got him locked up. He’s your hostage. I understand that. I don’t expect you’re gonna feed him whiskey and steak, send up a friend if he gets lonely. That’s okay. But maybe you got guys on your team who like to hurt people. Hurt them for fun. That’s not professional.”
“Yes,” Muñoz said impatiently. “I know all this.”
“Herrera, he liked to watch men die. That’s why he had those cage fights.”
“Herrera is no more, amigo. You above all should know that.”
“There’s others like him. Maybe you have some of them in your crew. What I want to tell you is this: I can find one myself, easy enough.”
“Why do you say all this? What is your meaning?” Muñoz spoke softly, but a titanium thread of menace throbbed in his voice.
“Just play it for real,” Cross told him. “Nobody gets paid for acting stupid. You know about me. You know people who owe me. Some of them, anyway. You know what I can do.
“So listen good. If you hurt Princess, if we don’t get him back in the same condition as you found him, we’ll find you. Wherever you go, no matter how long it takes, we will find you, Muñoz. And when we do, it’s going to take you a long time to die.”
“HOW MUCH do I owe you?” Rhino asked the waiter from Nostrum’s. They were standing near the mouth of an alley that opened into a street in the heart of the gay cruising area.
“You owe me some respect,” the waiter snapped. “I don’t forget what Princess did for us. I’m a man,” he said with quiet force. “A man pays his debts.”
“I apologize,” Rhino squeaked. “If there’s ever—”
But the waiter was already walking away.
IN THE basement of Red 71, Cross was using a laser pointer to illuminate various parts of a crudely drawn street map he had taped to the back wall.
“He’s somewhere in here,” Cross said, the thin red line of the laser pointer aimed at a cross section of a tall building standing next to three others exactly similar. “We don’t know what apartment. We don’t even know what floor. Humberto controls the buildings, so he may even switch from time to time.”
“This Humberto, he never goes out?” Rhino asked.
“Once a week. To the airport. He meets an international flight on the south concourse. A different guy comes each time. Humberto meets this guy, talks to him for an hour or so; then the guy just turns around and gets back on another plane.”
“The courier still has to clear customs,” Buddha said. “Otherwise, what’s the point?”
“Sure. It’s a sterile corridor up to that point. No way to get in or out without the machines looking you over. But whoever comes in, he’s not bringing product, he’s bringing in a chip that’s smaller than a wristwatch battery. Nobody would give it a second look. And even if they did, so what? It’s a piece of plastic, not contraband. The courier clears customs, has a conversation with Humberto, and goes back home. That’s all there is to it.”
“Don’t make sense,” Buddha said. “That’s a lot of gelt just to get around a wiretap.”
“I don’t think that’s what it is,” Cross said. “Like I said, I think the courier’s bringing half of a puzzle. Like this one—” holding up the chip he got from Muñoz. “But the only way to see if it works is to try it: they all look alike. The way I got it figured, Herrera was playing both sides. Trying to get Humberto and Esteban to waste each other, each of them thinking they were partners with him, see?”
“So?” Buddha put in impatiently.
“So Herrera’s not around anymore. But he probably had chips stashed all over the damn place. Maybe Humberto thinks Muñoz hasn’t got the only one. Or maybe not even the right one. But it’s still his best chance. They go through this negotiation dance, but it’s really a stall for time.”
“This Humberto, he cuts the chip out of his own arm every week?” Buddha said, skepticism heavy in his voice.
“Maybe not. Maybe he’s got a dupe. I don’t know. But this much isn’t open for discussion: we’ve got to take Humberto at the airport. That job pays half a mil—that’s a buck and a quarter apiece.”
“You want to dust him at the airport, then chop off his arm right there? And—what?—throw it in an ice chest?” Ace asked caustically.
“No. We’ve got to bring him out of there, alive and in one piece. I think I know how to do it. Something I’ve been working on for a while.
“But Humberto won’t come alone. So I figure we take him when he comes back out of the terminal. Just before he gets into his car. Buddha can get an ambulance real close. What we need is a hideout. Someplace close to the airport. Quiet enough for us to do the rest of the job.”
“How you figure a hundred and a quarter apiece?” Rhino asked, leaning forward, his bulk imposing itself on the room.
“Me, you, Ace, and Buddha,” Cross replied, puzzled. “Tracker won’t take a dime, says he wants to prove in, first.”
“Righteous,” Ace said, touching the brim of his Zorro hat in a salute to a man not present.
“The way I figure it, Princess is in for a share, too,” Rhino squeaked.
“Princess?! He’s the genius who got us into this mess,” Buddha spit out.
“Then he’s the one who brought us the job,” Rhino snapped back.
“So give him half your share,” Buddha suggested.
Rhino slowly turned, focusing his small eyes on the short, pudgy man, not saying a word. Buddha gazed back, unfazed.
“Half a mil splits five ways real easy,” Ace said.
Cross nodded.
Buddha waited for a slow count of ten, during which Rhino never blinked. “Yeah, fine. But if one of you ever mentions this to my wife—”
CROSS PLUCKED the cell phone from his jacket pocket in response to a soft, insistent purr.
“Go!”
“He’s in. On schedule,” Buddha’s voice was that of a man accustomed to speaking from cover, quiet but clear.
“You have his ride?”
“Black Mercedes. Four-door S-Class. Bodyguard left on foot so he could meet up when the target walks out. Driver’s already out of the picture—replacement set.”
“Roger that. So it’s down to two … unless you scoped any backups?”
“Negative. Came in with driver and bodyguard, front seat; just him in the back.”
“Then get rolling,” Cross said, breaking the connection. He turned to Rhino. “They’ll probably page the driver as they get close to the back exit. That way, he can pull out of the parking area, swing around, and be waiting when they step off the curb.
“He’ll have another bodyguard hanging around, somewhere else. You take him. I’ll get Humberto. Ace’ll already be behind the wheel of their Mercedes, but they’ll never get close enough to see that. You and me, we ride crash-car on the getaway; we all meet back at the spot if we get separated.”
Rhino nodded. “You really think that contraption’s gonna work?” he asked, pointing his index finger—the one with the missing tip—at what looked like a particularly awkward pistol: instead of a butt, the pistol’s handle was a long, narrow canister.
“It’s gas-propelled,” Cross explained. “Same stuff they use in air conditioners. We should get around eleven hundred feet per second. And it won’t make a sound.”
“It only works for one shot?”
“One’s all we get.”
“Why don’t we just finish this guy? What do we need him alive for?”
“Muñoz wants him dead,” Cross said. “But he’s only paying us for an arm, not a body.”