Blood of the Assassin

CHAPTER 43





The street that ran in front of the Federal Police headquarters was teeming with traffic at rush hour, as were most in Mexico City, as the population embarked on its evening slog from the downtown business areas to the suburbs along the outskirts of town. As the day shift wound down, hundreds of officers moved down the wide steps of the entry to the sidewalk, some to catch a bite to eat, most to catch one of the packed buses that swarmed in and out of the endless procession of vehicles, pulling to grinding stops to on-load commuters.

Officer Porfirio Lopez waved goodbye to the three Federales he was chatting with and split off to grab a taco at one of the curb vendors, where throngs of passers-by stopped and consumed the soft corn-wrapped meats while passing cars honked their progress. It wasn’t dinner, more a snack – he got hungry by six, and this would tide him over until he got home and hooked up with his friends at the local cantina, which had a two-for-one special on Thursdays on their succulent pork carnitas; an irresistible deal.

As he stood munching the arrachera steak taco, he felt a sense of...something odd, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Maybe too much coffee – he’d drunk at least seven cups that day, which was close to a record for him. The food quieted his stomach, and when he was done, he tossed the paper wrapper into a trash can and strode to the bus stop, where hundreds of workers waited for their ride home with the dogged determination of spawning salmon.

A paperboy moved through the crowd, holding the evening issue of La Prensa aloft, a lurid photograph of four people found dead in a poor barrio on the front page, the victims of feral dog attacks that had polarized the city. The wild dogs lived in caves near the park where the victims had been found, dead of blood loss from multiple bites. The prevailing theory was that roving packs looked for opportunistic targets and then killed the unsuspecting for food. Such was the outcry that the police had gone in and rounded up dozens of dogs, whose incarceration was now a cause célèbre and had created considerable consternation for the mayor and other public officials, whose plan was to euthanize them without question.

He bought a paper and read with marginal interest until his bus arrived with a hiss of air brakes, and he shouldered through the clamoring crush to get aboard before it rolled away. He dropped his few pesos into the fare box and took the small receipt offered – proof of payment in the event of an impromptu inspection by the transit police, and a handy way for the drivers to be held responsible for all the money they had taken in on their route. The drivers were each issued a roll of tickets, and when their shifts were done, the number missing was counted, which established how much every driver owed in fares. The inspections were regular, making collection of the tickets by the riders mandatory to avoid heaping fines.

The bus rocked to and fro as it negotiated the uneven asphalt, the press of tired humanity staring dully into space, carefully avoiding all but momentary eye contact in the way that regular commuters usually did. Nobody wanted to have to strike up a conversation after a long work day, and the entire packed conveyance had the air of a slaughterhouse, the resigned bovines waiting patiently in line for their turn at the sledgehammer.

Officer Lopez gripped the overhead bar and tried to read his paper, folded in quarters so as to take up as little space as possible, but the near constant starting and stopping interrupted him with the regularity of a ship on the high seas plowing through oncoming swells. Bored on the hour-long commute, he snuck a look at a young woman eight feet away, who studiously ignored him, the twinkle of her wedding band all the warning he needed. Returning to the news, he read the latest list of murders with indifference – every day more were found, victims of crime, rage, random violence, or drug trafficking. It was an unending procession of misery to which he’d grown inured as part of his job, and he liked to joke that with human nature being what it was, he’d never be out of work.

The ride was tolerable in the spring, except when it was raining, when it became a misery, as hundreds of wet fellow travelers, many of whom wanted for indoor plumbing, packed onto the buses, their hygienic challenges painfully obvious. Then in summer, the heat of August and September again made it especially unpleasant – the buses rarely had air conditioning, and the opened windows were woefully inadequate. Now, however, it wasn’t so bad, and he’d learned to try to get as close to the younger women as possible, who usually huddled together, their heady perfume almost as much of an attraction as the possibility occasionally flashed from mahogany eyes.

Porfirio was twenty-nine, and had been with the Federales for eight years, having snagged the plum position with the help of an uncle who was on the force. Federales were the cream of the law enforcement crop, paid better than their lowly civil police counterparts and bribed with more generosity because of the vastly greater power they wielded. The best duty, that of highway patrol, was reserved for the fortunate few. None of that lofty branch of officers rode the bus, preferring to motor to work in their new SUVs, impossible acquisitions on their pay but unquestioned by the system. The graft involved in stopping drivers for indiscretions of speed or registration was an accepted part of the job, although publicly decried by administration after administration. He was hoping that maybe in another few years a slot in the hotly contested mobile force would open up, and then he too could trade the bus for the opulent Lincoln Navigator he’d had his eye on forever.

Lost in the daydream about how his life would change for the better, he almost missed his stop, on the outskirts of the metropolitan area only a few blocks from one of the more infamous slums, where the unfortunate and downtrodden spent lives of brutal hardship. He stepped down onto the cracked sidewalk with several dozen other commuters and then trudged the three long blocks to his home – a two-story apartment building with eighteen single-room flats, each with a flyspeck bathroom and a dangerously unventilated propane stove serving as kitchen. He could afford better, but saw no reason to squander his money – he was single, was rarely home except to sleep, and was saving for whenever he met a girl he got serious about. His marriage had ended in divorce, thankfully with no children, after seven years of bitterness and recriminations as he failed to bring home sufficient bacon to appease his young bride, and he had been footloose for two years, in no hurry to try that again anytime soon.

His boots crunched on the gravel as the sidewalk gave way to dirt and rocks, and he failed to register the shadow that darkened his building’s doorway as he unlocked the rickety front door – his landlord was a cheap bastard who never did any maintenance, and cockroach spray and air freshener were staples in all the dwellings. As he swung the door open he felt pressure on his upper back, and then a voice hissed in his ear.

“I have a gun, and I’ll blow a hole the size of a softball in you unless you do exactly as I say.”

He froze, and then felt a hand pull his service revolver from his belt. “Are you insane? Robbing a federal policeman? Do you really want this on you?” Porfirio asked incredulously. “Do you know what this is going to do?”

“Let’s go to your apartment. Don’t talk anymore. Now. Move.”

“I don’t have anything of value–”

The assailant swatted the back of Porfirio’s head with his service piece, just hard enough to get his attention. “I said shut up. That’s your only warning.”

They trudged down the gloomy hall until they came to the second to last door, and then Porfirio stopped.

“I need to reach into my pocket for the key,” he explained, growing angrier by the second at the balls of the thief. Robbing a federal police officer was suicide – the neighborhood would be crawling with cops who wouldn’t rest until the perp was found. Of course, part of his annoyance was at the grief he would take from his peers at having been blindsided, and there was the money...he had a quarter of all his savings in the little room, in cash, stashed in the freezer, where he accumulated the bribes he was lucky enough to get, preferring his apartment hiding place to having to explain in any sort of departmental investigation where the money he’d deposited in the bank had come from.

“Slowly.” The voice sounded odd – something about the accent, although it was barely detectable. Porfirio did a double take, and then retrieved his key ring from his pocket and opened the door, thinking he must have been mistaken – why would a common thug have the refined accent of a Castilian native from Spain?

His assailant pushed him into the room and closed the door softly behind him.

“I told you, I don’t have anything of value,” Porfirio started, hoping that would dissuade the robber, and then he was cut off by another smack on the back of his head, this time harder.

“I’m not interested in your money,” the man said, and then Porfirio heard a rustle just before a lance of white hot pain stabbed through his back and his heart stopped pumping.

Rauschenbach stepped aside as the dying officer fell face forward, the handle of the twelve-inch flathead screwdriver he’d sharpened to a stiletto point sticking from between his shoulders, and eyed the twitching body with cold indifference as all the young man’s hopes and dreams died with him. Once Porfirio’s corpse was still, the German’s eyes roved over the room, stopping at the closet.

It took him ten minutes to ransack the room and find the money. He methodically destroyed the place before he removed the dead man’s watch and wallet along with the few other obvious valuables, and then packed them into the empty nylon carry-all he’d brought, folded under his jacket on the long bus ride.

With any luck the cop wouldn’t be missed for a couple of days; and then, when found, the murder would look like a robbery gone wrong. At best they’d find the prints of the hardware store clerk who had rung up the screwdriver purchase smudged on the yellow plastic handle, and that would send any investigation into a tailspin, buying him time. By the point that anyone realized that the robbery had been about something more than a few thousand dollars’ worth of pesos stored in a frozen coffee can, he’d be winging his way out of the country.

Rauschenbach took a final look at the dead man and hoisted the bag over his shoulder with a gloved hand. He moved to the door, listening intently for half a minute, and then eased it open and slid out into the empty hall, a phantom, the single low-wattage incandescent bulb that dangled precariously from the ceiling providing the scantest of illumination as he made his way down the dismal corridor to the front exit.