Elizabeth Lowell - The Wrong Hostage

“Yes.”

“That is-?como se dice? Loan?”

“Rent,” Faroe said, hoping to defuse Hector’s rage.

“Rent. Two weeks.” Hector’s voice rose. “That is what the plaza de Tijuana cost me. Two focking weeks.”

Grace’s eyes widened. She looked at Faroe.

“That sounds about right,” Faroe said evenly. “The politicians charge Hector six million a week so that he can risk his life and the lives of his family running a dangerous, violent business.”

“Si, si. ?Exactamente! I pay todo el mundo. Guns and men and food and women-these not free. I am a great milking goat,” Hector yelled. “And then they put horns on my head and fock me in the ass. ?Aiee!”

Grace tried to look sympathetic, but doubted her acting skills were up to it. Hector screwed the men beneath him and the politicians screwed Hector.

She wouldn’t give a pile of dog turds for any of them.

“Where does Ted Franklin fit into this?” Faroe asked.

“He stole from me, the pinche money los politicos don’ take!”

With that, Hector erupted into the kind of Spanish Faroe didn’t want to translate for Grace. Instead, he provided a running commentary on the core of Hector’s rant.

“Carlos and Jaime talked Hector into buying a bank from Ted,” Faroe said softly. “Hector didn’t want to. He has a cash business, so he ‘don’ need no focking bank.’”

Hector took a breath, spotted Jaime, and yelled, “Jaime, Jaime, ?andale pues!”

Jaime spun around in his high-backed executive chair. He looked angry but he kept his mouth shut. Obviously he had experience with his uncle’s drug-fueled rage.

Hector gave his nephew a one-eyed glare. “Jaime, tell your plan grande, the plan you make with that cabron Carlos and his cabron amigo, Franklin. Tell how el Banco de San Marcos feex everything.”

As he spoke, Hector made moist, scornful noises and pumped his hips to demonstrate his contempt for his nephew and his big ideas.

Faroe had been watching Grace. She’d ignored Hector’s crude sign language, but her eyelids flickered at the mention of Banco de San Marcos.

Jaime came to his feet like a feral cat. He glared at Faroe, then at Grace, but when he turned to his uncle, his face was neutral, blank.

“This Jaime here, he genius,” Hector went on sarcastically, his accent getting thicker the madder he got. “Beesness degree. Aiee, cabron. He need machines to make a beesness I make out of my head.”

“Times have changed, jefe,” Jaime said evenly. “We can’t compete with other organizations if we don’t-”

“No,” Hector said, waving his cigarette wildly. “You want to own this beesness I shit bullets to make.”

“I simply want to rationalize it,” Jaime said. His eyes said they’d been around this track as many times as any greyhound.

“Boolsheet! Beesness is blood and fear and power!”

“I don’t think our business should be discussed in front of strangers, people who do not wish us well,” Jaime said.

Hector turned a torrent of Spanish on his nephew.

Faroe translated the meat of it for Grace. “Listen, pendejo, you don’t have any problem talking about our business to Carlos Calderon. Who are you to tell me who I can talk to?”

A man hurried into the room, a burrito in one hand and a piece of paper in the other. He circled the shouting Hector to put the paper on Jaime’s desk.

“You talk to that cabron Ted Franklin,” Faroe continued translating. “These people-that’s you and me, Grace-aren’t dangerous to ROG. We have what they want. They have what we want. So tell them our secrets, just as you have already told our enemies.”

Jaime looked uncomfortable. “Uncle, you are tired. Your judgment is-”

Hector drew his pistol and fired four times at the man armed only with a burrito. He was dead before he hit the floor.

Grace made a choked sound.

Faroe grabbed her and pulled her away from Jaime, who had the look of a man marked for immediate death.

Armed men poured into the room.

“Uncle, I swear to-”

Hector backhanded Jaime across the mouth, sending the younger man staggering.

Faroe went back to translating Hector’s words in a voice only Grace could hear. “Don’t, burro. Don’t presume to talk to me. You are very bright. You have a very good education that I paid for. Someday you might make a good man in our business, but you are not ready yet to take over from me. Until you are, never again question my judgment. Never.”

Faroe waited.

So did everyone else in the room.

Hector shoved his pistol back into his belt and gestured toward the body on the floor.

Faroe murmured along with Hector’s words. “Take that cabron and dump him with the garbage. A little warning for other traitors who walk past me to do Jaime’s work.”

Flushed, all but choking on rage, Jaime waited for whatever came next. He watched Hector with the eyes of a man looking for the best place to slide in a knife.

While the body was hauled away, Hector dug out the leather box and stuck a new cocaine cigarette in the corner of his mouth.

“You okay?” Faroe asked Grace very softly.

“No.”

“Can you keep it together a little longer?”

“Yes.”

He squeezed her arm and wondered if she understood the dynamics of cocaine intoxication. Irritability and irrationality were just the beginning. Paranoia and delusions followed close on.

Then things would get ugly.

Hector turned toward Grace and Faroe and said in English, “So, wha’ you think?”

“You’re very efficient,” Faroe said, ignoring the trails of blood on the white marble floor and the grim humor of the men dragging out the body. “Shall we set up the details of our trade?”

“Si, but first, you come with me. I show you efficient. Then you know don’ fock with Hector Rivas Osuna.”

Faroe didn’t have any choice, so he started after Hector.

Grace followed.

“No,” Hector said, waving her off. “You puke.”

Grace looked at Faroe.

“Stay here,” he said instantly.

“Why? What could be worse than seeing a murder?” Though her voice was steady enough, her skin was pale beneath all the makeup.

“Plenty. Stay, amada. You don’t need new nightmares.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll squint.” Then he added very softly, “Work on Jaime. Find out what pushes his buttons.”

TIJUANA

SUNDAY, 10:48 P.M.

FAROE FOLLOWED HECTOR THROUGH a door leading to a short, brick-lined hallway. At one end of the hall a circular metal staircase wound down to the lower level of the house, which was also walled with brick.

Hector, less angry now but getting higher with each toke, reverted to Spanish. “This is a wonderful building. Very expensive, very solid. It belongs to a wealthy judge here in Tijuana, although he has decided to let me borrow it for a few months.”

The traficante’s amused smile told Faroe that the judge hadn’t had any choice.

“He would like it back someday, but he is not man enough to ask,” Hector said with a laugh. “Not like the ball-breaker upstairs. Aiee, that is a strong woman.”

Faroe hoped that Grace would continue to amuse Hector…but not too much. Hector’s reputation with women depended on how high he was.

There was a heavy metal door at the base of the staircase. The door was guarded by a blank-faced man carrying an assault rifle. Without a glance Hector brushed by the man.

Faroe followed and found a spacious wine cellar converted to a torture room. Beautiful wooden wine racks were attached to the walls with heavy wrought-iron supports. A big, unshielded lightbulb dangled from the ceiling. The intense glare fell on the slumped body of a man dangling from chains strung up over the wine racks. The prisoner had longish dark hair that was slick with sweat. He was dressed in a white shirt that was red, covered with his own blood.

Faroe recognized him instantly-the bomb layer from Ensenada. One of the guards was wearing his solid gold diamond-rimmed watch.

Hector grasped a handful of the prisoner’s sweaty black hair and jerked his head upright.

The bomber’s face was a swollen, gross balloon. Bruises had gathered below and around his eyes, closing them darkly. His jaw hung slack and awkward. Broken.

Hector twisted his handful of hair and the bomber grimaced in pain, showing bloody, broken teeth.

“Are you ready to talk?” Hector asked, his voice gentle.

The hair on Faroe’s neck stirred. He would rather Hector had screamed.

The bomber made a ragged sound. Behind swollen lids, his eyes glittered dryly, like those of a coiled rattlesnake. His tongue worked behind bloody teeth. He tried to spit in Hector’s face.

His mouth was too dry.

Hector patted the bruised and bloody cheek and said tenderly, “There, there, it is almost over. Just tell us who paid you and we will take away all your pain.”

Faroe felt the chill of danger and the heat of adrenaline sliding into his blood. He wondered what his chances were of getting one of the automatic weapons before they got him.

Hector was nuts.

“So, what you think?” Hector asked Faroe. “Is this the man who tried to kill me and my family?”

Faroe’s face was a mask. He carefully studied the man but finally shook his head. “I doubt his mother would recognize him now.”

Hector laughed and nodded. Then he signaled to the shadows.

One of the waiting men stepped into the cone of light. He had a barrel chest and the emotionless eyes of a picador in the bullring. He mustn’t have been as stupid as he looked-he wore tight latex gloves to protect him from his victim’s blood.

The torturer held a stripped electrical wire in each hand. He looked at Faroe, then at the bomber, and touched the two copper conductors together. Dazzling blue-white sparks arced and showered over his hands. He grinned and waved the two wires in front of the bomber’s face. He touched them together again.

“Would you care for a little of this, perhaps?” he asked, polite as a waiter presenting a dessert tray.

“This man, Tomas, he really enjoys his work,” Hector said, clapping the man on the shoulder. “My Torquemada.”

Faroe looked into the torturer’s eyes and knew Hector wasn’t bragging. It was the simple truth.

“This one has been disloyal for a long time,” Hector said, gesturing toward the prisoner. “He works for a band of marijuana farmers down in the mountains between Sierra de la Laguna and the ocean. They use my plaza but they do not pay. I think I will hang his body from an overpass on the Ensenada toll road for all his friends to see on their way to work tomorrow morning.”

Faroe waited, wondering if Hector had a point or if he simply got off on blood and death.

“Should I bring my Tomas upstairs and introduce him to your judge?” Hector smiled. “Should I tell her that her son will be my gift to Tomas?”

Only years of living undercover kept Faroe from going for Hector’s throat. Only hard-won discipline kept Faroe’s voice neutral.

“As you pointed out, the judge is not without her own power,” Faroe said. “If Lane is harmed, there will be an international crisis. That is not good for business.”

“Ha! You think that will save the boy? I have many eyes reading the diplomatic telegrams between the gringo government and Mexico City. I have many ears listening to embassy conversations for the first sign of intervention.”

Faroe agreed with a calm he was far from feeling. “This is so.”

“The boy would live only as long as Tomas and I decide to keep him alive. And after we finish with him, somebody will tell the gringo authorities that the boy was a bad one who simply ran away and, like so many other unfortunates, was never heard from again.”

Faroe didn’t doubt a word of it.

And if Lane got hurt, Faroe would hunt Hector down and execute him where he found him.

“What you said is true,” Faroe said, “but it will not get you Ted Franklin on a golden platter with a roll of hundreds in his mouth.”

“Yes.” Hector ground the spent cigarette beneath his heel. “That is why you are still alive.”

OVER THE U.S.

MONDAY, 1:00 A.M. CST

STEELE SAT IN THE part of the Learjet that had been transformed into a flying office for the use of whichever St. Kilda consultant needed it. The wheelchair was a tight fit in the working space, but it didn’t matter. If he needed anything, Dwayne would get it before Steele even knew he wanted it.