A Billion Ways to Die (10 page)

I called Natsumi.

“It’s you,” she said, answering the phone.

“It is. Real is still real,” I said.

T
HE
GENERAL
called me the next day and told me to meet him at the lifeguard stand on the beach at the north end of Ocean Drive. He told me to come in a bathing suit and nothing else.

“No reason for modesty,” he said. “I already know what your prick looks like.”

When I told Natsumi the plan, she offered to come along and try to get his photo.

“He’ll have spotters posted all around the beach. They might see you.”

“I’m feeling superfluous,” she said.

“I need to know you’re safe.”

“You’re more cautious since they grabbed us off the boat.”

“I am?”

“You once told me inaction was the most dangerous thing we could do.”

“Why did I say that?”

“If I leave now, I’ll be an hour ahead. Time to get comfy and see if I can spot the spotters.”

She changed into a bathing suit over which she slipped a beach dress in a loud floral pattern. She put the SLR camera with the longest lens in the bottom of a canvas beach bag. I stayed silent as I watched her leave the hotel room.

I used the intervening time on the computer, cruising around nearly aimlessly as if that would help me feel less anxious. It didn’t.

I left the room and walked north from our hotel through the tan haze of sand-blown Miami Beach. It was a warm wind, with a threat of rain, the tropical kind that came and went like the sweep of a broom, cleaning the air. When I reached the assigned beach, I stripped down to my bathing suit and left the little pile of clothes under a palm tree. I resisted the impulse to seek out Natsumi as I walked across the beach, instead fixing my eyes on the big purple, green and yellow lifeguard stand.

When I got there, the general was sitting nearby in a beach chair. His body was lean and ropy, a greying mat of hair almost concealing a scar across his right breast. He pointed to an identical beach chair to his left. I sat down.

“I understand the attraction of sitting by the ocean,” he said. “The primordial pull. I just don’t get doing it all day. The time investment.”

“Agreed,” I said, brushing sand off my lower legs.

“It’s good to have common ground between business partners,” he said.

“I appreciate your help.”

He took a smartphone from his lap and tapped around on the screen.

“I appreciate the twenty thousand,” he said. “You won’t mind if I move it to a safer place?”

“Not at all.”

“I can do this while sunning myself on the beach,” he said, working the phone’s screen. “Most think such things commonplace. Me, I still have the wonder of
un joven Cubano
.”

“A young brain is good for survival.”

“Agreed on that as well.”

“So, any luck with my
mercenario
?”

He squinted at the phone for another moment, then nodded and put it back on his lap.

“Si. It happens I know the man well. Someone I have respect for. We were able to speak with candor, which saved a lot of time, effort and money. So much I’m almost embarrassed taking your twenty thousand. Almost.”

He rummaged around in a beach bag and came up with a pad of paper and a pen. He wrote down the name and handed it to me.

“Rolando Mosqueda,” I read out loud.

“I asked him point blank about the operation you described. He just laughed.”

“Laughed?”

“I don’t know why. I gave him your e-mail address and left it up to him if he wants to contact you. No guarantees there.”

“What if he doesn’t? How can I get word to him?”

“Not my problem, Señor Rana. You asked about a certain Latino mercenary on a certain operation, I give you this name. Be thankful I give this much.”

“There’re probably a lot of Rolando Mosquedas in the world,” I said.

“At least one’s a soldier of fortune. That should narrow the field.” Two young women wearing suits in tenuous conformance with South Beach decency standards walked by us on the way back from the ocean, their eyes cast furtively toward the rambling guard stand. “On the other hand,” he said, taking up a prior conversational thread.

“How about an address,” I said.

When he looked over at me I saw my face reflected in his oversized sunglasses. Then, another shape flashed across. I turned and saw Norberto unfolding another beach chair. He sat down next to me so I was sandwiched between the two men.

“Hola,” he said to me as he reached in a woven beach bag. He pulled out a can of beer. “Too early for you?”

“No thanks,” I said, as did the general.

Norberto shrugged and dove back into the bag, this time pulling out a towel. He pulled a piece of it away to show me the tip of a silencer. He grinned, and I grinned back.

“Just in case we run into any beach banditos,” he said.

I turned my head back to the general, who was gazing out at the sea.

“I need more than just a name. I can’t afford the research time,” I said, honestly.

“What’s the hurry, young man?” said the general. “With your whole life ahead of you?”

“This wasn’t the deal.”

“You must be unaware of the organizational chart,” said the general. He put one hand above the other. “I’m here, you’re there. Your responsibility is to thank me for such high quality information for such a reasonable price. My job is to go back to my piano and away from all this primordial pulling. You can keep the chair,” he added, as both he and Norberto stood up to leave.

“Did you check your investment account?” I asked.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“Have you checked your investment account, the one at the bank? First off, I wouldn’t trust a banker with my investments; secondly, you have way too much in growth stocks and too little in solid, dividend-yielding blue chips. So I rebalanced everything. You don’t have to thank me.”

The general unfolded his chair and sat back down, this time facing me. Norberto stayed standing. The general took out his smartphone and poked at it for a few minutes before looking up at me.

“You did this?” he asked.

“It’s all still there. You can move it back if you want. I don’t recommend it, but it’s your money. For now, anyway.”

“You’re a dead man,” he said in Spanish.

Norberto held the towel in both hands, the muzzle of the silencer sticking out in plain view.

“That dopey money market thing they talked you into,” I said. “Way too much cash sitting on the sidelines, if you ask me.”

“You know I can’t let this stand,” he said. “Norberto, if you would.”

Norberto squatted down in front of me and took a deep breath, letting the air out slowly.

“I promise your money will go to a good cause,” I said.

The general put his hand up. Norberto lowered the gun. The general held up his smartphone.

“My money is here,” he said.

I held up my own.

“If I don’t send an all-clear signal in five minutes, it will all be withdrawn. Permanently.”

Norberto started to raise his gun again, but the general stuck his foot out and lightly kicked the other man’s calf. “
Bastante.
How did you do this?” he asked me.

“What’s Rolando’s address?”

“I don’t know.” I sat there and stared at him through my own impenetrable sunglasses. “Palm Beach,” he said, finally. “I don’t remember the exact address. Gated community. I have his phone number.”

He played around with the smartphone for a few moments, then took out the pad of paper to write on.

“You knew I wouldn’t give you what you wanted,” he said, handing me the paper. “You were ready.”

“Like you, I wish I could be more trustful.”

“Am I going to have to worry about this forever?” he asked. “Are we about to have a war?”

“No war. I have other things to do.” I stood up and adjusted my hat and sunglasses. “You can keep the chair. And the twenty K, but remember, it always feels better to give something freely than to have it taken away.”

I kept my eyes toward the street as I walked across the beach, my attention undiverted by thoughts of Norberto’s suppressed firearm and
otros jovenes Cubanos
lurking among the umbrellas or the pull of subterranean forces, primordial or otherwise.

C
HAPTER
8

T
he trip up the coast from Miami to Palm Beach is less than a hundred miles, but it felt longer because of our chosen route, hard up against the ocean and away from Interstate 95 where sensible people drove. I’d rented a convertible to gain a greater feeling of connectedness as we made our way along trackless strip development and through the occasional neighborhood, some poor, some ensconced behind thick shrubbery, stone walls and metal gates.

It was behind such fortifications that we found Rolando’s house, though not immediately, since that would have taken either the proper access card or an M1 Abrams tank. I knew we had the right neighborhood, however, so now it was just a matter of getting inside the gates.

“How’re we going to do that?” Natsumi asked.

“Where there’s broadband, there’s a way.”

Which we found quickly enough at the neighborhood Starbucks. I commandeered a corner seating area while Natsumi provisioned at the counter. We’d left Miami so abruptly, I hadn’t had a chance to note more than Rolando’s address, though I’d recorded a related list of URLs for further inquiry. It only took a few moments to get what I most wanted at that point. A photo.

It was taken at the Palm Beach Rotary Club luncheon. He was standing at a podium, speaking to the group on the subject, “Financial Planning in the Age of the Underwater House.” He held a snorkel and face mask up to the microphone. He was smiling broadly. I could easily imagine the opening remarks.

With dark black hair, goatee and wire-rim glasses, his topic could have been far more academic and he’d look the part. His skin was pale white and his wide smile showed a row of perfect teeth, and even under the suit you could detect the broad shoulders. A meaty fist gripped the snorkeling gear.

I recognized the face, and still felt those large hands gripping my arms and pulling my wrists together, the rock hard body beneath the black Special Ops uniforms as the mercs jostled us in and out of the inflatable boat.

“What do you think?” Natsumi asked.

“The general could have used his help. Do a trade out.”

“So we don’t have to storm the gates?” she asked.

“Just the office suite. About two miles from here.”

I showed it to her on the smartphone’s GPS.

“So let’s go,” she said.

“We can’t do that,” I said, a faint panic rising in my throat.

“Why not?”

I thought a moment.

“I don’t know,” I said.

Natsumi sat back in her overstuffed Starbucks couch and smiled at me with her eyes, a talent that seemed uniquely her own.

“That happened too quickly,” she said. “You’re not ready.”

“I’m not.”

“The curse of the analytic mind. You haven’t crunched the numbers. Weighed the odds. Analyzed the regressions.”

“I’m unarmed. I’ve got nothing.”

“Yes you do. You’ve got me.”

She stood up and left the Starbucks. I followed, slightly unnerved. She got in the driver’s seat.

“You navigate,” she said.

Which I did, not knowing what else to do. As promised, we were there in a few minutes. It was a new office building made of phony brownstone and reflective blue windows. The sign out front suggested a warren of small operations, though we quickly spotted Rolando Mosqueda, Certified Financial Planner,
Hablamos Español
.

Natsumi parked near the exit, facing out. She shut off the car and turned to me.

“Sometimes it’s better not to think so much,” she said.

“Thinking keeps us alive.”

“There’s different kinds of thinking. You never heard of Gestalt?”

“They wouldn’t let mathematicians into psych courses.”

She opened the car door.

“Come on,” she said, “before the moment’s lost.”

I followed her into the building and up the elevator to Rolando’s office. Inside was a tight reception area with a pink-faced young guy manning the desk. He had thinning red hair and a scar that started in the center of his cheek and sliced straight back through the ear. I forced my eyes away, but it wasn’t necessary. All his attention was on Natsumi.

“We’re here to see Señor Mosqueda,” she said before the guy’s “Can I help you?” was halfway out. He looked down at something on his desk.

“No, we don’t have an appointment,” said Natsumi. “Tell him what we look like. He’ll see us.”

The guy stood up and went through the door behind his desk. Natsumi watched him go from where she was leaning forward, both hands flat on the desk. We didn’t have long to wait. The door opened and out walked Rolando, looking just as handsome as he did in the Rotary photo, only three inches taller and that much broader across the chest. His sleeves were rolled up over thick forearms and he had an old-fashioned pencil in one of his hands.

He didn’t offer to shake and neither did we.

“The general has some explaining to do,” he said.

“Not as much as you,” said Natsumi.