Blood of My Brother (24 page)

When he got there, Isabel was buttoning her jeans at the edge of the water, her back to him. He walked toward her, and when he got closer he saw that she was taking her jeans off, not putting them on. Her panties, blouse, and bra quickly followed and she dove in. Jay drank off half of his longneck bottle of Corona, then took off his clothes and waded into the bay, bringing the beer with him. Holding the bottle aloft, he dunked himself, rising to see Isabel, her naked body shimmering in the moonlit water, swimming slowly across his path. He finished the beer, threw the bottle far out toward the horizon, then dove and swam straight out for maybe three hundred yards before turning and swimming
back. When he reached the shore, Isabel, dressed, was sitting on the pebbly beach drinking a beer and smoking. She handed him a beer when he finished dressing, then lit a second cigarette and handed it to him as he settled next to her.

“You are a good swimmer, and strong,” she said.

“I almost didn’t make it back. I’m beat.”

“We’re both tired.”

Jay flipped over a shell and rested his cigarette on it, then took a long swig of his beer. Behind them a tractor-trailer went screaming by on the highway, and then a bus, and then the night’s stillness and silence fell on them again, broken only by the soft rush of the surf.

“Talk to me, Isabel.”

“If you’re tired, we can talk later, in the car, or when we arrive.”

“I’m fine.”

“There is no good time for this, I suppose.”

“No.”

“I liked your friend. He was a funny man, and brave.”

Jay said nothing.

“He arrived at the airport in Miami and put the money in a locker there. He took a cab to Miami Beach, where he got a room. This was on a Monday. The next day, I picked him up in front of the Fontainebleau. We drove to Jupiter. We wanted to make sure we weren’t being followed before getting the money.”

Isabel stopped here, and took a drink of her beer. Jay watched her profile for signs of calculation or spin control as she stared for a long moment at the bay. He had assessed her in this way several times during the long, quiet ride from Merida, but, as now, had come up empty. There was no telling from looking at her proud, beautiful face what she was thinking or feeling.

“Go ahead,” he said, breaking the silence.

“I was staying at a hotel in Jupiter. We drove there. I was in fear at all times of being discovered and killed by the Ferias. I knew they had killed Bryce and his wife—Jose likes to take heads as trophies when he can—and were looking for me. Dan was certain that we had not been followed. The next morning he left for the airport to get the money. He assured me that he would not get it if he thought there was any danger. He must have crossed paths with the Ferias. We had agreed that I would change hotels, which I did. The next day I saw in the newspaper that he was killed. I called my friend Alvaro Diaz. I did not want to involve him, I was afraid he would be killed, too, but I was desperate. I stayed with him for three days, and then he took me to Maria.”

“Did Dan know the name of your new hotel?”

“No. I was supposed to call him on his cell phone.”

“Did you?”

“Yes. Edgardo answered.”

“What hotel did he check into in Miami?”

“I don’t know. He cabbed to the Fontainebleau.”

“You had a car at the time?”

“I left my car at Royal Palm. I took a cab from there to the hotel in Jupiter, where I rented a car, the one that Dan drove to Miami.”

“Did you tell Dan what he was getting into?”

“Yes.”

“Did you mention the Feria brothers, and Herman Santaria—that they killed Bryce and Kate Powers?”

“Yes.”

“When was this?’

“When he arrived in Florida. I offered him more money, told him he could back out.”

“What did he say?”

“He laughed. He said I could buy him dinner.”

“What happened to the rental car?”

“I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter. I rented it with false ID.”

“Do you know these Feria brothers personally?”

“Yes, I have met them.”

“You sound like you’re pretty familiar with Santaria’s operation.”

“I started working for him when I was fourteen years old.”

“Doing what?”

Isabel shook her head, just slightly.

“Do you want another beer?” she asked. “I will get it from the car.”

“No. I have another question.”

“Yes.”

“How is it that Danny and the Ferias happened to ‘cross paths’? If they were following him, they would have gotten you, too. Or did you set him up?”

“You’re sitting here with me right now. Are you afraid for your life?”

“There’s a big hole in your story.”

“I sent him to Royal Palm, to get my passport. Two passports, actually, one real, the other false. I left the condo very quickly, and took nothing with me except my purse. I was trapped without the passports, especially if we did not recover the cash. They must have been watching the condo.”

“You sent him.”

“Yes.”

“And he followed orders.”

“I was paying him.”

Jay went to the jeep for two more beers. Danny wouldn’t
take more money. A deal was a deal. Which meant they had slept together. For
that
his friend would take extra risk, follow certain orders.
Pussy,
he recalled Frank Dunn saying on the night of the Powers murders,
it makes us weak.

On the beach, Jay opened the beers and handed one to Isabel as he sat down next to her. She again lit a cigarette for him and handed it to him. They smoked and drank for a minute or two, watching the bay, then Isabel said, “I am sorry about your friend. Truly sorry.”

“Did you have dinner with him?”

“Yes.”

“Did he hit on you?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“He said I was so beautiful it was killing him. He said if I slept with him it would make him immortal.”

“Danny,” said Jay, finishing his beer in one long drink, then throwing the bottle into the bay, watching it bob in the moonlight. “
Danny
.”

Then Jay put his head down onto his drawn-up knees, facing away from Isabel, and cried, murmuring Danny’s name as he did. Isabel took Jay’s head in her hands, laid him on the sand, and held him until he quieted. Soon they were both asleep, too exhausted to change positions or slap at the insects that buzzed around them in the sweltering eightyfive-degree night air.

The section of the Mexican Justice Department that dealt with requests by foreign countries for the issuance of arrest or search warrants in Mexico was the Division of International Warrants and Arrests, or DIWA, and was headed by Lazaro Santaria’s nephew, Pedro Alvarado. Handsome, in his mid-thirties, educated at Amherst and the National University Law School in Mexico City, Pedro had known only good in his life. His family’s fortunes had risen with those of his uncles Lazaro and Herman, one high-profile, the other decidedly not, but very rich. Uncle Lazaro had climbed steadily to very near the top of the Institutional Revolutionary Party—the PRI—the political party that had held power nationally for over seventy years, before adroitly switching to the new Mexican Action Party—PAM—the year before it took power in 2000. A switch made easy by large donations from Herman, under cover of unregulated political action committees, to PAM. Very large donations. Pedro’s work was routine and handled by a jaded but competent staff of lawyers, investigators, and clerical help. One task that Pedro took to himself was the daily review of requests for action by the US government pursuant to treaty, with comments attached from his department heads indicating the suggested
response by the Mexican government. To these Pedro added his own comments before handing a copy personally to Lazaro late every afternoon.

When Lazaro received his daily DIWA report for Monday, December 20 and saw Jay Cassio’s name on it, he picked up his private line and called his brother Herman and arranged for them to meet for dinner at Las Vacas Gordas, a steak house on nearby Avenida Madera, at nine p.m. that night. The next morning, Herman was having breakfast on the balcony of his twenty-fifth floor penthouse on Avenida Cinqo de Mayo, when his bodyguard brought Edgar and Jose Feria out to join him. The brothers had arrived in Mexico by private jet on Saturday morning, three days prior, and immediately reported the highlights of their recent trip to Miami to Herman. He had not spoken with them since. In recent years he rarely met with them personally, but, given the information he had received from his brother the night before, he thought it necessary to chat face-to-face with his young killers. Below him
La Ciudad de Mexico,
vast and dense, spread to the horizon in all directions, while the morning sun struggled to penetrate the smog that covered the city like a shroud.

“Sit. Would you like coffee?” said Herman, pointing to the silver service and china cups on the table between them. “Help yourself. Leave us, Stefan.”

The bodyguard stepped back into the apartment, leaving Herman and the Ferias to their coffee and their dazzling view. Herman eyed the brothers, knowing they were waiting for him to speak first. One of Gary Shaw’s bullets had grazed Jose’s temple. The wound was not serious but it had bled profusely, and Jose was still wearing a bright white bandage over his partially shaved scalp. This he fingered while his brother poured coffee.

“An inch to the left and you would be dead,” said Herman.

“Leaving my brother to avenge me,” Jose replied.

“The black was a cop,” said Herman, “so it was good that you left quickly.”

The brothers, uninterested in the occupation of the people they killed, nodded and waited for their employer to continue. Herman, sixty-two, his body florid and bloated from years of unrestrained indulgence in rich food and the best wine and champagne the world had to offer, marveled at his luck at having two such killing machines at his disposal. His panthers, he had befriended them as cubs, and they had been utterly devoted to him ever since. Stony-eyed, supremely confidant, unhurried—he often thought they would have made excellent bankers—they would calmly set out to assassinate the Pope if he ordered them to.

“You will have to stay out of the States for a while,” Herman continued, “but there is work for you here. Senor Cassio landed in Cancun on Saturday. The US Justice Department wants him picked up. We are checking the car rental agencies and the hotels. The Yucatán and Campeche police have a bulletin on him. If they find him we will send you up there to take care of him.”

“And the woman?” said Edgardo.

“She has not been seen at the restaurant in Miami. As I have said, she can bring me down, and if that happens my dear brother and Senor de Leon are concerned that
I
will have no choice but to bring
them
down. I tell them not to worry, but they are terrified. There is no trust among us thieves. Therefore we must find Isabel, and take care of her. I have located two of the sisters from her days in the convent. One is in Mexico City, the other is in Guadalahara. They may know where Isabel would go to hide. Do not
frighten them. You are looking for your sister, so that she can receive her inheritance from her long lost father.”

“We will leave today.”

“Yes, pronto. And come back pronto. I want her head to give to Lazaro and Rafael as a Christmas present.”

Herman liked to give the impression that he was careless, that he knew only vaguely what was going on in his legal and illegal organizations, and that he did not know precisely how big his empire was or how much money he had. But that was artifice, designed to lull both friend and foe. He had over two hundred million dollars in Russian and Philippine bank accounts, and holdings worth another two hundred million. He liked being in the thick of the fray, not above it; when he was young, he had done his share of violence in order to clear the way for Lazaro and Rafael, and of course himself.

Lazaro would never let him down, and neither would his panthers, but Rafael had shown signs of weakness lately, and fear. He would naturally consider the possibility of the Santaria brothers turning on him. De Leon, a man sixty-five years of age who still liked to fuck fourteen-year-old girls. Perhaps it was time to show him the photographs that Herman had been accumulating over the years, to discourage him from pursuing the foolish idea of a preemptive strike. It would be nice to see the arrogant
mandamas
frozen in amber, to be dealt with at Herman’s leisure.

“Here are the names and addresses of the good sisters,” Herman continued, sliding a piece of notepaper across the snowy white tablecloth to Edgardo. “Bring me a trophy. When you return there may be more interesting and more difficult game than an innocent young whore.”

“I have never had to be a nurse before,” Isabel said.

“You don’t have to be one now,” Jay replied.

“You were truly sick.”

“This rash. I thought I was getting better.”

“It is a good sign. It means it is dengue fever, and not something worse.”

They had woke on the beach outside Sabancuy at dawn, driven all day, covering some five hundred miles in twelve hours, most of it through the sweltering, sterile scrubland of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and arrived exhausted at Puerto Angel, where Jay was almost immediately flattened by a blinding headache and a fever that reached one hundred four degrees in an hour. After a night of this, along with vomiting and severe joint pain, a rash had appeared on his chest and spread to his arms and legs. Until the rash appeared this morning, Isabel thought it very possible that Jay would die. Cholera and typhoid fever were not unknown in Mexico, and although they had been very careful about what they ate and drank, a small amount of the swallowed water of Campeche Bay would be enough to give Jay any number of deadly diseases.