Blood of Paradise (47 page)

Osorio picked up before the second full ring. Old folks, they sleep like they're afraid they won't wake up, Malvasio thought, watching as the other vehicle, trailing dust, disappeared. He explained things to the old
oreja
, told him the van he'd said might be needed for surveillance was on the way. He was sorry he hadn't been able to provide better forewarning but events had taken a sudden turn. Osorio hacked, sniffed, then said he'd be ready.

“Of course, this is all very sensitive,” Malvasio said. “I'm sure I don't need to tell you that. No one can know.”

“I did my part during the war,” Osorio snapped. Malvasio could picture him, wispy hair a mess, blinking without his bifocals, sitting straight as a flagpole in his underwear. “I'm not some little dog, yip yip yip.”

Malvasio stopped at a
panaderÍa
on his way back through town to buy coffee and
pan dulce
, then drove out to the old construction yard, letting himself in at the gate and pulling into the parking area beneath the sniper hide. From the glove compartment he first removed his Beretta 92, screwing on the silencer, tucking the weapon into his pants and covering the butt with his shirt, then he pulled out a pair of vinyl gloves and stuffed them into his back pocket. Finally, he collected the bag with breakfast inside and climbed up to join the Candyman.

“Hope you slept better than I did,” Strock said, his eyes rheumy and bloodshot. “I just kept thinking about all the ways this can go wrong.”

“Don't talk like that, it's a cinch. Listen.” Malvasio handed a coffee to Strock and a chunk of
pan dulce
, wrapped in wax paper. “Come seven o'clock they drive in. It's a painter's van. There's four guys, they'll be inside, one at the wheel, the others in back—zero in on the van's back door. They're gonna wait till the car shows up and Jude brings his guy out. Once everybody's inside the car, the van moves to cut off the street and the three in the back tumble out. Plan is they take out the driver first then fire away at the car till Jude and his guy are dead too.” Malvasio peeled off the lid to his own coffee and sipped. “That's how it's supposed to happen, anyway. You take down the three spilling out the back as soon as you see them. All that's left is the driver. Thing's done before it even starts.”

“They're gonna shoot the car—it's not armored?”

“You've got Humvees and APCs tooling around without armor in Iraq—think anybody's gonna pay the freight to plate up a Mercedes down here?”

Strock shook his head, tore off a chunk of
pan dulce
, and dunked it in his coffee. “The world is illusion.”

“To live is to suffer. Pass the pie.”

“What's the backup plan? If I don't get all four guys in time, what then?”

“There is no backup plan. You're it, buddy.”

Strock grimaced, chewing, chasing his swallow with a sip of coffee. He thought for a moment, then said, “Not to sound like a broken record, but have you checked in at all with Clara and the little girl?”

Malvasio thought better of remarking on Strock's odd obsession, remembering the tiff from the day before. “As a matter of fact, I did. Kid was hopping around like a monkey, Clara tickled to beat Jesus. We should all be so happy.”

“I dreamed about them last night,” Strock said.

My God, Malvasio thought. He checked his watch, five till seven. “I thought you said you had trouble sleeping.”

“I did. It wasn't a fun night. Except this one dream, which was, I dunno, very vivid.” Strock rubbed at his flaming eyes. “Not that I can make sense of it. You know dreams. We were at the little house on the beach except it wasn't that house, it was different, bigger. Not the one the hurricane ripped to shreds, either, but kinda like that, I suppose. Houses mean something in dreams, I heard that somewhere. Constancia was bigger, too, almost a teenager. She was like a little Clara, same face and body, different hair. Sorta blondish, like my girl. Anyway, they showed me a part of the house where the roof was gone, and we looked up at the sky and the clouds were amazing, so close you could touch them. Then Clara said—she spoke English, that's another weird thing—she said the fish would be plentiful now. Something about the weather, I dunno, and then it was night and there was this moonlit river like a Hallmark card and another house and I can't remember anything else. Except the way it felt. You said they were happy? My dream, it felt that way too.” He shrugged. “Bitch of a night, but I woke up happy.”

Malvasio resisted the impulse to glance at his watch again. “Anybody who says they can make sense of dreams is lying.”

“Yeah. But like I said, it was almost more a feeling than a dream.” Strock licked his fingers and turned to look out through the hole in the wall toward Villas de Miramonte. “Ah, Christ. Already?”

Malvasio crouched to look over Strock's shoulder and saw the white van moving slowly up the cul-de-sac. It pulled in front of Osorio's and parked.

Strock lay down, fit the weapon to his shoulder, and peered through the scope. The bag of kitty litter rested under his left arm like a pillow and it rustled as he settled in. “Not to quibble with your plan, but it'd be easier to take out the driver first, given how he's parked. That way there's no cutoff, the car gets away. I deal with the other three as they appear.”

Malvasio leaned closer, hovering over Strock's back. “Yeah, but if the van doesn't move into position, there's no guarantee the other three come out.” He reached for the pistol in his waistband. When he had the weapon clear, he placed the silencer flush with the base of Strock's skull and fired twice.

Strock's head and shoulders slumped forward, his body went limp. As quick as that, Malvasio thought. Thing's done before it even starts.

He shoved the gun back in his pants, pulled the gloves from his pocket, and tugged them on. Only got yourself to blame, Phil. Said it was your way or no way, you'd call it in if you didn't like the smell of things. Well, I don't like it any better than you, but who says we had a choice? If it means anything, of all the ways I saw this going down, I wanted this one least.

The day before, as he'd racked his brain trying to figure out how to do this, he'd realized that the gremlin in the machine was the timing of it. To make it all work, he would've had to devise a way for the little girl to show up as though he hadn't known where she was all along. If he'd had a week or even a few days to mock up a search, pretend he'd hunted high and low—then bingo, looky here—he could've wrapped this up beautifully for all concerned. Well, Clara would've suffered. She'd bonded with the kid to the point it was almost eerie, but he could've found her an orphan. Hell, the judge's
finca
was crawling with them. But such thoughts were fantasy. Time. There just hadn't been time. In a moment of desperation, he'd considered simply ripping the kid from Clara's arms, coming here to Villas de Miramonte, and dropping her like a foundling near the security gate. But he'd remembered that undertone in Hector's voice, the suspicion lurking in the silences. The girl shows up that quick, he'd thought, no matter how or why, he'll see through the ruse. No such thing as parting friends, not in that crowd. Not with what I know.

If time was the gremlin, though, Jude was its sidekick, him and the old man, Axel Stumblefog. All they had to do was admit the obvious, give up, go away. But no, they had to blunder into what they didn't understand to accomplish the impossible. Like the upright Americans they were.

And that was the sum of it, he thought. Nothing else to say. You tried, they jinxed it, and there was no time to make it right.

He dragged Strock's body away from the weapon and tucked it into the corner. Both rounds had exited through the mouth and blood drained out. The eyelids had slid down to half-mast and Malvasio closed them the rest of the way. Sleep now, he thought. Or head off to wherever it is restless, bitter drunk souls go. Back to Indiana, for all I know. Send me a postcard.

Using a T-shirt of Strock's for a rag, he wiped away the blood on the rifle, making sure in particular the scope and trigger were clean. He searched Strock's things, looking for surprises, found none. The cell phone's outgoing calls were limited to his test of 9-1-1 two days earlier, the hopeless ass. The incoming numbers included Malvasio's, and though he'd be ditching that particular phone soon, there was no point being sloppy.

Strock's wallet contained a picture of the little girl, Chelsea. She was three maybe, but no telling how old the picture was. Straw-colored hair, milky skin, the kind of smile kids figure out early, playing the grown-ups. I'll send her some money, he thought, and tucked the picture back where he'd found it.

He flipped the mattress to avoid lying in blood and found a shank lying there, made from a sharpened piece of wood, a rag for a handle. The crudeness of the thing only made it more startling as he realized,
That was meant for me
. He kept staring at it as though it might spring to life, tell him things. He thought: Phil, you sly, untrusting fuck. That's how close we come sometimes. Shaking himself out of his daze, he settled in, lay prone, and arranged his business, nestling his elbow into the bag of kitty litter and fitting the rifle's stock snug against his shoulder as he squinted through the scope. The front doorway of Consuela Rojas's house sprang to life within the crosshairs. Two hundred thirty yards, the man had said. The scope was already zeroed in. Remember your cold shot's gonna land high right a quarter of an inch.

Osorio ambled to the door, dressed in a clean white shirt, crisp slacks. The pain in his hands was bad today—they shook, and he'd nicked himself shaving. The bloody scrap of tissue still clung to his cheek. He opened the door, expecting to greet a man. What he found instead was a jumpy, bug-eyed clown in coveralls.

Sleeper forced his way in, pushed Osorio against the wall, a hand across the old man's mouth as he stabbed his chest, over and over, a dozen times then a dozen more, his hand a blur as the blade punctured both lungs. No air, no screams. The bright white shirt was a tangle of blood by the time Sleeper was through. He pushed the old man aside and the wispy-haired fool dropped in a shudder to the floor. The look in his eyes, begging with fright, as a raspy wheeze rose faintly from his throat, the blood bubbling up. He was drowning in it.

Sleeper said,
“Saludemos la Patria, jodido.”
Hail the motherland, fucker. He wiped his blade on the old man's pants.

Malvasio flipped open his cell. “Tell me.”

“One down,” Sleeper said. “How things look up there?”

Malvasio glanced over his shoulder at the body, remembering another time Strock had looked that serene, minus the blood. He'd been sleeping off a bender in the back of his squad car, parked behind the infamous Green Bunny on the south side, of all places. Malvasio had rousted him, tapping his nightstick against the window glass, thinking it was a miracle some burner hadn't taken him out while he was lying there.

“We're good,” he told Sleeper. “Ready when you are.”

Sipping coffee, Jude tugged the curtain aside to glance out the dining room window. A white van he hadn't seen before sat parked in front of a house across the street, three doors down. There was lettering on the side panel, it belonged to a house painter. He called Consuela from the kitchen. “Remind me.” He pointed. “Who lives there?”

Wiping her hands on a dish towel, she smiled acidly. “Ah. Osorio. The old
chambroso.”
Gossip.

“I'd like his number if you have it.”

Consuela went to check while Jude dialed the number on the van. He reached an answering machine, the taped voice garbled but clearly a man's, identifying himself as Joaquín Mojica. That checked. Jude left a message asking for a quick callback, he wanted to confirm a job on Senda Numero 6 in the Villas de Miramonte. Consuela returned with the phone book, pointing to the name and number for a Pedro Osorio. Jude dialed and the phone rang and rang, no answer. He hung up, checked the number, confirmed he'd gotten it right, and redialed. Same as before, no matter how long he let it ring.

“What's the number of the security gate up front?”

Consuela looked at him as though that were the oddest question. “I couldn't tell you. I've never—”

“It's okay,” Jude said, cutting her short. Out the window he watched as the Mercedes appeared, turning the corner into the cul-de-sac. Jude had the number on speed dial and he thumbed the two-number code. Carlos picked up.

Malvasio drew a bead on the driver's side of the tinted windshield as the Mercedes passed the van outside Osorio's. Suddenly the car jerked to a stop, something was wrong and he knew he couldn't wait. He squeezed the trigger, reminding himself, a quarter-inch high right. The weapon fired, its report muffled by the silencer—a tinny, grating, hollow sound—followed by the ping of the cartridge onto the floor. The recoil felt no worse than a nudge and he almost gave in to a fleeting urge to look up, but then remembered Strock's words: Stay married to the weapon. Through the scope he watched the windshield shatter, a spiderweb pattern the size of a saucer. Not quite where I wanted, he thought. Calm down. He fired two more shots in quick succession, the windshield shattered further. The car began to drift backward.

As soon as he saw the windshield fissure, Jude pushed Consuela down and pulled the curtains. “Stay away from the windows!” He ran to the front door, checked the lock, and threw the chain—it wouldn't keep out a rumor. To Consuela he said, “Go upstairs with Oscar and his mother. Put the vests on and lock the door.”

Axel scrambled down the stairs, stopping at the landing midway as Consuela climbed toward him. “Get the pistol I gave you,” Jude said, running to his duffel to dig out the extra clips he'd loaded, stuffing one in each pocket. He told Eileen, rushing in from the back garden, “Shut the screen door and latch it. Leave the glass door open, get the shotgun. Make sure it's loaded.” He pitched a box of nine-shot to her. “Here's backup.”