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Chapter Fifty-six

Twisted Oliver picked up the phone, stared at it, then put it back in its cradle without dialing. He sat quietly for several minutes, wondering if he was going crazy.

Scowling, he shuffled through the papers on his desk before returning his watery gaze to his computer screen. Maybe he submitted the request to the lab incorrectly. He scanned the top of the glowing spreadsheet for the codes that indicated which tests would be run, then flicked his gaze to a sheet of paper clipped to the front of a manila folder. He compared names, dates, numbers.

He’d done this four times already, but Oliver believed in being thorough. He’d run the whole gamut of tests for Sam, as requested, and even told the lab to put this blood work at the top of priority jobs. He punched the keyboard and squinted through his glasses at the scientific names that appeared on the screen in a new window.

Well, well.

If you knew where to look, there were many flags for cause of death, and almost all could be seen in the blood. Oliver liked to think of the bloodstream as a person’s chemical record—not just their overall health but their stress level, diet, even state of mind. Every emotional state had corresponding blood chemistry, from the soothing endorphins of exercise to the pheromones of sex or the adrenaline of exertion and stress. Even the depression of a suicide or the blind rage of homicide left their mark, if you knew how to find them.

As he read down the list, Oliver focused on the inconsistencies, chemical compounds out of sync with the alleged cause of death. There were two or three, but his eyes kept tripping on one in particular.

Prunus Dulcis.

“What the hell are you doing there?” he asked aloud, tapping the nail of his right index finger against the screen. When the screen didn’t answer, Oliver sighed and looked back at his notes.

Severe impact trauma. Adrenaline signature. Blood oxygen saturation.

Oliver turned his gaze once again toward the phone.

It’s not your job to figure it out
, he told himself.
Just report the facts and move on—there are plenty of corpses waiting for you.

The thought of handling dead flesh roused Oliver from his torpor, and this time he dialed. After four rings he heard the click of an answering machine, followed by Sam’s measured tone. When the beep came, Oliver spoke clearly and precisely.

“Hello, Sam? I ran those tests on your landlord, and I might have found something…”

Chapter Fifty-seven

Flan spotted the cop from across the street and knew something had gone terribly wrong.

Flan’s real name was Humberto, but since no one had called him that since his mother died, he thought of himself by the name given to him by Zorro’s crew. There was something about criminal life that made nicknames an automatic part of the shared language, a shorthand way of identifying someone without all the social niceties or bullshit of civilian life. Someone called it as they saw it, and if the name stuck, that label was good enough for everyone.

Flan was named for a crème caramel served in Mexico, a slightly yellowish custard with a thin crust and a sweet filling, which he ate in such enormous quantities that his skin had taken on both the texture and vaguely cloying scent of the popular dessert. Flan weighed in at a respectable three hundred and twenty pounds, most of it extraneous fat that began at his chin and rolled like the breaking tide when he walked, and every day he thanked The Good Lord Jesús that he wasn’t born Italian. He couldn’t stand going through life known as Humberto the Chin.

The cop parked his convertible in front of a hydrant and scanned the street before wrapping his knuckles on the trunk and jaywalking toward the restaurant. The cop’s gaze swept smoothly across the front door and didn’t linger, but Flan knew he’d been made. He was hard to miss and had no illusions about his appearance—too fat for the NFL and too ugly and mean-looking to be wasting his time sitting in some cubicle trying to get his sausage-fingers to type on a keyboard. Just as Flan knew the guy in the sportcoat and jeans with the broad shoulders was a cop—even though he’d never seen him before—the cop would know Flan was Zorro’s muscle. The only question was how to play it.

Flan decided to be sneaky. He quickly reached into his jacket and pulled out a cigarette and lighter, cupping his hand around the flame and looking as nonchalant as a three-hundred pound man can manage on short notice. Though his blood sugar was low, his brain seemed to be working just fine as Flan reasoned that the cop wasn’t going to do anything rash. After all, he was a cop, not a triggerman for some rival gang.

Flan decided to let the cop go inside the restaurant rather than brace him at the door, then follow him as he navigated his way to Zorro’s table. When he least expected it, Flan would come up behind him. Flan was surprisingly light on his feet for a big man and felt he could easily manage this maneuver, the idea being to intimidate the cop with his sudden appearance, as if he’d just materialized out of not-so-thin air. The cop would lose his nerve, Zorro would gain the upper hand in their exchange, and Flan would be rewarded appropriately.

Flan feigned a coughing attack as the cop brushed past him and headed through the front door and down the short hallway toward the reservations desk. He was about to follow when the cop took a sudden left, opened the door to the men’s room, and disappeared.

Caray!
This was going to throw off his timing. Flan counted to sixty, thinking that was plenty of time to take a piss, but when the cop didn’t emerge, Flan figured the prissy bastard was washing his hands, so he kept counting until he hit a hundred.

Nothing. Flan started counting again as he tried to remember the layout of the men’s room. Three stalls, two urinals, two sinks but no window. So there was no way the cop was going to sneak out, even if he made had a change of heart and decided to run. In that case he’d just come back through the front door.

Two hundred
. Great, the guy suddenly had to take a shit. But Flan could sympathize. Sometimes just the thought of facing Zorro put his own bowels in an uproar. He’d give it another minute.

A young man wearing an expensive suit and a haircut to match left the restaurant and entered the men’s room. Flan had noticed the guy when he arrived half an hour ago with his date, who was a reasonably plump tomato with red hair and fishnets. After a count of thirty-three the guy pushed open the door and returned to his table.
Didn’t wash his hands
, thought Flan.

Three hundred
.

Murrda
. Flan knew the difference between a gang-banger and a career criminal like himself was the ability to stay flexible, think on your feet. That was what separated Zorro’s men from the other gangs whose members wound up dead or in jail. New plan—take the cop down in the bathroom. Lock the door and scare him a little, then drag the
maricon
to Zorro’s table or throw him out on the street.

The bathroom was on the left, halfway down a long hallway leading to the reservations desk and the restaurant. The desk was almost twenty feet away, so Flan figured that even if he made a little noise in the bathroom bouncing the cop off the walls, no one would notice. Inside the restaurant, most of the tables were full and it was noisy, the sound spilling down the hallway and out into the street where Flan stood. As he pushed open the door to the men’s room, he flexed his fingers in anticipation, his knuckles cracking like castanets.

The barrel of the gun was behind his right ear before the door had swung closed. Flan’s eyes went wide, but he didn’t move. He recognized the cool, liquid feeling of the metal and had no illusions that the round shape against his skin might be a finger or ballpoint pen. As Flan tried to estimate the size of the barrel, a voice directly behind him spoke just above a whisper, as if the man that held the gun wasn’t really there.

“A lot of cops favor the Glock,” said Sam, pressing even closer to Flan, who stood frozen, hands out from his sides. “But the Glock has no external safety, so misfires are very common. When the department first started issuing them, you wouldn’t believe the number of leg shootings we had, cops shooting themselves as they pulled their guns out of their holsters. In the heat of the moment, it’s no wonder a man’s finger could slip.”

Flan heard the distinctive sound of a hammer being cocked into place and tried but failed to control an involuntary shiver. The voice continued.

“Me, I like the Beretta. It has a safety that’s easy to flick off with your thumb, and it has a hammer, which you just heard, that makes the first pull on the trigger really, really
easy
.”

Flan took a deep breath and nodded his understanding. He heard a sniffing sound behind him.

“You smell nice,” said Sam. “Almost sweet. Not at all what I expected.” Flan was about to explain his nickname when Sam prodded him with the gun. “Handicap stall,
now
.”

Flan shuffled forward, catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror over the sinks. It was a fleeting and only partial view, because turning his head wasn’t really an option, but the expression on the cop’s face gave Flan the distinct impression he wasn’t bluffing. He began to sweat under his jacket, wondering if maybe this guy wasn’t a cop after all.

Within the stall, one loop of the handcuffs was already locked around the pipe at the back of the toilet, the other dangling freely. Flan felt a sharp push of the gun against his ear and a simultaneous shove at the small of his back, and he staggered forward. When he reached the toilet, he turned his bulk around slowly, as nonthreatening as a three-hundred pound wall of flesh can be, and sank slowly onto his double-wide backside. Sam gestured with the gun and Flan fitted the loose cuff around his wrist—barely—and clicked it into place. Sitting there, chained to a toilet, he looked enormous, amorphous and almost sad.

Sam managed not to shed a single tear as he holstered the gun and headed toward the door. When he passed the sinks, he didn’t bother looking in the mirror.

Sam had hit the jackpot. From the layout of the block, Sam was pretty sure this place didn’t have a rear entrance. No other visible muscle suggested Zorro might actually be on a date.

An attractive young woman manned the reservations desk, her perfect chin lit from beneath by the halogen glow of a sinuous desk lamp. The effect made her eyes seem dark and huge, shadows stretching across her forehead, giving Sam the impression she was a beautiful alien sent to Earth for the sole purpose of welcoming him to this restaurant.

Sam gave her his most reassuring smile as he flipped his wallet open and closed and said, “Police.” Her mouth opened and closed but no sound came out because Sam had already moved past her.

The restaurant was split into two parts. On the right was a traditional room filled with tables seating two or four, a long room running to a bar in the back. But to the left was an open courtyard where tables were arranged in rows, all the seats facing the exterior wall of the adjacent building, a five-story slab of gray cement. Normally not much of a view, but the restaurant had put it to good use and projected movies onto the surface of the wall, turning the courtyard into a cross between an intimate restaurant and a drive-in movie.

Sam had read about this place. To enhance the atmosphere, justify the prices, and avoid the issue of ambient noise, the restaurant showed foreign art films without the sound. Tonight a Japanese film about food loomed over the dinner guests. Marie had been a sucker for art films, and Sam recognized it from her collection. As he watched, the image on the wall cut to a scene of Japanese women dressed as pearl divers standing in the surf, the waves moving in an almost sensuous rhythm. As Sam scanned the courtyard, reflected light from the film flickered across the faces of the patrons, the strobe effect keeping time with the rocking of the waves.

A woman twenty feet away laughing at something her date had said. A man staring into the hypnotic light of his cell phone as he sent a text message, as if the phone was a crystal ball. A young woman in a too-tight dress leaning toward a man who had his left arm draped heavily over her shoulder, the man turning into the light to reveal teeth jagged and bent, reptilian fangs darting outward in all directions.

Bingo.

Sam moved quickly between tables and came up behind Zorro on the side opposite his date. With his left hand, Sam clamped down on Zorro’s neck while his right pulled Buster’s butterfly knife and swung the blade open with a sound like change falling. Zorro’s head swung reflexively to the right as Sam brought the blade up and held the point directly below Zorro’s right eye.

Zorro’s mouth popped open with a wet smacking sound as his teeth disengaged from his lips, but no sound came out. He sat frozen as his eyes darted right and left, either searching for Flan or wondering when the other diners were going to turn away from the movie.

“
Hola
Zorro,” said Sam, his voice like gravel. “Remember me?” Sam leaned across Zorro’s shoulder just long enough for him to catch a glimpse of his assailant. Zorro grunted in recognition as he regained enough composure to close his mouth.

Sam glanced at Zorro’s date to confirm his sudden appearance had the desired effect. She looked petrified, her right hand over her mouth in an almost theatrical gesture. He figured it was only a matter of time before her state of shock evaporated and she remembered she wasn’t mute.

Sam tilted the point of the blade backward into the soft flesh below Zorro’s eye. Zorro flinched, but Sam held his neck in an iron grip and forced his head forward. “Is this how you do it, Zorro? Do you scoop them out after they’re already dead, or do it while they’re still alive?” Sam twisted his wrist counterclockwise and heard Zorro gasp as the knife pricked his cheek. A thin trickle of blood ran over the back of Sam’s hand.

On the screen, a young Japanese woman held an oyster shell in her hand and brought it to her mouth, the camera hovering only inches from her perfect skin. As she wrapped her mouth around the shell, the ragged edge caught on her lip and the camera zoomed even closer as blood pooled into the oyster. The image was jarring, erotic, and disturbing.

Zorro’s date found her voice buried just below the surface of her fear and started to scream. Chairs screeched across the stone floor as people turned toward the girl, whose scream ascended rapidly into a wail. Sam didn’t bother looking up but held the knife fast as he leaned close enough to whisper into Zorro’s ear.

“Tag,” he said. “You’re it.”

Sam flipped the knife closed and stood, turning his back on the crowd and the movie. Behind him on the wall, the girl with the bloody lip had rejoined her friends in the surf, the sea rolling back and forth as if waving goodbye.

The lovely alien from the reservations desk ran into the restaurant as Sam pocketed the knife and walked toward her with no sign of stopping. She looked at him accusingly.

“I thought you were the police.”

“I was,” said Sam. “But not anymore.”