Requiem for the Assassin (18 page)

Cruz tried to tell whether the younger man was kidding or not, but gave up. The assassin was unreadable, and there were some things Cruz would never know. He left the room and made his way back down the stairs, where the host was nowhere in evidence. As Cruz stepped out onto the sidewalk, a chill ran up his spine, and he had to choke down a spurt of stomach acid that accompanied his thought.

Maybe the assassin was playing him in some way, and getting him to fake his death was part of a larger design.

The idea roiled in his guts like a twisted knife, and his entire body broke out into a sweat. He looked around and saw the approaching roof light of a vacant taxi. With a final glance at his watch, he hailed the car, unwilling to try to find his way to the market from where he was and unsure that he was thinking clearly enough to do so if he wanted to.

An hour later he was back at the condo, lost in thought as he watched Dinah put away the groceries. She eyed him as she did so and then cracked a Modelo beer, poured it into a mug along with some tomato juice, half a lime and some Worcestershire sauce, and then brought it to him.

“All right,
caballero
. You’ve done enough penance. Drink that and go take a
siesta
. You’ll feel better in no time.”

He sniffed at the drink, caution playing across his face, and drained the glass without pausing. When he set it back down on the table, he took a deep breath, his eyes watering, and offered a pained smile.

“
Gracias
.”

“Go on. Get some sleep. The world will still be here when you get up.”

She was right. He returned to the bedroom and shed his clothes, pausing to set the burner phone on the nightstand next to the bed, alongside his Glock. He was just drifting off to sleep when the little phone trilled.

“Hello?”

El Rey
’s voice was barely a whisper. “I have an idea.”

Chapter 28

A tangerine moon drifted from behind high clouds as a black Cadillac Escalade pulled up to the valet parking area of the Four Seasons hotel in Mexico City. The driver waited as a young woman teetering on impossibly high heels, wearing a white one-piece miniskirt that melded to her body like a second skin, hugged another similarly clad young woman near the palatial entrance, their voices loud, martini glasses in their hands. Four suited men with short haircuts and chiseled features waited nearby; their square shoulders and military bearings identified them as bodyguards.

The shorter of the two ferreted in her purse, withdrew a cigarette case, and offered her companion a smoke. She lit both with a Dunhill lighter and blew a cloud at the glimmering stars, the overcast clearing now that the front had blown through the valley. She continued telling her story in a loud bray and glared at her purse when her iPhone warbled. Emptying her glass with a single swig, she retrieved the phone with a shrugged apology to her friend and, after answering, erupted in laughter, her momentary irritation at the interruption forgotten.

The taller woman busied herself with her own phone, checking her Facebook page for responses to the photos she’d taken that evening and posted from the hotel nightclub where her cousin was having her eighteenth birthday celebration. Both women stood scant inches apart, discussing the party they’d left only moments before with their online friends, now on their way to an exclusive disco in the penthouse of one of Mexico City’s high-rises.

The first woman hung up with a final titter and returned her attention to her companion, who held up a finger and continued inputting her message before swaying toward the guards and handing the nearest one her empty glass.

“You want to ride with me or take two cars?” the first woman asked.

Her friend rolled her eyes. “You know how my parents would freak if I didn’t take the dynamic duo over there with me, Isabel. Can we all fit in your car?”

Isabel eyed the Escalade, trying to calculate, and shook her head. “Not comfortably. When will yours be here?”

“Maybe three more minutes. I’ll tell you what, I’ll just hook up with you at the club, okay? Wait for me at the bar.”

“What a pain. All right, then. See you in a few.”

Isabel approached the gleaming SUV and waited while two of the bodyguards moved to the vehicle. The closest one held the rear door open for her as the other climbed into the passenger seat. She appeared to take no notice of them and was already reading something on her phone screen, back in her cyber-world as she slid her long legs into the vehicle.

The second bodyguard closed the door for her and then trotted around the rear of the SUV and got in beside her. The driver slipped the attendant a hundred-peso note and put the transmission in gear. The modified exhaust burbled as he inched to the end of the drive and signaled to pull into traffic. A sedan slowed and gave him an opening, and he gunned the gas, rear tires chirping as the big truck accelerated into the stream of cars.

Fifty yards behind, a van pulled into traffic, leaving six car lengths between it and the SUV. Late night traffic was sparse on a Sunday night, and the van varied its speed so as not to arouse suspicion. A second vehicle, a dark blue Chevrolet four-door with tinted windows, edged ahead of the Cadillac and settled in one car length ahead of it.

The seven blocks to the club went by in a blur as Isabel tweeted her impressions of the party to her coterie of followers. The Chevrolet made a right on the smaller street that fronted the destination building, and the SUV followed suit, its custom suspension smoothing the rough pavement.

Isabel’s driver glanced in the rearview mirror at the van’s headlights as it also made the turn, but thought nothing of it as he rolled to a stop at the curb. The two bodyguards got out, and one moved to the door of the high-rise where a uniformed doorman stood. Far above the street, neon red and blue lights flickered in the penthouse windows, where an elite crowd was dancing into the wee hours as the rest of the city slept.

None of this registered on Isabel as she dropped her phone into her gold clutch purse and emerged from the rear of the Escalade. She tossed her mane of thick hair, her two-hundred-dollar highlights catching the reflection of the van’s headlights, and then the night exploded with gunfire as three masked shooters piled out of the Chevrolet and opened fire on the bodyguards.

Isabel froze as rounds thumped into the man who had only a second before been holding her door open. She gasped as he went down, and the driver’s scream sounded like it was coming from a mile away.

“Jump in. Hurry,” he yelled and then the top of his head blew against the windshield in a spray of blood and brains as a row of armor-piercing rounds punched through the bullet-resistant rear window.

Isabel screamed and tried to make it to the building, but her second bodyguard took two slugs to the chest and collapsed in the doorway. The doorman ducked into the shelter of the lobby, leaving her gasping near the dead guard as two masked assailants sprinted toward her from the van, brandishing pistols.

“Come on,” the brawnier of the pair growled as he grabbed her arm. She resisted, and he slammed the butt of his pistol into her head, dazing her. The other man caught her other arm as her legs buckled, and together they dragged her to the van.

Less than thirty seconds had passed from the first gunshot to when the two vehicles roared off, leaving three dead men and one three-hundred-dollar pump perched like a trophy on the sidewalk, its tiny buckles twinkling in the faint moonlight.

Chapter 29

Tres Marías, Mexico

Cruz coasted to a stop at the end of the gravel drive and got out of the unmarked Dodge Charger he’d signed out of the
Federales
pool, wondering what the hell he was doing. He’d picked a fight with Dinah as
El Rey
had suggested, and had told her that he intended to take a day or two away from everything to clear his head at the rustic cabin he owned on the road to Cuernavaca in the hills just outside of the small town of Tres Marías. The hurt and lack of comprehension in her eyes had been like a dagger to his heart, but he hadn’t faltered, even though his self-loathing had blossomed with every step toward the condo door.

El Rey
had been adamant that he couldn’t even hint at what was to come, and that any foreshadowing would be a death warrant if she were questioned. It had been one of the hardest things he’d ever done, and he’d slipped at the last minute, hugging her and sobbing as he held her in his arms, which he hoped would be viewed, in retrospect, as evidence of his precarious mental state – distracted and unbalanced.

He retrieved a flashlight from the glove compartment and moved around the exterior of the house to the thousand-liter propane tank, which he’d filled the last time he’d been there with Dinah seven weeks earlier. It would play a critical role in the night’s ugly work, and he felt a tug of nostalgia as he eyed the humble little cabin, which soon enough would be vaporized by the explosion when the propane ignited.

The interior of the dwelling was as simple as the exterior – one large room at ground level and a loft above up a rickety set of wooden stairs with a bed that featured in many happy memories. The cabin, like most in the area, had been built from local timber and brick, and was perfect for long weekend getaways of stargazing and hiking.

Cruz flipped a light switch, and the lamp over the dining room table illuminated. He set the bottle of tequila down and removed his jacket and then his Glock. The assassin had been clear – everything would have to point to a man drunk out of his mind, who had passed out with the gas stove on, perhaps intending to commit suicide, perhaps just incoherent. Whatever the explanation, what happened next would be self-evident. The flame had gone out on the stove, either intentionally or from a gust of wind, and then a spark ignited the gas that had flooded the cabin. Boom. No more Cruz.

If bits of his weapon survived, so much the better. Likewise if the tequila bottle residue was found, although Cruz had bought two and left one in the car, still a quarter full, just in case. It told a story of despair and alcohol abuse – not an unfamiliar one among the
Federales
, just as with most police forces, where officers turned to the bottle to relieve the stress that accumulated over the years, and occasionally one ate his service pistol when the voices of the ghosts from his past made another day in the present unbearable.

It wasn’t a perfect plan, but it was the best they had. The combination of the explosion and the resultant fire would obliterate everything in the cabin, and the likely cursory forensics investigation by the small-town police department would be as superficial as they could hope for, everyone eager to put the unpleasantness behind them, the evidence framing a sad end to a dignified career.

The pain it would cause Dinah was the one element he couldn’t live with, but the assassin had been adamant. So his wife, the love of his life, would have to believe him dead, hopefully for only a short while as they worked to uncover what was behind the killings.

Cruz went into the bare-bones kitchen and got a shot glass. He returned to the dining room table, poured it to the rim, and stared at it for a good five minutes before tossing it back with a single swallow, a toast for the dying. He closed his eyes, remembering Dinah’s face when she’d looked at him with surprise and fright as he’d fought with her over nothing, and took a deep breath, the tequila fumes making him want to retch.

The bottle shattered against the wall. The violent gesture relieved some of the tension that had accumulated like a steel band tightening around his chest, and he felt better for it. The alcohol no longer a temptation, he sat and waited with his eye on his watch for the assassin to arrive, his onetime mortal enemy the one to ease him across the threshold.

A vision drifted through his consciousness, one that he’d thought banished for good, now vivid as the morning sun in the haze of his memory. His original wife, Rosa, smiling as she pressed his hand against her belly to feel their unborn daughter kick. The corners of his mouth turned up at the image, but then it disintegrated into the stuff of his waking nightmares: Rosa’s and Cassandra’s heads in boxes, slaughtered by psychopaths, delivered to his office for effect.

The sound of a motor outside shook him out of his grim reverie, and he looked up as headlights brightened the windows. The assassin had arrived.
El Rey
, an explosives expert, would rig the cabin however he deemed appropriate while Cruz stood by. Then, in the dead of night, a fireball would soar into the heavens, and
Capitan
Romero Cruz of the
Federales
would cease to exist.

When
El Rey
opened the front door, he was all business, moving like a wraith on soundless feet. If he explained what he was doing, Cruz didn’t register it. Cruz’s last memory of the long night was the sight of the cabin fading in the rearview mirror of the assassin’s car just before
El Rey
called the cell phone he’d left on the dining table, rigged to create the spark that would obliterate any trace of the cabin and the man trapped inside.

Chapter 30

Mexico City, Mexico

Briones groped for the telephone in the darkened bedroom, fumbling before answering it. “Hello?”

“Lieutenant Briones. This is Hiliberto at headquarters. Sorry to call you in the middle of the night.”

Briones switched on the bedside lamp and looked at the clock: 4:18. If Hiliberto, the night supervisor at headquarters, was calling at that hour, it was important.

“No problem. What’s the emergency?”

“You wanted me to alert you if there was another high-profile kidnapping.”

Briones sat up, instantly fully awake. “And?”

“Isabel Cifuentes was abducted earlier this evening, downtown. Her two bodyguards and the driver were gunned down. All dead.”