Requiem for the Assassin (32 page)

“Yes, well, it’ll be hard to do that. His car blew up this morning, with him in it.”

El Rey
digested the news. “Who else is in the command chain?”

“Bernardo.”

“Only Bernardo? Nobody else?”

“Are you hard of hearing today?”

“Then he’s your man. I’d do round-the-clock surveillance and scrutinize every record you can find. Especially bank records. Unless you want me to use my powers of persuasion to interrogate him.”

Rodriguez’s tone was flat. “Thanks for the tips on fieldcraft. And no, that won’t be necessary. I’m not going to okay you doing anything to my staff.”

“Very noble, but he’s the only one left, which means he’s orchestrated the deaths of at least eight people, counting myself. If you’re not going to put the screws to him, it’s my ass on the line, so I will.”

Rodriguez let out an exasperated sigh. “We’re not stupid, you know. I’ve had them both under surveillance since our discussion.”

“And?”

“And so far, nothing.” Rodriguez paused. “It occurs to me that if you wanted to eliminate your handlers so you could point to them as the culprits, something like a car bomb would be the way to go.”

“You can’t think I had anything to do with Tovar.”

“I don’t know what to think. But I do know that you haven’t proved anything, and now one of the possibly guilty players is a smudge. Convenient for you, isn’t it?”

“Convenient in the sense that I don’t get my antidote because you’re blackmailing me? Or convenient in some other way that escapes me?”

“You mentioned learning the motivation for the killings?”

“That’s right. It involves a lawsuit.”
El Rey
told him about the farmer’s case. “As to Vega, she’s targeted because she’s nosy and was digging into the admiral and Perry. Cruz is a little more complicated, but I think he witnessed a meeting he wasn’t supposed to.”

“Wait – so you’re saying that whoever is doing this not only has co-opted CISEN senior staff but is ordering hits because someone might have seen something?”

El Rey
described the carjacking with the archbishop. Rodriguez said nothing and then cleared his throat.

“When did you discover this?”

“It’s not important. What’s important is that I did.”

When
El Rey
hung up, Rodriguez didn’t sound swayed, but it was obvious that his mental gears were meshing. Only not enough to authorize the injection. That would require something more than supposition and theory, which Rodriguez had more than made clear.

El Rey
returned to the ground floor just as Cruz was hanging up his burner cell phone. He glanced up at the stairs, an excited look on his hangdog face.

“Lieutenant Briones got a match on the sketch. It’s a real estate developer named Jacinto Ynez. Out of Guadalajara. There were eight other possibles, but nobody else that fit the profile.”

“How is he involved? Any idea?”
El Rey
asked.

Carla moved to the stairs. “I’ll be right back. I want to get my computer. Two screens are better than one.”

El Rey
approached his laptop and powered it back to life. “We’ll see what Carla can come up with. Meanwhile, I have my own resources.”

Carla returned a minute later and sat near the assassin. The two of them were silent as they scoured the internet for information on the developer, and at the end of an hour Carla stood and stretched. “I need to make some calls.”

Cruz glanced at her. “About?”

“I want to check a theory of mine. To do that, I need to talk to a friend of my father.”

“Care to share?”

She smiled. “He’s a career naval officer. Not a huge fan of our admiral, but it’s a big navy. He’s stationed in Veracruz, but he might be able to verify what I think might be going on.”

El Rey
eyed her. “Which is?”

“I don’t want to distract you. Continue doing whatever you’re doing, and I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

Both men watched her move to the stairs and take them two at a time. Cruz exchanged a glance with the assassin. “Quite a woman, isn’t she?”

El Rey
returned to the screen. “I hadn’t noticed.”

Chapter 53

Dinner that evening was a celebratory affair. The identification of Ynez had boosted everyone’s sense of purpose. Cruz had gone to a nearby
taqueria
and bought a kilo of barbequed steak accompanied by grilled onions and charro beans, and after changing his dressings,
El Rey
joined Carla and Cruz at the table.

“How’s the healing going?” Carla asked as she nibbled on an onion.

“I’ve been through worse.”

“Any sign of infection?” Cruz asked.

“No. I’ll live,”
El Rey
said.

Carla’s phone rang, and she leapt to get it. She had a hushed discussion in the kitchen and frowned when she hung up.

“What?” Cruz asked.

She sauntered back to the table and sat down slowly, her brow furrowed. She gazed at the food absently and flipped her computer open, lost in her inner world. Cruz glanced at
El Rey.
The assassin shrugged and kept eating. Carla would tell them when she was ready. Fifteen minutes later the spell broke, and she was all smiles again.
El Rey
looked at her with a quizzical expression.

“Well?”

“That was my friend from the navy. A big project was recently approved to put a naval base on the Pacific coast of Baja, in between Magdalena Bay and Cabo San Lucas, at a place called Punta Conejo. It’ll transform the area – they’re going to create a harbor, bring in power and water, paved roads, infrastructure… And get this. Admiral Torreon was absolutely against the project. In fact, he was the main opponent, and since it’s on the Pacific coast, it needed his blessing, which he continually refused to give because he didn’t agree that there would be any benefit to Mexico. The base would really be a concession to the United States, to help with their war on drugs – to allow Mexican naval ships and helicopters to work the shipping lanes up the coast.”

“Why would he be against that?”

“He didn’t see why Mexico should have to spend billions to fight the U.S.’s battles. His view was nationalistic – that if the Americans can’t keep their population from being the largest consumers of drugs in the world, they can foot the bill to try to stop them, not us.” She paused. “He viewed it as a demand issue, not a supply issue.”

El Rey
nodded. “And now that he’s out of the way…”

“Exactly. It’s been fast-tracked.”

“That will completely change the value of the surrounding land, I’d imagine,”
El Rey
said. “The difference between arid land without power or water and a new harbor with all the amenities is incalculable.”

Cruz frowned. “Sounds like Ynez got a heads-up.”

“It happens.” She gave the assassin a sidelong glance. “Why do you look so pleased with yourself?”

El Rey
eyed her. “Is it that obvious? I went into the government’s central database and researched the parcel that the
ejido
owns to see if there was anything that might shed more light on the farmer’s lawsuit. Turns out it’s in escrow.” He waited a beat for the information to sink in. “To a company that’s a subsidiary of Ynez’s development corporation.”

Carla’s eyes widened. “If there’s a dispute over the title, it could jeopardize his entire project, especially if the claim was legitimate. Banks don’t like to fund things that could turn out to be vapor. But with the farmer dead, that problem goes away…”

Cruz began pacing, a habit that was by now familiar to them all. “And the actor’s charity?”

“What do you want to bet that the stretch of shoreline the parcel fronts onto is one of the beaches the charity committed to protecting? I’ll go look up the details, but I remember it was concerned about the Pacific coast.” Carla smiled at Cruz. “Did you know that a sea turtle will return to the beach where it was born, thousands of miles, no matter where in the ocean it is, when it’s time to lay eggs? Alaska, Hawaii, Japan, doesn’t matter. The turtle will find its way back, every time, to within yards of where it hatched. If it’s a hatchery, development of that beach with hotels and condos and timeshares would destroy the habitat. Perry, for all his faults, was committed to lobbying to make it off-limits to ever develop in those areas.”

El Rey
turned to Carla, a contemplative expression in his eyes. “It would make sense – that’s why he had to go. With nobody really high profile and passionate about the issue, it dies with him.”

They fell silent, the food largely forgotten. Cruz shook his head. “I still don’t understand the archbishop. That makes no sense.”

El Rey
motioned at his computer with his water bottle. “Of course it does. He was big on ensuring that developers didn’t take advantage of the little guy. What do you think his reaction would have been to the
ejido
selling its land at giveaway prices to a developer who then saw a windfall because he had access to inside information? The archbishop was popular and influential enough to create real problems.”

“He sure was,” Carla agreed. “And you’ll note that his replacement shares exactly none of those ideals. He couldn’t dismantle his predecessor’s work fast enough and pimp his own pet causes. Want to bet there’s a bonus in it for him somewhere down the road from Ynez?”

“The naval base brings it all into focus,” Cruz said in a low tone and then his demeanor brightened. “Carla, you’re a genius. Without that piece, it might have taken us months to put this together on our own. Months we don’t have. We’d have had to wait until the base became public knowledge to make the connection.” He looked away. “Assuming we were still alive.”

El Rey
took a swig from his water bottle. “Slim chance of that without my injection,” he said.

“Which you’ll get now, won’t you?” Carla asked.

The assassin shook his head. “This isn’t proof. It’s all circumstantial. Compelling, sure. But it’s not evidence. If I’m going to get CISEN to honor its commitment, I need more. I know Rodriguez. He’ll stall to buy himself time to check everything, and each day I go without my shot I lose the ground I gained over the last two injections.”

“But he can’t deny you with all this…” Carla protested.

“Sure he can. He thinks I may have killed one of his men. I read the report he’s working from – it looked pretty ugly. I can understand his thinking. He doesn’t know what to believe, and he’s a company man, so he’ll waffle. Which is dangerous for me. But he’s got me over a barrel. What choice do I have but to wait?”

“I can break the story,” Carla said.

“That CISEN mistakenly killed a bunch of prominent people? ‘Oops, don’t mind us, our bad?’ I told you – it’ll never make it on the air,”
El Rey
said.

“I can break the part about the developer.”

Cruz grunted. “Getting a great deal on a land parcel? Is that really news?” Cruz asked in a bitter tone. “Without the killings, it’s not really much of a story. Okay, maybe something stinks about how he found out about the base, but that’s typical politics, and nobody’s going to lift a finger to stop it. If you can’t talk about the executions, you’ve got nothing. And your editor will tell you as much. Meanwhile, you’ll never be safe, because a guy who’s willing to kill this many people isn’t going to hesitate to have you taken out. Maybe not tomorrow. But it’ll happen.”

El Rey
stood. “Unless.”

“Unless what?” Carla asked.

“What are you going to do?” Cruz asked, knowing the assassin well enough by now.

El Rey
hesitated, and when he spoke, they had to strain to hear his words. “Where did you say he’s from? Guadalajara? It’s been forever since I was there. Beautiful town.”

Chapter 54

Guadalajara, Mexico

The horses neighed and stamped their hooves in the stable, waking Jacinto Ynez, who spent his nights at his estate with his windows open and the ceiling fan spinning. He looked over at his wife, who was snoring, and exhaled heavily before sliding his legs over the side of the four-poster bed and slipping on the worn huarache sandals he used for slippers.

Outside, a moderate breeze rustled the trees. The moon streaming through their branches cast a ghostly luminescence over the compound. He moved to the window and squinted in the dark, seeing nothing suspicious. In the distance by the corner of the stable, he saw one of his security men leaning against the wall, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette, his pump shotgun beside him.

Ynez licked his lips and shuffled to the bathroom. Now that his plans were coming to fruition he’d only managed a few hours of rest each night, too much adrenaline in his veins from the rollercoaster of emotions for sustained slumber. Ynez was a wealthy man, but the downturn in the U.S. coupled with a tightening of his credit lines had driven him into uncomfortable circumstances, where he was overleveraged on his other projects, and he’d been forced to turn to less savory sources of funding to buy the
ejido
parcel. As he knew all too well, when you slept with dogs, you woke up with fleas, and the cartel that was his lender of last resort was now in bed with him on the project, like it or not. Twenty-five million of its money was laundered in his deal, but with a pressure to perform like none he’d ever experienced, the clock ticking on the interest he’d agreed to pay even as the project stalled because of the damned admiral.

He eased the heavy cedar bedroom door open and padded to the kitchen, where a pitcher of jamaica awaited his nocturnal thirst. He’d just finished pouring a glass to the brim when he heard a scrape from his office – an area that was off-limits to everyone but his inner circle. Ynez cocked his head and listened, and heard it again. Unmistakable, coming from the hall that led to his study.

Taking care to be quiet, Ynez returned to the bedroom and retrieved a .357 magnum revolver from his nightstand drawer. He eased back through the door and down the hall, his drink forgotten, and cocked the hammer on the loaded gun as he neared his office.