Requiem for the Assassin (9 page)

Chapter 13

Tijuana, Mexico

Archbishop Rene Bolivar thanked his guests – a group of society wives who were instrumental in the Church’s charity drive to raise money for orphans – for coming, and shook hands with each as they left the rectory hall, where he’d hosted a dinner in appreciation of their tireless efforts. When the last woman had departed, he waved to Sister Catalina and wished her a good night. The cleaning staff was already at work clearing the tables and bussing dishes. He snagged a half-full glass of cabernet, a donation from one of the local wineries in the nearby Guadalupe Valley, and trudged wearily to his quarters on the second floor – an expansive suite of rooms by any measure, certainly compared to his prior Spartan digs when he was but a humble priest.

Bolivar was a hard worker, a hands-on administrator who was convinced he could make a difference in the community, changing attitudes about important issues like corruption, domestic violence, and abuse of property rights, all of which were greeted with apathy at present. Mexico’s history was one of constant corruption at every level of government, from the local police to the presidency, and his flock no more expected honesty from its public servants than it expected levitation. Likewise, spousal and child abuse were considered off-limits for discussion, dirty secrets best left unexplored, which ensured that they thrived through fear, ignorance, and ambivalence – or at best, quiet condemnation.

Property rights were his pet issue, due to the amount of land in Baja that had been sold to moneyed interests under questionable circumstances. His latest crusade was against unlawful restriction of beach access, which was guaranteed by law for the population – but which was routinely violated by resorts that paid off the local officials to turn a blind eye. And huge tracts of land had been stolen from their rightful owners by corrupt regimes that ignored legitimate deeds, preferring to write new ones for their cronies while the rightful owners spent decades in a court system that was as easily purchased as a dancing girl’s charms.

He’d managed to make progress on some things and was happy to see an increase in prosecutions against domestic violence, usually inflicted by alcoholic boyfriends or husbands while their mates cowered, afraid to tell anyone. There was also a slow increase in public outcry against corruption, although he had a long way to go on that one. In southern Baja’s most prosperous metropolitan area, Cabo San Lucas, the papers had leaked that over thirty million dollars had gone missing under the new mayor’s stewardship – not surprising given that his brother was in prison awaiting trial for embezzlement from his own term as the previous mayor.

Mexicans didn’t share the naïve beliefs of their northern neighbors and were under no illusions that prosperous men ran for office in order to become tireless public servants. The only reason any politician ran for anything was so he could get elected and steal everything that wasn’t bolted down, handing out sweetheart contracts for bridges to nowhere and misappropriating or otherwise absconding with the tax receipts while avoiding anything resembling actual work. That was how it had always been, and despite elevated rhetoric about change and a new era, nobody believed it would ever be any different in a society where votes were purchased for a few pesos and even the watchdogs were as corrupt as an Ecuadorian customs inspector.

Bolivar pushed his door open and took a long sip of the magnificent cabernet, grateful that another demanding day had drawn to a close. Unlike his predecessor, who had spent most of his time avoiding his responsibilities, Bolivar believed that it was his duty to work long and hard, and that if he didn’t want to, he shouldn’t have the job of being a an opinion leader. But in spite of his commitment and religious enthusiasm, some days the size of the task seemed overwhelming. This was one of those days.

Bolivar removed his clothes, taking care to fold them carefully and place them over the back of a chair, and treated himself to a long, hot shower – his first real opportunity to relax since launching into action early that morning. He took his time and was toweling off when he heard a rustle from his office.

“Hello?” he said, his head cocked as he listened.

Nothing.

“Hello…” he called again as he tied the towel around his waist. He tried to remember whether he’d opened his office window that morning, but couldn’t. Perhaps he had, or his housekeeper had, and the wind from the ocean was rustling his papers.

He walked into the office, but nothing was out of place, and the window was closed. He peered at the vines outside, making a mental note to have the gardener cut them back, and returned to his bedroom and the glass of wine. He drained it in three swallows, the dregs tasting bitter to him, and returned to the bathroom to brush his teeth. By the time he was done, his eyes were so heavy he was barely able to stand, and he almost didn’t make it to the bed before he passed out.

El Rey
stepped from behind the armoire, wearing a priest’s cassock, his bag slung over his shoulder. The 30 mg of zolpidem he’d put into the priest’s wine was enough to knock out a pony, rendering the archbishop unconscious for the final moments of his life.

The assassin glanced around the room and opened his bag. He retrieved three DVD cases and slipped them under the desk blotter near the priest’s computer, and slid one of the disks into the CD player so it would be found in the morning. Pornography was widely available, but deviant porn of this type was rarely seen, the bestiality, violence, and other offensive content so disturbing that even if it had been legal, it would have been frowned upon by most.

The dossier CISEN had provided indicated that the bishop was a pervert of the most extreme sort, his tastes running far beyond what might be considered normal in even the most liberal interpretations.
El Rey
had no doubt that when the good father was found and the contents of the DVDs reviewed, the church would ensure the case was closed before it even opened.

He removed a length of black silk rope from his satchel and secured it to the lamp fixture over the desk area, pausing to test it with his weight. Satisfied, he moved to the priest and lifted him. The cleric’s thin form was relatively light, and in five minutes he’d finished setting the scene, a package with six Ambien still unconsumed in the bathroom and one of the CDs looping on the computer. He glanced at the dead priest without expression and then slipped out the way he’d come, leaving the bishop to be found in the morning, naked and suspended from the ceiling, the victim of a deadly drug-and-alcohol-fueled bout of autoerotic asphyxiation gone wrong in pursuit of the ultimate climax.

Chapter 14

Tepuche, Sinaloa, Mexico

Serpentine waves of gentle breezes from the nearby mountains washed across the tall grass, the field undulating like the surface of a stormy sea. Indalecio Arellano eyed the approaching clouds with a wary eye.

The pigs had gotten loose again, and he was out looking for them, hoping to find them before they got really lost or a less-than-charitable neighbor got his hands on one and decided to have bacon for breakfast. As industrious as any animal when it came to escape, his freedom-loving swine were highly intelligent and possessed of a fierce independent streak. And now he was paying for their newly acquired liberty with sore feet from hours of marching through the grass.

The sound of motors reached his ears, and he squinted against the high afternoon sun. Two pickup trucks were racing up the dirt road that led to his property, trailing a dust cloud that lingered like beige smoke. Indalecio lived in a rural area of Sinaloa, far from the bustle of Culiacán, the capital city, and rarely had visitors on his large farm, where he grew lush harvests of tomatoes and organic vegetables as his forefathers had for centuries.

He watched the trucks slow at the gate and roll across the cattle guard. Whoever it was seemed in a hurry, which was unusual – nobody was in a rush in Sinaloa, least of all on a farm, where each day blended into the next and the passage of time was measured in seasons rather than hours. He removed his hat and wiped his brow with a soiled red bandana, resolved to abandoning the pig hunt for the time being as he turned and retraced his steps to the ranch house in the distance, where he lived alone, save for his hand, Ruiz, who’d been with him for six years – ever since his wife had died from a fever that had blazed out of control in spite of the best efforts of the local physicians.

Indalecio was sixty-four but looked a decade younger, mostly due to a rigorous regimen of exercise tending to his farm and a diet that was primarily vegetables he grew himself. The truth was that he hadn’t had the heart to butcher any of his pigs for as long as he could remember, having named each one and gotten familiar with their personalities, which were as distinct as any human’s, and which he generally preferred to his fellow man’s company. He’d read somewhere that a pig had the intellect of a four-year-old human child, and ever since that time he’d been unable to bring himself to eat them, incurring regular ribbing from Ruiz, who didn’t share his idealistic philosophical idiosyncrasies. Still, Indalecio had made it clear to his hand that the pigs were off-limits, and he doted on them like they were his children, which in many ways they were.

“Frigging pigs will be the death of me yet. Fine. Go run free and see what it gets you. You’ll be back before nightfall, begging for slop. Let that be a lesson to you,” he muttered under his breath as he trudged toward his ranch.

Ranch. A grandiose term for his sixty acres of land for which he fought a constant battle against the encroachment of the surrounding wilds. Only a third of it was really suited to farming, and the rest was more of a nuisance than an asset most of the year. Still, it was his, and he viewed himself more as custodian than owner, still thinking of it as his father’s land, even after these many years had passed since the elder Arellano had gone to his reward.

A mockingbird flitted from one of the perimeter trees, and Indalecio watched its flight, wondering what had startled it from its perch. Then he saw – six men carrying assault rifles were clubbing Ruiz with their weapon butts as he tried to regain his footing. Blood streamed down his face onto his soiled white shirt, and now Indalecio could hear the blows, like truncheons, the wet smacks of wood on flesh, skin splitting with each smack.

Indalecio stood, horrified, frozen in his tracks. He was unarmed, and the only ones with assault rifles in Sinaloa were the cartels and the police – and these weren’t police. What the cartel wanted with a simple farmer escaped him, but the rifles were real enough.

One of the men screamed at Ruiz so loudly that Indalecio could hear him even at that distance.

“Where is he? Come on, old man. You don’t want to die to protect him.”

Indalecio couldn’t hear Ruiz’s response, but he didn’t want to learn the limits of the man’s loyalty – if Indalecio had been in his place, he would have told the assailants whatever they wanted to know already, and it was only human nature that Ruiz would do so sooner than later.

He turned and began running, his legs pumping beneath him, the muscles ropey and taut as he put distance between himself and the house. He flinched when a burst of automatic weapon fire sounded from where he’d abandoned Ruiz, but he kept moving, not needing to look back for confirmation of his worst fears.

Sweat streamed down his face as he reached the edge of the clearing and plunged into the trees, following a trail that led to a stream, the water source for his precious tomatoes. A quarter mile away, if he could make it, was a shed where he had some supplies and a couple of tired burros that hung around to eat their fill of the sweet grass and plants that surrounded the water. Where they’d come from, he never questioned, just as he didn’t question most things in his life. If providence had chosen to favor him with hoofed visitors, then who was he to be inhospitable to his land’s bounty?

Depending upon how skilled the gunmen were, he had anywhere from fifteen minutes to half an hour lead on them. With any luck he could disappear into the foothills and wait them out while figuring out how to deal with the latest wrinkle fate had thrown at him. He didn’t question why they’d killed Ruiz, nor why they were after him. It could have been anything.

Or could it?

Was it possible that this was the retribution he’d long feared because of his lawsuit?

No. That was a title dispute over
ejido
land, communal property that belonged to agricultural collectives – farmers, like him. Farmers didn’t drive fancy trucks and kill innocents in broad daylight. No, that smacked of the cartel.

The cartel operated according to its own logic, and it could be anything from an imagined slight to one of the new breed wanting Indalecio’s property to grow marijuana or opium poppies – something he’d been approached to do numerous times over his lifetime, but he’d always politely declined. The older leaders of the cartel tended to have respect for the old ways and had honored his wishes, but these new ones…who knew what they were capable of?

It was best to slip away and contrive a strategy from a safe distance rather than die a meaningless death today. He was not without means, having saved the lion’s share of his earnings every year and having sold several worthless patches of land along the edges of his property to speculators a decade earlier.

He’d get away and then seek out the police – the trick being finding some that weren’t in the cartel’s pocket. Finding an honest cop in Sinaloa was as easy as finding a virgin in a whorehouse, so the saying went, and he, like most Mexicans, avoided anyone in uniform or in a position of authority like the plague, not wanting to invite the attention of parasites who wanted nothing more than to suck honest folk dry.

But still. A cold-blooded murder on his property would not go unpunished, and he’d find someone to investigate. He had an attorney in Mazatlán he could call. Perhaps he’d know how to proceed.