The Devil's Necktie (3 page)

4

The blackout shades were drawn in the modest apartment in Ontario, California. It could have been two in the morning or high noon. A young woman was handcuffed to the metal bed frame. Naked, gang tattoos across her chest and small, firm breasts. A dreamy look on her hard face. Her pupils tweaked, her dark eyes framed by eyebrows that had been plucked into nonexistence, replaced by a thin, harsh pencil line.

The light green wall paint was peeling in patches where rainwater had seeped through. A movie poster was thumbtacked to the wall behind the bed. Al Pacino seemed to be looking down on the naked woman over a huge pile of cocaine,
SCARFACE
printed in bold red letters at the top.

A twenty-something Hispanic man was sitting at a computer. He was also naked, his wiry body lit only by the green glow of the empty computer screen. He was in the process of downloading a silent video image from his cell phone to his laptop. He hit Enter and his partner Hector's jerky image filled the screen and quickly moved off.

The video screen pixilated and then refocused as Mia, startled, disoriented, sat up in bed and the large bull of a man—wearing latex surgical gloves—punched her squarely in the face, breaking her nose and knocking her head back against the wall unconscious. Blood spattered the pillow, the white sheets, and arced across the wall behind her. He dragged her across the bed, ripping out one of her earrings, and muscled her into the white-tiled bathroom like a child's doll, her bare feet scarcely touching the floor.

The camera jerked wildly and then found the action as the broad man with thick ham hands whipped a leather belt from his pants, cinched it around Mia's wrists, and fastened her to the overhead shower fixture. He was all business.

Hector's father had been a butcher and had taught his son the trade. Beaten the knowledge into him. Hector's job as a boy had been to prepare the
carnitas
for the Easter feast. Failure was not an option. The suckling pig would squeal and scream like a human baby when Hector cut its throat. It bothered him at first and then not at all. He was a natural.

Cutting Mia was child's play compared to the thick skin of a pig. He had been told this woman was not only a pig but also a whore.

“Come back to bed, Johnny,” the woman purred seductively.

Johnny didn't respond, concentrating on the task at hand. Anyway, he thought, Angelina wasn't going anywhere. The cuffs had been her idea.

Johnny Rodriguez, with black hair that fell over his ears, dark smoky eyes with thick lashes, and a youthful face that was almost too pretty, averted his eyes from the screen and stared at his handcuffed girlfriend as Hector pulled out his carving knife and went to work. Hector used the shower curtain as a butcher's apron to keep the blood spray off his rented police uniform and methodically drew the knife across Mia's neck, slitting her open from ear to ear. The one earring that remained on her head swayed as the blood pulsed out of the gaping mortal wound.

Johnny, the man who had videotaped the murder with his new cell phone, knew what had come next. He'd have nightmares reliving the horrible scene until the day he died. He'd killed men before, but that was gang-related business, cut and dried. A man had to build street cred to get ahead in his world. But this murder was bad, it was a woman. He thought guiltily about his own mother and two sisters.

With the download completed, he typed in an e-mail address, banged the Send key with more force than was needed, and in a matter of seconds, after the proof of the kill was transmitted to Arturo Delgado, thankfully hit Delete. The now empty green screen gave him some relief. No reason to keep evidence that could put him away for life. The phone would be disposed of, the cost of doing business.

Johnny stood up and walked over to the bed. He pulled a vial of cocaine from the top of his simple pine nightstand, next to his pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses, and poured a fat line on his girlfriend's body, onto the cleft between her smooth rounded thigh and her meticulously shaved pubic area. She arched her back, beckoning him forward. He started getting aroused again as he snorted half the line and then nestled his member into the remaining cocaine. Johnny straddled Angelina, who emitted a guttural moan as he slowly moved up her body, rubbing himself against her small, dark, pierced nipple before placing his drug-laden phallus into her mouth.

Johnny's back straightened as the young woman went to town, making sure none of the cocaine was wasted. Then his back twisted and bucked and quivered. In the dim light,
18TH STREET ANGELS
, the name of Johnny's gang, tattooed in florid script on the small of his back, seemed to glow in the dark.

5

The violent wall of sound was an assault to the senses. Throughout the federal penitentiary roared the unrelenting din of metal doors clanging, men screaming, pipes banging, orders shouted, music blaring.

Manuel Alvarez sat on his bunk. On the surface, total serenity—just below, volcanic rage. He had a book propped open on his lap and wore a Bose noise-reduction headset he had ordered online. He was never without it.

Alvarez was reading the latest mystery by Robert Crais. Alvarez thought Crais was quick-witted and told a compelling story. Reading was one of his few pleasures.

His mind was wandering today, though. He slammed the book shut when he realized that he hadn't retained a thing he'd read in the past ten minutes. He thought he would have gotten news by now. Then he opened the book to where he'd started and tried again.

Alvarez stood five foot seven, one hundred and forty pounds. His eyes were coffee bean brown, his gaunt face the color of rice paper, with clear, flawless skin.

He hadn't seen an exercise pen in over a year. He paid men for protection. He still had hard, ropy muscles under his jailhouse grays, just in case, but he wasn't one to do any heavy lifting. That was what cocaine afforded him, even locked down in an eight-by-ten cell. He was only five years into a twenty-five-year prison sentence, and he had to get by somehow.

He could have talked—turned on the men who supplied him—and made a deal with the prosecution for a reduced sentence. But he didn't, and the cartel was grateful. They allowed him to work and introduced him to Arturo Delgado, who provided the cocaine that made life bearable, even behind bars. Now Delgado was supposed to give word that he'd performed another favor.

Manuel looked up from his book, carefully placed a bookmark in the last page read, laid the book on his meticulously made bed, and walked over to the heavy metal cell door. One of the trustees on Delgado's payroll had pushed a book cart in front of Alvarez's cell and was waiting to be acknowledged before going about his business.

Alvarez checked up and down the cellblock before nodding to trustee 776325, who took one novel from the stack of books and magazines on top of the cart, and then, like a sleight-of-hand magician, slid another from a hidden compartment underneath the top shelf.

“Mr. Delgado said you should enjoy the read, and then he would appreciate a review,” the trustee said, all business, as he handed the books through the opening of the cell door.

Without warning Alvarez grabbed the trustee's hand and yanked him forward with such force that the man's face, wedged against the bars, turned an off shade of purple.

“Is that everything?”

Alvarez let go of his grip and the trustee jumped back, putting the cart between himself and the bars.

“Ask Delgado,” he croaked, glancing up and down the cellblock to see if anyone had caught the attack. Nobody had.

Alvarez walked the few steps back to his bed, slid the new Michael Connelly into a small shelf of hardcover books in the corner of his cell, and then opened the Ian Rankin. A rectangular slot had been cut into the center pages of the book, creating a space large enough to hold a cell phone that Alvarez pulled out and secreted beneath his pillow. He slid the doctored book onto the shelf with the rest of his collection. The next time his trustee made a delivery, Manuel would return the Ian Rankin with the clean phone—memory purged, minus the 8GB microSD card—and five crisp hundred-dollar bills.

Alvarez picked up the Crais novel but hadn't read more than a paragraph before a guard walked up to his cell. He stopped and stared at Alvarez for an instant. Satisfied it was business as usual, he continued down cellblock C into the bowels of the penitentiary.

Alvarez ripped off his headphones and listened to the echo of the guard's leather boot heels recede down the cellblock before pulling out the cell phone Delgado had provided. He punched in his secret code, keyed into an e-mail account, waited for the download, and hit Play. His features hardened, his coffee brown eyes black as pitch.

Manuel Alvarez watched Mia, the woman he had entrusted his fortune to—and foolishly opened his heart to—get butchered to death.

6

Cultivating a proper hatred for someone doesn't happen overnight, Arturo Delgado mused. He was watching a blue wave crest, the rolling curl edged in silver. It gained momentum and then dropped, turning to white foam as it spilled onto the expansive beach of Playa del Rey.

No, hatred had to be developed over time, meditated on and nurtured. Arturo's ruined leg was a constant reminder.

Delgado had harbored a grudging respect for Jack Bertolino after the bust all those years ago. Seven, to be exact. He had been one-upped mano a mano. As brilliant a tactician as Arturo Delgado had been, Bertolino had remained dogged. And in the end, he had won.

The cops had named the case Operation Green Door. Delgado had smuggled huge quantities of coke into the United States in crates of fruit. He read everything he could find, on the Internet, in the news, and on court transcripts to find out where it had all gone wrong.

Green Door was Arturo's play from the inception, and if successful, would have cemented his reputation forever. He would have earned more money than God, and back in Colombia he would have been treated like one.

Delgado was forward thinking and had forged a relationship with the Betos, a Mexican group that was responsible for the transportation of major quantities of cocaine throughout the Southwest. Delgado would provide the Colombian cartel's cocaine, and the Betos would provide the distribution. This new alliance brought the Colombians together with the Mexicans in the northeast sector for the first time in history and would have changed the drug game in the States forever.

But it was not to be.

The Betos got sloppy, Bertolino dropped the hammer, and Arturo Delgado paid the price.

The eighteenth-floor, three-bedroom furnished apartment in the Azzurra del Rey cost Arturo Delgado ten grand a month. Chump change and worth the investment, he thought as he walked past the granite and stainless steel kitchen over to the bank of back windows. The 180-degree view ran from downtown L.A. to the Hollywood Hills. He bent down over the telescope he'd recently purchased at Brookstone on the Third Street Promenade. The viewing lens was focused on a five-story building a few blocks away. Within its silvery circle was displayed an orange metal balcony with a wooden bench, a barbecue grill, and a single tomato plant in need of water.

As if on cue, Jack Bertolino pulled open the sliding glass doors. He walked stiffly with a glass coffeepot and carefully watered around the edges of the tomato plant. Satisfied with his work, he walked back inside and closed the sliding door behind him.

Delgado tilted the telescope from the balcony down to the parking level, where he could just make out the nose of Jack's gray Mustang. He was about to give up the surveillance when he caught a glimpse of Jack walking toward a line of retail shops a half block away.

Arturo picked up his phone and quickly texted two words:
FIFTEEN MINUTES
. He couldn't see his man, but knew he was in place. The professional would make short work of installing a GPS bug on the undercarriage of Jack's Mustang.

—

Jack tried to stretch his back as he walked down the sidewalk. It didn't help. After his fall at Ground Zero doing cleanup post 9/11, shooting pains ran down his six-foot-three frame on a daily basis and had forced him into an early retirement. He had to occasionally stand while eating, and pop pain meds like vitamins. He worried sometimes about the side effects. The pills might dull his brain and slow him down a bit, but after three unsuccessful operations he'd vowed never to go under the knife again. He'd read somewhere that Homo sapiens used only one-tenth of their brains. He could live with those odds.

Jack walked up Glencoe toward a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf behind the Barnes & Noble bookstore. Once inside, Jack decided on a pound of Italian roast.

“You a cop?” the shaggy-haired barista asked as if he was in the know.

Jack didn't want to go there and ignored him.

“That's ground for a cone,” Jack said, handing off the bag of whole beans.

“So, you're a cop.” It was a statement.

“I used to be,” Jack admitted.

“Once a cop, always a cop,” the barista said with the maddening wisdom of youth as he walked away to grind Jack's beans.

Ever since he woke up, Jack had been sorting through his priorities. His first order of business was to call his old friend in Miami, DEA agent Kenny Ortega. They'd worked Mia as a team during the Alvarez case, and he might still have a line on her. At least Jack could get the lay of the land.

The next call would be to Tommy Aronsohn. He had been a baby DA back when Jack was an up and comer. Fiercely loyal, an impartial jurist, and a pit bull in a court of law. He had a high-end private practice now with an office on Park Avenue after a successful career as a Manhattan district attorney. The two men had made their bones together and remained steadfast friends. Jack was hoping he would stay out of the fray—more specifically, out of jail—but he'd give Tommy a heads-up just in case. He knew Tommy would have his back.

Jack was crossing Maxella on the way home when he heard, “Car wash . . . donations . . . car wash.”

The high-pitched voices of twenty-something Hispanic women and children pierced the industrial sounds on Glencoe. “Car wash . . . caaaar . . . waaaash.” Jack knew what was up before he was close enough to read the hand-painted cardboard signs. Someone was dead.

Lean, tattooed men in cutoff tees were working in the parking lot directly behind their women and children. The men manned wet rags, buckets filled with soapy water, and leaking hoses for the final rinse. There was no joy in their work. One of their own had died of a bullet wound to the abdomen. He needed to be buried. It was as simple as that.

Jack understood the culture of violence. It had been part of his catechism growing up in a Mafia infested neighborhood. But the wanton disregard for human life that allowed one man to slaughter another like so much chattel—those were the lives he wanted retribution for. But even higher on Jack's food chain were the men, removed from the violence, who gave the orders to kill. The men protected by their wealth, politics, and religion. Protected by their soldiers and bankers and lawyers and true believers. That's who he wanted to track down in avenging Mia's death.

Jack folded a twenty as he crossed the street. He stood for a moment before a makeshift shrine to the recently departed and slid the bill into the uneven slit cut into the top of a red shoe box. He thought about Mia and got deadly angry.

—

Delgado studied his reflected image in the full-length mirror hanging in his walk-in closet. The closet was about the same size as the house where he'd been born and raised with his three sisters, drunken father, and beloved mother, just ten kilometers outside Bogotá. His long silver mane of hair framed his chiseled, weathered features. The thick lines that accentuated his clear gray eyes and cut across his wide forehead lent him an air of gravitas, a life filled with battles won.

Delgado worked to minimize his limp as he crossed the expansive living room. He wore a metal brace that was undetectable under the tailored, navy linen slacks he was wearing. Unseen was a rage that could erupt at any moment. He could still kill a man with his bare hands. Success was all about control.

The sound of his cell phone brought Delgado back to now. He didn't give Manuel Alvarez a chance to speak. “I'm being told there was no iPad. They delivered her phone, but there were no financials, no information I didn't already have.”

“The cunt always used an iPad,” Alvarez stated. “All of her notes, all of my accounts, so that she could manage my affairs when she traveled.”

“Mia's gone, don't worry about a loss. We'll make it up in six months.”

“I want what's mine,” Alvarez hissed, unable to control his emotion.

Delgado didn't respond at first, wondering why the hell Alvarez was worried about something stupid like this. Then his voice became stern. “I delivered on a promise made. You don't sound grateful. You should rethink your tone.”

“You don't understand.”

“Sure I do. Send me everything you've got,” Delgado said. “Banks, offshore accounts, passwords, the entire portfolio. I'll get my people on it.”

The other end of the line was silent for several beats. Then Alvarez admitted, “She had it all. I had nothing on paper.”

Now the situation became clear. The anger, the wet work. Delgado understood what it took for Alvarez to admit weakness. He himself had never traveled that road, but he understood the emotion in lesser men. He became conciliatory, the benevolent leader.

“What are we talking about, Manuel? How much did she take?”

Alvarez all but whispered, “Twenty-four million.”

The six zeros were enough to give Delgado pause. That was a formidable amount. It could, he realized instantly, comfortably round off his own bank accounts.

“Then I'll find another way. But don't waste my time, Manuel,” he said softly, with a trace of menace. “We're on the eve of greatness. Trust is an issue.”

“It won't buy me any time,” Alvarez said bitterly.

“But they will remember you on the outside when you're released. You'll be older but revered. Money alone can't buy what I offer.”

And Delgado clicked off with something to add to his personal mission statement. Find the Colombian
puta'
s iPad.