The Garden of Betrayal (32 page)

“Then why are you here?” I repeated.

He moved toward me, eyes wild, and I realized how near he was to hysteria.

“Because you don’t understand what you’re doing. Haven’t you wondered what kind of people set up this sort of operation? And what they might do if some small-time nobody threatens to blow it for them?”

“I’ve wondered about who they are. Why don’t you tell me?”

He took a step backward, toward the door.

“And end up dead? I don’t think so.”

It was the reaction we’d expected.

“You’d be more persuasive if you brought some of these bad men
with you,” I said, deliberately provocative. “All I’m seeing is a broken-down stock jockey.”

He flinched as if I’d slapped him and began digging a hand purposefully in his other pocket. My heart rate jumped. The unmanageable risk at the core of our plan was that Mohler proved to be violent himself. It was why Reggie and Claire had insisted on the gun. I rose, groping for my weapon, but Mohler beat me to the draw.

“Take it,” he said, thrusting a fat white envelope toward me. “That’s ten thousand dollars. It was all the cash I could get on short notice. I can get more, lots more, but you have to be patient. You have to work with me on this.”

I pushed the envelope away and settled back down onto the bed, trying not to betray how scared I’d been.

“Why?” I demanded. “So these guys you claim to work for won’t kill me? Stop bullshitting me. If you had that kind of muscle at your disposal, you wouldn’t be trying to pay me off.”

Sweat shone on his forehead. He held the envelope out again, his hand trembling.

“Work with me, because we’re in this together now. If they knew I’d been careless, they’d kill me, too.”

I took the cash from him and tossed it on the bed.

“Sit,” I ordered, pointing to the chair. “You have to answer a few questions before we strike any kind of deal.”

He collapsed onto the chair.

“First, tell me how you got involved in this whole thing.”

He edged forward and began working his fingers nervously along the brim of his hat again.

“Why do you care?”

“Because I want to know who I’m becoming partners with.”

He nodded rapidly, as if eager to persuade me of his cooperativeness.

“I was working as an account rep at Dean Witter back in the mid-nineties. I signed a couple of geriatrics as clients and did a few trades to try to make them some money.”

“But it didn’t work out,” I prompted, having heard similar stories innumerable times before. “So you did a few more trades and lost more money. Someone complained.”

“Right,” he said, sounding bitter. “The compliance guys at Dean Witter accused me of churning. They ratted me out to the SEC. The SEC
investigated, and suddenly it was securities fraud because there was a problem with some statements. I got a call from the U.S. Attorney, offering me two to four years in jail if I took a deal and threatening me with five to seven if I didn’t.”

“What did you do?”

“I was still trying to figure it out when I got a call out of the blue from some lawyer I never heard of. He said he could get me off, and that I had friends in high places. I didn’t know much, but I knew I didn’t have any friends in high places.”

“Let me guess. Your problems went away.”

“Right. The SEC backed off, so the U.S. Attorney dropped the case. I even got severance from Dean Witter. It was sweet.”

He smiled at the recollection, still gleeful at having put one over on the powers that almost crushed him.

“But your new friend wanted a return favor.”

The smile vanished, replaced by a look of resignation.

“I was kind of into the whole thing at first. Nice office, good salary, no pressure. Once a month I have to figure out how to allocate trades between a bunch of different accounts, to move the right amounts of money back and forth. It was easy. But it’s been the same thing for ten years now, and I got to admit, it gets kind of old.”

“No special projects?” I asked, thinking of the Petronuevo transaction.

“A little private equity sometimes. Most of the time I don’t even get to read the paperwork. I just sign where I’m told to sign.”

“Told by whom?” I asked, circling back to the only question I genuinely cared about.

He shook his head, looking scared again.

“Fine,” I said, trying another tack. “Just explain how it works.”

He nodded rapidly again.

“I get most of my instructions on the phone. And there’s a guy who comes around to collect signatures. Mr. Smith, he calls himself, like it’s a big joke.”

“Nice guy?”

He shook his head sharply.

“Not a nice guy?”

“It’s why we have to be careful. You don’t know these people.”

“Tell me.”

He dropped his eyes to the carpet nervously.

“Smith wanted me to sign some legal papers a couple of years ago. They were in French. I asked how I was supposed to sign if I couldn’t read them. ‘With a pen,’ he told me. I said no. I’d signed all kinds of stuff before, without ever reading any of it. But it was the way he was always treating me, like I was a complete nobody. It made me mad.”

“What did he do?”

Mohler glanced up and fixed me with a pathetic smile.

“He put a knife to my throat and made me hold my left hand in a desk drawer, and then he slammed the drawer shut.” Mohler held the hand up, so I could see it. Two of the knuckles were badly misshapen. “I don’t ask any more questions.”

I almost felt bad for him.

“How do you get in touch with Smith if you need to speak with him for some reason?”

He opened his mouth to answer, but a noise from the door interrupted. A key turning in the lock. The door opened, and a man entered. Mohler moaned in fear. The man was wearing a baseball cap pulled low and had a wide, shiny scar stretching from his mouth to his left ear.

The man with the scar stepped forward silently. Reggie and Joe Belko were immediately behind him, guns drawn.

“You heard?” I asked, reaching around to the small of my back and unclipping Claire’s phone from my waistband.

“Everything,” Reggie said, removing the Bluetooth earpiece he’d been wearing to monitor our conversation from the next room. He looked at Mohler. “How about it? Is this the guy who broke your hand in the drawer? Is this Mr. Smith?”

Mohler was staring at the man with the scar like a rabbit transfixed by a snake, seemingly unable to speak.

“These guys are with me,” I assured him. “Your friend likes to keep tabs on other people’s e-mail. We were expecting you to be followed. There’s nothing for you to worry about as long as you tell the truth.”

Mohler nodded jerkily, the color drained from his face.

“How about you, Mark?” Reggie asked. “You seen this guy before?”

“Twice that I know of,” I confirmed, the recollections popping in my memory. I pulled the gun from my pocket, the elation I’d felt at the success of our plan giving way to rage. “Once at the counter in the diner, when I met with Gallegos, and once in the lobby of the Four Seasons, just before Rashid was killed.” I pointed the gun at the man who called himself Smith and put my finger on the trigger. “So, how about it? Who do you work for?”

“Whoa,” Reggie said, holding up a hand. “Hang on there. First things first. This is way too small a room to risk any crossfire. Mark, you come around over here and stand between me and Joe.”

I edged wide around the man with the scar, eyes locked on his face. He looked bored, like a guy waiting for a bus. I wondered how much more interested he’d seem if I pistol-whipped him in the side of the head.

“Better,” Reggie said, when I’d positioned myself as he’d suggested. “Basic rule of any shoot-out is to have all your weapons pointed in the same direction.”

Mohler staggered sideways, as if convinced the shooting was imminent.

“Now,” Reggie continued, addressing himself to Mohler and Smith, “I want you guys on your knees, backs toward me and hands behind your heads.”

Both complied, Mohler starting to cry, Smith still wearing his mask of indifference.

“Good,” Reggie said. He holstered his gun under his shoulder and reached for my weapon. I opened my mouth to protest, but he shook his head firmly. He checked the safety and then dropped it into his coat pocket. Bending forward, he began frisking Mohler. “Either of you guys give us any trouble and my partner there will put a bullet through your knee. Nobody’s even going to notice a single shot in a place like this.”

The tears were running down Mohler’s face freely.

“Clean,” Reggie concluded, moving from Mohler to Smith. “But what have we got here?” He pulled a gun from beneath Smith’s coat and held it up to examine it. “Ruger 40 S and W.” He removed the clip and then ejected a bullet from the chamber. “Hollow points. Nice.” He thumbed the loose bullet back into the clip, passed both pieces of the gun to Joe, and resumed his search. His hand came out of the coat again a moment later, this time holding a walkie-talkie.

“Joe,” he said, frowning. “Do me a favor and go to the window and tell me if you see anything.”

Joe took a step backward and lifted the edge of the curtain an inch with the barrel of his weapon.

“Red Explorer,” he reported tersely. “Wasn’t there a few minutes ago. Backed into a spot on the far side of the lot. No plate visible. Two guys in the front seat. I can’t get a good look at them.”

“My associates,” Smith said, speaking for the first time. His English was unaccented, but his clipped diction made me think he was foreign. “Both carrying HK53s. It’s a military weapon. Fully automatic assault
rifle. Gets through an extraordinary amount of ammunition. They’ve both got extra clips in tactical bags.”

My heart began racing again. We’d worked up contingency plans in case things went bad, but none that anticipated going up against guys with machine guns. The only exit from the room led to the exterior gallery, and the gallery was lined by a simple rail-and-post balustrade. There wasn’t any way out of the room without the guys in the parking lot seeing us, and once they’d seen us, we were completely exposed. Reggie and Joe had suggested the motor court in part because of good sight lines. But sight lines worked both ways.

“You want me to call 911?” I asked hoarsely. Secrecy was less important than not getting killed.

“No time to roll the right firepower,” Reggie said tersely. “And I don’t want a couple of sleepy patrol cops to get shot to hell. Don’t worry. We’ve still got options.” He took a half step forward, pivoted delicately on the ball of his left foot, and kicked Smith hard in the side of the chest. Smith tumbled sideways, smashing his head on the corner of the bed frame. Blood gushed from a gouge in his forehead as he lay stunned on his back. Reggie dropped the walkie-talkie onto Smith’s chest, unholstered the gun from beneath his arm, and then pointed it at Smith’s face.

“You tell your buddies to stand down, or you’re dead.”

Smith lifted himself on one elbow, wheezing. Blood ran diagonally down his cheek and was channeled to his mouth by the scar. He licked his lips and smiled, a sheen of blood on his teeth.

“I thought you were the good cop,” he sneered. “The one who didn’t hurt people.”

Smith must have heard my conversation with Reggie in the car after our trip to Queens. He’d been the one eavesdropping on me, the guy who’d been in my apartment. If the circumstances had been different, I would have kicked him, too. I didn’t want to interfere, though—I was praying Reggie could get us out of the mess we were in without any shooting.

“Unless they threaten me,” Reggie barked. “And right now I’m feeling very threatened. You need another demonstration of my willingness to hurt you?”

“Not going to make any difference. I walk out of here with Mohler or we’re all dead. My ‘buddies’ have explicit instructions. I don’t come out
within five minutes, they blow everything and everyone in this room straight to hell, including me. Nothing I say now can change that.”

“Bullshit,” Reggie said. He cocked his revolver with his thumb, the cylinder rotating to put a loaded chamber under the hammer. “I’m going to count to three.”

“Count to any number you want. But you might want to take a moment to say your prayers first. You’ll be killing yourself as well.” His gaze shifted from Reggie to me. “Could be a good time for you to put in a last call to that wife and daughter of yours. They’re at the Meridien, aren’t they? I was looking forward to seeing them again. Your daughter’s gotten very attractive. Too bad for me. My associates will have to send along my regards.”

I started toward him, but Joe grabbed my collar from behind and dragged me back. Reggie took a two-handed grip on his gun and spread his feet slightly.

“One,” he said.

I shook myself loose and peered cautiously out the window. The two men were still in the front seat of the red Explorer.

“We got any hope against these guys?” I muttered to Joe.

He rapped a knuckle against the exterior wall, eliciting a hollow thud.

“Depends. If Smith’s telling the truth, we’re fish in a barrel. Bullets will go through this wall like cardboard. One guy stays in the parking lot and hoses the room high. The other guy runs up the stairs while we’re all hugging the carpet and hoses the room low. Game over. Different story if they want Smith back. They try to come through the door, we might give them a few surprises.”

“What if we open up on them now, when they’re not expecting it?”

“Fire a handgun through a car windshield at thirty yards and you got deflection and penetration problems. Maybe one chance in ten of hitting your target, even for a top marksman. More likely to just make them mad.”

“Two,” Reggie continued, eyes locked on Smith’s.

“Listen,” Joe whispered, leaning toward me. “There’s a window in the bathroom. You should be able to get out that way. You got Claire and Kate to take care of. No reason for you to hang around and take chances.”

“What about you and Reggie?”

“I’m too old to be climbing through windows, and Reggie’s too big. We’ll make our play here.”

A low groan made me glance toward Mohler. Urine was spreading from the crotch of his pants. Dying in a crappy motel room was bad, but not as bad as abandoning my friends.