Thief (16 page)

“Yes.”

“Call back when you're there.”

The line went dead. The thief showered, shaved, and dressed while his mind ran wild at the thought of Hector Vargas kidnapping Sister Rachel. Why? What was the point of that? Use her as a lure? Or take his revenge on him by harming her?

These questions crafted anger and built resolve in Monarch until he thought of himself as a juggernaut, an invincible, unstoppable machine. He grabbed his bag, headed for the door. He'd go to Heathrow, get the first flight to Buenos Aires, and in the meantime call in a—

When he yanked open the door, Christopher Pynchon startled and took a step back.

“What are you doing here?” Monarch demanded. “I told your counsel I was out, and I've got places to be.”

The banker swallowed, said, “I was instructed to show you something. It will only take a moment of—”

“Another time,” the thief said, and made to move by him.

“It's about the old woman,” Pynchon blurted.

Monarch froze in his tracks, saw fear in the man, and said, “What old woman?”

Pynchon lifted his briefcase, said, “I'll show you inside.”

“What old woman?” Monarch demanded.

“I don't know who she is,” the banker said. “I assume you will.”

The thief shoved the banker into his room, said, “So show.”

Shaking, Pynchon got a laptop computer from the briefcase, opened it, and the screen jumped to a video player.

“Mr. Fischer?” the banker said. “I want you to know that I am only the messenger here, and expect you to treat me as such.”

The video started in darkness, with just the sound of a man breathing.

Then a door opened and a shaft of light cut across Sister Rachel's office at the clinic in the Village of Misery.

The light went on in the office and she was standing there. When the hand clamped across her terrified mouth, and the needle plunged into her neck, Monarch felt a rage like no other explode and throw fire through his veins.

He sprang like a leopard at Pynchon, seized the banker by the throat, and slammed him against the wall. “You,” the thief seethed. “You are a fucking dead man.”

Pynchon's terrified eyes bugged out of his head as he choked, “Only messenger.”

“You think I give a shit?” Monarch said, pressing his forehead hard against the banker's brow. “I will cut your fucking head off and serve it to your wife on a platter.”

“No! Please!”

Monarch wanted to close his hand tighter on Pynchon's throat, slowly cave in the banker's windpipe, watch him struggle and fight toward lights-out. But the thief and soldier in him said to counterattack.

“Who sent you? Who hired you?”

“I don't know. Really!”

“Who does know? Your partner? Hormel?”

“He … he's dealing with a middleman in South America somewhere,” Pynchon choked. “We're all just messengers.”

“Do you have any idea who that woman is?”

The banker shook his head.

“She's a fucking saint. Like Mother Teresa.”

Pynchon looked ill, said meekly, “I had no idea. All I was told to say is you do the job and she goes free. If not, she dies. They expect you on a flight to Brazil tonight, or she dies.”

Monarch couldn't stop himself. He hit the banker in the gut with his free hand, tried to drive the blow all the way to his spine. With a sickening
ugh
sound, Pynchon pitched forward, his mouth wide open and his lips pulsing like a guppy's. The thief straightened him up, and grabbed his testicles through his suit pants. He twisted, pulled, and crushed.

All the blood in Pynchon's body seemed to seek his neck and head. His face turned a mottled purple, and so pressurized and stretched it looked like his muscles were trying to break free of his skin. Monarch hurled him to the floor, and stomped his heel on the banker's rib cage until he heard a cracking noise.

Pynchon vomited and made soft, flat, wounded grunts and blatting cries like a sheep that has been set on by a mountain lion. Monarch stood over the banker, let the ungodly pain do its work, let it sear his brain, and jelly the fucker from head to toe.

A minute passed, and then two. While the thief waited, his mind caught gear, and spun out possible courses of action: go to Buenos Aires; or go to Switzerland, find Hormel, squeeze him to get the middleman in South America, follow the money trail wherever it goes; or simply do the job in Brazil. The last option, he knew, could take weeks, but he felt he had no choice. If he didn't go, they'd kill her.

His burn phone rang. He answered, said, “I'll call back in two minutes. I have something to finish here.”

Monarch saw Pynchon's eyes focus on him in abject fear. In all his privileged existence, he could see the banker had never encountered or even imagined someone like him. It showed in the banker's trembling, and wet stain in his crotch.

The thief crouched, and in a calm voice, said, “Your life as a messenger is over.”

Pynchon started to whimper and nod. Snot was running from his nose.

“But this? Between us? It is not over. Do you understand?”

Still terrified, the banker started to nod, but then shook his head.

“Tell your partner and your attorney that I do not turn the other cheek when dealing with scum, even if they're wealthy scum with degrees and money. I am a man who believes in vengeance. The three of you
will
suffer for your involvement in this abomination. If that good woman doesn't come out of this alive, the three of you are doomed. I don't care where you hide, I will hunt you, Hormel, and Chase to the ends of the Earth, and I
will
make your deaths the stuff of nightmares.”

Pynchon was shivering uncontrollably, a man lost in an ice storm.

“Do you understand?” Monarch asked.

The banker nodded feebly.

“Good,” the thief said, hauling him to his feet. “Now get on your phone, and tell your pilot I'm on my way. And I'll need operating cash. A million U.S. should do it.”

 

21

BUENOS AIRES

INSIDE THE CLINIC IN
the Villa Miserie, Claudio Fortunato turned to Chanel Chavez, and felt his cold heart melt.

The short, pretty, powerhouse of a woman he loved was rocking a newborn boy while his mother slept. He'd never really thought of Chavez, a sniper by training, as the maternal type. But she was making it look natural, and it made him love her all the more.

Will she say yes when the time comes?

He'd had the ring in his pocket since picking her up at the airport the night before, but everything that had happened since then had blocked him from popping the question.

He said, “We should go.”

Chavez yawned and nodded.

“I'll take him,” said Inez, the night nurse.

“No, I will,” said Maria, the boy's mother, who'd opened her eyes.

Chavez handed her the infant, said, “He's so precious. What is his name?”

“Anthony.”

“That's a wonderful name.”

“Thank you.”

Wringing her hands, the nurse went to Claudio, and said, “Are you sure we shouldn't call the police?”

“It's complicated, but yes, I'm sure,” he replied, and glanced over at Gato and Fernandez, who were lying in beds with ugly, raised bumps on the side of their heads.

He and Chavez had questioned Gato and Fernandez as the men drifted in and out of consciousness. Fernandez, who'd been guarding the rear of the clinic, didn't remember who hit him. Gato, the guard in front, said a man in his forties, stocky, and wearing a knit cap down over his ears had asked for a light before hitting him expertly with a sap.

It had to be Hector. And because someone high up in the police department had to have been bribed to let Vargas walk on weapons charges, Claudio had decided not to report Sister Rachel missing.

Monarch had agreed with the move in their last phone call before he got on the jet to Rio. They had also agreed on a three-prong counterattack. While Claudio and Chavez handled Buenos Aires, and Monarch worked Brazil, Gloria Barnett would fly to Zurich and meet John Tatupu, who'd been with Monarch in the U.S. Special Forces, and Abbott Fowler, who'd been part of Monarch's unit at the CIA. Those three would target Pynchon's partner, Hormel.

Claudio followed Chavez outside the clinic. Dawn was just showing in the eastern sky, and the Village of Misery was starting to come alive.

“Jesus that smell is awful,” Chavez said.

“The
ano,
” Claudio said. “It always smells awful.”

Chavez looked away from him, hands in her back pockets.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I'm dead tired,” she said. “I feel guilty leaving my sister. I'm upset about Sister Rachel, and I still think not getting the police involved is a bad idea.”

“No,” Claudio said firmly. “Getting the police involved
is
a bad idea. It's not just the corruption. They will start looking into Sister Rachel's life, maybe the orphanage's finances.”

“So?”

“So if they dig deep enough, they will find out about me, and perhaps Robin, and then their investigation will become about us, and not her,” he said. “Like Robin said, it is better if we handle this ourselves for the time being.”

He could tell she still wasn't happy, but he would have to live with it. He loved Chavez. She was a smart, sexy, tough woman, but she wasn't criminal by nature. Claudio
was
criminal by nature
,
a strength in this sort of situation.

“I can get you a taxi back to my place if you need to rest and call your sister,” Claudio offered, without rancor.

Chavez looked uncertain. “What about you?”

“I'm going to go door to door,” he said. “See if anyone saw anything last night. And then I'm going to track down every former member of
la fraternidad
.”

“To see if they've heard from Vargas?” she asked.

“Or seen him,” Claudio said.

“Then I'll stay,” she said. “I'll sleep when I'm dead. That good with you?”

The artist grinned. He loved her take-no-shit spirit.

“Course it's good with me, chica.”

For the next three hours, they worked the shacks and slum buildings that surrounded the clinic on the hill above the garbage dump. In the heat, the stench was stupefying, but they kept on, asking everyone they encountered about the missionary. Nearly all of them knew who Sister Rachel was. Nearly everyone in the Villa Miserie had been to see her for one malady or injury or another.

But no one remembered seeing the doctor or anyone suspicious around the clinic because they were all inside, taking shelter from the brutal storms that had raked the city.

Around noon, Claudio and Chavez reentered the alley behind the clinic feeling like they'd gotten nowhere. The artist felt like a failure, and that sickened him. Sister Rachel had been the first one to tell him he really could become a painter. The first one. He owed her so much it hurt. But he couldn't let that emotion keep him from acting with a clear head.

“We'll go back to the apartment,” Claudio said. “You get some sleep, and I'll start calling the brothers.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Chavez said, yawning.

“Senor? Senora?” a voice called from behind them.

Claudio looked over his shoulder at a middle-aged woman wearing ragged clothes, and carrying a shirtless baby in a cloth diaper. She was acting nervous.

“Can I help you, senora?”

“Maybe I help you? You help me?”

“Okay?”

The woman said, “I see the Sister last night.”

That got Claudio and Chavez's full attention, and they went to her.

“Go on,” Chavez said. “What did you see?”

The woman acted even more nervous, then said, “We are hungry. My children are hungry and I am afraid.…”

Claudio understood, fished in his pants, and came up with fifty dollars worth of Argentine pesos, put them in her hand. “And that much again, if we find her.”

She brightened, stuffed the cash in her bra, and gestured at the rear gate to the clinic. “I was at my brother's there, and I just heard the truck and looked out the window. I see her there, the doctor, all limp. Two men, they carry her out and put her in the back of a truck. They put blankets over her, and they drive away.”

“The men,” Claudio said. “Did you recognize them?”

She shook her head.

“They see you?” Chavez asked.

“No.”

“What about the truck?” Claudio asked.

“What do you mean?”

“What kind of truck was it?”

“Oh,” she said, shifting her baby to her other hip. “A farm truck, yes?”

A farm truck? Claudio thought.

“How do you know it was a farm truck?” Chavez asked.

She hesitated before saying, “When they put her in the back, some things fall out of there. When they're gone, I go out and look and there is a big, big cabbage in the mud.”

“Where is it?” he asked.

“In our stomachs. I cut it up and boiled it. But not all,” she said. “There's some left in the pot.”

Chavez asked her if she could get some and bring it to them.

“Why?” Claudio asked when the woman trotted off.

“How many different kinds of big, big cabbages are there, and where are they grown locally?”

“Oh,” Claudio said. “We can find someone to figure this out?”

“I'm sure.”

The woman returned with some boiled cabbage wrapped in old newspaper. Claudio gave her the rest of the money, and Chavez thanked her. They retrieved Chavez's luggage from the clinic, walked out to the nearest main road, and hailed a cab. Chavez laid her head on his shoulder and dozed as they drove through the city.

Claudio felt the engagement ring in his pocket as if it weighed ten pounds. Part of him wanted to rouse her, and ask her in the taxi. Another part of him wanted to go down on his knees when they reached his apartment. But the better part of him knew it was not the right time, not with Sister Rachel missing or worse.