When Darkness Falls (16 page)

E xplosives changed everything-especially for Vince Paulo.

Since losing his sight, Vince had heard all the amazing stories. The guy who blew his nose so violently that his eye popped out. The firefighter whose eye was left hanging by the optic nerve after a blast from a fire hose. The child who ruptured her eye on a bedpost while bouncing on the mattress. Metalworkers with steel shards embedded near the optic disc or with splashes of molten lead on the eyeball. A soldier shot at arm’s length, the projectile entering the inner canthus of the right eye and lodging under the skin of the opposite side. What made these cases remarkable was that in each instance, the ultimate visual impairment was nonexistent or negligible, or so the tales of medical miracles went. On the other side of the spectrum were patients who seemed to suffer only minor ocular trauma, the globe still intact, but whose vision was lost forever. They were the unlucky ones, the Vince Paulos of the world.

“Bomb squad is standing by, Sergeant.”

Vince heard the message over his earpiece, but he didn’t answer right away. Theo Knight’s mere mention of explosives had Vince seeing that pockmarked door again, the opening at the end of the hallway to his personal and permanent tunnel of darkness.

“Vince?” said Alicia. She was standing at his side.

“Yeah, I heard. I was just thinking for a minute.” It was a lie, of course-at least the part about “a minute.” Vince had been thinking and rethinking for months, imagining how different things might have been if he just hadn’t pushed open that door. He keyed his mike and told the bomb-squad leader to stand down until he made one more attempt to reestablish contact with Falcon.

Alicia said, “Just because this Theo says there’s a bomb doesn’t mean Falcon has one.”

“We have to assume the worst.”

“Do you really think he has the know-how to make one?”

“He had two hundred thousand dollars in a Bahamian safe deposit box. He’s packing a nine-millimeter pistol with plenty of ammunition. He shot two officers in a gunfight in the dark, and now he’s more than holding his own in a hostage standoff against the entire City of Miami. I think it’s time we all erase from our minds the image of a hapless homeless guy atop a bridge and focus more on the sick bastard who for no apparent reason beat a defenseless woman to death with a lead pipe.”

“I was just asking, Vince.”

He could hear the change in Alicia’s tone, and he realized that his own intensity was getting the best of him. It was time to get control over those feelings that lingered just below the surface and never really went away, time to quell the useless anger over a risk he should never have taken. “Sorry,” he said. “Guess I should just catch my breath and chill a little, huh?”

He felt the gentle touch of her hand on his forearm. She said, “This is a different ballgame than the one Chief Renfro and I invited you to. Are you okay with it?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know. Too much like the last one, maybe.”

“No, you’re wrong. It’s nothing like the last one. This time I have a warning. I can see what’s coming.” The unintentional pun drew a mirthless chuckle from somewhere inside him, like a reflex.

The phone rang, but it wasn’t on the dedicated line to the hotel room. It was Vince’s cell. The call was from Detective Barber, the lead homicide investigator. “Got an update for you on the body in Falcon’s car,” he said.

“Good. Alicia Mendoza is right here with me. Let me put my cell on speaker.”

“I’d rather you didn’t do that,” said Barber.

Vince wasn’t sure how to interpret the detective’s concern, but he obliged. “Okay, no speaker.”

Barber said, “In fact, I’d prefer that this information and everything you say in response to it be just between us. It might be important to your negotiations.”

“All right.” He covered the phone and said, “Alicia, could you excuse me for a minute?”

He sensed some confusion on her part-just a vibe that he picked up from her hesitation-but it was only for a moment.

“No problem,” she said. “I’ll get some coffee.”

Vince waited for the door to open, then close. “I’m back,” he said into the phone.

“I have an eyewitness who claims to have seen a well-dressed, twentysomething-year-old man, either light-skinned black or dark-skinned Hispanic, speaking to Falcon two nights ago by the river.”

“What time?”

“Just after dark. If I tie that in with the medical examiner’s report, it’s not long before our Jane Doe ended up dead and stuffed inside the trunk of Falcon’s car-Er, home.”

“Any idea who it might be? Your physical description could fit half the young men in Miami.”

“True. But fortunately our witness got a license plate number.”

“How did it come back?”

“This is where it gets interesting. It’s a guy named Felipe Broma. He works security for Mayor Mendoza.”

Vince suddenly understood why the detective wanted Alicia out of earshot. “You talked to Broma yet?”

“No.”

“How about the mayor?”

“Not yet.”

“What are you waiting for?”

There was silence on the line, then Barber said, “I’ve been a detective a long time. I listen to my instincts.”

“What are your instincts telling you?”

“There’s only one way to find out what’s really going on here. And talking to the mayor or his bodyguard is not the answer.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“I need to talk to Falcon,” said Barber. “Through you.”

Vince considered it. “Let me see if I can get him talking again. We’ll take it from there.”

“One other thing,” said Barber. “Not a word of this to the mayor’s daughter. Agreed?”

Vince wasn’t entirely sure what the detective had on his agenda, but he wasn’t hot on the idea of keeping secrets from Alicia-at least not without a more compelling explanation from Barber. “Like I say: I’ll see if I can get Falcon talking, and we’ll go from there.”

T hings were finally coming clearer to Falcon.

Even without electricity, enough sunlight seeped into the room to show the faces of all his prisoners. The girl in the bathtub was not the woman he’d originally thought she was, not the past he feared. She was just a girl without a name, like many others he’d known years earlier.

“I think she’s getting a fever,” said Natalia.

“Quiet!” shouted Falcon.

“You should really get her to a doctor,” said Theo.

Falcon glared and said, “I told you before, the doctor has already given his blessing.”

“What the hell doctor are you talking about? Are you a doctor?”

“Do I look like a doctor?”

“From my HMO? Absolutely.”

Falcon shot him an angry look. “I’ve met clowns like you before, always getting in their little jokes. The minute I let my guard down, you sneaky bastards go right for the gun.”

He glanced at the girl in the tub, then turned and started pacing across the room again. No food, no money, no necklace. Swyteck had told him that they had the necklace, but now it would be more difficult than ever to work out a delivery. The big-mouthed black guy had screwed up everything by telling the cops about the magic coat. Who in their right mind would come near the hotel room?

The girl in the tub groaned. Natalia said, “She’s definitely getting a fever.”

“She needs a doctor,” said Theo.

“Shut up!” he shouted, thrusting the gun toward Theo. “I’ve had it with you. Enough already!”

Falcon could feel the heat rising. It was as if someone had switched on the furnace, which he knew wasn’t possible. Or was it? The cops could have been pumping hot air through the AC ducts. They’d already turned off the water and the electricity, so why not turn the place into an oven? He crossed the room and pressed his hand to the vent. He felt nothing, save for the sweat that continued to run down his face. How people in Miami survived in these concrete boxes before air-conditioning was beyond him. There was something to be said for living in a car with the windows busted out. If you got cold, you put on a coat. When it turned hot, you took the coat off. Not this time, however. Not this coat.

The coat stayed on.

There was a whimper from the bathroom, then a sustained groan. Falcon knew the sound of pain, but he was impervious to it. That was not exactly true. Once upon a time, he had thought himself to be impervious to it. He’d failed to realize that every grunt, every groan, every shrill scream in the night had seeped right through the psychological walls that he’d built around his conscience. For years, he’d kept them locked in the basement, but they kept creeping up the stairs and knocking on the cellar door until the locks finally broke. The memories came flooding back to him. They were no longer his past. They had become his every waking hour-his past, present, and future.

“She needs a doctor,” he heard someone say, but it only confused him further. The present was mirroring the past. Or the past was coloring the present. His mind could no longer distinguish between the two, and he was suddenly returning to the basement, trapped with his memories.

“ARE YOU LOOKING for the Virgin?” asked El Oso.

The question had the intended effect. Prisoner 309, the young woman with child, was well acquainted with the horrors that had unfolded at the feet of the Virgin Mary. A gang rape before the statue of the Blessed Virgin was a particularly effective way of telling a subversive young woman just how far she had strayed from acceptable behavior.

El Oso acknowledged her fear by telling her not to worry. “The Virgin is not here,” he said, his voice laden with a perverse satisfaction. “There are no virgins left at la casa de la bruja.”

He pushed her forward, and they continued to the end of a long, dark hallway. Her belly was way out in front of her; she had to be due any day. El Oso stopped and unlocked the metal door. The moment it opened, a sharp scream pierced the darkness. It sounded like a woman, but El Oso knew it was a man. It was something the guards liked to tell jokes about, the way men could be made to scream like girls.

“Would you like to watch?” he said. They were standing outside the room, as yet unable to see inside. Party music was blaring from a radio, a tune strangely at odds with what was obviously going on in there.

The young woman shook her head.

“Are you sure you don’t want to see?” he said. “It could be someone you know.”

It was a possibility that she seemed unwilling to consider, but he could see her defenses breaking down. They always did. Instinct may have cautioned that it was better not to know, but in the end, the prisoners craved answers.

“Come, let’s have a look.” He was speaking softly but not out of concern. The insincerity was palpable, and it pleased him to see the heightened anxiety in her eyes. He nudged her forward, and there was another scream from inside the room. This one was so loud and lasted so long that even El Oso stopped to listen. It ceased only when the prisoner had no more voice, no more ability to express his suffering.

Had to be the testicles, thought El Oso.

The party music continued to play.

“I don’t want to go in there,” said the woman.

“That’s not important.”

“No, please. Don’t make me go.”

“It’s your only chance. In a minute, he’ll be crying for his mama. They always cry for their mamas.”

The tears started to come. Her body trembled. “I don’t want to see.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“Who’s in there?”

“The enemy.”

“What’s his name?”

“He has no name.”

He pulled her forward, but she resisted. “I can’t go in there!”

A slap across the face silenced her. Then he jerked her by the arm with so much force that she slammed into the wall. In her advanced state of pregnancy, her balance was not what it might have been. With another quick shove from behind, she stumbled through the open doorway. She collided with the counter, which rattled the guards’ empty beer bottles, and then she fell to the floor.

“Look, woman!” one of the guards shouted. “See who’s on the grill now.”

The grill was a metal table in the center of the room. A male prisoner was strapped to it, completely naked and flat on his back. The soles of his feet were purple and swollen. A guard stood at the foot of the table with a length of hardwood, ready to swing it at the prisoner’s arches like a baseball bat. Another guard tended to the electric transmitter and several strands of wire that ran directly to the prisoner’s torso and genitals. His chest and stomach were dotted with black burn marks. His testicles were grotesquely discolored and three times their normal size.

“Fernando!” the pregnant woman screamed, but the prisoner did not respond to her. He managed only to groan and whisper, “Water…please.”

“No, you can’t drink now!” said El Oso.

“I’m so thirsty,” the prisoner said, his voice fading.

“He can’t drink now or he’ll die!”

“He’s going to die anyway,” said another guard. He laughed as he forced metal beads down the prisoner’s throat-electrodes that would make the voltage cut like lightning through his insides.

“Swallow!” the guard with the beads ordered.

At the turn of the dial, the current flowed. The prisoner’s entire body tensed and then quivered. There was suddenly a bizarre symphony of party music on the radio, howling from the guards, and the blood-curdling screams of a dying man.

“You animals!” the woman shouted through tears, but she was no longer watching the torture of her husband. She remained on the floor, grimacing. El Oso assumed that she simply couldn’t bear to look, but the pained expression told more than that.

“My water just broke,” she said as she slumped onto her side, sobbing.

The guards stopped laughing. The prisoner lay utterly motionless. The pregnant woman was wailing. Party music continued to play in macabre fashion.

“Shit, now what?” said the man with the metal beads.

“Quick, help me carry her,” said El Oso. “Let’s find the doctor.”

T he moment Jack came through the door, the silence in the mobile command center didn’t seem natural to him. He understood that negotiations were in many ways a strategic game of chess, but some of the best chess players he’d ever seen-the old Cuban men in Little Havana-could talk beisbol, order espresso, and argue politics, all while contemplating their next move. Some could even engage in a simultaneous game of dominoes. To be sure, a hostage situation was no game. Still, Jack was beginning to fear that Sergeant Paulo might be overanalyzing things.

He also sensed more than a little tension between Paulo and Alicia. “Did I interrupt something?” said Jack.

“No, not at all,” said Alicia.

“Come right in,” said Paulo.

Each of them had spoken in a tone that was a bit too upbeat, voices that tried too hard to convince Jack that nothing was wrong. Jack said, “I can come back in a minute.”

“No,” said Paulo. “We need to do this now. Ready?”

Jack nodded, then realized that it was a dumb-ass thing to do when speaking to a blind man. “Ready,” he said.

Jack was definitely picking up some added stress in Paulo’s voice. Perhaps it was Theo’s outburst about explosives that had changed the lead negotiator, or at least affected his demeanor. Jack was about to say something about it, but Alicia was already dialing up Theo’s cell. Whatever it was, it seemed that Alicia was even less inclined to discuss it than Paulo.

The hollow sound of unanswered rings echoed in Jack’s ear-five times, then a sixth. Another ring and the call would go to voice mail, but finally Falcon picked up.

“Boom,” he said.

Jack gathered himself and said, “That’s not funny, Falcon.”

“Swyteck, is that you? Can’t say I was expecting that. What happened? Is my friend Paulo afraid to talk to the mad bomber?”

Jack glanced at Alicia, then at Paulo. He should have simply said “no,” but Jack couldn’t help himself, at least not when part of him was wondering the same thing. “Our only fear over here is that you might do something really stupid. You should be afraid of that, too.”

“You got my necklace?”

“First, we need to talk about your coat. More specifically, about what’s under your coat.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Are you wired with explosives?”

“Come on. That’s ridiculous. Where would I get a bomb?”

“My friend Theo says you have one.”

“Your friend Theo’s an asshole.”

“Maybe. But he’s not a liar.”

“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

“Most of the time that’s true. But every now and then he nails it. Here’s how we can settle this real quick. Theo’s cell phone has a camera function.”

“A what?”

Jack realized that a guy who’d been living in a car for over a decade might not know anything about camera phones. “Trust me, the phone takes pictures. Theo can explain how to use it. Take off your coat, snap a picture of your torso, and send it to us.”

There was silence, and Jack took some comfort in the fact that Falcon didn’t immediately tell him to take a flying leap.

“Anything else?” said Falcon.

“Yeah. We want the coat.” Jack didn’t want to explain why, but Falcon could probably guess that they wanted to examine it for traces of explosives.

Falcon said, “So, let me get this straight. First you tell me that if I let everyone talk on the phone, you’ll give me food and my necklace. I try to keep up my end of the deal, and your friend screws everything up. Now, to get the same food and necklace that you promised me before, you want me to start snapping photographs of myself and give you, literally, the coat off my back. Is that what you’re saying?”

“I’m just trying to do what’s fair for everyone.”

“Like hell. You keep changing the deal, and I’m tired of all this stalling.”

“The coat changes things.”

“Not for me it doesn’t. If you get more, I get more.”

“What do you want?”

“I want my damn necklace. And I want Alicia Mendoza to bring it to me.”

Jack glanced at Paulo, not sure how to answer that question. Paulo picked up Jack’s hesitation, scratched out a message on a scrap of paper, and slipped it toward him. It read: NO WAY…But never say never.

“That’s a tall order,” said Jack. “I won’t lie to you. It’s going to be very, very tough to pull that off.”

“Tough my ass.”

“Seriously. For starters, I’ll have to track down Alicia.”

“If you’re telling me she’s not there with you, I know you’re lying.”

Jack didn’t respond, but it was obvious that his bluffing needed some improvement. “If Alicia is going to get involved, I’m sure I’ll need to get clearance from Mayor Mendoza himself.”

“That’s easy. Your dad’s the governor of Florida, right?”

“Used to be the governor.”

“He’s still a politician, just like Alicia’s father. Those guys are always sucking each other off. You get your old man to call her old man, and you make it happen, you hear me?”

“I can try, I guess. But I can’t make any promises.”

“This is going to be easier than you think, Swyteck.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Here’s a little incentive for her. Tell Alicia that if she blows me off again this time, then we’re going to have to call the doctor.”

It took Jack a moment, but then he deciphered what Falcon was saying. “Threatening the hostages is a very bad tactic, Falcon. SWAT is just looking for a reason to bust down those doors.”

“I’m not threatening anyone, you idiot. Just be sure to tell her exactly what I said. She’ll know what I mean.”

Jack looked at Alicia, who gave him nothing in return. It wasn’t clear that she understood what Falcon was saying. But it wasn’t clear that she didn’t, either.

“All right, Falcon. I’ll be sure to pass along your exact words to Alicia. But I can tell you right now, I’ll need some serious time to work on this.”

“How much time?”

Jack looked at Paulo, whose instincts again told him that Jack needed guidance. He held up six fingers. Said Jack, “Six hours.”

“You got one,” said Falcon, and the call was over.