Bloodline (23 page)

Chapter Thirty-five

Javier Rastano had never prided himself on his patience. In fact, if there was one attribute he was sorely lacking, it was patience. He wanted to know which of the two men the snitch was, and he wanted to know now. He had one of his men monitor the gym area where Luis worked out in the morning, and a team of two follow Pedro, at a distance, as he ran through the pampered streets of Colonia Escalón. His instructions to the three men were simple. If either boxer's phone rang they were to listen to the conversation, if possible, then get their hands on the phone before either man could clear the number from the phone's memory. Whoever was feeding Eugenio Escobar the information was using his cell phone, and the incoming or outgoing number would be traceable. There was no possible way that Eugenio or his informant could know he was on to them, and therefore no reason to cut the lines of communication. Eugene would call, or one of the boxers would call him, of that he was certain.

He wanted the rat, and he would get him.

Javier stood at his bedroom window at the center of the house overlooking the rear gardens, and watched Pedro stretch prior to his run. Javier glanced at his watch, just after five-thirty in the morning. Was it Pedro? Neither man had shown any signs of skulking about, although Luis did like to let himself into the kitchen late at night to fix a snack. But none of the guards had seen him do anything but fix some food and head back up to his room. It was quite the puzzle.

The whole thing incensed him. How dare someone come inside his house under false pretenses? One thing was certain: that person was looking for an opportunity to snatch the women. But that was not going to happen. Actually, there was another certainty. One of the boxers was a dead man. Javier just needed to know which one.

Pedro finished stretching and jogged around the corner of the house toward the front gate. Out of sight, but not out of mind. Javier hit five on his speed-dial and one of his guards answered. “Pedro's on his way to the front gate,” he said. The other man acknowledged and terminated the call. Javier smiled.

It was show time.

 

Eugene used the restroom in the Rochester airport to freshen up. He splashed water on his face, brushed his teeth and changed his shirt. It had taken him the entire night to get from El Paso to the city on the shores of Lake Ontario. The airline staff in Pittsburgh had insisted on seeing his passport when he bought the ticket to Rochester, which he had expected, but when the gate attendant scanned the bar code through her machine he knew it was only a matter of time before Irwin Crandle and his team located him. Her reaction to his ire was to smile and tell him to have a nice day. He felt like killing her.

He stepped into the brisk northern air and hailed a cab. He checked his watch and did the math to convert to Pedro's time zone in San Salvador. Five-forty-three in the morning. Pedro would be calling soon.

“Where are you going, sir?” the Pakistani driver asked cheerfully in lilting English.

Eugene glanced up. He replied in English, although after consistently speaking Spanish ever since arriving in the United States, it felt kind of strange. “Do you know a good place for breakfast?”

“Of course,” the driver said. “I know many. What kind of breakfast would you like?”

“Coffee and anything edible.”

The driver grinned. “I know the place with the best coffee in all of Rochester. Twenty minutes and we're there.”

“Sounds good.”

 

Pedro had completed about one-quarter of his usual route through Colonia Escalón when he dialed and hit the send button, initiating a call to Eugene. The connection was poor, almost entirely static, and after fifteen or twenty seconds he hit the end button. Before he could dial again, a black Maserati accelerated around a bend in the road and came racing toward him. It stopped a few inches from where he stood and two men jumped out. Pedro recognized one of the men from Javier Rastano's estate.

Both men approached quickly and one of them said, “Could I have the phone, please?” He held his hand in front of him. Under his suit jacket Pedro could see a handgun in a holster.

“Sure,” Pedro said, holding out the phone. The guard took it, punched something on the keypad and the hint of a smile appeared on his lips.

“I'll need to keep this for right now,” he said.

“That's my phone,” Pedro protested. He reached out to take it back, but the phone disappeared into the man's inside suit pocket.

“Mr. Rastano has asked us to bring your cell phone to him.”

“What for?” Pedro asked. “Mr. Rastano has his own phone. He certainly doesn't need mine.”

But he was talking to their backs. The two guards returned to their car and Pedro watched the high-end sports car turn around and head back to the Rastano estate. It didn't take a Mensa member to figure out what was going on. Rastano was suspicious and checking up on him. But why? And what did he hope to gain by taking the cell phone? Pedro started jogging again, sorting the disjointed facets of what had just happened into a logical sequence. First, the car hadn't appeared until seconds after he had placed the call. That would suggest that the men were following him and somehow listening. One of those spy microphones, perhaps. That wasn't much of a stretch, given Javier Rastano's wealth. Whatever toys he wanted, he could buy. So Rastano had instructed his boys to listen in on any incoming or outgoing calls, then grab the phone. And one of the goons had checked the phone and smiled. Then it hit him; he hadn't cleared the outgoing number. Rastano wanted to know who he was calling.

Rastano knew Eugene had someone on the inside.

But how? The last contact he'd had with Eugene was yesterday morning, almost twenty-four hours ago to the minute. No one had been watching him then, at least, not that he knew. Perhaps the problem was at Eugene's end. Maybe the person feeding Pablo information was playing both sides of the fence.

He kept his pace up in case they were still watching from some unseen location. Sweat formed on his forehead and dripped down on his shirt. He ignored it and kept pumping his legs, his Nikes gliding over the smooth asphalt. That might be the answer. If so, Eugene was in danger. Everything he did would immediately be conveyed to both Javier Rastano and Pablo. It would be childishly simple for both men to adjust their strategies to compensate for any gains the DEA-CIA team made. The efforts of five people were being undermined by one.

Pedro recognized his problems as two-fold. Straight off the top, he was now in harm's way. At some point Javier Rastano was going to rip off his flimsy cover and expose him. And that meant torture and imminent death. But leaving now was unthinkable. Julie and Shiara wouldn't survive through the upcoming weekend, and Eugene wasn't closing in on Pablo's location quickly enough to find him and get the ten-digit code. As Eugene had put it, he had problems on his end.

Getting word to Eugene was now imperative; he had to let him know that someone was feeding information to both Rastano and Escobar. It was risky, but not impossible. Rastano would probably keep the cell phone, which meant he would have to dial out on a land line. He made his decision as the gates to the Rastano estate came into view. He would find a phone somewhere in the mansion and make the call. Perhaps the one in the gardener's shed. The benefits outweighed the risks.

Pedro turned into the estate and doubled his speed up the driveway. He reached the house and ground to a halt, taking his pulse and keeping his legs moving to burn off the lactic acid. He walked around the south edge of the house to the backyard, wiping the sweat from his face on his shirt. As he rounded the corner, one of Rastano's men appeared at the back door and motioned to him.

“Mr. Rastano wants to see you,” he said.

Pedro nodded. This was it. He was either okay or he was a dead man. The next five minutes would tell which.

Chapter Thirty-six

“What do you mean, he's gone?” Senator Irwin Crandle yelled at Eduardo Garcia. Crandle locked his upper and lower teeth together. There was a distinct grinding sound as his lower jaw moved back and forth.

“Eugene Escobar is not at the hotel, sir,” Garcia repeated. “I checked with the night desk clerk. She said the concierge ordered him a cab last night, and that he instructed her to ask the driver to pull up at the back entrance. He didn't return.”

“You assigned men to watch the hotel, Agent Garcia. You didn't think to station one of those men behind the building?”

“There are four entrances to the hotel, sir. I only had two men. They watched the main entrance.”

“Shit,” Crandle said, slamming his fist on the desk. The sound echoed through the small command center at EPIC. Landry and Maxwell sat at their desks, watching. Reid leaned against the far wall, coffee in hand. “The one person I wanted close at hand in case we found Pablo is gone.” He pointed at Reid. “Get on the phone. Check on his credit cards, see if he's used one in the past twelve hours.” He pointed at Cathy Maxwell. “Check every airline that flies out of El Paso. See if he flew out last night. And Alexander, you pull the taxi logs for last night and find out where the driver dropped him. Also, check the bus depot. Eduardo, check any incoming and outgoing calls Eugene made last night.”

It took less than ten minutes to find out what they needed. Eugene had taken a United Airlines flight to Pittsburgh after stopping at three different ATM machines. At each of the banks, his credit card had been used to secure a cash advance for two thousand dollars. He was on the run. But why Pittsburgh?

“Have we got anything in this mess that points to Pittsburgh?” Crandle asked, waving his arms over the piles of paper burying the desks.

“Nothing that I've seen,” Cathy responded.

Alexander shrugged his broad shoulders. “Nada.”

“Not even close,” Bud Reid said.

Garcia shook his head.

“Well, we know he was in Pittsburgh at eleven o'clock last night. Someone's got to head up to Pennsylvania. Any takers?”

No one raised a hand. Crandle didn't waste a breath on indecision. “Cathy, you and Alexander get up to Pittsburgh. My plane's at the airport. I'll have the pilot file a flight plan and be ready to fly within the hour.” He addressed the entire room. “It's Wednesday morning, which means Eugene's only got three days before the deadline. He didn't waste his time flying to Pittsburgh for nothing. I'm starting to think that if we find Eugene, we might find Pablo.”

Eduardo's phone rang and he answered it. He thanked the caller and hung up after just a few seconds. “Eugene took a phone call on his cell last night just before he disappeared. It originated in Miami.”

“Mario Correa called him,” Crandle said quietly. He pushed some files aside and sat on the edge of Landry's desk. “Correa ducks us in Miami, waits for a time when Eugene would be alone, then calls him. What for?”

“He knows where Pablo is,” Bud Reid said.

“Maybe,” Crandle replied. “Maybe not.” He stopped pacing the room and sat on the corner of Landry's desk. “He knows something of value, that's for sure.” He glanced down at the desk, looked up, then quickly looked down again. He read for a minute, then slowly picked up a sheet of paper. It was a fax. But what had caught his eye was that the correspondence had originated in El Salvador. “What's this?” he asked Alexander Landry.

“I just received that this morning,” he said. “I was going to share it, but we've been concentrating on what happened to Eugene.”

“You've been talking with covert DEA agents in Panama and El Salvador,” Crandle said.

“I thought it might help things if we knew who had Eugene's wife and daughter,” Landry said, feeling guilty when he had no reason to feel that way. “I've got a few friends down south. One of them narrowed it down to two possible people. Antoine Alzate or Javier Rastano. But another source eliminated Alzate. He's in Europe right now, left four days ago.”

Crandle glared at him. “So you knew Javier Rastano was holding Julie and Shiara Escobar but said nothing.”

“I told you, I was going to bring it up. I just didn't have time,” Landry said, defensively.

“That's not proper procedure, Alexander,” Crandle said. “Don't do it again. You find out something that's relevant to our case, you tell us.”

“Yes, sir,” Landry said.

Eduardo Garcia said, “I know this guy, Javier Rastano.” That turned every head in the room. Garcia expanded on his statement. “I don't mean I know him personally, but the El Paso division has seen his name on a few of our reports. Not nice stuff. The guy may be a psychopath; he likes to see people suffer. We've got three files where he brutally tortured and then murdered informants in Colombia. We suspect him of at least five killings in El Salvador. He runs a tight ship. His men are extremely well paid and very loyal. Most of them have military experience and know how to use their weapons. No rent-a-cops here. And we think he's moving some serious quantities of coke.”

“Why is he still operating?” Crandle asked.

Garcia shrugged. “He's untouchable. Never goes near the drugs himself. We don't have a clue where he ships it from. We know it's not Colombia. The coke is going overland and being loaded on freighters in Central America somewhere, but we can't seem to get a handle on it.”

Irwin Crandle took a few deep breaths, digested the information, then said, “Nothing's changed. Alexander, you and Cathy get to the airport and take the Lear up to Pittsburgh. Find Eugene Escobar. The three of us will divide our time between taking a serious look at Javier Rastano and using EPIC's resources to continue tracking possible places where Pablo may be living.”

Cathy was already up and moving, glad to be out of there. “We'll call in the moment we have something, Senator.”

Chapter Thirty-seven

Javier Rastano was relaxing on a padded chaise lounge when Pedro entered the great room from the patio. His running shoes squeaked on the tile floor and the sound echoed off the high ceiling. Luis was already there, sitting on a wrought-iron chair with a small cushion on the seat. Rastano waved at the chair next to Luis, and Pedro sat. The room was bright and airy, one side all windows. The metal chair was hot from the sun and the ornate design was pushing into his back. But somehow he didn't think being slightly uncomfortable was the worst of his problems. It was difficult to miss the two cell phones sitting on the table beside the Colombian.

“Finished your daily run?” Javier asked pleasantly, sipping his coffee.

“Yes,” Pedro replied, wiping his brow with the towel he had draped around his neck. “The hills are good for my legs.”

“That's the most important point in boxing, isn't it? Your legs.”

Both men nodded, and Luis said, “You don't move your feet, you're dead in the water.”

“Interesting analogy,” Javier said under his breath. “Either of you gentlemen want coffee?”

“Please,” Pedro said. Luis shook his head.

Javier waited until Pedro's cup was filled and the right amounts of sugar and cream added, then continued. “Any idea why I wanted to speak with you two?” he asked. Both men shrugged. “I've got a small problem. That's why I had my men confiscate your cell phones this morning. Both of you made an early morning call, and I wanted to see who it was you would speak with at this ungodly hour. Luis made a call to a friend of his in Panama City. Pedro's call was local, to a number registered to a house in El Centro.”

Pedro kept his breathing normal. Jesus Christ, it was a wrong number. His fingers must have slipped on the keys while he was jogging and he had dialed a wrong number. Pedro couldn't believe his luck.

Rastano was talking again. “So the calls didn't tell me what I wanted to know.”

“What's that?” Pedro asked.

“Which one of you is a spy for Eugenio Escobar.” Javier Rastano's eyes were busy, pivoting between the two men, looking for a sign of recognition at the mention of the name. Pedro kept his eyes on Rastano; he didn't glance at Luis to see how the other man was handling the accusation.

“Who?” Pedro said.

“Eugenio Escobar.”

“Who's that?” Luis asked.

Pedro took the opportunity to glance at him quickly. The boxer looked genuinely confused. Which, of course, he was. Pedro hoped his acting looked as genuine.

“Eugenio Escobar is a business associate of mine,” Rastano said, still scanning the two men. “We're working on a mutually beneficial deal right now. He is in the United States at present, but I've been informed that he managed to insert a spy inside my house. The time frames are such that the only new arrivals since Eugenio and I have been involved are you two. So one of you is Eugenio's man.” He paused and lit a cigarette. “Either one of you wish to tell me who it is?”

“It's not me,” Luis said emphatically. “I don't know any Eugenio Escobar.”

Pedro shook his head. “No idea who he is.” The coffee cup in his hand was absolutely steady. He noticed that Javier was staring at it.

“I thought so. It would have surprised me if one of you admitted your involvement. So we'll have to take care of this problem as diplomatically as possible.” He motioned to one of his men. The guard stepped forward and dropped a coin in Rastano's open palm. “You two can flip a coin,” he said.

“What?” Pedro said. “That's insane.”

“Perhaps,” Javier said, his eyes locked on Pedro. “But what else can we do. One of you must be held accountable, and other than me guessing at which one, right now I have no other way of determining who is the guilty party. So we'll let luck take its course.”

Luis was looking a little less confident now, scared even. “What happens to the loser?” he asked.

“He dies.”

Luis started to jump from his chair, but the guards leveled automatic weapons at him, and he returned to his seat. “I didn't sign on for none of this shit,” he said. He was sweating now, the beads forming on his forehead and wet stains appearing under his arms. “This is bullshit.”

“You're kidding, right?” Pedro said.

“I never kid about such things,” Javier said. He glanced back and forth between the two men. “Who wants to call it?”

Neither man responded and he pointed to Luis. “Call it in the air. If you call heads and heads is showing when the coin lands on the floor, you win. Tails, you lose. Pretty simple, actually.” He buried the tip of his thumb under his index finger and set the coin over the visible portion of his thumb. “Call it,” he said, flipping it in the air. There was no mistaking the authority in his voice.

“Heads?” Luis said hesitantly.

The coin landed on the tile and spun for a second, then lay flat. Rastano leaned over and took a good look at which side was face up. He turned to Luis and said, “Heads. It's your lucky day, Luis.”

Every gun in the room was immediately pointing at Pedro, who just sat staring at Rastano. The Colombian rose from his chair and pulled a pistol from under his shirt. He slowly lowered it and pointed the barrel at Pedro's head. He advanced to within a few feet and stopped. “Anything you want to say?” he asked.

Pedro shook his head. “This is stupid,” he muttered.

Javier's finger tightened on the trigger, then in a flash so quick that no one in the room could react, he swung the barrel about and pulled the trigger. The bullet smashed into Luis's head and sent the man flying backward onto the floor. Blood and brain matter poured out the gaping hole in the rear of his skull and after a couple of involuntary twitches, the body lay still in a growing pool of blood.

“What the fuck?” Pedro said.

Javier smiled and sat down. He picked up his smoldering cigarette and took a long drag, then crushed out the butt. “It's my game, I can play it however I see fit,” he said, leaning forward and staring into Pedro's eyes. “I still don't know if it's you or him, Pedro. But I do know this. If I want to promote a fighter, I want to promote the best I have. Even though you lost the coin toss, I'd much rather have your talent and good looks in the ring than that acne-scarred piece of shit. It's all an image thing, you know.” He lit another cigarette, still staring into Pedro's eyes. “I just hope I killed the right guy.”