Catch Her If You Can (21 page)

“I want you to go back to El Paso with the team,” he told me once we’d said our good-byes to Brother Doctor. “I’ve got a chopper standing by. I’ll call it in and join Paul in Mexico City. We’ll take it from here.”

“I’m in this as much as you are now.”

“Be reasonable, Samantha. Your testimony is all we need to prove Mendoza held you against your will. You don’t need to be in on the takedown.”

“Yes, I do. This is bigger than me, Mitch. Much bigger. The folks here in Tapigua lost a little girl. Father Alfonz is convinced she got sucked into Mendoza’s vicious flesh-peddling schemes. You had to put Jenny out of your life because of him. If I can talk to Teresa Slut Shoes, away from Mendoza, I think I can get to her expose the entire operation.”

“Think?”

“It’s worth a shot.”

 

GUESS I don’t need to tell you Donati was less than enthusiastic when Mitch contacted him via cell phone and relayed my request for a personal heart-to-heart with Mendoza’s girlfriend. I couldn’t really blame Paul for his explosive reply. The two other cases I’d worked with him had turned nasty. Not
totally
my fault, I hasten to add, but these FBI types have convenient memories.

“Ask him where Mendoza is now,” I hissed at Mitch, who duly voiced the question.

“Some big charity do,” he relayed. “Evidently it’s been planned for months.”

“Ask him . . .”

“Here.” He thrust the phone at me. “You ask him.”

“Paul, it’s Samantha.”

“Glad Mitch found you in one piece, Lieutenant.”

Ever wonder how some people can inject so many nuances into a single sentence? This one contained genuine sincerity, weary resignation, and more than a touch of “Please! Go home and let us do our thing.”

“Thanks.”

Wish I could convey the same wealth of emotions with minimal expression. Guess I need to work on my delivery.

“Listen, Paul, we can crack Mendoza.”

“He’s got an Achilles toe.”

“Heel,” Mitch corrected dryly.

“Heel. In this case, the heel’s name is Teresa.”

“Teresa Sandoval? His assistant?”

“You think so, huh?”

Paul gave a huff of reluctant laughter. “Yeah, we got the impression she might provide Mendoza more than administrative services.”

“Did you interview her?”

“Of course.”

“Did she admit being with her boss on the mesa?”

“She did.”

“And?”

“She saw nothing, heard nothing.”

“Did you play the wife card?”

There was a short, telling silence. “Not with her,” Donati admitted after a moment. “We tried it on Mendoza, though. He just smiled and said his wife understands that a man must be a man.”

Teresa hadn’t found the situation nearly as amusing. I’d almost gotten whiplash when I asked her about Mrs. Boss.

“I want to talk to her, Paul. Can you and your friends get to her? Discreetly detach her from her boss so we girls can have a heart-to-heart? We need to do it fast, though. Before Teresa has time to think about what she knows and doesn’t know.”

“Hang on.”

I waited impatiently while he conversed in hurried Spanish with someone on his team. I heard a second person bark an order, waited a few moments more, and got my answer.

“She’s at the same function the Mendozas are attending. Taking bids on the piece he put up for auction.”

Perfect! The boss makes her work while he schmoozes with his wife. Teresa Baby had to be steaming.

“Mitch says he can call in a chopper. We’ll be there in less than an hour.”

 

IF you think L.A. collects smog, try choppering into Mexico City sometime. One minute you’re skimming above an impenetrable layer of brown goop. The next, you’re nose-diving in and hoping to hell it dissipates before you hit the ground. Or in this case, before you hit the ramparts of a massive stone castle with four lethal towers poking into the sky.

I’d visited Chapultepec Castle before, when O’Reilly was invited to compete in the opening round of the Chess Tournament of the Americas. He’d talked Pen and me into taking leave and tagging along as his personal cheering section. We sat for five long, boring hours while Dennis and his competitor shuffled pieces across a board. He lost in the first round, thank heavens, so we spent the rest of the weekend hitting bars, pyramids, and at Pen’s adamant insistence, a museum or two.

One of those museums was located at the base of Chapultepec Castle. But the rock it sat on looked a
lot
higher and steeper than I remembered from our brief visit. Especially when the chopper pilot swooped around a turret and aimed for the black-and-white-tiled piazza at the rear of the castle.

The rectangular piazza jutted out above heavily wooded grounds. I spotted a string of limos, at least four of which were heavily armored and guarded by uniformed personnel. Their plates were obscured for security reasons but I glimpsed a subdued U.S. flag shoulder patch on one of the uniformed guards standing at parade rest.

“Mitch! Are those U.S. Marines?”

He squinted and nodded. “Embassy guards. Evidently the guest list includes the U.S. ambassador as well as the mayor and governor.”

Ooooh, boy. A U.S. ambassador, a governor, and a mayor. I hoped to heck gate-crashing their big wingding didn’t come back to bite me in the ass. I would have enough to explain to Dr. J without the State Department and a foreign government coming down on me.

Paul’s counterpart had obviously cleared us in. A police officer in a bright orange vest waved us to a pad near the ramp that led up to the castle gate.

“You want to ease up a bit there, Samantha?”

“What? Oh!”

I loosened the nails I’d gouged into Mitch’s thigh, then dug them right in again as the landing pad zoomed up at us. He merely grunted and, once the skids had touched down, pried my hand loose.

Paul had sent a car and driver to pick us up. I took great reassurance from the sight of those U.S. Marines as Mitch and I zinged past the parked limos and drove up onto the castle ramparts.

Most of the security personnel ringing the walls wore camouflage fatigues like mine, desert greens like Mitch’s, or the spiffy all-black of the governor’s personal body-guards. I half expected one of those razor-jawed black-shirts to challenge us, but Paul Donati was waiting to thrust us through a side door into a small anteroom.

“Couldn’t talk her out of it, could you?” he commented to Mitch in disgust.

“You had your shot, Donati. I didn’t notice you doing better.”

“Yeah, but she’s your woman.”

I knew darn well Donati said that to get a rise out of me but I actually kind of liked the way it sounded.

“Enough man talk,” I interjected sternly. “Where’s Teresa?”

“Inside.”

He nudged me toward the door of the anteroom. It gave onto what looked like the castle’s main reception hall. A vaulted ceiling soared fifty or more feet in the air. Fluted stone pillars marched at regular intervals down a marble-tiled hall at least two football fields long. Works of art occupied spotlit niches between the pillars. Including, I saw with a catch to my breath, the magnificent eagle dancer that had recently graced the foyer of Mendoza’s cliff house.

Teresa stood beside the sculpture, lean and sensuous in a black sheath slit to the knee on one side. I couldn’t see her shoes, but there was no missing the scarlet, come-and-get-me hibiscus tucked in the knot of her hair. Or her intense concentration as she followed the movements of a couple across the room.

Rafael Mendoza, I saw with a sudden spike in my pulse. With a languid blonde at least three inches taller than him on his arm. Diamonds dripped from her ears and sparkled in the choker that ringed her neck.

My glance zinged back to Teresa. She was doing a damned good job of hiding her feelings, but I was betting on the fact that they were simmering just below the surface. I poked Paul in the ribs.

“Send someone to get her. We’ll wait out on the piazza.”

“You sure you know what you’re doing?” Mitch asked when we’d moved to one of the parapets that overlooked acres of green below.

“No. Just play along, okay?”

 

AFTER all my furious thinking and plotting, Teresa fell apart at the seams the first moment she saw me.

“They said . . .” She stumbled back and put up a hand as if to ward off a ghost. “They said you wrecked the Hummer . . . That you wandered into the desert on foot. They said you could not survive.”

“They said wrong.”

“How did you . . . ? Where did you . . . ?”

“Never mind me. Let’s talk about your boss.”

As shaken as she was, she recognized that we were after bigger game and made a painfully obvious effort to pull herself together.

“I don’t know why Señor Mendoza brought you to the mesa. He never told me the reason, only that . . .” She wet her lips and glanced nervously from me to Mitch to Paul and back to me again. “Only that I must make sure you were treated well while you were there.”

“Bull!”

“I swear!”

“And I suppose he never told why he’d had ringbolts soldered to the flooring of the plane that ferried me in. And ferried out terrified little girls and boys.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Her nostrils flared. She backed up another step. Two. I followed relentlessly.

“You don’t know about a girl named Angelina?”

“No! No, I never hear of her!”

“Then I’ll tell you about her. She comes from the village of Tapigua. She went missing last year. Her parents and the parish priest believe one of Mendoza’s squads picked her up and sold her to a brothel. She wouldn’t have brought much in the way of profit. Not enough to pay for the diamonds your boss likes to drape all over his wife.”

That slipped in under her guard. She stiffened and flashed me an evil look but held her own.

“I say again, I don’t know this girl or . . .”

“Listen to me!” I cut in ruthlessly. “Your boss is going down, Teresa, and not just for kidnapping me. You’re going with him. Unless you decide he’s used you long enough and want some payback.”

“He does not . . .” She stopped, frowned, continued a little less adamantly. “He does not use me.”

“No? When’s the last time he danced with you in public? Or invited you to join him and his family for a splash in the pool?”

That was laying it on pretty thick, but I was on a roll.

“You think your lover’s going to protect you when I get on the stand and identify you as one of his cohorts? Not hardly! If Mendoza runs true to form, he’ll try to eliminate me . . . and anyone who can verify the truth of my story.”

“I . . . I . . .”

Mitch stepped forward then. His face might have been carved from the same stone as the castle walls.

“Your lover’s done it before,” he said in a tone so low and lethal I felt goose bumps crawl up my arms. “Four years ago he went on trial right here in Mexico City. I testified at that trial. So did my counterpart on the task force. Ramon’s son disappeared a week later. I made sure Mendoza couldn’t get to my daughter, so he took Samantha instead. He would have killed her, Teresa. Slowly and painfully. The same way he’ll kill anyone he considers a threat.”

“Better watch your back,” I advised her cheerfully. “Or let these guys watch it for you.”

THE scariest moments of my whole south-of-the-border sojourn came just after Paul and his pals donned vests emblazoned with various official insignia and invaded the charity auction. They marched up to Mendoza and cuffed him right in front of the ambassador, the governor, the mayor, and his wife.

She threw a first-class, scream-your-lungs out, claw-everyone-within-reach hissy fit. I don’t know all that many Spanish four-letter words, but Señora Mendoza added considerably to my repertoire. It took three men to subdue her while two others escorted her husband down the colonnaded hall and out onto the piazza.

Mendoza didn’t put up any resistance. No doubt because he was already mentally figuring which judges he could pay off and how many jurors he would have to intimidate.

Then he spotted me.

And Mitch.

I don’t know what he said to Mitch. All I can say is that it had a real nasty ring to it.

I
do
know what Mitch said in reply. I won’t repeat it here. Suffice to say Mendoza’s response forever shattered my faith in handcuffs as a means of restraint.

Like an enraged bull, he shook off the men holding him, lowered his head, and charged. He moved so fast that Mitch barely had time to shove me aside before taking a head butt to his midsection.

No big deal ordinarily. You gasp for air. Toss up the carne asada you had for lunch. Kick the crap out of the buttee. Go on about your business. Except when you’re six-one or -two and standing close to a low stone wall!

Mendoza had hit so hard and fast that Mitch toppled backward. I had an instant, terrifying vision of him flying over the wall and crashing into the woods below. My heart in my throat, I lunged forward to try to catch him.

I could have saved my panic and my effort. Mitch had already regained his balance. He swatted me aside, brought his knee up, and smashed it into Mendoza’s groin.

The Mexican screamed in agony and doubled over. His legs gave out. He started to crumple, but before he dropped, Mitch grabbed his collar.

“That was for Ramon’s son. And this, you worthless piece of shit, is for Samantha.”

The knee slammed into his face this time. Bone crunched. Blood spurted. I whooped with glee.

Mendoza fell to the tiles, writhing in agony. I know it’s very uncool to hit a handcuffed man while he’s down. Probably against the Geneva Convention, too, but I was in no mood for nice. Hauling back my left foot, I gave him a good, solid combat boot to the gut.