Everybody Pays (23 page)

Carlos nodded, as if thinking it through for himself. “Okay, I get it—this was you from the beginning, right? So what? No way you get another girl next to him—he’ll never go for that twice.”

“In a couple of minutes,” Cross said, soft-voiced, “you’ll have the powder. Me, I’ll have the baby. I’m not going into his compound. He could decide the best way to clean the slate is to whack me soon as he has the kid. I’m going to show the baby to his wife, not to him. And then
I’m
going to hold the baby. So Lorgano, he’ll have to meet me somewhere. Someplace open—like right here, understand?”

“
Sí.
How much?”

“He’s got, what, three million of your money? Plus whatever this all cost you. What’s it worth to get your hands on him?”

“You tell me,
hombre.
”

“You already owe me a quarter-mil, right? Double it, and he’s yours. COD.”

“It sounds good, Cross. Too good. In fact, it does not sound like you at all. Lorgano, he will know who set him up. And they still have plenty of firepower.”

“Yeah, I know. His crew, it’s not like yours. They’re all mercs. They work for the money. They wouldn’t do anything just for revenge. It would just be Lorgano.”

“So? As soon as we let him go, he could just hire some new . . .”

“You remember a kid named Juan? He was with your crew, wasn’t he? Until he got smoked doing a delivery. You lost that shipment too, right?”

“Yes, Juanito was my sister’s oldest son. But that was—”

“That was Lorgano,” Cross said. “He had the kid hit. Another shipment he didn’t pay for.”

Carlos’ face shifted imperceptibly, then went stony. He handed the baby to Cross. “It’s a contract,” he said. “COD.”

for Ralph Compton Pino

TWO-WAY RADIO

T
he florid-faced man stared intently at the small aluminum cube. It sat pure and pristine on the mottled green surface of a crude desk fashioned from an old wood door laid carelessly across a pair of sawhorses. “You’re sure it’ll work?” he asked, eyeing it warily. He made no move to reach out and touch it.

“It’s a half-pound of pure C4,” the shadowy man on the other side of the desk assured him. “There’ll be nothing left of the car. Guaranteed.”

“I got to be sure,” the florid-faced man said. “Myra’s a vicious damn bitch. I won’t get more than one chance.”

“You won’t need more than one.”

“I’m not worried about it being traced back to me. Running a porno business, it isn’t like it used to be. The Mob wants to control everything now, even little operators like me and Myra. The cops, they’ll figure we didn’t pay off and . . .”

“Sure,” the shadowy man said, not interested.

“Cross. I been hearing about you for years. I didn’t even know you was real until I reached out. They say you never miss.”

The shadowy man lit a cigarette, not responding.

“Is that right?” the florid-faced man asked, a slightly more insistent tone in his reedy voice. “That you never miss?”

“You know anybody saying different?”

“No. I didn’t mean . . . ah, never mind. How does it work?”

“Right now, it’s as harmless as a paperweight,” the shadowy man said, reaching out for the aluminum cube. A bull’s-eye tattoo on the back of his hand gleamed faintly in the dim light. The man called Cross tossed the aluminum cube into the air, caught it on the way down. “The receiver’s inside. All you need is the transmitter,” he said, taking a black plastic box about the size of a pack of cigarettes from inside his coat. He held the transmitter up so the florid-faced man could see it.

“Yeah,” the man said, wiping his brow with a white handkerchief. “It doesn’t matter where I put it?”

“No. Trunk of the car’s fine. Or under the dash. In the back seat. Inside a package. The whole car’s going anyway. Just be sure you’re at least a block or so away—there’s going to be shrapnel.”

“That’s no problem. We got our . . . studio out on a farm. Almost a hundred acres. It’ll go off when she’s still on the property. But . . .”

“What?”

“This is like a radio thing, right? How do I know some idiot with a cordless phone won’t set it off while I’m driving out to the place?”

“That’s the beauty of it,” Cross said. “This is a
two-way
radio. See these buttons? The green one arms it, the red one sets it off. Unless you press the green button, it can’t be activated.”

“I guess that’s it, then,” the florid-faced man said, pocketing the aluminum cube and the transmitter and getting to his feet.

“Give me the money,” Cross said quietly.

It was almost forty-five minutes before the cellular phone rang. Cross picked it up without speaking.

“He just turned onto the dirt road,” a woman’s voice said. “I can see his car from the attic.”

From his pocket, Cross took the twin to the transmitter he had given the florid-faced man. He pushed the green button. “Bring the money tomorrow,” he said. And pushed the red button.

for Molly and Brenna

NOVELLA

EVERYBODY PAYS

“
F
ong swears he’s a snakehead, boss,” the pudgy man said. The small back room was filled to capacity, but his voice was aimed only at the man seated behind a makeshift desk—a wooden door placed over a pair of sawhorses.

The man behind the desk took the third drag of his cigarette and snubbed it out in an inverted hubcap already filled to the brim with butts, exposing the bull’s-eye tattoo on the back of his right hand. He was so still within himself that the movement seemed ghostlike.

“What’s a snakehead?” one of the other men asked. He was so grotesquely overmuscled that he looked like a comic-book figure. His shaved head and the miniature wrecking ball dangling on a chain from one ear didn’t detract from the image. His voice was that of a fascinated child.

“A smuggler, Princess,” a man in the farthest corner of the room answered. That man was so enormous he appeared to be part of the wall itself, dwarfing even the massive bodybuilder by several inches and a hundred pounds. His voice was a high-pitched squeak, the result of drain cleaner forced down his throat when he was a teenager. “Only they smuggle people, not stuff, understand?”

“You mean like Mexicans across the border?”

“Yes,” the huge man said, approvingly.

“I did good, right, Rhino?” the bodybuilder asked.

“It was very smart of you to figure that out,” the huge man said, his tone indicating he’d doled out enough praise for one conversation.

“That ain’t no cargo worth hijacking,” a razor-thin black man in an ankle-length leather coat spoke up. “What’s all this bullshit about, Cross?”

The man behind the desk closed his eyes. “I don’t know what it’s about,” he said softly. “Buddha brought it in—it’s on him to say where the money is.”

The slim black man turned to the pudgy man. “Well?”

“Look, Ace, it’s just a job, all right? I don’t know anything more about it. This guy, he says he’s bringing in some people; he wants cover, in case someone tipped the INS. That’s what he told So Long. I asked Fong, and Fong said, yeah, the guy’s a snakehead all right. Does it all the time. But he always worked the coast before. This time he told So Long he’s bringing them over from Canada on one of those ore barges.”

“Across Lake Michigan?” Ace sneered.

“That’s what he said,” Buddha replied, shrugging his shoulders.

“And he’s offering . . . what?” Rhino asked.

“A hundred. Half up front, half when the cargo’s gone.”

“You speak any Chinese?” Cross asked Buddha.

“Boss, there ain’t no such thing as ‘Chinese.’ Jesus. They got about a million different dialects, depending on where they’re from. I mean, I can get by a little, maybe, but . . .”

“It stinks,” Cross said. “How much could each of the people he brings over be worth?”

“Thirty, even forty,” Buddha told him. “So Long says they’d have to work it off here, but their people’d still have to front a nice piece of it before they took off, too. All their relatives chip in. If the snakehead’s got a full boat, it could be a few dozen head, that’d be huge, chief. A big score.”

“I’m sure So Long knows what’s she’s talking about,” Cross said mildly. “Your wife—”

“So Long knows money,” Buddha said defensively. “You gotta give her that much.”

“Fuck, even
I
give her that much,” Ace acknowledged.

Rhino grunted assent.

“I’m not saying she’s not right about what the cargo’s worth,” Cross said, voice still soft and mild. “But it’s not worth that to
us,
right?”

“No, chief. Just the—”

“Yeah,” Cross interrupted. “Just the thing to make us believe that it would be
worth
a hundred large for cover fire.”

“You don’t think—?”

“One,” Cross said, holding up a finger, “a hundred grand isn’t enough to get us in a firefight with the feds. Two, if we go for it, somebody’s going to know where
all
of us are at the same time.”

“Why would this snakehead want to ambush us?” Buddha asked.

“Who knows? Who even knows if it’s him that wants to do it? Plenty do, right? Maybe he’s worried some other tiger crew is looking to hijack his cargo. Or maybe some of the people he brought across didn’t make it one time, and somebody wants payback. Maybe, maybe, maybe . . . Too many ‘maybe’s for us.”

“So we pass?” Buddha asked, an undercurrent of disappointment in his tone. The shrewish So Long, his wife of many carping years, wouldn’t be happy at a missed opportunity for cash.

“Buddha, ask him for the drop-off point. Tell him we need at least seventy-two hours to get dug in. See if he’ll go for that.”

“But boss, he probably don’t even know. I mean, they’ll be in radio contact with the barge, right? They’ll have to send a smaller boat out, offload the cargo. No way they’re gonna bring an ore barge right up to Lake Shore Drive, come on!”

“So how would he get this cover fire he says he wants to buy?”

“Oh. Yeah, well, he explained that to So Long. See, all he needs is a phone number. Cell phone. When he knows exactly where they’re coming in, he calls and we can come to the drop point.”

“It’s an ambush,” Cross said flatly. “Now we need to find out who’s setting it up. Tell So Long to tell this snakehead he’s got himself a deal.”

“Are you sure?” the immaculately dressed man demanded imperiously from the back of the discreetly dark, long-wheelbase Rolls-Royce.

“These are the precise directions I was given, sir,” the chauffeur replied.

“I pay good money for . . . Oh, never mind. Just . . . go ahead.”

“Yes, sir.”

A few more turns and the limo was facing a prairie. A prairie populated with junk beneath even the lowest scavenger’s contempt: skeletons of abandoned cars, rotted furniture beyond salvage, broken chunks of concrete, rusting razor wire, pieces of discarded appliances. The sweep of the car’s headlights reflected tiny dots of light at various points in the rubble.
Pairs
of dots, the chauffeur noted.

A six-story building stood alone some distance back from the street, the sole survivor of what had been a connected string of flats. The other buildings had long since fallen to a builder’s wrecking ball. Bankruptcy had canceled the plans for “developing” an area even the most optimistic yuppie pioneer would refuse to visit in broad daylight, much less inhabit.

“
That’s
it?” the man in the back seat asked incredulously.

“These are the coordinates, sir. There are no street numbers around here. I assume that is the building. We won’t know until we’re closer. And there appears to be no way to
drive
any closer, so . . .”

“You expect me to—?”

“Pal, you want to know the truth?” the driver asked, his formerly subservient tone replaced by something just this side of a sneer. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about your little expectations. You know who I work for. My orders were, bring you to this joint, play chauffeur, keep anybody from hurting you. I did that. I can do that. The rest of this stuff—mister, you’re on your own. You want to stroll through that minefield over there, I’ll walk point. You want to bag the whole thing and go home, I’m just as okay with that. Don’t matter to me, you understand?”

“Couldn’t we call—?”

“This is what I was told, all right? Only place to find this guy is right here. Or at that Double X joint he owns, but word is he won’t do business there. So it’s got to be here. And it’s got to be now, the way it was set up.”

“Do you know this man?”

“Only by rep. Never met him.”

“Do you believe he could actually—?”

“Don’t know, don’t care.”

“Your superiors—”

“Sure. Whatever. I’m not in this. You want to walk or you want to ride?”

The immaculately dressed man let himself out of the back seat for an answer, tapping one toe impatiently as the chauffeur also got out and joined him.

“Did you set the alarm?”

“What the silly fuck for? You think anyone around here’s gonna call the cops? Look, the way I was told, you park in this spot—see, right across from that fire hydrant with the top knocked off it—you’re covered, long as you’re inside. And they’re expecting you. I figure they got us scoped already. These guys, they’re not car thieves, okay? Now come on. . . .”

The chauffeur walked ahead carefully, lips twisting in something close to a smile at the brief flashes of ankle-level light that exploded coldly every few steps—lighting the path and announcing a warning at the same time. The immaculately dressed man came behind him, finally silent.

The outside of the building had the number “71” scrawled in dried-blood red as its only identification.
Good enough,
the chauffeur thought to himself. A rusty metal door was standing slightly ajar. He pulled it toward himself and stepped inside. A long streamer of the same-color paint greeted him. A crudely drawn arrow at its end pointed the way. Down.

He descended the steps, chuckling at the dozen different ways he’d already spotted for an intruder who pulled the wrong move to die. The door at the bottom had the same “71” scrawled in the same-color paint. Past the door was a poolroom. At least, it looked like a poolroom—it was so murky that only the click of the ivory balls and an occasional muted movement gave any hint. The size of the room was impossible to determine.

An elderly man wearing a green eyeshade as old as he was swiveled in his wooden chair, pulling his eyes away from a small black-and-white TV set with rabbit-ear antennas wrapped in silver foil. He looked at the chauffeur, saying nothing.

“We’re here for Cross,” the chauffeur said.

“I ain’t the boss,” the old man said, cupping a hand around one ear.

“Sure, Pop.” The chauffeur snickered. “I get the joke. How long do I have to—?”

He stopped speaking because he felt a hand on his forearm. A gentle hand, but the chauffeur sensed it would be impossible to dislodge. He didn’t turn around.

“Count to five. Then turn around. Follow the biggest thing you see,” a high-pitched squeaky voice said quietly.

When the chauffeur turned around, he saw the shapeless bulk of the largest human he’d ever seen in his life moving off between the tables. “Let’s go,” he told the immaculately dressed man.

The huge man cleared a path with his presence, as though he were displacing the very air. When he came to a curtain composed of thousands of ball bearings strung like beads, he stepped to one side. “In there,” is all he said.

The chauffeur parted the curtain for his passenger, noting the weight—any one strand would snap bones as if they were dry twigs. As the chauffeur passed through, he felt the presence of the behemoth behind him, but there was no physical contact.

Inside, he saw a man behind a desk fashioned out of a door laid across a pair of sawhorses. The man was as unremarkable as a grain of rice. A human generic, a member of any crowd, invisible even in person. A pair of institutional-gray metal folding chairs was arranged on the other side of the desk.

“You’re Cross?” the immaculately dressed man asked the man behind the desk.

“Just sit down,” the chauffeur told him, embarrassed, taking a seat himself. “I’m carrying,” he told the man behind the desk.

“We know.”

The chauffeur nodded in acknowledgment. They knew he was armed. He knew he was surrounded. He’d disclosed his weapon only to keep things honest, that’s what he told himself. But he knew the truth—he wanted to distance himself from the immaculately dressed man. He was a professional, same as the man sitting across from them. And, somehow, it was important to him that the other man recognize it.

“My friends in the State Department . . .” the immaculately dressed man began.

“Told you I could get something done. Just tell me what it is,” the man behind the desk said softly.

“My daughter is a political prisoner,” the man said.

Cross regarded him in total stillness, waiting. It was almost fifteen seconds before the immaculately dressed man understood that this was not going to be a conversation—if he didn’t speak again, the meeting was over.

“She’s being held in Quitasol,” he said. “Maybe you read about it. The government claims she was working with the rebel faction, with some guerrilla outfit. But she was only there for some ecology thing. She never had a trial. Like that girl in Peru. Only these people are even worse. There’s no appellate process at all. The prison they have her in, she . . . won’t survive much longer. It’s high in the mountains. The food is foul. There’s no medical care. She . . .”

“What do you want?” the man behind the desk asked.

“Want? I want her out of there. I want her home. Where she belongs.”

“Uh, maybe you didn’t understand me. You came
here.
I’m not a therapist. Tell me what you want to
buy.
”

“He wants an extraction,” the chauffeur said, motioning the immaculately dressed man into silence before the arrogant fool said something that would end it all before they even got the offer out.

“From La Casa de Dolor?” Cross asked.

“Yes,” the chauffeur replied, unsurprised that Cross knew not only where the girl was being kept, but what the locals called it.