Gamma Blade (13 page)

“Take your hand off me,” he said. “Or I’ll book you for assaulting a police officer.”

He went down the stairs, aware of the two men’s looming presence at his back. In the reception area, he smiled at the woman behind the desk. She stared back impassively.

“Oh,” Venn said, turning. “Almost forgot. My gun.”

One of the goons slapped the Beretta into his palm. Venn checked it. They hadn’t secretly unloaded it.

“Have a nice day,” he said to the room, and stepped out into the steaming, brightly sunlit street.

He headed back in the direction of Estrada’s car, aware that he’d just painted a massive, neon-lit target on his back.

*

A block from the office, Venn heard footsteps approaching rapidly.

He tensed. So they were coming after him now, already.

He turned, his hand going into his jacket, fingers touching the grip of the Beretta.

But the man hurrying toward him across the road wasn’t one of Brull’s thugs.

It was the small, overweight, terrified-looking guy he’d seen coming down the stairs earlier.

Venn slowed, then stopped. He watched the guy approach. The man was out of breath, and Venn guessed he’d been following at quite a pace in order to keep up with Venn’s long strides.

“Sir,” he gasped. “Sir.”

As he drew near to Venn, he gazed fearfully around him. Venn looked, too. Although there were some fairly rough-looking people on the street, none of them looked like an immediate threat.

Venn faced the guy, leaving the Beretta where it was in its holster. The man was drenched with sweat, and the sour smell of fear radiated off him. He hadn’t shaved for a couple of days, and he looked like he hadn’t slept in longer.

“You okay?” said Venn, unnecessarily.

Now that he’d reached Venn, the man looked like the final spark had gone out of him. He leaned forward, hands on his knees, and gulped for air. His shoulders shook.

“Hey,” said Venn. “Come on. Easy, now.”

He stooped a little, to get closer to the man’s face. The guy flinched, as if expecting an attack. Venn spread his hands to show he posed no threat.

“I saw you back there,” Venn said, quietly. “In the office. You looked scared.”

The man’s bleary, bloodshot eyes sought Venn’s, though he seemed to have difficulty focussing.

“So why don’t you tell me what’s going on,” Venn suggested.

The man’s eyes cleared a little, and fixed on Venn’s face. His lips worked, but no sound came.

“What’s your name?” said Venn. Always a good prompt to get people talking.

Instead of answering, the man said, his voice low and harsh: “Are you... are you with
him
? Brull?”

“No,” Venn said. “I’m very much
against
him.” He straightened, looked around him again. This would be easier if they were somewhere more private.

Touching the guy’s shoulder, gently, so as not to spook him, Venn said, “Let’s walk. We’ll go slowly. Catch your breath. Talk to me in your own time.”

He waited till he knew the guy was ready to fall in step with him. Then he resumed his strides, though at a slower pace, in the direction of Estrada’s car, a block away.

They’d gone ten paces or so when the man said, more steadily now: “My name is Carlos. Carlos Fuentes.”

“Okay, Carlos. I’m Joe Venn.” The guy sounded like a first-generation Cuban. His English was good and fluent, but his accent was heavy. “What were you doing at Brull’s offices?”

Venn was disturbed by the way the man recoiled, as if Venn’s words had physically stung him. Fuentes stopped for a moment. Venn thought he was going to pass out, and put his hands out to catch him.

But Fuentes waved them away, and continued walking.

He said: “You are police?”

“Kind of,” said Venn. “Well, yeah, I
am
a police officer. But this isn’t my territory. I’m from New York. It’s just that Brull almost killed me last night, and let’s say I’ve taken a keen interest in him since then.”

Fuentes absorbed this in silence.

Venn prompted: “So that’s me. How about you?”

Fuentes stopped again. This time he really did stagger.

Venn turned and grabbed him by the shoulders. He peered down into his face.

“Carlos, what is it? What’s scaring you like this? Talk to me. Talk to me, and maybe I can help you.”

Fuentes raised his eyes to Venn. This time, there was no terror there. Just utter, howling despair.

“Brull has my Hector,” he whispered. “My son. Just a little boy. Brull has stolen him. And if I do not do what he demands, Brull will torture him, and murder him. My little boy.”

The man’s words were choked off in a strangled gasp. His eyes rolled like an animal’s just before slaughter.

Venn put his arm around the guy’s shoulders, not so much to comfort him as to keep him vertical.

He said: “Come on. Let’s move.”

Chapter 18

Estrada twisted round in her seat and stared at Fuentes as Venn pushed him into the rear and slid in after him.

She said, “Who’s this?”

“Carlos Fuentes,” said Venn. “He’s a friend.”

She looked at Venn. “What went down in there?”

“I met your guy. Brull. He’s the one who I encountered last night, all right. But he didn’t give away a thing.”

“And this guy?”

Venn saw that Fuentes was frightened once again. He cringed away from Estrada’s unflinching gaze.

“Carlos, this is Detective Lieutenant Estrada from the Miami PD,” Venn said.

Fuentes look horrified. “No! No police. I cannot -”

“Relax,” said Venn. “She’s not gonna make this official. She’s off the grid, like me. This is like a personal investigation.”

Fuentes looked from Venn to Estrada and back again, unsure.

Estrada said, “Will you tell me what’s going on?”

Venn motioned gently to Fuentes. “Come on, man. You’re safe here. You can talk to us. Take all the time you need.” He noticed a half-empty bottle of water tucked into the cubbyhole in one of the doors and pulled it out. “Have some of this.”

Fuentes drank greedily, spilling some and choking a little. He handed the bottle back to Venn and wiped his mouth.

Slowly, haltingly at first, he began to tell his story.

He’d first encountered Ernesto Justice Brull eight months earlier. Brull had come into his grocery store one day and bought a few items. He’d seemed like just another guy, a sharp-looking dude with a friendly manner and a desire to chat.

While Fuentes had rung up his purchases, Brull had inquired about the store. Fuentes had told him proudly how he’d set it up on his own, eleven years earlier, shortly after he’d gotten his green card and become an American citizen. He and his wife had toiled, day and night, working two jobs each, barely sleeping, seldom eating a square meal, scrimping and saving every penny they earned in order to invest in the fledgling store.

Fuentes had built it slowly, and in fits and starts. There’d been nights, in the early years, when he’d lain awake soaked in sweat, his fears of bankruptcy and ruin taking on the character of demons in the darkness. But he’d come through, and the business had started turning a healthy profit a little over two years after it had first opened its doors.

Brull had listened with seeming genuine interest. He’d congratulated Fuentes effusively, saying that it was success stories like his that had given Brull the inspiration to set up his own business and keep on soldiering through the hard times.

“He said he was setting up a soccer coaching firm for inner city kids,” Fuentes said, his voice sounding appalled by his naivety.

Brull had let it be known that his business was doing extremely well, and that he had cash to play with. Cash he was starting to loan to other, Cuban-run small firms which might need a little boost. Right at that time, Fuentes had hit a bump in his financial road. He’d had a rocky period after a large chain store had opened up a couple of blocks away in the neighborhood. And he could use a small infusion of capital. Maybe two grand, just to keep the wolf from the door.

Brull offered him one and a half times that.

“I was a fool,” said Fuentes simply. “I said yes. I should have known the interest he was proposing was outrageous. But he seemed a nice guy, and authentic.”

So he’d taken Brull’s three thousand dollars. The repayments had suddenly and unexpectedly increased one month. When Fuentes objected, he found his store’s windows smashed one morning, every last one of them. And a dead cat on the wall, impaled there by a crossbow bolt.

He’d paid up. And realized what a nightmare he’d entered.

Since then, the interest had rocketed. Brull had seemed to take a perverse pleasure in cranking them up, arbitrarily and without warning.

And two weeks ago, Brull had called Fuentes and told him that he no longer thought they could work together, that Carlos had let him down with his unreliability and his attitude, and that he was calling in the loan.

“Four thousand dollars, he wanted. In one lump sum. By this week,” said Fuentes, shuddering. “I requested to meet him yesterday. His men collected me and brought me to his office.”

Fuentes fell silent, the memories overwhelming him.

Venn urged softly: “What then?”

Fuentes raised his head and stared a Venn, as if he were a stranger. “He increased the payment to six grand,” he said dully. “Six thousand dollars. By Monday morning. Two days from now.”

“And...?”

“And, he showed me footage of my son. My only son. Hector.”

“Footage,” said Estrada.

Still looking at Venn, Fuentes said, “My boy was screaming in the clip, Mr Venn. Screaming as if he was frightened out of his wits. A man was holding him from behind, with a - with a
knife
to his throat.” He broke off, choking back a sob.

“How old’s Hector, Carlos?” said Venn.

“Seven.” The voice was a whisper once more.

Venn thought:
son of a bitch
.

“You son is missing?” said Estrada. Not harshly, but not exactly sympathetically.

This time Fuentes turned his stare to her. “Yes. I called Helena, my wife, immediately as I left Brull’s office. She was in the store. Hector was, so far as she knew, at school. I called the school. They said he never arrived there that morning, and they were going to call us.” He wiped a hand across his wet eyes and nose. “He walks to school. It is just round the corner. Brull or his men must have snatched him on the way.”

Estrada said, “The clip he showed you. Did you notice any other details? The background? The face of the man holding him?”

“Wait,” said Fuentes, and he fumbled in his pocket. He took out a cell phone and thumbed the keys with shaking hands. “Here.”

He held the phone up so both detectives could see the screen. A jerky video clip was playing. In it, a chubby boy, his face a rictus of terror, was struggling in the grip of a muscular man who had his arm across the boy’s neck. The man’s face was out of the picture, and Venn noted no distinguishing marks on the forearm, no tattoos or scars.

The background was a haze, a blur of movement. But just near the end of the six-second clip, something swung into view.

“Hold on,” Venn said. “Stop it there. Go back a few frames.”

Fuentes did so.

“Freeze it.”

Just above the boy’s right shoulder, and behind him, a flattened oval shape was visible. It was bifurcated horizontally by an indistinct line, which divided a dark half below from a lighter section above.

Venn couldn’t be sure, but it looked like a porthole, with a line of sea-surface beyond it.

“A ship,” he said. “Or a boat.”

“Yes,”
said Fuentes fiercely. It was the first time Venn had heard anything but fear or despair in the man’s tone. “I have looked at this clip over and over again, Mr Venn. I have studied every frame. And I am convinced that Hector is aboard a boat.”

Venn glanced away, understanding.

Fuentes nodded. “So, you see, when I first met you in the office, and I heard that you wanted to talk to Brull about a boat... I believed you could help me.”

Venn studied him. “Why?” he said. “I could have been in cahoots with Brull. I might have been one of the men who was holding your son.”

Fuentes shrugged awkwardly. “I cannot say why, exactly, I felt hope right then. But you looked to me... I don’t know. You looked to me, Mr Venn, like a man who was on the side of good. I thought maybe you were an undercover cop. Or a private investigator. And I admit, I was not being rational. There was no reason you mentioning a boat had anything to do with Hector’s disappearance.” He drew a long breath. “But I felt I had nothing to lose. I had just offered Brull the last thing I had. My life. My life, in exchange for my son’s. Of course, Brull laughed in my face. But I knew I had to approach you.”

Estrada said, “You didn’t go to the police when you first learned your son had been taken?”

“I could not, Detective,” Fuentes said. “If Brull heard the police were looking for the boy, and he surely would find out, he would kill him. And probably Helena, and our daughter Aletha. And me, though I do not care any longer.” Without warning, Fuentes seized Estrada’s arm. “
Please.
You
cannot
tell your department. They will post flyers with Hector’s photo all over the city. Brull will know at once -”

“Calm down.” Estrada extracted her arm. “Like Detective Venn said, this is unofficial. We’ll tell nobody.”

Fuentes looked at Venn again.

“Will you help me?” he said.

Venn thought about Brull. About the way the guy had sat there, behind his desk, a sleazy king in his crappy two-bit throne room, with the jewelry winking in his teeth.

He thought about Beth, and the life growing within her. The life he’d helped to kickstart.

He said, very slowly and carefully: “Carlos. I swear to you, on my mother’s grave, that I will get your son back to you.”

Venn was aware of Estrada’s glance in his direction, but he didn’t return it. He kept his eyes focussed on Fuentes’.

He saw, by the desperate hope in the bloodshot gaze, that Fuentes believed him.

“Thank you,” the man whispered.