Latitude Zero (26 page)

A muscle twitched at his temple. “Yes, he overpowered my agents. For a small guy, he was pretty strong. He managed to wrestle Pizarro, knock a knife out of his hand, rush the door, and get out. But now I’ve said enough. You now have all the relevant information you need to consider our assignment. Our generous offer, I might call it.”

“Your assignment?”

“Finally. We’re getting down to business.” Darwin smiled. “Marisol Vargas is a person of interest to us. We understand you are friends. We have learned of her connection to Juan Carlos at Compass Bikes. From correspondence we have intercepted between Juan Carlos and his good friend here in Quito, we believe Mari has the flash drive now. We also believe that she may have been entrusted with additional confidential information concerning my client.”

I almost wanted to laugh. “Maybe you should write spy novels,” I said. “You’re really good at coming up with theories based on circumstantial evidence. And yes, I’m a lawyer’s daughter and I know what that means.”

“It’s not circumstantial evidence. Juan Carlos told his friend that he and Mari spoke at length before Chain Reaction, and that he habitually confided in her.”

“Look. Mari doesn’t have a flash drive, either. Or any other information.” The more I spoke, the braver I felt. “You’re totally wrong about us. We’re just students! Kids!”

“Ah, but kids can be very savvy in the business of information,” said Darwin. “And that’s where you come in.” He reached beneath the table and pulled out a stack of cash. Crisp hundred-dollar bills rubber-banded together. He ran his thumb across the short end of it and made the bills flutter, like a fat deck of cards. Then he shoved it toward me.

I recoiled. I didn’t want to touch this guy’s filthy money.

“Here’s the job,” he said. “I need you as an inside operative. A deeply undercover agent. You’ll get further with her than we will because she trusts you. She likes you. Find out where the flash drive is, and what else Juan Carlos might have confided in her. We need to know what she knows. You’ll report your findings to us daily, giving us fresh leads, calling the number you used before. Cool cash, under the table, and all you have to do is what you’re already so good at. Talking. Listening. Reporting.”

“No.”

He tilted his head. “You confuse me. I thought you wanted to be an investigator.
KidVision
was child’s play. A small step up from Barney. This job is closer to your intended line of work than that show ever was.”

“This isn’t reporting. It’s spying!”

“Are they really so different?” asked Darwin. “Bianca Slade went undercover, as did you, to dig up information.”

“I’m not a spy. And Mari’s my friend. You couldn’t pay me to do this.”

“Really?” He inched the cash back toward me. “But teens just love working for us.”

That jolted me. “Wait.
Teens
work for you? Doing what?”

“Mostly they move money around for us.”

“They work for you as money mules?”

“Something like that. For smaller jobs, since cash smuggling has become so risky lately. Some have other assignments. Over half our staff right now is young people under twenty-five. We’re an international organization, so we use backpackers, study abroad students. Transient types.”

My eyes widened. “And none of them have ratted you out?”

“We hire well. They’re desperate for cash, and they’re too scared to squeal. Usually they’ve got something they need to protect. Secrets of their own. See, it all comes back to information. Who needs a gun when you can find out or make up anything about people, and make it public, forever?”

My God. Darwin was taking advantage of young people in desperate situations. How low could this guy get?

“Come on. What teen doesn’t want a wardrobe refresher? Or her very own car?”

“Not me.”

“Ah. That’s right. You’re different. Let’s see. Maybe you could use some cash to reimburse your parents for covering your little bandit riding snafu? Making a Chain Reaction donation? Helping a dear friend finish her senior year at Shady Pines?”

Oh my God. How did he know all that stuff?

My phone. Of course. He’d hacked into it. He’d probably pulled or read all my texts with Kylie and Sarita.

“And if I refuse?”

He smiled his biggest smile yet. “We’ll tell the world your secret.”

“My secret?”

“That you killed Juan Carlos.”

I dropped my tote bag. I was shaking so bad I could hardly pick it up. I didn’t know if the camera was okay.

“We have helmet camera footage of you pulling out of a paceline. We can fabricate some key eyewitnesses to talk about how you purposefully veered into his path on a ride you didn’t belong on.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“What could stop me?”

Rage surged in me. This guy was pure evil.

But the only way out of this meeting was to tell him I’d take the job. Then I’d run to the nearest police station with this camera, and let them deal with Darwin, while the trail to him was still hot. Smoking hot. I’d get them after Darwin before he even left this club.

“Fine.” I scowled. “I’ll do it.”

“Good girl.” He peeled off some bills from the stack and put the rest in a briefcase. “Consider this an advance. Time is of the essence. With all the media coming for the PAC finale, that’s a prime time for a leak, especially from someone who’s so inclined to finish projects that Juan Carlos started. You need to begin immediately. I look forward to your first communiqué.”

The red drapes parted, and Pizarro appeared, ready to usher me out.

46

PIZARRO STEERED
me by the arm again, toward the door. I had no idea how much time had passed in the alcove. Pizarro put both hands on me and maneuvered me through the crowds.

At the corner of the dance floor, Pizarro suddenly spun me around. The next thing I knew, we were whirling right into the crowd of salsa dancers. Swaying elbows and hips jabbed me from all sides. A woman with a spike heel stepped on my foot, then shot me a dirty look, as if it were my fault.

“Stop! Stop! I don’t want to dance!” I cried out, stumbling.

In the kaleidoscope of spinning dancers and lights, I caught Pizarro’s evil leer.
“¿No quieres bailar? ¿Pero, porque?”
he murmured into my ear.

Then I was being pushed off the dance floor and toward the door, and the bouncer in the cream suit and Panama hat shoved me into the street, into a downpour.

I looked down and my wool bag—with the camera, with all my evidence—was gone.

I ran across the street, gasping for breath, and found Mari, still waiting, with a terrified look on her face. “Twenty-eight minutes! I was about to go in to find you. What happened?”

“Darwin told me all kinds of crazy stuff. Enough to convict him of multiple crimes.”

“Like killing Juan Carlos?”

“Not that. Though I think he knows who did it. But he said a lot of other stuff.” I briefed her on our meeting, including the fact that Dylan was almost certainly innocent. And I told her about the job he’d offered me.

“Spying on me?” she burst out. “God! I want to go in there right now and kick him in the balls!”

A group of nightclub hoppers passing by stared at her curiously.

Mari ignored them. “He’s using you—
paying
you—to get to me? Based on an overheard phone conversation that makes them think I have information? That’s insane.” She turned and ran down the street, back toward the club.

I jogged after her and pulled on the hood of her lightweight jacket to stop her. “Mari. Are you really going in there with all those undercover bouncers and spies to give Darwin a good talking-to?
That’s
insane.”

She spun around, eyes blazing. “So let’s take that camera to the police right now!”

I displayed empty hands. “We can’t. Pizarro took my bag. With the camera! And some of the police here work with this group. Pizarro told me himself. Oh, God.” I leaned against the side of SuperChicken, feeling like I’d bonked on a long bike ride. “I don’t have any proof.” I took a shuddery breath. Tears burned my eyes. “I tried so hard. We’ve come so far. I just wanted to make everything right! I blew it. I failed.”

“Hey.” Mari put her hands on my shoulder. “You didn’t fail. You can’t talk like that. A lot of people would have gotten off this crazy ride a long time ago. You’ve gone farther than anyone else would. Farther than I would, that’s for sure.”

“Really?”

“Let’s call the police anyway,” said Mari. “Let’s just tell them what went on in there, describe Darwin, and explain he’s connected to a murder case back in Boston.”

“There’s no point.” I glanced at the club. “What are we going to say? Some scary guys swiped my tote bag? Happens all the time in La Zona, right? Forget it.” I slid down the wall and slumped on the sidewalk. I hugged my knees to my chest. “It’s all over. Darwin’s going to wreck all our lives. Especially now that he knows I tried to smuggle a camera into our meeting. There’s nothing we can do.”

“Stop it,” said Mari. “There’s always a way out. Come on.” She yanked me to my feet. “Where’s that relentlessly, annoyingly positive girl who used to host
KidVision
?”

“Long gone,” I said morosely. “Lost.”

“Then I’m taking over your job. I think we can solve this problem. But first we have to get you out of here. Maybe we can catch the
chiva
on its way back.”

We ran all the way to the street corner where we’d jumped off the bus and listened intently for
chiva
music over the sounds of passing cars through the puddles. No
chiva
materialized out of the mist.

“I just want to go home,” I said, burying my face in my hands.

“To your host family?”

“No.
Home
.”

“Well, that’s not happening, so get over yourself. Let’s get you back to the Ruiz house. Let’s find someone with a cell phone we can borrow and call Santiago.”

“His number’s in my tote bag. Which is missing, remember?” Surely at some point Santiago had noticed both Mari and I had vanished. If he’d had any suspicion I was a sneaky person, or dishonest, that must be confirmed in his mind by now. I didn’t want to go back to Vuelta to wait for the
chiva
and get a ride home. I didn’t think I could look Santiago in the eye right now. He’d been so helpful, so up front with me, and all I’d done was use him for rides and scheme about how to get away from him.

“I’ll just take a taxi,” I said, raising one arm. “I have two dollars in my pocket. That should get me there. Or close.”

“I’m going with you.”

“You want to sleep over?”

“I don’t know. I was thinking I’d just make sure you got there. But now that you mention it? Maybe. Do you think your host family would let me?” Mari looked embarrassed.

“I’m sure they would. They’re really nice.”

She gave a short nod and looked away. “It’s funny. I came here just wanting some freedom. But being around a family actually sounds sort of okay right now. Just for a night,” she added quickly. “Just to get a good night’s sleep.”

“Of course.”

We turned to go, rounded a corner, and almost bumped into Santiago, who was jogging toward us. “What happened to you two? Did you fall off the
chiva
or something?”

It almost sounded funny, the whole idea of it, but Santiago wasn’t joking. He wasn’t smiling at all.

47

WE ALL
stood blinking at each other under a streetlight, like stunned moths, and finally Mari spoke.

“It’s not what you think,” she said to Santiago. “Tessa got sick, and I wanted to help.”

“Really? I thought you ditched the
chiva
party. And our group,” said Santiago, looking at me more than Mari. “We have volunteers who do this sometimes. They jump off the bus in La Zona and run off to a nightclub. I didn’t think you would do that. But when we realized you two were missing, my father asked me to go back and find you. I’ve been in every club for four blocks.”

Santiago didn’t seem angry in the way Jake used to get angry. His voice didn’t turn into acid. He wasn’t playing mind games. He was just legitimately bewildered. If I were in his shoes, and were responsible for the safety of foreign volunteers, I’d feel the same way.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “We should have told someone we needed to go. And we did go to a nightclub. But it’s not what you think. It was for a meeting. I can explain.”

“Can you explain this, too?” Santiago held up a small black box, about the size of a pack of cards. “I found this attached beneath my car earlier today.”

“What is that?” Mari said, reaching for it. “A garage door opener?”

“No. A GPS tracker,” he said. “It attaches by magnet.” He showed her.

“A GPS tracker!” I grabbed the device from Mari and inspected it. It didn’t look like anything special. “You mean this could tell someone where your car is?”

“That’s high-tech spy gadget stuff!” Mari exclaimed.

“No, it’s not,” said Santiago. “You can buy them online for three hundred dollars or less. Sometimes people buy them to track a grandparent who has dementia, or a cheating lover, or a teenage driver.”

“You’re a teenage driver,” Mari reminded him. “Maybe your parents put it there.”

“They would never,” said Santiago. “My mother does not drive a car. My sisters do not yet drive. My father takes his bike almost everywhere. I am the family chauffeur. My family, they would not even know what this thing is.”

That lie Mari told about my getting sick was possibly about to come true. I felt seriously nauseated as the meaning of that gadget hit me. “The airport,” I said slowly. “They put it on at the airport. Darwin and his crew. They watched me go to your car, and one of them probably put it on there when you were calling my host family.”

Mari’s eyes widened. “That’s how Balboa found us at El Panecillo yesterday!” she exclaimed. “I was wondering about that. Santiago drove us there. Now it all makes sense.”

“And that’s how they found the Ruiz house. Santiago had driven me there. So they knew where to leave me a note.”

“Wait—who came to the Ruiz house and put that note on the gate? I thought you said that was from Mari?” said Santiago. “What is all this you are saying?”

I rubbed my forehead and looked away, unable to meet his gaze. All my efforts to protect Santiago, to avoid dragging another nice person into this mess, had been useless. He was now a target of this spy ring, too. Literally. And now I looked like a liar on top of everything else.

“Let’s go back to Mari’s place so she can pack,” I finally said. “We’ll explain everything there.”

“But first?” Mari took the tracking device, with its blinking green light, and affixed it to a parked taxi cab with nobody in it. “There,” she said, with a grim expression. “Let them chase after that for a while. That should keep them busy.”

Back at Mari’s empty apartment, while Mari stuffed a change of clothes in a bag, Santiago and I sat in the kitchen, amid the piles of take-out food containers and rotting fruit. I was glad Mari would be taking a break from this place. The air felt rank and toxic. I swatted at fruit flies and told Santiago everything, going all the way back to Chain Reaction.

“So we weren’t behind Juan Carlos’s death, in case you were wondering,” I concluded.

“Yeah, we’re not international fugitives or anything like that,” Mari called out from behind the partition. I could hear her opening and closing drawers.

“And we helped launch the criminal investigation, by finding the sabotaged bike frame,” I added.

“I didn’t think you were fugitives,” said Santiago. “But I’ve been following the case in the news. I had to wonder when you were both acting
misteriosas
, since both of you had a personal connection to el Cóndor. Now I understand.
Chuta
.” He had been twirling a pencil around in his fingers while he listened, and suddenly it snapped in two, he’d been gripping it so hard. “You are having a serious problem.”

“Now do you believe me? That I’m not just here for clubbing adventures?”

“I do. I believe you.” Santiago held my gaze. “You do not wish to go to the police with this?”

“No way,” I said. “Darwin’s got plants in the police force.”

“I agree. There are problems with our police right now, and it is too big a risk,” Santiago said. “If people are desperate for cash, they can be persuaded to do all kinds of things.”

Or paid to look the other way. Even the military officer at the protest the night I arrived had been easily bribed; Santiago had slipped him a twenty to let us around the blockade. Is that how Darwin’s note on Saturday night had arrived at the Ruizes’ gate? Had Victor, the night guard, been paid to ignore it?

“The consulate,” I said, thinking out loud. “I saw on the State Department website that there’s a hotline you can call to report crimes.”

“They’ll contact the local police anyway,” said Santiago. “The embassy does not have jurisdiction.”

“Then I’ll go straight to the top. Who’s the U.S. ambassador?” Excited by my new plan, I stood up and started pacing, thinking out loud. “I’m sure he’s in touch with FBI field agents or customs people. They can go after Darwin and then find the links back to Juan Carlos’s murder.”

Mari popped her head around the side of the bookshelf partition. “His name is Michael Carver. I thought of that already, and I even called to try to get an appointment,” she said. “But he’s on vacation, in Venezuela this week, watching the PAC Tour. Turns out he’s a big cycling fan. He won’t be back until the PAC Tour comes to Quito in a couple of days.”

My hopes for a speedy resolution shattered.

“But the ambassador knows Preston Lane,” Santiago added. “I am sure when he returns he will be willing to talk with us if we tell him that you know Preston personally.”

“Wait, how does the ambassador know Preston Lane?” I asked.

“Ambassador Carver knows all the foreigners who do a lot of business with Ecuador,” Santiago replied. “The EcuaBar cacao farms are all based in El Oriente, and Preston Lane gives to many charities and nonprofits here. Such as Vuelta. Have you seen the picture of them with my father, in my father’s office?”

I shook my head.

“Preston Lane got the ambassador interested in cycling. This is why the ambassador is away now. But I wish you had told me of this spy situation earlier,” Santiago said to me quietly when Mari went back to her packing. “I am more than a getahead vehicle. I am deeply interested in what happened to Juan Carlos.”

I winced at the mention of how I’d used him for his wheels. “I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to keep relying on you to take me places. But why are you so interested?”

“Why?” He looked surprised. “For the same reason everyone in Ecuador is interested. One of our heroes has fallen. But I have a special interest as well. Juan Carlos helped Vuelta become visible internationally. And Preston Lane has donated large sums of money to Vuelta. Now, with his star rider gone, we don’t expect donations to continue for long. My father is worried he will go back to struggling to keep the organization continuing. He wants to use Juan Carlos’s name to help as long as he can, but if there is something wrong about his death, it is something we need to know.”

I gave him a long look. “What’s wrong about Juan Carlos’s death, Santiago, is that Juan Carlos is dead.”

“I know.”

“But I’m at the end of the road after tonight. There’s nothing more I can do.”

Mari emerged from her makeshift bedroom lugging an overstuffed duffel bag. Clearly more than a day’s change of clothes.

“I thought you were only staying one night,” I said.

“I am. Do you think they’d let me do some laundry at the house?”

“Of course. Got Juan Carlos’s flash drive in there, too?” I made a feeble attempt at a joke.

“No! Tessa!”

“Sorry. Just doing my job. Now I can call Darwin tomorrow and report our revealing conversation. I’m sure he’ll faint from shock.”

Santiago had been tipping back in a chair, but suddenly he brought all legs down with a crash. “There are two choices here, I think,” he said. “We look for the information Juan Carlos stole. Or we look for the person he stole it from, the person Darwin is trying to protect. The first choice seems easier, and less dangerous. They are looking for one single flash drive. But don’t you think Juan Carlos was smart enough to make extra copies of the information? Or send it to somebody else? Darwin said Juan Carlos talked to a friend in Ecuador. That was before Mari arrived.”

“So if Juan Carlos didn’t give it to Mari, who else could have it?” I asked.

Mari sank into a kitchen chair. “His best friend. El Ratón. Why didn’t we think of that before?”

“Yes!” Santiago thumped the table so hard in his excitement that a pile of take-out containers slid onto the floor. “Why aren’t Darwin and his spies bothering that guy?”

“Maybe they are,” I said slowly, as a new realization dawned on me. “Darwin said he’d intercepted correspondence between Juan Carlos and a friend here, and that’s how he got the idea Mari might have this information. The local friend? I bet you anything it’s el Ratón.”

Mari sat up straighter. “I bet you’re right. And since el Ratón was Juan Carlos’s best friend, he’s probably sitting on his friend’s information, doing all he can to protect him.”

“We must find him at the urban downhill race tomorrow,” said Santiago. “We’ll ask him if Juan Carlos sent him any files, and tell him to give us a copy. I’m sure he’ll want to help us finish his best friend’s mission.”

“But even if we get a copy of the information from el Ratón, we can’t just hand it over to Darwin,” Mari pointed out. “Right? Otherwise he wins! That’s not what Juan Carlos would want.”

“Right,” agreed Santiago. “So we need to find out what kind of information Juan Carlos was trying to leak. Then, if we agree with his cause, we can finish his work and leak it ourselves. We can give it to the U.S. ambassador when he returns to Quito. If he has hard evidence, the chief of police in Quito will have to take this seriously, as well as the immigration and customs enforcement officials.”

“That bike coming in the container’s important, too,” Mari added. “If the flash drive is so important to Darwin, it might explain where the cash in the bike came from, and link Darwin and whoever Darwin’s client is to Juan Carlos’s murder. I’m sure there was some reason Juan Carlos was trying to expose both the cash and the flash drive to the media at the same time. We need to follow through on his plan. We need to get both the flash drive and the bike into the U.S. ambassador’s hands. Together.”

I nodded eagerly. Even though everything we talked about sounded scary, it felt good to have a plan again, to be out of that place of despair. “Juan Carlos was looking for a media person to expose something. But I think we should show it to the authorities who can actually prosecute. Darwin’s crimes—cyberstalking, physical stalking, smuggling, maybe murder—these are international crimes. We have to make sure the ambassador is at the container unload on Friday.”

“I can send him a special invitation from Vuelta and tell him it’s an important cultural exchange,” Santiago promised.

“And don’t forget, Preston Lane will be at the unloading, too,” Mari added. “I think he’ll be very interested to see what comes out of that shipping container in four days and what it might show about his top cyclist’s death.”

Outside, Santiago hailed a taxi, and we all rode back to the Vuelta office to pick up his car. Santiago sat between Mari and me. My head turned to look at Salsoteca Mundial as we passed. There was a longer line at the door now, and the bouncer in the cream suit was gone.

“Too bad Darwin picked that as his hangout,” said Mari, following my gaze. “I always thought it looked like a fun place to dance. Is it?” she asked, turning to Santiago.

“What? Oh. I wouldn’t know,” he said, looking embarrassed.

“You’ve never been there?” said Mari.

“No.” He gave a half smile and scratched his head. “Actually? I do not dance.”

“What? Why? I thought all Latin guys danced,” said Mari in a teasing voice.

“All but me,” he admitted. “I think I have the honor of being the worst dancer in all of Ecuador. Maybe all of South America.”

I had a fleeting thought of my red sundress still folded up in my suitcase. In the next moment, I packed that thought away. There would be no dancing for me on this trip—my surreal spin with Pizarro did not count. And I definitely would not be practicing any hot dance moves with Santiago. I felt a twinge of disappointment. Then I packed up that feeling, too.