Night of the Jaguar (43 page)

“Cooksey, this is crazy, just you and Scotty against all those guys…”

“Scotty will not be involved. He’s been told to look after Geli. They’re in his cottage with the doors and windows locked and barred, with instructions to call the police if it goes wrong. And he has his shotgun. Meanwhile, we have to keep you safe during the coming fracas. I can shove my big cabinet in front of the entrance to this alcove. It’s not obvious that there’s another room within my office, and I doubt that anyone will come searching for you in any case. It’s Geli they want. As for your door outside—we’ll just have to rely on the lock. It’s going to be dark, of course—I intend to pull the fuses from the mains. This will favor the defender, you see.”

He rose then and left the little room, returning a moment later brandishing a large black revolver. “My trusty sidearm,” he said, showing his long teeth. “Are you comfortable? Is there anything I can get you?”

“No, I’m fine.”

He sat on the edge of the pallet. “Then I’m off. In case of the worst, there’s a packet with your name on it in the right-hand drawer of my desk. It has some letters of introduction should you wish to pursue a career in wasp entomology. You should work on your reading, of course, but there are a number of people I know who would be happy to have you in their labs. I’ve made some financial arrangements as well, so you won’t be absolutely destitute, I hope you don’t mind…”

“Cooksey…”

“No, no weepies, dear, we haven’t the time for it. And may I say what a pleasure it’s been knowing you these last months, quite the nicest thing that happened to me in a very bleak time. Oh, and you can have my
Wind in the Willows.
”

Before she could say a word to him he was out of the room and pushing the high cabinet into place. She lay back on her pillow, cried briefly, and then exhaustion carried her back into sleep.

El Silencio had prepared for the night’s work as best he could, given the short notice. He had located a contact of Hurtado’s, a small-time dealer who operated out of a derelict trailer park in the south county, and he had taken his men there to run through the operation. The problem was that although he knew the approximate layout of the property, he had no idea where the woman might be when they arrived. He had decided, therefore, to send teams of two to each of the two small cottages, while he and Ochoa waited at the main house. If the woman was in one of the cottages, they’d bring her out; if she was in the house, then the whole group would surround and assault it from several directions. They rehearsed these evolutions in the trailer park until El Silencio was satisfied that his people would not actually trip all over themselves during the real thing. He was not really confident, but he had little choice. Besides, he didn’t think that a woman and a couple of civilians would give them much trouble.

They arrived at two in the morning, pulling right into the driveway of the property. The gate was not locked, and the place was completely dark and quiet, the only sound being the wind in the foliage and splashing water. El Silencio recalled that there was some kind of pool. The night was clear, with a crescent moon, and with these and the sky glow from the city, there was enough light to walk without stumbling out here, although it would be quite dark on the paths.

He and Ochoa went through the archway that led to the patio and stood in the shadows while their teams set out on the paths leading to the two cottages. From here they could keep watch on the front door of the main house and also keep the exit from the property under watch. They waited without talking.

Then an orange flash lit the undersides of the palm fronds above them and then came the BANG, far louder than a gunshot. They saw the glow of a bright fire. Ochoa cursed and ran out. El Silencio heard a high-pitched shrieking, like that of a pig being stuck, mixed with curses and calls for Momma. In a moment, there was another, louder blast, which rattled the palm tops and the windows.

He heard Ochoa shouting and the sound of footsteps going away.
The shrieks died away. Now three loud gunshots, which sounded to El Silencio like .45s. Then silence.

The gangster moved farther into the dark corner of the patio, sinking down behind a large, covered propane grill cart. It was his principle that when things went to shit, the best thing to do was not to race off as Ochoa had just done, but to remain calm and quiet, to see what would develop. He took out his nine-millimeter pistol and listened. Obviously, someone had planted bombs on the paths, and these had taken out his four men. He hadn’t thought that these people had the skills to do that, but he had been wrong and that was that. Ochoa had just as obviously stumbled into an ambush, yet another argument for staying calm and quiet. He could probably escape himself, but he was reluctant to do this. He had never failed before, and he thought he could still shoot all the people opposing him and take the Vargos woman. He actually preferred to work alone.

He heard a woman’s voice calling out, and then a man speaking. A door slammed shut. He waited for over forty minutes and was about to stand up and change position when he heard footsteps on a sandy path, then the sound of steps on paving. A thin man of around fifty dressed in black clothes walked past into the patio. El Silencio rose from behind the grill and shot him three times in the back.

The bombs had awakened Jenny, and she was looking out the window of the door that led from her alcove to the patio, so she saw Cooksey fall. Without thinking she opened the door and darted out. The man was standing over Cooksey’s body. She saw the blood pooling beneath him and let out a cry. The man heard it and turned around, raising his gun. He said something in Spanish and pointed the gun at her. She spun on her heel and ran from the patio.

El Silencio almost shot the girl but checked himself at the last instant. This was clearly the redhead who had escaped from the garage, and he was intensely curious to find out how she had done that. Also, once he had her, he could make her tell him where La Vargos was. He sped off in pursuit.

They were on a dark path. She and El Silencio hurdled the slumped and smoking forms of two of his men and then she cut sharply
to the left, down a narrower path that rose slightly and changed from coarse sand to rough stone. The sound of rushing water grew progressively louder. He put on more speed. The girl was not more than three feet from him. Suddenly they burst into the open. His shoes clattered on rock. He reached out to grab at her flowing red hair and then he saw her leap into the air and sink out of sight. His feet splashed through water, he tried to slow down, but his thin city shoes slipped on the slick stones and he felt himself falling through the dark.

It was a fifteen-foot drop to the bottom of the waterfall, and El Silencio fell badly, suffering a compound fracture of his left arm and numerous deep scrapes on his legs and back from the rough coral rock. The force of the falls sent him deep under the water, but he was a competent swimmer and was able to struggle one-armed to the surface. There he rolled onto his back, and keeping his left arm pressed to his chest, he began kicking to move himself to the edge of the pond. He was thinking about what he would do to this girl when he had her.

The first piranha hit at his thigh where it bled from its scrape, ripping out a chunk of meat the size of a shot glass. El Silencio made a sound that would have been a scream in a person with normal vocal machinery but emerged as a long rasping yawp. He flapped both arms and sank, and then the whole school was upon him.

Jenny sat at the shallow end and watched the water churn and churn and grow reddish and then become quiet again. She ran back to the patio. Cooksey was not quite dead yet, but unlike the dying men she had seen in the movies, he did not have any choked last words. She called the police and then sat by him and held his hand while he died. Her tears fell on his face, making clear tracks through the commando paint.

Jimmy Paz slept fitfully that night, although he observed that his wife was perfectly at rest, and after popping in and out of sleep, he decided to get up and start his new life as a maybe demigod with a cup of coffee. He made a pint of Bustelo in the stove-top hourglass pot and warmed an equal amount of milk in a pan, and when the
café con leche
was ready he took it out to the back patio with a plate of Cuban bread toast, butter, and guava jam. He watched the sky go from pink to cerulean blue,
dotted with tiny specks of fleece, and then, to his surprise, the front doorbell rang, and it was Tito Morales.

“We need to talk,” said the cop. He looked rumpled and frowsy.

“Want some coffee?” Paz asked amiably.

Morales did. They sat at the counter in the kitchen while Paz fixed him the same kind of breakfast he had just enjoyed.

“This is about the Indian, right?” asked Paz as Morales took his first grateful sip.

“What Indian is that?”

“Our Indian. He showed up at Zenger’s estate last night and I shot him with my Oshosi bow and arrow.”

“Your Oshosi bow and arrow,” said Morales in a flat tone. “And why would you do that, Jimmy?”

“Because he was in the form of a giant jaguar and he was about to eat Amelia. Luckily it was a magic arrow and it knocked him out and turned him back into our Indian. He’s in South Miami Hospital. I thought that’s why you came over.”

“No, and I’m going to temporarily forget what you just said, because they dragged me into this out of a sound sleep and I might be hallucinating. What I got is a—what is it, septuple? A septuple homicide situation at the Zenger place. I got four of what look like Colombian
chuteros
blown up by bombs, another one shot dead, and another I don’t know what it is, a piece of meat chewed up by those fucking piranhas in that fishpond. No face, no fingers. It could be Jimmy Hoffa.”

“That’s only six.”

“Cooksey’s dead, too. Someone shot him, unclear who. The Simpson girl called it in. She told me an interesting story. That’s why I’m here, see if you can cast some light.”

“What’s her story?”

“Well, she says that Cooksey was the mastermind behind it all. These Colombians apparently killed his wife years ago down there in jungle-land, and he set the whole thing up. He knew all about this Consuela deal from Geli Vargos, old Ibanez’s granddaughter, and he somehow imported this Indian from South America to do the murders of your dad and Fuentes, which brought Hurtado and his merry band to
Miami. The Indian whacked a few of his people and—okay, here’s the part she wasn’t too clear about—Hurtado had some kind of deal with Ibanez, and Ibanez was getting cold feet on it, so Hurtado wanted to snatch Geli to pressure the old guy. Cooksey set all this up, and he made bombs to take out the bad guys, and he shot one, and pushed the last guy into the pool, but not before getting shot himself. Which is bullshit, but I can’t prove it. The girl was wringing wet when we got there, so she was obviously playing in the pool with Señor No-face, who’s probably the one who shot Cooksey. I got no idea exactly how it went down, however, not that it matters. We picked up Hurtado, too, by the way.”

“Really? I thought he was in the breeze.”

“He was, but the girl said Cooksey had tipped off the Ibanez house where Geli was, and that the maid or someone there had tipped Hurtado. We rousted the house, and the maid gave up the number she called him at and we found him in a fleabag in North Miami Beach. I don’t know what we’ll hold him on. Getting a phone call is no crime, and we have no direct connection between him and the dead people at Zenger’s. Now, tell me about this Indian.”

Paz smiled. “The Indian’s going to walk.”

“Fuck he is! He killed four people that we know for sure about. I guarantee you that the naked footprints in that garage and the prints on the gate near your dad’s house are both going to match up with him.”

“You’re probably right. In which case you have two choices. Let me lay them out for you. Plan A is you book the Indian—his name’s Moie, incidentally—and you explain to Major Oliphant and the state’s attorney all about how a little Indian who can’t weigh one-thirty managed to carry off all by himself four murders, including one against a heavily guarded victim and two against armed desperadoes, while leaving jaguar footprints made by something weighing in at nearly five hundred pounds, said murders requiring superhuman strength and agility and leaving the corpses torn by what forensics will tell you could only be the teeth of a large cat. Should you choose Plan A, they will smile sadly and put you on the rubber gun squad for the duration of your career. Plan B is you got a bunch of dead Colombians from a gang noted for its ferocious murders,
its gruesome revenges against traitors, a gang that was heavily involved in illegal business deals with said dead Cubans. Obviously, the dead guys did all the killings. Case closed. Oh, and as a bonus, if you pick Plan B, I will give you Hurtado, and you will have the collar of the decade and be the golden boy of the Miami PD and a hero in the Cuban community forever after. And the envelope, please…”

Morales stared angrily at Paz for a good thirty seconds and then seemed to deflate. “Ah, fuck this, Jimmy! He killed your father, man! How the hell can you just let him walk?”

“He had nothing to do with killing my father. My father was killed by a supernatural creature as a result of his own crimes, whether you believe it or not. Arresting Moie would be like arresting a Buick for a hit-and-run.”

“Okay, man, if that’s the way we’re going to play it, I give up. I know when I’m over my head. Tell me about Hurtado.”

“Good decision, Tito. Okay, Hurtado is a dope lord. He had a nice little laundry set up here with Consuela, but he’s still a dope lord, and what I couldn’t figure out was what was so important to
him
about cutting down some damn forest in the ass end of Colombia. And just this morning when I was waking up it came to me, something my sister told me about Consuela buying wood-boring equipment down there. And I called her and she described the machinery, what it was for. So I ask you, why would they need a huge wood-boring machine in a timber operation? Now you know that there’s a smuggling environment nowadays where the borders are tightening up because of terrorism, they’re shooting down planes, they’re paying mules to swallow balloons with tiny little amounts of dope. And Hurtado has access to a scheme to import thousands of mahogany logs via a perfectly legitimate and well-established import operation.”