Requiem for the Assassin (16 page)

“It wasn’t my intention to do so. Wouldn’t it be easier if you simply attended to these errands and then went back to doing whatever it is you do, in peace, having received the shot, as planned? Why force my hand in this?”

El Rey
’s voice was so soft when he next spoke that Tovar had to strain to make out the words. “I’ll need the dossiers in my inbox today. And anything I ask for is to be supplied, immediately and without question. Do you understand?”

Tovar pressed his hands together. “Of course.”

The assassin eyed the tiny beads of sweat on the CISEN man’s forehead and took the folder from him. “What does a pig farmer have in common with these others?”

“They’ll all be dead inside of a week. Isn’t that enough?”

El Rey
gazed at the farmer’s photograph and then flipped to a headshot of the startlingly beautiful woman whose name he recognized from her numerous appearances in the news: Carla Vega. He thumbed through a dozen more photos of her from every angle, many from celebrity events, and then turned to the final file.

“You do understand that the level of difficulty in trying to take out someone of this man’s stature makes everything I’ve done pale by comparison, right? I mean, even if I had a month, it’s almost certainly impossible, but in the time I have before the next injection’s due?” The assassin shook his head. “Like I said. Impossible.”

“I’ve come to believe that nothing is beyond your abilities. I have complete faith you’ll succeed.”

“For the record, you’re refusing to tell me why CISEN wants me to execute the most visible law enforcement official in Mexico along with one of its most beloved celebrities.”

“I’ve told you all I know, and all I’ve been authorized to. I appreciate that this isn’t how you’d hoped things would go, and believe me, if I had any other options…”

“Right. But you don’t. And I don’t suppose that Rodriguez or your boss will talk to me.”

“All due respect, you’re a bit of a hot potato at present. You’ll find that nobody can afford that discussion.”

El Rey
returned his attention to the dossier he was holding. Smoldering eyes burned from the page with quiet intensity in the official photograph. It had to be at least four or five years old by now, judging by the man’s countenance, which
El Rey
knew was thinner and harder than the photo showed, any trace of good humor seared away by the demands of the job. It had been half a year since he’d last seen him, but the assassin was willing to bet that the passage of time hadn’t been kind to
Capitan
Romero Cruz, a man who owed
El Rey
a favor he could never adequately repay.

Chapter 25

El Oso Negro was the kind of working man’s bar that tourists to Mexico City never saw. Tucked away on a side street on the edge of an industrial district, the façade was run-down. A hand-painted caricature of a rampaging grizzly bear with a frothing mug of beer in one paw as it swatted at white-clad villagers with the other glared from a rusting steel billboard over the entrance, the pair of red lights that served as its eyes blinking on and off in either invitation or warning.

Briones pushed through a pair of worn saloon-style half doors and peered around the gloomy interior, which continued the bear motif on two of the walls. The interior was as sorry as any he’d seen, and the clientele was largely in worse shape: middle-aged men with nothing to say, their drinking silent and committed. A stereo blared seventies-era banda music through a pair of partially blown speakers, the tuba that served as the bass reduced to a crackling woof. The floor was bare concrete, stained gray-brown, and had seen more than its share of sucker punches and spilt blood.

Briones moved to the bar and sat down next to Cruz, who had a half-empty shot glass in front of him and an amber bottle of Indio beer sweating beside it. A bartender with pasty skin queried him with a glance, and Briones pointed at Cruz’s drinks and held up two fingers.

The tequila was El Jimador Reposado, cheap and strong, a smoky caramel that promised damnation and salvation in the same glass. The first bite burned his throat as he threw it back, and his eyes immediately brimmed as he reached for the cold comfort of the beer. When he’d taken two large swallows and had caught his breath, he turned to Cruz, who hadn’t said anything.

“I guess you heard the news.”

Cruz grunted and downed the remainder of his shot, his movements deliberate and wooden. The bartender raised an eyebrow, and Cruz held the glass up and gave a curt nod. Another serving of tequila arrived, and Cruz paused as he reached for it, as if only now hearing Briones’ words.

“Yeah. Coroner’s preliminary report said she’d been raped and sodomized repeatedly before they killed her. That the burns were likely inflicted while she was still alive. As was the butchering. Did you see the pictures?”

Briones shook his head. “No.”

“Good. You don’t want to. After they were done with her, they tossed her in a dumpster like yesterday’s garbage. She’d been there for at least twenty-four hours.” Cruz gazed bleakly at his reflection in the mirror, seeing an unfamiliar face twisted by disgust and the mirror’s imperfections. “The rats had gotten to her.”

“I heard.”

“Some things you never forget. That’s one of them,” Cruz said and drained his shot.

It was Briones’ turn to grunt.

Cruz looked at the younger man. “How did you find me?”

“Dinah.”

“Ah. She gave me up, did she?”

“She’s worried. Said you sounded…distant…when you called.”

Cruz gazed at a nonexistent spot on the wall. “You didn’t look at the pictures, did you?”

“No.” Briones hesitated, took a pull on his beer, set it back on the weathered bar top, and ran a blunt thumb across a burn scar left over from the days when smoking was permitted indoors. Someone had used a cigarette, or perhaps a knife and a lighter, to leave their mark. Briones swallowed hard before he continued. “I was hoping we could grab something to eat and head home. When you’re done with your beer.”

This was the tipping point. The moment when the car ran out of gas and someone suggested that the party was over. Briones knew it could go either way, and he held his breath as he waited for Cruz to respond. The captain was a smart and serious officer, but he also had demons large enough to bury ten men, and it was debatable who was sitting on the barstool next to the lieutenant.

A phlegmy cough echoed from down the bar – a wet, ugly sound, the result of decades of inhaling dust at construction sites, end-stage lung disease as common as cockroaches with laborers by the time they hit forty. Cruz closed one eye and glared at the mirror behind the bar with the other, and then his face seemed to collapse, like wax before a flame.

“What kind of animals would kill a sixteen-year-old honor student because her parents aren’t millionaires – would rape her and cut her nose and ears off? Who does that?”

Briones had no answer. The tequila had begun to warm him, and he more than understood the flight into oblivion that his superior was seeking. But that had never been his way, and he hadn’t come to be a drinking partner.

“We’ll find them, and when we do, we’ll return the favor.”

“It’s just so…senseless,” Cruz muttered, his voice quiet, the consonants surprisingly well pronounced. “I mean, with the cartels, it’s about drugs, power, territory. Nothing surprises me with their atrocities. It’s like junkyard dogs fighting for dominance. I completely get that. But this? What was this about? She was just a child.” Cruz took a long breath. “Her mother was hysterical on her last phone call with the kidnappers. We were taping it. She offered herself, to sell the house, whatever they had to do to get her baby back. Didn’t do any good, did it? Burner cell phone. She was crying, begging for her child’s life, offering everything they had in exchange. I listened to her. The kidnapper laughed.” Cruz groped for his beer, missed with clumsy fingers, got it on the second try. “I heard him. The bastard laughed. Like it was a game. Funny in some way.”

Briones waved at the bartender and motioned for the check. Cruz stared dully at his bottle, eyes only partially focused, the whites bloodshot, the skin around them sallow and slack. For a moment Briones was afraid Cruz was going to fight him about leaving, with the drunken belligerence that was particular to tequila and mescal, but he just sat quietly, clutching his beer, the stylized green and gold image of an Aztec warrior staring into eternity from the label.

Briones didn’t need to see the size of the tab to know that Cruz would be suffering tomorrow. He paid with a wad of pesos as the banda song wound down, the singer’s croon ending the tune with a promise of eternal love. When the bartender arrived with his change, he doled out a tip and pushed back from the bar, glad he’d decided to only have one shot.

“You about ready? I’m hungry. And Dinah…she loves you and wants you home.”

Cruz slid the beer away from him and stood, blinking mechanically, like a prizefighter trying to get off the mat after a knockout punch knocked his legs from under him. He gazed around the dingy room; the other patrons ignored him, immersed in their own dramas. Another song began blaring from the stereo, the accordion screeching like a wounded eagle from blown tweeters, the tempo downbeat, like a New Orleans funeral march without the swing.

Briones took his arm to steady him, and Cruz leaned in, his breath a thousand-proof wheeze, the sour taint of perspiration strong as he sweated alcohol.

“You didn’t look at the pictures, did you?”

Chapter 26

Dinah pushed through the bedroom door, holding two steaming mugs of strong coffee. Cruz struggled to sit up in bed and rubbed his hand across the stubble on his chin, wincing from the morning sunlight streaming through the window.

“What time is it?” he croaked.

“Ten o’clock. I decided to let you sleep late,” she said, sitting next to him and handing him the cup. He took it and sipped at it gratefully, and then his eyes widened.

“Damn. Ten? I have to get dressed.”

Dinah smiled, her eyes dancing in the sun. “It’s Sunday,
Capitan
. Even the great Cruz can rest on Sunday.”

“Is it? God. I completely lost track. Every day seems to blur into the next…”

“I wouldn’t lie to you.” She regarded him. “How do you feel?”

“Like somebody put me in a sack and dragged me behind a truck.” He closed his eyes. “I’ll never drink again.”

“Yes, well, we’ll see about that. In the meantime, you owe Fernando a thank-you for driving you home. You weren’t making a lot of sense when he brought you to the door.”

“It was that bad?”

She nodded. “Oh, yeah. That and more.”

“I didn’t…do anything embarrassing, did I?”

“No more than usual.”

They sat together, comfortable, drinking coffee, neither feeling any compulsion to speak. Cruz finished his cup and took her hand. “I don’t deserve you. I’m sorry about last night.”

“I’ll exact my punishment when you’re more up to it. This morning you look like something the dog ate.”

“We don’t have a dog.”

“I know. That’s another thing we need to talk about.”

After a long shower, Cruz dressed as he checked his messages on his cell phone. There were dozens in his email inbox, all work related, nothing that couldn’t wait until the following day. His head felt like his blood pressure was through the roof, a by-product of a world-class hangover, one of only the first in a litany of tortures his aging body had in store for him as payment for his excesses. The screen of his phone seemed to blur in and out, and he gave up trying to read in favor of finding a bottle of aspirin in the bathroom cabinet.

Dinah had prepared a large meal by the time he made it out of the bedroom, and he sat down to another cup of coffee and a liter of water as she spooned out heaping portions of chicken, cheese, and tortilla chips slathered in a spicy red sauce – her breakfast specialty,
chilaquiles
. At first he thought his appetite had deserted him, but after forcing a few mouthfuls he managed to clean his plate and convince her to give him seconds. When he was done, he sat back and patted his belly.

“This sounds terrible, but all I can think of is going back to sleep for a few hours.”

She gave him a skeptical look. “Little early for a
siesta
at eleven, don’t you think?”

“Can I plead extenuating circumstances?”

She shook her head and handed him a short list. “I have needs.”

He read it. “Really? Groceries?”

“They don’t buy themselves. We’re short a few things, and the walk will do you good.”

“Nothing will be open.”

“Of course it will. Don’t procrastinate. When you’re done, then it’s
siesta
time.”

Cruz knew Dinah well enough to understand that he’d never win this battle, so he slipped on shoes and his shoulder-holstered Glock, donned a light jacket and a baseball cap, and after swigging another half-liter of water and pocketing the list, kissed her and let himself out the door.

The day was blustery, partially overcast with a new storm blowing in, but he still put on his sunglasses as he exited the building after telling his men to stand down. A two-block trip to the market didn’t require an escort. They nodded wordlessly, and Cruz wondered whether their night-shift peers had shared the story of him being drunk the prior evening, and then decided he didn’t care.

There were only a few pedestrians on the wide sidewalk – a man leading a golden retriever, a pair of teenage girls giggling as they strolled arm-in-arm, a middle-aged woman chatting on her cell phone as she ambled by. Cruz set out for the market, the sunlight like daggers on his visual cortex, and wondered to himself whether the entire day was going to be spent suffering.

He rounded the corner and picked up his pace, determined to will some life into his step, and had about convinced himself that things might steady out when a familiar voice from behind him chilled his blood.

“Just keep walking. Don’t turn around. Up at the metro stop, go down the stairs, and buy a ticket on the northbound route. I’ll meet you there.”