The Council of Ten (11 page)

He went for Miguel first, not because he was charging as Selinas lurched to his feet gun in hand, but because shooting Marco now would almost assure the involuntary pulling of his trigger and the splattering of the boy’s brains across the wall. It took two bullets to halt the powerful Miguel and by that time Marco had the gun out of the boy’s mouth and was bringing it around.

Selinas dove to the floor and rolled. Behind him a bullet from Marco blew a lamp apart. A measure of the room’s light faded. Another round exploded in front of him as he snapped to a halt. Marco was about to fire again when Selinas let go a round. The glazer bullet, composed of hundreds of tiny pellets, blasted into his shoulder and tore his arm halfway from its socket. Marco pitched backward screaming.

Selinas rose to his feet.

“Get up!” he ordered the three boys who had all collapsed tight to the floor. “Get up!”

Finally, they did, slowly until Selinas lifted one bodily to his toes.

“Get up and get out of here!”

The one who’d wet his pants stood shaking with arms wrapped around himself against the wall.

“Help your friend,” Selinas told the other two. Of course, his employer’s instructions would have been to kill the boys. They had seen much too much here tonight, but so long as no one else found out no complications could result. “Take their Cadillac to get home,” he continued. “Ditch it a few miles from where you all live. You can use the walk.” One of them started to speak. “No questions. Move!”

They were gone seconds later.

Selinas walked over to Marco and leaned over him. Marco’s eyes had gone glassy and the shock had forced his teeth to slice right through his lip. The glazer bullet had done quite a job on his shoulder. Selinas could see the sinews of ruined ligaments, cartilage, and muscle intermixed with the blood. Marco spit up at him.

“You set us up, man… .”

Selinas didn’t bother to nod. He had quickly determined days before that finding the Riveros would be impossible, so he elected to have them find him and they had cooperated brilliantly.

“What you waitin’ for, man?” Marco rasped. “Come on, do me and get it over with.”

“Tell me where the suitcases are.”

Marco grimaced in pain. “You get the powder and I get to live. Is that it, man?”

Selinas’s expression was noncommittal.

“You did my brother. I got to get you for that. What the fuck, man, I don’t need the powder anyway. I’ll give it to you just to get my chance. Upstairs. Second room down. Wall on the right side of the window is false. Smart man like you, you’ll spot it right away.” Marco looked up at the gun and squeezed his ruined shoulder with his other hand. “You’re gonna be dead, man,” he spat angrily. “You’re gonna be dead quick.”

“You already are.”

And Selinas pulled the trigger over Marco’s face.

Chapter 9

SUNDAY TURNED INTO THE
longest day of Drew Jordan’s life. His useless phone call at the Esplanade left him with two choices. One was to throw himself on the mercy of the Palm Beach police, the other to get out fast for a safe port—DEA regional headquarters in Miami. The first option was appealing only in that he was guilty of, at worst, a self-defense killing. But explaining the circumstances of his presence at Too-Jay’s and his possession of a gun promised to lead to questions he couldn’t answer. Option number two, then, was his best bet. The DEA was involved in this through Masterson regardless of the agent’s fate. They would have to help him, learn who the assassin was, and who had sent him.

Drew had no idea if the police were looking for him, so he decided to play it safe. He was not crazy over the prospects of returning to the Hyatt under the circumstances, but he liked less the prospects of remaining in his waiter’s garb. He needed clothes and money. He could be at the Hyatt and gone before news of Trelana’s murder even reached television or radio.

But how to get to Miami? A rental car seemed the simplest and safest means. The key was to move fast and keep moving. He called a cab from the Esplanade pay phone, and it deposited him back at the Hyatt where he packed quickly, checked out, and took the hotel jitney bus to an airport car rental agency. With surprising ease he was heading down Route 95 for Miami not even ninety minutes after blood and brains had splattered all over Too-Jay’s.

Drew kept his speed in check throughout the drive to Miami, not wanting to attract the attention of any radar-equipped troopers. He arrived in the city limits a little past four o’clock and got off 95 at the Biscayne Boulevard exit. From there he drove to Collins Avenue, cruising it from one end to the other to maintain the security the car provided. Finally, he opted for a hotel toward the northern end billed as the Ocean Palm, which boasted an olympic-size swimming pool on its marquee. He paid for the night in advance and was relieved to learn that the hotel featured room service as well as the pool. He didn’t plan to spend any time outside of his room, especially in restaurants or coffee shops where he would have to linger for too long at a time.

Sunday night in the room wore on forever, Drew keeping one eye on the fuzzy television and the other on the door, expecting Miami Vice to come crashing through at any second. He tried to force himself to sleep but couldn’t even though his body felt exhausted. After a few hours of uneasy slumber in the rock-hard bed, he rose, figuring he might spend a few hours after dawn by the pool where the fresh air might recharge him. But the rain came before the sun had a chance to and Drew resigned himself to watching the patterns it swept on the windows.

By nine o’clock he had eaten breakfast and tried Masterson’s private number a dozen times without results. Something was clearly wrong. The only way to find out what was to pay a visit to DEA headquarters. If Masterson had betrayed him, there were plenty of avenues open. But if Masterson had himself been betrayed …

Drew chose not to complete the thought. He had returned the rental car the day before some miles from the hotel and had come back in a cab to avoid possible connections. The police might somehow be able to trace the car to Miami and the rental agency, but Miami was a big city and by the time they got a line on him, Drew would hopefully be long gone one way or another. He called a cab from his room to take him to the Miami headquarters of the DEA.

The building was located on Northwest Fifty-third Street. It was a modern, three-story design, nestled comfortably amid at least two dozen virtually identical structures, all enclosed by neatly cropped hedges in a Koger Executive Center row. There was little to tell him it was the offices of the Drug Enforcement Agency, and he might easily have tried a few of the other buildings first, had not the driver left him off right at the door.

He had little trouble learning where Masterson’s office could be found and only slightly more in sliding past building security into the elevator. The compartment was crowded and Drew was among the first to exit on the second floor. The door to Masterson’s office up the hall was open, with his full name printed clearly in bold black letters.

Inside, a secretary was packing materials into boxes. She looked up, startled.

“Is Agent Masterson in?” Drew asked her.

Her face showed first shock and then sadness. Her words emerged flatly. “Agent Masterson was killed.”

Drew felt a thud to his stomach, but he wasn’t surprised at all. “When?” he managed.

Of course, the answer would be Sunday—yesterday—which would explain why the plan had gone so wrong, why he had been set up and then abandoned at Too-Jay’s.

But that’s not what she said at all.

“Wednesday,” came the secretary’s almost tearful response. “It happened last Wednesday.”

The rest was a blur. Drew backed out of the office without further words.

Agent Masterson was killed last Wednesday and I met him on Friday
.

Confusion tore through him. Outside the headquarters, he managed to find a cab that had just dropped off someone else. He spent the ride back to the hotel with his head pressed low and his breathing rapid, an all-encompassing fear battering his senses. Somewhere in all this lay a perverted sense of order.

Masterson was not Masterson, which meant …

Which meant what?

Drew shivered. Everything had been a setup. No, not everything. The fact that Masterson had been murdered seemed to indicate that his grandmother had indeed contacted the real agent. Both had been killed as a result, the other grandmothers, too, and who knew how many others.

And drugs were somehow to blame; drugs, the only common denominator.

But what of the letter? All the facts contained in it might have been true, yet that didn’t mean his grandmother had written it. Yes, the letter must have been a plant, a plant used to make him contact the fake Masterson at the conveniently provided number. He should have known that his grandmother never would have written such a letter, never would have risked involving him in something like this. But he had fallen for it, and the rest had fallen into place naturally. Out of fear for his own life and desire to avenge his grandmother’s death, Drew had done exactly what had been expected of him.

But how could they have known he would blackmail the fake Masterson into helping him? And if Trelana’s eventual killer was theirs, why had they needed Drew in the first place? So much left for chance, so much that didn’t make sense no matter how hard he tried to think.

Stop! Block it out for awhile. Let it come on its own
.

But the thoughts kept coming at him, smashing against each other and driving him to the brink of madness. The fake Masterson wanted the drug lord dead and, more, wanted Drew to do it and then, yes, be killed for his efforts. A dead pigeon made the perfect pigeon. But Drew had crossed them up by failing to complete the hit, necessitating a contingency plan that had allowed him to survive. But why again was it so important to involve him in Trelana’s—

Wait. What if Trelana hadn’t been responsible for Doris Kaplan’s death at all? What if she had died instead at the hands of whoever or whatever was behind the fake Masterson? Trelana could have been as much of a pawn as the grandmothers themselves … and now Drew. Morris Kornbloom had reason to believe that the women were involved in
something
, but he had no idea what.

Morris Kornbloom! He had told Drew to call him if he needed him. Well, he certainly needed someone now, someone he could trust to help him out of this.

The taxi deposited Drew outside the motel. Mindlessly, he paid the driver and went straight to his room. He switched on the noon news on a local Miami television station while he searched his wallet for Kornbloom’s number. So far, the murder of Arthur Trelana was receiving plenty of mention, but the primary focus was the lack of leads. Drew could help them. Legally, after all, he was guilty of nothing more than a self-defense killing. He had nothing to hide now. He would call Kornbloom, and the doctor would help him make the right contacts.

He located the doctor’s number and dialed it.

“Dr. Kornbloom’s office.”

“Dr. Kornbloom, please.”

There was a pause.

“All his patients are being referred to Dr. Feinstein,” the woman said faintly.

“No, you don’t understand. I’m just a friend and I need to
speak
to him.”

Another pause. “Sir, I’m sorry to tell you, but there was an accident last night. Dr. Kornbloom was struck by a hit-and-run driver. He died this morning.”

The receiver slid from Drew’s hand. Morris Kornbloom was dead, killed in what appeared to be yet another tragic accident. Kornbloom had met him, knew him,
delivered
the letter they had somehow planted. That made Kornbloom an unwitting part of the setup and thus a potential trace back to them. So, they had erased him.

Just like they had erased Trelana and the grandmothers.

Just like they would try to erase Drew.

Drew ran his hands over his face. He had fooled them all by surviving at Too-Jay’s, but they wouldn’t be giving up the chase so quickly. They could have been waiting for him to show up at DEA headquarters, could have followed him back here!

Drew’s attention was drawn all at once to the television screen. The picture displayed on it was of him! He jumped up and turned the volume louder.

“… TWENTY-SIX-YEAR-OLD ANDREW JORDAN OF WASHINGTON, DC, BEING SOUGHT AS A SUSPECT IN THE MURDER OF PALM BEACH DEVELOPER ARTHUR TRELANA AND TWO ASSOCIATES ACCORDING TO POLICE …”

No!
Drew wanted to scream at the screen.
It’s not like that!

But he knew it would do no good. The enemy had played their next card. The police knew him. They thought he was a killer.

There was no place to run.

Selinas had been waiting at the Miami Airport bar, this time in the Eastern terminal, for thirty-five minutes when his contact finally arrived. All the booths were occupied, so Giblet was forced to take a seat at the bar.

“I saved you a stool,” Selinas told him, motioning to the one next to his. “It wasn’t easy. Morning rain must have delayed a lot of flights.”

“The weather’s been better.” Giblet settled himself down and maneuvered his stool closer to Selinas. “We have another matter requiring your attention.”

“Four in such a short period of time. That’s quite unusual, almost unheard of.”

“The circumstances call for it.”

“So must the objective. Who is it?”

“We have no location for him except the general Miami area, and time is crucial.”

“Isn’t it always? Just tell me who the target is.”

“A young man named Andrew Jordan, but he goes by the name of Drew… .”

Chapter 10

THE LIGHTS ON HOYSTER
street in Prague seemed inviting as Elliana Hirsch walked slowly through the most active nighttime section of the city. Her trips to Prague in the past had left her with a romantic feeling for the city. Perhaps it was the strange juxtaposition of vitality and repression that Prague was able to manage. Communist by force rather than choice, Prague had nonetheless been able to maintain the flavor and feel, although subdued, of a western city. Take away an occasional patrolling military policeman serving Czechoslovakia more than the Soviet Union and a stranger might never have known that this was a Communist stronghold.