Текст книги "The Forgotten"

Автор книги: David Baldacci

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

CHAPTER

57

THE SMALL SHACK SAT behind an abandoned-looking building ten blocks off the water. It was in an area that would be discreetly described as in a transitional stage, meaning don’t go there at night and also try to avoid it during the day. The place looked dead and wasted and nothing like Paradise and its emerald beaches relatively close by. It seemed that the town’s beauty was only skin deep. A few layers under the surface it became quite ugly.

Three young men were standing outside the building and taking turns tossing knives at tin cans set atop a Dumpster. They were good enough that each one consistently knocked the cans over from a distance of ten feet.

“Decent aim.”

The men whirled, their hands dipping to the guns in their waistbands.

And then they stopped reaching for their guns.

Puller stood there holding an MP5 set on two-shot bursts. Carson had not been kidding about weapons. And flying on military transport had allowed her to bring whatever guns she wanted.

“Wise decision,” said Puller, coming forward and lifting his gaze past them and to the windows of the shack. They were covered and he saw no one trying to peek through to get a sightline on him with a weapon.

“Got a question.”

The men looked at him warily. Puller could tell they were trying to think of some way to turn his tactical advantage into a disadvantage.

But he wasn’t worried because the MP5 at close quarters was a difficult nut to crack.

“His name is Diego. He has two cousins. Isabel and Mateo. Where are they?”

The men said nothing.

Puller moved closer. “Diego, Isabel, and Mateo, where are they?”

The men remained silent.

Puller moved a foot closer. With one sweep of the MP he could lay all three down for eternity.

He shifted the fire selector on the MP to full auto. “I’ll ask one more time and then I won’t ask again.”

“We don’t know where they are,” said one of the men, staring at the muzzle of the MP.

“But you did know, right?”

The three men looked at one another. The man who had spoken shrugged. “Hard to say.”

“No, it’s really not. You just have to say it.”

Puller moved another foot closer.

The men smiled.

Puller thought he knew why.

“I wouldn’t,” said Puller. “I’m not the only one here.”

The men stopped smiling.

It was in the corner of Puller’s eye. A fourth man.

He’d come around the building’s east side. He had a slim compact pistol aimed at Puller’s head.

“Check your chest,” said Puller.

The man flinched, looked nervous, but didn’t look down, obviously suspecting a trick.

The other men glanced over. The one who had spoken swore under his breath as he saw the red dot squarely over the man’s heart.

He said something in Spanish. The man with the gun looked down, saw the dot. He swore too, lowered his gun.

Puller pointed his MP at him. “Why don’t you lose the gun and join the discussion group.”

It wasn’t a question.

The man dropped his gun and walked over to the others, the red dot following him the whole way.

“Diego and his cousins,” said Puller. “They were here and now they’re not. So where did they go?”

The four men glanced nervously at one another.

“Glancing and not talking tends to make me very angry,” said Puller. “And when I get angry I do unpredictable things.”

He put the fire selector back on two-shot bursts and fired some rounds above their heads. They all instinctively dropped to the dirt.

Puller eased his finger off the trigger and said, “Where?”

The men rose on trembling legs. One of them said, “They took them.”

One of the other men glared at him and looked ready to punch his colleague.

The speaker sensed this but hurried on. “They were taken last night. The man paid one thousand dollars for them both.”

“Both? Which both?”

“Los niños. Diego y Mateo.”

“Who paid one thousand dollars?” Puller said sharply.

“Like I said, un hombre.”

Two of the other men hissed, but the speaker looked defiantly back at them.

Puller said, “What was his name? What did he look like?”

Before the other man could answer there was a roaring sound. Puller looked to his left and saw the pickup trucks coming. In the truck beds were men standing and holding a lot of firepower and looking ominously in Puller’s direction.

In Puller’s earwig Carson’s voice crackled. “I think retreat is the order of the day,” she said.

Puller grabbed the man who had answered him and they ran off.

The trucks veered off to give chase, but several shots rang out and both trucks ground to a halt with flattened tires. Two men fell out of one truck bed as it screeched to a stop.

Puller turned the corner with the man in tow and saw the Tahoe up ahead. He double-timed it and saw Carson coming down from her high perch on another building carrying her scoped rifle. She jumped into the passenger seat. Puller threw the man into the rear seat and leapt into the driver’s seat as he heard feet pounding down the road and men yelling in Spanish.

He hit the gas and the Tahoe sped off, turned a corner, and disappeared in the maze of streets.

Carson had her rifle pointed at the man in the backseat. She studied him calmly. “What man took the boys?”

Puller glanced at her.

She said, “I heard over your earwig.”

She looked at the man in the backseat. “We need some details.”

The man shook his head.

“You’ve come this far,” said Carson. “In for a dime, in for a dollar.”

The man looked at Puller. “You are big. Like the other guy.”

Puller glanced at him in the rearview. “What other guy?”

“The big guy. Bigger than you. He can fight.”

“Is he staying at the Sierra?” asked Puller.

The man nodded. “He picked up one of our guys like he was nothing. Threw a knife twenty feet point-first into a wall. El Diablo.”

Puller glanced at Carson. “The same guy who saved my butt the other night.”

Carson looked at the man. “El Diablo have a real name?”

The man shrugged. “No sé.”

“Is he the one who took los niños?”

“No.”

“Who did, then?”

“No sé.”

Carson moved her finger closer to the trigger of her rifle.

A smile crept across the man’s face. “You won’t shoot me.”

“Why?”

“Because you are military. A general.”

Carson looked down at the one-star ring she had on.

The man said, “I was in the military once. Not yours. From my country.”

“Sorry to see you’ve fallen so low,” snapped Carson.

Puller said, “We want to help Diego and Mateo. That’s all. Help us do that. They’re just kids.”

“They are beyond help.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know that. And I don’t care. They’re not my problem.”

Carson looked at Puller and shrugged. “Open the door,” she said.

The man said, “What?”

“Open your door and jump.”

“What?”

“Jump!”

She pointed her gun at his crotch. “General or not, you jump now or you’ll be missing some very vital parts.”

The man kicked open the door and leapt out, tumbling along the road and then coming to a stop. They watched as he picked himself up and slowly limped off.

Puller said, “I like your style.”

Carson eyed him with a stern gaze. “What?” he said.

“Next time you go on R and R, pick a safer place than Paradise.”

His phone buzzed. He answered it and listened for a bit before saying, “Okay.” Then he clicked off.

Carson said, “Talk to me.”

“I’ve been officially invited to join the murder investigation.”

CHAPTER

58

MECHO STUDIED THE POLICE OFFICERS.

He was bagging yard debris and the police officers were bagging the remains of a very expensive automobile.

Mecho wondered if they had found the bits of the license plate with “The Man” on it. He hoped not. He hoped it had been blown into the water and swallowed by a shark.

As he used a rake to collect some dead branches that had fallen to the ground, he watched the maid Beatriz walk across the lawn with a tray of lemonade and snacks. She was headed to the pool where Lampert and James Winthrop and Chrissy Murdoch were lounging. Her eyes were puffy and she kept her gaze downcast as she served the drinks and food. He watched Lampert eye her as she walked back across the lawn.

As she neared the house and was out of sight of the others, Mecho hoisted the bag of debris and used his long legs to reach a spot that would cross her path. She pulled up when she saw him. He was well over a foot taller than her and more than twice her weight.

He spoke to her in Spanish, asking her if everything was okay.

She mumbled that it was and kept walking. He kept pace beside her.

He asked more questions, and finally queried Beatriz about her employer. Her features hardened.

Mecho pounced on this vulnerability.

“I understand that your boss is leaving the country soon.”

She looked sharply at him. “How do you know that?”

“One of his guys told me. Asia?”

“And Africa. At least that’s what I overheard.”

“When does he leave?”

“Why do you want to know?” she asked suspiciously.

“I was thinking of asking you out. It would probably be easier if he weren’t around.”

Whether she understood the significance of his words or not it was impossible to tell from her features.

“You want to ask me out?” she said slowly.

“I wasn’t always a laborer,” said Mecho truthfully. “I treat women with respect and courtesy.”

“It is impossible.”

“I understand.”

She put a hand on his arm. “No, you do not understand. I am not allowed to leave the premises.”

“You cannot leave here?”

She shook her head and said in a low voice, “It is not permitted. I should not even be talking to you.”

“I am a nobody. They do not care about nobodies.”

She glanced up at him. “I think you are somebody,” she said hopefully.

“Is it the guards that keep you in here?”

“Not just the guards.” She glanced over her shoulder in the direction of the pool.

“You could call the police.”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Why not?”

“It is not just me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“There are others.”

“Your family?”

She nodded, tears trickling from her eyes. She picked up her pace and hurried across the lawn and into the house.

Mecho slowed his walk and ambled over to the truck with his load of debris. He dumped it in the vehicle’s rear bed and watched as Lampert walked down to the gate that led to the pier and unlocked the gate. The walls back here were wrought iron, six feet high. Lampert obviously didn’t worry too much about prying eyes from the water. There was enough foliage to block the main house and guesthouse from observers on boats.

Mecho continued to watch as Lampert walked down the pier, climbed on board the yacht, and disappeared belowdecks.

I could kill him. And maybe I should.

But Mecho didn’t move toward the boat. Part of it was practical. He counted five security men within his sightline.

He had no way to easily get through the gate. And he also had no weapon. Each time they had come here every man on the landscape crew had to walk through a magnetometer and then was wanded by the security detail. Lampert was a careful man. Before he even got to the big boat they would have shot him, and what would that have accomplished?

No, better to let the plan play out the way he had envisioned.

As he continued to work under a hot sun he thought about what the man Donny had told him last night at the hotel.

The shipments came nearly every night. The last platform used as a staging area was twenty miles off the coast and to the west. Mecho believed that was the one he’d been on.

Mecho had also been told that the plan was to start smuggling even more people in beginning next month. This would include people from Asia and Africa. That made sense if Lampert were planning to travel to those continents.

How soon he would be leaving could be problematic. If things were not in place and he left before Mecho could act?

I will not let that happen. Even if I have to somehow shoot his plane out of the sky. He will not get away again.

Never again.

Mecho sensed someone watching him and turned to see Chrissy Murdoch staring at him from just off the pool deck. She had on a bikini with a short terrycloth cover-up over it.

He continued to work away as she walked over to him.

He knelt down and pulled at some weeds around a flowerbed. He saw her painted toes stop a few inches from him. He looked up.

“Mecho?”

“Yes?”

“You work very hard.”

He shrugged as he threw the weeds into a sack he had taken from the truck. “The only way I know. Hard.”

She smiled at this as though the comment had amused her somehow. “Did you hear what happened last night?”

Mecho didn’t look up. It was beyond odd that she was talking to him at all, and particularly about bombs exploding in the darkness.

“I saw the car,” he said in a low voice.

“And you saw me too, didn’t you?”

He looked up at her, shaded the glare of the sun with the width of his hand. “I do not understand.”

“At the window of the guesthouse yesterday morning. You were looking. I saw your reflection in the mirror hanging on the wall.”

Shit! thought Mecho.

“It’s okay. I’m not upset or anything. Did you like what you saw?”

Was she playing with him? Yet for some reason he thought she really wanted to hear the answer.

“Did you like what you were doing?” he shot back.

She seemed to mull this. “It’s complicated.”

“Complex things are actually simple.”

“Oh, you think so?”

“Don’t you?”

“Maybe. What do you think? Did I like it?”

“No. But then again, it’s none of my business.”

She looked over his shoulder at the yacht. “He has the best of everything,” she said. “Houses, planes, yachts.”

“And you? Are you one of his bests?”

“You don’t seem like a typical member of a landscaping crew.”

“I came here for a better life. I have yet to find it. In my country I had a good job. I used my brains. Here, I just use my back.”

“So why come here, then?”

“I had to.”

“Were things bad in your country?”

“Things were bad,” he said curtly.

“I see.”

“Do you really see?”

She looked at him with a bemused expression. “Why do I think you’re talking more about me than you?”

“Does the other man know?”

“James? James is lock, stock, and barrel with Peter.”

“This is a phrase I don’t understand.”

“Peter owns James. So, no, he doesn’t care.”

“Then James is less than a man.”

“A fact I know perfectly well.”

“Why do you bother to talk to me? Because I saw?”

“I trust my gut on people. And you passed that test.”

“That doesn’t matter. People like you do not talk to people like me.”

“Is that the rule?”

“Yes.”

“I like to smash rules, Mecho. I always have.”

He shrugged and went back to weeding.

“Will you be here much longer?” she asked.

“Will you?”

“I don’t know. It’s up to Peter.”

The same for me, thought Mecho.

CHAPTER

59

THE PLAZA HOTEL DID NOT look like the far more famous one in New York City on the edge of Central Park. Its exterior was the usual beige stucco, its roof the usual terra-cotta tiles, and each balcony overlooking the water had columns shaped like palm trees.

Puller did not focus on the architecture of the building as he and Carson walked inside. He was thinking about Diego. And how to get him and Mateo back in something other than body bags. And he still had no clue where Isabel was.

“Do we tell the police about what just happened?” asked Carson as they hurried through the ornate lobby that had as its centerpiece a fountain with King Neptune in the center on a pedestal with dolphins and mermaids leaping around him. If it weren’t so garish it might have actually been funny.

“Yes, we do. They need to get an APB out on the kids right now.”

Landry met them at the elevator banks and they rode a car up to the floor where the murders had occurred. On the way Puller told her about Diego and Mateo and their run-in with the street kings.

“You’re lucky to still be walking around. Those guys are real animals.”

“They wouldn’t last a minute in Afghanistan,” said Puller.

“Amen to that,” added Carson.

Landry called in this information. “I’ll let you know as soon as we hear anything,” she said after she got off the phone.

As they climbed off the elevator Puller caught Landry and Carson checking each other out in a way only women could do and most men would never even notice. But Puller noticed and, again, it made him uncomfortable.

The hotel room was empty except for Bullock and the two dead bodies. Other than that there was no visible sign that anything had been processed.

Bullock came over to them, and as if in answer to his thoughts he said, “Called in some support from the state police. And I’m trying to think of a way to engage the FBI. This is getting out of control. But I’ve heard nothing back yet. Florida’s slashed its budget like every other state. Not sure we’re going to be getting any help.”

Puller was only half listening. His attention was on the bed where the two men lay. He drew closer, Carson right next to him.

“Who called it in?” asked Puller.

“Hotel. Room service came up here with a breakfast order one of the guys had put in the night before. No one answered. She opened the door and, to put it delicately, tossed her cookies along with the breakfast tray. Luckily someone cleaned that up before we got here.”

“Those wounds look deep,” said Carson.

“They are,” replied Landry. “The knife blade came out the other side on both men.”

“Long blade and strong killer,” said Puller. He focused more on the faces. He had already seen that the two men were not the same pair that had been following him.

When Carson asked him about this, he shook his head. “No. Different guys. Never seen them before.”

He looked at Landry. “Time of death?”

“The ME came in and did a quick look-see and pronounced death. She said between two and four last night.”

Puller ran his gaze over the bodies. “Tied up.” He looked closer at their faces. “Were their mouths taped? I see some residue.”

“Apparently so, but the killer took the tape with him. And there’s this.”

Landry edged down the pants and underwear of one of the men.

“The killer cut his groin?” said Carson.

Landry nodded. “We saw the blood on the pants and the ME had a look.”

Puller said, “Torture? Getting them to talk?”

“I guess that technique would work on most guys,” observed Landry dryly.

“Who are these two?” asked Puller.

“Joe Watson is the guy on the right. This was his room. Stiff on the left is Donald Taggert. He was in the room next door.”

“What else do we know about them?”

“Not much. They came down here about two weeks ago. They’re both from New Jersey. We’re checking into their backgrounds now. Next of kin being notified, all the standard stuff.”

“Two weeks here,” said Puller. “Pretty expensive.”

“It can be, yes,” said Landry.

“Nice suits,” said Carson, edging up Watson’s jacket to see the label. “Hands manicured, expensive shoes. There’s money here for sure.”

Bullock came over to join them. “And a bombing at Lampert’s place. Murders on the beach. Gangs attacking folks. I don’t know what the hell is going on. Just last week this place was as peaceful as a small town in the middle of Kansas.”

“Even small towns have problems,” said Puller, thinking of his recent escapade in rural West Virginia.

“Well, right now I’ll switch with any of them,” replied Bullock. He looked inquiringly at Carson, and Puller quickly introduced her.

“A general?” said Bullock. “That’s pretty impressive.”

“Not really. The Army has a lot of one-stars.”

“Not many who are women, I bet,” said Bullock.

“The Army could definitely do better in that regard,” agreed Carson.

Puller said, “Any leave-behinds from the killer?”

“Not much so far. No one saw anything. And unfortunately the hotel doesn’t have security cameras in the corridors.”

“Why not?’ asked Carson.

“What happens in Paradise stays in Paradise,” replied Bullock.

“Vegas has tons of surveillance cameras,” she pointed out.

“In the casinos. And I guess we’re a little more forgiving here.”

“Not very forgiving to those two,” said Puller, pointing at the dead men.

“How’s the investigation coming with your aunt?” asked Landry.

“It’s coming. Did you ever find Jane Ryon?”

“She wasn’t at her home. We left messages on her phone for her to contact us.”

“How about an APB?”

“We don’t have enough cause to issue an APB. You just saw her driving down the street. She could have been coming from anyone’s home, or just passing through the neighborhood. We learned she has other clients on that street. And the ME has not issued her report yet. We don’t even know if it was a murder.”

“So you’re just going to wait to hear from her?” said Puller. “And if you don’t? If she’s already fled the country?”

Carson said, “You can put markers in the system for passport, credit card, and cell phone usage. She can be tracked that way.”

Bullock looked doubtful. “I’d need a court order for that. Let’s just try to work the case a bit more. I don’t want to get my butt sued in case she’s just off on vacation or something. And now I’ve got all this to deal with. This, we know, was a murder.”

Puller turned back to the bodies on the bed. “What do you want me to do?”

“You’re a trained investigator. Look around and tell me if you see anything that strikes you.”

“I’ve got my evidence duffel in my car. If I’m going to look around I’d rather do it my way and professionally.”

Bullock exclaimed, “Hell, have at it. I’m not too proud to admit I’m out of my depth here.”

Puller left to get his duffel.