Текст книги "Cuba Straits"

Автор книги: Randy Wayne White

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An hour later, Ford was hiking up the hill to Marta Esteban’s home when the Santero’s phone buzzed with a second message: Why you no contact? They in car red Buick that is with gallineros seated driving west. Police do not know. Watch soon with eyes ready.

Ford puzzled over that, unsure if Kostikov was writing code or if his Spanish was as bad as Vernum had claimed. Tomlinson and the shortstop were in a car somewhere between here and Cojimar, but the Russian didn’t want Cuban authorities involved. That much fit with what Ford already knew and confirmed that Tomlinson was in danger but not immediate danger. But what the hell did gallineros seated mean? Gallinero was Spanish for “chicken coop.”

Gibberish, Ford decided. The Santero had become an eager, earnest informant after forty minutes of questioning. The key to breaking a hostile interrogant was plying his ego or tapping into his innermost fears. The man didn’t swim well. He was terrified of sharks. Blindfolded, Vernum had believed he was adrift in the Gulf Stream when, in fact, they hadn’t left the river.

Ford had a lot of information to sort through. Juan Rivera would have killed for what he had learned tonight. Instead, Juan had fallen victim to something he didn’t know.

The pressing issue was Vernum’s claim that he hadn’t hurt Marta or the girls. It was late; Ford had changed into fishing shorts, a blue chambray shirt, and a ball cap—better to look like a tourist and less like a ninja. But Kostikov’s message took precedence. If the Russian had found his phone in the stadium trash, that meant Vernum’s phone also contained a GPS chip. He’d assumed as much and was still unsure what to do with the damn thing. Using one finger, he texted a response: Dropped phone in water. Messages garbled cannot call. Meet you where? After adding a string of random letters, he hit Send.

That would give him some time. Somehow, though, he had to silence the phone’s tracking signal. Even if he shut it off, the thing would still transmit. A possible solution was in the systems menu. He found location services and disengaged all links.

Ford crossed through the trees to the drive and jogged the rest of the way. Every window in the Esteban house was alight with candles and lamps. He stopped near the tamarind tree, switched on a flashlight, and called a friendly warning: “Marta . . . it’s me, the guy from the United States. Your daughter calls me the gringo fascist.”

Lighten the mood on this traumatic evening, is what he wanted to do, the whole time hoping more trauma didn’t await.

But it was okay. The porch door flew open and the younger girl, Sabina, came flying out wearing baggy pink-and-white pajamas. “I told them, Marion, I told them both! They didn’t believe me—so typical . . .” Then she became shy as she drew nearer and stopped. Behind her, the mother appeared, carrying an oil lamp, a diffident woman with Polynesian hair that hung to the waist of her bathrobe.

Ford moved the flashlight so she could see his face. “Sorry, Mrs. Esteban. I didn’t know how to find the place by car, so I waited at the hotel, hoping you’d check in.” He squatted to be at eye level with Sabina. “How’re you doing, tiburónita? Where’s Maribel?”

“Little shark”—a nickname—and Maribel was on the porch, one hand clinging to her mother’s robe.

Sabina backed a few steps. “You look different.”

Ford was counting on it. “I cleaned up at the hotel. Is that so bad?”

“You’re not as big . . . and your legs are bare. Why are you dressed like a tourist from Canada? Don’t lie to me. Everyone thinks I’m stupid, but I’m not.”

Smiling, Ford stood and spoke to Marta. “If it’s too late, I can come back tomorrow.”

“No . . . stay. Please stay, come inside. Maribel, where are your manners? Bring the patrón a glass of cold water. Or coffee. Would you like coffee?” The woman’s eagerness signaled the shock of what the Santero had done. Ford had heard only one side of the story but had decided not to press for details. If Marta wanted to talk, he would listen. The complexities of emotional trauma were outside his field, but he had a bedrock respect for personal privacy.

On the way to the house, the girl looked up. “What did you do to him? The zombie man, he would have murdered Mama and Maribel, then you came. He would have killed me, too, but I fought like hell. Did you see me kick him? I did. Kicked him and tried to bite him.”

“A zombie?” Ford replied. It took a second to connect that with the stitches in the Cuban’s face. He asked Marta, “What’s she talking about?”

“You know who I mean,” the girl said, then began to second-guess herself as she looked him up and down. “What happened to the thing on your”—she touched her forehead—“and the holster you wore here?” Sabina’s hand moved to her side. Puzzled over that, then turned to her mother. “I swear it was true. I told the truth about what happened. A man, a giant with a green eye, he came out of the trees, but maybe it wasn’t—”

“Stop pestering our guest,” Marta interrupted and focused on Ford while she waved the girl into the house. “Your name is Marion? I’m glad you’re here, but I’m so upset, it’s hard to think. Something happened tonight.”

“Serious?”

“Do you have a car? You’ve already done so much for us, I hate to ask, but, if you have a car, I think it’s dangerous here. We’d like to leave.”

Ford, who had the keys to Vernum’s old Lada, replied, “That can be arranged. Why don’t you tell me about it.”

•   •   •

HE DIDN’T SMOKE, but sat at a table with coffee and a cigar he had accepted because the woman was so eager to please. Unlit, it wasn’t bad. Tasted of moist leaves with a leather tang. He bit the tip off but refused politely when she lit a match and extended her arm—pretty, her face, the way her hair glistened behind the flame. She blew the match out and turned for an ashtray. A contrail of smoke framed her profile: Aztec nose, chin, and elevated cheeks; an estuary for her eyes, which were volcanic brown, isolated, and private unless she granted contact.

Marta granted eye contact now. She stood, the table and kerosene lamp separating them. “Coffee keeps some men awake. Are you sure?”

Ford handed her the cup. “A little sugar, if you have it.” It would be hours before he’d have a chance to sleep.

“There’s bread I baked yesterday, maybe a bit of honey, I’ll look. I wish I had more to offer.” The lamp, which provided backlight when she walked to the kitchen, verified that Marta Esteban had a great deal more to offer: a sturdy body, lean-waisted, with breasts that moved beneath the robe.

Mr. Esteban, Ford decided, wherever he was, had either died happy or was a fool.

She made herself busy in the kitchen. “I used to work at the cigar factory in Plobacho. I was a girl. They started me with cheroots—sort of like cigarettes. By the time I was fifteen, they trusted me to do Cohibas—only the best leaves, the best fillers, and each layer had to be cut and wrapped perfectly. Very, very tight.” Marta did sort of a rolling, chopping ceremony with her hands. “I’m sorry you don’t like the cigar.”

“You made this?”

“No, but I could.” For the first time, she smiled. The haunted eyes softened. “You don’t smoke? If you like something milder, I could make that, too. Whatever you wanted.”

Ford nodded his thanks. “Tell me about the cigar factory.”

“They had a man read to us—twenty women in a room on benches with a fan but no radio. He would read for an hour, take a ten-minute break, then come back and read some more. There was a microphone at the front of the room on a tall desk that wasn’t really a desk. He read José Martí and Ernest Hemingway, anything that was approved by . . . well, I don’t know who approves these things. That’s how I fell in love with books.”

They had been discussing Sabina. She and Maribel were pretending to be asleep in the big bed in the next room, door closed, which is why the adults kept their voices down and, so far, the subject matter light. Earlier, when Marta had started to describe the attack, it was out of fear for Vernum Quick—yes, she’d recognized him—and a sense of urgency, so Ford had taken her aside and said, “He’s not coming back.”

The woman had almost broken down when she heard that but battled through to spare her daughters. She had yet to ask the obvious question.

Later, on the porch, with the lamp turned low, she did. “Sabina was right, wasn’t she? She saw you do something to that . . . I won’t say his name. Then you both disappeared.”

“I don’t know what she saw, and I’ve learned not to argue with her. On the raft, when I found your daughters, she not only threatened to swim to Cuba, she actually tried. That girl’s a fire-breather, Mrs. Esteban.”

“Marta,” she corrected. “I shouldn’t have asked, it was rude. You must be tired. I didn’t see car lights. Did you come by boat?”

Ford confirmed that with a look.

“The girls said fantastic things about your boat. How fast it is, with lights that blink like a spaceship. Funny . . . I believed very little of what they told me about you. But tonight, I would believe anything.” She reached for the lamp and inspected his face as a nurse might. “You’re tired . . . or worried. I’d like you to sleep here . . . in the girls’ room, of course. Or there’s a hammock—”

“I have to meet someone,” Ford said. “But I need to ask a few things before I go.”

“Questions about the—”

“No, not about that. About the village, things only a local would know.” Ford turned east toward Plobacho, not far as the crow flies, but so small there were no lights above a tree line dominated by stars. “You grew up here?”

“My grandparents, too, but I don’t understand. You told me we’re safe and I want to believe you, but the girls will be afraid. It’s so dark out there on the water, and you could rest and have a good breakfast. Are you in trouble?”

“A friend of mine might be. That’s who I have to meet.”

Marta broke eye contact. She placed the lamp on the railing near the ashtray and picked up the cigar because that’s what her fingers had been trained to do. “I had no right to ask that. What would you like to know?”

“My friend, he’s looking for . . . well, looking for something and I want to be there when he finds it. I’ll explain when we have more time. I have the location narrowed down, but I don’t know the area. Here, have a look.” He opened his bag and handed her a page from his notebook—a map he’d sketched while interrogating Vernum.

“It’s soaking wet,” she said.

“I slipped coming up the riverbank. Didn’t the girls mention I’m clumsy? I’m not much of an artist either.” The smile in his tone was intentional. He scooted his chair close enough to touch the map. “Here’s the village square. And this is an old baseball stadium, I was told. And the X—I circled it. Do you know the house?”

“A large green house with . . . I don’t know the word . . . towers on each side . . . or gables?”

“Maybe.”

“If it’s the same, a wealthy man built it years ago. Very, very rich, before the Revolution, and his only daughter still lives there. Hector Casanova was the man’s name. His daughter is old now. Imelda Casanova. La Viuda—the Dowager—is what she’s called. She’s a recluse. My grandmother was a maid in her house, but only for a few years.”

This was an unexpected bit of luck. Ford had questions about the Dowager but wanted to orient himself first. Marta had watched games at the baseball stadium but didn’t know much about the place. She confirmed the location of a few other landmarks but was puzzled when he asked, “Why does a village as small as Plobacho have such a large cemetery?”

“What do you mean? The nearest cemetery is twenty kilometers from here in Artemisa. Or, if the family has a little money, they choose the Cementerio de Caimito. These are simple places, not large.”

Vernum had been caught in his first lie—or the shortstop Figueroa Casanova had lied to Vernum.

“I pictured something more elaborate. Nothing closer? With mausoleums, sepulchres, a lot of them, I was told.”

Marta glanced inside, where her daughters pretended to be asleep. “West of Havana, there is the magnificent Cementerio de ColÓn.”

Ford thought, Maybe Lázaro is right, while the woman continued. “Members of the elite can be buried there, but not people like us. Sabina thinks it more beautiful than photographs of Disney World.” A wistful smile faded while she thought it through. “Although . . . there was once a burial field near the river. Not far from here”—she nodded in the direction of the village—“unless you go by car. It was called the Pauper Cólera, but bulldozers came many years ago and covered it. Most of it. There are still some ruins of buildings. That was after Fidel and the Revolution but before I was born.”

“There was a cholera epidemic?”

“I suppose so. Or because it was a swampy area that flooded. Cholera, malaria, black bowel fever. In those days they were called pauper diseases because peasants were considered unclean. Some say the bodies were dumped and covered with cement. Others say they were burned. It was to protect our water supply, so no one argued, but you know how old people are. They still believe diseases come out of the ground there.”

Marta, the cigar in her hand, reconsidered the map, which consisted of stick drawings and cryptic abbreviations. “This is the public garbage dump, not a cemetery.”

“Is it close to the place you’re talking about?”

She noted his interest and looked beyond the river, northeast. “No. As I said, the Pauper Cólera is beyond those trees. Not far on foot, much longer by road. I’ve never been. Why would I?” She put the map aside. “Is it rude to ask what your friend is looking for? Perhaps I can help.”

“My source of information has mixed in lies with the truth. I think it has something to do with Imelda Casanova. I’m not certain yet. Or her grandson. Something he knows, or something he did.”

“You are speaking of Figueroa.”

“Yes.”

“There’s not much I can tell you.”

Ford took a stab. “Is he really her grandson?”

Marta fidgeted while her fingers graded the quality of the cigar, then placed it in the ashtray. Nervous, Ford decided, reluctant to discuss the secrets of a family that had once been powerful, then fell from grace—or so Vernum had claimed.

That wasn’t it. She turned to him. “Figuerito has the brain of a child, that’s true. But if he was guilty of murdering children, explain why the same murderer attacked us tonight? Other girls from the countryside have been attacked or just disappeared, poof”—she illustrated with her hands—“even though Figuerito was locked away. Now you tell me my daughters are safe, but the fear I’ve lived with for two years—more than two years—praying every night, worried all day that . . .” Marta cleared her throat, too emotional to put it into words because words provoked mental images. “To allow my babies to fall into the hands of that monster . . . I couldn’t. So I made a decision that broke my heart, to send them away. That’s why I’m asking you . . . why I must know if . . .”

Ford waited for her to finish, a little impatient—he had to get moving—but soon realized she was crying. He hesitated, then placed a hand on her arm. Just as he’d feared, she jumped as if startled but felt better when she leaned against him and sobbed. It didn’t last. A moment later, she pulled away, saying, “Don’t . . . I haven’t bathed. This is like a terrible dream. Please understand something: when I said I wanted you to sleep here tonight, I didn’t mean—”

“Of course you didn’t. In the girls’ room or the hammock, you made that clear.”

“I know, but before the words were out of my mouth I realized it sounded so cheap. A man like you, a man of character, would never . . .”

Never? Ford was easily undone by tears. He wanted to tell her that recent one-night stands within twenty-four hours with a stranger didn’t constitute a man of character. Instead, he spoke in soothing tones as he searched the porch, hoping to see a handkerchief or a towel. “Calm down . . . try to breathe . . . I’ll be back with something so you can blow your nose.”

She was still crying when he returned empty-handed. “Marta?” he said. Then more firmly: “Marta.”

It was a while before she could look at him. “Don’t you understand? I’m disgusted with myself. You gave us money for a hotel. Sabina begged and begged and I should have listened. But I swear, what you think happened tonight didn’t happen. It’s my daughters I’m worried about.”

Heartbreaking. Why did good women, no matter how smart, how solid, blame themselves for the cruelty of predators who viewed victims as faceless objects? Ford chose his words with care. “No matter what happened, you and the girls aren’t at fault. You are not at fault, Marta. So if you’re worried I think you’re somehow tarnished, trust me, that’s not why I have to go. Anyone who blames you is a damn idiot. Do you understand?” While she sniffed and nodded, he took her hands and helped her stand so they were facing. “Sabina will be okay. I can tell. What, Maribel?”

She didn’t speak until he tilted her chin with a finger. “That . . . person didn’t touch her. Well, he tied her hands and feet, but he wanted me first, I think. Then he heard Sabina and ran outside.”

The relief Ford felt didn’t rival the anger that had been building all evening.

“Marion”—she spoke his name for the first time, but in a whisper—“did you kill him? I hope you did. I wouldn’t tell anyone ever. If you killed him, then I’ll know we’re safe.”

Ford couldn’t risk the truth—Vernum Quick was bound, gagged, and cabled to a tree, still alive—so he pulled Marta into his arms and held her because what the hell else could he do but pretend to be kind and caring and worthy of this woman’s misplaced respect? “You’ll never see him again,” he said. “That’s all I can say. Do you believe me?”

Her head bobbed up and down against his chest.

“But you’re still afraid.”

Another nod but more emphatic.

“Okay . . . let me ask you something.” He was thinking of the little palm-sized 9mm Sig Sauer that was now in his briefcase. “Have you ever fired a pistol before?”

Vernum, trussed in the trunk of his own car, said to Ford, “Jefe . . . why don’t you talk? I hate it when you do this. That’s why, huh? Mind games. I’ve had training, man. My KGB handler, the one we want to kill, he does educational videos. That we want to neutralize, I mean. I’m more valuable than you think, Jefe. Give me a chance, you’ll see.”

Jefe, pronounced “HEF-fay.” Eager to please, the Santero was addressing him as “Chief” because he was scared shitless.

Ford didn’t bother with Super Glue and a tongue depressor. If he needed an answer fast, applying solvent took too much time. “I’m going to make two stops,” he said. “If you lied to me, I’ll set your car on fire and walk away. Think before answering. Vernum . . . is there anything you left out?”

Yes . . . several minor details that weren’t minor, but he had an excuse. “How many times have you shut off the blood to my brain, man? Jefe, please, if you don’t think that affects my . . .”

Ford found the man’s jugular vein—end of explanation. He balled cotton into Vernum’s mouth and used duct tape.

The Lada had a bad clutch. It needed a ring job and the starboard headlight was out. No big deal in Cuba. In Havana at eleven-twenty, there would be a few cars and donkey carts, but sparse. In the countryside, even on main highways, no matter the time of day, there was no traffic. Just the occasional transiting of a Chinese bus that stunk of propane, a Russian half-track hauling cane, a car or two on wobbly tires, then long spaces of silence and wind over asphalt that had been engineered for the future but led to nowhere but the past.

The bombs of the Cold War had never been deployed—except here where they had detonated in spirit. Their mushroom gloom had emptied the highways in a slow-motion panic that joined two centuries yet isolated the young, the hopeful. Instead of aspiring, instead of coveting their first success, they sold tamarinds and mangoes by the roadside in the silence of asphalt, unaware they were the newest casualties of a long-gone war.

Ford drove to the main road and, after a few miles, turned left toward Vista del Mar, then another left on a rutted lane toward Plobacho. Didn’t see another car, not one, only the sparks of candles and kerosene poverty through trees, while, on the highest hillside, a satellite tower strobed a single red warning to pilots from the north.

That reminded him to check Vernum’s satellite phone. He had to hold it away to see the screen . . . but nothing new to read.

Kostikov hadn’t responded. That could mean only one thing: the Russian knew something was amiss. His next move would be to find Vernum. Right now he would be in his Mercedes, somewhere between Cojimar and Plobacho, watching a laptop or meter locked onto Vernum’s phone. This phone.

•   •   •

WHAT MARTA had called Pauper Cólera Vernum called Campo Muerto—“the field of the dead.” He said a leper colony had burned to the ground here in 1917, but they continued to bury the poor and diseased until the Department of Health had sent in bulldozers fifty-some years ago and changed the name.

“Peasants are superstitious,” he explained. “It’s better not to frighten them, but no one comes here anyway. I told you, man, I knew the perfect spot.” Vernum, with his legs free, no longer gagged, was talkative, full of attitude even with his hands cuffed behind him. “But”—he paused to stress the importance of what came next—“this is between us. A covert action, right? I can’t wait to see the look on that fat Russian’s face when we bring him here.”

They wouldn’t have to bring the Russian if they didn’t hurry. Kostikov would find the place by himself.

Ford said, “He should be in a hospital by now, if what you told me is true. You screwed it up somehow. Or were exaggerating.”

“Jefe, how many times have I explained? You know more about the Russians and uranium poisoning than I do, man.”

What Ford knew was that Vladimir Putin, a former KGB hit man, now president, sometimes ordered agents to use polonium-210 to murder his enemies. A dose the size of a grain of sand, if pure, was so lethal that even if it was immersed in an ounce of water, the victim would die in agony within a week. To Putin, an additional benefit was that his agent would die, too, just from handling the stuff.

Plausible deniability.

But the effects of polonium were dose-dependent. If enough wasn’t ingested or injected, or if the dosage was diluted, the symptoms—diarrhea, vomiting—might linger for months. There was no antidote, but the victim would recover.

According to Vernum, he’d been smart enough to realize what was in the fountain pen, so he had drained the contents into a vial. To the vial, he’d added olive oil. “To make it taste good,” he said. “I put a few drops on his jerked chicken sandwich. The man has had the shits ever since, so I know it’s working.”

Vernum also claimed he’d cut Figueroa with a blade contaminated with the stuff, but was less sure about that. Rather than listen to it all again, Ford gave him a push and said, “Shut up and walk.”

They were on acreage that had been cleared years ago but had gone wild with weeds and wetland vines that thinned as they ascended a hillock that had been piled high by a dredge or contoured by earthmoving machines. Columns of brick sprouted from the bushes in a random pattern, like stalagmites in a roofless cave . . . then a brick wall with holes punched through. On the river side, viewed from the top of the hill where Ford stopped, was the husk of a building with a towering chimney or cupola, no roof, and only three walls.

“Is that where you dumped the bodies?” he asked.

Vernum had admitted killing only two girls, but then imagined himself locked in the trunk of his 1972 Lada while the car burned. After that, he had upped the number to five but insisted, “As a Santero, I took an oath to weed out the bad ones. You know, possessed by evil. Hey—it’s true. There’s a ceremony, man, very strict the way every detail has to be prepared. The purest turpentine, a coconut rind sliced in fourths with a knife that’s been cleaned and sharpened. I can’t, you know, share all the secrets, but it’s about purification. It’s about feeding certain spirits what their hunger craves. Life must feed on life. I don’t expect you to understand, but how else you gonna deal with something so bad?”

Until then, Ford had refused to be baited. “The Esteban girls are evil? Maribel hardly says a word. And the mother, don’t blame some bullshit ceremony on what you planned to do to her.”

Vernum was immune to insult. “How many times I say this? Man, I don’t expect gringos from the Estados Unidos to believe, but it’s true.”

“Good. I’d have to tape your mouth again.”

“All I’m saying is, your religion doesn’t train you—”

“Keep moving,” Ford warned, and started down the hill.

Vernum hustled to catch up. “It doesn’t train you to recognize the signs. The evil ones, they get more powerful as adults. Are you Catholic? Catholics understand that demons are real, man. We can’t see them, of course. They’re like parasites. They move at night like a worm seeking, what do you call it, fertile ground. But, Jefe, when a demon finds the right person—a child with a bad disposition, say—they slip in through the mouth or nose. Pretty soon, you’re dealing with a devil who’s a total maniac. See? Now you understand why I do what I have to do. As I told the Russian, I’m well suited for this type of work.”

Ford’s jaw flexed. He checked his watch. They were almost to the brick shell of what had once been a sanitarium run by nuns—a leprosarium.

Vernum couldn’t stop talking. “When a demon roots inside the brain of a kid, it’s actually a kindness. You know, end their misery before it gets worse. That youngest girl—what’s her name?—the brat squirted acid in my eyes and laughed, she threatened to bite my fingers. A goddamn child.”

Ford had to smile, but only because he could picture Sabina doing it. Vernum was ballsy—hands cuffed, struggling to keep up, his face a mosaic of stitches, yet still preaching in his superior, street-hip way. No . . . he was justifying his own crimes.

“My KGB handler, for instance. Sometimes the things I do, things you do in your profession—I think you’ll agree—it’s necessary for the good of others. You saw the video I shot. That’s how the Russian dealt with that German traitor.”

Some, but not all, of the video. Ford, in a remote part of his brain, had critiqued the way Kostikov had played Vernum, the aspiring spy, against the German agent—a blonde he recognized from Tomlinson’s brief stardom on Facebook. His methods worked but were heavy-handed. A truly gifted operator would have manipulated the scenario so that when the woman went out the door, even the pilot would have believed it was accidental.

Anatol Kostikov of the KGB: low marks for creativity. Zero for professionalism. In all Ford’s years, he had never witnessed such pointless, joyous cruelty. A similar flaw defined the difference between arson and pyromania. It was weakness. Weakness could be targeted.

Ford stopped beneath the towering chimney, then moved a safe distance away. Hurricanes and the years had twisted it like the spine of a cripple. The damn thing could come toppling down beneath the weight of the stars, or one croaking frog, or a breeze that pushed sulfuric musk across this plain where the diseased had died and were dumped into holes. The air, the earth, and the weeds were contagious with dread. Even Ford, a scientist, could understand why locals avoided this place.

He used the flashlight. Painted the chimney, which was the size of a furnace cupola—a crematorium, possibly. The building’s foundation was primitive cement . . . a couple of collapsed rooms . . . a wedge of steps to a root cellar or basement, where rats scampered. Nearby, more rats atop the remains of a well or cistern . . . then, at a distance, a trench lined with bricks, bricks piled everywhere. Several likely locations. “Okay,” Ford said. “Show me the bodies.”

Vernum didn’t move. “Someone was here,” he said. He sounded spooked.

“So what?”

“Unlock my cuffs. Man, you saw what they left behind but you just didn’t understand. I need the flashlight.”

Not a chance. Ford figured it out for himself. Near the steps was a sunflower bound with red ribbon. A little pile of cowrie shells with painted eyes . . . a cigar and an empty rum bottle. At the base of the well, another sunflower, where rats quarreled among the seeds.

“No one comes here,” Vernum said. He was scared—but probably more worried about revealing evidence that he was a child killer. Or maybe not, because then he said, “They’re in there . . . inside the chimney.”

“All five bodies?”

“Isn’t that what I just said? There’s an opening at the bottom. Hurry up. I want to get out of here.”

Ford shined the light. “I don’t see it.” Gave the man another push, and kept prodding him, until the chimney dwarfed them both, and there it was, hidden by weeds: a brick conduit into the chimney. The outline suggested the shape of an oversized oven. He’d been right. A crematorium.

Ford kicked weeds away. The chimney’s base was the diameter of a large room, but the opening was less than the width of his shoulders. “Sit on the ground with your back to me,” he told Vernum. He emptied his pockets to streamline himself but kept the flashlight and his phone, which he switched to video mode.

“You’re crazy, man. Crawl in there on your knees?” Vernum looked up, the chimney six stories high, rows of bricks missing, whole sections segmented like blocks hanging by a thread. “I don’t want to be sitting on my ass if that falls. You bang into it wrong, kick something loose. Jefe . . . why you need pictures? Get them later, man, after we do the Russian.”

Ford stared at the Santero until he dropped to the ground, facing the river. “Don’t do anything stupider than you already have,” he said, then got down and probed with the flashlight. What he saw caused him to thread his head and one arm into the space. Then attempted to wiggle his shoulders through. The space within stunk of fur and darkness.