Bloodline (6 page)

Chapter Six

Eugene watched the outline of Isla de Margarita disappear into the afternoon mist rising off the Caribbean until it became a fuzzy haze on the distant horizon. Everything was out of focus: his island, his life, his wife and daughter. What had happened? He felt the bile rising as the plane touched down on the Venezuelan mainland. Caracas airport, dull, gray and ugly between the coastline and the slum-covered hills to the west. One question weighed on his mind: Would his friend help him find Julie and Shiara? Only a face-to-face meeting would give him the answer.

He deplaned at Maiquetía, the domestic terminal, and was saved from the madness of Simón Bolívar terminal, which serviced international air traffic in and out of Caracas. A queue of taxis waited at the curb and he checked three sets of ID before settling on a driver. Taking the wrong cab from the airport was akin to wearing a “Please Rob and Beat Me Senseless” sign on your back.

The cab entered the city of five million and moved with the frenzied flow of traffic, much like the men of Pamplona with the bulls at their heels. The once sleepy town of Santiago de León de Caracas, its red-tiled roofs glinting in the equatorial sun, was long gone. The discovery of rich oil reserves in Venezuela brought unprecedented growth to the city as workers flooded in from the rural areas; slums and wealthy enclaves sprang up along the strip of habitable land between the ocean and the mountains. The
ranchitos
were nothing more than hovels that provided some protection from the elements, and no protection from the high levels of crime and violence. But people kept coming, and Caracas kept growing. Now the city spread like a cancer over the steep hills, the roads slicing across the sharp ridges and the houses multiplying and filling every gorge and canyon. Eugene directed the driver to an industrial section of town where even the
ranchitos
refused to take root.

The tile factory was a dreary building in a cluster of similar windowless concrete buildings. Nothing grew here without a monumental struggle against the pollution and the onslaught of poorly finished cement. Trucks and factories belched dark, sooty smoke into the air and Eugene's nostrils and eyes stung from the acrid smog. He considered rolling up the windows, but the taxi lacked air-conditioning and the heat would be unbearable in less than a minute. The cab came to rest in front of a nondescript set of doors with a small sign hanging askew above the upper jamb. Stenciled onto the weather beaten wood was
Cerámico Cuidad.
City Ceramic. Eugene slipped two twenty U.S. dollars from his pocket and ripped them in half. He handed one half from each bill to the driver and re-pocketed the other two halves.

“Wait for me,” he said, turning and heading for the entrance.

“
Sí, señor,
” the driver said, clutching the two twenties. Forty dollars for this fare was excellent pay. He would wait however long his client was in the building.

Inside, Eugene found himself in an administrative bullpen with numerous employees, mostly younger women, at their desks, filling out forms or talking on the phone. One of the women at a desk off to one side, attractive with long hair and piercing brown eyes, glanced up and smiled.

“Can I help you?”

He weaved through a couple of desks to where she sat. “Yes, please. I'd like to speak with Pedro Parada.”

Again, the smile. “Sure. I think he's on the floor. You want to follow me?”

“Thanks.” Eugene fell in behind the woman as she moved through the tangle of desks to a door against the back wall. A wall of sound hit them as she opened the door and entered the shop area. It was a cavernous room, perhaps two hundred square feet with a thirty-foot ceiling, and filled with machinery and conveyors for forming and packaging ceramic tiles. The antiquated equipment was labor intensive, and workers were plentiful, watching the machines, adding oil and adjusting relief valves to keep the internal pressure constant. One corner of the room, where the tiles were formed and kiln dried, produced enough heat to keep the entire room sweltering. The woman rounded a large conveyor that bound the finished tiles in cardboard and rolled them down to waiting pallets. She pointed to a group of men working on one of the machines.

“Pedro is the crew leader for maintenance,” she said. “They're working on one of the hydraulic units.”

Eugene nodded and smiled. “Thank you.” He walked the last few yards to the group of men and waited until one of the four noticed his presence. He pointed to Pedro, who had his head down and was tightening a new hydraulic line with a wrench. The man tapped Pedro on the leg and he looked up. A broad grin spread across his face as he recognized Eugene. He dropped the wrench and stuck out a greasy hand.

“Eugene, my friend,” he said, rising to his full height of five feet eight inches. He wore a short sleeve shirt and his muscles bulged against the material as he shook hands. His forearms were thick and well defined, his skin dark brown from the sun and his mestizo heritage. He wore his dark hair short and neatly combed back from a broad forehead and prominent cheek bones. His smile was glistening white against the soft brown of his skin.

“Hello, Pedro,” Eugene said, ignoring the grease and accepting his friend's hand. Both men had strong grips.

Pedro motioned to his crew to finish the repair and steered Eugene toward the coffee room where they could escape the noise and pollution of the main factory. “What brings you to the mainland?” Pedro asked, fixing two coffees and sitting with Eugene at a corner table. The room was about half full of workers on their break and many voices vied to be heard over the din. “You finally tire of living the good life on Margarita?”

Eugene knew Pedro too well to dance about. “I'm in trouble, Pedro. I need your help.”

Pedro's eyes narrowed and he leaned forward on his elbows, closing the distance between the two men to keep their conversation private. “What's wrong, Eugene?”

“Julie and Shiara have been kidnapped.”

Pedro's face remained impassive for a few moments, and then a tiny vein appeared in his forehead and his lips turned slightly down. The friendly face had turned nasty, almost vicious. The warmth in his eyes evaporated, replaced with steely resolve. “How did it happen?” His voice was ice.

“Javier Rastano and some of his goons took them. He's a drug dealer from Medellín. Sort of a continuation of what Pablo was into a few years ago.” Eugene explained the visit from Rastano to his house on Margarita and finished with the small plastic container with two severed fingers. Pedro was silent for a minute, then he nodded.

“I think I understand. You're going after your cousin. You think Julie and Shiara are in El Salvador and you need me to find them.”

“I wouldn't ask if I wasn't desperate, Pedro.” Beads of sweat dripped from Eugene's forehead onto his cheeks. He wiped them away and dabbed at his face with a napkin. “It's Julie and Shiara, Pedro.”

“Jesus, Eugene. One wrong move with these guys and I'm a dead man.” They were both quiet for a minute, then Pedro said, “What do you know about their setup in El Salvador?”

“Nothing,” Eugene answered. “I'm not even sure they took Julie and Shiara to Central America. But one thing's for certain: They aren't in Colombia. The Rastano clan has spent too much time and effort to appear legitimate to blow it all by keeping kidnap victims in their back yard. They've got Julie and Shiara somewhere away from Medellín. And since their strongest presence outside Colombia is in San Salvador, I think that's where they took my wife and daughter.”

“Where's Miguel?” Pedro asked.

“Safe in Caracas with his grandparents,” Eugene said. “Thank God for small miracles. But time is limited, Pedro. Javier Rastano has given me two weeks to find Pablo.”

Pedro was quiet for another minute. Street-smart and tough, he knew the consequences of his answer were huge. If he chose to shy away from danger, he would be abandoning his friend in a time of dire need, and possibly sentencing Julie and Shiara to death. But accepting the challenge held the very real possibility of another early death. His. The people Eugene was asking him to go against were Colombian drug dealers. Ruthless men. He closed his eyes and for a few seconds he was fourteen years old, in San Salvador, walking home from school on that hot, humid afternoon.

School had gone well and he had the results of a social studies test in his book, ready to show his grandmother. Ninety-four percent. She would be so proud. He took his usual route, passing near the zoo on his way to the small adobe house on Colonia America where he lived with his grandmother. The neighborhood was never really safe, but the walk home from his classes was usually uneventful; most of the thugs who prowled the streets were looking for better targets than a fourteen-year-old schoolboy. But not that day.

Pedro passed a house with an open front and a couple of soda machines set against an inside wall. Two tables sat in the shade, one occupied by three young men in their late teens. Pedro caught some sort of a motion as he cruised past, but never gave it a second thought. A moment later he heard a voice behind him.

“Where you going so fast,
chiquillo?
” One of the teens had lurched outside the hole in the wall and was trailing Pedro down the road.

Pedro glanced back. The youth was covered with gang tattoos, on his arms, his neck and ears. His face was crisscrossed with scars from knife fights. He yelled at Pedro again, this time accusing him of being from a different gang. Pedro began to run, his legs pumping quickly, his eyes on the ground, watching where each footstep landed on the broken pavement. He reached a clear spot and risked a look behind him. Another four gang members had joined the first and they were only a few steps behind him.

Pedro knew if the gang caught him he was dead. He started screaming for help. The streets were alive with people and cars and buses, but no one stepped forward. They just watched as he ran for his life, knowing that getting involved would only make them targets. Pedro rounded a corner, his legs and lungs burning and his breath coming in short gasps. He had nothing left. A church loomed up at the end of the block, but his muscles were too tired to make it. Just as the gang seemed to be on top of him, a strong arm grabbed him by his shirt and yanked him off his feet. His feet swung back to earth and his head and shoulders smacked into the man's back. The hand let go and he dropped to the pavement, staring at the gang through the man's legs.

“You want the boy, come and get him,” the man yelled at the group. They pulled up short, brandishing knives and waving them wildly about. The man's right hand was behind him, close to the small of his back. “I've got a gun, and I've got enough bullets for each one of you. You want him, you go through me.”

“Get out of the way, asshole,” one of the gang yelled. “We want the kid.”

“You get the kid when you get past me,” the man yelled back. “And if you try, I'll kill all of you. No fucking survivors to tell the story.”

Lives hung in the balance. Witnesses to the standoff crawled into doorways and behind buildings, wary of stray gunfire or of being slaughtered because they'd seen too much. There were no police, and even if they were near, this wasn't their fight. This was one man against a gang.

“You fucking guy,” one of the gang yelled. He snapped his blade shut and rammed it in his pocket. “I ever see you around here again, I'll kill you.”

“You do that,” the man said as the rest of the gang followed suit and retreated. A minute later they were gone, swallowed by the grimy labyrinth of streets and alleys. The man finally looked down to where Pedro was huddled on the cement. “You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Pedro said, standing and dusting off his school clothes. “I'm fine. Thank you.”

“Not a problem, but we got a bit lucky if you ask me.”

“How's that?” Pedro asked.

The man lifted up his shirt to reveal the small of his back. “I forgot my gun today.”

“Holy shit,” Pedro said. His knees buckled and he collapsed back to the ground. “It was all a bluff.”

The man nodded. “I'm Eugene Escobar,” he said, wiping a few beads of sweat from his brow. “Just visiting from Venezuela. Is it always this exciting around here?”

Despite the seventeen-year difference in their age, the two became friends. At first, it was more of a father-son relationship, but as Pedro matured and entered his twenties, the friendship blossomed into one of mutual respect. They stayed in touch, Pedro often traveling to Venezuela and to Eugene's island to visit and help on the dive boat. Eugene made a couple of trips to El Salvador, but it was more difficult after Shiara was born. Still, despite distance and time, the friendship endured.

Now Pedro sat at the rickety table in the lunch room of Cerámico Cuidad, already knowing what his answer would be. He adored Julie; she was like a sister to him. And Shiara had turned into a wonderful young woman. She and Miguel always called him Uncle Pedro. It was the family he had been denied as a young boy surviving the rough-and-tumble streets of San Salvador. He took a sip of coffee and cupped the warm mug in his hands.

“I'll need some expense money, Eugene. I'm kind of tapped out right now.”

Eugene finally let out his breath and nodded. “Money's not a problem. I can give you twenty thousand American dollars. That should pay for your plane flights, hotels and food.”

“Where did you get…?” Pedro let the question die, not really wanting to know the answer. “What should I do? How do I get close to Javier Rastano and his father?”

Eugene shrugged. “I don't know. You're a resourceful kind of guy. You'll think of something.”

Pedro finished his coffee. “And if I find your wife and daughter? Then what?”

“That's your call. Get them out if you can. Call me. Call the police. Do whatever you have to.”