Magic City (24 page)

Stanton had held them hostage with an empty weapon.

As Caufield was settling her aim, Alex slung the pistol at her. The woman bobbed her pistol down, then brought it back. Alex was in the air by then, leaping at the federal agent who had just killed Stanton King and wounded Sugar and meant to murder her.

Alex swung her heavy cast, accelerating as she swiveled into a roundhouse blow. Then spiking the woman full in the face.

The Glock blasted. A skewer of shock waves knifed down Alexandra's shoulder and the round tore open a seam in the plaster cast and ripped apart the sleeve of her sweater.

Alex fell back on the floor. Her ears were ringing, but she was not dead. No wound she could feel. Not yet anyway.

Pauline Caufield, on the other hand, was out. A three-inch gash etched across her hairline, and blood drooling from the cut like milk from a leaky carton. Alex pried the Glock from her hand and stood up. She patted her down and found only a tiny telescope in her jacket pocket. No ID, no keys.

Alex stood up straight, and the foyer started to spin like a sluggish carnival ride. She settled her back against the wall and ordered the whirling to cease. After a few seconds it slowed enough for her to walk.

Alex made it back into the hallway without falling. She made it five more feet, then another five, the walls breathing in and breathing out. She pushed open the door to the first bedroom, but Sugarman wasn't there. She made it to the second and shouldered that door aside.

Sugar sat on the floor, his back propped against the bed. Blood saturated the front of his shirt and was puddled around his butt.

He opened his eyes and watched her kneel down beside him.

An embarrassed smile washed across his lips.

She found a phone in a hallway, called Emergency, gave her location.

The dispatcher got the medics rolling, then said, “This is Thorn's house?”

“That's right.”

“Hell, what's he into now?”

Alex had forgotten that part of Key Largo. Everybody into everybody's business. Some folks thrived on it.

“Five minutes or less,” the dispatcher said. “Apply pressure.”

“I know about that,” Alex said, and hung up.

She opened Sugarman's collar and examined the wound.

He'd been right, it was just a nick, but it was a bad nick. Very bad. The slug had whisked across the flesh just below his jawline. The artery was perforated, and a strong current of blood was pulsing out. She pulled a pillowcase loose and pressed a corner to the gash. When the fabric could absorb no more, she kept it in place to speed the clotting and folded another piece over it to soak the rest.

As they rolled Sugar out to the ambulance, Alex noted without surprise that there was no sign of Pauline Caufield.

Pauline had double vision. Speeding up the turnpike toward Miami, seeing two eighteen-wheelers where there was one, two motorcycles, two bread trucks. Two exit signs flashing past.

It took her three tries before she punched the correct numbers.

“Need to speak to Hadley.”

Two red Corvettes blew by her on the left.

“He's in a meeting,” his secretary said. Someone new Pauline didn't know. They were always rotating in and out.

“Get him out of the meeting. This is urgent.”

“I'm sorry, what was your name again?”

“Caufield, Pauline Caufield.”

“One moment please.”

Pauline watched two big white birds sail across the highway. Two suns burning in the sky, two roads running parallel before her. The blood had stopped seeping. But a bell was ringing in her throat, and something tasted rotten at the back of her mouth.

“I'm sorry, Ms. Caufield. He can't come to the phone. It's an important meeting.”

“It's Pauline Caufield. Did you tell him that?”

“Yes, ma'am, I did.”

“Well, go tell him again. This is the highest priority.”

“I'm sorry, ma'am, Director Waters said he doesn't know a Pauline Caufield.”

 

At thirteen she learned to pleasure herself. In her dreary, motherless house she lay beneath the sheet and comforter, hand stroking thighs. A sweet relief from the pressure knotted inside. Something new, something exciting. Something all her own
.

Twice that year her daddy swung open her bedroom door and caught her in the act. Shamed her, gave her prayers to say, made her read the Testament, pointing to the terrible punishments parents were sometimes required to make. Abraham and his boy Isaac. Onan, who so displeased the Lord for spilling his seed, he was slain
.

The third and final time he caught her she was fourteen. As she was rising to the crucial moment, her guilt-loving father pushed open her door as if he'd been standing in the hall waiting for her moans, the squeak of mattress springs; her father waiting outside, ready with his punishment
.

He strode across the room, yanked back her sheets. He looked down at her hand tucked between her white thighs
.

I warned you about this
.

I warned you, yet you continue to defy me. This lewd conduct. It will spoil you for marriage. No man will have you. I will not allow this in my house. I have warned you. Over and over I have warned
.

There was a glass specimen jar in his hand. He held it out, unscrewed the lid, tipped it. Inside was a papery nest crawling with wasps, frantic to defend their broken hive
.

No, she said. I won't do it again. I promise. I'll stop. I will
.

You promised before. I no longer trust your word
.

Years passed and she grew wanton. More bold and daddy-hating. Eighteen, nineteen, moving quickly from boys to men and more men. Bringing his worst fears to life. Dangerous men, powerful men, some more powerful than he. Inviting them in, taking all they had. Draining them dry, casting them aside
.

Until that one man, that thrilling man. A man of valor. She fell for him, fell and fell so hard. His slinky body, his insolent smile, long lashes. Sensual macho lips. A genuine man, nothing like the others. A man of action and daring
.

She made her way into his bed, oh God, his bed, his body. Those hours in his arms, his breath in her ear. His ferocity, his yearning
.

But no. She can't have him. Beautiful man. Can't have, can't have. The wife and children called him home. And that's final. Go away, leave me alone. Forget I exist
.

With her eyes shut, she placed on her tongue the dry wafer of the past, sipped from the goblet of memory. Reliving once more that murderous night, the man who died, and that sweet girl child. The wasps, the stinging wasps seeking her out, circling her head like a venomous halo, they buzzed round her brain, swarming and swarming to return to their hive, crazy to return to their broken hive. Their broken, broken hive
.

 

Hadley Waters couldn't do that. Could he?

Pauline Caufield was a government employee with health insurance, a pension plan, nearly forty years of service. Waters couldn't erase all that, couldn't delete her Social Security number, expunge her from the system. No way in hell. People knew her, lots of people. She had a history. She had a penthouse office in one of Miami's finest office buildings, a network of agents under her command. She had bank accounts, a Florida driver's license, a passport, a deed to her house in Belle Meade, credit cards, a leased vehicle. There was no way she could simply poof and be gone. No way in hell.

Then again, she knew that wasn't exactly true.

She'd done as much herself. Agents in the field exposed who'd had to disappear. She'd overseen the work from Langley tech support. Watching them type and delete. Erase the flickering electronic codes that held the data that gave heft to human identity. A day or two was all it took, tracking down every trace, every footprint in the sand.

Poof.

And Hadley S. Waters had access to the best tech masters in the field. Better than anyone Pauline used. He might have already done it. He might have made Pauline Caufield and all her many accomplishments evaporate.

When making an agent vanish, removing the data was step one. It was step two that chilled her. Carting off the furniture from her house, the books on her shelves, the photographs. Removing the files from her computer, the computer itself, the record albums, the letters. Emptying drawers, stripping clothes from the closets, checkbooks and old tax statements from the desk, the pots and pans, everything down to the last spoon and paper clip.

Removing all physical presence of Pauline. Making her disappear.

Ten minutes after leaving Cielo's house, battling his way through midday traffic, Thorn worked north on Le Jeune, a shady two-lane road. A dividing street: mangy Grove on the east side, tidy Gables on the west.

He peered into the rearview mirror. Still no Jaguar.

“He's back there,” Snake said. “Biding his time.”

“Maybe we lost him. Maybe he gave up.”

“Dream on.”

“What do you propose?”

Snake stared out the windshield, tapping the .38 irritably against his knee.

Finally Thorn said, “Cielo talked about being back in Havana. The
gran proyecto
. What do you make of that?”

Snake gripped his forehead one-handed and squeezed.

“When it comes to Cubans,” he said, “there is only one grand project. It is the same now as it's been since the communists came down from the mountains. To return home.”

“Always that,” Thorn said. “Always that.”

“My father was no clown,” Snake said. “His men were workers, yes, that's the only thing Cielo got right. They were common men and he inspired them. He was a lousy father and husband, but he was passionate for his cause. He had a vision. He would have sacrificed anything to return to Cuba.”

“Look, Snake. We're closer than we were, but we're not there. We know their names, the five people. We know they conspired to kill your parents for a CIA operation; at least a couple of the people in the photo were at your house that night. But we don't know why.”

“I don't care why.”

Thorn braked for a long line of traffic waiting to cross Dixie Highway. They hadn't discussed a destination.

Snake looked out at the unmoving traffic ahead of them. He checked his rearview mirror, then threw open his door and climbed out.

“Hey!”

The .38 was clutched in his right hand. He raised it to shoulder level as he marched down the row of cars stalled behind them. Horns began to hoot. Thorn hopped out and chased after Snake.

Ten cars back, the green Jaguar was wedged between a plumbing truck and an empty school bus.

By the time Thorn caught up, Snake had gotten the drop on Runyon. Still sitting behind the wheel, the old man had his hands raised to his ears.

Drivers in nearby vehicles were abandoning ship, escaping from the madman with his weapon. There was a strange orderliness to it, like a fire drill these folks had practiced more than once.

Thorn hustled up as Snake said, “Where's my goddamn father?”

“Hey, fuck you, kid. I'm not scared of you or your asshole buddy.”

Thorn leaned down for a look through the passenger window. Backseat empty. The butt of a chrome pistol visible in the map holder, wedged between his thigh and the door. An easy draw.

“He's got a gun.”

Unfazed, Snake said, “Let me see your mutilated hand.”

“Fuck you.”

“Raise your right hand where I can see it. Do it now.”

“You're in some deep shit, boy.”

“I was born in deep shit,” Snake said.

Behind Snake a man edged forward through the deserted cars. He wore jeans and a polo shirt, and had the square-jawed look of an off-duty cop, sworn by law to help. Thorn yelled at the guy to forget about it. He halted for a moment, making the decision of a lifetime, then took a swallow of his own spit and backed off the way he'd come.

“The hand, Runyon, show me your hand.”

The old man raised it to the open window. The first two fingers had been hacked away below the middle knuckle.

“That's my work, isn't it?” Snake said.

“Pull him out of there, we'll take him with us,” Thorn called. “People are on their cells; cops'll be here soon. We can sort this out later.”

Snake ignored him. Fixed on the man who'd abused his sister, a member of the team who'd wasted her and his parents and sent Snake whirling off into a warped corner of the galaxy.

Snake was daring him to make a play.

Thorn had seen it too often before. The gestures men made in their final moments seemed to spring directly from the core of their character as if it were impossible for a dying man to lie. They fired off one last true picture of their soul. With Runyon, it was a final act of scorn for Snake and men like him who had never served on the front lines or worked the dark edges of espionage in distant lands. How could civilians measure up to battle-hardened men? It was a mistaken view, of course. Domestic horrors being what they were, men and women without experience of war could grow every bit as hard and dangerous as any Runyon. Just ask Thorn. Or Snake.

“You only chopped off two of the ten,” Runyon said. “What're you doing, coming back for the rest, little boy?”

His hand slipped off the steering wheel and slid to the crack between the seat and door. Doing it openly, an insolent smile for Snake and his kind.

The first three rounds blew open the chest of Runyon's green Hawaiian shirt. After that, Thorn looked away.

Around them Thorn heard the screams of good citizens. Ordinary people who minutes earlier had been running errands, keeping the fridge stocked, meeting their appointments. So many times in the past, from the safe distance of Key Largo, Thorn and his buddies had scoffed at these city folk. Their agitated lives, their callous disregard for the land and sky and natural world around them, as if they were another race of man, inferior in every way. But standing among them, Thorn felt none of that disdain. City people, island people, it made no difference. He felt an upwelling of shame that he had once been so smug and so wrong.

He turned from the Jaguar and started toward the sidewalk. Making his exit from this mess.

Then Snake was beside him. He'd taken charge of Runyon's silenced pistol and used it to poke Thorn in the ribs.

“Where you think you're going?”

“I'm done,” Thorn said.

Behind them cars were jockeying for the side streets.

Snake produced a grim smile, the muzzle of the pistol riding up and down the bumps of Thorn's rib cage.

“I'm not arguing with you. Walk back to the car, or die right here.”

Thorn half turned to face him. Snake skipped back a step but kept the pistol steady on Thorn's chest.

“You can cut the high-and-mighty bullshit, Thorn. You and me, we're not any different. I saw you in action yesterday. We're just a couple of killers out for a joyride.”

Thorn drew a breath and let it out. He walked back to the car. Snake followed closely.

In the secret marrow of his bones, Thorn considered himself a peaceful man. Meditative, a student of sunsets and sunrises, and the trajectory of gulls and egrets and the lazy lofting flight of great blue herons. A man who hungered for nothing more than the love of a woman, the tug of a large fish on his line. Simple shit.

But the years had proved a steady contradiction. No doubt about it anymore. Thorn had been born under a doomed planetary alignment. A dozen times before, he'd been on this same steep grade. Knew the feel of the tipping point—when his trot became a gallop, the gallop grew to a crazy hurtling rush, and by God, once again he found himself sprinting over the suicidal edge, into empty air, sailing down into whatever waited below.

Snake slid in behind the wheel, and with the pistol in one hand, he whipped the Audi through a U-turn.

Sirens howled in the distance. Snake drove for ten minutes until the sirens were lost in the traffic noise. He swung into the parking lot of a 7-Eleven. He spent a moment reloading his pistol from bullets he'd been carrying in his pockets. Then he told Thorn to get out.

“What now?”

“I think you're right, we should work on the why.” Snake nodded at the pay phone. “Let's find a plumber.”

“Humberto? The man's been dead for forty years.”

“We Hispanics tend to carry on our family business.”

“We don't know if Berasategui even had a family. And if he did, what're they going to tell us we don't already know?”

“The man killed my sister. I'd like to know who he was.”

Snake followed him to the phone, and Thorn leafed through the Yellow Pages. Ran his finger down the column of plumbing businesses. He saw his hand shaking. His body was flushed with adrenaline. The pistol's racket still in his ear, the big man dying behind the wheel. Thorn took a breath and stilled the shiver. The day was young.

There was one plumber with that uncommon name.

H. Berasategui. South End Plumbing. Cute.

“Call it,” Snake said.

A woman answered, and Thorn asked if Humberto was in.

There was no one there by that name. He must have made a mistake.

“No Humberto Berasategui?”

She thought about it for a second, then yelled in Spanish to someone in the next room and momentarily a man's voice replaced hers.

“There's no Humberto,” he said. “There's a Danny.” The man was impatient, on the verge of hanging up.

“Yellow Pages say
H. Berasategui
.”

“Nobody calls him that. Like I said, his name is Danny.”

“Was his father Humberto Berasategui?”

The man spoke as though delivering a blow: “His father's dead.”

“Murdered forty years ago?”

“Who is this?”

“Detective Mark Harris.” Thorn's new career, impersonating cops.

The man was quiet for a moment. Then more Spanish yelled back and forth. He fumbled with the phone, came back on.

“Danny's on a job.”

“I'm working the murder of Humberto Berasategui.”

“Working the murder? Some goddamn little kid did it. All that was forty years ago, for christsakes.”

“There's new evidence. I'd like to speak to Danny.”

The man considered it for several seconds. Thorn stood in Snake's shadow and watched the traffic pass.

“He's on a job,” the man said. “I'll beep him. He wants to talk, it's his call.”

“I'll give you my cell.”