Resurrecting Midnight (22 page)

“Okay.”

“Thought they were about to cross the border and slip into Chile, would’ve lost them if they had, but I found out they were about to flee the country for China. Took out their guards and got to them before they boarded Orient Cruise Lines, a plastic surgeon waiting for them at the end of that journey. It was beautiful down there. I had kidnapped my contracts and put them on a boat, taken them farther south, where there was nothing but ice and snow.”

“Icebergs have always fascinated me. Always wanted to go to Alaska and see one.”

“Yeah. They are some of the most beautiful things on the planet. And the deadliest.”

“So you had caught the targets down at the bottom of South America.”

“Yeah. I had done like I had been ordered, stripped the men of all ID and dumped both in the inhospitable, subpolar oceanic climate.”

“That’s nasty. And mean.”

“My client was a revanchist.”

“About territory and status.”

“Yeah.”

“I know quite a few ten-dollar words. We should play Scrabble.”

“We can do that.”

“So the targets.”

“They were seasoned grifters my client had wanted to die in one of the most horrible ways he could imagine. He wanted them to freeze to death.”

“There are horrible ways to die, and that is way up on the list. Slow-motion death.”

“Yeah.”

“You do it?”

“I had dumped them naked, left them beaten and weak, was going to let Mother Nature be the one to deliver the final blow.”

“That’s as horrible as hanging a man from a cross and watching him die.”

“I know.”

“You couldn’t do it, could you?”

“Tried. But part of me, despite what I did, wasn’t into watching men suffer.”

“That’s not your style.”

“I was still new to the business back then. Was doing my best to make a living. Doing my best to impress. Doing my best to be good at something. I had killed before, but tracking two men, outsmarting their Brazilian and Peruvian hired guns, that was the one job that made me feel like a professional. Like I was a secret agent. That part of the job had given me a rush.”

“What did you do?”

“I took out my gun. Gave those ruthless men mercy one bullet at a time.”

“Damn.”

“Took out the father first.”

“That’s the way life was supposed to be. A father should die before the son.”

“Then I killed the son. I can still see the whiteness and ice reflecting sunlight while red seas of blood froze around their bodies. That stuck with me for a long time. Fucked me up.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah. Took it a while to go away. Then I chose not to think about it at all.”

“We all do a job or two that messes us up.”

“That we do.” I took a breath. “The older man I put down, that was Scamz’s father.”

“Your client’s father?”

“Scamz’s sixty-year-old father. The man who made him a con. And one of Scamz’s brothers.”

“A father and a son. Scamz had you put down his daddy and a sibling.”

“Yeah.”

She paused. “They have no character. You’re working for people who have no character. They are bottom-feeders. Don’t go back to South America. Not for people like that.”

“I don’t have a choice.”

“There is always a choice.”

“I have a debt I have to pay. This job is about a debt I have to pay.”

“Money debt? Like the mafia debt?”

“That bottom-feeder saved my life once. He did. That conniving fuck came out of the shadows and rescued me. Hard for me to admit it, but he did. Won’t get into it, but he did. I want that off my plate more than anything. South America is what he needs in return. The idea that someone I . . . that he is responsible for saving me . . . part of me would rather . . . still be dead.”

“Well, for what it’s worth, I don’t want you dead. You’re too much fun.”

“Maybe I should get it over with.”

“What does that mean?”

“Maybe I should leave here and go to South America.”

She said, “You told me you promised the boys a few things.”

“I did.”

“Be a man of your word. Don’t be like my daddy. Make promises and not show up. Children hate to be left waiting. Just do what you promised. A man ain’t a man if he can’t keep his word.”

“Daddy issues.”

“Momma issues. Daddy issues. We all have at least one of ’em.”

We went silent.

I said, “Scamz paid me to kill his father. I killed mine to save the whore that raised me.”

Hawks’s fingers came up and touched my lips. She had heard enough.

She said, “I could use a stiff drink right now.”

“What’s your poison?”

“Some top-shelf eighty-proof brown liquor.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

“Think they have a Scrabble board around here anywhere?”

“Doubt it.”

“Should’ve packed mine. I have the deluxe edition.”

Arizona was on her mind.

I could tell.

She said, “I bet you’re a regular John Mayer. Gal pals all over.”

“Not even close.”

“Whatever.”

Hawks was a killer, an official international assassin, but she was still a woman.

We headed back to the room.

We didn’t talk about killing.

Hawks gave me what she thought I needed. I did the same for her.

But I knew she wanted more than I’d be able to give.

Still, I did the best a man could do when he had another woman on his mind.

Capítulo 20

The Seven Jamaicans,
a hit squad out of Kingston, arrived in Buenos Aires.

The Seven Jamaicans was a group made up of ten men. At times the number had been as many as twenty, but today there were ten. Half of them were dark-skinned, hair cut short. Men who worked in the murder, kidnapping, and drug trade. Men who dressed like executives, not stereotypes. They had flown up to Atlanta from Jamaica, then came into Ezeiza Ministro Pistarini International Airport. Flight 101 was due in at seven forty-five a.m. but arrived at six fifty.

The ten men breezed through customs, walked through the sparkling, overpriced shopping area designed to suck money out of the tourists’ pockets before they made it to baggage claim, then stepped past the rental car and
remis
stands with no problem.

The leader, a man who was six foot five, reached into his pocket and took out a tracking device. His face always owned a little moue. The sensor he had been given flashed yellow. The package was within a few miles. The trip was not wasted. Half of the package that had been brought over from Uruguay remained here. The information they had obtained was good.

As the leader stood in the crowd, underneath dismal skies, a Latin man passed by him.

They never made eye contact as their hands touched, palms open.

The leader’s empty hand now had two sets of keys.

Keys to two nondescript vans and a safe house in San Nicolas.

The word was that The Four Horsemen had stolen the prize for an American.

Today they would make The Four Horsemen look like The Three Stooges.

The Seven Jamaicans took their backpacks and exited the airport, walked to the parking structure across the street. Two vans loaded with powerful weapons waited for them.

They exited EZE airport, passed by Shell and YBF stations on autopista Ricchieri, and came up on the tollbooths that stood in the shadow of low-income apartments. Lines of cars queued up at a dozen booths. A van that was a few cars in front of them was taking forever to get through. A lane over, their second van was held up at the tollbooth as well.

The Seven Jamaicans opened up the containers inside their vans.

Weapons were inside. Weapons, ammunition, and hand grenades.

They had studied The Four Horsemen’s techniques. They would bomb them the way they had bombed others.

The girl inside the tollbooth exited in a hurry, sprinting in her flat shoes.

All around The Seven Jamaicans, people were fleeing from their cars.

The Seven Jamaicans looked around, tried to see what had happened.

They expected to see the police.

There were no police.

None that could be seen.

No helicopters overhead.

Then.

The Jamaicans in the first van saw her first.

A woman in a black suit, long black coat, black hat, and a paisley tie smiled at them as she appeared off to their right, the side with the high-rise, low-income properties. The woman raised a semiautomatic grenade launcher. The assassins stared at the handheld rocket launcher, a launcher that could hit a target one hundred yards away. Nobody within ten yards could survive the explosion and fire. The Jamaicans looked down at the explosives in their van.

They screamed, yelled for the driver to move, to get them away.

The van rammed the vehicle in front of them. Then rammed the vehicle behind them.

Next to them, the members of The Seven Jamaicans in the second van were doing the same.

The first van had a better view of the woman, saw the grenade being launched.

The side of the van was hit. Followed by the explosion. Then there was a secondary explosion. The grenades they had inside added to the bang.

Those Jamaicans, deader than Elvis, Che, and Hendrix.

The Jamaicans in the second van screamed. Their driver rammed cars, tried to get their van free. The woman had lowered her launcher, smiled an evil smile, then pointed to her left.

The Jamaicans saw three armed men. All dressed in black. Different color ties.

The Four Horsemen.

Ten minutes after getting out of the airport, and The Four Horsemen knew.

The Horsemen opened fire on the second van with M16A2 semiautomatic rifles.

A beautiful horror at sunrise.

The Jamaicans screamed. They were trapped inside a van. Blocked in by other vehicles.

In war, vehicles were always the easy targets. Stationary vehicles were coffins.

Three of the Jamaicans escaped the second van, stumbled out, falling to the blacktop, guns in hand, shooting wildly. A second grenade was launched, hit the van, and exploded. Shock waves sent people to the ground. Innocent bystanders were peppered with shrapnel.

That bang was followed by more M16 gunfire that eliminated the three Jamaicans who had stumbled and fled out of the second van only to be knocked off their feet by the explosion.

It was like Iraq. It was like Fallujah. It was like the Falklands War.

Once again Medianoche led The Beast, Señor Rodríguez, and Se ñorita Raven.

Medianoche knew they could’ve handled this in a subtler manner.

The Italians. The Jews. The Israelis. The Russians. The French. Central Americans. They could all have trackers on this package and the other.

They could fuck with the Scamz organization, but Argentina was off limits.

They were sending a message to anyone else who thought about coming to Buenos Aires in search of the package they had. Enter at your own risk. And die with your first breath.

Chapter 21

Confitería La Rambla
in Recoleta.

Blond wooden walls decorated with neon signs by Coca-Cola, Corona, Quilmes, Michelob, and Johnny Walker. Two televisions up high. Sixteen-inch tiles in shades of brown.

Medianoche was a block away from the disco techno music escaping the black-glass edifice called Club Black. Where Sodom met Gomor rah. Men in black suits waited on every corner, approached every tourist or single man without shame, offered a chance to buy overpriced drinks and lease the bodies of beautiful Spanish and Brazilian women.

Two couples left La Rambla within ten minutes of each other. One couple had been upstairs. Now the upstairs eating area was empty. Medianoche had checked. The café was small, a dozen tables downstairs, half as many upstairs.

Now five people were left inside La Rambla, not counting the young waiter.

Medianoche watched the five Italians imbibing coffee. They were gangsters, not thugs.

Gangsters were politicians and world leaders, men in suits, men with charm and grace.

James Cagney. Glenn Ford. Humphrey Bogart. Sterling Hayden. John Garfield. Robert Mitchum. Kirk Douglas. Tyrone Power. Orson Welles. Dick Powell. George Macready.

Men in suits. Crisp dark suits. Suits as dark as their .38s.

Medianoche regarded his watch, a Series 800 Movado, steel adorned with a full diamond bezel, seven sparkling diamond hour markers on a white mother-of-pearl dial.

His Beretta rested in his lap. He waited for her to appear, like she had done before.

He looked across the small café. Glanced at a table of well-dressed Italians. All Gucci and Montblanc. Every stitch of clothing tailored, their shoes handmade.

This job was about the woman at the cemetery. The client who had come to Recoleta Cemetery dressed in a dramatic fur coat and high heels that sparkled. The woman who had reminded him of Isabel Sarli. A woman who had paid cash for her vendetta, her revenge.

Just like Caprica Ortiz had done. That job still on hold.

The job for Caprica, it had weight, had meaning.

This job was a nothing job. Just a fucker who wanted another fucker dead.

A war without meaning.

He thought about Hopkins, Scamz, the package, and what the end result would be.

Soon they would have the second part of the package. No more shit jobs like this.

Medianoche looked around. A dozen tables. All empty except for one other.

When the waiter came, Medianoche ordered; “
Café con leche y tres medialunas
.”

Son las dos y veinte de la mañana.
Two twenty a.m.