Silent Treatment (40 page)

“We’re going to have to develop a system for evaluating these,” she said. “I suppose we should say that if the caller can point the man out to us we’re interested. Otherwise, thanks, but no thanks.”

“Maura, I don’t
have
fifty thousand dollars.”

“Hey, first things first,” she said. “Don’t you remember hearing the speaker say that at the AA meeting last night?”

“God, I’ve created a monster.”

The third call was from Tom Hughes. He would keep looking, but as far as he could tell, there had never been a licensed private eye in Manhattan or any city in New York State named Walter Concepcion. Harry slammed down the
receiver, then snatched it up and called Concepcion’s rooming house. Walter himself answered.

“Concepcion, I want to know who in the hell you are, and why you’ve stabbed me in the back like this.”

For fifteen seconds, there was silence.

“Your place or mine,” Concepcion said finally.

“… I couldn’t see the man’s face because of the way I was tied up, but even through the drugs and the pain, I recognized his voice. It was my boss, Sean Garvey. He was what we called a floater—sort of part CIA, part DEA, part above it all. It was his job to coordinate our side of the undercover operation in northern Mexico. But he sold me out and brought in his friend Perchek to work on me.…”

When the man Harry had known as Walter Concepcion arrived at the apartment, Harry immediately lost control. Without waiting for any explanation, he spun Concepcion against the hallway wall and was so close to striking him that Maura had to restrain him. Now, he and Maura sat together on the sofa in his living room, listening in stunned silence as Ray Santana took them through his three years as an undercover Drug Enforcement Agency operative in Mexico, then his capture, and his torture at the hands of Anton Perchek.

“… After Garvey left the cellar, Orsino, one of the
drug lord’s lieutenants, told Perchek about an escape tunnel leading to a house across the street. With the festival going on in Nogales, and crowds of people all over the city, they would have a perfect chance to slip away from the Mexican police. Poor Orsino obviously didn’t appreciate who he was dealing with. It wasn’t by accident that no pictures or reliable descriptions of The Doctor existed. Perchek pulled a pistol from his medical bag and just as calmly as you please, shot him through the mouth. Then he pointed the gun at me. But he was furious with me because I hadn’t broken. It was the ultimate insult to him. He wanted me to die, but not a quick death. Instead of shooting me, he emptied the whole syringeful of hyconidol into me.”

“Oh, God,” Maura said.

Santana shuddered.

“It was horrible. Indescribably horrible. But it was also a mistake. I didn’t die.…”

Fascinated, Harry studied the man as he continued. Santana’s voice was animated enough, but there was a blankness in his eyes—a strange, detached distance. Outwardly, he was telling his story, but in his mind, Harry realized, he was living it.

“… Ray … for God’s sake, Ray. Come on.”

A man’s urgent voice pries into Santana’s consciousness. Ray fights to stay within the darkness. Finally, though, he groans, opens his eyes a bit, and strains to focus on the face behind the words. His body feels as if it has been worked over with a baseball bat. He is on his back on the grimy cellar floor, a makeshift pillow beneath his head.

“Ray, it’s me, Vargas. Ray, where is he? Where’s Perchek? Come on, Ray. We’ve lost a lot of time.”

The face comes into focus. Joaquin Vargas. One of Alacante’s most trusted lieutenants. One of the men Ray was preparing to have arrested. Vargas—Mexican undercover all the time!

“Vargas … I never thought you—”

“Never mind that. Where’s Perchek?”

With great effort, Ray pushes himself up. His head is clearing rapidly. Apparently, The Doctor does not know his revered pain drug as intimately as he thinks. Or maybe he just doesn’t know Ray Santana.

“How long have you been here with me?” Santana asks.

“Half an hour. Maybe a little more. You’ve been out like a fish on ice. At first, we thought you were dead.”

“He went out a tunnel somewhere over there. It goes to the house across the street.”

“The tunnel,” Vargas orders.

Immediately, three uniformed policemen race that way.

“They don’t know what he looks like,” Ray says. “I do. I need a gun.”

“Ray, you’re too—”

“I’m fine. Joaquin, you have no idea what that bastard did to me. Please. Give me your gun.”

Reluctantly, Vargas hands over his revolver—a nine millimeter Smith & Wesson. Ray cradles the gun and pats the Mexican on the arm.

“You sure as hell had me fooled,” he says.

Without waiting for a reply, Ray hurries up the stairs. If the streets are as Garvey has warned, crawling with police checking out any and all gringos, there is still a chance Perchek hasn’t found a safe way out.

It is nearly six p.m. Long, late-afternoon shadows stretch down the main street, where a small parade is wending its way toward the plaza. The crowd along the sidewalks is modest—probably in a lull between the afternoon and evening festivities. But a number of those celebrating are wearing costumes … and masks. Chances are, Perchek is behind one of them, possibly in the midst of the parade. Or perhaps he is headed out of town by now. But policemen are everywhere, knocking on doors, checking alleys, and blocking the main exits from town. There is still a chance.

Ray is more wobbly from his ordeal than he wishes to admit. But each step feels more assured than the last. And he knows that when and if he does need the strength, it will
be there. He starts to follow the parade. But after a few yards, one of Vargas’s men calls to him. The policeman is approaching with a thin, agitated man who is gesticulating wildly and chattering nonstop. The man is naked save for a pair of red silk bikini briefs.

“Mr. Santana,” the officer says, “we found this man bound and gagged with adhesive tape in an alley two blocks in that direction. He says that not ten minutes ago a gringo put a gun to his head, took his costume, and tied him up. We’re looking for a clown with a red polka-dot suit, mask, and bright orange hair. From this fellow’s description, I doubt he’ll be hard to spot. Only ten minutes ago. There’s no way he can escape us. We’re closing in on the plaza.”

Ray voices his approval, but he senses something is wrong. Anton Perchek had shot Orsino to death without a flicker of hesitation. An ally of his.
Why allow the man in the clown suit, who has also seen his face, to live?

He slips the Smith & Wesson beneath his belt and heads away from the plaza toward the alley where the clown was found. A tangled ball of adhesive tape shows him the exact spot. The alley is deserted. With firecrackers going off every few minutes, there is no way a gunshot would have even been noticed. Yet the man is alive.

Not at all certain what he is searching for, Santana makes his way around the tawdry block. Then quickly around the next one. And the next. Litter from the fiesta is everywhere. A number of celebrants lie in doorways or between trash barrels in deep, alcohol-induced siesta. One of them, somewhat removed from any others, catches Santana’s eye. It is a young woman with a rather pretty face, perhaps in her early twenties. She is sleeping on her side, her back pressed against a building, covered to the neck with a tattered Mexican blanket. Ray approaches. But five yards before he reaches her, he knows she is dead.

He pulls back the blanket. She is dressed only in a pair of white cotton panties, and she is pregnant—perhaps seven months, perhaps eight. A single bullet hole stares up at him obscenely from a spot just above her engorged left nipple. The blood that has oozed from it has already clotted.
Santana bets that The Doctor had the woman’s clothes hidden away even before he took the clown’s;

Driven by a jet of adrenaline, his legs are suddenly responsive. He pulls the revolver free as he sprints toward the main street. A juggler in a skeleton’s costume and mask is entertaining a crowd of fifty or so. Shielded by the corner of a building, Ray studies the crowd and then turns his attention to the street. Everyone seems to be involved in conversation, in commerce with one of the street vendors, or watching the juggler.

Then suddenly he sees her. Across the street and a block away. She is walking slowly, unobtrusively, away from the crowd—away from him. What strikes him, though, is her very unobtrusiveness. Her feet are bare, her head covered by a shawl. An unremarkable pedestrian in a very remarkable scene.
Unremarkable
. The Doctor’s most valuable attribute.

Santana moves ahead, keeping the crowd between himself and the woman. If it is Perchek, taking him will not be easy. There are dozens of potential hostages around, and scores of potential victims should any sort of shooting erupt.
One move
. That is all he has. If he is wrong, there will be one shocked, bruised woman. But nearly fifteen years as a cop tell him he isn’t wrong.
One move
.

He remains in the shadows of the building for as long as he can. Then he breaks across the street and dashes toward the woman from directly behind her. At the last possible moment, she senses movement and begins to turn around. But Ray, his gun drawn, is already airborne. His shoulder slams into her back, sending her sprawling onto the rutted dirt street. The moment he impacts with her—the instant he feels the bulk and the tightened muscles—Ray knows it is Perchek.

Shrieking in Russian, The Doctor spins to his back, struggling to free the gun in his right hand. But the loose maternity dress slows him, and Santana is ready for the move. He pins Perchek’s wrist with his left hand, and simultaneously thrusts the Smith & Wesson up into the soft flesh beneath his chin.

“Drop it!” he barks. “Drop it now or it’s your fucking head, Perchek. I mean it!”

The Doctor’s ice blue eyes sear him. His mouth is twisted in a snarling rictus of hate. Then slowly, ever so slowly, Anton Perchek releases his weapon and lets it drop from his fingertip.…

Harry worked his neck around and realized he hadn’t moved a muscle for some time. Across from him, Ray Santana sagged visibly, exhausted from recounting the ordeal that should have killed him. Without speaking, Maura went to the kitchen and returned with coffee. Nobody spoke until she had poured three cups.

“Can you tell us what happened after that?” Harry asked.

“Nothing good. Perchek’s injection didn’t kill me, but over the last seven years I often wish it had. Something irreversible happened to the pain fibers in my nervous system. They fire off with no cause. Sometimes a little. Sometimes absolute hell.”

“I assume you’ve seen doctors.”

“Without the chemical Perchek used, they didn’t even know where to begin. Most of them thought I was crazy. You know how doctors are about things they didn’t learn in some textbook. They thought I was just after drugs or a government pension. Finally, I took a medical discharge from the agency and got one hundred percent disability. I go to AA and NA periodically, but the pain always wins out. Fortunately, I have a doctor and pharmacist at home in Tennessee who understand. So getting Percodan prescriptions is no problem.”

“And your family?” Maura asked.

Santana shrugged sadly.

“My wife—Eliza—tried to understand what had happened to me and what I was going through. But with no encouragement or insight from any of the doctors, she finally gave up. Last year she got married to a teacher from Knoxville.”

“And your son?”

“He’s at the university. From time to time, when he can, he calls. I haven’t seen him in a while.”

“This is very sad,” Maura said.

“I was managing—at least until a few weeks ago I was. About a year after Perchek was locked up in the Mexican federal penitentiary just outside of Tampico, I got word that he was dead, killed in a helicopter crash during an escape attempt. I didn’t trust the report. In Mexico, if you have enough money, you can make just about anything happen—or appear to happen. There had been an explosion over water, I was told. The chopper blew up, there were several reliable witnesses. What was fished out of the Atlantic was identified as Perchek through dental X rays.”

“You sound as if you weren’t convinced.”

“Let’s just say that what I wanted to believe and what I believed in my heart were not the same thing.”

“But how did you end up here?” Harry asked.

“I got a call from an old friend in forensics at the bureau in D.C. That expert of yours, Mr. Sims, had sent down a number of prints for identification. One of them, a thumbprint, matched Perchek’s with about a ninety-five percent certainty. I wasn’t that surprised—especially when I learned it had been lifted from the room of a woman who had been murdered in a hospital. I came here and began making plans to get close to you. My friend in D.C. promised to give me a little time before identifying the print for Sims.”

“But why didn’t you tell us who you were?”

“Well, the truth is I wasn’t sure what side you were on. I thought maybe you had hired Perchek to kill your wife. I wasn’t even a hundred percent certain after that night in Central Park.”

Harry groaned.

“That was you. You shot that man.”

“You look upset.”

“I am upset.”

“I saved Maura’s life. Maybe yours, too.”

“If you had taken those men in instead of killing one, Andy Barlow might still be alive.”

Now it was Santana who lashed out.

“Harry, don’t be an ass. We’re dealing with killers, here. Not college professors, not social workers—killers. Got that? These people don’t stand around and let someone
escort
them to the police. They kill. It’s too bad about Barlow. He shouldn’t’ve died. But get it through your head—it wasn’t my fault.”

“You’re dangerous, Santana,” Harry snapped back. “A walking stick of dynamite with a short fuse. You don’t really care who gets blown away as long as Anton Perchek goes along with them.”

“You’ve got that right, brother.”

“Well, I might get booted out of my hospital because of what you’ve done,
brother.”