The Arraignment (42 page)

The hotel has a small desk with a single phone. If I call again, the clerk will recognize my voice.

At a counter a few feet away, there’s a young girl offering sample scents of perfume from some atomizers. I step over and tell her I’ve had a little accident, pointing to my ear. I ask her if she wouldn’t mind placing a phone call for me in Spanish. It would only take a moment.

She smiles and steps around the counter. I drop another coin in the phone and dial again.

“I want to talk to one of their guests. An African-American gentleman. A black man. His name is Herman. I’m afraid I don’t remember his last name, but there are only a few guests at the hotel.”

When the clerk answers, the girl speaks in rapid-fire Spanish. They go back and forth a couple of times. Finally she hands me the phone and smiles. “His last name is Diggs. Herman Diggs. They are ringing his room now.”

“Thanks.” I take the phone, listening as it ringing. Three times, no answer. On the fourth ring, “Hello.”

I recognize Herman’s voice.

“Herman. Paul Madriani.”

“Well, shit, ’bout time somebody called. Where the hell
are you? I been lookin’ all over. Go to sleep, wake up, and everybody’s gone. Startin’ to think somebody called an audible and I missed it. Can’t fine Julio, any of the rest of the crew. And some clerk downstairs says your partner got shot. Some shit about airplanes.”

“Herman!” I have to raise my voice to stop him from jabbering.

“What?”

“Go find Adam Tolt. I tried to call him a couple of minutes ago and the cops cut me off.”

“No shit, Sherlock? Tolt’s gone.”

“What do you mean, he’s gone?”

“Vanished, disappeared, vamoosed, gone. I went to his room. The place is all fuckin’ tore up. Cops are down there wrappin’ the place early for Christmas. All kinds of yellow tape across the door. It was Ibarra ’n’ his bro. They snatched Tolt right under our nose. This morning while their fuckin’ air force was busy shootin’ up the pool.”

“How do you know?”

“Cuz the brothers turned Tolt’s room upside down lookin’ for somethin’. When they didn’t find it, they took Tolt and dropped me a note. They want a meeting tomorrow morning early. At dawn. At some ruins. Place called Cobá. Some temple. Just a second, I get it.” He leaves the phone to get the note and comes back.

“Here it is. Something called the Doorway to the Temple of the Inscriptions. I looked on a map. Cobá’s in the middle of the fuckin’ jungle. They holdin’ Tolt as collateral for this Rosen shit, whatever it is. So I hope you got some. Otherwise they gonna be sending your friend back a piece at a time.”

“Do the police have the note?”

“No. It was slipped under my door early this afternoon. All they know is Tolt’s gone and his room’s a mess.”

This sends a lot of silence from my end of the line.

“Hey. You there?”

“I’m here, Herman.”

“Tell me. Where exactly is here?” he says.

“I’m across the street in the plaza.”

“What the fuck you doin’ there?”

“I don’t have time to explain. Can you get out of the hotel without the police seeing you?”

“Yeah right, six-foot-five, three-hundred-pound bro’, I’m gonna slip through the lobby unnoticed like Tinkerbell.”

“There’s gotta be some way.”

“Yeah. I can do it. It won’t be easy. First tell me why?”

“I’m going to need your help.”

“Take me a minute to get dressed,” he says. “In my Skivvies.”

“I’ve got some bad news,” I tell him.

“What?”

“Julio is dead.”

Silence on the other end. “What you talkin” bout? Ay don’t believe ya. Bullshit.”

“I just saw him. He’s sitting behind the wheel in one of the Surburbans down in the garage with half of his head gone. Do you know where the rest of your people are?”

Nothing but the sound of his breathing on his end.

“Herman?”

“What?”

“Where are the rest of your people?”

He hesitates for a second. “Ay don’t know. Called the condo four or five times. Nobody answers.”

“Then we have to assume they either bought them or they’re dead. And one of the cars is gone. Do you know where it is?”

“No.”

“Do you have keys for the other two?”

“Got keys for all of ’em.”

I tell him to meet me in half an hour on the sidewalk behind the plaza. Then I hang up.

I buy a pair of pants, a couple of shirts, some underwear and socks at one of the men’s clothing shops in the mall, then head for the men’s room. Inside I wash the blood off my neck and clean away some of the crusted blood from my ear,
being careful not to reopen the wound. Then put on one of the new shirts.

Out in the mall I wait inside, watching for Herman through the glass doors I had entered forty minutes earlier. A few seconds later, I see him hoofing it up the sidewalk and coming this way. He’s wearing black high-top shoes, a pair of black chinos, thighs bulging, and a tee-shirt, stretched in every direction. Around his waist is an oversized fanny pack on a thick web belt sagging from the weight of the forty-five and the clips of ammunition inside.

Carrying the shopping bags with my clothes in them, I head out and meet him on the street.

“I don’t believe you, man. Fuckin’ shoppin’ at a time like this,” he says.

“I had blood all over my clothes.”

“Oh. That’s different,” he says.

“Everything I brought with me is locked up in the room, including my passport.”

“Looks like you gonna be talkin’ to the powlice before you go home,” he says.

We head down the hill.

Five minutes later we’re standing in the garage under the condo, Herman with the leather pouch on his left side unzipped. His right hand is in it under the flap.

The Suburbans are parked where they were when I left, the smell of exhaust still lingering in the air.

“Which one’s Julio in?”

“One on the right.”

“Stay here.”

“Herman.”

“What?”

“Leave it. Don’t touch it.”

“Can’t just leave him here,” he says. “Besides, my fingerprints are all over that car.”

“There are things besides fingerprints,” I tell him. “There’s nothing we can do. As soon as we get the other car and get out of here, we can stop and call the cops from a pay phone. Tell them some kids saw the body in a car in the
garage. Give them the address and hang up. They’ll take care of it.”

“I at least want to see him,” he says.

“I understand. Look, don’t touch.”

Herman goes up and looks at Julio through the driver’s side window. “Fucker did this is dead,” he says. “Now I gotta go tell his wife and kids.”

“He was married?”

“Yeah. Gal named Maria. Nice lady. Three kids. Two boys and a girl.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. So am I.”

“We need to go,” I tell him. “Do you have the keys to the other car?”

“Yeah.”

“Then we should go.”

“Not yet.” He turns and walks back the other way, right past me.

“Where are you going?”

He doesn’t answer.

“Herman!”

“You wanna go, go,” he says.

“This is crazy.” I follow him.

He leads me through a door and up two flights of stairs, man on a mission. Herman has to use a key from his pocket to unlock the door upstairs. Once inside, he heads down a hall, past several doors. He holds out a hand for me to slow down, pops the snap holding the handle of the gun in the fanny pack, and pulls the stainless automatic out, holding the muzzle up toward the ceiling, the gun near his right ear.

He stops in front of one of the doors and puts his ear to the wood, listens for a second, then slips a key into the lock. Motions for me to stay where I am in the hall. A second later, he is inside.

I wait outside listening. Nothing. A few seconds later, Herman swings the door open. “They’re gone. And all their stuff. Like they checked out. Bags, everything.”

“Why?”

“Sold out’s what I figure. Otherwise, Ibarra’s people killed ’em, their stuff would be here. The way business is done down here,” he says. “It’s either buy you or bullets. There ain’t no other way.”

Back at the car, Herman fishes for the key in his pocket, then steps around to the passenger side window and, without opening the door, looks across toward the driver’s side of the front seat.

“What are you doing?”

“There’s things besides fingerprints,” he says. “There’s things besides bullets too.” Then he opens the door, pushes the button that unlocks the other doors, goes around to the driver’s side and pulls the latch to pop the hood. It takes a minute or so, looking around the engine block, then underneath before he’s satisfied.

“Where you figuring on going?” he asks.

“The glass pyramid.”

“See Papa Ibarra?” he says.

I nod. “I assume he’s the only who can tell us what this Mejicano Rosen is and help us find Adam.”

“And who killed Julio.” Herman walks to the back of the car and opens the back hatch. He finds a key on the ring and slips it into a key slot in the floor, turning it. The entire section of carpeted flooring lifts out. Underneath is a rack with three long guns and something that looks like a short machine gun.

“Can you shoot?”

“I’ve fired a gun before.”

“Not what I asked. Can you shoot?”

“I don’t know.”

“Here, you take the shotgun.” He hands it to me. “You slide the pump underneath each time you shoot. Like this. Then shoot again. This little thing. This the safety. Keep it off when you’re shooting. Think you can handle that?”

“Yeah.”

“Just don’t point it anywhere near me.” He grabs a box of shells and hands them to me. “I’ll show you how to load
it inside.” Then he pulls the little machine gun from the rack and gathers up several magazines of ammunition, each one with a gleaming, round copper bullet protruding from the forward side of the open end.

“We’re not going to go in there with these?”

“Watch me.”

I
n the car I slip on a pair of long pants from the shopping bag in back and put on socks while Herman drives. A block from the glass pyramid, we stop near a restaurant and I use the pay phone to call the police and tell of the location of Julio’s body. Then I hang up.

Herman doesn’t want to talk about it. Man on a mission, he turns onto the private lane leading to the glass pyramid. The road is lined with palm trees planted in the thirty-foot strip of grass that forms the center divider.

We wind along this toward the hotel. He parks in a space out in front.

“Go inside, get us a room, high up. Close to the top floor as you can get.”

“Why?”

“Just do it. Bring the key back here.”

A few minutes later, I’m back in the car. “Eighth floor. Is that high enough for you?”

“It’ll do.”

“Now what?”

“Sit tight.” He backs out of the space and pulls around the hotel, ten stories of smoked glass on an angle, reflecting sunlight like a solar generator.

Herman drives through the parking area, edging his way around the building until he finds what he’s looking for: dumpsters and service vehicles, a small electric cart with canvas bags filled with dirty linen in the back.

“This the place.” He parks the car.

“What now?”

“You just sit here fo’ a second.” He gets out and goes over to the cart. Hands in his pockets, he stands, looking around, ultimate stealth, your usual seven-foot dark mountain. Then he grabs a folded canvas linen bag from the back of the cart and returns to the car. This time he gets in the backseat.

“What are you doing?”

“Tol’ ya, just sit tight.” He leans over the backseat into the rear compartment, grabbing the guns, the pump shotgun, and the stubby little machine gun, making sure they’re loaded, the magazines are in, and the safeties are on.

“Now. In a minute I’m goin’ over there.” He talks while he checks the guns. “Do you see that door?” He nods in the direction with his head.

“Yes. I see it.”

“In a second I’m goin’ in there. What I want you to do is just sit right here ’til you see me wave from that door.” He gathers up the extra ammunition and puts it in the laundry bag, unclips the web belt from around his waist, and drops the fanny pack with the forty-five into the laundry bag too.

“Then I want you to get out of the car, walk over there. Don’t run, just walk. And bring this shit witcha.”

He hands me thirty pounds of canvas with sharp edges sticking out everywhere. “You got that?”

“I got it.”

He reads my expression, one filled with doubt.

“Hey, fuckin’ Tolt, he’s your friend. I don’t care they cut his ears, nose en balls off, hang ’em on a charm bracelet. But this man upstairs, this Pablo Eyebarra. Far as you and I are concerned, he be the fuckin’ Wizard a Oz. Man with all the
answers. Now we can either go talk to him or we can go home. I don’t know ’bout you, but I ain’t goin’ home ’til I get the answer to at least one question. Who the fuck shot Julio? So you in or you out?”

“I’m in,” I tell him.

“Good. I thought so. Den let’s do it.” Herman smiles through his chipped tooth, opens the door, and seconds later he disappears into the service entrance at the back of the hotel.

After letting Saldado practice his meat-cutting arts on my arm and becoming gunnery target for the Ibarrian Air Force, I am in no position to question Herman’s judgment. Whatever he’s missing on that score, he makes up for in loyalty. The difference between us is he’s more direct.

Before I know it, he’s back, waving at me to come.

I get out of the car with the bag over my shoulder, Santa Claus with an arsenal. I walk quickly toward the door. When I get there, Herman takes the bag and pulls me inside like a rag doll. I follow him down a short corridor. I don’t have a lot of choice; he has me by the belt towing me along. I see some guy in whites and a chef’s hat cross the corridor in front of us, passing from the kitchen to another room across the hall. He doesn’t see us.

Herman opens a door and pushes me into a dark service closet, then closes the door behind us.

“Gotta find the fuckin’ light,” he says.

We stand in the dark for a couple of seconds until I hear the metal beads click on the light over our heads. Herman with the string pull.