A Desperate Silence (Dr. Sylvia Strange Book 3) (12 page)

     
"She may get sent back. She's a temporary ward of the court; there'll be some red tape, some back-and-forth—"

     
"But what about her family in Mexico?"

     
"I don't have the details—"

     
"Who are they?
Where
are they? If she matches this description, why aren't they here now?" Sylvia walked across the room away from the kitchen, lowering her voice so Serena wouldn't hear the conversation. "How do we know she'll get the treatment she needs if she goes back to Mexico?"

     
"We don't."

     
"Well, shit." Sylvia tensed, caught up in her thoughts. She wanted more time with the child. And the last thing Serena needed was to become the pawn of feuding state, federal, and international agencies. It could set her progress back weeks, even months. But something else nagged at her—she couldn't shake the growing sense of urgency she'd felt for the past twenty-four hours, the notion that Serena's time was running out. Now that sense had been confirmed by a query from Mexico.

     
The silence between them stretched until Sylvia asked, "How was it at the prison?"

     
Matt's grunt was noncommittal, a signal that he didn't want to elaborate. After a beat, he asked, "You know anything about Noelle Harding?"

     
Sylvia thought for a moment. "I know she's been on the news recently, pushing her brother's cause. And she's hosting a charity thing. Why?"

     
"On my way out, she was holding a press conference."

     
"I saw something about it on the news tonight."

     
"The woman knows how to get press coverage."

     
"She's trying to save her brother's life." Sylvia made a wry face. "I don't think she's just some empty person with a crusade. Harding heads up an international fund for homeless kids. She's connected. Big Texas money."

     
"Well, I guess money can't buy everything." Matt's tone was intentionally provocative. He and Sylvia differed in their opinions of the death penalty. He was satisfied to rid the world of
scumbags
—his word—while Sylvia believed in life imprisonment for hard-core criminals; for the less hard-core, she still believed in treatment. Maybe because she couldn't write off the million-plus inmates incarcerated in the U.S.

     
"We should go to her fund-raiser," she said. "You've got an extra five grand in your pocket, don't you?" To her surprise, Matt didn't laugh.

     
He asked, "When is it?"

     
"
Why?
"

     
"I met her brother today. Hey"—Matt sounded as if he'd just snapped awake—"don't forget you've got an engagement party tomorrow morning—eleven o'clock sharp."

     
"Of course not." But for a moment Sylvia had forgotten.

     
"I love you." Matt hung up softly.

     
She switched off the handset, aware for the first time that she had paced herself into the living room. She tiptoed back toward the kitchen, freezing at the sight of the ruined wall, the brutal face.

     
Serena had drawn a demon. She was still working feverishly, crayons in hand, nose inches from plaster. Small sighs of effort escaped her lips as she guided color over the wall's surface. Wild lines quickly formed details on the face: seeds for eyes, a beaklike nose, sharp cheekbones. The mouth was a hole, a gaping wound.

     
Sylvia started forward but stopped when she realized the child appeared oblivious to everything except her work. Within seconds, the demon's face had grown a body. The dark form was tall and lean, walking upright. His body was crisscrossed with slash marks.

     
As Serena drew the monster, her skin darkened with an infusion of blood—she was visibly distraught, breathing rapidly. She looked as if she had a tornado trapped inside her body.

     
Suddenly, she slapped her hand against the wall. Again and again her palm struck plaster, and then her hand curled into a fist. Sylvia lunged forward and caught the child's arm before impact. Serena collapsed. The only sound of her rage was the harsh staccato rhythm of her breath.

R
ENZO'S GLOVED HANDS
glowed inside the telephone booth. Outside, car headlamps flashed off glass and asphalt. Red lights reflected in Renzo's eyes when he glanced up at the Circle K sign.

     
Patrons at the gas station passed the pay phone on their way in and out of the convenience store. They avoided eye contact, but Renzo could see that their skins were bleached by fluorescence; their faces were blank, soulless. These were people who could die tonight and they would leave no trace.

     
A young woman walked past the phone booth. Idly, Renzo imagined inserting a knife into her brain.

     
He slipped the twenty-dollar disposable phone card into the slot and dialed. The distant ringing went on for six, seven, eight repetitions, then there was a hollow electronic click; Renzo recognized that the call had been forwarded to a new number. That new routing was answered on the first ring.

     
Amado Fortuna offered his customary greeting: silence.

     
Renzo imagined language—wondering if his lips and tongue would form the complex mix of Spanish, Indio, and slang—watching his own eyes reflected in the metal surface of the pay phone. Perhaps those two unblinking eyes would tell him who he was tonight.

     
He spoke very slowly. "
I found our friend three nights ago. He did not offer an adequate explanation for his recent behavior. I severed our business relationship
."

     
With care, Amado posed a question.

     
Renzo answered. "
I can't come back yet. There's another, smaller problem I must address while I'm up north
."

     
In answer to Amado's next question: "
No, it will not take long. I think the issue will be settled permanently
."

     
He brought his thoughts back to the words traveling from Mexico; Amado had offered no protest. When he asked about Snow White, he did so without direct reference.

     
Renzo took a moment to answer; he found he'd left his body again—just for an instant. But he had to pull himself back into flesh and blood. "
I did not find the item we wanted
."

     
For a few moments Amado turned away from the phone. He did not hang up. He was talking to someone in the room, in his home in Juárez. A child laughed. Amado had a six-year-old son, a nine-year-old son, and a twelve-year-old daughter. Renzo decided the laughter belonged to the youngest child.

     
Renzo knew that Amado Fortuna was controlling his rage. To do so, he would focus on his children, on the treasures in his home, on the possessions unlimited money could buy. The elegance of Fortuna's surroundings helped to remind the
patrón
how far he'd come in this life. His surroundings convinced him that he had risen far above the rest of the world.

     
Renzo also knew that Amado Fortuna was very unhappy to hear that the item was still unaccounted for. The item was a reminder of life before wealth, before elegance, before privilege. The item was dangerous.

     
When Amado returned his attention to the phone conversation, he expressed polite—but quite serious—dissatisfaction.

     
"
I understand
," Renzo said. "
I share your sentiments
."

     
Amado was ready to end the conversation. In impeccable Spanish he said, "
There is someone, a mutual friend from El Paso, who is waiting for you when you return. This is someone you must talk to soon. Someone who needs your professional touch. Can we tell him that you will hurry back?
"

     
The mutual friend would be the cop Bobby Dowd—the last man to talk to Paco before he crossed the U.S. border. "
Of course. It will be a pleasure
."

     
"
Bueno. Hasta mañana
."

     
Renzo hung up the phone gently. He smiled to himself. He could see his teeth glistening, reflected in the silver metal; they looked perfect. He was beginning to feel better.

CHAPTER TEN

B
OBBY
D
OWD THOUGHT
he was looking at the inside of his eyelids. But in a remarkably short time he figured out that the darkness was too velvety—and minus the little red sparks that always exploded when he squeezed his eyes shut.

     
So, it wasn't eyelids, it was the inside of a trunk—and the trunk was part of a motor vehicle. Yeah . . . there'd been a black Mercedes following him down the street before the assault. As fragments of his memory returned, he felt a staggering sense of relief. His mind was functioning logically.

     
There were more reasons to be grateful. He was still breathing, which meant he was still alive—and this was no coffin. Sure, he was packed like luggage inside a car, but the Germans had designed a very roomy trunk for the Mercedes. Things could be worse.

     
Abruptly, nausea threatened to overwhelm him, and his heart tightened in his chest. Things
were
worse. He broke out in a sweat, recognizing his body's reaction to a foreign substance. They'd shot him up with something.
Christ!
With what?

     
Breathe. Get a grip
.

     
Some drug was cruising inside his veins like a shark—a sand shark, a hammerhead, a great white? So far, the animal—the drug—was an unknown. Was it deadly? He told himself
no
. He told himself he would find out soon enough.

     
After a few minutes, the terror subsided with the pulse of the drug. Whatever it was, it was moving inside his body with a tidal flow all its own. At the moment, the tide was out. Only now did Bobby realize he could hear voices; they were muffled but clearly male, definitely Mexican.

     
He spoke fluent Spanish, but he couldn't quite catch the words as they filtered through leather and metal. He wished he could replay the conversation in the privacy of his own life; but he'd stopped wearing a wire after a small-time drug dealer had demanded a body search out of the blue, and he'd only just managed to flush the sucker—he'd come within a mosquito's ass of dying, bullet through the head, body dumped in a trash heap.

     
Not the fucking Cadillac of Last Reposes.

     
Bobby caught something about Amado. Amado Fortuna, patron saint of the El Paso-Juárez trafficking operation. The story went like this: Amado Fortuna, illiterate, dirt poor, and ambitious, had risen like a phoenix from the ashes of the Pacific drug cartels.

     
Befitting a man of his importance, he decided he would learn to read. One of the first sentences he actually understood was "The moving finger writes . . ."

     
Buzz was: the
pendejo
being so thrilled with his ABC's had started his memoirs—goddamn journals complete with transactions, dates, and names.

     
When Bobby first heard the story, he'd pictured the Big Tuna writing: "
Mi querido diario, Today I sold 2 tons of Colombian heroin to my best friend the Panzini godfather in Detroit
."

     
Bobby had worked next to feds who joked that the Tuna Diaries had existed—until Fortuna destroyed them. Anything was possible. In 1985 the biggest bust in history had gone down in a warehouse in Sylmar, California; the booty included tons of cocaine and a stack of ledgers. Sometimes these guys were not very frigging bright.

     
Dear Diary. The journals could've taken Amado down like a rock, but the Fish finally wised up and burned them in his front yard
.

     
If the diaries had ever existed, they were long gone by now. And so was Paco; he'd taken flight with all his wild stories.

     
So what was Bobby Dowd doing in the trunk of a Mercedes? As far as he knew, he hadn't done anything to piss off Amado Fortuna. There was no cover to blow; he made no secret of the fact he was a cop on the take. Besides, he'd been incommunicado for weeks.

     
Except for talking to Paco
. . .

     
A monster wave slammed into Bobby—the drug was at high tide again, jarring loose some fragment of memory.

     
He and Paco sitting at a table
. . .

     
There was a loud noise, and the car jiggled. A scraping sound alerted Bobby that a key had been inserted in the lock of the trunk. The lid flew open.

     
The first thing Bobby saw was a bright light in his face. Big arms wrenched him out of the trunk. When he could focus again, he caught his bearings; he was outside the Buenas Noches, an hourly-rate motel somewhere on the oily fringe of Juárez.

     
Somebody muscled him headfirst into the bumper of the Mercedes. He moaned, head jammed against metal, his shirt reeking of sweat.

     
He shouted hoarsely—felt hands release his arms—and then he vomited on the gravel of the Buenas Noches parking lot.

     
Lying there in the dirt, a fat man of a moon laughing down at him, Bobby Dowd thought about his old man. Smoky Joe Dowd had been proud when his son became a cop in 1982. Said it was a step up the ladder for all the Dowds. What would the old man say this minute if he were looking down from the Big Ranch in the sky? Would he know that Bobby had never intended to shoot up? That he'd always tried to be the best cop he could be? Would he understand that the drugs and addiction had come with the territory?