Cliff Diver (Detective Emilia Cruz Book 1) (27 page)

Chapter 26

The Agua Pacifico
truck was in the far right lane. Emilia watched as Rico offered a box of candy
and was obviously turned down. The truck swung into the narrow shoulder by the
tunnel administration entrance and the driver got out. He walked around to the
right side of the truck, putting it between him and the lanes of traffic.
Emilia backed up to the toll booth where Silvio was stuck making change.

“Do you see him?”
she asked out of the corner of her mouth.

“He’s bringing
jugs into the administration offices.”

“A lot of them.”

Up in his elevated
booth, Silvio could see over the parked cars. “The jugs look dark.”

Emilia nodded.
“When he leaves I’m going in.”

“Take Portillo.”
There was a gap in traffic and Silvio swung partway out of the booth. He
grabbed Emilia’s shoulder and gave her a little shake. “Ten minutes and I’m
coming in after you. Don’t do anything stupid.”

The man who ruled
the vendors marched up, glowering, and Emilia went back to the candy line. She
gave a slight nod to Rico over the hood of the car in the lane between them and
he nodded back.

Emilia felt her
stomach clench in anticipation. When the water truck left it backed into the
line of traffic, causing a brief moment of chaos. But it was early afternoon on
a weekday and the traffic was not heavy. The truck maneuvered its way into the
lane, the driver paid Fuentes the toll and then the truck entered the high
vaulted tunnel. Emilia saw Silvio talking on his radio. Fuentes was, too, and
making change for the next car in his lane at the same time. Macias and Sandor
were probably bitching like two old women how they’d been called twice.

She waited two
minutes then pressed her boxes of candy into the arms of another seller and ran
across the lanes of cars, swerving to avoid being hit. The sound of revving
engines and the calls of the candy sellers masked the slight grate of metal on
metal as she pulled open the door. She felt Rico behind her and they both
slipped inside.

☼

They were in a
small, empty office. The room was long and narrow and had no windows. A row of
security camera screens showing the toll booths at the Acapulco end of the
Maxitunnel lined one wall. Two desks were placed at right angles to the
screens. A water
garrafon
was upended into an ordinary jug holder with a
spigot. It was full with real water that sloshed when Rico prodded it. Another
full
garrafon
was on the floor. A cabinet held paper supplies, pens, and
an odd assortment of cups. There was nothing extraordinary about the office
except that it was empty.

“
Hola
!”
Rico called.

They could hear
the rumble of traffic but nothing else.

“Come on,” said
Rico.

The next room was a
bathroom that someone had used recently. There was soap in the dish and a few
droplets of water in the sink.

They backed out of
the bathroom and tried the only other door. The next room appeared to be a
large supply depot, with hoses, electrical cords, shovels, and other
maintenance supplies stacked neatly along the sides of the room. Three
substantial fire extinguishers hug from wall brackets.

“Listen,” Emilia
whispered.

The traffic noise
was less now and a distant rattle came back to them.

“They’re rolling
the
garrafons
,” Emilia said.

“What are you
doing here?”

A short, weathered
man wearing a dirty Maxitunnel polo short stood in the entrance to the room.

“Looking for the
bathroom,” she mumbled, looking down, slipping into candy vendor  mode.

“Get out.” The man
jerked his chin at the office but his eyes darted to the rack of fire
extinguishers.

Rico walked toward
him. “She only needs to find a can. She’s pregnant, you know.”

“This office is
off limits.” The man spat on the floor. “Get out.”

Emilia couldn’t
see around Rico but there was movement and a grapple and then Rico was stepping
backwards and the man was on the floor. He was unconscious and blood tricked
through lank hair.

“Something tells
me we’re on the right track,” Rico said. “He didn’t work here.”

“We’re going to
have a problem if he does,” Emilia said.

“He’s wearing
boots,” Rico said. “Nobody in Acapulco wears
vaquero
boots. Only the
northern
sicarios
coming down to make trouble.”

Emilia checked out
the expensive lizard cowboy boots and had to concede the point to Rico. “What
did you hit him with?” she asked.

Rico held up his
heavy handgun. “Never did that before.”

“What do we do
with him?”

“We’ll leave him
for Silvio.” Rico gagged the unconscious man, then tied his wrists and ankles
together with safety flags found with the other supplies, and dumped him in the
bathroom.

Emilia ran her
hand over the rack of extinguishers, looking for a latch or something. To her
surprise it simply pulled away from the wall. It opened to reveal a long narrow
hall that sloped downward and was lit by bare bulbs every hundred yards or so.

“They took the
jugs down here?” Rico peered into the gloom.

“It’s the
maintenance tunnels,” Emilia said. “Probably have some sort of staging area
somewhere.” She found two hardhats with the supplies and handed one to Rico.
“Here. Our disguise.”

“Sure, we’re
maintenance,” Rico said.

They shut the door
behind them and started down the narrow tunnel. It was only wide enough for one
person. Rico went first. Both had weapons drawn.

The sounds of cars
driving overhead made the tunnel vibrate with a deep rumble. The noise deadened
as they went deeper but the vibration remained, sometimes becoming more
profound. Bigger vehicles, Emilia thought. Or poor tunnel construction. They
neared the first light and saw a door cut into the curving wall of the tunnel.
It was marked with a number stenciled in orange paint. Rico tried the door
handle. It was locked.

“Keep going,”
Emilia said.

The tunnel bent
slightly, obscuring their view of its end.

“Bet it goes all
the way to the other side,” Rico said.

A hard grating
sound made Emilia jump and then she felt a breeze. There was a box fan set into
the ceiling just a few feet above her head. “Look,” she whispered and pointed
to a series of ventilation chutes protruding from the wall at the ceiling line.
“Ventilation shafts.”

“Not big enough
for the jugs,” Rico said.

They continued
walking, Emilia in front this time. Doors on the right were marked with
numbers. From her research she knew behind them were supply depots for repairs
and firefighting equipment. Doors on the left were secured with long levers and
led into the main tunnel itself. The ceiling lights seemed to be further and
further apart and she wondered if this was like coal miners felt like, descending
into the bowels of the earth, not knowing if this will be the day they’ll never
see the sky again. The traffic rumble was ever-present, magnified by the
vaulted ceiling. She was grateful for Rico’s solid presence.

Two more numbered
doors were locked. Emilia figured they’d walked for at least 20 minutes when
she stopped and held up a hand to make Rico stop walking. She felt him pause
behind her and strain to hear. A man’s voice, hollow and indistinct would be
heard faintly, a sound masked by the drone of the traffic, noticeable only in
the lull after a car had passed overhead and the next one was not yet upon
them.

Emilia could
identify more than one voice. All were distorted by the strange tunnel
acoustics. She started walking again. The distance to the next light was
greater than before and Emilia realized that a light bulb was either missing or
burned out. She felt her way in the inky darkness, sweat dripping down her
forehead under the hardhat.

As they neared
another ventilation chute, the voices grew more distinct. They were coming from
below.

They passed the
chute and kept going. The tunnel curved again.

A rime of light
showed around the next door along the corridor.

As they neared the
door swift footsteps sounded in back of them. Emilia turned to look and the
door swung open, flooding the darkened tunnel with light. Emilia blinked in the
sudden brightness as two shots rang out, as deafening as a freight train in the
tunnel, and Rico pitched forward.

He toppled into
her and Emilia fell heavily, disoriented by the noise and light. The hardhat
popped off and went flying into the dark, the rap of the hard plastic lost in
the reverberating roar of the shot in such a confined space. Before Emilia
could orient herself, a hand grabbed her arm and wrenched her to her feet. A
backhand across her face sent her reeling into the wall and her gun clattered
away. As her head spun and she fought nausea, Emilia was dragged down a long
rough slope and propelled through a doorway.

She was in some
sort of mechanic’s workshop, with silver ventilation ducts snaking overhead and
a long thin overhead fluorescent light casting a greenish glow. Electrical
wires snaked along the duct and one dangled from the ceiling, the end taped off
with black tape. The air was chilly and smelled strongly of mold and sweat.

The dimensions of
the room were roughly that of
el teniente’s
concrete wonder. Across the
space was an entrance that was a mirror image to the one she’d just been thrust
through.

Several men had
evidently been working. Two she didn’t recognize; small hard men with rugged
jeans, big silver belt buckles,
and
vaquero
boots. Another had
dragged her into the room.

And then there was
Villahermosa. He seemed to fill the small space, all shoulders and blunt
features, and a gun held casually as if Emilia was something to be toyed with.

“The little girl
detective,” he said mockingly.

“It was you,”
Emilia heard herself say. Her mouth felt wrong, as if it had been dislocated by
the slap, and her brain was sluggish, struggling to process information as if
it couldn’t remember how.

There were at
least forty dark blue plastic Agua Pacifico jugs stacked on their sides up
against a wall. More were open like clamshells on a rough worktable. Twists of
marijuana was being taken out of the jugs and repackaged into dense packages
the size of bricks. Emilia realized they probably used the trucks to take the
marijuana down from the mountainsides around Acapulco, and used the tunnel as a
convenient repackaging site. Cars like the Hudson’s Suburban transported it as
far north as El Norte for the unquenchable
norteamericano
market.

“You were supposed
to keep them out,” Villahermosa said to someone behind Emilia.

Something jabbed
Emilia hard in the ribs.

“I got her partner
in the tunnel,” Fuentes said. “She doesn’t know anything.”

“Go get the body,”
Villahermosa said.

They all waited
while two of the men dragged Rico’s heavy and unresisting body into the
workshop and dumped it next to the jugs.

Emilia looked at
Rico. Even in the dim light she could see the smear of blood across his chest.
He wasn’t breathing and suddenly neither could she. Rico was gone, she was
alone and if Silvio had been lying then he wasn’t going to help her; he was
partners with Fuentes and Villahermosa and he’d sent Fuentes in to kill both
her and Rico. She was going to die and the thought that she’d never made love
to Kurt Rucker, never felt his body jerk and judder between her legs, made her
sit down abruptly on a metal stool by the door.
Please Hail Mary make Silvio
who he says he is. Make him come.

Villahermosa waved
at Fuentes with his gun.

“Take her to the
truck.” He indicated Rico’s body. “Dump both bodies.”

Fuentes grabbed
Emilia by the arm and hauled her to her feet.

“Does Morelos de
Gama know what you’re doing?” she blurted. “Starting up again even after Lt.
Inocente kidnapped his son?”

Fuentes stopped
hauling on her arm. “What?”

“You were in it
with him, weren’t you?” Emilia babbled. “Kidnapped his son and held that child
until the ransom was paid in counterfeit money. And when Morelos de Gama
realized the real money was switched for counterfeit he had Lt. Inocente
killed. Or you killed him because he cheated you all.”

Villahermosa
stepped close and shoved his gun into the soft underside of Emilia’s jaw, just
where she’d hit the now-missing Horacio with the beer bottle. “Nobody’s a
kidnapper,
puta
. What are you talking about counterfeit money?”

The pressure of
the gun made it hard to talk. Her eyes ran with the pain. “The ransom,” Emilia
managed. “You kidnapped that child and the ransom was paid in counterfeit.”

“Who says?” The
pressure didn’t abate.

“The money was in
a white Suburban.” Emilia could barely breathe but she saw the confusion in
Villahermosa’s eyes. “We left it on the road. The next morning the money was
gone and the child was left in it. The ransom was paid in counterfeit
Estados
Unidos
bills that some people named Hudson had muled in.”

“What’s she
talking about?” Villahermosa’s eyes swung to Fuentes.

“She drives a white
Suburban,” Fuentes said and shrugged.

Emilia was
starting to gag from the gun pressed under her jaw. “Maybe Inocente switched
it. He took the money from someone pretending to be him and then told the
kidnappers where to find the counterfeit.”

“You think
Inocente took the ransom from me?” Villahermosa said. “Took Morelos de Gama’s
money and gave fake to El Machete?”

“Everybody tried
to blame Silvio,” Emilia went on. “Fuentes. Obregon.”

Villahermosa
looked at Fuentes. “What the fuck is she talking about?”