Brian bumped the door open with his backside, and we carried Octavio the short distance to the back of the van. Showing surprising strength, Brian held the bundle with one hand while he opened the van’s rear door, and then lifted the body up and in while I came forward with my end. I looked casually around as Brian pulled the bedspread out and slammed the doors shut. I saw nothing at all except a few dozen parked cars.
“All right,” Brian said. “Next?”
We went back up the stairs and repeated the process with Stranger Two. Luck was with us, and we saw no one—and hopefully no one saw us, either. In any case, it was only a few more minutes before we had the second body in the van. I stretched and wondered whether I would ever again have feeling in my back that wasn’t pain.
Brian slammed the van’s back doors, locked them, and nodded at me. “One more trip,” he said.
“Really?” I said. “I only counted two bodies.”
“Your things,” he said, moving past me to the hotel door. “It might be best if you check out now?” He turned and showed me a small and knowing smirk. “Even better if you do it by phone,” he said.
“You may be right,” I said.
He nodded. “It had to happen someday.”
We went up together, pausing cautiously on the third-floor landing, and again at the door to my room—or ex-room, to be more precise. There was no sign of anything or anyone, and I went on in. It took me less than a minute to gather my meager possessions, and we trudged back down the stairs and out to the parking lot. I walked past the van and threw my suitcase into the trunk of my rental car while Brian climbed into the driver’s seat of the van.
“Follow me,” he said, and then added, “Not too far.”
“All right,” I said. I got into the rental car and followed Brian as he nosed slowly out of the lot.
The police car was still parked by the front door, and there was no sign of its occupants. We crawled by and out onto U.S. 1, and a few blocks up, Brian made a U-turn and drove south. I followed along, wondering what he had gotten himself into, and why it should be my problem.
A few minutes south, Brian pulled into a strip mall that held, among other things, an all-night doughnut shop, and I nodded. Nobody would notice my rental car here. I parked it in a spot close enough to the doughnut shop that some of the bright fluorescent lights spilled onto the car, and walked to the far corner of the lot, where Brian sat in the van, engine idling. I climbed into the passenger seat, and he drove back out onto U.S. 1 again, heading south.
Neither of us spoke for several minutes, until finally, as we passed Sunset Drive, I couldn’t take it anymore.
“I’m very sorry about your friend,” I said.
Brian sighed. “Yes,” he said.
I stared at him expectantly, but he said no more, and I was miffed enough to feel that I shouldn’t have to drag it out of him, so I was silent, too. We drove still farther south, almost all the way down to Homestead. Then Brian turned off U.S. 1 and headed west, inland, turning several times. We straightened out at last on a long stretch of badly maintained pavement that led due west. The sun was going down, and it shone directly in my eyes, so I turned sideways and looked out the window. There wasn’t a lot to see in this old residential area. The houses gradually got older and smaller and farther apart, and then finally they disappeared altogether and we were driving along a dirt road through a landscape of scrub, canals, and saw grass. We had come to the very edge of the Everglades. I looked at Brian, hoping he might be ready to explain all, but he looked straight ahead at the road and the setting sun.
After another ten minutes of awkward silence, Brian finally turned off the dusty road and drove us through a gate in an old and sagging chain-link fence. The gate itself hung forlornly from one rusty hinge. There was an ancient faded sign on it, but I couldn’t see what it said.
A hundred yards or so past the gate we came to the lip of a large old quarry filled with milky water, and Brian put the van into park. He turned the engine off, and we continued our silence for a moment. The engine ticked a few times as it cooled, and not too far away an entire symphonic chorus of insects began their evening concert.
And then Brian shook his head, took a deep breath, and turned to me.
“And now, brother,” he said, in a dead and very serious voice, “I’m afraid I have to tell you that you have placed us both in grave danger.” He leaned closer. “I need to know who you told about your hotel room.”
F
or just a moment, I could do nothing but stare at Brian and blink my eyes. I seemed to be doing that a lot lately. Was it a sign that I was really losing it, sliding off the edge into permanent stupidity? Or was it merely an indication that I had never been quite as clever as I’d thought I was?
In any case, I stared, and I blinked. Brian’s question caught me completely off guard;
Who had I told?
It was an absurd question on so many levels that I didn’t know where to start. I had already concluded that someone had traced Brian, not me, because of his credit card. That seemed so obvious to me that it didn’t even bear mention—how could he fail to figure that out? On top of that, Octavio was
his
friend, not mine, so his death meant nothing to me—it was clearly aimed at Brian.
But most basic of all, there was absolutely nobody left for me to tell, not about hotel rooms or anything else. Aside from Brian himself, nobody would talk to me.
After a long pause that was just right for conveying dramatically my sense of dumbfounded surprise at his question, I finally managed to yank my powers of speech out of the ditch and back onto the conversational highway. “Brian,” I said, “did you truly think somebody killed Octavio to get at me?”
Almost as if he was working hard to make me feel better, Brian responded with a gratifying gape-and-blink of his own. I thought it lasted much longer than mine had, but it may be that such things seem longer to watch than to perform. But I gave him all the time he needed, and he finally closed his jaw and slumped over just a little. “I did,” he said. “I actually thought that. Silly me.” He looked at me and shook his head. “I seem to be doing some very stupid things lately.”
“There’s a lot of that going around,” I said.
“But then how did they find me so quickly?” he said, with truly puzzled dismay.
It began to occur to me that, in spite of his many other fine qualities, Brian was not quite as adept as I was at life in the cyberworld. “It’s just a guess,” I said. “But I think they traced your credit card.”
He looked at me with such blank astonishment that I revised my opinion: Brian didn’t have a
clue
about life in the cyberworld. “Can they really do that?” he said. “That card was clean—I’ve had it for only a few weeks.”
“Throw it away,” I said. “Put it in the quarry here, with Octavio and—Oh. Are we putting them in the quarry? I just assumed—”
“We are,” Brian said. “The water has a very high lime content. Nothing left in a couple of months.” I didn’t ask him how he knew that—but I did file it away for future reference. Assuming I actually had a future, which seemed to be somewhat in doubt at the moment. Brian frowned, and looked very puzzled. “But seriously, I thought a credit card was…well, you know. Don’t the banks guard the data pretty carefully?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “It would take me almost a full ten minutes to hack in and trace somebody.”
“Oh, dear,” he said, and he shook his head again, very slowly. “I can see that there are some rather glaring holes in my education.” He leaned back in the seat and furrowed his brow, looking like he was trying to remember if he’d done anything else that might come back and bite him. “Perhaps I spent too much time learning to get rid of bodies, and not enough on the more pedestrian side of things.”
“So it seems,” I said. “Let me suggest that for the time being, cash is probably safest? Um—you do have plenty of cash, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes, not a problem,” he said absently, apparently still cataloging the sins of his recent past.
“Perhaps this would be a good time to tell me where it came from,” I said. “And who is trying to kill you to get it back. Did you take their drugs, too? Or just the money?”
Brian jerked upright and looked at me, and then nodded. “Sometimes I forget that you’re a trained investigator,” he said. “Of course you would figure that out.”
“Elementary, dear brother,” I said.
“I’m not sure how much to tell you,” he said slowly, obviously stalling while he thought about it.
“Tell me enough to keep me alive,” I said.
“Yes. That much, at least.” He inhaled deeply, then blew the breath out again noisily. “Well,” he said. “As you have guessed, I took a little jaunt into the drug trade. Nothing really out of the way, just a new venue for my well-practiced talents.” He smiled modestly. “But at a much higher pay grade.”
“All right,” I said encouragingly.
Brian shrugged. “It’s an old and tawdry story,” he said. “I was doing very well out of it, financially speaking, and rather enjoying my work.” He gave me his terrible smile, but this time there seemed to be real pleasure behind it. “Lots and
lots
of little jobs. A surplus of…encounters?”
I nodded. Brian shared my sense that actually speaking aloud about what we did was somehow indelicate, but we both knew what he meant. He had been permanently and painfully removing people who his employers considered obstacles. It seemed like a wonderful job, and apparently quite lucrative. “Freelance?” I asked. “Or working for one particular outfit?”
“Just one. Just Raul.” He smiled again. “Rather melodramatic, but they called him ‘El Carnicero.’ The Butcher.”
“Yes,” I said. “It is a bit over-the-top.”
“That’s their world,” Brian said with a shrug. “They seem to enjoy histrionics.”
“So what happened?” I said. “Did you piss off the Butcher?”
“Oh, no, not at all,” he said emphatically. “I was very good at my job, and he appreciated that. But unfortunately for all concerned, the Butcher pissed off Santo Rojo.” He showed me his teeth. “More histrionics, I’m afraid. It means the Red Saint?”
“Yes, I know.”
“Apparently Raul overstepped his proper boundaries,” Brian said, trying very hard to sound regretful. He wasn’t nearly as good as I was at that kind of thing. “Santo resented it. And soon we were in a full-scale war.” He paused and cocked his head to one side, as if seeing the things he described. “Santo was a much bigger man—far more powerful, with lots more minions and money and influence. Raul was relatively small-potatoes—an up-and-comer, but definitely not there yet.”
He shrugged. “To cut to the chase, it seemed to me that I was on the losing side, and it was only a matter of time until Raul and all of us in his little family were eliminated. I discussed this with a coworker—”
“Octavio,” I said.
Brian nodded. “Yes. Because as it happened, Octavio knew where Raul had stashed a rather sizable chunk of money in case he needed to, um, relocate? Quickly?” He twitched his mouth in a brief and unconvincing smile. “One of the hazards of the trade, you know,” he said. “Every now and then you really do have to get away in a hurry.”
“So I understand,” I said. “So you and Octavio took the money and ran.”
“Yes, that’s right,” he said, and he sighed. “All that money. I had no idea there would be so much.” He looked at me happily. “So very much, brother. You have no idea.”
“I’m sure,” I said. “But where’s the problem? With Raul and most of his gang dead, who was left to come after you?”
“Ah, well, that’s the thing,” Brian said ruefully. “You see, we made a very small miscalculation. As it happens, Raul managed to plant a bomb in Santo’s headquarters. It went off quite successfully; Santo Rojo and a large number of his minions were killed, and the rest flocked to Raul’s banner. The war was over—but unfortunately, Raul was still alive.” He smiled at me again, no more convincingly than any other time. “And among the missing were two of his trusted associates and an extremely large piece of untraceable cash. Raul feels very possessive about his cash,” he said.
“A common failing,” I said.
“And so, to conclude,” Brian said, “Raul and all his remaining henchmen are working very hard to find me. Probably
not
with the intention of begging me to return to work.”
“Almost certainly not,” I said. I frowned and tried to reason out loud. “All right,” I said. “So Raul’s computer guy tracks your credit card to my hotel room. No doubt he assumes that Dexter Morgan is you, a nom de guerre. He sends someone to conduct your exit interview—”
“Nicely put,” Brian murmured.
“And he waits in the closet, thinking your return is imminent,” I said, and then I stopped. “But what about Octavio? What was he doing there?”
Brian sighed again—the third time he’d done it. It was getting a little annoying, especially since I knew quite well he felt nothing at all, let alone anything that might induce a sigh. It had to be a new habit he was trying out for some reason, just for the effect. “I can only guess,” he said at last. “Octavio was staying at your hotel.” I must have looked surprised, because Brian spread his hands in apology. “Mere convenience,” he said. “Octavio must have seen this other man and recognized him. He followed him to your room, and…” He snapped his fingers. “The rest is tragic history.”
We were both silent for a minute. “Is it likely,” I said at last, “that Raul would send one mere henchman to dispose of you?”
“Oh, no, certainly not,” Brian said cheerfully. “He had great respect for my talents.”
“So there would be two? Three?”
“Several of them, without a doubt—five, six, even ten,” he said, still quite cheerful. “I think this would be rather a high priority for Raul. And he would almost certainly come along with them.”
“Just because of a little money?” I asked.
Brian got even merrier. “Oh, it’s not a little, very far from it,” he said. “But of course, it’s much more than the money. If he lets me rip him off, he loses a great deal of respect.” He raised an eyebrow at me. “That’s everything to these people, you know. No, Raul will send a good number—and
keep
sending more until it’s done.” And he nodded with satisfaction.
Somehow I could not bring myself to share his lighthearted joy at being pursued relentlessly by several platoons of dedicated, experienced assassins. “Wonderful,” I said.
“They’re quite good, too,” he said. “And completely relentless, of course.”
“Of course,” I said. He fell silent and I followed suit, using the time to ponder a little bit. Now I knew how Brian was funding his recent great flow of generosity. That didn’t tell me
why
he had been so helpful, but I was starting to get a nasty suspicion. I had already suspected that Brian needed my help for something unpleasant. It was starting to look considerably worse than unpleasant—downright lethal, and I wasn’t really sure I wanted any part of it, brother or no. While it was true that I have normally been willing, even eager to help out a family member in need, I had always understood that to apply to moving furniture, or providing a ride to the dentist. I didn’t think family ties had ever been intended to cover helping your brother survive the relentless attacks of an enraged drug lord.
But as I thought that, I realized that it was already too late for me to politely bow out. Raul’s men had been clever enough to trace Brian’s credit card rather quickly. They would certainly know the room was registered to me, and they would soon find that it was not Brian’s fake identity, and then they would be onto me. They would assume that I was connected to Brian in some important way, and I would become a target. In fact, I had
already
become a target just by being in that room. Although a mere unknown connection might not seem terribly damning evidence of anything to a rational being, I knew enough about the drug world to know that it has very few rational residents. They didn’t need to know a thing about me to decide that I had overstayed my time on planet Earth. I was now on their hit list, as sure as I sat here.
Another thought popped into my head, which was a very good sign that things were working the way they should. This thought whispered to me that if Brian truly wanted my help, he might well have sent Octavio there himself while I was out, knowing that he would run into the hit man. And I, faced with two corpses in my room and the certainty that I had been identified, would feel compelled to join Brian in his struggle. Even more—with Octavio dead, all that lovely money was presumably Brian’s now, and he had given me no reason to think that he liked Octavio—or anyone—more than money.
I looked at my brother. He was still frowning, squinting into the last rays of the sun that sank down past the horizon as I watched. He turned to me, shook his head, and said, “I’m afraid I have to ask a very great favor.”
“Did you kill Octavio?” I said by way of answering. “Or set him up to be killed?”
To his very great credit, Brian didn’t even pretend to be surprised or offended. “No, I did not,” he said simply. “Naturally, it had occurred to me that I might want to, sooner or later—but I needed his help to avoid being killed myself. And now…” Brian suddenly went shy and turned away from me. “As I said,” he said apologetically, “it’s a very great favor.”
“Yes, it is,” I said, and I admit I sounded peevish. “I don’t know how I can possibly—I mean, I am being watched, you know. By the police. And I may be dragged back to jail at any moment. What did you think I could do?”
“Nothing strenuous,” Brian said, a little sulkily. “Some light and entertaining chores. You know, watch my back while I do the heavy lifting, and then join in for the fun part.”
I opened my mouth to speak, to point out that we needed to worry about more than the five or six heavily armed homicidal lunatics who were after us now. Even if we disposed of them, there was a large and ruthless organization behind them. And then I closed my mouth again as I realized that of course Brian knew that, and what that meant he was hinting at. The word
hubris
popped into my head, and just to show that I remembered even more big words, I tacked on
overweening,
because if what I suspected about the nature of his plan was true, overweening hubris was a huge understatement. It was grandiose conceited flamboyant stupidity on a colossal scale that exceeded all earthly boundaries, and I was sure it was exactly what Brian was contemplating.
I looked out the windshield in front of us at the milky water of the quarry. The surface shone brightly, even though it was completely dark now, which I thought was quite appropriate.