Green Ice: A Deadly High (9 page)

“Are we at the place?” Trey slowed to a crawl, looking out for a free parking slot. 

“We’re near the house but we need to check it out before we go in. This damn car stands out too much though. Those guys will soon vamoose or at least be suspicious if they see a couple of gringos hanging around near their place. We need to be a bit savvy here.”

Trey slid the Thunderbird into a parking space on the side of the road next to the oncoming intersection. Mancini didn’t like the position they were in, nose first against the sidewalk and a stationary vehicle either side of them.

“Pull out and back into the space, at least,” he sighed. “We’re boxed right in here.”

“Okay,” Trey
huffed and carried out the vehicle maneuver, stopping traffic in both directions in the process.

Mancini baulked at the honking horns from the impatient drivers, waiting to carry on their journeys.
Trey finally negotiated the steering and eased the Thunderbird into the parking slot. He cut the engine and sat in silence, waiting for the next move.

Mancini studied the map on his lap, plotting the quickest exit route out of Ensenada. He hoped the shit wouldn’t hit the fan and they wouldn’t have to leave in too much of a hurry. Worst case scenario was they’d both be leaving the city in body bags.

Chapter Ten

Mancini figured out the quickest and easiest route out of Ensenada from their position and showed Trey the way by running his finger along the road lines on the map. Trey nodded and flashed him a nervous glance.

“You still up for this?” Mancini asked.

Trey gulped and nodded. He wanted to prove himself to Mancini and prove he was capable of carrying out such a dangerous assignment within Oreilles’s network.
Mancini went to the trunk and took out the holdall the tall guy had given him. He returned to the passenger seat and placed the bag at his feet. Trey watched Mancini hunch over the holdall, loading the two Heckler and Koch handguns and fill the spare magazines with 9mm rounds.

“You know how to use one of these?”

“Sure,” Trey muttered. “I’ve been a member of a gun club since I was old enough to hold one.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-four,” Trey stated. “How old are you?”

“You ever fired at anything other than targets or bottles?”

Trey shrugged. “Sure, I’ve been out hunting a whole bunch of times.”

“This is way different to firing at deer or swamp rats
, or whatever the hell you’ve been used to hunting. You ever fired a shot at another human being?”

“I shot my sister with a pellet gun once. Does that count?”

Mancini snickered. “Yeah, that counts,” he mockingly sighed. “Just don’t freeze up on me but don’t do any shooting, unless I do first, okay?”

Trey nodded and Mancini
leaned close to hand him the loaded firearm.

“Keep it out of sight in the back of your waistband,” Mancini hissed and passed him two spare, loaded magazines.

Trey shoved the magazines into the side pockets of his shorts, hoping they wouldn’t stand out visibly as an outline too much. Mancini leaned forward and slid his own handgun down the back of his waistband then put his spare magazines in his cargo pants pockets.

“To answer your question, I’m thirty-five,” he said. “Ready?”

Trey looked nervous but nodded with false bravado. “Let’s do this,” he croaked, trying to sound convincing. 

“Okay, let’s go then,
Audie Murphy,
” Mancini said, then climbed out of the car.

“Who the hell is
Audie Murphy?” Trey asked, hauling himself out of his seat.

Mancini shook his head. “Young guys today,” he sighed. “Google him, if we
ever get out of this situation alive.”

“What?”

“Just kidding, come on. Let’s find this damn house.”

Mancini placed the
holdall back inside the trunk and Trey locked it up. He ensured he locked the glove box and checked he’d left nothing on the seats.

“I hope nobody thinks of jacking my ride whilst we’re away,” Trey said
, slipping on his sunshades.

“Me too,” Mancini sighed. “It’ll be a hell of a long walk if it’s gone when we get back.”

Trey followed Mancini back along Miramar Street. Mancini had memorized the street address and glanced at the numbers along the buildings, his eyes hidden behind his shades. He didn’t want to give the appearance he was searching for someplace or to look as though he was lost. Street guys liked nothing more than to hustle a stranded vacationer searching for an address.

Mancini slowly walked by an open gateway
, with a few one storey buildings standing to the rear of the property and slightly further away from the roadside. He glanced at the street numbers on either side of the gateway. This was the place he was looking for. It made kind of sense that the bad guys would choose someplace slightly out of plain view.

“Let’s cross the street,” he muttered to Trey.

They waited until the traffic receded and walked towards a small liquor store on the opposite side to the open gateway.

“Go inside and bu
y two sodas but don’t speak to the storekeeper and keep away from any cameras as best you can,” Mancini said.

Trey obliged and returned from the store with two cold
bottles of pineapple flavored
Jarritos
. They stood, leaning against the window, sipping their drinks under the shade of the green canopy, draped over the storefront. Mancini kept his eyes on the property on the opposite side of the road. He saw a nearly new, fawn colored Chevrolet parked nose first in the driveway and guessed it was a rental car. The curtains remained open on both levels of the two storey buildings. Mancini glanced at each of the three orange stucco dwellings in turn. The structure to the far right was smaller and squatter than the other two with a pair of large double doors in the center of the facing wall. He guessed that building was more of a storage area, which wouldn’t be used for accommodation purposes.

Balcony walkways ran along the outside of the building in the center and the one to the left. Several white painted doors, positioned at regular intervals, stood in a line at the rear of the walkways facing the road. The doors were marked with black numerals and Mancini presumed these were numbered apartments. The problem he now faced was matching up the three guys he was searching for with their respective
rooms. He’d briefly met Luiz and Jorge but the third guy, Ernesto, he didn’t know at all. All three were originally from Mexico and would easily blend in with the locals. Mancini had to find a way of figuring out which rooms they were holed up in. He knew trying to call La Rat would be a pointless exercise. The location was obviously the only information he had. One of the mysterious Hector’s guys had probably seen the three men out on the town and followed them back to the apartment block. That was as far as it went for those guys. Now, it was Mancini’s turn to take up the baton and continue the repossession action.

He counted the number of apartment doors.
Five on each floor of the two buildings, which resulted in twenty separate rooms. Presuming the guys didn’t share apartments, Mancini calculated he had a one in six point six chance of finding one of the guys if he started knocking on doors. But he couldn’t guarantee any of them would answer or be inside the apartments. He had to think of another way.

Mancini didn’t have long to wait before fate intervened.

The door of apartment twelve, situated in the center building on the upper floor, banged open and a worried looking man in his mid-forties and dressed in nothing but his underwear bundled onto the balcony. He gabbled into his cell phone while glancing around him and repeatedly turned to face the open door of his apartment.

“That looks like Jorge
Alvarez,” Mancini growled. “Come on, let’s go to work.”

He dropped his soda
bottle on the sidewalk and hurried across the road, dodging the traffic in each direction. Trey placed his soda bottle on the store window sill and followed Mancini across the street.

“Try and stay out of sight
for as far as you can,” Mancini hissed. He hugged the wall of the adjacent building beside the gateway and crept forward. Trey followed in Mancini’s footsteps, replicating every move he made.

Mancini stayed in the building’s shadow while crossing the driveway. He approached the left side of the central building, keeping a watch on Jorge above him on the balcony. Trey followed, treading lightly on the blacktop covered path. Jorge seemed too preoccupied with his phone call and who or what was inside his apartment. Mancini
handed Trey a pair of close fitting, black gloves and led the way to an open staircase at the left of the building. He rushed up the steps, his footfalls almost silent. Trey likened Mancini’s movements to a hunting panther as he struggled to keep pace up the stairway. Mancini stopped at the stairway summit and took a peek through the gap in the door. He slipped on his tactical gloves and motioned for Trey to do the same.

Mancini whipped out the Heckler and Koch handgun from the back of his waistband
, before he slipped through the fire door leading to the upper balcony. He held the weapon out in front of him double handed, aiming the barrel at Jorge’s head. Trey followed onto the balcony and drew his own firearm, keeping it pointed down at his side.

The near naked man still jabbered in Spanish into his cell phone and didn’t notice Mancini and Trey approach. He leaned his head inside the apartment threshold and Mancini could tell the guy was in a state of panic by the tone of his voice.
Jorge seemed to be staring into his room, looking out for something inside. Mancini stealthily closed the distance between him and Jorge, looming behind him. In one fluid movement, Mancini wrenched the cell phone from Jorge’s grasp, tossed it over his shoulder and over the side of the balcony, then pressed the barrel of his handgun against the back of the near naked man’s head. Jorge gasped and made to turn around but Mancini pushed the Heckler and Koch barrel harder against his skull.

“Hi Jorge, don’t turn around now,” Mancini said quietly. “Go right on inside your apartment and don’t try to run or I’ll shoot you right in the head. You understand?”

Jorge nodded slightly and went to speak.

“Keep it quiet, Jorge. Talk to me when we get inside. Are you alone in here? Shake or nod.”

“No…yes…kind of,” he stuttered.

“You spoke, Jorge. I told you not to. That’s a big black mark against your chances of surviving this
,” Mancini hissed. “Let me rephrase. Is there anybody who’s armed inside this shitty place?”

“No,” Jorge grunted. “But…”

Mancini shoved the man forward into the room space but kept his firearm trained on the back of his torso as Jorge stumbled into the apartment. Trey followed Mancini inside and hurriedly shut the door behind them. He felt his hands sweating inside the gloves and his legs shook slightly. Trey had never shot a person in anger before and he hoped the situation could be resolved without a round being fired.

Jorge turned to face Mancini with an expression of shock and fear engulfing his face. A furious pounding noise reverberated around the small room. Mancini and Trey glanced to their right to the source of the noise. They looked at a closed door and heard growls and yelps from the room beyond. Mancini turned his attention back to Jorge.

“Have you got a dog locked up in there, Jorge?”

Jorge
raised his arms above his head and rapidly shook his head. Sweat poured down his face and he kept glancing nervously at the closed door.

“Don’t open it,” he stammered. “There is a girl in there. She…she was dead not so long ago.”

Trey felt his skin turn to gooseflesh. Did he hear the cowering dork right?

“Oh, I have no intention of opening that door,” Mancini said. “Now, you know what we’ve come here to take back, don’t you Jorge?”

Jorge made a strange gurgling sound as he nodded his head. “Yeah, but the money and the crystal is not in here,” he stammered.

Mancini took a quick glance around the room.
A double bed sat in the center of the floor space with a small beside cabinet pushed against the wall alongside each pillow. A table with a glass surface stood in front of a large, wall mounted TV set and a small kitchenette was situated to the left of the apartment. Mancini eyed the drug paraphernalia strewn across the table. The remnants of a bag of white powder was scattered amongst a few small green crystal chips. A smoking pipe lay in a big round glass ashtray beside two half empty glasses and a near empty bottle of tequila.

“Okay, Jorge. You have exactly ten seconds to tell me where the money and the merchandise
are and who or what is making all that damn racket in that room.” Mancini’s words grew louder in volume as he spoke above the banging against the door.