Authors: Warren Hammond
Which meant they’d made my job of getting away with murder that much easier.
Mota’s setup was a yawner. Did he really think he could lure me to my death with that flimsy-ass story? That shit was grade-school.
I crossed the rooftop, feet tromping through leafy vines and ripped tar paper. I climbed a wall and jumped down to a lower rooftop, the long bag slung over my shoulder bouncing on my back. All I had to do now was hurdle that rail, cross that balcony down there, climb out onto that ledge, jump across this alley.
I checked the time. Maggie should be along any minute. Careful to stay in shadow, I leaned out and peered down at the street, where a jam of cars was gridlocked like bathroom tiles, pedestrians walking the grout lines. Horns and shouts echoed up the alley walls, the noisy sounds of a dysfunctional city.
There she was, crossing the street. Even from way up here, I recognized her, that confident stride, black locks waving in a light breeze. Maggie passed the Rojo Caballo’s front door and entered the alley, reaching a staircase and starting up.
I moved again, butterflies lifting off in my gut, pulse beating faster. Harder. I walked to the edge and stepped off, dropped a meter to a balcony, the landing muffled by a soft bed of moss. I ducked under a pipe, detoured around a ventilation fan, and sidestepped my way out onto the ledge.
I looked down at the hotel. Maggie was on the fifth floor now. She tried a gate that led to the roof but found it locked. Mota and Panama had seen to it that there was only one point of entry, meaning Maggie would have to walk to the opposite end to the other gate. She stepped along the outdoor walkway, heels crunching crumbled concrete, hotel rooms on her left. Door, window, door, window, door, window …
I caught a glimpse of her face as she walked under a light, the beam catching a rock jaw and eyes like jade.
She passed below my position. I kept still. She had no idea I was here, no clue what I had planned.
I hadn’t liked lying to her, but I did it. I’d told her I was ready to surrender my protection racket to Mota. I just needed her to negotiate the truce.
I’d told her all about Maria’s sister getting cut, and how I thought Mota and Panama would be on the hotel’s roof ready to ambush me. She could go in my place and work out a deal.
But it was all a ruse.
What I really needed was for someone to draw out Mota and Panama from their hiding places so I could kill them.
I couldn’t feel bad about using her. Not now. Not until it was over. Time enough to repent later.
She was on the other end of the hotel now, going through the unlocked gate and disappearing up the stairs. I could hear her call Mota’s name. “Don’t shoot! It’s Maggie Orzo.”
I used my left to put the earpiece dangling on my shoulder into my ear. I recoiled at the volume when she shouted his name again. The bug I’d dropped in her hair had a sensitive pickup. She’d never find it. Small like a flea.
I sloughed the bag off my shoulder and reached in, pulled out a lase-rifle, unfolded the stock and snapped it into place.
“Captain Mota?” I heard in my ear. “Come on out. I came alone.”
So she thinks.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Mota’s voice.
“I’m unarmed,” she said. “Juno’s not coming. He didn’t fall for that story Chicho told him. He knew it would be a trap. He sent me to negotiate a truce.”
So she thinks.
I dropped the now empty bag, watched it sweep and sway its way down to the alley far below. I checked the rifle to see if the telemetry from Maggie’s bug had been received. Green light.
“Who is this?” Maggie’s voice.
“I’m a business partner from upriver.”
Maggie, meet Panama.
I gauged the distance across the alley. Two meters. A drop of, say, four. I could clear it easy. No problem.
I looked straight down. The alley was long and narrow with evenly spaced lights, the last one infected by a jittery flicker. I figured it best to jump now in case the jitters were contagious.
I held the rifle out front and pushed off with both feet. Air blew through my hair and billowed my shirt, my stomach climbing into my throat. I dropped as I crossed the narrow alley, sailing over the blacktop far underneath. I cleared the hotel wall, feet reaching for the roof of one of the penthouse units.
Contact.
Knees buckled.
Impact.
The rifle wrenched out of my hand. My body folded up, my chin driving into my knee with a clap of teeth. I fell backward, my back and head striking the wall.
Too stunned to move, I stayed where I was, my heart pumping mad beats. My lungs sucked wild breaths. I swallowed blood. My chin, teeth, and jaw suffered from a wicked uppercut. I thought the forward momentum would’ve been enough to take me into a roll, but my downward trajectory must’ve been too steep.
I fumbled for my earpiece, stuck it back in my ear. Maggie’s voice came through the dazed fog. “He doesn’t care about the protection business. You can have it back.”
“And in exchange?”
“All we want is the doctor. We’ve been to that hellhole he calls a clinic. He’s using people as lab rats.”
“That’s a little outside your jurisdiction, don’t you think?” Panama’s voice.
“He has an office here.”
“He doesn’t do anything illegal here. And what he does in Yepala is my jurisdiction.”
They hadn’t heard my fuckup of a landing. I tested my legs, couldn’t feel them, but they moved when I told them to. I forced myself onto my hands and knees, started feeling around for my gun, thorny weeds poking and scraping.
I crawled on numb knees. It felt like I had two more stumps. My hand made contact, fingers wrapped around the rifle. I pulled the weapon up, pressed the cool steel of the barrel against my cheek. I struggled upright, using the rifle as a third leg.
Maggie spoke in my ear. “Juno offered to sweeten the deal.”
Mota laughed. “Now you’re saying he wants to buy his way out? What happened to the empty threats?”
I took slow, lurching steps, wobbled and weaved, toddler-like, toward the open arms of scaffolding pipes. I hooked my arms around them and leaned out, took a look, couldn’t make visual. My weapon required line-of-sight.
I went to the corner, looked in another direction, couldn’t see them. Shit.
I looked into the gunsight, studied the rifle’s display. I saw numbers. Coordinates. Maggie’s bug was reporting her exact position, its camera eye picking out Mota and Panama, calculating their positions, feeding the data into the targeting system. Somebody smarter than me would know how to read this thing. They’d do some quick math and know right where to go. All I saw was random numbers. Shit.
“It’s too late for him, Maggie. He can’t undo this. It’s time he paid for all the shit he’s done.”
I climbed out onto the scaffolding. I needed to make my way down from the penthouse rooftop to the hotel proper. They had to be behind the other rooftop unit, close to the staircase Maggie had climbed.
I pulled out a pocket light and risked flicking it on. I carried it in my teeth, seeking a way down. I spotted a ladder, took a step in that direction, and stopped. How was a one-armed man going to carry a rifle down a ladder?
I jogged in the opposite direction, toward the street, found an access stairway and struggled with a single-hinged door, managing to angle myself through.
“She knows where he is.” Panama’s voice. “We can make her lead us to him.”
“No. We’ll find him another way.”
“Fuck that. Let’s teach her how we do it in the jungle.”
“We’re not in the jungle.”
“I’ve never given a necktie to a woman.”
“This is a homicide detective.”
“So?”
“So, we can’t bring that kind of heat down on ourselves.”
I exited the stairwell and turned toward the hotel’s rear.
“What are you talking about? You weren’t opposed to killing cops when I nectktied those two in the Cellars.”
“This one’s well connected.”
Maggie had no fear. “Don’t be stupid. You touch me, and there’ll be no deal. It’ll be all-out war.”
Panama’s voice was full of malice. “That ship done sailed. The war is on.”
I stepped into the shadow of the second penthouse unit. Flashlight off. Rifle raised. Eyes peeled. I lifted one shoe and then the other, taking high steps to keep from getting tangled in the vines.
Silence in my earpiece. Mota was mulling his options. I inched my way around a pile of scrap metal, choosing my steps oh-so-carefully. Sweat rolled down my nose, stung my eyes. The corner was close. Almost there.
I moved past, edging my way up to what used to be a mini-courtyard pinned between penthouse units. The staircase leading down sat on the far side. The junk-strewn courtyard was lit by a portable gas lamp sitting on a crate. Maggie faced my direction, her hands raised halfway, like she’d gotten tired of holding them high. Mota and Panama stood opposite Maggie, their weapons drawn, covering both her and the staircase.
Maggie broke the silence. “So what if the war already started. I’m giving you the chance to end it.”
“And if we don’t?”
“If you don’t, my money’s on Juno.” A lengthy pause followed before she added, “He can be a ruthless son of a bitch.”
Damn straight. Exhibit A: I wasn’t above shooting two men in the back.
I blinked sweat out of my eyes, told my racing heart to settle down. I held my weapon lefty, finger on the trigger, forestock resting on what was left of my forearm.
I pinned down the trigger. No hesitation. No doubt. Panama was right. This was war.
I swept the weapon left to right, the targeting system firing timed bursts that briefly cast the rooftop in a fiery glow. Panama collapsed first, Mota an instant later, his body falling into a pile of scrap, followed by the sound of breaking glass.
Maggie’s body jerked and she let out a startled scream. Her eyes and jaw opened wide. She blinked, her face dotted with blood. Same with her hands and shirt.
I rushed forward, toward the smell of roasted meat. She ducked and went for Panama’s weapon, which still sat in his hand.
“It’s me.” I came out of the shadows, rifle in one hand.
She pulled the weapon from his dead grasp and held it in both hands, her face seized by shock.
“It’s me,” I repeated. “It’s okay.”
She lowered the gun. “What did you do?”
I stepped up to Mota’s lifeless body, peeled his gun out of his hand. “I ended it.”
She stared at the bodies, bewildered.
I watched the spreading pool of blood, his hat getting caught in the flow, blood sponging into the hat’s weave.
Maggie looked at her hands, at the spattered blood. She wiped them on her pants.
My feet tickled with pins and needles, sensation slowly coming back. I turned to take another look at Mota, a pane of glass partly trapped under one shoulder, shards radiating outward. His pretty-boy face was pressed into the rooftop, nose squished up, lips pushed into a guppy mouth.
A fist struck my back. “What did you do!”
I winced and arched my back. Another shot landed, this one on the kidney, the heft of her pistol making the blow sink painfully deep. More blows came and I took every one of them. She hit me with words too, a torrent of angry venom:
They were listening to me, asshole. Why did you jump the gun? They were going to take the truce.
She figured the rest of it soon enough. Words snapped from her lips.
You set me up. You didn’t want a truce. You used me as a diversion. You made me an accessory.
I waited quietly until she was spent, my back getting plenty tenderized.
Tentatively, I turned to face her and bowed my head. “I had to end it. There was no other way.”
“Yes, there was, dammit! I was about to make a truce.”
“We can’t trust Mota’s word.”
“How do you know? You didn’t even try.”
I looked into her blood-speckled face. “Some doubts can’t be left to chance.”
Exasperated, she rubbed her forehead with her free hand. Feeling the blood, she pulled her hand away. “Jesus.” She buried her face in her sleeve and tried to wipe it off. “You couldn’t do it, could you? Couldn’t give up your protection business like you promised. Now you’re eliminating your competition.”
“I gave the protection business away.”
“Bullshit.”
“I did. I gave it to Chicho’s bouncer. She and her sister are going to run it.”
Maggie aimed her gaze down at the bodies. A cloud of flies swirled about. The sound of chittering lizards came from the shadows, a four-legged army ready to feed. “Why didn’t you tell me what you were going to do?”
“You think you could’ve convinced them you were on the up-and-up if you’d known? Would you have even come?”
“I can’t believe you. I really can’t. What are you going to do with them?”
“Hide them under some scrap, come back in a few days after the flies and lizards pick them clean to collect the bones.”
She closed her eyes. “Christ.”
With nothing more to say, we stayed where we were, alone with our thoughts, me hoping she’d accept the decisions I’d made, hoping I hadn’t driven us permanently apart. The air hummed with flies. Squawking horns sounded from the street while sirens sang somewhere in the distance.
I built up the nerve to ask, “Are we okay?”
She kept quiet, seconds stretching by. Finally she spoke. “Are those sirens coming this way?”
twenty-six
M
Y
ears tuned into the whine of sirens. They couldn’t be coming for us.
Couldn’t be.
We were totally alone. Isolated in this condemned rooftop courtyard.
Yet they grew in strength, the walls echoing with their wail.
Maggie pulled out her phone. I dropped my rifle and nabbed the portable light, took off on a dead sprint, crossing the roof, running for the side that faced the street.
I sped past ventilation fans, weaved around piles of junk, skidded around a corner and up to the wall. I poked my head over, into the blare of sirens, the strobe of blue and red lights a mere block away.
I told myself they weren’t coming for us. They were coming for some other reason. Some kind of coincidence.