Shotgun asked, “How long will that take?”
“At least twenty-four hours.”
“Was a lot quicker getting down here than going back.”
I took out my iPhone. Wanted to pull up the cameras in Powder Springs.
There was no signal. That meant I couldn’t call them right now.
Catherine and I would have to talk about Medianoche, the man she knew as Midnight.
If she knew he was alive, she’d need to come clean.
If she didn’t know, she needed to be warned.
Konstantin asked, “You want to go back on board and say good-bye to Arizona?”
A few cold raindrops splattered against my wounded face as I looked back at the yacht.
Scamz was on deck, dressed in dark colors and a darker coat, looking down at us.
I’d gone to the End of the World and put his grandfather and uncle into the ground.
One day he might end up on my hit list. One day some sponsor might ring my phone because they had a contract on him. That day would be like Christmas morning.
I was my own man. I had my own name.
And I didn’t need to go back and look down on his woman.
I shook my head and told Konstantin I didn’t need to go say good-bye.
The nights I’d had with Arizona, she’d always left before sunrise.
She’d never said good-bye before she left me. Not even a kiss.
Arizona was with the man she had chosen in the end.
I’d been with her twice. He’d been with her the past year.
And a few hours ago, I’d said some harsh things. Things that couldn’t be unsaid.
So the ugly truth had been told, and every word had fallen on Arizona’s ears.
That was unprofessional. This was business.
She had already given me the information I needed.
I’d kept my promise to Scamz.
I was done.
Arizona had come up short on the con.
She had that problem, a dead brother at her side, and a wounded sister to worry about.
I needed to lead my team back home. That was my responsibility.
Three hired guns walked down the docks, all three of us limping in some way. We made our way through a laid-back city that had old street lanterns and cobblestone streets, some of the walls covered with beautiful flowers. The old cars made it seem like we had gone back in time. We passed women working at Whiskerías and Casas de Masajes, saw a few people smoking pot.
We moved deeper into an old city that was a mixture of Spanish and Portuguese.
There were old cannons, but there was no gunfire mixed with the rain that had begun to fall.
I’d jumped out of moving trains, fallen from buildings, been shot at with grenades.
Had battled the low-life scum of a man who might’ve had a hand in creating me.
My body felt it all. The waves of pain were unending.
Agony must’ve shown on my face, because Shotgun dug in his pocket and handed me another BC Powder. I nodded my thanks. He took one. Then passed a packet to Konstantin.
Not long after, we were on a crowded bus heading toward Montevideo.
I sat in the window, looked out at the rain, my mind on Catherine and the boys.
Hawks was on my mind too. I was glad she wasn’t swimming in this cesspool of danger.
The information Arizona had given me, I had already passed it on to Hawks. I had sent it to her as soon as it was given to me. She’d been in the background working for me.
Dark clouds shadowed every thought. This job was done, but I still had another two-point-five-million-dollar problem that had weight and its own rapidly approaching deadline.
I shared the same information I’d sent to Hawks with Konstantin.
He asked, “No word from her?”
“No word. Not yet.”
While Konstantin looked the information over, I had a long conversation with Shotgun.
He was in this fraternity now.
I told him what Konstantin already knew, told him about a man they had called Midnight.
I told him who Medianoche was. Or might be. I told him about that day in North Carolina.
I told him that Catherine used to be a whore named Thelma. I told him how we had lived on the run most of our lives. I told him I had gone to kill Catherine when she was Thelma, had wanted to kill the woman who taught me to kill, told him that I had gone to assassinate her more than once but never did. I told him about the DNA results that had been inside the FedEx box.
I told him how I got the name Gideon. I told him about a cold night in Detroit.
I told him who I really was. I told him the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Most of it was ugly.
The big man was left speechless.
Capítulo 49
el desaparecido
The Beast was no more.
The man with plenary power over The Four Horsemen was dead.
Gun in hand, Medianoche stood over his leader’s body. Half of The Beast’s face was gone. There would be no coma. There would be no coming back. There would be no lies.
They had been like brothers. So this ending was biblical in Medianoche’s eyes.
Señorita Raven remained across the apartment, unarmed, awaiting her fate.
Señorita Raven asked, “What just happened here?”
“He’s dead. You’re not. That’s all that matters.”
“Why did you kill him?”
“Because enemies should only be allowed to get so close.”
Señorita Raven looked at the gun in Medianoche’s hand. He saw her trying to decide if she could move fast enough to run inside her bedroom.
He saw her expression say that she didn’t stand a chance in hell.
She asked, “Now what? You’re going to kill me too?”
“I could kill you and throw your body out the window just to see it fall.”
That paused her. “Are you?”
“That depends on you.”
“What do you mean, depends on me?”
“Decide what you want to do. I’ll be back soon.”
“What are my options?”
“Be here or be gone. You can go back to East Saint Louis.”
“I’ll never go back to East Saint Louis.”
“Like I said, depends on you.”
She asked, “You’re going after the package?”
“That’s done. I’m leaving. Lot on my mind. Shit to do. And don’t follow me.”
“You killed The Beast.”
“He was about to kill you.”
“Is that why you killed him?”
Medianoche didn’t answer.
He told Señorita Raven, “If you stay on board, I have an assignment for you. But if you leave, I can give you another assignment. A final assignment. The pay will be doubled either way.”
“But I can stay.”
“You can stay.”
“If I stay, that makes me second in command.”
“It does.”
“And I get to help pick the next members.”
“You do. But I have final word.”
She paused. “Do I have to sleep with you?”
“You don’t have to.”
She nodded. “What is the assignment?”
“It’s a job in Montserrat. A woman named Gracelyn.”
“Your ex-wife. The one that broke your heart.”
“Do it however you want to do it. As long as it gets done.”
“What about The Beast and Draco?”
Medianoche looked down at his dead friend.
It was time for a changing of the guard.
Then he looked back at Señorita Raven.
He said, “Call the cleaner. Tell them there are two bodies. Have them cremated.”
“Sir, I want Señor Rodríguez’s body taken from the morgue. He’s in the morgue toe-tagged as a John Doe. We can say he was on the train and was an innocent bystander. I’ll go to the morgue. Nobody saw me on that train, so I’ll say I was his girlfriend and I will claim his body. One thing, sir. I want his body sent home to his family. And I want you to pay for it. He died saving your life, and I want you to show some goddamn appreciation and pay for it.”
“You one-eyed fuck.”
“What?”
“You usually end it with ‘you one-eyed fuck.’ ”
“Oh. Right. Well. Not this time. I got tired of saying that.”
“Good. Because I’m not in the mood.”
“Regardless of your mood, I want you to show some respect for a dead soldier.”
“I could put a hole in your head right now.”
“You could. But you won’t.”
Medianoche frowned at her. “You’ve got balls.”
“Big balls, sir. When it comes to looking after my comrades, gigantic balls. I looked after him. And I offered to look after you. But you took that the wrong way. You took it as a threat.”
He nodded. “Make it so. Go get him from the morgue. Ship him back to his family.”
“The three girls next door?”
“Send those whores home.”
“Can I throw money in their faces first?”
He stared at Señorita Raven.
He asked, “Can I trust you?”
“Depends. Can I trust you?”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“Don’t disrespect me.”
He nodded.
She did the same.
Until this mission was over, it would remain friends close, enemies closer.
He asked, “Anything else in his files I should know about?”
“Yeah.”
“What?”
Señorita Raven said, “She’s alive.”
“Who’s alive?”
“Thelma. She’s alive. The woman who got your eye shot out. She’s around.”
“Gideon said she died last year.”
“The Beast was in contact with her a few years ago.”
“You sure about that?”
“If I read his records properly, and he kept electronic journals, he saw her in Amsterdam somewhere between eight and eleven years ago. He saw her in Germany too. And based on his records, he was in contact with her when she was in London, by phone, then in contact with her about two months ago. So somebody’s lying. The Beast e-mailed her, but that e-mail address she used is no longer in use. Looks like he was protecting her. She was in Georgia.”
“Georgia? She’s alive and in Eurasia?”
“Not the country Georgia. The state in the Bible Belt section of the United States.”
“Big state. Which city?”
“The files didn’t say where. Just said she was in Georgia. And get this. The files said that Thelma had another son. A little boy named Sven.”
“The whore had another son.” Medianoche grunted. “Can’t blame that one on me.”
“She wouldn’t have to. It was The Beast’s kid.”
He looked down at his friend’s dead body. Lies had been told and the truth had been taken to the grave.
Medianoche said, “You sure he had a child with her?”
“One hundred percent.”
“In their communications, what was said about me?”
“No chatter about you at all. Based on what I read, she thinks you’re dead.”
A lot was known, but a lot was missing.
Medianoche told Señorita Raven, “I want you to go through all of his files.”
“I can’t. After he knew I had hijacked his Wi-Fi and peeped inside the files, he deleted everything, then ran a program that writes meaningless shit over the memory a thousand times. My guess was he had Draco do that. The Beast wasn’t computer literate. I guess when I lost it on the elevator and said that I’d read some files, he became paranoid and erased everything. He erased before I told him about the Wi-Fi hijacking. If the files were transferred to some other location, I don’t know. But I’m sure he did transfer the files somewhere.”
“That’s why he wanted you dead.”
“You knew he wanted me dead.”
“I knew.”
“How long did you know?”
“Long enough.” He looked at her. “Call the cleaner. Have the bodies burned.”
“What about the ashes?”
“Walk the streets and sprinkle their ashes on the dog shit, for all I care.”
Medianoche took to the elevator. Pushed the button.
Señorita Raven stuck her head out in the hallway.
She said, “Sir?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I at least get an apology?”
“I didn’t rape you.”
“For throwing the money in my face. That really hurt my feelings. That hurt me more than anything that happened after. I’ve put my life on the line for many men. Over and over.”
Medianoche nodded. “I apologize.”
“Apology accepted.”
Then he walked onto the elevator. As it descended, he thought about Gideon. The sonofawhore and the whore were out there.
It hadn’t ended.
It was only beginning.
Meidanoche took the crowded subte.
He rode the B line to Leandro N. Alem, the end of the line in that direction.
He made his way to the escalator, passed by kiosks with vendors selling scarves, came out at Luna Park. The rain had stopped. He walked through a crowd of Muslims, Jews, Catholics, and atheists who were marching in protest, all waving signs that read
BASTA DE INSEGURIDAD
.
He hurried toward the Santillana Group Building.
The Four Horsemen had failed. Faulty leadership was to blame.
He would have to build a better, stronger group.
Medianoche held a cup of coffee in his hand.
He went inside the building, found his way to an office on the twentieth floor, and handed the coffee to an old businessman, an old man who had helped thirty thousand people vanish.
An hour later, Medianoche was walking inside Galerías Pacífico. It was one of Buenos Aires’ plushest downtown malls. It had also been the site of an abandoned torture center, the truth uncovered accidentally during a movie shoot. Tiffany’s, Polo Ralph Lauren, Christian Lacroix, and hundreds of other stores stood sparkling on the wretched ground where the First Army Corps had imprisoned people in the bowels of the mall. Down below all the fine shopping, the prison walls had been marked with the final desperate words carved by its dying prisoners.