Deadly Lullaby (25 page)

I say, “I respect you, Phan. You're tough. So, I'm not going to humiliate you by cutting you or beating on you. Instead, I'm going to give you an honorable way out. If you don't talk, I'll kill you clean. I'll shoot you.”

His eye muscles jerk involuntarily—otherwise, no reaction.

“You don't believe me. You're used to dealing with cops who actually hear you when you assert your right to remain silent, who actually follow the rules. In this case, as far as I'm concerned, there are no rules.”

He flushes; he breathes heavier.

“Okay, Phan, have it your way.” Sighing, heaving myself off the couch to stand before him so he can see every move I make, I remove the .38 Chief's Special snub nose from my waistband—the weapon I took from Latzo two days ago. I take dead aim at his head, cock the hammer, then at the last instant fire a round into the cushion by his leg.

The concussion fills the room, stuffing and dust erupt, bits and pieces of it cascading on Phan's head like yellow snow. “Mudda
fuck,
” he says, his eyes saucers.

“Fuckin' loud, wasn't it? Now, watch this, Phan,” I say, and flick open the cylinder, dump the five shells in my hand, and replace the one I dotted on the primer with a felt-tip marker. I give the cylinder a twirl, palm it shut, put the barrel to his forehead and cock the hammer.

Another flinch.

“We're going to play a game, Phan. This pistol holds five thirty-eight-caliber bullets—hollow points, dumdums, rounds that will take off most of your head. Now it's loaded with only one. The game is I ask you a question, you give me an answer. The first time you
don't
give me an answer, you have a one-in-five chance of getting your head blown apart. The next time, one-in-four, and so on and so forth. Do the math in your head, if you're capable. If you're lucky, you'll live to give me four nonresponses. Then you're guaranteed to be dead. Do you understand the game?”

Sweat pops on his brow, no other response.

I pull the trigger.

“Fuck!” His body jerks; his eyes bug.

I chuckle. “Didn't expect that, did you, Phan? See, the rules of the game require you to answer any question I ask you, no matter how trivial. Don't worry, I won't fuck with you like that again.” I cock the hammer. “Here's a real question: Who hired you and Vannak to kill Taquan Oliver?”

He clamps his eyes shut, his face reddens, he presses his lips together so hard the blood drains from them.

No response.

I pull the trigger.

“Aieee.”
Snot flies from his nose. Piss darkens the front of his cargo shorts. He weeps.

I cock the hammer.

“Two down, Phan. You've got balls, man, not to mention luck. The last guy I played this game with lost after question number two. And, man, it was a real fuckin' mess….Now, let's go for number three: Who hired you and Vannak to kill Taquan Oliver?”

His face is beet red, clenched tighter than a bare-knuckler's fist. His lips tremble. Blood pours from the corner of his mouth in such volume that you have to figure he's bitten off a chunk of his tongue.

No response.

“Is that your final answer?”

I pull the trigger.

He sobs, chokes, collapses on his side, his head going
thunk
on the arm of the couch. His bowels release in a succession of wet farts.

God, the smell…

I grab his hair and pull him upright, put the pistol to his temple. “Congratulations, Phan! You've gone where no man has gone before! No matter what happens during the next round, you can be proud. When you're gone, I'm gonna tell your Boyz how brave you were. They'll have T-shirts made in your honor with your picture on it. Won't that be cool, man, huh? Now, your chances are fifty-fifty, Phan. Do you want to go for broke?”

I cock the hammer, and his body responds by making clicking and snapping sounds from the tremors, like muscle and tendon separating from bone. Jesus, he might be having a seizure.

“All right, Phan, here goes, pal. My money's on you. I'm betting these are the last words you'll ever hear: Who hired you and Vannak to kill Taquan Oliver?”

He upchucks bloody puke, coughs, gasps, weeps, chants Vietnamese gibberish that sounds like a prayer.

“C'mon, Phan, you got an even money chance now. Who hired you?”

His eyes roll back in his head, and before I pull the trigger he rolls forward off the couch and onto the floor, out cold.

Fuck.

I remove the cuffs and leave his ass where it lies.

While waiting for confirmation of the wire transactions, I cannot help but study the picture on Ovando's desk, a family picture. The picture is a spontaneous playground shot, and must have been taken some time ago, because Ovando appears in it without a mustache. He has two kids, the youngest one having the slanted eyes and flat face of a mongoloid, and an okay-looking blonde wife. Ovando is hugging the retarded kid close, beaming, apparently as proud of him as he is of his normal kid, a handsome lad not quite in his teens.

Ovando is staring up at me, hard, his trembling hands folded over the keyboard, face pale and damp, eyes teary. “That's my family,” he says, his voice cracking. “I stole the money for little José there”—gesturing at the mongoloid—“to provide for his special needs. Do you understand that?”

This makes me feel lower than rat shit in a sewer drain. All I can say is, “Everything's going to be fine, Errol.”

This has no effect on him.

“José can't make it without me,” he croaks. “None of them can. I'm their sole provider.”

Jesus. “Soon as Carmelita confirms everything,” I say, “you are going to be okay. No worries.”

These statements do not seem as untrue to me as they were minutes before.

Ovando gulps from the highball glass on the desk and coughs. “
¡Dios mío!
If only you weren't lying to me, I would be so happy,” he says and hangs his head, tears plopping on the keyboard like the first drops of a spring rain. “For my kids,” he says. “They so need me, especially little José.” The tears flowing, he returns to mumbling his Act of Contrition.

This pleading is really getting to me, and I begin to think of a way I can let him go free without me getting whacked in the process. There is only one way this will work, and it totally depends on Ovando's trustworthiness. This is my last job, ever, and I decide to trust him for the sake of his family, for the sake of his retarded kid.

“All right, Errol,” I say. “Listen. I am not bullshitting you, all right?”

He looks up at me, hope gleaming through the tears in his eyes.

“Errol, If you promise to leave the country and never—”

My stream of thought is interrupted when I glance down and see a picture at my feet I have yet to notice, a picture Chief must have knocked off when he dragged Ovando across the desk. The picture is of Ovando dressed in a suit. Posed with another man in an identical suit, a man identical to Ovando in every respect—identical, that is, except for the mustache. The other man is clean-shaven. I reach down for the framed picture, study it, and compare the clean-shaven guy to the guy in the family picture. Displaying it to Ovando, pointing at the guy without the mustache, I say, “You have a twin brother.”

He turns his head away, clears his throat.

“And the wife, the kids, they are
his
kids, not yours.”

Caught like a bad fucking cold, he flushes scarlet.

Jesus, the depths to which mooks will stoop to save their pitiful lives never cease to disgust me.

I grab his collar and pull his face to mine. “You scum, using a retarded kid as a ruse to gain my sympathy. You should be a-
shamed.
”

“Ahh, fuck you,” he says. “I'm not gonna beg any—”

He jerks his eyes to my cellphone when it vibrates.

I palm his face and shove him roughly away.

Snarling at him, I flip the phone open: an exclamation-pointed dollar sign from Carmelita.

I say to Ovando, “You ought'a be glad the Alvarez transfers cleared. If they had not, I would have Chief—”

Another vibration: a text from my Cayman guy, a smiley face.

A smiley face?

“My fee cleared, Errol,” I say, place my cellphone in my back pocket and step behind him, withdraw the .22 revolver from my belt, one fitted with a suppressor, a cheapo Savage that Chief picked up for me on the black market.

I had to dump the Kel-Tec I used on Jimmy Coyle yesterday—a real pity.

I take dead aim at the back of his head. “We are leaving now, Errol, you asshole. Goodbye.”

To my surprise, he whips around in his chair, his face twisted in anger and grief. “I'm not gonna let you off that easy. You're gonna have to look me in the eye, you sonofabitch you, you fuckin' cocksucker you, you mother—”

“You are not making this hard on me, Errol.”

The recoil is practically imperceptible, the sound practically inaudible, a mere whisper of death.

“Damn,” Chief says, mopping his forehead with a hanky, “that guy knows how to make an exit.”

I lower the pistol, feeling nothing for Ovando, feeling nothing but relief for myself: my retirement has now officially started. Smiling, I think now all I have to do is help Chief load the corpse into the van in back, climb inside and—

My cellphone vibrates again.

Sighing, I withdraw it from my breast pocket, check the display.

From Carmelita: Three exclamation points on the display screen—a warning.

Trouble outside.

Carmelita speaks to me through her phone in a panicked whisper: “One of Ovando's
cuates
just parked outside in a moving van. He is walking to the door, man, the fucking
door.
”

Shit.

“Get rid of him.”

“How?”

“Give me a minute to think,” I say, reeling from a spasm of electricity that just arced between my eyes. Recovering quickly because there is no other choice but to, I hustle out of Ovando's office and say to Chief, “
Carmelita
is on the phone. We, uh, have an issue,” stop, turn to him and say, “One of Ovando's friends just got here.”

“Babe.”
He looks as if he has been stricken by a diarrhea cramp.

Using both hands to pat down the air in front of me, I say, “Relax. While I talk to her, you get Ovando rolled up in the carpet and clean up any blood. The spic is out front, so I'll have Carmelita distract him while we load Ovando in the van and split.”

This seems to ease his mind and he sets to work, moving fast.

In the lobby, I take cleansing breaths and count to five before saying to Carmelita, “Do not panic. Do you know this man?”

She breathes audibly. “Yes. Pablo. Errol says he grew up with him. He comes by once in a while.”

“Thanks for telling me that in advance, Jesus.”

“He always comes after hours, never at this time,
never
.”

I rub my lower jaw, then massage the back of my neck. “All right, look, you have to get out of your car and approach him. Tell him Ovando is gone for the day.”

The doorknob on the front door jiggles; this is followed by a knock. The blinds on the door are pulled down, but a shadow dances underneath the sides and corners.

Christ.

“No!” she says. “Mr. Alvarez said my job was to warn you,
ese,
if danger appeared outside. That is all I agreed to do. Pablo may learn what has happened and hurt me. He is a very bad man and always carries a gun. Errol likes to brag about how tough Pablo is, his
cholo.
I confirmed it on the computer. He has a record, and is wanted in Canada for murder.”

“Did you tell Alvarez this? He told me Ovando had no associates to be concerned about.”

“…”

God
damn.
“All right, forget it. I will deal with Alvarez. Just listen and listen close, you
have
to help. Just get out of your car, walk up to him, and—”

Another knock, sharper this time, more urgent. Then a voice. “Errol, man, we're here, Holmes, open up! Let's get to it!”

We
are here?

“No!” she says. “Errol must have told him to meet him. If I tell him he is not here, he will want me to let him inside to wait.”

I mull this over. “All we need is three minutes to load the van in back. Just—”

“Wait! An SUV just pulled to the curb and the driver leaned out to talk to Pablo.” A pause, then Carmelita shrieks.

“What is wrong now?”

“The cholo in the SUV is a friend of Pablo's. He is driving into the alley now!”

“How many men in the SUV?”

“One.”

A total of two men now.

I massage my neck in earnest. “All right, please get out of your car and approach Pablo. Tell him Errol will be back any minute, unlock the front door for him, and ask him to have a seat. Then, after you leave, me and my friend will take care of Pablo first, then the guy in the SUV out back.”

“Both of them? What if you fail? Then they will come after me, will kill
me.
No, I am leaving town now. You are on your own.”

“You are panicking. Think straight, will you? They do not know that you and me are—”

Click.

Fuck.

I call her again and she does not answer.

“Errol, maaan, whatchu doin' in there, givin' it to Carmelita on the desk, uh?” The voice from the front door again, followed by a laugh and a, “Car-me-li-taaaa, ho ho…”

Chief sticks his big head out of the office door. You would have to describe his expression as
freaked.
“I almost get fuckin' Ovando ready to go and look out the fuckin' back window and see a fuckin' Cherokee parked behind our fuckin'
van.
”

There is pounding at the back door.

Ovando's cellphone begins to chirp and vibrate on his desk.

To Chief, I say, “Enough with the
fuckin'
this and the
fuckin'
that already. We can handle the situation, Chief. All we need to do is stay calm.”

“A walk in the fuckin' park, huh? Like shootin' ducks in a fuckin' barrel, huh?”

“You,” I say, pointing my finger at him for emphasis, “
you
are very close to losing your job,” and step out into the lobby to call Alvarez, to convince him that
he
has to convince Carmelita to come back here to coax these guys inside.

Alvarez's phone no sooner starts to ring when a stark realization freckles sweat on my brow: Barack Obama will snort coke in a televised press conference before Alvarez will answer my call. Why should he help me? He already has almost all his money, and the only thing left for us to split is the cash Ovando stashed in the carrying case in the vault—a hundred grand or so, and Alvarez can leave fifty grand on the table as easily as he can leave an unfinished drink at a bar. And what can I do to him for stranding me? I have no idea where he lives. Hell, for all I know Alvarez may not even be his real name.

No answer, no voicemail.

No surprise.

Options?

“Chief?” I say.

“Come here,” he says, his voice practically at my back.

Chief sits at the reception desk outside Ovando's office, Carmelita's desk, fiddling with the controls of the CCTV next to the desktop computer. “The guy out front's gone,” he says, pointing at the screen, which now shows the front bank entrance.

“You sure?”

He shakes his head, irritated, then nods it at the screen. “Do
you
fuckin' see him?”

“Switch to the back door view to see if the guy in the SUV's still there.”

“Yeah, if he's gone, we split.”

“Even if he
is
still there, we go ahead and let him through the back door, clip him, load up the bodies, then drive out the other end of the alley.”

His face gets that distinct
Oh, shit
cast to it. “Uhhh…”

“What?”

“We, uh, can't drive out the other end. It's blocked.”

“Blocked by
what
?”

He gulps. “I looked around the corner before I came in the back door, you know, lookin' for other cameras like you said to? There ain't no cameras out there other than the bank's, but there's a public works truck there at the other end of the alley and the ground's all dug up. Sewer's on the blink or somethin', I dunno, I didn't—”

“And you are just telling me this
now
because…?”

“You said to tell you if there was other cameras out there! You didn't say nothin' about—”

“I did not tell you to take a shit this morning, either, did I? Or to—”

I pause to take measured breaths—a hyperventilation-prevention measure—finally saying, “Flip the screen to the alley.”

He toggles the View button once, twice, and a black-and-white view of the alley appears.

“Shit,” Chief says.

“Shit is right.” The guy out back is gone, but, naturally, the Cherokee is still there. “Switch cameras, see if there is a view of the parking lot. Maybe they left in one car.”

He toggles the View toggle once and the walkway to the left of the bank appears.

Nothing.

Clicks it again and a view of the parking lot appears.

Pablo and his buddy, both Latinos, are standing next to the driver's door of a moving van, talking with their hands and smoking. Pablo is short and trim with an '80s shag haircut and Pancho Villa mustache, jeans and jean jacket. The one whose name I do not know is fortyish, about my height and build, with hair combed back like mine, jeans and sport coat not unlike mine. Both wear shades. Both are animated. Not quite arguing, but discussing something urgently.

Chief repeats himself by saying “Shit,” except this time he pounds the desktop with his fist, leans back, and crosses his arms in a huff.

Still looking at the screen, focusing on the moving van, I say, “Ovando, the cheap sonofabitch, must have planned to move all this ratty furniture out and sell it.”

The guy who resembles me drops his smoke to the pavement, nodding as he toes it out, stands by the passenger door as he fires up another one.

Senor Mustache opens the driver's door and climbs in.

“Leave, motherfuckers,” Chief says. “Just drive away.”

“Yeah, if they leave, I will hot-wire the Cherokee and move it out of your way.”

“Hey, do it now, Babe, while they're out front.”

I study the screen and realize my worst fears. “They are parked at the end, where they can see the Cherokee back out. And the guy with the sport coat is keeping an eye on the bank. They see us and we will have a shoot-out on our hands.”

Back to the screen.

Senor Mustache is in the driver's seat of the van, a cellphone to his ear.

Ovando's cellphone chirps and vibrates on his desk again.

“Hey, Errol,” Chief says to the rolled and duct-taped Persian carpet on the floor, “answer your phone, dumbass. Tell your buddies to join you across town for a beer.”

It rings two more times and stops.

“Maybe they will leave now.”

“Yeah, the pricks didn't climb back in the van for nothin'.”

The parking lights on the side of the truck light up, indicating Senor Mustache just ignitioned the motor. He looks down at the cellphone in the palm of his hand, punches in a number, and puts the phone back to his ear.

“Who the fuck's he callin' now?”

Senor Mustache is talking urgently on his cellphone.

He clicks off the phone and the truck remains parked.

We look at each other.

“He's calling reinforcements,” Chief says. “Either the cops or more spics.”

“I hope he is calling spics. Spics we can handle, cops…”

“We better call somebody, too. Call Tarasov, Joe, whatever…”

I say, “No, the spics will resist them when they get here and this shopping center will be like a nuclear bomb hit it. Then cops will show and—”

I interrupt myself to think.

Cops,
I am thinking…
cops
…or, more accurately,
cop.

“Babe? What are you thinking?”

“I am thinking, Chief, that before we exercise the nuclear option, there is another idea we should explore first.”