Down Among the Dead Men (A Thriller) (35 page)

Beth nodded but wasn’t sure if he saw her.

“Come closer,” he said.

Beth hesitated, then readjusted her body, doing as she was told, and he reached back, ripping the tape away. She let out a long breath, then immediately backed away from him, returning her head to the armrest.

“What about my wrists?”

She was lying on top of them and her hands were starting to go numb.

“Not yet,” he said. “But soon.”

“Can’t you at least cover me?”

“I wasn’t expecting you to be like this, so I am afraid I have no way of granting such a request. You can thank La Santisima for the heat.”

“Don’t you have a blanket in the trunk or something?”

“No,” he said. “But there is no reason to be ashamed of your body, Beth. As I’ve said many times, you are a beautiful woman.”

“You disgust me.”

“There is little I can do about that at the moment. But it will change. I promise.”

They drove in silence for a while, Beth quietly working on the rope around her wrists, trying desperately to loosen it. But he’d tied it too tight, and she wasn’t having much success.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked.

“Back home, of course. Where you belong.”

“What do you mean? I’ve been there before?”

“Ahhh, yes. We have many memories together.” He paused. Shrugged. “Well…
I
have many memories. What happened to you is unfortunate. But those who sin against La Santisima rarely go unpunished.”

“What do I have to do with La Santisima?”

“Much more than you know. You are a child of the Holy Mother.”

“Oh? And what about Jen? Is she a child of the Holy Mother, too?”

“We all are,” Rafael said.

“Where is she? What did you do to her?”

He paused again. “We’ll save that question for another time.”

He was silent for a moment, and Beth stared at his face in the rearview mirror. The entire right side was a mess of mottled, blistery flesh.

He caught her looking at him.

“You must be wondering how this happened. The last you remember of me is our encounter in Playa Azul.”

“How do you know that? How could you possibly know what I remember?”

He smiled. “There is someone in your life, Beth, who is not who he seems to be. He has been apprising us of your progress—although not quite as faithfully as I had hoped.”

“Who? Dr. Stanley?”

He laughed softly. “Your doctor knows nothing about us. No one at the hospital does.”

“Then who?”

Rafael said nothing, letting her turn the question in her mind.

Then it hit her. There was only other person she’d had contact with since the shooting, besides the police.

“Oh my God,” she said. “Peter?”

“He has been working with us for quite some time now. Long before you and I met. He has managed to facilitate many of our business transactions, while diverting attention away from us. At a price, of course. He is a valuable asset.”

“I don’t believe you,” Beth said. “Peter may be a lot of things, but he’d never get involved with people like you.”

“You think you know him, do you?”

“I was married to him for nearly four years.”

“Then you must know that he was sleeping with your sister.”

83

I
T TOOK BETH
several moments and a considerable amount of effort to recover from Rafael’s bombshell. What helped her was to allow herself to slip into a state of complete denial.

“Bullshit,” she said. “Jen would never do that to me.”

“Jen is a creature of impulse, Beth. You know that better than anyone.”

He was right, but Beth refused to believe that her sister would betray her like that. It was true that Jen didn’t seem to care much about who she slept with, as long as she got the rewards, but there’s no way she would have taken on Peter. He was off-limits.

But then, the concept of off-limits wasn’t one that Jen truly understood, was it? She’d proven that more than once, like the night she’d flirted shamelessly with the newlywed, right in front of his wife.

Could Rafael be telling the truth?

Was Jen the woman Peter had been cheating with? The reason for their divorce?

As if he were reading her mind, Rafael said, “It’s a sad, unfortunate tale, Beth. But it goes well beyond an unfaithful husband and a sister’s betrayal.”

“I don’t understand.”

“How do you think Marta and I met you? Do you think it was an accident?”

“No,” Beth said. “I think you and your little fuck buddy were on board that ship trolling for victims. You saw us in the restaurant and liked what you saw.”

“Yes,” Rafael told her. “We did like what we saw. But we met Jennifer long before that cruise.”

That didn’t make any sense.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I told you, Beth. Your ex-husband and La Santa Muerte have long had a business relationship. A little over a year ago, Marta and I were visiting Los Angeles and we held a private party for our friends. A way to say thank you for their service to La Santisima.”

“What does this have to do with Jen?”

“Your sister was Peter’s guest at the party, and quite a popular one at that—with both the men
and
the women.”

“Shut up, you disgusting pig.”

“I know this is painful for you, but I think it is important that you know the truth.”

Yes, Beth thought. The truth. Not these horrible lies.

She tried again to work the rope free but still couldn’t get it to budge.

“Marta took quite a liking to your sister that night. But Jennifer was so high on alcohol and drugs, I doubt if she remembered either of us. Marta, however, did not forget. And when Peter later found himself in a bit of…difficulty…Marta offered him a tempting solution.”

“What kind of difficulty?”

“He fathered your sister’s child.”

Beth felt her skin go cold; her mind was suddenly crowded by the image of the baby smiling up at her.

Jen’s baby.

Peter’s
baby?

“Andy,” she said, almost involuntarily.

“Yes,” Rafael said, sounding surprised. “You remember him?”

“Only a face. A face and the name.”

“Unfortunately for Jennifer, Peter had no interest in being a father. Especially out of wedlock. Especially when he was trying to win back his ex-wife.”

Beth remembered all the phone calls from Peter in the wake of the divorce, begging for her to take him back. The excuses to see her at the office. But she had rebuffed his advances every time. She’d been hurt enough, and she wasn’t interested in giving him a chance to hurt her again.

“I still don’t understand,” she said. “What does any of this have to do with us meeting you and Marta on that cruise?”

“The whole thing was prearranged. Peter booked passage for Jennifer and her guest as a gift to her. A chance for her to get away and think about the pregnancy. But what she didn’t know was that
she
was the gift. To
us.
”

“He was setting us up?”

“Not you,” Rafael said. “He was not expecting you to be her guest.”

That’s right, Beth thought. She’d been a last-minute substitute when Jen’s best friend, Debbie, flaked out.

“Yet there you were, sitting in that restaurant, then later, standing at the ship’s rail. And I knew I had to have you.”

Beth felt a ball of bile lodge in her throat. The thought that she’d let this guy even come close to her made her want to projectile vomit.

“But Marta wouldn’t hear of it,” Rafael continued. “You were not part of the deal.”

“That’s what you two were arguing about in the bar.”

Rafael nodded. “When Peter found out you would be there, he made a personal appeal to El Santo that you be left alone.”

“But you didn’t listen.”

“I tried, my darling. And despite your rudeness toward me when I saw you sitting in that café in Playa Azul, it was very difficult to walk away.”

“How flattering. And Jen?”

“We had already taken her by then. But before the day was done, my prayer to La Santisima was answered. And we took you as well. Just as you were leaving the police station.”

“But why? Weren’t you disobeying a direct order from your precious El Santo?”

“Yes,” Rafael said. “And that is why I have
this
.” He gestured to his ravaged face. “An offer of flesh as penance for my sins.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

“Oh no, my darling. We call it a cleansing. It is quite painful—but without pain there is no glory before God. You will see.”

Beth stared at his face in the rearview mirror again and renewed her effort to loosen the rope, a deep, dark well of dread bubbling in her intestines.

She had to get the hell out of this car.

84

V
ARGAS COULD BARELY
contain himself. “Come on, Ortiz, we’re wasting time. We have to get moving.”

He was standing in Ortiz’s toolshed, looking down the steps into the hidey-hole. Ortiz was moving around down there and taking forever.

“If we’re going to kill a man,
pocho,
we’ll need the right tools to do it. And not that popgun you bought from me.”

“All right, fine, just hurry it up.”

A moment later Ortiz climbed up the steps carrying an armload of weapons, then dumped them onto a workbench.

“A couple of these should do the trick.”

Vargas looked down at them, a variety of handguns, the makes and models of which he couldn’t even name.

“Pick your poison. But I got dibs on the SIG.”

It was a classic case of overkill. They already had the Tomcat and the gun Mr. Blister had left on the hotel room floor, and Vargas just wanted to get on the road.

He grabbed a handgun and stuffed it in his belt. “All right, you happy now? Let’s go.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Ortiz said. “Don’t you think we’d better talk about where we’re going, first?”

“I told you, Ciudad de Almas.”

Ortiz picked up the SIG. “That’s an all-night drive and then some,
amigo
. How do you know that’s where he’s taking her?”

“I don’t. But it’s all I’ve got.”

“This is where you say the dead nuns came from, right? From the church there?”

“Right,” Vargas said. “Iglesia del Sagrado Corazón. But we can talk about all this on the road. We’re wasting time.”

“That’s another problem,
amigo
.”

“What?”

He nodded toward the taxi, which was parked in the drive. The side mirror was history, but the car itself was still in pretty good shape.

“That spare tire we put on is one of those temporary things. It won’t last all the way to Ciudad de Almas.”

They’d thrown the spare on as quickly as possible, wanting to get away from the hotel before the police showed up. No way they’d be able to pass off the gunshots as pre-festival fireworks, and involving the Mexican cops in this thing was a recipe for disaster.

When Vargas had tried to retrieve his Corolla from the parking lot, he’d discovered the tires had been slashed. Courtesy of Mr. Blister, no doubt.

“Christ,” Vargas said. “What about one of your friends? Don’t they have cars?”

“My friends find out we’re fucking around with La Santa Muerte, they’ll shoot us just to be merciful. So I wouldn’t count on them.”

“Then what the hell are we supposed to do?”

Ortiz thought about it a moment, then an idea struck and his eyes lit up.

“We’re about to go where no man has dared to tread,
amigo
.”

“What do you mean?”

Ortiz gestured. “Come over here; let me show you something.”

They crossed the yard to a small garage at the end of the driveway. Glancing around, Ortiz grabbed hold of the handle and yanked on it, rolling the door open.

Inside was a sight to behold: a pristine black 1970 Plymouth Barracuda with a monster Hemi-head engine.

“Jesus Christ, Ortiz, how long have you been hiding this thing?”

“I haven’t been,
pocho.
This is Yolanda’s ride.”

85

D
ESPITE ALL OF
Rafael’s talk and all of his revelations about Peter and Jen and Marta and their sordid little orgy in the name of God and La Santisima, Beth still had a giant blank spot where the last ten months should have been.