Resurrecting Midnight (15 page)

She hung up her phone. Laughed as she put it away. Then she looked at me.

She hadn’t called her father. She’d called Konstantin. That was her way of checking in after her job, letting him know she would be out of the country for a few days, with me.

By then, I had my iPhone out.

I said, “Checking on Powder Springs before we hit the air.”

“You get that DNA thing straightened out?”

“Not yet.”

“That boy. Steven.”

“I know.”

“You really should fix that. If he has been kidnapped . . . and I think he was.”

“I know. Something else happened.”

“What?”

I said, “The fuckers who worked with my old Detroit problem, they made contact.”

Her jaw tightened. She understood. “When?”

I told her the same things I had told Konstantin.

Hawks took a nervous breath. “Want to cancel this trip?”

“I was on the move for damn near a year. Was hunted like an animal.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m tired. I’m fucking tired. I’m not going Bin Laden. Not again.”

“And that means?”

“Just because somebody is after me, I’m not going to keep living in a fucking cave.”

She reached inside her backpack, took out an envelope. We had the back row to ourselves. I clicked on the overhead light and she opened the envelope. Photos. Personal information. I saw notes that had an address in the San Juan area. It was an assignment.

I said, “You have a job in Puerto Rico?”

“Two meetings in P.R. Couple more in other places.”

Hawks took out another set of photos. One was of a beautiful twenty-five-year-old model. The second, third, and fourth photos were of the same woman. Her face looked so deformed, so horrible, it shocked me. Both eyes blackened, face bruised, eyes swollen.

Hawks said, “Her ex did that to her. He’s a hockey player.”

“She called the cops?”

“She kept it out of the news. Lied about the situation.”

“Why would she cover for the man who beat her into the ground?”

“Didn’t want to ruin his career. Was in love. Who knows why she was so stupid.”

“Those are major injuries.”

“She had to sneak to Brazil and get plastic surgery because of that asshole.”

“I take it he paid for the reconstruction.”

“That he did. Put her on a private jet and got her out of the country.”

“Good way to get her out of the public.”

“And away from the paparazzi. She’s down there now.”

“So she has an alibi.”

“Domestic violence makes my blood boil. I would’ve put Tommy Lee and Ike Turner down. Would’ve found the asshole that abused Halle Berry and put a sharp blade in his heart, and I don’t care how young or famous or how well an asshole can sing or dance, that beautiful woman from the islands, if she had whispered the word, I would’ve done the work pro bono.”

She took those pictures away, showed me a different one, one less personal.

I said, “This guy, the actor. His ugly divorce has been dragging out in the news.”

“His wife has put a hit out on him. Not crazy about her, but it’s a job. She wants to modify the settlement with a bullet to her husband’s cranium. That’s how she plans to upgrade her lifestyle. Her stimulus package. Her six-figure divorce settlement isn’t enough. She wants one hundred percent. Greedy uneducated bitch. Hate greedy bitches too.”

“Nobody ever has enough money. The rich will never be rich enough.”

I reached over, took her hand.

She said, “We can cancel this.”

“I promised. Have to keep my promise.”

Hawks smiled. Then she closed her eyes. Put her head on my shoulder.

She had no idea how close this had been to not happening.

If Arizona hadn’t been . . . pregnant.

I rubbed my eyes. Rubbed away that vision, only to settle on a different memory.

My mind returned to the End of the World.

Saw frozen blood in the land of fire.

Capítulo 14

The Beast
closed his cell phone. “That fucking fuck Hopkins is fucking dead.”

Medianoche remained unfazed. “I assume it wasn’t natural causes.”

“Fucker fucked around and got blown the fuck up in fucking Miami.”

“Did he get the second half of the package?”

“Fuck no.”

“Now what?”

“We find the fuckers that took out Hopkins. My guess is they have the second half. If they don’t, my bet is they know where the second half is located.”

“We go to them?”

“Have to know where they are first. However they were being tracked, we need to get that information. We take it from there. Interesting position Hopkins has left us in.”

“Sitting on the golden egg.”

“Half the golden egg. And half is no good. Half gets us nothing.”

“Any word on other interested parties?”

“Three Russians were killed last night.”

“Where?”

“The
villa
where I left the package.”

“The Russians were tracking it.”

“It’s in a safe place. Five Russians arrived two hours after we left the package. Twenty minutes after that, three were dead and the other two were running for their lives.”

“Guess they didn’t run fast enough.”

“They weren’t faster than speeding bullets.”

Medianoche looked around the barrio. “Crowded out here.”

“Damn tourists from all over the world.”

“Only a few places in the world to go if you want to sit and wait and see everybody in the world. Times Square. Piccadilly Circus. Carnival in Brazil. And here. Everybody comes here.”

La Boca. The land of the blue-and-gold hooligans. Home of Boca Juniors. Colorful homes painted with leftover paint from boats in the nineteenth century. An area that was dangerous at night.

It was noon.

Daytime. Several blocks were safe. The area was filled with busloads of tourists dressed in sweaters and coats, some wearing gloves, droves of credit card holders buying soccer and tango memorabilia. Historic area, placards all over, dwellings painted in Crayola colors: reds and yellows and blues and purples and oranges, commercial buildings painted the same, cafés and restaurants, outdoor seating, each with a tango show. This sector was energetic, but along the edges of the historic barrio, the bay smelled of sewage, was filled with trash.

Señor Rodríguez and Señorita Raven stayed behind them. Not a part of their conversation. Both the señor and the señorita were in jeans and military-style boots; both held motorcycle helmets and carried backpacks. Most tourists had backpacks.

Hopkins had been blown to hell. Hopkins had had presidential-style security.

Medianoche tugged at his gloves and asked The Beast, “Any idea who the other party is?”

“If all goes as planned, we will know who the fuckers are within the next fucking hour.”

Medianoche nodded.

The Beast took a deep breath, looked at his watch, then said, “Let’s walk.”

Medianoche passed an armed policewoman, young and beautiful, gun inside a holster. Women and guns. The only real women left were the ones who wore dresses and danced the tango. Women with perfect hair. Makeup. Women who smiled, not hardened by disappointment and lies.

Things had changed overnight.

He had grown up in Los Angeles; inside the horseshoe-shaped Pacific Ring of Fire. He had lived in Baldwin Hills, before civil rights and the change in demographics. His family had lost everything when he was seven, when the Baldwin Hills aqueduct broke, that dam collapsing as the disaster was being shown live on television, broadcast by a helicopter on KTLA.

An unforgettable day. December 13, 1963.

More than 380 million gallons of water were sent crashing down a hillside, cars pushed down the streets a dozen at a time, current strong enough to rip away the walls and wash away their home, a home that had no insurance. The intersection of Coliseum and Cochran became a river. They lost more than a house and a ’57 Chevy that day. His mother, killed when she was swept into an excavation hole. He remembered the mud. All the goddamn mud.

Village Green was the hardest hit of the villages. The scavengers and looters, opportunists who took advantage of others’ misfortunes, they were there before the raging currents died. What the floods didn’t destroy, the looters stole.

They had stolen his toys. Three boys older than him by at least ten years. His mother was dead and fucking asshole looters had swum upstream and stolen his toys.

Twenty years later, Medianoche returned to Los Angeles. Went to visit the boys who had stolen his toys. Now grown men with families. Walked up to their doors. Knocked. And when they answered, he had killed them. Three houses. Three hits within a two-hour period.

He was a man who never let things go.

Medianoche moved at a hurried pace next to The Beast.

Then.

He saw Thelma.

The prostitute from North Carolina. The whore from Yerres. The woman who had cost him his eye. She was in the crowd. A dozen tourists with her. Medianoche regarded The Beast, was given permission to break formation and he hurried back to that swarm. To that woman.

She and her friends were speaking in French. Thelma was French.

His angry frown changed into a charismatic smile as he tapped her shoulder.

She turned and was startled. The ruggedness of his face. The patch over his eye.

That was a reaction to which he had grown accustomed.

He was startled as well. It wasn’t Thelma. She couldn’t be the same age now as she was twenty years ago. Perfect face on flawless skin. The flair of an actress from the period of French cinema known as
La Nouvelle Vague,
combined with the contemporary beauty of the French actress Emmanuelle Béart. Same thing he had seen when he first looked at Thelma’s face. The first time he had seen her was at Montego Bay. The last time was in Charlotte.

A whore who had moved around like a gypsy. Like she was running from her past.

He spoke to her in French,
“You are . . . very beautiful.”

A Turkish name.

He said,
“You’re French.”

She laughed. That jovial smile made her the duplicate of the whore from Yerres.

He told her, “Enjoy La Boca.
”

He hurried back, his handmade double-stitched Turpin shoes moving over cobblestone, the crisp air chilling his tailor-made clothing as he found his place next to The Beast.

The Beast asked, “What was that all about?”

“Mistaken identity on my part.”

“Who did you think she was?”

“A French whore.”

“That’s vague.”

“The one from North Carolina.”

“From Charlotte?”

“Yeah. Bitch that ambushed me with that kid.”

“She’d be the same age now that she was then? Impossible.”

He adjusted his eye patch. “Anything is possible. When a man comes back from the dead, anything is possible.”

“All the diseases. She’s probably dead. And that kid, that whore’s son is probably dead too. If not, he’s somewhere locked up. Or an addict. But I’m betting on dead twice over.”

“You’re optimistic.”

The Beast nodded. “Do you remember everything that happened in North Carolina?”

“Not everything.”

The Beast touched his shoulder. “Watch out for the dog shit.”

“Why don’t they clean up behind their dogs?”

“They tried to pass a fucking law. Fuckers rebelled.”

“I understand the women marching for abortions, the protests against Brazil, the protests against the paper plant in Uruguay, understand blocking the bridge and the port, the farmers demanding a better deal. Hell, they’re even protesting a part of Avenida Pueyrredón becoming a two-way street, but who in hell rebels against cleaning up dog shit?”

They passed a man painted in silver and standing like a statue, tip bucket at his feet.

Medianoche said, “Is it time?”

“Close enough. Fuckers better be the fuck on time.”

The Beast nodded at Señorita Raven. She reached inside her pocket, took out an iPod. Put the earphones on, clipped it to her waist. Señor Rodríguez reached inside his back pocket and took out a paperback novel. Ray Bradbury.
Now and Forever.
Carried it in his left hand.

Colorful banners hung over a crowded cobblestone boulevard, CENTRO CULTURAL DE LOS ARTISTAS, a narrow bumpy road packed with tables for two or four, soft-back folding chairs with beer logos, and colorful umbrellas over each setup, the road about as wide as two European cars. Bright blues. Brighter reds. Brightest yellows. The tables were as vibrant as the buildings.
Porteño
couples danced the tango on raised platforms, performed in front of every café. Wooden seats filled the roads in the area where the Argentineans said the tango was invented.

La Rueda de Caminito. Mustard-colored café. Pictures of tango dancers over the doorframe. Outside seating. Three-piece band. Spanish guitars. Keyboardist. An Argentinean playing the German instrument called the
bandoneón.
A live tango show. Every table filled with tourists eating beef, pastas, cold cuts, and spinach.