Spiral (25 page)

Therefore he could not have agreed more with what Benigo Gamboa said next.

The old man abruptly stopped his hand in midsweep and pressed the open palm on the glossy surface of the desk. When he lifted it, there was, for a moment, a moist spectral print of his splayed fingers which gradually evaporated in the dry, climate-controlled atmosphere of the room. I don't give a fuck how you do it, Lucas," Gamboa said, looking up and into the darkness between him and Negrete. "I don't care if you have to pull their nuts out through their nostrils, but I do not want these
tecos
to make another run at me. Let them know how it is." He paused. "Every time you get your hands on somebody connected to them, kill him.
Con venganza.
I want to eat this owl bite by bite," he said, crimping the fingers on one hand and snapping it closed, opening it slowly and snapping it closed again, as he spoke. "And I want him to watch me taking every mouthful. I want him to know what it feels like to be eaten alive, watching my mouth closing on him, from his asshole all the way up to his fucking head.

Chapter 25

H
E
was not aware of having actually awakened, for the night had afforded very little sleep. Rather, he simply opened his eyes and looked up at the morning light burning on the sienna wood of the bed posters, felt the eddying breeze of the ceiling fan, and was thankful the dreaming was over. In the wakeful moments of life, at least, he was allowed a sense of transition from one experience to another. The night world had been unmerciful, hurtling him from one perception to another in a never ceasing, never slowing succession of phantasms. As he lay there, his single overriding emotion was that of relief at seeing the morning sun.

Nina was not in bed. His watch said eight-forty. He threw off the sheet and went into the bathroom to wash his face and brush his teeth. Coming out, he grabbed his light cotton robe off the foot of the bed and started down the stairs. He smelled breakfast before he was halfway down, and he hurried through the dining room to the kitchen, where he found Gabriela squeezing oranges.

"Buenos diasT
she said, wiping her hands on a towel and reaching for the coffeepot. "Coffee?" She looked at him and frowned appraisingly as she poured the dark Colombian brew into his cup. "You don' look like you slept too good," she said.

"I didn't." He pulled the cup and saucer toward him across the massive butcher block they used as a work table in the middle of the kitchen. "Where's Nina?"

"On the terrace. You ready to eat? We got
migas."

"Has Nina eaten?" He poured cream into his coffee, stirring until it was the right color.

Gabriela shook her head. "Jus' coffee, tha's all. She wass gonna wait for you. You ready?"

"Sure," Haydon said. "How about you?" "I've already eaten, twise," Gabriela said, grinning. "I'm no lazybones."

Haydon took his cup through the sunroom and out onto the terrace, where Nina was sitting in the webby shade of a flamboyana. The two morning newspapers were sitting on the table, but Nina was again reading her book, her bare feet propped in another chair, a cup of coffee sitting on the wrought-iron table beside her.

"How long have you been up?" he asked, standing near the doorway, taking his first sip of Gabriela's coffee.

She looked at him and smiled. "Good morning." She lifted her wrist and looked at her watch. "Since six-thirty. I woke up, and couldn't go back to sleep. How do you feel? You did a lot of twitching and tossing last night."

He went over to her and sat down in another chair at the round table. Nina never looked bad in the morning; sleep refreshed her as it was supposed to, even when she got only a little of it. That was one of the first really personal things he had ever noticed about her.

"How about you?" he asked, not answering her.

She smiled. "I've had better nights."

The newspapers were face up, and he could see the headlines about the shooting at Richmond and the West Loop, and Mooney's death. The stories took front-page space for the second day. There was also an item about a tropical storm that had grown to hurricane status entering the Gulf of Mexico, early for the hurricane season.

He reached for the
Chronicle
and pulled it over in front of him. Police spokesmen were saying that it hadn't been established that the deaths were related, but the waffling was obvious. Reporters were not going so far as to draw their own conclusions, but in light of the little information coming from the police department, they stated facts that allowed readers to make their own judgments: Detectives Ed Mooney and partner Stuart Haydon had investigated a death Tuesday morning at the same Chicon address where Detective Mooney was killed Tuesday night. Both detectives were among the investigators at the scene of the "terrorist-style" assassination on Tuesday afternoon. Motorcycles were used in the assassination, and a motorcycle and "motorcycle workshop" were found at the Chicon address where detective Mooney had been killed Tuesday night. One reporter had speculated that the Mexican, Sosa Real, had been the intended target of the assassinaton, rather than the two Americans in the car with him.

There was a boxed article farther back in the first section, accompanying the continuation of the lead story from page one, which explored the potential of "Latin terrorism" spreading to the United States, specifically Texas. Several experts and authorities were interviewed who said that indeed what had happened on the West Loop had been a "classic" terrorist-type assassination. They speculated about the reasons for it—increased drug trafficking from Latin America, increased political and economic tensions in Central America and neighboring Mexico, increased activity of illegal aliens in all Texas cities—and said they feared this would not be the end of it.

A second sidebar article said gunshops in the city had done a booming business on Wednesday.

Benigo Gamboa Parra's name was never mentioned.

Haydon shoved the paper away and reached for the
Post
just as Gabriela brought their breakfast on a tray and set it on the table. Haydon poured fresh coffee for each of them and returned to the articles in the
Post.
He ate indifferently, paying more attention to the newspaper. Though there were more photographs in the
Post
, the information was essentially the same. After he read the last article, he leaned back, the cool wrought iron pressing into his bare back.

"Did you read these?" he asked.

Nina nodded, wiping her mouth on a napkin. "Not much there, is there?"

He shook his head. "I imagine Captain Mercer's being pretty tight-lipped, but I suspect the truth is there's really not much to be tight-lipped about."

"What are they going to do?"

Haydon stuffed one hand in his robe pocket and set his cup in the saucer. "They're going to hope for the lifesaver: an anonymous tip. I imagine everyone's working his snitches, the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agents are running their traps, the FBI's counterterrorist teams are doing the same. Probably the DEA in Guadalajara is trying to help. And Interpol."

"Who's going to be coordinating all this?"

"I guess Pete has drawn that impossible task."

"Impossible?"

"With this many agencies involved, 'cooperation' is wishful thinking," Haydon said. "It's sensational investigations like this one that can make or break a career, and agencies are an extension of their administrators' egos. The FBI ought to have a head start.

They've got a special division for this sort of thing, but I doubt they're going to want to share a heck of a lot of information. Everyone else will resent that, and will have a tendency to do likewise." He sipped his coffee. "You won't read about it in the newspapers, but agents are going to be tripping all over each other. Whoever has the best informant network is going to win this one."

"What about what Renata Islas told you?"

"I imagine the DEA in Guadalajara has people who can provide information on the
tecosT

"I mean about this man with the scarred lip." As always, Nina was going straight to the central issue, central for Haydon, that is.

"She said there was no police record of him," he answered evasively.

"That's my point. Aren't you going to pass that on to them?"

"Yes."

Three bluejays came out of nowhere, falling and screeching out of the bright morning light and into the flamboyana. They fought shamelessly, like an ill-mannered family taking their squabbles into public with no sense of disgrace, thrashing about in the branches, shaking loose a scarlet shower of broken flowers, and then they were gone.

"When?"

"As soon as I check it out," he said.

"How are you going to do that?" Nina was being unusually curious. He liked that, but what he didn't like was the irrepressible twinge of caution he felt about answering her. It was peculiar, having the gut reaction of wariness—the sixth sense he depended upon to keep him alive—to a question from Nina. There was no reason for him to feel that way except for the fact that she was showing the kind of interest in the case that, if exhibited by anyone else, would have put him on Haydon's checklist. He didn't like it. He didn't like the way it made him feel. It was a sensibility that belonged "out there," not at home.

"I don't believe these people could operate in Houston as they've been doing without some kind of backup system here to support them," he said. He tilted one of the newspapers and shook off the ruby debris of flowers. "They've got to have some kind of collaboration. Someone up here has to deal with someone down there. I think that the someone here is the lawyer who was the Teco Corporation's registering agent, Enrique Cordero Rulfo.

Nina picked a fragment of a leaf, a fragile piece of filigree, out of her coffee cup. "Don't you imagine he's already been questioned?"

"I should think so, but the only connections to him they know about are the obvious ones, the ones in the newspapers. He's going to be ready with responses to questions about those."

"So you're going to ask him about Arizpe?"

Haydon nodded. "I'll need to talk to him anyway. He's really the only lead I've got."

"Because he deals directly with the
tecos
in Mexico."

"Well, that's a good working assumption. But there could have been an intermediary. Cordero might not have dealt with them at all. And even if he did have direct contact, we can't assume he knew anything about the death squad here. They might have kept him in the dark about that. Sometimes it's a lot cleaner for them that way, in the event a lawyer's legal services are ever needed for criminal defense."

Nina closed her book and laid it aside.

"So what do you think?" she asked.

Haydon drank the last of his coffee. "I think it looks bad," he said. "I think Gamboa's going to be assassinated no matter what any of us do."

Nina's eyes flared in surprise, and then she frowned. "Why are you so pessimistic?"

He shook his head and was aware of a trace, a slight mist, of perspiration on his upper lip.

"Because we're dealing with the wrong side of the coin," he said. "The FBI's got informants in all sorts of foreign dissident groups operating in the states, but Mexicans are not seen as that kind of a threat. Mexico is a staging ground, yes. A number of radical groups work from there. It's a kind of out-of-bounds territory. The FBI has thwarted numerous terrorist missions which were being planned in Mexico but were to have been executed in the States." He stared at a tiny yellow stamen he was rolling between his fingers. "But the Mexicans
themselves
have never been seen as the source of political terrorism. Up to now their political dissidents have been regarded as a relatively benign sector. Activists in name only. That is, if you're talking about the left wing. But this business is coming from the political right, 'our' people down there. We're simply not going to be ready for it."

Haydon stood and gathered what was left of the
migas,
got a fresh cup of coffee, and walked down to the bathhouse. Cinco had been dozing, but either heard or smelled Haydon before he rounded the corner of latticework to the open-air shower. He was struggling to a sitting position, his ragged old tail making a flopping effort at a wag. Haydon sat down on the bricks beside him and scratched his ears, holding the bowl of
migas
on the bricks so it wouldn't scoot away while Cinco ate. Gabriela had as much affection for the old collie as did Haydon, and every meal she prepared now was prepared for four.

Haydon watched Cinco eat. He thought of the numbers of hours they had spent like this, sitting together in summer shade or winter sunshine, each following his own thoughts, and neither having the remotest idea what preoccupied the mind of the other. They had nothing in common but the unexplained pleasure of the other's company. When the old collie finished, he glanced at Haydon from under his hoary eyebrows, then sat blinking lazily a few minutes. After a while he lay down again and closed his eyes. Slowly he moved a front paw on the bricks until he touched Haydon's leg. He pressed against it in a feeble stretch, and left it there with a sigh. His breathing became rhythmic and content. Haydon didn't have the heart to move for a long time, and finally, when he did, Cinco was asleep.