Suspicion (23 page)

G
alvin noticed blood spatters on the front bumper and grille. He pulled out a handkerchief and tried to wipe them away, but couldn’t. The blood had frozen on the metal.

“Shit,” he said. “We have to hose the car down or something. I can’t have blood tying this thing back to me.”

“I saw a car wash back in Carbondale,” Danny said. “You think we’d have time to stop?”

Galvin grimaced. “No, not really. But we don’t have a choice.”

 • • • 

After they’d gotten into the Suburban, and Galvin was behind the wheel, he tore open the Velcro closure of the left-hand pocket of his parka and took out his phone.

“Curtis,” he said. “Change in plans. I need the jet fueled up and ready to go in an hour. Can you do that?” A pause. “And file the flight plan. Ninety minutes, then. That’s fine. Thanks.” He disconnected the call without looking at the phone.

Galvin was driving crazily. He gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles were white. A few times, on the winding narrow road, he nearly slammed into the guardrail.

“Jesus, Tom—slow down.”

Galvin just muttered to himself. The car veered off the side of the road and hit a snowbank, then swerved back onto the road. Danny caught his breath and gripped the door handle for support.

“Holy shit! Let’s get there in one piece.”

Galvin groaned. “Great choice of words.” He sighed in frustration. “We gotta get home, make sure they’re okay. And make sure they hustle.”

Danny waited until Galvin’s driving was less frantic, then he called Lucy.

“What happened to you?” she said. “Where’d you go?”

“For a ride with Tom—listen, Tom needs to get back to Boston right away, which means we have to fly back with him.”

“Huh? Did something happen?”

“An important meeting just came up. An emergency.”

“We can’t stay on, the rest of us?”

“He’s taking the plane.”

“Okay, right. Well, that’s a shame. Baby, are you sure you’re okay? You sound—I don’t know, different, somehow. After that head injury—”

“Just bad reception. I’m fine. We’ll be back soon—maybe half an hour or so. Just—hurry.” And he ended the call.

“There it is,” Galvin said, pointing to a car wash up ahead on the right. Tires squealing, he pulled into the lot. It was open, with no other customers around.

A minute or so later, the Suburban bumped along the conveyor track through the clear vinyl panels and into the tunnel, with Danny and Galvin inside.

Danny interrupted the tense silence. “What happened back there, Tom? This is the second driver of yours to be targeted. That I know of.”

Galvin said nothing for a few seconds. He seemed distracted, but maybe he was just scared. “I told you, they’re not just drivers,” he said finally. “They’re babysitters. Minders planted by the cartel. To watch me—and to watch out for me. Which also makes them convenient targets.”

The car moved through the mitter curtains, hanging flaps of cloth that slapped the car’s exterior, swishing and wriggling back and forth. It crawled along at what seemed an excruciatingly slow pace.

“So who did it? Your bosses, the Sinaloans?”

“No . . . Remember that
Z
carved into his . . . abdomen? Tells me it’s Los Zetas.”

“Zetas? What—?”

“That’s another cartel,” Galvin said. “There’s seven major cartels. Biggest players are Sinaloa—my guys—and Los Zetas. Some people say the Zetas are the most sophisticated, the most dangerous of them all. And that thing with the body and the two cars? That’s a Zeta signature.”

“But why would a rival cartel target your driver?”

He shook his head. He shrugged. “I don’t have any earthly idea,” he said, looking at Danny, fear in his eyes.

Danny thought of Alejandro standing outside the coffee shop that morning. He’d seen Danny meeting with the DEA guy, Slocum. Obviously, Danny couldn’t say anything to Galvin about it, but he couldn’t help but wonder: Did Alejandro’s murder have something to do with his seeing Danny that morning?

His BlackBerry played “Sweet Home Alabama.”

“Sweetie,” he answered. “
Querida
.” He launched into a hurried conversation in Spanish. Danny could make out only a few words.
Inmediatamente
. And
protección
. And
peligro
, which he knew meant “danger.” Words like that. He was telling her what had just happened, maybe. Telling her they had to leave.

The high-pressure nozzles assaulted the Suburban’s windows and its flanks. It was like driving through the worst rainstorm ever.

He hung up and for a long while he said nothing, just watched the hot air blast from the nozzles on either side, blowing the droplets away, the wind from a dozen hair dryers.

“My time is up,” he said finally. “I have to vanish.”

“Vanish?”

“And only you and my wife can know about it.”

G
raciela Arriaga had worked at the Drug Enforcement Administration headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, for almost eighteen years.

She was a file clerk in the Records Management Unit. She knew her colleagues mocked her behind her back, considered her humorless, uptight, rigid, rules-bound. A stiff. They called her Debbie Downer.

The truth was, she was none of those things. She was a woman who just wanted to do her job and do it right, keep her head down, earn a living, be left alone.

Somehow she had to support a daughter and a granddaughter on a GS-6 salary and the negligible survivors’ pension the VA paid for her husband, Luis, a Vietnam vet who’d died more than a decade ago.

Her daughter, María Elena, worked in customer service at Marshalls in the Snowden Square Shopping Center. Her take-home pay barely covered day care for her two-year-old boy, Jayden, with just enough left over for food and clothing.

So María Elena and Jayden lived in the second bedroom of Graciela’s apartment, on the fourth floor of the ugly dun brick building on Columbia Road, in Columbia Heights, Maryland. Graciela’s son, Raúl, was in prison in Hagerstown for boosting a Zipcar.

Graciela was not the type of person ever to do anything that might put her job at risk. Yet there were all the money problems. And there was Tía Yolanda, back home in Mazatlán, and her nine children and twenty-four grandchildren. They needed whatever money Graciela could spare to send them.

Life did not always give you choices.

Wearing a long puffy charcoal-colored down coat with gray pants and simple black shoes, she climbed to the fourth floor and keyed open the top and bottom locks and then the police lock. Graciela had high cheekbones and wore prim black glasses and had once been considered reasonably pretty. Now she was generally regarded as matronly.

Her tabby cat, Señor Don Gato, meowed loudly when she entered, and brushed up against her leg. That was unlike him. Most days he scarcely bothered to rouse himself from the sofa.

Graciela sniffed. The kitty litter needed changing. She hung up her down coat on the wall hook next to little Jaden’s snow pants. She noted with disapproval the dishes still in the sink. She was always asking María Elena not to leave the breakfast dishes unwashed.

Then she lit the flame under the kettle to make herself a cup of tea and selected her favorite mug from the cupboard:
WORLD’S BEST MOM.

“Make two cups, if you don’t mind.”

The voice—a soft baritone—startled her. She turned, saw the silhouette in the shadowed recesses of the living room.

“You know who I am, don’t you?”

She nodded mutely. The mug slipped from her hand and thudded to the linoleum floor of the kitchenette, where it bounced but didn’t break.

“I hope you have something for me,” the man said.

“A
nything you need,” Danny said. “I’m here.”

“I’m going to need you to vouch for me.”

Danny looked at Galvin curiously. “Vouch for you? How do you mean?”

“Well, not to put too fine a point on it, brother: I’ll need you to lie to law enforcement after I disappear. Back up an alibi for me. When the FBI question you—and they will, believe me—just say I told you I was flying down to meet some business contacts in Mexico.”

“Where will you really be?”

“Probably best you not know. Belize, at first. Then somewhere else. Cuba, Venezuela. Maybe Kazakhstan or Croatia or Dubai.” He was driving less erratically now, though just as fast. “There’s this remote fishing village in New Zealand Celina and I discovered on our honeymoon. It . . . it’s the town that time forgot. On the west coast of the South Island, in the middle of nowhere. The landscape’s out of
Lord of the Rings.
Maybe a dozen ancient stone houses, green rolling hills dotted with sheep. You sit there eating the greatest fish and chips from a little shack on the water’s edge. Watching the dolphins playing and the fishing boats bobbing in the bluest water you’ve ever seen.”

Danny nodded. “You’re taking your plane?”

“Right. But as I told you, it’s chartered. I don’t own it. Means I have to file a flight plan. Which I will, but it’ll be a bogus one. I’ll be requesting one particular pilot, and I know he’ll cooperate. He’ll fly me wherever I ask. For a briefcase full of cash.”

“So you want US law enforcement to think you were meeting with cartel officials and were abducted. Something like that?”

Galvin nodded.

“So what’s—what’s your plan? Just fly away one day?”

“Pretty much.”

“Do you have a fake passport or something?”

“No. A real one.”

“I don’t get it.”

“If you know the right people and you have the right kind of money, you can buy an absolutely one hundred percent genuine US passport under a different name.”

“Jesus, Tom. You sure it’s real? It’s not counterfeit—not something that might be flagged and get you arrested?”

“It’s absolutely authentic. And it was extremely expensive.”

Danny went quiet for a moment. Neither man spoke. Then Danny said, “You’re talking about leaving your family behind?”

He nodded. “It’s for their own protection.”

“Would you . . . will you . . . tell them?”

“Just Celina. She knows this may happen someday. As for the boys and Jenna—I couldn’t burden them with the knowledge. When the time is right, I’ll say good-bye to them as if I was just going away for a week or so on business.”

“And then just disappear.”

“Right.”

Another long silence. “I don’t understand.”

“What don’t you understand?”

“How you can actually do this. The way you love your kids . . . the way you love Celina . . . how you could bring yourself to decide one day you’ll never see them again.”

Galvin exhaled slowly. Then he replied, hesitantly, stumblingly. “I can’t—I mean—I mean, consider the alternatives! Having their father in prison for the rest of his life? Having their father killed by the cartel? And
them
in jeopardy, too?”

“So why is this any better, Tom? Leaving your kids to think you just ran off one day? Or that you were abducted and killed. But never
knowing
?”

Galvin sounded weary, even defeated. “They’ll figure out in time that I had to leave, that I had no choice. Maybe they’ll hate me for it. But they’ll know this was the only way to protect them. Anyway, they all have money in trusts. They’ll be taken care of.”

Taken care of,
Danny thought: What a phrase. When the one thing his kids
wouldn’t
be was taken care of. They’d have money, like they’d always had. But to have their father just be gone one day without a word of explanation? It was difficult to think of anything harder or more painful than losing a mother to cancer, as Abby had. But losing a parent without closure, without ever knowing how and why? That would be painful beyond words.

“Well,” Danny said softly, “I just can’t imagine it.”

“I’ve had twenty-some years to think about this. Though it doesn’t make this any easier.”

Danny looked at Galvin’s gun resting on the console between the seats. It was matte black and had a seal stamped on its handle that read
R. BERETTA.
He picked it up. It was cold and heavier than he’d expected.

He didn’t like guns particularly—they made him nervous—and didn’t own any. But his father had taught him to fire pistols and shotguns at the Nauset Rod and Gun Club on the Cape. He knew how to use one if he had to.

“Careful,” Galvin said. “That’s loaded.”

Danny nodded. “The safety’s on.”

“You know something about guns?”

“Enough. Do you have another one?”

Galvin looked away from the road, gave Danny a searching glance, then turned back. “There’s another one under your seat. Could you pull the trigger if you had to? I mean, and shoot someone?”

Danny was silent for five or six seconds. “Yeah,” he replied. He swallowed hard. “I could now.”

D
anny reached down and felt something flat and hard. A metal flap. He pulled it open. Inside the compartment, he felt the cold smooth steel carcass of another gun and a small cardboard box. He slipped out the gun and the box. An identical Beretta. The box contained Cor-Bon jacketed hollow-point high-velocity ammunition and felt heavy.

He checked the magazine and saw it was full. The gun was loaded.

“What happens if they send a bunch of cartel guys with AK-47s after us?” Danny said. “A pistol’s not going to be much help.”

“If they send anyone after me, it’s not going to be what they call a
fusilado
. More like a
tiro de gracia
.”

“Translation, please?”

“A single shot. Not a firing squad. If and when it comes to that, I mean. They’re not going to send a bunch of goons with submachine guns after me. Not here. Not back in Boston, either.”

“Why not? They have the manpower, right?”

“They have armies. But they don’t need it, not for one guy. And they’re limited by the surroundings. Around here, a truck full of scary Mexicans with tats and Uzis isn’t going to blend into the background so easy. And something else: Even if they want to kill me, they’re not going to do it right away.”

Galvin paused, and Danny looked at him. He shrugged. “I don’t follow.”

Galvin tapped the side of his head with a forefinger. “There’s too much up here they need. Passwords to bank accounts and such.”

“Meaning they’ll torture you first.”

Galvin nodded.

Danny felt a wave of revulsion. He tried to keep those goddamned Internet videos of beheadings and castrations from playing in his mind.

“Oh, Jesus,” Danny said.

Galvin said, “But I don’t plan to give them the opportunity.”

Danny nodded.

“For now, I’ll just need you to keep a watch at the house. We have to get the women to the airport and onto the plane uneventfully. And make sure Abby and Lucy have no idea anything’s wrong, okay?”

“I’ll do what I can, but—”

“You’re a good friend. None of this has anything to do with you. You could just walk away if you wanted, but you’re not. I can’t tell you how much that means to me.”

If you only knew
, Danny thought, but he just shrugged.

 • • • 

As they pulled into the long driveway in front of his house, Galvin said, “See the window over the garage?”

Danny nodded.

“Do me a favor and keep a watch from that room while everyone’s getting packed. That’s probably the best vantage point. You see someone with a gun drawn, shoot ’em.”

“Got it.”

When they came inside, Galvin clapped his hands like a grade school gym teacher and said, “Let’s go, girls. We need to be at the airport in half an hour. Less, if we can. We’ve all got to hustle.”

The girls were on the landing, on their way upstairs. “Well, this totally sucks,” Jenna said.

“Right?” Abby said. They were both still wearing their ski attire, their faces rosy from hours on the slopes.

“We don’t even have time to take a shower?”

“No.”

“Is what’s-his-name, Alejandro, going to come up and get our stuff or do we have to bring it down?”

“Alejandro isn’t working tonight,” Galvin said without a pause. “Bring your own stuff downstairs and I’ll load the car.”

“You’re not even packed, are you?” Celina asked her daughter. “Upstairs and pack. Now.”

“They’re not packed yet?” Danny said. “Come on, Abby,
move
it!”

The girls trundled loudly up the stairs. Celina bustled around the big main room, picking up miscellaneous items the girls had scattered about. Jenna’s iPad, a phone charger, lip gloss. She didn’t look at her husband. She wasn’t wearing any lipstick, or else it had worn off, and her eye makeup was smeared. Her eyes were bloodshot. She’d been crying.

Lucy wasn’t there. She was probably upstairs packing.

“Come on,” Galvin said, following the girls up the stairs. He stopped at one of the first doors off the long hall that led to their guest room. He switched on the light. The room had the faint solvent smell of newly installed carpeting. It was much smaller than the room where Lucy and Danny had spent the night. The only furniture in here was a queen-size bed with a chenille bedspread, a couple of end tables, and a bureau. Galvin pointed at the window.

“You should be able to get a good angle from here without standing directly in the path. If you have to fire through the window, do it.”

“Understood,” Danny said.

Galvin turned and left quickly without closing the door.

Passing headlights bloomed and faded on the road at the end of the driveway. They came by at the rate of around one car or truck every minute. He shifted from one foot to the other, tense.

“Danny?”

Lucy’s voice. He turned, saw her standing in the hallway, her blond hair gleaming in the overhead light.

The gun in his hand.

“Danny, what are you doing?”