The House of Wolfe (8 page)

During that same period, Ramón Colmo had risen too. He'd formed his own gang, Los Doce, so named because there were twelve of them, counting himself. He had made it a point to keep them at that number, and only recently, due to the death of a member named Chisto, had found it necessary to make its first replacement since the gang's inception. In its early years Los Doce concentrated on home burglaries and grew highly proficient at it—and for a share of the proceeds, Huerta was soon colluding with them, tipping them to affluent non-client residences and the means for penetrating their various high-grade defenses. Over time, the gang expanded into express kidnapping and robbery. Rotating teams of two or three in a car selected random victims as they exited upscale hotels, restaurants, theaters, office buildings. They snatched them into the car and stripped them of cash and credit cards, took them to every bank they had a card for and made them withdraw the daily maximum permitted at each automatic teller, then released them in some fringe part of town.

Ramón's aspirations, however, ran much higher, and last year Los Doce had begun kidnapping for ransom, with Huerta again colluding—his professional resources enabling him to identify prime targets for the sort of snatches Ramón had in mind. Swift grabs, swift payoffs, swift releases. Ramón did not want to hold a captive for more than one night, and liked it better yet if the entire process could be completed in the same day. The targets proposed by Huerta were well-to-do but not so wealthy they could afford full-time bodyguards, if any at all, so the snatches weren't very difficult, and although Ramón insisted on careful planning of each operation as the key to its speedy execution, Los Doce could usually pull two jobs a month and always at least one. The ransoms were not of such marvelous sums as one read or heard about in the news every so often, but they were ample, and even discounting Huerta's commissions, Galán and his men were earning far more than they had through burglary and express snatches combined.

Even as Los Doce developed into a smoothly functioning kidnapping crew, Ramón Colmo, too, underwent a remarkable transformation. He began dressing in increasingly dapper fashion, and for the past few months had been dressing chiefly in suits of white or pale yellow silk. In cool weather he wore a cashmere Chesterfield or a camel hair polo. He carried himself with poise and even seemed taller somehow—Huerta had checked carefully and knew it was not an effect of crafty footwear. He was now always freshly barbered, his nails manicured. But the greatest changes were in his manners and speech and pleasures. His demeanor had become almost courtly, his speech formal and precise, and Huerta could not recall the last time he had heard him use profanity. He had acquired an interest in classical music and could speak with authority on compositions emanating from a car radio or restaurant sound system. Huerta took great pride in having made himself a more stylish and better-spoken man, but Ramón had become a figure of elegance. Indeed, he wasn't even Ramón Colmo anymore. Some of his men had started referring to him as El Galán, and so was he now known to those of his profession, most of whom had never known him by any other name.

Still, there were stories suggesting that within El Galán's refinement, Ramón Colmo yet remained coiled and ready to strike. Just a few weeks ago a mutual acquaintance had told Huerta of an incident that occurred at a meeting he'd had with Galán in Chapultepec Park. They were sitting on a bench near a fountain, no one else about but a young couple on another bench, when suddenly the couple started arguing and the woman loudly called the man a prick and got up to leave. The man jumped up and grabbed her and began slapping her, cursing her for a lowdown bitch. Galán rushed up behind him and punched him hard in the kidney, then grabbed him by the hair with one hand and twisted an arm up behind his back with the other, forced him down on his knees in front of the ironwork bench, and twice rammed the man's face into the edge of the bench seat, audibly cracking bone and snapping teeth, pieces of which dribbled from his pulped bloody mouth. He let go of him and the man fell over, moaning, and Galán spat on him and called him a cowardly rat cunt and a few other epithets of the slums. But when he stepped back to adjust his cuffs and tie, the girl ran up to the man and knelt beside him, crying and crooning over him. Galán looked at her sadly, then looked at his friend and shrugged. They then went across the street to a cantina to finish their conversation, Galán showing no sign at all, the friend said, of just having destroyed a man's face.

Huerta had owned Angeles de Guarda for more than three years when, four months ago, Francisco Belmonte hired the firm at a princely fee to provide full-time guard service to his family and home. The comprehensive duties required Huerta's full contingent of seven agents working in shifts around the clock, and he had been obliged to remove his men from other bodyguard assignments. The rest of the company's clients subscribed only to electronic guard services that were easily monitored from the Angeles office by the firm's two women employees.

At the time that Huerta's company took over the security duties at the Belmonte estate, wedding plans were already under way for the upcoming marriage of Demetrio Belmonte and Luz Sosa. As chief of security, Huerta naturally became privy to every detail of those plans, and his position gave him access to a trove of personal information about both the Belmontes and the Sosas. Together with his extensive investigative resources, such access made it a simple matter to learn everything about both families' financial holdings. And the more Huerta learned, the more clearly he perceived the biggest opportunity of his life. And the more evident it became that he would need outside help to realize it.

So he had gone to Galán.

They have both decided they will order the broiled swordfish when they get to La Nereida. First, however, they are going to switch over to Galán's Mercedes coupe, which is parked at the home of one of his favorite lady friends, a wealthy widow of avid sexual appetite. Following a night of marvelous delights with her—which Galán has described to Huerta in almost poetic detail—he had slept late this morning while the widow departed for Paris to attend a week's showings of new fashion lines. Because Galán never uses his own car for business, the Cherokee had collected him for the meeting with the Belmonte and Sosa parents. Its driver, whom Galán addresses as Fuego, is a thin man with a pockmarked face. Huerta has never seen him before.

The widow's home is not far off the west side of the beltway in a residential community of spacious properties amid dense woods and small lakes. Galán's handheld remote control opens the barred driveway gate, which closes and relocks behind them after they enter. The widow employs one of the best security companies in the city, and there are sensitive alarms in every window and outer door of the house that on being silently triggered will bring armed agents to her door in minutes. But for reasons of personal privacy she has not permitted cameras to be posted on the property.

At this hour the servants have retired to their quarters. The house is dark but for the lights in the gated front courtyard and in the kitchen at the rear of the house, where the driveway ends at a large turning circle in front of a triple garage. The garage door is lighted by a low-watt overhead lamp.

As they get out of the Cherokee, Galán is laughing softly at Huerta's adamant refusal to tell him where he plans to go after he gets his share of the ransom tomorrow.

Galán points an electronic opener at the garage door but it stays closed. This worthless thing, he says. Doesn't function half the time.

He aims the opener again and presses its button, but still the door remains shut. Oh well, he says, and puts the remote in his pocket and heads for the corner of the garage, saying, There's a button on the wall over here.

Huerta hears the SUV's door open behind him—and even as he starts to ask himself why the driver's getting out, he knows.

He drops to a half crouch and starts to scurry around the vehicle, drawing his Sig 9 as gunshots
thonk thonk
behind him and a leg quits him and he hits the ground in front of the car and rolls onto his back and blasts two flaring shots up at Fuego's dark shape at the same time that Fuego fires twice more, both rounds punching through Huerta's chest and the second one stopping his heart.

Fuego kicks away the Sig, then bends down to probe Huerta's neck for a pulse. He straightens up with a grunt and puts his pistol back into its shoulder holster, then pulls open the other flap of his coat and probes his side. He winces and hisses.

Galán comes out from behind the corner of the garage, reholstering his Glock. He sees the dark stain on Fuego's side just above his belt. Bad? he says.

Nah. Went through. Stings like a bitch but not bad.

Galán gives him a clean handkerchief and Fuego wads it up and groans softly as he puts it over the entry wound and pulls his pants up higher to hold it in place, then puts his own handkerchief over the exit wound and tightens his belt over both makeshift bandages.

Galán picks up Huerta's Sig and thumbs the decocking lever and puts the pistol in his coat pocket. He stands in an attitude of alert listening.

Think anybody heard? Fuego says.

Galán shakes his head. The properties are large and well apart, he says. The hedges are high. Cold night, the windows shut.

If I'd killed him with the first two shots he wouldn't have got one off. Fucker heard the door and figured it.

Yes, Galán says. He always had good instincts for what was behind him. He wasn't as good at anticipating what might be ahead.

He gestures at Fuego's wound and says, Go to Mago and get that tended before you report to the Beta house. I'll put somebody else on the disposal.

Oh hell no, chief, it's not that bad. No lie. I'll get patched up after I take care of the disposal.

To prove his point, Fuego hurries to the Cherokee's hatchback and opens it and unzips and smooths out the body bag already unrolled on the floor behind the seat, then comes back to the body and squats down to grasp it under the arms and starts dragging it toward the rear of the vehicle. He is much smaller than Huerta and grimaces with the pain of his effort. Galán watches him a moment, then picks up Huerta's legs and helps carry him to the hatchback and lay him on the bag. Huffing for breath, Fuego tucks Huerta's arms and legs in the bag and zips it closed.

There, all set to go, he says. Whew. He readjusts his belt.

Galán is staring at the bagged body.

They would've tracked him down, chief, Fuego says softly, like you said. He would've made a deal. He had to go. Like you said.

Galán smiles. Fuego has always been a favorite of his. Quit flapping your mouth and get moving, he tells him. Then go directly to Mago.

Right, chief, don't you worry, Fuego says as he shuts the hatchback. I'll take care of this and then I'll see the doc and then I'll get out to the hold house. Fuego's grin is wrenched with pain.

He gets in the Cherokee and wheels it around the turning circle and drives away. In truth, he hates going to those garbage pits whose reeking firelight he is sure is full of evil spirits of no relation to the benevolent Santa Muerte. But he wants very much to rise in the world, and the best way to do that is to prove to Galán at every opportunity that he, Fuego, is a man who can be counted on to do a job. A man who can take it. Who is above the pain of wounds.

Galán watches him go, then studies the widow's house, seeking a sign of stir within, some new light, some silhouette at a window. The widow has a good intuition for hiring servants who know what not to see, not to hear. Besides, they know nothing more about him than she does, and she knows him as Mario Pérez, a sales representative for an international electronics company.

He turns on the garage remote control and presses a button and the door rolls upward with a low whir to reveal his Mercedes next to the widow's Eldorado.

He goes to El Nido, a small basement café in a downtrodden neighborhood of his days in the Malditos gang, for a bowl of what he regards as the best menudo in the city. He is revered by the local residents as one of their own, and although everyone knows his car and it needs no protection in the alley where he parks it, three large boys nearly get into a fight over which of them will stand guard over the Mercedes. He settles the dispute by appointing all three as its guardians and, despite their protestations, insists they accept payment for the duty.

After eating, he heads for his townhouse in a gated community at the south end of the Jardines del Pedregal. The deed is under the name of Alberto Molina, an uncle of his now dead for eleven years. The rain-black sky hides the westward hills and their scatterings of shantytowns, including Infiernito, where he was born and grew to an early manhood in the constant smoke and vile smell of a garbage pit. Where he learned to fear nothing—except, as he has never admitted to anyone, the dogs. The terrifying packs of feral beasts that roam the sprawling shanty settlements. Most of them starving, some rabid, all of them ever alert for a chance to attack the sick and helpless, to snatch away the small children of unvigilant mothers. He was nearly taken by them one night when he was very young. He woke to their low growls and then they had him, screaming in terror and pain as they dragged him from the hovel. His mother woke and began to flail at them with a tin pan and was also many times bitten. He well remembers the tumult of shadows and his great screaming pain and the dogs' fire-lit eyes and wild snarlings and slavering jaws, their piercing shrieks and yelpings at each swing of his mother's pan. He yet bears scars of that night on his arms and legs, on his scalp, hidden under his hair, remnants of his mother's crude stitchwork. But the only scars visible in public are on his jaw and neck, which his acquaintances believe were acquired in gang fights. He still at times has gasping dreams about those dogs.