The Last Family (23 page)

Then he walked through the rear gate to the kitchen door carrying his flight bag. He set the case down and tried to insert his key in the lock, but it wouldn’t fit.
Upon inspection he saw that the lock was newly installed and looked far more substantial than the other one. He stepped back from the door and looked at the key, then peered around the corner of the house to the windows of the ballroom studio. The lights were on, so Laura was working. He went to the first window and rapped at the glass with a key.

“Laura, it’s me!” he yelled at the ghostlike shape that appeared on the other side of the sheer curtains covering the glass. Laura opened them and looked out, and when she saw him, her face lit up. “Reid, come around,” she yelled, and pointed toward the front of the house. “Front door.”

She opened the kitchen to him standing there holding his suitcase in one hand and his suit coat in the other. She kissed him and pulled him inside.

“Key didn’t work. Just wanted to check in before I head home.”

“The locks were changed,” she said.

He walked into the kitchen and poured himself half a glass of red wine and sipped it. “That’s better,” he said. “I’d imagine it would take a very skilled burglar to pick the old one, wouldn’t you? You weren’t trying to give me a message, were you?”

“I’ve got a lot to tell you.”

Wolf ran down the stairs and jumped up on Reid. “Okay, boy. Down.” Reid pushed him to the floor. His tail ticked off the measure of his excitement.

“So I’m listening,” he said as he poured another half glass.

“The DEA found out the house was bugged. They got two in this room. Five in all. In the phones and in the lights.”

The glass fell out of his hand and shattered against the marble countertop. Wine ran across and cascaded off, dripping onto the floor. He grabbed a towel, and Laura joined him in the cleanup.

“You mean they’re listening to us right now?” he said after she told him everything she knew.

“Yes,” she said.

“Even in the bedroom?”

She reached over to his ear and whispered. “Not the bathroom. Especially with the water running.”

“That’s something, I guess,” he whispered. “I hope I can,” he added. “I’ve never performed for an audience. And they found two listening devices in this room?”

She nodded. “And one in the studio. They’re going to try to find the receiver but don’t want to draw attention to their presence by searching wholesale. Besides, it might be anywhere. I’ll make it up to you.”

“Don’t be silly. The important thing is that you’re all safe. A little inconvenience is a small price to pay for that.”

Reid was seated on a bar stool. She put her arms around his neck and kissed him softly. “Sorry I shocked you with the news.”

“Thank God they didn’t jump out of the bushes with their guns drawn. I might have ruined a perfectly good pair of pants. Cops make me nervous. I know it’s irrational, but—guns and all that.”

“They know you already. They’ve been watching us since the first of September.”

“How did the kids take all the excitement?”

“The agents don’t show themselves. We know they’re there and the house is covered. I really hadn’t thought about it all day. Remind me to give you a new key. So how was your trip?”

“Nothing compared to yours. I looked at a lot of new equipment and listened to a lot of boring discussions about digital imaging and other tiresome claptrap.”

“I wasn’t expecting you back until tomorrow.”

“Early flight out. No reason to stay.”

“You look tired.”

“A shower would fix me right up.” He raised his eyebrows and smiled suggestively. “But I don’t have the energy. I should go over to my place. I have some paperwork to do and my plants to water.”

“Another time?” she said.

“No problem,” he said, kissing her. “You want me to sleep over—to protect you with my life?”

“No. I’m perfectly safe,” she said, smiling. “There’s heavy firepower two seconds away.”

“Yes, I imagine you’re safe as milk. So I’ll stay.”

She giggled. “Fine. Water your plants tomorrow. I’d like company.”

“I’ll just get that shower,” he said, picking up his bags.

She hooked her arm under his and they went up together.

21

L
ATER
L
AURA TRIED TO SLEEP
. H
AVING THE PROTECTIVE RING
around the outside and Wolf in the house should have made her feel perfectly safe, but it didn’t. She wasn’t just afraid Martin Fletcher would get them if he put his mind to it—she was dead certain he would. Her instinct said run and hide. But Martin would find them, and he might find them when they were alone. Besides, how long could they hide from a man like that, who was driven by hate and a thirst for revenge? It was far better to wait here and pray Thorne was as good as Paul had always said he was. She stood and checked in the closet for her gun and found it in an old purse where it had been for five years. Paul had given it to her fourteen or fifteen years earlier. For protection. She was relieved that it was loaded. She didn’t know what had happened to the box of bullets he had given her. She had fired the weapon once. One shot at a can. Paul had fired the other four rounds. Then he had cleaned it, and she had never picked it up again except to
transfer it from one closet to another each time they moved.

Martin Fletcher was a terrifying man. She remembered the first time she had met him at a DEA function. Something about him had felt wrong. The way he had kissed her hand when Paul had introduced her to Martin. Something lecherous in the smile—a flatness in his eyes. He had stared at her all evening, and the stare had put ice in her blood. She tensed as she remembered the meeting in the DEA parking lot in Arlington two weeks or so after that party. She had been sitting in her car near the front door at DEA headquarters reading a novel. It had been a beautiful day, and the car window had been down. She had felt a hand on her face, initially thought it was Paul, but she had been startled to find Martin Fletcher leaning against the side of the vehicle smiling in at her. Leering.

“You want to take up where we left off the other night? I presume you’ve been thinking about me. What I could give you?”

“You presume completely wrong,” she had snapped.

He had reached in and gripped her upper leg where the shorts were cuffed. He had pushed his fingers up her leg and into the crease in her panties. She had recoiled but was belted into her seat. “Laura, let me tell you something. I would give this little pussy the fucking of its life, and you’d have to keep bringing it back for more. In fact, you’d leave that faggot you’re married to and follow me around on your hands and knees.”

She hadn’t been able to budge his hand no matter how she tried. She’d tried to slap him, but he’d caught her hand in midswing and kissed it, pressing his wet tongue between her fingers. Then he had turned and laughed—a laugh she would never forget. It had taken her ten minutes to stop crying.

She had never mentioned the incident to Paul because she feared the consequences to him. Paul wasn’t a physical person, and this Martin Fletcher was. A few months later Martin had been arrested, tried, and sentenced to federal prison.

Martin Fletcher had said at the trial that he had been
framed by Paul and his team. He was even more dangerous than she had imagined. Eight innocent people. Children and wives. The thought of waking up looking into those cold, dead eyes honestly terrified her. Just the idea of violence made her ill. How could she fight him? He was a monster.

She climbed out of bed, put on an old cotton button-down that had been Paul’s. The tail covered her almost to the knees. She rolled up the sleeves and went downstairs, with Wolf close at her heels. She had a lot of work to do to get ready for the German show. She had assured the gallery twenty large paintings, and only sixteen were completed. She would have to work on four at one time to meet the deadline.

Lily had insisted on bringing potential clients into the studio to visit and see the work in progress, but Laura had refused, saying the visits would intrude on her concentration. That was before she had federal agents in the trees, ears taking in every conversation in the house, Paul off the mountain, and the constant fear of Martin Fletcher running free. She turned on the studio lights and studied the three paintings that were hanging on the work-in-progress wall. She was amazed at how much better they seemed to be. Maybe the pressure would work to her advantage, she thought to herself. Wolf dropped to the floor by the table, then seemed to remember something, got up, and went ambling down the hall toward the kitchen. The sounds of his lapping at his bowl of water filtered down the hall.

Laura sat on her stool and began mixing a flesh tone on the pallet. She was planning to work on the canvas on which she had sketched a woman standing at the edge of a cliff, wrapped mummylike in barbed wire. The skin between the strands was protruding in fleshy pink bands. She began painting in the skin between the strands of wire. It was a self-portrait.

As she painted, she tried to lose herself in memories so she could dredge up intense moments from her past. That was easy. She simply tried to remember the last full day and night she had spent with Paul.

22

L
ALLO
E
STEVEZ WAS SOUND ASLEEP
. H
E WAS NORMALLY A HEAVY
sleeper, but the gentle chirping of his personal cellular phone, tucked beneath his pillow, awakened him as a shotgun blast fired over the bed might have awakened another man. His wife, unaware, was lying flat on her back with her head aimed at the ceiling, snoring loudly beside him. Her eyes were covered with a white blindfold trimmed with burgundy lace, and her face shone from a coating of moisturizing cream. There were clear wax plugs in her ears to insure uninterrupted sleep. Lallo opened the telephone and put it to his ear.

“Yes?” he said, trying to sound alert.

“This is Spivey. Your office. Now. Alone.”

“Now?”

“Well, take twenty minutes.”

•   •   •

Lallo tossed the covers back and stepped into his room-sized closet. He dressed hurriedly, brushed his silver hair carefully, and put on his overcoat. He opened a drawer and removed a small automatic. He contemplated the handgun, started to slip it into his waistband, and then decided not to. If Spivey or any of his CIA dark-operations pros wanted to kill him, the gun would be useless.

Lallo slipped on his dark topcoat and went out to the garage. He opened the door to his wife’s Mercedes wagon, climbed inside, and was about to close the door when the overhead fluorescent went dead and a man moved toward the car with a flashlight pointed at Lallo’s eyes. He caught the door before Lallo could close it. Lallo looked up, then winced. The man’s face was hidden behind the light, and he didn’t try to look. To see the face, whether it belonged to friend or foe, could be dangerous.

“Mr. Estevez. Nice to see you again.”

“Mr. Spivey,” Lallo answered. “A surprise.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that Fletcher had contacted you?”

“I was … I haven’t had time.… Tomorrow I …” Lallo realized that his hands were trembling.

“Then he has. When?”

Lallo could hear the smile in the man’s voice and cursed himself for not contacting Spivey as he had been instructed—warned.
He tricked me. He didn’t know!
“Today,” he lied. “Earlier this evening. He called in saying that he was someone else, but I recognized his voice.”

“You were supposed to call me.”

“I got sidetracked.”

“The meeting—when?”

“He wants the money that’s owed to him. See, you people will get me killed yet.”

“We hoped he’d want the debt settled. So I do know what I’m talking about, after all.”

“Holding back the money I owed him was dangerous. He might have gone to Perez, who had already paid it to me. Then what do you imagine would have happened to me? My intestines would be on the carpeting. Perez pays me and I do not pay Martin … either of
them could kill me. I am lucky he called me. He could just as easily have appeared in my bedroom.” Lallo knew it wasn’t the money that Fletcher measured, but the apparent disrespect that holding the money back represented. Martin’s ego would be his downfall. Lallo knew that Martin had paid the doctor in Spain a fortune for the face alteration and had then killed the man after he had banked the cash. Lallo would have killed him before he’d paid him. That would have been a prudent business maneuver.

“Look, Lallo. You like doing business in this country? You don’t want to end up out of our favor, do you? Be out of favor and into Marion or Fort Leavenworth for enough years so you’d be over one hundred when you got out. We don’t want that, do we?”

“You don’t know this man like I do. Martin is like a viper. He might not bite this time, but the next time he might, or the time after.”

“When do you meet him?”

“Tomorrow night. Eleven
P.M.
at my pier. Beside the
Vasquez
, which is presently at the dock to unload.”

“Meet with him. We have someone to go along with you. Ramon Chavez. You know him.”

“Ramon?” He shrugged, wrinkling his brow, remembering the fierce Indian. “A good man. But, between us, he makes me very uneasy.” Lallo crossed himself. Lallo had made use of Ramon to cover meetings and to instill a healthy fear in his business associates. That had been years before. He was aware that Ramon had left the cartel and had gone freelance. Only a man of remarkable talent could make a career move like that and not be killed by his ex-bosses. Ramon would not turn on his employers, because he had a large family to think of.

“Ramon remembers and likes you. We asked him to come up for a visit. He’ll take care of this problem. Also, our best marksman will be watching from the roof.”

“I am sure Martin knows Ramon. Martin … what if he sees Ramon?” Lallo was starting to panic at the thought of being in a cross-fire situation. Ramon was indeed a terrifying sight. A stony-eyed Indian with a
deeply pocked, pie-shaped face and muscles a bull would envy.