Victims (33 page)

“But she is a young girl,” Miranda said softly.

Galvez shook his head. “These scum have no age, Miranda. The drug becomes their years, and the true character surfaces. They lie and cheat and betray and steal for the moment’s high. They burn everything they touch until they burn out. Or are extinguished.”

“But you are the major supplier of—”

He stopped her cold by merely raising his arm, pointing his index finger at her. His posture, his stance, the narrowing of his eyes, the concentration and intensity he focused on her, caused her breath to catch in her throat. Miranda felt hollowed out and empty and fragile. Very breakable.

The moment passed and he seemed to resettle, to relax, to focus on her with a different kind of interest. His voice went soft again, a lover’s voice. There was that also: his sexuality, a constant, surfacing now and then, stronger at certain times. She could feel herself responding to it as though her body was separate and apart from her mind’s control. It was as if he was surrounded by a magnetic field that seemed to draw her closer and closer, arousing not just her fear but, to some large extent, her curiosity.

“But you, Miranda. Ah, you. Miranda Torres. Who are you? How do you come to be in this corrupt world? You’ve been out there, for years, in the filthiest part of the world, out on the street, in all of the garbage, and you’ve come through it all uncorrupted, with a strange pureness intact. How did this happen? Are you some special reminder, of what once was, of what might still be, somewhere? Some innocent time and place? Some place of rest and peace and beauty and surety and certainty?” He gently tilted her face so that she had to confront him directly. “Tell me, Miranda. Who are you?
I need to know.”

“I am just myself. I am the only person I can ever be.” She shrugged and said quietly, “I am what you see me to be.”

“There is a mystery about you. All the others, anyone I’ve ever known, the women especially—each has so many faces, so many lies, so many deceits, so much deception. From moment to moment, the lies to please, to win favors, to cheat, to distort. To win. Whatever the individual sees as the prize. What prize would tempt you, Miranda?”

“No prize, señor. A prize is something given: a lottery. A chance thing.”

“Would you not accept a chance thing? A thing given? Your life as a prize? Would you accept that?”

She froze. His face revealed nothing but deadly intent. She had no clue as to what her answer should be, what it was he wanted of her. He gently brushed the back of his hand against her cheek, just once, then insisted, “Tell me. Answer me. I want to know. From your heart, Miranda. Exactly as your heart tells you to answer. It is important.” And then, ominously, “To you as well as to me.”

It didn’t matter. It was a game he was playing to amuse himself. She had seen him glance at his watch: he was using up time in a way that pleased him. So be it.

She answered him directly, without calculation. It did not matter.

“My life is not a prize to be given.
It is mine.”

Carlos Galvez laughed. It was a sound of honest enjoyment, of unexpected pleasure. His smile was wide, his large mustache spread, his strong white teeth gave an unexpected innocence to his face. The smile made him, for no more than a split second, look younger, uncorrupted. But then his face fell back into place and he shook his head.

“Oh, you will make problems for me, little one. Right now, at this exact moment, could you not at least let go a little? Must you be, at this moment, who you have been all your life, Miranda? Even great trees have been known to—”

From outside, or from another room, there came a muffled scream, a young woman’s voice, anguished, frightened, pleading. And then the clear hard unmistakable sound of a revolver shot. Another. Then silence.

Miranda drew in her breath, twisted toward the sounds, and he surrounded her, turned her around to him. He began to talk to her, quietly, soothingly. He was comforting her. She heard some of the words, caught the drift of what he was saying. It was peculiar, strange, removed from where they were, from what was happening, from what and who each of them was. It was totally unreal and yet it was all encompassing: the sound of his voice as his hands held her against his body. She felt his touch move from her shoulders to her throat, then, gently, to some location behind her neck, and all the time his touch was gentle and, in some strange and terrible way, was welcome as though she had been waiting for him for a very long time. It was a loving touch and in no way did she feel frightened: she felt herself giving in, gliding, with his touch and his words. His loving voice filled her with strange peace and calmness. Now pressed against him, she could feel the fabric of his shirt, a fine, expensive linen, smell the sweat that had come through from his body, the light exotic masculine fragrance of his cologne. In her mouth, she swallowed hard over the metallic taste of fear and horror, ignored the last warnings of her brain and listened only to her body’s euphoria. And to his words.

There was a peculiar exchange going on between them, but before she could begin to figure it out she felt herself sliding away. The last thing she consciously felt and consciously heard was Carlos Galvez as he bent over her and gently kissed the back of her neck and then whispered into her ear, “Remember me, Miranda. Remember this.”

And then she slid all the way into soundless, sightless, tasteless darkness. Nothing.

Nada.

Nada.
N
OTHING

Layers of silence; shades of darkness. And then a weightless rising sensation, strange and gentle, an easy floating upward toward the surface of a far-off and ill-defined reality.

With a slow beginning panic, Miranda became more and more aware. The silence was no longer profound. There was an occasional muffled humming sound, low and sporadic and unfamiliar, growing stronger, clearer and finally recognizable. People were standing nearby, whispering, focusing on her.

She visualized the scene: she lying there, still and cold. They, their faces sad, regretful, sorrowful, watching her and their memories.

Oh God. Is this what it’s like? All those times, did
they
know, as she now knew? Had they been aware, her father, her brother, her grandfather, friends, all those others? Those people Mannie and his family fuss over? Is this what it’s like: I hear and know but cannot reach out. No matter how hard I try, how determined I am to let them know I am still aware. Is this my last awareness? Is this the way it is supposed to be?

“Easy, Miranda. Easy. It’s all right.”

She felt a strong pressure on her wrist, a human touch, connecting with her, acknowledging her awareness. She had, then, really made that slight sighing that inside herself was a roar of despair. Using tremendous will and concentration, Miranda forced her eyes open, fractionally, just enough to see the blurred outline of a face leaning toward her.

“I am Dr. O’Brien,” he said. “You are in a hospital. It’s going to be all right. You are safe and you are going to be all right.”

She slid away again, safe now: down and back, an easy progressive slide into some formless safe dark place.

They came to her, over a period of time, when the doctors approved that she was ready for them. To talk, to reassure and to question. They told her their end of it, the captain explaining, the other squad people nodding and waiting for her.

There had been a telephone call to Police Headquarters with the words that guaranteed immediate response:
police officer needs help.
Squad cars responded to the location: an unused maintenance shack not one hundred feet from where the bodies of the two murdered stewardesses had been found.

They walked into a scene of carnage, and as they sorted it out, describing the bodies, Miranda helped them make some sense of what they had found.

Maria Vidales, dead of two bullets in her head. Her “young man,” strangled; the two thugs who had abducted Miranda, shot twice each behind the ear.

And Miranda, unconscious, presumably left for dead.

Carefully, Miranda explained what had happened, how she had come to be there, at that shack with Maria Vidales. She did not relate any of her conversation with Carlos Galvez: she did not discuss billions of dollars and a United States senator or governments owned and the all-inclusive control, the ultimate power achieved through the accumulation of such money. She just said that inside the shack she was alone with Carlos Galvez and then she was in a deep sleep. She thought she had died. Apparently, she was still very much alive.

“As far as anyone outside this hospital knows, Miranda, you just don’t exist. He thinks he killed you.” Captain O’Connor spoke very softly, leaned close to her, actually took her hand and squeezed it for reassurance. “The news story was that three unidentified men and two unidentified women were found murdered in the maintenance shack. You’re under wraps. Don’t worry about anything. We’ll take care of you.”

She nodded and felt the loosening of his reassuring grasp on her hand.

“You know, Miranda,” he said, slightly puzzled, slightly worried, his face creasing, “you’re the only cop who’s ever seen this man, this Carlos Galvez.”

It was not an accusation; it was a statement of fact. And yet it seemed like an accusation.

“Yes. That is true.”

O’Connor’s eyes slid away, no longer able to meet her steady stare. “He’s been treated as nonexistent, political, all the way to the federal level. It’s as though he just doesn’t exist. I mean, the man just... vanished.”

“Yes. I understand.”

O’Connor put a cigarette into the corner of his mouth, but changed his mind. He leaned over her, and she wondered if he had been this old all along. She’d thought of him as a man in his prime. He seemed smaller and tired and used up. He returned to a more personal ground with her. It was where he was more comfortable.

“Tell you something, kid. Seeing you unconscious, knowing he’d tried to strangle you, scared the holy hell out of me. I mean, you were alive and in some kind of coma, and all everyone kept saying was the possibility of brain damage. Jesus. That would have been... I just want to tell you, Miranda. I am glad you’re going to be all right.”

His caress, his hand on her face, was clumsy, a large rough man’s tenderness. Miranda nodded and felt her eyes closing over the exhaustion. Over the sorrow she felt when seeing Captain O’Connor’s face. He was a good man who was accustomed to finding things out; to getting answers to questions. To getting to the truth at the center of events. With this, all of this matter, he was to have no questions and did not seek any answers she might want to volunteer. It was a matter that had nowhere to go.

“We’ll all be in seeing you, Miranda. We don’t want to bother you right now. You just get the rest you need, kid. Sorry we can’t let anyone in your family, or any friends, know about this. We have to keep you under wraps for now.”

“I understand,” she said. “I understand.”

“Good. Rest now, Miranda,” the captain said and left the room.

And don’t make waves, Miranda.

This is how it is done, she thought. This is the other side of Galvez’ operation: silence. Official silence. There was nowhere to go with information or testimony or an eyewitness account. There was nothing to bring to a district attorney. The most pure, totally uncorrupted, eager, anxious D.A. would stare and say, “What? What do I take to the grand jury? Hand me something; show me something! Documentation, tape recordings of pertinent conversations. Give me some proof, some evidence, something in my hand to hold up and say, Here, this connects with that and leads to this and it all begins and ends with the power of unimaginable sums of drug money.”

She had nothing but her knowledge, and it was totally worthless.

Mike Stein had made his deal: was satisfied with the future he had accepted.

Captain O’Connor, with his sad, knowing eyes, knew all he cared to know. He had no great and wonderful connection to any higher authority; no more than she.

All the crime commissions, at all the various levels, local, municipal, state and national, had all the information and the evidence and knew of all the connections and cross-connections, knew of the involvement of government, of big business, knew it all the way down to the pusher in the alley. And all of them pointed down to that alley: get the bastard off the street, the filth who is selling drugs to our innocent kids.

They all knew. All of them. And no one could or would do anything about it.

She felt herself sinking into despair: a sin. She knew this was a sin, and a sudden rush of awareness flashed through her.

She was not alive by mistake. Carlos Galvez did not make such mistakes: he could not afford to. Not even once.

She was alive for whatever reason he had
decided
to let her live, because she was no threat to anything. He knew, as clearly and precisely as she did, that there was nothing she could do to him, or to his operation.

The effort to think this all through exhausted her because beneath all her conscious thoughts there was
something.
Something elusive, something maddeningly important that she had forgotten and must remember. Something to do with him that she must,
must
clarify.

Miranda had no idea how long she had slept, whether it was late afternoon or morning or evening. She came instantly and totally awake when she heard the door open and close. Captain O’Connor pulled a chair up alongside her bed. His voice was flat and without expression: pure cop-voice.

“Miranda, have you been in touch with your family? Either directly or have you had anyone at all send them a message?”

“My family?”

“Does anyone, your mother, your son, your former husband, anyone at all, know that you’ve been... injured? That you’re here, in the hospital?”

Her body went rigid. “No. No one at all.”

O’Connor stared at her hard: penetrating, looking for signs. Then, satisfied, he said, “There was a phone call at the office about an hour ago. One of the guys took the message. Some new guy, who knows nothing at all about any of this, about you, your involvement. It was a man calling. ‘A soft Spanish accent,’ this young detective said. We’re working on running it down.” He shrugged. “The man who phoned said he was a friend of your family and would the message be delivered to you. At the hospital.”