In Dark Corners (33 page)

We took off for town, a mile or so away in the fog; the place only dimly lit now, without benefit of our night vision goggles. The rising moon was becoming visible through the mist. It was a relief to be walking along the paved road in the sultry night without the stealth suits on.

***

The two-story, ramshackle Kool Kitten was located in the low rent southern end of Laredo. Unlike the bars on either side, this establishment didn't have a neon sign, just a faded cartoon cat standing with a top hat and cane on a small sign over a pair of swinging doors. Noise and light blared out from the entry into the night.

We pushed inside and stopped, eyes taking a moment to grow accustomed to the brightly lit, smoky interior.

The place was crowded, all our senses assailed at once: the
clamor
of laughing, talking, swearing, and a woman screaming from somewhere upstairs over the sound of a pair of guitars strumming in a corner opposite the bar; the
smell
of tobacco and cannabis smoke, stale beer, perfume, and sweaty bodies; the
sight
of a number of heavy-set, tattooed, unshaven men talking and dancing with painted women wearing brightly colored clothes and dangling earrings; the
tingling
feel of an electric excitement hanging in the thick, foul air. Seedy, noisy, smelly, alive: this relatively small, sleazy bar and whorehouse was smugglers' central for this part of the country.

We worked our way through the dancers to the bar and ordered three beers.

When the huge, bald bartender, wearing a black T-shirt and brown leather vest, set the three mugs down, I asked him in a nonchalant voice, "Seen Trixie tonight?"

He wiped up some splashed beer from the polished countertop in front of me with a dirty towel, then looked us over carefully before he answered. "Ain't seen her, yet," he replied loudly, but nodded his head ever so slightly as if contradicting his own statement.

Picking up my drink, I said loudly back, "If she comes in, we'll be sitting over in the corner." I indicated a table in the far corner, away from the musicians, out of the dance floor action.

At the table, I sat down my beer, looked the crowd over more carefully, and announced to my two companions, "Okay, I see our contact."

Sanchez sat down with his back to the corner and nodded. Romanov pulled up a rickety chair beside him without comment.

I worked my way through the crowd into the restroom that smelled strongly of disinfectant, waiting a few moments for the rear stall to come available.

Of course the door didn't latch, but I still had all the privacy we would need.

After a moment or two, a tall, thin redheaded transvestite pushed into the cubicle. She smiled, almost a clown-like leer through her heavy make-up. "Hey, Alfy, good to see you, man."

We hugged.

Trixie, a skinny, small-breasted, heavily tattooed hooker, had been my main smuggling contact here for over nine years—we'd both made a lot of money dealing with each other. I trusted her as much as you could trust any gringo; some of them, like Trixie, semi-loyal to established contacts, but edgy-paranoid, with possibly good reason. The
Triple S
—the Special Security Service—was rumored to be watching everywhere along the border for gringos trying to cross, even in dives like the Kool Kitten. But, in my ten years of doing business with Sanchez north of the border, I'd only directly encountered one law enforcement officer—maybe a Triple S Agent—who, as it turned out, wasn't the least interested in a small time operation like Sanchez and myself. So maybe
Triple S'
omnipotence was little more than myth.

"What's it gonna be tonight, pal?" Trixie asked, still grinning lasciviously at me, as if I were a potential sexual client. "Got some really heavy Gulf Coast maryjane in stock and a garage full of cartons of authentic Silver Eagle cigarettes."

I shook my head. "No tobacco or cannabis, my friend. This time I need papers for three people and transportation to Corpus Christi and back."

Trixie lifted her plucked eyebrows, but asked no questions about my uncharacteristic request, except to say, "Need high quality IDs with photos, holo thumbprints, and laminated?"

"Yes," I replied. "Best quality." Even though
Triple S
had never bothered Sanchez and myself, we'd never really violated much of their turf, or tried to take out an apparently valuable and rare artifact.

"Okay, you got it," Trixie replied. "But it'll take me maybe a half hour or so to round up my documents man and get him back here with his equipment. And it's gonna cost 1000 pesos apiece for the IDs. You'll have to make your own deal with the driver, but I think I can get you a guy with a Speed Wagon—the three-hour trip to Corpus Christi probably cost you 1400 to 1500 pesos plus the coal. Require some shoveling on your part, too." He stared at me with his eyebrows tented.

"No problem."

"Okay, see all three of you back here in half an hour for photos and thumbprints, right?" Trixie said, backing out of the smelly cubicle.

I nodded.

***

Back in the smoke-filled bar, Sanchez was grinning—a rare event. "We've been offered every sex act imaginable in your absence, Al…maybe a few not even listed."

For a moment I saw Gramps warning us long ago about the painted women on this side of the border and wagging his finger at two horny teenagers:
You boys sleep with dogs you get fleas
. An admonition both of us had taken to heart.

"Didn't see anything you liked?" I asked Romanov, trying to be funny.

He stared at me a moment with his chilling gaze, then took another sip of his beer. All business.

I explained the outcome of my meeting with Trixie.

***

A little over an hour later we were well on our way to Corpus Christi, each of us with a good set of papers, the Speed Wagon leaving a trail of thick, black smoke in our wake. During the next two hours, the three of us exchanged shifts shoveling coal into the Wagon's boiler furnace. The trip was uneventful until we stopped to pick up more fuel at Coal Station #31, a half hour from the outskirts of Corpus Christi. Now that the fog had thinned a little, the once-great city glowed dimly on the southern horizon. Sanchez and I had dismounted to help shovel coal into the loader in front of the Wagon's boiler—

That's when the banditos appeared on horseback, like specters in the night, five of them, mean-looking, all armed with weapons pointed in our direction—handguns, antiques to be sure, but still appearing quite lethal.

Sanchez dropped his shovel, backed up carefully toward the Wagon, where Romanov stood with one hand resting inside his khaki pants pocket. As the masked riders slowly advanced toward us, I heard my friend whisper to the gringo gangster, "All holograms…except for the one on the roan mount—"

Hand a blur, Romanov drew a tiny pen-like weapon and discharged a flash of light just by the right ear of the roan.

Terrified, the horse reared up, as the biological bandito fought to retain control and stay mounted…the holograms around him shimmering, fading, breaking up, and finally disappearing.

His horse under control, the bandito jerked about and fled off into the darkness.

Our driver laughed and shouted from the Speed Wagon, "Shame on ya, ya dog-bref rascal."

For the first time, I detected a trace of a grin on Romanov's scary features. Maybe he was human after all—the thought had crossed my mind several times that he might not be biological. In any event, I silently thanked Gramps' wisdom for selecting the infrared sensing option instead of night vision in Sanchez's visual enhancement package. Time and again it had saved our asses.

***

Less than an hour later, just before daybreak, we rode into the heart of Corpus Christi, a few skyscrapers quietly rising up around us like a thin stand of magnificent sequoias. Still, even in the darkness as we drove by, I had a creepy feeling, seeing signs of the decay of the once-great city—many first floor business windows boarded up, street littered with old debris, no street lights or neon, only a window here and there lit in the residential buildings, and the facades of all the structures streaked with sooty grime.

***

The single-story warehouses in the old dock area were even more rundown and unmaintained, the section quiet, probably vacant. Romanov directed our driver between two sets of buildings with roofs sagging so badly they looked like a strong wind would collapse them all, toward a smaller building near the end of the alleyway. Finally, the gangster ordered, "Stop, right here." He turned to Sanchez and me and said, "This is where we meet my contact."

We followed Romanov to an unlocked entry at the rear of the building. He slid the creaking door open, stepping into the unlit gloom.

"Hold it," an ominous and slightly accented voice echoed from somewhere back in the darkness.

Four men stepped cautiously into view. "Extend your arms over your heads," the apparent leader ordered.

We obeyed.

The four men, each as large as Sanchez, approached carefully, all holding old-fashioned handguns. The leader remained in front of us, as his men patted us down. One of them came up with Romanov's laser pen-gun and a long knife, the other two finding Sanchez and myself unarmed.

"Okay," the leader said, looking first at the pen and knife, then Romanov. "You must be Balls?"

Romanov nodded.

The leader produced a pocket-comp and checked it, squinting at Romanov, then at the computer, then back at Romanov. Finally, he nodded to his three cohorts, who seemed to relax a bit. Then, he asked, "Got the Canadian cash?"

Romanov handed over a thick rubber-banded envelope, which the leader did not even bother to check.

"This way," he said, leading us with a huge flashlight out of the warehouse and across the service alley to a similar dilapidated structure. We went through a sliding door, into another unlit gloomy darkness, to a row of three large reefers. And from the lack of a hum, none of them appeared to be powered and refrigerated. But I was wrong. The leader beckoned us to the middle reefer, set his flashlight down, and flicked on a small watt bulb over the container door. Then he unlocked the door, jerked open the handle, and nodded inside with his head, a grin on his pudgy face. "That's it, Balls. We haven't started cutting it up for you to carry yet."

Sanchez, Romanov, and I looked inside the old cold box at the artifact lying on the floor.

The thing was huge, maybe fifteen feet long and eight feet wide. A hand gripping a torch, fashioned beautifully from heavily corroded copper. Of course, after a moment, I recognized the mysterious artifact. But I wondered how in the fuck, even cut up in smaller pieces, we were going to get all that into three backpacks? "Balls, we can't carry that…?"

Ignoring me, Romanov stepped back and lifted his right arm as if he were signaling someone.

A half-dozen black-garbed figures appeared behind us, just at the edge of the darkness, blocking our exit, each armed with a big stungun with a mounted laser-spotting rifle. "Don't anyone move," one of the men shouted, his voice thick with menace. "Everyone drop your weapons and get face down on the floor, now!"

From the surprised looks on the faces of the four Russkies, I suspected these six black-clad guys were not good friends; and I could tell the gangsters had no intention of dropping their guns.

That's when all hell broke loose.

A stungun thundered and the single light bulb exploded, plunging us all into darkness.

The gangsters began firing wildly with their handguns, bullets ricocheting about in all directions, lasered red dots answering back, searching for Russkie targets in the darkness.

Instantly, both Sanchez and I dropped flat, trying to dig a hole in the cement floor. We were in a tight spot here, caught in a crossfire, not being able to see anything except the muzzle blasts of handguns firing and red tracers from spotting rifles…Then, close by I heard a low moan, "Ohhhh." I reached out touching Sanchez, who squeezed my hand strongly. He was okay. The nearby sound must be coming from Romanov. He'd been hit!

We had to do something for him, get him away from the crossfire, and render first aid. But the six latecomers had closed the alley door on entry, and it was darker in here than night collapsed in on itself. At that moment, I heard Gramps' voice whispering in my head:
Al, you can see in the darkness
.

He was right. I tugged at Sanchez's sleeve and whispered hoarsely, "Goggles…Then, we'll drag him back where it's safer. I think I saw a container near the exit."

Night vision goggles adjusted in place, we drug Romanov out of the line of fire, toward the doorway and behind a large packing case, the black-garbed men ignoring us, busy with their spotting rifle scopes, searching for gangsters.

Fortunately, Romanov had only a flesh wound in his right rump, probably hit by a ricochet from one of the gangsters' handguns. And the gunfight lasted only a few minutes more…One, two, three, four, the deafening stungun blasts echoed in the old warehouse.

Then silence.

The gangsters all down.

***

A few minutes later, several of the black-clad men anxiously gathered around Romanov still resting behind the packing case. Then each grinned or laughed when they discovered the location and minor nature of his wound. One announced sarcastically, "Hey, Big Guy, you gotta bring ass to kick ass."

"Very funny, pal," Romanov replied, then turned to Sanchez and me. "Thanks for getting me out of that crossfire. Guess you two are entitled to an explanation."

"That would be nice," I said, looking suspiciously at his ebony-garbed cohorts, guessing they were the legendary
Triple S
.

But we didn't learn if they were the famed secret service. Or even the name of our smuggling partner. Because Romanov wasn't Romanov. His features had been surgically altered to resemble the notorious criminal. I found out later the real Balzac Romanov was still on ice back in Monterrey. This had all been set up to first catch the American-Russkie mob trying to smuggle out the first part of the statue they had stolen, and then recover the rest.