The Devil's Bounty (11 page)

Hector squeezed the man’s arm. ‘Come on. Spit it out. What’s the problem?’

The bartender leaned in towards him and whispered, ‘She’s American.’

Hector pushed past him, his feet hammering up the stairs, taking them two at a time. He reached the tiny wooden postcard of a landing and threw open the only door.

What confronted him inside told him he had been right. Win-win was for asshole
gringos
, like Charlie Mendez. For a man like Hector there was only ever lose-lose.

Twenty-six

CONTRARY TO ITS
carefully cultivated image as a hotbed of decadence and debauchery, Los Angeles was an early-to-bed, early-to-rise city. There was too much money out there and up for grabs for it not to be. It wasn’t even seven in the morning but the diner on the corner of Melrose and Lankershim already had half a dozen people waiting for a table.

In a corner booth, Lock took a sip of coffee and pushed a half-eaten Western omelette around his plate while Ty continued to shovel up a mountain of food. They had walked there from the hotel, Lock wanting to make doubly sure that the surveillance they had been under had ceased. Not that it mattered. A new security team had already moved in to take over the coat-holding and car-door-opening duties demanded by Triple-C, but when it came to Mendez they were still at square one. Despite contacting everyone who might be able to lead them to him, there had been no new sightings, no fresh intelligence of any description.

Ty wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and belched. ‘So what’s the plan, Señor Lock?

‘Apart from you maybe getting some table manners?’

‘Sorry about that, just came out.’

‘So what do you mean, “What’s the plan?”’

‘Well, we going to go down there and get this asshole or what?’

Lock eyed him over the table. ‘Slight hitch, Señor Johnson.’

Ty smiled and scooped up some more food. Lock swore that his partner had hollow legs. Ty could eat all day every day and not put on a pound. It was irritating in the extreme.

‘Like we don’t have a goddamn clue where he is?’ Ty said.

Lock cleared his throat. ‘There’s that. But what if he never surfaces? Do we just let it go?’

‘Can’t do that either, can we?’

‘Okay. Let’s set ourselves a deadline. If we knew right now where he was, how long do you think we’d need to put everything together for a hostile extraction?’ Lock asked.

‘Day, maybe two.’

Lock signalled to the waitress for the check. ‘Two days’ time we head down there. If we don’t know where he is, maybe we can flush him out.’

‘Or get ourselves killed,’ said Ty.

Lock lifted his coffee mug and clinked it against Ty’s glass of orange juice. ‘That’s always an option too.’

The waitress dropped by with the check. Ty gave her his patented never-fails smile. She ignored him but took Lock’s credit card and came back with her phone number, which she had written on the back of the receipt.

Ty stared at it as she walked away. ‘You gonna call her? I mean the girl’s eyesight’s clearly not the best, but she is kind of cute.’

‘Don’t go there.’

‘What? You gonna be a monk the rest of your life? You gonna give yourself a bad case of DSB?’

Lock grimaced, knowing he would regret asking the obvious question. ‘DSB?’

‘Deadly Sperm Back-up, brother. Messes up a dude’s mind if he holds on to that dirty water too long.’

Lock pushed away his plate. ‘Can’t understand why you don’t get yourself more dates, Ty. Real old-school charmer such as yourself.’

Ty open-palmed an apology. ‘Hey, I’m just sayin’.’

‘Well, don’t.’

Ty’s BlackBerry chimed. He picked it up and took a look at the screen, then clicked the read button to open the email that had just dropped into his inbox.

‘Something?’ Lock asked him.

‘That break we needed?’ Ty said. ‘American guy I’ve been talking to down there who’s plugged into one or two of the local crews. He thinks he spotted Mendez in a bar.’

‘When?’

‘Last night,’ smiled Ty.

‘Where?’

‘Little town outside Santa Maria called Diablo.’

Lock tried to think back to his map. He was sure he’d registered that name. ‘Wasn’t that close to where Brady found him the last time?’

‘Think so.’ Ty thumbed further down the email. ‘Looks like he wasn’t alone either.’

‘Security?’ Lock asked.

Ty’s expression clouded. ‘Doesn’t mention it here but there was an American girl.’

Lock was already at the door. ‘Think we’d better move that departure date up.’

‘A day?’

‘No,’ said Lock. ‘We leave now.’

‘I can be good to go in an hour.’

‘Make it thirty minutes,’ said Lock, shouldering out on to the sidewalk.

Twenty-seven

THE AUDI WOULD
stay where it was. Lock gave the valet who had seen it in its blood-drenched condition a hefty tip to take it out of the garage and drive it around Los Angeles on a pre-determined schedule that broadly correlated to his previous movements over the past week: a car that didn’t move would alert the suspicion of anyone still monitoring the tracking device.

In his hotel room, he gathered some of his belongings. He left some clothes on hangers in the wardrobes in case someone decided to take a closer look. He also left his toothbrush and razor. The toothbrush he would replace; the razor could go unused. He hadn’t shaved for the past week, figuring that if Mendez had changed his appearance to deflect attention then so would he.

The hotel was paid for until the end of the following week. That was the time-frame Lock had allowed to locate, kidnap and repatriate Mendez. If it took any longer than ten days they could keep the rest of his stuff or throw it away: the chances were that he wasn’t coming back.

He pulled a pre-packed duffel bag on to his shoulders and took one last look at the room, then left. In the corridor, Ty was waiting for him. They walked in silence to the elevator and rode it down to the parking garage. They got out and went to a white Ford Ranger double-cab pick-up truck.

They slung their bags into the back. The Ranger would take them over the border where they would switch vehicles. Ty got behind the wheel and drove out of the garage, both men on the lookout for someone following them.

Lock pulled a picture of Charlie Mendez from his jacket pocket and clipped it to the sun visor as a reminder. Mendez stared back at him with a broad grin. If Lock had his way, he wouldn’t be smiling for much longer.

They took Interstate 5 as far south as San Diego, then picked up the Kumeyaay Highway and began to head east through the Cleveland National Forest. Finally, Ty broached the subject that had been preying on their minds. ‘He was seen with a girl. You think he was …?’

Lock stared out of the window at the dry, scrubby desert, as the road flirted with the Rio Grande only to switch north again. ‘A leopard doesn’t change its spots.’

Twenty-eight

TOWERING ROADSIDE CROSSES,
painted pink and entwined with dried flowers, greeted Lock and Ty as they crested the hill, the border area of Mexico laid out beneath them. Lock counted six of the twenty-foot-high wooden structures. A hundred yards down the road they came to four more, one after another, high desert stretching off into the distance on either side of the highway. He waved for Ty to pull the white Ranger into the side of the road.

‘What’s up?’ Ty asked.

Lock looked towards the crosses stony-faced but said nothing. ‘Just want to take a look.’

Ty pumped the brakes and the car slid to a halt on the gravel.

Lock got out and walked towards the base of the first cross. A photograph, wrapped in clear plastic, was fastened to it. He hunkered down in the dust and studied it.

A young Mexican woman looked back at him. She had long dark hair, soft brown eyes, and the hesitant self-aware smile of someone unused to posing for the camera. She was wearing a
black high-school graduation gown over her clothes and clutching a mortarboard in her right hand, her whole life ahead of her. At the bottom of the photograph was a name: Rosa Perez. Beneath that, in the same neat handwriting, were the dates of her birth and death. Rosa had been nineteen when she died.

Lock straightened up and, shielding his eyes from the strengthening mid-morning sun, took in the vista below. Santa Maria lay before him. Official estimates put its population at 1.5 million but that was almost certainly out by at least half a million. Like the other border cities along the Rio Grande, the city had drawn in hundreds of thousands of people from the poorer south of the country to work in its
maquiladoras
. Free trade between the countries had allowed American companies to shift jobs a few miles across the border and save themselves tens of millions of dollars in lower wage costs and taxes.

The workers in the
maquiladoras
were mostly young women. They were considered more dextrous when it came to the assembly line, and the factory owners could pay them less than they would men. They were also the ones who had been turning up dead for more than a decade. Thousands of them, spirited off the streets, raped, murdered and dumped, often mutilated or dismembered, like trash, all over the city.

The roadside crosses were one part memorial and one part caution. No one in Santa Maria was safe from the ravages of a crime rate that had made it the most dangerous city in the world. But young poor women were the most at risk. It was the same the world over, but here, in Mexico, it had taken on new depths of depravity. Worst of all, no one knew who was behind it. There were theories and whispers, but no answers. Only more killings.

Lock reached out to touch the picture of the girl and his mind
forced him back to Melissa. He rose, packing away his feelings. He and Ty had a job to do. A job that wouldn’t afford them any distractions. There would be time to mourn the dead when they were done. First they had to find Mendez.

He walked back to the car, opened the trunk and pulled out two large black canvas duffel bags. Staying on the roadside and shielded by the car, he deposited the first bag, marked with a red and white tag, on the back seat. He dropped the second bag, which had no tag, next to it. It was the second that he unzipped. He pulled two hard plastic black gun cases and two side holsters from it.

He opened the first and took out a SIG Sauer 226. He clicked a fresh twelve-round clip into it and checked it over. He repeated the same procedure with the second 226. Then he closed the cases, zipped up the bag, shut the rear door and got back into the front passenger seat.

The guns had been purchased from a contact Ty had in El Paso, a dealer who didn’t care whom he sold to as long as the money was good. No paperwork had changed hands, aside from a thick bundle of twenty-dollar bills. If they had to use them, the only way the weapons would be traced back to them was if they left their fingerprints on them. On the other hand, to venture into Mexico looking for Mendez unarmed would have been guaranteed suicide.

The most nerve-racking part had been passing through Customs Control on the US side of the border. Tourists generally didn’t use the US/Santa Maria crossing because of what lay on the Mexican side. But gun runners did, although not usually in regular cars. Illegal traffic across the border was a two-way process. Drugs went north, and firearms went south to the cartels.

When they had been questioned, Lock had shown two carry permits and informed the guard that they were private security contractors going south to guard a fictional American executive and his family, who were living in Santa Maria. As cover stories went, it was plenty plausible and they had been waved through.

He handed the second weapon to Ty, who checked it over, put on the holster and slid the gun into it. ‘What happens if we get pulled over by the Federales?’ Ty asked.

Lock stared hard into the glare of the sun. ‘We do what everyone else does. We pay ’em off.’

Ty grimaced. ‘And if they won’t be bought?’

‘What colour do you think we should get our crosses?’ Lock asked.

‘Well, not pink, that’s for damn sure.’

Lock glanced back at the roadside and forced a smile. ‘I dunno … pink might bring out your eyes.’

Ty waited for a gap in the traffic and pulled back on to the highway as a truck roared past them in the fast lane. As he drove, his eyes flicked back and forth from the road ahead to the rear-view and side mirrors. They were relatively safe on the freeway, but in a moment they would be on surface streets until they reached their first port of call.

Ty nudged his way through the thundering lines of trucks, returning home to pick up fresh loads, towards the off-ramp. He kept the turn signal off. He waited until he was almost at the final stretch of the median, where the ramp ended, then spun the wheel hard right. He gave the rear-view mirror a final check to see if anyone had followed but the ramp behind was clear.

Lock checked the sat-nav app on his cell phone. ‘Okay, right at the bottom,’ he said to Ty.

Ty didn’t signal this time either, and again waited until the last possible moment before making the turn, swinging out wide and almost clipping a green and white taxi cab travelling in the opposite direction. The road opened up into a wide boulevard, with a concrete median running down the middle.

‘Over here,’ said Lock, and they pulled into a second-hand-car dealership with an auto-repair body shop on one side, presumably operated by the same owner, and a dentist on the other. The body repair and the dealership were two halves of the same business. The place was a
yonque
, or chop shop. They were known as bone-yards, or
huesarios
, in the interior of the country.

Ty pulled the car through a set of gates into a small yard shielded by panels of corrugated iron. A dog sat scratching itself next to a dark blue Dodge Durango with the deep tint on the windows that seemed standard here, rather than a factory option. The dog rose slowly, took a piss against one of the tyres and ambled away as Lock went to greet the owner, a portly man wearing a flowery shirt that was two sizes too small, and a fedora.