The John Milton Series: Books 1-3 (45 page)

“Do you know his name?”

“The policeman? Yes—it was Plato. I think his first name was Jesus.”

“And the man in the hotel?”

“I do not know his real name. But he liked to talk, all the time he would talk to me and the other girl, and this one time, just before I escaped, he told me about the things that he did for the cartels. He said his father was an important man in El Frontera and that he was a killer for them, a
sicario
, but not just any
sicario
—he said that he was the best, the most dangerous man in all of Juárez. He said that he had killed a thousand men and that, because he was so dangerous, the men who worked with him had given him a name. ‘Santa Muerte.’”

Caterina wrote that down in her notebook, underlining it six times.

Santa Muerte.

Holy Death.

Saint Death.

“SO, OLD MAN—you going to stay in Juárez?”

Plato looked at Alameda and then at Sanchez. They had been goofing around all evening—mostly at Plato’s expense, about how it felt to be so old—and this felt like the first proper, serious question. “I don’t know,” he said after a moment. “The girls are settled here, they got their friends, they’re in a decent school. The little one’s just been born; do I want to put him through the hassle of moving? There’s another one on the way. The wife was born here, her old man’s in a home half a mile from the house.”

“Come on, man,” Sanchez said. “Seriously?”

And Plato admitted to himself then that he had already decided. Ciudad Juárez was no place to bring up a family. Forty years ago, when he was coming up, even twenty years ago when he was starting to do well in the police, maybe he could’ve made a case that things would have been all right. But now? No, he couldn’t say that. He’d seen too much. He had investigated eleven killings himself this month: the man in the Ford Galaxy who was gunned down at a stop sign; three beaten and tortured municipal cops found in the park; a man who was executed, shot in the head; and six narcos shot to pieces in the
barrio
by the army. In the early days, at the start, he had kept a list in a book, hidden it in the shed at the bottom of the garden. They called it Murder City for a reason. It took him two months to learn and give up.

“Maybe,” he said.

“Maybe?” Alameda tweaked the end of his long moustache. “You ask me, Jesus, you’d be out of your mind if you stay here. Think what it’ll be like when your girls are all grown. Or Jesus Jr, you want him hanging out on the corners when he gets a little hair on his chin? I’m telling you, man, as soon as I got my pension I’m getting the family together and we are out of here, as far away as we can.”

“Me too,” Sanchez said. “I’ve got family in New Mexico.”

“Yeah, I guess we will move,” Plato admitted. “I fancy the coast. Down south, maybe.”

“Get to use that boat you’re wasting all your time on.”

“That did cross my mind.”

Sanchez got up. “I’m gonna drain the lizard.”

Alameda got up, too, indicating the three empty glasses. “Another?”

He watched Alameda and Sanchez as they made their way across the restaurant, Alameda heading to the bar and Sanchez for the restroom. They had chosen La Case del Mole tonight. It was a decent enough joint. The food was a little better than average, the beer was reasonably priced and plenty strong enough, and the owner—a fat little gringo from El Paso—owed the police a favour, so there would always be a hefty markdown on the bill at the end of the night.

He relaxed in his chair, stretching out his legs so that the ache in his muscles might ease a little. He was getting old, no point hiding it. It had been a long day, too, and if those two had their way, it would be a long night. He thought of his wife trying to get the two girls to behave while she struggled to get the baby to settle, and then feeding them, the chaos of bedtime, and then tidying the house, and for a moment, he felt guilty. He should get home; there were chores to be done, there were always chores, and it wasn’t fair to live it up here with the boys and leave her to do everything herself. But then he caught himself; there wouldn’t be many more chances to do this, to knock off after a shift and have a beer to wind down, maybe stop at a taco stand and shoot the breeze. He would keep in touch with his old colleagues, that was for sure, but it would be different when he was a civilian. He should enjoy himself. Emelia didn’t mind. And she’d given him a pass.

It was almost nine, and as he waited for the busboy to clear the plates away so they could get down to the serious drinking, he idly played with his empty glass and looked out into the parking lot outside. Darkness was falling, the sodium oranges and reds slowly darkening, and the big overhead lights were on. A nice new SUV rolled in, an Audi Q5, the same model that he had had his eye on for a while, the one he knew he probably couldn’t afford. He took in the details: silver, El Paso plates, premium trim, nearly a hundred grand if you bought it new. The truck stopped, not in a bay but right out in front of the restaurant, and Plato sat up a little in his chair. The engine was still running—he could see the smoke trailing out of the exhaust—and the doors on both sides slid open, four men getting out, too dark and too far away for him to see their faces well enough to remember them. There was something about the way they moved that he had seen before: not running but not walking either, quick, purposeful. He didn’t even notice that he had stopped trailing his finger around the rim of the beer glass, that his hand had cautiously gone to his hip, that his thumb and forefinger were fretting with the clip on the holstered Glock.

Plato heard a woman’s voice protesting, saying, “No, no,” and then the crisp thud of a punch and something falling to the floor. The men were into the restaurant now, all four of them, fanning out around the room, each of them with something metallic in their hands. Plato had seen enough firearms in his time to pick them all out: two of them had machine pistols, Uzis or Mac-10s, another had a semi-automatic Desert Eagle, and the last one, keeping watch at the door, had an AK-47. Plato had unfastened the clip now, his hand settling around the butt of the Glock, the handgun cold and final in the palm of his hot hand. He looked around, knowing that there were fractions of seconds before the shooting started, looking for Alameda or Sanchez or anyone else who might be able to back him up, but Sanchez was still in the john, and Alameda had his back to him, facing the bar. The other diners, those that had seen the newcomers and recognised what was about to go down, were looking away, terrified, frozen to their chairs and praying that it wasn’t them.

Twenty feet away to Plato’s left, a fifth man rose from his seat. He recognised him: his name was Machichi. He was a mouthy braggart, early twenties, with oily brown shoulder-length hair and a high-cheekboned Apache face. Two yellow, snaggled buck teeth protruded from beneath a scraggly moustache and an equally scrubby goatee. Machichi had a small Saturday night special in his hand, and he pointed to the table a couple away to his left. Plato knew what was playing out: Machichi was the tail-man, his job was to ID the targets so the others could do the shooting. They were
sicarios
: cartel killers, murderers for El Patrón. But their targets didn’t look like narcos. It was just a table of three: two young women and a man. One of the women—pretty, with long dark hair—saw Machichi and his revolver, shouted, “No,” and dragged the other woman away from the table, away from the
sicarios
.

Plato felt a pang of regret as he pulled the Glock and pushed his chair away. One week to go, less than a week until he could hang it up, and now this? Didn’t God just have the wickedest sense of humour? He thought of Emelia and the girls and little Jesus Jr as he stood and aimed the gun.

“Drop your weapons!”

The
sicario
with the AK fired into the restaurant, hardly even aiming, and Plato felt his guts start to go as slugs whistled past his head. A woman at the next table wasn’t so lucky: her face blew up as the hollow point mashed into her forehead, blood spraying behind her as her neck cracked backwards and she slid from her chair. Plato hid behind the table, the cold finger of the Glock’s barrel pressed up against his cheek. He hadn’t even managed to get a shot off, and now he knew he never would. He couldn’t move. Emelia’s words this morning were in his head, he couldn’t get them out, and they had taken the strength from his legs. He knew he was probably being flanked, the man with the rifle opening an angle to put him out of his misery. Plato knew it would be his wife’s words that would be repeating in his head when the bullets found their marks.

Be careful, Jesus.

You got a different life from next Monday.

It was crazy: he thought of the lawn and how it would never get cut.

Gunfire.

The
tic-tic-tic
of the machine pistols.

A jagged, ripping volley from the Kalashnikov.

Screams.

The man who was with the two women had been hit. He staggered against his toppled chair, leaning over, his hand pressed to his gut, then wobbled across the room until he was at Plato’s table. Blood on his shirt, pumping between his fingers. He reached for the table, his face white and full of fear, and then his hand slipped away from the edge and he was on his knees, and then on his face, his body twitching. Plato could have reached out to touch him.

He was facing at an angle away from the kitchen, but he glimpsed something move in the corner of his eye, cranked his head around in that direction and saw a cook, covered in sweat and shirtless save for a dirty apron, vaulting quickly over the sill of the wide window that opened onto the restaurant. The man moved with nimble agility, landing in a deep crouch and bringing up his right hand in a sudden, fluid motion. Plato saw a pair of angel wings tattooed across his back as his right arm blurred up and then down, something glinting in his hand and, then, leaving his hand. That glint spun through the air as if the man had unleashed a perfect fastball, like Pedro Martinez at the top of the ninth, two men down, the bases loaded. The kitchen knife—for that was what it was—landed in Machichi’s throat.

He dropped his revolver and tottered backwards, clawing at the blade that had bisected his gullet.

It was the spur Plato needed: he spun up and around, firing the Glock. The
sicario
with the Kalashnikov took a round in the shoulder and wheeled away, wild return fire going high and wide, stitching a jagged trail into the fishing net that was hanging from the ceiling. Sanchez appeared and fired from the doorway to the restroom; Alameda was nowhere to be seen. All the diners were on the floor now; the cook fast-crawled on his belly between them, a beeline to the man with the Kalashnikov and, with a butterfly knife that had appeared in his hand, he reached down and slit the man’s throat from ear to ear. He picked up the AK.

He popped out of cover, the muzzle flashing.

One of the
sicarios
was hit, his head jerking back.

The cook was beneath the line of the tables, firing a quick burst that left most of the top of the man smeared across the carpet and the wall behind him. The gun made a throaty chugging sound. Like someone with a hacking cough.

The remaining pair scrambled back to the door. Plato watched through the restaurant’s large picture window as they hurried to the Q5. The cook stepped around to the window. The car was just fifteen feet away outside. The cook raised the Kalashnikov, calm and easy, braced the stock expertly against his shoulder, and fired a concentrated volley straight through the window. The pane shattered in an avalanche of shards, the bullets puncturing the driver-side window, none going astray, all of them within a neat ten-inch circle.

The car swerved out of control and hit another. The door swung open. The airbags had deployed. The driver fell out, his head a bloody mess. The passenger was hit, too.

Plato brought up his Glock and aimed at the cook.

“Police! Get down, Señor! Down! On the floor!”

The man got to his knees, put the Kalashnikov on the carpet, then lay down.

MILTON HAD lost track of time. Suddenly, there had been sirens, police, ambulances. Six men and two women were dead. It was obvious who the gunmen had been after: two of the dead were from the same table. The police fussed around the bodies, taking photographs and judging trajectories, and then, when they were done, the paramedics were called over to lift the dead onto gurneys, covering their faces as they hauled them away. Milton was detained by the older, silver-haired municipal cop who had shot the gunman with the Kalashnikov; he was a little plump around the middle, the wrong side of fifty, and he had the smell of alcohol on his breath. The man told him to get a shirt, told him he was going to have to come back to the station with him to give a statement. Milton said that wasn’t necessary, he could just do it there and then, but the cop had been insistent. Then, when they had arrived, he had insisted that he be photographed and have his fingerprints taken. Milton said he wasn’t a criminal. The cop said maybe, but he just had his word for that. Milton could have overpowered him easily and could have gotten away, sunk under the surface again, but there was something about the cop that said he could trust him and something about the night itself that said he better stick around.

He let them take their photographs, front and profile. He let them take his prints.

The man was sitting in front of him now.

“So—you’re Mr.”—he looked down at his notes—“Smith. Right?”

“That’s right.”

“First name John. Correct?”

“Correct.”

“John Smith? Really?”

“Yes, really.”

“All right then, Señor Smith. Sorry about bringing you down here.”

“That’s all right. Why don’t you tell me what you want?”

“I just wanted to visit with you a little bit. Talk to you about what happened. That was some trick with the knife. What are you, ex-military?”

“I’m just a cook.”

“Really? You don’t look like a cook.”

“So you say. But that’s what I am.”