The Wake-Up (19 page)

33

Thorpe drove over the broken gate and onto the gravel road, keeping it in first gear, taking his time. He had rolled his window down, and the breeze brought in the stink of rotting oranges. He tilted his rearview mirror, tried to get a glimpse of Vlad and Arturo, but the angle was wrong. The Land Rover hit a pothole, bouncing him forward. Looking through the trees, he could see the Town Car, the trunk open wide, ready to take a big bite.

He was sweating, but he kept the air conditioner off. Better to be soaked than to get the shakes. He needed all his steadiness now. One of Guillermo’s
pistoleros
lay inside the trunk of the Town Car, crammed into a cubbyhole under the spare tire with a full-auto M249 machine gun, a SAW. Thorpe couldn’t see the gun, but he could feel the man sighting in on him. Hathaway had told him the SAW was equipped with a couple of belts of military ordnance, rounds that would go through an engine block like vanilla yogurt, rounds that would tear Thorpe apart as he sat behind the wheel, rounds that would chew up Vlad and Arturo as they approached, before they even stopped their car. All the Kevlar in the world wouldn’t save Arturo. Or Vlad, either. A strange, sad duck. Not an evil bone in his body, but he had probably lost count of all the people he had killed. What had Hathaway said? Vlad and Arturo had taken out five of Guillermo’s dealers in one weekend, killed everyone they found, men, women, and children . . . babies in their cribs. Not even counting Ray Bishop, and Bishop
did
count. No, he and Arturo both had to go.

The driver of the Town Car pulled an orange off the nearest tree, wound up, and fired it at a nearby sprinkler head, splattering pulp. One of the boys of summer in baggy jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, probably an Uzi inside a rosin bag under his shirt. The driver picked another orange.

Thorpe carefully steered around another pothole, rolled over one of the trees that the Town Car had flattened. He had to blink to keep the sweat out of his eyes, but a tiny rivulet squirmed from his hairline and rolled behind his ear as he stared at the trunk of the Town Car. Hathaway had assured Thorpe that he would be in the backseat, sitting right next to Guillermo to make sure that Thorpe survived the execution of Vlad and Arturo, when the instinct was not to leave any witnesses. “You ain’t a witness, Frank. You’re a co-conspirator,” Hathaway had said, laughing.

Thorpe eased the Land Rover toward the edge of the road, out of the direct line of fire, and slowly rolled to a stop. He turned off the ignition, his hands steady, his mind clear. He touched the 9-mm tucked into his waistband. He wasn’t ready for anything, but he was ready enough. That was Thorpe’s motto.

“Frank stopped the car,” said Vlad. “We should get going.”

“Not yet,” said Arturo, watching the dust billow across the Town Car through the binoculars.

“Frank said—”

Arturo patted Vlad on the back. “I know you like him, but that’s not enough.”

“Clark said we were supposed to work with him.”

“Clark lets Missy tell him what to do. A real man does not do that. We’re going to have to have a long talk with him. Set him straight.”

“Frank is getting out.” Vlad rechecked the assault rifle slung under his arm, worked the action. “We should
go.
”

“Howdy, Frank, fine afternoon, isn’t it?” The driver of the Town Car was Danny Hathaway. The inside of the car was empty.

Thorpe glanced back to where Vlad and Arturo were parked on the ridge above the grove, then back at Hathaway. “What happened?”

“At the last minute, Guillermo decided that he didn’t want to get involved.”

“He didn’t want to get involved, but he loaned you his armored car?”

Hathaway plucked a desiccated orange off the nearest tree, hefted it before letting fly. A miss. “Actually, it wasn’t a loan.” He grinned. “I kicked him and his two bodyguards out at a miniature golf course in Santa Ana, told them to play a round on me. Guillermo didn’t think it was funny, but he never did have a sense of humor.”

Thorpe turned his head so that he could keep track of Vlad and Arturo. The Lexus was still parked in the same spot. “What do you want to do now?”

Hathaway opened the rear door of the Town Car, pretended to talk to someone inside, then slipped into the backseat, crawled forward on his belly. “Same as you want to do. I can handle the SAW better than Guillermo’s shooter anyway.”

Thorpe strolled around to the side of the car, positioned himself so that his face was partially blocked by one of the trees. Even with his binoculars, Arturo wouldn’t be able to tell that Thorpe was talking. “Can you see the road from in there?”

“No problem.” Hathaway’s voice was muffled. “It’s hot in here, though . . . and Guillermo’s shooter was a lot smaller than me.”

“We won’t have to wait long.”

“We can drive away if you want, Frank. This thing is built like a bank vault. You can flip them the bird as we drive past.”

It was tempting. What they were planning was murder, legally anyway, not morally, and the distinction between the two had caused Thorpe grief his whole life. He beckoned to the Lexus. “No, I’m good for it.”

“You know the rules of engagement,” said Hathaway.

Thorpe touched the 9-mm under his shirt. “Yeah, there are no rules.”

Hathaway’s laugh sounded hollow from under the spare tire.

“Let’s get down there,” said Vlad.

Arturo put down his binoculars, started the car. “Forget Frank’s little pep talk. Here’s the way it will happen. Just past the gate, there’s a big pothole. I’ll take it fast, so the car will really dip, and when I do, you roll out your door and into the gully by the right side of the road. Guillermo and his
pistoleros
won’t be able to see clearly through the smoked glass of the Town Car. Then you scurry up the gully, keeping ahead of me. When I get there, we hit them at the same time.”

Vlad shook his head. “Better I move behind your car after I roll out, then cut left through the trees. I’ll keep low, move fast; there’s enough brush to screen me. They’ll be watching you approach in the car, and I’ll catch them from behind. They’ll all be dead before you hit the brakes.”

Arturo considered it, nodded. “You’re right.”

“Arturo . . . you should be careful when you start firing. You don’t want to hit Frank.”

“No, we wouldn’t want that.” As Arturo put the Lexus into gear, his phone beeped.

“At least it’s not Missy, asking if it’s over yet,” said Vlad.

“I’ve been waiting on this call,” said Arturo. He listened as he watched the Town Car. “You’re
sure
?” He smiled and then snapped the phone shut.

“Good news?”

Arturo stared through the windshield at the orange grove, his face darkening now. “I just wish the call had come through ten minutes ago.”

“What is it, Arturo?”

“Clark and Missy’s new best friend is a liar. Guillermo didn’t have our cookers killed.”

“Maybe Guillermo lied to him.”

“Why do you always take his side?” asked Arturo.

“I’m not.” Vlad nodded toward the Town Car. “Let’s go down and take care of business. . . . We can ask Frank to explain things when we’re done.”

Arturo shook his head. “If Guillermo didn’t kill our cookers, maybe
he’s
not our problem.” He chewed on his thumbnail.

“You should call Clark. Ask him what he wants us to do.”

“I don’t need to call anyone,” said Arturo. “No, we’ll let Frank explain to Guillermo why we backed out. It should be a most interesting conversation. I just wish I could piss on the
pendejo
’s body after Guillermo gets done with him.” He slipped the Lexus into gear, pulled out onto the main road. “Let’s go to Santa Ana and pay a visit to someone who will be
very
unhappy to see us. Would you like that?”

Vlad stared out the window.

Thorpe watched the Lexus drive away. “You can come out now.”

“What happened?” asked Hathaway, emerging from the inside of the Town Car, trying to work the kinks out.

“I don’t know.” Thorpe kept watch on the road, just in case.

“Too bad. I was looking forward to seeing if this Vlad character could be killed.”

“What does
that
mean?”

“Vlad is the reason that Guillermo backed off.” Hathaway stretched, popped his neck. “Guillermo thinks Vlad is some kind of
brujo . . .
wizard. I don’t believe a word of it, but Guillermo does.”

“Maybe Guillermo just wanted an excuse to back down.”

“Guillermo doesn’t make excuses,” said Hathaway. “He told me that when they had their dustup a couple years ago, one of his cousins shot Vlad five times. They found blood everywhere, so they knew he wasn’t wearing a vest, but the next thing Guillermo knows, Vlad’s back in action.” Hathaway snagged a bottle of mescal from inside the car, took a swig, and offered it to Thorpe, who declined. “Guillermo tracked down the ER doc who worked on Vlad, and the guy goes on about patient confidentiality until Guillermo clarifies things for him.” He took another swallow of mescal, showed his perfect white teeth. “Doc said he had never seen insides like Vlad’s. He showed Guillermo the X rays, and Vlad’s organs are all overdeveloped, with scar tissue and . . .
growths
everywhere. Doc told Guillermo that Vlad should have died from the gunshot wounds, but a day later, he walked out of Intensive Care and disappeared. Doc was really pissed. I guess he was working on some article for a medical journal, but his proof walked out on him.” He squinted at Thorpe. “I dearly would have liked to have seen how those weird organs of his would hold up to the SAW. Nine hundred rounds a minute, that’s some serious firepower.”

“Sorry I got you into this, Danny. You ruined your deal with Guillermo for nothing.”

“I’m the one owes you,” said Hathaway. “I was overdue for a change. I’m done with Guillermo and the DEA both.”

“I thought you liked the work.”

“Every job gets old, Frank, even the pussy tester for the king of Siam hates Mondays.” Hathaway scratched the inside of his arm. “Besides, there’s too many temptations at DEA, and I never been good at telling Satan to get his ass behind me. No, you done me good. You woke me up.”

“Yeah, you’re welcome.”

Hathaway put the top back on the bottle of mescal, tossed it onto the driver’s seat. “What are you going to do now?”

“I’ll think of something.”

“You could let it go. That’s something.”

“Danny, if I was the kind of person who could let it go, I wouldn’t have achieved the lofty station in life that you see before you.”

“Sergeant Hardass.” Hathaway threw a sloppy salute, a Delta Force salute, mocking the regular army feebs. He turned serious. “I guess if you were any different, the Engineer would be sleeping better at night.”

“No, the Engineer has no trouble sleeping. He sleeps a sweet and dreamless sleep; I’m counting on that.” Thorpe looked at Hathaway. “What are
you
going to do?”

“I don’t know. . . . It’s a beautiful evening.” Hathaway pounded the Town Car with his fist. “I think I’ll clean out my crib and then take this baby on a road trip. It’s not too late for you to come, Frank.”

“Yes, it is.”

34

Vlad could see Pinto’s knobby anteater-skin cowboy boots protruding from under the white Mustang, heavy-metal music from the boom box drowning out the sounds of work. Fancy boots for the job at hand. He eased into the double garage from the back door, not making a sound. Arturo beckoned Vlad closer, jaw clenched, probably still angry about Thorpe.

For the last few hours, all Arturo had talked about was how he wished he had gotten the phone call sooner. Then he could have taken care of Thorpe himself, instead of leaving it to Guillermo. Vlad felt bad that Thorpe had fooled him, but the feeling didn’t really linger. None of his feelings lingered. Arturo was always in a boiling rage, taking everything personally. A dealer was late with a payment, a cooker spoiled a batch, and Arturo acted like they’d had him in mind when they did it.

Vlad picked up a grease rag, wiped at the blood and brain matter on his shoes.
He
didn’t act out of anger or resentment; he didn’t blame anybody or call names. He just did what he was supposed to do. He tossed aside the rag and was reaching for the handle of the hydraulic jack, when Pinto sensed that he wasn’t alone.

“Mellon? That you?”

“It’s me,” said Vlad.

A socket wrench clattered to the concrete floor. Pinto crabbed the creeper out from under the car, but Vlad turned the handle of the jack, lowered it, pinning Pinto’s torso with the frame of the Mustang.

“Fuck!” Pinto clawed at the floor, his knotty forearms scrolled with spiderweb tattoos, a spaceship snagged in the web, hanging upside down as a two-headed spider watched from Pinto’s elbow joint.
“Fuck!”

Vlad lowered the jack a little more, Pinto begging now, his boots flapping on the ground. That was the good thing about a hydraulic jack: You had such fine control over the level of lift, raising and lowering it by quarter inches. Precision work, he liked that. He once told Arturo that he was thinking of taking a correspondence course in watch making, and Arturo said he might just as well study brain surgery. It took a few minutes for Vlad to realize that Arturo wasn’t serious. Arturo had apologized, even gave him a shoe box full of watches a few days later, new watches, too, said Vlad could practice on them. The watches were still in the shoe box, untouched. Someday, when Vlad wasn’t so busy, he was going to see what made them tick.

“What’s going
on,
man?” Pinto said from under the car.

Arturo strolled into the garage, avoided the spots of pink transmission fluid on the concrete floor. It was bright inside the garage, tools neatly laid out. A calendar on the wall showed a nude blonde holding a shock absorber between her legs. Arturo turned off the boom box. They didn’t have to worry about Pinto’s cries. The garage was in a warehouse district of Santa Ana, and everyone in the vicinity had gone home for the night long ago.

“What’s this about?” called Pinto.

Arturo pulled up a stool and sat down. A cigarette smoldered in a tuna-can ashtray by the rear tire. “Did you think we wouldn’t find out?”

Pinto’s fingers twitched, the nails scalloped with grease. “Find out what?”

Vlad lowered the jack, heard Pinto groan, backed it up again. Not quite as high, though.

“Did you think we wouldn’t find out?” repeated Arturo.

“Can’t . . . can’t breathe,” gasped Pinto.

Vlad lowered the jack. He watched Pinto thrash around, then raised it again.

Arturo waited until Pinto had caught his breath, the man making wet sounds as he sucked in air. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

Silence from under the car.

“Vlad?” said Arturo.

“It wasn’t my fault,” blurted Pinto.

“That’s better,” said Arturo. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“Let me out,” said Pinto. “We’ll talk.”

“You can talk from there,” said Arturo.

“Hey, Pinto,” said Vlad. “If I wanted to buy a roller coaster like the one at the Kids Unlimited Karnival, how much would it cost?”

“What?”

“Vlad asked you a question,” said Arturo.

“I don’t know, man. Two or three hundred thousand. I never priced them,” said Pinto. “Come on, let me out of here.”

“Three hundred thousand, that’s not so much,” said Vlad. “I could ride anytime I wanted then, day and night.”

“This Mellon . . . is he the one who put you up to it?” asked Arturo.

“You’re cutting off my circulation,” said Pinto.

Vlad lowered the jack.

“It was
Mellon,
” said Pinto. “It was his idea. I didn’t want to.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” said Arturo. “That makes a big difference.”

“Mellon . . . he
made
me do it,” said Pinto. “Said he’d kill me if I didn’t help him.”

“So, you ripping off our cookers was just self-defense,” said Arturo.

“That’s right,” said Pinto. “Absolutely, self-defense.”

“Where we going to find this Mellon?” asked Arturo.

“Mellon . . . he’s got a place just off Seventeenth Avenue,” said Pinto. “I don’t know the address, but I’ll take you there.”

“This is a nice car,” said Vlad. “Lot nicer than the other one.”

“I guess that’s what you did with the crank you stole from us,” said Arturo.

“You shouldn’t have taken my Mustang,” said Pinto, defiant now. “I loved that fucking car.”

Vlad tapped the side panel. “What’s with the snake emblem?”

“It’s a ’68 Shelby GT Five Hundred Cobra. Almost cherry,” said Pinto. “Zero to sixty in four point eight seconds. Less than fifty of them left in this condition.” Even in his position, he couldn’t keep the pride out of his voice. “Just let me out of here, okay? I’ll show you the interior. All leather. Matched hides and everything.”

Arturo’s PDA beeped and he pulled it out of his jacket, checked it. “Missy wants to know how things are going,” he said to Vlad. He keyed a reply.

Vlad watched Pinto try to squeeze out from under, the creeper’s metal wheels squeaking on the concrete. Vlad let him make an inch of progress, then adjusted the jack, dropping the car down slightly so that Pinto retreated, thinking it was some permutation of the Cobra’s undercarriage, trying again from a different direction. They went back and forth, Vlad humming as Arturo tapped away on the PDA.

“Come on, man, this is so unnecessary,” said Pinto, gasping, farther under the car than he had been before, only his knees free now. “Mellon is the one you want to deal with. He’s a total crank maniac. . . . I’d go in guns blazing if I was you. Let me out and I’ll take you right over. We’ll settle this, then go back to business as usual.”

Arturo put away the PDA. “You don’t know his address?”

“I wish I did, man. Just let me out, and I’ll take you there.”

“His address is 1209 Plesa, right off Twenty-fifth, not Seventeenth.” Arturo smiled, but Pinto couldn’t see it. “I was having a little fun with you. Don’t worry about taking us over. We’ve already been there.”

“Place was a real mess,” said Vlad. “Smelled bad, too. I don’t think Mellon had taken out the garbage in weeks. Drugs . . . they ruin a person’s perspective.”

“Fuck
you,
man. Fuck the both of you.”

Vlad lowered the jack and Pinto screamed, the sound uncoiling from his chest, echoing in the garage.

“Mellon only had about a half ounce of that gold meth you took off Weezer,” said Arturo. “He said you kept the rest, promised to move it out later this week. Where is it?”

Pinto made gurgling sounds, boots kicking feebly.

Arturo beckoned to Vlad, waited until the jack was raised. “Where’s the rest of the meth?”

“Fuck . . .
you.
”

“You need to work on your vocabulary,” said Arturo.

Pinto gagged, legs twitching.

Vlad raised the car slightly.

“Better?” said Arturo.

“My ribs . . .” Pinto tried to scuttle out, but his legs weren’t working. “You
fuckers . . .
” His voice was high-pitched now, like a little girl’s. A brave little girl’s. “I think . . . I think you broke something important.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing that an Ace bandage and a little bedrest won’t cure,” said Arturo. “Come on, Pinto, just tell us what we want to know, and then we’ll let you finish working on your beautiful car.”

“Sure . . .
sure
you will.”

“You can trust us,” said Arturo. “Have we ever lied to you?”

Pinto’s breathing was ragged.

Arturo looked over, and Vlad raised the jack, kept going, lifted the car three feet off the floor. Arturo squatted down, keeping his knees clean, and looked in at Pinto. Vlad looked, too. Pinto’s head lay against the floor, his eyes half-closed. Blood dribbled from his mouth and nose. “Pinto? Pinto! Where did you stash our goods?”

Pinto opened his eyes, stared back at them. “Fuck . . .
you.
”

“Bueno.”
Arturo nodded, then took the smoldering cigarette from the bent-can ashtray, puffed it back into life. He reached under the car, offered it to Pinto, but the man’s hands just twitched. Arturo stuck the cigarette into the side of Pinto’s mouth, then backed away, squatting on his haunches, watching. “Good for you, hombre. I wouldn’t talk to me, either.” Pinto dragged deeply on the cigarette, started to cough.

Arturo nodded, and Vlad released the jack, brought it crashing down. It sounded like someone stepping on a baby chick with a heavy boot.