Rum Luck Page 21

  “Enlighten me.”

  “Stalling for time will not work, Mr. Cooper. The police cannot help you.”

  “That’s a risk I’m willing to take,” Ben said.

  “I do not care whether you hand me the emeralds or I take them from your frozen corpse,” Vasquez said. “But are you willing to throw away Ana’s life along with your own?”

  “This is everyone?” Victoria fumed.

  Captain Reyes had arrived minutes after her call with two squad cars and a single unmarked police car. Four officers fanned out around the cantina.

  “Thank you for your concern, Ms. Holmes.” Reyes looked grim. “Unfortunately, Detective Vasquez managed to dispatch most of my men on frivolous errands at the outskirts of our jurisdiction. I assure you, they will be here soon.”

  She waved at the massive gaps between the advancing officers. “In the meantime, Vasquez can drive a bus through this disaster you call a perimeter.”

  The captain’s eyes narrowed as he turned back to face the cantina. He grabbed his handset, the radio cracking to life as he pressed the switch. “All stations, this is command post. Report. Over,” he ordered.

  “Alpha, no change. Over.”

  “Bravo, no change. Over.”

  “Charlie, in position. No sign of the target yet. Over.”

  “Delta, fifty meters out and closing. Over.”

  “Roger. Command post out.” Reyes released the handset and raised his binoculars.

  Victoria and Miguel exchanged a knowing glance. The rain had slackened off enough for them to see that the cantina’s lounge and dining areas were deserted and that the windows in the office and the new bedrooms had been shuttered or blacked out. Vasquez knew police procedures and how to counter them each in turn.

  Reyes grunted, lowering the binoculars. He leaned in the window of the unmarked car and asked the detective inside, “Have you been able to reach Vasquez on his phone yet?”

  “Not yet, Captain.”

  “Keep trying.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Miguel whispered to Victoria, “Distract Reyes. I’m going inside.”

  “Do you really think you can make it past Reyes’s men and take Vasquez by surprise?” she hissed. “You heard those gunshots. He’ll kill you.”

  “He’ll try.”

  The freezer’s compressor clicked off, leaving Ben in silence, except for the chattering of his teeth. It seemed a lifetime ago that he’d learned in Boy Scouts how hypothermia killed—first you were cold, then you felt warm and drowsy, and then you fell asleep. And never woke up. The cold and the dark were already starting to make him feel as though he was about to drift off. He had to stay awake at all costs.

  “What have you done with Ana?” he asked.

  “She is safe. For now.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “You think you know what this is all about?” Vasquez asked. “You have no idea what you and your friends have blundered into.”

  “So you keep saying.”

  There was a long pause. “I have closed more cases than any three other detectives combined. I work all hours, day and night, but my wife understands. She knows this is my calling. Sofia never complained. Not even when she got sick.

  “She has cancer of the liver. It is very serious, and not one of the doctors we have consulted thinks she can survive. Her cousin is a doctor in the United States. He told us there is an experimental procedure there that may save her life. I have spent the past twenty years keeping the people of this country safe. I have never asked for anything in return, except for this treatment. The Ministry of Health refused.

  “I am not an evil man. I could have made a fortune working directly for the cartel. They could have had free run of the coast. They would have become unstoppable. Instead, I simply helped to remove some of their competition. Occasionally, I failed to follow up on a lead. Where was the harm? The men I arrested were all criminals. I never hurt anyone who was innocent.”

  “Except Antonio,” Ben replied.

  “Antonio.” Vasquez’s voice dripped with scorn. “I gave him the same generous offer that I have given to you. He made his choice, and he died by it.”

  Miguel quietly walked away from the police perimeter. The wind gusted, tearing fronds from the palm trees. Already soaked to the skin, he scarcely noticed the driving rain. He hunched his shoulders and assumed a steady walking pace. In the fading light, he was but another civilian shuffling from one place to the next, invisible in plain sight.

  Once out of view, he turned back toward the row of bars and restaurants along the beachfront. The businesses all looked as though they’d closed for the storm, but he kept his eyes open for anyone still inside. Luck was with him; the seafood restaurant he entered was deserted.

  He paused for a moment to take in his surroundings. The light was fading fast, but was still bright enough for his purposes. The restaurant’s layout was similar to the cantina’s, only smaller. He slid behind the bar and started opening drawers.

  He carefully checked inside each one until he found what he was looking for. He wrapped his hand around the handle of a long, serrated utility knife and took a moment to gauge the knife’s weight and balance. It would do the trick. He turned it in his hand and flipped it into a reverse grip, blade downward, then twisted it so the knife was hidden neatly behind his forearm. Openly carrying a weapon could lead to awkward questions.

  He scanned the restaurant and the space between it and the next one. Most tourists never gave the gaps between the beach-front businesses a second glance. Some were separated by a wooden fence, others by a hedge or a few lanky weeds. Enough to keep customers from marching over to the next restaurant when their meals were a half hour late, but not enough to slow a former soldier.

  Miguel leapt the fence with a single hop. He moved through the row of restaurants, clubs, and hotels, one after the other, knife in hand.

  “What do you mean, you gave Antonio the same choice?” Ben’s eyelids were growing heavier by the minute.

  “Those emeralds are the only pension I will ever see. The one and only payment I will ever receive from the cartel for turning the occasional blind eye.”

  “You hid them in the bathroom.”

  “Antonio invited trouble into his life the moment he decided to steal them from me. My contact handed them off when I was in the bar on police business. I did not expect to be dispatched to a crime scene before I had the chance to put them away safely. I sealed them in an evidence bag and hid them in the tank of the toilet in the men’s room.”

  “But Antonio saw you.”

  “He always did know everything that went on in his bar,” Vasquez said.

  “Who was your contact?”

  “The cartel and I have a very delicate arrangement, Mr. Cooper. Revealing my contact would invite trouble into my life. And yours.

  “I returned to collect the emeralds later that evening. When I saw they were missing, I confronted Antonio. I am a reasonable man. I simply asked that he return what he had stolen from me. I did not even draw my gun.

  “Antonio was not reasonable. He said he would return the emeralds, but he reached for that bat of his instead. He swung at me, so I struck back with my baton. Even after I broke his collarbone, he still tried to kill me with the bat. He would have tried everything. I could see it in his eyes.”

  “So you took the bat from him . . .” Ben choked on the words.

  “I did what I had to do, Mr. Cooper. For Sofia.”

  “What about the apron and that suspicious bundle? Why try to pin this on Luis?”

  “How did you know I was wearing an apron when I left?”

  Ben went silent, wondering if his curiosity had condemned some poor addict.

  “It does not matter,” Vasquez continued. “If you must know, I wore the apron to hide the blood on my clothing. As for the bundle, it held the money from the register, Antonio’s effects, and the dish towels I used to remove all traces of my presence. I had no inten
tion of trying to frame your busboy.”

  Pain enveloped Ben as he touched the cut on his head; when it released him, he found himself clutching a shard of glass. He remembered belatedly that he should have left it where it was, blocking the flow of blood. Too late for that. He pressed his sleeve to the wound before the trickle become a flood.

  He cleared his throat, and said with hollow bravado, “Let Ana go. I’ll give you the emeralds once she’s safe.” His sleeve was already soaking through.

  “That is a touching offer, Mr. Cooper. But I am afraid you are on the wrong side of the door to make such a demand. Give me the emeralds, and I will release Ana in due time.”

  “You expect me to trust you?”

  “As if your life depended on it.”

  Miguel crouched behind the fence between the cantina and the small hotel next door. He heard the faint crackle of a radio in the distance, followed by the occasional murmur from one of the police officers surrounding the place. He cursed the weather; he’d hoped the rain would last until he made it inside. Now his only camouflage was the gusting wind and rapidly darkening sky.

  It occurred to him that the police might have night-vision goggles. If he were Vasquez, he would have disabled the night-vision equipment before heading to the cantina, but there was no way to know whether they were watching his every move. Miguel took a deep breath. The only way to find out would be getting a bullet in the back, long before he set foot inside the cantina.

  All he knew for certain was that Vasquez had drastically weakened Reyes’s position. The captain would need to wait until the other officers returned before he could mobilize a strike team and breach the cantina. If he tried to storm in with the handful of officers there now, Vasquez would almost certainly escape. Or kill Ben. Or both. The police could monitor the bar’s doors and windows, but nothing more.

  He slid through a gap in the plank fence and climbed atop a stack of discarded tires. He slid the knife into his belt and grabbed the narrow eave of the cantina’s largest remaining storage room, a windowless cinder-block structure. Once he had hauled himself onto the thin metal roof, he lay motionless on his stomach for a count of ten. His heart hammered in his chest as he waited for the police to open fire, but there was only the rush of the wind. He had gambled that approaching the cantina via the one room without windows or an outer door would let him enter undetected. That bet had paid off.

  He slowly rose on his hands and knees. There was less than fifteen feet of corrugated metal roof to cross, but he had to consider each movement carefully, or else risk making a noise that would draw the attention of nervous men with loaded rifles. With painstaking caution, he crossed the roof without a sound.

  He held his breath as he crossed onto the thatched roof of the bar itself. Even if the rotten reeds held his weight, it would make noise as he climbed. Still, the sound of creaking thatch should blend with the noise of the palm trees whipping in the wind. He crawled until his pace count put him over the bar, then slid the serrated knife from his belt and began to saw.

  He set aside the chunk of the roof, then gently lowered himself through the hole into the cantina, landing with a soft thud.

  “We have movement.” Captain Reyes lowered his binoculars and raised his radio. “All call signs, this is command post. Prepare to breach, over.”

  Victoria was shocked. “You don’t have enough—”

  Reyes cut her off with a wave of his hand. Each of his officers radioed back in turn.

  He replied, “Command post, Roger alpha through delta. Hold assault positions and maintain radio silence until my mark, over.” He turned to Victoria with barely contained anger. “Ms. Holmes, if you interrupt me once more, I’ll have you tossed in the back of this squad car.”

  “What makes you think—?”

  “Vasquez is the best detective I have ever worked with. He knows our procedures better than I do. Right now, he believes he has delayed us for several hours. It is getting darker by the minute, and he will soon have free run of the cantina to do as he chooses. If we wait any longer, there is a very real chance my officers will walk into a death trap. I’m done reacting to Vasquez. It’s time for him to start reacting to us.”

  Victoria opened her mouth to say . . . say . . . What could she say? Miguel is inside? He told me to trust him? He sounded really confident about it?

  Reyes keyed his handset. “Breach.”

  Miguel checked the pass-through between the bar and the kitchen. A steel tray had been wedged into the frame to obstruct the view from outside. He sidled toward the kitchen door, his back brushing the shelves of liquor. He stopped and stared at the knife in his hand, then reluctantly set it down. A knife fight could only end one way, and he wasn’t prepared to add another death to his conscience. He resumed his slow approach, the detective’s voice growing more distinct with each step he took.

  He rounded the corner to the hallway and peered through the kitchen door, leaning in until he glimpsed the back of Vasquez’s suit. He pulled back. From the walk-in freezer to the countertops, every surface in the blasted kitchen was gleaming stainless steel. His odds of catching Vasquez unawares were now nil. On second thought . . . He slid back into the bar and looked along the cluttered counter. A beer cap. Perfect.

  He tossed it down the hall. The cap spun through the air and landed between the kitchen and the bedrooms with a faint clack, not unlike the sound of two magazines full of ammo clicking against one another. He could hear Vasquez’s footfalls as he moved to investigate the strange noise. Miguel counted the seconds. One one thousand. Two one thousand. Three one thou—

  There was the faintest noise of metal rubbing against wood. A second later, Miguel caught a flicker of movement in the doorway, then he heard the safety catch on Vasquez’s pistol click. Miguel struck out as he spun in place, slamming Vasquez’s arm against the doorframe.

  He grabbed the pistol with both hands, but could not break the detective’s grip. He slid his finger inside the trigger guard and squeezed. And squeezed. The bar filled with thunder and lightning. Then the slide caught on the pistol’s empty magazine.

  Reyes’s radio crackled. “Shots fired. Say again, shots fired.”

  Victoria could hear the panic in the officer’s voice. Reyes replied with icy calm, “Respond with all force necessary.”

  Miguel’s grip tightened around the pistol as it slipped from Vasquez’s hand. He had to get inside the kitchen. He rounded the corner into the hallway and turned to—

  He stared down the barrel of a submachine gun and saw the wide-eyed police officer at the other end. There was a flash, and everything turned black.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Ben swam on through the brilliant sapphire of the ocean. He propelled himself into the dark abyss, farther and farther from the surface, chasing a faint flicker of movement. The water grew colder as he swam, and soon he was shivering uncontrollably in the ocean void.

  Still he drove himself onward, until he finally caught a glimpse of his goal: a rum bottle on a string, being trolled through the water. Ben looked up and saw a wooden hull far above him drift away and vanish.

  He rose slowly to the surface, gasping for air, and found himself surrounded by a troupe of clowns riding miniature jet-skis. They raced around him, honking bicycle horns and dousing him with their wakes. Ben clawed frantically at the pitching waves around him, choking on the saltwater.

  One of the laughing clowns tossed him a life preserver. Ben wrapped his arms around it, only to have it deflate with a flatulent trumpet. He sank back into the depths of the ocean, his eyes fixed on a lone clown floating above him, calling his name. “Ben . . . Ben . . .”

  He knew that voice. That wasn’t a clown. He slowly swam back to consciousness.

  “He’s waking up,” Victoria said over her shoulder. She turned back to Ben. “How are you feeling?”

  “Awful,” he said. “What happened? I heard gunshots.”

  “Relax. You need time to warm up.”

  Ben l
ooked down at his prostrate form. Someone had laid him on a couch in the cantina’s lounge and covered him with a reflective survival blanket. He sat up slowly, cradling his bandaged head in his hands. He never thought he’d have a headache worse than the one he’d had in jail. But he did.

  “Here, drink this.” Victoria handed him a warm mug. “It’s an old family recipe.”

  “Thanks.” Ben took a sip and choked. “It tastes like camphor and death.”

  “I said old, not good.”

  He managed a smile. What a strange dream. The ocean was like a jewel, a sapphire . . .

  He looked over Victoria’s shoulder, finally noticing the hive of activity in the cantina. The bar lit up with a flash as a police officer snapped photographs of a long knife on the counter, behind crisscrossed streams of police tape. In the dining area, Captain Reyes and a detective Ben hadn’t seen before were quietly jotting down notes while a stream of uniformed policemen delivered reports.

  “How did you find me?”

  Victoria explained how Enrico had helped them link Vasquez to the attack on Antonio. “Vasquez escaped. The police raided the bar and found you lying on the floor outside the freezer, unconscious. We’re lucky they came in when they did. You were barely breathing.”

  “The emeralds . . . I . . .” Ben remembered opening the door, and then . . . what?

  “Gone,” Victoria said. “No one blames you, Ben. You did what you had to do to survive. If anyone doubts that, you can show them the eighteen stitches on your forehead.”

  A bottle of rum on a string, Ben thought. “Where’s Miguel?”

  “In his room. He managed to sneak into the bar and disarm Vasquez, but got caught in the middle of the police raid.”

  “Is he all right?” Ben tried to stand up but his legs didn’t work quite the same way they used to.

  Victoria gently pushed him back down. “A flash-bang grenade went off right next to him, but he’ll be fine. Enrico is looking after him.”