Wild Card pp-8 Read online

  “Remain calm, Mr. Lenard, you’re doing fine,” the voice from inside the chopper called out. “We’re sending down a rescue basket, and will give you instructions on how to exit the boat once it’s lowered.”

  Bathed in the unremitting brightness of the spots, Jarvis finally had to break into a grin. He could not help himself, ah no, not after having heard that voice speak the word rescue. The men up there had gotten a look at a fool out here, surely he’d given it to them… but looks could deceive, as the old saying went.

  Jarvis saw a hatch open in the belly of the chopper, watched the basket begin to descend at the end of its line, took a very deep breath, and held it.

  Then, his lungs filled to capacity with oxygen, he tore his knitted dread bag from his head, cast it into the wind of the blades, and plunged headlong over the side of the boat into the river.

  POINT FORTIN, TRINIDAD

  Jean Luc watched Tolland Eckers emerge from the field office and knew he was about to receive word that wasn’t good. The security man’s stiffly erect walk and hiked up shoulders said it all; he seemed to be overcompensating for the urge to hang his head as he approached.

  “I’ve got that update you ordered from Team Gray-wolf, sir,” Eckers said, his voice raised above the thrum of the oil pumps. “It’s disappointing, but their search operation is still at an early stage.”

  Jean Luc leaned back against the Range Rover, holding the protective helmet he’d worn for his inspection at his side. Besides the doffed hard hat with its goggle and earmuff attachments, he had on jeans, tan mocs, and an open-collared indigo linen shirt that was perhaps a half shade darker than the strikingly blue eyes that regarded Eckers from under his tanned brow.

  “I want the simple details, Toll,” he said.

  “Would you prefer hearing them now or on the drive back—?”

  “Start right here,” Jean Luc said. “Just be kind enough to spare me the excuses.”

  Eckers took a cautious look around from behind his Ray-Bans while a truck rumbled slowly past on the dirt road to their left, ferrying a group of roughnecks toward the wells.

  “The man in that boat’s been positively identified as our groundskeeper,” he said after a moment. “It took a while to confirm this from our photos — bad angle. The bird didn’t pull overhead until right at the last minute, and he was wearing a dread bag that made it difficult to see his features.” He paused. “A dread bag, that’s one of those knitted caps some of the locals wea—”

  “I was born and raised on this island,” Jean Luc interrupted. “My time away didn’t result in severe loss of memory.”

  Eckers didn’t speak. A warm mid-morning breeze ruffled his loose-fitting guayabera shirt.

  “I think we were already clear about who was out there,” Jean Luc said. “A man doesn’t head full-tilt for the open sea at two A.M. without some pressing reason. Not from where he did, and not on a crap motorboat.”

  Eckers stood there uneasily another moment, then nodded.

  “Yes,” he said. “Of course.”

  “We know it was Lenard, and we know he took a dive out of the boat… to everybody’s surprise but mine,” Jean Luc said. “The question is, Toll, can we say what happened to him afterward?”

  Eckers shook his head.

  “I’m sorry, sir, we can’t with absolute certainty,” he said. “Our general feeling is that he drowned, though. The current’s pretty strong over near the lower tip of the peninsula. There’s soft riverbank — a mix of clay and sand — for a stretch that runs several miles up and down the channel from the point where Lenard abandoned the outboard. Vegetation’s weeds and cattails, some scrub growth. Our trackers are familiar with this kind of surface geography, and they’d have likely discovered evidence if he made it ashore. Footprints in the mud, bent or snapped rushes, something of that nature—”

  Jean Luc cut him off. “I assume the scuba teams are on this.”

  “Since last night.”

  “And they’ve found nothing? No sign of him?”

  Eckers hesitated. Jean Luc looked at him, waiting.

  “The dread bag was retrieved from the water about a half mile down from where the son of a bitch took his plunge,” Eckers said. “That’s it.”

  “The dread bag.”

  “Right.” Eckers inhaled. “Again, the search is in its initial stages. We’ve got experience with this sort of thing and the resources to back it up.”

  There was a brief silence. Jean Luc’s eyes remained steady on Eckers.

  “Lenard’s from that village,” he said.

  Eckers nodded.

  “I see what you’re thinking,” he said. “Those people know their way around the island. And they’re protective of their own.”

  “Aren’t they?”

  “As far as that first goes, without a doubt,” Eckers said. “They’ve been there for generations. But a lot of them live in poverty or near poverty and won’t need much incentive to give up what they know.”

  Jean Luc watched his face another moment. Then a smile crept across his strong, full-lipped mouth.

  “Take me back to Bonasse,” he said, and reached behind him to open the Rover’s passenger door. “We’ll talk more on the way home.”

  They got in, Eckers behind the wheel, and drove along the dirt vehicle path across the production fields to the Southern Trunk Road. On their left, pump rods moved up and down over the established wellheads in steady rhythmic fashion. On the right, enormous derricks soared above the newer drill sites, their various mechanical systems powered by humming diesel engines and generators. Beyond these were the storage and refinery tank farms, and further to the northeast the delivery terminals on the Gulf of Paria, barely visible now in the bright blue-green reflectiveness of Caribbean morning sunlight and seawater.

  Jean Luc sat in the Rover’s comfortable air-conditioning and waved a hand toward the fields as they bumped along.

  “You know, when I look out at all this, it would be easy to see two hundred and fifty years of family accomplishment,” he said. “But it isn’t my perspective. It wasn’t my father’s, or my grandfather’s, or great-grandfather’s. I’m a now kind of person. I focus on each opportunity as it’s presented. That’s how I was raised, a sensibility that’s been instilled in me. It’s how I run my life and business.” He gestured out the window again. “What I see out there are separate parts of a whole, individual projects at distinct, ongoing stages of development. I look at a well that’s ten, fifteen years old, ask myself whether it’s almost tapped out, or peaking, or somewhere in between, and then ask whether its efficiency can be improved. I see a thumper rolling over a particular location, or possibly a rig going up, and make a mental note to have the latest seismological and core sample data on my desk toot suite… Can you appreciate where I’m coming from, and how it relates our current problem, Toll?”

  Eckers made a quick turn to put them on the main route.

  “You’re saying not to lump sum it,” he said, nodding.

  Jean Luc looked across the seat at him and grinned.

  “Nicely put,” he said. “And right on. Experience is always helpful, but you can be lulled by past success. What we need is to reset our priorities, focus on today instead of”—his grin widened—“our master plan, if you’ll pardon my being cute.”

  Eckers gave another thoughtful nod.

  They rode in silence for the next forty miles, crossing the peninsula on the Trunk, a smooth multilane blacktop that dipped inland from the constellation of industrial towns around the petroleum fields and then swung southwest through undisturbed woodlands toward the beaches, sugar plantations, and fishing villages of Cedros.

  Just short of an hour after they had left oil country behind, Eckers made the long, curving turn off the road that brought them within sight of the estate grounds and, high on a hill behind a spread of cedar copses, topiary, and ornamental gardens, the grand Colonial mansion with its witch’s hat turrets wrapped in balconies of stone.

&
nbsp; “I’ll reset and reorganize the search,” he said, passing through the electronic entry gate. “See that our men — our assigned specialists—understand Lenard has to be their first priority.”

  “As if our world stands or falls on finding him,” Jean Luc said. “In the meantime, I’d better massage our partners at Los Rayos. With their having gotten confirmation that the visitor from UpLink will be coming, this episode’s bound to have made them uptight.”

  “Beauchart’s given them his reassurances.”

  “They’ll want to hear from me anyway,” Jean Luc said. He paused. “Suppose I might as well make a call to Washington while I’m at it.”

  Eckers glanced at him.

  “Are you surprised?” Jean Luc said.

  Eckers shrugged a little.

  “Some,” he said. “I wasn’t sure you’d need to do that.”

  “I don’t. Not absolutely. Not yet. But there’s the history. The connection between our families. Respecting it’s another of my ingrained traits.” Jean Luc paused again; Eckers’s silence betrayed his reservations. “No fear, Toll, I haven’t contracted the honesty bug… I suppose you could say fair’s fair between Drew and myself, though,” he said. “If I expect him to play by my rules of the game, I have to respect his.”

  Eckers looked as if he was about to say something, but then moved on without another word. He went up the drive to where it rimmed the mansion’s front court, pulled over to the low curb, and stopped the vehicle.

  “Do you want me to stay on the grounds?” he said as Jean Luc got out.

  Jean Luc leaned his head back in the door and shook it once.

  “That’s okay, I’d prefer you get back to the hunt,” he said. “And don’t forget our chat. Take one thing at a time, Toll. One thing at a time and we’ll be fine.”

  Eckers nodded and became very still, staring out the windshield through his dark lenses again. Jean Luc studied him a moment, withdrew his head from the Rover, pushed the door shut, and turned up the courtyard toward the house.

  A moment later Eckers spun away from the curb and started back down the drive to the gate.

  SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA

  Tom Ricci knew as he awoke that he was hung over. It was the dry graininess in his eyes, the sour taste on his tongue, the headache and burning stomach. This wasn’t his first time, not by far, and he knew.

  He stretched out a hand, found the other side of the bed empty, and lay back in the morning light eking through the window blinds. He remembered her drawing them shut while he’d started to undress her, tugging at the cord as he worked on her blouse from behind. The pile of clothing had built up fast. Hers first, then his — they’d made a bet at the bar and he’d won. Ricci had gaps in his recollection of the night before, but that was among the parts that had stuck. There were enough of those, especially of what they’d done when they got back to her place, even if he couldn’t recall what their bet had been over.

  He remained very still, his head on the pillow, not bothering to look around for her. She was in the kitchenette; he could hear her through its Dutch doors, opening and closing the cabinet, moving things around. Her apartment was small, a studio — hard to get lost in here for very long.

  A minute or two passed. Ricci listened to her in the kitchenette, holding out the slim hope that she’d put up some coffee. But he didn’t hear the maker gurgling and supposed he’d have caught whiff of a finished pot.

  He pulled off his covers, sat up naked on the edge of the bed, felt his brain slosh against his skull. He was slower leaning down to check for his holstered FiveSeven, making sure it was there underneath the bed where he’d left it.

  Devon appeared from the kitchen entrance wearing a short robe of some silky black material and carrying a black melamine serving tray in both hands. She collected Melmac and vintage Ray-Bans and body jewelry, bought them through online auctions. With only two closets and a single cupboard over its half-height refrigerator for storage, her apartment became easily cluttered, but she kept the place neat and planned to start looking for a bigger one soon. The sunglasses were professional accessories, she said. For her costumes when she danced. She’d had the strategic piercings done for work and play, but keep it quiet from the IRS, she said. Melmac was strictly a hobby, and she liked the black pieces best. Black was her favorite color, and “black velvet” was the hardest shade of Melmac to find, she said.

  Ricci supposed he’d learned a few things about her that weren’t in the basic course requirements.

  She crossed the room to the bed in her bare feet, a bottle of Drambuie and two crystal cordial glasses on the Melmac tray, their drinks already poured. She set the tray down on the nightstand, picked up the glasses, carried them over to him, and held his out.

  Ricci looked at her fingers around the glass. Their nails were long and carefully painted and manicured. She paid a lot of attention to her appearance and he supposed some of that would be for professional reasons, too.

  “Hair of the dog,” she said.

  “Maybe we ought to try those morning-after pills.”

  Devon kept his glass between them without lowering it, gave him a slight smile over its rim.

  “I already took one, just a different kind,” she said, and wobbled the glass. “Come on. My arm’s getting stiff.”

  “No,” he said.

  “I thought we weren’t supposed to use that word.”

  “Who says?”

  “You,” she replied. “Last night.”

  Ricci looked at her. The two of them hadn’t done a lot of sleeping, and her large blue eyes were a little bloodshot. In the timid light coming through the blinds, with her makeup off, he could see faint dark crescents under them.

  By tonight, when she danced under the bright lights, she would have erased or covered up the dark spots, made sure she was looking fresh for her admirers. Keeping up that appearance.

  “We’ve been drinking too much,” he said.

  She put the Drambuie in his hand, reached for her own glass, and sat close beside him on the bed, her legs crossed yoga-style, the hem of her robe brushing up their bare thighs.

  “Here, here,” she said.

  They clinked and drained their glasses and sat holding them in silence. Ricci felt the warmth of the sweet, powerful liqueur spread through him.

  “It’d be good if we went out for a walk,” he said. “Got some air, put something solid in our stomachs.”

  She moved closer to him, put a hand on his shoulder.

  “It would be better if we stay right here and mess around,” she said.

  Ricci glanced at the display of his WristLink wearable. Nice that they hadn’t made him turn it in with his Sword tag.

  “It’s almost noon,” he said.

  “I’m not due at the club till five o’clock.”

  “Happy hour.”

  “Maybe for the regulars.” Devon shrugged her shoulders. “We’ve got all day.”

  Ricci looked at her. “What about A.J.?”

  Devon shifted her body a little but stayed there close against him.

  “You didn’t have to mention him.”

  “He might decide he wants to see you.”

  “That’s what answering machines are for,” she said. “He never shows up without calling first.”

  “And you won’t care about the phone ringing. Or him leaving messages on the machine.”

  “I’ll turn off the ringer, and you can distract me from the blinking light.” She paused. “A.J. doesn’t decide who I will or won’t fuck.”

  Ricci looked at her.

  “Kind of obvious,” he said.

  They studied each other awhile. Then Ricci lowered his eyes to his empty glass and smiled a little.

  “What’s so funny?” she said.

  Ricci shrugged.

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “Maybe something about my sitting here with no clothes on, and talking about us having an affair behind your married boyfriend’s back.”

  Devon m
assaged his arm with her fingertips.

  “Since when does it bother you?” she said.

  Ricci shrugged a second time, leaned across her, reached for the open bottle of Drambuie on the nightstand, and refilled their glasses.

  “Bottoms up,” he said.

  They drank and sat quietly on the bed. Then Ricci took the glass from her hand, put it on the tray alongside his own.

  When he turned back to her, she had loosened the sash of her robe, let the robe fall partially open around her body.

  He looked into her eyes. They were still a little red and also overbright now from the alcohol. Probably his weren’t any different.

  He kept his gaze on hers without saying anything, and reached out, and tugged her robe the rest of the way open a bit roughly, and holding it like that moved his eyes down to her breasts, and let them linger there before taking a long look at the rest of her, and then slowly brought them back to her eyes. He was aware all the while of her touch on his leg, her hand probing, taking hold of him as greedily as his eyes had taken in her body.

  “We don’t have any shame,” Ricci said.

  “Like you said, we drink too much.”

  Ricci looked at her, his head swimming.

  “That our excuse?”

  “If you need one,” she said, and then shrugged out of the robe, and fell into his arms.

  He kissed her, and she tumbled onto her back with her mouth against his, biting his lower lip, running her nails over his shoulders, and down his back, and down, digging them into his skin.

  The smooth silk of the open robe bunched in his fist, his face tightened into what almost might have been a look of pain, Ricci moved over her, a hard thrust that she arched her hips to receive.

  “What about our walk?” she said, the words coming out in a broken moan.

  “We’ve got all day,” Ricci said.

  TWO

  BAJA PENINSULA, MEXICO APRIL 2006

  It was after midnight when the Lincoln Navigator reached the outskirts of Devoción, a tiny dust spot on the road some forty miles south of the U.S. border and roughly midway between Mexicali and the smuggler’s hive of Tecate. Unmarked by direction posts, excluded from most maps of the Peninsula for its slumbery irrelevance to tourists, Devoción was known to locals as the birthplace and original home territory of the brothers Lucio and Raul Salazar, two of the three Magi of Tijuana—Los Rayos Magos de Tijuana, in Spanish — so called for the blessings and protection they had once bestowed upon their underlings and lesser allies in a widespread theft, money laundering, and narcotics trafficking empire they built from scratch.