Wild Card pp-8 Read online

  Still, Lathrop had learned enough about the garage from his reconnaissance. Learned its location, its size, its outward appearance, and its immediate surroundings. He had also tracked Armand’s normal patterns of movement in and around Devoción. Found out how many guards usually traveled with him from San Diego, and the number of lookouts — mostly young men from town — he kept hanging around the garage and its lot. As Raul had said, though, the place was windowless. Since Lathrop hadn’t yet learned the trick of seeing through solid walls from Clark Kent, he’d obtained no advance knowledge of its interior layout, or where Armand would sit down to take care of his private business.

  Assuming the kid hadn’t tried to sucker him, he knew now.

  Lathrop peered out through the windshield, saw several parked cars in the lot, and noted the shadowy figures of Quiros’s lookouts in the cast of the SUV’s lights. There were five, maybe six of them hanging around near the building’s corrugated steel roll-up doors.

  “Turn on the rearview video,” he said.

  The kid was shaking his head again.

  “That ain’t gonna work while I got us in Drive,” he said. “They make it for when people goin’ backward, you know. When they can’t see what’s behind ’em inna mirror—”

  “Go ahead,” Lathrop said. “Turn it on.”

  Raul obliged without further comment, reaching over to push the dashboard LCD’s control button. Its cover panel slid up above the screen.

  Lathrop thought for a second, still looking out the windows.

  “Okay, Raul, listen close,” he said. “Here’s what you’re going to do next…”

  * * *

  Raul stopped at the parking lot entrance, his window about halfway down like the man behind him wanted it. Then he waited in silence as a couple of the lookouts outside the garage strode toward the Navigator. He recognized the first to approach as a dude named Pedro.

  “Hola, Papi, what’chu bring tonight?” the lookout said, mixing Spanish and English. He was a little older than Raul — around twenty-three or twenty-four. Lived right in town, hung out with Raul and his cousin at the cantina every so often.

  “Ain’ no Matchbox toy, man.” Raul forced a grin.

  Pedro grinned back at him, came around to the driver’s side, clasped his hand through the window. Tall, skinny, he wore a two-tone gray basketball warmup suit and a bright purple-and-yellow paisley skullcap with a long, flowing neck shade that made him look like some kind of flashy Arab camel herder. There was a small diamond stud in each ear, another in his right nostril. On a band around his arm was a gum-stick MP3 player.

  He pressed a button on the audio player, plucked out a stereo earbud, and let it dangle over his shoulder, leaving the other earbud in place.

  “Es un machin mas bárbaro,” he said, admiring the vehicle’s shiny new flank. “This high line merch.”

  “Sí, Pedro.”

  “She somethin’ else, bro.”

  “Sí, eso es.”

  Raul rested his left elbow over the upper edge of the window and leaned against the door, struggling to look calm, look relaxed like the crazy man in back had put it, while intentionally blocking Pedro’s view of the Nav’s interior with his upper body.

  “Armand still around?” he said.

  Pedro nodded over his shoulder at the garage, his eyes still admiring the vehicle. “Bet she tricked out nice—”

  “Armand gonna wan’ to see her.”

  The lookout was in no apparent hurry in spite of Raul’s growing insistence. He leaned against the car, propping himself against the driver’s door with both hands.

  “Like to be havin’ a look inside on my own,” he said. “A ver, how ’bout you let me see…”

  Raul drew erect. His head ached and his pulse was racing in his ears. He had the vehicle in Reverse, his foot on the brake pedal to keep it from slipping backward and, more important, to keep its rear lights on. According to Crazy Man, they would give off enough brightness for the cargo hatch’s built-in video camera to serve some kind of purpose.

  But he couldn’t just sit here with Pedro getting ready to climb in front with him. If he could have just taken a hit off his pipe before he got here, one hit, he’d have been able to handle things without feeling like the walls of his skull were closing in around his brain, mashing his brain to a pulp.

  “Que pasa?” he said. “Been drivin’ all night, know what I’m sayin? Wanna take care’a my shit.”

  A moment passed. Another. Raul’s head kept throbbing to the accelerated beat of his heart.

  Finally Pedro frowned with disappointment, boosted himself off the Nav, and held up his palms in acquiescence.

  “Yo, chill, I hear you,” he said, looking quickly around at the garage.

  Raul saw one of the dark figures outside the vehicle bays reach for a wall-mounted control box next to the automatic door. As the door started to rise, he almost crumpled in his seat with relief.

  “You wan’, I give you a ride into town when you done,” Pedro said, studying Raul curiously. Then his expression sharpened, and he added in a low, confidential whisper, “El basuco alvidar mis hambres.”

  The crack will fill our hunger.

  Raul looked at him, momentarly speechless. He’d been struggling to hide the unbearable fear and need at his core, but realized now that the need showing through might have been the best thing he could have wished for. That it was all that had disguised the other.

  “Bien,” he said at last, and nodded. “I got you covered.”

  Pedro gave him another soul handshake, his grip lingering a few seconds. “Hey, awright,” he said with a grin.

  Raul flashed a pretend grin in return. Then he pulled his hand back through the window, shut it, and reached for the shifter.

  * * *

  On his belly in the Nav’s cargo section, his balaclava pulled up so that only his eyes were visible through its narrow opening, Lathrop looked between its two front seats at the video display. He’d thought he might have seen someone’s outline at its left-hand border… a dim, fuzzy human silhouette flitting into the image, such as it was. But that had been several seconds ago. Now he saw only the faint red glow of the vehicle’s taillights tinting the blacktop.

  His gaze steady on the screen, Lathrop heard Raul and the lookout conclude their exchange. I got you covered. Hey, awright. It had been dicey having the kid lower his window more than a little — Lathrop knew he’d have been discovered in an instant had Pedro stuck his head in. But if Raul had kept the window any higher up, it would have invited suspicion, given the appearance he had something to conceal.

  Lathrop had weighed his choices, and what he saw now seemed to confirm he’d made the right one. The lookout had stepped away from the vehicle, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his warm-ups.

  Raul had managed to get by him.

  Now he raised his window, shifted into Drive, and rolled across the lot toward the garage.

  That instantly killed the video, but Lathrop hadn’t expected it to be of any real use until they got inside. The rearview camera was a crummy excuse for a spy eye, meant to help an Average Joe driver avoid backing over toddlers, pissing dogs, and low stationary obstacles in his mirror’s blind spots… not pick out roving Quiros stooges in a dark nowhere like this. A crummy, inadequate option with a range that extended fifteen feet at best. Still, Lathrop had gotten a sense of what he could expect from the thing.

  As the Navigator began to move, he slipped his free hand under his partially unbuttoned tac jacket and withdrew a shoulder-slung MP7 compact assault gun he’d carried tucked away against his side at the ready, keeping the other hand around the.45’s checkered rubber grip. He had prepared carefully for tonight’s work and knew they were pieces he could count on.

  Lathrop would have liked to know if anybody was out in the dark circling the wagon, though. For the first time in longer than he could remember, he wouldn’t have minded having a second pair of eyes to cover the very dangerous blind spots in his
own sight. But he had gotten along with less than he wanted before, and there had been three million dollars’ worth of incentive for him to do it again tonight.

  Just ahead now, the garage’s vehicle bay was opening wide for the Nav. Lathrop pressed his chest almost flat against the carpet. He hadn’t seen or heard Pedro indicate he wanted the door retracted, yet the lookout had somehow given the okay to somebody before his prolonged handshake with Raul.

  Lathrop wondered if his quick glance around could have been it, decided that explanation didn’t wash. The garage was about a hundred feet away, and it was too dark a night for that look to have been seen clearly by anyone out front. So what was the signal? He pictured the MP3 player on the lookout’s arm, asked himself if maybe it wasn’t what it seemed. A hands-free radio unit could be easily modified to look like an audio player and equipped with an ear/bone microphone that would pick up the wearer’s words from vibrations in his skull. If that were the case, Pedro would have barely needed to move his lips to give his order.

  It occurred to Lathrop that Enrique Quiros, who’d packaged the family business in his tech savvy and Stanford degrees, would have appreciated exactly that kind of touch. And though his cousin and former underboss Armand had a reputation as a throwback player with more muscle than brains, it might indicate that at least some of Enrique’s modern standards of criminality were being carried on two years after he’d been erased from the world.

  Lathrop put that thought aside as the Navigator reached the garage, cool white fluorescent light rinsing over it from the open bay entrance. Raul stopped just outside it, his foot on the brake.

  About thirty seconds passed. Lathrop scooched forward, raised his chin slightly to look out the windshield, saw two men stepping over to the Nav from inside the garage. Lean, dark, curly haired, they looked enough alike to be brothers. One of them wore a black-and-silver rugby pullover shirt, a handgun bulging a little under the shirt, his neck zipper lowered to showcase the tats on his chest. The other had on a flamingo pink button-down with short sleeves, its untucked tails hanging loosely over the belt holster clipped to his jeans. He also had a lot of ink on his arms. Neither man wore a vest or had taken very much trouble to conceal his weapon. Placing strut over smarts.

  They came closer, Rugby Shirt stepping over to the driver’s door, Flamingo Pink hooking toward its right side.

  Lathrop recalled the scouting he’d done, placed this matched set among Armand’s traveling entourage of bodyguards. He had never seen Armand go anywhere without five or six armed men around him and didn’t suppose it was any different tonight. There would be more of them around… the only question was where. He couldn’t see out the vehicle’s side windows without bringing his head up, but a glance at the rear video display told him its image had been improved by the garage’s fluorescents — although the low line of sight still restricted what he could observe.

  Getting his elbows underneath him, propping himself up a bit, he adjusted his pistol in his right hand, then checked again that the MP7 was within fast and easy reach under his other arm.

  He knew he’d have to move at any moment.

  There was nothing left for him to do now but stay ready for when it arrived.

  * * *

  Raul brought his window partly down again, leaving it raised a little higher than before.

  “Here it is.” He looked out at Rugby Shirt. “Got what I promised.”

  Lathrop heard the strained edge in Raul’s voice, noticed his fingers were back around the steering wheel, fidgeting with the wheel.

  The guard stood there and didn’t say anything. His eyes slid over the Navigator, inspecting it in the outspill of light from the wide bay entrance. Then they came level with the kid’s face.

  Lathrop drew a breath. The mingled garage smells of car exhaust, valve oil, and gasoline vapor reached him along with the night air… that and a metallic clanging beyond the door. There would be other bays besides the one that had been opened to admit the Nav. Some probably with mechanics in them, working to dismantle the latest stolen vehicles delivered by Armand’s crack-addicted worker ants.

  Raul continued to sit there facing the guard, waiting to be let inside.

  “Wha’s goin’ on?” he said, angling his chin toward the bay entrance. “Thought Armand know I got here.”

  Rugby Shirt’s eyes held firmly on Raul.

  “No este tu irrespetuoso,” he said.

  Do not be disrespectful.

  The kid dragged the back of his hand across his mouth. When he clenched it around the steering wheel again, Lathrop noticed it was glistening with streaks of wiped-off perspiration.

  “Didn’t mean anythin’,” he said. “Jus’ want to be bringin’ in this coche, do what I gotta do.”

  Rugby Shirt stood by the vehicle, quiet and intent, his lips pressed together. Beside the passenger door, his partner was equally impassive.

  Lathrop saw Raul shift in his seat with apprehension, got the sense he was starting to unravel under their combined scrutiny.

  The waiting silence continued about ten seconds longer, Lathrop down on his stomach in the Nav, his finger curled around the trigger of his.45. He wasn’t inclined to act before the time was right, but it would force his hand if either of the guards decided to lean in closer to the windows.

  Then Rugby Shirt nodded his head toward the garage, rapping the vehicle’s broad flank with his palm.

  “Muy bien, es de el jefe agrado,” he said.

  Very well, it will be to the boss’s liking.

  Lathrop listened, understanding the guard’s Spanish, thinking the look in his eyes didn’t at all match his words. He’d caught on that something was up with Raul. Anybody who wasn’t blind or deaf would have caught on. And while it was possible he would attribute the kid’s twitchiness to his being strung out on rock, Lathrop was not about to stake his life on it.

  Still, Rugby Shirt had decided to let the Nav through the entrance. Whatever his reasons. It moved slowly forward, both guards walking along to either side of it, escorting it into the bay.

  Lathrop braced himself. The Nav’s heavily tinted glass had screened him from sight out in the darkness, but it would be another story under the garage’s bright overhead fixtures.

  Now Raul pulled the Nav through the door and shifted into Reverse, leaving the engine on as he’d done out in the lot. Beside his door, Rugby Shirt nodded his head toward the rear of the garage. When Lathrop had questioned the kid back on the mesa road, he’d said that was where Armand’s private office was located, its door facing the bay entrance and work area, a large two-way mirror on the wall beside the door looking out over everything.

  Lathrop glanced at the rear video screen and saw two sets of legs move into the right side of the picture, coming around from what he assumed was the next bay over. Then a third pair appeared behind the Nav on the left. All of them were in drab green mechanic’s pants, Lathrop’s view of them cut off above the knees by the camera. If these men were armed, he had no way to tell.

  A few seconds went by. Then another pair of chopped-off-at-the-knees legs entered the left border of the picture and came up to join the group behind the vehicle. These were in ordinary brown chino trousers rather than grease monkey work pants.

  Lathrop was guessing they belonged to a third bodyguard. He also guessed at least twice as many more were elsewhere in and around the building — the chop shop had its regulars in addition to Armand’s personal crew. And he couldn’t allow himself to forget the lookouts. They were local punks, sure. Amateurs. But amateurs that he had to believe would be carrying hardware.

  He waited a second or two more.

  Behind the wheel, Raul had kept the Nav in Reverse, his foot on its brake. He seemed to be hanging onto the last frayed threads of his self-control well enough to stick to the plan. Lathrop had wanted him to keep the pedal down, stay put as long as possible, figuring that some of the guards would be drawn around the vehicle. The closer they got, the better it would be. Wh
en the time came, Lathrop would prompt the kid to release the brake and start the Nav rolling backward, throwing whoever was around it off balance, and giving Lathrop a bare moment of surprise he could work to his favor.

  Now Rugby Shirt turned all the way around to face the office door, stepping toward it, waving for the kid to get out of the vehicle. Lathrop was convinced he looked more suspicious than impatient.

  “Mira, viene aquí!” he said, instructing Raul to follow him over to the office.

  Raul hesitated.

  Lathrop tapped the kid’s backseat, his cue to release the brake.

  Raul sat there, unresponsive, his foot leaden on the pedal. He took several breaths through his mouth. It was the same sort of harsh, nervous breathing Lathrop had noticed when they’d approached the chop shop, only with a shallow rapidity that made it sound like he was gasping for air.

  Out in the garage Rugby Shirt paused, turned around, waved the kid out of the Nav again.

  Lathrop saw the pair of chinos inch closer in the rearview video screen.

  Then Raul grabbed the shifter and threw the Nav into Park, reaching for his door handle with his other hand, jerking himself toward the door, starting to push it open, getting set to bolt out into the garage.

  The kid’s rope had finally snapped; he’d lost it. Lathrop wasn’t waiting to find out what he had in mind.

  With a quick, fluid movement, he pushed up onto his knees, swung his.45 up above Raul’s shoulder in a two-handed grip, and fired three rounds through the windshield.

  * * *

  Rugby Shirt could not have been prepared for what hit him. He would have had only an instant to see Lathrop spring into a double-handed shooter’s crouch in the Navigator’s cargo section, and was unlikely to have heard the muffled pops of the sound-suppressed gunshots before his developing suspicions came together.

  The bullets penetrated the windshield with a loud, sleety explosion of broken glass, meeting his flesh and muscle across the rib cage. He wobbled around on loose legs and smashed backward against a pegboard wall to his left, clawing for a handhold, groping blindly at its cluttered array of power tools in a vain attempt to stay on his feet. Several of them crashed off their hooks as he slid down to the floor of the garage, leaving the board and whatever tools remained hanging from it speckled with red.