‘Please, my case.’ Hinge nodded toward his briefcase. ‘It was a gift. From my wife. Uh ... de mi esposa.’ Gray-Eye looked back at the case and sighed and picked it up.
The other gunman, who was younger and had his long hair tied in a pigtail and wore a gold earring in his right ear and was very jumpy, yelled ‘Pronto, pronto.” at Gray-Eye, then got in the car and pulled up to them. He was heading back, toward Falmouth.
‘Oh, goin’ back the way we came?’ Hinge said, in as loud a voice as he dared.
Gray-Eye pushed Hinge into the car and threw the attaché case on the back floor of the Pontiac. They drove off in a whirl of dust, leaving Gomez standing beside the road with his hands still high in the air.
Falmouth had heard Hinge’s last remark above the roar of the getaway car. ‘Jesus,’ he said to Angel, ‘they’re coming back this way!’
Angel slammed on the brakes and spun the steering wheel, whipping the car around in a perfect one-hundred-and-eighty- degree spin, dropping into low gear as he did, digging out, as the car completed its half turn, and heading back in the opposite direction. Fast.
‘Beautiful,’ Falmouth said.
Angel drove back to the paved road and took the first turn, U-turned and parked. He was ready for them when they came back.
‘Magnifico.” Falmouth said with admiration. He slid down in the seat and took a 9-mm Luger from its armpit holster and slid it under his thigh. If there was trouble, the Game would be over, anyway. It would be survival tulle.
The blue Pontiac came down the dirt road a minute later, squealed around the curve and headed away from them, back toward the main road to Caracas. There were three people in the car.
‘I give ‘em couple blocks, okay?’ Angel asked.
‘No, there were only two of the pistoleros in the car. There should be two more coming right behind them. Let’s give them a minute or so. We don’t want to get in the middle.’ The beeper was going crazy beside him on the seat.
Another minute dragged by and then a black ‘76 Chevy came down the dirt road and followed the first.
‘That should be them,’ Falmouth said. ‘Let’s roll.’
Angel eased away from the curb and followed them.
The beeper was singing loud and clear on the seat beside him as they wound back through the El Este section toward the highway into town. The Chevy was in view, moving at exactly the speed limit. They weren’t taking any chances.
They were almost to the highway when it happened: a kid roaring suddenly out of a driveway on a motorcycle, seeing the BMW too late and veering to miss it, the bike sliding out from under him and the two skidding crazily in front of Angel, and Angel, slamming on the brakes and swerving at the same time, missing the kid and his Honda by inches, fishtailing for a moment too long and the BMW hitting the curb, teetering for a moment as though it were going to turn over, then righting itself, and as it did, the back right tire exploding like a bomb. Angel wrestled the car to a stop and jumped out. The tire was hanging in shreds from the wheel.
Angel kicked the car. ‘Shit,’ he bellowed. ‘Shit, shit, shut!’
In the back seat, Falmouth listened as the tone on the beeper grew fainter and fainter and finally beeped out. Hinge was on his own now. He was not in any immediate danger, but the whole switch operation depended on Falmouth’ s snatching one f the terrorists as they left the meeting. Hinge’s trip was now a total waste.
‘You’re right,’ Falmouth said. ‘Shit.’
*
Falmouth was sitting on the balcony sipping a gin and tonic and watching the teleférico climbing slowly- up the side of Mount Avila. He had left the door between the two rooms open and heard Hinge come in, heard a door close and then heard Hinge’s toilet flush.
A few moments later the Texan joined him on the balcony. The younger man was obviously surprised and distressed. ‘What happened?’ he asked. ‘How come you’re back?’
‘A kid pulled out in front of us on a motorbike. Angel hit a curb and blew a tire.’
‘Well, Je-sus Kee-rist!’ Hinge snapped.
‘Easy,’ Falmouth said. ‘Get yourself a drink and we’ll talk about plan Baker.’
The hard-faced Texan went back into the room. He was edgy, but he was not a complainer. Like Falmouth, he was already thinking about their next move. He poured a generous slug of gin over ice cubes and returned to the balcony.
‘You mean we got a plan Baker,’ he said.
‘There’s always a plan Baker,’ Falmouth said, still watching the cable car as it reached the peak of the mountain.
‘Problem is, we ain’t got one of theirs, we ain’t got shit,’ Hinge said. It was not a pointed remark, he was thinking out loud.
‘What happened at the meeting?’ Falmouth asked quietly.
Hinge sighed. As Spettro had said, there was always the unexpected. Hinge reported in a kind of abbreviated rote, an emotionless summary of the facts.
‘Four of ‘em, like you figured, plus the driver, Gomez. Four creeps, spent a month or so with Gaddafi’s bunch, think they’re the fuckin’ PLO. Blindfolded when I got in the car. My guess is we went downtown. A lot of traffic noise. Drove for about eight minutes. Parked in what sounded like an indoor garage. Never went outside. Up one flight of stairs, straight ahead forty paces to office. Took off blindfold t talk. The four were back-lighted. Three thousand-watt floodlights behind them. Couldn’t see faces clearly. One did the talking. Tough talker, brown beard, left eye is kinda gray. Driver of pickup car wore ponytail and an earring in his ... uh, right ear. Looked to be about thirty. Office was small. Shades over windows, conference table, six chairs, telephone. Period. Not even an ashtray.’ He stopped and took a sip of his drink.
‘What did they ask you?’
‘Did I have the loot? The loot’s nice and safe, I tell ‘em. Are we ready to deal? I gotta know my man’s still alive, I says. They make a phone call. It’s this Lavander. English accent. Scared shitless. All he gets out is his name and “Please help me.” Deal is, we connect again at ten-thirty tonight. I bring the cash, they bring Lavander. Anybody follows me, they terminate the hostage, snatch another one, it’s the same ol’ ballgame but the price doubles.’
‘Where do you meet them?’
‘Same script as first time. They call with an address. I head into town, they intercept me somewhere along the way. They figure it worked the first time, why not use the same gag again. Stupid pipiolos.’
‘You did fine, Hinge,’ Falmouth said, ‘Sorry things got queered. Couldn’t be helped.’
‘Sure. Sorry I got my ass a little outa joint, there. There’s one other thing. The turkey with the weird eye? He’s mine, okay?’
‘My pleasure.’
Hinge smiled. ‘Okay, so... what’s plan Baker?’
Falmouth looked up at him and smiled back.
‘Gomez,’ he said, and handed Hinge a sheet of paper with the chauffeur’s address on it.
The house was a red hut among many red huts on the western ridge of the mountains that separate Caracas from the rest of Venezuela. Its main room was small and barren. The bed doubled as a sofa. A furniture crate beside it served as an end table. There was a small lamp on the crate but it was turned off. Posters of John Travolta, Rod Stewart, Blondie and Farrah Fawcett covered the walls, and a transistor radio, with the heavy beat of disco music pounding from its small speaker, was on the floor beside the sofa bed. The only other furniture was two wooden chairs near the windows, one of them stacked with dirty laundry. There was also a phone on the floor in one corner. A handmade rug covered part of the linoleum floor, its corners ravelled and dirty. Flimsy strips of cotton hung limply over the windows. Beside the lamp on the crate was a small-calibre pistol.
Gomez was getting laid on the sofa bed.
This woman is a noisy one, God, is she noisy, Gomez thought. My neighbours, they will think, I’m killing someone in here. But this tiger, this man-eater, she may kill me.