“You want me to tell Prax that I’m in Panama City?” Laken had asked.
“Yes, and that you want to meet him.”
There’s an old trail called the Orchid Walk, I told my son. “He’ll find it.”
I gave him a time.
Ten yards downhill, around a bend, another limb cracked… then came the sound of a rock rolling free.
Lourdes had gotten my son’s e-mail.
26
Praxcedes Lourdes was dressed as a woman… a Muslim woman, with traditional robes, a shawl and a burqa, the full-face veil with only a horizontal slit for the eyes. The man was a freak for costumes.
I waited until he was beneath me, then jumped, using the rope to slow my fall. I crashed into him so hard he was launched tumbling into the bushes. His surprise registered as a girlish scream.
By the time he got to his feet, I had the knife out. I grabbed him by the shoulder, pulled him to me with unexpected ease, then looked into his eyes as I touched the blade to his neck.
Lourdes’s burn scars are signatory. I expected to see one sleepy gray eye and one lidless blue eye. Instead, I was looking into eyes that were olive-brown, wide with terror.
I stepped back. It was a woman. She screamed-a high, warbling alert-as I slid the knife into my belt and stammered in Spanish, “I’m sorry… I’ve made a terrible mistake. I thought-”
I didn’t finish. There was a rustling of bushes behind me, a woof of heavy breathing, and as I turned to look a huge hand spun me, as a knee hammered at my groin. I deflected all but the first kick, a glancing shot that buckled my knees with nauseating paralysis. The barrel of a gun, jammed under my chin, kept me on my feet.
Once again, I was looking at a figure cloaked in a burqa. This time, pale eyes stared back, one gray, one lidless blue.
“Ford, you meddling punk! I expected your spawn. A younger face. Softer. Skin I can use. ”
Praxcedes Lourdes swung his head at the woman, who was edging sideways down the trail. “Go, bitch! You’ve done your job.”
The woman understood English. She lifted the hem of her robe from the ground and ran.
Lourdes had his left hand behind my neck, the gun in his right, and he pressed the barrel deep, rotating it as if burying a screw. He found the knife in my belt, then the pistol. As he tossed them away, I tried to spin away but gagged as he pushed harder and tried to knee me again. He stank of cigars, and also something fetid, like bugs I’d once left in ajar too long.
“I can’t believe your son conned me. We were becoming such pals. Where is that sweet boy, California? I checked the IP address.”
Lourdes the computer wizard.
My voice was hoarse as I nodded, “California. Yes.”
Laughter. “What a fucking imbecile! You think reverse psychology works on me? So he is in California. I’ll catch the next freighter. I’ll bring scalpels and dry ice. Maybe there’ll be a harvest moon.”
As I brought my hands up to pry the gun away, his knee hammered me twice in the thigh. The body’s most sensitive glands all seem linked to the gag reflex. My legs sagged once again and he collapsed with me onto the ground. He buried a knee in my stomach, then got to his feet and stood over me, a stainless steel revolver pointed at my head.
I told myself not to panic- Breathe, the nausea will pass- as he said, “Ford, I knew it was a con. I’d would have been on this trail waiting, anyway. That’s how stupid you are.”
I took a chance and sat up. My pistol was only a few yards behind me, the knife next to it. I arched my back as if in pain, my right hand behind me. The first weapon I touched I would use.
“Keep your hands where I can see them!” Lourdes moved as if to kick me. I put my hands up to block him.
He stepped back. He motioned with the gun. I got slowly to my feet, expecting him to pull the trigger any moment.
“Your boy has such a beautiful face. Nothing at all like your slab of meat. I may boil you down for glue. Picture it before I put a bullet in your brain. How am I going to look wearing your brat’s face?” He bowed and yanked the burqa off his head.
Praxcedes Lourdes resembled a human skull over which gray skin had been stretched too tight, then patched with melted wax. Tufts of blond hair grew out of white bone. He had the wild eyes of a horse that smelled smoke.
I had once sealed this man in a fifty-gallon drum, determined to roll him off a ship into the Gulf of Mexico. Wilson was right-I was a fool to have spared him.
Lourdes was reaching into the pocket of his robe as I said, “Plastic surgery can’t disguise an asshole, Prax. It’s been tried.”
My lungs were working again, the adrenaline circulating. I took an angling step toward him as he pulled a lighter-sized butane torch from his pocket, then a plastic squirt bottle filled with some kind of gel.
I was watching the man’s eyes. Excitement increases blood flow, eyes appear to glaze. With this freak, compulsion was pathology. He couldn’t stop himself. He had to see me burn.
“You are so goddamn sure of yourself. You know what I’d like? I want to see you run, Ford!” Lourdes lunged at me with the bottle, squirting a stream of gel as he snapped the torch’s flint trying to fire it.
It didn’t light-and he also dropped his pistol.
I blocked some of the goop with my gloves as I side-stepped, then dove at him. I hit him just below the knees, knocking his legs from beneath him. Lourdes weighed close to three hundred pounds and he came crashing down on me. But he didn’t let go of the torch, which still wouldn’t start.
“Goddamn thing!”
We got to our feet at the same time and I waited for him to lunge. I dropped to one knee when he tried to club me, ducked under his huge hands, and came up behind with my left elbow cradling his throat, my left leg threaded between his legs so he couldn’t move. I locked my fingers beneath his jaw, tilting his head back, and pinned my right knee against his spine. The gloves gave me a better grip.
Lourdes still had the butane torch and I snatched it from him. The gel was close enough for me to reach and I grabbed it.
“Ford… what are you doing?”
I was squirting a stream of gel down the back of his robe, that’s what I was doing. The goop smelled of soap and petroleum.
“Are you insane? Stop that!”
Lourdes, the psychopath, was also claustrophobic. The last time we’d met, I had told him I would bury him alive if he threatened my son again. Fire, as it burns, can also entomb. It was close enough.
I had the man’s head torqued so hard that he was looking over my shoulder. I could have broken his neck if I’d wanted. But I was furious… and he did not deserve a quick and painless ending that for me has become procedural.
Talking into his ear, I whispered, “Too bad, Prax, change of plans. You’ve got to run.”
As I started flicking the butane torch, I watched the one lidless blue eye grow wider in that terrible face. Then, abruptly, he stopped struggling. He seemed to be focusing on something behind me.
“Ford! Let him go. No fires.”
I waited until I heard, “Step away. That’s an order,” before I turned to confirm that the voice was familiar.
A man was coming down the hill toward me carrying a gun. It was Kal Wilson.
Wilson was wearing a navy-issue sweatsuit and ball cap pulled low on his head and pointing a pistol at Lourdes. It was the Russian silent pistol I’d seen earlier.
Vue was with him but several yards up the incline. The barrel of his submachine gun moved in synch with his eyes as he stood watch.
Lourdes appeared dazed. I felt the same. What was the president doing here?
“Step away,” Wilson said again. He used the pistol to wave me back as he marched toward Lourdes. Instead of tinted glasses, he was wearing contacts. Even so, he paused to focus on the man’s face. “Good God… I didn’t believe the photos. You really are a monster. But you did it to yourself.”