“But I didn’t,” she said. It was almost an admission, as though there was something unnatural in not blowing the guy’s brains out. “Why? I could have done it. I’ve even dreamed of it, of having the scum in my sights and he doesn’t have a gun and I shoot him over, and over, and over. I was craving the chance, but I…”
“You what?” Art asked obligingly. The thought needed to be completed, but by her.
“I realized it was real. It wasn’t some fantasy that I could play over and over until I got it right, because it never got right.” Frankie finally looked at him. “Doing it wouldn’t have been any more right than dreaming it.”
Art smiled a bit and nodded. “I told you I had faith in you.”
It was Frankie’s turn to smile, her first true one in days. “So, what does he have to say?”
Art glanced back at the room. “He suddenly became mute. You know the type.”
“Won’t rat on his familia, huh?” Frankie asked, her gaze traveling down to the bodies of the first two to die.
“His loyalty may be a bit in excess, considering,” Art commented, the idea coming simultaneously. “Hmm. Maybe we should fill him in on just how loyal his employer was to him and his buddy.”
“I think he has a right to know,” Frankie agreed with a bigger smile.
They were back in 106 a few seconds later. Omar Espinosa cleared the room for Art, leaving just the two agents and their suspect.
“Still don’t want to tell us your name, ‘Flavio’?” Art inquired, knowing the chance was unlikely to be seized by the perp.
Jorge rolled a bit and cocked his head to look up. The spade and the broad were there, standing over him. The door leading out was open, and lying in it was… Tomás. “Go fuck yourself, nigger.”
Art just laughed it off softly. He’d been called “nigger” by more dangerous and influential people than this pile of human waste. “Tough. That’s a good thing to be. Tough and loyal. Never rat on your buddies. That’s a good code.” He stepped back and sat on the second bed, staring into the eyes of the man he wanted to break like a matchstick. Beating him mentally, though, would be more satisfying. “It’s a bitch when your buddies don’t think the same way.”
Jorge looked again to Tomás, then to the lady pig. She was the one who had shot him. She had to be the one. So what was this nigger talking about? “Don’t play head games with me, boy. It won’t work.”
Art gave a single, slow nod, then bolted from his sitting position and grabbed the perp by one arm, jerking him off the bed to a standing position. There was a muffled cry of pain, but Art ignored it and dragged him to the door, inches from his partner’s body, and directed his face with a strong hand on the chin to look out the door.
“There is your fucking loyalty, asshole! Look!”
Jorge looked down once more to Tomás, moving only his eyes, then out to the parking lot at the two bodies lying together as one. There were…guns?…on the blacktop near the corpses. Two guns, shiny stainless-steel revolvers. Revolvers. The tool of…his trade, and of theirs.
“Quite a well-armed pickup service,” Art said, the perp’s head swiveling to look at him. “Oh, yeah. We know that you were expecting someone to pick up a tape. Only I don’t think they were coming just for that. Do you?”
The motherfuckers! He had done everything to bring the job off perfectly, just like he had for them before, and they were going to repay him with this?
“You owe us your life, boy, ’cause these fellas were coming to smoke you.” Art pulled him back to the bed and lowered him against the headboard. “My partner here saved your ass.”
“But she killed Tomás,” Jorge said, his voice wavering as it had when the guns were pointed at him.
Art mentally noted the name. “And he was going to kill her. She was faster. The point is that you are alive not because of any of your so-called friends. Your buddy over there would have been dead anyway. And so would you.”
Frankie watched in silence as her partner wore the guy down. His manner was reverting to that which it had been when death was staring at him from the barrel of a gun. He wasn’t able to handle the fear of his own mortality. He was a coward, as most bad guys were when confronted with something they could not seize the initiative on. When killing Portero and Thom, this guy and his partner had been in control. Now the surviving member of the duo was completely without that human need, and he was coming apart.
“What’s your name?” Art asked directly, his clear, steady eyes staring into the tear-filled ones of his prisoner.
“Jorge.”
“Jorge what?” Behind, Frankie had removed her notepad.
“Jorge Alarcon, and it’s…it’s behind the dresser.”
“It?” Art asked, Frankie was already looking for whatever “it” was.
“This, partner,” Frankie said, holding up the cassette. A simple radio/tape player sat on the dresser. She opened the tape deck and dropped the cassette in.
“It’s Portero and some guy,” Jorge said with a sniffle. “That’s not what we came for.”
Well, you had the right to remain silent. Art didn’t care if the guy hanged himself with his words. “We have that one.”
Jorge’s face showed complete surprise at the revelation. “But how?”
Frankie smiled as the tape rewound. “Wrong pocket, buddy.”
Jorge’s head dropped until his chin rested against his chest. They had blown it. Now he had also. He was broken. Having always seen himself as smarter than the cops who were his de facto enemies, he had learned that the reality was quite the opposite. Whatever lay ahead, he considered his life to be over here and now.
A loud click signaled the end of the rewind. Frankie pressed the Play button and adjusted the volume.
The first sound after the opening static was the ringing of a phone as it would be heard through the receiver. Art knew the sound. “Phone mic.”
Frankie nodded. The sound was a telltale indicator that someone was using a simple microphone, attached by suction cup to the listening end of the receiver, to record a call.
The ringing ceased, and a voice answered with the customary “Hello,” though thickly accented.
“That’s Portero,” Jorge said. He had no reason not to tell them.
“His voice is clear,” Frankie observed. “He’s the one recording this.” Her eyes narrowed as she listened to the other voice, obviously at the opposite end of the line. “But who is that?”
The voice was familiar, but Art couldn’t place it. He had heard it. His mind traced backward for familiar links. It was in a group of people. That was it. A speech. His ears strained to match the sound with a visual image tucked away somewhere among the trillions of neurons. A speech. Where? When? Who?
The progressing conversation began to steer Art’s mental search on a narrower path. Certain words and the way they were spoken caused brief images to flash in his mind, but he could not seize on any one. Who are you?
“Mr. Portero…”
“No, please, señor. Francisco. We are speaking as friends. Francisco.”
“Yes. As I was saying, Mr. Portero…”
That was it! What was being said was important, but who was saying it, and to whom, was what mattered most. “The son of a bitch.”
“Who?” Frankie asked. “That’s nothing new. Portero was just telling some guy what he knew. And whoever it was didn’t sound like he believed him.”
“Or didn’t want to believe him,” Art countered. “You don’t know who that was, do you?”