Michael, though, was another story. For all his bluster, the work ate at him. You could see it in his face. In the slope of his shoulders as he slumped in his chair. Lester may have the luxury of not thinking what they did was killing, but Michael knew better. Michael was out in the field, the muck, the blood-and out there, the truth was harder to avoid.
If it weren’t for Evie, Lester wondered if Michael would have lasted this long. Evie’d been everything to him. Walking away from her-regardless of his reasons or his resolve-had devastated him. But he’d never stopped-he couldn’t stop-taking care of her. It was one more reason Michael needed Lester’s skills. Maybe the only reason that mattered.
Even after Michael’s supposed death, Evie’s parents never forgave her for leaving with him. She-now a nurse practitioner who split her time between three free clinics in her area-was too proud to ask them for help paying back her student loans, her looming mortgage. Michael, with Lester’s help, ensured she’d never have to.
She didn’t realize who the money came from. Had no idea it was blood money. As far as she knew, the deposits were part of a structured settlement-the result of a bogus class-action lawsuit Lester conjured from thin air, supposedly brought forth by loved ones of war dead who fell victim to faulty body armor. And thanks to Lester’s computer chops, that’s all anyone who thought to look would ever see.
Lester didn’t know if those payments helped Michael sleep at night, but he was pretty sure they kept him rising every morning. Even after all these years-after Evie fell in love with someone else, after she married-he couldn’t help but try to take care of her.
Couldn’t help but try to make things right, one murder at a time.
10
The afternoon sun streamed through the windows of the dead man’s flat-no, apartment, Engelmann reminded himself for perhaps the thousandth time, though the Americanism struck him as inaccurate and artless. Cruz’s apartment stood apart from nothing, being one of thirty units in the building-a squat, stuccoed box three stories high, from which jutted perfunctory balconies just large enough to place a hibachi and a single chair, and AC units laboring to make tolerable the city’s heat.
Cruz’s AC unit sat idle, and the windows were all closed. The apartment was oven-hot and stuffy, the air laden with sex and cheap, masculine cologne. As soon as he walked in, Engelmann’s face and neck broke into a sweat, and his hands grew sodden and clumsy inside their black nitrile gloves. Had it been this hot in the hallway, Engelmann likely would’ve taken twice as long to pick Cruz’s many locks. As one might expect, Cruz was a cautious man. Though in this case, Engelmann suspected the locks weren’t to protect against retaliation for his crimes but to bar entry to his wife.
This apartment was not the home they shared. And though the bedding was mussed and stained-the night-stand topped with oils, candles, and all manner of phallic appliances-Cruz’s wife had never seen the inside of its bedroom. Perhaps she suspected the existence of her husband’s little love nest, situated just blocks away from their tidy Little Havana bungalow, or perhaps not. Engelmann suspected it was the former-in part because one’s wife, he’d discovered in the course of many an interrogation, often knows a good deal more than she lets on, and in part because he’d seen her expression as she stood watching from the lawn as the Feds picked apart her home, one grandchild propped on each wide, matronly hip, another clinging to her legs. Though her neighbors gathered and watched, too, and with them the news crews, and though her youngest granddaughter buried her face in the woman’s ample bosom and cried, Cruz’s wife’s face showed neither shame nor distress.
Instead, her face showed rage.
At first, he’d assumed it was directed toward the agents ransacking her home. Toward the pretty agent in charge of the scene and her swaggering partner-the same agents he’d observed just yesterday investigating the scene of Cruz’s murder. But to them she was cordial, polite-even offering them something to eat while they waited for their crew to finish, as if she craved their approval.
As Engelmann watched, one of many in the crowd, he realized it was not their intrusion that vexed her. It was the fact that her husband had brought this intrusion upon her. She spit whenever the agents mentioned him by name; she shook her head in disgust when pressed for details about his work. As if she’d had no idea until his death what he’d done for a living. As if she had no idea what kind of man her husband really was.
Engelmann had seen this a hundred times in his profession. She was content to look the other way when her husband’s work bought them a tidy, sunny-yellow Craftsman home, the nicest on the block-tapered stone pillars propping up the clay shingled roof over the covered porch, a well-manicured lawn in front and back for kids to play on‚ fenced in as if to say to passersby “MINE”-but when it came time for her to face the fact that the fruits of his labor were plucked from a forbidden tree, mock horror was her response.
It made her a hypocrite, Engelmann thought-a liar to herself and to the world. Looking around Cruz’s spartan apartment, Engelmann knew the teak glider on the porch of his widow’s bungalow was not a purchase he would have made on his own, nor was the elaborate landscaping or the darling patio set he’d glimpsed around back.
No, those were his widow’s doing. And it seemed to Engelmann if she were so content to spend Cruz’s money, perhaps she shouldn’t hold his way of making it in such disdain.
No wonder the man had taken a lover. And no wonder he’d taken such pains to keep his wife out of this place. Having seen her reaction to having her husband’s earnings outed as blood money, Engelmann could only imagine how livid she’d become if she were confronted with the evidence that she was not the only one on whom he lavished it.
After a brief circuit to take in the gestalt of the apartment, Engelmann searched the dwelling slowly, methodically, without fear of discovery. The Federals knew nothing of this place. It was not leased under Cruz’s name, nor under any of his known aliases. In fact, the apartment wasn’t leased at all. The rental company’s paperwork listed it as vacant, though in ten years it had never once been shown, let alone rented.
The rental company was owned by the Cuban Mafia. The late Mr. Cruz’s employer.
All it took for Engelmann to find it was one call to his Council contact. The address was texted to his burner phone in minutes.
Engelmann started in the kitchen. Small and galley style, it stretched along one side of the empty living room. A stack of take-out menus sat on the countertop. The phone jack on the wall was bare and unused. He opened each drawer in turn: empty. Then he removed the drawer boxes from their frames and searched each for false bottoms, or envelopes taped to their undersides. Still nothing. He searched the cupboards. All but one were bare. The cupboard nearest the three-quarter refrigerator contained two juice glasses, a corkscrew, and a box of plastic eating utensils. He dumped the utensils onto the yellowed linoleum floor and let the box fall after them once he saw that there was nothing left inside.
The oven was empty and appeared unused. In the refrigerator he found a half-empty six-pack of Cerveza Cristal and nothing else. In the garbage, a few rancid food wrappers and two empty wine bottles. He emptied the trash can’s contents onto the floor, but there was nothing hidden underneath them-nor between the bag and bin.
There was no furniture in the living room. No art. The beige carpet was stained, the window bare of curtains. Beside the window was a sliding-glass door over which hung a set of cheap vertical blinds, louvered open to let in the light. Engelmann grasped the chain that operated them and slid them back and forth. They moved easily on their track. He ran a hand along the top of the track, but felt nothing. And when he poked his head outside, he found the balcony bare.