McCracken moved through the turnstile and up into the crowded bar area. Blisteringly loud music smacked his ears. Most of the room’s light sprang from four television screens playing the same music video. Everything was dark and brown, the lamps attached to the wooden support beams shedding only candlelight illumination. More young teenagers were milling about, nursing drinks, and Blaine walked over to a set of empty tables in the back of the room.
He chose a table against the wall and sank into a chair. When a waitress finally came over, Blaine asked to borrow her pen and grabbed a napkin from her tray. He wrote quickly.
DA SA—
I’M DOWNSTAIRS. NEED TO SEE YOU.
MCCRACKEN
“Give this to the manager, please,” he said in Portuguese, handing it to the waitress along with a generous tip.
Two minutes later, a curly-haired young man in his mid-twenties approached the table.
“He told me you might be coming,” he said in English. “I was to send you up as soon as you arrived.”
“I’ve arrived.”
The young man pointed to a set of stairs on the left. “His office is on the third floor. To reach it, go up to the second landing and cross the dance floor. The guards will be expecting you.”
“Dance floor?” Blaine asked. He couldn’t wait to ask Fernando Da Sa why he had chosen the Bali Bar as his base. Making it up the stairs was like fighting traffic on the L.A. freeway. The dance floor was packed with bodies twisting and churning beneath flashing multicolored lights. A large man stood guard near a door across the floor, and Blaine found himself dodging bodies as he made his way there.
“McCracken,” Blaine announced to the guard over the din.
The man gestured toward the stairway just behind him with his eyes, the outline of a pistol obvious beneath his sports jacket. Blaine slid by him and climbed the steps. At the top of the stairs, another man directed him to an open door on the right side of the corridor. McCracken headed toward it.
The anomaly actually struck him as he passed inside.
Male guards instead of female guards. Why?
But a half-dozen steps inside the office and the why was made clear.
“Mr. Da Sa?”
The crime lord was seated in a high-backed leather chair behind his desk, immobile because of the neat slice in his throat that had spilled blood down the center of his suit and splattered it over his desk blotter. In the same instant that Blaine put everything together, his ears registered steps pounding his way. A window directly before him was open to the Rio night, and he lunged toward it, a step ahead of the machine-gun fire suddenly struggling for a bead on him.
Rat-tat-tat…
The sound peppered his ears as he hit a narrow strip of the second-floor roof. He tried for balance, but the slippery metal tripped him and he fell, thumping hard to the cobblestone drive below. Wobbly he regained his feet just as machine-gun fire from down the hill came his way. Blaine swung and retreated up the cobblestone driveway. Swinging right at the top, at the Bali Bar’s rear, he crossed into an alleyway that ran between the bar and an athletic club. He was running, but his feet felt heavy. He felt dizzy from the fall and started to crumple, just as he realized the alley came to a dead end.
He was trapped, the guards starting down the alley after him. He fought to get back on his feet, but his strength was gone. The alley swam before him. He reached instinctively into his jacket for the gun he’d lost at the Jardim Botanico. He was too groggy to notice that just behind him the round cover of a telephone-line tunnel had popped open.
Blaine was clawing to hold on to his last bit of consciousness when a pair of hands pulled him down into a dank darkness his mind at last surrendered to.
Part Four
Children of the Black Rain
Chapter 21
The nightmare began for Patty Hunsecker when the phone jarred her from sleep at the first light of dawn.
“Whatever you’re selling, I don’t want any,” she said, knowing full well it could only have been Sal Belamo.
“Wake up, lady,” came Belamo’s rapid voice. “Wake up quick.”
Patty was upright in the next instant. “What’s wrong, Sal?”
“We got as some problems, lady. Do what I say and you’ll be all right. You hearing this?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. I’m calling you from one of these goddamn car phones. The safe house isn’t safe. You’re not safe. Clear?”
“Crystal,” Patty said, not as bravely as she had hoped.
“I’m on my way there now. Chances are someone’s gonna beat me to the building, so here’s how we’re gonna play it. You gotta get out, and you gotta do it now. Back stairs. Rear exit…No, they could be watching that…”
“Who, Sal?”
“Good question, lady. Not a good answer. Give you the shitty details when I pick you up. Suffice it to say everything makes sense now, most of it anyway. Old Blaine’d be proud of me…and you.”
“What’s going on?”
“You’re leaving, and I’m picking you up. Go up to the roof. Do you hear me? Go up to the roof. You’ll find some heavy twenty-foot planks up there. There’s an apartment building next to the safe house that’s the same height.”
“I know it.”
“What you gotta do, you gotta slide those planks across and walk on over. Then head down through the unlocked door on the building roof to the alley on the western side. I’ll be there.”
Patty was fully awake now, and so was her fear. “What about security? Can’t we call—”
“Fuck security. If they’re not dead, they’re useless. Just do what I tell you.”
Patty dressed quickly in jeans and a sweater. She moved cautiously into the corridor, holding her breath in fear that a gun barrel would greet her. There was nothing, no sounds, no shapes. She slipped silently to the stairwell and started to open the door when she heard the echo of steps ascending. Hard to tell how many. A single man, perhaps two.
Patty felt panic swell within her. She had to reach the roof, but obviously this approach was out. Something had spooked Sal Belamo — and whatever it was was coming up the stairs for her. She bolted back toward her room, trying to frame the building’s structure in her mind.
The fire escape! That was her only chance! She reentered her room and locked the door behind her. Then she rushed to the window and lifted it open. The fire escape lay before her, rusty and providing no reason for confidence. Nonetheless, she pulled herself outside onto it. Her boots clanged noisily on the metal tubing. Rising to a crouch, she slid the window back down and began her climb up the ladder.
The cold Washington morning bit into her lightly clothed body, and her breath misted before her face. There were four flights to cover, the steps were cold and slippery, wet with morning dew. A few times she had to stop just to wipe her palms on her jeans. As she neared the top, her heart thundered with the fear of being caught, but she managed to swing her legs off the ladder’s top rung and onto the roof without anyone stopping her.
Scanning the rooftop, she spotted the planks Sal had mentioned and ran over to examine them. To her dismay, only one was usable, the other too rotten to be trusted to carry her. This meant she’d have to get to the neighboring building with only ten inches of cushion.
Patty hoisted the plank and slid it over to the adjacent roof with the utmost care, aware a mistake now could ruin her only viable escape route. No sooner was it in place on the opposite roof, its middle section sagging noticeably, then fresh sounds of pursuit reached her from the stairwell door. She was actually thankful for the sounds; they gave her the burst of adrenaline she needed to step out on the plank and begin her walk.