“And?” Serrano glanced again at Captain Espinosa. “And what?”
“I don’t know, Senator. You spoke with Fields, not me. What else did he say? Whatever it was, you seem to be very impressed by it.” He locked eyes with Captain Espinosa. “Or is this the moment where you order us both shot?”
Ortega felt his anus pucker up tighter than an Italian tenor’s trousers.
Serrano and Espinosa had both expected Crosswhite to be shitting himself at this point, but he obviously wasn’t remotely concerned, and this left them both in a genuine quandary.
“Do you have some identification?” Espinosa asked.
Crosswhite took a blue passport from his back pocket and tossed it onto the table.
Espinosa checked it over. “This says you are Canadian.”
“I am Canadian.”
“Then what are you doing working for the CIA?” Serrano blurted.
“At the moment, I’m trying to help save your life. Did you really expect Fields to admit to what he was up to?” Crosswhite returned his focus to Captain Espinosa, recognizing the glowering lawman as the most immediate threat. “You should have advised the senator much better than that, Captain.”
If Espinosa had sat up any straighter in that moment, his spine would have snapped.
“What are you talking about?”
“What am I talking about? Why would you allow the senator to speak with Fields at all? What were you thinking? I thought you were supposed to be looking out for this man. Now Fields knows I’m in Mexico. He knows everything that you two know. He even knows that I’ve taken Agent Ortega and his family under my protection.”
He saw Serrano and Espinosa exchange more dazed glances. Realizing he’d guessed correctly, he dug in his heels. “That’s right. Fields told you that Ortega and his family have disappeared. Did he ask where they were? Did he happen to mention he wants them dead? I’ll bet he left that part out.” Crosswhite took a pack of cigarettes from inside his sport jacket and lit one.
“I don’t mean to be rude, gentlemen. I understand this is Mexico, and I respect your sovereignty — I do — but we’re playing on the world stage here. That’s why it doesn’t matter if I’m from Canada or Ireland or fucking Norway.” He pointed at Serrano with the cigarette between his fingers. “What matters is keeping you alive, Senator. And without me — without Pope’s blessing — your road to the presidency will be long and narrow. Now, do you want my help or not? Because my services happen to be in great demand.”
For a fleeting second, even Ortega thought Crosswhite was telling the truth.
“I do,” Serrano said quietly. “You must understand that—”
“What I understand is that you need to tell me what else Fields had to say and what else you said to him. That way I can assess the damage that’s been done and come up with a way to fix it.” Crosswhite crushed out the cigarette on the table top, glancing at Ortega. “What are you looking at?” he said in English. “Did you think I was making all this shit up?”
Ortega shrugged and shook his head, obviously more confused than anyone else at the table. “I–I don’t—”
“Shut up.” Crosswhite turned back to Captain Espinosa, keeping the initiative. “Was I incorrect? Are you not the senator’s advisor?”
Espinosa glanced at Serrano.
“He’s a trusted advisor, yes,” Serrano said. “But he didn’t — I didn’t speak with him before I spoke with Fields. It was my decision to speak with Fields. My error.”
Crosswhite feigned incredulousness. “I’m sorry, Senator, but am I to understand that you have no political advisor?”
Serrano stiffened, his embarrassment beginning to show as he realized that Crosswhite was accustomed to dealing with much more sophisticated power brokers.
Crosswhite let him off the hook, turning back to Espinosa. “My apologies, Captain. I was under the impression you were an actual advisor.”
Now Espinosa was also embarrassed — not to mention annoyed with Serrano — exactly as Crosswhite had planned. Crosswhite saw, too, that even the bodyguards were off balance, which meant they’d been briefed to expect an entirely different kind of meeting with an entirely different outcome.
Now that everyone was sufficiently agitated, he said, “Excuse me, but can one of these two gentlemen show me to the restroom?”
“Um, yes,” Serrano said. “Of course.” Grateful for an opportunity to gather his thoughts, he gestured for one of the bodyguards to show him the way.
Crosswhite stood up and moved toward the house, pausing for the bodyguard to catch up.
Captain Espinosa glanced at Serrano, his face an open display of displeasure at having been made to look foolish in front of the CIA.
As the bodyguard approached, Crosswhite spun into him, striking the vagus nerve in the side of the man’s neck with the inside ridge of his hand. The bodyguard’s entire body went ramrod stiff, and he toppled over backward, landing on the ground without making any attempt to break his fall. Crosswhite launched himself at the second bodyguard, pouncing like a mountain lion to jam his thumb deep into the man’s eye socket and stealing the Glock pistol from beneath his jacket.
He turned and shot Espinosa in the throat as he was rising from his chair. The police captain pitched over into Serrano’s lap, and Serrano stared in wide-eyed disbelief as Crosswhite shot him in the forehead. The fat man fell over against the table and flopped to the ground. Two more headshots finished the bodyguards, and Crosswhite stalked over to where Serrano’s girlfriend sat, too petrified to move or make a sound.
The Chihuahua barked at him twice as he pointed the pistol into her face, speaking calmly in Spanish. “I’m with the CIA. Do you know what that is?”
She nodded, the magazine still in her hands.
“If you give anyone an accurate physical description of me, I will find you, and I will kill you. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she croaked in English.
“You got a helluva set of tits, honey.” With that, he turned and walked back to the table, where Ortega sat in his own piss, trembling like a dog shitting a peach pit, blood from both men spattered on his face.
“I told you all you had to do was be yourself,” Crosswhite said.
Expecting to see Crosswhite and Ortega lying dead on the ground, Oscar Martinez came out the back door carrying a pair of black rubber body bags and stopped dead in his tracks.
Crosswhite aimed the pistol at him. “Those other two assholes still out front?” he asked in English.
Oscar nodded.
“What was supposed to happen?”
“I was to… I was to…” Oscar’s jaw began to tremble.
“It’s okay,” Crosswhite said. “You can tell me.”
“I was to put your bodies into these bags and to… to call Ruvalcaba’s people to come take you away.”
“Go out front and call those other two assholes back here. Double-cross me, and I’ll feed you to that goddamn Chihuahua.”
Oscar ducked back inside, and Crosswhite followed a few steps behind.
Ortega was still sitting in the chair staring at the bodies on the ground when he heard two more shots inside the house. A few seconds later, Crosswhite walked up and smacked him in the back of the head. “Get your ass up, Mikey. We’re done here.”
Ortega got unsteadily to his feet. “Will you take me to my wife and kids now?”
Crosswhite took him by the arm, setting off toward the house. “What I should do is drown you in the goddamn pool, you piece of shit.”
71