Kaminski massaged her temples, trying to get her brain to function. Buenos Aires? Montoneros? What the fuck? She’d read something once about the Dirty War, but she couldn’t remember what. “So you had it rough and now you’re up from the gutter — a real success story.”
“Something like that.”
“Good for you. You’ve earned all this! And never mind that you’re a thief or a spy or some kind of terrorist — someone who bullies old men, and kidnaps girls from the streets of Rome.”
“I’ve told you, Felicia, your friend Abe is fine, and I am no spy. I have no taste for politics at all. If I had to describe my profession, I’d say I was a broker. I match buyers with sellers, and take a fee. A modest fee, all things considered.”
“Buyers and sellers of what?”
Faust shrugged. “This and that. Odds and ends.”
“Like stolen music manuscripts?”
“The manuscript is in the closet, Felicia, behind lock and key. My own musical inclinations run more to Sinatra than Mozart.”
“Not music, then what — drugs, guns? Whatever it is, I’m sure it makes your family very proud.”
Kaminski felt the air change, going silent and thick around her. The smiling Mr. Faust was no longer smiling, and those dark eyes seemed to look right through her. Defiance and anger drained from her, replaced by choking fear. This time, the knock on the door was a relief.
It was the squat man again, and he looked nervously at Faust. Faust said something to the man — she didn’t know what — and walked out the door. The squat man turned to her.
“Come,” he said in gravelly English.
She was not inclined to argue.
Faust hadn’t lied about the trip. It was a short one in the back of the big BMW, through sodium-lit nighttime streets. Kaminski looked for signs and landmarks: Light Street, East Lombard, a big stadium off to the left, bathed in light and carpeted in impossible green, then a tangle of narrower streets, and old brick buildings. In 10 minutes, they pulled up in front of one of them.
Four stories and broad, the building looked to her like a warehouse or an old factory. And so it had been once upon a time, as she read on the shiny brass plaque near the modern glass entry: The Sail Cloth Factory–1888. Just above that plaque another, with the address: 121 South Fremont Avenue.
Home, she thought, her anger returning as she followed Faust inside.
Exposed brick and ornamental wrought iron whispered of the building’s industrial past; otherwise, the rest of the lobby — gleaming brass, etched glass and marble — proclaimed its current incarnation as a luxury apartment building. Faust crossed to the elevator and Felicia followed him in and then, on the fourth floor, out again. Around a corner, down a pale gray corridor, and to a black door at its end; Faust knocked twice. Then he took a key from his jacket pocket, worked the lock, and stepped inside. And stopped short.
Kaminski didn’t see the wiry, bearded man pointing a Glock 30 at Faust’s chest until she bumped into Faust’s back. Then she gasped and gripped Faust’s bicep.
“Jesus,” she whispered.
The bearded man smiled at Faust, who smiled back. “Que tal, Nacho,” Faust said.
“Nada, Jefe,” the man said, and slipped the Glock into a holster behind his back. “All quiet on the western front. Have a look for yourself.”
Faust gently removed Kaminski’s hand from his bicep, and followed Nacho to a window. She let out a long breath and looked around. The large loft apartment — brick walls, high ceilings, exposed beams and ductwork, shiny plank floors, and little in the way of furniture: a card table, some folding chairs, a dim floor lamp, and heavy white drapes across the windows. There was plenty of technical equipment: three laptops; several cameras wearing long lenses; and two massive, tripod-mounted binoculars. They were pointed at a narrow gap in the drapes, and now Nacho fiddled with one of them.
“Got the image intensifier on this one, Jefe,” he said as Faust bent to the eyepieces.
“When was the last delivery?” Faust asked as he looked.
“This afternoon. Maybe five o’clock.”
“You know what it was?”
Nacho looked at Kaminski and switched to Spanish. She tried to follow it, but it came too fast and the accents were strange, and anyway it sounded scientific to her, chemical terms maybe. She walked slowly to the binoculars while Faust and Nacho spoke. The men saw her but seemed not to care. She peered into the eyepiece.
Outside, the world was tinted green, as was a brick building, low and long, that seemed very close. It had a lot of windows, all shuttered, and she thought it looked abandoned. There was a loading dock in the center of the image, and the only thing that moved was a plastic bag, blowing in the warm night breeze.
Nacho pulled the drapes and the outside images went black. He looked at Kaminski and nodded his head at a chair in the corner. She sat, still straining to catch the conversation. It was less technical now, Faust asking something about someone—does he know…Does he know what? Horario. Was that like orario, meaning schedule, timetable? And who was this he?
It seemed as if Nacho was uncertain too. He shrugged at Faust and moved to a large closet’s double doors. He put his hands on the knobs. “Maybe you have better luck than me, Jefe,” he said in English, and swung the doors wide.
Kaminski screamed.
The man on the closet floor stared at her, though he was bound with wire and gagged with duct tape, and bleeding from a gash on his shaved head, which, she noticed, was tattooed with the likeness of the jack of spades. Nacho pressed a forefinger to his lips and made a shushing noise at her.
She had no idea how long it was before her head cleared, but when it did she saw Faust kneeling by the tattooed man. His hand rested gently on the man’s shoulder, and he spoke softly in his ear. The duct tape was off the tattooed man’s mouth and Kaminski could see that the man’s lips were split, and that he was crying. And speaking too, in urgent, terrified English.
“No, no — not weeks! It’s days, a matter of days. Maybe less!”
Faust spread the duct tape over the man’s mouth again and patted him, almost affectionately, on the back. Then he stepped away and shut the closet door. Nacho looked at Faust and smiled.
“Still got the touch, Jefe,” he said.
Faust smiled minutely. “You call if there’s any more activity,” he said. To Kaminski, he added, “We return to the hotel.”
She stood and followed numbly. As they were about to step into the corridor, she touched Faust’s arm and spoke in a whisper. “What will happen to him — the man in the closet?”
“Nacho will see to him,” Faust said. “Now come, we have dinner plans to make.”
It was nearly black in the hospital room when Jack Perez came awake, the .357 in his hand. The only light came from the orange glow of the call buttons on the wall, the green digits on the blood pressure monitor, and the pinkish scatter of streetlight through the shaded window. It was nearly silent, too — only the sounds of his wife’s steady breathing, the quiet whir of air in the vents, and the electric ping of some sort of warning bell reached his ears. About right for two a.m.
But something had woken Perez from his brittle sleep. His father-in-law going out? Someone in the corridor?
Perez wiped a hand across his eyes, rose from the lounge chair and crossed the room without a sound. He leaned against the doorframe with one hand on the knob and the .357 down along his leg. He took a deep breath and opened the door a crack.