Melanie dialed the Reyeses’ apartment with shaking hands, thinking of Dan out in the rain forest. Was he walking into a trap?
Luis Reyes answered. Melanie immediately told him she had no news about Carmen, in order not to get his hopes up, but said she needed to speak to Lulu right away.
“She not here right now. She got ice-skating practice in Chelsea Piers till ten o’clock tonight. I think it’s good she keep up her routine, you know?”
He gave Melanie the number for the Chelsea Piers Sky Rink. She called there right away, but the woman who answered the phone refused to get Lulu off the ice, claiming she was too busy to leave her station. Melanie insisted it was an emergency. The woman grudgingly took a message, but Melanie had zero confidence Lulu would ever see it. Damn.
Melanie paced like a caged animal, agonizing over her next step. She wanted to go find Dan in the rain forest and warn him the drug deal might be some kind of hoax. That’s what she wanted to do, but she kept telling herself it wasn’t smart. She was a prosecutor, not a cop. She could screw things up, barging into the middle of a surveillance. Not to mention get hurt.
The phone shrieked, and Melanie jumped. She grabbed the receiver, hoping it was Lulu calling back.
“He-hello?”
“Yo, Ms. Vargas, Frank Leary, Manhattan South Homicide, calling to give youse a heads-up on developments with this Deon Green murder.”
“Oh, sure, Detective,” she said, struggling to focus her brain on something other than what was happening in El Yunque.
“We locked up the pross in question earlier today. One Samir Khan, aka Sammy. Guy rolled right away. Claims he was paid off to lure the vic into a beatin’ by none other than your boy Jay Esposito.”
“Huh. Really.” Melanie fell silent. The thought that Fabulous Deon had thus in all likelihood been killed for snitching made her sick to her stomach. But another part of her experienced a guilty jolt of relief. If Expo were responsible after all, then Dan was just surveilling a normal drug deal. Nothing to worry about.
“Hello?” Leary asked after a moment.
“Yes, I’m still here,” she said. “I hate to hear that. It means Fabulous Deon was probably murdered in retaliation for his work with us.”
“Jeez, sorry about that.”
“God, that’s just awful. Deon was a good man.”
“So let’s move fast on this Esposito asshole, make him pay.”
“Yes, definitely. Our team’s set up right now at a location about forty-five minutes from here, where Expo’s people are doing a hand-to-hand tonight. We’re expecting him to show up there.”
“Expo? In Puerto Rico? No way. He’s in New York tonight. I got good intelligence says he’s at one of his clubs.”
“Are you sure? That’s different from what we’ve been hearing.”
“The snitch I’m working with is real reliable, so I’m pretty confident. My partner and I are gonna take a ride right now and bring ’im in.”
“Detective, do me a favor and let me know as soon as you’ve got Esposito in custody? If he’s not down here, we need to know.”
“Sure thing.”
Esposito at one of his clubs in New York? What could that mean, other than that she’d been right? Somebody was playing them. They were being set up. Jesus, she’d better warn Dan. But he had his phone and his radio turned off.
Melanie desperately started dialing team members, even though she assumed nobody would answer. She left messages on Dan’s and Bridget’s cells begging them to call her at the hotel because she had important new information. Then she called Ray-Ray Wong. Much to her shock, he picked up on the first ring.
“Ray, it’s Melanie. I’m so glad I got you! Did you land yet?”
“Did I what?”
“Are you in San Juan? I couldn’t reach you before, so I figured you guys and Trevor were already on the plane. I have some important new information.”
“Whatever it is, it’ll have to wait. We got a serious problem up here.”
Melanie felt suddenly cold and light-headed, like she was sick with something. She knew what was coming. The thing she’d tried so hard to avoid. She closed her eyes and saw Trevor’s face.
“Tell me,” she demanded with quiet urgency.
“It’s Trevor. He never arrived at the airport. The Escalade they had him in hasn’t been seen in hours. We’ve lost them somehow.”
51
MELANIE WAS BUSY negotiating with a cabdriver named Raúl in the hotel driveway when Lamar Gates and Pavel LNU walked right by her and got into a waiting convertible. What the hell were they doing in San Juan? Did they have Trevor stashed around here somewhere? She didn’t have a clue what was going on, but one thing she did know: She couldn’t afford to waste time. She quit arguing over a few bucks and jumped in the back of the taxi.
“Follow that car!”
“Lady, are you crazy? That’s a Porsche,” Raúl said, looking at her in the rearview mirror. He was middle-aged, with a bristly mustache.
“Do it! Hurry up! We’re gonna lose them.”
“You pay twice the meter and cover any damage to my cab.”
“Deal.”
Once his foot touched the pedal, Raúl did not disappoint. He ran red lights all the way to the highway. They got on, heading for El Yunque, and Raúl wove in and out of traffic, doing a minimum of eighty, keeping the Porsche in his sights yet somehow remaining far enough back so as not to blow their cover.
Another benefit of doing eighty was that it made El Yunque that much closer. Twenty minutes later they turned off the highway onto a smaller road that ran beside a diminutive river, more like a stream. In the distance black mountains massed, shrouded in mist.
“That’s it,” Raúl said, pointing out the front window.
Melanie shivered. “Are there snakes?” she asked.
“Probably, but I’m no expert. I don’t like nature. Too dirty for me.”
They’d seen the Porsche cross through El Yunque’s gates some distance ahead of them and disappear into the blackness. Now Raúl drove up to the portal, marked by a National Park Service sign, and stopped the cab.
“Here you go,” he said.
“This isn’t my final destination. I’m going to El Baño Grande.”
“Lady, the park is closed.”
“I’ll pay extra.”
“I’m not going in there after hours.”
“Raúl, this is important. Like I said, I’ll pay.”
“Twice the meter y cincuenta pesos más.”
“Fifty bucks extra? You’re crazy.”
“Fine, chica, there’s the door.”
“I don’t even have that much. I’ll pay you twice the meter plus twenty-five.”
He shrugged. “Okay.” He put the car in gear, then stopped, looking at her over his shoulder. “Your friends in the Porsche, they got guns?”
She hesitated, not wanting him to change his mind. But she wasn’t the type to lie, not when another person’s safety was at stake.
“I’m not sure, but probably,” she said, expecting him to turn the cab around. Instead he turned off the headlights, and they entered the park in complete darkness.