“I heard you talking.”
“Right. Look. I can’t do a job for you if I’m chained up in a dungeon or thrown out of Puerto Rico. The only way I can make any progress is to go to ground. If they can’t find me they can’t deport me, you dig? That’s why we’re out here instead of drinking banana daiquiris at Dorado Beach. I don’t know if you were tagged at the airport but we have to assume you were. By coming here you’ve exposed yourself and that makes my job harder. If they can reach you it’s the same thing as reaching me.” Then Crobey showed anxiety: “You’re dealing with terrorists — people who kill people. If Rodriguez gets the idea you’re putting him in jeopardy—” and he shrugged without finishing it. Then: “Maybe it’s time you put paid to this thing. Go home to the world you know, don’t try to mess about with things you can’t handle — you’re a guppy trying to swim through a school of piranha. If they’re hungry they’ll have you for breakfast and they won’t even belch afterwards.”
“Have they got you scared, Crobey? Is that it? Do you want me to call it off because that way you won’t have to think of yourself as a coward?”
“Believe that if it makes you feel better.”
“My son isn’t any less dead now than he was when I hired you.”
“When we get too close to Rodriguez he’ll do something about it. You understand that?”
“I understand he’ll try. It’s your job to make sure he fails, isn’t it.”
“Given a free hand I’ll try. But it means you’ve got to stay out of it. Go back to the mainland, hide out somewhere, hire a bodyguard if you can, wait it out.”
“No. I’m staying, and I’m setting the rules. For a thousand a week you can play it by my rules.”
“Rules? Do you think there are rules in this game?”
“I want every scrap of information you get — whether it’s useful or negative or just immaterial. When decisions are made I’ll discuss them but I’m in charge and I don’t put things to a vote. If I want you to divulge anything else to Mr. Anders or the police I’ll let you know but until then you’ll keep your lip buttoned and say nothing to anyone.”
Santana gaped at her — he’d never heard a woman talk to a man that way, let alone to a man like Crobey.
“I hear you,” said Crobey, amused, waiting her out.
“I was told in Washington that if they’re arrested on American soil they can only be charged with violating the U.S. neutrality laws. Conspiring against a foreign government. That’s a slap on the wrist. My son was murdered in Mexico — I want to know what the official Mexican position is. Legally it’s their case.”
Crobey said, “Forget the Mexicans.”
“Why?”
“There’s no material evidence he was killed there. The body was dumped there but for all we know he was killed out at sea aboard a boat — and wouldn’t that be a nicety for a few dozen lawyers. In the second place even if the Mexicans had it airtight they wouldn’t touch it with a rake. The rightists would condemn them if they convicted, the leftists would condemn them if they didn’t. If you want an opinion, the only way you’re going to get revenge on these bastards is to kill them yourself.”
“No. I don’t just want them punished. I want them punished publicly, in the eyes of the world. I want justice, and I want the world to see it. I’m not about to go to jail for murdering Rodriguez. I don’t want it to be a joke, Crobey. I want it to be a memorial to my son.”
“You don’t get it, ducks.” His voice was softer now. “The kind of justice you’re asking for is out of stock. It was rendered obsolete by reality. The Mexicans won’t touch them. I explained that. And nobody else has jurisdiction.”
“You’re wrong about that.”
“Am I? Show me.”
“I’ve had time to think it out,” she said. “There’s one government that will be sure to execute them with full-scale publicity. All we have to do is catch them and turn them over.”
Crobey looked at her, baffled.
“Castro, Crobey. We deliver them to Fidel Castro.”
Crobey scowled. His mouth prepared for a speech but he subsided; finally he cocked his head, reluctantly pleased. “My God. It might work.”
“Uh-huh,” she said, obviously pleased with herself.
“Anything else up your sleeve?”
“A thought or two. For instance — you must know a few of the black-market arms dealers in this part of the world.”
“You want a bazooka for Christmas.”
She said, “Suppose you’re a terrorist gang and you’ve just collected ten million dollars in cash ransom. Where do you spend it?”
Crobey didn’t answer for a moment. His face changed a bit. Finally he said, “I hadn’t thought of that one. I wonder if Anders has.”
“A civil-service apparatchik? I doubt it.”
“Don’t undersell Anders.” But he was watching her more alertly than he ever had before, as if for the first time he recognized her as something more than an attractive bit player.
Chapter 11
Glenn Anders slouched in an uncomfortable wooden chair while Perez flipped through the photo cards with the repetitive efficiency of a bank teller counting money. Perez had been through mug-shot canvasses before; just the same Anders was dubious — Perez flipped them over so quickly. After a while there was a danger of forgetting what one was looking for. One’s eyes began to go out of focus and one might flip right past the vital one.
A girl in an Afro natural hairdo and bone earrings came in. She put a paper bag on the table and smiled brightly and left.
Anders removed two capped Styrofoam cups from the bag.
“Yes. Black please, with two sugars, yes?”
The room was prim and sinister, the windows set high. The tile floor sloped to a center drain and the walls were slick with high-gloss green paint. This was police headquarters: a washable room designed for interrogations.
Anders stirred sugar into the coffee with the wooden tongue-depressor stick and pushed the cup across the table to Perez. “Take a break. Tell me again what he looked like.”
Perez — slight, birdy, poplin suit, fake silk tie — had a cocky way of narrowing his eyes and dropping his voice near a whisper, as confidential as a desk clerk pimping for a girl on the third floor. As it happened he was neither pimp nor pusher; Perez was a plainclothes police detective.
Perez said, “I wasn’t so close to see him clearly,” and ended the sentence with a nervous meaningless laugh that sounded like a telephone’s busy signal. The habit irritated Anders. Perez, proud of his English, said, “I was tired to sit waiting in the car, I was getting out for walk, then I hear the footsteps, yes? In the open he startled me and I went up in a doorway to look like I’m ringing the bell of the house. I am afraid he spotted me. I think so, yes?” And another honk of laughter, this one to cover his shame. It was another point against him that he still hadn’t understood Anders’ question.
Anders contained his irritation. None of it meant much anyhow. Likely the whole thing was a false lead. The Volkswagen had provoked the attention of the bureaucracy and Anders was obliged to follow up dutifully but he wasn’t sure it would take him anywhere.
Reasoning that Rodrigo Rodriguez might spend part of the ten million dollars’ ransom on armaments, Anders had activated the clumsy apparatus. Inquiries were made in seventeen ports. The report that flagged Anders’ attention came from Fajardo, the port town at the northeast tip of the island of Puerto Rico.