"You know the rules of engagement," said Hathaway.
Thorpe touched the 9-mm under his shirt. "Yeah, there are no rules."
Hathaway's laugh sounded hollow from under the spare tire. "Let's get down there," said Vlad.
Arturo put down his binoculars, started the car. "Forget Frank's little pep talk. Here's the way it will happen. Just past the gate, there's a big pothole. I'll take it fast, so the car will really dip, and when I do, you roll out your door and into the gully by the right side of the road. Guillermo and his pistoleros won't be able to see clearly through the smoked glass of the Town Car. Then you scurry up the gully, keeping ahead of me. When I get there, we hit them at the same time."
Vlad shook his head. "Better I move behind your car after I roll out, then cut left through the trees. I'll keep low, move fast; there's enough brush to screen me. They'll be watching you approach in the car, and I'll catch them from behind. They'll all be dead before you hit the brakes."
Arturo considered it, nodded. "You're right."
"Arturo… you should be careful when you start firing. You don't want to hit Frank."
"No, we wouldn't want that." As Arturo put the Lexus into gear, his phone beeped.
"At least it's not Missy, asking if it's over yet," said Vlad.
"I've been waiting on this call," said Arturo. He listened as he watched the Town Car. "You're sure?" He smiled and then snapped the phone shut.
"Good news?"
Arturo stared through the windshield at the orange grove, his face darkening now. "I just wish the call had come through ten minutes ago."
"What is it, Arturo?"
"Clark and Missy's new best friend is a liar. Guillermo didn't have our cookers killed."
"Maybe Guillermo lied to him."
"Why do you always take his side?" asked Arturo.
"I'm not." Vlad nodded toward the Town Car. "Let's go down and take care of business… We can ask Frank to explain things when we're done."
Arturo shook his head. "If Guillermo didn't kill our cookers, maybe he's not our problem." He chewed on his thumbnail.
"You should call Clark. Ask him what he wants us to do."
"I don't need to call anyone," said Arturo. "No, we'll let Frank explain to Guillermo why we backed out. It should be a most interesting conversation. I just wish I could piss on the pendejo's body after Guillermo gets done with him." He slipped the Lexus into gear, pulled out onto the main road. "Let's go to Santa Ana and pay a visit to someone who will be very unhappy to see us. Would you like that?"
Vlad stared out the window. Thorpe watched the Lexus drive away. "You can come out now."
"What happened?" asked Hathaway, emerging from the inside of the Town Car, trying to work the kinks out.
"I don't know." Thorpe kept watch on the road, just in case.
"Too bad. I was looking forward to seeing if this Vlad character could be killed."
"What does that mean?"
"Vlad is the reason that Guillermo backed off." Hathaway stretched, popped his neck. "Guillermo thinks Vlad is some kind of brujo… wizard. I don't believe a word of it, but Guillermo does."
"Maybe Guillermo just wanted an excuse to back down."
"Guillermo doesn't make excuses," said Hathaway. "He told me that when they had their dustup a couple years ago, one of his cousins shot Vlad five times. They found blood everywhere, so they knew he wasn't wearing a vest, but the next thing Guillermo knows, Vlad's back in action." Hathaway snagged a bottle of mescal from inside the car, took a swig, and offered it to Thorpe, who declined. "Guillermo tracked down the ER doc who worked on Vlad, and the guy goes on about patient confidentiality until Guillermo clarifies things for him." He took another swallow of mescal, showed his perfect white teeth. "Doc said he had never seen insides like Vlad's. He showed Guillermo the X rays, and Vlad's organs are all overdeveloped, with scar tissue and… growths everywhere. Doc told Guillermo that Vlad should have died from the gunshot wounds, but a day later, he walked out of Intensive Care and disappeared. Doc was really pissed. I guess he was working on some article for a medical journal, but his proof walked out on him." He squinted at Thorpe. "I dearly would have liked to have seen how those weird organs of his would hold up to the SAW. Nine hundred rounds a minute, that's some serious firepower."
"Sorry I got you into this, Danny. You ruined your deal with Guillermo for nothing."
"I'm the one owes you," said Hathaway. "I was overdue for a change. I'm done with Guillermo and the DEA both."
"I thought you liked the work."
"Every job gets old, Frank, even the pussy tester for the king of Siam hates Mondays." Hathaway scratched the inside of his arm. "Besides, there's too many temptations at DEA, and I never been good at telling Satan to get his ass behind me. No, you done me good. You woke me up."
"Yeah, you're welcome."
Hathaway put the top back on the bottle of mescal, tossed it onto the driver's seat. "What are you going to do now?"
"I'll think of something."
"You could let it go. That's something."
"Danny, if I was the kind of person who could let it go, I wouldn't have achieved the lofty station in life that you see before you."
"Sergeant Hardass." Hathaway threw a sloppy salute, a Delta Force salute, mocking the regular army feebs. He turned serious. "I guess if you were any different, the Engineer would be sleeping better at night."
"No, the Engineer has no trouble sleeping. He sleeps a sweet and dreamless sleep; I'm counting on that." Thorpe looked at Hathaway. "What are you going to do?"
"I don't know… It's a beautiful evening." Hathaway pounded the Town Car with his fist. "I think I'll clean out my crib and then take this baby on a road trip. It's not too late for you to come, Frank."
"Yes, it is."
34
Vlad could see Pinto's knobby anteater-skin cowboy boots protruding from under the white Mustang, heavy-metal music from the boom box drowning out the sounds of work. Fancy boots for the job at hand. He eased into the double garage from the back door, not making a sound. Arturo beckoned Vlad closer, jaw clenched, probably still angry about Thorpe.
For the last few hours, all Arturo had talked about was how he wished he had gotten the phone call sooner. Then he could have taken care of Thorpe himself, instead of leaving it to Guillermo. Vlad felt bad that Thorpe had fooled him, but the feeling didn't really linger. None of his feelings lingered. Arturo was always in a boiling rage, taking everything personally. A dealer was late with a payment, a cooker spoiled a batch, and Arturo acted like they'd had him in mind when they did it.
Vlad picked up a grease rag, wiped at the blood and brain matter on his shoes. He didn't act out of anger or resentment; he didn't blame anybody or call names. He just did what he was supposed to do. He tossed aside the rag and was reaching for the handle of the hydraulic jack, when Pinto sensed that he wasn't alone.
"Mellon? That you?"
"It's me," said Vlad.
A socket wrench clattered to the concrete floor. Pinto crabbed the creeper out from under the car, but Vlad turned the handle of the jack, lowered it, pinning Pinto's torso with the frame of the Mustang.
"Fuck!" Pinto clawed at the floor, his knotty forearms scrolled with spiderweb tattoos, a spaceship snagged in the web, hanging upside down as a two-headed spider watched from Pinto's elbow joint. "Fuck!"
Vlad lowered the jack a little more, Pinto begging now, his boots flapping on the ground. That was the good thing about a hydraulic jack: You had such fine control over the level of lift, raising and lowering it by quarter inches. Precision work, he liked that. He once told Arturo that he was thinking of taking a correspondence course in watch making, and Arturo said he might just as well study brain surgery. It took a few minutes for Vlad to realize that Arturo wasn't serious. Arturo had apologized, even gave him a shoe box full of watches a few days later, new watches, too, said Vlad could practice on them. The watches were still in the shoe box, untouched. Someday, when Vlad wasn't so busy, he was going to see what made them tick.