The Deadly Kiss-Off Page 20

  “Graciela Dambara,” she announced.

  I shook her hand as a sleepwalker might.

  Smiling most unsportingly at my confusion and comeuppance, Graciela’s husband stepped to her side and put an arm as far around her equator as he could manage. “My wife and I could do with some refreshment at the factory canteen. Perhaps, the two of you will join us there after you make your hellos. I am sure you have much to say.”

  The Afro-Iberian lovebirds left, and I turned to Nellie.

  Her arms were folded across the bosom I so fondly recalled, and any pro-Glen elements in her expression had been sent packing by the anti-Glen forces.

  “You want to get yourself killed? Is that it? Or get me killed, too? So that we never have a happy old age together?”

  I thought the old-age stuff was positive. “What? I’m gonna get killed by coming here to challenge Mr. Jello Pudding Pop?”

  “Ay, tolobásku! Of course not. You see that Onésimo is not that kind of savage man—unlike some I could name! And he does not deserve to be made fun of. He is gentle and honest and was good to me when I felt hopeless. And he did not offer me his close friendship without causing some trouble to himself. It took plenty of persuasion and saying sorry for Graciela to accept him back, once she discovered our small encounters. In any case, such matters are all over now. You saw. And that is all I have to say about him.”

  I certainly wanted to say more about this selfless Good Samaritan who had so generously filled in for me in my absence, but I refrained. Using my silence, Nellie plunged ahead.

  “No, I am talking about you and Stan getting mixed up with that Vin Santo criminoso.”

  I dared to take a step or two closer and was pleased that she did not back off. “Oh, honey, listen to me, please; it’s not like that at all. Vin Santo is totally a businessman. And Stan and I are just his business partners. This is strictly a no-violence gig. The people involved are not like Nancarrow. I’m just doing a little snake-oil peddling. The buyer will never know he got rooked, and will go home happy. Suckers want to believe they are smart businessmen, and so even when the gadget fails a hundred times, they won’t believe it. And if they do come after us, Santo will handle it. And you and I and Stan and Sandy become instant millionaires. It’s better than winning the lottery. Just think what this kind of money will mean for our lives together. That happy old age you just mentioned. Don’t you want to be free of worries about your business? We can do it, Nell, without any danger. You have to trust me on this. It’s my field of expertise.”

  She seemed to waver a tad. “But all I can think about is those thugs from Nancarrow holding us all at gunpoint. It was the worst moment of my life. I don’t want to find us there again.”

  “Not gonna happen.”

  “Then why did you lie to me about it? You must have felt there was some danger. How can I trust anything you say now?”

  I got within holding distance. Nellie seemed to bend toward me involuntarily before reasserting her enforced remoteness.

  “Dearest, I only kept you in the dark because I didn’t want you to worry about anything. You’re so busy and swept up in this wonderful enterprise of yours. It’s demanded all your attention, and I didn’t mind! I wasn’t jealous, was I? I just wanted to place this gift in your lap. And I knew that you are a very moral and ethical person and might be a little disturbed by the unconventional approach Stan and I had to take in order to swing this deal. But I’m not a good person. I admit it! At least, not when it comes to making money. And so I did not want to burden you with my utterly disreputable choices. Choices, however, that would serve as a shortcut to never having to do anything bad ever again. I swear! You knew all that about me years ago, when my last little project first brought us together. And aren’t you happy it did? Our whole relationship together stems from me being a—what did you call it?—a criminoso! So how can this new scam be bad?”

  I could tell she was wavering, so I plunged ahead.

  “We need each other. We complement each other. Good and bad, yin and yang, light and dark, north and south—man and woman.”

  I wrapped her up in my arms, and she didn’t resist one iota but instead melted into me. Our lips together, tongues found each other. Her mouth tasted of all the exotic spices in the local food. I grabbed the waistband of her pants and yanked down, popping the one-button closure apart and divesting her of that encumbrance while she unzipped my fly. Coffee beans scattered.

  Panting after our boisterous reunion, I realized that my vision of Nellie and Dambara banging on the burlap bags had been spot-on.

  PART FIVE

  41

  Nellie did not come immediately home with me, but that was fine. Two steamy nights together in the Hotel Pestana Trópico had recemented our bonds. I even made an effort, during the daytime, to become fluent in the argot of coffee production and to conduct myself in a gentlemanly fashion around the unrepentant Dambara, whose smarmy face I refrained from punching only because his wife set such an example of forgiveness and nobility. Also, because Graciela proved to be an amazing cook who served us delicious lunches and dinners.

  So, knowing that Nellie, her fling over, still had legitimate business to conduct on Santiago but would be home shortly after my return to the USA, I flew back happy.

  And the fact that Nellie even seemed a tad intrigued by the scam, now that I had laid it all out on the table, was reassuring to me. I had had to describe all the players to her first because, of course, she had never met the Luckmans, Chantal and Les, or the buyer. But she was a fast study and good at envisioning people and their natures, so she quickly got up to speed.

  “So, Glen, nha omi malandru, tell me one more time. Once you fake this last test some way for the polsia from El Salvador, they just pay you and go home and you never see them again, this is so?”

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  “They won’t get mad when they find out the boxes are inutil?”

  “The way we figure it, the detectors will register just enough positives back in El Salvador on a day-to-day basis to keep them happy. And after all, how will they even know most of the times that they failed to detect something? A car or a person blows up after you scanned it, it must be because the bomb was planted after your test. No, our tails are covered, especially since Luckman is the figurehead for everything.”

  Nellie looked concerned. “But this poor profesoru Luckman—he can handle any trouble?”

  “Oh, sure. Plus, he’ll be rich enough to hire the best lawyers if anything goes wrong, because he’ll be swimming in dough, just like us. We don’t have to worry about him. Besides, he’s the guy who invented this flop. Let him stand behind it. All Stan and I are doing is helping him market it.”

  I felt a little guilty justifying all this aloud to Nellie, but she seemed to accept my rationale at face value, finding it not too reprehensible.

  “I guess it’s okay, then. So how can you fool this final testi that Crespo wants?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. Stan won’t tell me over the phone. He says I need to come back first. So that’s why I have to leave tomorrow.”

  “Then I guess we’d better get busy with some fresh loving zup-zup!”

  * * *

  Memory of that last bouncy bout did indeed linger to console me all the way back to the chilly clime where our final challenge awaited.

  Stan showed up at the airport before 9:00 a.m. to meet my red-eye flight. It seemed to me I had been away much longer than four days.

  “How’s it going?”

  “Okay, I guess. But things are shaking down fast. Crespo has the place for the test all picked out. I’m gonna drive you by it. He wants it to happen two days from today.”

  “Does that give us enough time for our workaround? What is it, anyhow?”

  “I think we’ll be set. But I can’t say for sure. The person who’s supposedly
gonna save our asses comes into town today. Chantal knows her and arranged everything.”

  “Our ace in the hole is some gal?”

  “And her partner.”

  I experienced nausea at the idea of driving to the condo and then to the airport once more. “I suppose we have to come back here to pick her up?”

  “Nah, she lives close enough to drive herself, even though it took her a day. And besides, she couldn’t bring her partner on the plane.”

  The faintest nebulous tickle of what Chantal had in mind teased at the periphery of my jet-lagged brain but failed to coalesce fully. “Okay, I can be patient,” I said. “I like a mystery as much as the next guy. Let’s go see the site of the test, though.”

  Halfway back to the city, I said, “Where’s this gal going to stay?”

  “It’s actually her, her husband, and her partner. We booked them into the Hyatt, the room right next to Chantal and Les. Gotta be careful not to let Crespo run into them, natch. Oh, by the way, Smalley’s gone home now that he’s been outbid.”

  “I guess that’s a wash on room expenses then. One out, one in.”

  “Just remember, dude, it’s all penny ante when you’re talking multimillions.”

  “I won’t worry, so long as you don’t find another bad investment and blow through your share.”

  “My angel investor days are done,” he said. “I am strictly a self-serving devil from here on out.”

  I stayed quiet, thinking, until we were back within the city limits. Then I said, “How is everyone holding up? The Luckmans? Sandy? Crespo? Caleb?”

  “The prof’s a little down. It took him a while to admit his gadget is a piece a shit and that we’ll have to cheat on the final test. Really seemed like kinda a big shock to his self-esteem. Chantal was sorta brutal with him. But I think he’s finally coming round. Rosa has kept a low profile, which suits me just fine. Sandy’s actually been helping Caleb at the factory while they gear up to slap together the second thousand units. That’s another thirty million bucks there for us, remember. He says she’s making his life a lot easier, and they work together like two kids building a fort. And Crespo—well, that bastard is an icicle inside a corpse buried at the North Pole. He don’t give nothing away. I guess he’s still on board with our wonder product, or he wouldn’t be going to all this trouble to arrange his big test.”

  Stan had driven us to a section of the city that used to be known as Chocolateville. Long ago, several candy factories had clustered there. But that line of business had petered out long ago, though residents claimed they could smell the sweet-pungent ghosts of the factories for years afterward. A couple of the old brick mills had been repurposed into shops and condos, including one project helmed by our old nemesis Nancarrow. But the largest complex had burned down about three years ago and gone into some kind of legal limbo, leaving a four-acre parcel of undeveloped land, surrounded by a chain-link fence and lots of rusting keep out—private property signs.

  Stan pulled to the curb at one corner of the lot, which was dotted with charred concrete foundations, heaps of debris, sinkholes dropping into water-logged basements, and the bare branches of lanky weed trees. It looked like the set for some young adult dystopian film. I could picture the kids dodging their pursuers through the ruins before they all get mercilessly exterminated.

  “This is it,” Stan said. “Somehow, Crespo pulled strings and got temporary access to the place through his local connections. He’s going to seed the whole lot with hidden samples of explosives and then make us sniff ’em out under his supervision.”

  “There’s only that one locked gate into the property?”

  “Yup. And I assume that once he lays down his Easter eggs, he’ll have the place guarded right up to the time we arrive.”

  “Shit! He’s not making it easy for us, is he?”

  “Where’d be the fun in that?”

  Back at our condo, I got the travel fug off me with a shower, shave, and new outfit. Then we headed to the Hyatt, and the suite where Chantal and Les awaited us.

  The pair maintained their usual disparate attitudes, Les all stylishly disheveled unconcern, Chantal all tightly wired competence.

  Seeing this cryptic, composed woman for the first time since she triggered my small epiphany, I was not surprised to find that she still raised a kind of spooky mental and bodily resonance in me. It felt as if we were walking different ends of the same thrumming tightrope stretched across a gulf as wide as the Grand Canyon, and the survival of each of us depended on the actions of the other.

  “Lina just texted me,” Chantal told us. “You should know that Lina Llull is her full name. Ex-Ranger, Special Forces. I met her at a show some years back and have stayed in touch since. She and her husband are parking now in the garage. I don’t know him. Eddie Greenfriars. I believe he has some military connection as well. She’s coming straight to our room while her husband checks in and deals with their bags.”

  I had a Skyy vodka with tonic from the room’s minibar while we waited. It would probably cost me thirty bucks on Chantal’s bill, but I had given up caring. Stan joined me with a beer, but the others refused.

  Waiting, I tried to picture what a badass woman US Army Ranger would look like. But when Chantal responded to a knock at the door, I realized just how far off the mark I had been.

  Subtle indicators put the woman at my age, late thirties, but she looked no more like a clichéd warrior than did Taylor Swift. If you pictured a petite, pretty, perky young blonde who might pass for a clerk at a makeup counter, you’d have an image of Lina Llull. About the only discordant feature—she wore no coat, which I assumed her husband had carried upstairs for her—were her ripped biceps and calves. I suspected she could punch a guy through a wall or kick a mosquito out of the air.

  Lina toted an elongated, semirigid fabric carrier, taupe in color and screened on both ends, about the size for a cat. She hoisted it to eye level and announced with a smile, “Folks, meet Algernon, the answer to all your troubles!”

  42

  I had to admit, once I recovered from my surprise, that Algernon was the cutest goddamn animal I had ever seen outside of a Pixar cartoon. And I was someone who generally thought that pictures of cats and dogs were the entropic sludge of the internet.

  The African giant pouched rat comes big, up to eighteen inches long, and Algernon was a champion of his breed. A gorgeous tawny coat peppered with white and gray, perfect little pink hands and outsize ears, eyes not too alarmingly beady, and an elegant tapering face and rounded snout all contributed to his dashing good looks. An almost excessive cleanliness and not unpleasant odor didn’t hurt his presentation, either. Not a marsupial, not even really a proper rat, he derived the “pouched” part of his name from his large cheek capacity. The fact that he wore the most darling tiny tartan harness was the final zinger in his winning looks. Even Stan fell in love, stroking Algy’s fur and going “Aw-w-w” like a thirteen-year-old girl in a corral full of ponies.

  I got to hold the well-behaved three-pound rat while Lina explained his origins and purpose.

  “Algy and his pals are trained by a Tanzanian group called APOPO to sniff out explosives. They’re also used to identify TB carriers by their spit samples. Not relevant to our purposes, but kinda neat. I got to work with Algy when I was on assignment in Niger a couple of years ago, and we really bonded. He was three years old then, and although his kind generally live to seven, he was almost ready to retire. I had just put in my twenty, and so was I. So we left the service together. He hasn’t done much professional work since then, but he’s still sharp and healthy. Perfect for what Chantal said you had in mind.”

  “He can really sniff out bombs?”

  “Try him.”

  I passed Algy back to Lina, and she clipped a lead to his harness and set him down on the floor. She said something in what I assumed must be Swahili, and Algy scurried ac
ross the room to Chantal’s purse. Lina rewarded him with a little treat.

  “Do you still have that chunk of C-four in your bag?” I asked.

  “Yes. And also something else you need to see.”

  Chantal opened her purse and took out a sugar packet that looked as if it had lain outside in all kinds of nasty weather. She set it on a table, and Algy immediately leaped up to nuzzle it, whiskers waggling.

  “Open it.”

  I tore the packet open cautiously and spilled out the familiar ANFO particles into my palm.

  “We have fifty of these all made up, all containing the only explosive that Luckman’s gadget can reliably detect. They’re not all sugar packets, but other likely trash as well. Candy wrappers, fast-food wrappers, seemingly used condoms, hypodermics. Perfectly plausible urban discards. The night before the test, Lina and Algy will enter Crespo’s test site and find all his samples. They will plant one or two of the disguised ANFO items within a few inches of each sample. The next day, we will conduct the trial under Crespo’s supervision. And we will find every single one of his seeded caches, because each one will have an ANFO trigger beside it.”

  I had to admire Chantal’s devious ingenuity. “That is absolutely brilliant,” I said. “But I do foresee one major hang-up. How are we going to get past any guards?”

  “This is where you play a part. You must visit Vin Santo and request that he arrange a distraction.”

  “A distraction? Like what?”

  “Santo has contacts with MS-Thirteen. I assume those gangsters would like to know where they could find a few unsuspecting Sombra Negra operatives and have their revenge.”

  “You want to stage a firefight as cover for Lina sneaking in?”

  “More or less—the exact level of violence can be optimized.”