They were just street guys, not the kind that Jack would normally have given a second thought.
Tomás
Castillo—tall, athletically built, with curly black hair and a bright smile—was on Jack's right. On his left was José Rodriguez, shorter than Castillo, and stockier, going a bit too fat, with a stomach that hung over the belt of his jeans.
They had nothing to do with the buy. They were simply Jack's escorts, walking him to the location where the buy was to take place, a location of which Jack had not been informed in advance.
There was nothing unusual in that. Just another precaution that dealers were known to take. If you knew in advance where you were to make a buy, you might arrive there with a small army and try to get for free the junk that you were supposed to pay a hundred thousand for.
Or you might make a call to the D.E.A.
Either way, it paid to keep the spot a secret until the last minute, sending a couple of low-level punks to escort the buyer to the scene.
Jack had met Castillo and Rodriguez at a bar on
Calle
Ocho
, and they had taken him to an old Ford LTD, painted gray and covered with rust spots, like a thousand other cars in Miami. Then they had driven him to the warehouse district where they were walking now.
They had left the car ten minutes before, and they had walked about a mile, wandering through darker and darker streets, until they stood before a metal warehouse with peeling silver paint. Jack could make out the words "RAT FINX" painted on the walls in red paint from a spray can, and there was a spray-painted picture of a rat that looked like Mickey Mouse might look if he'd lived the last ten years as a wino.
"This is the place," Rodriguez said. "The stuff's inside."
Wofford
didn't believe him. He had fifty thousand dollars in the battered leather briefcase he was carrying, all of it in carefully doctored bills that would allow the money to be traced, but he was sure that there was no one inside to give the money to. This was just to be a low-level buy, another step in the information-gathering mission that
Wofford
was on.
"Let's go," Castillo said, giving
Wofford
a nudge in the back.
There was nothing to do but go along.
They walked to the side of the building, to a door not too far from the painted rat's back leg. The door was unlocked, and Castillo shoved it open. It squeaked on its hinges as it swung inward.
"You first," Castillo said to
Wofford
.
Wofford
didn't want to enter the dark building, but he knew that he had no choice. If he backed off now, all his work would be down the tubes. He was getting too close for that to happen.
He stepped through the door.
Rodriguez and Castillo were right at his back. He could hear them breathing, could almost feel their hot breath on his neck.
"Keep
movin
'," Rodriguez said.
Wofford
walked straight forward, trying to see in the deep gloom.
A light snapped on, a weak bulb hanging from a twisted wire. It was jiggling slightly, and it threw dancing shadows around the empty interior of the warehouse.
Two men that
Wofford
didn't recognize were standing under the light. They weren't carrying satchels of dope.
Instead, they were both holding short-barreled revolvers, which they were pointing at Jack.
"Just be a nice boy," one of them said, "and nothing bad will happen to you."
For a moment,
Wofford
didn't know for sure whether the deal had merely gone sour—been hijacked—or if it was something else.
Then he felt the gun barrel that Castillo shoved in his back. "Stand still."
Wofford
did just the opposite, swinging the briefcase backward as hard as he could and managing to catch Rodriguez in the balls. Rodriguez screamed and fell to the floor, clutching at himself.
At almost the same instant,
Wofford
stamped down on Castillo's right
instep
with the heel of his shoe, hoping that Castillo would be in too much pain to pull the trigger of his pistol.
When Castillo sucked in his breath and bent almost double,
Wofford
threw the briefcase toward the two men who were facing him, whirling it through the air high and hard.
As soon as the briefcase left his hand, he was bending to the right, scooping up the revolver that Rodriguez had dropped. Rodriguez made a halfhearted move to stop him, but didn't have the strength yet to make a successful move.
Wofford
heard the briefcase hit the floor and then the almost simultaneous firing of two pistol shots. He rose and fired back, once, without hitting anyone. Then he was heading for the door.
He was out the door and into the night, feet pounding behind him. He heard a curse as two men hit the doorway at the same time, and he turned and fired.
There was a yell, and he knew that he had hit one of them. He ran again, down the middle of the street. He figured that there was at least one of them behind him, maybe two if Castillo had recovered. Rodriguez would be out of it for a few minutes yet, and the one he'd shot would be out for good.
There was a shot behind him, and the bullet hit the street, whining off to the side and splattering into a brick wall.
Wofford
ducked into an alley. He was going to try to make it to a more populated area. He might have a chance if he could.
Halfway down the alley he turned, knelt, and braced his gun hand. As soon as the first figure turned into the alley,
Wofford
fired twice.
Two misses. It wasn't easy to shoot straight after you'd been running down a street. Your heart was pumping too fast, and the blood rushed in your ears.
Wofford
got up and ran again, kicking through loose paper and strands of black metal banding that had been used on packages of some kind. One of the bands tangled around his legs and he pitched forward.
The fall was a hard one. His knees felt as if they had been hit by a Louisville Slugger, and the skin was peeled off the heels of his hands. He had dropped the pistol.
There was no time to look for it. He struggled to his feet, fighting off the banding, and stumbled forward.
He emerged into the next street. There was no one in sight in the feeble light from a distant streetlamp. The only thing he could see was the rusting hulk of an old Chevrolet that had been left there as not even worth the trip to the junkyard. He headed for the car.
Just as he got there, two bullets slammed into the sheet metal, sounding as if someone had punched iron rods into it.
Wofford
glanced back over his shoulder. The two men were gaining on him. The fall had slowed him badly, and he could almost feel his knees swelling. He looked around for a weapon, for a place to run, but there was nothing and nowhere.
Well, there was one thing. He broke the radio antenna off the car and shambled on.
The others didn't need to shoot now. They were gaining on him too fast, and they knew he was hurt. He was going to have to face them. He held the antenna down by his leg, not wanting them to see he had it, and limped along as fast as he could.
They caught up with him in less than a block.
"Hold it right there, motherfucker," Castillo said, "or I'll shoot both your goddamn legs off." It wasn't easy for Castillo to speak. He was panting and trying to get his breath.
Wofford
stopped. He knew that he wouldn't be able to run much longer, not the way his knees were screaming in pain. He turned slowly to face the two men. Castillo was still gasping, but the other man looked to be in better shape. His hair was mussed, but he had his breathing under better control. He was the one
Wofford
would have to deal with first.
"Easy now," the man said. "Does he still have the gun?"
"How the fuck would I know?" Castillo said. "I'll cover him. You check him out."
The man moved forward.
Wofford
tried to look whipped.
When the man had moved close enough,
Wofford
lashed out with the antenna, snapping it up from beside his leg with as much speed as he could muster, going for the man's eyes.
He connected, and the blunted tip of the antenna turned the man's left eyeball into jelly. The man screamed like a wounded panther, dropping his pistol and falling to his knees, his hands pressed to his face.
Wofford
went for the pistol, but Castillo fired into the pavement in front of him. Asphalt chips stung
Wofford's
face as he fell back, still clutching the antenna.
"Son of a bitch," Castillo said, firing again.
The bullet hit
Wofford
in the left shoulder, spinning him around, but he still kept his grip on the antenna with his right hand. He lay on the street as Castillo walked over to him.
"You ain't dead," Castillo said, standing above him and looking down. "Get up, real slow, and don't forget that I got this pistol pointed right at your head."
Behind Castillo, the other man moaned in the street. "My eye. He poked out my goddamn eye."
"Shut the fuck up," Castillo said. "We'll get you a doctor. It's probably just
swole
up."
"He poked it out," the man said. "It's kiln' me, goddam—"
Castillo made the mistake of giving the man a glance, maybe to see if he was telling the truth.
Wofford
came up off the pavement, not fast, because of his knees and his wound, but fast enough.
When Castillo turned back, the antenna was already almost at a level with his chest, the tip pointed at the soft spot underneath his chin.
It touched.
"What
th
'—"
The antenna telescoped, collapsed in upon itself in microseconds, becoming a short, solid, deadly implement. It rammed into the palate of Castillo's mouth, sliding off momentarily, ramming farther, harder.
Wofford
applied all the strength he had, shoving, twisting.
Castillo fired the pistol reflexively into the pavement.
"
Grrnnggg
," he said. Blood ran from his mouth. He fell down, screaming.
Wofford
stepped aside and let him fall.
"What's happening? What's happening?" the other man cried.
"Nothing,"
Wofford
said. He turned.
And there was Rodriguez, with his pistol.
"Shit,"
Wofford
said.
"Yes," Rodriguez said. "Shit, indeed. You have caused far more trouble than you are worth."
Wofford
suddenly felt tired, more tired than he had known he could ever feel. "Fuck it," he said. "Go ahead and shoot."
"Oh, no," Rodriguez said. "That would be too easy. We want more from you than that. There will be a car here soon, and then we will go. I think, Mr.
Wofford
, that you will wish that I had shot you, but that will not happen. Not until you tell us what we want to know."
"I won't tell you a thing,"
Wofford
said.
"Ah," Rodriguez said. "As to that, well, we will see. We will see."
Wofford
just looked at him.
Rodriguez broke into a smile. It was not a pretty smile, and it twisted his mouth cruelly. "After a while, my friend, you will pray for death. And then . . . we will see."
T
he attendant on the Miami flight thought that she'd never seen three such big men in the first-class compartment. Or at least two of them were big. The third one—the one whose name on the manifest was Hog Wiley—was huge.
And rambunctious.
"
Yessir
, little lady," he said in his East Texas twang, "you're prettier than a speckled pup. Why don't you bring me another one of those nice drinks and sit down here and have a little talk with me about how we're gonna get together again."