Chameleon (21 page)

There was an edge to his voice, not of fear, but of anger. Jesus, Falmouth thought, don’t lose it now.

‘Okay,’ Falmouth said to Angel, ‘Slow’er down. Give the bastards a chance to do their mischief.’

‘Si:’

Two men with shotguns came toward the car. Gomez got out to meet them, his hands held high over his head. He was putting on a good act. Hinge grabbed the moment.

‘This’s it, the joy ride’s over. Car: dark-blue Pontiac Grand Prix. 1974. Very dirty. Lotsa dents. Two guys with shotguns coming toward us. Another in the bushes with an automatic weapon, one on the hill, spotting. Jesus, it’s Jesse James time. These turkeys have bandannas pulled over their faces. Okay, here comes one. Bonas nokkers.’

The one who approached the car was short and squat, like a box, with long greasy black hair topped by a brown beret. The bandanna did not hide his beard or his funky left eye, a gray mass floating between narrow eyelids. He pulled the door open, holding the shotgun toward Hinge’s chest with one hand. ‘Vamos,’ he ordered and motioned Hinge out of the car. ‘Pronto!’

Hinge got out, holding the briefcase close to his chest. Gray-Eye looked at the case and then back at Hinge. ‘Habla Usted espanol?’ he asked.

Hinge shrugged.

‘You speak Spaneesh’?’ Gray-Eye snapped.

‘No,’ Hinge lied.

‘Hokay, I speak Englis, un poco, leetle beet, si.

He laughed and reached for the briefcase, but Hinge turned away from him, as if to protect the case. The terrorist snatched it away from him and opened it with one hand. A half-dozen file folders spilled out and were whisked away in the wind. Hinge looked distressed. Gray-Eye’s shoulders sagged. ‘Sorry,’ he said in mock apology. He threw the case on the ground, and spinning Hinge around, tied his hands behind his back, then quickly frisked him.

You’re the one gets it, pal, Hinge thought. You sick-eyed spic pig, you go down first.

‘Please, my case.’ Hinge nodded toward his briefcase. ‘It was a gift. From my wife. Uh ... de mi esposa.’ Gray-Eye looked back at the case and sighed and picked it up.

The other gunman, who was younger and had his long hair tied in a pigtail and wore a gold earring in his right ear and was very jumpy, yelled ‘Pronto, pronto.” at Gray-Eye, then got in the car and pulled up to them. He was heading back, toward Falmouth.

‘Oh, goin’ back the way we came?’ Hinge said, in as loud a voice as he dared.

Gray-Eye pushed Hinge into the car and threw the attaché case on the back floor of the Pontiac. They drove off in a whirl of dust, leaving Gomez standing beside the road with his hands still high in the air.

Falmouth had heard Hinge’s last remark above the roar of the getaway car. ‘Jesus,’ he said to Angel, ‘they’re coming back this way!’

Angel slammed on the brakes and spun the steering wheel, whipping the car around in a perfect one-hundred-and-eighty- degree spin, dropping into low gear as he did, digging out, as the car completed its half turn, and heading back in the opposite direction. Fast.

‘Beautiful,’ Falmouth said.

Angel drove back to the paved road and took the first turn, U-turned and parked. He was ready for them when they came back.

‘Magnifico.” Falmouth said with admiration. He slid down in the seat and took a 9-mm Luger from its armpit holster and slid it under his thigh. If there was trouble, the Game would be over, anyway. It would be survival tulle.

The blue Pontiac came down the dirt road a minute later, squealed around the curve and headed away from them, back toward the main road to Caracas. There were three people in the car.

‘I give ‘em couple blocks, okay?’ Angel asked.

‘No, there were only two of the pistoleros in the car. There should be two more coming right behind them. Let’s give them a minute or so. We don’t want to get in the middle.’ The beeper was going crazy beside him on the seat.

Another minute dragged by and then a black ‘76 Chevy came down the dirt road and followed the first.

‘That should be them,’ Falmouth said. ‘Let’s roll.’

Angel eased away from the curb and followed them.

The beeper was singing loud and clear on the seat beside him as they wound back through the El Este section toward the highway into town. The Chevy was in view, moving at exactly the speed limit. They weren’t taking any chances.

They were almost to the highway when it happened: a kid roaring suddenly out of a driveway on a motorcycle, seeing the BMW too late and veering to miss it, the bike sliding out from under him and the two skidding crazily in front of Angel, and Angel, slamming on the brakes and swerving at the same time, missing the kid and his Honda by inches, fishtailing for a moment too long and the BMW hitting the curb, teetering for a moment as though it were going to turn over, then righting itself, and as it did, the back right tire exploding like a bomb. Angel wrestled the car to a stop and jumped out. The tire was hanging in shreds from the wheel.

Angel kicked the car. ‘Shit,’ he bellowed. ‘Shit, shit, shut!’

In the back seat, Falmouth listened as the tone on the beeper grew fainter and fainter and finally beeped out. Hinge was on his own now. He was not in any immediate danger, but the whole switch operation depended on Falmouth’ s snatching one f the terrorists as they left the meeting. Hinge’s trip was now a total waste.

‘You’re right,’ Falmouth said. ‘Shit.’

*

Falmouth was sitting on the balcony sipping a gin and tonic and watching the
teleférico
climbing slowly- up the side of Mount Avila. He had left the door between the two rooms open and heard Hinge come in, heard a door close and then heard Hinge’s toilet flush.

A few moments later the Texan joined him on the balcony. The younger man was obviously surprised and distressed. ‘What happened?’ he asked. ‘How come you’re back?’

‘A kid pulled out in front of us on a motorbike. Angel hit a curb and blew a tire.’

‘Well, Je-sus Kee-rist!’ Hinge snapped.

‘Easy,’ Falmouth said. ‘Get yourself a drink and we’ll talk about plan Baker.’

The hard-faced Texan went back into the room. He was edgy, but he was not a complainer. Like Falmouth, he was already thinking about their next move. He poured a generous slug of gin over ice cubes and returned to the balcony.

‘You mean we got a plan Baker,’ he said.

‘There’s always a plan Baker,’ Falmouth said, still watching the cable car as it reached the peak of the mountain.

‘Problem is, we ain’t got one of theirs, we ain’t got shit,’ Hinge said. It was not a pointed remark, he was thinking out loud.

‘What happened at the meeting?’ Falmouth asked quietly.

Hinge sighed. As Spettro had said, there was always the unexpected. Hinge reported in a kind of abbreviated rote, an emotionless summary of the facts.

‘Four of ‘em, like you figured, plus the driver, Gomez. Four creeps, spent a month or so with Gaddafi’s bunch, think they’re the fuckin’ PLO. Blindfolded when I got in the car. My guess is we went downtown. A lot of traffic noise. Drove for about eight minutes. Parked in what sounded like an indoor garage. Never went outside. Up one flight of stairs, straight ahead forty paces to office. Took off blindfold t talk. The four were back-lighted. Three thousand-watt floodlights behind them. Couldn’t see faces clearly. One did the talking. Tough talker, brown beard, left eye is kinda gray. Driver of pickup car wore ponytail and an earring in his
...
uh, right ear. Looked to be about thirty. Office was small. Shades over windows, conference table, six chairs, telephone. Period. Not even an ashtray.’ He stopped and took a sip of his drink.

‘What did they ask you?’

‘Did I have the loot? The loot’s nice and safe, I tell ‘em. Are we ready to deal? I gotta know my man’s still alive, I says. They make a phone call. It’s this Lavander. English accent. Scared shitless. All he gets out is his name and “Please help me.” Deal is, we connect again at ten-thirty tonight. I bring the cash, they bring Lavander. Anybody follows me, they terminate the hostage, snatch another one, it’s the same ol’ ballgame but the price doubles.’

‘Where do you meet them?’

‘Same script as first time. They call with an address. I head into town, they intercept me somewhere along the way. They figure it worked the first time, why not use the same gag again. Stupid pipiolos.’

‘You did fine, Hinge,’ Falmouth said, ‘Sorry things got queered. Couldn’t be helped.’

‘Sure. Sorry I got my ass a little outa joint, there. There’s one other thing. The turkey with the weird eye? He’s mine, okay?’

‘My pleasure.’

Hinge smiled. ‘Okay, so... what’s plan Baker?’

Falmouth looked up at him and smiled back.

‘Gomez,’ he said, and handed Hinge a sheet of paper with the chauffeur’s address on it.

The house was a red hut among many red huts on the western ridge of the mountains that separate Caracas from the rest of Venezuela. Its main room was small and barren. The bed doubled as a sofa. A furniture crate beside it served as an end table. There was a small lamp on the crate but it was turned off. Posters of John Travolta, Rod Stewart, Blondie and Farrah Fawcett covered the walls, and a transistor radio, with the heavy beat of disco music pounding from its small speaker, was on the floor beside the sofa bed. The only other furniture was two wooden chairs near the windows, one of them stacked with dirty laundry. There was also a phone on the floor in one corner. A handmade rug covered part of the linoleum floor, its corners ravelled and dirty. Flimsy strips of cotton hung limply over the windows. Beside the lamp on the crate was a small-calibre pistol.

Gomez was getting laid on the sofa bed.

This woman is a noisy one, God, is she noisy, Gomez thought. My neighbours, they will think, I’m killing someone in here. But this tiger, this man-eater, she may kill me.

Todavia no, todavia no! she cried and he was trembling and he felt like exploding. She wiggled under him, squealing with delight, then screaming, then groaning. Her legs were wrapped around his hips, and each time he thrust into her she tightened them a little more, digging deeper into his back with her fingernails. Sweat dripped from his chin onto her forehead and she giggled and then shoved up hard against him, In the semi-dark room he could see her face under his, and her eyes were rolled back and crazy.

Más, más, más,’ she demanded and he didn’t have much more to give and felt himself peaking and his ass getting tighter as he tried to hold back.

He barely heard the door crash open.

For the next few seconds, everything seemed to happen in confused, blurred slow motion: two grim figures framed in the doorway the girl, opening her mouth to scream

a faint sound

bupbupbupbupbupbupbupbupbupbupbup

the woman, her chest erupting into pulp, slamming back against the wall the slugs, ripping into her, making more noise than the gun itself the girl falling on her side, her head dangling limply over the side of the sofa bed, her sweaty black hair hanging straight down to the floor red stains widening across the sheet toward him turning, finally, reaching for the gum again that dull sound, almost inaudible

bupbupbupbupbupbupbupbupbupb
u
pbup

the gun and the lamp and the crate vanishing in an explosion of splinters falling back on the bed, still gasping for breath, still erect, his eyes staring in terror at the form beside the bed, pointing a machine gun at his eye.

It was all over in a few seconds. What in God’s name!

In the semidarkness the finger of light from a flashlight led the other figure into the bathroom, then the kitchen.

‘Qué quiere Usted?’
Gomez cried out finally.

‘Shut up,’ the one with the machine gun snapped. ‘And speak English when ye’re asked.’

He heard the sound of water running into the bathtub. The other one came back and he recognized his drawling voice.

‘Nobody else here. The sucker’s really big time. Got himself a fuckin’ bathtub. Running water. Goddamn new phone over there in the corner. I mean, look at that brand-new phone, I’ll bet there ain’t been five calls made on it yet.’

Hinge picked up one of the chairs and went back toward the bathroom with it. ‘Shit, ol’ Ray-fi-el, he’s dreamin’ of bein’ a fuckin’ millionaire, aintcha there, Ray-fi-el.’

Gomez said nothing. He looked at the girl, at the blood gushing from her butchered chest, like water pouring from an open spigot. He started to get sick.

‘Forget her,’ the Texan ordered. ‘You get sick, I’ll rub your goddamn nose in it.’

Gomez swallowed hard, forcing the sour bile back down. The new one, who was taller and thinner than the Texan, handed his gun to Hinge and stuffed a washcloth in Gomez’s mouth and tied it in place.

The Texan picked up the shattered lamp and carried it into the bathroom.

‘Let’s go,’ the tall one said, pulling Gomez off the bed, half dragging him into the bathroom. They shoved Gomez into the chair and tied his hands behind his back and tied each of his legs to a leg of the chair.

The Texan, the one Gomez knew as Mr Lomax, smiled down at him. He leaned the machine gun against the wall and pulled the double-strand wire from the shattered lamp and separated it into two strips. He took out a knife and stripped a foot or so of insulation off both strands of wire. When he was finished he had two long strands of cleared wire, still connected at one end to the plug.

‘This oughta give ya a little charge,’ Hinge said, and giggled as he wrapped one wire around each of Gomez’s ankles. The chauffeur’s eyes bulged even wider. He twisted violently in the chair.

Hinge turned off the water. He and Falmouth lifted the chair and set it in the bathtub. Gomez looked down. The water was well above his ankles.

Hinge picked up the plug and knelt on the floor near the socket.

‘I didn’t think you’d have electricity there, Ray-fi-el, I thought we’d have to use gasoline on the bottom of your feet.’ He giggled again and held the prongs of the plug in front of the socket and popped it in and out, very quickly. Gomez jerked as if someone had just kicked him. His scream was trapped in the gag. He was breathing hard through his nose, shaking his head, back and forth.

‘Didn’t like that, now did ya, ol’ buddy?’ Hinge said. ‘Lemme tell ya what we’re gonna do. ‘We’re gonna ask you a coupla questions and if we don’t like your answers — well, shit, man, I’m just gonna plug you in and we’re gonna go have ourselves some dinner someplace and come back after dessert. How does that grab yer ass, Ray-fi-el? Hmm?’

Gomez kept shaking his head.

‘The one with the funny eye, uh, el malo ojo, where does he live?’

Gomez looked up at Falmouth, who produced a hotel pad and a pen.

‘He’s gonna untie yer hands, Ray-fi-el, and you just write that sucker’s name and address down, comprende, motherfucker?’

Gomez shook his head no.

Hinge thrust the plug in the socket. This time he left it in for a full second. Gomez jerked forward against the ropes, then snapped back. His head lolled over the back of the chair. His eyes rolled back in their sockets. Falmouth dipped a cloth in the tub water and wiped off his face. He stuck smelling salts under the nose of Gomez. The chauffeur gradually came around. He was grunting and breathing hard through his nose and spit dribbled from the gag at the corners of his mouth. He looked up at Falmouth and then at Hinge, trying to focus.

‘What we want, friend, is names and addresses. The one with the malo ojo and the driver of the car that took me, the little shit with the cute little o1’ earring? And the other two at the meetin’. And we wanna know where ya took me and where this Lavander fellow ya snatched is. Ya savvy all that, or am I talkin’ too fast for ya?’

Gomez stared at him, dull-eyed. He was having trouble breathing.

‘It’s real easy, man. Ya write those names and addresses down on that piece a paper there, and you’re through for the day. Okay? Otherwise, I’m gonna give ya another fuckin’ ride.’

He held the plug down near the socket and slipped the prongs in just far enough to keep the plug from falling out. Gomez stared down at the plug, hanging half in and half out of the socket. He nodded his head hard and murmured through the gag.

‘Well, shit, looka there, that turkey’s ready to talk awready. I tell ya, pardner, the ol’ bathtub trick never fails. Untie him, there, see can he write plain.’

Falmouth untied Gomez’s hands and held the pen toward him. The chauffeur took it with a tremorring left hand.

‘South paw, hunh,’ Hinge said. ‘You shoulda been a baseball player, Ray-fi-el, it’s one helluva lot healthier than the game ye’re in.’

Gomez wrote names and addresses on the tablet.

‘Phone numbers, too,’ Hinge said. ‘Obviously you boys got yuhselves some new phones like that one in on the floor there, hunh? Just for this little caper.’

Gomez wrote the phone numbers below the addresses. His eyes jumped fearfully back to Hinge. He looked like a rabbit staring at a rattlesnake. Hinge took the paper and read the names and addresses.

‘How about Lavander. El prisionero?’

Gomez shook his head wildly.

‘I don’t think he knows where they’ve got Lavander,’ Falmouth said.

Gomez nodded his head in wild-eyed agreement.

‘Hell, he’s just a fink they pulled in to drive the fuckin’ snatch car,’ Hinge said. He looked at the list. ‘Pasco Chiado, Lupo Areno, Billy Zapata and — who’s this ... Chico. Chico what?’

Gomez shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. ‘He means this one only has a surname. That’s common down here,’ Falmouth said. ‘Means this Chico is a bastard. Literally. It’s an acceptable condition in Venezuela.’

‘Which one has the malo ojo? Hinge asked, wiggling a finger in front of his left eye. ‘Chiado?’

Gomez shook his head.

‘Areno?’

And Gomez nodded. Hinge looked at the paper a few more moments. ‘Wanna let yer pal check out this office?’ he said to Falmouth, who took the slip and went into the other room.

‘Case ye’re lyin’,’ Hinge said to Gomez. Gomez shook his head again. He shook his head hard.

‘But supposin’, man?’ Hinge said, smiling.

Gomez raised his eyes as if in prayer, still shaking his head.

‘How’s it goin’?’ he called to Falmouth.

‘He’s calling me right back.’,

‘Four-oh.’

The phone rang and Hinge could hear Falmouth talking very low into the phone, heard him hang up..

‘You were dead on,’ Falmouth said, coming back into the bathroom. ‘It’s an old office building in the La Pastora section. The first floor’s converted into a garage for the tenants.’

‘Hell, I didn’t think he’d lie, pardner. Not ol’ Ray-fi-el. Right, Ray-fi-el?’

Gomez stared back and forth between his two captors. There was abject terror in his eyes.

‘One or two more questions — this Chiado, is he married?’ Yes.

‘Is that his car?’

No.

‘Areno’s car?’

Yes.

‘So how does Chiado get to the meeting?’

Gomez wrote down the words ‘el omnibus.’

‘Sonbitch,’ Hinge said, ‘can you believe it. A two-million- dollar heist and this guy Chiado goes to collect the loot in a fuckin’ bus.’

‘Perfect,’ Falmouth said.

‘Four-oh,’ Hinge said, and he pressed the side of his foot on the plug and shoved it into the socket.

The wire hummed and Gomez thrashed frantically in the chair, his screams muffled by the gag. The chair fell sideways against the wall and the legs slipped out from under it and the chair toppled over backwards in the tub. Bubbles dribbled up from Gomez’s nose. His body was seized with spasms. Then he went limp. After a while the bubbles stopped.

Hinge unplugged him. ‘Doesn’t take but a minute,’ he said.

‘Let’s stuff him and his galfriend in the trunk, let Domignon take care of ‘em. That sonbitch hasn’t done shit in this deal but sit on his ass and thank God he wasn’t the one got snatched.’

Psychologically, it was necessary to take another hostage, one who was married and who was one of the leaders. Gomez would not have worked. Besides, he .vas dead. And Falmouth decided Areno and his pals would probably be glad he was. Fewer people to divide the loot with. So they checked over the list again and the obvious choice was Chiado. He lived close by in the slums of the foothills. And he would be taking the bus to the downtown section, which would leave him wide open.

They drove slowly past the house in a Firebird that Angel had arranged for Falmouth to use. It was, like Gomez’s house, little more than a hut hard by the side of a pockmarked street. Hinge focused his compact Leitz binoculars on the windows as they passed the house. Chiado was eating dinner with his family. His wife, a young woman bordering on obesity, was nursing a small child. There were two other children t the table.

‘He’s there, awright,’ Hinge drawled. ‘Chowin’ down with a fat wife and three rug-runners.’

They drove to the corner, turned and drove six blocks to a main street. Angel was waiting for then.

‘Eleven forty-five, right?’ Hinge said as he got out.

‘Eleven forty-five,’ Falmouth repeated and drove back to the Chiado house while Angel and Hinge went off into the night to be hijacked again.

Hinge felt exhilarated as they took the blindfold off. It was the same room, squalid and bare except for the negotiating table and the telephone and a .45-caliber pistol lying on the table in front of Areno. Hinge sat in the same chair with the briefcase, handcuffed to one wrist, resting in his lap. Now his blood was racing in anticipation of the next few minutes. He felt no fear. He was never afraid. Rather, he was stimulated by the potential danger of the situation. There had been a tense moment when the Rafsaludi intercepted them and Areno realized that Gomez was not driving the car. Hinge explained that Gomez had not shown up and that he had picked another driver, not wanting to be late. Areno nervously accepted the explanation.

Hinge looked at his watch. It was ten forty-one. He looked around the room. No Lavander. No Chiado, either, of course. ‘Where’s our man?’ he asked Areno.

Areno glared at him with his good eye and shrugged. ‘One of our people ees late,’ he said.

‘That don’t answer m’question. Is Lavander with him?’

The leader curled his lips back and showed two rows of ragged yellow teeth. ‘We decide to feel the weight of your money first, gringo. Hokay? Then maybe you get back thees scarecrow of yours.’

The three men laughed.

‘The deal was, we trade here. The money for Lavander. That’s the deal.’

The leader shrugged and held out his hands, palms up. ‘We change our mind, hokay?’

Another round of laughter.

Hinge smiled. ‘No Lavander, no dinero, hokay?’

He shifted in his chair. The handcuffs rattled as he moved the briefcase on his lap. It was pointed at Arena, the spokesman.

‘Hey, señor, I could cut your arm off with one leetle whack of my machete.’

‘Reckon ya could, pal.’

Areno showed his bad teeth again.

Hinge smiled back. ‘The case stays with me until I see Lavander, got it?’

The leader was still grinning, but the grin turned nasty. ‘You talk big, for a leetle man. One needs friends with heem, to talk like that.’

‘Oh, I got a lot of friends. F’r instance — he looked at his watch — ‘one of them is at ol’ Chiados house right now. Why dontcha call him before we do any more talkin’.’

The three terrorists looked at one another quizzically. How did the gringo know Chiado’s name? What kind of trick was he pulling?

‘You better call him,’ Hinge said, in a voice that had become flatter and harder.

The leader stared at him for several seconds and then picked up the receiver and dialled a number.

‘Never know till ya try, right?’ Hinge said.

Falmouth sat behind the wheel of the Firebird about a hundred feet from Chiado’s house. On the back of the front seat on the passenger side there was a small clear plastic dish, no larger than a tea saucer, with a parabolic mike the size of a fingernail in its centre. It was aimed at the open front window of Chiado’s house with a thin cord from the mike to the speaker in Falmouth’s right ear. The setup could pick up conversations a thousand yards away.

Chiado lay beside Falmouth on the front seat. Around his throat was a thread of C-4 plastique no thicker than a nylon fishing line. Imbedded in the back of it was a tiny radio-controlled fuse. Chiado had been dead for more than an hour, ever since Falmouth dropped him in his tracks. Chiado had seen the tall gringo, with the cigar, leaning over the door, locking his car. As Chiado approached him the big man turned to him, pointing to the cigar, and said, in perfect Spanish, ‘Deme Un fosforo, por favor.’ And an instant later Chiado felt something sting his throat and it began to burn and the burning spread like a fire down his neck into his chest and down his arms to his fingers and then the world seemed to spin away from him and the man with the cigar got smaller and smaller. The dart had hit the main nerve in Chiado’s throat. Falmouth threw the terrorist in the front seat, pulled down a dark street and garrotted him.

Falmouth’s ear was deluged with sound. Two crying children, a woman’s shrill commands rising above the blaring radio somewhere in another part of the house, another child whimpering in her arms. Then the phone rang and she answered

‘Que hay!... Buenas noches, Areno ... Quë pasa?

Falmouth put the car into gear, leaned over and shoved Chiado’s body into a sitting position. He drove toward the house, opened the car door, slowed down, and twisting sideways, kicked Chiado out in front of the house. He blew the horn several times as he drove away and saw Chiado’s wife, phone in hand, staring through the window at her husband’s body. Falmouth pressed the fuse button.