Steve Martini - Guardian of Lies

“You mean the body?”

“No. I mean our prints, anything we mighta’ touched.”

I think about this for a second. “No. If we do and the killer left any trace evidence, we’re likely to destroy it. Besides, two days in a confined area like the apartment and trace evidence of our presence would be everywhere. We’d never get it all.”

“Sure.” Still, Herman takes the knife out of my hand, wipes the handle and the blade with the tail of his shirt as I use the key to open Goudaz’s apartment door.

As I do, I hear the phone in the study ring. Herman and I look at each other, then I break and run toward the sound. I can’t tell how long it’s been ringing. Before I get there the automatic answering device picks up the call.

I wait and listen, hoping at least that I might hear the message. Instead there is a long beep as the fax machine on the desk kicks in. I wait a few seconds. The machine spits out a single sheet and then quits.

“Who was it?” Herman has put the knives back in the drawer and is now standing behind me.

“I don’t know, it’s a fax.” I grab the page and start to read, but it’s in Spanish. Herman studies it over my shoulder.

“Son of a bitch!” he says. “That answers your question, how Goudaz knew where the container was comin’ from. Look,” he says. Herman points with his finger. “The name of the ship, and it ain’t the Mariah . Vessel’s called the Amora . Its ETA, where it’s headed, even the container number. And the name at the bottom, ‘A. Afundi.’ First name Alim,” says Herman.

“But why? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“It’s a copy of a fax sent to a cargo broker. They wanted Goudaz to follow up on it. From what I’m readin’ he gave ’em the lead on the broker. Like you said, he was selling information.”

“So that’s how they knew about Pike and the fact that he had the pictures. It still doesn’t make any sense. If they needed his help, why did they kill him?”

“Who knows,” says Herman. “At least we know where we’re going.”

I look at my watch. “What’s the time difference between here and Ensenada?”

“Same as at home,” says Herman. “It’s one hour later here, I believe.”

I hear the gate clatter downstairs and a shrill voice. “Lorenzo! Lemme in.” It’s Maricela. I run to the little French windows leading to the tiny balcony, step out, and stick my head over the railing. “Stay there, we’ll be down in a minute.”

“Lorenzo was right. They couldn’t gimme my old phone number. So I don’t know what we do now,” she says.

“Just wait there.”

I don’t even bother to close the window. “Let’s grab our bags.” I see a phone book on a shelf in the kitchen. “Hold on a second. How do you say ‘charter air’ in Spanish?”

Herman thinks for a moment.

“Never mind.” I grab the book and take it. “Make sure Maricela’s got her purse.”

“Why?”

“Because her passport is in it.”

As he marched toward his car, Liquida knew the Arab would be sending him an e-mail any minute telling him he wanted to meet him to pay him. Liquida would meet him all right, on his own timetable and perhaps at a place of his own choosing.

He no longer cared about killing the woman. As far as he was concerned, at least for the moment, he was working for himself, and there were only two people on his current hit parade: the man called Afundi who owed him a bundle, and the lawyer who had interfered for the last time.

In his present state of agitation, Liquida was a good fit for the Tico traffic of San José. He whipped out of the parking space without bothering to look in his mirror, cutting off a woman who hit her brakes and laid on the horn.

Liquida gave her the finger out his open window as he laid rubber on the rainbow road, streaking for the airport. He was already calculating in his mind which terminal in northern Mexico to parachute into that would put him closest to the port of Ensenada.

They say that with enough money you can buy anything. At the moment Herman and I are testing the concept. Sitting in the backseat of one of the little red taxi sedans, we are rumbling down Highway 1 just beyond the broad avenue known as Paseo Colón. The shocks are gone on the car’s rear end, so we feel every bump and groove in the road as it vibrates from the tailbone up the spine.

Herman and I are silently counting the currency from our money belts as Maricela sits, watching us from over the front-passenger seat. We have not told her that Lorenzo is dead, only that we have information regarding her father, where we think he will be, that there is no time to talk, and that we will fill her in later.

“I don’t think it’s enough,” says Herman. “You gotta figure it’s at least twenty-five hundred miles, maybe more.”

Herman and I left the States with a total of nineteen thousand dollars between us in the two money belts. Less the fifty-three hundred we paid for the two passports leaves us thirteen thousand seven hundred. Even if I wanted to use it, the feds have probably put a stop on my credit card. Herman could use his, but it has a twenty-five-hundred-dollar limit and there’s no question they would trace it.

“I booked a charter flight out of Mexico a few years ago for a client and it cost us twelve grand back then. And we didn’t go nearly that far,” he says.

“We won’t know unless we try,” I tell him.

“ Seńor, we are coming up to the turnoff, I need to know if you want me to take it or keep going.

Give us a minute, says Herman.

This time of the day the only commercial flights north are gonna take us to the States. Maricela can't get in without a visa even to transfer flights. And then there’s the question, do you really want to try and run the U.S. border on these things?” I tap the phony Canadian passport next to me on the seat.

“Take the turnoff,” says Herman.

The driver cuts across three lanes of traffic, setting off horns all across the city. He hangs a quick right on the short off-ramp, rolls through the stop sign, and starts winding through the back streets. I ask Herman for the cell phone and call Harry. I have tried to reach him repeatedly over the last several days. I am wondering if perhaps the carrier simply doesn’t have good coverage in this area.

I am holding the fax from Goudaz’s apartment in my hand as Harry answers.

“Where the hell have you been? I’ve been trying to reach you for two days,” he says.

I tell him to get a piece of paper and write down what I’m about to tell him. With what we now know from the fax, Herman and I have decided that we can no longer withhold the information from the federal authorities.

“Wait till I get outside,” says Harry.

“You’re in the office?”

“Where the hell else would I be?” he says.

“Then stay there, you won’t need a pencil. Just repeat everything as I give it to you out loud. As I say it.”

“You know what you’re doing?”

“Yes, we’re talking to the world,” I tell him. “I want you to contact Rhytag and give him the following information. Go ahead. Say it out loud.”

“You want me to contact Rhytag and give him the following information.”

“The weapon is in transit on board a ship.”

“What weapon?” says Harry.

“Never mind, just say it.”

He repeats it out loud.

“The name of the ship is…” Before I can say the word Amora , the line goes dead. “Hello. Hello. Damn it!”

Just as I push the button to dial again, the driver starts goosing the taxi, bumping aross the deep swales at blind intersections as if this were the national sport. Herman and I bounce all over the backseat.