The Last Family

22

Lallo Estevez was sound asleep. He was normally a heavy sleeper, but the gentle chirping of his personal cellular phone, tucked beneath his pillow, awakened him as a shotgun blast fired over the bed might have awakened another man. His wife, unaware, was lying flat on her back with her head aimed at the ceiling, snoring loudly beside him. Her eyes were covered with a white blindfold trimmed with burgundy lace, and her face shone from a coating of moisturizing cream. There were clear wax plugs in her ears to insure uninterrupted sleep. Lallo opened the telephone and put it to his ear.

“Yes?” he said, trying to sound alert.

“This is Spivey. Your office. Now. Alone.”

“Now?”

“Well, take twenty minutes.”

Lallo tossed the covers back and stepped into his room-sized closet. He dressed hurriedly, brushed his silver hair carefully, and put on his overcoat. He opened a drawer and removed a small automatic. He contemplated the handgun, started to slip it into his waistband, and then decided not to. If Spivey or any of his CIA dark-operations pros wanted to kill him, the gun would be useless.

Lallo slipped on his dark topcoat and went out to the garage. He opened the door to his wife’s Mercedes wagon, climbed inside, and was about to close the door when the overhead fluorescent went dead and a man moved toward the car with a flashlight pointed at Lallo’s eyes. He caught the door before Lallo could close it. Lallo looked up, then winced. The man’s face was hidden behind the light, and he didn’t try to look. To see the face, whether it belonged to friend or foe, could be dangerous.

“Mr. Estevez. Nice to see you again.”

“Mr. Spivey,” Lallo answered. “A surprise.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that Fletcher had contacted you?”

“I was… I haven’t had time… Tomorrow I…” Lallo realized that his hands were trembling.

“Then he has. When?”

Lallo could hear the smile in the man’s voice and cursed himself for not contacting Spivey as he had been instructed-warned. He tricked me. He didn’t know! “Today,” he lied. “Earlier this evening. He called in saying that he was someone else, but I recognized his voice.”

“You were supposed to call me.”

“I got sidetracked.”

“The meeting-when?”

“He wants the money that’s owed to him. See, you people will get me killed yet.”

“We hoped he’d want the debt settled. So I do know what I’m talking about, after all.”

“Holding back the money I owed him was dangerous. He might have gone to Perez, who had already paid it to me. Then what do you imagine would have happened to me? My intestines would be on the carpeting. Perez pays me and I do not pay Martin… either of them could kill me. I am lucky he called me. He could just as easily have appeared in my bedroom.” Lallo knew it wasn’t the money that Fletcher measured, but the apparent disrespect that holding the money back represented. Martin’s ego would be his downfall. Lallo knew that Martin had paid the doctor in Spain a fortune for the face alteration and had then killed the man after he had banked the cash. Lallo would have killed him before he’d paid him. That would have been a prudent business maneuver.

“Look, Lallo. You like doing business in this country? You don’t want to end up out of our favor, do you? Be out of favor and into Marion or Fort Leavenworth for enough years so you’d be over one hundred when you got out. We don’t want that, do we?”

“You don’t know this man like I do. Martin is like a viper. He might not bite this time, but the next time he might, or the time after.”

“When do you meet him?”

“Tomorrow night. Eleven P.M. at my pier. Beside the Vasquez, which is presently at the dock to unload.”

“Meet with him. We have someone to go along with you. Ramon Chavez. You know him.”

“Ramon?” He shrugged, wrinkling his brow, remembering the fierce Indian. “A good man. But, between us, he makes me very uneasy.” Lallo crossed himself. Lallo had made use of Ramon to cover meetings and to instill a healthy fear in his business associates. That had been years before. He was aware that Ramon had left the cartel and had gone freelance. Only a man of remarkable talent could make a career move like that and not be killed by his ex-bosses. Ramon would not turn on his employers, because he had a large family to think of.

“Ramon remembers and likes you. We asked him to come up for a visit. He’ll take care of this problem. Also, our best marksman will be watching from the roof.”

“I am sure Martin knows Ramon. Martin… what if he sees Ramon?” Lallo was starting to panic at the thought of being in a cross-fire situation. Ramon was indeed a terrifying sight. A stony-eyed Indian with a deeply pocked, pie-shaped face and muscles a bull would envy.

“It won’t matter. We will end this problem. As soon as Martin shows himself, get him to the car, open the car door, and step back. Between my two men there’ll be nothing left to chance.”

George Spivey made it sound as though facing Martin on the dock would be no more dangerous than a walk in Jackson Square at high noon. Even given Martin’s demise, it was always possible that Spivey might decide to bury everything in one big hole. In that case… what could he do anyway? Nada.

“You know I am not used to this sort of-”

The man outside the car put a hand on Lallo’s shoulder and applied too much pressure, the way a schoolyard bully would-measured for discomfort but not pain. A promise. “And for a bonus you get to keep the money you shorted him. No one will know Martin is gone but us.”

“What about the police? They could hear the rifle.”

“There will be no noise and no police. Just make sure you step out of the way after you open the door.”

“Si.” Lallo shook his head. Bullets have no eyes.

“Lallo, when all is said and done, Martin Fletcher is just another nickel-and-dime cleaner gone off the deep end. He’s been lucky, that’s all. Besides”-he patted the man’s cheek-“he’s an old man now.”

Lallo shook his head. “And you are young. Never underestimate your elders and the experience that comes only to those who live to see the next sunrise. This old man has been evading you people for, what, five years? You should have sent experienced men to kill him in the jungle when you had the chance. Not boys.”

There was no answer. The man who called himself George Spivey was gone. How George Spivey had got the information he had on Lallo was a question Lallo could not fathom. He was a professional. A cold man. Surely he was working for the CIA. Maybe freelance; there didn’t appear to be any red tape wrapping Spivey. He was officially tied in, at any rate. How long would these federales keep making Lallo do their will? Maybe it would continue until they killed him themselves, or leaked word to the cartel that Lallo was playing games on the wrong side.

Lallo stepped from the car and went back into the house. But there was no question of trying to sleep, so Lallo used his key to let himself into the maid’s bedroom off the kitchen, where he could lose himself in her soft, fragrant embrace until morning.

George Spivey sat in his car, opened his cellular phone, and hooked a small black box onto the telephone’s mouthpiece to scramble his voice. He dialed a number in New Orleans that was a relay extension and sent the signal to some receiver in a location unknown to Spivey. The man who answered the telephone spoke in a flat, monotonous drone.

“Nature Center,” he said.

“It’s Terrence,” George Spivey said. “We’re about to tag the purple martin. The Amazonian parrot should be migrating north immediately.”

“I have that,” the voice answered. “Another thing.”

“I’m listening.”

“That one-eyed eagle from up in the mountains?”

“Yeah, I know the one.”

“He’s no longer on the endangered-species list. He’s out of his nest in the sanctuary, and it seems he’s circling the farm.”

“I know.”

“If he flies over the henhouse, he’s fair game.”

“If he interferes?”

“As long as he flies, an eagle’s a threat.”

“So he’s not protected.”

“The checkbook wants him brought down.”

“Under what circumstances?”

“If there is a clean shot.”

“That wasn’t part of the arrangement. The deal was to tag the martin.”

“There’s a new grant that should cover the additional fieldwork. The deposit is already in your account.”

“That’s a go.”

“Happy hunting, Terrence.”

George Spivey ended the call and unhooked the box from the telephone.

He thought about Paul Masterson. It was a shame he had decided to get involved, but so went the world. Things were never easy. He made a note to check with the bank in Switzerland. Just to make sure. He understood that this was all in the interests of national security, but he wasn’t an employee with a retirement plan. He was a nice guy, but he’d be damned if he’d do Masterson for nothing, national-security risk or not.