Bio-Strike

SEVEN

For better or worse, Lathrop supposed it always had been his nature to look at the dark side of things. Probably, he’d been born with that disposition… an “insufferable gloom,” wasn’t that the phrase in the Poe story? Always, always, he’d been compelled to poke around under the rug or lift up the rock and see whether some secret nastiness might be exposed underneath.

As he moved between the joggers and strollers on the path leading around the carousel in Balboa Park, Lathrop remembered reading somewhere — in his downtime he would go through stacks of books, gobbling them the way some people did potato chips — that in French, carrousel meant “tournament,” while the Italian word carosello translated to “little war,” giving origin to the English carousel when one of the later crusading armies, composed of knights and mercenaries from throughout Europe, went marching off to relieve their boredom through a healthy dose of bloodshed and noticed that Ottoman Turk and Arab cavalrymen would practice their lancemanship by charging toward a tree on horseback and trying to jab the weapon’s tip through a ring hung from a branch. When the industrious European warriors brought the idea back home — those who hadn’t been slaughtered because they were too wasted from drinking and debauchery to put up any kind of fight — the tree became a rotating pole, and the real horses became wooden mounts that got cranked around by a chain-and-mule contraption, but the purpose of the whole rigmarole was still a martial exercise.

So the merry-go-round had started out as a drill for impaling your enemy with lethal accuracy, and Lathrop had known it since he was writing book reports in grade school. Other kids would reach for the brass ring to win a free ride; he’d imagined somebody sticking it to his tender young gut if he didn’t make the grab. It was the same with everything. When other kids saw their pet kitties flip their rubber squeak toys up and over their heads with their paws, they thought Puss, Tabby, or Spooky was just the smartest and the cutest, a regular cat-baseball major leaguer. Lathrop, meanwhile, went and got a book from the library and discovered that the up-and-over move was an aspect of the hunter-killer instinct, how felines in the wild tossed fish out of a stream prior to making them a dinner course.

The lesson in this for Lathrop was that whenever you played, you had to know you were playing for keeps… which, on second thought, had definitely been learned for the better, since minus that invaluable insight, he would not have come away from Operations META and Impunity with all his vital organs in their proper relative positions.

Ah, the glory days of a hot-shit deep-cover op.

Now Lathrop slowed to a halt at the edge of the path. He had a good view of the carousel from where he stood and didn’t need to get any closer. It was old-fashioned, dating back maybe a century, with a band organ, several rows of antique carved animals, and gondolas on the outside of the platform. Though this was a weekday, the warm, sunny weather had brought visitors to the park in droves, and the ride was filled.

Lathrop bent as if to tie his shoelaces and gazed covertly at the spinning platform through the lightweight, black-framed eyeglasses he’d donned in his car. An instant later, he pushed a tiny knob at the hinge of their left stem with his fingertip, and a rectangular augmented reality panel appeared on that side. Seeming to hover about two feet in front of him, the AR display was in fact being projected onto the upper half of the plain plastic lens by the microelectromechanical, or MEMS, optical systems embedded in the frame of the glasses.

A twist of the control knob focused the image reflector /magnifiers in the lens and smoothed the display’s borders.

“Profiler,” Lathrop whispered into the pickup mike clipped to his collar.

On his vocal command, an audio link through a slender cable running down under his windbreaker to his hidden wearable computer — the same device he’d had on his belt the night of the tunnel ambush — launched a bootleg version of the UpLink International face-finding application sold to him by Enrique Quiros. Talk about an intriguing turn of the wheel.

Lathrop waited as the software loaded. To conserve memory, he’d installed a minimized version that contained a search index of ten thousand terrorists, criminals, and their known associates and would show the twenty closest matches in the AR panel. The program’s full-option setup on his desktop computer would have let him scan many times that number, and Lathrop knew he could have accessed its database resources over his wireless network connection. But that was a time-consuming distraction in the field, and the pinhole digicam in the bridge of his glasses would capture an image of his subject that he could review at his convenience.

He continued to watch the carousel’s jumpers slide up and down on their poles as it went around to the cycling pipe music. Most of the younger kids were belted onto the menagerie animals that made up the inner rows: spotted pigs, smiling fairy tale frogs, and brightly colored birds with long, arched necks that might have been fanciful cranes or ostriches. On the tall king’s horses behind the gondolas were their older brothers and sisters, some with their parents standing alongside the saddles to steady them. A group of whooping, overly giddy teens that Lathrop nailed as stoned on pot occupied the remaining painted ponies.

None of them was his concern.

Estimating he had about a minute to fiddle with his sneakers without attracting attention, Lathrop concentrated on the twosome sitting like sweethearts in a gondola at the perimeter. Except, he thought, this was no such snuggly interlude.

The man was Enrique Quiros. Lathrop didn’t recognize the blonde looker riding with him, but he’d been on enough tails in his day to read their body language and was positive that whatever was going on here was strictly business.

This afternoon was proving to be much more interesting than he could have anticipated.

After leaving Quiros’s Golden Triangle front in La Jolla, Lathrop had pulled his Volvo out of the hourly garage around the corner, swung back toward the office building, and double-parked about halfway down the street, where he’d gotten a good view of its front entrance. That was the only way in or out besides the loading and emergency doors, and Enrique wouldn’t have seen any reason to leave through them.

Five minutes later, Quiros emerged alone onto the busy sidewalk, turned in the opposite direction from Lathrop, and walked a block to yet another of the neighborhood’s ubiquitous indoor garages.

Lathrop followed, stopped near the garage, and watched some more. It wasn’t long before Quiros came driving out in a custom Porsche Carrera 911, the vehicle of choice for ostentatious, drug-dealing slime crawlers. Probably he’d called ahead for the attendant to have it ready.

Lathrop allowed Quiros to get about two car lengths ahead of him and then angled his Volvo into the flow of traffic. The 911 made a left onto A Street and headed north on Twelfth Avenue, following the road to where it became Park Boulevard, moving along toward Balboa Park at a moderate speed. At the intersection beyond the overpass, Quiros waited at a red light, took a left on the green, drove a short distance, and then turned right into the macadam parking lot back of the Spanish Village Art Center.

There were plenty of available spaces, and Lathrop swung in five or six slots down the aisle from Quiros, between a Ford Excursion that could have carted around the entire Osmond clan and an only slightly less house-y minivan. As he’d watched Quiros step out of the 911 and walk north, away from the art center toward the carousel and zoo entrance, he got his jogging clothes out of the gym bag on the passenger seat and changed into them, stuffing the sport jacket, dress slacks, and cordovans he’d shed into the bag.

The concealment offered by his tinted windows and the large, unoccupied vehicles on either side convinced Lathrop nobody would be able to peek in on him, but he doubted it would have raised an eyebrow even if that were the case. Guys did stranger things in their cars. And all he’d have looked like to some busybody who might notice was a working stiff who’d sneaked away from his desk to play hooky in the springlike weather.

Keeping Quiros in sight, Lathrop brushed back his hair and put on the Nike baseball cap resting on his dash. His first law of disguise, a baseball cap was the perfect standby, as long you didn’t wear one with a team logo that might stick in anyone’s memory. Costume beards, wigs, facial prosthetics, and other materials of that sort were great tricks of the trade, but preparation was needed to use them effectively, and Lathrop had been working on the hoof.

He added the AR glasses last, plugging them into the hidden microcomputer belted around his waist.

Within minutes after Quiros left his car, Lathrop made his own exit and trailed behind him to the carousel, where the slinky blonde had been waiting for Enrique near the ticket line.

Now he watched them circle around and around, talking rapidly, as if trying to cram in whatever had to be said before the five-minute ride came to a finish. Lathrop was hoping he’d be able to piece together their conversation on playback using the speech-reading component of his desktop software, which employed context-sensitive logic to fill in sequential blank spots when their faces spun away from his digicam lens or the carousel’s movement blurred the video input, also compensating to some extent for the cross talk that occurred during ordinary verbal exchanges.

As the carousel whirled on, the Profiler floated a dozen possible hits, overlaying the bottom of the mug shots with their known or assumed names, ages, nationalities, and a requisite listing of offenses.

Lathrop was mildly disappointed. He’d have liked to ID the blonde on-site, but it was clear she wasn’t any of the criminal candidates that had popped into his display. Still, he was charmed to have stumbled onto this little tryst and had plenty of recorded conversation to study later.

He straightened, figuring he’d bent over his shoelace long enough. Also, the ride was grinding to a halt, and he was concerned Enrique would start in his direction after getting off. The guy might not suspect he was being shadowed, but neither was he an oblivious fool.

Lathrop was about to move on down the path when he noticed something that caused him to risk staying put another few seconds. As the gondola spun past on one of its final slow revolutions, Blondie abruptly opened her purse, brought out a smallish object, and gave it to Enrique. A box, dark and shiny, the kind Lathrop imagined they’d carry in those exclusive Rodeo Drive jewelry stores.

He watched with sharp curiosity. The quick handoff squelched any second thoughts that might have occurred to him about this being a lovers’ outing. It didn’t even seem especially amicable. There were no smiles. No meeting of the lips, chaste pecks on the cheeks, or air kisses. Moreover, Enrique looked reluctant to accept the box, almost nervous, stuffing it into the pocket of his sport jacket like it was red hot to the touch.

Lathrop’s chin tilted upward. His lips parted and curled. He drew in a breath. That transaction was it. Right there. The reason for the meet. And he’d captured the cherished moment on his wearable’s flash memory card.

Or had he?

Excited, Lathrop indulged his urge to confirm it.

“Exit Profiler, run video,” he said into his mike, watching the gondola pull away from him.

Another two voice commands, and the scene was replayed on his eyeglass display.

A thrill shot from his spine into his arms and fingertips. Beautiful. And to think a few seconds ago, he’d felt let down.

He supposed he could have hung around some more, drifted among the crowd until he’d observed where Quiros and his lady companion headed once they left the ride. But experience told him it was time to fold. And he was sure they’d be going their separate ways, at any rate.

Enrique had gotten what he came for. As had Lathrop himself.

Thinking he couldn’t be happier with his afternoon’s work, Lathrop turned from the carousel and took the walkway back toward the parking lot.

“Three Dog Night. Jefferson Airplane. The Troggs,” Ricci read aloud, leaning over the selection tabs on the big vintage jukebox in Nimec’s poolroom. “Got to admit, Pete, you’re—”

“A wild thing?” Nimec snapped his fingers.

“Groovy,” Ricci said.

Nimec grinned.

“That’s the same model juke that was in the hall where I spent the whole summer of ’68 with my father. A Wurlitzer 2600.” He patted the machine’s fake wood-grain side panel. “Same songs, too. Three selections for a quarter, ten for fifty cents.”

Ricci looked at him.

“Must’ve been some year.”

“We were on a streak, and flush for a change. Couldn’t miss the sweet spot on a cue ball for anything,” he said. “I don’t think it would’ve mattered if we’d been trussed and blindfolded, which is how I bet some of the mugs considered dealing with us before they paid up. These were some hard, tough sons of bitches, let me tell you.”

“How come they behaved?”

“My old man was harder and tougher.”

Ricci nodded.

Nimec went around the soda bar. It was white with a red Coca-Cola bottle-cap design on the base, chrome trim along the counter’s edge, and a half-dozen white stools. Everything looked a little grubby. The chrome finish was scratched and dulled in places. There were cigarette burns on the countertop. Some crumbled and yellowed padding was pushing through a tear in the leatherette cushion of one of the stools.

“How about something to drink?” Nimec said from behind the pump. “The cola’s got the right proportions of syrup and fizz. And I have frosty mugs. Or there’s beer, if you want.”

Ricci sat on one of the stools, inhaled air thick with the odor of stale cigarettes and cheap cologne.

“Better make it soda,” he said. “I start out hugging a drink, three hours later I wind up wrestling with one. Like that Bible story, when Christ wrestles with Satan in the desert.”

Nimec looked at him.

“Except,” he said, “Jesus, you’re not.”

Ricci gave a vague impression of amusement.

“The truth shall set you free,” he said.

Nimec poured two colas from the fountain, puffs of condensation dispersing from the ice-cold mugs as he filled them and then handed one to Ricci across the countertop.

They drank in silence. Then Ricci lowered the mug from his lips with an ahhh of appreciation.

“Good,” he said. “Not too fizzy, not too syrupy.”

Nimec smiled.

Still holding the mug by the handle, Ricci made a scratch in the thin rime of ice on its outer curvature with his thumbnail.

“You going to tell me why I was invited here?”

Nimec gave him a nod. “Your RDT proposal’s been rubber-stamped on a trial basis,” he said. “I figured you’d be pleased. And I wanted to give you my congratulations in person rather than over the phone.”

Ricci sat there looking at him for a long moment.

“Thanks, Pete,” he said. “And not just for the well wishes.”

Nimec shook his head. “I don’t deserve any credit for this. The idea was yours. You’re the one who sold Gord on it. Sold everybody on it. Some of us just took longer than others to realize they’d been persuaded.”

“And maybe wouldn’t have at all if you didn’t push.”

Nimec shrugged and said nothing.

“The ragin’ Cajun among the enlightened?” Ricci asked after a moment.

“To be honest, he’s not gung ho. But he’s willing to suspend his opposition and give things a fair chance.”

“Didn’t think fairness was one of his capacities.”

Nimec put down his mug and leaned slightly forward over the counter.

“About Thibodeau,” he said. “He’s a little headstrong, maybe going through some difficult personal times, I don’t know. But he’s also a good man, stand up to the bone.”

“And?”

“Your comment on the Pomona about the circumstances that got him shot was a low blow. He may have deserved it from you at the time, and I’m not going to be critical. But between us, his actions in Brazil weren’t careless or foolhardy. They were heroic, expedient, and they saved a lot of lives, very nearly at the cost of his own. I would hope you could acknowledge it.”

Ricci was briefly quiet.

“Say I do,” he said. “Say I even respect him for it. You asking me to admit that to anyone but you?”

Nimec shook his head.

“I know when I’m already running ahead,” he said.

They sat drinking their Cokes in the deliberate shabbiness of a pool parlor generated from thirty-five-year-old memories and impressions “So when can I start putting together the new section?” Ricci said after a while. “Soliciting volunteers for tryouts, that sort of thing?”

Nimec glanced at his watch.

“It’s three o’clock on the button,” he said. “You okay with about five after?”

Ricci gave him the barest smile and lifted his soda to his lips. The frost on the mug had now melted to leave behind glistening beads of moisture.

“Bottoms up,” he said.

On the books, Felix Quiros earned his bread from the family-owned automobile salvage business he managed on the outskirts of San Diego. But his veal was in the money he made shipping various hot American vehicles to countries throughout the world via Mexico.

Sometimes in broad daylight, mostly at night, these were driven into the fourteen-acre yard directly from the streets and garages where they were stolen. The spiffiest models would be rolled into long aluminum vans that would cart them across the border at illegal transit points. The less-desired vehicles were dismantled for parts in Felix’s chop shop.

As he gazed down between stacks of crushed automobile bodies in the dark of this chill, moonless November night, Lathrop could see a shadowy line of maybe five or six cars pass through the chicken-wire fence across the yard toward where the metal vans waited with their extended ramps. A couple of others were moving along a different gravel path toward the lifters, conveyers, and compactors in the recycling and demolition area.

It was almost like watching them roll into an automatic car wash, he thought. Neat.

“So, when I gonna find out why you got me here rattling my stones, instead of us meeting inside where it be nice and warm?” Felix said, standing there with Lathrop amid the rows of gutted and flattened vehicles. He hugged himself for warmth, rubbing his hands briskly over his shoulders. “What the fuck’s this about?”

“Privacy,” Lathrop said.

Felix tipped his head toward the trailer at the far end of the scrapyard.

“That right over there is my private office, comprende?”

Lathrop looked at him.

“You have a fresh mouth, sonny. Ought to consider finishing school,” he said. “It did wonders for Enrique. Who’s the reason I’m here.”

Felix made an unsatisfactory attempt at minimizing how much that piqued his interest.

“Ain’t got to be disrespectful. All I’m saying, we both gentlemen, ought to give ourselves our props,” he said. “And what’s up with my uncle, anyway?”

“Main thing far as you’re concerned is I met with him today, and he happened to mention that he’s upset about you moving on Salazar without his nod.”

Felix struck a posture of bluff rejection lifted straight from some MTV hip-hop video, head pulled back, chest thrust forward.

“How’d he find out I got anything to do with that?” he asked. “And why he want to talk to you about it?”

Lathrop released a deep breath.

“Okay, time to cut the wiseass bullshit,” he said. “You didn’t hear me say our meeting was about you. Enrique made a comment, and I figured you might want to know what it was. Far as who clued him it’s you did the hijack, I don’t have the foggiest idea. Maybe you opened that big show-off’s mouth of yours to somebody with an even bigger one.”

Felix shook his head rapidly.

“No way, no way,” he said. “Besides, if Enrique’s in a burn about this, how come you didn’t put in a good word? You the man told me when Salazar’s shipment was coming. You the man told me Enrique wouldn’t have faith I could do the job. Told me to keep it under the fucking table till after the product’s turned over, split the earnings with him afterward, finally get him to recognize me. You the man, Lathrop.”

“Doesn’t mean I’m your guru. Or your lawyer. It’s not my place to jump into the middle of a family tiff. I gave you my best advice before, figured I’d give it now. No extra charge. Go talk to Enrique. Tell him the truth, be clear you weren’t intending to hold out on him. Just omit the fact it was me who put you onto the shipment.”

Felix tossed his head and did a kind of petulant shuffle, kicking the toe of his shoe into the dirt.

“Omit, right,” he muttered. “How I know it wasn’t you gave me up to my uncle?”

Lathrop expelled another long breath, glanced quickly around to be sure nobody was lurking amid the walls of the junk-metal canyon into which he’d lured Enrique, wanting to avoid making a mess of the punk’s trailer. A mess that would have to be scrubbed and sanitized before he could be on his way.

“I warned you about talking nasty,” he said. “You should have listened.”

Felix suddenly became still. Swallowed. His expression showing an awareness that he really had opened his mouth too wide this time.

“What’s that supposed to mean, man?” he said.

The silenced Glock nine appeared in Lathrop’s hand as if he’d snatched it out of nowhere.

“Means you’re gone, Felix,” Lathrop said. “Gonzo alonzo.”

He brought up the pistol and squeezed the trigger twice, putting two slugs into the precise center of Felix’s forehead before he knew what hit him.

Cleanup here was easy. Lathrop put on his gloves and disposed of the body in one of the junked cars down the aisle with a rusty but undamaged trunk lid, stuffing it inside the trunk, pushing the lid shut, even getting it to latch.

Then he went back to toss some dirt over the blood and skull fragments.

Lathrop wasn’t looking to be overly thorough concealing the kid’s remains. It really didn’t matter whether Felix was discovered by some Quiros stooge or eaten by foraging rodents. Just as long as nobody could pin anything on him.

Ten minutes later, he slipped out of the salvage yard unnoticed, anxious to get back home. Tired as he was, he meant to take a closer look at the videos he’d taken of Uncle Enrique and Blondie on the carousel.

Not to mention that his cats needed feeding and a little tender loving care before he fell into bed, the three of them having been left alone since very early that morning.