Guardian of Lies

FIFTY-SIX

Unfortunately the Gulfstream had everything on board but an in-flight phone system. The copilot who saw me trying to talk to Harry on takeoff told me to shut it down. The cell phone might interfere with their avionics.

An hour into the flight and the passengers seemed to settle down. The other two couples paired off to seats and settled in for the ride. Herman and I spent the time in the rear of the plane trying to explain to Maricela what we’d found when we returned to Lorenzo’s apartment.

At first she couldn’t believe that he was dead, and when she finally came to accept it, she blamed herself for leading the killer to his front door.

“You don’t understand,” I say. “Lorenzo was selling them information.” I showed her the fax from his machine.

As she read it her eyes gravitated to the name at the bottom of the page. “That’s it. I remember. I heard only once, but his last name was Afundi. I knew that I’d heard it. I just couldn’t remember. But why? Why would Lorenzo be working with them?”

“The oldest reason in the world,” says Herman, “money.”

“You mean he sold Katia’s life for a few dollars?”

“He may not have known that they would try to kill her, but I doubt if there’s any question that he fingered Pike.”

“How did he meet such people?” she says.

“He was dealing with the same people your father is,” I tell her.

“Yes, but my father has no choice.”

“Regardless, the result may be the same. We need your help.”

“How?”

“We can’t identify either Alim or your father. We need to find them and track the container until we can get the authorities to stop it. If we don’t, a great many people are going to die. Do you understand?”

She doesn’t say anything. She just looks at me. “I cannot believe my father would do something like that.”

“Perhaps, as you say, he has no choice. If that’s the case, we’re going to have to do what we can to help him get free.”

She looks at me, then nods. “Then I will help you,” she says.

“Good.”

Three hours later we land in Mexico City to off-load the first passengers. I tell the pilot that my cell phone is on the fritz and ask him if there is any way he can send a message over the plane’s VHF radio to a friend in San Diego. I can’t very well tell him about the bomb without raising eyebrows and being arrested.

Instead the man lets me use his cell phone. I take it to the back of the plane for privacy.

It is after hours. The office will be closed, so I call in the open to Harry’s unguarded cell line. I don’t have Rhytag’s phone number or I would make the call myself.

Harry doesn’t answer. I can’t be sure if he is even carrying his regular cell phone any longer. Harry hates cops. With the federal government now listening in, he has probably flushed the phone down the toilet.

Nonetheless I leave the message to have Harry call Rhytag and tell him about the bomb. I give him the name of the ship, Amora, and its estimated time of arrival in Ensenada. I am hoping that the feds are listening in.

Then I call Harry’s house. Again he doesn’t answer, so I leave the same message on his home phone. For the moment, at least, it’s all I can do.

Liquida got bounced like a Ping-Pong ball all over the hemisphere trying to get back to northern Mexico. From San José he shuttled to Houston and from there caught a connecting flight to San Diego. He didn’t even try to fly south from there. Instead he rented a car and stopped for coffee at one of his haunts, a twenty-four-hour Internet java shop just outside National City.

Inside he ordered a latte and sat down at a computer to check his e-mail. He was anxious to snag the Arab’s message and read his lies. Liquida knew that between the coffee and the raghead’s brazen deceit, it should be enough to get his blood going again, to keep him awake at least until he could get across the border.

He was feeling pretty good. He had spent several hours snoozing on the planes, dreaming of ways to entertain his employer. He wondered if the man had family, and if so whether they had any money, and how much an ear or part of a nose might go for among relatives in the Middle East. He could give them a discount and sell him by the pound, a piece at a time. Liquida dreamed that maybe he could take the Arab alive, and get him alone somewhere, in which case the one thing he could promise the man was that he wouldn’t die fast.

At least Liquida could now relax. According to the note he took from the dead cartoon critic at the apartment in San José, he had plenty of time to meet the boat at Ensenada. It wasn’t due in until sometime around noon tomorrow.

He punched up the screen on the computer and waited a second to enter the floating ether of his endless e-mail domains. Then he slipped down through the junk mail and found what he wanted.

Liquida opened the message and sure enough there was text on the screen, so he knew that the Arab was lying again. The e-mail was filled with irritating false praise for the fine job he had done. Because of this, his employer wished to reward him with valuable commodities-gold and fully marketable narcotics and hints that they might even throw in the moon and the stars. But Liquida would have to stop by to pick it all up personally since FedEx was balking at delivering the heroin and the springs on their van couldn’t seem to take the weight from the mountain of gold they had for him. They apologized for the inconvenience and said they hoped he’d understand.

Liquida was angry with today’s e-mail provider. If their bullshit checker had been working properly, every word in the message should have been underlined, flashing and depositing little drips of brown down the screen by now.

The Arab translator even gave him an address in Tijuana where Liquida could hook up his trailer to haul this treasure trove home, and told him tomorrow, four o’clock sharp, not to be late. The Arab’s other assassins must charge overtime, thought Liquida.

He wrote down the address, signed off on the computer, finished his coffee, then looked at his watch. He wondered if it was too late to drop by one of his suppliers and pick up some stuff, or whether the guy would still be awake. Then he dismissed the thought; after all, that’s what doorbells were for.

And if he didn’t answer, there was always the fire alarm.