Left for Dead

48

6:00 P.M., Monday, April 12

Tucson, Arizona

Angel Moreno had spent a very busy but very profitable afternoon. When he told Sal and Tony that Humberto had a job for them, the two dopes came along as nice as you please. They were now disposed of, wrapped in a roll of orange shag carpeting and dropped off in the landfill north of Coolidge.

Long experience had taught Angel Moreno that orange shag was the best bet for that kind of job. Even when things started to leak, the colors more or less matched, and no one went near orange shag these days if they could help it. He had left the landfill with an empty panel truck and a feeling of accomplishment. Two down; one to go.

Another thing experience had taught Angel was that there was no disguise quite as effective as pretending to be a janitor with a mop. Or, in this case, a janitor with an immense floor polisher. He had brought one along in his van when he drove down from Phoenix, just in case. And he had been right. It turned out that the long hallways at Physicians Medical Center were uniformly in need of polishing.

The one thing he had expected to be a real challenge—laying hands on a hospital employee badge—had turned out to be no challenge at all. Halfway through his second pass in the parking lot, he found a Van Pool van complete with a conveniently unlocked door and a valid PMC employee badge lying right on the dashboard. Angel was able to filch it without setting off so much as a beeping auto alarm. That was the thing he really liked about auto alarms—if doors weren’t properly locked, an alarm didn’t make a sound.

Armed with the badge lanyard attached to the pocket of a pair of anonymous scrubs, he was ready. The polisher was mounted on the front of a wheeled cart that held a tall plastic container with a convincing collection of mops and brooms. The bottom of the container held a small canvas bag with one particular item that wasn’t remotely related to janitorial supplies.

Pushing his way across the parking lot, he used the badge to enter a locked door at the rear of the building next to the Dumpsters. That was the most dangerous time, getting inside the building. Once he was in, however, he didn’t rush. He checked the map in the lobby so he knew where to find the ICU, but he was in no hurry to get there. In fact, the later he arrived, the better. All he had to do in the meantime was polish floors like crazy. As long as he kept the ID tag so the name didn’t show, and kept his face averted around security cameras, Angel was secure in the knowledge that no one would notice.

Except this time they did notice. Everywhere he went at Physicians Medical, people smiled at him or greeted him, asking him things like “How’s it going?” That was not a good situation for someone accustomed to being invisible while in plain sight.

It was unsettling, but not enough so for him to back off or give up. After all, Humberto had paid him in advance, and Angel had no intention of screwing this up. Angel Morales knew all too well what happened to people who promised something to Humberto Laos and then didn’t deliver.