Stolen Prey

17

Martínez’s problem, which she’d recognized before she ever set foot in the U.S., was that none of her subordinates, Uno, Dos, and Tres, were particularly bright; they were the Mexican equivalent of the hapless American shitkicker who discovers the power of the gun. Which was fine when somebody needed to be killed right now, or chopped to pieces. Not so fine when subtlety was needed.

She waited for Uno and Tres in a Metro State University parking lot; when they arrived, they got out wearing jeans and black sport coats, and not-so-subtly armed with Mac-10s over their shoulders, nine-millimeter pistols tucked in their belts.

“How will you carry them if we have to go on the street?” she asked of the Mac-10s.

“Under a jacket,” Uno said.

“It’s warm. It’s hot.”

“So … if anybody asks, we shoot them.” Uno laughed to show that he was joking. Maybe.

THEY WERE in a hurry, but Martínez took five minutes to examine the target house, and the surrounding area, on a Google aerial photo that she pulled up on her iPad. When she was satisfied that she had the general lay of the land, they left, taking her car. If they were ahead of the BCA, then the car wouldn’t matter. If it was a trap, and they had to run, the BCA agents knew Martínez’s rental, but not the Toyota.

As she waited for traffic at the edge of the parking lot, she remembered her shock when Davenport had suddenly appeared at Sanderson’s apartment, running up the apartment steps with the gun in his hand.

She began to sweat. Something about the feel of the thing.

The direct route to Margaret Street would be a left turn and straight ahead. She considered, checked her iPad again, and took a right. She turned right again on East Seventh, then left on Greenbrier, drove a block, and found herself looking out the driver’s-side window, down a long, steep bluff, into a vast weedy hole in the ground. She’d seen it on the iPad, but hadn’t been quite sure what she was looking at.

Another block and they came to Margaret Street, but five blocks from the target house, and across the four-lane East Seventh Street. Margaret dead-ended at the hole, which a sign said was Swede Hollow Park.

She looked at it for a moment, then turned around and drove back the way she came, again overshooting the direct route to Margaret.

Uno, who was now looking at the iPad, said, “No, you turned the wrong way.”

“We’re going another way,” she said.

Uno turned the iPad in his hands, and the map image turned with him, frustrating him—he wanted to look at it sideways, and it wouldn’t allow him to do that. “Shit,” he said. “This machine is shit.”

Martínez took the tablet away from him, propped it against her steering wheel, and followed the map along Mounds Boulevard to Third Street, took Third to Cypress, turned left on Cypress to Fremont, turned the corner on Fremont and pulled over.

“So now, one of you has a mission.” She didn’t care about which one—one was as dumb as the other.

Uno was querulous: “¿Qué?”

She explained: there was some small chance that the cops were watching this house. A small chance, but a chance. They nodded.

“There may be twenty-two million dollars inside,” she told them. “Big Voice says that if we get the gold, I will get ten percent for taking the chance to get it, and each of you will get five percent. That’s one million dollars in gold for each of you, if we take this chance. A million in gold will buy a very nice life for you and your mother and your wife, if you have one. A Toyota Tundra with a cap, running boards, brush guard, bush lights. Whatever you want. Ten of them, if you like, and you still won’t have spent even half of the gold.”

They nodded, listening closely now.

If the police were waiting up ahead, it would be better if only one of them was caught. The others could then try to rescue that one, or get away, and send money for lawyers and so on.

“So which one goes?” Uno asked.

“You decide,” she said.

The two killers looked at each other and Uno finally lit up and said, “Piedra, papel o tijera.” Rock, paper, scissors, best two out of three.

Tres laughed and nodded. Uno promptly won the first round, rock breaking scissors. Tres groaned with excitement, and they went again, and Tres won this time, paper covering rock, when Uno tried to get smart and do “rock” twice in a row. Tres pulled out a second victory with another paper over rock.

Uno giggled and said to Martínez, “I thought he would do scissors because he thought I would go to paper, but, I fail.”

Martínez nodded, contained an impulse to smack them both, and said, “Look for people in cars, or people standing around not doing much, or even people hiding. Look in windows. Walk slowly. We will keep the telephone on, you and me. If you see something, tell me.”

If he didn’t see something, she told him, he was to check the house, and perhaps go in. “If you do see something, go this way on the same street, on Margaret. If they chase you, keep going, and you will come to that big hole we saw. They can’t follow in their cars, and you are very fast, so you will lose them when you go through the hole.”

“Ah,” Uno said. He was, indeed, very fast. “Walk on to East Seventh Street, and then down the long hill to the city.”

“We will be on this street, and will watch behind you.” She tapped the iPad. “When you get here, in the city, you will call us and we will come and get you.”

Uno looked at the iPad for a long moment, then said, “So I walk to this Margaret Street and then to the right number, and then, if I find the gold, I call you. If I don’t, I call you, and then walk down the same street.”

He repeated it all, tracing the route on the aerial photo. When she was satisfied that he had it, she cut him loose.

They watched as he walked back to Fremont, looked at the street sign, and took a right. In a moment he was out of sight.

SHRAKE HAD gotten permission from a Margaret Street homeowner to sit behind the slats of his old-fashioned front porch, a block east of the decoy house. Jenkins was two blocks away, also on Margaret, west of the decoy, on his stomach behind a hedge. Lucas was in Del’s pickup with Del, parked a block over, north and west, toward East Seventh, where they expected she would come in. Shaffer was in a car with another agent, north and east.

The second meeting with the other agents had gone well enough, with a couple of them annoyed that they hadn’t been let in on the secret about Martínez, but most agreeing that not knowing had given the meeting, with its flashes of anger, more authenticity. “Never would’ve guessed it,” one of the agents said.

Shaffer found two members of the BCA SWAT team who weren’t on any immediate assignment, and grabbed them, and assigned them to hide inside the decoy house.

In any case, it was Shrake who saw Uno coming. There’d been a half dozen false alarms, guys walking alone or in pairs along the street, but none of them looked right. Shrake checked Uno with a pair of compact, image-stabilized Canon binoculars, then called in on a handset that all the other teams would pick up.

“Got a small guy coming in, he looks right, he looks Mexican, he’s small. Moving slow. He’s on Cypress, coming up to Margaret. He’s checking things out.”

Lucas: “He’s alone?”

“He’s the only one I see.”

“I’m moving over a block, to Margaret,” Shaffer called. “Everybody else stay put.”

A moment later Uno came up to the intersection and stopped on the corner, and with great, ostentatious nonchalance, stretched, yawned, took a good long look around, then turned toward the target. Shrake recognized that for what it was: “This is one of them,” he said, excitement riding in his voice. “He’s checking out the block. He’s got a phone in his hand, he just said something into it, so it’s turned on, or it’s a walkie-talkie. He’s turned toward the house.”

“I see him,” Shaffer said. Shaffer was a full block behind Uno, sitting at an intersection.

“She’s sent him out here to look for us,” Lucas said. “She’s not sure we’re here, but she’s worried. And she’s close. Not more than a few blocks away. I’m going to break off with Del and start turning blocks, see if we can spot her car.”

“Go,” said Shaffer. “John, come in a block. Look for people in cars.”

“The guy’s looking at the house,” Jenkins called.

JENKINS, SHRAKE, and Shaffer took turns recounting Uno’s progress down the block, and Lucas and Del started turning corners, looking for Martínez. They started north and west of the target house, while Martínez was south and east. As they went first south, and then east, they turned a block too soon and passed a block north of Martínez’s position. They never saw her car, and she never saw their truck.

MARTÍNEZ ASKED UNO, on the phone, “How close are you?”

“I’m crossing the street,” he said. “I see nobody here. There is a porch. It’s an old house. All the curtains are closed.”

“All the curtains?” She tensed.

“Yes, all the curtains. I am at the front. Should I go up?”

“You see nobody?”

“Nobody.”

She thought about it for a few seconds, but it was only Uno. “Go up,” she said.

UNO WALKED UP the porch to the door. The door had a glass panel in it, at head height. He peeked. He didn’t see anybody, but he saw a shadow, and the shadow moved.

He stepped back and put the phone to his mouth. “There is somebody inside,” he said.

Martínez closed her eyes. She said, “Is there a doorbell button?”

Uno said, “Sí.”

“Push the button, then count to thirty. If they don’t answer, it is the police. Then, fast as you can, run down Margaret Street toward the big hole,” she said. “We will catch you on the other side.”

“Push the button and count to thirty,” Uno repeated.

“Like you were waiting for an answer. Then run like the wind.”

AS SHE TALKED to him, she’d made a U-turn on Fremont and headed west, following the aerial photo on the iPad. She jogged onto Fourth Street, turned left on Hope, and as Uno shouted, “I’m running,” she pulled into a Laundromat parking lot on West Seventh.

Uno shouted, “I am one block.”

“Faster,” she shouted back. “Run faster.”

THERE WAS one car out in front of Uno, and others following on parallel streets. Jenkins ran sideways out to Cypress, jumped in his car, pulled onto Margaret with Uno now a full block ahead, drove down to Shrake, closing the gap a bit, opened the door so Shrake could climb in.

“That motherfucker has legs,” Shrake said.

“But we got wheels,” Jenkins said.

“Easy, easy,” Shaffer called. “Keep him boxed, but let him run.”

“I’m coming up to East Seventh,” Lucas said. “You want me up the hill?”

“Come up partway.”

“He’s coming up to Seventh,” one of the other agents said, from a car in front of Uno, on Margaret. “I’ve got to get out of his way. You want me to cross, or turn, or what?”

“Take a right and pull over,” Shaffer said.

“Taking the right.”

“I see you,” Lucas called. “We got him this way.”

AT THAT MOMENT, Uno bolted straight across the four-lane street, through traffic, and on down Margaret. “Holy shit, he ran straight across, he could lose us,” an agent called.

“We’re on it,” Lucas said. Del accelerated up the hill, ready to take a left on Margaret.

“I can’t see him anymore,” Jenkins said. “There’s a jog at the intersection.”

Del made the left, and up ahead they could see Uno running hard as he could, straight up the street. “Got him,” Lucas said. “He’s heading straight for Swede Hollow. Shit, he’s going down the Hollow. I bet they set this up. We need to get somebody on the other side. If he runs down, we’ll spot him from up on top.”

UNO HAD DONE his job. From the Laundromat parking lot, Martínez had seen Uno bolt across the street, and then, as he ran out of sight, the car swerving out from a curb into the turn lane, and then down Margaret.

She saw Lucas quite clearly, a handset to his mouth.

She turned to Tres and said, “Ah, well.”

“¿Qué?”

LUCAS AND DEL parked at the top of the park bluff, and ten seconds later Shrake and Jenkins arrived, Shrake with his binoculars, and they followed the flight of Uno down the hill, through the trees, and across the park. It was a long, hard run, and Uno fell at one point, and apparently lost his phone. He scrambled back to pick it up, and then ran on.

Shaffer’s team was out in front of him. As Lucas called out his location on the handset, another of the agents came back and said, “We got him. We see him. We’re out of the car, we’re going to run down the track here, try to keep him in sight.”

Shaffer asked, “You see anybody following him?”

“Nobody. There’s no way anybody could, unless they were waiting in here. I think they’re probably on the other side of East Seventh.”

“I don’t think you’ll see them,” Lucas said. “She broke us out. She knows we’re on to her.”

“Should we take him?” one of the agents asked.

“Where’s he headed?” Shaffer asked.

“He’s running down the track alongside the creek. He’ll be coming out at East Seventh in a minute or so. He’s really motoring. I can’t keep up, but he’s not running off into the trees, anyway.”

Lucas called, “He’s out of sight from here. We’re coming your way.”

Another agent: “I’m out of the car on East Seventh. I saw him, he’s still on the track.”

Shaffer said, “Keep out of sight. Let him run for a minute. Let’s box him again at East Seventh.”

UNO WAS in good shape and a fast runner, but as the track led under a bridge, he paused, caught his breath, got on the phone and called for help, but got no answer. He thought that perhaps Martínez and Tres had been caught, somehow, and that he might be on his own. He thought about it, saw the tall buildings ahead, remembered what Martínez had said about finding him downtown, and turned that way.

He came to a fence at a railroad track, tried to climb it, got his jacket snagged, pulled the jacket off and threw it over, then climbed over after it. The jacket was a mess from a couple of falls he’d taken while running through the park, but he picked it up, ran across the tracks, careful not to break an ankle in the rough gravel, threw the jacket over another fence, climbed the fence, pulled the jacket back on, and jogged toward a car wash.

LUCAS AND DEL, in Del’s car, followed by Shrake and Jenkins, were rolling down East Seventh, pulled in by Shaffer’s agents, when one of the agents called, shouting, and said, “We got a problem. We got a problem. He just jumped the fence around the railroad track, and I’m not sure, but it looks like he’s got a fuckin’ Uzi slung over his back.”

Shaffer came back: “An Uzi? You’re sure?”

“It’s a short black gun with what looks like a thirty-mag hanging under it. Hang on, hang on, Jack is coming up, he’s got glasses.”

A moment later, a new voice: “This is Jack. He jumped another fence and he’s running up toward that car wash place, and I’m looking at him, and it—That’s a Mac-10, not an Uzi.”

Shaffer said, “Lucas? What do you think?”

“We’re busted. She sent him out there to see what would happen. If he’s got a Mac-10, I don’t think we can let him get into town. There’s some big parking lots on the other side of the car wash. If he runs across those, we’d have him out in the open.”

“I agree.” Shaffer began directing traffic, sending four cars on the other side of the parking lot, calling, “We’re coming, Jack. You and Roy follow on foot, come up behind him so he can’t run back into the park.”

Jack called, “He’s walking now. He’s walking around the car wash.”

UNO WAS looking around, saw nobody. He stopped, put the phone, which was still open, to his ear and asked, “Can you hear me? Can you hear me, Mama?”

There was nobody on the other end. He heard what might have been traffic, but no human being.

He looked around, and started walking, out onto a huge parking lot, toward a squat five- or six-story redbrick office building. He was thinking, now, They have left me. Not that they had been caught, or that they were waiting, but that he’d been abandoned. He felt like crying, but hadn’t cried since he was six, and so he didn’t. And there glimmered in his heart the possibility that they were waiting for him, just around the redbrick building….

The glimmer of possibility died as he came up to it, and a man emerged at the side of the building and shouted, “Police. Stop.”

Another man, in a dark uniform, stepped out with a long arm of some kind, a rifle.

Uno had been born to have this moment happen. There had been other possibilities, that he might have wound up as a dirt farmer, or stuck in a barrio, scratching out a small life, but he’d chosen the narcos and they’d chosen him, and this moment was always going to come.

He stripped off his jacket and threw it on the ground.

The man out in front of him was shouting, “Stop! Stop!”

Uno shouted back: “Chingate!”

Then with a single motion, long practice, he swept the Mac-10 from behind his back up into the shooting position, raking off the safety and tightening his finger against the trigger, the stuttering burst beginning as the muzzle came up….

They’d seen the move and the man who’d first shouted at him dropped behind a car, and Uno saw him dropping and then the first impacts came, in his chest, turning him, and then…

Nothing.

SHAFFER WAS SCREAMING, “He’s down, he’s down, everybody okay? Everybody okay?”

Uno’s burst from the Mac-10 had mostly spattered off the parking lot, ricocheting nobody knew where, but nobody, other than Uno, had been hurt.

Uno was dead; the cops stood back, in a circle around his short, thin crumpled body, and a couple of sirens started—St. Paul cops responding to reports of a shooting. Lucas arrived with Del, Jenkins, and Shrake, and as they walked across the parking lot, they could see his face, looking up at the blue sky and the summer clouds. Shaffer said, “Mac-10. Haven’t seen one for a while.”

And Shrake said, “The kid had legs.”