The Colombian Rogue Page 18

  The burgers came, and CG lifted his head again, his eyes flashing wide as if he had just awakened from a long sleep. He began to attack his hamburger while Sam inspected his own burger.

  “Looks good,” he said and took a bite. “You not getting anything?” he asked Juan.

  “Maybe later.”

  Over the speakers, a slow song ended and a fast-tempo song began. Juan felt a tap on his shoulder and realized CG was still eating his burger. He turned and saw the woman in the yellow dress.

  “Hola,” she said.

  “Buena noches,” Juan said as the woman grabbed his hand and tugged him out toward an open area of the patio where others were moving to the music. He went with it; what bad could come of it? Besides, he knew this song and enjoyed the fast pace of it.

  From behind him, Juan just barely heard CG say, “Holy shit. Since when can Paul dance?” And when Sam didn’t say anything, CG said, “I like the new Paul 2.0. Dude’s picked up some moves!”

  Let them talk, Juan thought. He hadn’t let loose like this in a long time.

  Seeing her face up close, Juan realized that the woman across from him was definitely a ten, maybe even an eleven. She smiled at him and said her name was Klara. Her teeth were white and flawless, and her voice was soft yet somehow aggressive. He stared into her dark brown eyes and admired the suntanned skin of her cheeks. On impulse he reached out and brushed a strand of dark hair away from the side of her face, allowing his hand to caress her ear.

  She laughed and drew closer to him.

  What if she’s one of them? ELEPHAS?

  Her body was so perfect and their steps were so in sync that in that moment, he didn’t care. Let her stick me with a needle full of poison. It’d be worth it . . .

  “I’m Paul,” he said.

  She laughed again and drew close to him. He hesitated for only a moment before falling into the music and moving with her body, turning her around so that she was backing into him and he could run his fingers along the outsides of her thighs.

  Her hips moved from side to side in front of him as she tilted her head up to look at him from behind her. She was shorter than him, and he had to crane his neck forward to kiss her on the lips. Then the song ended, and Klara pulled away from him, retreating back to her table. Although her eyes dared him to come sit with her, Juan held up a finger and walked back to Sam and CG.

  “Dude,” CG said, his chin smeared with mayonnaise from his burger, “you got her to come to you. That just doesn’t happen in real life. Ever.”

  Maybe it’s a trap . . .

  Juan shrugged. He was tired of living in fear that he was only one moment away from a killer’s bullet or needle. Before he could turn and walk over to Klara’s table, his phone chimed again.

  Cali: Miss you. Do you miss me? Will you come over? Please . . . ;)

  Juan’s feet stopped him where he stood. Something was wrong. This wasn’t Cali, he knew.

  His phone chimed again, and an apartment number and address appeared. While he had never been to Cali’s place, he knew the area. It was in Getsemaní.

  It had to be a trap.

  He knew he should ask Sam to go along for backup, but CG was not in any state to be left alone. If CG tried to drive home and killed himself or someone else, Juan would feel that guilt on his shoulders.

  Shit, I never used to feel stuff like this before I had a team . . .

  So, his answer was easy.

  He’d do this alone.

  He could handle it.

  He had to.

  “I’ve got to go,” Juan said, holding up his phone.

  At first, CG looked confused. Then he nodded knowingly and nudged Sam’s arm.

  “Are you good to take him home?” Juan said.

  Sam nodded and waved his hand. “Don’t worry about us. We’ll be fine. Take care of your . . . emergency.”

  CG laughed.

  “Okay,” Juan said, not paying any attention to their words as he gave a departing look over at the woman in the yellow sundress. She looked sad when Juan held up his cell phone and made an apologetic face. Although he wished he had time to get her number, he feared what might happen to Cali if he didn’t get to her place as soon as possible. He couldn’t let anything bad happen to her.

  With a last look at the patio, Juan thought the crests and troughs of the strung-out red lights resembled long glowing snakes.

  His stomach tightened and he headed to his car.

  26

  Intrusion

  His phone chimed as he pulled off the exit ramp of the freeway and onto a residential street. The place had changed so much in his time away, he hardly recognized it anymore. Gone were the cramped apartment buildings, trashcan fires, and gritty basketball courts surrounded by chain-link fences. He now saw gurgling water fountains and chic hostels spray-painted with stunning, lifelike murals in an array of beautiful colors. There was a vibrance to the place that explained the confluence of tourists in the area. Back in the day, there would never be this many people out and about, especially at night—it wasn’t safe.

  After passing through a heavily populated town square, the road straightened out toward a stone bridge up ahead spray-painted with peacocks, and Juan glanced down at his phone to check his latest text.

  It was CG.

  Don’t forget protection.

  Juan looked at the message for an extra moment, and it probably saved his life. Had he been paying attention to the motorcycle pulling up alongside him, he would have seen it before it cut over directly in front of him, and he would have braked.

  Now he didn’t have time to stop.

  The rider turned and raised a machine pistol at his windshield half a second before the car’s front bumper struck the back tire of the motorcycle. The snub-nosed pistol spat out a tail of lead that punched into the hood of the car and snaked its way up the passenger side of the windshield as the bike flipped backward onto the car, the rider’s helmet smashing through the already weakened windshield, the figure’s legs pinwheeling backward over the top of the car as a Ferris wheel of fire and bullets shot up into the sky.

  Juan swerved sideways with a screech of rubber, and luckily no one was behind him. The car came to a halt up against the raised stone side of the bridge, and the windshield collapsed in one opaque spiderwebbed sheet onto the dashboard.

  Juan heaved the heavy piece of curved glass away from him, realizing the front of his pants were leaking hot liquid. As he struggled with the weight of it, he managed to shove the windshield outward, where it skated halfway down the front of the hood and came to a rest.

  Then he looked down at his lap where the upturned helmet of the motorcycle rider looked up at him. Long dark hair trailed out from under the visor and lay sticky upon the blood soaking his pants.

  “Hmph,” he said aloud before vomiting out his window and onto the freeway beside him.

  He had no time to stop and inspect the motorcycle or the rider’s body, so Juan just put the car in Drive; the broken windshield skidded off the side of the hood and onto the road. He picked up the helmeted head, and since it was too big for the glove box, tossed it onto the floor of the passenger seat. He could identify the assassin later. What he knew right now was that it had been a woman.

  Juan feared the head might belong to Anita Chou, and if so, Paul was really going to kill him if the two of them were an item now. And that meant that Paul was waiting at Cali’s place, ready to spring a trap on him if he managed to evade the first attempt on his life.

  I’ll definitely have to torch the car, Juan thought as he sped away from the bridge. He had been lucky that no one had been around to witness the wreck, but he knew that it wouldn’t be long before someone called the cops. He couldn’t let anything point back to him.

  Making it to Cali’s apartment faster than he would have guessed possible, Juan was already checking his gun as the car came to a complete stop.

  He wondered if he ought to scout out the backyard or just rush the front door. Fro
m what Cali had told him, her apartment was at ground level, the bottom right door of a four-door, two-story house that had been converted into an apartment building.

  He didn’t have time.

  Screw any traps his brother might have set—he was going in.

  Sprinting around the side of the house, he cleared the porch steps in a single bound. As he put his ear against the thin-looking apartment door, Juan thought he heard a perverse panting and licking sound as well as a woman gasping or moaning softly from within.

  He kicked the door in, his shoulder brushing it as he crouch-entered the dark apartment, gun raised in front of him.

  There was light up ahead, but he couldn’t see immediately below and to the sides of him. He didn’t see the figure that struck him against the chest, rising from the floor to tackle him, and he landed on the floor with a hard crack that sounded as if his body might break through to the crawlspace below.

  A concussive blast of hoarse barks sounded directly in his ears, and hot, stinky breath clouded up against his face. Saliva splashed upon his cheek, ran backward into his nostrils and down through his clenched teeth.

  A light came on from somewhere above him, and Juan was temporarily blinded.

  “Paul? What the hell is going on?” he heard Cali say.

  The back of Juan’s head ached where it rested upon the old hardwood floor as he blinked his eyes to clear the stars from them.

  “Schwarz. Down. Come here.”

  The weight was retracted from Juan’s chest as a German shepherd padded over to where Cali stood and sat protectively against her legs. She held a sawed-off shotgun in her outstretched hand.

  Juan tried to get up, but his lower back sent up a warning pain so intense that he just sort of wriggled in place for a moment. Then he turned himself over and got to his hands and knees. “Are you okay?” Juan said as he placed a palm against the wall to right himself, leaving behind a red handprint on the light-colored paint. He saw that Cali was wearing gray polyester pants and a white t-shirt.

  “Am I okay?” she said, seeing his front side clearly for the first time since his intrusion. “Fucking A, you’re bleeding!”

  Juan looked down and saw the soaked dark red of his shirt and pants. He waved his hands emphatically and slid his gun back under his shirt. “It’s not mine.”

  “Then what the hell died in your lap? Fuck. There’s blood all over the floor. And the wall. And even . . .” She had seen the bloody footprints her dog had tracked behind him after he was called back to his mistress’s side. “Schwarz!”

  The German shepherd tucked his head under his front paws and gave a low whine. Then he started to lick the blood off his muzzle.

  Cali smacked him on the muscular shoulder. “To the tub,” she said, and the dog padded off toward a door Juan guessed led to the bathroom.

  She turned back to Juan, her face set in stone. “What’s going on?”

  “Your phone,” Juan said. “You were sending these texts—”

  “I haven’t seen my phone all evening,” she said. “I must have lost it somewhere this afternoon.”

  “That’s why I came. I thought you were in trouble.”

  “So, what? You murdered someone with a knife?”

  Juan raised his hands. “On my way over, a woman on a motorcycle tried to kill me. I ran into her and . . . I guess her head just kind of fell into my lap.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said. “Like most women who fall for you?”

  Juan couldn’t understand why she was so angry all of a sudden. “Look, I don’t know what I said or did wrong but—”

  He was interrupted by footsteps outside on the porch. A stifled gasp came from the open doorway. “¡Dios mío! Are you alright?”

  “Everything is okay,” Cali said as she brushed past Juan, putting on a smile as she tried to block the door with her body.

  The woman outside was middle-aged with creases of concern lining her face. “Should I call the police?”

  “Oh no, I’m fine. My dog spilled a bucket of red goop. I’ll clean it up.”

  The kindly woman made to step forward, but Cali blocked her. “I can help clean. I am a house cleaner.”

  “No need,” Cali said. “I’ll get it. Thank you, though.”

  The woman looked past Cali’s shoulder. “Is that your boyfriend?”

  “A friend,” Cali said.

  Hurried footsteps sounded from the apartment above them, and a male voice hollered down the front of the building over the short balcony. “Everything alright down there?”

  “Yes. Fine, thanks. Sorry for the noise. My dog.”

  “Sounded like someone gettin’ killed,” the man’s voice trailed off. It was followed by the closing of a door. “It’s okay,” the man’s muffled voice said through the ceiling. “No, said it was just a dog.”

  The kindly woman looked at Cali. “You sure?”

  Cali smiled and nodded.

  “What kind of goop is it, anyway?” the woman said, but Cali had already started to close the door, the broken doorframe accepting the door with protests of crunching wood.

  Cali pressed her back against the closed door. “I am going to kill you.”

  Juan gave her a look that asked, What for?

  Then they heard the whoop of a siren as a police car pulled up to the house.

  “I really am going to kill you,” she said.

  27

  Disturbance

  Cali didn’t kill Juan, but had he not slid a rug over the bloody floor and moved the hall tree with its single hanging rain jacket in front of the bloody handprint on the wall, who could say what would have happened next.

  She opened the door.

  “Señorita, I got a call about a disturbance. May I come in?”

  Cali looked over her shoulder. “Come in? But it’s a mess in here.”

  “Señorita, is everything okay here?”

  “Yes. Fine.”

  “Then you won’t mind if I come in for just a second?”

  Cali opened the door carefully.

  The policeman stopped. “What happened to the door?”

  “Oh, that? My cousins came over earlier today. They were playing around and near broke the door in.”

  “Looks like they succeeded.” The man’s eyes narrowed upon hers. Perspiration slicked his tanned forehead and cheeks. “Tell me. They big cousins?”

  “The biggest,” Cali said. “They like to watch the American football. Wish they could play it, but there are no leagues like that here.”

  “Violent sport, American football. Tell them they ought to take up real football. That’s what real athletes play.” The man chuckled and looked down at his slightly protruding gut and then nervously to the side as if embarrassed. It seemed to Cali that the man had bought her lie.

  However, something caught the man’s attention on the wall behind the hall tree. When he reached out a hand to knock aside the rain jacket, Cali tugged at his other wrist so he was pulled into the room. Luckily the rug didn’t slip.

  “Well, come in,” she said.

  “Uh yes,” the policeman said. His eyes glanced about the room. “You live alone here, Señorita . . .”

  “Echevarría,” she said. And then, “No, I have a dog.”

  “Oh? I’ve got a dog. What’s his name?”

  Cali didn’t want to say his name because she knew he would come trotting out of the bathroom leaving faint bloody pawprints behind him. Speaking of pawprints . . . She glanced down at the now-clean floor. Paul must have wiped them up, she thought with relief.

  The policeman was looking at a picture on a bookcase of Cali sitting on the grass with an arm around a young German shepherd puppy. She had a pretty smile on her face that Cali thought looked fake or weird. Under the picture, written in black block letters, was Cali + Schwarz.

  “Schwarz,” the man said aloud, butchering the proper German pronunciation.

  Cali heard Schwarz’s excited breathing and the light padding of his pawprints on the hardwood f
loor. She raised a palm to her face. Am I going to have to knock out this policeman now? Or let Paul get his ass hauled to jail . . .

  “Good boy,” the policeman said, scratching Schwarz behind the ears. “Interesting name. Schwarz, huh?”

  “It’s Schwarz,” Cali corrected. “It’s German for black. On account of his being able to move silently through the night while chasing down his target. He’s a decommissioned police dog.”

  The policeman nodded as if he now had even more respect for the dog. “He’s a fine dog.”

  And didn’t leave bloody footprints this time, she didn’t say aloud.

  “And he’s the only other inhabitant?”

  She gave her best smile, hoping it didn’t look too fake or cheesy. “As far as I know.” She laughed.

  The policeman looked over at the sitting room at the black-and-white horror film playing on the TV. A woman was begging a monster not to kill her.

  The monster killed her.

  “Can’t stand those damn scary movies,” the policeman said with a shake of his head.

  “Sometimes I don’t realize how loud it is,” Cali said with a shrug. She walked over and turned off the TV. “And then Schwarz starts barking because he doesn’t know it’s just a movie. That was probably the disturbance you got called about.”

  The policeman fished a business card from his shirt pocket and handed it to Cali. “You see or hear anything out of the ordinary, you give me a call back, okay?”

  She said she would.

  The policeman turned and started for the door, but stopped abruptly.

  Please don’t say you have to use the bathroom . . .

  “I was gonna say—” he started to say when his radio squawked. A female voice ran off a short numeric code Cali recognized as a traffic accident, and then an address by a bridge.

  “That’s nearby,” the policeman said as he picked up the walkie. “This is Juan Santiago, copy. I’m not far. Heading over.”

  “Copy,” the woman’s voice said, and the policeman replaced the walkie at his belt.

  “Juan Santiago, huh? Like the smuggler?” Cali asked.