They both saw the horror on his face, heard it in his voice. “Mara Salvatrucha.” He raised blind eyes to their faces. “My brother was working with those animals? This is a fabrication. Why are you blackening my brother’s name, my mother’s name?”
If Anna hadn’t been certain Dr. Hayman was not involved in any of this, she was certain now. But he’d guessed what his mother’s family was involved in and hated it; his disgust was honest and gut-felt. But how could a man accept that his twin brother was one of the monsters? She said, “Professor Salazar was with them in the cave, sir. We believe he had them trash his house so he could claim they had abducted him. When he offered to confess it all to us, one of the gang members shot him.”
Dr. Hayman looked pale, the confident, self-assured academic gone as well as his rage, leaving him looking pinched and confused. “I know nothing of this, nothing.”
He began pacing, still in his lovely gray cashmere winter coat. He looked like someone had punched him in the face. “So they’ve managed to ruin me at last, ruin me utterly, my brother and Maria Rosa, who took him away to Spain with her when we were children and left me here with my drunken criminal of a father. She wanted to save herself from being beaten to death. She did not care that she was leaving me in his care, damn her to hell.
“Of course, she couldn’t leave me out of it. There were hints, I’m not stupid, but I chose to ignore them as I did not tell her my father never struck me as he had her, that indeed, he was proud of me.
“Yes, I chose to think we were all civilized. When Maria Rosa mentioned Rafael would very much like to come to Stanislaus as a visiting professor for a year, I did not suspect there was anything more to it, none of this drug business, surely not those violent gangs from El Salvador.” He paused, stared blindly at nothing in particular, and said more to himself than to them, “Of course I cannot keep my directorship at Stanislaus; I will not even be able to teach anywhere. The government will hound me, try to implicate me in all this, even though I am innocent.” He focused on Anna now. “You know I am innocent, don’t you?”
“I imagine you are.” Anna also wanted to say, But you knew, you had to know he was here for another purpose, you had to, but she only stood quietly, watching him. It was out of her hands now.
“Ah, but what kind of man am I, worrying about myself while Rafael may be dying? I must call Maria Rosa in Spain and tell her what has happened. She will blame me, of course. It is like her. Will she admit to me what she has done? Will she admit she told Rafael to get himself kidnapped to cause confusion and distraction until she could rescue him? She never tells me anything, so why should she begin now?”
He walked back to the elevator, not looking back.
Ward Place, N.W.
Washington, D.C.
Tuesday afternoon
The falling snow helped mask the lousy upkeep at Melissa Ivy’s red-brick apartment building. They walked past the triple row of black mailboxes up to the third floor and down the battered wooden hallway to apartment 3B.
Melissa opened the door immediately, since Savich had called her ten minutes before.
She’d changed since the morning into more comfortable clothes, her midriff and navel not on display, perhaps in deference to Peter’s death. Instead she was decked out in loose dark blue sweats, her pink UGGs back on her small feet. Her hair in a single thick braid that fell over her shoulder.
“I’ve already looked for videos that aren’t mine, but I haven’t found any.”
Savich smiled at her. “Tell you what, Agent Sherlock will look around while we talk, how’s that?” He didn’t wait for an answer, simply nodded to Sherlock and walked to the sofa.
He heard Sherlock moving around in the kitchen. If there were any videos or compact disks Peter had secreted away here in Melissa’s apartment, Sherlock would find them.
“Tell me, Ms. Ivy, did you notice if Tommy and Peter had any more money than usual lately?”
She blinked her marvelously thick darkened lashes at him. “More money?”
“Yeah, more cash. On display, for you to see.”
She pursed her pink lips. “Well, Tommy took me to buy my Christmas present and said I could have whatever I wanted, that I didn’t even have to look at prices. Of course, that was a crazy thing to say at Tiffany, so I looked for something I thought he could afford, and asked for these earrings. He did pay cash, I remember, because I saw him pull the bills out of his wallet, all hundreds. I asked him if he was trying to impress me with that stash, but he only smiled and told me I was beautiful and I deserved it. You mean like that?”
Savich nodded. “That’s exactly what I mean. When was this?”
“A week before Christmas, I remember, because Tiffany was really crowded. It was so fun, actually buying something expensive in there with all the rich people.”
She sounded like an orphan, and he wondered if she wasn’t laying it on a bit thick. Probably.
“Did Tommy usually have lots of cash with him?”
“No, that’s the first time I ever saw so much. He usually paid with a credit card, but after that we went to a couple of really expensive restaurants, and he paid cash there, too. Why, Agent Savich?”
He only smiled and asked her, “Then why did you leave him, Melissa, for Peter? Sounds like Tommy treated you well, gave you an expensive Christmas present, bought you whatever you wanted.” He pointed to the pearl earrings in her perfect ears. “I’d say he was head over heels in love with you.”
She searched his face, as if suspecting him of sarcasm, and seeing none, she shrugged. “His grandparents hated me. His Aunt Marian hated me, too. His sisters, though, thought I was beautiful and wanted me to do their makeup. Tommy told me not to worry about it, said we didn’t need his family, but I knew he did, and that I’d never fit in with them. Then Peter was there and he wanted me, too, and his parents were really nice to me.”
He heard Sherlock move into Melissa’s bedroom.
“What about Peter? Did he have a lot of cash?”
“Peter always seemed to, even before we went together. He paid for nearly everything in cash. I asked him once if he wasn’t afraid of being mugged and having all that money stolen. He laughed, said cash was better than having The Man know everything he paid for, whatever that meant.”
He looked toward the pile of compact disks next to her stereo. “All music?”
“Yes. When you said you wanted to look for a video, I looked through them all first. I listened to the ones I wasn’t sure about. They’re all music, I’m positive.”
He and Sherlock left Melissa’s apartment an hour later with nothing to show for the effort.
Then Sherlock mentioned the SUV Delsey had seen in their neighborhood, and Savich remembered. “I’ve asked Davis Sullivan over tonight for spaghetti. After dinner we’ve got work to do.”
“I’ll make you a deal,” she said. “You make the spaghetti sauce, and I’ll let Sean help me make an apple pie. What have you got in mind for our after-dinner work?”
He grinned at her as he gunned the Porsche’s engine. Ah, sweet music to his ears. “We’re gonna rock ’n’ roll.”
Georgetown, Washington, D.C.
Tuesday evening
Savich let out a contented sigh when he was finally seated at the dinner table with Sherlock, Delsey, and Agent Davis Sullivan, Delsey’s pilot from Maestro, and her date for tonight.
He said, “Davis, I hear you’re not new to the Bonhomie Club. You visited with Quinlan and Sally?”
“Yep, heard our boy play. He makes that sax wail.”
“Who’s playing tonight?”
“Ariel,” Davis said as he spooned some of Savich’s meatballs and sauce over his spaghetti. “I could sit for hours and listen to her play. Talk about floating you in the clouds; she mellows you out better than any recreational drug back in college, not that I ever tried any, nat
urally, or inhaled.”
Delsey said, “I thought you liked Vincent and Big Escape, people with nose rings and tattoos.”
He patted her hand. “I love it all, even that retro stuff you like to blast. Sherlock, the spaghetti and meatballs sure smell good. Thank you.”
“Nope, not me. Savich is the spaghetti impresario in this household.”
Davis grinned at Savich. “If the sauce and meatballs taste as good as they smell, Savich, you’ve got to give me your recipe. Here, Delsey, load up.” He passed her the meatballs and sauce and spooned Parmesan on top of his spaghetti. “I haven’t heard you play yet, Savich. Quinlan told me you sing country and western and play the guitar? And you write a lot of your own stuff?”
“He sure does,” Sherlock said as she forked up a bite of spinach salad. “We promise we’ll invite you next time he plays.”
Delsey took a bite of her spaghetti, closed her eyes, and murmured, “I’m having a spiritual moment here. Dillon, this is seriously excellent.”
Davis said, “That’s it, then, I gotta have the recipe, keep the cute girl here in my corner.”
The garlic toast was passed around, room made on everyone’s plate for a bite or two of spinach salad, the Chianti poured. Sherlock felt herself begin to relax. She hadn’t realized how tense she was. She took a deep breath, felt her shoulders ease. She watched Delsey and Davis argue and laugh, and they sounded pretty relaxed, too. Relaxed and relieved.
Davis raised his wineglass. “Here’s to the incredible drug bust in Maestro today. And no agents were seriously wounded.”
After everyone drank, Delsey said, “I’m still amazed it was really Professor Salazar. I don’t understand it. He’s a world-famous classical guitarist; he’s feted everywhere he goes. And he’s a drug lord? I still can’t get my brain around it. The gods blessed him with everything.”
Savich said, “I’ve learned that for some people family trumps everything. He’s a Lozano, don’t forget, weaned on the Lozano family business by his mother.”
Delsey said, “I’m going to punch Griffin out the next time I see him. I can’t believe he was crawling through that cave hours after he was shot in his leg. I was letting him have it when Anna grabbed the phone away and said the wound wasn’t bad at all, and not to feel sorry for him.” She grinned over her forkful of spaghetti. “Then they both laughed.”
One minute Delsey was chewing on the incredible garlic toast, and the next she was standing over the DEA agent dead in her bathtub, then hurled into the stark terror when the gang member was straddling her, holding the knife to her throat in her bed at the B&B. She’d be dead if not for Griffin. She hadn’t fallen apart, she’d controlled her fear, she’d handled things, she’d been ready to fight back, and now it was over.
She was alive, Griffin was alive, Anna was alive. She didn’t have to fight her fear anymore. She trembled suddenly, felt the shakes start deep in her belly, as cold as the snow falling steadily outside the dining room windows. She hated the thin-as-paper voice that came out of her mouth. “It’s all my fault, if I hadn’t drunk like an idiot Friday night, then—”
“Then what?” Sherlock said. “The DEA agent’s body wouldn’t have been in your bathtub?”
“Well, that’s true, but if I hadn’t gone home early from that dreadful party, I wouldn’t have never seen a body and I—you—all of us would never have been involved.”
Davis chewed a meatball and swallowed. He leaned into her until she looked at him. “Hang it up, Delsey. None of it is your fault. You’re blaming yourself for going home to your own place?”
He eyed her, saw that everything he had said was like blah, blah, blah in her ears. He put his arm around her and gave her a good shake. “Look at me.”
She looked.
“Your brother made it through this, and so did you. They broke up a huge drug-smuggling operation today, seized millions of dollars’ worth of drugs and weapons destined to be sold to kids on the streets. They captured or put an end to the people responsible. That’s as good as it gets for us. You helped with that. You should be proud of your brother, and of yourself.”
So stark, yet it worked. Delsey managed to nod and felt the ice in her belly begin to melt.
“That’s better. Now eat some more of Savich’s incredible spaghetti. The meatballs, Savich, they’re better than my mom’s, I swear.”
Delsey opted for a green bean on her plate and held it in front of her, frowning.
Sherlock said, “Go ahead, Delsey, you can eat the green bean and think at the same time.”
She picked at a piece of garlic toast instead, the green bean still staked to her fork, her spaghetti untouched. “Sherlock, I’m so sorry about last night. I mean, I put Sean in danger, and you guys—”
Sherlock rolled her eyes. “Sean is all right. He decided the evil Incan mathematician, Professor Pahuac, had tried to break in after all. That’s a character from one of his video games, and since Sean is very good at clubbing the professor with a canoe paddle, Sean said he’d go outside and stomp him. I told him Pahuac had probably already hightailed it back to his evil cave in Machu Picchu.”
A bit of laughter, a good thing. Davis put a fork of twirled spaghetti to Delsey’s mouth, and she opened up and in it went. She chewed, thoughtful.
She said, “Since the gang is all broken up in Maestro, maybe Davis and I can go to the Bonhomie Club after all; it might be good.”
Savich said, “Someone has come after you twice now, followed you out here from Maestro. You saw that stolen SUV pass by right outside here this morning.”
“You mean you don’t think it’s over, even with Salazar shot?”
“I don’t know, Delsey, but I’ve dealt with gangs like MS-13 before. What they do can seem chaotic and disorganized, or it can look that way because they follow their own rules, not ours.
“You were never a threat to them except as a witness linking two of them to Agent Racker’s death, and through him to Salazar and the whole operation. They made some big mistakes that night, and in a gang like MS-13 if you make a mistake that threatens the group, you fix it, eliminate the witnesses that made you a weak link in the chain, or the gang will cut you out themselves. Someone in the gang may still be under orders to kill you, or die himself. If that’s true, we have to stop them.”
“How are we going to do that?” Delsey asked. “What are you planning, Dillon?”
“Right now, Delsey, let’s not worry about that. Let’s all enjoy this good dinner and Davis’s lame jokes. Sherlock made an apple pie for dessert.”
Davis’s eyes glittered even though he tried to hide it, at least from Delsey, but Sherlock recognized that look. Sullivan and Dillon had indeed been planning something, but she and Delsey would have to wait to hear what Dillon had in mind. Dillon appeared to be enjoying his dinner. No meatballs, for him, of course, and not all that much spaghetti, either. He was saving room for the apple pie.
The Bonhomie Club
Washington, D.C.
Tuesday night
Marvin the Bouncer listened to Ariel’s flute float out over him soft and sad into the snowy night as he stood in the open doorway of the Bonhomie Club, his arms crossed over his chest. He was wearing only jeans, a denim shirt, and a vest, a man impervious to the cold. He wanted the patrons to know that even though he was from Savannah, he was no stinking wuss. Truth was, it was cold and getting colder, under thirty degrees now for sure, and snow was coming down steadily, white and thick as his granny’s lace curtains, in the lights around him. They always had lots of lights around the Bonhomie Club entrance, but outside their circle, it looked black as pitch, except for an occasional halo of light from the two streetlamps that still worked. The other streetlights were out again, smashed by some pork-brained kids. The neighborhood was supposed to be gentrifying, and Ms. Lilly had told him everything was right on schedule with Washington’s hundred-year p
lan.
He turned a hairy eyeball toward Sherlock—who’d told him to call her Delsey tonight—and Agent Sullivan, who was supposed to be her date. They’d gotten out of Sullivan’s truck, seemingly alone, and were trying to walk normally, tough because they probably had their SIGs pressed against their legs. Savich had told him about some Latino gang trying to kill this woman Delsey, but he still couldn’t believe any yahoos would try to kill her here of all places, or would the idiots not realize the FBI was expecting them? If those tattooed morons couldn’t figure out there’d be half a dozen FBI agents hiding around the club, they deserved all the pain that was coming to them.
Savich was in charge, so Marvin wasn’t worried. And because he wasn’t worried he hadn’t told Ms. Lilly what was going on. Savich had agreed that wouldn’t be a good idea. She was hunkered down in her office playing poker with some hotshot ragweeds from Pittsburgh, and very probably winning big.
He met Sherlock’s eyes, gave her a slight nod. He had his Dirty Harry’s big-ass .44 Magnum in his pocket, ready for action. He saw Agent Davis Sullivan turn slightly, speak to Sherlock.
Davis said low, “We’re giving them all the chances they could want. I’m thinking the gang has been called off or written Delsey off as too much trouble. I also think Delsey’s going to belt all of us for not letting her come out tonight and play.”
Sherlock said, “She’s got Sean to play with, well, along with Lucy Carlyle and his grandmother. It could still happen, Davis. Stay alert.”
It helped, Davis thought, that it was cold and snowing, so Sherlock was all bundled up. Even though she didn’t look a thing like Delsey, what with that hood pulled over her head, no one could tell if she was Delsey or Godzilla.
“Delsey kept saying she’s the Trouble Magnet, so if we wanted trouble, she should be with us.” He gave his head a shake and said, as if the words were being pulled out of his throat with pliers. “The girl’s kinda cute, though.”