For the two hours that remained before Bern had to leave, they continued to concentrate on the lengthy reports that Jude had provided on his meetings with Sabella and Baida in Ciudad del Este.
As dusk fell, the evening rains came in on rumbles of thunder. There was no wind, and the rain fell straight down and hard, slapping the thick canopy of trees in the park as if it were popping on canvas awnings, a monsoon sound that distracted them from their desperate concentration. They stopped talking and stared out the open windows as the last of the purple light deepened into night, and the mesmerizing sounds of the rain-splashed streets evoked in each of them closely guarded memories.
Finally, Susana broke the silence.
“There’s no reason to think you’ll be in any danger,” she said. She had been pacing back and forth in front of the sofa as they talked, but she had stopped now to stare out at the rain. Bern was still sitting in one of the armchairs, where he had been flicking through pages on the laptop, reading from the CDs of Jude’s reports.
“We know nothing about the guy,” she went on, “which makes people like us nervous, though there’s no real indication that we should be. Obviously, he’s been helpful to Jude, had access to the encrypted cell number. No one else had that.”
Bern looked at his watch. He backed out of the program and then popped the CD out of the laptop. He put it in a clear plastic envelope, stood, and handed it to Susana.
“I’ll do the best I can,” he said. “I’ll try not to screw it up.”
Susana didn’t react to the last remark.
“Lex’s people will be trying to pick up surveillance,” she went on, “so you need to stay right there at the statue the whole time. You get inside a club or near a street musician, it’ll play hell with our audio pickup. If this guy wants to leave, don’t. And remember, you’re going to want to do everything differently now. If he wants to talk in Spanish, say no. You don’t have to explain. If he wants to continue anything ‘the way we’ve always done-’”
“Then I say no. I want to change it. And I don’t explain anything.”
“Exactly,” she said. “The implication is that you’ve got your reasons, and they’re none of his business. Jude pulled that kind of shit on people all the time, and my guess is that this guy is already very familiar with it. That gives you a lot of room to maneuver.”
Bern nodded. He was surprised at the absence of butterflies. As the two hours had dwindled, he had become increasingly focused, and with that had come an odd kind of serenity. He noticed it. Didn’t understand it. But he didn’t dwell on it, either, gratefully accepting it for what it was. He was okay. He could do this. There was so much to lose that there was no realistic way that he could shoulder the weight of it. That realization was liberating.
He told the taxi driver to drop him at the corner of Florencia, and he began walking toward Genova along Londres. The rains had passed and the streets and sidewalks glistened in the city’s lights. He couldn’t just jump out of a taxi and go right into it. He wanted to feel the pavement first, move along the sidewalks, walk through the smells and sounds. He hadn’t even been out of Jude’s apartment in twenty-four hours, and it was beginning to feel as though he was orbiting the city rather than living in it.
As soon as he passed Amberes, the crowds picked up and the feeling of impending carnival increased with every doorway he passed. The district’s wise guys smoked and lounged along the sidewalks, which were crowded with young clubgoers and hangers-on. A solitary woman with the lifeless expression of someone who saw it all every evening watched him pass by as she smoked a cigarette and held the leash of a mongrel who was shitting at the base of a solitary ficus growing in a circle of bare dirt.
At Genova, the evening was in full swing. The street had long ago been closed to automobile traffic, and an island of garden plantings and palms ran down its center. Both sides were lined with outdoor cafes and restaurants, clubs, bars, hotels, and art galleries and antique shops. The crowd was roughly divided among three groups: those curious folk who came here to taste the spicier side of the city’s nightlife, those who wanted to sell them something, and those who wanted to prey on them. Like all streets of this kind in major cities the world over, none of the motives ever changed.
As Bern moved through the crowd headed in the direction of Paseo de la Reforma, he was aware of being the watcher and of being watched. He wanted to glimpse the statue of the naked samba dancer before Mingo had the chance to see him. He wanted at least that much of an advantage.
He heard the carnival beat of Club Cuica well before he saw its sign, and he moved closer to the rail of a sidewalk cafe to get a better angle on the palmy median of the esplanade. Finally, through sporadic gaps in the bobbing heads of the pedestrians, he glimpsed the bronze dancer raised on a stone pedestal a couple of feet high. Cautiously, he moved ahead, then stopped outside the door of an art gallery where two shoe-shine boys had squatted down on their boxes, taking a break from the crowd. They watched the stream of nightlife with bleary disinterest while they ate red Popsicles that dripped on the stones between their feet.
Then Bern saw him, hanging close to the statue, a well-dressed young man, perhaps in his late twenties. His hair was carefully barbered, and he had the comfortable good looks of a sophisticated capitalino, a man who understood the mysteries of the city where he had lived all of his life. Seemingly unconcerned about having to wait, he leaned a shoulder against the hard thigh of the nude statue and watched the women coming and going through the doors of Club Cuica. Bern liked him immediately.
Without hesitating further, Bern cut through the crowd and approached the young man. He instantly saw the recognition in the young man’s eyes.
“Hey, Judas,” Mingo said, straightening up as they shook hands. He threw a look around with a half shrug. “This is a strange way to do it, huh?”
“A little,” Bern said. He could see Mingo looking at him closely.
“What’s the deal?” Mingo asked. “What happened to you?”
“I was hurt a little,” Bern said. “I’ve been recuperating.”
Mingo’s eyes opened in surprise. “No shit? They shot you?”
“Look,” Bern said, “what’s the story here?”
“Yeah, okay, you want to go somewhere so we can talk?”
“Got to do it right here.”
Mingo’s eyes flickered, and Bern could see him trying to figure out the logic of it, why Jude would want that. But then he nodded, accepting it. He glanced around and hunched his shoulders a little in an unconscious gesture of confidentiality, then moved closer to Bern.
He was wearing an expensive suit without a tie. He had a very precise coal black mustache, which complemented his handsome features. Just behind his head, one of the naked breasts of the luscious samba dancer shone brightly, its dark patina worn away to a clean brassy shine by the nightly caresses of randy young men.
Mingo raised his eyebrows with a knowing look. He shifted his weight and leaned in closer. Close enough for Bern to catch a whiff of cologne.
“I did what you said to do,” Mingo rasped. “ Tuvimos cuidado, Judas. Ver-ry careful, okay?”
Bern nodded.
“It took us a while,” Mingo went on, “but my capitalinas, they are very clever girls, very light, like moths. They went where you said to go; they did the things you said to do. And, of course, they were very inventive, too.”
The shoe-shine boys appeared in front of them and one said something in Spanish to Mingo, who nodded casually and kept talking as he ruffled the kid’s hair affectionately and put an already-polished shoe up on one of the little wooden stands. Bern shook his head at the other boy.
“I have found a woman who has the thing you want,” Mingo said. He waited for a response from Bern.
Bern’s heart fluttered. “Oh?”
Mingo reacted subtly. Something in Bern’s reaction. Mingo had expected something different? Something more?
“And?” Bern asked.
Mingo carefully handed him a piece of paper. Taking his cue from Mingo’s caution, Bern surreptitiously unfolded it, read what was there, and then looked at Mingo. He needed to react. Mingo was anticipating something, as if the information was momentous.
But Bern wasn’t quick enough. Mingo’s eyes scrambled quickly over Bern’s face, sensing that something wasn’t right. The shoe-shine boy tapped his foot, and Mingo looked down, adjusting his foot on the stand.
The second boy very casually went around his kneeling partner, working on Mingo’s shoe, and stared at the statue behind Mingo. The boy on his knees opened the side of his box to take out a tin of polish as the second boy reached up and took Mingo’s arm.
Mingo looked around to see who it was just as the kneeling boy came up with a glistening chrome pistol the size of the boy’s head. Holding the huge gun with both small hands, he heaved it up, his arms straight out, pointed it at Mingo, and fired. The recoil was so powerful that the boy’s thin little arms flew up over his head, almost out of control, and the sound of the report was as deafening as a cannon blast.
Bern watched, frozen, as the little boy with the gun then brought the pistol down again and jammed it into Mingo’s stomach while the second boy, holding his arm, kept the stunned young man from lunging away. The second and third shots were loud, but muffled, and drove Mingo into the naked embrace of the samba dancer. The fourth, fifth, and sixth shots, all buried in the depths of Mingo’s torso, blew blood and viscera twenty feet away.
It all happened before Bern could even draw a breath of astonishment.
Women screamed and people scattered from the samba dancer. The music in Club Cuica pounded away, but in an instant, there was no one there to hear it. The two shoe-shine boys ran as if they had thrown a ball and broken a window, leaving behind the bloody chrome gun at the dancer’s bare feet.
Mingo had been thrown back into the palmettos by the force of the rapid blasts, and only his well-shined shoes and expensive trousers protruded from the bed of ivy.
Then Bern ran, too. He was the last to run, and he headed for the darkest streets in Mexico City.