Southtown

Page 33

I crept around the corner and could just make out Jem’s shape toward the end of the walkway.
His back was to me. He stood frozen, looking at something—perhaps Sam Barrera’s body below.
As quietly as I could, I cal ed, “Jem.”
No reply.
Stirman must have missed him. Stirman had given up when he heard the alarms. The police cars would be heading this way. It couldn’t take them long.
“Jem,” I said. “Come on—I’l get you out of here.”
I stepped closer and froze.
Jem wasn’t staring over the edge. He was staring at Wil Stirman, who was crouching in front of him at the edge of the walkway.
He was tel ing Jem something, pointing his gun at the boy’s feet. I could’ve sworn he was giving Jem a lecture.
Stirman saw me. He rose, calmly. We leveled our guns at each other.
I could hear police cars now. Tires slashing through water, turning onto Jones. They were running without sirens, but I knew they were cops. There is something unmistakable about the sound of police engines.
“It’s over,” I told Stirman. “Let Jem go back to his mother.”
Stirman blinked slowly. He seemed to be losing his grip on consciousness.
A single police light flashed—circling once across the neon skywalk and the face of the West Tower. An officer must have hit the switch accidental y while getting out of his car.
The light snapped Stirman back to his senses. He looked around. He was backed into a corner, forty feet in the air.
“Tel me where the money is,” he said.
“It’s too late for that,” I said. “You’l never get out of the building.”
“I owe Soledad. I can’t give up.”
“It isn’t giving up. It’s deciding to live. If you run, you’l die.”
Down in front of the museum, car doors were opening.
I had to get Jem away from Stirman. I had to get him out of the line of fire.
Stirman held my eyes. He seemed to understand what I was thinking.
He put his hand on Jem’s shoulder, gently pushed him toward me. “Go on, boy.”
Jem dug in his heels. His hand was closed, as if he were holding something small . “But . . .”
“Go on,” Stirman ordered.
Jem shook his head stubbornly. “But you told me—”
“It’s al right.” Stirman’s voice cracked. “Just go on, now.”
When Jem was final y safe behind me, Stirman said, “Now tel me about the cash. Quick.”
I didn’t see what difference it would make. I told him where the money was.
Understanding dawned on Stirman’s face—the sense that what I said had to be true. “Goddamn Fred Barrow.”
I imagined the police inside the building, the slow pulse of the glass elevator as it rose through the gal eries, fil ed with heavily armed men.
Stirman took one last look at Jem—hesitating long enough to erase any chance of escape.
“Bear witness, Jem,” he said. “Be good to your mother, hear?”
Then he jumped. The drop should have been enough to break his legs, but he hit the roof of the lower gal ery on solid footing and cleared the other side, dropping into the darkness behind the museum. There was at least a square mile of woods and flooded riverbanks back there. The police would have to search it on foot. But they would find him. I was sure of that.
Jem stared at the spot where Stirman had disappeared—wet treetops hissing in the rain.
I wanted to put my hand on his shoulder, but I sensed the barrier he was putting up. He wanted no more hand-holding, no comforting.
“He won’t come back,” I said.
“I know.”
His tone wasn’t what I expected from an eight-year-old who’d just had a conversation with evil. He sounded wistful. He wore the same expression he’d worn the night we watched his mother’s van go floating away down Rosil io Creek.
He slipped his hand into his pocket, depositing whatever he was holding.
Before I could ask what it was, I heard a groan from the roof below us. A man’s voice said, “Hel .”
“Stay here,” I told Jem.
I lowered myself over the railing. Stirman had done it. How hard could it be?
I dropped.
Stupid, Navarre.
I lost my footing immediately and slid down the slick roof. I would have gone over the edge and into the skylights below had I not caught the wet bottom rung of a service ladder. Slowly, I managed to crawl back up to where Sam Barrera was lying on his back, his arm bent underneath him at an ugly angle.
“Damn bastard,” he muttered. “You get him, Fred?”
I sat next to him, too exhausted to correct his ragged memory. “Yeah. I got him.”
That seemed to comfort the old man. He put his head back and let the rain fal on his face. Police were popping up in al the windows of the museum now—SWAT team members on the skywalk, aiming assault rifles at me.
“Thanks,” I told Sam, “for trying to save us up there.”
“Did I do that?”
“Yeah, you did.”
“I always was pretty damn brave,” Barrera said. “I don’t know about taking the money, though. It feels wrong.”
“Maybe it is,” I admitted.
“And the baby?”
I looked at him, and asked careful y, “What about him?”
“Did your wife get him out okay?”
I was silent for a long time as the police moved in, DeLeon now visible above us, not looking happy, or in any hurry to cal off her firing squad.
“Yeah, Erainya got him out,” I told Barrera. “The baby is fine.”
I looked up at Ana DeLeon in the broken glass and neon. I raised my hands in surrender.
Chapter 25
The plane was a twin-engine Cessna, so old no self-respecting drug-runner would use it anymore, but it could stil make the flight to Mexico below radar in under an hour.
The pilot waited in the drizzle on the tarmac at Stinson Field. He checked his watch. His client was late.
It was a crummy night to fly, but anticipating his payment made him feel better. He imagined the money in his bank account. He would make separate cash deposits, space them out careful y, keep them under the mandatory reporting limit.
He was deep in thought about a comfortable retirement when somebody put a gun to his back.
Long after the police took Erainya Manos away, Pablo had waited in the ventilation shaft.
He expected the woman to sel him out. Any second, the muzzle of an assault rifle would poke its way into his hiding place.
But Pablo kept waiting.
When he couldn’t stand it anymore, he crawled out. No one was waiting in the storage room to ambush him. His gun was stil lying on the floor by the window. They hadn’t even bothered bagging it for evidence.
Why would the police leave the scene so fast?
He checked the magazine. Stil loaded, minus the bul et Erainya Manos had fired to rattle the police.
Dangerous, he had told her.
It’ll throw them off balance, she said. When they find out I fired the gun, they’ll relax their guard about everything. They’ll believe I’m alone.
He hadn’t trusted her, but he’d gone along. He couldn’t run. He couldn’t surrender. He couldn’t bring himself to kil her.
He crept down the stairs, spotted two uniformed cops at the front entrance. They looked bored, like they’d been put there to keep people out. They weren’t paying any attention to the inside of the building.
Pablo slipped out the back, onto the loading docks.
The rain felt good on his face, but he told himself he would never make it across open ground. There were probably stil snipers on the surrounding rooftops. His shoulder blades tensed for the bul et he expected in his back.
He jogged down a dark al ey. Nothing happened. He made it three blocks away, came out next to St. Paul Square. A bunch of tourist rental cars were parked on the street. He strol ed down the line, glancing casual y through windows. A Dodge Neon had the driver’s keys just sitting there on the front seat.
Too easy. Had to be a trap.
The police would surround him as soon as he turned the ignition. The engine would explode. Something.
But he got in, started the Neon, and pul ed away from the curb.
By the time he got to the highway, he was crying like a child.
He had come that close to kil ing Erainya Manos, and she’d been tel ing him the truth.
The pilot found himself facing a young Latino with cobwebs in his hair, ragged clothes, dirt and scratches on his arms like he’d crawled out of a col apsed building.
The pilot tried for calm. He raised his hands. “I got nothing you can rob, partner. Unless you want an airplane.”
“Actual y,” the Latino said, “that is exactly what I want.”
The pilot blinked. “You’re Wil Stirman?”
“You know the Calabras airstrip, south of Juárez?”
“Sure.” The pilot didn’t feel the need to mention he’d flown heroin from that airstrip a dozen times. “You have my hundred grand?”
The Latino smiled. He nudged the pilot’s nose affectionately with his gun. “Actual y, se?or, there’s been a slight change of plans.”
Wil Stirman found his money, right where Navarre said it would be.
The black duffel bag was lighter than when Wil had packed it, eight years ago, but that was to be expected. Fred Barrow must’ve used a good half mil ion.
Wil stuffed a couple of hundred-dol ar bil s in his pocket, rezipped the bag.
He had one last score to settle.
He climbed the wooden stairs out of the basement, the knife wound in his shoulder throbbing so badly he could hardly think. He found an intact section of roof to stand under. Rain was blowing through the skeletal remains of the house. The dark hil s around him smel ed of wet juniper.
Wil cal ed the SAPD. He was pleasantly surprised to get a connection so far from the city. He told the dispatcher he was the outside accomplice who’d helped Wil Stirman escape, and now he had a guilty conscience. He gave her enough details about the jailbreak to be sure she was taking him seriously. Then he told her where they could find one of the missing Floresvil e Five. A hunting cabin in the woods of Wisconsin. He gave her directions.
Wil hung up, feeling satisfied.
With any luck, his guess would be right. The Guide might be stupid enough to lay low there. He might have thought Wil had forgotten about the Wisconsin property, which the Guide had shown him once, years ago— his little retirement dream house. But Wil never forgot a good hiding place.
He walked back to the main road in the dark—a good half mile, through mosquitoes and mud and brambles. Down toward the river, the only visible light was a kerosene lamp glowing in a curtained window.
A caretaker’s cabin, maybe. Wil avoided it.
He hadn’t seen another human being for thirty miles, since he exited the main highway. Every farmhouse had been dark, every road abandoned. Anybody crazy enough to ignore the evacuation orders, Wil wanted to stay clear of.
He climbed into the truck and stared at the empty seat next to him.
You failed Soledad, Navarre had said. You let the past stay buried.
The words weighed on Wil ’s heart.
Eight years ago, he had taken the coward’s way out. He’d never tried to find out what real y happened to Soledad’s baby— his baby.