When Darkness Falls Read online

  “I think she’s getting a fever,” said Natalia.

  “Quiet!” shouted Falcon.

  “You should really get her to a doctor,” said Theo.

  Falcon glared and said, “I told you before, the doctor has already given his blessing.”

  “What the hell doctor are you talking about? Are you a doctor?”

  “Do I look like a doctor?”

  “From my HMO? Absolutely.”

  Falcon shot him an angry look. “I’ve met clowns like you before, always getting in their little jokes. The minute I let my guard down, you sneaky bastards go right for the gun.”

  He glanced at the girl in the tub, then turned and started pacing across the room again. No food, no money, no necklace. Swyteck had told him that they had the necklace, but now it would be more difficult than ever to work out a delivery. The big-mouthed black guy had screwed up everything by telling the cops about the magic coat. Who in their right mind would come near the hotel room?

  The girl in the tub groaned. Natalia said, “She’s definitely getting a fever.”

  “She needs a doctor,” said Theo.

  “Shut up!” he shouted, thrusting the gun toward Theo. “I’ve had it with you. Enough already!”

  Falcon could feel the heat rising. It was as if someone had switched on the furnace, which he knew wasn’t possible. Or was it? The cops could have been pumping hot air through the AC ducts. They’d already turned off the water and the electricity, so why not turn the place into an oven? He crossed the room and pressed his hand to the vent. He felt nothing, save for the sweat that continued to run down his face. How people in Miami survived in these concrete boxes before air-conditioning was beyond him. There was something to be said for living in a car with the windows busted out. If you got cold, you put on a coat. When it turned hot, you took the coat off. Not this time, however. Not this coat.

  The coat stayed on.

  There was a whimper from the bathroom, then a sustained groan. Falcon knew the sound of pain, but he was impervious to it. That was not exactly true. Once upon a time, he had thought himself to be impervious to it. He’d failed to realize that every grunt, every groan, every shrill scream in the night had seeped right through the psychological walls that he’d built around his conscience. For years, he’d kept them locked in the basement, but they kept creeping up the stairs and knocking on the cellar door until the locks finally broke. The memories came flooding back to him. They were no longer his past. They had become his every waking hour-his past, present, and future.

  “She needs a doctor,” he heard someone say, but it only confused him further. The present was mirroring the past. Or the past was coloring the present. His mind could no longer distinguish between the two, and he was suddenly returning to the basement, trapped with his memories.

  “ARE YOU LOOKING for the Virgin?” asked El Oso.

  The question had the intended effect. Prisoner 309, the young woman with child, was well acquainted with the horrors that had unfolded at the feet of the Virgin Mary. A gang rape before the statue of the Blessed Virgin was a particularly effective way of telling a subversive young woman just how far she had strayed from acceptable behavior.

  El Oso acknowledged her fear by telling her not to worry. “The Virgin is not here,” he said, his voice laden with a perverse satisfaction. “There are no virgins left at la casa de la bruja.”

  He pushed her forward, and they continued to the end of a long, dark hallway. Her belly was way out in front of her; she had to be due any day. El Oso stopped and unlocked the metal door. The moment it opened, a sharp scream pierced the darkness. It sounded like a woman, but El Oso knew it was a man. It was something the guards liked to tell jokes about, the way men could be made to scream like girls.

  “Would you like to watch?” he said. They were standing outside the room, as yet unable to see inside. Party music was blaring from a radio, a tune strangely at odds with what was obviously going on in there.

  The young woman shook her head.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to see?” he said. “It could be someone you know.”

  It was a possibility that she seemed unwilling to consider, but he could see her defenses breaking down. They always did. Instinct may have cautioned that it was better not to know, but in the end, the prisoners craved answers.

  “Come, let’s have a look.” He was speaking softly but not out of concern. The insincerity was palpable, and it pleased him to see the heightened anxiety in her eyes. He nudged her forward, and there was another scream from inside the room. This one was so loud and lasted so long that even El Oso stopped to listen. It ceased only when the prisoner had no more voice, no more ability to express his suffering.

  Had to be the testicles, thought El Oso.

  The party music continued to play.

  “I don’t want to go in there,” said the woman.

  “That’s not important.”

  “No, please. Don’t make me go.”

  “It’s your only chance. In a minute, he’ll be crying for his mama. They always cry for their mamas.”

  The tears started to come. Her body trembled. “I don’t want to see.”

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  “Who’s in there?”

  “The enemy.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “He has no name.”

  He pulled her forward, but she resisted. “I can’t go in there!”

  A slap across the face silenced her. Then he jerked her by the arm with so much force that she slammed into the wall. In her advanced state of pregnancy, her balance was not what it might have been. With another quick shove from behind, she stumbled through the open doorway. She collided with the counter, which rattled the guards’ empty beer bottles, and then she fell to the floor.

  “Look, woman!” one of the guards shouted. “See who’s on the grill now.”

  The grill was a metal table in the center of the room. A male prisoner was strapped to it, completely naked and flat on his back. The soles of his feet were purple and swollen. A guard stood at the foot of the table with a length of hardwood, ready to swing it at the prisoner’s arches like a baseball bat. Another guard tended to the electric transmitter and several strands of wire that ran directly to the prisoner’s torso and genitals. His chest and stomach were dotted with black burn marks. His testicles were grotesquely discolored and three times their normal size.

  “Fernando!” the pregnant woman screamed, but the prisoner did not respond to her. He managed only to groan and whisper, “Water…please.”

  “No, you can’t drink now!” said El Oso.

  “I’m so thirsty,” the prisoner said, his voice fading.

  “He can’t drink now or he’ll die!”

  “He’s going to die anyway,” said another guard. He laughed as he forced metal beads down the prisoner’s throat-electrodes that would make the voltage cut like lightning through his insides.

  “Swallow!” the guard with the beads ordered.

  At the turn of the dial, the current flowed. The prisoner’s entire body tensed and then quivered. There was suddenly a bizarre symphony of party music on the radio, howling from the guards, and the blood-curdling screams of a dying man.

  “You animals!” the woman shouted through tears, but she was no longer watching the torture of her husband. She remained on the floor, grimacing. El Oso assumed that she simply couldn’t bear to look, but the pained expression told more than that.

  “My water just broke,” she said as she slumped onto her side, sobbing.

  The guards stopped laughing. The prisoner lay utterly motionless. The pregnant woman was wailing. Party music continued to play in macabre fashion.

  “Shit, now what?” said the man with the metal beads.

  “Quick, help me carry her,” said El Oso. “Let’s find the doctor.”

  chapter 36

  T he moment Jack came through the door, the silence in the mobile command center didn’t seem natural to
him. He understood that negotiations were in many ways a strategic game of chess, but some of the best chess players he’d ever seen-the old Cuban men in Little Havana-could talk beisbol, order espresso, and argue politics, all while contemplating their next move. Some could even engage in a simultaneous game of dominoes. To be sure, a hostage situation was no game. Still, Jack was beginning to fear that Sergeant Paulo might be overanalyzing things.

  He also sensed more than a little tension between Paulo and Alicia. “Did I interrupt something?” said Jack.

  “No, not at all,” said Alicia.

  “Come right in,” said Paulo.

  Each of them had spoken in a tone that was a bit too upbeat, voices that tried too hard to convince Jack that nothing was wrong. Jack said, “I can come back in a minute.”

  “No,” said Paulo. “We need to do this now. Ready?”

  Jack nodded, then realized that it was a dumb-ass thing to do when speaking to a blind man. “Ready,” he said.

  Jack was definitely picking up some added stress in Paulo’s voice. Perhaps it was Theo’s outburst about explosives that had changed the lead negotiator, or at least affected his demeanor. Jack was about to say something about it, but Alicia was already dialing up Theo’s cell. Whatever it was, it seemed that Alicia was even less inclined to discuss it than Paulo.

  The hollow sound of unanswered rings echoed in Jack’s ear-five times, then a sixth. Another ring and the call would go to voice mail, but finally Falcon picked up.

  “Boom,” he said.

  Jack gathered himself and said, “That’s not funny, Falcon.”

  “Swyteck, is that you? Can’t say I was expecting that. What happened? Is my friend Paulo afraid to talk to the mad bomber?”

  Jack glanced at Alicia, then at Paulo. He should have simply said “no,” but Jack couldn’t help himself, at least not when part of him was wondering the same thing. “Our only fear over here is that you might do something really stupid. You should be afraid of that, too.”

  “You got my necklace?”

  “First, we need to talk about your coat. More specifically, about what’s under your coat.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Are you wired with explosives?”

  “Come on. That’s ridiculous. Where would I get a bomb?”

  “My friend Theo says you have one.”

  “Your friend Theo’s an asshole.”

  “Maybe. But he’s not a liar.”

  “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

  “Most of the time that’s true. But every now and then he nails it. Here’s how we can settle this real quick. Theo’s cell phone has a camera function.”

  “A what?”

  Jack realized that a guy who’d been living in a car for over a decade might not know anything about camera phones. “Trust me, the phone takes pictures. Theo can explain how to use it. Take off your coat, snap a picture of your torso, and send it to us.”

  There was silence, and Jack took some comfort in the fact that Falcon didn’t immediately tell him to take a flying leap.

  “Anything else?” said Falcon.

  “Yeah. We want the coat.” Jack didn’t want to explain why, but Falcon could probably guess that they wanted to examine it for traces of explosives.

  Falcon said, “So, let me get this straight. First you tell me that if I let everyone talk on the phone, you’ll give me food and my necklace. I try to keep up my end of the deal, and your friend screws everything up. Now, to get the same food and necklace that you promised me before, you want me to start snapping photographs of myself and give you, literally, the coat off my back. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “I’m just trying to do what’s fair for everyone.”

  “Like hell. You keep changing the deal, and I’m tired of all this stalling.”

  “The coat changes things.”

  “Not for me it doesn’t. If you get more, I get more.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want my damn necklace. And I want Alicia Mendoza to bring it to me.”

  Jack glanced at Paulo, not sure how to answer that question. Paulo picked up Jack’s hesitation, scratched out a message on a scrap of paper, and slipped it toward him. It read: NO WAY…But never say never.

  “That’s a tall order,” said Jack. “I won’t lie to you. It’s going to be very, very tough to pull that off.”

  “Tough my ass.”

  “Seriously. For starters, I’ll have to track down Alicia.”

  “If you’re telling me she’s not there with you, I know you’re lying.”

  Jack didn’t respond, but it was obvious that his bluffing needed some improvement. “If Alicia is going to get involved, I’m sure I’ll need to get clearance from Mayor Mendoza himself.”

  “That’s easy. Your dad’s the governor of Florida, right?”

  “Used to be the governor.”

  “He’s still a politician, just like Alicia’s father. Those guys are always sucking each other off. You get your old man to call her old man, and you make it happen, you hear me?”

  “I can try, I guess. But I can’t make any promises.”

  “This is going to be easier than you think, Swyteck.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Here’s a little incentive for her. Tell Alicia that if she blows me off again this time, then we’re going to have to call the doctor.”

  It took Jack a moment, but then he deciphered what Falcon was saying. “Threatening the hostages is a very bad tactic, Falcon. SWAT is just looking for a reason to bust down those doors.”

  “I’m not threatening anyone, you idiot. Just be sure to tell her exactly what I said. She’ll know what I mean.”

  Jack looked at Alicia, who gave him nothing in return. It wasn’t clear that she understood what Falcon was saying. But it wasn’t clear that she didn’t, either.

  “All right, Falcon. I’ll be sure to pass along your exact words to Alicia. But I can tell you right now, I’ll need some serious time to work on this.”

  “How much time?”

  Jack looked at Paulo, whose instincts again told him that Jack needed guidance. He held up six fingers. Said Jack, “Six hours.”

  “You got one,” said Falcon, and the call was over.

  chapter 37

  J ack walked across the parking lot from the mobile command center to the fast-food restaurant. He was in search of caffeine. He found mostly testosterone.

  Law enforcement had taken over the entire restaurant and surrounding property, and the SWAT members were in the dining area, waiting for the green light. Jack had bumped up against plenty of machismo before, as few Miami courtrooms were large enough to hold the average trial lawyer’s ego. But there was simply nothing quite like the collective bravado of a tactical team in full gear. It was a bizarre thought-and one that seemed unnerving to no one in the room but Jack-but in a matter of minutes, one of these guys might be pumping hollow-point ammunition into a man’s skull. The outcome depended entirely on the words Jack chose, the nuances of his tone of voice, the way he steered his next telephone conversation with Falcon. His job suddenly seemed even more overwhelming.

  Jack passed by the coffee machine and went straight to the restroom. He stood at the sink, splashed cold water onto his face, and then took a good look at the man staring back at him from the mirror. He needed a shave, for sure. He removed the bandage, and there was some purple swelling around the cut at his right temple, where Falcon had said hello with the butt of his pistol. There wasn’t much other color to his skin. The worry lines appeared to be carved in wax, the stress written all over his face. It reminded him of the time his father had signed Theo’s death warrant and Jack went running into the bathroom to throw up. “Damn, you look worse than I do,” Theo had told him when he arrived at the penitentiary. It was no joke. When it came to matters of life and death, Theo seemed to have a leg up on everybody. Jack hoped that was still the case.

  “Hang in t
here, buddy.” Jack was speaking aloud, but in his mind, he heard Theo talking.

  Jack dried his hands and started toward the door. It opened before he got there, and a plainclothes officer entered. Jack recognized him as Detective Barber from the night they’d found a woman’s body in the trunk of Falcon’s car. Jack said a quick hello, then excused himself and tried to pass. Barber closed the door and leaned back against it, blocking Jack’s way.

  “You used to work with Gerry Chafetz, didn’t you?” said Barber.

  It seemed like an odd time for small talk, but Jack went along. “He was my supervisor at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, back when I was a prosecutor.”

  “Chafetz and I rode together when he was on the force. I called him after you and I talked the other night. He speaks highly of you.”

  “That’s nice to hear.”

  They stood in silence, each sizing up the other. Jack knew that this had to be about more than his old boss. “Is there something you and I need to talk about, detective?”

  “Chafetz tells me that you can be trusted.”

  “I like to think that’s true.”

  Barber narrowed his eyes, as if to press his point. “I had a private conversation with Paulo this morning. Did he mention it to you?”

  “No.”

  “I need some information from Falcon, but Paulo tells me that you’re the one doing most of the talking.”

  “It’s not my choice, but that seems to be the way Falcon wants it.”

  Barber nodded slowly, as if Jack’s version were consistent with what Paulo had told him.

  Jack said, “What are you trying to find out?”

  Barber hesitated, seeming to weigh in his mind whether it was enough that Jack’s former boss had vouched for his integrity. Either it was, or Barber had run out of options. “I need to know why the mayor’s bodyguard was snooping around Falcon’s car on Thursday night.”

  “You mean the night the woman was murdered?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean.”