Night Moves (Doc Ford) - By RandyWayne White Page 0,107

was done speaking Chicano, finally playing the role he knew best—precisely why I had already discarded his visual messages as bullshit.

Confused, Kondo took a step back, the Uzi still in his right hand, finger edging toward the trigger, but the barrel pointed up, relaxing on his shoulder at parade position.

“We damn partners!” Kondo said again. “What I say? You find me the scarecrow, five hundred clean, when we back at the dock! Hell, you worried, I pay you now! It in my bag, want me to prove it?”

“The real money,” Diemer said, “it’s on this boat someplace. Force me to search, you won’t be around for the split.” Then pulled the hammer back, getting down to business, which stopped the slow arc of the automatic weapon, freezing it against the Haitian’s shoulder.

“What money? Sheeeit, mon!” Indignant, Kondo tried to laugh, but his voice broke, which he covered by saying, “Doan be fuckin’ wid a priest of my knowledge! The rich woman, the blonde, her brother, what’s-his-name, she not tell you ’bout my powers? Kill me, it doan matter. The shit still gonna come down on yo head, mon. I’m a voodoo sacerdotal, fuckin’ highest priest! Guardian is Chango, mon! Brarilia, Rio, ask anybody what that name Chango mean!”

Speaking to me, but not moving his head, Diemer said, “Start your engines—and put that goddamn piece away!” Then got right back to Kondo. “There was a girl on Saint Martin. French, but part Brazilian. Blond, fourteen years old. You remember her name? Two years ago—February. Same month as now.”

The way Diemer spoke, trying hard to remain the cold interrogator, brought back the memory of the photos I’d seen on his yacht: pretty girl, gawky, with braces, with a family resemblance. It also stopped my hand on the boat keys and caused me to watch Kondo, anticipating his reaction, anticipating his desperate lie of denial.

Didn’t happen. Instead, the man shook his head, honestly mystified, and tried to explain, “My brother, the hell you talkin’ ’bout? So many of those tourist girls kind, mon, I can’t count! How you expect me to ’member—”

Which is when Vargas Diemer shot the Haitian drug dealer twice near the heart—SNAP-SNAP, like a muted cap pistol—punching a clean pattern, inches apart, despite a morning wind that was freshening, the sea gray, the sky a blue pearl edged with night. The rounds slammed Kondo’s back onto the deck, not killing him, but it did knock the air out of him, so he writhed and kicked in Charlie Chaplin silence before he spoke, his words a labored hiss because of two sucking chest wounds and the pooling blood: “Call . . . call a doctor, mon! I didn’t do nothin’!”

Diemer maintained a clinical disinterest by pushing a warning hand at me, palm out—Stop!—because I had my weapon up, sights focused on him. Told me, “We’ve got to get out of here!” then turned his back . . . hesitated, placed his weapon on the deck, and opened a black tactical bag, first time I’d seen it.

The Zodiac was drifting away, so I had to yell, “You can’t just dump him over the side. Not like he is!”

Diemer, taking something from the bag, replied, “Start disconnecting your electronics—the navigation system, anything that gathers a GPS footprint. We have to throw it all overboard—but not here.”

“What the hell’s going on?”

The man looked over his shoulder, his impatience asking a question I had asked him moments ago: How goddamn stupid are you?

“Okay, okay,” I said, but was still confused. “Fishing guides, a few of them might head out here after mackerel. We have half an hour at most.”

Kondo was groaning, “Chango . . . Chango, come heal my heart, I bleedin’ to death, Chango!” while Diemer zipped himself into a cheap plastic rain suit, then sat and swung a leg over a knee: he’d brought along surgical booties and a face shield, too—a man who knew the risks of forensic evidence. Getting to his feet, neatening the pliant creases, he called to me, “Don’t watch this!” but I did. Watched him slide down the ladder with his dancer’s grace, pistol in hand, then straddle the Haitian, the Haitian staring up, terrified by this space-age creature garbed in plastic, which is when I decided, yeah, it was better if I looked away.

POP-POP.

When it happened, I was busy disconnecting my navigation electronics, even though I knew my special ops version had a default shredder if disconnected without first typing in a password. No need to explain