Tell No Lies Page 32

  “Lai-Wing have no in-laws,” the matriarch added. She smoothed a few stray hairs back toward the loose bun at her nape. “Lai-Wing lucky girl.”

  “Thank you.” He grabbed the owner’s shoulders, kissed her on the forehead, then charged past her even as she shouted after him. He ran through the brief kitchen and out into an alley, skidding on a mound of rotting vegetables. Waverly Place was a historic two-block stretch of Chinatown, once nicknamed 15 Cent Street for the price of the haircuts given there. Daniel shot out the end of the alley, knocking over crates of cabbage and pinballing off a Dumpster onto the main drag. He rushed past the three- and four-story Edwardians with their intricate balconies, flags, and signs in traditional Chinese, a fluttering banner announcing it as the “Street of Painted Balconies.” Between an employment agency and a temple, he spotted the dilapidated red house.

  No cop cars. No unmarked sedans. Just the house and him, facing off in the cool Chinatown air.

  He paused in front, hands on his knees, panting.

  Up the slender alley to the east, almost lost to shadow, was a battered worker’s van. Just beside it, concrete steps down to a subterranean door.

  Fear scratched at his chest from the inside.

  He pulled out his iPhone, checked the time: 11:47.

  Moving silently up the alley, he brought up Dooley’s number. Pressed CALL.

  “Where the hell are you?” he whispered.

  “We got the place. We’re outside now. SWAT’s ready to steamroll.”

  “I don’t see you.” He approached the van in a crouch. Coming into view behind, parked haphazardly beside a low wrought-iron fence, was a rusting motorcycle. The final confirmation. He stared at the bike, reminding himself to breathe. “Where are you guys?”

  “A shithole north of Sunnydale. Are you here?”

  He tried to swallow but his throat was too dry. “Sunnydale? You— No. I’m in Chinatown at Waverly. Red house by the intersection of Clay.”

  He crept closer to the van. Dangling from the rearview mirror, a Metro South parking pass.

  He rested his palm on the hood.

  Still warm.

  Dooley said, “All his last-knowns show him at—”

  “He’s here, Dooley.”

  He hung up. Turned off the phone. Removed the box cutter from his pocket and slid the blade out as far as it would go.

  Then he crept around the side of the van and descended the worn steps to the peeling door below.

  Chapter 70

  The door to the basement apartment was slightly ajar, the latch resting against the jamb, as if someone had made a hurried entrance. With full hands. Inset glass squares in place of a peephole afforded Daniel a partial glimpse of the living suite. Unfolded futon with no frame, electric hot plate in the corner, clothes strewn on a water-stained carpet.

  The peeling paint poked into his fingertips. The hinges were mercifully quiet. And then he was standing inside.

  Empty.

  He retracted the blade, his mind whirling. Ten minutes left, maybe less.

  He pictured Marisol Vargas pinned to her kitchen floor, leaking tears of blood, and then her face was replaced by Cris’s and his brain mostly shut down, stopping him there two steps onto the rotting carpet.

  You’ll see.

  He waded through the stark terror that had descended over him, telling himself to look for any hint of a clue. The folding closet doors were open, nothing inside but scattered take-out cartons and pizza boxes. A few unwashed bowls were stacked unevenly by the hot plate, and the place stank of fish. Hardened spaghetti lay in a clump near an overturned dish in the corner, red sauce splattered up the wall. Through the bathroom door, he saw the cracked bowl of the toilet, the tank lid missing, a wire hanger jerry-rigged to serve as a trip lever rising into reach. Here beneath the city, the primitive surroundings seemed not just of another world but another time.

  A moist, earthy reek emanated from the bathroom. And the faintest stirring of air. He drifted into the cramped space and stood on the curling linoleum. The mold-speckled shower curtain breathed out at him. Then sucked away. He stared, bewildered, as it bulged and withdrew like the wall of a lung.

  His thumb rode the box cutter’s slide forward again, the razor ticking out millimeter by millimeter. The curtain breathed at him some more. Bracing himself, he raked it aside.

  A jagged, man-size hole penetrated the tile wall. Wall studs remained like exposed ribs, a narrow space dropping away.

  His breathing came fast, ragged. He tried to calm down but found his body unwilling to obey. Taking in a gulp of air, he stepped into the tub and leaned through the mouth, the protruding tiles biting into his shoulders.

  A narrow shaft dropped ten feet into what appeared to be a tunnel.

  Only one way left.

  Down.

  Pocketing the box cutter, he climbed through and lowered himself as quietly as he could manage, splinters pricking his hands. He dropped the last few feet and hit dirt, nearly toppling over.

  He shot quick looks in either direction. The tunnel was impressive, tall enough that he could stand without crouching. He remembered the myths of the passages running beneath Chinatown, the shaft Dooley had discovered leading into the restaurant cellar. Those apocryphal tong opium dens and torture chambers, the Prohibition escape routes. With their ancient beams and rusted bolts, the crumbling walls looked old enough, but a few joists were held in place by newer metal brackets. The perennial handyman, Angelberto had reinforced them himself.

  The intestinal walls radiated a wet chemical stench, like an infested pond. Daniel spun in a slow circle, his breath clouding about his head in the chill. Mine-shaft lights dangled from snarls of extension cords, hung at intervals, barely cutting the gloom. One fork was visible, several paces ahead. A trickle of air brushed his cheeks, carrying with it the faintest noise. A woman’s whimpering.

  Cristina.

  The sound of her burned his nerve endings straight through to numbness. Leading with the box cutter, he started toward the split in the tunnel. His fear had turned to something physical, needles pricking at his arms, his face, the back of his neck.

  He reached the fork, stepping around the first bend to stare down a brief length intersecting another passageway. To his right an adjoining room came visible, sunken several feet off the main tunnel system. The old ceiling had crumbled, beams smashed down at angles, but around the wreckage was new buttressing. In fact, the room had been partially excavated and rebuilt, concrete poured to firm the dirt, a few lengths of rebar stubbed up.

  Movement at the tunnel intersection ten or so yards ahead drew Daniel’s attention. Paralyzed with disbelief, he watched as Angelberto moved backward through the visible stretch, dragging an empty plastic tarp behind him. He wore the familiar black sweat suit and work boots, and the motorcycle mask was shoved up, crowding his forehead. Whistling, he passed from sight.

  Daniel stood breathless, a statue.

  The whistling, a skin-tingling merriment, found resonance off the tunnel walls.

  Then it stopped.

  Firming his grip on the box cutter, Daniel watched the brief stretch of intersecting tunnel.

  A puff of air blew into sight.

  Breath.

  And then Angelberto stepped back into view. He regarded Daniel, head cocked, puzzled. Mist huffed again from his mouth.

  It took two tries for Daniel to get the words out. “It’s over,” he said. “Martin’s in jail. You know this.”

  “The wife.” Angelberto spit brown, wiped his chin. “She will pay me. The money from the robberies. She has money still.”

  “She’s dead.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Suicide. She stepped in front of a bus when they came to get her.”

  Angelberto considered this, his face tensing, those thin lines of facial hair bristling. “Either way,” he said. “You have seen me.” He removed the lock-blade military knife from his pocket, unfolded it, and started calmly for Daniel
.

  Daniel half turned, putting his heels to the sunken room so he’d have space to leap backward and parry. The lip of the packed dirt pressed through the soles of his shoes. The moist subterranean walls muffled all sound from the world above. “The cops are on their way,” he said. “Right now.”

  “That,” Angelberto said, “I do not believe. If that was the case, you would not be foolish enough to come down here alone.”

  A shift of the air brought Cris’s muffled cries, sending Daniel up on the balls of his feet as if he’d taken a cattle prod to the ribs. Angelberto observed his reaction with neither pleasure nor sympathy. He drew nearer and paused.

  Daniel kept the box cutter ready but low at his side. He dug the Polaroid from his back pocket, flipped it onto the dirt between them. “You want money to bring your family here, right?”

  Angelberto looked down at the photo. Back up at Daniel.

  “Think of them,” Daniel said. “Your wife. Your son. Would they want this?”

  Angelberto’s shoulders lowered, the blade dipping. Somehow Daniel could hear the rumbling of the Bay, water against the bed of the city.

  “Oh,” Angelberto said. “You don’t understand. You think I care.”

  The reaction, reflective and almost mournful, caught Daniel off guard. He kept his gaze fixed on the knife. “About what?”

  Angelberto said, “About anything like that.” The blade stayed low, but he lunged, one of those big black boots striking Daniel in the chest, propelling him backward off the lip.

  He felt the impact, not yet pain, but a battering-ram thud. There was a tearing sound, a rending of flesh, and then his concrete-filled head rolled drowsily to the side and he saw the slick, gleaming spike of rebar rising up from his left shoulder, impaling him.

  He moved, and his nerves finally awakened, pain screaming through him.

  White static clouded his vision, then cleared by degrees.

  He sensed Angelberto’s shape up past the ledge, the dust filling his lungs, a fallen ceiling joint just out of reach above. His feet squirmed and kicked against the pain, but from the waist up he could hardly move.

  Pinned to the floor.

  The blood-wet metal bar warm against his cheek.

  Another muffled scream traveled down the shaft to match his. His wife, trapped in her own agony.

  Angelberto’s voice carried down. “I’ll be right back.” His shadow lifted.

  The boots tapped the earth, treading away toward Cristina.

  Daniel realized he was bellowing unintelligibly. The white static returned, fuzzing the edges of his thoughts. Somewhere in there was the warning Dooley had issued in another context, another universe: Usually piece-of-shit criminals are just flat-out broken. You can’t get through to them. You can’t fix them.

  He tried to breathe, found it nearly impossible, his chest cramping around the wound. A memory of his own words to Cristina returned to mock him: I would do anything to keep you safe.

  Well, he thought. Then fucking do it.

  The slightest movement set off such intense pain that he risked passing out. He cast about for any mental tool but could focus on little aside from the quick jerks of his lungs. He ran the equation: Increased adrenaline led to hyperventilation led to shortness of breath led to overbreathing led to diminished CO2 led to dizziness led to fainting.

  So.

  He slowed the rise and fall of his chest.

  Deep, even breaths.

  Grunting with pain, he reached across his chest and felt for the point of penetration. The rebar rose through the meat of his trapezius just above his collarbone.

  Flesh and muscle, then. No bone.

  Which meant he had a shot at worming off the hook.

  Gritting his teeth and yelling, he strained to lean forward off the rebar but the razor-blade flurry set off inside the wound sliced his will to pieces. Once he’d regained the ability to think, he realized that he couldn’t yank himself free; the angle was wrong. He’d have to lift himself vertically up off the metal post.

  Impossible.

  Through the haze of pain, he heard Cris’s cries intensify. Angelberto had reached her.

  He breathed in the moist reek.

  He thought about Dooley and SWAT, across town in Sunnydale. Theresa had probably dispatched patrolmen to this location, but they’d have to find the basement apartment, the hole in the shower, the tunnels beneath. There wouldn’t be time for that.

  He concentrated, the fallen ceiling joist above his head coming into focus. If only he could grip it and lift himself free. He tried to raise his left arm, but the pain shut down the muscle, left it dead, a raw slab of meat. His right hand shook as he forced it up. His fingertips barely brushed the wood. No way.

  His arm fell away.

  He lay defeated.

  Cris’s whimpers reached him again, and his right hand moved before he ordered it to. Working the buckle of his belt, then yanking the leather strip. He did his best to keep the rest of his torso frozen as he hoisted his hips and tugged the belt free, but the sensation was blinding.

  Sweating, grunting, sobbing, he flipped the buckle over the angled joist above him, gripping both ends of the looped belt in the fist of his right hand. Before he could give it any thought, he yanked, hoisting his torso up off the ground. Every muscle, straining, ignited. A roar scoured the inside of his throat. The white static returned, blotting out all sight, all sound, all sensation.

  When it cleared, he was sitting up, blood draining down his side and back, matting his T-shirt. He rolled to his knees, then rose.

  Picking up the box cutter where it had fallen, he stepped up into the tunnel and headed for his wife.

  Chapter 71

  There was no time for surprise or strategy. Daniel staggered around the bend in the tunnel and saw Angelberto up ahead in another cleared roomlike hollow, this one more intact. Knife in hand, he was crouched over Cristina. His broad, hunched back blocked her head and torso from view, but her white legs, bound at the ankles, bucked and bucked against the recently poured concrete floor. To the side he’d arranged a cluster of mine-shaft lights and a digital camera, which looked tiny perched atop a heavy-duty tripod, the setup present no doubt to record proof of death for the payment he still believed would come. The knife moved down and out of sight toward Cris’s head.

  “No!” Daniel said.

  Angelberto rose and spun. Cristina’s face flashed into sight behind his boots. A slit beneath one eye drained blood, mixing with her tears, but her face looked otherwise unmarred. She stared at Daniel, sobbing, unable to speak.

  Wielding the box cutter, Daniel lumbered toward Angelberto, who stared back, expressionless. If he was surprised, he didn’t show it. As Daniel neared, the janitor squared to face him. His gloved hand snapped once, repositioning his grip on the knife, the blade angled down, parallel with his forearm, razor edge out.

  Firming his grip on the box cutter, Daniel stepped into the cleared space, the concrete suddenly firm underfoot. His shoulder throbbed, fire running down the nerve lines, rendering his left arm useless. Burgundy drops pattered onto the floor, the tops of his shoes. A dizzy spell washed over him; he had only a few minutes before the blood loss would leave him powerless.

  Last time he’d made the mistake of watching the weapon, so now he watched Angelberto’s eyes, his body.

  The men circled each other warily.

  Shuffle step. Feint. Shuffle step. Feint.

  As in a wrestling ring.

  Daniel kept his focus on the larger man’s legs, reading the pattern of movement. Left knee bent in a partial crouch. Quick push off the foot, weight shifting to the right leg, body rising slightly, then coiling to the point of decision.

  Daniel remembered from his countless hours on the mat that the knee broadcast intent. When that right knee started to rise again, it signaled another shuffle. If it stayed bent and started forward, it signaled an attack.

  He ignored the knife, watched the knee.

  Shuffle
step. Feint.

  Cris corkscrewed to watch even as wisps of hair fell across her eyes and stuck to her cheek. Her sobs had turned hoarse.

  “Don’t worry,” Daniel told her. “You’re gonna be okay.”

  Shuffle step. Feint.

  Angelberto said, “How do you know?”

  Shuffle step.

  The right knee paused, coiled. Made the faintest swivel toward Daniel, preparing to drive. Then Daniel did something counterintuitive. He stepped into the charge.

  The movement caught Angelberto off guard even as he lunged. Keeping his weight low, Daniel sprang back, pivoting on his left foot, a bullfighter fanning his cape. His momentum carrying him forward, Angelberto swung forcefully, the knife arcing past Daniel’s cheek, inches from flesh. Driving off his rear foot, Daniel flicked the box cutter at Angelberto’s throat, the big man twisting to dodge the blade.

  They stood facing each other again, the same distance apart as they’d begun.

  “Because,” Daniel said, “you’re already dead.”

  Angelberto’s head bobbed, and a fine crimson spray misted from his throat. He gasped, his hand rising to clamp over the slit in his windpipe. The lock-blade knife fell, clanging against the concrete. Choking, he dropped to his knees. Then collapsed on his side.

  Light-headed, Daniel stepped forward. With the tip of his shoe, he nudged Angelberto’s hand away from his throat. A sheet of blood spilled from the exposed box-cutter slash. Growing weaker, Angelberto reached again to cover the cut, and Daniel toed his hand away again, then stepped on his palm. Angelberto stared up at him, beads of perspiration sparkling in his pencil-thin mustache and beard. His other hand flopped over and cupped the top of Daniel’s shoe.

  And then slid off.

  Daniel staggered to Cris and fell onto his hip beside her. He didn’t have the strength to cut her wrists and ankles free, but he pulled her head into his lap and she curled into him, fetal and sobbing. Tears of blood dripped from the slit beneath her eye. He tried to cover it with his thumb to stem the bleeding, the crying, but then he realized: He couldn’t.