The Killing Floor Blues (Daniel Faust #5)(75)
“And Jennifer?” Caitlin asked. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
Caitlin uncrossed her arms.
“I swear,” Raymundo said, pressing his back to the wall. “All I know is she’s got all kinds of shit locked up in her head. Like where all her grow houses are at, all the people on her payroll, and she’s got, like, stacks of cash stashed in a Cayman Island bank account, but only she knows the account number and the passcode. Cesar wants all of it before they cap her.”
My jaw clenched. They wouldn’t be getting that information out of her by asking politely.
“If they’ve hurt one hair on her head—” I started. Raymundo shook his head, panicked.
“No, no, man, it ain’t that easy. You—you know. You can’t make that chica bleed, man. Shit gets freaky when she’s around blood. Her own or anybody else’s.” He crossed himself with his good hand. “That shit’s el diablo. Ain’t nobody with any sense gonna take a razor to her. She’ll just laugh and spit poison at you. So Cesar talked to these Chicago guys, and they got a solution.”
“Which is?”
He fell silent. His gaze flickered between Caitlin’s cold eyes and the floor.
“Do I need to start counting to ten?” she asked him.
“All right, all right!” He winced. “Chicago’s got this guy, they call him the Doctor. Pure f*ckin’ evil, man. Used to be CIA or something. They say he can get anything out of anybody, no problem. Like he just looks in your eyes and knows how to break you. Cesar warned ’em about the blood thing, and they said it wasn’t no big deal; the Doctor’s got a hundred ways of hurting somebody without leaving a single mark.”
“And this ‘Doctor,’ he’s…” My hands curled into fists at my sides.
“He’s on his way. I paid off one of the guards to smuggle a burner into solitary for me. Fucking thing shorted out when Jablonski gave me the fire-hose treatment, but I talked to Cesar last night. He said the Doctor and a bunch of Chicago heavies were getting in a car and driving out here for a meet-up. See, they can’t fly with, uh, his…equipment. They’ll be in Vegas any day now.”
“And this meeting?” Caitlin asked. “Where will it be?”
“I don’t know. God’s honest truth, there’s tons of places it could go down.”
“This Cesar,” I said, “he got a last name?”
“Gallegos. Cesar Gallegos. That’s all I know. Swear to God, that’s all I know.”
Caitlin and I shared a glance.
“Shall I?” she asked.
“Nah,” I said, “I think he’s had enough for one day. Let’s get moving. Time’s not on our side here. Congrats, Raymundo, you get to live.”
He had the most hopeful look on his face, right up until the moment I slammed the cell door behind me and locked it.
“But you’re also staying in prison. And we’ll make sure to let all your old Calles buddies know how you stabbed them in the back.”
“Hey,” he shouted from the other side. The stout door rattled. “Hey, you can’t do me like that! Hey!”
“I think we just did,” I said.
Caitlin nodded in agreement and gestured to the stairs. “Shall we?”
The front offices were a wasteland of overturned furniture and smashed windows, with the occasional body—inmate, guard, or too blood-soaked to tell the color of his uniform—littering the walkway. We headed out the same way I’d come in on my first day in prison, through the processing wing. All I could see was Jennifer’s face.
We had a chance to save her. How slim, I didn’t know, but we had a chance.
The stars shone down on a deserted tarmac. Floodlights from abandoned watchtowers cast random, desolate pools of light. The mass exodus of Warden Lancaster’s “guests” and his smarter henchmen was long over; nobody wanted to go down with this ship. We stayed low as we ran, just in case, keeping to the shadows, but nobody stood in our way as we made our escape through wide-open gates.
A tinny horn beeped. Up ahead, a van parked by the roadside fired up its engine and cast headlight beams across the desert flats. The side door, emblazoned with a Channel Five Eyewitness News logo, swooped open as we jogged up. Bentley waved us on board, while Corman looked back from the driver’s seat.
“Cuttin’ it close, kiddo,” he said as he threw the van into gear.
I pulled Bentley into a hug with one arm, reaching out to squeeze Corman’s shoulder with the other. I didn’t have words just then. Bentley patted my back.
“We were unavoidably delayed,” Caitlin said, glancing around the back of the van. It was windowless, lined with steel bins for storing camera equipment. She crouched down, perching on the raised wheel well, while I helped Bentley into the passenger seat up front.
“Yeah,” I said, “good news is we have a lead on finding Jennifer. Bad news is, she’s in deep trouble. We’ve gotta move, and fast.”
As we drove, I filled them in on the details. We’d only gone a couple of miles down the road before blinding high beams washed across the van window. National Guard trucks, draped in camouflage green, roaring in the opposite direction. I counted five in all, followed by a parade of highway patrol cruisers painting the desert in red and blue light.