There were a lot of things to like about Caracas.
Having so neatly side-stepped Mexico's rainy season, it was a pity his trip had to coincide with Venezuela's instead, but the climate was otherwise reasonable. The coastal influences kept the temperatures moderate for the latitude - it was still unpleasantly hot some days, but nothing like the soul-meet-pitchfork hell-pit that was Mexico's northern interior.
The weather was having one of its more cooperative moods and predicted to stay that way, so he had the cab drop him at the edge of Parque los Caobos for the longer walk. The car hadn't been going anywhere in a hurry anyway. Goddamn traffic was worse than Manhattan.
The park was a usefully multi-tasking environment, so long as he stayed clear of the huge fountain with its rushing, splattering water and all those people and their shrieking brats. The traffic noise and fumes dialled down behind him, the trees taking over, shivering and rustling above him in easy sound, low and steadily variable with the birdsong. The city was toned back from its enclosing, dense primary colours, but not lost anywhere in a park this size, always hanging misty-grey somewhere around him when he sought it out through the trees. Major roads and chiming clocks reaffirmed his sense of direction if he needed it, on sunless days back when the paths had been unfamiliar, and they kept the whole experience from being too reminiscent of the endless grinding tedium of marching the dirt roads round El's old hovel, while he waited for the dicktard to quit moping and kick his own starter. The bigger parks were more disorienting, took more concentration, and he only used those when he didn't need to think.
He still chose walking as much the lesser of the available evils. He had to keep himself in something like his old shape, and he wasn't going to be playing any ballsports on a competitive level. And he had no desire to spend time at the gym, with unspeakably boring corporate types panting and rasping heavy under excess pounds at the next machine. He'd stick with push-ups and the other at-home basics for muscle work.
He knew all the paths here, pressing the pace and using the cane as a fast check for branches after the rainstorms, or trash dumped by zombie-brained fucklets-in-waiting. Barely a ten minute walk to his bench, a spot carefully selected because it was arced close by bushes, and he took the laptop from its case knowing nobody was going to be getting line of sight on his keys without stomping on sixty or seventy twigs first. He slid in his earphone - just the one, he liked his other ear paying attention elsewhere - connected the laptop to his cell, strapped on his throat mike and dialled up.
The usual lengthy and tedious access routine broken by a couple of false inputs, but he preferred his accounts to have the extra levels of security. The first part of the money had just transferred in, and was already sweeping through automatically to his main stockpile.
He didn't play with bags of cash the way he once had. Even if he got himself a reliable double-check he wasn't being stiffed with the Monopoly bank, he'd be a walking invite for muggings on a weekly basis. Sooner or later he'd fuck up and some greasy turdball would get lucky.
Everything one step removed, right along with the rest of the world, disassociation the key to a tidy life.
He transferred a smaller amount through to his local account and disconnected the final call, erasing them from the histories of both cell and computer. Barely ten minutes and everything was repacked, and he took a series of trails the length of the park before he headed for the café.
No bleep from his watch yet when he reached the steps, figured he was a minute or so early, but the door rattled unlocked and opened with a rush of air-chill when he got to it anyway. He tucked his cane up under his arm and made his way through to the table the other side of the bar, in the corner away from the windows.
He arranged his meetings a little after opening, and the staff in his places knew to check the furniture was all where it should be if they wanted their tip. And he tipped well.
He ordered his coffee - Adriana today, she knew how he wanted it, and didn't hassle him over details - and settled back to wait, cool breeze touching round his neck beneath his hair and easing the city's damp-clinging heat from him. Air-con really was the perfect invention for anyone whose circumstances dictated the carrying of concealed weapons. It was a pity nobody had convinced the local cab drivers of the virtues.
The waitress was back a few minutes later, setting his coffee down, and an ashtray beside it. His watch bleeped again, one minute warning for his ever-punctual meet, and he smiled and thanked her briefly, but didn't reach for the cup.
The door opened out front and someone came in; heavy-built with long, steady strides and shoes that tapped over the tiles, business, not sneakers. Sands tracked him past the bar, picking up his coffee and blowing on it, deliberately unreacting as the feet clicked closer. He'd met the man a few times now - enough to have an idea, not enough to be staking any of his remaining body parts on it, especially when he kept changing his shoes.
The man stopped the other side of his table and yanked out a chair, sharp lift-drag. Definitely Muñoz.
"So what have you got for me?" No names, no introductory small talk, the guy was always straight to the point. Sands almost liked him.
He unzipped the back pocket of the laptop case one-handed, took out the papers and slid them over the table. "This is the itinerary for the whole month, with the emphasis naturally on the non-public visits."
He sipped at his still-too-hot coffee, the papers rustling regularly across from him as they were flicked through slowly.
"This is all guaranteed?"
"Multiple sources confirming most of it. I've marked the details that might not be a hundred percent."
A second, faster ruffle of the sheets. "There aren't many of those."
He smiled quick and tight, spinning the words out slower. "You're paying me for facts, not a ten page listing of maybes."
With the real ass-wipes, the ones who were going to die either way, well, he sold the truth to them too, but there'd be a little something missing along the way. Nothing too big, nothing too important, just enough that overlooked it would swing things against them, and he got to sit back and play them a little as they thrashed around in the tar-pit, digging themselves ever-deeper in the struggle to get out.
Not too often, though - it wouldn't do to get himself a reputation for being unreliable.
Muñoz paused half a second, no flap of paper, no obvious breathing. "Some of these facts make interesting combinations."
Sands smiled a little wider - he'd figured the connection with the oil, then. "Personally, I'd go with the dinner on the twenty-fifth as your opening."
Personally, he could give a rat's fart about whatever deals Castro was cooking up with Chavez, but it interested enough other people to keep his finances healthy.
Shiver through the table beneath his hand, some movement there he hadn't caught direct from Muñoz. "Maybe." Nothing committal in the voice, certainly not inclined to be trusting, and there really was a lot to appreciate in doing business with someone who knew just how it all worked.
The papers rustled one last time as his guest tapped them straight against the table and tucked them away. "Your payment's on the way."
Sands smiled at the edges. "I know."
Muñoz pushed his chair back, quick scrape-scratch absorbed into the room, but then he leaned back in instead of standing to leave, arms on the table making it quiver-stop. "Oh, and just as a little something extra, you might want to know some people have been asking around after you."
Sands left the smile fixed in place, raised his eyebrows in light curiosity. "Would you happen to know who?"
"I didn't bother finding out - that's more your line, after all. It's a different name they're looking for, but it's your description."
That figured. Not much chance of there being two of him around, really. "American?"
"Nobody's called it. The accent's not local, but they speak Spanish and English, and both flawless."
Well, that ruled out the basic coke goons, which left a fairly short list of possibilities. "I don't suppose you've got a description to share with me?"
"A man and a woman, somewhere in their thirties, that's all." His voice drifted upward the same way his lips would be right now. "If I had more, I'd have made you lower your fee."
Sands smiled back at him, one finger circling slow over the table, smooth-polished beneath the glove. "So why the tip-off? Would this be your charitable act for the week, a down-payment on your chosen spot in the afterlife?"
"You've been good for business. There's probably more chance of this set-up surviving if I tell you than if I don't." Quick cloth brush that might have been a shrug. "Either way, I lose nothing by it."
That was true enough - Muñoz would need a particularly inspiring reason to want him out of town at this stage in his dealings.
Muñoz got to his feet, shivering crockery rattle as he brushed against the table. "I'll hope to see you around," he said lightly, and clicked away across the tiles.
Sands listened to him go, the door opening and closing after him, then pulled out and lit a cigarette, huffing the smoke out fast between his teeth.
Well, fuck.
He hadn't ever been planning on a permanent deal, but he'd been hoping to keep it flowing a little longer. All that time and effort setting up connections and contacts, and he was going to have to disappear again.
Venezuela had been good to him. Caracas, like most cities, had a wide range of inhabitants with an equally wide variety of views and affiliations, and there was always space for a facilitator between. Someone who could get information from the slum scum, including the ones less motivated to cooperate, then slide right back in with the people who made things happen. Just the right degree of political infighting and corruption around right now to create plenty of interesting employment opportunities, not enough to make daily life unpleasant, and even better, a government that was no friend at all to Washington.
Nobody was ever going to be dragging his ass back to the US through legal channels.
A couple more pulls on his smoke, and his hand reached out automatically to the ashtray, quick flick of his fingers at the edge.
He wondered if this meant the hunt was on for El too.
He'd resisted putting the feelers out for information on El Mariachi. If the dickwit had ever gotten careless and dead, that news would have filtered down fast with the fine Colombian imports, and as long as he kept himself alive, the details were irrelevant. Asking would have sent too many unusual vibrations both ways along the wires.
But El was too good a Plan B to lose just because the brainfuck was clueless someone else was painting themselves into the picture.
Christ, he should have stuck around long enough to arrange some kind of system. He'd place some major bets that El's happily enriched mariachi tag team could get word to him inside a day if they ever needed to. He was gonna have to start right over from the basics, which was just too fucking tedious.
If he decided he was going to do it.
And wasn't that quite the question?
Adriana was hovering non-intrusively, making work a few tables away, and he waved her over. "What's my tab running at now?"
"I'll check for you, Señor." Not quite hiding the surprise - normally he'd stay longer, eat lunch.
He pulled out a roll of notes from a pocket tight against his ass - all one denomination, fresh from the ATM, anything else was too much fucking hassle - and counted them off. No sense pissing off the locals over something as minor as an unpaid bar tab, not while there was any possibility he might end up round this way again sometime. He handed her two extra. "Keep the change." He wouldn't have any use for bolos himself tomorrow.
"Thank you, Señor." The smile was bouncing all over her voice, obvious as King Kong on the Empire State swatting planes. It wasn't the worst way to start a shift for a waitress cutting minimum wage in a currency running over thirty percent inflation. She'd figure it out in a week or so when he didn't show. "Should I call you a cab, Señor?"
"No. It's a good day, I think I'll walk."
When she left, he scooped his fingers through the left pocket of his jacket, pulling out the change and smaller notes he'd collected over the last few days and left those as part of the tip. That junk only got in his way.
His cigarette had burned through, and he crushed it into the ashtray.
He fired up his laptop and hooked his cell in again, quick check on a few extra details and news reports. A couple of short calls got him the full range of transport possibilities, and then he wiped the memory and records on his cell blank. He didn't leave much in there anyway, but no point tossing out even the small crumbs. It was amusing to consider the possibilities of having the Company go poking into the affairs of some of his less amenable contacts, but the potential drawbacks of bringing together any of the various people who didn't much like him were too inconvenient.
He packed everything away and left, using the less-travelled back streets that paralleled the arterials.
He knew his options from here, had plans in place to cover the basics, a few tentative feelers hooked out to a couple of cities.
He could push on to Paraguay, use the time it took them to track him again to see what he could dig up, try to get himself something to work with. Or he could head back to Mexico and take the blunt instrument approach to the source of it all. One got him a time limit and starting from scratch with almost no contacts, one got him a batshit crazy Mariachi and more enemies than just the ones who'd followed him here. Heads you lose, tails you're truly fucked, Sheldon.
Those types of choices were getting cosily familiar with him lately.
He'd developed a certain respect for the direct approach. Kind of enjoyed it, when it was a choice and not a lifestyle. Like most things, it lost its appeal shoved hard down his throat - he was willing to suck cock now and then, but he always pulled back when he started to gag.
The other reason he'd left, well that no longer applied.
He could taste it still, the taint of steel flooding over his tongue when his thoughts slipped; that moment in the car, running smack into the little inconvenience that had been backing him quietly from the sidelines the whole time he made his plays.
It had been fear, and not the kind that was bullets he couldn't see whining past his head and into his goddamn leg.
Fear that was standing by a doorway with the wrong people following, a connection sliced silent by his ear, and the knowledge that everything was about to go crazy and he didn't have a fucking clue.
Fear that was waking up strapped to a table in a room with a man whose street reputation was based on a liking for torture.
He'd always known he could do it - had it all figured out in his head from about day six, thoughts tacking breezy between the pain-waves as he sat mummified in a back room with a bubblegum kid. And knowing hadn't done a goddamn thing to stop the thought of being blind alone from leaving him absolutely fucking ready-to-empty-his-guts-all-over-the-car terrified.
Shit, just thinking about it now was enough to have his fingers in his pocket sliding over his pack of smokes.
It was a funny thing to look back on. When he got down to it, it was only a matter of figuring out what he needed to do and working his way through the list, same as anything else, and just as easy. Making things happen was what he did. He'd known that the whole time too, known that sitting around sifting through all the ways it could go to hell was a lot worse than just getting out there and doing it.
And he'd still had to get out and do it before he could believe it.
The only big head-fucker he was stuck with now was whether El was already on the watch list. If he was, he needed to know. If he wasn't, digging him out would add him right up near the top as somebody interesting.
No way to tell without more information, and no way to get it without putting himself out there as a target, and that was far more El's style than his.
Fuck, but he hated being pushed into decisions when he didn't have all the data. Or in this case, damn near any of it.
Footsteps across the street, light, fast, almost skipping; just the one set and exactly what he'd been listening for.
"Hey, kid. Get over here."
The footsteps slowed, stopped, but they didn't come any closer.
He reached into a jacket pocket, pulling out the smaller stash of notes there - never keep all your cash in one place, not in Caracas, eye issues irrelevant - and thumbed a few off slow and obvious.
Still no closer - this one was stringing him a tough sell. And then the break, high, inevitable - "What do you want?"
A girl. That explained the reluctance, not that it made any difference - he looked a complete fucking perv whatever kid he paid off in the street. "I want you to drop something off for me, that's all. You don't have to go anywhere with me."
She was crossing the street now, creeping in. Still cautious, but no question she'd bite. Not that there ever had been. "Is it illegal?" She sounded more hopeful than suspicious - mercenary inclinations developed early, just the way he liked them.
He dipped his head as she moved in, tracking her height from her voice, and smiled down. "Not this time." He held out the cash and his cell towards her. "I want you to take this phone and put it on a bus. Not a city bus, something going long distance. Just push it under one of the seats towards the back."
"They won't let me on the bus, Señor. The drivers, they watch for us."
Up close, she didn't smell great, and she wasn't so well-sharpened in the brains block either - even if he were a perv, he'd pass on this one. "So ride the bus a stop then take another back if you have to. I'm giving you more than enough cash to cover a ticket. Consider the trip out of town a bonus." The brat had probably never been more than twenty blocks over from whatever rat pit she was born in.
Sound-movement flash, and she was grabbing at cash and phone - brush of fingers that had been fuck knows where over his glove, and he squashed the instant flinch-tense of it and kept his grip. "Oh, and kid." He let his smile flatten out, running his voice sweet and dark like treacle. "You really do want to leave it. Don't get any funny ideas about keeping it."
She snatched again, harder, and he let go, her feet slapping off fast down the street.
She'd follow instructions, for that amount of cash - even she'd realise the deal stank worse than she did.
And if anyone else found the cell and stashed it, well, they deserved whoever came looking. Handing in lost property was just good manners.
He was deeply curious as to who it might be doing the looking.
With the Cuban connections, there'd be a couple of Company coyote-lickers slinking round here somewhere, sniffing up the same information. Someone could be tossing them one or two extra bones unasked for - with the rigged referendum idiocies, the opposition might just be getting desperate enough to suck American ass to be rid of Chavez.
But if the Cunts Incorporated knew he was here, he'd be expecting more by now than a few questions. There was another angle to this.
He reconnected with the main road to take the bus the rest of the way to his apartment. The buses were unpleasant, but they were frequent, and he'd got no phone now to call a cab. He wouldn't risk trying to flag one in the street, not when he'd no way to tell if he got a genuine taxi or a moonlighter who'd try taking him like some dipshit tourist. He didn't need the hassle of body disposal today, or the even more annoying possibility of some kind of public scene right outside his door.
There wasn't much to pack when he got back to his place. Some of his clothes had migrated into the closet and drawers over the months, along with the newer, rather classier threads he'd equipped himself with when he got here. He'd have to leave a few behind - he owned too much now to fit the one bag with the rest of his guns, and he always liked to keep one hand free.
He changed into something more suitable for the trip, dressing down into ten-buck tourist T-shirt under a light denim jacket, and knee-length ragged cut-offs that covered the bullet scars. He was older than the average 'adventure' traveller who made a point of hitting the borderline risk cities, but it was the least stand-out look on offer. It suddenly wore a little non-designer ripped every time he couldn't fake it out and had to obviously resort to the cane, of course, but that was true however he played it.
He threw the laptop case in the trash, and shoved the computer and most of its accessories in the bag too, between the clothes - no way was he losing that, not with its adaptations and after all the hours it'd taken him training the voice recognition software up to speed. Christ, but if he ever found himself within range of the stupid fuckers who'd coded that piece of horse shit, he'd shoot their dicks off. Learning to touch-type even at this belated stage might actually have been quicker.
Fifteen minutes after he got back, he was set to go, and he knew where he was going.
The idea of fleeing with rabbit ears down across South America, trailed every step of the way by some irritating bugfucker jackals he couldn't even finger, really yanked at his balls. So Mexico it was.
And if he brought El some more unwanted attention, well, that was hardly new. El could watch his own back well enough if he knew what to watch for. He could always disappear again, if he hadn't already.
Sands reached for the phone and dialled up a cab.