PAYASO STOOD QUIETLY off to the side, watching by the window curtains.
“Well?” Borkow asked.
“It’s just as we thought; they are getting organized. They have already started hitting all the places we thought they would.”
“Then why haven’t they hit the Orchid?”
“They figured it the most unlikely place to find you so they set a trap. They’ve had two cars down the street watching. It won’t be long now.”
“I don’t know why they haven’t hit the Orchid yet. They should’ve hit it first. I want to get back in there. Once they hit it, they’ll be less likely to come back.”
From the other room, Harold said, “Boss, we got visitors.”
Borkow hurried over to the window and took up his perch with his head again pressed to the wall as he peeked out the slit. Ten cop cars, half of them unmarked, zoomed in and surrounded the Grand Orchid. Overkill—too many cops for just him. A black Suburban with an entire SWAT team standing on sideboards brought up the rear.
The sight of all those cops raised his heartbeat, made it race. Sweat beaded on his forehead, ran into his eyes, and stung.
Standing there naked with just a towel, the heavily armed and violence-hungry cops outside—not more than thirty or forty feet away—brought out his vulnerability. Yet he couldn’t move. He could only watch and imagine what it would feel like if he were actually standing in the Grand Orchid watching his violent demise approach. They wouldn’t bother with the warning yell “stop, police,” even if he stood with his hands in the air; they would gun him down like a dog. The sheriff’s department lost a big chunk of respectability when he’d made buffoons out of them. No, they would shoot him on sight.
Could Payaso have set all this up on purpose so Borkow could see just how serious the situation had become? The rude, insensitive bastard.
Payaso wanted Borkow to take off for Costa Rica. Hide out there for a few years while Payaso ran the operation and the heat cooled. Of course he did. If he let Payaso take the helm, he’d never get it back. And one day while lying on the beach sipping a sickening sweet piña colada, some sicario would slip up behind him and slit his throat.
Just as the men dressed in all black—the SWAT team—hurried to line up for a coordinated assault, a cowboy and a big black man dressed like a trucker exited the lead car. The two ran through the perimeter with guns drawn. The cowboy never missed a step. He grabbed a broken brick from the planter and hurled it at the double glass doors.
The door on one side exploded in a million tiny cubes of safety glass that rained down like an ice storm. The black man went in first with the cowboy close on his heels. Their actions, bold and unflinching, made Borkow shiver. Who were these guys?
It had been Payaso’s idea to buy the fitness center. What better place to hide than in plain sight in the same strip center as his beautiful Grand Orchid? Once the cops hit the Orchid, and saw that it was shut down, all but abandoned, Borkow could go back and forth from the fitness center to the Orchid with relative ease and not have to worry much about Johnny Law. He’d have a little more freedom, something he craved the most.
“Hey,” Borkow whispered to Payaso, “I am familiar enough with their procedure to know that those two who went in first are going to be in the grease for not waiting for the SWAT boys.”
Payaso watched from the slit at the other side of the window. “I warned you about this.”
Borkow looked away from the window and over at Payaso. “Tell me again.”
“You messed with that cop’s daughter. Now he’s going to come at you with everything he’s got until he puts you in the ground.”
“What? You mean that big buck dressed like a trucker is the same slug working as a bailiff in the court?”
“He’s not just a bailiff, and you’re way off-base calling him a slug. That’s Bruno Johnson.”
“Who the hell is Bruno Johnson? You say it with reverence like he’s, what, someone I need to be afraid of?”
“I would be, if I were you.”
Payaso never talked that way about anyone, not even the vicious Chinese Tong, who, two years earlier, had tried to muscle in on Borkow’s chain of massage parlors, demanding ten percent from his operation for protection. Payaso went head to head with the Tong’s street soldiers in three bloody battles and eventually beat them back.
Borkow looked through the slit just as Johnson and the cowboy came out holstering their guns. SWAT had waited, and now ready to go, hurried forward. The lead SWAT guy said something to the cowboy, who flipped him the bird and kept walking.
Johnson stopped and hesitated. He looked around, taking in the entire strip mall. His eyes stopped on the defunct Muscle Max across the parking lot.
“Shit.” Borkow pulled back from the window. “He just looked this way. Did you see that?”
“That’s what I was trying to tell you. This mayate has the instincts of a jungle cat. You should never have poked him like that.”
Borkow held his breath and focused on Johnson through the slit. He watched until Johnson lost interest in the fitness center and headed for his car where the cowboy waited.
Borkow let out his breath and waved his hand at Payaso. “Couldn’t be helped. We needed the diversion or the jailbreak would never have happened. I wouldn’t be standing here otherwise. We’ll just have to live with the consequences.”
“Don’t know if we can.”
Borkow left his perch and walked toward Payaso. “You telling me you’re afraid of … what did you call him … this, this mayate?”
“Not for me. I’m just afraid I won’t be able to keep him off you if he keeps kicking in doors like that. You just saw how he works. He doesn’t give a shit about the rules. Those kinds of cops are the most dangerous. He kicks in enough doors, someone’s gonna squeal.”
“Then take the offensive. Knock him off his game. We know his Achilles heel. Hit him again where it hurts so he has something else to keep him occupied.”
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
“I don’t care what you would do or wouldn’t do. Get it done. Get that bailiff’s daughter. Now, where are we with my wonderful defense attorney, Ms. Gloria Bleeker?”