The yellow man stepped over Tito’s body, leaned down, and pulled Tito’s shirttail out of his pants. He wiped Tito’s blood off the tomahawk, his face empty, and smelled the copper smell of Tito’s blood. He was careful not to step in the blood. Once in Miami he had been stupid enough to step in the blood, and he had left a couple of clear prints from his shoes on the street outside the bar. The shoes were Bruno Magli, just like the ones O. J. Simpson never wore. He had paid a great deal of money for them, would have been a year’s pay for his father back in Guyana, and yet he had had to throw them into a cistern near the ship canal at Biscayne Bay. They were the first fine shoes he had ever owned, and it made him sorry to have to throw them away. Maybe one day he would have to think about using something other than his hatchet, but he was a superstitious man.
In the unofficial wars he had fought, the hatchet had been a good friend. A gift from the Marines, it had made everything possible, even the visa to come and live in the United States whenever he wanted. And afterward he had earned a good living with it. The others, they were all addicted to the bang-bang, loved to spray rounds everywhere, see the wood chips fly. They were children. Anyone could kill like that.
His judgment was cool, his methods his own, and therefore his life belonged to him alone. The middle management in Atlanta had approved of him, and even after all the deaths in the drug trade in the mid-eighties, he had stayed busy, had kept his arrangements in place. He never worked for two bosses, never sampled the product, never trusted a narcotraficante no matter what was promised to him, he never crossed over during a job, and he never forgot someone who tried to hurt him. Most of all, he never worked with anyone in any government, because once a government person had you, you were a puta, a slave.
Better to die.
The blade clean again, he walked over to the door and looked out at the traffic. No one had seen anything. That was one of the first things he had learned, that no one paid any attention. You could do almost anything as long as you did it without all that bang-bang. No one would ever notice.
He turned the lock on the front door and flipped the CLOSED sign over. Turning around, he made certain that no one looking in the front door could see either of the dead ones behind the counter. He walked back and looked down at the boy.
There had been a lot of blood in him. It was still running, but not as fast now. The brain had shut down the heart. Usually the body would empty itself in less than a minute. The fear did that. You had to step clear or do them from the back because the blood would come out in a big spray. Or an arc, depending on the cut. If they were awake, the adrenaline would make their hearts pump like little bird wings.
The boy looked like he might have been Indio himself. Don Florida was known for bringing in countrymen. They knew how to keep their mouths closed, especially since it was Don Florida who kept them safe from the INS agents who were always roaming around in places like Hunts Point and the Bronx factories. It was possible the boy had been trying to be brave, or to show off for the girl. If there had been more time, he would have spent some time with her just to teach the boy some manners.
He reached down and pulled the girl’s head back by the hair. A stringy ribbon of blood looped down from her open mouth. Her eyes were half-lidded, as if she were drugged. He caught a scent of spice and wool.
Meat, he thought, letting go. He wiped his hand on her plaid skirt, feeling the strong muscle in her thigh. He pushed the skirt up higher, exposing her pink panties. Her bottom was brown and smooth, rounded. He considered the situation, feeling a slow heat develop in his belly.
No, not with business to do.
Maybe later, if there was time.
He stepped through the door that led into the warehouse area and closed it behind him. The warehouse was about forty feet long and was filled with jute-bound crates and wooden boxes stuffed with leather crafts. It smelled of spices and rot and overripe fruit. Cane furniture was piled up along a wall. The rear loading bay was open, its slatted steel gate rolled up into a ceiling rack. There was a smaller entrance door beside the main bay gate.
The warehouse was cold and very dark. He walked over and looked up at the mechanism that controlled the sliding garage door. Manual. Whoever wanted to get in would have to ring or knock from the outside. Most likely, getting no answer, he would come in through the door and open the main gate himself. He pressed the red button at the side of the frame, and the steel door clattered and banged down through the rails. Now the darkness inside the warehouse was complete. The air was cold and damp and reeked of foreign ports and salt water. The warehouse felt like a crypt now, or a church.
The yellow man took a position behind a large crate with GUYAQUIL stenciled on the side. He waited quietly, his heart slowing and his lips going slack.
His eyes reflected nothing.
He was still.