Brodie grabbed Taylor’s arm and pulled her behind a column in front of an office building just as the driver flicked on his high beams.
The police car rolled slowly down the street. Brodie ran through their options. If they had been spotted, they would be confronted. The best-case scenario would be a belligerent shakedown. The worst case would be the cops finding the guns on them.
The car inched closer. Given how empty the street was, Brodie figured he and Taylor could light these guys up and beat feet. If they had to. And, recalling Worley’s story about the Venezuelan-American visitor, maybe they had to.
He had Taylor pressed against the column, and there wasn’t enough space between them to slip a credit card. So while Big Brodie was gaming how to get them out of this situation, Little Brodie was misinterpreting the inputs and stirring awake, which was really unhelpful.
The police car was now almost next to them. They were concealed in shadow as the high beams struck the column in front of them.
The car kept driving, and Brodie and Taylor slid around the column to remain in darkness. Another moment passed… then the driver gassed it and continued down the block.
They remained frozen behind the column for another minute as they listened to the car disappear down the street. Little Brodie was continuing to behave in an unprofessional manner, as was his nature, so Brodie took a step back from Taylor and looked down the dark street. No sign of the cop car.
He turned to Taylor, who was looking at him. The hint of something had passed between them, and it could only mean trouble for this mission, not to mention their careers.
Brodie cleared his throat. “That was close.”
“Yeah.” She looked down the street in the direction they had been walking. “We lost Raúl, but I think I can see the tower from here.”
They continued down the dark street, both aware that they were alone in a dangerous and lawless city, on a dangerous and unlawful assignment, with no backup except each other.
CHAPTER 18
The Tower of David, a.k.a. the Finance Center, was actually a complex of buildings, though there was a main tower that loomed above the rest, about forty or fifty stories high. It was an angular structure with a steel and concrete frame, intermittently faced with glass. Whole sections were unfinished, showing exposed floors and ceilings. It resembled a construction site except that the concrete looked old and stained, and much of the glass was shattered. It would not have looked out of place in an urban war zone. Or a zombie movie.
The sun was slipping farther beneath the horizon, casting the tower as a great looming thing against the blue-purple sky. Brodie and Taylor walked slowly toward it.
A concrete wall surrounded the entire complex, and ahead of them was a metal gate. Three figures were in front of the gate, though it was difficult to discern whether they were security, loiterers, or banditos.
As they got closer, they saw that the three men wore dark blue uniforms. One was leaning against a motorbike smoking a cigarette. The other two were standing next to the gate with submachine guns strapped across their chests.
The smoker spotted them across the street and waved them over. “Aquí, aquí.”
“Para quién?” asked Taylor.
“Raúl,” replied the man with some impatience. “Aquí.”
Brodie said to Taylor, “If it comes to it, we hit the two guys with the subs first. I take the right, you the left.”
“Copy.”
They crossed the empty street, and as they drew closer to the men, they saw that the guy smoking the cigarette was older than the other two,probably mid-forties. He had a pencil-thin mustache, a long gaunt face, and a thick scar that stretched down one of his sunken cheeks. He wore a pistol in a holster at his waist. As they approached he flicked his cigarette toward the curb. The two younger guys, maybe late twenties, stared at them.
Scarface asked something in Spanish, and Taylor responded. They had a brief exchange in which all the men kept shifting their gazes to Brodie, probably wondering what kind of man would let a woman speak for him. He wanted to tell them that he had failed freshman year Spanish before studying French, but that would have required some Spanish.
One of the young guys unlocked the metal gate and pushed it open. Scarface gestured for them to enter.
“After you,” said Brodie, gesturing at the gate.
Scarface just stared at him, dead-eyed. “After you,” he said back in heavily accented English.
Brodie and Taylor went through the gate, followed by the two submachine-gun-toting guys, while Scarface closed the gate behind them and followed.
They walked abreast of the three men through an area of overgrown grass and slabs of cracked pavement, then passed between two thick columns to enter an open-air circular atrium with multi-tiered wraparound balconies. The place stunk like mold and garbage, and every surface within reach was covered in stratified layers of graffiti, some profane, some artistic. Much of it political. In the gloom, Brodie could make out a large message scrawled across the far wall in big, bold yellow letters:CHÁVEZ VIVE. Chávez lives.
Well, Chávez was dead. As was any hope of Venezuela achieving the lofty financial status imagined by the original designers of this grand ruin.
Evidence of the tower’s former squatters was everywhere—jerry-rigged power lines extended across the atrium, brightly painted railings lined the edges of the open balconies, and high walls of stacked brick and cinder block formed makeshift rooms in the upper levels.
