“Good,” said Brodie. “We may need it.”
He leaned the AK against the wall and sat in a nearby chair. Luis stayed standing with his Beretta in hand and his eye on the door. The man had good instincts. And he had just killed a man. Luis had found his inner warrior.
Carmen reached over to a side table near the bed for a pack of cigarettes, shook one out, and lit it.
Brodie asked, “Is Kyle Mercer here?”
She took a drag and blew out a long trail. “No. He hasn’t been here for, like, two weeks.”
Two weeks. That would have been right after Al Simpson spotted him. Maybe he did get spooked.
“How long have you known him?”
Carmen thought a moment, then replied, “Maybe four months. I was dancing in the lounge, see this big gringo at a table, watching me. He was handsome. Because of my English these men usually are sent to me, and he was. So we come here, spend some time, he pays me and leaves. Next night, I’m dancing in the lounge, he’s there again. But this time he’s talking to the colectivo guys. You see them out there? Gang guys?”
Brodie nodded. Best not to go into detail on that subject.
“Yeah, you don’t fuck with them. So he’s talking to them, and I ask Carlo about it. It was weird for a yanqui to be talking to them, but… Carlo toldme to mind my own business. So I did. And then Señor Kyle pays to see me again, and he starts to see me, like, two or three times a week. At first he never says much. Seems like… his head is somewhere else. Always thinking. Then he starts to talk a little—”
A man started shouting in the hallway just outside their door. Luis walked over to the door and put his body against it and listened. A second voice could be heard. It was Lupe. They were having an argument.
Carmen stared at the door, worried.
Luis turned to Brodie and whispered, “Customer is unhappy with his girl. Says she is sick.”
There was a scuffle in the hallway; then the voices died down as a door slammed shut.
Carmen shook her head, muttered something in Spanish, took another drag. She said, “They shouldn’t make the sick girls work.”
Brodie thought that sounded reasonable. He also thought this place and this country had truly descended into hell. There was no mercy here, and life—like the national currency—had no value.
Brodie checked the wall clock. There was a lot of activity in this place, there was no way to lock the doors, and now two of the twenty-four rooms had corpses in them. This was like a battlefield interrogation of a civilian—you wanted to cut through the bullshit quickly and get to the information that will save your life or serve your mission before the bad guys find you and try to kill you.
Brodie focused on Carmen. “What did Señor Kyle talk about?”
Carmen watched the closed door for a moment, and then turned back to Brodie. She looked nervous, took a drag. “I told you, not too much… but after a couple weeks he tells me he was in the American Army, and he was taken prisoner in Afghanistan. And now he is somehow working with the colectivo, but he does not give me details. And out in the lounge I see him sometimes talking to the colectivo guys, and one time even with the regime guys, those pigs in the suits. I hear one or two of them call him ‘camarada.’ Comrade. I don’t know, just seemed weird, this yanqui soldier just shows up out of nowhere and now he’s a regular of this place and maybe an amigo of the Chavistas?”
Was Comrade Kyle a commie? Brodie doubted it. Mercer was doingwhat he had to do to get in with these people, for whatever reason. At least, that was Brodie’s assumption. Then again, who knew what two years in Taliban captivity could do to fuck up your head and your allegiances?
Carmen was looking at him. “So you’re an Army guy too?”
“Yes.”
“You with Señor Kyle in the war?”
“Different war. Same shit.”
Carmen gave him a look. She finished her cigarette, stubbed it in an ashtray on the table, and lit up another.
Brodie asked, “Did you ever overhear a conversation between Señor Kyle and any of these colectivo or regime people?”
“No… but one night, he’s with me and we do what we do, and after, he tells me he needs the room and I need to leave. I say okay. This is not something we are supposed to do with clients, but Señor Kyle is different and I understand this. I get dressed, leave to go to the lounge. And on my way down the hall, I pass this old guy I been seeing around lately. Dark-skinned guy. Last few weeks I notice him, sits at the bar alone sometimes, doesn’t say much, never had him as a customer but a couple of the other girls did. So I pass him in the hall and he just glare at me and then I turn and I see him go into my room. I go to the lounge, I ask Carlo, who the fuck is that guy anyway? Carlo tells me to shut the fuck up and mind my own business. But I am curious, so I sit at the bar and ask Amando, the bartender, and he says this guy is an officer in the army, a general. Amando recognizes him from the TV and newspapers. General Gomez.”
That sort of surprised Brodie. A general. But as Brodie had suspected, Mercer was a regular here and used this place as a kind of hideout and hangout. Rick’s Café with hookers. But more than that, it was a base of operations of some kind for Captain Mercer, and he had apparently insinuated himself with the local power. What the hell was he up to?
Brodie asked, “Did you ask Señor Kyle about his visitor?”
She shook her head. “He wouldn’t tell me if I did.”
