The woman.
The third man would no doubt be at her side, close-in protection.
Evan edged east, sourcing the tinge of perfume.
Night had come on hard, the jagged mausoleums framed in shadow and ambient light from the distant streetlights. The three monkeys of lore, rendered in gray marble, crouched at gargoyle readiness atop a slab of funereal stone, their shadows stretched grotesquely across the ground.
Listening for the two roving guards, Evan eased around a small-scale cathedral with caskets slotted into its rear wall. At the end of the lane, bent in the thickening darkness, the woman reached for a marble statue at the foot of a tomb.
As his eyes acclimated to the night, the age-old statue came into focus—a baby swathed in cloth, the newborn’s likeness preserved in marble. The woman’s head was angled mournfully, her face lost behind the wide brim of the hat, her hand resting on the baby’s stone chest as if feeling for a heartbeat.
Evan’s inhalation hitched ever so slightly in his throat. He became aware of a hike in his heart rate, the hot night air wrapping itself around his neck.
As he breathed himself back to steadiness, he admired the woman’s tradecraft. A grief-steeped mother paying respect to a lost child—a clever ruse designed to turn a key inside him, to access some long-buried vulnerability.
It almost worked.
More important, it meant they suspected he was watching.
As he drifted back out of sight, he sensed movement mirroring him on either side behind the mausoleums. Sure enough, as he came to the next intersection, the two roving bodyguards stepped into view to his left and right.
10
A Dog’s Breakfast
Evan faced ahead, favoring neither side, keeping both bodyguards in his peripheral vision.
“Hello, friend.” The guy to his left spoke in a voice that was theatrically low, with an excess of patience that a large, dangerous man could afford. Lightly accented English—either he’d gauged Evan’s gringo skin or knew who he was. “Is there some reason you’re following the lady?”
Evan stared straight ahead at the darkness. Neither man reached for hip or lapel; they assumed this could be handled without firearms.
Too bad they didn’t have an opportunity to acquaint themselves with the First Commandment.
Evan said, “She asked to speak with me.”
“Did she, now,” the man said. Not a question. “I find it unlikely that Ms. Veronica would ask anything of you. I think you shouldn’t be stalking women around cemeteries after hours.”
“I understand your opinion on the matter,” Evan said. “But it doesn’t interest me.”
The other spoke up. “We have encountered many men who weren’t interested in our opinions. Their broken bodies are now at the bottom of the Río de la Plata. You will see them soon enough.”
He took a step forward. His counterpart paralleled him on the left side.
Evan said, “This isn’t a good idea.”
The second man chuckled, leaned back on his heels. They each had at least four inches and fifty pounds on Evan. “You don’t look like much.”
Evan said, “That’s why this isn’t a good idea.”
The man sidled forward, resting a firm hand on Evan’s shoulder. The clenched grip was supposed to be intimidating, but it accomplished little more than making the man’s limb available.
Evan said, “We’re really gonna do this, then?”
“We are.”
Evan said, “Okay.” He grabbed the man’s hand and rolled it outward, snapping wrist and elbow with two percussive pops. A savate piston kick staved in the guy’s knee from the side, and he grunted and sank a few inches, evening out the height differential.
Before the bodyguard to the left could react, Evan reached across the injured man’s broad back, gripped him beneath the armpit, and pinwheeled him into his partner. Hurled sideways, the man hit his colleague at mid-leg, hyperextending both knees with a pleasing crackle. They tumbled into a stone edifice, the first man’s head smacking the wall from the momentum of their fall, the second’s after Evan clipped his chin with a well-placed jab, driving his skull into the granite.
They weren’t unconscious, but they couldn’t manage anything more than breathing, wet rasps and shudders. Evan looked down at them, doing his best not to consider how satisfying it felt to knock the rust off his fighting-muscle memory. It had all the dark deliciousness of giving in to a bad habit. He knew too well the costs of surrendering to it and yet couldn’t shake the sense right now, with the night air keen at the back of his throat and the rush of blood in his veins, that this was in fact the thing he was meant to do.
The greater the gift, the greater the curse.
Evan patted the men down, finding on each a Bersa Thunder .45, the predictable choice for an Argentine strongman.
The corroding door of the mausoleum had wedged halfway open, exhaling a faint waft of rot and mold. Evan rolled the men through the gap, letting the dank interior swallow them. Their pained exhalations floated out, ghostly echoes.
Evan dropped the magazines from both guns, cleared the rounds in the chambers, and tossed the pieces into a nearby trash can.
Then he started back toward the spot where the woman—Veronica?—had posed in feigned vigil over the child’s tomb.
The third bodyguard stood in the middle of the next lane, perfectly backlit, the glow from the distant high-rises bleeding around his silhouette. His gun was out, aimed at Evan.
They confronted each other a few feet apart.
Evan said, “Bersa Thunder .45, huh?”
“A nicely weighted gun.”
“I always found it lacking. The trigger-return spring gives out after a few hundred rounds.”
The man shifted his weight. He was barrel-chested, the glow of the streetlamps limning the side of his face, highlighting muttonchop sideburns. “I hadn’t noticed.” His accent was thicker, with the Italian lilt that qualified the Spanish here. He kept the pistol aimed at Evan’s heart. “Slide-lock issues, though.” He made a clucking sound to voice his disapproval.
He took a slight step forward. His gun hand stayed steady. Not his first rodeo.
Evan eyed the frame-mounted safety at the rear of the pistol. It was off. The man’s thumb was under the safety lever, not riding on top of it, a tell that he was not as experienced an operator as he projected. The .45’s heavy recoil could cause the thumb to slip on the grip and accidentally engage the safety.
The man flicked his head at the darkness behind Evan. “My men?”
“They’re alive.”
The man sidled forward a bit more, bringing the muzzle within a few feet of Evan’s chest. With its mishmashed frame angles, oversize levers, and aggressively angled trigger, it was a dog’s breakfast of a pistol.
Which made it a nice match for the man’s face.
He smiled, revealing beautiful square teeth inside a dense beard. “My name is Raúl. I am in charge of Ms. Veronica. I am under specific orders not to let anyone near her.”
“Were those orders given by Ms. Veronica?”
“This is not your business. And you are unarmed. I understand you got past my associates, and that has given you confidence. But they are boys. You are about to find out what happens when you meet a man.”