“A doctor, huh?” he said with his second step. “You say the girl needs a doctor?” Another step. “That’s really too bad. Because the doctor is nowhere to be found.”

He took two more steps, inching closer to the crisscrossing seams of the bag’s double bottom. “But if you find him,” he said, raising his foot, as if poised to kill a cockroach, “if you do manage to talk to that chickenshit doctor, you be sure to ask about la bruja.”

He brought his foot down with full force, and the smashing of the tiny microphone between the seams made a small pop that could be heard across the room. “The witch,” he added, but only for Theo’s benefit.

chapter 43

I n a reflective moment outside his mobile command center, Vince allowed himself to wonder what he was missing.

Vince didn’t think of himself as an existentialist, but, ironically, his blindness almost forced him to step outside his own body and see himself. Sometimes he saw a happy Vince adapting to a world that didn’t depend on sight. He knew the smell of Alicia’s perfume and how it faded as the day wore on. He could hear footsteps around him and even differentiate between the heavy plod of SWAT members and the lighter step of Alicia as she walked away, toward the restaurant, leaving him alone with his thoughts. He could feel the breeze on his face and smell the Laundromat down the street. He heard helicopters overhead, the buzz of traffic a block away as it was being rerouted around the barricades on Biscayne Boulevard. With a little extra concentration, he could suddenly distinguish buses from trucks, trucks from cars, little cars from gas-guzzlers. Nearby, a pigeon cooed, then another, and it sounded as though they were scrapping over a piece of bread or perhaps a bagel that someone had dropped in the parking lot. A car door slammed. Men were talking in the distance. No, not just men-there was a woman, too, though Vince couldn’t make out the words. In some ways, he was more aware of his surroundings, or at least of certain details of his surroundings, than many sighted persons.

Other times, however, he looked at himself and saw a foolish Vince who blithely skated by in a world that acted upon him and described itself to him through sound, smell, taste, and touch. The foolish Vince failed to realize that he lived his life largely in a reactive posture, failed to appreciate that things still existed even if they concealed themselves and did not call out to him for recognition.

He wondered where the patches of silence lay in this assignment, and he wondered what secrets they held.

“Paulo,” said Sergeant Chavez.

Vince turned at the voice and faced the SWAT leader. “Yeah?”

“Chief Renfro’s on the line. Wants us to conference. Come on, in the SWAT van.” He took Vince by the arm and tried to steer him toward the van. Vince resisted, not because he didn’t want to go but because Chavez was apparently of the mind that blind folks should wear a brass ring in the nose so they could be led around like stray calves. “My hand at your elbow will work just fine,” said Vince.

They entered the van through the side door. Chavez directed Vince to one of the captain’s chairs, took the other one for himself, and slid the door shut. “We’re all here, Chief,” Chavez said into the speakerphone.

“Good,” said Renfro, her voice resonating over the speaker.

“You want another update already?” said Vince.

“Not unless something’s changed in the last five minutes.”

“No change.”

“Good,” said the chief. “Chavez and I were just talking, and we have both reached the very same and firm conclusion. I know you won’t like this, but it’s time to start angling for a kill shot.”

“What?”

“We’re going to take him out,” said Chavez, as if translating.

“But he just admitted that he has no bomb,” said Vince.

The chief said, “We don’t give that any credence. Falcon clearly knew there was a listening device hidden in the bag when he said there was no bomb.”

“I don’t think he was trying to trick us.”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Chavez. “The message from Theo Knight was loud and clear. There’s someone inside the bathroom who’s hurt and needs a doctor.”

“I agree,” said Vince. “I was just working out my next phone call in my head. Let me see if I can talk Falcon into letting her go to the hospital.”

“That’s ridiculous,” said Chavez.

“Let him talk,” the chief said. “Paulo, how do you propose to get the injured hostage out of there?”

“We can roll a gurney up to the door, just like we did with the food in the wagon.”

Chavez scoffed. “Falcon won’t trust that. We planted an eavesdropping device in the food bag. He’ll probably think a gurney rolling into the hotel room is a Trojan horse loaded with specially trained, three-foot-tall SWAT members.”

Vince said, “Maybe he’ll let a doctor come in and see her.”

“Maybe he’ll hold the doctor hostage, too. Chief, you and I have been over this already, and time is a-wasting. That girl could be dying in there for all we know.”

There was silence, then the chief said, “That’s where I keep coming out on this, Paulo. I can’t let you keep talking indefinitely, knowing that there’s a hostage in need of medical attention.”

“So we’re going in, right?” said Chavez. “That’s the plan.”

“That’s not a plan,” said Vince. “Not unless you want dead hostages on your hands.”

“Paulo’s right,” said the chief. “I want to try a sniper shot before we break any doors down. Maybe we can get him to open the door or come to the window. Paulo, I need you to help us set it up.”

Suddenly, it was as if all the questions were answered, as if the real reason for his involvement were being trumpeted from the hilltops. Vincent Paulo wasn’t there to negotiate for the release of hostages. His highly conceived role was to facilitate and assist in Falcon’s execution. And he had the sinking feeling that this had been the foolish blind man’s role from the beginning.

“All right, Chief. Let me see what I can come up with.”

chapter 44

J ack was standing by the Dumpster behind the restaurant, ready to make a follow-up phone call to his father. He’d punched out six numbers when a uniformed officer interrupted.

“There’s someone at the barricade who insists on seeing you,” she said.

It was one of those eerie doo-doo, doo-doo moments, as Jack got the impression that his father had shown up just as he was about to place the call. “Who is it?”

“Says she’s your abuela. I told her you were kind of busy. But she’s, to put it mildly, persistent. Kind of a crazy old lady. No offense. My abuela’s crazy too.”

Not like mine, thought Jack. He put his phone away. First things first, and Abuela never came second. “All right. Lead on.”

Abuela, of course, was Jack’s maternal grandmother, his chief source of information about the mother he had never known. Jack’s mother died while he was still in the hospital nursery. His father remarried before Jack was out of diapers. Jack’s stepmother was a good woman with a weakness for gin martinis and an irrational hatred for Harry’s first love and, by extension, all things Cuban. As a result, Jack was a half-Cuban boy raised in a completely Anglo home with virtually no link to Cuban culture-a handicap that his abuela was determined to rectify. The results were mixed, at best.

“Jack Swyteck, ven aca.” Come here.

She was standing behind the striped barricade with arms folded across her bosom, a disapproving scowl on her face. Jack remained on the other side of the barricade. This was not going to be pretty, and some official separation from her wrath couldn’t hurt.

He leaned closer, kissed her forehead, and said, “What did I do now?”

Her love for talk radio had improved her ear for English (Dr. Laura was her favorite), but when speaking, she often stuck to the present tense. “Your father calls to tell me what you are doing.”