Ballistic(34)
Court’s gaze settled on a building that overlooked the park. The first two stories were finished; they housed a dental office, a travel agency, a pharmacy, and a few other offices. But high above street level the third and fourth stories were construction; iron beams, rebar, cinderblock, electric wires, scaffolding, and big, dark open windows that overlooked the entire crowd and the stage. To a man like Court Gentry, it looked promising. Here was an overwatch, a place where he could get a bird’s-eye view of the event.
He began walking towards the building.
The next speaker at the podium was male, a state prosecutor. He began extolling the brief but illustrious career of Major Eduardo Gamboa, in advance of the late-officer’s wife saying a few words.
Finally free of the gridlocked crowd, Gentry headed down an alley that ran west all the way to the beach. On his left an archway opened to a hallway that ran under the partially finished building. At the arch he passed the doorway to a pet store; a dozen bird cages hung from the roof off the hall alongside the shop’s windows, forcing him to duck as he walked on. Moving slowly down the narrow hallway, he stepped around more chirping finches and budgies in their wooden cages, which jutted out into his path. Pigeons sauntered around at Gentry’s feet as he moved slowly towards a light ahead. A stairwell at the end of the dark hall.
And then, thirty feet in front of him, a shadow from the left. Court stopped in his tracks. A man crossed the hallway in the light, from a room on the left to the stairwell up on the right.
The man was dressed from head to toe in black, and his face was covered with a black ski mask.
He was a federale, or dressed like one at least, but his skulking movement and mannerisms were not those of a cop here to keep the peace.
Gentry froze, willed the man not to look up the dark hallway as he passed and just continue to the stairs.
The man did not look, he did walk on, and just before disappearing from view, Court saw a squat black submachine gun in the federale’s left hand.
Then Court heard a vehicle pull into the alleyway behind him. He looked back and saw a black armored Policía Federal SWAT van stop directly under the archway by the pet store from where he had just come, essentially blocking him in unless he could find another open exit.
Court stood alone in the hallway for nearly half a minute, not sure what to do. Ahead of him, somewhere up the stairs, an armed man who seemed to be up to no good. Behind him, who knows how many more shady cops showing up a block away from the event.
“Cullen, you read me?”
The reception was shit in the hall. Court heard an echo of the man speaking into the public address in his phone’s earpiece, but he couldn’t hear Chuck.
Damn. He began heading towards the staircase.
The second-floor door was locked, and Court didn’t think the man had gone through it, as Court would have heard the latch echo down the stairwell to the hallway. He whispered into his mike, again trying to raise Captain Cullen, but the reception in the stairwell was even worse than in the hallway.
He slipped off his tennis shoes so that he could move without footfalls echoing up the stairwell, and he began walking up the concrete stairs in his stocking feet.
On the third floor Court left the stairwell and entered the construction area of the building, looking for the lone federale with the sub gun. The unfinished floor provided open windows out to the Parque Hidalgo and the streets around. He half expected to find the masked policeman here, amidst the darkness and the building materials, but there was no one. Gentry stepped forward to check the crowd.
The plaza below was packed tight; from this vantage point he could better see the incredible congestion in the space. The speaker finished his comments and turned the lectern over to Elena Gamboa; clapping and cheering drowned out the yelling and cursing, but Court could make out the differing camps reflected in the gathering. Shoving, finger wagging, and other animated gestures expressing displeasure were sprinkled in amongst those clearly here to honor the fallen men.
Then loud car horns began honking below and to his right, drowning out the applause. First one, then two, and finally five large white SUVs pushed their way slowly through the mass of humanity. They moved in the wrong direction up the one-way street. The big trucks continued honking, and the angry waving of the SUVs’ drivers out the windows encouraged the crowd to part. Finally, the big white trucks stopped, and men began filing out. So dramatic was their entrance to the event that even Elena Gamboa paused her opening comments from the riser to see what was going on.
Court wondered if this was part of the memorial, but one look to the dais dispelled that notion. The families and other speakers standing up there looked confused by the new arrivals.