Judge & Jury - James Patterson [91]
We’d learned from a local bartender, and a waitress, that the American ate at a café called Bar Ideal on San Martin Street, near the port. He sat at the same table in the front window. He sometimes grabbed and flirted with a hot little blond waitress there. A couple of times they had been seen going off together, after her shift, to a hotel down the street. Cavello and the girl usually came out after about an hour or so.
Then, like a sated bull, he would wander over to a smoke shop a few blocks away, on Magellanes, his bodyguards a few paces behind. He’d buy a box of fancy cigars. Cohibas—Cuban. Then he’d take a USA Today and a New York Times from a newsstand down the block. Cavello seemed to be fearless here. Who would recognize him? Occasionally he would sit at a different café, order a coffee, open his papers, and light up a cigar. Merchants seemed to cater to him, as if he was an important man.
As I glimpsed him getting out of his car, I felt my insides ratchet tight. All the anger and anguish from so many deaths came hurtling back at me. I could only watch silently, my skin numb and hot.
How was I going to do this? How could I get him alone? We had no bait.
How was I going to get close to Cavello? And then, what if I did?
That night, we stopped to have dinner in a small café outside of town. Andie seemed unusually quiet. Something was weighing on her, and I was feeling it, too. We’d been so close to Cavello—and he was a free man here. Finally she looked at me. “How are we going to get this done?”
I took a sip of the Chilean beer. “He’s well guarded. I don’t know how to get close.”
Andie put down her beer. “Listen, Nick, what if I can?”
Chapter 114
ANDIE HAD BEEN THINKING about this for a long time. She had watched Cavello enough that she just knew. She’d had this feeling even watching him come into the courtroom that first fateful day. She knew how to get close to him if she ever needed to, and now she did.
“I’m an actress, remember?”
She and Nick began to think out a loose plan, just going through the motions.
She had to make sure she wouldn’t be recognized, but Cavello had only seen her during the trial—with her hair long and usually tucked in a beret. So she went out to the farmácia and got a dye to lighten her hair to blond. Then she braided it, Indian-style, and put on a baseball cap. With a little orange lipstick and sunglasses, she surprised herself.
“What do you think?”
“I think we take this a step at a time, Andie. I think it’s a good disguise.”
It wasn’t just acting a role now. It was the real thing. It was life and death.
They found a place to lure him easily enough. But with Cavello’s bodyguards always around, Nick had to be ready to come in fast. There was always a chance he might not get there in time. And then Andie would probably die. They would both die.
Nick bought a short, serrated blade, a fisherman’s knife. And a melon.
“You push the knife in here,” he said, showing her. He guided her thumb to the soft spot under her chin, pressing into her larynx. “It’ll stop him dead, make him helpless. He won’t be able to scream. He’ll be too shocked, and bleeding too much to do anything. There’ll be lots of blood, Andie. You have to be prepared for that. And you have to keep the knife in him. Until he dies. You think you can do that?”
She nodded tentatively. “I can do it.”
Nick handed her the sheathed blade. “You think so? Show me.”
She held it unnaturally. She’d never used a knife for anything except preparing food. She slowly lifted the blade, still in its sheath, to the spot under Nick’s chin. Pressed.
“Let me practice on the melon,” she said.
“Practice on me. Harder,” he said.
Andie pushed the blade with more force . . . into Nick’s throat.
He grabbed her wrist. “Quick—like this.” His hand jerked upward with a violent movement, scaring her, his thumb going right to the same point in her neck.
She let out a gasp.
“You have to be able to do this,” he said, applying more pressure,