St Kilda Consulting 02 - Innocent as Sin

and westof Central Avenue. Despite his slight, ropy build, he didn’t have to fight every night or every week to prove himself. The thought made him smile.
    Here, everyone knows that Gabriel Navarro is a stone-cold mother-fucker.
    It had been three years since he’d killed anyone in the Jumping Cholla, and that hadn’t been done to polish his reputation. The dude had needed to die. Gabriel had taken care of it.
    The mixed clientele of the bar—Indian, Indio, Mexican, the odd gringo—reflected his own heritage. He could drink here and shoot eight-ball with the cross-eyed Cajun from Baton Rouge for a hundred bucks a game and nobody bothered him. Well, the bar girl asked every half hour if he wanted another schooner, but she always came close enough for him to grab her ass, so it wasn’t really a hardship.
    The last thing Gabriel expected to see as he chalked his cue stick was Andre Bertone walking in through the open back door.
    Ay, chingón! He has my cell number. What is he doing here?
    Immediately Bertone stepped into the shadows and stopped to size up the bar. He didn’t have to take a deep breath to know what kind of place he was in. The mixed odors of tobacco, beer, male sweat, and a urinal more often missed than hit were familiar. By comparison to places he’d been in around the world, the Jumping Cholla was almost upscale. At least someone had tried to cover the urinal’s stink with a pungent disinfectant.
    Even if the bar hadn’t been relatively genteel, Bertone wouldn’t have worried. Once he’d delivered a million-dollar cash bribe to an African defense minister in a place far worse than this. Another time he’d shot to death a Bulgarian helicopter pilot who had hijacked a load of rocket-propelled grenades. Another time itwas a knife and a fool who had tried to step on Bertone’s shoes. Never had any of the bar patrons tried to stop Bertone.
    If he decided that Gabriel had lied to him about the girl’s escape, no one would stop the death Gabriel deserved.
    The bartender spotted Bertone and made him as wrong.
    Bertone almost smiled. Maybe it was his white silk shirt open at the throat, his heavy silk slacks, and his thousand-dollar loafers. Or a haircut that cost more than most men in the place cleared in a week.
    With a sound like a pistol shot, the bartender slammed the heavy glass he’d been polishing on the bar.
    Heads raised, looking first at the bartender, then in the direction of his eyes.
    Gabriel didn’t look up from the shot he was setting up at the pool table. “ Bienvenido my house, esso, ” he called out in sliding, slurred English. “I thoug’ I see you soon. But no here, esso. You ’ave good sources.”
    “I found you once a long time ago, Gabriel. After I have found you once, I can always find you again.”
    With that Bertone turned away and walked back through the door into the deeply shadowed parking lot.
    To the surprise of every man in the room except himself, Gabriel racked his cue and walked toward the back door.
    The Cajun had hair the color of chili colorado and a rough voice. “Hey, bro, you forfeitin’?”
    “It’s a draw, asshole,” Gabriel said without looking back.
    The Cajun didn’t argue.
    Gabriel found Bertone leaning against the gleaming black flank of his bulletproof Humvee, puffing on a cigar he’d just lit. A gold-plated Zippo gleamed in his thick fingers.
    “Tell me what really happened,” Bertone said.
    “Like I told you,” Gabriel said, shrugging. “Bitch had a knife. She opened it with one hand, like maybe she knew how to use it. You tell me no blood, so I hadda think. Then the fuckin’ guard turned on the light. I figure I wait for a better time.”
    Bertone puffed on the cigar and watched Gabriel through the smoke. The man wasn’t smart, he wasn’t worldly; a primitive, really.
    But a useful, ruthless one.
    “So you climbed the wall and came back to the main house,” Bertone said.
    “Guard had a gun. If I don’t book on out of there, he make a big noise you no like with all those fancy guests around.”
    “What happened to your gun and the rest of the gear?”
    Gabriel’s mouth opened, then closed without a word. He lit his own cigarette with a match scratched across the butt of his jeans.
    “I got my own gun,” he said finally. “I can use rope when I find her again.”
    “If you find her, you cretin.” Bertone’s voice was a lash.
    “I know Phoenix. You watch the airport. I find her.”
    “You lost your gun, tape,