by Roy Glenn
“No.” Geno followed her to the couch and stood over her. “They just questioned her, but she was sure that they weren’t done.” He folded his arms across his chest. “So why don’t you tell me what you know about this?”
“It’s a long story,” she looked up at him and said.
“I got nothing but time,” Geno said, and sat down next to her. “I’m listening.”
“When I married Gustavo, I had never heard of The Comodoro Cartel. Before that, I thought that his family was in the soybean business and he was just a spoiled rich party boy. I didn’t find that out until we moved to his hometown.
She could still hear him shouting, where do you think all this comes from!
“When he got back there and started working for his family, it was like he was a different person. That was when the drinking, and the cocaine and the womanizing began. I can’t tell you how many nights and mornings he’d come home smelling like liquor and perfume.” Valencia stood up and walked to the bar. “He’d be gone for days, sometimes weeks at a time; and if I’d ask him about it, he’d just say that it wasn’t my place to ask him about his business.” She picked up a bottle of Angel Envy’s Rye Whiskey and poured herself a drink. “You want one?” she asked, holding up the bottle.
“Sure.” Geno came and joined her at the bar as she poured, and then handed him the drink. She drained her glass and sat down at the bar. He shot his and sat down next to her.
“So one day, one of his whores, Julieta Sanz, shows up at my house.”
“You knew about her?”
“Of course, I did. It was a small town, and everybody talks; and they couldn’t wait to tell me all about her and his other whores.”
“How many were there … that you knew about?”
“You want their names?”
“I don’t think that’s necessary. Do you?”
“Let’s see,” Valencia paused, and put her hand on her chin. “There was Manuela, and Ana Sofia, and Guadalupe, and Agustina—”
“Vee!” Geno held up his hand to stop her. “I think I get the point.”
“Anyway, she’s got a bag full of his clothes and she throws them at my feet, cursing at me in Portuguese. Cadela, você pode tê-lo, sua cadela. O filho da puta me bate. Muita cocaína, ele não pode continuar, was what she kept screaming at me. At the time, I had no idea what she was saying, until one of the maids told me. After that, those words stayed in my mind because they would become my life.”
“What does it mean?”
“Bitch, you can have him, you bitch. The son of a bitch beats me. Too much cocaine, he can’t keep it up.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Believe me, so was I.” Valencia poured them both another drink and she took a sip. “I asked him about it, and he said that she was lying, he barely knew that woman. That she was a friend of his cousin Pérez.”
“What happened after that?”
“I just told you. That became my life and one night I had had enough. I told him that I was leaving. That I was tired of him being gone all the time; and when he was here, he was a drunk that couldn’t get it up.”
“I bet that didn’t go over well.”
“No, Geno. He beat me, and then he raped me, and then he left.”
“I’m sorry,” Geno said, because he didn’t know what else to say. All this time, he thought that when Valencia left him dirt broke and fucked up, as he liked to say, that she had moved to paradise and was living the life of a queen. Geno had no idea that it was her life that was fucked up.
“So, there I am, crying. I had just got beaten and raped, my eye is swollen, my lip is bleeding, and my clothes are torn. I’m trying to cover myself, and Ezequiel Simmonds walks in my room and sits down on the bed next to me.”
“Who is he?”
“My nightmare.” She took a sip. “He’s an enforcer for The Comodoro Cartel. He tells me that Gustavo was becoming a problem for more than just me. But since he is Pérez’s cousin, that most people are afraid to do anything to him out of fear.”
“Pérez? He the boss?”
She shook her head. “No, his uncles, Juan Esteban Ferreira and Sebastián Esteban Ferreira, run the cartel.”
“Go ahead.”
“He said that he wasn’t afraid of Pérez and he would make all my problems go away, and all I had to do was ask him … and do one thing for him. I said, ‘Kill him,’ and I never saw Gustavo again. Three weeks later, they found his body in the trunk of an abandoned car when it started to smell.”
“What did he want you to do?”
Valencia just looked at him as if he should have known the answer. “He wanted me.” She finished her drink. “He pulled me up from the bed, spun me around, ripped the rest of my dress off, and I got raped for the second time that night.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to keep saying that.”
“I don’t know what else to say, and I am sorry this happened to you.”
“I am too.” She touched his hand. “After that, I stayed down there for a few months, playing the grieving widow for as long as I could stand it, and then I came back to the states and tried to restart my life,” she paused. “And yes, Geno, I did look for you.”
“Thank you.”
“I thought a lot about you those days, wishing I had chosen with my heart instead of my head.”
“But I was a street hustler and he was a millionaire.”
Valencia didn’t like the way it sounded, but it was the truth. She married for money. That was what she did and why she did it. She saw her future life with Geno, and although she thought that she was falling in love with him and the time that they spent together was awesome, Valencia just didn’t see a future in it for them beyond living on love.
“Yes, and I am still paying the price for that decision.”
Geno was about to say I’m sorry, but what did he have to be sorry for?
“I had gone back to school, reimagined my company and was just starting to get it back together, when Coleman Patterson came into my world.”
“The dead blackmailer,” he said, since he didn’t tell her that Marvin killed her other blackmailer; he just gave her back the money and said that he wouldn’t bother her anymore.
“He presented himself as an art collector looking for a business consultant. Next thing I know he’s telling me how I arranged for Ezequiel Simmonds to murder Gustavo and knows more details about it than I do.”
“What does any of that have to do with Mrs. Black getting questioned in Ferreira’s murder?”
“Because Ezequiel is blackmailing me too.”
“What does he want?”
“He wants me to arrange a meeting with him and Mike Black, because they want to run their drugs out of Freeport.”
“Why can’t they approach Black directly?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t tell me why, just that he was forbidden. But I do know that it has something to do with the Comodoro’s, and somebody named Rodrigo Iñíguez. While I was in the hospital, Ezequiel came to see me and all but told me that he was responsible for the food poisoning. Then he told me that Andrade was in New York looking for somebody to supply tobacco machine parts for his cigar business in Brazil and asked me to help him. So, me, like the stupid fool that I am, thinking that if I do this for him that I would finally be free of him, I put Andrade in touch with Shy.”
“Guys like that.” Geno shook his head. “Once they get their hooks in you, there will always be something else to drag you in deeper.”
“What am I gonna do?”
Geno picked up the bottle and poured them both another drink. “No point in you talking to Black about it. Rain Robinson is the boss of The Family in New York, but Napoleon runs things in Freeport. I think that we should go talk to him.”
Valencia leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.
“Thank you, Geno.”
Chapter Eighteen
For Shy, the hour-long ride from the NYPD 19th precinct
on East 67th Street to their home in New Rochelle, seemed to take forever. She and Patrick Freeman had just spent three hours being interviewed about the murder of Andrade Ferreira.
Where the prior day’s interview seemed casual, with just a few questions being asked about the murder, that day’s interview was much more intense. Detectives Sanders and Ross kept going over the same points and then, DEA agent Dietrich would ask a totally unrelated question about her and her past life. It always drew the same response from Patrick.
“I don’t see where that has any relevance to the matter at hand.”
However, where the detective seemed annoyed by it the day before, that day, they not only permitted it, but fed off it, even encouraged Dietrich’s comments.
Something had changed; she just didn’t know what.
When Black called Rain back the night before, he was disappointed. She told him that since they didn’t have anybody at the 19th precinct, that she wasn’t able to get any information about Shy from any of their usual sources. “Okay,” he said, and ended the call. His next call was to Wanda.
“Hey, Mike.”
“Cassandra got questioned by the police and I need you to—”
“What did they question her about?”
“The murder of Andrade Ferreira.”
“The Comodoro Andrade Ferreira?”
“The same. I need you to get in touch with our friend at One Penn and see if he can tell you what’s going on.”
“I’ll take care of it and get back to you as soon as I have something,” she said, and ended the call.
“Is everything alright?” Jada asked Wanda as she came out of her dressing room.
“Shy was questioned by the police about a murder.”
“Oh, my,” Jada said, as Wanda made her call.
That woman can’t seem to keep herself out of trouble, Jada thought.
And she couldn’t.
As hard as they were trying to move forward and live a normal life, raising their children and loving each other, that just didn’t seem to be in the cards for Michael and Cassandra Black.
After picking the children up from school, they headed for home with Easy in the front with Chuck, telling him all about his day at school. Michelle sat in the back with her mother, texting feverishly. That was fine with Shy that they weren’t talking to her. Michelle did ask what was wrong, but when Shy said that she was just thinking, Michelle went back to texting. She stared out the window as they rode, replaying the interrogation in her mind.
“Okay. Why don’t you take me through it again, Mrs. Black,” Ross suggested and sat back.
“As I’ve said twice already, I met Mr. Ferreira two days ago in his office to discuss the purchase of cigar rolling machines from China, for use in his business in Brazil.”
“And you arrived there at or around ten o’clock. Is that correct?” Sanders asked.
“Yes.”
“So, you arrived at the building and went to his office.” Ross flipped a page in the notes he was taking. “And you said that prior to that, you had never met or had any dealings with Mr. Ferreira, is that correct?”
“That’s correct.”
“I find that very hard to believe, Mrs. Black,” Dietrich said. “Seems to me that with your past record, that the Ferreira’s would be exactly the type of people that you and your husband would be involved with.”
“Is there a question mixed up somewhere in that statement, Agent Dietrich?” Patrick asked.
“How did the meeting get arranged?” Sanders asked, without waiting to see if Dietrich would answer.
“I was put in contact with Mr. Ferreira by a mutual business associate,” Shy said.
“Who was that, Mrs. Black?”
“Valencia DeVerão.”
“And how are you acquainted with Ms. DeVerão?”
“Her company, Porter Technology, recently did some work for my company.”
“Tell me about that conversation?” Sanders asked.
“She called me and said that she had a client who was looking to buy cigar rolling machines.”
“From China?”
“No. Mr. Ferreira was talking to a company called Innerbond. But once I found that they were the overseas distributor for a Chinese company, I reached out to them directly.”
“Why you?”
“What do you mean?”
“What I’m asking is, why did she think of you?”
“Because my business is an import-export business,” Shy said, with more attitude than the situation called for, because she was getting tired of answering the same questions with no end in sight.
“I’m curious, Mrs. Black,” Ross began.
“About?”
“Your import-export business,” he quickly scanned his notes. “CAMB Overseas Importers. You import women’s apparel from Honduras and Italy, and medicinal and pharmaceutical products from India—”
“Pharmaceutical products,” Dietrich commented.
“Your point, detective?” Patrick asked.
“My point, Mrs. Black, is that you’re an importer of women’s apparel, and medicinal and pharmaceutical products, what made Ms. DeVerão think of you if he wanted to buy cigar rolling machines?”
“I’m not sure about her motives,” she said, thinking that she needed to know what Valencia’s motives were so she could figure this out. “I imagine that you would have to ask her about that, but I think it was because my business is exporting things from one country and importing them into another country.”
“So,” Sanders and Ross glanced at one another, “let’s get back to the meeting.”
“Mr. Ferreira and I met for approximately forty-five minutes to discuss the proposal from Changpu Zhao and China Tobacco Machines, that you looked at yesterday.”
“Was anything else discussed?” Ross asked.
“No.”
“After the meeting you left his office, what did you do then?” he asked. Shy had noticed that each time that they went over her story, they always got around to asking what happened after she left Andrade Ferreira’s office.
“I went back to my office.”
“You didn’t stop anywhere else in the building?”
“No.”
“What time was it when you got back to your office?”
“Around noon.”
“But you can’t say specifically?”
“No, detective, I cannot.”
“Mrs. Black, have you ever met a man named Garza Cabrero?” Dietrich asked.
“No.”
“What about Ignacio Moreno or Facundo Ceballos, you know or ever hear of either of those men?” he asked.
“No, Agent Dietrich, I haven’t heard of any of those men either.”
“Hector Villanueva?” he asked, and Shy said nothing. “Do you know him?”
“Yes.”
“Leon Copeland, you know him too?”
“Yes.”
“What can you tell me about them and your association with them?”
“I don’t see where her association with Mr. Villanueva or Mr. Copeland has any relevance to the matter at hand.”
“Mrs. Black’s association with known criminals is relevant to this investigation,”
“Why?” Shy asked.
“Because you and your husband are known criminals, Mrs. Black. And you personally were arrested and charged with murder and conspiracy to distribute.”
“Just for the record, I’d like to point out that Mrs. Black was never arrested, and those charges were dismissed with prejudice,” Patrick said calmly. “And as you well know, agent Dietrich, Mr. Black has been investigated by the FBI and the DEA, twice, and both agencies concluded their investigations without any charges being brought having found that Mr. Black has no involvement in the narcotics business.”
Shy smiled at the agent.
“Were you aware that certain members of the Ferreira Family run The Comodoro Cartel?” Sanders asked.
“No. Prior to you just saying it,
I had no idea the Mr. Ferreira was involved with any cartel.” Shy smiled and looked at Dietrich. “If I had known that he had any association with any cartel I would not have anything to do with him.”
When Shy left the precinct with Patrick, she was not charged in the murder, but she understood that with her being the last person to see him alive and the implied connections to known drug dealers, that she was a person of interest if not a suspect. As soon as she got in the car with Chuck, Shy immediately called Valencia, but the call went straight to voicemail.
Chapter Nineteen
The reason that Shy’s call went straight to voicemail was because Valencia and Geno were on a flight to Freeport. As the plane drifted over the clouds, Valencia thought about where she was, where she was going and how she got there. She was on her way to The Bahamas to meet Napoleon Wade. For a time he was Black and Shy’s bodyguard, but when Jada had Aaron killed, Black suggested that she put Napoleon in that spot and since Jada generally took Black’s suggestions as orders, Napoleon became the boss of her operation in Freeport. For that, Valencia was happy; excited even.
If everything went well, and there was no reason for her to think that it wouldn’t, in a few hours there was a good chance that she could put all this behind her and move forward with her life. Something that she’d been trying to do for quite a while now with no success. But even if she got Ezequiel Simmonds off her neck, there was still the matter of the murder of Coleman Patterson that she had to deal with. That’s where she was. How she got there, how she got herself into this mess and a result of her choices.
Her grandmother’s words always rang true.
If you give a dance, you gotta pay the band.
Valencia glanced at Geno, sitting next to her with his eyes close and knew that it was time to pay the check. She hadn’t done right by him either. He hit the nail on the head when he said, I was a street hustler and he was a millionaire. Sad and sorry as it may seem, that was the reason that she chose Gustavo.
You can’t love without money, you can’t make love on hungry belly, was another of her grandmother’s sayings.
In the days when they were together, Geno was always looking for the next big hit and then the one after that. Valencia may have thought that she was falling in love, but she couldn’t see that life for herself, so she chose with her head instead of her heart and chose poorly. She looked away and closed her eyes, thinking how happy she was that she had a second chance with him.
