Cadillac Payback

by AJ Elmore

  My voice is hoarse when I say, “You're telling me my brother died because Gram got spiteful?”

  Frederick stares, gray eyes bright with emotion, measuring my composure. Will I keep my shit together under the weight of this news?

  Finally he says, “Abuela has been slowly weeding Gram out of NOLA since we left, and it's damn near worked. Gram took a much bigger loss after that shit with the Feds, mostly because his operation never has been as big or . . . international as Abuela's. She took full advantage of that and has been kicking him while he's down ever since. This feud has been going on above and without us this whole time.”

  I slam the mug down on the counter, spilling more coffee. I flick it off my hand like it's blood. My whole body buzzes with the urge to get into the car, drive again to Gram's doorstep, and rip his throat out with my hands.

  “Fucking coward,” I spit. Still, no tears.

  Frederick sighs. He's staring at his coffee again. And it makes sense, that sadness I saw in him. His voice is steady when he speaks again.

  “Gram's current supply comes from a homegrown operation in rural Louisiana. The quality is good, but the price is high, and that's cost him a portion of his slum business. Not to mention that the house in Biloxi had quite the pretty price tag, capital and cash that they really couldn't afford to lose. He gets his shipments at a place in the Ninth, personally oversees the transactions. Lots of guns and cameras and guards involved.”

  He lets a few beats of silence pass that draw my eyes to him. He looks so calm, but there's a storm in his eyes.

  “Gram is a cornered, injured snake. He's ready to snap at anything that threatens him. For us to send his partner back with no hand to shake was a slap in the face. He's pissed, and he's slowly drowning. To even show our faces in NOLA is dangerous at this point.”

  I take a few steps toward him, the movement and proximity winning his attention. The hard look is set firmly on his face and, maybe for the first time ever, he bristles at my closeness. It hurts more than I care to admit. I've never seen him this agitated.

  I say, “I don't care if it's dangerous, I want to finish what my grandmother started. I want to wipe them from this city's streets. My intentions have not changed. You've known that all along.”

  He thumps his mug onto the counter with as much force as I had, ignoring the liquid that sloshes out. “I don't like it, Maria.”

  My verbal advance halts immediately in my throat. Rarely does he oppose me so strongly. I say, “You think I do? I think you're missing the point a little, Frederick.”

  His mouth snaps closed and his eyes narrow, despite the pain the action must cause in his black eye. He takes a long breath through his nose, then says, “Doesn't it bother you?”

  The rage growing in me slams into a wall, a wall created by the quiet menace in his tone. My voice is lodged in my throat, but the question is in my gaze: What? What are you saying?

  It's he who steps forward this time, invading my space with an air of authority, his face so close I get the urge to kiss him. But the anger in his eyes demolishes any thought but what comes next.

  “Doesn't it bother you that she's using you to fight a battle that you have nothing to do with?”

  He must see the surprise stutter through me, because he steps back, picks up his half-spilled coffee. He takes a slow sip as he wipes his hand on his pants, and stares at the floor. It takes me a moment to form a coherent thought, a rebuttal of some kind. The silence between is daunting.

  “That's how it works, Freddy. I'm still in her debt,” I say, barely audible. I'm watching him, silently pleading that he look at me.

  His brow furrows again and he shakes his head fiercely. “That's not how it works. This is what Derrik did to me, the same fucking thing. And I should have been dead for it.”

  My breath catches in my throat and the rage melts into grief. Is he right? Charlie is dead because of revenge for something he didn't have a part in. I might die for the very same reason. This time the tears win, rolling forth and down my cheeks. A sniff brings his eyes to me.

  “I heard what she said to you, that if you fail you are disowned. Those other asshats don't know Spanish, they don't know the depths of her cruelty, but I heard every goddamned word. It's not right. You know it's not.”

  I can't speak to answer. My voice won't come, just that familiar suffocating grief. And the tears, they fall in earnest. My thoughts become a messy race to fruition: this is how it works in the world of a cartel. My grandmother has to be a cold-hearted bitch because she still has to answer to the top, the children of this family are meant to be used. Or am I justifying?

  The edge in him softens and he steps forward, grabs my shoulders gently. He looks me in the eye and says, “This woman was willing to let her grandchildren die by her own hand, because of money.”

  Indignation takes hold of my center that he would dare insult my family. It's an old habit, one that feels out of place now. Finally I find my voice.

  “What else do I have? This family is my life.”

  His grip tightens on my shoulders and his voice comes a little more strained when he says, “Leave it behind.”

  Shock resounds, chokes off the tears, and I just stare at him as the last ones slip down my cheeks. I shake my head in dumb response, fear tearing through me that he would even mention it.

  “I can't.”

  It's just a whisper.

  “I can show you how to disappear,” he says, those gray eyes burning holes in my composure.

  Is he really saying what I think he is? Run away, leave this all behind? He's done it before, but this time, he doesn't want to go alone. Of anyone left in my world, he was the last I would ever expect to say those words.

  “Ven conmigo,” he whispers.

  How tempting it is, to throw some cash and clothes in the car and peel out to unexplored lands. Just now, I want nothing more than to ride the sunset down with him. Surely he can see it. But it wouldn't be right to Josh, or Izzy. It wouldn't be right to Charlie. I shake my head.

  “I can't.”

  He stares at me for a long time, the overt concern creasing his features. He releases one shoulder to wipe the tears from my cheek. He sounds so sad when he says, “I thought you might say that.”

  “I won't blame you for leaving,” I say, my voice watery, weak.

  Now it's he who shakes his head. He says, “I'm not going anywhere.”

  He pulls me into a hug and the tears return. All the weary sadness of the loss of my brother and a new bleeding betrayal by my own family.

  “We have to finish this, Frederick. You and me,” I mutter into his shoulder.

  He squeezes a little tighter. His voice is gruff when he says, “I thought you might say that, too.”

  “I want to blow up that whole goddamned warehouse,” I say through my sniffs.

  He kisses the top of my head, like he does every time he sees me cry. He pulls me back to look me in the eye. He's serious when he says, “I can make that happen.”

  Chapter 26 Codes in the Silence

  Frederick

  It's mid-day and it's too hot to move. Even the workers are on siesta. I'd sleep if I could put the brakes to my racing brain. Instead, I'm sprawled in a big rocking chair in my guest room, drapes drawn against the sun, with a fan blowing on high against me. The chair is cocked back and my bare feet are propped against the edge of a full-size bed. My hands have been abandoned on the chair arms for too long to gauge. Spread across the mattress on an old tattered sheet is my arsenal.

  A floor lamp casts a weak half-light across an array of weaponry, highlighting their curves and edges. I've been here, wearing just a pair of shorts, staring at the pieces of my life since I laid them out in their full glory. There's one missing, the six-shooter my mentor gave me, the gun that initiated me into this life. Its absence is like a bloody hole in my chest, but what it represents has no place here, at what could be the end. Whether I die soon or not, I'
ll never shoot that gun again.

  I slept a few hours in the smallest part of morning, before I drove back out of town. It feels like forever ago, when I woke in a cold sweat, feeling nauseated and – something I haven't felt in a long time – afraid. If it was a nightmare, I couldn't remember it, so I showered, locked the door behind me and left. I didn't even tell Josh I was leaving, just got in the car packed with several felonies and rolled out of town.

  That uneasiness still stirs in my gut, and Maria's words are like barbed wire around my chest, so that each breath pushes the spines in deeper. You and me. The drive back here was a long crawl of bitterness and anger that, again, I've become a puppet. And how did I know she would want to protect Izzy and Josh from it? How? Because this is their problem only because they work for the family and it's the family's problem.

  She and I are different from those guys. Our grievances are solidly tied to the enemy, she to the leader who took her brother, and I to the teacher who betrayed me. How in this hell-on-earth will two children of the streets take down an empire?

  A bead of sweat works its way, infuriatingly slow, down the side of my throat. The tickle stokes the rage, which becomes tension that makes my jaw grind. The glaring problem with Abuela's suffocation of the Reapers is that now their operation is small enough to be well guarded from every side. By bleeding them out for so long, she has given them time to fortify what they have left. The thing that's bothering me is that if I can see the problem in her strategy, she definitely can. So how do we fit into her endgame?

  Slowly I let my feet fall to the floor and the chair begins to rock. The creak of wood against wood creates a crosshatch to the whir of the fan. The soft back and forth eases my anxiety. With each press against the balls of my feet, I manage to calm the shake in my limbs. My bruised eye has started to throb, a nice counter rhythm of pain, a distraction.

  There's only one way I can see to blow Gram's entire warehouse to hell. The question comes down to clout. How do I intercept the shipment and rig that truck with enough explosives to leave a crater? His next truck comes in two days, something I haven't mentioned yet to Maria. Doesn't leave me much time to work the network, and leaves a whole lot of blank space that could be filled with Reaper affiliates. If I can pull it off, though, we won't need more than two people.

  My gaze crawls over the long barrel of my Dragunov sniper rifle as I pull my phone from my pocket in slow motion. It's a cheap pre-paid thing, registered under the name of someone who's been dead for some time. I punch in the number to a certain voodoo shop in the Quarter. It rings twice, then a low, rumbling voice answers.

  “Sty, how's it goin'? It's Freddy.”

  There's a heavy pause on the line, then the voice answers. “Damn, Freddy, I near gave you up as dead. Haven't seen you since the Mid-City job.”

  The words lace around my lungs. I've been out of the network for too long. It was kind of like being dead. Then I think of Charlie. Maybe it's not like that at all.

  I say, “You know better than that. Hey, I'm gonna be in town. Can I buy you a beer?”

  There's another pause and I can see the scrutinizing look on the 6' 3”, muscled and dreadlocked Black man. There's so much being said that will never be said, so much history and danger, codes in the silence.

  “I close at eight.”

  My next breath comes easier. I glance down at my watch. That leaves me plenty of time to get back to NOLA.

  “See you at Margaritaville,” I say.

  “Christ,” he spits and that brings a wry smirk to my lips.

  Locals hate that place with a burning passion, myself included, and for that reason, that's where we'll meet. No one in any respectable ring would be caught dead there. So I'll buy Sty an overpriced, weak margarita while tourists stare at us, and see just which angles are still open to me.

  “Ciao,” I say flatly and hang up.

  Again I'm staring at the rifle, at the sleek scope and streamlined stock, in all its semi-auto glory. This plan that's hatching in my mind is incredibly stupid. And it's fucking brilliant.

  Chapter 27 Bad Juju

  Isaiah

  There's a business meeting in five. The house is quiet. Abuela is still gone. I'm the first one to the table. As I slowly smoke my cigarette, I can't help but recall back to the morning after Charlie died. Something in the air feels the same. That meeting feels like forever ago and nothing has really changed. Except then, Josh was her most recent victim. This time Josh isn't even here, and it's me.

  My thoughts skip forward now, half an hour ago maybe, to the knock on my door and the way her eyes skated down my naked torso when I answered.

  Then she said, “Business meeting in twenty minutes.”

  It's mostly for her reaction that I chose not to put on a shirt for this meeting. It's a rare show, for me to bare my skin, or my mood. But I've taken as much bullshit as I can endure, and being stuck on this plantation for days is taking its toll. There's nothing coy left for these kids, just unadulterated aggravation.

  Maria is the first to join me. I expect her to take the head spot, but she doesn't. Of course she doesn't. She takes the seat across from me.

  She's watching me when I look up, waiting to gauge how I'll react to her. There's a hunger there in her eyes, but it's guarded. She's withdrawn. Is it respect that keeps her at a distance? Or fear of what I might do next?

  I glance at the tabletop, smirk, and look away from her to retrieve my cigarette. It's subtle, but I believe I have made my point. It's the same point I told her before I made her come: she doesn't know me, doesn't know my demons.

  When I look back to her, she's smirking, too. Fair is fair.

  We break the contact as Freddy joins us. She looks to the table and I eye him sideways as he hesitates at the head chair. Perhaps she didn't warn him that she was putting him on the spot. That she would do such a thing, I believe it without ever asking. Finally he sits without pomp.

  He, too, is shirtless, skin and bones that he is. He's wearing his glasses, which is as rare a thing for him as gallivanting around shirtless is for me. My gaze snags on an ugly bruise around his left eye. The coloration suggests that the bruise isn't fresh.

  Probably he already had it when he rolled in yesterday morning, and before he left again in the early afternoon. I won't ask what happened – I don't actually care – and he won't mention it, but those shades of purple and green are foreboding.

  He glances my way, long enough to take in the details, but not long enough for eye contact. He's scanning the room like he would during a deal, weighing me up, noting the scene. Freddy always holds himself with the attitude like he dares you to say something, like he wants you to step out of line. Usually I ignore him. Today I kind of want to cross the line.

  Our games don't normally clash, his unfeeling mask to mine, but today both of us are raw. My peaceful image is not the only one that has cracked. For as much as Freddy and I have always left to silence, we've spent a lot of time around each other. I've seen this guy scan a bar-full of people, never make a sound or crack an expression, and still be the one to anticipate the cheap shot that waited for us outside. It was a set-up, a deal that almost went to shit, that was nearly a double-cross. Except they didn't anticipate Freddy.

  He left those guys bleeding on the pavement, by himself. That was the day that solidified in me both a respect and a distrust of Frederick. He doesn't feel like most people. Sometimes he's just a machine, acting on input, and that's more unnerving than anything else about him.

  And right now, he's more on edge than I've ever seen him. That does not sit well with me.

  Maria finally gives him her attention. I've been waiting for it and it leaves her wide open. She won't show Freddy a false face. So I watch the same tension string from him to her, through the lines of her jaw and the muscles of her shoulders. Always there's something deeper between them. I always saw it. So did Charlie.

  Slowly, Freddy's eyes roll back to me. His featu
res are stern, almost reluctant. That's when it occurs to me that whatever plan they're about to lay before me is already set into motion. They're just including me. Goddammit if I can't read them, just when I wish that weren't my specialty in all this. And I'll be goddamned if it doesn't sow a seed of resentment in the holy of holies of my emotions.

  Freddy produces something from under the table, a piece of paper, presumably from his shorts’ pocket. He unfolds it and spreads it out over the table. It's a map of New Orleans. I would recognize those lines anywhere. He's so calm, so matter-of-fact with his actions. Sometimes it's easy to forget that Freddy held rank, in some other world, when he stood opposite of me. Of us.

  Or maybe it's that I wish I could forget.

  My scanning eyes almost miss the movement of his hand as my gaze goes instinctively to the Quarter. Almost, except his fingers close around my smokes. My hands ball in response, but he's not even looking at me, the cocky prick.

  He sets the box down on a black X drawn in the Ninth Ward and he says, “Gram's next shipment comes in two days from now, at three in the morning. There's a cluster of old warehouses here, at North Galvez and Raynes.”

  My rattled nerves ease a little when I realize he's just setting the scene, even if part of the scene is in the Ninth Ward. I settle against the chairback and banish the emotion in my expression. Maria is a stoic mirror of me, those honey eyes already searching the map for another X.

  Freddy doesn't disappoint, wouldn't in this rare moment of spotlight. He draws a pistol, a 9mm Smith and Wesson, modest for him. The piece is flat black and its presence triggers anxiety in my gut. Just as quickly, he pops the magazine free and cocks the chamber open.

  As he sets the gun down on the outskirts of the other side of the map, he says, “The delivery details will be handled by the supplying outfit. Their delivery vehicles are stored at a garage, here” – he taps the gun – “a couple blocks from the Superdome.”