“I’ll call the coroner’s office when I’m done here,” he said. “For the time being, this goes on the record as a car accident, you understand?”
“Whatever you say, Sheriff.”
Nichols pointed a finger at him. “Don’t let her or Ruth out of your sight for so much as a minute until I get back. I don’t care if aliens invade.”
Boggs yessed his head and took off. Nichols made his way down the hill, toward the smoldering remains of the car.
He’d seen his share of automotive disasters in his time on the force, scraped plenty of drunk teenagers and text-happy businessmen off the pavement, but this one took first place by a country mile. The car was top-down, smashed into the hillside like the forefinger of God had reached down and pressed.
The fire had burned out, the metal charred black, the air acrid, the tall brush littered with tiny glinting bits of windshield glass. No sign of the kid’s body; it was trapped beneath the mangled carcass of the car, and the extrication wasn’t going to be easy or pretty; he’d probably been squashed flat on impact and then burned to a crisp.
Nichols paced a wide perimeter around the crash site and finally found what he’d been hoping for: the license plate, wedged in among a stand of low-growing cacti. He slipped it under his arm, circled again in case the gun or any of the kid’s personal artifacts had managed to wing their way free, and then climbed his ass back to the overview, grabbing on to strong weeds to ease the way.
He threw himself behind the steering wheel, fired up the radio, and asked Gloria, the desk jockey who’d been working the night shift slathered in bright red lipstick since time immemorial, to run the plate.
She clicked and clacked as Nichols waited.
“It’s registered to a rental company. Guillermo’s Classic Cars, in Dallas,” Gloria reported, through the buzz of static. “You want a phone number?”
“Yeah.” He was down to 6 percent on his phone battery, and he hadn’t called Ruth yet, which meant she was going to be blindsided when Sherry showed up bleary eyed and inconsolable in Boggs’s car.
“Wait—no. Give me, uh . . . dammit, what’s that cop’s name in Dallas? The guy we worked with on that trafficking thing a couple years ago?”
Gloria didn’t even pretend to think, just waited to see if Nichols could dredge it up.
He snapped his fingers. “Sullinger. Edward Sullinger. It’s on my office Rolodex.”
Five percent left, by the time Sullinger picked up his cell, sounding halfway in the bag. Four by the time Nichols sweet-talked him into calling Guillermo’s Classic Cars, local heat always the warmest, telling them they had a piece of inventory smithereened five hundred miles south, and finding out whose name was on the rental.
Nichols was halfway home when Sullinger buzzed him with the info, straight from Guillermo himself. Nichols pulled over, flipped open his notepad, and scribbled down the name and billing address.
Lalo Albarra, twenty-five, of Fort Worth. Or so said his license.
If nothing else, the kid was a liar.
Nichols radioed Gloria, had her run the name.
It came back dirty as a motherfucker.
Lalo Albarra had spent half his short adult life in prison. Transporting minors across state lines. Coercion to prostitution. Possession of a type-A controlled substance. Domestic abuse.
It was the résumé of a pimp, a jackal, a pretty-boy hustler. Preying on young girls, filling their heads and hearts with dreams and promises and then turning them out.
Somebody had put him in motion, sent him after Sherry. That someone was still out there.
And so was Galvan.
Nichols floored the gas pedal. He wasn’t sure where he was going, but he knew he had to get there fast.
CHAPTER 13
He was known, by allies and enemies alike, as El Cortador. The cutter. Most would have been surprised to learn that the nickname did not bespeak violence. He was, in fact, good with a blade, but Herman Rubacalo’s true skill was in cutting to the heart of a matter. Excising incompetence from his organization with surgical precision; hacking new trails like a bushwhacker with a machete. His blade might be broad or slim, might saw or stab or merely flash. But it was always sharp.
Most men in Herman’s business were born into poverty and rose from disposability to prominence through a combination of ruthlessness and animal cunning, loyalty, and luck. They moved up the cartel’s ranks, accumulating bodies and profits and avoiding gunfire, stepping into vacancies that opened up when others’ nerves or brains or reflexes failed. Eventually, prison claimed most. The rhythms of their rise and fall were as predictable as respiration.
Herman was the exception. He had been born into the trade and groomed to run it—his mind a precious commodity, his father a shrewd investor determined to extract maximum profit. Herman’s education had not been in the streets, but rather the halls of privilege; he had studied alongside the sons and daughters of tycoons and aristocrats, rubbed up against money so old it had succumbed to dementia and couldn’t remember where it came from anymore.
Trace that money back through time, and all of it was covered in blood, just like his own. That was the history of capitalism, of prosperity. It didn’t mean you couldn’t run your organization like a professional and aspire to something better.
The whole messy business was, in truth, a means to an end. Herman had a deeper purpose, an agenda that swallowed the drug trade whole.
That, too, had been in his family for generations. They were strategists, long-term thinkers.
Connoisseurs of irony.
An urgent mission, carried out over centuries.
As a child, Herman had read a science fiction story in which aliens, who exist in a dramatically sped-up version of time, arrive on Earth. From their perspective, only the movement of plants is discernible, and so they conclude that only the plants are intelligent. The flickering lives of humans do not register at all, and so mankind is annihilated without a thought. Herman couldn’t remember the title or the author, but the idea had stayed with him all these years.
Slow and steady wins the race.
El Cortador sipped from a bottle of mineral water as his three-vehicle convoy—the armored limousine in which he rode, the gun-turreted Hummer that trailed it, and the military helicopter hovering above them both—approached Ojos Negros Prison, after a three-hour drive.
The display of force and power was customary. Perfunctory, at this point, like the handmade Italian suits Herman wore, the Philippe Patek timepiece on his wrist, the charity galas his family foundation hosted on a quarterly basis, their surname forever gracing another hospital wing or university building.
If a quarter century atop the cartel throne had taught him anything, it was that appearances were paramount. One never knew who was watching, and the perception of weakness got you killed faster than weakness itself.
By the same token, the illusion of strength could tide a hobbled man over until real potency returned.
Today’s gambit was all about appearances.
Not his own, but his adversary’s.
Sometimes you had to play a hunch.
The gates opened, and the cars entered. The chopper veered off, having chaperoned Herman to his destination. It would disappear now, or seem to. In actuality, Herman’s security detail would maintain surreptitious contact with the pilot and alert him if air support was necessary—in the event that Herman had to make a quick exit and needed the prison’s rooftop snipers neutralized. It was unlikely but not impossible, and better to have your contingencies covered than to leave anything to chance.
The limousine drew up beside the entrance, and Herman took a final sip from his bottle. He could not remember the last time he’d felt nervous. Before his final undergraduate exams, perhaps.
This would be an entirely different kind of test, he thought—and then hastened to remind himself that it was he who would be asking the questions. This meeting was a concession in itself, an admission that reassurances ha
d to be made. Never before had Herman or any of his predecessors—nor any of his rivals, for that matter—been granted an audience with El Cucuy. The Ancient One had always preferred to have them look upon his works and not his face. To maintain the mystery of his existence.
That he had agreed to meet bespoke a house in disarray.
Maybe.
A guard led Herman and his entourage through a warren of tunnels, heavy with the musk of decrepitude. The thought that hundreds of men who worked for him were housed in the tiered cell blocks above—men who would spend their lives trying and failing to serve him well enough to earn notice and reward—flitted through Herman’s mind, and then the passage widened, became a room with walls of dark stone, lit by torches. A slablike table, fashioned from the same stone as the walls but stained unmistakably with a burgundy wash of blood, dominated the space.
Seated behind it was a man, his legs crossed at the knee. Small-boned, clean-shaven, handsome.
“Welcome, Mr. Rubacalo,” the man said, rising and stepping around the table to extend a hand. “Domingo Valentine.”
El Cortador ignored it—stepped closer, forcing Valentine to drop his hand, and drew himself up to his full height. At six four, he dwarfed this peon—Herman’s stature a point of pride, an ever-present reminder that his family’s history stretched back into the mists of time, before miscegenation and migration and debasement, when men walked tall and the gods looked on them with favor and delight.
“Your name is of no interest to me. I have come to see your master.”
Valentine retreated. Stepped behind his chair and tried to reestablish authority.
“I’m afraid that is not possible. He has been called away on other business.”
El Cortador narrowed his eyes, as his brain calculated furiously. His security detail appraised Valentine’s, both sides immobile and discreet, standing recessed in the room’s plentiful shadows.
“There is no away for him,” Herman said slowly, dialing back the menace for now, replacing it with a pointed deliberateness. “And no business more important than mine.”
Valentine met his gaze, and Herman could see the tectonic plates shifting below the surface of the man as he considered his response.
“I do not speak of a physical absence,” he said at last. “The Ancient One is a being of . . . of spirit. And meaning no insult to you, Mr. Rubacalo, he is in a state of meditation that no earthly business could disturb. You and I—all of us—we exist on a single plane of being. The Great One—”
“I didn’t drive three hours for a lecture on metaphysics, Valentine. Revenues are down. Conflicts are going unresolved. Business is suffering.”
“I will convey your concerns, Mr. Rubacalo.”
Herman unbuttoned his suit jacket, sat down, and crossed his legs, enjoying the stricken look on Valentine’s face as he contemplated the move. Haltingly, Valentine sat as well.
“My sources tell me that no girls, no virgins, have been delivered to this prison for several months,” El Cortador said, in a voice so airy he might have been discussing the weather. “Perhaps you imagine that the Great One’s habits, his patterns, are unknown to us. I assure you, Mr. Valentine, that is not the case. As a businessman, it behooves me to keep tabs on the health of my partners.”
He let that hang in the air, watched Valentine’s Adam’s apple bob up and down in his throat.
“I assure you—”
“No, Mr. Valentine, you don’t.”
Cucuy’s man blinked at the insult, but he recovered quickly, his face hardening into a mask.
“You have never been graced with his presence before, Mr. Rubacalo, and you are not owed it now. If you have business to discuss, discuss it with me.”
Herman stifled a smile. Valentine’s sudden aggression had confirmed all his suspicions. There was no doubt about it: something had shifted. Perhaps Cucuy’s time was running short, and self-preservation was his only concern. Or perhaps his time had already run out, and this bantamweight usurper had stepped into the void, scavenged the keys to the kingdom from the body.
Was it really possible that the Great One’s reign had ended, after all this time, with a whimper and a puppet show?
Had Herman’s sacred oath been fulfilled, rendered null and void? Was the chain of centuries broken? Was he free to lead his life, to leave this odious business and this shadowy vigil behind?
He tried to read Valentine’s face, found it weak but inscrutable.
Power does not disappear. It only changes hands.
Or bodies.
Time would tell. The Enemy would emerge with strength anew, or he would not.
In the meantime, Herman Rubacalo would fortify his own position. Turn chaos into opportunity. Eliminate the competition.
That would flush Cucuy out, if anything would. To see his fragile ecosystem torn asunder, his chessboard overturned.
“Rosales,” Herman said. It was a conversational pivot toward the tangible, the flesh and blood.
Valentine’s relief was palpable. “Rosales,” he repeated, as if hearing the word for the first time—a distinct possibility. “What about it?”
Herman made a show of sighing. “What about it. Are you a lover of poetry, Mr. Valentine?”
“I—”
“To paraphrase Mr. Frost, two roads converged in a wood. And the name of that wood, Mr. Valentine, is Rosales.”
He crossed his legs, in subtle mimicry, and waited for Cucuy’s servant to say something. Then he tired of waiting.
“I need that town—my distribution chain endures great hardship without it. And so, apparently, does Sinaloa’s; the government’s new enforcement protocols have cut down both our options. Do you follow?”
The slight man gave a slight nod. He was playing it close to the vest. Herman wasn’t quite sure how to read that; from a man squatting on a vacant throne, he’d have expected obsequience, or a show of force—desperation in one direction or the other. But not stoicism.
Don’t grasp at conclusions, he reprimanded himself. Just gather information. That’s all you’ve got to do.
“This is the kind of situation Cucuy has always refereed,” Herman went on. “If he won’t, or he can’t, then as far as I’m concerned his time is over. Barrio Azteca will take its business elsewhere.”
“Is that a threat?” Valentine asked, voice low and serpentine. As if he was coiling himself up. Preparing, in slow motion, to strike.
Herman rose from his seat. “Certainly not. It is a plea for the Great One’s attention, in the fervent hope that our relationship might continue to flourish for many years to come.”
He buttoned his jacket and smiled. “Believe me, Mr. Valentine: if I were to threaten you, no explanation would be required.”
He turned on his heel and strode toward the door, security detail massing into a phalanx behind him.
El Cortador strolled slowly down the corridor, the decorum of his departure belying a desire for fresh air so pronounced it was all he could do not to sprint toward the light.
Five hundred years, he thought. The words echoed in his head, syncopated to the rhythm of his footfalls.
Five hundred years.
CHAPTER 14
El Chango.
Galvan had never dreamed he’d see the inside of this bar again.
This bar, on the Mexican side of the border, where the strippers eyed the patrons like they were thinking about forgoing the usual tits-for-tips exchange and just robbing them blind. Where guns got checked at the front door, backrooms were for losing your shirt in poker games, and the walk-in storage locker probably housed the local health inspector’s corpse.
This bar, where everything had started. Where a moment’s compassion for a girl his daughter’s age—drunk, vulnerable, about to become the victim of men twice her age and half her worth—had bought Galvan a blackout beatdown and an eight-by-ten cell.
Pick the underdog, and you died by the odds.
He’d run all night to get here. Ran until the
sun was hot on his back and then hot above his head. Ran without stopping, except to swim. His clothes dried on his back, the moisture lifting away as if by magic. His body was like an arrow shot from a crossbow, cleaving a path through space that was sure and true, unalterable.
Fleeing one country for another had been much harder the last time he’d had to do it.
What he was hoping to accomplish here, Galvan wasn’t sure. It was as if the coordinates had been programmed into him without his knowing. Like a reboot. A fail-safe.
If everything goes to shit and you murder your daughter’s boyfriend in cold blood right in front of her, head for the scummiest bar in Mexico.
He sure needed a drink, though.
Cucuy had been quiet the whole way down. Maybe because the exertion muzzled him, or maybe because things were going exactly as the monster wanted, and he was content to sit back, throw his vehicle on cruise control, and watch it charge straight into his own country.
Take him home.
Hell, Galvan realized, the thought like a punch in the gut, maybe the dream had been Cucuy’s. A false vision he’d smuggled into Galvan’s subconscious to trick him into killing an innocent kid. Into letting that much more of his humanity crumble and blow away, like ash in the wind.
Who could be sure? The previous night was like a dream. All Galvan could remember clearly was the look of hatred on his daughter’s face.
Something told him he’d never forget that.
“Otra vez?” the bartender asked, jutting his chin at Galvan’s empty glass. The dude’s face rang a bell: the hairnet, the lazy eye. Galvan nodded, and cheap whiskey splashed into the vessel. He’d slapped a twenty on the bar when he’d staggered in, an hour earlier. It was the only money he had, and if he hadn’t drunk his way through it by now, he couldn’t be far off.
This wasn’t the kind of joint that encouraged you to drink on credit.
The barman lingered, watched him pour the liquor down his throat. “You look familiar,” he said, cocking his head to jog his memory.
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