by A. J. Adams
Kelvin took some persuading but Arturo talked him round. When he finally hung up, there was a delicious scent of coffee in the air, and I could hear a clatter of cutlery in the room next door. By the sound of many voices, breakfast was a business meeting too.
“Sirena! Are you hungry?”
“Starving. And overwhelmed by the suite and the personal maid. Really, Arturo, what on earth will the poor woman do all day?”
Arturo grinned. “Within a month you won’t know how to get along without her.”
“Do you have a valet?”
“I did, but he drove me crazy so I got rid of him.”
“Hmmm.”
“You’ll need Eva,” Arturo insisted. “Trust me. Maids come and go, so it will be good to have at least one constant.” He picked up a phone. “This is yours. Like I told you, it has a GPS chip in it. There’s a laptop arriving later, and it has one too. And when you go out, I want you to stick this in your bag.” It was a small token. “It’s a GPS chip.”
“Suddenly I feel like a target. How do you know the wrong people aren’t watching?”
Arturo waved to a room across the corridor. “That’s my secure room. My files are there, and it’s also the centre of the surveillance system. Your security detail can see you as they’re with you, but satellite imaging is restricted; only Kyle and I can get that. We don’t spy on you, sirena. We only look if something goes wrong.”
It sounded like something from a spy film. “I’m betting your code isn’t one two three four.” I had no idea where that came from.
Arturo laughed. “Like Escamilla? No, it certainly isn’t!” He stopped and stared at me. “You’re remembering?”
I tried to think hard, but my stupid memory stayed blank. “No. Or at least, not consciously.”
“Feeling all right?” Arturo suddenly looked concerned.
“Peachy, Arturo.” I didn’t want to think about the past. “I won’t be going out until I’ve settled in, so you can get me up to speed on security protocol when we come to it.”
“All right. In the meantime, I have something for you to do.” Arturo picked up a folder and handed it to me. “There’s Luz, three maids, a kitchen girl and two gardeners to supervise.” He dug in a drawer and pulled out another file. “You’re also in charge of the foundation.”
“I’m what?”
“Luz is a cook, not really a housekeeper, so you’re in charge of the house now, and she can go back to doing what she does best. The foundation helps poor kids go to college. You’ve got five million invested, so you’ve got a quarter of a mil per year to work with.”
I just sat there and stared at him. “You’re saying I have to decide –”
“You said you wanted a life, well, now you’ve got one.” Arturo was grinning. “Oh, and I want you to organise a business dinner for the day after tomorrow for a dozen, and we’re having a party on Saturday for the family. Luz will tell you how we usually set up.”
I’d asked for a life, and Arturo had taken me at my word. By the sound of things, he’d given me two or maybe three.
“Come meet everyone.” Arturo was up and moving.
Breakfast turned out to be a combination of a buffet and a business meeting. There was a steady stream of visitors, most of them related to Arturo. I quickly lost track of the names and faces, and as the conversations were fast and colloquial, I lost track of those, too.
What was obvious was that Arturo was a superb multi-tasker. He was on the phone, listening in to a conversation across the table and signing papers at the same time. He was also a swift decision maker. People came, had something to eat, queued for a chat with the jefe and were moving back up the table to talk to the others within five minutes. It was extremely efficient except for one thing: Arturo wasn’t eating, and his coffee had gone cold.
I got up, poured Arturo a fresh coffee and made him a scrambled egg sandwich. The second I put it in front of him with a plate of sliced mango and banana on the side, he looked up and smiled. “Gracias, sirena.”
I kept an eye on him after that, topping up his coffee and removing the empty plate when he was done. From some of the glances I caught, it looked like our fight had been the subject of lots of gossip, and everyone was disappointed we’d made up.
Arturo hadn’t said a word about me chewing him out in public, but I knew he’d hated it. For a cartel man, image is everything. I’d told Arturo that he had all the power, but actually I had some too, because I could make him look great, or I could show him up. I chose to make him look fantastic, and Arturo not only knew it, I could see he was secretly loving it. As he’d been pretty damn amazing the night before, I didn’t begrudge him a bit of it.
I wasn’t following what was being said around me, so I ended up eating a plate of fried eggs with salsa (delicious!) while reading through the files Arturo had given me.
The house file looked straightforward enough. It had a list of staff, responsibilities and salaries. Someone had also put together cleaning and maintenance schedules as well as a range of menus, complete with shopping lists and budgets. It all looked super efficient.
The foundation file was quite different. There was a copy of a bank transfer, a few sample sponsorship agreements and some college brochures. That was it. Checking the bank transfer, I saw it was dated that morning. There was a note saying the account could be accessed by only one person: me. I had sole discretion over the funds and the distribution. The scale of it took my breath away.
The second Arturo had a moment, I asked him about it. “Did you set this up today?”
“Yes, but I’ve been thinking about it for a while.”
“There’s no charter. Do you have anything special in mind? Like keeping it strictly local, or at a particular place? Or maybe a certain type of training?”
“Nope, set it up any way you like.”
It was outrageous. “Arturo, you realise that I could give a kid a dollar for an ice cream and keep the rest?”
“You won’t.” He was laughing at me. “What’s bothering you, Solitaire? You said you wanted a job, and now you’ve got one.”
“You’re investing five million, and you don’t know me!”
“I thought we were trusting each other?”
That flummoxed me. “Jesus, Arturo. Trust is one thing but five million?”
He shrugged. “It’s only money.”
And in a way, I knew what he meant. There’s no life without money, but if you’ve enough of the green stuff, it doesn’t matter anymore. From the way Arturo lived, five million was probably small change, but for me it felt like a lot of cash.
Arturo went back to talking shop, and I went back to thinking about the foundation. There would be lots of people wanting a slice of it, so I’d have to do some very careful studying and planning if I was going to avoid fucking up. I made a list of things I’d have to research: what laws would affect how the foundation worked, what other sources of help were available, whether the kids would have to pay tax if I gave them money, which were the good colleges and which the bad ones, what average living expenses were like in various cities, what I should look for in applicants – and then it occurred to me that I couldn’t even start until I learned proper Spanish.
Thankfully, Arturo had hired Luis Delgado, a college professor with a passion for language. Luis arrived at eleven, just as the breakfast party was breaking up, and although Arturo was friendly and welcoming, Luis was clearly terrified of him. He actually quivered with nerves when Arturo stood up and shook his hand.
Arturo pretended not to see, but I knew he was aware of it. “Delgado has excellent reviews at my niece’s school,” Arturo told me. “As it’s the holidays at the moment, we’re lucky he’s available.”
Luis looked like he was having second thoughts, but he mumbled something about the terms being very generous.
After Arturo reduced Luis to a nervous wreck by telling him he had every faith in his teaching skills, I decided it was time to get to work. “Come alon
g, Luis, we’ll grab a space in the kitchen and get cracking.”
You know, it was strange but I automatically assumed that Arturo would act the jealous type, so I planned on staying in the public eye. That’s why I suggested the kitchen.
Before Luis could say anything, Arturo jumped in. “The kitchen’s too busy, Solitaire. Take the living room or the dining room. You can be private there. Lunch is at two.”
So I took Luis through to the other side of the house and into the dining room. It had a terrific long table, ideal for studying, and it stood right in front of some French windows. I could see a gardener trimming the bushes by the pool, so I opened up the windows and invited Luis to take a seat. It was one thing to know Arturo wasn’t the edgy suspicious type, but I had the idea that his people would be looking to criticise. Sitting in the full view of the public eye would prevent that.
I caught myself on that thought and wondered where it came from. If I let myself go on autopilot, I seemed to know all sorts of things, like how poor the average Mexican is, how Arturo’s people would think, and that in some places a gift of money is taxable. That list of things to do for the foundation was fairly slick, too. But if I tried to push and find out how I knew those things, my brain baulked and put up the big black screen.
I wondered for a second if I should ask Kyle to give me another jab, just in case it brought back some useful skills, but then I decided against it. I’d move along on autopilot and be grateful for anything useful that popped up.
Away from Arturo, Luis stopped being a jelly. “Do you speak any Spanish?”
“I’m not sure.”
Luis looked a bit surprised but simply asked, “Cómo se llama usted?”
“Me llamo Solitaire.” And then I found myself making small talk. It wasn’t terrific, and I knew I was making mistakes, but it was obvious that I’d picked some Spanish up somewhere. From Arturo’s file, I guessed it had to be from when I was working for Miguel Fuentes.
A chat and a vocab test later, we figured out that I was ace at, “Here’s proof of receipt in triplicate” and clueless about “I like tennis but hate baseball”, which confirmed my suspicion.
It was a relief to know I wasn’t starting from scratch. “I need to get up to speed fast,” I showed him the foundation folder. “Can you teach me how to talk to kids about college and careers, and how to talk about money and taxes?”
“Yes, of course.”
“How much time do we have?”
“The holidays are for another three weeks, and I’m to be here every day until further notice.”
That sounded like Arturo. From the look of Luis, the job was welcome for the money but being near Arturo, not so much. Never mind, he’d get over it.
“I have to settle a few things, so why don’t we start tomorrow? We can do eleven to two for a week and see how that goes. If it’s not enough, we can double up the week after.”
“You’re like him,” Luis stammered.
I hadn’t a clue what he meant. “Like who?”
“Señor Vazquez.”
That was a surprise.
“Not that you’re – um, I meant not in a bad way. I mean, you’re organised, that’s all. Actually, you’re nothing like him. You’re nice –”
I cut him short. “I think you’d better stop there. You see, I like him, and he is paying your salary. An extremely generous one, too, from what you say.”
Luis quailed. “Yes. Sorry!”
I stood up. “I’m not feeling very nice at the moment, so let’s call it a day.”
Luis beetled off, and after steaming for a moment at the ungrateful bugger, I decided it was time to see Luz. She ran Arturo’s home, so I had a feeling that she might not be happy to have me around, taking over her position. As it turned out, I was totally wrong there.
I found Luz in the kitchen, chopping up a pile of tomatoes for a salad. The place looked like a bomb had hit it, but it smelled like heaven. Luz was alone, which rather surprised me as she was supposed to have an assistant. From the pile of food in front of her, Luz was single-handedly cooking for an army.
“Luz, what happened to your helper?”
“She quit,” Luz said darkly. “And so did one of the maids.”
I picked up a knife and began chopping a tomato, imitating Luz as best I could. “Can’t Eva help?”
“She’s your personal maid.”
“Is demarcation a problem here?”
Luz looked blank. “I’m a cook,” she said. “I run the house because the jefe didn’t have time to hire a housekeeper after the last one left.”
“He expects me to take over,” I told her, “but I don’t think it’s something I’ve ever done. Also, I don’t want to tread on your toes.”
Luz looked pained, but I quickly realised it wasn’t the idea of my running the house but the way I was mangling her tomatoes that was the problem.
“You are not a cook,” Luz observed. “And how can you not know what you’ve done before?”
I put down the knife, which cheered her up, and filled her in, pretending I’d tripped by accident, and leaving out all the blood and horror. As it turned out, it was the just the right thing to say, because Luz went from polite to friendly in an instant.
“Just like on television,” she breathed. “Incredible!”
“It’s a little inconvenient, but I can live with it. The question is: what do we do?”
Luz chopped thoughtfully for a while and then shrugged. “You have no Spanish, and you don’t know our people. But the jefe wants you to run his house because he knows I find it impossible.”
“Tell me what makes it impossible.”
It was the home question. From Luz’s impassioned speech, the problem lay in Arturo’s crew. Most of his immediate family, Chumillo, Rafa and Kyle in particular, were decent but the rest were pulpos, Luz explained.
I knew that one. It meant octopus. “Bunch of randy bastards? Is that why the girls quit?”
“Sí!” The chopper came down hard on an onion that appeared to be standing in for a testicle. “Four weeks, four girls! Four! They are too afraid to even take out the basura! They leave the house, and bam! Those pigs pounce!!”
“Right. Hire someone new. I’ll deal with the pigs.”
“What?” Luz was staring at me. “You?” She looked out the window and gestured at a group of men hanging around in the shade of a big tree. “Those men, they are perros hijueputas.”
I knew that expression too. I looked at them, smoking cigarettes and flicking the butts in the grass. There were a dozen of them, and none had been at breakfast. “They work for Arturo?”
“Sí! They’re from Nuevo Leon.”
“No problem. Leave it to me.”
Five minutes later I was carrying out the rubbish. Usually I walk with my head up and shoulders back; it’s an attitude that makes people think twice about messing with me. This time I scuttled as if someone might be after me. It was a pose that shouted ‘prey’, and within a minute I had a predator on my tail. I heard him coming, and the second his arm slid around my waist, I stopped, sidestepped and had my elbow in his gut. There was a grunt, and as my fist moved down and landed in his balls, he let go of me and slid to the ground, grunting, “Zorra!”
I didn’t know that one, but it sounded nasty. The rest of his buddies were staring at me in astonishment. Looking past them, I spotted Luz’s white frightened face at the kitchen window. Eva and two other women were standing next to her, but none of them moved. Good, just as I’d hoped.
I turned my attention back to the men and faked tremendous rage. “Is this fucker with you?” When they all stared at me, slack-jawed, I raised my voice to foghorn level. “I said: is this fucker with you?”
One of them shrugged. “Yeah. Who the hell are you? Xena?” He had a lantern jaw, sky blue eyes and a Texas drawl that came straight out of a western.
I marched straight up to him. “What the hell do you think you’re about, coming to your boss’s house and behaving li
ke a bunch of animals?”
His friends crowded around me, totally confident of their superiority as there were a dozen of them and one of me.
“Hey, guapa, chill!”
The Texan put a hand out, intending to put it on my shoulder. I grabbed it, pulled him close, twisted, and then he was lying on his back at my feet.
“The next man who touches me gets a broken arm!”
Now they were uncertain and unhappy. This wasn’t going the way they liked.
The odd one out was the Texan. He was lying on the grass and laughing. “That was fucking wild! Who the hell are you?”
“My name’s Solitaire.”
It was as if I’d flipped a switch. All their faces went blank, and everyone instantly stepped away from me.
“I see you’ve heard of me,” I said into the silence. I reached a hand down to the Texan and pulled him to his feet. He was looking cautious now, too.
I didn’t try to kid myself that they were afraid if me. They knew I was Arturo’s girl, and they were wondering how much trouble they were in. Then they looked at the Texan and their fallen friend, and I saw respect dawn in their eyes.
Convinced I had them by the balls, and knowing their hearts and minds would follow, I laid down the law. “Luz tells me she can’t keep staff because you bastards can’t keep your hands to yourself. As it’s now my job to keep the house running, there’s a new rule: touch one of my girls and I’ll chop it off.”
“The hand?” the Texan asked.
“You’d be lucky.”
They stood around me, all of them intensely wary.
“All right,” the Texan said. “Sorry, it won’t happen again.”
“Good. And if you’re going to smoke, put your butts in the bin.”
“Yes, ma’am. Sorry ma’am.”
I glanced at the one I’d punched in the family jewels. He was still curled up in a foetal position and whimpering. “Make sure he gets the message.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
