Rojas would watch him make that walk over and over in his nightmares. He marked every footfall, every shifting shadow edging across his brother’s corduroy jacket. Esteban was tugging nervously on the sleeves of that jacket, pulling the fabric deeper into his palms. Rojas had always looked up to his older brother, and never once had he seen him afraid.
But those hands tugging on the sleeves …and his gait, carefully measured but the boots dragging deeper than they usually did …told him that his hero, his protector, the boy who had taught him how to fish, skip rocks, and drive a tractor, was very much afraid.
“Esteban!” Rojas cried.
His brother spun and raised a finger. “Stay on the porch!”
Rojas wanted nothing more than to either accompany his brother or run back into the house and alert his parents, but they had gone into the city to celebrate their wedding anniversary, and Rojas’s father had boasted about saving up enough money to treat his wife to an expensive meal.
One of the gangsters said something to Esteban, who fired back a retort, his voice rising. Esteban neared the gate, and oddly enough, the gangsters refused to come past it, as though there were some force holding them back.
It was not until Esteban pushed past the gate and stepped into the dirt road beyond that they surrounded him. Rojas thought of the shotgun their father kept under his bed. He thought of rushing out there and blasting each of those evil boys in the face. He could no longer watch his brother being accosted by these cabrones.
He remembered the candy that Esteban had brought home last week, a real luxury to them, and he realized that even that had been purchased with the stolen money.
“Here,” Esteban had said. “I know how much you love chocolate.”
“Thank you! I can’t believe you got some!”
“I know. Neither can I!”
And after they’d finished eating all the chocolate and were lying in their bunk beds, staring up at the ceiling, Esteban had said, “You should never be scared of anyone, Jorge. People will try to intimidate you, but no one is better than anyone else. Some have money and guns. That is the only difference. Don’t be scared. You need to be a fighter in this life.”
“I don’t know if el padre would go along with that,” he’d said. “He told us to be scared of the gangs.”
“No! Never be scared.”
But Rojas was scared, more than ever now, as he’d watched the gangsters begin shouting at his brother.
The shortest one shoved Esteban, who returned the shove and screamed, “I’ll pay back the money!”
And then the tallest one, the sentinel who’d remained a few steps behind and had not said a word, reached into his jacket and produced a pistol.
Rojas gasped, tensed, reached out—
The gunshot made him flinch and blink as Esteban’s head snapped to one side and he dropped to the ground.
Without a word, Rojas ran into the house, into his father’s bedroom, and snatched up the shotgun. He rushed back outside. The three gangsters were already sprinting across the field, toward the moon hanging low on the horizon. Rojas banged past the gate and screamed after them. He fired the shotgun twice, the boom echoing off the house and hills. The gangsters were well out of range. He cursed, slowed to a halt, and struggled for breath.
Then he turned back to his brother, lying motionless in the dirt. He rushed to his brother’s side, and the shotgun fell out of his hands. The gaping hole in Esteban’s head sent shudders through him. His brother stared back with a weird reflection in his eyes, and later on, in the dreams and nightmares, Rojas would see the moon in those eyes, and against that moon, cast in silhouette, stood the sentinel, raising his pistol. Rojas would struggle to see the boy’s face, but he never could.
He put his head down on his brother’s chest and began to cry. Neighbors found him there a few minutes later, and eventually his parents arrived. The wailing of his mother carried on throughout the night.
That was another lifetime, thought Rojas, running a finger along the burled-wood arm of his seat. The rags-to-riches story was a cliché, he’d been told, yet he defied anyone to classify his present life as a cliché. As much as he still loved and admired his brother, Rojas understood now that Esteban had made a grave and foolish mistake. Rojas had spent nearly half of his life searching for the boy who had killed Esteban, but no one had come forward to help.
“Well, Jorge, I can’t thank you enough for this. For all of this. I mean, I’ve never actually met the president of a country before.”
“I’ve met many of them,” Rojas said. “And you know what? They are just men. People will try to intimidate you, but no one is better than anyone else. Some have money and guns. That is the only difference.”
“Some have private jets, too,” Campbell added with a grin.
He nodded. “I like to travel.”
“I’m sure you’ve been asked this question before, but I’m always intrigued by people like you. What do you think contributed the most to your success? Was it discipline or just smarts? Luck? A little bit of everything? I mean, you’ve told me the story of the small town where you grew up. And now you’re literally one of the richest people on the planet. That article in Newsweek said your estimated worth is at least eight percent of Mexico’s gross domestic product. It’s just …staggering. Who would’ve thought this in college, right?”
“You’ve done pretty well, too. Don’t sell yourself short.”
He nodded. “But nothing like this. So, as I look around your beautiful jet, I ask you, how’d you get here?”
“Buying businesses, making wise investments …I don’t know, really. Friends helped the most.”
“Don’t be coy.”
“I’m serious. The friendships I’ve made are what’s become most important, and you’ll see that when we get to Colombia.”
Campbell considered that and finally nodded, and it seemed Rojas had successfully ducked the question. But then Campbell said, “Do you think it was school? Doing well in school?”
“Sure, that’s it. Friends and school.”
“But that doesn’t answer the real mystery.”
Rojas frowned. “Oh, what’s that?”
“How so many of your companies have been able to weather this economic downturn. If memory serves, not a single one of your companies has had to file for bankruptcy. Given this volatile market, that’s incredible.”
Rojas allowed himself a faint grin. “I have good people working for me and an army of lawyers to protect me and my investments.”
“The Subways you have in Mexico are making more money than those in the United States, yet the people in Mexico have less disposable income. How do you do it?”
He began laughing. “We sell a lot of sandwiches.” And then he cast his mind back to a board of directors meeting he’d had in the previous month, where his team had presented on the year’s earnings for the chain of car dealerships he owned with locations throughout all of Mexico. Many people were unaware that the country often had the largest car production and sales in the world. The numbers, however, had been disappointing, yet Rojas had been able to assure his people that dealer incentives would not only remain but increase tenfold.
“But how can they do that with this tremendous drop in sales?” asked his CEO. It was a fair question, and the dozen or so people seated at the long conference table focused their attention on Rojas, who stood at the head and said, “I’ve been in direct talks with the manufacturers, and I promise you that your incentives will increase.”
They shrugged in disbelief. But Rojas made it happen. And the calls and e-mails flooded in: “Thank you! Thank you!”