But then Leticia called.
She’d been missing since Sam and I showed up to Honrado three days earlier, which meant she likely saw her boyfriend Killa and Junior arriving in one condition and leaving in a slightly different version, and knew that this might be her only opportunity to steal away with her son. But she could only go so far-a fact Fiona had predicted too well, so that when Leticia phoned her, she wasn’t all that surprised.
After she answered the call, Fi put her hand over the phone and whispered, “It’s Leticia.”
“She’ll want to talk to you,” I said to Father Eduardo. “You ready for that?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Let her know Father Eduardo wants to speak to her,” I said to Fiona. “And make sure she knows he’s not angry with her.”
Fi spoke with Leticia for just a few moments and explained to her what had probably grown to be obvious: it wasn’t an accident that they’d met up that afternoon earlier in the week, and that it was all part of a larger plan to disrupt a conspiracy she’d been unwittingly pressed into, one best explained by Father Eduardo. Fiona handed him the phone and he spoke with the girl as calmly as possible.
“They are here to protect me,” he said to Leticia. “They are here to protect you and your son. Whatever you might have heard that is the contrary is rumor and innuendo. They will protect my brother, too, if it comes to it.”
Father Eduardo looked at me when he said that. It wasn’t something I was entirely certain was possible, not because it was physically impossible, but because it might be morally and ethically impossible. I’d already hobbled him, which would likely preclude him from taking part in anything involving standing for a few weeks, effectively keeping off the production line for the money and out of the heist, too. The rest? That would have to be up to him.
But, in that particular moment, there wasn’t a lot of space for nuanced thought. I just nodded my assent.
“Pardon me,” Father Eduardo said to us, “but I need some privacy to continue this conversation. I’m going to continue this call outside.”
We waited for Father Eduardo to step outside before we continued our previous conversation-which was just how we were going to position Junior to fail.
“You think he’ll be able to keep it together?” Sam asked.
“Right now? Yes,” I said. “If we keep him out of the lines of fire, he’ll be fine. But when we turn this information over to the authorities, and they call Father Eduardo as a witness? Well, that will be up to him. But my feeling is that he’s led a dual life before. A little white lie here and there to the police will be fine.”
The bugging of Junior’s office, just over the course of three days, had provided all the information needed to get Junior put back in prison and people like Peter Prieto into prison for the first time. There were phone calls, all recorded, between Junior and Peter. There were e-mails between Junior and “clients” in other countries ensuring delivery of product as soon as production was resecured. There was video of all of this, too.
And Sam had gone back to the Ace after our first meeting with Junior and managed to pick up the two missing fingers, too. Physical evidence is always a bonus.
“What’s our move?” Fiona asked.
“Our first one is to get Junior’s people positioned,” I said. I put my cell phone on speaker and called Junior at his office. Just like every other office drone, he answered on the third ring.
“What do you want?” he said.
“Is that how you greet a business partner?”
“We are not partners,” he said. “You wouldn’t happen to know where Killa’s son is, would you?”
“Why would you ask me that?”
“Because he and his mother disappeared on the same day you showed up,” he said.
“Let’s just say,” I said, “that maybe I’m more careful than you are.”
There was silence on the other end of the line, but I could tell that Junior was trying to contain his anger. He wasn’t the kind of guy prone to long, contemplative silences.
“What do you want?” he said again.
“I need your guys,” I said. “And your cop.”
“When?”
“Tonight,” I said. “There’s a shipment leaving Harding Pharmaceutical at six P.M. that I’d like to own.”
This got Junior’s attention. “What is it?”
I decided being honest was the best policy. “About a thousand stop-smoking patches.”
“There a market for that?”
“There is in Bolivia,” I said, thinking that a quarter century in prison might have made Junior a little dim on the black markets and geography. Or where people still smoked.
“What’s my cut?”
“You don’t get a cut,” I said. “It’s the price of doing business at Honrado. We discussed this right before my friend choked you out with her whip.”
“Change of rules,” Junior said.
“You don’t make the rules,” I said.
“You think I’m stupid? I spent some time looking into you, Mr. Solo,” he said. “You don’t exist.”
“And yet here I am, talking to you on the phone.”
“You think you’re the only person who can run a license plate?”
I looked at Sam. He was the man in charge of making sure I had plates on the Charger that couldn’t be traced back to anything prudent. It had been so long since we’d changed them that I had no idea whom or what they belonged to. I gave Sam a look that I hope conveyed this. He just shrugged.
“I trust that Officer Prieto can do all sorts of services for you,” I said. “But do you think I’m the type of person who just rolls up into the DMV and registers my ride? You better have your man dig deeper.”
Junior sighed. It was an odd sound. You never want to think of terribly menacing people feeling resigned. It ruins your idea of ultimate evil on all levels.
“We either start understanding each other on a better business level or one of us is going to die,” Junior said.
“Are you speaking euphemistically?”
“I’m speaking bullets to heads,” he said.
I laughed. It wasn’t a funny thing to be hearing, but it’s always nice to give psychopaths reason to believe you’re just as crazy as they are. “I like how you think, Junior,” I said. “Look, we can only both bleed this whale for so long and then we’ll have to fight for his oil and blubber once he’s dead; that’s what I’m hearing. So why don’t we do this. You send your guys and your cop over to Harding Pharmaceutical this evening, grab the truck, don’t kill anyone in the process, and in good faith, I’ll give you forty percent of my take.”
“Fifty percent.”
“What are you willing to give me to get fifty percent of a score you wouldn’t even know about without me?”
“You can keep the girl. What’s her name? Leticia. She’s yours. But my man wants his kid. That’s Latin Emperor property.”
Fiona was already angry, but this last demand got her ready to blow. So I did the only thing I could do. “Deal,” I said. “Why don’t you and me go to the job tonight, too. Make it a real gentlemen’s agreement, and that way I can make sure none of your boys goes crazy and caps someone and then we both lose.”
“When do we get the kid?”
“Sunday morning,” I said. “I’ve got buyers ready tonight. They’ll inspect the truck, see if it’s all kosher, we’ll get paid and we’ll make the trade in the morning at Honrado-that way no one goes gun crazy. No one gets cut. Father and son are together. We all go get some Jesus together, maybe. Make it real easy. And I’ve got one less crying kid to worry about. You ever listen to a kid cry for an entire night? And then there was the food he ate. You can have him, Junior. You can have him.”
Junior considered all of this. “Where do we meet tonight?”
I told him to meet me a few blocks from Harding at four forty-five. “The truck is scheduled to leave at six,” I said. “I want you to send Officer Prieto there to clear out the building well before then. Tell them there’s a bomb threat.”