We sat down at the table, but Eduardo remained standing at first, as if he wasn’t sure this was, in fact, the course of action he wanted to take. How odd it must be to meet with the mayor of the city at one moment and then whatever, or whomever, Sam and I were the next.
The key to making someone comfortable, even in their own home or sanctuary, is to ask him questions about himself. People love to talk about themselves. This is why so many people admit to crimes when police interrogate them-they simply cannot help themselves from themselves.
I picked up one of the blueprints. “Are you expanding?”
“Oh, yes,” Eduardo said. He stood between Sam and me and looked at the blueprint. “That will be our greenhouse. We plan on having more sustainable gardens here in the future, so we can begin providing organic vegetables. Do you know that the average apple you eat contains over fifty trace chemicals in its skin?”
“I didn’t know that.”
“And look at yourself. You should know. You’re fit. You’re smart. Now think about these kids in these neighborhoods. You think any of them have any idea about pesticides in their food?”
“I’d guess that’s the least of their concerns,” Sam said.
“You would guess correctly,” Eduardo said. “Whoever you are.”
“Mikey didn’t tell you I was coming?” Sam said. He shook Eduardo’s hand. “Sam Axe at your service. You’ve got the full faith and credit of the United States government right here in my handshake.”
“That’s not an entity I trust, but I assume if you are with Mr. Westen that you are trustworthy.”
“That’s not a good assumption,” I said.
“Ah, but it is an educated guess,” he said. “Educating someone is different from making them concerned about something. Same with the kids and the organic food. People today, they do not know the difference between education and fear-making.” He sighed then and shook his head. He finally took a seat across from us. “This is precisely what I was talking to the mayor about. All of this money to teach children what to be afraid of, and no money to teach them music or art or, well, you know how it is. Do you know I learned how to play the violin in prison? It’s true.”
“Maybe more people should go to prison,” I said.
“Just because it is true doesn’t mean it isn’t a shame, Mr. Westen.”
I laughed.
“You find that funny?” he said.
“I find it funny you just called me Mr. Westen,” I said. “I was trying to remember the last time I saw you before yesterday. And you know what I remembered? You actually turned my brother, Nate, upside down and shook all of the change out of his pockets.”
“Mikey, that’s what kids do,” Sam said.
“He wasn’t a kid,” I said. “Do you remember this, Eduardo?”
“I’m afraid I do not. Not because it didn’t happen, but because I did it to so many people. How old was I?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “maybe seventeen? Maybe eighteen? Old enough and rich enough not to need a kid’s pocket change.”
“It was never need,” Eduardo said. “And where were you at this time?”
“I was coming up with a bat in my hand to crush over your head,” I said. “Unfortunately, a teacher saw me coming and wouldn’t let me.”
“Unfortunately?” he said.
“Could have saved you and a lot of other people a lot of grief,” I said.
“I get the sense you don’t believe I am a changed person,” Eduardo said.
“You sense correctly.”
“I need your help, Michael,” Eduardo said. “So I hope I can convince you that I am worthy of it.”
“How did you even know I exist?”
“You helped a friend of mine,” he said. “Ernie Paseo. He was having trouble with some gangsters.”
Can no one keep a secret anymore? Ernie Paseo had been one of the first people I’d helped in Miami. He had also been sworn to tell no one that I’d helped him, and had subsequently referred people to me like I was a Merry Maid.
Ernie was not the kind of person to engage with crooks, and the mere fact that he’d mentioned me to Eduardo was a good sign.
“Ernie’s been good for business,” Sam said.
“Remind me not to give him any secret launch codes,” I said.
“He told me I could trust you,” Eduardo said. “He told me you were a good and honest man and that you weren’t scared of anything. Your name sounded familiar, so I asked some of our old… associates… if you were the same person as I recalled from childhood.”
Associates. That could mean only that Eduardo made some phone calls to a few of the less desirables we’d both gone to school with and maybe he’d rolled with. “No one you knew from school knows I’m back,” I said.
“That’s funny,” he said. “You have a friend who sells guns?”
Fiona.
“No,” I said.
“A girl, maybe? Wears short skirts and always has automatic weapons?”
Fiona, for sure.
“Nope. Sam, you know anyone like that?”
“Can’t say I do, Mikey. Sounds like a very dangerous person. If I see her, I’ll call nine-one-one.”
We both gave Eduardo our most professional smiles.
“I don’t care, Mr. Westen, who you know. Just know people are aware of your presence in town. The right kind of people and the wrong kind of people. Just like you and me. The difference is that I have a path guided by the Lord, and that path tells me that at every turn I’ll need to make right the sins of my youth. I don’t think you feel the same way.”
“I’m not a criminal, Eduardo. I never was.”
“Maybe not in your eyes. But, Mr. Westen, you have killed, have you not?”
“I have,” I said.
“That’s against someone’s law,” he said.
He certainly had a way of evening the scales. And the truth is, I believed him. The evidence was all around, and his demeanor suggested a man who’d changed his life and was dedicated to helping others.
“You’ve done an excellent job letting me know that we are cut from the same cloth, that you’ve been saved and that the world is going to be just fine now that you’re on the job. So, Eduardo, what do you need me for? You need help getting out of the sand trap the mayor left you in?”
Eduardo exhaled through his mouth and his entire body wilted a bit inside his expensive suit. He loosened his tie and took off his coat, and then held up another blueprint. “You see this?” he asked. “This is going to be our new library. Paid for entirely through donations. It will be state-of-the-art-computer retrieval system, digital library of every newspaper in America-everything-and we will be training librarians here. It’s true. Library science classes will take place on Northwest Fourth Street. This?” He pointed at yet another blueprint. “This is going to be an auto shop. We had one before, but it wasn’t here. It was out near the juvie, so I couldn’t watch it, and soon it became a chop shop. You know? Kids, they will fall back into bad habits. So many plans. Next year, I’ll have another hundred fifty people working, if everything goes as planned.”
“Who is shaking you down?” I said.
Eduardo got up, went to his desk and came back with a thick manila envelope. “I can trust you?” he asked.
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
He handed me the envelope and then sat behind us on one of the leather sofas. It was as if he didn’t even want to be in proximity to the contents I was pulling out and sharing with Sam. But the thing was, there wasn’t anything particularly incriminating in the envelope, just old photos of Eduardo with various other members of the Latin Emperors. There were several photos that featured pictures of Eduardo with guns and a few that showed drugs, but none of this was a mystery to anyone-it was, apparently, what had made Eduardo such a superstar.
“I don’t get it,” I said.
“Those men,” he said, “most of them are dead.”