“How can that be if you ran the gang?” Sam said.
“Division of labor,” Eduardo said, “and plausible deniability, I suppose. In terms you can both understand, Junior ran the defense and the judicial, and I was in charge of the economy and outreach. Those were our skill sets.”
“Obviously,” I said.
“And if I am arrested again,” Eduardo says, “I’m in prison for life. And that would be a short life. I would be dead within an hour, I assure you. Even though I am innocent, it wouldn’t matter. I’m confident my involvement at all would constitute a conspiracy charge, and I am confident that the judicial system would happily use me as a public relations target. All of this, all of what you see here, would be gone. This is all because of me, Michael, because of my desire to atone and my desire to help these kids so that they don’t necessarily make the mistakes I made. And here, my past can ruin it. I did my time. I admit my mistakes. I admit my crimes. I will not let all of the good I am doing fall to waste. And that-that, Mr. Westen-is why I cannot call the mayor or the president or anyone. You are my only hope.”
The room fell silent. I frankly didn’t know what I was going to do to help Eduardo, but I had the sense that he was right-no one else could help him, and without help, all that he’d done would crumble.
Plus, I liked being called his only hope. I felt a little like Obi-Wan Kenobi.
“Okay,” I said. “I need time to think about this.”
“And I can pay you whatever you require,” he said.
“Well,” Sam said, “there are going to be some expenses…”
I put a hand up to stop Sam, which is a bit like hoping a feather could stop a freight train, but luckily it was still pretty early in the day for Sam, and he didn’t quite have his normal midafternoon head of steam yet. “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I need the karma. And so does Sam.”
“One question,” Eduardo said. “Are you actually a spy?”
“I am,” I said. “Or I was. You and me, we’ve both been excommunicated from our organizations. You by choice, me by someone working behind me, trying to discredit the good I did, so I understand uniquely the situation you’re in.”
“How did you go from here to there?” Eduardo said. “And why are you back?”
“I could ask you the same question,” I said. “We all make choices, Eduardo. I made the right ones. You made the wrong ones. And yet here we both are.”
“A strange fact of life,” he said.
I couldn’t imagine a stranger one. “When are you supposed to have an answer for Junior?” I said.
“Two days,” he said.
“You have a way of contacting him?”
“One of his soldiers is to come by tomorrow to confirm.”
“No phone number?”
“No, no,” Eduardo said. “I have no idea where he’s even living. My people on the streets say he is not in the old neighborhoods.”
“All right. When his guy comes, you tell him you want a face-to-face meeting here. When is this place the busiest?”
“All day,” Eduardo said. “We have a shift that starts at seven, another at four, though we feed the workers at three thirty for the night shift.”
“Tell him to be here at three thirty, then,” I said. “Let him see the full workforce.”
“What will we be telling him?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “But I have a few ideas.”
Sam and I wound through the shaded lawn of Honrado Industries as we walked back to the car. There were flags in places where the new buildings were planned and signs, propped up with artist renderings of what the buildings would look like. The weird thing was that just across the street from this small bit of paradise-paradise built on the religious reformation of a gangster and put in peril by his past-was the real world: a teenage girl pushing a baby stroller, a homeless man asleep in an apartment complex carport, a stray dog nosing around for scraps.
“Here’s what I don’t get,” Sam said. “Why come back here? If you’re Father Eduardo, I mean. Why not just move to Idaho and start all over? He had to expect that he’d run into these kinds of problems eventually.”
“Home is home,” I said. “And besides, he’s paying penance.”
“I dunno, Mikey,” Sam said. “I don’t see myself running over to Fallujah when I retire just to pay penance. I could live my whole life without seeing the Republican Guard again and I’d be perfectly fine. Know what I mean?”
“You can’t discount ego, either,” I said. “Eduardo wouldn’t be lunching with the mayor if he lived in Boise. He might be doing it all for the good, but there’s still a little bit of the showboat gangster I remember in him.”
“You gotta have that to make it in the God game,” Sam said. “Look at Tammy Faye Baker. She wasn’t exactly reserved and refined.”
He was right. He usually is. “Listen,” I said, “I want you to find out what you can on Junior Gonzalez. I need to know just what kind of guy we’re up against.”
“If he’s got cops,” Sam said, “I’m a little limited on my sources. People tend to talk when they think something of interest is happening, and you never know who knows who in law enforcement.”
“I’m sure you’ll find someone who can help,” I said.
“I can go back to my guy in Corrections, but he’ll only know so much. I’ve got a buddy who did some time at the same prison while Junior was there,” Sam said. “That might be a place to start. And I’m pretty sure he’s no friend of the local law. He runs a pretty lucrative post-lockup business these days, is my understanding. You know how Father Eduardo gets kids back on the road to good? My buddy, he paves the road with the papers they might one day need if they ever want to work a real job.”
“What was your friend in for?” I asked, which is probably the wrong question to ask anyone when they say they have a friend who’s done time.
“Oh, you know, fraud, some passport business, minor nonviolent acts meant to increase his personal wealth. That sort of thing. Good guy. You’d love him. I’ll call him and see if we can meet up for drinks. He’s the kind of guy who likes a little lubrication.”
“I know the type,” I said.
“Ah, Mikey, you only know the half. My guy? He still makes pruno at home. You’d love it. Puts a little spice in there that’ll make you jump out of your socks. Of course, if he makes it wrong, it can also kill you. So it adds a bit of thrill to the evening.”
“That’s great,” I said.
When we reached my Charger, there was a young man of about twenty walking slow circles around it. He had on the same polo shirt as the rest of the kids working at the facility. “This yours?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Nineteen seventy-three?” he asked.
“Nineteen seventy-four,” I said.
“Original interior?”
“It’s had a few accidents,” I said, though I opted not to tell him the number of times I’d fixed bullet holes in the leather… or the scrubbing that goes into getting scorch marks out… or, well, the periodic exercise involved with removing blood. “But yes, the original interior.”
“The body looks good. You should lower it,” he said.
“Not my style,” I said.
The kid considered this. “Then at least you should buff out the bullet marks on the passenger’s side.”
“I’m going to get on that,” I said.
“You pull it to the auto shop around back. I’ll do it free of charge. Good practice, homes. Know what I’m saying?”
Unfortunately, I did.
I looked at Sam. “You got twenty minutes?” I said.
4
Dealing with a source or a confidential informant is always a dicey proposition, but Sam Axe had made it into a kind of performance art. The way he figured it, people wanted to tell you their deepest and darkest secrets, because what fun is it knowing something salacious if you can’t revel in the knowledge with a friend? And maybe over a couple of beers? And maybe, in some cases, earn some cash for what you know?