The Wrong Hostage

by Elizabeth Lowell

  Grace felt herself begin to breathe again. Her son had a temper. It made him brave but not always smart.

  Like Joe Faroe.

  As play resumed she heard a gentle tap on the passenger-side window. She looked over and saw the genial brown face of Carlos Calderón. He grinned around his customary black Havana cigar and gestured for her to unlock the passenger door.

  More men with more weapons—long guns slung over their shoulders or submachine guns held casually, muzzles toward the ground—flanked Calderón. They had the same easy insolence and edgy eyes as the gate guard.

  Do they have federal police badges too?

  But Grace didn’t say anything aloud. She touched the switch that unlocked the vehicle doors and picked up her purse from the passenger seat. When Calderón opened the door, she thought about asking him to leave his cigar outside. Then she decided to keep her mouth shut and be the deferential female Calderón expected in Mexico. It grated, but not nearly as much as seeing Lane illegally tackled, tripped, and slammed to the ground.

  She extended a cool hand to prevent the more intimate Mexican greeting. “Hello, Carlos. How are you?”

  “So nice to see you, Your Honor,” Calderón said in unaccented English.

  With a nod of his head that was just short of a bow, he took her hand in his own soft, well-manicured one. He held on to her fingers moments longer than necessary. It could have been an accident. It could have been a silent reminder that he was a man of power.

  He set the limits of politeness, not her.

  “I’m very disappointed that you couldn’t persuade Ted to come with you,” Calderón said.

  Grace withdrew her hand. “I told you that Ted is away.”

  Calderón gave the graceful shrug that was the hallmark of the Mexican male. He lived freely on both sides of the border, but he’d been born in America. He and Grace had even gone to the same private high school in Santa Ana. Yet here, south of the line, he was todo mexicano, formal in the way a Mexican businessman might be.

  Grace preferred the American version of Calderón.

  “I’ve been very busy,” she said evenly. “I haven’t spoken to Ted in quite a while. I haven’t had any chance to pass on your message.”

  Calderón puffed on his cigar. “How disappointing.”

  “You’re a very important client of Edge City Investments,” Grace said. “Why don’t you just call the firm and ask for Ted?”

  Why lean on me and make me afraid for my son?

  But she didn’t say that aloud. Her Kazakh grandmother had been very clear on that point—never show fear.

  “Oh, I’ve tried many times,” Calderón said with a rueful smile.

  Thick blue smoke swirled around the interior of the vehicle.

  Grace put on her courtroom face, the one that wouldn’t notice the smell of sewage if it was shoved up her nose.

  Calderón glanced over toward a group of men who stood beyond his bodyguards. He took another deep puff on the cigar. The tip glowed hot and red.

  She realized that he was nervous.

  Not good. Not at all good. She didn’t want to know what it took to frighten a man of Calderón’s wealth and power.

  “You called me down here to talk about Lane,” she said. “Ted isn’t necessary for that.”

  Then she snapped on the ignition switch and ran down every window in the SUV. Cigar smoke had made her hurl when she was pregnant. She didn’t like it much better now.

  Calderón drew hard on the cigar and blew a plume of smoke toward the windshield. “I’m sorry. I didn’t make myself clear. There are some aspects of your son’s welfare that only Ted can address.”

  Grace’s heart hammered hard beneath her ribs. “Then speak clearly now. Why is one of Ted’s oldest friends and his most important business associate threatening me?”

  Calderón looked at her, surprised. “Threatening?”

  She gestured toward the armed men. “Telling me to come here among all the men with guns. They weren’t here before.”

  “The guards? They’re just a precaution. Some very wealthy people send their sons to All Saints. Unfortunately, in Mexico there are kidnapping and other security issues that rarely trouble American parents.”

  “Interesting, I’m sure,” she said evenly, “but what does that have to do with Ted?”

  And Lane.

  “Since Ted is the parent who signed Lane into All Saints,” Calderón said, “the people who run the school asked me to contact Ted.”

  “I’m as much a custodial parent as Ted is. Either of us can speak for Lane’s welfare.”

  “Custodial. Such a nice term, a legal term, one that sounds good in your American courtroom. But the legal system isn’t quite the same here in Mexico. Other, more realistic considerations hold here.”

  “Are you saying that I can’t speak for my son’s interests in Mexico?”

  Calderón blew smoke. “At this moment, no. Only Ted may do so.”

  “In that case I’m taking Lane out of All Saints right now. When you find Ted, you can have a long talk with him about custodial parents.”

  “Taking Lane with you isn’t possible,” Calderón said, refusing to meet her glance. “Because Ted signed the papers admitting Lane, only Ted can remove him.” Calderón threw her a quick, nervous smile. “So now you understand the importance of bringing Ted here, yes?”

  Sweat gathered along Grace’s spine. She’d seen that kind of anxious smile before, in the barrio, when young vatos curried favor with gang leaders. At that instant she understood that Carlos Calderón, a very, very powerful man in Baja California and all of Mexico, was acting as someone else’s messenger boy.

  Someone violent enough to make Calderón nervous.

  Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Will I never get free of the gutter? Grace asked silently.

  She’d spent her adult life forgetting the gutter, ignoring it, not looking back, climbing high and fast to a place where the air was clean and the nights were safe and women didn’t have to be arm candy to be allowed into the halls of power.

  “Carlos.” Grace’s voice was quiet and calm, that of a judge presiding over her court. “Are you telling me that Lane is a prisoner here and only Ted can set him free?”

  Calderón looked out at the field, where the referee had just blown the whistle, stopping play. Then he looked toward Grace without meeting her eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “This isn’t the way I would prefer to do business.”

  He got out of the vehicle and gestured in the direction of the sidelines. Two men separated from the crowd and strode toward the Mercedes.

  “Please,” Carlos said urgently, “stand with me to greet him. It is simple respect, something a judge understands, right?”

  Reluctantly Grace got out of the car and stood an arm’s length from Carlos. One of the approaching men was a black-haired Mexican in clean, creased blue jeans, ostrich-skin boots, and a crisp white pearl-buttoned shirt. Around his neck hung a heavy gold chain holding a large, diamond-crusted medallion.

  It was hard to guess the man’s age, except that he wasn’t young. He had too much sheer macho confidence to be under forty. He walked with a faint limp, like a retired rodeo cowboy with narrow hips and old injuries. His dark face had the strong, blunt features of the people who had lived in Mexico long before Cortés rode roughshod over the land. The man squinted in the shimmering, hazy light. His left eye was milky. He was no taller than Grace.

  Understanding went through her like an icy spear. I know him.

  Hector Rivas Osuna was head of the most powerful, most violent crime family in Tijuana. Grace had seen his face in newspapers and in U.S. post offices on the ten-most-wanted broadsheet.

  No wonder Carlos is sweating.

  ALL SAINTS SCHOOL

  SATURDAY, 12:25 P.M.

  5

  THE MAN WALKING NEXT to Hector was a younger, more polished version of the rough-edged crime lord. He wore a silk shirt, Italian slacks, and thousand-dollar loafers
without socks. His hair was styled and blown dry. His skin was lighter, his body less beaten. He hid his eyes behind aviator sunglasses.

  But the family resemblance was marked, right down to the narrow hips and swagger. Father and son, perhaps, or uncle and nephew.

  “Who is the younger one?” Grace asked quietly.

  “Jaime Rivas Montemayor,” Calderón said very softly. “He’s the heir apparent to the Rivas-Osuna Gang. The ROG. Very violent. Very dangerous.”

  Grace didn’t answer, but now she understood why the federal policeman had been eager to cover his badge. He and his buddies were dancing to a tune called by either Calderón or the most corrupt crime boss in Mexico. Seeing Calderón’s nervousness, she was betting on Hector Rivas Osuna being the man in control.

  Hector stopped a respectful distance away and bowed his head formally to her. “Your Honor.”

  There was only the faintest trace of derision in his tone.

  Grace nodded in return and kept her mouth shut.

  “You tell about her son?” Hector asked Calderón.

  Hector’s English was close to Spanglish, the border creole, rough but useful. As he spoke, he watched the banker with his good eye, tilting his head in a way that pulled apart the lids of his blind eye. It was obvious that he’d been injured—scar tissue puckered whitely in a ragged line all the way to his thick hair. Most men would have worn a patch to conceal the eye’s ruin.

  Hector wasn’t most men.

  “Not completely, Carnicero,” Calderón said. “I thought some of the details would be more convincing if they came from you.”

  Carnicero.

  Butcher.

  Grace was surprised that Calderón would use such a nickname to Hector’s face. She glanced beneath her eyelashes at the nephew. He was watching his uncle with an expression of distaste. Either Hector didn’t notice or didn’t care.

  Hector looked at Grace again, examining her the way the Mexican customs inspector had, but Hector’s expression was more complex. Some traditional Mexican males were fascinated by powerful women, so long as that power didn’t extend south of the Tía Juana River. Apparently Hector was one of those men.

  Grace couldn’t decide if that was good or bad.

  “I hear you ver’ important woman, a judge,” he said to her. “That mean you smart, so pardon me if I speak plain. I am a plain man. Do you know me?”

  Grace nodded.

  “Bueno. Tijuana is my world,” he said calmly. “I make law. I enforce it. ¿Claro?”

  She nodded again.

  “Your husband stole my money. Mucho dinero.”

  Grace’s eyes widened and her stomach knotted.

  “He don’t give that money to me,” Hector said, “I kill el niño, the son. Is simple.”

  Bile rose in her throat. She swallowed it back down.

  Hector straightened himself out of his slight stoop, stretching stiff muscles in the middle of his back.

  Grace remembered reading somewhere that he’d been badly wounded in a shoot-out on the streets of Tijuana. Yet Hector still had a kind of primitive physical power, the kind of raw charisma that some criminal leaders possessed. A very few men like Hector had come through her courtroom, men who lived violently and often died the same way.

  But never soon enough for the innocent.

  Hector turned and gestured toward the field where play was winding down. “You saw?”

  Grace didn’t trust her voice, so she simply nodded, feeling like a puppet whose strings were being jerked.

  “El niño, he get small bump,” Hector said. “A warning, so you unnerstand.”

  Her stomach knotted more tightly and her throat closed. She couldn’t have answered if her life depended on it.

  It didn’t matter. Hector was still talking.

  “The big hombre, the one that hit Lane? My nephew. He like to give pain.” Hector smiled, showing hard white teeth and a few steel ones. He gestured to Jaime Rivas. “This one, he think we hit your son more hard, make bigger unnerstanding.” Hector’s smile changed, thin and dangerous now. “Jaime no happy. He talk me into el banco grande with Calderón and Franklin. Jaime want to kill el niño, but I want solamente my money. ¿Claro?”

  Grace glanced at Carlos Calderón. He’d turned his back, plainly showing that he wasn’t any part of their transaction.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Bueno. Two days.”

  “Two days? For what?”

  “To find el cabrón that is your husband.”

  “That’s impossible!”

  “Lo siento.” Hector shrugged. “The death of a son es muy triste. Ver’ sad.”

  Grace couldn’t believe what she was hearing. And she couldn’t afford not to believe it.

  This can’t be happening.

  But it was.

  “A request, please.” She spoke quickly, softly, with a steadiness that came from a soul-deep certainty that she would die before she let this butcher kill her son. If that meant begging a favor from one of the most violent men in any nation on earth, then she’d beg. “I must be able to come to the school and see Lane at any time. Surely you understand why.”

  “Seguro que sí,” Hector said, smiling. “A mother, she must see her son. But today a few minutes solamente. Surely you unnerstand why.”

  Grace didn’t miss the mockery in his last words. A matter of power. He’s showing me that getting what I want is entirely at his pleasure.

  The Butcher.

  How did this happen?

  “Yes, I understand,” she said tightly.

  Jaime’s expression was disdainful, as contemptuous of his uncle as everything else in the world. Especially Lane Franklin, gringo son of a thieving gringo father.

  “Thank you,” Grace added, throttling her fear.

  “Don’ be sad,” Hector said, smiling almost intimately at her. “I learn much time ago always to offer a choice. Plata o plomo. Silver or lead. Smart people, they choose the silver.”

  Grace drew a hidden breath and vowed not to show any weakness. “Do you understand that Ted and I are divorced? I didn’t control him when I was married. What chance do I have now?”

  “My people say you have power. Use it to please me.”

  “Power? Hardly. If I really were powerful, you’d be worried that I’d turn my supposed power against you.”

  Hector laughed. “They want me in El Norte and in Mexico for murder and a thousand other crimes. Sí, I ver’ afraid of the law.” He laughed harder. “You smart, you work for me.”

  Grace nodded and hoped her face didn’t show her fear. Or her hatred.

  “You keep this between us,” Hector said, “or I kill the boy. ¿Claro?”

  “Very clear.”

  Hector turned away.

  “Did my husband know this was going to happen?” she asked.

  Hector paused, tilting his head as he considered the question for a moment. Then he spoke to her with a combination of respect and mockery that was uniquely his own. “I tell you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Is what you demand, Judge?”

  She nodded.

  “Franklin know,” Hector said simply. “Is part of our deal to have el niño in Mexico.”

  Grace couldn’t hide her anger. She didn’t even try. “Does Lane know he’s a hostage?”

  Hector frowned and shook his head. “I no scare children. Two days, señora.”

  Grace started to ask for more time. A look at Hector’s bad eye told her to save her breath. His clothes might have been clean, crisp, fresh; his dead eye was a preview of hell.

  “Sí,” Hector said, smiling. “You smart woman. Adiós.”

  The aging crime lord turned and strode away, his sour-faced nephew trailing behind.

  As soon as they were beyond earshot, Grace turned on Calderón. She looked at him like she’d never seen him before.

  “Is your son enrolled here?” she asked.

  Calderón nodded.

  “You put him up as a hostage?” she a
sked in disbelief.

  Calderón looked at her blankly for a moment, then shook his head. “It wasn’t necessary, not south of the line. He would be as vulnerable on the street in front of our home as he is at All Saints. Besides, my son and I aren’t at risk. Hector knows I put a lot of my own money into the investment pool Ted stole.”

  “How much money are we talking about?”

  Calderón hesitated, then shrugged. “My own investment was five million.”

  “And Hector’s?”

  “Ten times that at least. Twenty times, possibly.” Calderón shook his head. “Jaime never told me the whole amount, but he was trying to sell it to politicians and narcotraficantes in both hemispheres.”

  Grace did the math and felt like throwing up.

  Fifty to a hundred million dollars.

  The referee blew a long, shrill blast on his whistle, echo of the scream throttled in her throat.

  Lane broke away from the celebration of his team’s victory and jogged toward her.

  Calderón looked at his watch. “I’m sorry, but…” He shrugged.

  “Only a few minutes.” Grace took a deep breath and put a bright smile on her face. “You bastard.”

  Calderón faded out of hearing as Lane ran up and gave Grace a hug that lifted her off her feet. He was taller than she was. Stronger.

  His hazel green eyes and fierce grin were like Joe Faroe’s.

  When did Lane grow so much?

  Where did the time go?

  How am I going to get him out of this velvet hellhole?

  “We kicked butt,” Lane said in a deep voice that was also an echo from her past. “Did you see it?”

  “I saw your butt get kicked,” she said, running her hands over his sweaty head and shoulders. The ripple of lean muscles on his arms surprised her. He must be lifting weights when he isn’t studying. “Are you okay?”

  He shrugged. “Just a bump.”

  The echo of Hector’s words made ice slide down her back.

  “Coach—Father Rafael—told me you’d only be able to stay a few minutes,” Lane said. “Something about having to rush back home. Is it Dad?”

  “Is that what Father Rafael said?” Grace asked carefully.