Jania pushed the partially open door ajar and greeted him with a smile. She was twenty, slim, with long, dirty-blond hair and an appealingly fresh face.
“Good morning to you, as well. Is there anything special you need me to do before we open?” Jania continued to beam at him, seemingly unaware of the multiple ways the invitation she was extending could be taken.
He paused, then returned her smile. “No, we can do the inventory tonight after we close. You’ve been keeping track of our sales, right? It’s probably time to reorder some of the top sellers.”
“The corkscrews are moving well and so are the bone-handled steak knife sets. I think we’d be wise to stock more of those.”
“Noted.”
“Oh, and my uncle Gustavo will be by at eleven. He says you promised to let him beat you at chess today,” she announced, then spun perkily to attend to the small showroom.
Gustavo came by every few days, and Antonio allowed him to hang out and kill time at the store. Gustavo presented a welcome diversion and got him out of the shop. They would sit at one of the numerous outdoor coffee shops adjacent to the entry and play chess for hours, shooting the breeze and watching the world go by. Normally anti-social, he’d made a measured effort to appear friendly since moving to Argentina. Socially adept people were not regarded with suspicion, whereas recluses were. And the last thing he wanted to do was attract attention.
“I’ll look forward to his arrival.” He checked the time again. “Might as well open the front door, since we’re both here now,” he called after her.
Gustavo was a character — a retired bureaucrat in his early sixties living on a pension, who always seemed to have plenty of money to throw around. He drove a new BMW and lived in one of the most expensive areas of town, which had struck Antonio as odd. When he’d probed the topic with Jania, she’d simply responded that her uncle was the black sheep of the family and always had his hands in something lucrative. Antonio took that to mean that he was involved in the black market that was ubiquitous in Argentina, and without which the economy couldn’t function. As far as he was concerned, what the old man did to make ends meet was none of his business.
He finished up his online chores and then heard the chime again, followed by Gustavo’s distinctive baritone from the front. He quickly powered down the computer and, after doing a scan of the office, closed the office door and moved into the shop. Gustavo was chatting with Jania, examining the tango music CDs on the countertop display.
“Ah, good morning, my friend. So today is the day where I finally win a game against the maestro?” Gustavo boomed in greeting, holding his boxed mini chess set aloft in his left hand.
“It’s a time of hope. One never knows what little miracles will be bestowed upon the fortunate,” Antonio replied with a grin.
“Shall we?” Gustavo gestured at the door.
Antonio nodded.
They made their way to the French bakery a few doors down and claimed one of the sidewalk tables. A waitress emerged from the shop and took their order as Gustavo carefully set the pieces on the chessboard.
“How’s business, my friend?” Gustavo asked.
“Oh, you know. Slow. It could be better.” The truth was that business was dismal, not that Antonio cared much.
“It’s the damned government. Did you know that Argentina was the eighteenth richest nation in the world at the start of the twentieth century?” Gustavo commented.
“What happened?” Antonio asked politely, having heard the story before.
“Back at the end of the Eighties, the president, Menem, privatized all the industries in Argentina that were part of the collective national worth. That’s the polite way of saying that he took anything of value and sold it to foreign banks for two cents on the dollar, in return for massive bribes. That’s why everything costs so much here. Argentina produces oil, and yet there are chronic gasoline shortages, and the price is higher than most non-producing countries. Same for power. The electric rates are among the highest in the world. Even the airline got sold, and it was wildly profitable at the time — and yet it went for less than the value of the assets, much less the revenue.”
“Well, the rest of the world is starting to get the same treatment by the same banks. The population gets screwed while the banks and the government get rich,” Antonio observed.
“Is it any wonder that the rule of law is breaking down? Society is a contract, between the people and their government. If the government doesn’t honor the deal, and lets special interests rob them, and inflates the currency till savings are worthless and prices go through the roof, then the population walks away from the deal. That’s how things are in Argentina,” Gustavo concluded.
“I’m not here to judge. I’m here to get beaten at chess. You do what you have to in order to get by.”
“A wise philosophy, my friend,” Gustavo said, nodding. “So how are you getting on with Jania?”
“She’s perfect for the job. I couldn’t ask for a better person,” Antonio replied neutrally.
“I think she’s rather fond of you.”
“As am I. Like I said, she’s the perfect person for the job,” Antonio repeated, preferring not to go down the road Gustavo was trying to steer towards.
“Ah. Just so.” Gustavo moved his opening pawn and eyed Antonio warily. “Your move.”
Gustavo had always perceived that, with Antonio, there was more going on than met the eye. He considered himself a good judge of character, having spent years doing handshake deals as he built his network in the Argentine underworld while he was one of the directors of the secret police. He wisely vacated his position after his role in the mass executions and death squads of the 1970s came into question, and he faded into obscurity before being recruited for the new regime, which was equally brutal, a few years later.
He’d leveraged his power in the newly-created intelligence apparatus to solidify a slavery and drug distribution network in Buenos Aires that survived to the present, albeit with younger men in the active positions. Upon his retirement from the government twelve years earlier, Gustavo had moved first to Patagonia, and then later to Mendoza, to be as far from the scene of his crimes as he could get while still remaining in the country.
He wasn’t sure what Antonio’s situation was, but he did know one thing after spending a few months chatting with the man and playing chess. He claimed to be from Ecuador, but his accent said differently. It was oddly neutral, almost in a practiced way, but Gustavo thought he detected Mexico rather than South America. Whatever the case, he knew that a young man of brilliant capabilities such as he’d displayed with the chess board didn’t appear out of thin air in Mendoza to operate a money-losing trinket shop unless there was something else going on.
Gustavo’s natural curiosity had been aroused as he’d gotten to know him, and he’d put out feelers to see if he could figure out who he was dealing with. As a career criminal, he sensed an opportunity potential with Antonio. Perhaps young Antonio could be of use in his ongoing Buenos Aires operation, or maybe he had contacts with the Colombians or the Mexicans that could be of help in solidifying new suppliers for the drugs that were so in demand in the Argentine capital.
Whatever the case, Gustavo smelled rat all over Antonio, and it wasn’t in his nature to let that go without rooting around and finding out what the real story was. If he’d learned anything during his time on the planet it was that information was power, and he could no more help his drive to discover more about his current chess adversary than a salmon could help swimming upriver. It was part of his wiring — who he was.
He’d made some calls over the past week, and his former colleagues on the police force and with the Argentine intelligence network had agreed to check in Mexico and Central America for any young men who were wanted for serious crimes. It was a shot in the dark, but Gustavo had time on his hands. This was a project he could get interested in, and his instincts were piqued whenever he sat with Antonio. There was more to
him than met the eye, and as a predator himself, he recognized the same qualities in others when he saw them.
And make no mistake. Antonio was a predator. Of that, Gustavo was sure.
Once home, he turned on his computer and began downloading the thousands of photos and rap sheets his network had come up with through Interpol. It would be a painstaking and potentially fruitless chore, but he was infinitely patient and loved a project. And there was a point of stubborn pride in the equation. Gustavo’s nose was never wrong.
Now, it was a matter of discovering where and what young Antonio was running from, and then they could have an altogether different discussion than one revolving around chess. Which Antonio had beaten Gustavo at today, yet again, for the seventeenth straight time since they’d begun their irregular matches.
Gustavo was more than intrigued.
The files finally loaded, he began paging through the photos.
At three in the morning he came across one that stopped him. There were striking similarities, and yet the face was different.
He made a few notes and resolved to make a call in the morning to get some more information. Gustavo wrote down the sparse details on the file and yawned, beyond tired. He’d do a web search for more tomorrow. For now, he was beat.
If Antonio was the man described in the bulletin, he might be just what the doctor ordered for messy contingencies, as his subordinates grew bolder and deferred to Gustavo less and less over the years. It could never hurt to have a pit bull on a chain.
Especially one that loved the taste of blood.
Chapter 4
Captain Romero Cruz walked with a slight limp to the kitchen, hurriedly buttoning his Federal Police shirt. A plate of eggs and chorizo sat steaming on the small dining room table, a cup of coffee at its side. He sat down, and Dinah, glowing as ever in a fitted dress and colorful purple blouse, emerged from the attached laundry room and placed her hands on his shoulders, leaning in and kissing his cheek. She was stunning, as always, with wavy black hair and huge eyes and a face that was beautiful in a non-traditional way.
“You’re going to be late, my love,” she warned playfully.
“They have to wait for me. I’m the boss,” Cruz responded, swallowing a forkful of eggs before grabbing her arm and pulling her closer to him. He kissed her neck and, with a minor adjustment, her lips.
“Good eggs,” Dinah said, pulling away and moving to the counter, where a glass of orange juice waited for her with a much smaller plate holding two pieces of toast.
This had been their regular routine since she’d begun staying at Cruz’s modest new rental condo, courtesy of the Federales. Ever since he’d been kidnapped by the head of the Sinaloa cartel, he’d been under twenty-four hour armed surveillance, and likely would remain so until he left his position with the police. Cruz was the head of Mexico City’s anti-cartel task force, which effectively made him the head of the national effort as well, given that DF, as Mexico City was called by the locals, was the largest city in Mexico, containing thirty percent of the nation’s population. He’d also developed somewhat of a reputation after a near miss assassination attempt on the last president was foiled by his team’s actions, which accounted for why he still had the job now that a new administration had taken office for its six year stint at running the country.
Usually, when an administration changed, the key positions went to new blood as payback for favors, but Cruz’s position was too critical to play politics with. Or alternatively, and more likely, nobody else wanted the job of tackling the most powerful and rich narcotics trafficking groups in the world. It was a position that wasn’t great for extended life expectancy, and Cruz believed that he was still heading the group because there wasn’t anyone foolhardy enough to take it. During his tenure, Cruz’s wife and child had been kidnapped and brutally murdered, he’d been shot in a bloody ambush that nearly cost him his life, he’d been kidnapped by the most powerful cartel kingpin in the world, and his life had been threatened by virtually every organized crime syndicate in Mexico.
This was a world where the most prominent people in the ongoing war against the cartels had a suspicious habit of crashing in aircraft accidents, or getting gunned down in heated assaults, so being the poster boy for the government’s push to eradicate narco-trafficking was slightly below lion tamer or Russian roulette gambler in terms of safety.
Cruz was used to it. He’d long ago reconciled himself to the idea that he would live as long as he lived, but that he’d do everything in his power to bring the groups that had butchered his family to justice in the meantime. He was brutally effective, and though his methods were controversial, nobody argued with the results.
And he was the only one willing to strap on a bull’s-eye every day and go into the office, wondering if today was the day a bomb or a sniper snuffed out his existence. That ensured a certain job security, if that phrase could be used to describe the circumstances in which he lived on a daily basis.
Dinah and Cruz had become an item following his recuperation from the shooting, and she’d taken to staying with him most nights for the last few months, going so far as to move in two large suitcases full of clothes. Cruz had mixed feelings about the situation at first because of the constant threat of danger surrounding him, but Dinah had shrugged it off.
“You have the best protection in the world ensuring you don’t even trip on a crack in the sidewalk. This is probably the safest building in all of Mexico,” she’d reasoned.
It was hard to argue, and truthfully, Cruz didn’t want to do so with any real enthusiasm. This was the first time he’d had a female companion since his wife had been torn from him, and it felt good. Nothing could ever replace his lost family, but if healing was possible, he’d done so, and had resolved to move forward and focus on the future, after having spent years dwelling on the past. Every two months, the department rented a new condo for him, in a different building in a different area of town; his possessions appeared at the new address as if by magic. It wasn’t an ideal situation, but it was the one that was keeping him alive, and so both he and Dinah had reluctantly grown accustomed to the disruptive grind.
Cruz admired Dinah’s curves while she stood in the kitchen, wolfing down her breakfast as she rushed to be at her job on time. She was a teacher, and she couldn’t be ten minutes late for work like Cruz could. The class wouldn’t wait, and it was policy that everyone had to be on campus fifteen minutes before school started. At the rate she was going, she wasn’t going to make it. It would be a miracle if she could get across town before the opening bell.
Cruz slurped his coffee and then rose from the table, his breakfast only half done. He approached Dinah and put his arms around her waist, nuzzling her neck as she finished her juice.
“Do you know what today is?” he asked.
“Monday. Now I have to run, Corazon. I’m already way too late.”
“It is indeed Monday, but no, I was thinking more that it’s been exactly six months since you began staying with me,” Cruz nudged.
“Ah. Has it? It really only seems like yesterday…”
Cruz fumbled with his shirt pocket and extracted a small black velvet box, moving it over her shoulders and positioning it on the counter next to her plate.
“Wha…what’s this?” Dinah asked in a whisper, suddenly serious.
“Go ahead. Open it.”
Dinah reached forward with trembling hands and pried the small case open. Inside sat a platinum band with a solitary one carat diamond. Dinah drew in a sharp intake of breath, and lifting the box, turned to face Cruz, who still held her waist, smiling.
“Is this…?”
“I love you, Dinah. It’s time. I’d like you to marry me. I know I’m not perfect, and I have my faults, but…”
Dinah’s eyes welled with moisture as she silently removed the band from the box and slipped the little velvet square back into his shirt pocket. She slid the ring on her finger and smiled through the tears.
“It fits.”
“Yes. I measured one of your other rings. Actually traced the interior circumference and took it to the jeweler. He said you’re a six. Looks like he knew his stuff,” Cruz explained nervously.
She shushed him with a long kiss on the mouth. Tears of joy trickling down her flawless cheeks, she gazed into his eyes and smiled. “Capitan, I accept your offer.” She kissed him again.
They’d come a long way since Cruz had met her while investigating El Rey. He’d have never thought it possible when he’d first seen her, hair gleaming in the sun, radiantly beautiful in the shabby little pawn shop lobby where Cruz and his partner had been waiting. And yet a kind of small miracle had taken place, and she’d been attracted to him, and now, ten months after first setting eyes on her and six months since their first full night together at his place, the most beautiful woman in Mexico was going to be his wife.
Once Cruz had been transported to the office in the armored BMW 760 Li that was his official vehicle, the usual crush of reports and urgent requests buried him. One benefit of his line of work was that there was never any shortage of events — the cartels were always up to something — so it never threatened to be boring or uneventful. He probably coordinated at least one major raid per week on a cartel stronghold or suspected drug or arms storage location, and while his group’s success rate wasn’t stellar, it was better than anyone expected. In a hierarchy that was historically riddled with corruption, Cruz’s group was considered above reproach — one of the very few clean organizations in a nation where their adversary wielded enormous financial resources they couldn’t hope to match.
The entire budget for the Mexican army was a billion dollars a year, and the army worked alongside the Federales to battle drug trafficking. The budget for the entire Mexican Federal Police force was thirty-five billion, but that included all duties — only ten percent or so was spent on anti-cartel activities. The rest went to personnel and administration and general law enforcement, and in the way that large government bureaucracies were always inefficient, the Federales were no different than, say, the Pentagon, where hammers cost two hundred dollars.
Revenge of the Assassin a-2 Page 4