by J. M. Colail
He laughed. “Thanks for the offer.”
“I like to think of it as a public service.”
“Just doing your part for the good of gay America, is that right?”
“Hey, a lot more of your people have taken the occasional poke at their hags than they’ll admit, you know.”
“If you say so.”
“Just, don’t be too sad tonight, okay? And call me if you find yourself doing anything remotely resembling drunk-dialing.”
“Who would I drunk-dial, Gloria? I don’t even have his number.”
JACK TRUDGED home, head down, eyes on the ground. Nothing in the mail but bills, that stranger’s name shouting up at him from the address labels. Someday, someday it’ll be Francisco again. He said so, and I believe him.
That belief was becoming a mantra, a point of faith with about as much empirical evidence as intelligent design. The note D had left him in Redding had been re-read nearly to tatters, its contents long since memorized and examined until the words had started to lose meaning. Five months now, soon to be six, and although he’d imagined it would probably take at least this long, maintaining his equanimity was no small task. He hadn’t even heard from Megan since Christmas.
He stopped at the top of the stairs. There was a package on his welcome mat.
Trying not to get too excited, Jack approached casually. Had he ordered something from Amazon? That was a distinct possibility. He was a slave to those damn daily Gold box deals. But this package was not from Amazon. It didn’t have the smiley on the side.
He bent and picked it up. It was hand-addressed, and he knew that writing, except there was no street address on it. It must have been hand-delivered, which meant either Churchill or Megan had brought it, since they were the only ones who knew where he was. “Shit,” he muttered, fumbling for his keys and finally shoving his way into the apartment.
He dropped his bag and coat, already tearing at the package. What on earth would D send him on Valentine’s Day?
When he saw the box, he just stared for a moment, and then choked out a laugh that was trying not to be a sob. “Jesus, D,” he said. “For all you gave me shit about it you sure love giving me damn chocolate-covered cherries.”
There was no note. He hadn’t really expected one. It was enough to know D was thinking of him. Jack tore the wrapper off the box and opened it. A whole box this time, not just the tiny four-piece he’d left in his suitcase back in Baltimore. Several dozen. Plenty to stretch them out for weeks.
Fuck that. Eat them all tonight, in one sitting. Eat them until you puke.
CHAPTER 29
April 2007
RUIZ’S HOUSE smelled of laundry and machine oil, with a slight undertone of chile peppers. It was dusty; the man’s family had stirred things up quite a bit while they packed, their faces tight, their eyes darting to D every few moments. He could tell them he wasn’t going to hurt them a dozen times and they still had looked at him with that frightened-puppy look on their faces, waiting for a sudden kick, the strike of a snake they’d been tiptoeing around.
This is the last one. Just this one more really oughta be enough. Then I can go to Raoul, and then… I can go to Jack and all this’ll be over. It better be enough, ’cause I don’t think I can fuckin’ take much more a bein’ away from him.
He heard the front door open and Ruiz’s cheerful voice calling out in a mixture of half-English, half-Spanish. “Carida!” D heard him step further into the house. “Juanita?” he called, sounding a little uncertain now. There was a long pause. “Dios mio!” he exclaimed.
No doubt he was seeing the mess. The family had thrown things around quite a bit while they packed. It must have looked like the place had been ransacked.
“Juanita! Pedro!” Ruiz yelled, his voice full of alarm now. D heard his footsteps approaching the living room and braced himself. He’d done this six times now and it never got easier. Ruiz burst through the doorway and stopped short when he saw D, sitting in the recliner with his gun held not-casually across his knees.
“Hello, Ruiz,” he said, calmly.
Ruiz stared. “La sombra,” he murmured.
D didn’t speak much Spanish but he knew what “la sombra” meant. He’d heard that’s what the boys were calling him now. “If you say so.”
“Where is my family? My wife, my son?”
“They’re just fine.”
Ruiz advanced on him. “If you’ve done something to them—”
“I ain’t hurt your family, Miguel, and I ain’t gonna. But I might hurt you if ya don’t back off,” D said, shifting his gun just a little. “Your family’s just got a head start on ya. You’ll see ’em soon.”
Ruiz was nodding. “This is what happened to all the others, no? Esteban, and Casanas, all of them.”
“You don’t know what happened yet, but you will.”
He sat down in a chair opposite D. “If you kill me, okay. Just let me talk to my family first, so I know they’re all right.”
“I’m not going to kill you. But you are going to do exactly as I say. And then I’ll take you to your family, and I’ll never trouble you again.”
Ruiz was shaking his head. “I don’t understand. What is it you want?”
“Information. That’s all. I want to know everything you know about the Dominguez operation. Any murders you participated in. The locations of any bodies you helped bury. Your personal knowledge of their criminal activities. You and I are going to spend a long time documenting everything you know.”
“You’re crazy, amigo. You might as well kill me. I can’t go against the brothers.”
“The others did. Esteban, Casanas, and all the rest.”
Ruiz stared. “They… they did?”
“They did. I have boxes full of the evidence they all gave me.”
“And… none a them are dead?”
“Nope. They’re all living comfortable lives with new identities in countries far from here. The brothers won’t find them, any of them, just like they won’t find you. I’ll see to that. Do you believe me?”
“No,” Ruiz said, without hesitating.
D nodded. “I didn’t think you would.” He pulled out his cell phone and sent a quick text message. Thirty seconds later, the phone on the table next to him rang. Ruiz jumped. D pressed the speaker button, motioning for Ruiz to greet the caller.
“H… hello?” Ruiz said.
“Miguel?”
Ruiz’s eyes bulged. “Tristan? Es que usted?”
The man on the other end, Tristan Casanas, chuckled. “Soy yo, viejo amigo.”
“Pensé que estaba muerto! Y ahora este hombre dice—”
“Debemos hablar Inglés.”
Ruiz glanced up at D. “All right. English. But, this is really you, no? Not some kind of trick.”
“How many people know your home number, eh?”
This seemed to give Ruiz pause. “Where are you?”
“I made it to Espana, Miguel!”
Ruiz was leaning forward now. “You are there? You are really there?”
“Si! What did I always say, eh?”
“That someday you would return to the mother country and open a cantina,” Ruiz recited in a sing-song voice, smiling wryly at the phone.
“I have my cantina!”
Ruiz looked gobsmacked. “That’s… I can’t believe it, Tristan!”
“The man. La sombra. He is there, no?”
Ruiz glanced up at D. “He is here.”
“You can believe what he says. He sent us here.”
Now Ruiz looked like he was waiting for the punch line. “He… he did?”
“He gave us money enough to come here. New papers, new passports, new names so they can never find us. I know you want to be free of that hijo de puta,” Casanas said, his voice dropping as if he were afraid the brothers were listening in. “They want us to think there’s no way out. Have us trapped, like a rabbit in a snare. I didn’t believe it either, when I came home to find la sombra in my hou
se, my wife and daughter gone…. Then I got this call too, except mine was from Esteban.”
Ruiz straightened up. “Esteban? Where is he?”
“I shouldn’t say, amigo. But he is safe and has a new life, like me. I agreed to make this call so you could escape too. You can, if you trust la sombra.”
“How can I?” Ruiz said, shaking his head. “It sounds like… some kind of trap.”
“I know. You must trust me that it is not. Miguel, have I said the word?”
Ruiz glanced at D again. “No,” he said, quietly.
“Believe me. I am sitting in my cantina now. We are washing the glasses for the evening. Soon the place will be full, and there’ll be music, and Estella will come and bring the baby and we will dance like we are free. I don’t look over my shoulder every day now, Miguel. I wish this for you. I got you into the business of blood, but I didn’t tell you that you’d be just as stuck there as I was. Now I can help get you out.”
There was a long, pregnant pause. Ruiz stared at the phone, his hands gripping and squeezing each other. D knew that he was weighing the likelihood that Casanas was telling him the truth. The word he’d referred to was a danger code word. If any member of the brothers’ organization was being coerced into saying something untrue, or designed to trap another member, there was an innocuous but uncommon word they were to slip into the conversation. D didn’t know what it was, nor did he want to know. But the fact that Casanas had not used it when he could easily have done so had to be weighing heavy on Ruiz’s calculations.
In fact, everything Tristan Casanas said was true. D had procured new passports and identification for him, his wife, and small daughter and paid for their passage to Barcelona, with a pretty substantial chunk of money in their pockets to get them started. In return, he had gotten two crates of meticulously documented and described evidence of criminal acts perpetuated or ordered by Raoul and Tommy Dominguez, acts of which Casanas had personal knowledge. The two crates had been added to the dozen or so D had gotten from the previous five Dominguez family members he’d relocated over the past six months.
The first one had been the hardest, because he hadn’t had anybody the man would trust to vouch for him. There had been no one to make a call from a safe place, to verify that D had indeed given him a new identity and moved him overseas. So he’d had to carefully observe the men who worked for the brothers, looking for the just the right man to approach, and he’d had to enlist Megan’s help to give the whole thing an air of governmental security.
After that, it had been cake. D had been, frankly, amazed at how willing these men were to give up the brothers lock, stock, and barrel in exchange for a chance to escape. Not just to avoid jail time, or for a lesser sentence, but for honest-to-God freedom someplace they could never be traced, where no revenge could be taken on them.
After the first one vanished, there was barely a ripple in the organization. It wasn’t that unusual. He’d split, and no doubt he’d be found. Or he’d gotten on the wrong side of someone and ended up dumped by the side of the road. And the fact that he’d packed all his clothes and personal items? Waved off.
The second one had caused some concern. The third one was like a bomb going off. Now men with families were vanishing. Wives, children, pets, the works. This was no accident. This was no coincidence.
When he’d worked up Casanas, the man had laughed himself nearly into hysterics to learn what was really behind all the disappearances. He’d harbored deep hatred for the brothers, far more than any of the others. D hadn’t asked why; it didn’t matter. But Tristan Casanas had gleefully told D how little progress Raoul had made in locating any of his missing men, and how paranoid everyone was becoming over who was next.
That was music to D’s ears. It meant his plan was working. Now, Ruiz was the last one. After him, there’d be enough.
Ruiz took a deep breath. “Gracias, amigo,” he said to the phone. “I will see you around the bend, yes?”
“Si, Miguel. Buena suerte, my friend.” He hung up.
Ruiz looked up at D. “What do you want of me, you man with no name?”
D smiled a little. “You and me are going to spend some time together, Ruiz. You’re going to answer a lot of questions, draw me some maps, and make some videos. And then you’ll be on a plane.”
BEING INSIDE Raoul Dominguez’s house—although “mansion” was a more appropriate word—was oddly reassuring. All the months he’d spent guarding Jack against this man’s machinations, all the months he’d worked to get men out from under his thumb, and getting into his private home had been almost laughably simple. He’d used the old servant’s-entrance trick and disguised himself as a member of the catering crew for Raoul’s daughter’s Quinceañera party. He’d picked up a crate of wineglasses and walked right in. Then he’d shed the waiter’s jacket and slipped upstairs to the man’s private study. He had a theory about why Dominguez had not beefed up his personal security, but he’d find out if he was correct soon enough.
Now, he was waiting. Dominguez was set to see his wife and children off on holiday to Jamaica right after the party. Dominguez himself would not be joining them. He was too busy chasing ghosts. After tonight, he could stop.
D didn’t know when Dominguez was likely to come in here. Tonight, after the party? Not until the morning? It didn’t matter. He’d waited this long; he could wait a little longer.
He was sitting in a wing chair in the shadows, where he’d be concealed from view until Dominguez was behind his desk. He let his head tilt back against the chair and thought of Jack, as he so seldom let himself do. It broke his concentration and churned up all kinds of emotions to let his thoughts dwell on him, so he normally avoided it, but the end was so close now.
All the more reason ta keep yer head about ya and not let yerself get distracted, he told himself, but he just couldn’t seem to do it. The very high probability that he’d be seeing Jack in a few short days was just too much to put out of his mind entirely.
He’d imagined scenario after scenario for how it would happen. He’d imagined Jack’s face when he opened the door to his apartment to see D standing there. He’d imagined lying in wait for him to come out of work. He’d imagined having Megan fetch him to meet at some private spot where they wouldn’t have to worry about anyone looking askance. He’d thought that maybe he ought to just let himself into Jack’s apartment and wait for him to come home.
He still hadn’t decided how he’d do it. Walking back into someone’s life was no small task, as it turned out. Logically, he ought to just call him first and let him know he was on the way. But somehow that lacked… drama. Why drama was required, he didn’t know. He just knew that calling first felt wrong.
D checked his watch. It was after midnight. The family ought to be in their limos on their way to the airport by now. The sounds of partying below had given way to the sounds of cleanup. He saw a catering van leave, then another.
Footsteps were approaching. D steeled himself, then had to smile. How much steelier do you even get than normal? he heard Jack say, in that teasing voice that dared to challenge D’s oh-so-serious self-perception.
The door opened. He heard Raoul’s heavy footfalls enter, then the door shut and locked. Perfect.
Raoul walked around to the desk. He wasn’t looking around. He picked up a folder of something and looked at it, then out the window, then back… then froze.
D knew that he was only dimly visible in the dark office, further shadowed by the deep wings of the leather chair in which he sat. Raoul wouldn’t be able to clearly discern his features. D didn’t know what he’d expected, but Dominguez was cool as a cucumber. He slowly put the folder down, then sat in his desk chair, never taking his eyes off D. “I have been expecting you,” he finally said. His voice was like charcoal, burned and ashen.
“I know.”
“How you know?”
“You didn’t take any special security precautions with the house. You could have kept me out if you’
d tried.”
“You would eventually bring to me your demands. You have shown you can get to my men, anywhere and anytime you like. Man like you, so careful as to make men disappear like they were never born. Man like you must have a plan. Something he wants, something he wishes me to know that I will give him. Wishes me to know I am in his power.”
“You don’t really believe I’m in your power.”
“How can I not?”
“Because right now you’re using your foot to activate the security measures around this room and trap me here, alerting your muscle.” Raoul blinked. “Too bad I disabled it. Thought it was best we talk alone.”
A long pause spooled out between them. Dominguez could not have missed the gun lying across D’s knees… nor that it was his own gun, stolen from the top desk drawer. “What do you want?” he finally asked.
“Nothing you’ll miss. Nothing it’ll hurt ya ta give me.”
“Then why this… this siege?” Dominguez said, leaning forward a little. The light slid over his eyes and D saw his cold intelligence, his hooded rage. “Months have you labored to demonstrate yourself to me. Why, if it is such a trifle you ask for?”
“I want you to be real clear how serious I am.”
“Man like you is nothing but serious.” Dominguez steepled his fingers before his lips. “Petros, he spoke of you.”
“Did he?”
“Said of all men who walked the earth, there were very few he respected and even fewer that he feared. You were one.”
D didn’t show his surprise on his face. “I ain’t had no idea he even knew who I was.”
“He knew.”
D watched Raoul’s silhouette against the slated exterior lights. “You know what I came here for, don’t you?”
The man sighed. “I have heard talk that you are not long for your profession. Some say you lost the taste. Others say you went soft. Still others say you fear capture. But… the truth is not of these things, is it not?”