Black Onyx

by Victor Methos

  He got inside and flopped on his couch and turned on the TV. He absently flipped through the channels without paying attention to what was on. He glanced around to the photos on the wall. James had no children, so most of the photos were of Dillon when he was younger. There was one by the kitchen of Dillon and James on their first hunt together. They were after a jewel in the Congo. A villager had supposedly found some sort of diamond/emerald hybrid and had stashed it away from the authorities. They had contacted someone who contacted someone who eventually got in touch with James.

  The trip was hot, long and full of bugs that ate them alive, but Dillon couldn’t have been happier. It was the most time he had ever spent with anyone, and on top of that, James was nice to him. He treated him with respect and taught him things.

  When they arrived, the jewel turned out to be a hoax but James had bought it from the man anyway and had given it to Dillon. To always remember the trip by. Dillon pulled it out of his pocket and looked at it. James didn’t know he carried it around with him.

  Dillon took out his cell phone and texted Henry:

  I’m in

  6

  El Sacerdote woke and looked to the sunshine coming through the skylight. He watched white clouds drift and morph before him. An arm was laid across his chest, connected to the nude body of the model he had slept with last night. She was nineteen and beautiful and psychologically a mess, the way he liked them.

  He rose and walked out to his balcony and looked over the city, his city. Juarez had been where he had grown up. His father was a bus driver, an honest man who did his best to provide for his wife and newborn son. His mother, Maria, had been a chef before he was born and every night their meals consisted of the best foods they could afford, which wasn’t much. He remembered the summers where he and his mother would cultivate the little garden in the back of their one-room house so that they could have more variety in their dinners.

  El Sacerdote had been happy as a child, he remembered. But at around six years old, things began to change. He was at school one day and the boy next to him was drawing. He could hear the markings of the graphite on the paper and it sounded like nails on a chalkboard. It seemed to entomb itself into him, into his very bones, and El Sacerdote calmly stood, took the pencil, and buried it into the child’s eye. Then he sat back down as if nothing had happened.

  There were no special programs for juveniles in Juarez at the time so he had been let off with a warning. But his father saw something change in him. He insisted that his son prepare for the priesthood, and from the time he was six he was taught Latin and scripture and the history of the church. This was the time when he had been given the name El Sacerdote.

  But plans had changed. A fire had taken the lives of both of his parents and, at twelve, El Sacerdote sat on the steps across the street and watched the house burn with his parents inside. The fire had been declared an accident, but the neighbors didn’t believe it had been an accident. From that time forward, El Sacerdote lived on the streets, learning the art of theft until he had earned enough of a reputation on the street, by killing a police officer in broad daylight, that he was entrusted with smuggling marijuana into El Paso.

  The boss at the time, Hernan Guzman, saw something in the young boy. He took him under his wing and began teaching him the business. How to outsource everything and build layers between himself and the men on the street. How to buy politicians and reward them handsomely, and how to use extreme violence to terrorize those that wouldn’t accept. “Maximum terror,” Guzman always told him, “was in killing the innocent. Killing the guilty rarely frightens people enough.”

  El Sacerdote became Guzman’s personal assistant, and, when he was only fifteen, his bodyguard. He had a reputation for being deadly with his two 9mm pistols and ruthless in the enforcement of his boss’ will. He murdered judges, police officers, border patrol agents, and, something Juarez had not seen yet, their families and friends. He even once murdered the dog of a judge that refused a bribe and forced the judge to eat it.

  Guzman began teaching him the intricacies and art of the drug trade. The true lessons that Guzman, until this point, had reserved only for his two sons. He believed that El Sacerdote would make a good counselor for his sons when they took over the business. But that never happened.

  At the young age of twenty-one, El Sacerdote had become head of the cartel. Guzman, and his two sons, had disappeared without a trace. El Sacerdote had told people that they had turned into informants and fled Mexico. No one questioned him.

  “What are you doing?” the woman said, sitting up in bed.

  “Six miles that way, there is the United States. A land so hypocritical they lock up the user of narcotics in their prisons while I make one hundred million dollars a year selling it to them and they cannot touch me. I am a product of their hypocrisy. I could not exist without it. They make me, feed me, sustain me, protect me, and betray their own people for me.” He exhaled. “It is sad actually.”

  “What is?”

  “They are the freest nation that has ever existed. One that was built on the idea of man as a rational being, a being that should be given his freedom and his choices. It is…a fantastical idea. Un milagro. It is in decline and soon it will fall. That is the way of empires. They are found, they rise, they decline, and they fall. When the United States falls, the world will fall. And we will enter a dark ages. People do not understand how easily we can fall into such things. How little a push it would take to destroy civilization and turn us into monsters. But it will happen…” He turned and looked at her. “I have a meeting.”

  “Should I stay with you today?”

  “No. Take the limo. Go to El Paso and go shopping.”

  He showered and dressed in a pin-stripe suit before having a breakfast of coffee. He lit a cigarette and went downstairs. Out front, three men were waiting for him by a Mercedes and they opened the back door and allowed him to get in before they did the same and pulled away.

  The car drove through the streets of Juarez but El Sacerdote had his eyes closed. He was meditating on the meeting, playing out several scenarios in his mind. He visualized everything in his life and found that he was better prepared for the surprises that were part of his business.

  They drove over the bridge and through the gates of El Paso and entered the United States. It was a short drive to the warehouse they were meeting at and they parked in the lot. His three men exited the car and checked with a man who was standing in front of a door. They spoke a few words and one of the men came back and opened the door for El Sacerdote.

  “They are ready for you, El Padrino.”

  He stepped out of the car and walked through the door into the warehouse. A woman was sitting behind the front desk, a poster of another woman in a bikini behind her. She glanced up and then buried her head back down into the magazine she had open in front of her.

  He walked down a corridor into a room with a conference table, and several men were already there. He sat down at the table while his men stood behind them.

  Three men sat before him. Two in gray suits on either side of a man in a black suit. The man wore a cowboy hat and he took it off and placed it on the table. His hair was graying and he was portly but not quite fat. He wiped his nose with a silk handkerchief, his Rolex gleaming in the sunlight coming through the floor-to-ceiling windows.

  “They call you the Priest,” the man said. “What’s your real name?”

  “It does not matter.”

  “I’m not doing business with a man that won’t even tell me his name.”

  “Then you won’t be doing business at all.”

  The man paused. “You’re not the only game in town.”

  “You may find my competition unwilling to do business with those that have displeased me.” El Sacerdote smiled. “We have not begun this meeting properly, Mr. Park. I am a simple man and do not understand the intricacies of negotiation. I am merely here to make a profit, and I believe that if you make a profit
with me, we can have a long, sustainable business. I need access to Canada. I believe it is a large market that has yet to be tapped. But I cannot get there on my own. You may provide that. You wish for this as much as me, I believe. So the only question is how much do you wish for your services? Everything else is irrelevant.”

  “I don’t know who the hell you are and you want me to risk my business, everything I’ve worked for, smuggling your shit. Well, fine, but I need assurances. And a larger piece of the pie.”

  “How large?”

  “Forty-five percent of any load.”

  “Deal. Now see, was that so difficult?”

  The man looked to the two men seated to the right and left of him. “That’s it? You’re just going to accept the first figure I give you?”

  “I don’t argue over pennies. Forty-five percent is fine. Miguel will see to all the details.” He rose and walked over and shook the man’s hand before leaving.

  When they were outside, he glanced back to see Mr. Park staring at him from the windows. El Sacerdote smiled and waved before getting into the car. Once his men were in, they pulled away.

  “El Padrino,” Miguel said, “may I ask something?”

  “Yes.”

  “Forty-five percent to this pig of a man, that seems high.”

  “It is. It should be somewhere around ten percent. But I just need one shipment for now. Once he sees how easy it is we’ll renegotiate. And if he doesn’t want to we’ll take one of his three sons until he does.”

  “What is to be delivered?”

  “Death, Miguel. Death.”

  7

  Assistant Special Agent in Charge Dana Gladstone sat in her well-lit office at the Drug Enforcement Agency’s field office in El Paso. Special Agent Michael Cobb, one of the men under her command, sat across from her as they listened to the tapes of El Sacerdote’s meeting with Jim Park.

  “I don’t know who the hell you are and you want me to risk my business, everything I’ve worked for, smuggling your shit into my country. Well, fine, but I need assurances. And a larger piece of the pie.”

  “How large?”

  “Forty-five percent of any load.”

  “Deal. Now see, was that so difficult?”

  “That’s it? You’re just going to accept the first figure I give you?”

  “I don’t argue over pennies. Forty-five percent is fine. Miguel will see to all the details.”

  She shook her head as she paused the media player on her desktop. “It doesn’t make sense,” she said. “Forty-five percent for shipments? He’ll barely make a profit.”

  “New market,” Cobb said. “Maybe he just wants to hook a lot of people up north and then renegotiate?”

  “Maybe. His product isn’t any better than anyone else’s though. He doesn’t have any competitive advantage. This just doesn’t make any sense.”

  “They’re drug dealers, Dana. Since when do they have to make sense?”

  “You haven’t done this as long as I have. These guys are smart. Not typically in the way some turd at Harvard Law is smart, these guys have the scariest type of intelligence. They can read people and understand when a profit is being made and when it’s not. El Sacerdote’s increased the cartel’s profits by almost two hundred percent in four years. That’s unheard of. He wouldn’t be making this move lightly unless there was a big upside for him.”

  “Well, do we have any of his men in custody we could talk to?”

  “They don’t talk. There was a young guy once, Adrian I think his name was, he cooperated with us in exchange for witness protection. His entire family was murdered the next day. Not after the trial or years down the line, the next day. That means someone in our office informed El Sacerdote about it the moment it happened.”

  “Shit. He’s got that much pull?”

  “You have no idea.” She leaned back in her wheelchair, tapping a pencil on the desk. “John Larson is in charge of the El Sacerdote investigation. Why’d you bring this to me?”

  “Jim Park. He’s a shipping magnate, Park Shipping and Towing. He’s a new player in this we haven’t seen before so I thought I’d run it by you. You’ve got the experience…sorry, that came out wrong.”

  “Why? Cause I got shot by these assholes I’m now an expert?”

  They looked to each other a moment in silence.

  “Mike, I’m kidding.”

  “Oh, man, sorry.”

  “It’s fine. No, this is a big move for the Priest. You were right to bring it to me.” She glanced outside her door to the cubicles outside. “Mike, can you shut my door?”

  He stood up and closed it before sitting back down. “What’s up?”

  “This field office is compromised. I think John’s a big part of it. I went to the SAC and he told me to keep my allegations to myself unless I have any proof. I don’t know if he’s in on it too or if he just wants to remain willfully blind, but you can’t trust anyone with El Sacerdote.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Nothing for now. Follow it up and file it. You won’t get the authorization for any more wiretaps. In fact, I bet once they find out about this one they’ll close it down. Why was the conference room bugged anyway?”

  “ICE was investigating Park for immigration violations of his employees. They sent this little tidbit over this morning.”

  She thought a moment. “Do me a favor, huh? Don’t tell anyone about this just yet. File your reports in a few days.”

  “What’re you gonna do?”

  “I’m gonna pay a little visit to a friend of ours.”

  8

  Dillon sat on the plane flying over the Falkland Islands. They would soon be landing and then have half an hour to get to Port Stanley, the jumping point to Antarctica. You have to travel by ship to Antarctica as there were almost no landing spots this time of year. The best season to go was between November and March, and considering that it was now June, they would be there utterly alone. Even most of the wildlife had gone out to sea.

  They landed and Dillon took out his iPhone earbuds, blaring Nine Inch Nails, and looked to James who was asleep, his fingers intertwined with Niles in the next seat.

  “Wake up love birds.”

  James stirred and opened his eyes. He glanced out the window just as the wheels made contact with the tarmac and the plane jarred and began slowing. They gathered their things and stepped off and found a man with a sign that read, ANTARCTICA. Climbing into the car, Dillon could see the man clearly didn’t speak any English so they listened to the radio as they drove to Port Stanley.

  Port Stanley, though the capital of the Falklands, had only two thousand people. Dillon had read the Wikipedia entry and found that when cruise ships docked the tourists in the town frequently outnumbered the residents.

  Driven right to the docks, they found their ship waiting for them. A sixty-five foot yacht named the Laban.

  “That ship looks rather luxurious for its context,” Niles said.

  “It’s our last adventure,” James said. “I spared no expense. Or I should say I had Henry spare no expense.”

  Dillon rolled his eyes. “You guys are worse than teenagers.”

  “Don’t be jealous, Dillon. You’ll find the love of your life one day too.”

  “I don’t need a love of my life.”

  “Ah yes,” James said, “the ‘I can stand alone’ theory. Well, you may change later on and when you do you will see that there is absolutely nothing wrong with love, Dillon. It’s a rare enough commodity in the world as it is without you attacking it. But I’ll tell you this: you cannot survive without other people. No one stands on their own, no one.”

  The car came to a stop and they took their bags and walked up the ramp onto the yacht. A muscular man with a beard and a thick blue coat came up to them.

  “You James?”

  “Yes.”

  He put out his hand and James shook it. “George Anston. Welcome aboard.”

  “Thank you for having us.”
<
br />   “Pleasure’s mine. Henry put up the money for this little expedition and you three were the exchange.”

  “Well, we’re pleased just the same.”

  Dillon noticed the hot tub. “You got a hot tub?”

  George smiled. “It’s the little things. And at night, when the moon’s out over the ocean, there’s nowhere better to be. I’ll show you to your cabins.”

  Dillon followed him and was shown an eight-foot-by-eight-foot steel cabin with a metal bunk used as a bed. He sat down and put his bag on the floor. He looked around and wondered why the exterior of the yacht was so nice and the cabin was something out of an oil liner. He unpacked, which consisted of taking some of his toiletries out of the canvas gym bag he’d brought with him, and then headed up to the main deck.

  The town looked quaint. The houses were multicolored and usually no more than two floors. The roofs were a mix of red and blue and green, and the most prominent building was the church. It looked like a fishing village out of the eighteenth century.

  Before long they drew anchor and the yacht began pulling out to sea. Dillon watched the foam at the stern. This would be the last time he would travel like this with James. He looked back and saw James and Niles at starboard, laughing and pointing things out at the town, taking photos on their phone.

  Dillon turned away, a gray feeling coming over him that a period of his life was ending and he wasn’t sure what it would be replaced with. His cell phone buzzed. Amazed he was still getting service, he checked who it was. It was a text from Jaime:

  Hey big explorer, just wanted to wish you luck. And guess what? I actually do miss you a little

  Dillon smiled as he replaced the phone in his pocket and looked out over the vast expanse of water.

  9

  El Paso was dark and there was a section of the town, on the northern-most end, where tourists never went and the locals left at night. Only a small handful of people were there and of those, none of them wanted to see or hear what anybody else was doing. It was the best place in the city to meet when you didn’t want other people butting their noses into your business.