by K. A. Ware
Luis sighed and moved to walk further into the kitchen. "I'm sorry."
I wasn't having any of it.
"I said get the fuck out, Luis. I can't promise you that I won't shoot you if you don't leave now."
Shoving off the wall, he stumbled a bit. "Fine, you don't have to be such a puta."
I wondered briefly how he'd managed to get into the house without my noticing being as drunk as he was, but then again I'd been distracted. I finished feeding the dogs and locked up; I needed to get some sleep because something told me that when Antonio said he'd see me in the morning, he meant before noon.
The stairs creaked underneath my feet as I headed upstairs to my bedroom, something I'd been meaning to get fixed, but never seemed to have the time actually to do. Santi and I had bought the house together a year before he died, with the intention of fixing it up. At the time, it was all we could afford, and even though in the past ten years I'd made plenty of money to buy the house fifty times over, I didn't have the heart to sell it.
Living in a four-bedroom house by myself with only two dogs as companions got lonely, but the alternative was letting people in. When you ran illegal drugs for a living, your circle of trustworthy people was limited.
Years ago, Luis had claimed one of the guest rooms as his own and used it to crash in whenever he and Sophia, his longtime girlfriend, were in a fight, which was often. They had two girls, Ava who was sixteen and Isabelle who was nine. Sophia was a good woman, but she was just as batshit crazy as Luis, which I suspected was part of the appeal for both of them.
However, Luis had been staying at my house less and less since his father got out of prison. He'd spent thirteen years in lock up after getting busted for trafficking and illegal possession of a firearm.
My Uncle Edgar and Aunt Vera had taken Santiago and me in when we were five years old. Aunt Vera had stopped by the one bedroom apartment we'd lived in with our mother one afternoon and found her passed out on the couch with a needle in her arm.
Most of my early childhood was a fog, but I remembered that day clearly. My brother and I had been hiding in the bedroom, scared to death after not being able to wake our mother. It was cold and dark. The electricity had been cut off for days, and it was just before Christmas, so the house was freezing. I'd been holding onto the popsicle stick reindeer I'd made in school for comfort. There was no food in the house, and we hadn't eaten anything but stale crackers in days.
Santi and I were hiding underneath the thin blankets when the pounding on the door started, but instead of letting up after a few minutes, the person on the other side kept hammering on the door. Santi had told me to stay where I was, crawling out of the nest we'd created to keep warm and creeping into the living room toward the front door. Of course, I didn't listen and followed after him.
My heart seized in my chest, and I immediately began to cry when I heard my aunt calling our names through the door. Over and over, she screamed for us to answer the door, never once mentioning her sister's name. She just wanted to make sure we were okay. Eventually, Santiago unfroze himself and let her in.
Aunt Vera had been a wreck when she saw us. We watched in terror as she filled up a dirty glass from the kitchen with water and marched over to where our mother was lying on the couch, dousing her in the icy cold liquid. I felt a small sense of disappointment when she sputtered awake.
Vera, my sweet aunt who prayed for everyone and never spoke an unkind word, reached down and wrapped her small hands around my mother's throat. Pulling her forward and leaning close, she spat out words in rapid-fire Spanish, so quick and so low that we couldn't hear what was being said. When she was finished, she let go and shoved my mother back into the couch cushions, turning to head towards us. My mother did nothing as she watched her sister gather my brother and I up, load us into her car and drive off.
Uncle Edgar and Aunt Vera raised us from that point forward as if we were their own. A few years later, we got word that our mother had died of a drug overdose, neither of us shed a tear. Even at seven, I felt nothing connecting me to the shell of a woman that let us go without a fight.
I supposed for most people, having an addict for a parent would be a deterrent from anything and everything that had to do with drugs, but that was only partially true for my brother and me. Neither of us had ever touched anything hard, preferring to stick to alcohol and the occasional joint, but the draw of money and the dream of escaping the slums outweighed the moral complications that came with dealing drugs.
We had five good years after we came to live with them. We went to school wearing clean clothes, with food in our bellies and slept in a warm bed at night; that all changed when Aunt Vera got sick. Seeing the love of his life wither away and not having the money to pay for the specialized treatment that wasn't covered by their crappy insurance, broke something inside my uncle.
He changed overnight. One day he was a doting uncle who taught us how to ride bikes and took us to the park, and the next he was a desperate and crazed man searching for any way to save his wife.
She was in the hospital for months. Uncle Edgar would work all day it is construction job and come home to take a shower before heading to the hospital where he stayed all night. Leaving the Luis, Santi, and I to fend for ourselves. It was three months after Aunt Vera had been admitted when we saw him at the park for the first time. He was supposed to be at the hospital, but instead, he was with a man that he'd always warned us away from, a drug dealer with a mean face and scary tattoos.
At ten-years-old, I'd never seen a drug deal happen out in the open. When we were little, strange men would come to the apartment, and our mother would send us to the bedroom while they gave her the drugs she shot into her arm. But Luis was thirteen and had a better idea than we did about what was going on. He was so angry that it took both Santi and me, using all our weight, to hold him back from running to his father.
That night he confronted his father, which earned him a beat down like I'd never seen. Luis was left bruised and bleeding, his arm at an odd angle. It took the better part of the night to get him cleaned up and recognizable, but there was nothing to be done about his arm, and we were all too scared to ask to go to the doctors. Even now, Luis couldn't fully bend or extend his left arm.
None of us ever questioned uncle Edgar again.
Vera finally passed a few months later, and Uncle Edgar announced that we were moving from our comfortable home in Glendale to a shitty apartment in East L.A. He told us that he got offered a job opportunity that would allow us to live a better life, the thing he didn't tell us, was that job opportunity was as a drug dealer.
Chapter Seven
VIC
I was right to assume that Antonio's version of morning was vastly different than my own. He showed up at 9 AM shiny shoes in place, but he had lost the jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his white button-down. It wasn't exactly inconspicuous, but it was something. I'd decided to wear ripped black jeans, combat boots, and a flannel over a tight tank to hide the bulge of the gun in my waistband.
"Come on in," I said, waving him through the front door. "I just have to grab something, and then we can go."
Leaving him standing in the living room, I headed back to the kitchen to gather my things. I emerged, keys dangling from my pinky and carrying a covered casserole dish. As always, my wallet was securely tucked into my bra. There was no room for a purse in my line of business, at any moment I could have to make a run for it, there was no telling what the day could bring.
The ‘what the fuck' look Antonio gave me when he caught sight of what I was carrying had me stifling a laugh. "I thought we were going to your distribution house, are you planning to bribe the neighbors with enchiladas?"
I had to force myself not to roll my eyes. I wanted to hate him, and for a good reason, he was a direct threat, but I didn't. There was something about him that made me want to trust him, even though logically I knew I shouldn't.
Liking him off balance, I shrugged. "Nosy
neighbors."
I should've known that my non-answer wouldn't be enough to satisfy him. "What do neighbors have to do with it?"
I pushed past him for the front door, knowing full well that he'd follow. "Different people coming and going from a house looks suspicious. If you're carrying what looks like food, the rubberneckers wouldn't think twice."
"I thought people in neighborhoods like this didn't talk to the cops."
Careful, buddy. Your rich is showing.
Closing the door behind us, I turned to look at him over my shoulder. "Neighborhoods like this? What's that supposed to mean?"
"Well…" Antonio said, gesturing around us, apparently searching for the right thing to say.
Curling my lips around my teeth, I tried and failed to keep a straight face. There wasn't much in my life that amused me, but fucking with Antonio was quickly climbing to the top of the list.
"Not funny," he scolded.
"It was a little funny, Mr. Chairman."
"Would you stop calling me that?"
I blinked at him, my face a mask of contrition. "Oh, does it bother you?"
He grunted, jaw like steel. "Yes."
A Cheshire grin spread across my face. "Then, no."
Turning away, I whistled loudly and headed down the porch steps. Hearing my signal, Tank and Chopper came barreling around the side of the house towards me. I heard Antonio muttering to himself as he trailed behind me and I could've sworn I'd heard him say something about spanking.
"I'm sorry, what was that?" I turned just in time to catch him staring at my ass.
A thrill ran through my limbs at the image it conjured. Normally, I like to be the aggressor in sexual situations, but something told me I'd very much enjoy handing over the reins to Antonio for a night.
Instead of being embarrassed about being caught, Antonio just looked exasperated. "Nothing."
"Come on, let's go I'm driving."
At that, Antonio stopped in his tracks. "I can follow you."
Our playful banter had run its course, and I was starting to get annoyed, a pattern I was beginning to notice.
I pointed at his shiny black car parked on the street. "You're going to follow me in that? You may have lost the jacket, but you still look like an accountant. You think pulling up in a hundred thousand dollar Mercedes isn't going to call attention?"
He was silent for a beat as if he was debating whether arguing with me was worth it. It wasn't. "Fine, but I'm driving."
I laughed, a real, honest to God laugh. "Like hell you are." Closing the short distance to the driveway where my white Tahoe was parked, I gestured to the passenger side. "Stop being a pussy and get in the truck."
With the dogs loaded in the back and Antonio begrudgingly sitting in the passenger seat, I pulled out of the driveway and onto the road.
"To answer your earlier question, we're not going to a neighborhood like mine. Even if we were, it's still best if no one knows what's going on in the house. You never know when someone's going to try and rip you off, and it's not exactly like you can file an insurance claim on a couple hundred thousand dollars' worth of stolen drugs."
Antonio shifted in his seat, clearly uncomfortable not being the one behind the wheel. "This is the only place you package the product after you receive it from us?"
"Yes, they cut the product once, and then we package it in varying quantities to be distributed out."
"Is that smart to put all your eggs in one basket? What if you get raided?"
I bristled a bit as his questioning but tamped it down. For once, he wasn't accusative, just curious. "It's a risk, but I go to great lengths to prevent that from happening. Besides, the more houses you have, the more people you have to employ and the more variables you have to cover. The product moves pretty quickly through the house. We do four kilos at a time, and it usually takes 48 hours to process through until its distributed between our three trap houses."
"Your monthly orders from us are a lot more than four kilos. Where do you hold the product before you deliver it to be processed?"
I'd accepted the fact that I needed to bring him into the fold to find the source of the tainted heroin, but I wasn't prepared to give away all my secrets. "It's secure, only Luis and I know where it's kept, and I'm the only one who has access."
If Antonio was annoyed by my lack of disclosure, he didn't show it. "Are you moving anything other than the heroin and cocaine that you buy from us?"
Thankful he wasn't going to press the issue, I decided, to be honest. "No, meth is too conspicuous, and the marijuana we sell is legitimate through our dispensaries."
"You have dispensaries?"
I was not impressed by his apparent shock at the revelation. "Yes, Mr. Chairman. The thug has a legitimate business, shocking, I know."
"I didn't say that," he countered.
I scoffed. "You thought it, though."
Ignoring my jab, he continued, "How many dispensaries do you have?"
"Ten in Oregon, mostly in the Portland area, and five just over the border in Vancouver. I jumped on the bandwagon when they started talking about legalizing it Washington a few years ago. Started with one medical dispensary and is soon as they legalized recreational use, I popped up another four in the area. A couple of years later, Oregon passed the recreational law, and I expanded my business from there."
"That's…impressive."
I glanced over to see the look of shock on Antonio's face
"What? A hood rat can't have a mind for business?"
The mask of indifference smoothed over his features once again. "I'm not sure I would call you a hood rat, but no. It's not all that surprising. Dealing drugs is a business; you have to be good at it in order to be successful, which you've clearly accomplished. I just didn't realize you were that diversified."
His approval, while I refused to believe I needed it, felt good. "What can I say? I like making money."
"So you launder your illegitimate money through your legitimate businesses?"
"What are you trying to steal my secrets?"
"Whoever's responsible for this is targeting only you. I'm just trying to see it from all angles. I need to know where you're vulnerable."
Thanks for the reminder, I almost forgot.
I sighed and ran a hand through my hair, a nervous habit I'd never been able to break. It was pretty much the only tell that I had. "No, my dispensaries are a hundred percent legitimate, I keep them entirely separate."
"So how do you launder your illegitimate money?"
You ready for this one big boy?
"I don't."
"What?"
"Look, small time dealers get picked up on a traffic violation and get popped for possession. At my level, when you're talking about distributing to almost an entire city, those guys don't get caught with their hand in the cookie jar covered in white powder, but by the green stuff. Think about it, what's the primary tactic the cops use to catch the big fish?"
He was silent for a moment, considering my question. "Follow the money?"
"You got it, Deep Throat."
Antonio choked, "I think I like Mr. Chairman better."
I snickered, it was too easy. "Deep Throat, you know, All The President's Men, Watergate?"
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him cock his head as if he were seeing me for the first time. "I wouldn't have pegged you for a history buff."
"Stop underestimating me, and maybe you'll stop being surprised."
"Point well made, Ms. Mendoza."
An unpleasant chill ran down my spine. My mother had been Ms. Mendoza. "It's Vic," I said, more harshly than necessary.
Picking up on my change in demeanor, Antonio shifted the conversation back to the original topic. "You're not laundering your money to avoid the cops?"
"Exactly, if I'm not trying to launder money, they can't follow it anywhere."
"So, what? You've just got a mattress stuffed with cash?"
"Like I would tell you that. I make enough mon
ey from my legitimate businesses that no one's going to bat an eye if I want to go and buy a new house and pay cash. Like I said, all of my legitimate business is just that, I pay out the ass in taxes to Uncle Sam and keep everything clean. I don't live a lavish lifestyle. You're not gonna see me on Instagram riding a tiger or posing with my diamond encrusted AK-47."
At that Antonio laughed, it was strange hearing a sound like that come from him. Up until that point, he'd been so serious that I hadn't thought he was capable of laughter.
"Can I ask you a personal question?"
"Because your previous questions have been so impersonal?" I countered, only half joking.
He glared, all signs of previous amusement gone. "You have your legitimate businesses and don't spend your money, so why are you still peddling heroin and cocaine? Isn't it an unnecessary risk?"
I ask myself the same thing every day.
"It's hard to explain. Once you get a taste of the street, the danger of it, the money, the power. It's this rush you feel all the way down to your bones, and it doesn't let go. Even now that I have the money, it's the pull of the street that keeps me coming back. I've been doing this for a long time, it may not be all I know, but it's my kind of normal."
Chapter Eight
Antonio
"What about you?"
I took a moment to think about the question. For once actually feeling like I wanted to give an honest answer. Even though I didn't have the best read on Vic, I could tell she'd been honest about what she'd shared.
There was the family loyalty aspect of it, Carlo and I had essentially taken over the family business, and I'd never considered an alternate course. But why hadn't I chosen to take a more administrative role? It wasn't money or power that kept me rooted in the day to day; it was the violence. The monster inside me needed bloodshed, called for it, demanded it.
"I need to make sure the job gets done. If there's a problem, I'm the one to fix it."
"So, you're a control freak?" she asked, throwing it out there as if she hadn't hit the nail squarely on the head.