The Paper Swan

by Leylah Attar

  Every year, Damian left a bouquet of Mexican sunflowers on MaMaLu’s grave. He picked the deepest orange blossoms with the brightest centers. MaMaLu was buried in Paza del Mar, in the cemetery behind the church of Archangel Michael—the same church where Damian had made his first drop for El Charro, the same church he had attended as a boy with MaMaLu. Her grave was surrounded by those of all the other dead, unclaimed prisoners from Valdemoros—a pile of rocks with a plain slab, engraved with her name and prisoner number. There was no date of death, because someone had forgotten to jot it down, and it broke Damian’s heart that she had been robbed of that dignity. Damian did not get a new stone for MaMaLu. He needed that reminder. Every year, when he saw that incomplete slab, the fire in him blazed higher, and he needed it to burn eternally so he could take a chisel and hammer to the hearts of the two men who had put her there, and carve out retribution. Then, and only then, would he get MaMaLu a proper tombstone.

  Once when Rafael came to visit Damian over the holidays, they drove to La Sombra, the cantina where Rafael’s parents had worked. It was still El Charro’s domain, one of the many bases he frequented. A new couple ran the place. They were younger than Juan Pablo and Camila. The woman’s smudged apron strained against her pregnant belly. Damian and Rafael could not bring themselves to eat there, so they bought fish tacos from a street vendor.

  “I would never have survived if it wasn’t for you,” said Rafael. He was thirteen, but tall for his age. “You saved my life.”

  They were sitting on the hood of the car, outside Casa Paloma.

  “I saved my life, Rafael.” He knew Rafael was thinking about a small, blood-splattered room in the mountains. “If you were in my way, I’d have taken you out. Make no mistake about it.”

  Rafael took a swig of beer and laughed. “You like to think you’re all cojones, no corazón. All balls, no heart. But I know better.”

  “You don’t know shit.” Damian walked up to the tall, wrought iron gates of the now-lifeless estate.

  Casa Paloma was in disarray. Tall, thorny weeds had taken over the garden. All the windows were boarded up, and the lock that Victor had chained to the main gate was gritty with rust. Damian liked that. It felt just like his memories of the place—chained and dead and abandoned.

  Keep Out.

  This was the place where MaMaLu had fallen victim to the politics of wealth and power, to greedy men with a sense of entitlement that left them with no remorse for the lives they destroyed.

  “One day I’m going to own this place,” said Damian, when they got back in the car.

  One day, he was going to bring down Warren with the same weapons he had used against MaMaLu: money and ruthlessness. One day, he was going to rob Warren of everything he held precious.

  “Is that before or after you destroy El Charro?” asked Rafael, rolling his eyes. He wished Damian would give up his quest. El Charro was invincible and he didn’t want his friend getting hurt.

  Damian doubted if El Charro remembered the nanny who had come chasing after a little girl and chanced upon a meeting of black crows. No. El Charro was the scavenger of carrion. One dead body was no different from another. Damian was not going to waste his time trying to make him remember. El Charro didn’t deserve explanations or justifications. He deserved fire and ashes, an incinerating descent to hell.

  “First El Charro, then Warren Sedgewick.” Damian started the engine. “Then I take the place where it all began.”

  As they drove away, Damian did not think of Skye. He never once thought of Skye. She was locked up in a room with windows that were boarded up with sheets of plywood. And Damian always, always stayed away from strawberries and gap-toothed girls with hair like spun gold.

  The rivalry between the Sinaloa cartel and Los Zetas was escalating. Every day bodies were turning up in the ditches; blood was flowing in the gutters. El Charro called a meeting of his most trusted allies and advisers.

  “Damian,” he said, examining the ‘C’ he had just carved into the victim at his feet. “My blade needs replacing.” He handed Damian his cane.

  Every year, Damian took El Charro’s cane to a blacksmith in Caboras, who fitted it with a new, razor-sharp, custom piece.

  “We are meeting at the new warehouse in Paza del Mar tomorrow. 3 pm. Have it fixed by then,” said El Charro. “Comandante 21, look after these bodies.” He stepped over them, holding a handkerchief to his nose.

  Damian followed El Charro out and watched him drive away in his air-conditioned sedan. He switched the sim card on his phone and made a call. “I have information for Emilio Zamora.”

  He didn’t have to wait long. Emilio Zamora was the younger brother of Alfredo Ruben Zamora, the man who had attempted to kill El Charro, the man Damian had shot in the cantina. Of course, Emilio, like everyone else, thought Juan Pablo was responsible for his brother’s death. Ever since El Charro had sent Alfredo’s severed head to his funeral, Emilio had been vying to get even.

  “Tomorrow. The warehouse in Paza del Mar. 3 pm. El Charro and all of his right hand men.”

  “Who is this?” asked Emilio, but Damian hung up.

  The perfect opportunity had finally presented itself.

  Damian guarded the door while Comandante 21 accompanied El Charro inside the warehouse. One by one, men arrived in bodyguard-driven cars, and took a seat around the long table, with their muscle men standing a respectable distance behind them. The location had been disclosed last minute as an added security measure. For all intents and purposes, the warehouse functioned as a shipping facility for canned sardines, but Damian knew that the cardboard boxes and crates stacked around them were filled with shrink wrapped bales of marijuana, blocks of cocaine and methamphetamine, along with carefully sealed bags of brown powder heroin.

  Every man in the room was connected to the cartel in one way or another. Some owned the farmers who grew local marijuana; others had contacts in Colombia, Peru or Bolivia. A few ran the hidden super labs that manufactured methamphetamine. They were all involved with the preparation, transportation and distribution of drugs, carrying them over the American border via cars, trucks, speedboats, drug tunnels and cross border mules. They had dirty cops and judges in their pockets, and stash houses in Los Angeles, El Paso, Houston, Tucson. From there, the drugs infiltrated other major cities, trickling down to hundreds of suburbs and communities beyond. Damian wondered which of them had been present the day MaMaLu had interrupted the meeting at Casa Paloma. He glanced at his watch. It was 2:45 pm.

  “Damian! How’s it going, man?” He felt a hard slap on his back.

  Damian turned pale. “Rafael. What are you doing here?”

  “I invited him. My mathemagician,” said El Charro, patting the empty seat next to him. Rafael made him look good. El Charro slipped him notes during important meetings and Rafael came up with the numbers he needed for viable options.

  “Listen, Rafael—” Damian pulled him back.

  “Shut the door, Damian,” said El Charro. “And bring me my cane. It’s time we got started.”

  Damian unwrapped El Charro’s cane from the plastic sheathing and handed it to him.

  Outside, El Charro’s men prowled the perimeter.

  Inside, the king held court with his dark knights.

  Damian glanced at his watch again. All the pieces of the puzzle were in place, except for one. Damian had to move quickly. He passed a note to Rafael under the table and got up. El Charro raised an eyebrow.

  “Be right back,” said Damian. He let himself out the back door. The two men stationed there recognized him. Damian stopped in the shade of a tall tree and pretended to to take a piss. Behind him, a canopy of coconut palms covered the surrounding hills. A troop of howler monkeys let out loud, barking whoops as they swung from branch to branch across the treetops, startling one of the guards at the door.

  “Chupame la verga,” he said, when the other one laughed at him. Suck my dick.

  They were still laughing when Emilio Zamora’s men sla
shed their necks. Damian ducked behind the tree. The foliage concealed him.

  The Los Zetas were vicious. And quiet. They had the advantage of surprise and they used it to methodically eliminate the guards outside. Machetes, knives, cords, chains, rocks, batons. No firearms. Emilio Zamora did not want to tip El Charro off, or bring him down in a blaze of gunfire. He wanted him alive so he could finish him off in the most painful way.

  Of course, things didn’t go as planned. El Charro’s men started shooting when they realized what was happening, but they didn’t stand a chance. Emilio Zamora did not trust anonymous tips received over the phone. He had his moles look into it, and then he brought a veritable army with him. It was paying off. They overwhelmed the guards outside and stormed into the warehouse, guns blazing.

  Damian crawled to the back door, over the bodies of the dead guards. Going back inside was a fool’s mission, but he had to get Rafael out. The only thing that kept him moving forward was his combat training, and the rush of adrenaline that jolted through his system. He ignored the zing of bullets, the splinters flying in the air, the steady stream of spent brass casings as they clanged on the floor. Half the lights were gone, bulbs shattered, and bodies lay around him—some lifeless, some screaming in agony. The warehouse was hazy with gunpowder and the grit of boxes spewing drugs into the air. It was hard to breathe, hard to see, but Damian kept crawling until he was under the table. Rafael was crouched at the other end. His hands were over his ears and he was rocking back and forth on his heels.

  Damian had almost reached him when two men fell to the floor, toppling over the chairs. They rolled around, one trying to snatch the gun away from the other. Shoe-polish black hair glistened in the semi-darkness. El Charro was wrestling with Emilio Zamora.

  “Damian!” El Charro spotted him under the table. They both saw the other gun, lying discarded by Damian’s foot. “Give it to me.” El Charro held out his hand.

  Their eyes met for a fraction. Damian wanted to pick up the gun and pump El Charro’s body full of lead, but he knew that would ruin his plan. At the same time, he couldn’t let El Charro kill Emilio until he and Rafael were safely out of the building.

  Damian kicked the gun out of El Charro’s reach. “Maria Luisa Alavarez,” he said. “Remember my mother’s name when you meet your maker.”

  El Charro’s face registered shock and disbelief, not because he had a clue what Damian was talking about, but because of the betrayal. It was momentary, because Emilio pulled El Charro up by the collar, and El Charro had more important things on the line. Like his life.

  Damian continued making his way to Rafael. There was no turning back for him now. He had spoken his truth, let El Charro see the hate in his eyes. If El Charro survived, it would mean the end for Damian. But Damian needed him to survive just a little bit longer.

  “Rafael.” He shook him.

  But Rafael was in shock, like he’d been when he’d peered through the bathroom door and witnessed his parents die. Gunfire was his biggest phobia.

  “Rafael.” Damian slapped him twice. It was enough to rouse him out of his personal hell.

  “I hid under the table. Like you said.” Rafael still had Damian’s note scrunched up in his fist.

  “Good. Now listen to me,” said Damian. “Keep your head down, keep crawling until you get to the door.” He pointed to the exit in the back.

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll be right behind you. Don’t look back. Just keep going. When you make it to the door, run for the trees. You got that?”

  Rafael flinched as a spray of bullets riddled the crates behind them.

  “Rafael? You got that?”

  Rafael nodded and started making his way under the table.

  Damian spotted Comandante 21 lying on the floor. His eyes were open, but he was gone. Damian felt for the strap around his ankle. He removed the knife that Comandante 21 always carried with him. El Charro and Emilio Zamora were still struggling like giants in the arena. Crawling back under the table, Damian waited until their legs were inches from him. Then he reached out and slashed the back of Emilio Zamora legs, severing the tendons that held him up. Emilio Zamora fell to his knees.

  “What did you do that for?” Rafael looked at Damian with his mouth open.

  “I told you to keep going.”

  “But Emilio was just about to kill El—”

  “Move, Rafael!”

  Rafael didn’t argue. The two boys made it out and dashed for the trees. Behind them, the carnage continued. When they got to the top of the hill, Damian turned around.

  “I don’t get it.” Rafael was bent over, trying to catch his breath. “Why didn’t you go after El Charro?”

  “I needed him alive,” said Damian.

  “But—”

  Just then, a fireball erupted in the warehouse, a thunderous explosion of heat and smoke. All they could hear through muffled ears was a highpitched ‘eeeeee’, as a second sun spewed glass and debris into the air. One side of the warehouse stood, quaking unsteadily, before collapsing in a cloud of dust and ash. Everything stopped—the wind in the trees, the birds, the animals. It was a strange silence, filled with the blaring of car alarms.

  “What did you do?” asked Rafael, through the haze-filled heat.

  “I rigged the place with explosives and placed the trigger in El Charro’s cane. The moment he brought down the retractable blade . . . KABOOM.”

  “That’s why you stopped Emilio from gaining the upper hand. You wanted El Charro to kill him. You knew El Charro wouldn’t be able to resist marking him, just like he had marked his brother.”

  Damian kept staring at the warehouse. Nothing had survived—not the men, not the drugs, not the decoy cans of smoked sardines.

  “Shit, Damian,” said Rafael, as realization dawned on him. “We’re free of El Charro and the cartel. They’ll think we died in there, with everyone else. They’ll think it was a fight to the death between El Charro and Emilio Zamora. ‘C’ for cesado. Finished. Dismissed. You fucking charbroiled El Charro and everyone else.”

  “We’re not in the clear yet, Rafael. They’ll find traces of explosives if they look closely.”

  “Yeah, but the Sinaloa cartel will point the finger at Los Zetas and Los Zetas will turn around and blame them. Ingenious, Damian. Well worth the wait.”

  “One down, one to go,” said Damian, dusting off his pants.

  Rafael knew he was thinking about Warren Sedgewick. “Geez, Damian. You should allow yourself a breather. Even movies have intermissions.”

  “Really? And where would your ass be if I’d taken off for popcorn and candy?”

  “True. That’s twice you’ve saved my life,” said Rafael. “So what now?”

  “Now we lay low and wait for the dust to settle. Think of it as an intermission.”

  “For how long?”

  “As long as it takes to put together the next plan, Rafael. As long as it takes.”

  “WE’VE COME A LONG WAY from Caboras,” said Rafael, clinking his beer with Damian’s.

  Damian surveyed the tiki-torch lit patio overlooking Mission Bay, the exotic, tropical fish swimming in the ceiling-high aquarium and the pristine table setting before them.

  “It’s taken a long time to get here,” he said.

  “Eleven fucking years.” Rafael scanned the menu. “What are you having?”

  “A burger,” replied Damian, without opening his menu. He fidgeted with his cuff links. “Was this really necessary?” he asked.

  “You want to blend into fancy circles, you’ve got to look the part. How do you like the shoes? I had my guy custom make them.”

  “I get that they’re standard issue for a hotshot financial advisor like you, but fuck it, Rafael, there’s nothing like a pair of shoes broken in by hard labor and sweat.”

  “Screw hard labor and sweat. You deserve this. When are you going to start enjoying some of your hard-earned cash? If you don’t start relaxing, Damian, your face is going to set int
o a permanent scowl and you’ll scare the girls away. Permanently.”

  Damian waved his hand dismissively. At twenty-seven, he was completely oblivious to the polarized reactions of the women around him. When Damian walked into a room, he went for the shadows and dark corners. He never fit in and he never attempted to. But the very attention he sought to avoid always found him, because it was like dragging in a caged animal. The women flocked around him, afraid to touch him, afraid to talk to him, but at the same time, completely fascinated.

  “The money means nothing,” he said. “It’s a means to an end.”

  “I know that, but take some credit for what you’ve achieved. After El Charro, we had nothing but the money you’d stashed away. And you managed to turn that around. From one boat to two, to five, to ten. From a small fishing company to a motherfucking shipping conglomerate. You put me through college while you worked your ass off. Everything I am, I owe to you. And now here you are. On the brink of toppling Warren Sedgewick over.”

  Damian thought back to those early years after El Charro’s death. He had kept his ear to the ground about Warren. El Charro was a stranger who had sought to eliminate a threat, but Warren . . . Warren knew MaMaLu. She had looked after his daughter for nine years—nine fucking years—six of which she’d tried to fill the void his wife had left. She had loved Skye as dearly as she loved her own son, going so far as to put Damian second when it came to her time and affection. And how had Warren rewarded her? By betraying her to save his own skin. He was a coward who needed to atone for his sins, not by dying, but by living. Damian wanted him to feel pain his whole fucking life. He was going to strip Warren of his extravagant mansion in La Jolla, his fleet of chauffeur-driven cars, his line of immaculate, luxury resorts, scattered across the most idyllic spots in the world. One by one, Damian was going to take it all away—his fame, his fortune, his prestige—the very foundation his world was built on. And to get there, to battle Warren in his ivory tower, Damian had to amass his own weapons, build his own fortune, a fortune fueled by something far more powerful than anything Warren had in his arsenal: a rusty box of cigarettes and the memory of MaMaLu’s incomplete tombstone.