by Annie Jocoby
“Fucking psychos. If they’re suicidal, they should just kill themselves. Why take down a bunch of others on the way?”
I shook my head and looked down at my food. I twirled some spaghetti around my spoon, and thought about Santino’s words. All of them. There was a plan, maybe, that could permanently drive a wedge between Charlotte and her dad, which could, possibly, mean that I could be safe. I wouldn’t imagine that a hit could come unless her dad ordered it, and I would imagine that, even if Charlotte tried to get somebody else involved with the hit, her dad could stop it cold. That wouldn’t mean that Charlotte herself wouldn’t try to kill me or have me killed, but it would be easier to evade her than to evade an entire network of people.
We’d still be playing a dangerous game, but it would be slightly less dangerous than before. That was something to hold onto. A glimmer of hope. I’d have to find a way to meet with Slade, and I knew that wasn’t going to be easy. Charlotte probably put every tracking device known to man on Slade, so he was going to have to think this whole thing through.
I decided to send him another text. I had no idea if Charlotte had real-time access to his texts, but I had to do something. “Hold off and don’t mention Santino. We need to meet, and soon.” That’s all the text said. And then I added “our place 8 tomorrow.” Slade knew that “our place” referred to this tiny bar that was right on the beach, facing the boardwalk. We used to go there whenever he would stay with me at my home. He loved going there because it made him feel normal. Nobody bothered him there, and he could have a drink and relax and not worry about anybody pointing at him.
I didn’t get a text back from him, but I didn’t obsess about that. It was entirely possible that Charlotte would know if he sent a text, even if she didn’t necessarily know that there was one incoming. How that would be, I wasn’t sure, but I knew one thing.
I was going to be seeing Slade, and soon.
Santino and I talked some more about Miguel. He assured me that if I wanted to see Miguel, I could. I just had to call Santino, and he would be the intermediary between us. He told me where Miguel lived, too. After talking with Santino, I started to feel hopeful that maybe, just maybe, there could be a plan that might work after all.
Chapter 6
The next day, I found out another incredible thing. Turns out that Derek was fired. Anita, my assistant, came into my office as I was working on yet another appellate brief. I had noticed that Derek had been gone from the office, but I didn't care enough to ask why. He was dead to me, as far as I was concerned, so why should I care if a dead person shows up to work or not?
Yet, when Anita told me that news, my heart soared. “Derek is gone,” she said to me after she came into my office. “And the rumor is that you have something do with it.”
I gave Anita a look, trying to figure out if she was accusing me or simply stating a fact. I closed my eyes and decided that it was the latter. “I might have had something to do with it. Why? What have you heard?”
“That you and he had bad blood. At any rate, firing him was a decision that came straight from the top. Meaning Mr. Bridgewell.” She cocked her head at me. “That would imply that you probably did have something do with it.”
I took a deep breath and shrugged my shoulders. I wasn’t feeling like talking to Anita about this, although I was inwardly overjoyed. “Why do you say that?”
“Well, I guess…” Her voice trailed off. “Maybe not. I mean, I don’t want to step out of line, but you and Mr. Bridgewell were together. Now I’m hearing that he’s dating Charlotte Boswell. I read that in the papers today. It’s so weird.” Her face turned red. “If you ever need to talk about that, I’ll listen and not judge. I’ve always liked you, Ms. Roberts.”
My heart sunk. The “dating” between Slade and Charlotte already made the papers? Which papers?
The masochist in me sprung forth, unbidden, and couldn’t stop what was going to be my next request from poor Anita. “What papers?”
She left without a word, and, not five minutes later, came back in. She showed me a tabloid with a picture of Slade and Charlotte sitting on a terrace, his hand on hers. She was looking at him with a expression that told the camera man that she was head over heels. His face was turned away, so I couldn’t see his expression. It was clear, though, that this picture was one that wasn’t posed or staged. It seemed to be a completely natural picture that was taken with a long-range lens.
I felt tears coming to my eyes as I read the story. “Charlotte Boswell, the current ‘It’ girl in Hollywood, has publicly denied a relationship with the notorious billionaire playboy, Slade Bridgewell, but exclusive photos taken in the star’s Malibu home tell a different story. Readers might remember that, up until recently, Mr. Bridgewell was under suspicion of a brutal murder. Now that he’s beaten this rap, it seems that he wants to take another title – the King of Hollywood. He’ll prove that by canoodling with the current Queen, Charlotte Boswell.”
I stopped reading after that. It wasn’t just the corny prose, although that kind of made me want to hurl as well. It was more the fact that the story was accompanied by an intimate picture of the two of them. I fully expected to see posed pictures of them out and about. What I didn’t expect was to see a picture of them at Charlotte’s house, having a romantic dinner, with his hand covering hers. Granted, I couldn’t see his face in the picture, but I didn’t have to. Just seeing his hand covering hers was enough to devastate me.
“This is a rag,” I said, throwing the paper in disgust at Anita. “Don’t bother me with this again.”
“I won’t,” she said. “But I’d like to know what happened. I mean, we all kinda thought…”
“What? That Slade and I would be the ones getting married? Whatever would make you think that?”
“We saw the two of you at Malcolm’s funeral, and nobody could look at a woman like Slade looked at you and not think that a marriage isn’t pending at some time soon.”
“Well, you obviously thought wrong. Looks like Slade is going to be the King of Hollywood.” I snorted. “I guess that’s what he deserves. To continue to be hounded by photographers for the rest of his life.” My voice got louder, as I started to feel that I was getting out of control. “Bastard. He could have chosen to live a quiet life with me. All that publicity would have died down as soon as he got boring. But no. He decides to live life in the spotlight, just as he always has. Well, he won’t coming whining to me about how his life isn’t his own. I’ll tell him where to go.”
It was then that I looked at Anita, who was sitting there in a chair, her eyes downcast. I hadn’t realized that I had just said all that out loud, in front of my assistant, and I immediately felt embarrassed and unprofessional. “Oh, I’m sorry….”
She shook her head. “Trust me, we’ve all been there. Screwed over by some charming jerk. What woman hasn’t experienced that?”
I had to smile. She had a point. If a woman is still dating people at a certain age, and not yet happily married, she’s going to experience more than her share of douchebags along the way. It certainly comes with the territory of trying to find the right person.
And I thought that Slade was that right person….
It was then that I made my decision. I was going to bring down Charlotte, but I wasn’t going to involve Slade. He didn’t deserve to work with me. I wanted my revenge on that bitch, but I wasn’t going to allow Slade back into my life.
As far as I was concerned, he was as dead to me as Derek.
Chapter 7
I made my decision. I was going to go to Mexico and find this Miguel Sanchez person and I was going to talk to him myself. I was going to involve Slade in this whole operation, but, after seeing that picture in the paper, I decided that Slade wasn’t going to come with me after all. Fuck him. He deserved to show up at that little bar on the beach and find that I wasn’t there. Let him make a trip down to San Diego for nothing. And let him go to my house and find that I wasn’t there, either. Neither we
re Bella and Gigi – they were put into a doggie hotel for the time being.
A part of me was screaming that I was making the wrong decision. A wrong decision that just might get me killed. It was a stupid decision, too, really. But there was another part of me that felt reckless. Maybe there was a little bit of a death-wish in there. Because one thing was for sure – seeing that picture of Slade and Charlotte didn’t just make me want to throw up.
It made me want to die.
And what better way to die than at the hands of a Mexican drug dealer who was most likely armed to the teeth and paranoid as hell? Santino gave me all the information that I would need to find this guy, which was mistake number one. He had offered to come with me, but I refused, which was mistake number two. There were sure to be other mistakes, but I didn’t really care.
What I cared about was that I was going to get the evidence that I needed to nail Charlotte to the wall with her own family. If I didn’t get that evidence, I’d probably end up dead, which was fine, too. Either way, things were going to be better, because they were going to be different. That was literally all that I knew at that point.
I drove down to Mexico right after work, and, since the Mexican border was only about twenty minutes away from my office, it didn’t take me long to get there. I got into the line of cars at the border, streaming into Mexico as the workers filed into that country after their own long days at work. That was what it was like in San Diego – there were quite a few people who worked in the city and went home each evening to Mexico. It was the best of both worlds for them – they got the relatively high wage in San Diego, and then went down to their families in Tijuana, where the cost of living was exceedingly low. I thought that these enterprising Mexican people probably lived like Kings and Queens down there, even if they made the minimum wage in San Diego. In a city where people lived on five dollars a day, making even $7.50 per hour was more than a living wage.
The border city was San Ysidro, and, right at the border, was a veritable treasure trove of small shops and bazaars. I had come down here before, from time to time, shopping at the colorful booths. There was anything that anybody could ever want, and it was all cheap. Sure, the “designer” purses weren’t exactly designer, as they might have had the words “Fendi” on them, but they sure as hell weren’t quality made. The “saltwater pearls” were most likely plastic, carefully crafted to fool the most discerning customer. Etc. But that didn’t matter to the hoards of people who lined the streets, looking for bargains and often finding them. To them, just having a purse with the Fendi name was enough.
While the border town had a carnival atmosphere, I knew that, once I crossed the border, I’d have a tougher time. Down there, people led you into their shops by your hand. The men would stand outside the shop and actually come up to you and physically take you into the shop so that you could buy something. Walk down the streets in the touristy part of the city, and you’ll be hassled to come into bars and try free tequila. But Tijuana wasn’t so bad, considering its reputation. I wasn’t at all concerned, because the bars and shops down there always seemed to be filled with Americans eager to be parted from their weekly salaries. Indeed, since Tijuana was so close to San Diego, there were also plenty of Americans who went down there to get dental work done on the cheap, or get a pair of eyeglasses or seek a solution to any number of medical or dental issues. I felt comfortable coming to TJ, as Tijuana was colloquially called.
But Miguel didn’t live in Tijuana, of course. He lived in Ciudad Juarez, in the Chihuahua peninsula in central Mexico, right on the Texas border. Ciudad Juarez was where the powerful drug cartel, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, CJNG for short, ruled with an iron fist. The CJNG used military-style weapons in its constant battle with law enforcement, and used these same weapons with rival crime networks. They specialized, in addition to drug smuggling, cooking and running, in kidnapping, extortion and murder. I wasn’t quite prepared to meet with Miguel, and I wouldn’t be until I purchased a gun, which wouldn’t be at all difficult to do in Tijuana. That was my plan, such as it was – go to Tijuana and get a gun and talk to some locals about Ciudad Juarez. Get some information about it. And then just go on down there and find Miguel and try to get some information from him about the deals he was making with both the Vichellis and the Garancinos. I was going to get a recording of him telling me that Charlotte was the one who was trying to manipulate him into going with the Vichellis over the Garancinos, and if I died doing this, I died.
If I lived, and I got that recording, then I’d have the ammunition that I would need to get Charlotte gone. Her father would either banish her or have her killed. Either way, my life would be spared. I really didn't care what happened with that bitch, either. Her life was like a bug on a windshield to me. It was of no consequence.
Fuck Slade. I had no idea what his plan was, and I didn’t fucking care. This was my plan, and, even though it was beyond dangerous, I was going to do it.
But the first thing that I had to do, before I did anything else, was to get a TracPhone. I didn’t want Slade tracking my movements once I got over the border. I was that infuriated with him. I wanted to do this whole operation completely on my own.
It was then that I realized that maybe I really did have a death-wish. Losing Slade was the last straw, and I had to come to terms with that in my psyche. Perhaps I was going just a little bit crazy, and, really, if you think about it, I deserved to go nuts. All my life, I had to endure one tragedy after another. I tried, so hard, to keep it all together, and it was always difficult. Then, I met Slade, and things started to finally make sense. It seemed that I was finally turning a corner in my life.
Then he dumped me, and, more importantly, he lied to me. He fucking lied to me. He made it seem like he was with Charlotte for one reason, and that was to buy some time so that he could find a way for us to be together. Well, that picture of him, that candid, intimate picture of him, holding Charlotte’s hand, said otherwise. It wasn’t a posed picture. It was something that was taken by a photographer that Slade had to be completely unaware of.
I swallowed hard, absolute fury wracking through my body. The line of cars were moving slowly, too slowly. I knew why – it was rush hour, really, for all the Mexican people who worked in San Diego, along with the San Diegans and other Americans who were eager to get down to TJ and have some cheap or free tequila. I laid my arm down on my arm rest in the car, and cursed silently. Traffic jams, which happened far too often in this city anyhow, always made me extremely impatient. At this moment, with how I was feeling, this traffic jam was making me feel a little bit nuts.
I finally got to the border, where the agent asked me what I was doing, where I was going and when I would be back.
“I’m going down to Tijuana,” I said, trying to be as pleasant as possible. “To go to a restaurant to meet some friends. I plan to stay overnight, and will be back in the States tomorrow morning.”
The agent just nodded his head and I went on through. It was my experience that it was fairly easy to get over the border. Coming back from Mexico was the trickier part, because that was when the drug-sniffing dogs got involved. Obviously, people going into Mexico were less likely to be up to no good - smuggling drugs or people – then the people coming out of Mexico, so the border agents didn’t give the Americans much hassle when they wanted to leave.
Not that I was going to have any issues coming back into the States, unless, of course, Miguel asked me to do something for him in exchange for any information he was going to give me. I thought of that, too – maybe Miguel would tell me about Charlotte in exchange for my bringing drugs back into America or something like that. In which case, I didn’t quite know what I was going to do. Getting Charlotte was officially an obsession with me, ever since I saw that picture. At that moment, I was prepared to do anything, anything at all, in order to see her fry.
There was a voice that was talking to me, as voices sometimes do, whenever I was about to make a huge mistake.
I used to think that it was the voice of my guardian angel, and there were occasions when I still thought that. I knew that I had an angel watching over me – I had seen her on more than one occasion. I swear I saw her after my mother was killed, and she stopped me from doing anything rash then. And then again after Derek raped me, and I wanted to kill him – she stopped me from doing so.
Now, she was speaking to me, and saying things clearly. I chose to ignore her this time, though.
“Serena,” she was saying. “You have to go back. This isn’t the path that you’re supposed to be on.”
I shook my head. “Go away,” I snarled. “I’ve had enough. I’m at my breaking point, and I’m going to get that bitch, even if I have to die trying.”
I turned up the radio on full blast so that I wouldn’t have to hear her, and that seemed to do the trick. She was going to tell me all kinds of bullshit about how I shouldn’t be doing this, blah, blah, blah, and I simply didn’t want to hear it.
With tears in my eyes, I went to the first pawn shop I found and purchased a gun and a TracPhone. I turned in my iPhone and was given $100 USD for it. I was careful to erase the phone and upload all my pictures and contacts and everything important onto the cloud before I did all this.
“Senora,” the man behind the counter said to me. “You’re trading in your iPhone for a TracPhone?” He shook his head. He probably knew that I was up to no good, because nobody in their right mind would trade in their smart phone for a TracPhone unless they were up to no good. “Whatever you’re planning, be careful.”
I furled my brow and held out my hand for my money and said nothing. Then I shook my head as he counted out the $100. My guardian angel was probably speaking through this guy, which was another trick that she tried to play when I wouldn’t listen to her. “Thanks,” I simply said, as I made my way out the door.