by A. J. Thomas
Ray left the soup on the nightstand and helped Elliot recline against a pile of pillows. He set the soup in his lap and put the glass of water on the nightstand. He hesitated for a moment and sat down on the bed beside Elliot’s legs.
Elliot took a sip of the soup and glared at him. “Delgado, I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but why are you doing this?”
“Sophie Munoz… Boyfriend… Case file…” Ray shrugged and kept his gaze away from Elliot’s topless chest.
“I’m going to need a couple hours, at least, and it’s already six o’clock. Interviewing Luca Garcia isn’t going to happen tonight. Don’t you have work or something?”
Ray tried not to smile, but he couldn’t help it. “Uh, no. Two weeks of paid administrative leave. You Feds really can’t take a joke.” He shook his head seriously.
“Huh?”
“I still hear stuff from my family every now and then, although most of them know better than to come anywhere near me. What I do hear, I report to a collaborative gang task force. I don’t work gang enforcement anymore, but I keep up on what’s going on. With the Tijuana leadership all arrested, it’s not like it’s that big of a deal anymore, but…. Someone’s started a rumor that a member of the Munoz family stole a whole lot of money from the cartel and was planning to break from them. I reported it, and some uptight little twerp named Hathaway seemed to think he could treat me like an informant rather than a colleague.”
“Hathaway?” Elliot’s eyes bulged. “He’s huge….”
“Size isn’t a determining factor in being a little twerp.”
A huge grin spread across Elliot’s face, despite the pain he was in. “You were the informant he couldn’t press charges against? The one who refused protective custody a week ago? He’s been whining about that nonstop.”
“I am not an informant. I might not say no to short-term protection in a hotel, but I’m not going into full-blown protective custody. I’m not going to jail, and I see no point in going to go hide in some shitty east-side hotel with an FBI babysitter when there’s no risk. It’s a rumor, not solid information, and I’m not the only one who could have brought it to the task force’s attention.”
“Do you have any idea why he wanted to put you in protective custody?” Elliot gaped at him.
“Yes….” Ray drew out the word. “Didn’t I just say that? You get a bit loopy with those drugs, huh? Anyway, the rumor is that millions have gone missing from accounts used to launder money between the cartel and Alejandro Munoz’s dealers. To me, that means that one of the bankers they’re working with is really, really stupid. No one inside the family would do it, but I know a lot of people who wouldn’t mind framing Alejandro for it to get him out of the way. Apparently Agent Hathaway’s vast experience with the Munoz family leads him to think they’re going to use me telling other law enforcement agencies about it as an excuse to kill me. If that moron knew a damn thing about the Munoz family, he’d know they have all the excuses they need to kill me already.”
“What did you do to Hathaway, anyway? No one in the office who knows will talk about it, and the report is still sealed. The bomb squad submitted part of the report, though.”
Ray squeezed his eyes shut and tried not to laugh. “I did not blow anything up! This time. It’s gotten to the point where if they hear my badge number on the radio, they just show up.” He glanced up when he felt Elliot flinch, caught himself, and lowered his voice. “Sorry. Seriously, though, you play with a dry-ice bomb one time, and fuckers on the bomb squad stalk you for the rest of your career. Special Agent Hathaway tried to handcuff me and throw me into the back of an SUV. So I threw him off me. I couldn’t get leverage to throw him into the car. I had to turn to get any leverage, so he ended up spinning too. I had no idea that food cart was sitting right there. Right where it’s been every weekday afternoon between eleven and three for the last six years. He kind of knocked it over when he ran into it.”
Elliot took a long sip of soup and leaned back, shutting his eyes. “I thought he was exaggerating about the informant in this case being a pain in the ass.”
Ray let his palm slip over Elliot’s knee and studied his face, trying to gauge his reaction. If the pained grimace on Elliot’s face was any kind of hint, he didn’t even notice. “This case?” Ray whispered. “It’s the same case. You think there’s a connection between Sophie disappearing and the rumor about the money.”
“Do I?” Elliot chuckled.
Ray watched the way his head rolled to the side, then slowly righted itself. “Loopy. You’re adorable when you’re loopy.”
Elliot’s gaze seemed to lose focus for a moment, then locked on to his eyes. “I don’t know.” His tone dropped low. “Is there a connection between Sophie Munoz vanishing and millions of dollars vanishing from illicit accounts controlled by her big brother?”
“So you think she stole the money, and she’s trying to disappear.” As much as Ray hated saying that out loud, it made sense. Sophie hadn’t been taken from her dorm room, she had packed her things and left. And Alejandro wanted to find her badly enough to risk looking for her right under an FBI investigation—or rather, he wanted to find her badly enough to con Ray into looking for her. He’d been wondering why Alejandro was suddenly so worried over the fate of a sibling he openly detested.
Ray couldn’t assume Alejandro’s motives were normal, because they never were. If the rumors were true, he’d lost a lot of money, and the Tijuana drug cartel was going to expect him to get it back. If he had that much at stake, he might be inclined to forget about flesh and blood ties altogether. If Alejandro suspected his sister stole that money from him, Ray had no choice but to assume that if Alejandro found her first, he’d kill her.
“I really hope you’re wrong,” said Ray.
Elliot shook his head, the motion exaggerated and slow, as the painkiller made him groggy. “Been following the money, tracing electronic funds transfers since your report came through the system last week. None of the funds have stopped moving yet, and our guys haven’t even said how much money is involved. But they traced it back to an IP address at the UCSD campus. You really think it’s a coincidence?”
“I….” Ray didn’t think it was a coincidence. “I’m a cynical bastard. I want it to be a coincidence, but it’s a bit much. She told me she wanted to go into federal law enforcement. She’d throw away her chance if she got involved with something like this.”
“She got turned down. Her brothers, and father, and uncles came up on a standard background check. It was about six months ago. Right before she hooked up with this Luca Garcia, if her professor’s account of things is right.”
“Two months before the rumors about someone draining those accounts started running around.” Ray nodded to himself. “Well, fuck. He played me.”
“Who?”
Ray plastered a reassuring smile on his face, and since Elliot seemed to be too high to object, squeezed his knee a little. “Don’t worry about it.” Ray waited to see if Elliot was going to shove his hand away. Ray swallowed hard when Elliot didn’t get angry. “Hey, since you’re stoned, can I ask you a question?”
Elliot almost managed to glare at him.
“Was it that bad, being with me?”
Elliot let out a sound that was half-way between a chuckle and a huff. “You should go home, Delgado.”
Ray slipped his hand away, knowing he’d pushed Elliot’s tolerance too far. With his former partner, he could always count on the other man calling him out when he got carried away, whether he was making too many bad jokes or crossing the physical boundaries he had imposed on their relationship when they were first assigned to each other. Without Hayes there to smack him in the head, he wasn’t always sure when he’d upset someone, but he was pretty sure he’d just crossed that line with Elliot. Again.
“Whatever it was I said, whatever I did… I’m sorry.”
Ray couldn’t help smiling down at Elliot. The way Elliot couldn’t keep his eyes open was cute.
When his breathing evened out, Ray took the half-empty bowl of soup back to the kitchen. He thought about calling a cab to get back to his car, or back to his place downtown, but he had a whole three dollars in his pocket and knew there was no way that was going to get him home unless he took the bus. Most of the cabs in the city didn’t accept credit cards yet, and he didn’t particularly want to bother finding the nearest ATM. Instead, he washed the pot and bowl, stole a strawberry Pop-Tart from Elliot’s pantry, and sat down on the threadbare green sofa sitting in the center of the beautiful living room like an eyesore.
He wanted to smack himself.
He wasn’t supposed to get worked up over people, especially not people he’d already slept with. But over the last few months, some treacherous part of his mind began conjuring images of what it might be like to be with the same person, not just for a few days, but every day.
The spectral hopes and longing had become annoyingly persistent. They were also addictive. They had started with Ray’s ridiculous fixation on his partner Hayes, and when he had chosen someone else rather than even give him a chance, he expected the idea to fade. Instead, he found himself sizing up everyone he slept with now, trying to fit them into some warped vision of a future he knew he could never have. He’d never been with a woman he could see having a future with, but with men, the fantasy of a life together felt real, possible. So Ray had spent many of his nights off pursuing men rather than women, just to indulge in the fantasy for a little while. What had always been just random sex suddenly carried the promise of something more. Like a new spice transforming his favorite food, that something more was tantalizing.
Maybe it was just because he was getting older. Most Latino men his age were settled down and raising families of their own, and Ray knew he wasn’t immune to the stereotypes and customs he’d been immersed in as a child. It was possible the loneliness he’d been feeling since his partner took off nine months before was getting to him. Whatever it was, the idea of finding someone special, someone who would be there past breakfast, had gone from terrifying to exciting.
No matter how exciting it became, though, Ray knew life wasn’t that easy. He’d never known anyone who’d had a relationship last beyond a few years. After the first night of sex, when people stopped adhering to a standard hookup script, Ray’s own social ineptitude ruined any chance he had of finding something that would even last for a few weeks, much less years.
He had screwed up whatever chance he might have had with his partner from the start by not being honest with him. Ray still wasn’t sure how he’d screwed things up with Elliot, but the way Elliot kept trying not to smile when they talked gave Ray a bit of hope that he might be able to fix things.
Before he could think about that, he had to find Sophie.
He unbuckled his belt, grabbing his holster as the leather slipped through the belt loop, then set it down on the arm of the couch. He never slept well when he was alone, not until he was utterly exhausted. He hadn’t slept in nearly two days, and he was so tired that he felt like scratching his eyes out, so he figured getting to sleep now wouldn’t be a problem. He stretched out on the ancient sofa, surprised by the comfortable way it seemed to swallow him, and buried his face against the cushions. After twenty minutes, the silence in Elliot’s living room began to make him so anxious, he knew sleep wasn’t going to happen. He pulled his phone out of his pocket instead and played a word game. When he couldn’t stand that anymore, he went back to Sophie’s social media posts and pored through them again.
Before, he’d been looking for excited notes about travel plans and parties, but now he studied the messages she exchanged with Luca Garcia, trying to glean some insight into their relationship. Luca Garcia’s Facebook page announced his affiliation with a Mexican gang based in Texas. The profile picture next to Luca Garcia’s comments showed a young man holding a pistol, throwing up gang signs, and glowering at the world.
The name Garcia could be a coincidence, Ray knew, but he never let any connection go unexplored in his investigations. Since the violence in Tijuana had settled down, the Tijuana drug cartel was slowly being swallowed by the central Mexico cartels, under the direction of one of the last of the older generation of cartel bosses, Esteban Garcia.
No matter how much he thought Sophie was too smart to be manipulated by some gang punk, their conversations painted her as a woman who was quick to agree, quick to give in to arguments, and always conciliatory. As he skimmed her responses to the young man, Ray began to recognize the clipped tone and figure of speech responses Sophie often used with Carmen when the other woman annoyed her. The few declarations of affection in the posts came from Luca, and Sophie responded with single word replies. From any other girl, it might have come across as affectionate, but it was Sophie’s way of brushing his comments off.
“Dating some kind of gangster wannabe she can’t stand….”
Not long after sunset, his phone’s battery died completely, and Ray finally dozed off. He managed to sleep until just before dawn. He found Elliot’s guest bathroom, which was empty except for half a roll of toilet paper, and then poked around Elliot’s laptop hoping to find a power cord he could use to charge his phone. When that turned up nothing, he tried turning on the laptop itself, desperate for something to keep his mind busy. He hit the space bar, then held down the power button for a few seconds. Nothing happened. Ray sat down in front of the computer at the breakfast bar, content that he’d found something to keep himself busy.
Elliot woke up to a smoky, chemical smell that left him panicking and wondering why the hell his smoke detectors weren’t blaring. He leapt out of bed, nearly fell flat on his face as a wave of dizziness swept over him, and stumbled out of his room to find whatever was on fire. He stopped cold as he entered his kitchen and saw a mess of electronics spread across his counter. From end to end, the counter was covered with small circuit boards, oddly shaped pieces of plastic with wires attached to them, and metallic rectangles covered with stickers and warning labels. At the end of the counter, hunched over a small green circuit board, was Ray Delgado. He was holding a small silver coil of solder in one hand, and a smoking soldering iron in the other. He touched the circuit board and a puff of acidic smoke drifted up.
Elliot tried to make sense of what he was seeing, including what was left of his dismantled laptop at the far end of the counter.
“Good morning, sunshine.” Ray grinned up at him. “I made oatmeal, but it’s probably cold by now.”
“Oatmeal?” Elliot glanced at the stove and saw that the man had, in fact, made him breakfast. “I have oatmeal? What is that smell?”
“Resin.” Ray bent down over the circuit board again. “It’s in the solder, it helps stabilize the alloy, keeps it solid at room temperature, and then it burns away once the solder melts. Sorry, I know it stinks. I’m almost done.”
“Do I want to know what you’re doing?”
Ray kept his eyes on the circuit board and touched the coil of solder to it quickly. Another puff of smoke rose. “I am replacing two blown capacitors.” Ray didn’t take his attention away from the circuit board.
“Is that what was wrong with it?” Elliot asked. That laptop had been sitting on the counter for nearly a month, waiting until Elliot remembered to take it down to one of the electronics waste collection drives that different stores around town offered occasionally. Since it had been out of warranty when it died, he’d just replaced it with a new one—albeit, one he’d been leaving at the office most days.
“Yes. I’m replacing them with higher-rated ones, so they shouldn’t blow out again. The rest of it…. When it comes to electronics, you get what you pay for.”
Elliot shrugged. “Or you get something that’s cheap enough to replace when it breaks. Do you carry random electronic bits with you?”
Ray waved the soldering iron. “There’s a hardware store down by the freeway ramp. They opened at seven. It’s next to a grocery store you should totally visit more often. I grabbed yo
u oatmeal and turkey and stuff.”
Elliot took in the mess on the counter again, wondering how long it had taken Ray to disassemble, diagnose, and fix the computer. The repair guy Elliot had consulted said it would need a new circuit board and take a week to repair. Ray was still dressed in the same slacks he’d worn the day before, but he had stripped down to a plain white undershirt that clung to every inch of his darkly tanned skin. Even though Elliot wouldn’t admit it out loud, the man was definitely worth drooling over. But his normally handsome face was marred by dark circles beneath his bloodshot eyes. He’d obviously slept on Elliot’s couch, and slept so poorly he looked hung over. “How long have you been awake?”
“Too damn long.”
Elliot watched him set the soldering iron down, and then he grabbed a tiny set of wire cutters and clipped the thin pieces of metal he’d just attached to the circuit board. Ray spun the circuit board in his hands, then carried it over to the gutted shell of Elliot’s old laptop and set the small circuit board into place. With a screwdriver so tiny that he had to hold it between two fingers, Ray began to secure the rest of the components, clipping things back into place and reassembling the laptop as if he’d done it a thousand times before.
“You fix a lot of computers?” Elliot asked.
“Yeah. They’re neat. And don’t give me that look.” Ray wagged a finger at him without looking up from his project.
“What look?”