Clifford looked at his young charge. It would be imprudent to fly off the handle in front of the kid, particularly since the kid had a monitoring bracelet around his ankle.
“This is unusual,” Clifford said. “But what are we as humans if we cannot adapt, right, Milo?”
The kid didn’t say anything. He just stood up when Clifford did and made his way to the door with him.
“Real sorry about this,” I said.
“I didn’t vote for the mayor,” Clifford said. “Don’t expect my vote next year, either.”
“Noted,” I said.
Down the hall, another young man and kid with an ankle bracelet came shuffling out of the office Sam had entered. They didn’t look happy, either, so when they passed me I said, “The mayor thanks you.”
“The mayor will be hearing from me,” the young man said.
“All letters are appreciated,” I said.
Sam opened up the third office door and then stepped back abruptly.
“Problem?” I said.
“Mike, this isn’t good,” he said. I peered into the office. It was filled with bookshelves. On each of the shelves were approximately twenty Bibles. “That’s a lot of judgment right there, Mikey.”
“You’re on the right side of the law,” I said. “Generally.”
“We’ll keep this door closed,” Sam said. “I don’t want Fiona to walk by and burst into flames.”
“Good call,” I said.
When we reached Father Eduardo’s office, I rapped lightly on the door and he opened it and, yet again, surprised me. Instead of the shirt and tie I’d grown accustomed to, Father Eduardo was dressed as the priest he was, collar and all.
“Jesus,” Sam said.
“That’s the idea,” Father Eduardo said.
It was nice he still had a sense of humor. Even still, it was going to be hard to hit a man in a collar, which Father Eduardo had likely banked on. I’d done worse, and I had a feeling that Father Eduardo, at some point in his life, had done so, too.
Once we were in the office I said, “I emptied out the floor. What’s above us?”
“Nothing until tonight,” he said. “What did you do with Leticia?”
“Gave her a choice,” I said. “We’ll see how that works out.”
Sam peered out the window. “Company’s coming,” he said. “Should we get out the nice china?”
I walked up behind him and looked out, too. Junior Gonzalez: his eyes were covered by black wraparound sunglasses, but his tattoos and scars and muscles, however, were on full display. He’d given up the pretense of pleasant businessman so well cultivated in his suburban home that I had to wonder how silly he felt changing into a wife beater, Dickies and white shoes. The lieutenant walking with him was a massive hulk of a man. Maybe six foot five. Close to three bills. He had on shorts and white socks pulled to his knees, and wore a button-down shirt opened up to reveal a plain white T-shirt. It always surprised me how these guys had such white shirts. Didn’t they ever spill a Coke on themselves, like regular people?
“When was the last time you saw your brother?” I asked Father Eduardo.
“Nine months,” he said. “Maybe a year. Maybe longer.”
“You ready to see him again?”
“I am,” he said.
Out on the street, a Miami police cruiser came to a stop at the corner. I called Fiona. “You see that cop?” I said.
“Hard not to,” she said.
“Get his plates. He gets out of the car and starts heading toward the office before you make your move? Shoot him.”
“Really?”
“Really,” I said.
There was a pause. “You mean with the paintball gun?”
“Yes,” I said. “How’s Barry doing?”
“He’s sweating through his pants,” she said. “He’s agreed to get my car cleaned so we won’t have a problem.”
“That’s just great,” I said. “Let me know if you hear anything important when Junior and Killa walk up.”
“That’s Killa?”
“Doesn’t look the part?”
“I guess I imagined he’d be smaller,” she said, and hung up.
Out the window, Junior and Killa were making slow progress across the grounds. Every person who walked by got stared at. “Not trying to be too inconspicuous,” I said.
“Not Junior’s way,” Father Eduardo said.
“Open up your office door and stand there,” I said. “Let your brother see you and let Junior see you.”
“Should I look worried?”
“Are you?”
“No,” he said. “I have faith.”
“That’s good,” I said. I lifted up my shirt and showed him my paintball gun. “I have this.”
“I told you,” he said, but I put my hand up.
“It’s a toy,” I said, and handed it to him.
He hefted it a bit and then gripped it completely in his hand. “This feels comfortable,” he said.
“It’s perfectly legal,” I said.
Father Eduardo looked down the barrel. “What is it loaded with?”
“That one is loaded with paintballs filled with a fun, flesh-eating acid. The one on my ankle has pepper spray. In case I’m mugged.”
“Mikey,” Sam said from the window, “they’re getting close. Better have the padre move to the door.”
Father Eduardo gave me back my paintball gun and then walked over to his double doors and opened both wide. His frame filled up the open space impressively. He might have been religious, but he was still hell to look at.
I sat down behind Father Eduardo’s desk and placed my gun between my legs. Sam stretched out across the leather sofa to my right, leaving the conference table and the other sofa open for our guests. I closed my eyes, leaned back, relaxed and waited. In a few moments, I heard the slap of Junior and Killa’s footfalls in the hallway.
Even if you can’t see someone, you can tell a lot about them by listening to the way they walk. Put two people next to each other, and evolutionary science tells us that they will attempt to keep pace with each other. They will match speed. They will match stride. They will do all they can not to be left behind. From listening to the syncopated rhythms of the footfalls, I could tell that one of the two men was dragging a leg ever so slightly. Instead of making a definitive
clop-clop
sound, it made a
clop-clap-clop
, which meant he was dragging his foot instead of lifting it completely off the ground.
A weak knee.
Which probably meant a weak hip.
Since both men were rather physical specimens, my bet was on Killa, because his bulk looked more like something that came from a needle and not a dedication to working out. And that meant he probably had tendons and ligaments stretched beyond their normal limits. Which meant they could be snapped like a twig.
I opened my eyes in time to see the proof of my assumption. Killa was a half step behind Junior as they got to the door, all silent violence and dressed-down aggression and, it appeared, a bothersome medial collateral ligament.
Father Eduardo stepped forward and met both Junior and Killa before they could get inside. This wasn’t part of the plan.
“Jaime,” he said, using Junior’s real name, and then he did the damnedest thing. He hugged him. The two men embraced for just a few seconds, and I thought, Oh, no, this is a setup. This is about El Salvador
.
Father Eduardo then turned to Killa and said, “Adrian, my brother,” and hugged him, too.
Sam hadn’t moved on the sofa. Or at least hadn’t moved much. Just his hand, which held his cell phone. Neither of us had real guns on us, as per Father Eduardo’s instruction, but I had a pretty good feeling that Fiona had a MAC-10 in her trunk for a very special occasion.
The three men—all well over six feet, all well over 250 pounds—stood there in the hallway for a moment and stared at each other. They looked like triplets. “Come in,” Father Eduardo said eventually, “meet my friends.”
Father Eduardo stepped aside, and that’s when Junior got his first look at me. He wasn’t pleased.
“You,” he said.
“Me,” I said.
“You stole my BlackBerry,” he said.
I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled it out. “You’ve got terrible coverage,” I said, and tossed it back to him.
He saw Sam on the sofa. “Your girlfriend looks different,” he said.
“Just a different outfit,” I said. “You want your car keys?”
“I already got rid of that car,” he said.
“You know these motherfuckers?” Killa said.
“Language,” Junior said. “You’re in a church.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “This is my church now, and I allow for all kinds of language.”
Junior looked mildly surprised. “Oh, really? Is that true, Eduardo?”
Father Eduardo began to speak, but before he could get a word out, Sam jumped up from the sofa, took two steps and slapped him. Hard. “You don’t talk,” Sam said. “Nobody talks but the big man. You hear? He wants you to talk, he’ll tell you when.”
Killa made a move toward Sam, which didn’t surprise me in the least, but it was especially telling. Junior grabbed him by the shoulder and yanked him back. “Stop,” he said. “You don’t do anything unless I say so, remember? Same rules.”
“Maybe you want to chain your puppy up?” Sam said. “I’d hate for him to get hurt.”
“Do you know me?” Killa said to Sam.
“Yeah,” Sam said, “I know all the pretty babies. Are you a pretty baby? I like all the pretty drawings you have on your arms. Did your mommy draw those?”
I didn’t know where Sam was getting this stuff, but I liked it. Killa thought he was tough—and by the looks of him, he probably was, at least in the conventional street sense, which is a different scale—but Sam could put him down without breaking a sweat. That’s the difference between striking fear in someone by looking tough and actually being tough. Killa was probably pretty good at shooting someone in the back of the head, but Sam didn’t even need a gun.
“All right,” I said calmly. “Why don’t we all just sit down and then we can make threats to each other after everyone knows what the score is. Father, why don’t you put your big ass down on a chair, and maybe your buddies will follow suit.”
Father Eduardo, whose face was still bright red from where Sam slapped it, sat down at the table covered with blueprints. Junior and Killa didn’t bother to move.
“Please,” I said to Junior, “you’re my guests here. Have a seat before my guy Finley puts you down.”
Sam cracked his knuckles, but they didn’t make any noise, which sort of understated the effect he was aiming for, so he cracked his neck, too, and it sounded like someone dropped a piano down a flight of stairs. “Ah,” he said, “now I’m loose.”
Junior and Killa exchanged glances and then sat down in the two seats directly in front of the desk, not bothering with the empty sofa. At least they knew they wanted to be in front of me.
“Good,” I said. “Now, I understand you have a proposal for me?”
“Who are you?” Junior said.
“I’m the person who didn’t kill you in your own home,” I said. “But you can call me Solo.”
Junior laughed. “You have balls,” he said. “In here, you have balls. There’s two of you. And maybe you’ve got this snitching priest on your side. So you think, Okay, I got God working for me now, too, in addition to whatever you think you’re going to tell me. But I’ve got an army. You heard? I make a phone call, and I can have two thousand people here. You step outside, you won’t talk to me with such disrespect.”
“I gave you back your phone,” I said. “Why don’t you go ahead and make that call? I’m happy to wait. And while you do that, I’ll have my man Finley here make a call, too, and by the time you’ve hung up, Julia Pistell’s throat will be slit. Nice girl, by the way. Ever met her? Sweet as can be. Yeah, we got her down at the Ace Hotel. She thinks she won a contest through her college. How long you think it will take the police—and not the ones on your measly payroll—to put her dead body and your house together?”
“Who?” Killa said. And when Junior didn’t say anything, he said it again. “Who?”
“Nice you brought your owl with you,” Sam said from the sofa.
“Shut up, Adrian,” Junior said. “I’m trying to think.”
I caught Father Eduardo’s eye. He looked ... impressed. But this wasn’t anywhere near over yet.
“You said your name is Solo?” Junior said.
“That’s what I said you could call me,” I said.
“What’s the nature of your business, Solo?”
“My business? You could say I take over distressed companies and then, when they’re profitable, I sell them. Why, you looking for an investor?”
“I guess I’m trying to figure out why you’d align yourself with someone who has a history of selling his partners out.”
“Align? You think this is an alignment? Father Eduardo works for me. You think you’re the only person who ever tried to blackmail someone?” I said. “I understand you want to utilize Father Eduardo’s existing infrastructure to run your business—would that be correct? I know you came in with this revenge-and-reward business, but the truth is that you see a good business model here. Right? Let’s just be honest, businessman to businessman. I’ve done pretty well here, haven’t I?”