Even in late November the Rio Grande Valley was baking hot. It was one a.m. and the temperature was still 85 gringo degrees.
Ornela was only a hundred yards from the river when the coyote she had hired to take her across turned around and said, ” There’s going to be an additional charge…” And he had a gun in his hand.
Eric was about to make his first trip across the same river, with a team of cocaine smugglers. He wished like hell that he could just go back to his old job in Alaska, but if he tried to run a dozen of his relatives would die.
When he had gotten caught in bed with the drug lord’s woman he had expected a slow painful death. Now he was finding out that they weren’t going to let him off that easy.
And here, for your reading pleasure, is our free excerpt:
Chapter 1
Mexico City
Sunday Morning, January 3rd.
She had just said goodbye, just leaned down to kiss him and then she headed for the door and he was watching that gorgeous ass swaying across the hotel room and she opened the door SMACK the fist of the guy in the black suit crashed into her face and she fell CLUMP to the floor like a sandbag.
Eric jolted to a sitting position on the bed but then froze as the well-dressed, well-groomed Mexican guy stepped over her body, calmly, like she was a puddle and his shoes were too shiny, too expensive to touch her. After him, two other guys stepped into the room and closed the door. Big scary guys wearing tight black suits. One took up a position near the door and the other one checked in the bathroom, began searching the closets, doing his real obvious bodyguard routine.
Eric was nude, without even a sheet over him. He couldn’t breathe and he couldn’t take his eyes off Señor Debonair, who sauntered across the room and lowered himself into the plush chair across from the foot of the bed.
“I hope it was good. Your last time…”
He smiled as he said it, slowly flexing the wrist on his punching hand. Eric couldn’t speak. The Mexican regarded him with amusement, then spoke in Spanish to the others.
“Clean her up. Get her out of here. Take her to the bodega.”
One of the big guys bent over, grabbed Celia—Eric remembered that her name was Celia—lifted her like she was a Kleenex and took her into the bathroom.
“So was she good? Your last memory?”
Eric heard the words. They were in English; he heard them but he didn’t understand anything. He was afraid to move and he was sitting nude, frozen on the bed.
“I understand,” said the suave Mexicano, “You’re having trouble processing the last few minutes, right? So I’ll lay it out for you. You fucked my girlfriend so Diego there,” he indicated the big guy by the door, “is going to kill you. See how he’s smiling? He doesn’t understand English but he knows I’m going to give you to him. That makes him happy. He thinks I’m going to give him Celia, too. Probably I will.”
“I didn’t know.” It came out as a hoarse croak.
“You didn’t know she was my girlfriend?”
Eric nodded, grateful to be understood.
“I believe you. Why would she tell you about me? Women tell lies; they’re horny bitches. At least the ones I like are, but ignorance is no excuse. You fucked my woman; you have to die.”
“But why? If I didn’t know?”
“Because you’re in Mexico now, gringo. Different culture; different rules. If only you and me knew about this, maybe (small chance) but maybe I could let you disappear, but two of my guys here know what you did. If I let you live, they would talk and then nobody would be afraid of me.”
Eric couldn’t think of a word to say.
“It’s bad luck for you, amigo, but you got yourself a date with Diego and I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but he likes to take his time. He likes to improvise. It could take you a long time to die.”
The man stood, like an actor playing someone very distinguished, looked around the room with a sneer and turned to leave.
“I won’t watch. After the first ten times or so it just got boring. Diego really drags it out. I think his record is eleven hours. People scream a lot and beg. They cry and shit themselves. I can’t waste eleven hours every time I need to have somebody whacked. I wouldn’t have gotten where I am in this business if I hadn’t learned how to delegate. Put the right guy in the right job and let him do it, you know? And Diego loves his job.”
Chapter 2
Barrio Coyoacan, Mexico City, (same day)
A few hours later, in another part of the city, Dr. Hilario Villareal ushered one of his nurses into his office and shut the door behind her.
“Please sit down.”
He sat down behind his desk. The tall woman in the nurse’s uniform took the patient’s chair in front of the desk.
“This is hard for me to say, Ornela.”
He was obviously uncomfortable.
“Is there something wrong with my work?”
“No. Your work has been perfect, as I knew it would be. It’s just that yesterday my wife came by the office.”
“Yes, I met her. She seems nice.”
“She is,” he leaned forward to emphasize the point. “She is a very nice person. But, uh, she is unfortunately also very jealous, even though I’ve never given her any reason to be. And well, she thinks that you are a threat to her.”
“Me?”
“Yes. I tried to convince her otherwise, but it was no use. We had a long conversation about all this last night and she says that from now on I can only hire ugly nurses, or else…” His voice trailed away.
“You’re kidding.”
“No. I’m sorry. I’m not.”
“So that’s it? I’m fired?”
The doctor stood, picked up an envelope from his desk and handed it to her.
In the break room, she took off the uniform, put it in the laundry hamper and put on jeans and a loose-fitting high-necked top. Subway clothes, chosen to avoid being noticed, not that it helped much.
Before she left the building, she opened the envelope and was surprised to see large peso bills. She counted them and realized that Dr. Villareal had paid her a month’s salary for one week’s work. At least he’s generous, she thought. A wimp, but not stingy.
Once on the sidewalk she found a payphone and called Alfa.
“I’ll be home early, cousin. I could pick up the kids at school.”
“No, Ornela, you can’t. A guy from Immigration was just here and he had a cop with him. They asked for you by name and they know you’re from Argentina. You can’t come back here. They could be watching the place.”
Chapter 3
Tom Clark spent the morning evading surveillance in Monterrey. By noon he had changed cars and taxis a dozen times, changed hats and sunglasses half a dozen times, gone out the back door of two stores and sat for long periods in two parks, carefully scanning all traffic, both pedestrian and vehicular. He was a senior DEA agent stationed in Laredo, Texas with clearance to work in Mexico and he went through this routine about once per month, in order to protect his best source, a captain in the Nuevo Laredo, Mexico police department. He assumed that the captain took equal precautions, since he had survived their meetings for ten years.
Clark reached the restaurant, if it deserved the name, at noon and began to read the local paper and watch a soccer game on TV. Since his grandparents had emigrated to the US from Mexico, and he himself had not spoken English until he entered first grade, there was nothing in his appearance or speech to mark him as a foreigner.
At one p.m. Captain Delgado arrived, and after the usual abrazo, or welcoming hug, slid into the opposite side of the booth. They exchanged pleasantries about family, the weather, soccer, ordered beer and food, and eventually got around to business.
“I hear you guys had some fireworks last night,” said Clark.
“Yeah. Three guys were ambushed coming out of the Gata Salvaje. Two shooters using AK-47s. Over a hundred rounds fired.”
“Who died?”
“Lefty’s guys. I’m not sure how high up in the organization they were, but the Gata Salvaje is a fairly expensive house, so they weren’t mules. Mid-level, I think.”
“I hope they enjoyed it. Their last time at the Wild Cat.”
“Yeah, one would hope.”
“Any idea what they did wrong?”
“I heard that they knew about a load of coke that got busted last week about forty miles north of town.”
“That was Lefty’s coke?”
“He says no, but Nestor’s guys say it wasn’t theirs either. You get anything on it?
“We caught four mules and fifty kilos, but none of them are talking, as usual, and they’re facing real hard time. I figured you’d know who they were working for.”
“I should, but nobody knows nothing. It’s weird.”
“And if these three dead guys were merely suspected of ratting out that load you would expect them to disappear and turn up six months from now in a gravel pit. AK-47s in the red-light district is bad for business, bad for the city’s image.”
“True, but nobody gives a shit about the city’s image anymore. They should, because bad headlines eventually bring down too much heat, but all they’re worried about is the tax. If they don’t know whose load it was, they don’t know if anybody paid the tax on it. They figure maybe you guys bust one load in ten, so maybe there were nine loads that got through, or more. Somebody’s doing good business and they’re not sharing the wealth. The army thinks Lefty’s holding out on them and the Feds think Nestor is shorting them. Nobody trusts anybody.”
“Hell of a mess,” Clark said with a grin.
“Fucking democracy. One thing you can say about the PRI, they knew how to run the drug business.”
Clark smiled, but made no comment. He had heard the captain’s views on politics before. It was a fact that during the seventy-year long dictatorship of the PRI, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, the drug business had been a lot more orderly. In every major border city one guy had the plaza, meaning ‘the franchise’, he ran the show. He hustled his own dope but the territory was also open to others, as long as they paid a tax of ten percent or more. The guy with the plaza got very, very rich, but he had to pass along huge sums to the federal police, the army and the local cops. It was a simple, effective system. A local cop could live better than a doctor and the brother of the president could end up with half a billion dollars in Swiss banks. Now and then one of the plaza holders would get out of control and have to be taken care of, but that was not really a problem.
Sometimes the big guy would get a swelled head and want to play the role of patrón. He would hire songwriters to compose ballads about himself, or build hospitals or soccer fields in his native village. He might start using his own product and become unreliable in business. The DEA would ask questions and the Mexican government would have to do something. The offender would become a public scapegoat, forced to go to jail for a while. Of course, he would have his own private wing of the prison, his own chef, his own women, and he would continue to run his operation by phone. But the government could say, “We are fighting the drug lords.” It was a beautiful system but then the Mexicans woke up and demanded free elections and a free press. The one party dictatorship ended and the dust hadn’t settled yet. The current president’s party only had thirty percent in the congress and he couldn’t control the bureaucracy. For example, in Nuevo Laredo the army chose Lefty Galindo from Juárez to have the plaza and the Federal Ministry of Justice and national police chose Nestor Alvarado from the Gulf cartel in Matamoros. The end result was bodies in the street and bad, bad headlines. Fucking democracy.
“So is there a new guy operating here or not?” asked Clark.
“Believe me, you are not the only one who wants to know. If there’s a new unauthorized organization here, they are stupid pinche cabrones because we will find them.”
“Is there a reward?”
“Two. Both sides are offering a reward. If they didn’t they would be admitting it’s their operation.”
“Well, I hope you’re the one who collects both rewards. If there is in fact such a rogue organization of lunatics.”
“My personal opinion is that there is no new organization,” said Delgado. “Nobody would be stupid enough to muscle in on two cartels. Lots of contrabandistas get loco from using their own product, but nobody gets that crazy.”
“But somebody whacked Lefty’s guys in front of the Gata Salvaje. Somebody has to pay for that.”
“Of course,” said Delgado. “Lefty’s guys died, so he’s gotta take out some of Nestor’s people. He has no choice.”
“And he has to do it publicly.”
“Of course.” The captain finished his beer and set it on the table with a disgusted sneer. “It’s fucking anarchy is what it is.”
“Well, it keeps things interesting.”
They talked about other smugglers and other operations for a half hour. Delgado revealed as much as he needed to and no more. Finally, Clark slid an envelope across the table and stood. “Thanks for keeping me posted.”
“No problem. Give my regards to Tío Sam.”
The monthly payment from the DEA wasn’t much, but it was many times what the captain made from the police department. He also worked for Lefty and Nestor both, so his total income was roughly forty times his official salary. It was a dangerous high wire act, but he had developed expensive tastes over the years. In fact, he owned the Gata Salvaje, and it wasn’t his most expensive whorehouse.
Chapter 4
Eric had a lot of time to think that day. Two more goons came to the hotel room and then they escorted him to a service elevator and out the maintenance exit of the hotel. Parked by the loading dock was a black Cadillac Escalade with tinted windows all around. They bound his ankles and wrists with plastic handcuffs, tied a rag over his eyes, threw him in behind the rear seat, and covered him with a blanket. Before they closed the door, he heard the man in black say, “Take him to the bodega.”
He tried but he couldn’t keep track of time. All he could hear was a CD the driver was playing, the greatest hits of Los Tigres del Norte. He really couldn’t stand the norteño or border style of accordion-based Mexican country music but now he became very attached to it because he knew that when it stopped things were going to get worse for him. He kept reliving everything that had happened to him since he had awakened that morning, trying to figure out where he could have done something different, but it had all happened too fast.
The black SUV drove on and the Tigers of the North sang their greatest hits over and over. Occasionally the truck would stop for a while. Sometimes one of the front doors would open and close but the motor kept running. Then they would drive on and Los Tigres would keep strumming. Most of their songs were about narcotraficantes, or drug smugglers, but Eric noted than none of them mentioned torture or execution. Los Tigres preferred to sing about brave poor boys who became rich by outwitting the gringos of the Patrulla Fronteriza, the Border Patrol.
At some point Eric was aware that his personal darkness became more absolute. Even under a blanket and blindfolded, he could tell that the sun had gone down. Not long after that, he noticed that the Escalade had turned onto a gravel road. By then he had memorized every line of every song, even if he wasn’t sure what a lot of the words meant, and his chief worry was that he would piss in the back of the vehicle. That would surely infuriate his captors, but then they could hardly punish him worse than they had already promised.
***
Eventually the gravel turned to dirt and then, a half hour later the truck stopped moving and the motor shut down. Suddenly the fear that had been sucking the breath out of him all day got much worse. He had been trying not to think about what they intended to do to him. They were going to torture him to death. Maybe Celia would suffer the same treatment. Would he have to watch what they did to her?
They jerked him out of the SUV, removed the blindfold and cut the plastic ties around his ankles. He was standing in a circular driveway in front of a large two-story brick house with a red tile roof. There were other small sheds, corrals and outbuildings scattered around, illuminated by mercury lights on poles. One large steel framed building with corrugated siding looked like it might be a barn or garage for large equipment.
A guard came out of the house and frisked him, then used a small electronic wand to search him again. Then they led him inside the house, down a hallway and locked him in an unfinished room in a back corner of the building. There was an attached bathroom and he quickly enjoyed the most sensuous piss of his life. After that, he paced back and forth in the small open space, but there was really nothing to do but lie down on the bed, where he tried and failed to sleep. His body was producing enough adrenaline for a combat platoon and his eyelids were stuck open. Finally, around 4 a.m., his mind finally shut down. It was almost twenty-four hours since he had been kidnapped.
Chapter 5
Ornela sat on a park bench and considered her options. She had arrived in Mexico on a one-way ticket from Buenos Aires two months earlier, sure that she could find some kind of work, but she had been wrong. The hospitals were all unionized and foreigners were not welcome. She had found a job working for a doctor in private practice, but the day before her first payday the doctor had let her know that he expected sex on the side. She had quit and he had paid her nothing. She then found work with another doctor in private practice and the same thing happened. And after that it had happened again. And now, at her fourth job, she was fired for not being ugly enough.
She felt stupid that she had not foreseen the problems, but who would have thought that in real life Mexican men would behave even worse than they do in soap operas?
She knew that she could find a job in a convenience store or a market, but she would be paid half what a citizen would earn. That would be enough to pay her cousin Alfonsina for her food, but she would have nothing left to send to her mother in Argentina. She would be sleeping on the floor in her cousin’s small apartment for ever.
She had really screwed up.
Like many Argentines, she had always thought of Mexico as a rich country, a land of opportunity where smart, hard-working people could get ahead, but she had found the reality to be very different. Even after two months, she was still suffering culture shock. The city was so much dirtier than Buenos Aires. There were so many more beggars. Pollution and crime were worse.
And the prejudice against people with Indian blood was much worse.
She sat on the park bench for half an hour, but it took less time than that to make her decision. Finally she found a pay phone, called Alfa to set up a meeting for later that afternoon and then headed for an open air flea market where she spent an hour buying a used backpack and then decided to walk to Alfa’s place. It was six kilometers and a microbus would only cost three pesos, but she had the time and figured she could use the exercise. She was going to be walking quite a bit more than six kilometers pretty soon.
She arrived at the church a few blocks from Alfa’s at six p.m. and found her cousin sitting in the back. They hugged and then sat down.
“Ornela, you don’t have to do this. Something will turn up. What you’re doing is very dangerous.”
“ Maybe. Maybe not. Did you bring my stuff?”
“Yeah.”
Alfonsina picked a plastic trash sack off the floor and placed it on the pew between them.
“I didn’t want to bring your suitcase. I thought they might be watching.”
“Good plan. I don’t need it anyway.”
Ornela began going through the sack and transferring items of clothing into the backpack.
“I’m not going to be able to take all this. I need to save room for food and water. Can I leave some of this with you?”
“Of course, but I really wish you would reconsider. This is too scary. If you hang on for awhile the situation in Argentina might get better.”
“It might, but I don’t have the money to buy a plane ticket to go back. Trust me, cousin. I’ve looked at it from every angle. Can’t go back, can’t stay. So, I have to keep moving.”
A man sat down next to Alfa and whispered, “Good evening, ladies.” Then he kissed Alfa on the cheek. “Josefina is watching the kids.”
Alfa’s husband was the head chef at a five star hotel in the zona rosada, the rich part of town, but he barely earned enough to keep his wife and two kids in a small three room apartment. After seven years working at the hotel he had enough seniority to avoid night shifts, and considered himself lucky.
“I’m glad you could get away. Gregorio, please talk some sense into Ornela.”
Alfa’s husband rolled his eyes and smiled. “I’m not going to waste my time on a fool’s errand like that.”
He handed Ornela a small piece of paper.
“After Alfa told me what you’re planning I made a few phone calls. When you get to the border, call that guy. He’s got a good reputation. For $300 he can get you across, but that’s it; no transportation after that. It’s good that you’re Argentine. If you get caught they can’t send you back to Mexico. You can get a lawyer and then just disappear.”
Ornela stared at the paper.
“Thank you very much, Gregorio. I have heard bad stories about the coyotes. I wasn’t sure how I was going to find a good one. This will really help. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome, but I wish you’d stay. You’re a hell of a good influence on the kids.”
“Your kids are going to be fine. They’re on the right path.”
“They’re going to miss you.”
“And I’m going to miss them. Please explain why I had to sneak off like this.”
Their goodbyes took awhile, but finally they were on the sidewalk outside the church.
“If you don’t hear from me within two weeks… well, don’t worry. You will hear from me sooner than that.”
Ornela walked the four kilometers to the subway station and then it was only four stops to Terminal de Autobus Norte. As big as a major airport in the United States, it is only one of four gigantic bus stations serving Mexico City. She walked through the building, past the ticket counters for dozens of bus lines, serving destinations all over northeast Mexico. Finally she found the one she needed.
“One way, direct, to Laredo, please.”
“Texas or Mexico?”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Nuevo Laredo is in Mexico. Laredo, Texas is on the other side of the river.”
“Nuevo Laredo, please.”
Chapter 6
Monday, January 4
The torture began with twenty-four hours of waiting. Every sound in the hallway made his chest tighten and he would feel dizzy. Once he heard what sounded like three people walking down the hallway toward his room. He was sure they were almost to his door but then the sounds changed direction and faded away. He broke into sobs, ran into the bathroom, puked into the toilet and then lay gasping on the tile floor. After that, he just sat in the only chair and stared at the wall.
Sometimes he thought he could recall Celia’s face but her features kept dissolving in his mind. They brought him food but he couldn’t eat. He stayed in the chair, staring at the wall. He tried to breathe steadily but his fear and adrenaline kept his heartbeat racing. He tried not to think about what they said they were going to do to him but he couldn’t avoid it. Hours passed as he sat in the chair and tried to control his fear. He watched the shadow of the bars on the window move from one side of the room to the other, then fade and disappear with the darkness. Still, he couldn’t breathe normally and could not stop thinking about what they were going to do to him.
The second morning he awoke fully clothed, sleeping on top of the blanket on the bed, but he couldn’t remember when he had moved from the chair to the bed. While he was thinking about that, the door opened to reveal a young guy with a Colt-style 1911 model .45 caliber pistol stuck in his belt. He stayed well out in the hall and motioned Eric to come with him. As Eric stepped into the hall the guard pointed to the center of the house. Eric led the way, walking slowly. The guard followed five steps behind, with one hand on the grip of his pistol.
The man in the black suit was waiting in a large living room, sitting behind a large mahogany table. Diego and several others stood behind him.
“First, we have some questions. What’s that?” He tossed a small object to the other side of the table. Eric stepped forward to look at it.
“May I?” he asked.
“Go ahead.”
Eric picked up the device, which looked something like a cell phone. He pushed a button on the side and held it in for a few seconds. The display lit up and showed a message: “This Garmin ETrex belongs to Eric Kanaris”.
“It’s my GPS receiver. You found it in my suitcase.”
“What do you use it for?”
“I use it in my work. I’m a land surveyor. In Spanish, topógrafo or agrimensor. This receives radio signals from satellites and gives the latitude and longitude of wherever I’m at. So I know my exact location.”
“If you’re a topógrafo you should know where you are. Turn it off.”
Eric turned it off and replaced it on the table.
“I work in Alaska every summer. In very remote areas, hundreds of miles from the nearest road. If we need to call a helicopter, for instance, we give them our coordinates from that.”
“And this?” The man slid a folded map across the table.
Eric picked it up and unfolded it. “You got this out of my suitcase also. It’s a topographic map of an area I worked in last summer. Several points on this map are also stored on the GPS receiver.”
“And these guys?” He slid over some photographs printed on a computer printer. Eric picked them up.
“I see you found my camera also. These guys work for me in Alaska. These pictures were taken in October. The snow was just starting. A week later it got bad and we quit for the season.”
“What race are they?”
“One’s Eskimo. The other one’s Aleut.”
The drug dealer looked at him for several seconds with no discernible expression on his face.
“You ever get lost in those woods up there?”
“No.”
“Because of that.” He pointed at the GPS receiver.
“Not just because of that. Those are cool toys, but I’ve been surveying since I was fifteen and we never had those when I started. I learned with just a map and a compass. I can find my way pretty well with just the sun. At night the stars are even better.”
“How far can you walk in a day?”
“Depends on the terrain. The grade. How much I’m carrying. On level country twenty miles is doable. I think that’s thirty-two kilometers.”
The man slid some more photos across the table. Eric glanced at them but didn’t pick them up.
“I took those last November at Lookout Mountain, Georgia, at a school where they teach hang gliding. In Spanish it’s called aladelta.”
“How long can you stay up in one of those?”
“Guys who are good can stay up for hours. The most I managed was about five seconds.”
“Five seconds?” The man laughed and the guards imitated him.
“You don’t jump off a mountain the first day,” said Eric. “It’s like learning to ski. You start off practicing on small hills and work your way up. I pulled a muscle in my leg on the third day and had to quit. I never got my license.”
“I was beginning to think you were sort of smart, gringo, but I was wrong. Anybody who jumps off a mountain hanging from one of those things is fucking crazy.”
“If you’re careful, it’s safe. If you take stupid risks, you die. I imagine it’s a bit like the drug business.”
“No, in the drug business even if you’re careful it’s dangerous.”
Eric was starting to calm down. The smirk on Diego’s face was impossible to ignore, but answering questions was a good way to stall for time. The man in black had been suspicious of the GPS receiver. Did he suspect Eric of being an undercover cop or a spy for another drug cartel? If he were, then the meeting with Celia would not have been an accident. It would have been planned as a way to get close to her boyfriend.
“Okay. I’m still going to kill you, but first you’re going to work for me for a while. For now you’re going to train some of my people.”
“To do what?”
“To not get lost. Last week some of them got lost and it cost me one hundred kilos of cocaine. You seem like a careful man. Train my mules so my coke makes it to San Antonio safely. Any questions?”
“Lots. How many people? How much are they carrying? Where do we cross the river? How far do we have to walk? Do any of the mules speak English?”
“I’m just setting up my operation in this area,” said the man in black. “For now I want to move one hundred kilos per week. You can have as many mules as you want. We can drive to the river. You’ll pick the spot. We cross at night, naturally. On the other side, the Border Patrol only operates within a mile or so of the river, unless they’re in hot pursuit. The further you go before you transfer the coke to a vehicle, the less risk. We go every week of the year, except for the week of December Twelfth, the festival of the Virgin of Guadalupe. In the summer it gets to forty-six, which in gringo degrees is one hundred and fifteen. None of the mules speak English.”
Eric thought for a minute. “I’ll need an interpreter. My Spanish is not that good. Get me a chilango. I can barely understand norteño Spanish. Also, if you want me to do this right, I’m going to have to do some research. I’ll need at least a week. I could start teaching people how to use a compass tomorrow, but surveying and moving drugs past the Border Patrol are two different things. I’ll bet there’s a ton of material on the internet about the Border Patrol and how they work. There will be books I can order. That information could save time and money.”
Eric paused for breath. He was winging it like crazy, trying to sound like he could smuggle dope better than any Mexican on the river. He was being given a reprieve! He began to feel dizzy with happiness. He was not going to die today! And given enough time he should be able to figure out a way to escape from these guys. He plunged ahead.
“And your people who got lost? Are they in jail? If any escaped, I want to talk to them. They have information I could use.”
“Three of them made it back but you can’t talk to them because they’re dead. Look, these are all good ideas but you don’t have a week to get ready. We have a schedule. Customers to keep happy. If they can’t get their coke from us they’ll buy from somebody else. They’re addicts, you know? They can’t wait a week just because we fucked up and lost a shipment. Raimundo here,” he indicated one of the men behind him, “is taking a load over tonight. He used to smuggle people across a few years ago. You go with him. Get your feet wet, right? When you get back, we’ll talk.”
He searched through the stack of papers in front of him and held up a picture of a good-looking blonde teenager.
“Who’s this?”
Eric didn’t say anything.
“You don’t have to tell me who she is. Yesterday we did our own internet searching. On you. We know where your daughter lives with your ex-wife in Iowa. We know where she goes to school. We have a copy of your divorce decree from her mother.” He held up another photo. “We know where your sister lives and where she works. We know that every day she visits your mother, who’s in the Four Seasons Assisted Living Center. You do a good job for me and all those people will live long happy lives. You won’t, but they will.”
There was no comment expected from Eric. The man picked up the GPS receiver and tossed it to Raimundo.
“Destroy that.” Then he looked at Eric. “No one knows the location of this place and no one is going to.”
He made a gesture of dismissal and Eric’s guard pointed to the door. Eric turned and started walking.
Continued….
Click on the title below to download the entire book and keep reading
Lara Reznik, a native New Yorker, attended college at the University of New Mexico where she studied under esteemed authors Rudolfo Anaya and Tony Hillerman. Ambidextrous from birth, Lara preferred her right-brained creative side, but discovered she could make a better living with her left-brain skills, so entered the I.T. field in 1995. Lara's written and optioned three screenplays in addition to her novel, THE GIRL FROM LONG GUYLAND.
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