Rebel Island (11 page)

The meeting was held in a closed club called Gatsby’s on
the north side of Kingsville. Someone, perhaps to prove they’d actually read the Fitzgerald book in high school, had duplicated the eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg on a billboard outside. The parking lot was marbled with weeds. The front doors were elegant mahogany with beveled glass, which did not at all fit the plain white building that might have been anything—a warehouse, a beer barn, a pawnshop.

Three cars arrived within fifteen minutes of each other. Two new Mercedes sedans, each with Coahuila license plates, and a red Ford F-350 that belonged to Papa Stoner, one of South Texas’s most notorious middlemen in the heroin trade.

Stoner was sixty-two. Thirty-three of those years had been spent in prison. He was called Papa Stoner because he had a son, Eduardo, “Stoner, Jr.,” who had gone on to an illustrious career as a gang leader on the South Side of San Antonio. Eduardo had been murdered by rivals shortly before his twenty-fifth birthday, but Papa was still proud of him. He’d avenged himself ruthlessly on his son’s killers, and still wore Eduardo’s name tattooed on his arm, encircled in snakes and flames.

Papa Stoner came to the meeting alone, unlike his guests. Mr. Orosco and Mr. Valenzuela each brought two guards. Traveling with any less would have been suicide for such important men.

They met in the restaurant’s bar, which still smelled of stale beer and cigarettes and lemon furniture polish. Papa Stoner had personally inspected the place that morning. He’d found no traps, no wires. He’d taken care of bribing the right cops to make sure their meeting would not be disturbed. When you’re entertaining guests from across the border, after all, you want to show them hospitality.

Orosco was the nervous one. His operation was still small. This was a bold play for him, going behind the backs of the major cartels. He dressed too well for the meeting—an Armani suit, leather shoes, a new Patek Philippe watch. His hair was parted in the middle, well oiled, so he looked a bit too much like a maître d’.

Valenzuela was older, more confident. He wore beige slacks and a white guayabera as he did every day. He was a large, messy man with unkempt hair. Everything about him suggested disorganization, but he ran one of the tightest drug operations in Central America. Not a kilo escaped his notice, and he never forgot a name or an insult.

The men talked for almost an hour. They agreed that the border war between the cartels was a major opportunity for smaller players. They could form a new pipeline, quadruple their profits within the year. With the cartels at each other’s throats, the border could become a free trade area, a NAFTA for drugs.

Stoner just about had Orosco and Valenzuela convinced. Everything would be fine. They didn’t need to fear reprisals. Orosco started to relax.

Lunch arrived, specially catered from Stoner’s favorite Kingsville deli. The four guards took the meal boxes from the delivery boy at the door. Valenzuela and Stoner were breaking out the cold beer when Orosco’s phone rang.

No one knew where he was. Only a select group of people had his mobile number. He answered the phone.

A man’s voice said, “Go to the bathroom.”

The line went dead.

Orosco hesitated only briefly. He’d been in the drug trade most of his life. He knew that some things went beyond logic. Most people would ignore something like a random phone call, but Orosco’s gut instincts had saved him dozens of times. He excused himself from his colleagues and went to the restroom.

He was standing at the urinal when the restaurant exploded. The restroom door blew off its hinges and smoke billowed into the room. Orosco dropped to the tiles and curled into a ball. He was shivering like a child when he stood up.

He looked into the dining room, which was now in flames. Papa Stoner, Valenzuela, the bodyguards—all sprawled motionless on the floor, their clothes smoldering and peppered with holes. The walls bubbled with fire.

Orosco ran for the exit, tripping over bodies. His eyes stung with acrid smoke. He made it outside and ripped off his smoldering jacket. Thank god he had his own car keys.

He opened the door of his Mercedes and found a note on his seat, next to a sugar-candy skull.

The note said,
They are watching. Never again.

Orosco was whimpering. His hands couldn’t work the keys. He heard sirens getting closer. He had to get away. He got in the car and slammed the door. He didn’t know why he’d been spared. Perhaps he was too insignificant to the cartels. Perhaps they wanted him on their side, so they had let him keep his life.

He turned the ignition, and the steering wheel blasted apart.

He was still alive when the paramedics found him. The police could identify him from his license plates and the ID in his wallet, which was fortunate. His face was hardly human.

Later, the police described with grudging admiration how the bomber had rigged the airbag system, turning it into a bomb that delivered high-speed metal filament shrapnel rather than air.

Orosco lived for three days, long enough to tell the police what had happened. He served the purpose the assassin required. He spread a warning to anyone else contemplating a break with his cartel employers.

The assassin left no trace, aside from several other candy skulls strewn around the perimeter of the restaurant. The police were never able to find the man who delivered lunch. Orosco could not give a description. Orosco’s mobile phone gave no information about where the call had been placed.

It was this incident that led the media to give the assassin a name: Calavera, the skull. Some were horrified by the assassin’s efficiency. Some decided that criminals killing criminals was none of their concern. But everyone agreed: Calavera had earned his pay. He had as much capacity for mercy as the candy skulls he left in the Gatsby’s parking lot, grinning up at the eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg like some kind of challenge.

When I was done relaying the story to Maia, we were both
quiet, listening to the storm outside. There wasn’t much to say about Calavera. The story spoke for itself.

“You scuttled the boat,” Maia said. “Why?”

“I don’t want Calavera to get away.”

“Why not?”

I didn’t answer.

She was right. It would’ve been easier to leave the killer an out, let him brave the storm, hopefully sink to hell if he tried. Why would I want to cross a man like Calavera?

“You want to control the situation,” Maia said. “It’s not so much about the killer, is it? It’s about Ralph again.”

“It’s always Ralph with you, isn’t it?”

Maia dug her toes into my ribs. “I’ve got guilt, too. But I handle it differently. I wouldn’t try to stop my career. If I wasn’t pregnant, I mean.”

“Convenient excuse.”

“Oh, yeah.” She winced as she rearranged her legs. “So convenient. The point is, Ralph’s death made you feel powerless. You don’t want anything else to get out of your control. You tried leaving investigation completely, but now that you’ve got a killer on your hands, you can’t stand the idea of him getting away from you. You’re maybe not so different from Jesse Longoria.”

“All right, that was low.”

“I’m wrong, then?”

“Completely. Well…mostly.”

“Ralph, I think, would have something to say about now.”

“Yeah?”

Maia nodded. “‘You’re full of shit,
vato.
’”

Her imitation was so good it made my heart sore. “That’s irreverent.”

“Ralph was irreverent. He was also right about a lot of things.”

I pulled myself up next to Maia as best I could without jostling her. I kissed her forehead. If I didn’t look down, I could almost imagine that she wasn’t pregnant. Like old times—before everything changed.

Ralph’s death and my decision to marry Maia were not as simple as cause and effect. But they were connected emotionally. We both knew that. They resonated from the same terrible winter week.

“I miss him,” I said.

Maia’s breath was sweet and warm. Our forearms touched. The storm outside wailed steadily. I felt my eyes closing.

“Try to sleep,” Maia told me. “You need the rest.”

“Wake me up in an hour?”

“I will.”

I drifted off, imagining Ralph Arguello grinning above me, telling me I was a pretty sorry piece of work.

In my dream, I was sitting on the back deck of Peter
Brazos’s house in Port Aransas. It was nighttime, New Year’s Eve. Lights from the houses across the channel reflected like oil fire on the black water. On the edge of Brazos’s dock, a little candy skull glittered.

Peter had his computer in his lap, a vodka Collins in his hand. He was talking to me casually, telling me about his case against the drug cartel.

I wanted to warn him. I knew his house would explode any minute, but my dream self felt it would be rude to interrupt.

“It’s all about emotional leverage,” he told me. “What do they fear worse than their bosses? What makes them crumble inside? Find that, and they’ll tell you what you want. They’ll testify to anything.”

Peter had dark glittering eyes like the little skull on his dock. His skin was pale in the moonlight.

When he lifted his glass to his lips, I said, “Shouldn’t you get your family out of the house?”

He glanced behind him. “Too late,” he said sadly. “You can’t control everything.”

Then I noticed the building behind us wasn’t Brazos’s house. It was the Rebel Island Hotel. And as the windows flared red, I realized that it wasn’t Brazos’s family in there. It was Garrett and Maia.

“Here’s to leverage.” Peter Brazos lifted his glass to the flames. “Happy New Year, Tres.”

“Tres.” Maia was shaking my shoulder. “Tres, I can’t get up.
You need to get it.”

Someone was banging on the door. “Navarro!”

I had no idea how long I’d been out. My eyes still burned from the fire in my dream. I stumbled out of bed and opened the door.

Chase was standing there, looking like the ghost of keg parties past. “We went for ice.”

I blinked. “Chase, as direly important as that information is, why did you wake me up?”

“We found him.” His voice cracked with emotion. “I think you’d better come see.”

20

Jose heard yelling from the floor below.

“It’s in the kitchen,” Imelda said.

“Yes,” he said. “We will stay here.”

She bolted for the door, but he caught her arm. “It can wait, Imelda. We have enough trouble.”

She slumped down miserably on a stack of folded sheets. The linen closet was almost the size of a guest room. In the illumination of his flashlight, the shelves of folded sheets and towels reminded Jose of mummies—small bodies wrapped in white. He’d seen things like that in Mayan villages, long ago, in the Mexican army. He didn’t like the memory coming back now.

“Señora Navarre asked for tea,” Imelda murmured. “I told her I would bring her some.”

“Will she give birth here?”

“I don’t know.” Imelda shivered. The twenty years they had been married, they had lived in only hot places, but Imelda was always cold. Jose told her it was because her heart was so warm. Back home in Nuevo Laredo, she once cared for a dove with a broken leg for a month before it finally died. She would cup moths in her hand and release them outdoors rather than kill them. And the children…the last day they had gone to school, she had buttoned their shirts and fussed with their hair and slipped iced oatmeal cookies into their lunch bags.

“Jose,” she said quietly. “We can’t—”

“Don’t say it,” he warned. “It’s your own fault.”

A tear traced her cheek. He didn’t like being harsh with her, but the truth was the truth. Imelda had brought them so much trouble. Her warm heart again. She would never understand that some broken birds would not heal. They would die whether you cared for them or not. It was no mercy to prolong the pain.

He knelt beside her and took her hands. “We will survive this,
mi amor.
The storm will pass over.”

She met his eyes, but he couldn’t tell if she believed him. It seemed cruel to him, that she had suffered with a husband like him. He was not worthy of her. He had known that since the day they first met, at the dance at Señor Guerrero’s ranch. They had talked under the orange trees and watched the stars. She had been beautiful in her white dress. She had seemed to him like an empty cup, waiting to be filled with his stories. She found him fascinating, rough, perhaps a bit scary. She thought she could change him, make him into a good man. She had never given up on that idea. And he had married her anyway, knowing he would only bring her pain.

But he just kept promising things would be better. And she kept believing.

More noises came from the kitchen—distressed voices, the sounds of an argument.

“We should go down,” she said.

“No,” he told her. “Let them do what they will. They are like the storm,
mi amor.
Their sounds mean nothing.”

And they stayed in the linen room, holding hands, Jose kneeling before her as he had under the orange trees, telling her stories she chose to believe.