Thirteen #2
He did wonder why she carried it. Raines had told him that she had enemies, and she’d had death threats.
Considering her rap sheet, which he had accessed, she had been arrested and prosecuted but not convicted of assault with a deadly weapon; she had apparently shot a man who was too overbearing and threatened her.
According to the court documents the threat had been a real one.
However, her assailant had relatives high in local politics and belonging to rich families. So the judgment went against her.
Velasquez hated that. He had grown up very poor. He still remembered going to bed hungry sometimes and having nothing. And
going to school where the other children laughed at him because his parents couldn’t afford clothes for one of their five
children. He was too big and too tall to wear the hand-me-downs. So he had no new clothes and had to make do with what he
already had. It had been a painful childhood. It had been an even more painful adolescence.
His father was an alcoholic who stayed on the wrong side of the law and was eventually killed attempting a bank robbery, leaving
Velasquez to take care of his mother and siblings. Fortunately, he moved his way up through the gangs and brought in enough
money as part of the gang so that he could provide for his family, which he did. When he grew older, he married a girl from
a good family and had a son by her. His face hardened as he remembered the child. His wife had died soon after the child after
suffering agonies of grief. He hated remembering how . . .
He took a deep swallow of his drink and pushed the memory to the back of his mind as Raines introduced the young woman. As
he stood, a courtesy he always afforded women, he realized that her eyes were a bright, beautiful mint green. In all his life
he could not remember eyes that looked like that. He smiled when he did not feel like smiling.
Josie had no idea who this man was. She had already met the head man, the El Paso man, in the Poco Loco bar in Percell with
Raines sometime back, but Raines spoke of this man with reverence without naming him.
This man was elegant. He had thick jet-black hair, wavy but combed very conventionally.
His eyes were such a dark brown that they seemed black as obsidian.
He had a pale olive complexion, and he was extraordinarily handsome.
He stood up as she approached, a courtesy that was unexpected, and he gave her a slight bow.
He indicated for her to sit with one elegant gesture, his hand as beautiful as his face, strong, supple, beautiful.
Josie felt starstruck. He was the kind of man very, very rarely seen in real life. He would have looked right at home in a
castle wearing a crown. She smiled self-consciously at her own whimsy.
“Good evening,” he said in a pleasant deep voice, like deep, dark velvet. “I am Eduardo Duarte.” He didn’t add his last name.
He didn’t want her to put a reputation in her mind along with his appearance. He wasn’t sure why.
Josie was impressed despite herself. This man was extremely cordial. And hardly the sort of person you would expect to find
in a small, raw Texas town like this. She sat down at the table.
“What would you like to drink?” he added as he sat down as well.
“Something fizzy,” she replied with a grin.
He chuckled. “Raines, bring that and my usual,” he told the man, who nodded and said “yes, sir” and headed right for the bar.
Obviously, Raines had known this man for a while and was deferring to him as he had to the distributor she’d met before. This
man must be in the same chain of command somewhere.
“So you are in this with us,” he said to her and smiled gently. “Forgive me, but you do not look like the sort of person who
indulges in this pastime.”
Josie’s heart jumped but she managed to smile and fought down her sudden panic. “Isn’t there some saying, needs must when
the devil drives?” she replied unexpectedly.
“I believe this is a British thing,” he told her. Descriptive. Also very accurate.
It had to be a trick of the light, she told herself, but he had the kindest eyes she’d ever seen. Large and dark and soulful.
She was getting crazy feelings sitting close to him as her intuition kicked into overdrive. Here was a man who had known incredible
tragedies, but he was generous and kind, which was a conundrum. How could he be in this business and be those things as well?
Then she reminded herself of serial killers who were kind to elderly people and helped out around the house and brought in
groceries for old ladies. It had taken her years to learn that one trait in a person does not negate another trait. In other
words, a person can be kind in one respect and murderous in another. It was what caused juries to let killers go free. Because
they couldn’t separate the two traits; couldn’t believe people to be both kind and cruel.
“I’m sort of in trouble,” Josie told the man as Raines came back with the drinks. She sipped hers.
“Yes, I know,” the man across from her said, surprising her. “Your difficulty with the authorities is something I hope to
address soon. But first we have business that must take precedence. It was unfortunate.” He glanced at Raines with cold eyes
and Raines looked haunted. “The trial shipment was confiscated and the two of you were arrested. This will not make things
easier. And I must tell you, the big boss is not at all happy. This is why he sent me to speak with both of you,” he lied
easily, his eyes daring Raines to contradict him. He leaned forward and his eyes began to glitter. “If anything of this sort,”
he said, his voice very low and deep and gentle, “ever happens again, I will plant very nice flowering bushes over each of
you.”
Josie had to fight down a chuckle. It was a very specific threat, and it wasn’t really funny, but she had to fight hard to
resist the error to burst out laughing at the way he said it.
He raised an eyebrow. “This threat amuses you?” he asked her coolly.
“Sorry,” she said. “But I must tell you, I would look very good under a rosebush, so long as it was a nice heirloom pink one.”
He stared at her. His eyes began to twinkle. And he burst out laughing.
“And I thought this meeting would be boring,” he murmured, still chuckling as he sipped his drink, which looked like straight
whiskey with ice.
“Life is full of strange things,” she told him.
“Raines,” he told the other man, “go find something to do for an hour.”
The other man looked surprised, but he did as he was told. Eduardo turned back to Josie. He frowned, as if something about
her puzzled him. It was a long and curious appraisal, during which Josie had a flash of insight, as if she could see right
inside the man, whom she knew she had never met.
Velasquez saw that look in her eyes. He nodded as if at some spoken remark.
“Yes,” he said aloud. “We meet someone whom we have never seen before, and they are immediately family, as if we have known
them forever.”
Josie caught her breath. It was exactly what she had been thinking.
Josie and Velasquez both laughed at the irony of shared thoughts. “This is unexpected,” he told her, leaning back in his chair
to study her.
She felt oddly relaxed. The man was obviously high up in drug circles or she wouldn’t be introduced to him, but he seemed
far more like a corporate CEO than a drug dealer. He was sophisticated. His English was perfect, with only a faint accent.
His eyes were intelligent.
“Excuse me,” she said after a minute, “but you don’t look like a drug dealer.” She flushed at her own forwardness.
He just laughed. He toyed with a coin on the table. “I was thinking the same of you. Perhaps we were both destined for other
professions and took a wrong turn.”
She nodded.
“I was the first of five children,” he said. “We had nothing, as so many in rural Mexico have nothing. I ran errands for coins
for the hacienda, for the owner of the ranch where my father broke horses for little pay. Then one day he was dead, and since
I was the eldest, the responsibility for my family fell to me.” He looked up. “I was twelve years old.”
She grimaced.
He shrugged. “I could not provide food with my poor income, and the house where we lived was owned by the landlord, who wanted
it for his next wrangler. Those were bad times,” he added unnecessarily.
“I can imagine,” she replied. She leaned forward. “What did you do?” she asked, and seemed, and was, interested.
“There was a gang nearby which had ties in Mexico City. There was always work for those who would risk much to do illegal
things. It was quite profitable, as long as one was not caught.”
She nodded, intent.
“So I did illegal things. I worked my way up in one of the families, which was notorious for such things and, one day, I took
a . . . higher position. That way I could take care of my family.” He didn’t want her to know who he was. Not yet.
He didn’t add how he had worked his way up, and she didn’t ask.
“So I moved my mother and my sister and three brothers to the city with me.” His face hardened.
“Within a year, my mother died of pneumonia while I was away on business for several weeks. My siblings had been placed in an orphanage. When I returned to find this, I was almost out of my mind. At least, I realized finally, I could salvage my siblings, so I went looking for them.”
“And . . . ?” she prodded.
His eyes turned down to the table, to the coin. “You know that children are often used as livestock, in brothels . . . ?”
She ground her teeth together.
“They had been sold out of the country. It took me years to find them.” He didn’t add that this had been his reason for becoming
what he was; it was the only way for someone born in his circumstances to earn a lot of money very quickly. Some of the things
in his past haunted him, even though he’d done it to save his siblings. “However, by the time I finally found them, only one