Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
Pablo
“Speak up, Ernesto. Can’t hear you.”
I had men pick up Ernesto a week after we arrived. I’ve been holding him at the bodega—corner store—we have on Long Island. Each family has “a place” where they conduct business no one else can ever know about.
We own several small businesses in Jackson Heights.
The other three families believe we hold our inquisitions in the basement of a Queens bodega we use for our underground gambling rings.
They think there’s another in Queens that’s our torture chamber.
We let them believe whatever the fuck they want if it lets me work in peace here on Long Island.
Ernesto’s been hanging from his wrists for a day and a half.
We had him tied to a chair for a couple days.
He’s been in and out of a meat fridge. We’ve kept him guessing for weeks.
I’ve already worked him over a little each day.
Enough to keep him in constant pain, but not enough to kill him.
I’d love to do more, but he needs to be conscious.
“I know nothing else, Pablo. I came here looking for my granddaughter, and that’s it.”
“Huevonada. You’re such a horrible liar, Ernesto, and you’re being stubborn. You can end all of this if you just talk.” Bullshit.
“I can’t tell you anything I don’t know.”
I drive my fist into his gut.
“If you insist upon being useless, then I may as well just kill you. I enjoyed torturing you at first, but now it’s boring. I’d rather just get this over with.”
I watched him meet with some American businessman, but it was no one who surprised us.
I had surveillance running in his room and the area surrounding the Waldorf Astoria.
The guy is an insurance CEO who has some shady dealings with a biotech company Ernesto invested in years ago.
The conversation was as boring as watching Ernesto swing from a meat hook.
“I know you must be starving and thirsty and in pain. End it for yourself, if not for Florencia. Just tell me what I want to know. Who paid Humberto? It wasn’t just Néstor. Who did you get money from besides Humberto?”
“No one. There’s nothing left for me to tell.”
“Really? Because we intercepted a courier with a briefcase of cash. How cliché, by the way. We followed him back to the dispatch office.”
The courier was Asian with no accent besides one from Brooklyn. He was no use and a waste of time.
“How would I know who that was from if I never even received the package? I can’t answer questions I know nothing about. Maybe if you’d allowed that delivery to go through, I would have something I could tell you.”
“You really think I would let you get more money in your grubby little hands? Money that could pay for you to head back to Colombia? Money that could pay you off to stay quiet when somebody else goes after Florencia?”
“I had no idea about those fucking hitmen! That wasn’t anything I agreed to. Humberto did that on his own. Why do you think I came here searching for her?”
I try not to laugh in his face. His righteous indignation is a fucking joke.
“I think you came because she’s inconvenient. I think you would’ve told those mercenaries exactly where she was.”
“You chuchamadre! I’d never do that to my granddaughter.” The cunt of your mother.
I let the insult about Mamá slide. Not the hill to die on right now. But another one…
“Really? Because you’re the one who put her in front of Humberto. You knew exactly what kind of man he was. And you knew the risk that went along with it. That at any time she could’ve stepped wrong, and he would’ve put the hit on her. You were fine with that risk.”
“Until she met you, she was such an easygoing girl. She always obeyed instructions. She never talked back, and she never caused a fuss. If it hadn’t been for you, then she wouldn’t have ever stepped out of line.”
This fucker doesn’t know Flora for shit.
“That’s where you’re wrong. Flora has a backbone of steel.
She decided before I went to see her that she wanted to end things with Humberto.
It was hearing her conversation with that pedazo de mierda that made me realize how much danger she was in.
I rescued her before Humberto could get his hands on her. ”
“Rescued? Tell yourself that. You did nothing more than kidnap her. You won’t convince me she’s any less your hostage than I am if I don’t get to speak to her.”
“Ernesto, she’s made it painfully clear she has no wish to see you ever again. I definitely won’t force her to speak to you if she doesn’t want to.”
“Such convenient lies you tell me to justify keeping me away from her. You probably have her holed up in some equally dingy and disgusting warehouse.”
“That’s where you couldn’t be more wrong. Flora chose me. She could’ve insisted upon going to you. She could’ve refused my help. I could’ve helped her start a new life anywhere, but she chose here with me.”
“I don’t believe you, you lying puta de madre.”
We have so many ways to swear in Spanish. People say the Colombian Spanish accent is pretty neutral. They also say we’re pretty profane.
I pull my phone out and open my photo gallery.
I take very few pictures and store even less in my phone.
But I have one of Flora from last night when we went out to the movies.
It’s a selfie of us together with our hands in our shared popcorn.
I’m giving her a kiss on the cheek as she laughs. I hold my phone out to Ernesto.
“Does this look like a woman being held captive?”
“You’ve fucking brainwashed her. She’s some Stockholm Syndrome victim.”
“Don’t confuse you for me. I don’t need to indoctrinate her with anything.
I’ve never lied about who and what my family is.
All I’ve done is tell Flora the truth from our side.
She decided about the things your family told her.
She also spoke to Magdalena before we came to New York.
Her mother confirmed what I told Flora is the truth.
We also learned a few other interesting facts about who you spend your spare time with.
How long did it take for you to forget about Domingo when you climbed into Magdalena’s bed? ”
“You think I ever bothered to fuck that whore in a bed? Bent over my desk or up against a wall is as good as she ever got.”
“I wonder what Estrella would think about that. Your desk means it was in your house. Does your wife know you brought your mistress home with you? And not for a minute do I believe you and Magdalena didn’t fuck in a bed. You’re getting too old to stand up for that long.”
“Leave my wife out of this. She has nothing to do with any of it.”
“Of course, she does. She surely spun as many lies about my family and about Domingo as you did. You knew your son’s shortcomings. But Estrella still thinks the sun shines out of your son’s dead ass, even though she knows exactly what he did that led to his death.”
I sneer at him as I walk around his naked body.
I flick his ear just because he wasn’t expecting it.
My knife glides diagonally between his shoulder blades.
It leaves a thin trail of blood. Nothing deep enough to bleed excessively, but just enough to hurt.
It matches countless other cuts my cousins and I gave him during the time he’s been with us.
“You’ve spent more than thirty years being spiteful to a ghost. You wanted what your son had, so you’ve been fucking his mistress for decades.
Your son’s dead. He can never know about your pathetic habit of fucking the woman he supposedly loved.
You are trying to make up for a past that never happened.
You should’ve fucked her while your son was alive and made sure he knew about it. You just enjoyed being with Magdalena.”
I take what Flora’s mother confessed and toss it back in Ernesto’s face. I don’t enjoy trashing Flora’s mother, but what Flora can’t hear won’t hurt her.
“How many times did she call you Domingo? How many times did she moan his name? You settled for knowing the woman you had an affair with was always thinking about another man—your son—just to get revenge on someone who’ll never know it happened.”
I kick the back of his left knee and send him swinging as I walk back around to face him.
“I’m giving you one more opportunity to tell me what I want to know before this situation grows dire. I can’t let you live now that you’ve been here, but that doesn’t mean I can’t punish your grandson for your choices.”
“Leave him the fuck alone! He has nothing to do with this! He’s only a kid!”
Ernesto’s voice is already hoarse from not having enough to drink over the past ten days. His voice cracks throughout his plea. I laugh.
“He’s not a kid at eighteen. You’ve recruited younger men than that to try to fuck over my family. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t say other guys your grandson’s age are men and old enough to work for you, then claim he’s too young to be involved.”
“He’s only eighteen!”
“Which makes him an adult, so all’s fair.”
I close out the photo of Flora and me after flashing it toward him one more time. Then I pull up a Colombian phone number.
“One call, that’s all it takes.”
I’m growing more and more frustrated by the moment.
I’d really hoped the courier might give us a clue who’s involved.
Between no information from the delivery guy and no information when we inquired at the courier’s office, we’ve gotten nowhere.
Not even with the heavy incentives we offered the courier and the dispatcher.
Perhaps this is the negotiating card we needed.