Chapter 11 PDA
PDA
INEZ
Ihave a message out to Solomon, asking him to contact me as soon as possible. We keep heading west, and are approaching downtown LA when my phone finally rings.
"Solomon," I say by way of greeting. "Sitrep?"
"Hello to you too, Inez," he answers, his tone amused. "No, no, we're all good, thanks for asking."
A former version of me would have ripped him a new asshole for the sarcastic insolence. "What do you think I mean when I ask for a situation report, Solomon Cabot?"
“Oooh, the full name. Spicy."
"Are you high?" I ask. "Since when do you have a sense of humor?"
"Back at ya, boss-lady."
I sigh. "You're spending too much time with Saxon and Chance, I think. Now. Enough nonsense. I have an important update, but I would like to know your situation first."
"Fine, fine. No appreciation for a new page having been turned in the book of Solomon."
"There is already a book of Solomon, I believe," I say.
"It's the Song of Solomon, actually." He speaks over anything I might have said.
"Anyway, you asked for a sitrep. We've tracked Pugli and his minions to Los Angeles.
There was some chatter about an op in Vegas, but the one lackey we managed to capture and, um, question, didn't seem to actually know anything concrete about anything happening in Vegas. "
"When did you question him?"
"Say hello to La Víbora, shitstain." There's a wet, raspy gurgle. "He says hi."
"Enhanced interrogation?"
"Nah. Just a good old-fashioned face-pounding."
I sigh. "You may as well let him go, Sol. The reason he doesn't know anything about a Vegas op is because it happened already."
The line goes ominously silent. "What op already happened, Inez?" His voice is deadly cold.
"Calm yourself. They hit the club in force in an attack in broad daylight.
Forty-some men, either mercenaries or cartel soldiers, I'm not sure.
The women are fine—we're all fine. Fonz took shrapnel to the back of his leg and Toro took a hit to the arm. Our employer put us up in a pair of suites at the Bellagio he owns through shells and subsidiaries, and they found us there, too, but only a half-dozen or so. We took care of them in short order, no casualties on our side.”
"They hit the fucking club? With our women in it?"
“Everyone is unharmed and accounted for. But yes." I pause. "And that isn't all."
"Fuck me running, what else?" Sol asks.
"They've put Jay—our employer—on the run."
"That's the second time you’ve almost said his name, Inez."
"I know. I think it is likely that he will introduce himself to you when this is all over, but I cannot and will not reveal his identity before he's ready to do so himself."
"And I'd never ask. He gave all of us a second chance when none of us felt like we deserved one.
We all respect his need for privacy, but hopefully he—and you—know we'd never reveal anything we may know about him to anyone else beyond the circle of Broken Arrows.
And I include the women in that circle, obviously. "
"I do understand, Solomon. It's just not mine to reveal."
"Understood. So. Anything else?"
"Yes, actually. He—our employer—received word from a CIA contact that Pugli and Rafael will be meeting in LA in the next 24 hours.
We—meaning everyone, the women, Fonz, Toro, and Taj as well as Ren and I—are approaching downtown LA.
We'll need to put out feelers so we can figure out when and where the meet is happening so we can end this fucking bullshit once and for fucking all. "
"No shit. That makes sense. We've been focusing on Pugli as instructed, but my own contacts tell me they’ve had word of someone fitting Mercado's M-O being in LA."
"Elaborate," I say.
"Well, my contact is in the ATF, and they've been tracking the movement of a stolen shipment of small arms. It was jacked out from underneath the Army or some shit a few months back, but I guess the ATF had a lead that it was gonna be hit, so they put trackers in the cases, and they've got it sitting in a container at a warehouse in the Port of LA.”
"And how does this connect to Mercado?"
"The hit was surgical, with overwhelming numbers.
The squads assigned to guard the shipment had no chance whatsoever.
One of them did manage to record and send a video before he ate a round himself, and it shows a figure who no one can identify inspecting the arms. I saw the video and it is one hundred percent your boy Rafael. "
"A few months back is hardly proof that he's in LA right now, though," I point out.
"Right, but the ATF tried to get agents close enough to the container to verify that they didn't just find the trackers. The agents vanished. Yesterday, all three of the missing agents were dumped outside the LA field office."
"Dead, I presume?"
“Tortured. Beaten, electrocuted, and eventually given Colombian neckties."
"Not definitive, but that speaks to Rafael's favored torture practices, the electrocution thing in particular.
" I steel my voice so it doesn't shake. "He devised a process that is…
quite effective. It is extraordinarily painful, but unlikely to result in even accidental death.
" I can't suppress a shudder. "It took some experimenting before he arrived at the system he uses now.
Many of his victims died as he tried to figure it out. "
Solomon is quiet for a moment. "Personal experience, eh?"
"Indeed." I clear my throat. "That's an excellent indicator that he's here in LA, but not proof. Where are you all?"
"We’ve been in LA for a few days. Let's rendezvous and put together a plan."
We agree on a rendezvous point and time, and end the call.
An hour and a half later—because LA traffic is its own form of hell—we're all together again, finally. We’ve met up outside an abandoned warehouse in the port—a location provided by Fonz, who is LA-born and -raised, and who spent his entire adult working life here.
It warms my cold, dead heart to see the way the girls greet their men. Car doors are flung open before the vehicles have even stopped and the pairs run to meet each other with an exuberance that would make you think it's been months rather than days.
Lorenzo, Fonz, Taj, Toro, and I stand together to one side, watching the couples whisper and kiss and act like love-sick teenagers.
Fonz spits on the ground at his feet. "Jesus, these people. Get a goddamn room or something, fuck. I gotta piss." He hobbles off, muttering under his breath.
I watch him go, and they glance at Toro and Taj in turn. "What's his problem?"
Toro answers. "He despises the idea of love. He won’t speak of it, but I think he experienced some form of betrayal at the hands of someone he loved, and it has made him bitter and angry."
"And you?" I ask.
Toro rolls one broad, heavy shoulder. "I would like to find love for myself, but it does not seem to wish to find me. I am unlucky in love."
"Taj?" I ask.
He shrugs. "Love is a not needed thing. My parents and grandparents were arranged marriages and have much happiness. I, too, was married this way."
"You are married?" I ask, surprised.
He shakes his head. "No. Not anymore." He goes to the back of the Suburban and busies himself loading bullets into magazines—conversation over.
I notice his gaze flicking occasionally to Anjalee, and I see a wistfulness in his expression. I join him loading magazines.
"I see the way you look at her," I murmur. "Anjalee."
His movements become jerky and unnecessarily forceful, answering in the same. "She resembles my…wife—ex-wife."
"Ah."
He snorts. "No ‘ah.’ You do not know."
"No," I agree. I don't."
He glances at me. "It isn't in some dossier somewhere?"
"The outlines, yes. The context, reasons, and fallout? No."
"I am not in love with Anjalee. I do not look at her in that way." He glances at me. "I do not wish to discuss this any further, if you please."
"Of course. But if you wish to, you have friends here, now. Brothers. Sisters."
"I am not a Broken Arrow."
"But you fought for us. And…there may be room in the circle for additional members, soon.”
He nods. "Perhaps." He juts his chin at Anjalee, who is very busily and thoroughly making out with Kane, whose hands are buried in her ass. "Such a life is not for me."
"Why not?"
"I am Dalit."
"I admit, to my shame, that I know very little of the caste system of your country."
He shrugs, shakes his head. "It is not mattering. Not anymore. I am not there. I shall never return."
"Then—"
He grunts, irritation cutting through his normally placid demeanor. "Enough, please. Just…leave me be. Brand or no, I will be loyal to the brothers and these women. That is all anyone must know."
I hold up my hands. "I don't mean to pry, Taj. I have been…aloof, in the past. I am trying to be more of a friend and less of a boss or authority."
He nods, not looking at me.
I leave him and return to Toro's side.
Toro glances back at Taj, and then at me. "Discover anything about our silent comrade?"
"A bit. Not much. Mostly that he doesn't like being asked questions.”
Toro snorts. "I have worked with him for a while now, and you got more out of him in that conversation than I ever did. He is truly a very closed-off person."
"So was I, at one point," I answer.
Toro grins, eyeing Lorenzo, who is in conversation with Solomon and Scarlett. "Lorenzo loosened your tongue, did he?"
I laugh. "Something like that, yes."
I let the reunion carry on for a few more minutes and then give a long, sharp, two-fingered whistle to get everyone's attention. Conversation cuts out and everyone gathers around me in a semi-circle.