Chapter 12 #2
Together, they’d sloshed out and then lain flat on their backs on the warm sand. Tequila was a few yards away, trying to dig something out from under a log.
She turned to Daniel, just a dark silhouette on the sand next to her. “You’ve never told me about your parents.”
There was a dry rasp and then a burst of brightness. Daniel’s face was illuminated as he lit the joint pressed between his lips. He inhaled, then blew out the stream of smoke and held it across his body to her. “You’ve never told me about yours either.”
She took the joint and put it to her own lips. Sucked in, and this time, didn’t cough it all out again. She handed it back to him. “What do you want to know about them?”
He blew a stream of smoke into the air, then turned his head to look at her. “What happened to your dad?”
Her fingers brushed the tiny ballet shoe pendant at her throat—the gift from her dad on her sixth birthday. He’d died just weeks later, and somehow, the necklace had come to represent him far more than ballet. She exhaled softly. “He died when I was a kid. Aortic aneurysm.”
She felt Daniel’s eyes on her. “Do you miss him?”
She looked up at the night sky and said, “I was so young, it’s like there was no one to really miss. But I can still feel the absence at the same time. Does that make sense?”
He rolled over to face her. They were just inches apart. He reached out a hand to capture a strand of her hair. He considered it carefully, then tucked it behind her ear. “Yeah, it makes sense.”
His eyes flicked to the pendant she was still absently turning between her fingers. “You must really love it.”
She glanced down, confused. “What?”
“Ballet.”
The word hung between them, heavier than she expected. No one had ever asked her if she loved ballet. It was always assumed.
She let the question settle, turning it over in her mind. Then she tried to answer it honestly.
“I love to dance,” she said slowly. “That part, I love.” She hesitated, her grip tightening on the pendant. “I just don’t know if I’ll ever have an actual career in it.” A beat passed before she added, almost reluctantly, “Not like my sister does.”
The admission left a strange weight in the air, yet at the same time, she felt lighter. The words echoed back at her, and she realized it was the first time she’d ever said them—out loud, or even to herself.
She had spent years pushing down doubts, swallowing them whole. To admit them had always felt like failure, like giving up.
But now, for the first time, it felt like something else.
It felt like freedom.
“So, this is our thing now?” she whispered. “Getting high on the beach?”
He ran his hand over her bare shoulder and down to the dip of her waist. He ran his eyes down the same path his hand had made. When they met hers again, they were drowsy with desire. “We could make our thing getting high and having sex on the beach.”
He leaned forward and kissed her. She kissed him back, and it quickly grew hotter and more intense.
He gently rolled her over, so he was on top of her.
He was heavy; his body pushed hers down into the sand.
But the weight of him felt good, and the way he was pressing himself against her made her whole lower body throb.
He dipped his head and kissed her again, his tongue gliding against hers. She couldn’t help but wonder what else he might be good at.
He braced both his forearms on the ground above her and was pushing his hips against hers in a way that made her think she was about to find out.
Panic and desire were fighting an epic battle inside her. Panic won.
He must have felt her body stiffen because he abruptly broke off the kiss and looked down at her.
She whispered, “Daniel, I’m sor—”
He pressed his lips to hers, cutting her off mid-word. “Don’t,” he said, right against her mouth.
He rolled off her, lying on his back on the sand beside her. He exhaled, then ran his hands through his hair, leaving them resting on the back of his head.
She curled around to face him and said in a small voice, “Don’t what?”
He swiveled his head to look at her. In the darkness, his expression was impossible to read, but his voice was gentle. “Don’t keep apologizing to me. You know you don’t need to.”
There was something hot rising in the back of her throat and she tried to swallow it down, but there was too much of it and it overflowed.
And then she was crying, and he was wrapping his big arms around her and holding her.
And they lay together in the sand like that for a long time, until her tears subsided, and she grew quiet.
He kept his arms around her, his chin resting on the top of her head. The only sounds were the cicadas and the soft lap of water and Tequila’s little whines as she tried to extract whatever she wanted from under the log.
Then she sighed into his neck and said, “Maybe I shouldn’t smoke weed anymore. It just makes me cry. And want pancakes.”
He laughed, and she could feel it in his whole body. He kissed the top of her head and said, “You want me to drive us back into the city so we can go find pancakes?”
She nodded, and he chuckled again. Then he got up and helped her to her feet. They walked across the sand, his arm around her waist, her head leaning against his shoulder.
When they got to his car, she turned so her butt was against the hood. He placed both his hands on the metal on either side of her hips and leaned forward. But before he could kiss her, his phone went off.
He dropped his head and pushed back from the car. Retrieved his phone from his back pocket. The screen lit his face up as he read the text, and she watched as his face hardened right in front of her eyes. Became a different Daniel’s face.
He sighed and shoved the phone back in his pocket. “Julia, I’m sorry. I gotta go.”
“What? Where?”
“It’s a work thing.”
She shook her head, confused. “A work thing? But it’s one o’clock in the morning.”
“I service freight haulers, baby. They come in at all hours.”
She stared at his face. It was a lie. She wasn’t sure how she knew it, but she did with absolute certainty.
She had a fleeting fear he might go to see another woman. But his expression hadn’t been the one of a man reading a booty call text. It was the expression of a man who had, as he’d put it, complicated shit in his life.
Shit that could get you really hurt.
He lifted her chin between his thumb and forefingers. Kissed her once on the mouth. “Julia. Baby. I’m sorry.”
He opened the passenger door for her, and she hopped off the car and got in. He whistled for Tequila and the dog loped across the beach towards them. She threw herself into the footwell with sandy paws and licked Julia’s knees.
Daniel was quiet as he drove the short distance up the hill to her house.
He pulled up in his usual spot but didn’t quit the engine.
He leaned across the console to kiss her goodbye and reached down to hold Tequila’s collar so she didn’t jump out when Julia opened the door.
Then she found herself standing in her drive, still a little stoned, watching his red taillights recede.
And she realized then that there were two Daniel Castanos.
There was the Daniel that watched her dance and made her feel perfect even when she wasn’t.
The Daniel that held her in the sand while she cried and offered to take her into the city in the middle of the night to get pancakes.
The Daniel whose sweatshirt still hung in her wardrobe, like a protective talisman against her own dark thoughts.
Then there was the Daniel with bloodied knuckles and with the word ALONE down the side of his face. The Daniel who had gripped a man’s throat until he’d gone blue and pointed a gun at another man’s head like he’d done it a hundred times before.
The Daniel who had friends you didn’t want to make enemies of.
It was that Daniel she didn’t want to know. So, she shoved that version of him away. She forced it into that box in the back of her mind, where she kept all the other things she didn’t want to face.
And she vowed never to examine its contents again.
* * *
“Goddammit.”
Salsa splattered like horror movie gore all over Belinda’s only good white shirt. She grabbed a handful of napkins from a holder on the table and tried to blot the stain but ended up making it twice as large.
A passing waiter saw her predicament and said in heavily accented English, “I’ll get you a cloth, sen?ora.”
A damp dish cloth appeared, and she grabbed it, dabbing at the stain. Her attempts only turned the large red stain into a larger pink stain.
The waiter who had brought the cloth hadn’t moved, as if watching Belinda dab at her left boob was fascinating.
Annoyed, she glanced up, only to find it wasn’t a waiter at all. It was the proprietor, Mr. Tostá.
He looked fidgety and kept glancing around the restaurant floor. Beads of sweat had broken out on his forehead, as if talking to a customer had suddenly become an illicit business.
Belinda kept a lid on her impatience. Marti?n had called her last night, proclaiming to have information.
Information he would only impart in person.
She proposed a meeting at a downtown coffee shop to ensure neither of them would be recognized.
But Martín clearly didn’t trust Belinda any further than the tiny man could throw her, because he’d insisted on meeting her here, in familiar territory.
He dithered for a few more minutes, pretending to write something lengthy on his check pad.
Finally, he stuck his hand into his apron pocket and pulled out his cellphone.
He tapped at the screen, then placed it on the table by Belinda’s right elbow.
“Her name is Julia,” he said in a low tone. “She’s his girlfriend.”
She dropped the cloth and picked up the phone.
On the screen was a photo taken from within the restaurant.
The photo, captured from the counter’s vantage point, showed a young white woman seated at a table near the door.
Belinda swiveled her head and saw the same table, currently occupied by an elderly couple.
The woman in the photo was blond. Early twenties. She was looking up at a man who had just come in the door. A man who was unmistakably Daniel Castan?o.
Hello Blondie.
She swiped through, found three more photos of the same subject.
“You say she’s his girlfriend?” she asked, looking up at Marti?n. “Are you sure?”
He nodded. “Sebastián introduced her that way. They left together.”
She glanced over at the skinny Latino kid stacking dirty dishes onto a tray by the counter.
They’d both agreed on the phone that Sebastián could never know about this little arrangement.
Daniel was the only family the kid had left.
There was no way he’d accept help from the government if he knew it had come with the price tag of putting his brother behind bars for a very long time.
Belinda looked back down at the photo. The two were looking at each other in a way that seemed intimate. But the images were grainy, the lighting poor. She could have just been imagining it. Three low resolution photos did not a relationship make.
She handed Marti?n back his phone. “Can you send these to me right now?”
He nodded, then walked back to the counter, tapping away at his phone.
Belinda’s own phone rang. She took it out of her bag and glanced at the screen.
Oates.
“There’s been an interesting development,” he said. “Sasha Sokolov is no more.”
That surprised her. The Sokolov brothers had been on the government’s radar from the moment they set foot on US soil. A worse pair of entrepreneurial dirtbags she’d had yet to find. “No more, as in, gone to a better place?” she said hopefully.
“No more, as in, gone to a place where hopefully he won’t need a good amount of his head.”
“Shit.” Belinda pushed her plate of half-eaten enchiladas away. “Has this been confirmed?”
“Let’s just say, from a very well-placed source.”
“Ah. The lovely Svetlana. Your favorite CI. How’s she doing?”
Oates’s tone was grim. “Not good.”
Belinda sobered, too. Four months ago, stripper Svetlana Zeitseva had agreed to inform on the Sokolovs, putting her own life in extreme danger. It was the kind of bravery that was usually rewarded with a shallow grave and deserved more respect than Belinda often gave her. “Is she somewhere safe?”
“She’s staying with a friend,” Oates said. “I’ve been in contact with the OEO. I’m doing the paperwork now. Let’s hope we can get her into witness protection before this mess gets even bigger.”
“What happened?”
“La Mano Negra show up with the product, as agreed. Everyone seemed happy. For about five minutes, anyway.”
Belinda ran a hand around the back of her neck, squeezing the muscles there. “Wait. Why would LMN want to blow up their deal with the Sokolovs? That relationship seemed like a match made in gangster heaven.”
“Oh, no, that deal is still very much alive. The shot-caller wasn’t Terry. It was Borya.”
“Shit,” she said again. “That’s some Russian brotherly love for you right there.”
“I’ll say.”
“And who was the trigger man?”
Oates didn’t answer right away, and she instantly knew the answer.
“Castan?o,” she said.
“The one and only.”
Belinda looked down at the photo of the young man on her phone.
She was under pressure to wrap this operation up.
And not just from the CPD who wanted their Body in the Dumpsters case solved.
Oates himself believed they should just send in ICE to raid Castano’s trailer.
They’d almost certainly find evidence to link him to many of the crimes he’d committed.
Then they’d make him an offer he couldn’t refuse and wait until he flipped on his friends to save his own ass.
But Belinda knew better. Guys like Castan?o didn’t bend over that easily.
He’d take whatever they threw at him—deportation, even life in prison—and smile serenely back at them from his holding cell.
No, she’d always known that to break him, she needed more leverage.
She needed something, or someone, he cared about more than himself.
“Anyway,” Oates said in her ear. “What you got?”
Her eyes went to the girl he was staring at in the picture.
“Not what,” she said softly. “More like who.”