Back at Salazar’s palatial house by the sea, Lathrop was enjoying himself tremendously.
Facing Lucio across the room, watching his expression go in stages from astonishment to acceptance to resentful anger, he couldn’t have said whether the greater kick came from a regard for his own expert connivance or the reaction it had instigated.
Six of one, he thought.
He sat looking out at the breathtaking view of the sea and waited for Lucio to digest what he’d been told.
“Okay,” Lucio said at length. “Help me be sure I’ve got this right. A step at a time. Because you threw me for a loop here, and a whole lot depends on me not misunderstanding you.”
Lathrop nodded.
“First off, you’re saying absolutely Felix is dead. You’re sure there’s no mixup it’s him they found in that car trunk.”
“Couldn’t be surer,” Lathrop said, poker-faced.
“Now, second, you can confirm it was Enrique who killed him—”
“Ordered him killed,” Lathrop corrected.
“Ordered his own nephew killed. Because Felix was holding out on the profits from the load he swiped from me.”
“It’s a little more involved,” Lathrop said. “Everybody tolerates some skimming. But Felix was greedy. Claimed he was the one who did the tunnel boost, took all the risks, and deserved to keep every cent of the earnings. Bragging about it to anybody who could warm a barstool next to him. And that was only the last straw. He was running hustles left and right, and it was common knowledge he was on the pipe. Getting crazier and crazier. Becoming a major embarrassment.”
Lucio shrugged. “Was me looking to burn the competition, steal their goods, I wouldn’t have trusted the kid with the job. But say I’m Enrique, and I do, and then hear he’s spending my percentage. Being family, I talk to him direct. Let him know he’s making a big mistake and better get on track.”
“Enrique did that plenty of times. He called Felix in last week to give him one more chance. And instead of apologizing to Enrique, offering him a percentage of the take from the hijack, Felix told him to shove his grievances where the sun doesn’t shine.”
“Stupid,” Lucio said and shook his head.
“Yeah.”
“Took cajones, though.”
“Yeah. But dumb and ballsy can be a bad combination.”
Lucio was thoughtful.
“Let’s get to the next step,” he said, shifting his large frame on his wine-colored sofa cushions. “Enrique decides enough is enough. Sees the kid isn’t afraid of him. Sees he can’t be disciplined. So he’s gotta go. That on the mark?”
Lathrop nodded.
“Lousy position,” Salazar said. “Felix being his nephew.”
“Which is the reason he’s been claiming it was your family that had Felix scrubbed,” Lathrop said. “Like I told you before, Enrique’s story to his sister is that the Magi of Tijuana held a conference across the border about how to handle the problem of the tunnel boost. According to him, you’d already planned the hit to make an example of Felix but wanted a vote of confidence from your brothers before moving ahead.”
Lucio seemed affronted.
“That don’t even make sense,” he said. “I want the kid taken out, I’m gonna be damn sure his body disappears permanent. The way Felix was living, it could’ve been weeks before anybody figured he wasn’t off on some fucking jag.”
Lathrop looked out the window, appreciating the expansive view of the sea without end.
“Enrique’s head of the family,” he said. “His sister admires him. She believes what he tells her.”
“But I’d have to be tonto, an idiot, to order a dump job that leaves Felix in a car in his own place of business.”
“She’s not in the life. She probably doesn’t know how things work. Or if she does, she could be too overcome with grief to think that clearly about it. All I can say is he convinced her you’re responsible, and now she’s demanding that he retaliate.”
Lucio was shaking his head again.
“This would be funny, if it wasn’t so incredible,” he said. “Enrique has Felix steal my shit. Kill my people. Then they have a falling out over revenue from the hijack. Enrique does Felix, fingers me to his sister as a scapegoat. She tells him I have to die for whacking her son. Next, I get a phone call from Enrique, who says he wants to meet. Work out our problems. And I agree to it. Figuring maybe he’s realized he made a mistake and wants to offer reparations. But his real purpose is to do me now.” He thumbed his chest. “I’m going about my thing, not stepping on anybody’s toes, and Enrique’s trying to make me a victim twice over.”
Lathrop looked at him. The yarn was quite a nifty little twister.
“This isn’t just about Enrique satisfying his sister,” he said as a finishing touch. “You have to remember where and how this started. The tunnel job was a message. He absolutely means to shove you out of California and knows he has El Tío’s fist behind him. Felix was a marionette when he was alive, and now that he’s dead, Enrique’s still using him as a prop for his act.”
Lucio scowled with contempt.
“El Tío,” he said. “Everything’s disorder since he’s come into the picture. Fucking disorder.”
Lathrop said nothing.
Lucio sat there sucking his front teeth for a while. When he leaned forward on the couch, Lathrop was amused to notice the back of the cushion underneath him lift high off the springs from his ample weight.
“You got anything else?”
“That’s it.”
Lucio sucked his teeth some more.
“All right, Lathrop. You’re the best. And you can count on this tip being worth a nice bonus,” he said. “As far as how it goes between me and Enrique, we’ll see which of us is the fucking idiot two nights from now at the park.”
Lathrop nodded.
It did indeed promise to be an interesting showdown, and he fully looked forward to being ringside.
“It is interesting how we measure our accomplishments,” DeVane said. “I have many successes behind me, and envision more to come. Widespread ventures that yield abundant rewards. Yet the satisfaction I feel at this moment cannot be reckoned. A single person downed. A problem resolved. I hadn’t realized Roger Gordian had gotten quite that deeply under my skin.”
Kuhl sat across the desk from him in silence. Behind DeVane, slightly to the left of his chair, was one of the few windows in the entire building, a fixed pane of one-way multilaminate glass able to absorb the impact of a bomb blast or high-powered sniper fire. Perfectly square and soundproof, it somehow imparted a greater sense of separateness from the outlying woodlands than would have been presented by a solid wall. Kuhl saw deer tracks in the snow running toward the white-frocked forest spruces and understood the wild longing of the confined predator to lunge against the glass wall of a zoo or aquarium exhibit, a pull older than anything that could be devised to suppress it. And DeVane didn’t fool him. His mannered behavior was embroidery. A wrap he wore as neatly as his expensive suits, and to deliberate effect. But he, too, knew the impulse to strike and taste blood.
“Gordian’s condition,” Kuhl said. “Were you told of it?”
“He remains among the hospital’s general population, which means we can infer that he’s still in the early stage,” DeVane said. “But the symptoms will progress quickly enough.”
Kuhl was without expression.
“I propose that our backups be put in full readiness,” he said.
DeVane smiled, his lips flitting back from his small, white teeth.
“Your exactitude is always appreciated,” he said. “Yes, I agree, let’s surely be prepared for anything.”