He took a drink and set down the bottle. “And just who do you work for?”
“Way too soon.” She sat back. “But he’s the kind of man who’d feed us both to the fucking sharks if I hooked up with you and you turned out to be a fucking narc. I got rules I have to follow.”
He pushed the beer aside. “You wanna get outta here?”
She smiled. “Again, corazón, way too soon. There’s no way I’m fucking you tonight, so relax. I don’t even know your real name.”
“Yes, you do.” He dug his California driver’s license from his wallet and put it on the table. “See, Billy Jessup.”
Mariana looked at it. “Your name is actually Billy. Not William?”
“I was named after my daddy. His name was William, but everybody called him Billy.”
“I like that,” she said thoughtfully. “I think you should name a kid what you’re gonna call him.”
Realizing he wasn’t going to get laid, Jessup pushed aside his disappointment and settled in for conversation. “So do you want kids?”
“Sometimes. You?”
He shrugged. “I’d like to have a son. But a daughter would be okay.”
She could see he was telling her the truth. “It doesn’t sound to me like you’re in a position to start a family right now.”
“I can quit whenever I want. Nobody owns me.”
“Must be nice.” She put on her sad face and took a drink from her beer.
“What, you can’t quit?”
She pretended to force a smile. “We don’t know each other well enough, Billy. You don’t know the kind of people I work for.”
“I’m not stupid,” he said. “You work for the cartels, and we’re in the North — which means you work for Castañeda.”
She looked suddenly angry. “Liar! You are with the DEA!” She stole a look around the club. “You’re gonna get me killed!” She grabbed her purse and began to get up.
The second he grabbed her arm to stop her, she knew she had him.
“I don’t work for the DEA, okay? I work for Ruvalcaba.”
Mariana stole another quick glance around, lowering herself back into the chair. “That’s even worse!” she hissed. “What are you doing up here? Trying to get yourself killed?”
“Well, I don’t exactly work for him anymore. I quit a few days ago.”
“Just like that? And you’re not scared to be walking around Mexico?”
“They don’t really care about me. They care about my partner; he’s the one who’s important.”
She pushed up the sleeve of his T-shirt to get a good look at his Airborne Ranger tattoo. “Are you the one I’ve heard rumors about?”
He shook his head. “No, that’s not me; that’s my partner.”
“So it’s true,” she said quietly. “There is a gringo sniper.”
He drank from his beer. “It’s true, all right. And he’s not really anybody you’d wanna meet.”
66
Fields couldn’t believe his eyes.
“I send you two jamokes to do a job that should have taken you two minutes, and this is how you come back looking? What did you do, pick a fight with Manny Pacquiao?”
Fito was humiliated and angry, his broken tooth hurting him, but he resisted the urge to smart off, knowing they’d fucked up big-time. “A gringo showed up.”
“What gringo?”
“I don’t know. We’ve never seen him before.”
Fields sat looking back and forth between them. “One man did this to you? Why didn’t you shoot him?”
Fito looked at the floor. “He took my gun.”
“Took your gun.”
“He was a professional.”
“I’m sure he was,” Fields remarked. He described Crosswhite, but the cousins looked at each other, shaking their heads.
“No, he didn’t look anything like that,” Fito said. “This man had light-brown hair and light-colored eyes — almost gray.”
Fields had no clue who else it could have been. He looked at Memo. “What about you? You don’t talk anymore?”
Memo looked at the floor.
“His jaw’s broken,” Fito said. “We just came from the hospital. They wired it shut.”
“This is fabulous.” Fields got up from the edge of the bed in his hotel room. “One looks like he was hit by a truck, and the other one’s a mute.” He let out a sigh, longing for the days of the Cold War, when professional assets were plentiful and Congress never asked any hard questions.
“Listen,” he said, turning around. “There’s a woman in town; she’s getting some information from a contact. Once I’ve got the intel, you’re going to dispose of her. Is that clear?”
“How soon?”
“Within the next couple of days, but I’m having doubts as to whether or not you can even handle a girl.”
“We can handle her!” Fito insisted. “We just got surprised by this guy. You didn’t tell us there might be some crazy gringo running around down there.”
“Well, you’d better be able to handle her,” Fields said. “Because I’m not paying a dime for the ass kicking you two clowns received today. Did you even get into the house?”
“Yes!” Memo said through clenched teeth.
“I got in through an unlocked door on the roof,” Fito lied. “The house was empty.”
“This was before or after your spanking?”
Fito averted his eyes. “Before.”
Fields opened a file on his laptop, showing them photos of both Mariana and Jessup. “Here is a list of bars and clubs. That’s the motel he’s staying at. I don’t know where she’s staying yet, but she’s stalking him, so go find her and stay on her! Do nothing — and I mean nothing—until you’re given the word. Is that clear?”
“Yes.”
“About this gringo you ran into…” Fields stood thinking. “Did he say why he was there? Did you tell him anything — anything at all?”
Fito shook his head. “We just asked him what he was doing there, and he sucker punched Memo. I went for my gun, but he was too fast.”
When the boys from Baja were gone, Fields called Pope on the secure satellite phone.
“We’ve got a new player,” Fields said. “The Baja boys ran into a gringo outside Ortega’s place. He literally beat them up on the sidewalk in front of the house and left them lying there.”
“Sounds like something Crosswhite would do,” Pope remarked.
“That’s what I thought, but I described him, and they say no. This guy had light-brown hair and light-colored eyes.”
“You just described half the men in America.”
Fields chuckled. “You should see these two clowns. Whoever it was really worked them over. One has a busted nose; the other’s jaw is wired shut.”
“Has Mariana made contact with Jessup?”
Fields was startled. Goddamn that Midori! But he recovered quickly enough. “I don’t know yet. I’m expecting first contact tonight.”
“I don’t want anything happening to her,” Pope said. “She has a great deal of potential.”
Which is exactly why she has to go, Fields thought to himself. “That’s understood. You have no idea who this new player might be?”
“No. He must be working for Ortega. You still have no intel on who took his wife and kids?”
“Nothing factual, but it almost has to be Serrano. Or maybe that Federale captain — Espinosa, I think his name is — the crooked cop who turned Vaught over to Ruvalcaba’s people.”
“What about the leak at the PFM?”
Fields was not accustomed to Pope asking so many pointed questions. It meant that he was beginning to lose confidence. “I don’t know where that stands.”