“Then I’ll do my job and be going,” said Draper.
“Yes, yes,” said Avalos. He was an impatient man, who thought that saying things twice, quickly, saved time.
Draper took his briefcase over and set it on the bar. He brought out the digital scale and set it on the bar top and tapped the ON and RESET buttons. Then he brought over the suitcases two at a time and unzipped them and lifted the stacks of bills and went to the other side of the bar. He worked off the thick rubber bands and began weighing them.
Camilla sat on a stool and watched. She was drinking through a straw from a large red plastic tumbler like Hector’s and Draper could smell the bourbon wafting out from it. She always wore a different cocktail dress and tonight’s involved claret velvet and black lace. Her perfume was sensual and strong. There was a small CD player on the bar and Camilla put on some corridos -tales of brave and handsome traffickers and the dull-witted police who can never catch them. She hummed along.
Draper ignored her. He knew she hated being ignored and he truly enjoyed this part of his job. He whistled quietly to himself while he worked and marveled at the simple math that could only have been created by a loving God:
A pound of fives contained 480 bills worth $2,400.
A pound of twenties contained 480 bills worth $9,600.
A pound of hundreds contained 480 bills worth $48,000.
He weighed each bundle twice but the scale was fast and accurate. A few minutes later, stacked up on the bar and waiting to be photographed, were two pounds of hundreds, six pounds of fifties, twenty pounds of twenties and five pounds of fives.
Draper didn’t need a calculator to know that he was looking at $444,000, the best week he had ever had. His four points would be $17,760 and it would be in his pocket just a few hours from now. He missed Terry, but what a blessing, not to have to share it. He flipped on the vacuum packer to let it warm up.
Camilla gave him a frankly craven smile and Draper smiled back.
“Camilla,” he said. “This reminds me of the time I went to church and the preacher said that God and Jesus want us in heaven with them. They want us there. And they always get what they want because they’re God and Jesus, right? I remember thinking: this world is a place of beauty and forgiveness. It made me deeply happy to be alive. Deeply. I feel that way now.”
“You’re all screwed up, Coleman,” she said. “This is not what Jesus is about.”
“You both shut up,” said Hector. “What did you get, Draper, what did you get?”
“Four-forty-four.”
“Then you make sure it gets to El Dorado, or you get to eat your own cojones for dinner tonight. Okay?”
“Yes, Hector, I’ve been very clear on that from the beginning. You’re always eager to feed me my own balls.”
Draper got a small camera from his briefcase and photographed the slabs of cash. He checked the vacuum packer to make sure it was loaded with the continuous-roll bags. Then he went to work. The machine was called the GameSaver Turbo. It could seal fifty bundles without overheating. Draper loved the machine, the efficiency of it, the eagerness with which it packaged his bills.
When he was done he packed them into the four suitcases and threw in the cheap thrift-store rags to realistically fill out the luggage.
“You tell Carlos business is good,” said Camilla.
“I won’t have to.”
“Do his women still entertain you?”
“They’re good women.”
“They’re whores.”
Hector and Camilla and Rocky helped him get the luggage down to the Cayenne.
“You always have different cars,” Hector said.
“I borrow them from friends. I vary them because Customs officials remember cars and plates, but not faces.” And it helped that he could always pluck well-maintained specimens from his Prestige customers, fudging the odometer numbers, no harm done.
“I didn’t know an honest policeman made so much money,” said Avalos with a smile. “Drive safely. Click it or ticket.”
“Yes,” said Draper.
Hector handed his empty red tumbler to Rocky. “Refill, man. Pronto, pronto.”
Herredia was most pleased by his thirty-three-pound haul of U.S. cash. He sat behind his big steel desk at El Dorado and sipped a very dark tequila. The suitcases were flat on the floor and the vacuum-packed bundles were stacked neatly by the scale on the desk.
Herredia looked at Draper and his thick eyebrows lifted up and away from each other and he looked soulful. “To this crazy life, Coleman.”
“Yes,” said Draper, holding up an invisible shot glass.
The old man, Felipe, sat where he always did, but he had propped his shotgun against the wall behind him rather than holding it on his lap, a gesture that suggested trust.
“I was very surprised to hear about Terry,” said Herredia.
“So was I. I still can’t believe it.”
“A black American gangster?”
“That’s what a witness saw.”
Draper felt the weight of Herredia’s attention.
“I’m sad,” said Herredia. “I admired him. But I believe he was becoming dangerous. You know this.”
Draper nodded and looked down at his hands.
“But, twice as much for you,” said Herredia.
“Yes.”
“You are not pleased?” asked Herredia.
“Twice as much pleases me.”
“But you do not drink. You do not talk to me.”
“The drive was long tonight.”
“You have your bed and your whore.”
“I have a real woman in my life,” said Draper.
Herredia looked puzzled, but he nodded as if he understood.
“And I’m going to drive home tonight,” said Draper. “I mean no disrespect, Carlos.”
Draper guessed that Herredia was taking in well over two million a month now. Draper knew that the Eme faction led by Avalos was the primary collector of Herredia’s money, taking it from the hundreds of street gangsters who sold product, and paid obeisance and taxes. But Herredia had other arrangements, too. The drug world was filled with secret allegiances-some very old and others very new, such as Draper’s and Laws’s sudden and dramatic entrance as Herredia’s new couriers. It was a world in flux. Loyalties shifted. Allies became enemies. Friends became dead. The cartels were as complicated as the Vatican.
And Draper had always believed that disorder was opportunity.
“Con permiso,” he said, rising slowly and taking two steps toward Herredia’s desk. He folded his hands in front of him and looked first into Herredia’s now glowering face, then to the flagstones on the floor.
“Sir, I think-”
“You think I’m going to force you to take another partner.”
“That is another-”
“Silence, gringo. And listen to the sound of my good news. You have my trust and respect. You have your gun and your badge if you need them. In two years you have never been late or short. You have never given me reason to worry. So I say this to you: you will continue to work for me, alone, as you wish.”
Draper bowed. “Your trust means very much to me. But-”
“And you will take five points, not four, on all of what you deliver.”
Draper was truly flabbergasted, so it wasn’t hard to portray it. “It’s hard to speak.”
“This is probably because I am interrupting you. Tell me now, Coleman, what you are trying to say.”
“Avalos is cheating you.”
Draper heard the old man shift behind him, the soft clink of the shotgun leaving the wall.
“I have trouble hearing sometimes,” said Herredia.
“Avalos is cheating you.”
“You prove this.”
“I can’t. But Rocky can. He’s seen it. Rocky is afraid that when you find out you’ll have him killed along with Hector and Camilla. I told him I would try to keep that from happening.”
“How much does Hector cheat me?”
“Approximately two points every week. Camilla takes it before the bills are stacked and pressed and weighed. A few hundred here, a few hundred there, from many different people. Rocky said she’s proud of her defiance. She doesn’t bother to hide her thievery. But Hector never sees her do it, so he can tell himself there is nothing to see. So he can tell us all there is nothing to see.”