The Blue Zone

CHAPTER EIGHT

Luis Prado didn’t ask too many questions.

He’d been in the United States for four years now. His papers said he was here to visit a sister, but that was a lie. He had no family here.

He’d come here to do work. He was handpicked because of the way he handled himself back home. And what he did, Luis did very well.

He did jobs for the Mercados. Dirty jobs. The kind you did because of the oath you had sworn. You didn’t look into someone’s face. You looked through them. You didn’t ask why.

That’s what had gotten him out of the slums of Carmenes. What enabled him to send money back home to his wife and child-more money than he could ever dream of there. What paid for the fancy suits he wore and the private tables at the salsa clubs-and the occasional woman he met there who looked at him with pride.

It’s what separated him from the desesperados back home. A man with no worth. No significance. Nothing.

The driver, a cocky kid named Tomás, played with the radio in the customized Cadillac Escalade while he drove. “Ha!” He tapped his hands against the wheel to the steady salsa beat. “José Alberto. El Canario.”

The kid was probably no more than twenty-one, but he had already cut his cherry and would drive through a fucking building if he had to get out the other side. He was fearless and good, if maybe a little reckless, but that was just what was needed now. Luis had worked with him before.

They drove north out of the Bronx. Through the kinds of neighborhoods they had never seen before. Places that when Luis was just a kid back home were only hidden behind high fences, with guards at the gates. Maybe, Luis thought as they passed by, if he did his jobs and played his cards right, one day he might have such a home.

They followed the route from the highway carefully. They retraced it, making sure they knew the lights, the turns. They had to be able to retrace it, fast, on the way out.

It went back a long way, Luis thought. Cousins, brothers. Whole families. They all made the same oath. Fraternidad. If he died for his work, so be it. It was a lifelong tie. However long or short that was.

They drove down a dark, shaded street and pulled up outside a large house. They cut the lights. Someone was walking a dog down by the water. They waited until the person was well out of sight, checking their watches.

“Let’s go, hermano.” Tomás drummed against the wheel. “It’s salsa time!”

Luis opened the satchel under his feet. His boss had been very specific about this job. Precisely what had to be done. Luis didn’t care. He had never met the person. He wasn’t even a name to him. All he was told was that they could do harm to the family-and that was enough.

That was everything.

Luis never thought too much about details when it came to work. In fact, only one word ran through his brain as he stepped out of the car in front of the fancy, well-lit house and drew back the TEC-9 automatic machine pistol with an extra clip.

You do the family harm, this is what you get.

Maricón.