The Debriefing

Six

Manuel Santos had the blackest eyes, the smoothest skin and the calmest manner of any man one might ever meet.

He was not good looking, by any means, nor was he tall but these conditions were not troubling to him. Physical flaws were significant only to those with egos.

And Santos — known more commonly by his nickname La Piedra, the Stone — had none.

An ego was in itself a flaw, and he did not tolerate flaws in anyone, himself included.

Santos was walking along a sidewalk from a municipal garage where he’d left his SUV. He wore tight black jeans and a yellow shirt with blue piping and patterned across the chest with images of sailors’ knots. He bought the shirt solely for the splendid knots, though he had been on a boat only twice in his life, and the only knots he’d ever tied were improvised hangman’s nooses and tidy bindings around wrists and ankles.

His outer garment was a white silk jacket, this with gray piping and wide lapels. It had a dandy quality but Santos liked it because the cloth didn’t overheat him and it concealed his weapon efficiently; the Sig Sauer was secreted in a holster inside his back waistband. His boots were marvels of tooling and silver inlay and were sharp enough to puncture skin with a muscled kick. He’d always wanted to try this but never had.

Unless circumstances required otherwise, Santos was of the habit of walking slowly, as today. He would not be hurried. Whether he was painting his murals in the style of Diego Rivera — a hobby from childhood — or grilling steak for himself and Raphael and their cat, Boppo, or torturing a man or woman or child to death, he never rushed. When you hurried, you made mistakes.

Calm, slow.

Not so the man walking beside him. Garcia was far from serene. Tall and broad, with a pocked face, he was constantly looking around, as if with a nervous tic. He would pace, he would flick finger against thumb, he would grind teeth. These habits would have irritated Santos were Garcia not so good at his job.

Garcia also wore a jacket. This one cheap and beige, which was unfortunate because sweat was already darkening the cloth at the pits. The garment was longer than Santos’s because its job was to conceal a submachine gun and three long, heavy magazines of ammunition. Bullets weighed a great deal. Lead and copper, of course. People often forgot that.

Ah, the heat. Santos looked up. His smoky aviator sunglasses were thick and, with a squint, he could actually gaze toward the sun if only for a few seconds.

Garcia, ever aware of his boss, looked up too, perhaps thinking: drone.

But, no, Santos had merely been looking at the sun.

Then he continued calmly on his way and Garcia, twitchily, did too.

They walked into another garage, nodded to one of Santos’s crew and climbed into the back of a vehicle parked inside. Garcia slammed the doors shut, and the two panels, joined, made a word on the back: Ambulancia.

They pulled from the garage and began the five-mile drive to their destination.

Santos’s employer, the Cardozo cartel, was hardly the stuff of Netflix Originals. It was small. Also, the brothers running it — Alfonzo and Juan Carlos — rejected the splashy, lavish lifestyle that seemed appealing but that had gotten so many organized criminals (A) on the radar and then either (B) in jail or (B½) dead. They were working men, more or less good husbands (only one mistress each) and superlative fathers; they helped their children with their homework and stayed through the end of even the most lopsided soccer games. They supported the arts — to the extent there was culture in Serrantino, a pretty if somewhat dull burgh in western Chihuahua.

In short, they kept their heads down. They bought product from China, Honduras and Venezuela. They worked hard devising clever ways of getting the shipments into the United States, losing only two or three percent.

Small time meant long time.

Which wasn’t to say that the cartel’s enforcers — a tough, swarthy crew that Santos wrangled — would hesitate to gut, behead or scorch anyone who threatened their piece of the pie.

Which was his mission at the moment.

As the ambulance drove over the smooth concrete, Santos looked out the small window and noted the camo-painted Humvee, parked near the back entrance to the hospital, which overlooked only desert. Beside it was a sign:

Santos hunched and looked up to see the two flags, now limp in the oppressive midday lull: an American Stars and Stripes and another, designating some military unit. He wondered why divisions or platoons or whatever other detachments existed still had flags. Not as if they were going to carry them into battle.

The ambulance turned into the underground entrance to the hospital and Santos and Garcia climbed out, looking around, checking weapons. They continued into the cool, quiet place and up one flight of stairs.

Santos oriented himself and pointed. They walked a bit farther and then pushed through double doors into a small staff lunchroom, where four people sat at two tables. At one was a couple: a tall, balding man wearing a DEA identity badge, and a blonde, on whose chest dangled a badge with an FBI logo. Quite the ample chest it was too, he noted, though without reaction; if he was inclined to romp, which was rare, he’d prefer Raphael. Santos was a man whom passion had largely bypassed.

The other two were men in US Army uniforms.

None of them had seen Santos and Garcia walk inside.

Santos nodded for Garcia to position himself at the door. He did so, his hand disappearing toward the grip of his weapon. He looked outside and nodded.

Santos then walked forward to the couple. “Hola.”

They turned, blinked in surprise.

Then smiles all around, and Eddie Klein — the bald man who’d been pretending to be DEA agent Holmes — rose and shook Santos’s hand. Tiffany Brent — the pseudo FBI agent Talbot — kissed his cheek firmly; Santos’s impression was that she doled out kisses like one would give sweets to children. Maybe she was disappointed he didn’t grip her and pull her in closer. Santos turned to the men in US Army uniforms at the adjoining table and nodded in response to their grins.

“I got your message,” Santos said to Eddie. He was speaking English, of which he had a good command. Eddie and Tiffany were dicey with Spanish. “You were successful.”

Tiffany scoffed. “I’ve gotta tell you, Santos, it was sad. For kick-ass detectives, they didn’t have a clue.”