The Reformed

13

When you’re combating an insurgent force on foreign soil, like in Iraq or Afghanistan, it’s imperative that you work hand in hand with the nation that’s hosting you. In a perfect situation, you’d have trained that nation’s military force on your standard operating procedures, and there would be a great amount of mutual trust among the leaders, and the soldiers would consider each other valued assets in the fight for freedom, liberty and the greater good of whatever far-flung nation you happened to be dwelling and/or killing in. The truth, however, is that fighting on foreign land invariably means you can’t trust anyone.

“You know what I don’t understand, Mikey?” Sam said. It was just before ten thirty, and we were walking across the Honrado campus-Fiona had been instructed to arrive after Junior and his men, so she and Barry were watching us from her car across the street-en route to Father Eduardo’s office. “Why did it take so long for the bad guys to stop wearing matching uniforms? Life was a lot easier when the people who wanted to kill you all coordinated their dress.”

“All evolution is slow,” I said.

“You’d think George Washington would have looked across the river and realized it would be a lot easier to beat the British if they just changed their clothes into something less identifiably American. Like, you know, a red coat or something.”

“There were rules for war back then, Sam,” I said. “It was much more pleasant.”

“You know the only time the Americans really got their asses handed to them on American soil? Right where we’re standing. The Seminoles opened up a can on the Americans right here in Florida. And you know how they did it? They came at them from all angles, and they weren’t wearing stupid uniforms. You’d think we would have learned something from that.”

“You might have noticed during training that we weren’t given a lot of information on key losses in American history,” I said.

“Which is why we’ve spent the last several years getting our asses handed back to us in Iraq,” Sam said. “All this time, and no one gets that you don’t have to have a uniform to kill someone.”

Sam was particularly agitated this morning. It might have been a direct result of it being morning, or it might have been related to the fact that he set fire to his favorite Tommy Bahama shirt while we were welding the paintball guns-of which we both had two pistols each at present, while Fiona was planning on making a grand entrance with her whip-or maybe he just didn’t like the idea of going into battle with a faceless opponent.

“Sam,” I said, “Father Eduardo knows who in his employ works for the Latin Emperors, or at least did. We’re not stepping into this blind.”

“I dunno, Mikey,” Sam said. “I feel like this is a situation outside our comfort zone. Who knows how many moles are in that place? We could be walking into a slaughterhouse with paintball guns and Fiona’s buggy whip.”

It was true. I had to trust that what Father Eduardo had was more valuable to the Latin Emperors with him alive-and with us alive-than dead.

“A bunch of dead bodies is not good for anyone’s business,” I said. “We’re not disposable people. Junior’s going to realize that as soon as he sees my face. I have a feeling that will change the way he does business.”

Gangsters and terrorists are used to dealing with people who are scared of them. When you traffic in fear, you expect people will bend to your threats, and thus you’re able to get things done by reputation alone. The difference today would be that Sam, Fiona and I wouldn’t exactly be shaking in our shoes. Barry might have some problems, but we’d already made a plan for that.

When we reached the office building, I placed a small bug on the stucco wall adjacent to the door and then leaned down to tie my shoe. I didn’t bother trying to make the bug look any more indistinct than it was already-it was the size of a flattened marble, but flat like a magnet-since it had only one purpose: to record Junior’s conversation coming in and out of the building. “If you can hear me, Fiona,” I said, “honk twice.”

From across the street, two quick beeps rang out.

“Let’s go to work,” I said to Sam.

I pushed the double doors in and walked up to the reception desk while Sam stood still by the door. Leticia was on the phone, but when she saw me she hung up abruptly. “Hello,” she said, just another day of her life. “It’s nice to see you again, Mr…” she looked at her appointments, but my name wasn’t on there.

“Solo,” I said. “Father Eduardo is expecting me.”

“You’re not on the calendar,” she said.

I looked down at her calendar and saw that Junior Gonzalez had actually been penciled in. I had to hand it to Leticia. She was good at her job.

“He won’t mind,” I said.

She swallowed hard. “He’s got an appointment at eleven,” she said. “You should come back later.”

“Sweetheart,” I said, “do you see my friend back there?” I stepped aside so she could see Sam.

“Yes,” she said. “Mr. Teriyaki?”

“Kuryakin,” I said. “Mr. Kuryakin. Mr. Kuryakin is going to shoot you in the face if you don’t let me in to see Father Eduardo. It’s not personal. It’s just what he’s been told to do. You can understand that, right? Doing what you’ve been told to do? You do what you’re told, don’t you, sweetheart?”

She swallowed hard again. “You don’t understand,” she said, her voice a hoarse rasp. “People are coming who will kill you.”

“I admire that you want to save my life,” I said. “But don’t you want to save yours?”

“No,” she said. “I let you in, I’m good as dead, anyway.”

“What about your son?”

“How do you know about my son?”

“How does anyone know anything these days? It was on TMZ.”

Leticia slid her hands beneath her thighs. It was something a small child might do when nervous, and I realized Leticia wasn’t that old, really. A sad remnant of a life lived too quickly. “I can’t go,” she said.

“Leticia,” I said, “isn’t there another building you could visit right now? You don’t need to leave the state. You don’t even need to leave campus. Just put up a note that says you’ll be back in ten minutes and transfer your calls to voice mail. I’m here to help you. I really am. If I wanted you to be dead, you’d be dead. I don’t want that. I just want you to let me in, and then I want you to disappear until you think you should come back. I think you’ll know when that is. Won’t you?”

Leticia nodded slowly, and then I saw something dawn on her. “That girl?” she said.

“That girl,” I said.

“You really don’t want to hurt me, do you?”

“I really don’t,” I said, “but my partner will unless you leave.”

It was important that Leticia not know precisely what to believe, but also that she should believe me. She wanted out. We knew that. But I didn’t want to give up too much. Not yet, at least.

Leticia grabbed her purse and started to get up. “Wait,” I said. “Give me your cell phone.”

She reached into her purse, fished her phone out and set it on the desk. She kept her eyes on me the entire time. Not scared. Interesting.

“You like what you see?” I asked.

“Why aren’t you wearing a mask?”

“Because I don’t care who sees me,” I said.

“You’re not a bad person, are you?”

“No time to find out,” I said.

“That scar on your face,” she said, “you get that shaving?”

Testing now. Even more interesting.

“You have five seconds,” I said.

Leticia stepped around her desk and walked past me. Sam opened the door for her, and she never once looked at him.

“Tough girl,” Sam said.

“Let’s hope she’s not stupid,” I said.

We walked down the hall toward Father Eduardo’s office. There was a conference room on the right, followed by three offices along the left-hand side of the corridor before you reached Father Eduardo’s office at the end. I stuck my head in the first office and saw a young man of maybe twenty-five holding a Bible in his lap talking to a boy of no more than sixteen. The young man was dressed in a crisp white shirt with a tie. The name on the slider outside the office said CLIFFORD TURNER on it. Up the hall, I saw Sam enter another office and introduce himself as Chazz Finley, as we’d planned.

“Excuse me,” I said, and Clifford looked up at me.

“Help you with something?” he said. He didn’t seem annoyed, but clearly he was in the middle of a conversation and wanted to get back to it.

“Mike Michaels from the mayor’s office,” I said. I gave him the toothy smile every city employee with an ounce of desire to be a state employee can employ at a moment’s notice.

“Okay,” he said.

“I’m going to need you to clear out of your office for the next hour,” I said. “The mayor is coming in for a meeting with Father Eduardo, and we’re going to need your office to set up the media.”

“What?” he said. “I’m in the middle of a counseling session here.”

“I see that. I see that,” I said, “but it’s been a change of plans. Leticia just found out, the sweetheart, and so she’s busy trying to find us some space elsewhere. But when the mayor says jump, you know how that is.”

Clifford looked at his young charge. It would be imprudent to fly off the handle in front of the kid, particularly since the kid had a monitoring bracelet around his ankle.

“This is unusual,” Clifford said. “But what are we as humans if we cannot adapt, right, Milo?”

The kid didn’t say anything. He just stood up when Clifford did and made his way to the door with him.

“Real sorry about this,” I said.

“I didn’t vote for the mayor,” Clifford said. “Don’t expect my vote next year, either.”

“Noted,” I said.

Down the hall, another young man and kid with an ankle bracelet came shuffling out of the office Sam had entered. They didn’t look happy, either, so when they passed me I said, “The mayor thanks you.”

“The mayor will be hearing from me,” the young man said.

“All letters are appreciated,” I said.

Sam opened up the third office door and then stepped back abruptly.

“Problem?” I said.

“Mike, this isn’t good,” he said. I peered into the office. It was filled with bookshelves. On each of the shelves were approximately twenty Bibles. “That’s a lot of judgment right there, Mikey.”

“You’re on the right side of the law,” I said. “Generally.”

“We’ll keep this door closed,” Sam said. “I don’t want Fiona to walk by and burst into flames.”

“Good call,” I said.

When we reached Father Eduardo’s office, I rapped lightly on the door and he opened it and, yet again, surprised me. Instead of the shirt and tie I’d grown accustomed to, Father Eduardo was dressed as the priest he was, collar and all.

“Jesus,” Sam said.

“That’s the idea,” Father Eduardo said.

It was nice he still had a sense of humor. Even still, it was going to be hard to hit a man in a collar, which Father Eduardo had likely banked on. I’d done worse, and I had a feeling that Father Eduardo, at some point in his life, had done so, too.

Once we were in the office I said, “I emptied out the floor. What’s above us?”

“Nothing until tonight,” he said. “What did you do with Leticia?”

“Gave her a choice,” I said. “We’ll see how that works out.”

Sam peered out the window. “Company’s coming,” he said. “Should we get out the nice china?”

I walked up behind him and looked out, too. Junior Gonzalez: his eyes were covered by black wraparound sunglasses, but his tattoos and scars and muscles, however, were on full display. He’d given up the pretense of pleasant businessman so well cultivated in his suburban home that I had to wonder how silly he felt changing into a wife beater, Dickies and white shoes. The lieutenant walking with him was a massive hulk of a man. Maybe six foot five. Close to three bills. He had on shorts and white socks pulled to his knees, and wore a button-down shirt opened up to reveal a plain white T-shirt. It always surprised me how these guys had such white shirts. Didn’t they ever spill a Coke on themselves, like regular people?

“When was the last time you saw your brother?” I asked Father Eduardo.

“Nine months,” he said. “Maybe a year. Maybe longer.”

“You ready to see him again?”

“I am,” he said.

Out on the street, a Miami police cruiser came to a stop at the corner. I called Fiona. “You see that cop?” I said.

“Hard not to,” she said.

“Get his plates. He gets out of the car and starts heading toward the office before you make your move? Shoot him.”

“Really?”

“Really,” I said.

There was a pause. “You mean with the paintball gun?”

“Yes,” I said. “How’s Barry doing?”

“He’s sweating through his pants,” she said. “He’s agreed to get my car cleaned so we won’t have a problem.”

“That’s just great,” I said. “Let me know if you hear anything important when Junior and Killa walk up.”

“That’s Killa?”

“Doesn’t look the part?”

“I guess I imagined he’d be smaller,” she said, and hung up.

Out the window, Junior and Killa were making slow progress across the grounds. Every person who walked by got stared at. “Not trying to be too inconspicuous,” I said.

“Not Junior’s way,” Father Eduardo said.

“Open up your office door and stand there,” I said. “Let your brother see you and let Junior see you.”

“Should I look worried?”

“Are you?”

“No,” he said. “I have faith.”

“That’s good,” I said. I lifted up my shirt and showed him my paintball gun. “I have this.”

“I told you,” he said, but I put my hand up.

“It’s a toy,” I said, and handed it to him.

He hefted it a bit and then gripped it completely in his hand. “This feels comfortable,” he said.

“It’s perfectly legal,” I said.

Father Eduardo looked down the barrel. “What is it loaded with?”

“That one is loaded with paintballs filled with a fun, flesh-eating acid. The one on my ankle has pepper spray. In case I’m mugged.”

“Mikey,” Sam said from the window, “they’re getting close. Better have the padre move to the door.”

Father Eduardo gave me back my paintball gun and then walked over to his double doors and opened both wide. His frame filled up the open space impressively. He might have been religious, but he was still hell to look at.

I sat down behind Father Eduardo’s desk and placed my gun between my legs. Sam stretched out across the leather sofa to my right, leaving the conference table and the other sofa open for our guests. I closed my eyes, leaned back, relaxed and waited. In a few moments, I heard the slap of Junior and Killa’s footfalls in the hallway.

Even if you can’t see someone, you can tell a lot about them by listening to the way they walk. Put two people next to each other, and evolutionary science tells us that they will attempt to keep pace with each other. They will match speed. They will match stride. They will do all they can not to be left behind. From listening to the syncopated rhythms of the footfalls, I could tell that one of the two men was dragging a leg ever so slightly. Instead of making a definitive clop-clop sound, it made a clop-clap-clop, which meant he was dragging his foot instead of lifting it completely off the ground.

A weak knee.

Which probably meant a weak hip.

Since both men were rather physical specimens, my bet was on Killa, because his bulk looked more like something that came from a needle and not a dedication to working out. And that meant he probably had tendons and ligaments stretched beyond their normal limits. Which meant they could be snapped like a twig.

I opened my eyes in time to see the proof of my assumption. Killa was a half step behind Junior as they got to the door, all silent violence and dressed-down aggression and, it appeared, a bothersome medial collateral ligament.

Father Eduardo stepped forward and met both Junior and Killa before they could get inside. This wasn’t part of the plan.

“Jaime,” he said, using Junior’s real name, and then he did the damnedest thing. He hugged him. The two men embraced for just a few seconds, and I thought, Oh, no, this is a setup. This is about El Salvador. Father Eduardo then turned to Killa and said, “Adrian, my brother,” and hugged him, too.

Sam hadn’t moved on the sofa. Or at least hadn’t moved much. Just his hand, which held his cell phone. Neither of us had real guns on us, as per Father Eduardo’s instruction, but I had a pretty good feeling that Fiona had a MAC-10 in her trunk for a very special occasion.

The three men-all well over six feet, all well over 250 pounds-stood there in the hallway for a moment and stared at each other. They looked like triplets. “Come in,” Father Eduardo said eventually, “meet my friends.”

Father Eduardo stepped aside, and that’s when Junior got his first look at me. He wasn’t pleased.

“You,” he said.

“Me,” I said.

“You stole my BlackBerry,” he said.

I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled it out. “You’ve got terrible coverage,” I said, and tossed it back to him.

He saw Sam on the sofa. “Your girlfriend looks different,” he said.

“Just a different outfit,” I said. “You want your car keys?”

“I already got rid of that car,” he said.

“You know these motherfuckers?” Killa said.

“Language,” Junior said. “You’re in a church.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “This is my church now, and I allow for all kinds of language.”

Junior looked mildly surprised. “Oh, really? Is that true, Eduardo?”

Father Eduardo began to speak, but before he could get a word out, Sam jumped up from the sofa, took two steps and slapped him. Hard. “You don’t talk,” Sam said. “Nobody talks but the big man. You hear? He wants you to talk, he’ll tell you when.”

Killa made a move toward Sam, which didn’t surprise me in the least, but it was especially telling. Junior grabbed him by the shoulder and yanked him back. “Stop,” he said. “You don’t do anything unless I say so, remember? Same rules.”

“Maybe you want to chain your puppy up?” Sam said. “I’d hate for him to get hurt.”

“Do you know me?” Killa said to Sam.

“Yeah,” Sam said, “I know all the pretty babies. Are you a pretty baby? I like all the pretty drawings you have on your arms. Did your mommy draw those?”

I didn’t know where Sam was getting this stuff, but I liked it. Killa thought he was tough-and by the looks of him, he probably was, at least in the conventional street sense, which is a different scale-but Sam could put him down without breaking a sweat. That’s the difference between striking fear in someone by looking tough and actually being tough. Killa was probably pretty good at shooting someone in the back of the head, but Sam didn’t even need a gun.

“All right,” I said calmly. “Why don’t we all just sit down and then we can make threats to each other after everyone knows what the score is. Father, why don’t you put your big ass down on a chair, and maybe your buddies will follow suit.”

Father Eduardo, whose face was still bright red from where Sam slapped it, sat down at the table covered with blueprints. Junior and Killa didn’t bother to move.

“Please,” I said to Junior, “you’re my guests here. Have a seat before my guy Finley puts you down.”

Sam cracked his knuckles, but they didn’t make any noise, which sort of understated the effect he was aiming for, so he cracked his neck, too, and it sounded like someone dropped a piano down a flight of stairs. “Ah,” he said, “now I’m loose.”

Junior and Killa exchanged glances and then sat down in the two seats directly in front of the desk, not bothering with the empty sofa. At least they knew they wanted to be in front of me.

“Good,” I said. “Now, I understand you have a proposal for me?”

“Who are you?” Junior said.

“I’m the person who didn’t kill you in your own home,” I said. “But you can call me Solo.”

Junior laughed. “You have balls,” he said. “In here, you have balls. There’s two of you. And maybe you’ve got this snitching priest on your side. So you think, Okay, I got God working for me now, too, in addition to whatever you think you’re going to tell me. But I’ve got an army. You heard? I make a phone call, and I can have two thousand people here. You step outside, you won’t talk to me with such disrespect.”

“I gave you back your phone,” I said. “Why don’t you go ahead and make that call? I’m happy to wait. And while you do that, I’ll have my man Finley here make a call, too, and by the time you’ve hung up, Julia Pistell’s throat will be slit. Nice girl, by the way. Ever met her? Sweet as can be. Yeah, we got her down at the Ace Hotel. She thinks she won a contest through her college. How long you think it will take the police-and not the ones on your measly payroll-to put her dead body and your house together?”

“Who?” Killa said. And when Junior didn’t say anything, he said it again. “Who?”

“Nice you brought your owl with you,” Sam said from the sofa.

“Shut up, Adrian,” Junior said. “I’m trying to think.”

I caught Father Eduardo’s eye. He looked… impressed. But this wasn’t anywhere near over yet.

“You said your name is Solo?” Junior said.

“That’s what I said you could call me,” I said.

“What’s the nature of your business, Solo?”

“My business? You could say I take over distressed companies and then, when they’re profitable, I sell them. Why, you looking for an investor?”

“I guess I’m trying to figure out why you’d align yourself with someone who has a history of selling his partners out.”

“Align? You think this is an alignment? Father Eduardo works for me. You think you’re the only person who ever tried to blackmail someone?” I said. “I understand you want to utilize Father Eduardo’s existing infrastructure to run your business-would that be correct? I know you came in with this revenge-and-reward business, but the truth is that you see a good business model here. Right? Let’s just be honest, businessman to businessman. I’ve done pretty well here, haven’t I?”

“Eduardo is a Latin Emperor,” Junior said. “He may think he serves someone else, but he serves us first. That’s the oath. And he owes me much more.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve seen the documentaries,” I said. “There was even one you were in. Did you see that one?”

“No,” Junior said.

“Yeah, showed your picture, and then someone with a blurred-out face spent about twenty minutes talking about how you were the toughest SOB in the world and how you ran this and that and the other thing. But, shit, I just thought you looked like a guy who needed some nice Pottery Barn furniture and some chenille rugs.”

I winked at Junior, because when you wink at people, it’s a sign that either you’re insane or you know they’re insane and it’s cool, really.

“Thing is,” I said, “Eduardo has a new boss now. You have a problem with him, you take it up with me, and we’ll see what can be worked out without you getting killed.”

This made Killa laugh. He had an odd sense of humor. But Junior wasn’t amused. “I. Am. Owed.” Each word Junior said was its own sentence.

This day was not going as he had planned, I suspected, and I also suspected he wasn’t used to being challenged. I also had a pretty good idea that if pushed hard enough, he’d try to do something stupid. We hadn’t checked them for guns, but I was sure they were strapped. Or at least Killa was. In a moment, however, Fiona would be here to defuse that problem, if need be.

“You’ve got an outdated business model that needs some tweaking,” I said. “That counterfeiting business you were trying to pull is example A, Your Honor. And this idea that Father Eduardo owes you something? You wipe that clean from your mind. You go to that happy place you live in, with those nice sofas and pieces of art and that gazebo. I really liked that gazebo, Junior. You ever seen his gazebo, Killa?”

“Who the fuck are you?” Killa said. “Who the fuck are these guys, Junior?”

“Shut up, Adrian,” Junior said. Junior inhaled deeply and then tried to relax. “Eduardo belongs to me,” he said to me. “You must understand that.”

“Sure, sure,” I said. “You think I haven’t been in a prison or two? So he snitched you out. Big deal. He fell in love with the Lord-what did you expect? Let’s just get beyond revenge and deal with the tangible, okay? Everything you see here? That’s me. Father Eduardo and I made a deal. He had dreams, and I had means.”

“You are not involved!” Junior said. It was as if I wasn’t even speaking. Junior had his own script, and here I was interrupting it. He thought this was going to go down one way, and here it was, an all-new set of circumstances.

A rational man would change his tack.

A rational man might excuse himself and set up a new meeting at a later date.

A rational man might even just have his muscle pull out his gun and kill everyone. And Killa did have a gun. He walked like a guy with a bad knee and a gun shoved into his tailbone. Sam had noticed this, too, and was keeping a laser focus on Killa’s every move.

I’d spoken rationally thus far to Junior, and it frankly hadn’t done much to defuse the situation. Junior was quick to boil. The problem with speaking rationally to criminally insane people is that at some point, no matter how much sense you’ve made, they just won’t be able to process what you’re saying.

We’d already reached that point and had been talking for only about three minutes. So, when that point of stasis arrives, you need to get down to the level of your opponent, ponder what his next move might be and then make it before he did… which is why, during the second or two it took Junior to process what I’d just told him, I decided to shoot Killa in the knee with my big shiny gun.

Except it wasn’t a gun, of course. It was a paintball marker. But instead of paintballs, I’d filled this gun with rounds of a mixture containing primarily lortropic acid, which is a particularly voluble acid when it hits things containing water, since it actively repels the substance, which is why it works so well when you’re refinishing your deck. There wasn’t enough acid in the round to do much damage, apart from eat away a patch or two of skin, but when combined with the force of the shot, I knew in all likelihood the round would go right through Killa’s pulled-up sock and into his skin, where it would burn and sizzle and be plenty dreadful to look at, which is part of why I decided to do it.

The advantage was that the acid would actually cauterize the wound so, on balance, I was really doing Killa a favor.

Plus, my real plan was to sever his medial collateral ligament, or at least crack his patella. It would depend on how accurate the gun was. And that would help him in the long run, too. You can’t be much of a gangster if you can’t run after or away from people.

So, just as Junior was opening his mouth to respond, I slid my gun beneath the desk and with a single pop that didn’t sound like a gunshot (which is good, because a gunshot is pretty distinctive and loud and tends to bring in uninvited guests) dropped Killa to the ground in a screaming mess.

“My knee!” he bellowed.

Sam walked over to where Killa was writhing, knelt down, put a hand on Killa’s head to keep him still, and proceeded to pull a nice, little snub-nosed. 357 from his belt, which he handed to me.

Junior didn’t move. He just looked at Killa with something less than amusement. Killa’s knee was cut open in a two-inch gash that was, as predicted, bubbling but not really bleeding. A clean shot. Mostly, Junior seemed confused.

“I’m sorry,” I said to Junior, “but I don’t allow guns in here. It’s a church, you know? And I found his tone very disrespectful.”

“You shot me!” Killa said.

“Shut up, Adrian,” Junior said.

“Does that burn?” Sam asked.

“It’s eating my skin!” he said.

Junior kept his eyes on Killa, but said to me, “It is eating his skin.”

“Yes,” I said. “He’s got five minutes until it hits bone, so he should be fine provided we reach some kind of accord in, oh, four minutes and thirty seconds. He’ll want some time for the antidote to work its way into his system.”

“What did you shoot him with?”

“Trade secret,” I said.

Junior finally pulled his eyes from Killa and looked over his shoulder at Father Eduardo, who, amazingly, seemed pretty content with everything. It was all working out perfectly, and perhaps he saw that.

The only problem thus far was that Killa’s burning flesh smelled. The acid really wasn’t going to eat away at him until it hit bone-it would only burn off a few layers of skin, and, mixing with blood and the oil in his skin, would cause a lot of visual fireworks, but no real permanent damage. His destroyed ligaments were more his own fault than mine. They would have popped at some point. I just brought the future forward for him.

“Here’s what I want,” Junior said. “I need the printing plant. I will pay no fee for it. It will be mine. Eduardo can still print his newspapers and his flyers and no-drug pamphlets and everything else he wants. But I need the operation from midnight to six daily. There is no negotiation.”

“Really?” I said.

“Really,” Junior said. “Or else I kill Father Eduardo’s nephew.”