Walking back home with her take-out soup in hand, Graciella examined the neighborhood. The apartment building on Calle 61 Este was called El Sueño, The Dream. The whole time Graciella had lived there with her mother, she had dreamed of living elsewhere. She had watched longingly as sparkling new high-rises had sprouted throughout the city. Those were the kinds of places where several of her very important clients maintained penthouse suites. She had always imagined that once her mother was no longer in the picture, she’d move into one of those—preferably in one of the top floor units—and take her rightful place in the universe.
But the last few days had caused her to rethink her place in the universe. As her father’s primary money launderer, she knew exactly how much money was floating around inside El Pescado’s illegal world. She knew which numbered accounts belonged to him and which ones belonged to each of her half brothers. While sorting out the trash in her mother’s room, it had occurred to her that maybe there already was enough money. Maybe she didn’t need any more. What she should probably do was to consolidate what already existed by collapsing the cartel and walking away with the remaining spoils.
She wasn’t yet sure how she’d go about accomplishing that goal, but she intended to bring El Pescado’s cartel down in the time-honored Duarte fashion, by turning brother against brother and father against son. Graciella, an unassuming and unmarried spinster in her mid-thirties, wasn’t anyone’s idea of a drug lord. She wasn’t the least bit glamorous or even especially good-looking. She lived a quiet and ostensibly sober life. No one looking at someone who had selflessly cared for her mother for years would consider her capable of turning on her family and destroying them from within. Her father and her brothers would be wary of attacks coming from outside—from rival cartels or from the cops—but not from her.
Her challenge was to point the authorities in the direction of El Pescado and his sons without being drawn into the fray herself. There would be plenty of time later on for her to live a flashy life. Right now, she needed the protection of the same kind of invisibility that had served her so well as a vagrant child, wandering on her own and begging for money in the slums of Panama City. Now she would be an invisible drug cartel kingpin, hiding in plain sight in a run-down, somewhat seedy condo complex. She doubted anyone other than her father would know to come to El Sueño looking for her, and by the time he did, it would be too late.
Back in the apartment, Graciella was about to dish up her soup when the phone rang. The name in the caller ID belonged to one of Graciella’s coworkers. Isobel Flores’s cubicle was next to Graciella’s. She was also the assistant office manager. “Have you heard?” Isobel asked breathlessly.
“Heard what?” Graciella asked, feigning innocence although she was quite sure she already knew the answer.
“It’s about Arturo,” Isobel said. “He never made it home last night.”
“Really?” Graciella replied. “What happened?”
“You knew he left the office with Bianca yesterday, right?”
“I was pretty busy yesterday,” Graciella said. “I guess I didn’t notice. Why?”
“The cops came by here a little while ago. They got my name from Arturo’s wife. They told me that they found Arturo’s car early this morning. It was stuck in a ditch outside of town. The car was shot full of holes and covered in blood, but there was no sign of Arturo.”
Right, Graciella thought. She had told her contractor to get rid of the body, and he had.
“Anyway,” Isobel continued, “the cops found a valet receipt in the car and traced it back to the hotel.”
Graciella didn’t bother asking which hotel, because everyone in the office knew the one Arturo preferred above all others.
“They showed me a clip of security video from the valet stand out front. It showed Arturo plain as day. They wanted to know if I recognized the woman who was with him.”
“And you told them it was Bianca.”
“Of course. What else could I do? They left here to go talk to her. They’ll probably take her in for questioning. They might even arrest her. You don’t think she could have had anything to do with this, do you?” Isobel asked. “She always seemed so . . .”
“Naive, maybe?” Graciella put in.
“Exactly,” Isobel agreed, “naive and innocent.”
“Looks can be deceiving,” Graciella said with an inward smile. “Just because Bianca looks innocent doesn’t mean she is innocent. Maybe she has a boyfriend or a brother who took exception to Arturo’s behavior. It’s about time somebody did.”
Once off the phone with Isobel and feeling quite happy with herself, Graciella dished up her soup and then brought her laptop to the table to keep her company while she ate. When she logged in to the dark Web storage site, there was still no video link, but she was pleased to find several audio files queued up and waiting. With a real sense of satisfaction, she hit the play button, ready to listen in on the conversations of people who were unwittingly broadcasting every word from close to 6,400 kilometers away.
Graciella had hoped that the first voice she heard would be Stuart Ramey’s. She needed to gain some insight into who he was and how he operated in hopes of figuring out how to handle him once they were in touch. Unfortunately, the only voice audible on the recording belonged to a woman—Ali Reynolds, maybe? Since no other voices were part of the conversation, she was most likely speaking on a telephone.
Graciella heard the recorded voice say something about “surveillance cameras.” Unable to make it out, she ran the recording back and played it again. “Wait, we have surveillance cameras in here? Really? I never noticed them. Where are they?”
A knot formed in the pit of Graciella’s stomach. Hadn’t Robby forwarded a message from Ron Webster claiming that there hadn’t been any interior surveillance inside High Noon? Hadn’t he told her that he’d gotten away clean? If there were cameras at work, that wasn’t true.
Graciella returned to listening in time to hear the woman say, “I don’t see any camera.” A short time later the woman in Cottonwood exclaimed. “I’ll be damned! I never would have noticed that in a million years.” That exchange led Graciella to conclude that there had to be at least one camera present inside High Noon Enterprises—very probably more than one.
If there were interior surveillance cameras, it was only a matter of time before her planted listening devices would be found and the whole exercise would be a total waste of time and money. She had been assured that Ron was a smooth operator. Obviously that wasn’t true. Not only had he not been smart enough to spot the surveillance, he had also failed to hook up the video link and had subsequently lied about it. It didn’t take long for Graciella’s shock to turn to anger and eventually to rage. She had no intention of tolerating that kind of bungling. If the cops took Ron into custody, how long before he gave up Robby? And if that happened, how long before they showed up on Pablo’s doorstep, since she had used her half brother’s account to pay the bill?
For a long time after the audio file finished playing, Graciella sat there waiting to see if there would be another. Ali Reynolds had obviously left the building shortly after the recording ended. Finally, with no additional files available, a frustrated Graciella left the storage site and logged in to a different one. These days, when El Pescado required the services of a paid killer, he often turned to a group of assassins affiliated with MS-13, who filled that bill in any number of locations both inside the US and elsewhere.
When Graciella set up the hit on Ron Webster, she was more than happy to pay extra for expedited service. Once again, and just for consistency’s sake, she paid good money out of Pablo’s account for “overnight delivery.”
She’d been led to believe that Ron Webster was subtle and smart. Obviously he was neither, and that was why, although he was too stupid to realize it yet, he was on his way out. As for Graciella’s long-distance new hires? They were known to be thorough, lethal, and not the least bit subtle.
Clearly the authorities in the US weren’t especially interested in solving crimes committed in the distant past, so she would offer up some Duarte Cartel-related crimes that were a bit more current. She would use the cops to bring her father down along with her two half brothers. Once they were gone, with any kind of luck, she, Frigg, and Stuart Ramey would be the only ones left standing.