New Growth (Spook Hills Trilogy Book 2) (5 page)

Remember those two
times we saw him with those hookers getting some extra on the side?
 
Wouldn’t have minded some of that myself.”

Cruze was surprised but not sad.
 
Inclined to be dominant and bumptious, few
would miss his uncle.

Now looking back on it, he could see that even from Cristo’s
letters that summer, his twin’s
reactions
and mood were all about Cristo and how life had changed for him.
 
Cristo displayed little real sympathy for
Annetta, for Eduardo or for him where
he
sat incarcerated in juvie.
 
Cruze loved
Cristo but now with the distance of time, he could better see his shortcomings
as a boy and as a man.

The train pulled into Bern bringing Cruze out of his
memories.
 
He found he was sweating from
thinking about his time in juvie and all the tragedies that struck his family
that summer.
 
Cruze shoved his past away,
grabbed his duffle bag and walked off the train.
 
He looked up hotels on his cell phone, picked
one,
made
the booking and headed over to
it.

Once in his room, Cruze checked his email.
 
Finding nothing from his brothers, he ordered
from room service and sat down at the desk to examine the FBI website for any
stories about his brothers.
 

His search hit on the Fuentes bust the previous November,
with several news clips about the dramatic action.
 
The FBI had confiscated money and gold
in excess of
$75 million dollars and
undisclosed amounts in
an extensive
network of financial accounts.
 
He
scanned the first article until he found what he feared.
 

Cruze clutched his chest as he crumpled face down on his
laptop, after reading about a SWAT team killing Cristo and Eduardo.
 
The FBI got them at their home near Madrid,
New Mexico on Thanksgiving Eve.
 
Cruze
propped his head up
on
his hands to focus
on the words.
 
His mouth went dry as he
suppressed a scream of anguish.
 
The
commentary noted the third Fuentes brother, himself, had been killed in a raid
on a repackaging plant in Mexico City.

Cruze moaned as he read
a
second
story, not wanting to believe his brothers were dead.
 
No one should have known about the house in
Madrid.
 
Nevertheless
someone had found their real names and traced them to New Mexico.
 
A knock came
at
the door and like an automaton, Cruze took the tray of food, although he lost
his appetite.
 
He put it down on a small
table and moved to the window, staring at the lights of the city.
 
The death of his twin and best friend,
Cristo, left him alone for the first time in his life.
 
The news piece said Cristo had died of
multiple gun wounds, after having shot Eduardo to death.
 
If Cristo pumped bullets into Eduardo, he had
committed an act of mercy.
 
Once cornered
, Cristo would have recognized
Eduardo would never survive capture and incarceration, not with his
fragile
mind.

For the next
hour
Cruze
read several articles and searched for more.
 
Discovering no mention of the identification of the agents who made the
arrests, he did find one reference about consultants to the FBI, an arrest
team
and a SWAT team.
 
They had thrown a full force against his
brothers, gunning them down like rabid dogs.

Cruze sat hunched over the desk with his head in his
hands.
 
He needed to find out more from
someone he trusted.
 
If his brothers were
dead, he must get in touch with his cousin, Julio, who traded information for
high stakes rewards and who had been close to them growing up.
 
Since only Cristo and Eduardo
knew
how to get hold of him, Julio could not
have alerted him about their deaths.
 
The
FBI attack must have blindsided them.
 
Reluctant to give up their empire, Cristo and Eduardo were now
dead.
 
If they
had only escaped from their drug trafficking world when
he did,
they might still be alive.

Even as the thought of never seeing his brothers again sank
in, he speculated about whether Eduardo and Cristo might have staged their
demises.
 
Could they now be living
incognito or sailing the Caribbean flaunting new identifications and with the
bulk of their money stashed away?
 
Their
style was to make their deaths so convincing they even deceived him.
 
Was it possible he would one day receive a
call or an
email
to bring them back
together again?
 
If they were alive, why
had he not heard from them?

And yet knowing how much value they placed on their
accumulated wealth, would they have abandoned their vault full of cash and gold
bars?
 
A few million perhaps, but the $75
million referenced in the news was a huge amount to leave behind unless the
FBI
busting in hastened their exit.
 
He clung to the hope they still lived and one
day they would communicate with him.
 

He left
his hotel room
to take a long walk to plan how to discover the real
fates
of his brothers.
 
If
they had been killed, he would have to find out if their corpses had been
cremated or buried.
 
If they had not been
cremated, DNA testing could be performed, comparing the genes of the men
murdered by the FBI to each other
and to
his own genes.
 
He weighed various
options, but this stood out as his best.
 

Cruze once read about five stages of
grieving,
and he remembered denial as first.
 
In hoping his brothers plotted an elaborate
hoax of their killings, was he in denial?
 
He walked for two hours, going over what he just learned.
 
No one had trailed him to his little house in
Spain, believing him killed in the staged death they did in Mexico.
 
He should be safe for some time yet.
 
If he possessed Cristo’s streak of
vengefulness, he would search for clues, find out the identity of the agents
assigned to the case and chase them down, seeking revenge.
 

Cruze
was well aware
that he lacked the boldness to be a leader or a lone vigilante.
 
He was a follower – the sidekick to
Cristo.
 
If his twin happened to be the
sole survivor, he would hastily organize a revenge hunt for the agents who had
murdered his brothers.
 

Cristo!
 
A sob escaped
him.
 
More than his twin, Cristo made up
a significant part of
his world.
 
He sat down on a bench by a bus stop,
breathing deeply to bring his emotions back under control.
 
He still had
a
little
hope.
 
Now was not the time
to break down.
 

If anyone came
to arrest him
,
Cruze would not go willingly.
 
He
preferred death even if he had to shoot himself.
 
After his horrible year in a juvie facility,
he did not intend to spend the rest of his life in prison.
 
Death was a better choice.
 

Stopping to watch the twenty-six jets of the fountains in
Der Bundesplatz, a major square in Bern, Cruze took out his cell to arrange to
meet Julio in Miami and to get a plane reservation.
 
He had to understand what happened to his
brothers and if any reason existed to still hope they were alive.

The next morning Steve welcomed Rick when answering the
door at his knock.
 
After inviting him
in, he told him Mathew and Ivy would be making their way home that afternoon.

“Just as well.
 
I
wanted to talk to you about Callie and her
miserable
husband.
 
John Henry refused to go into
rehab,” Rick said as he pulled out a chair and sat down.
 
“He claims he quit drinking on his own.”

“Good news, I guess,” Steve said.

Rick gazed off
into
the distance, looking downcast.
 
“I’m
ashamed to say a part of me hoped the bastard would stew in his alcoholic
juices.
 
The man is a pompous ass.
 
Time for Callie to leave him and come home to
live with Susannah.
 
Even if he becomes
sober, he will not be a good husband.”

“Hard choices ahead for her, either way.
 
She is such a delightful gal.
 
She sure impressed Mathew.”

“He’s the type of husband Callie should have. I have gotten
to know Mathew fairly well over the last eighteen months or so.
 
I find him to be
likable
, honest and straight-forward.
 
All around good guy.”

“Mathew is the best man I ever met,” Steve said with a tone
of conviction.

Rick held his gaze and nodded.
 
“I’m no home-wrecker, but if Mathew lured
Callie away, Sassy and I
would
do a jig
of happiness.”

Steve smiled a little, “Us too.
 
I think we know that i
n marriage
the first time isn’t always right.”

The two men were sitting
at
the dining room table where Steve worked that morning.
 
Open windows on both
sides
allowed
a fresh breeze
to flow through, scenting the room with whiffs of the
fragrant
roses planted at intervals
by
the rows of vines as well as here and there around the gardens.

Rick said, “By the way, I ran into Lenny on the way over
here.
 
He said he
does
a thrice-daily security and constitutional walk.
 
Any chance for me to hire him for checking on
our place too?
 
Won’t do any harm if he
did a full circuit every
day
since I
can’t always wander out in the vines.”

Steve thought for only a moment.
 
Cooperative staffing between our two
vineyards
made
sense.
 
“I’ll give Mathew a heads-up.
 
Lenny changes his route each time he goes
out, looping higher and lower on different knolls both on our farm and on
neighboring hillocks.
 
Mathew has him
here as an extra pair of hands.”

“Seems like a solid guy.
 
A little quiet, which is not all bad.”

“From what I heard,” Steve said, “Lenny came from a poor
section of Chicago where a
police officer
in his neighborhood inspired him to pursue a career in law enforcement.
 
His grades and the good will of his
professors got him into the FBI.
 
For the
first twenty years, he served on SWAT teams.
 
In his later years, he became what I call the muscle, assigned from one
team to the next where they needed a man to either go in first or last.”

“No family?” Rick asked.

“Wife divorced him many years ago.
 
FBI careers can be hard on marriages.
 
Since he traveled so much, his two children
grew up hardly knowing him.
 
After
retiring, he moved
to California
to see
more of them, only to find them grown and married with no time for an absent
father.
 
To give Lenny a better place to
live than the trailer he is in, Mathew plans to redo the old manager’s cottage
on the additional acreage he’s after.”

Steve looked at his watch and said, “Time for me to make
sandwiches.
 
Want to stay?”

“Another time.
 
Sassy
is putting a picnic together for us.
 
She’s trying to sweet-talk me into stepping between Callie and John
Henry, convince Callie to leave the pompous prick and bring her and Susannah
back up to live with
us.”

“Will you?”
 

Rick lost his easy-going
demeanor,
his
face
contorted,
and he glanced
away.
 
Steve waited, not saying
anything.
 
Even though
he
often lacked social graces in his direct
manner, he understood when to let the other person unburden
himself
.

“I don’t want to risk Callie getting angry with me,” Rick
said, his eyes darting
around
as if
seeking the right answer.

“Marriages are tough.
 
Callie must see something in John Henry that you and I don’t.”

“She is loyal to a fault, feeling that he stood by her when
he got her pregnant.
 
Ten years with that
man has more than repaid her obligation.
 
I vowed to step in and watch over her when her parents were killed back
in her early teens.
 
Feel like I’m doing
a damn poor job of it.”

“Keep me posted.”
 
Steve put his big hand on Rick’s
sinewy
shoulder.
 
“I would be dying inside if
Mathew were in a bad marriage.
 
He is
like a son to me.
 
Situations like these, we can offer advice and help,
but we can’t force the issue.
 
Make
sure Callie appreciates that she has performed way more than her
duty
and that she has a home with you.
 
I am
confident
she knows both, but it won’t hurt to reinforce it.”

Rick nodded, walked over and reached for the doorknob,
stepping outside without another word and striding off.
 
Steve stood in the doorway thinking.
 
Since they had bought the land, he had
focused on building the house, starting the vineyard and resolving lingering
FBI issues, as well as marrying and settling in.
 
Rick had become a good friend during that
time, especially to Mathew.
 
Even though
Steve had limited experience with reaching out to people, he wanted to support
Rick.
 
He
would walk over to his place in a day or two to talk with him about a drainage
issue in one field and to hear what he decided to do about Callie.
 

After hiking up next to Mathew’s old house, Rick reached the
crest of the hill.
 
Silhouetted against
the bright cobalt sky, he turned and raised a hand to Steve.
 
Steve nodded, waved an arm up above his head,
turned and went back inside the house.
 

Even though the client’s data called him, Steve needed to
make lunch.
 
He
loved
food
with his
preferences ranging from
mild
to spicy or
plain to gourmet-fancy, as long as the dishes were fresh, good quality and well
prepared.
 
Even if his repertoire of
talents came up deficient in cooking expertise, he had the skills to make a variety
of tasty sandwiches.
 
Ivy had taught him
how to use their Panini
maker,
and she
kept the refrigerator stocked.
 
He rubbed
his hands together as he strode into the kitchen, eager to make lunch and
resume his work.

While he sympathized with his neighbor Rick, Steve’s life
fizzed with fulfillment.
 
For the first
time in his adulthood, the fullness of having friends and the demands of
supporting them came home to him.
 
His
friends depended on him as their rock for guidance and help.
 
Mathew struggled to find a woman to share his
life
.
 
Brian and Moll’s business was experiencing faster growth than their
capacity to handle it.
 
All these
concerns brought home the single-focused nature of his former FBI life.
 
His retirement challenged him as his life
redefined itself.
 
Now he enjoyed the
benefits of becoming
a more complete
man.
 
Six years ago when he started
on his journey
to grow as a person, his life
lay around him as empty as an old swimming pool, drained and deserted.
 
As his scope broadened, he kept discovering
more about himself.
 
Even the difficult
parts carried their rewards.

From a table at an outdoor café in the ritzy Bal Harbour
Mall in Miami, Julio surreptitiously peered at his cousin, Cruze, where he
stood near the koi pond, appearing more like a middle-aged hipster waiting for
his favorite squeeze than like a retired drug lord.
 
He stayed the same over the years, thin and
muscular with dark hair worn parted to the right with a gentle wave.
 
His keen blue eyes missed little, although
sometimes he became distracted by thoughts of paintings,
glass
and creative arts.
 
A pale scar in the shape of a
check mark
etched his brow above his left
eye.
 
It was a reminder of one of many
childhood escapades with Cristo.
 
The
most reserved of the brothers, Cruze had supported his twin with
a steadfast
resolve.

Cruze always seemed
faded
like
one of the old chambray beach shirts he often wore, which helped
him to blend in and slip away unnoticed when he wanted.
 
Today he dressed up in tan slacks with a
white polo shirt under a navy flannel blazer.
 
The requested shopping bag from Neiman Marcus hung heavily over his arm.

Cruze squinted down at his watch, peeked at two children
kneeling down to see the fish as they swam around and walked towards the
restaurant called Carpaccio to meet him.
 
Family visits and business happened these days by cell phone, by
texting
and by expensive lunches.
 

Living alone and separate from Cruze had allowed Julio to
grieve over Cristo and Eduardo in private for nearly a year.
 
Today he would face Cruze, whose grief was
new and raw.
 
Julio did not deal well
with emotions, neither his nor the pain of another, particularly those few
people he prized.

Julio smoothed his light Armani suit over the well-toned
body he kept fit through
regular
workouts, letting him glide around corners silent as a cat.
 
He lifted the index finger on his right hand
to Cruze, the signal he could approach him.
 
They greeted each other with a handshake and a slight touching of the shoulders.
 
Julio poured a second glass of the Roederer
Cristal and topped his up half an inch.
 

“To old friends.
 
Too
few remain.
 
The new function with less
grace.”
 
Julio kept his voice evenly
modulated in mid-range tones.
 
Up close,
Cruze’s devastation was visible, edging into his green eyes flecked with tawny
brown that matched those of his twin.
 
He
appeared younger than he used to, even though the deaths of his brothers
weighed heavily in his heart like a big block of ice, never melting, always
chilling.

“To old friends,” Cruze said and nodded.

Cruze was part of his childhood.
 
They had spent
little
time together in the last ten years.
 
First they talked about mundane things, life
abroad, men’s fashion, the weather and sports.
 
With the restaurant growing busier and noisier, they moved to more
personal
topics, allowing the sounds around
them to screen their conversation.

“What is the truth about my brothers?
 
Were they
blasted
away by the FBI?” Cruze asked in a whisper while leaning across
the table.
 

Julio saw him searching for certainty in his intense blue
eyes, so like Cruze’s brother Eduardo’s.
 
“As smart and slippery as Cristo and Eduardo were, they failed to be
wise.
 
You acted wisely.”

“And all is gone?”

“All here, all in Colombia and all in Mexico – taken and
divided up.
 
Your counterparts in Mexico
organized quickly.”

Cruze pushed back, his hand going
to his chest
to rub the area around his heart, which must hurt even
more as the loss of his brothers was confirmed.
 
“I keep wondering if I had stayed with them, could I have prevented
their untimely deaths?
 
Last fall when
this happened, I had just bought my place in Botaya using one of my false
identities.
 
I made plans to modernize
the house and then build my glass studio.
 
Should I have stayed with Cristo and Eduardo to pull them away from the
business?”

“They were not ready to leave,” Julio replied.
 
“I talked with them that afternoon before the
attack, wanting to wish them a Happy Thanksgiving.
 
Although they
were
trying to sell their way out of the drug business, their hearts remained in
Fuentes Enterprises.”