One You Never Leave (14 page)

A Family Meeting

Luke
stalked out of the interrogation room so fast that Anglotti had to run to catch up.

“Wait up, Wade,” said Anglotti.

“What do you want?” spit Luke. He was thoroughly angry now and past the point to exercise patience with Anglotti. Fuck the police! They weren’t ever going to help him. They hadn’t in over two decades.

“Hey, Wade. Chill. I didn’t call the FBI.”

“You didn’t need to. Apparently these guys keep me in their sights 24/7. I’ve got one big target on my back that says, ‘Here’s the drug lord’s nephew. Let’s make sure he stays in shit so deep he can never get clear.’ This is bullshit!”

Anglotti pushed Luke into an office off the hallway. “This,” hissed Anglotti. “This is what I was talking about. You’ve got to keep your fucking cool, Wade. Yeah, I get that there are bigger things going on. Don’t you get it? I live with this shit every fucking day of my life. One eye is on my family and one over my shoulder so that my bosses don’t figure out who my family is.”

Luke froze, eye to eye with Anglotti. It hit him that Anglotti walked the same tightrope he did, probably even more intensely. While Luke had disowned his criminal family connections, Anglotti had no choice but walk a shadowy line between his and his work. “Okay. Okay. I’ll cool down. It’s tough. No one seems to be interested in finding Emily.”

“Luke, again, you don’t get it. The police don’t prevent crimes, they don’t interrupt crimes; they just file the paperwork afterward.”

“I’m sure your bosses don’t see it that way.”

“You’re right. They don’t. But I’ve done this job long enough to know that ninety-five percent of the time that’s what it amounts to. Once in a while we’ll score a win and the press will make a big deal of it. But so much more gets past us. And those of us who try to do something about the problems of the world have to live with that. But right now what you and I have to do is concentrate on those people who can solve your problem for you. In a while, the FBI team will show up and they’ll want to set up a base to work from.”

“What can they do?”

“Electronic stuff that I’d have to get a warrant for. Maybe they can get a location from Emily’s phone. In the meantime, you need to get to the Red Bull. My uncle wants to talk to you.”

“What about the FBI team?”

“Does Tony have the codes to get into your shop?”

Luke must be tired. It took him a moment to connect the name Tony with Saks, which was Saks’ real name. “Yeah. Of course.”

“Good. I’ll send him when they get here. Go. Uncle Vits is waiting for you.”

“Isn’t Webb going to get all curious about where I’m going?”

“He does seem like the curious type. Don’t worry. You need to check on your mother-in-law, don’t you? Isn’t that what you just told me?”

“Yeah,” said Luke. “I suppose I did.”

Luke
flew down Route 66 and made it the Red Bull in fifteen minutes. Though there were cars in the parking lot, it wasn’t the usual mix of motorcycles and SUVs that graced the watering hole each evening. When Luke reached the door, he found the sign that read, ‘Closed for regular business for a private party. Thank you for patronizing the Red Bull.’ When he pulled on the door, it was locked.

What the hell? He was told to come here. The door was thick, so it wasn’t as if he could knock on the thing and people would hear him. He thought he might try the back door, but then the lock turned in the front and pushed open.

Saks stood there. “Come in, Luke. We were waiting on you.” His voice carried an urgent tone that Luke wasn’t accustomed to hearing from him.

The bar was dark, with only the wall sconces lit. For the first time in Luke’s memory, the lights above the bar were turned off. The scent of beer and liquor that clung to walls was highlighted by the lack of illumination.

“In back of the bar,” said Saks.

Luke followed Saks to the section behind the bar. Here, a long stretch of tables was set up to end. There weren’t as many men here as the night when he was here in similar circumstances. He recognized John and Shelton Rocco, but the others he did not know. This didn’t surprise him. But what did surprise him was who was tied to a chair, sitting on the platform in the corner where bands set up.

Pez.

He stepped closer to see the one-percenter sporting a shiner on his right eye.

Alarmed, Luke spun around. “What the hell’s going on here?” Was he about to be filled with lead?

“Luke,” said Saks quietly, “you need to keep calm. They were trying to help you, and you should show them respect.”

“Fuck! Don’t you know holding this man will start a gang war?”

“Of course we know,” said a gravelly voice.

Luke was absolutely shocked. This was a disaster, an absolute cluster-fuck.

“Luke, meet my Uncle Vito, though we call him Vits for short. He’s the capo for our group."

“Capo?”

“Like captain. He and a couple others report directly to the head of our family. In this area, he’s the boss.” Saks took Luke’s arm and spoke low in his ear. “And I mean it about the respect thing.”

“Got it,” replied Luke.

“Mr. Wade,” said Vits, “You’ve been very good to our Anthony here. He speaks highly of you. Tells us you are an honorable man. We cannot say the same thing about your uncle, Raymond Icherra. He came here offering things and making promises. But we think he had no intention of keeping any of them. Knowing we were here, he was playing us against other elements of this state. You know who we are speaking about.”

Luke nodded. It had to be the Rojos and the Hombres. “Yes, sir.”

“This man here, Pez, he has some interesting information. But he says he’ll not tell us the full story unless you are here. So we asked you to come.”

Luke stepped closer to the stage. “Pez?”

“Hah,” sneered Pez. “Don’t get all excited,
pendajo
. I just didn’t want to die without taking you down.”

“What a sense of drama,” said Vits. “We aren’t going to kill you.”

“Not yet, anyway,” said another man at the table, whose face was shadowed.

There were grim chuckles at the table, but, Luke reflected, this was not helping the situation at hand.

“Pez,” said Luke, “if you have something to say, I suspect you’d better spit it out. These men don’t play. They have a reputation to uphold.”

“Yeah, such honorable men.”

Shelton Rocco, the owner of the bar, stepped over to Pez and backhanded him hard in the jaw. Luke stood facing the two, stock-still and not breathing. For as many years as he’d known Rocco, he’d never seen him so much as snap at a customer.

“Pez,” said Luke, “I suspect things can get much worse for you, so stop playing hard ball.”

“After all we’ve meant to each other,
pendajo
, you just want me to roll over and play the whore? I’m fucking crushed.”

“Vits,” sighed Shelton, “I think it’s time to take out the trash.”

“Okay, okay,” said Pez. “It’s like this,
pendajo
. There’s something crooked going with the G-men. They’re looking for something you supposedly have. Someone from there hired a couple of my guys to go looking around your property, but they mucked it up.”

Luke remembered the night he’d had to go shut off the security alarm and did the walk-through with the police. “Yeah, and so? Wait. Were these the same guys who kidnapped my wife?”

Pez’s face turned red. “These guys hire out for anything or anyone. I didn’t know anything about it.”

“But you know these guys. Where did they take my wife?”

“I don’t know anything about that, and those
cabrons
disappeared, so I can’t ask them.”

“Asshole!” exploded Luke. He wanted to tear the man apart, but Saks was holding on to his arms, tight.

“Let’s save this for the jerks when we find them, Luke.”

Vits spoke up. “Now,
pendajo
, is that the term you use? Interesting word. Can mean so many things, but in this case I think it means ‘I’m-going-spill-my-guts-if-I-know-what’s-good-for-me.’ So,
pendajo
, what’s going on with Ray Icherra?”

Pez glared at Vits. “Nothing,” he spat.

“Shelton,” said Vits wearily.

The owner of the bar stepped in closer to Pez and raised his fist.

“Mother of—Oh,
puto culo,
okay, enough! Enough. The bastard wanted to supply us with enough
leillo
to put you out of business.”

“Cocaine,” hissed Vits.

“
Si
.”

“And he did this to some Hombres leadership and then the Rojos.”

“Si, the
cabron
did that
.”

“He offered us the same thing,” said Vits.

Pez offered a crooked smile. “Guess he didn’t know we were already business partners.”

Vits frowned. “But you violated one term of our agreement.”

“Which is?”

“Don’t get the local cops excited. And that is what you did when you allowed your men to kidnap Wade’s wife. You know they’ve been watching Luke because of his connection with Icherra.”

“I didn’t—” started Pez

“Are you telling me that you don’t have control over your crew? Because that makes you look weak. What would you rather be? Weak or stupid?”

Pez started swearing a long streak in Spanish.

“Take him to the van. We have another visitor.”

Pez twisted and spit as two men Luke didn’t know untied and pulled Pez out of the chair. He struggled, but the two men were larger than him. They dragged him out the back door.

“
Stupido
,” said Vits. “I told him I wasn’t going to kill him.”

The other men, also shadowed, laughed like it was a joke.

“What’re you going to do to him?” asked Luke.

“What does it matter?” said Vits.

“I’d like the opportunity to pound the crap out of him.” He shrugged. “After I get my wife back, of course.”

“You might get to do that, but not here. Not now. This is a place for business, not personal vendettas. Shelton, John. Our next guest.”

“I’ll never get over it,” muttered Vits. “Shelton. What the fuck kind of name is that?”

“My wife’s father,” snapped another man who Luke couldn’t see. “Now shut up about it.”

If Luke thought that the wise guys hauling Pez out was bad, the next person they brought in was worse.

John and Shelton brought in Raymondo Icherra, his hands bound before him. His eyes bounced around the scene, taking in the men at the table, and then Luke and Saks. He held his head up when he saw Luke.

“Mr. Icherra,” said Vits, “or should I say
Senor
Icherra, I’m giving you one chance, and one chance only, to come clean about the purpose of your visit here.”

“Why would I?” snarled Icherra. His eyes, darting around the room, sizing up the men there, were dangerous and feral enough to elicit a shiver from Luke.
Here
, thought Luke,
is where I came from
. The thought turned his stomach.

“Because,” spit Vits, “you’ve stirred up a lot of trouble in your short time here. Some of the spic factions are ready to go at each other because of your little offers, and I’m telling your right now, we settled one spic war this past summer. If not for how that stirs up the cops, we wouldn’t bother.”

“Don’t talk so big,” said Icherra, his tone a nasty slur. “You were ready to deal with me.”

“No. We were ready to listen to you. We got an earful and we didn’t like what you said. And I think that’s how you wanted it. You wanted to cause trouble, hoping that it would draw law enforcement’s attention away from what you really wanted to accomplish: to get your nephew and his wife out of the country.”

Icherra scoffed. “Why would I do that?”

“Because it makes it harder for Luke to get citizenship based on his kid’s birth here, which is a change the president is trying to put into law. And he’ll probably do it.”

“You fucking asshole!” Luke was beside himself. “Where is Emily, you bastard?”

Icherra blinked. “What’re you talking about?”

“Emily was kidnapped from our apartment today!"

“What? You think I did that?”

“That was your plan, wasn’t it?”

“You together, if I could convince you. I thought having the cops in your business might do that. But no, Ray. I would not take your bride. I wanted you to come willingly with me, home to Mexico. You’re all the family I have left.”

“Why should I believe what you say? Why would you care about family? You killed my parents, you fucking piece of shit.”

“Is that what that bastard told you?”

“What bastard? There are so many in my life.”