“I can tell you the senile man is indeed wise, but that you’d be wiser than him if you left right now. Before your chat.”
Senile man . . . The Owl. She might’ve nearby when I’d been speaking to Sanchez. I wasn’t going anywhere until I spoke to El Búho.
“I can say that you were on the right path, but it’s about to split.” She rubbed her teeth with her index finger, but the lipstick didn’t budge. “And you’ll have to decide how badly you want the prize.”
My prize. Natalia got this look sometimes when she was suppressing a smile or laugh. She did it enough around me to signal that she thought feeling happiness in her situation was wrong. That would change, though. “Badly.”
She sighed as if she’d done all she could to convince me otherwise. “Then you should value it more than life itself, because that will be the cost.”
“Whose life?”
She shrugged. She didn’t know. Because she doesn’t know anything, I reminded myself. I almost wanted to listen to her, which showed how desperate I was. “Then at least tell me if I’ll succeed in obtaining what I want.”
“No.” She put out her cigarette.
“No I won’t, or no you won’t tell me?”
She nodded at my mezcal on the wall. “I’d dump that out if I were you.”
Alarmed, I inspected the glass. “Poisoned?”
“Drugged. But it’s not doing your heartburn any favors, either.”
I frowned at her, then burst into laughter—even as I asked myself how the fuck she’d known about my heartburn. I must’ve been rubbing my chest.
She winked at me and knocked on the glass door.
Daniel turned to open it, and his non-existent eyebrows rose as the woman pushed by him. “What the—”
“Don’t ask,” I said, shaking my head after her. She had balls of steel to corner me that way, then spout a bunch of bull. How had she even gotten out here? I looked to the balcony several floors up as if she’d been airdropped in like a package of canned goods.
I didn’t have time to wonder, since Max wheeled the blind man in sunglasses through the doorway.
“¿Quién está ahí?” the ancient man asked before he was even all the way on the balcony.
“You’re safe,” I assured him. “I just have some questions I need answered.”
“Vete a la chingada. Fuck off.” He turned his head in every direction, looking remarkably like an owl. I half-expected him to hoot. “Where’s my wife?”
“Dead,” I said, ashing my cigarette. I nodded at Daniel and Max, who closed the door and resumed guarding the balcony.
“You may not remember me, but I’m a friend to your family,” I said.
“Cristiano,” he said.
I paused with my smoke halfway to my mouth. Pleased by his coherence, I nodded. “Sí, señor. You remember?”
“No. I can’t remember. That’s what they tell me. Can’t see, either.”
“I’m sorry. I thought the dementia was more advanced or I would’ve visited.”
“Visited where?” he asked, a thread of panic in his voice. “Where am I?”
I scratched my eyebrow as he started to squirm. “It’s me. Cristiano de la Rosa,” I said. “I’m looking for the remaining members of the Valverde family from the northwest.”
“Cristiano.” He grumbled, shaking his head. “Your father’s playing with fire.”
“Not anymore,” I said. “The fucker’s dead. I’m with the Cruz cartel now, and we need to get in touch with the Valverdes.”
“The Valverdes and the Cruzes are enemies,” he informed me. “Vicente and Costa are fighting over the old de la Rosa turf like vultures.”
Once my parents had died, Vicente Valverde had pounced on their cartel’s carcass, resulting in years of battling with the Cruzes over their narcotics territories.
The Owl was stuck in the past, but that might not be a bad thing. “Do you know who wins?” I asked.
Costa would, eventually. Largely because the Valverdes had vanished one day, practically into thin air. The Cruzes had absorbed all that remained of the fallen cartels. And when Costa had decided to trade risk for stability, he’d used some of those territories as currency to build out and focus on the shipping side of his business.
He gripped the arms of his wheelchair with knotty, spotted fingers. “I have to get home. My wife is waiting.”
With a tap on the glass, I looked up and met familiar dark, sparkling eyes. Tasha. She arched a manicured, scolding eyebrow at me—busted. She’d caught me pumping her grandfather for intel.
Then again . . . could she and her smirking red lips get the old man to hoot?
I nodded at Daniel and Max to let her onto the patio.
Natasha Sokolov-Flores stepped out in strappy, cherry-colored heels and a matching dress that stopped just below the curve of her ass. Her curled auburn hair brushed her cleavage as she came toward me. “Cristiano. It’s been a while.”
22
Cristiano
All my hopes were pinned on a blind, senile man in a wheelchair. The closure and proof my wife needed to allow me to smash through the lies she’d been told currently lay with The Owl.