family, his dog if he has one. There is a force field around him that you don’t get near unless you want to get zapped. Do we understand each other?”
They do.
They don’t like it, but they understand.
Ben Leonard is untouchable.
136
No one is untouchable.
What Duane gets told.
For example
137
What do the following have in common?
(a) Sonny Corleone
(b) Bonnie and Clyde
(c) Filipo Sanchez
The answer is:
They should stay the fuck out of cars.
138
Nevertheless, Filipo Sanchez sits in the back of the black Humvee, the seat piled high with presents for his daughter’s birthday.
Elena is going to be angry, he thinks. She believes he spoils Magda, but what’s a daughter for if her papa can’t spoil her? Elena says they have already spent more than enough on the party itself-and threatened to flay him alive if he was even ten minutes late-and that Magda doesn’t need more things, but a girl can never have too many pretty things.
He’s looking forward to the party, to seeing his daughter’s face light up.
Filipo lives for these moments.
He glances down at the ridiculous blue lizard boots that his bodyguard insists on wearing. Filipo keeps trying to tell Jilberto that they live in the city now, in the very best colonia in Tijuana, not out on some Sinaloan backwater, but he won’t listen.
They come to a traffic signal.
The light is about to turn yellow.
“Run it,” he tells his driver.
He must not be late for this party and risk Elena’s wrath.
But the Humvee stops.
“I said-”
Jilberto opens the door and gets out.
The driver flattens onto the seat.
Dios mio.
Three men appear in front of the car, AK-47s in their hands.
Filipo reaches for his gun as he starts to get out, but Jilberto kicks him in the chest, sending him back into the car.
Then Jilberto raises his Uzi and lets loose.
The three men open fire through the windshield.
The bullets shred Filipo and, with him, all the presents in their pretty wrappings.
139
Duane Crowe cracks an egg on the side of the cast iron skillet and carefully squeezes it into the hot canola oil.
He used to cook his eggs in bacon but his doctor busted his balls about his body-fat percentage, so it was either the beer or the bacon and Crowe chose the beer.
He tried turkey bacon, but… it’s turkey bacon.
Crowe has one of those one-cup coffeemakers that even he sees the sad symbolism of. A one-cup coffeemaker is what you get when you’ve had two marriages go south, and now even if you have a woman stay the night, it’s easier to take her out for breakfast because that way she’s, well… out.
Last thing in the world he needs is another divorce settlement taking half of what the last two wives left him, not to mention child support.
Two kids he rarely sees, and Brittany is already applying for college (shit, where does it go?) and she’s a really bright kid-a great kid-with good grades.
Last time she called she was looking at Notre Dame.
Crowe gets a percentage from Chad Meldrun for every client he sends through the door. It sounds like a lot of money, but he has to kick 20 percent up to the Powers That Be, so every dollar coming in means something, and every dollar lost means more.
He scoops the eggs onto a plate, shakes pepper and salt (fuck the doctor) on them, sits down at the breakfast counter, and turns on the news.
The talking head is chirping about “drug violence in Mexico” (This is news? Crowe wonders), and then a still photo of Filipo Sanchez comes on the screen.
Apparently, he’s now the late Filipo Sanchez.
Crowe is surprised, but not surprised.
Filipo has developed a nasty habit of not paying his fees. Maybe it was him trying to prove his chops to the Lauter family, trying to show them that he could do more than just marry Elena, but Filipo was on a campaign to cut the Powers That Be out of the payment loop. Always bitching about the money, trying to negotiate the rate downward, missing payments, a real pain in the culo.
Crowe didn’t blame him-you do what you can do-but Filipo’s rebellion was unwise given the Lauters’ ongoing war with the Berrajanos. He just became too much of a pain in the ass, and the Powers That Be decided to switch sides. It’s not that they whacked Filipo, they just signed off on the Berrajanos’ doing it.
Filipo didn’t want to pay the fees, the Berrajanos did.
That simple.
Crowe hopes that this Ben Leonard also saw the news and took a lesson from it.
He finishes his breakfast and heads out.
Should be an interesting day today.
A real popcorn movie.
The Empire Strikes Back.
