The Bones of Wolfe E-Book

James Carlos Blake

• Herausgeber: No Exit Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 402

Beschreibung

In the newest Wolfe-family adventure from James Carlos Blake, Rudy and Frank Wolfe are engaging in routine miscellaneous business - some legitimate and some less so - for their family when they stumble upon a stash of high-quality pornographic films in a raid. The plot thickens when their Aunt Catalina, the family matriarch aged 115, recognizes her long-lost sister in one of the young performers. Catalina tasks the boys with tracking the girl down, however improbable a connection may be. This proves to be no simple task. Soon, Rudy and Frank find themselves moving away from world of porn and towards the upper echelons of the Sinaloa drug cartel, where the mysterious woman has become a particular favorite of the head narco. For their aunt, the woman, and themselves, Frank and Rudy must find a way to get her out without alerting the cartel. A tropical storm complicates their quest, but their sprawling family may save them from this obstacle, too. Often outrageous and always entertaining, the Wolfes are not to be missed.

Leseprobe

CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR JAMES CARLOS BLAKE

‘Brilliant and uncompromising, Blake again proves why he is one of the best writers working today’ – Ace Atkins

‘full of wry humor and thoughtful writing’ – Kirkus Reviews

‘engrossing and wonderfully realized’ – Publishers Weekly

‘[I]mbued with the magical realism of García Márquez… [and] the frontier brutality of Cormac McCarthy… Blake’s story will entertain fans of historical and adventure novels alike’ – Shelf Awareness

‘A literary page-turner … a romantic, violent, panoramic historical saga (written) with a journalist’s eye for detail and a poet’s love of words… a fascinating read’ – San Antonio Express

‘[A] worthy book… Country of the Bad Wolfes is a poetic... offspring of Gabriel Garcia Márquez and Cormac McCarthy…’ – Tucson Weekly

‘A great read from start to finish, full of grit, local color, and a large cast of vibrant characters … this brawling, high-spirited, and superbly realized family saga… offers many pleasures, including endearing characters, unlikely love stories, and all manner of mayhem. Highly recommended for fans of literary fiction’ – Library Journal

‘Full of fascinating history, the Wolfe family saga is ribald, raunchy and essential reading… don’t miss it’ – Poisoned Pen

‘This is historical fiction in the manner of Umberto Eco… many-faceted, slow, and savory’ – Booklist

‘Blake’s literary badlands are uniquely his own’ – GQ

‘For anyone who has never experienced the exceptional talent of the idiosyncratic Blake, this is a wonderful novel to start with... Passionate, bloody and yet incredibly romantic, it is a tribute to the genius of its

author’ – Geoffrey Wansell, Daily Mail

‘Nobody writes about blood and guts better than James Carlos Blake’ – Washington Post

James Carlos Blake writes with the muscularity of great pulp novels and the grace of a dancer - from the edge of an America that is forever frontier – James Sallis

‘Blake’s prose is muscular, his dialogue and details are keenly observed… one hell of a ride’ – Booklist

‘Blake writes with a fearless precision and a ruthless sensibility, his prose is spare and tough, and his descriptions detailed and

cinematic’ – Publishers Weekly

‘One of the greatest chroniclers of the mythical American outlaw life’ – Entertainment Weekly

‘James Carlos Blake is a formidable writer [and] a deft stylist, welding the language with power and authority’ – Tucson Weekly

‘James Carlos Blake is of the Cormac McCarthy/Sam Peckinpah school of storytelling: Make it bloody as hell, but make it beautiful’ – Dallas Morning News

‘One of the most original writers in America today’ – Chicago Sun-Times

‘An epic chase’ – Men’s Journal

‘Riveting’ – Latinidad

To

The Distler IV

Joseph

Nancy

Emma

Morgan

Bone of my bone thou art, and from thy state

Mine never shall be parted, weal or woe.

– John Milton, Paradise Lost

Do what thy manhood bids thee do

From none but self expect applause;

He noblest lives and noblest dies

Who makes and keeps his self-made laws.

– Sir Richard Francis Burton

Yes, I am proud; I must be proud to see

Men not afraid of God, afraid of me.

– Alexander Pope, ‘Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot’

Life is contemptuous of knowledge; it forces it to

sit in the anterooms, to wait outside. Passion, energy,

lies: these are what life admires.

– James Salter, Light Years

I – THE SHIPMENT

Eddie and Alberto

The Gulf of Mexico on a moonless midsummer night. Star-clustered sky over placid black water. A frail and tepid offshore breeze. Eddie Gato Wolfe throttles back the engines as the boat closes in on a barrier island partitioning the Gulf from the southernmost reach of the Mexican Laguna Madre and the long stretch of uninhabited marshland beyond it. The vessel is an artfully customized trawler model fitted with a reinforced shallow draft hull and powered by supercharged twin Hemis. Even with a full load it can fly, and empty of cargo it can outrun almost anything short of a speedboat. Its hull registration number belongs to a commercial fishing boat whose sinking eight years ago was never reported, and its registered owner is a man who perished in a Veracruz nightclub fire six years ago with fifty-two other victims, his remains never identified. The name Bruja and home port of La Pesca displayed on the transom are also falsehoods.

Eddie’s crew consists of Romo at the bow with a pair of night-vision binoculars, scanning for signs of other boats; Tomás at the stern and doing the same; and Gustavo in the wheelhouse, attending the navigation screen and keeping Eddie advised of the heading for the lagoon inlet. They have all slathered themselves with repellent in readiness against the mass of mosquitoes. Each man carries a Beretta nine-millimeter pistol, and the wheelhouse locker holds three fully loaded M4 carbines and three extra thirty-round magazines per man.

The island is profuse with mangroves. Its width ranges from sixty to eighty yards, and the breadth of lagoon between it and the mainland is less than a quarter mile. Both the island and a sizable expanse of the marshy coast are owned by Eddie’s Mexican kin. The inlet he approaches was excavated by them decades ago and is not to be found on any nautical charts but their own and those of their Texas relatives. It is hidden from aerial view by a canopy of dense tree growth, and the design of its channel – like a horizontally elongated N that on the chart looks like a wide, wry smile and inspired its name of Boca Larga – obscures offshore detection of its entrance. The inlet is never used in daylight lest the boat be seen entering or exiting, and to navigate it at night, even with GPS assistance, requires an expert hand at the wheel. The spotlight at the fore of the wheelhouse roof is strictly for emergencies. Eddie knows this night passage well. He has steered through it many times before.

The inlet’s mouth is barely twice the width of the boat, and not until they’re within forty feet of it can they distinguish the deeper blackness of its gap against the extensive wall of mangroves. Eddie slows the Bruja to a brisk walking pace and they pass into the channel with the engines growling low. The darkness in here is nearly absolute, the air danker. GPS emitters implanted at intervals along both banks enable Gustavo to keep Eddie on a course exactly in the center of the channel. They make the starboard turn into the long middle portion of the passage, which is also its widest and allows the boat almost six feet of leeway to either side, and at the end of this stretch Eddie wheels left into the channel’s other short arm and they pass through it into the lagoon. Though the depth here does not at any point exceed four feet and in places is around three, the Bruja’s shallow draft easily clears the bottom. From somewhere in the darkness comes the loud splattering of a school of fish in flight from a predator. Eddie’s watch shows 9:45.

They’re moving even more slowly now, holding to the centerline of the lagoon, and Eddie brings the boat to an idling halt. Romo turns on a large flashlight, pointing it directly ahead, slowly raises its beam straight overhead, and as slowly sweeps it to the left and right three times and turns it off. Several seconds elapse and then a row of low-watt yellow lights appears along a short stretch of cleared bank. Eddie heads toward it. As they advance on the landing, they make out the figures of four men standing in the ground lights’ hazy glow.

Shortly the Bruja ties up at mooring posts alongside the clearing and a Mexican cousin of Eddie’s named Alberto Delmonte hops aboard. They greet each other with laughter and backslapping hugs.

Been waiting long? Eddie asks in Spanish. Like all their family on both sides of the border, he and Alberto are fluently bilingual.

About half an hour, Alberto says. Left the capital early this morning and made good time. Gonna be a long night for me and my guys, though. We gotta deliver this load to Irapuato by tomorrow afternoon, two o’clock. Thirteen-fourteen-hour drive and the first hour is on this slow-ass turtle trail back to the graded road.

Eddie takes a flashlight off his belt. Well, hell, let’s get to it.

They go belowdecks and into the dimly lighted hold. Because of the reconfiguration of the hull, the hold’s headspace was much reduced and they can stand no higher than a half crouch. The load comprises two crates of M4A1 carbines and two of M240 machine guns, plus a crate of 5.56 ammunition and one of 7.62. Each crate is stenciled with U. S. ARMY and abbreviated military descriptions of its contents.

Eddie opens a carbine crate and shines the light into it, and Alberto takes a look. Every load Eddie has ever delivered to Boca Larga has been collected by Alberto, and their examination of the cargo before its transfer between them is simply a rite of formality by which they assure themselves they are not becoming lax in their professional roles.

‘I said it before and say it again,’ Alberto says in English as he pats one of the M4s. ‘This baby’s the best there is for both open-field and street fighting, and I mean the AK, too. I know some say these jam too easy in sandy conditions, but I don’t know anybody it’s happened to.’

‘Neither do I. M4’s our steady bestseller.’ Eddie closes the crate and opens one that contains machine guns.

Alberto grunts as he raises one of the guns partway out of the crate with both hands. He works its action and dry-fires it with a loud snap. ‘I shot one of these at a ranch in Puebla last year. Felt like God.’ He puts it back in place. ‘Gotta have some muscle to tote the son of a bitch, though. Weighs, what, twenty-five pounds?’

‘Twenty-seven,’ Eddie says. ‘Add a tripod and that’s another eleven. So yeah, takes an ox to haul it around.’ He resets the crate cover. ‘Wasn’t easy for Charlie to get them on short notice, let me tell you.’

‘It’s a special fast-lane order, but Rigo knew Charlie could fill it. I’ve always wondered how the hell he does it. Got inside men at a thousand armories or what?’

‘Got his ways is what he’s got. Who’s the buyer?’

‘Zetas.’

‘Woo. Serious people.’

‘Fucking A,’ Alberto says. ‘Pay top dollar for what they want, though. The word is, they’re getting it for one of their enforcement crews along the lower border, but you know how it is with the word. About as reliable as Tina Maria.’

‘Tina? Didn’t you break up with her three, four months back?’

‘Yeah. Gotta tell you, though, I kinda miss her. I mean, she really knew how to deal with a dick. I ain’t kidding, Ed, soon as I’d ring her doorbell I’d get a boner. I told her that once and she said, “Pavlov’s dong.” Another thing about her, she was good for a chuckle.’

‘Always tough to lose a sex artist,’ Eddie says, ‘but one with a sense of humor is a major loss.’

They go topside and tell the crews to get busy, then help them to unload the cargo and transfer it to a large pickup truck about fifty feet away – a dark Dodge Ram with a buttressed chassis, a quad cab, and a bed topper. Despite its big backcountry tires, Alberto did not park the truck any closer to the bank for fear of miring in the soft ground under the additional weight of the cargo. The vehicle stands on a narrow crushed-shell trail that was also constructed by his family and also is not on any official map. It snakes through sixteen miles of palms and marshy terrain before connecting to a dirt road that runs north to a gravel works and a junction with a main highway.

Each crate is borne by two men at either end of it. Mosquitoes keen at their ears, and the men curse the unsure footing that makes the work all the more laborious. Huffing as they lug the crates to the truck, they hoist them up to the bed and muscle them into place. When the last one is worked in among the others, Alberto swings up the tailgate and snaps it shut and then fastens the windowless topper gate to it with a large padlock. The lock is meant to thwart street kids skillful enough to hop onto the back bumper of a slow-moving truck in city traffic and peek under the topper to see if it’s carrying anything that might interest their robber employers.

Eddie checks his watch and says, Seventeen minutes. Not bad. A couple of Alberto’s guys retrieve the landing lights from along the bank and put them in the Ram, while Romo and Gustavo hop aboard the Bruja, dig out icy bottles of Bohemia from a large cooler, and hand them out. The men raise their beers, say, ‘Salud,’ take deep swallows, burp, and sigh with pleasure.

Alberto takes a satellite phone off his belt and presses a few buttons. The order is complete, he says into the phone, then pokes a button on it and returns it to his belt. He chugs the rest of his beer and pitches the bottle into the water and his men do the same. ‘Gotta boogie,’ he says. He and Eddie once more exchange hugs and back slaps, and Eddie tells him to give his regards to the rest of the Mexico City family. Alberto says for him to do the same with his Texas cousins.

A minute later the big Ram has slowly rumbled away into the darkness and the Bruja is making its way back across the lagoon. Eddie activates his phone and says into it, ‘I’m an old cowhand,’ a code phrase apprising the listener that the transfer has been completed without incident.

He nimbly steers back through Boca Larga and out into the Gulf, then opens the throttles, rousing the Hemis to a roar as the boat accelerates with its prow rising, the men laughing as they hold tight against the rearward lean.

They don’t switch on the running lights or cut back to cruising speed until they’re a mile out and turn north for home.

The Crews

The Ram lumbers through the underbrush along the twisting shell track glowing pale bright in the headlights and holding the truck to a speed of around fifteen. The driver, Jorge, turns the air conditioner up another notch, grousing that he can walk faster than he can drive on this so-called road. Alberto’s riding shotgun. Neto and Felipe are in the rear seat.

They are discussing whorehouses, a subject initiated by Neto’s enthusiastic account of a recent visit to a new brothel in Mexico City called El Palacio de Los Ángeles. He claims it has the prettiest girls of any house he’s ever been to and it fully guarantees that they’re free of disease.

He and Jorge both favor the simplicity of brothels. You pick out a girl, you pay a fixed price for exactly what you want, you get it, and when you’re done you say, So long, darling, maybe I’ll see you again. Lots of variety and none of the problems of a regular girlfriend.

Alberto admits to the practicalities of clean whorehouses, but he much prefers sex that includes some affection.

Affection? Jorge says. You talking about love? Hey, man, every time I go in a whorehouse I fall in love. Then it’s over and I leave and I’m not in love no more. Works out great.

Not for me, Alberto says. It’s not as satisfying when you pay for it. If you want variety, do what I do and get a lot of girlfriends.

Any way you get it you pay for it, Neto says. You don’t spend money on your girlfriends? And every girlfriend sooner or later becomes as much of a nag as a wife. Who wants a lot of that?

He’s convinced me, Felipe says. Soon as I get home I’m kicking my girl’s ass out the door.

What girl? Alberto says. You haven’t had a girlfriend since Bettina kicked you out.

Yeah, well… if I did have a one, out she’d go.

Let’s have some music, Jorge says.

He switches on the CD player and ranchero music resounds from the speakers. The others all groan and Felipe says, No more of that hick shit, man. We had to listen to it all the way up here.

The driver picks the music, Jorge says, that’s the rule. Chief said so.

Well, I’m making a new rule, Alberto says. We take turns picking the music and it’s my turn.

He fingers through a row of CDs in the console and picks one. He ejects the ranchero disc from the player and inserts the selected CD, and the speakers begin booming the heavy-metal tempo of a band called Asesino.

Oh, yes! says Felipe. That’s more like it!

As Jorge grumbles about the unfairness of changing the music rule in the middle of a run, they enter a hairpin turn that forces him to cut their speed even more, the headlights dragging across palm trunks and high brush as the truck crawls through the bend. Then they’re out of the turn and facing a straight stretch, and the headlights expose a ponderous dark vehicle standing ten yards ahead and blocking the trail. It faces in the other direction, its lights off, its interior hidden within black glass.

Jorge stomps on the brakes and the truck crunches to a halt. ‘What the hell?’ Alberto says, and starts to reach for the volume knob on the player just as the dark brush on both sides of the mysterious vehicle detonates into a crackling, flaring barrage of automatic gunfire.

The men shriek and convulse as bullets punch through the Ram’s windshield and transform it into a thickening web of starbursts. The windows come apart in shards. The tires blow and the truck lurches and slumps and the engine quits. The music cuts off. The headlights go last – the ambushers having no further need of them to delineate their target.

Fifteen seconds after it commenced, the shooting stops. All screaming has ceased. The only light is the cab’s dashboard glow. The only sounds are a harsh hissing under the hood, the clacking of weapons being reloaded with full magazines, the snapping of cocking handles.

The vague form of a man holding a firearm at waist level with both hands appears from the gloom on the forward right side of the truck and cautiously approaches it. When he’s abreast of the cab he can see the men inside in the dim dash light, motionless, slumped in unnatural attitudes. A faint scent of blood exudes from the shattered windows and threads into the mix of gunfire fumes and marsh odors. He fires a luminous burst through the front window, jarring the two bodies, the near one folding atop the console, the driver crumpling lower against the door. He then sidles over and looses a burst into the men in the back seat. Then lowers the weapon and says, ‘Luz.’

Lights come aglow on both sides of the trail and three men emerge from the scrub, two from the left, one from the right, each of them wearing a utility light strapped to his forehead like a miner and each man armed with an M4A1 carbine. They curse the mosquitoes that in this part of the marsh are so fierce even the strongest repellent is of small effect.

In the light of the head lanterns, the man at the truck is revealed as young and clean-shaven, with a pale wormlike scar that angles vertically down the right side of his mouth. He presses a button on his wristwatch to illuminate its face and show the time. Chico, he says, the vehicle, move.

Got it, chief, Chico says, and jogs up the trail to the huge black Suburban. The chief calls another crewman to the rear of the Ram and has him shine his light on the padlock securing the topper gate to the tailgate. He stands to the side of the lock to avoid possible damage to the cargo, puts the muzzle of his carbine to the juncture of lock case and shackle, and blasts the lock apart. He raises the topper gate and the crewman shines his light on the crates inside. Because of the attack’s diagonal lines of fire into the cab, the shipment shows no sign of having been struck.

Good, says the chief.

Driving in reverse, Chico brings the Suburban to within a few feet of the Ram, and the other men store their weapons in it. The chief orders them not to take anything from the dead men, not their guns, phones, money, anything. They have just removed the first crate from the truck bed when they hear a pulsing buzz from the Ram cab. They recognize it as an incoming phone call on what has to be a satellite unit, as no cell tower is in range.

They know the truck stopped, one of them says.

Don’t piss your pants, the chief says. By the time they get here we’ll be long gone.

Still, they step up their tempo, panting with effort, sopping with sweat, faces itching and bloated with mosquito bites. In another few minutes they shove the last crate into the Suburban, shut and lock the rear doors, scramble into the vehicle, and drive away.

Rodrigo and Mateo and Charlie

In a large room on the highest floor of a towering Mexico City building whose blazing neon sign reads Zuma Electrónicas, S.A., a young technician called a screener sits before a row of computers, intermittently shifting his gaze between the monitors and the sports magazine in his lap. It is dull duty but pays well. Like the majority of employees of Zuma Electrónicas, the screener has a university degree in computer engineering. And like everyone else who works on the top floor of the building, he has a top security clearance and knows that the company has commercial ties – mostly clandestine – to numerous other business organizations and that its true ownership is a secret protected by many buffering layers of corporate law.

The monitors keep track of company transport vehicles equipped with encrypted GPS senders and appearing as yellow blips on a green geographic grid. On this slow evening there are only two blips to keep an eye on. Alpha vehicle is delivering a shipment from Mexico City to Acapulco, and Beta vehicle is collecting a shipment at a transfer point on the Laguna Madre and relaying it to a recipient in Irapuato. The screener does not know what kind of cargo either vehicle is carrying or any of the names of its crew. His data sheets tell him only the type of vehicle each one is and its schedule, including the cargo’s point of collection if the delivery did not originate from Mexico City. His responsibility is strictly to keep track of a vehicle’s progress and confirm that its cargo arrives on time.

Both vehicles are holding to schedule. Alpha is only two hours from its destination, and Beta collected its cargo and left the lagoon twenty-three minutes ago, its crew chief phoning in on arrival there and again on departure. The Beta is moving at a snail’s pace on what the screener knows is a difficult and circuitous backcountry trail that terminates at a junction road, but once the Beta arrives at that junction its progress will speed up and it will easily make the Irapuato delivery on schedule.

But now the Beta stops moving.

The screener looks at his wristwatch and enters the time on a clipboard form. An unscheduled stop by a company vehicle on business is always a matter for immediate attention. A flat tire or engine trouble can throw a delivery far off schedule, and a crew chief is obliged to call the screener about any such problem at once so that the company can dispatch speedy assistance if required and inform the awaiting party of the delay – and to dispel any worry about a hijacking. However, a crew chief isn’t required to call if he’s making an unscheduled stop shorter than three minutes, as for a roadside piss. The screener shifts his attention by turns from the unmoving blip to his wristwatch to the data sheet, which tells him the Beta vehicle is a new Dodge Ram pickup with less than four thousand miles on the odometer when it left the capital early this morning. When the third minute elapses he calls the crew chief’s satellite phone. He lets it buzz and buzz without an answer for almost a full minute before he picks up another phone and calls the tracking manager to notify him of the stalled truck and its lack of response.

The manager says to keep trying to connect with the crew and to advise him right away if he makes contact or if the Beta resumes movement without having replied. Then the manager makes a phone call of his own. Within minutes of receiving it, a fire team of five armed men in a Ford F-250 truck races out of Ciudad Victoria, almost a hundred miles from the Ram’s location but the company’s nearest station to it.

* * *

Two hours later the fire team leader phones the tracking manager from the scene of the attack and tells him of the shot-up truck, the slaughtered crew, the stolen cargo. The hijackers must’ve made it back to the main highway before the fire team exited from it because the team spotted no vehicles on the dirt road. The manager tells the team leader to hold on while he relays the finding to the Director.

Awakened by the call, the Director, Rodrigo Wolfe – whose standing order is that he be notified without delay of any hijack, never mind the hour – listens to the manager’s report without interrupting him, not even on hearing that the ambushed crew was that of his young cousin Alberto Delmonte. He commends the manager for his prompt action and concise account and instructs him to tell the fire team at the scene to convey the bodies to the Nuestra Señora del Cielo medical clinic in Mexico City and to have the Ram towed to the nearest junkyard and converted to scrap. The manager knows that the medical clinic is owned by the company and it will see to the proper but covert disposition of the deceased.

Tell the fire team to say nothing about the hijacking, not to anyone, Rodrigo adds. And tell the screener nothing other than he was right to call you and everything has been taken care of.

Using a different phone, Rodrigo then calls his brother Mateo, the chief of security, and tells him what’s happened.

You notified the Zetas? Mateo asks.

Not yet. They’re going to be unhappy.

Has to be an inside job, Mateo says. Somebody tipped the hijackers to the transfer. Somebody of ours or somebody with Charlie, but somebody who knew about tonight’s run and who’s familiar with the trail to Boca Larga.

Rodrigo sighs and says. The only people of ours who knew those things are you and me, Alberto and his crew, the tracking manager, and the screener. Neither the screener nor the manager knew what the load was. But as you know, Alberto always told his crew what they were carrying.

Yeah. Showed he trusts them, he always said. Makes them even more loyal. Can’t say I entirely agreed with him, but I let him run his crew his own way.

On the Texas side, Rodrigo says, the only ones who knew about the run are Charlie Fortune and the delivery crew. At least that’s the way he’s always operated. I’ll find out if he did anything different this time. Still, the odds are that the inside guy is one of ours.

Either somebody in Alberto’s crew, Mateo says, or somebody who used to work the Boca Larga run in the past and who found out about Alberto’s run tonight. Whoever he is, you think he tipped the Zetas? They steal their own buy, and when we tell them it’s been ripped they act all pissed and demand their money back?

No. Scheme like that’s beneath them. There are a lot easier ways for them to get money than by risking a breach with their best supplier of weapons. For damn sure, though, it was a professional crew. The fire team said the vehicle was shot to hell, every man in it with multiple wounds and every pistol still in its holster, that’s how quick and hard they got hit. Automatic weapons, 5.56 black-tip rounds, diagonal enfilade from both sides. Fast and slick. They did the hit, ripped the cargo, got the fuck out. And as far as the Zetas are concerned, I can tell you that they’re not going to want their money back, they’re going to want what they paid for. We either recover that cargo for them very damn soon or order a replacement of it from Charlie and eat the cost.

Yeah, that’s how it’s looking, Mateo says. I’ll start nosing around about the other pickup crews right away. There can’t be too many guys among them who’ve worked Boca Larga before Alberto’s crew took it over. If the tip to the hijackers was from one of our guys, I’ll know his name before the sun comes up. On the off chance he’s a Texan, Charlie will root him out pretty fast, too. We find the insider, we’ll find out who did the hijack, I’ll run their asses down and get the goods back. If they still got them.

There’s a plan. Get on it. I’ll call Charlie.

* * *

Charlie Fortune Wolfe awakens to the vibration of the cellphone under the corner of his pillow. The riverside night is still and clammy, ringing with frogs, the screened windows are black under the dense overhang of trees. The red numerals of the bedside clock radio read 1:46. He sees that the caller is his cousin Rodrigo Wolfe.

‘Rigo. What is it?’

Rodrigo tells him, speaking in English.

‘Alberto?’ Charlie says. ‘Ah, Jesus…’

In response to Rigo’s question, Charlie tells him the only ones who knew about the run’s cargo or schedule were himself and the crew.

‘Who’s the chief on it?’

‘Eddie Gato.’

‘I still haven’t met him,’ Rodrigo says. ‘Frank and Rudy I know, but Eddie not at all. Alberto mentioned him many times. Close cousin, right?’

‘Right. Been working with me three years and been my Boca Larga man since last year. I broke him in on that run myself. Listen, Rigo, I know what you’re wondering, so I’ll tell you right now – Eddie wouldn’t sell us. Neither would any of his crew. Those guys have been with me for years. And there couldn’t have been anything odd about the transfer or Eddie would’ve clued me, but he called in an all clear after the drop. If somebody’d been holding a gun on him, he would’ve used a different code to tip us off.’

‘Hey, Charlie, you vouch for them, that’s it. Man, if I stopped trusting you, who the hell could I trust? Lot more likely the inside rat is somebody on our end. Mateo’s out there right now trying to ID him. We have to find the son of a bitch and get the cargo back before it ends up who the fuck knows where.’

‘Let us help, Rigo. Frank and Rudy are on the body run your guys gave us, but they’ll be back tomorrow… hell, it is tomorrow. They’ll be back this afternoon and I’ll keep them on hand. Hey, man, I want those bastards as much as you do. It was my shipment and Alberto was my blood and bone, too. Just give the word and we’re on the way.’

‘I know it, Charlie. I’ll be in touch as soon as Mateo has something.’

* * *

His name’s Donasio Corona and he was in Alberto’s crew, Mateo says. Twenty-six years old. Came to us three years ago after doing two and a half at Veracruz state for robbery. We put him on various small duties the first couple of years – runner, street lookout, driver – some of those jobs for Alberto, which is how they got to know each other. Last year one of Alberto’s crewmen got killed in a bar fight and he took Corona on in his place. Anyway, he’s our guy. No doubt about it.

It is nearing dawn. Mateo arrived at Rodrigo’s estate in the city’s Chapultepec district a short while ago. They’re taking coffee in the softly lit courtyard gazebo, well distanced from the house and all servants’ ears.

I’m impressed you ran him down so fast, Rodrigo says.

All it takes is talking to the right person, Mateo says, but you never know who the right person is till you talk to him. I been going around all night to see those of our people who know about Boca Larga, asking them all the same question and doing a lot of tap dancing to avoid telling any of them about the hijack. I think it’s best we don’t let word of it get out just now. Might put the guys who did it on sharper guard.

I agree. So who was the right person to talk to?

Ignacio Verdes, another of our crew chiefs. He said it was odd I should ask if he’d heard or seen anything out of the ordinary about any of the guys in the transport crews. Said Alberto called him yesterday morning before he left on the Boca Larga run and asked if he could borrow a man. One of his guys, Donasio Corona, had called him before sunup saying he was sick as hell, shitting and puking since three in the morning, probably because of some bad menudo he had for supper. Alberto told him to see the company doctor as soon as the office opened, then called Ignacio, who let him have Neto Valles, one of his best men. Like some of the others I talked to, Ignacio was curious about why I was asking, and I told him I couldn’t say at this time. He’s going to be awful damn pissed about losing Valles.

And Donasio Corona has of course disappeared, Rodrigo says.

Wasn’t at home. Didn’t go see the doctor. Isn’t in any hospital or jail. I sent his picture and prints to our network guys with connections to the passport office and access twenty-four seven, and they reported that the prints aren’t in the files, so he’s never been issued a passport under any name. I ordered our border crews to post lookouts with all the wetback smugglers in case he should try crossing with one of them. On the off chance he’s still in town, I have people keeping watch on all the joints where he’s known to hang out. My guess is he got out of Mexico City but will stay in the country.

And Corona knows the Larga run pretty good?

The whole crew did. Alberto’s been collecting all of Charlie’s deliveries there for about two years steady now and mostly with the same guys the whole time, except for Corona just the past year. They were a good crew and he had no reason to mistrust any of them. They knew that guns are the only cargo ever delivered there, and the load’s usually American military rifles and pistols and that every so often it includes machine guns, sometimes foreign subs. Since Corona’s been with the crew, and not counting last night’s pickup, they’ve made seven collections at Boca Larga. That’s enough for him to have learned that run real good. He knew the exact distance from the junction road exit to the trail entry, which is impossible to spot at night unless you know just where to look. He knew the best spot to hit the crew on its way out. He knew there’s no room on the trail to hide a vehicle and that there’s only one spot just wide enough to make a U-turn without getting stuck. He knew everything you’d need to know for a hijack plan, and he laid it on somebody looking for weapons. And those motherfuckers took out our guys and stole our goods.

What’s your read on them? Rodrigo asks.

I figure a young bunch. They’re very good and they’re full of themselves. Probably looking to make their mark in weapons retailing but not flush enough yet to invest in top-grade guns. But even if they could afford a load like this one, they might be the kind who think stolen fruit is sweeter than bought fruit. A lot more satisfying to rip a load than buy it. Not a very smart outlook as a long-term business practice, but not uncommon in young guys with big balls. You’re not so old yet you can’t remember what that kind of cockiness is like.

I’m not so old yet I can’t still kick your ass. And Corona? Hell, he’s just a dumb shit who thinks whatever they paid him was worth it. The big question is who they are, but the pressing question is where he is. I figure hiding out with a relative, a pal, a woman, somebody. Thinking to hole up till things blow over. It’s what all the stupid ones do. Don’t understand some things never blow over.

So what are we doing? Rodrigo says.

I’ve alerted our intelligence people. Gave them the full jacket on him. They’ve put spiders out everywhere. We’ll find him.

Has to be fast, brother.

I know, Mateo says.

Rodrigo calls Charlie Fortune to relay what he’s learned.

Rudy

It’s a pleasant Saturday afternoon on the Gulf. We’re bearing south along the Texas coast, about a mile and a half off Padre Island. The sky is bright and nearly cloudless. On the distant eastern horizon a freighter is trailing a thin plume of dark smoke. There’s no other vessel in view except a small boat a quarter mile ahead of us and off to starboard.

My brother, Frank, and I are on the bridge of the Salty Girl, a thirty-five-foot customized sportfisher belonging to one of our uncles, Harry Morgan Wolfe, who normally uses it for fishing charters, but it sometimes serves other purposes as well. Frank’s at the wheel and I’m astraddle the swivel stool beside him.

Out on the foredeck, Rayo Luna and Jessie Juliet are lying side by side on their tummies, sunning their exquisite butts in string bikinis and talking about God knows what. Thick as thieves, those two – Rayo of the caramel skin and short black shag, Jessie a tanned strawberry blonde, her long hair loosely knotted in a bunch at the back of her head. They know we’re enjoying the view and that our pleasure isn’t hindered a bit by the fact they’re our cousins. Like Frank and me, Jessie is part of our family’s Texas side and is only a couple of branches removed from us. Rayo’s from the Mexico City half of the family, which originated from the same paternal root and is also surnamed Wolfe, but it places her further out from us on the genealogical tree. For the fun of it we sometimes refer to the two sides of the family in unison as the House of Wolfe. Over the generations, the Mexican Wolfes acquired a touch of mestizo strain through marriage, and most of them have the same light brown complexion and black hair as Rayo. In contrast, we on the Texas side of the house largely reflect the original family’s Anglo-Irish origin, almost all of us fair-haired and light-skinned. Frank and I are the only American Wolfes with a wee drop of mestizo blood, gained by way of a grandaunt whose father was Rodolfo Fierro, Pancho Villa’s right-hand man, and for whom I am first-named and Frank middle-named. For whatever reason, though, Frank tans more readily and darkly than I do, and given his black hair and bandido mustache, when nut-brown in high summer he bears a strong likeness to the Fierro we’ve seen in historical photos. The rest of the Texas clan could be taken for typical natives anywhere in Western Europe.

Rayo hollers, ‘Look!’ and points at a bounding bunch of dolphins that’s surfaced on the port side and is keeping pace with the boat. Frank and I and Jessie grew up around here and have been familiar with boats and the sea since we were children, but Rayo had never even been to a seacoast before she made her first visit here eleven years ago when she and Jessie were sixteen. She grew to love the beach even more during her years at the University of Miami, but ski boats and day sailers were the only kinds of watercraft she was familiar with until she came to live with us two years ago and we took her out on deepwater boats. By now she must’ve seen dolphins on dozens of occasions, and she still gets excited as a kid every time. She still marvels at every-thing about the sea.

‘You know what?’ she says, looking up at me and Frank. ‘I been thinking about how great it’d be to live on this boat. Never go ashore for anything but supplies, a little barhopping and dancing.’

‘Well, you better give it plenty of thought before you take up a cruising life,’ Frank says. ‘There’s an old saying – it’s better to be on shore wishing you were at sea than it is to be at sea wishing you were on shore. Lot of downsides to boat life,’

‘There are a lot of downsides to any life,’ Jessie says.

‘Such bleak perspective from one so young and fair,’ Frank says in the professorial mode he at times assumes for the fun of it and has enjoyed doing since we were in college. The truth is he could’ve been a professor. ‘I suppose,’ he says, ‘it stems from a frequency of journalistic exposure to a surfeit of human woe.’

Jessie’s a reporter for the local paper. She makes a face at him.

‘Actually, some good arguments can be made for boat living,’ I say, ‘and the best of them was made by the Phoenicians. They believed that no day spent on the ocean was deducted from a man’s life.’

‘What about for a woman?’ Rayo says.

‘They didn’t say.’

‘Of course not,’ she says, tossing her head in disgust. ‘Well, I’ll tell you something, Rudy boy,’ Jessie says, pointing at me. ‘Back in the Middle Ages it was widely believed that every time a man had sex it shortened his life by a day. And they didn’t say anything about a woman, either!’

‘Yeah!’ Rayo says. She and Jessie trade high fives.

‘Well now, that’s just rank nonsense,’ Frank says. ‘Because if it were true, I would’ve been dead a long time ago!’

The girls whoop. ‘Listen to him!’ Jessie says. ‘Frankie Casanova. Sex probably hasn’t taken two weeks off his life!’

‘Unless self-abuse counts,’ Rayo says. ‘In that case he could kick the bucket any minute.’

They laugh it up some more.

‘Self-abuse?’ Franks says in an injured tone.

‘Spanking the monkey, waxing the tent pole, shaking hands with the bishop,’ Rayo says. ‘All those cutesy clever phrases guys have for it.’

‘Massaging the midget!’ Jessie adds. ‘Strangling Mister Johnson!’

Those really get them howling, and Frank and I can’t help grinning. They can always give as good as they get.

‘I must say, brother,’ Frank loudly declares, ‘I am aghast to hear this sort of talk from women of allegedly proper upbringing.’

‘Words cannot describe the depth of my own distress,’ I say. ‘Yeah, yeah,’ Rayo says. ‘Listen, if I were you boys I’d play it safe from now on and never have sex, not even with just yourself, except on a boat.’

She gives me an exaggerated wink, then laughs when I point my forefinger at her and flick my thumb like I’m shooting her. Ever since she’s come to live with us, she and I have had some lovely times together, but she’s made it abundantly clear she’s not my ‘girlfriend,’ a word she enunciates like it’s been soaked in sour milk. What she and I are, she’s also made quite clear, is good-buddy distant cousins who like to get it on with each other. Quote, unquote. She’s like that. Direct as an arrow. At the University of Miami she got her degree in theater arts and lettered in track, tennis, and swimming – and was a regional collegiate swim champ. When she went back to Mexico she got into stunt work in movies and TV. Some of the stunts she’s done are unreal, but the worst she’s ever been hurt in any of the ‘bits,’ as she calls them, was a sprained thumb. One Sunday morning we were strolling by a schoolyard playground and she jumped the fence and hopped up on a set of monkey bars and went through a workout routine worthy of a spot in the Olympics. She was wearing a loose short skirt, and it wasn’t the first time she’d simultaneously shown me her gymnastic skills and her scanty underwear. She once said she was almost ashamed of herself for teasing me like that, because, as she put it, ‘It’s so girly.’ From up in the wheelhouse, her so-called tramp stamp – a little red tattoo inscription just above the thong strap and between her sacral dimples – is scarcely discernible, but I’ve many a time read it up close. factanonverba.

We’re on our way home from Louisiana, where we delivered two men and a woman, all three using the name Aguirre, and perhaps they were truly related, we didn’t ask. We had been contacted about them by our Mexico City relations, our usual source of clients in desperate need of a stealthy exit from Mexico and a new identity in the States. They sent us the necessary photos and pertinent physical data, then kept the Aguirres in a safe house down there while we arranged their relocation. Two weeks later when the Aguirres were transferred to the Salty Girl from a boat we rendezvoused with just a few miles off the Tamaulipas coast, we presented each of them with an American birth certificate, a duly issued Social Security card to match it, and a bona fide Texas driver’s license showing the address of a rooming house we own in Harlingen. At a Mississippi River boatyard a few days later and some thirty miles below New Orleans, we turned them over to some associates – kinfolk of ours named Youngblood – who escorted them the rest of the way to their new home. Because they had expressed a desire to live in a beachside community, a spacious apartment had been leased for them in Panama City, Florida.