Ric says.
He opens the door, she slides in quickly and shuts it behind her. “I knew what you assholes were doing in here. Share.”
Iván takes the vial out of his pocket and hands it to her. “Knock yourself out.”
Belinda pours out a line and snorts it.
Iván leans against the wall. “Guess who I saw the other day? Damien Tapia.”
“No shit,” Ric says. “Where?”
“Starbucks.”
“Christ, what did you say?”
“I said ‘hello,’ what do you think?”
Ric doesn’t know what he thought. Damien had been an Hijo, they were kids together, played together all the time, partied, all that shit. He was as close to Damien as he was to Iván, until Adán and Diego Tapia got into a beef, which turned into a war, and Damien’s father was killed.
They were all just teenagers then, kids.
Adán, of course, won the war, and the Tapia family was thrown out of the fold. Since then they had been forbidden to have any contact with Damien Tapia. Not that he wanted anything to do with them anyway. He was still around town, but running into him was, well, awkward.
“When I take over,” Iván says, “I’m going to bring Damien back in.”
“Yeah?”
“Why not?” Iván says. “The beef was between Adán and Damien’s old man. Adán’s dead, as you might have noticed. I’ll make it right with Damien, it will be like before.”
“Sounds good,” Ric says.
He’s missed Damien.
“That generation,” Iván says, jutting his chin at the door, “we don’t have to inherit their wars. We’re going to move ahead. The Esparzas, you, Rubén and Damien. Like before. Los Hijos, like brothers, right?”
“Like brothers,” Ric says.
They touch knuckles.
“If you guys are done being gay,” Belinda says, “we better get back out there before they figure out what we’re doing. Snorting coke at El Patrón’s velorio? Tsk, tsk, tsk.”
“Coke built this place,” Iván says.
“Selling it, not snorting it,” Belinda says. She looks at Ric. “Wipe your nose, boyfriend. Hey, your wife is cute.”
“You’ve seen her before.”
“Yeah, but she looks cuter today,” Belinda says. “You want to do a threesome, I’ll teach her some things. Come on, let’s go.”
She opens the door and steps out.
Iván grabs Ric by the elbow. “Hey, you know I have to take care of my brothers. But let things settle down for a few days and we’ll talk, okay? About where you fit in?”
“Okay.”
“Don’t worry, ’mano,” Iván says. “I’ll be fair with your father, and I’ll take care of you.”
Ric follows him out the door.
Elena sits between her sons.
She saw a documentary on television, a nature show, and learned that when a new male lion takes over a pride, the first thing he does is kill the previous ruler’s cubs. Her own cubs still carry the Barrera name and people will assume that they have ambitions even if they don’t. Rudolfo has a small retinue of bodyguards and a few hangers-on, Luis even fewer. Whether I want to or not, she thinks, I’ll have to take on a certain level of power to protect them.
But the top spot?
There’s never been a female head of a cartel, and she doesn’t want to be the first.
But she’ll have to do something.
Without a power base, the other lions will track down her cubs and kill them.
Looking at her brother’s coffin, she wishes she felt more. Adán was always very good to her, good to her children. She wants to cry, but the tears won’t come and she tells herself that’s because her heart is exhausted, played out from all the loss over the years.
Her mother, perched in her chair like a crow, is virtually catatonic. She’s buried two sons, a grandson and a granddaughter. Elena wishes that she could get her to move to town but she insists on staying in the house that Adán built for her in La Tuna, all by herself if you don’t count the servants and the bodyguards.
But she won’t leave, she’ll die in that house.
If my mother is a crow, Elena thinks, the rest are vultures. Circling, waiting to swoop down to pick my brother’s bones.
Iván Esparza and his two equally cretinous brothers, Adán’s horrible lawyer Núñez, and a flock of smaller players—plaza bosses, cell leaders, gunmen—looking to become bigger players.
She feels tired, all the more so when she sees Núñez walking toward her.
“Elena,” Núñez says, “I wonder if we could have a word. In private.”
She follows him outside to the grand sloping lawn she walked so many times with Adán.
Núñez hands her a piece of paper and says, “This is awkward.”
He waits while she reads.
“This is not a position I relish,” Núñez says, “certainly not one that I wanted. In fact, I prayed that this day would never come about. But I feel—strongly—that your brother’s wishes should be respected.”
It’s Adán’s writing, no question, Elena thinks. And it quite clearly declares that Ricardo Núñez should take over in the event of Adán’s untimely death until his own sons reach the age of responsibility. Christ, the twins are barely two years old. Núñez will have a long regency. Plenty of time to turn the organization over to his own offspring.
“I realize that this might be a surprise,” Núñez says, “and a disappointment. I only hope that there’s no resentment.”
“Why should there be?”
“I could understand that you might think this should have gone to family.”
“Neither of my sons is interested, and Eva—”
“Is a beauty pageant queen,” Núñez says.
“So was Magda Beltrán,” Elena says, although she doesn’t know why she feels a need to argue with him. But it’s true. Adán should have married his magnificent mistress. The beautiful Magda met Adán in prison, became his lover, and then parlayed that and her considerable business acumen
