“Something about me ending up like my friend.” De la Rocha and Calvo looked at each other without speaking for a moment. “What did he mean by that?” Daniel asked his older employee.
Together, slowly, their heads turned towards the rolling cart.
“Emilio. Check that.”
Emilio stepped to the other side of the rolling cart then used the barrel of his pistol to lift a corner of the linen tablecloth. His eyes narrowed as he squinted. “It’s a head, jefe.”
“A gringo who decapitates.” Calvo said it with his eyebrows high. “He is showing us he can play by Mexican rules.”
“Whose head is it?” asked DLR.
Emilio looked again. Knelt down lower. “I . . . I think it is Xavier Garza Guerro.” Garza was the highest-ranking police officer in Puerto Vallarta controlled by the Black Suits and a former army colleague of Daniel’s. DLR had known the man for sixteen years. He knew his wife, his kids, his parents.
“Get it out of here.” De la Rocha stood and stormed over to Spider, grabbing him by the lapel of his jacket. “Listen to me! I want him followed, I want him captured, and I want him tortured like nothing you have ever done to anyone!”
“Sí, jefe. I have men in the street ready to follow him until we get you out of here, then we will take him.”
“I swear to you; I want you to have nightmares about what you did to him. I want you to be sick!”
“Sí, jefe.”
“Now go! And do not show your face to me until you have the Gray Man. ¿Me entiendes?” Do you understand me?
“¡Sí! ¡Sí!” Spider Cepeda shot out of the room, his phone rising to his ear as he did so.
Then DLR looked around the room, found Emilio right on his shoulder. “The men on tonight’s advance security team?”
Emilio Lopez Lopez raised his chin. “I have already disarmed them and put them under custody. Tonight I will have this building burnt to the ground, and the manager and maître d’ shot.”
“Fine. But this is your failure.” His finger jabbed the leader of his security forces hard in the chest.
“I understand, mi jefe.” Emilio said it with his head low.
De la Rocha turned around towards Calvo now, who was already speaking on his mobile. “Call the house. Tell them to keep their hands off the Gamboa bitch.”
Calvo slid the phone back in his jacket, completing a call. “Done.”
Pent-up rage blew forth from the thirty-nine-year-old de la Rocha; he screamed and pulled dishes and glasses from his table, crashed them against the stone wall.
Calvo rushed forward. “Daniel, listen to me! Calm down! Everything the gringo said, everything he did, it was all to get this reaction from you! It was to knock you off balance! Don’t play into his plan! Think!”
“I will piss on his beating heart!”
“¡Tranquilo!” Calm down!
“I will calm down when someone around me does their fucking duty! I have had enough failure from you cabrones!” He threw bottles and knocked over tables. Around him his Black Suits stood watch. No one but Nestor dared speak to him.
And Nestor did speak. “We can end this, Daniel! We can end this right now!”
De la Rocha stopped smashing things; he turned towards his older advisor. Cocked his head. “You want to give the girl to the gringo. You want to stop hunting for Elena Gamboa.”
Nestor reached out, smoothed the lapel of Daniel de la Rocha’s black suit. “I want to put an end to this madness so that we can get back into the business of making money. Making money for everyone. Building our organization, empowering ourselves against our enemies, protecting ourselves from the government and the—”
“Stop! Stop talking now, Nestor, before I begin to lose trust in you.”
“I am at your service, patrón. But as your advisor I feel it necessary to remind you why we are here, why we take the risks that we take. Not for some gringo that la CIA cannot even kill or capture. Not for the life of the unborn child of a cop that we dealt with brilliantly weeks ago.”
DLR shook his head. “Listen to me, Nestor. You have your orders. The Gray Man must die. The Gamboa woman needs to be found.”
Without a sigh or a change of expression, Nestor Calvo Macias nodded. “As I said, I am at your service.”
“Good.” De la Rocha turned to another of his men, the leader of his kidnapping operation. “Roberto, move the Gamboa woman. Double the guard on her.”
“Sí, señor.”
“Emilio!” he shouted. His bodyguard was right behind him still. “Double the guard on me.”
“Already done, jefe.”