He looked into her eyes, his lips curving in a lopsided grin. “Ever think of being a cop?”
“Good heavens, no! I’m a journalist, and that’s scary enough.”
“Yeah, no shit. Okay, let’s go through them one by one.” His smile gone, he picked up the alleged rapist’s mug shot. “They never look like rapists, do they?”
“THIS IS LOCO. You know that, don’t you? You’re going to get yourself killed, amigo, and me along with you.”
Joaquin watched street names as his cousin, a member of the Latin Kings gang, drove him deep into the barrio, the Glock 9mm he’d bought two days ago heavy in his pocket. “No one is going to get killed.”
“This man you are after—he’s connected to a cartel.”
“I know. Los Zetas.”
Jesús glanced over at him, a look of disbelief on his face. “Then you must be loco. Thesechingaderos—they kill for fun.”
“He hurt and tried to kill a friend of mine—a woman.”
Comprehension dawned on Jesús’s face. “This is about that reporter who got kidnapped in Juárez.”
“I’m not going to let him hurt her again.”
“This is bullshit. We’re going home.” Jesús flipped a U-turn in the middle of traffic, drawing angry honks and curses.
“Stop!” Joaquin jerked the wheel hard to the right, forcing his cousin to the curb.
Jesús slammed on the breaks. “Are you trying to kill someone?”
As a matter of fact, ithadcrossed Joaquin’s mind. “Just show me where he is, and then leave. You don’t even have to get out of the car.”
Jesús looked genuinely afraid, sweat beading on his forehead, sliding past the little five-point crown tattooed on his temple. “If you get killed, your mother and mine will blame me. So you’d better stay alive, eh?”
“I promise.”
Jesús turned the car around again, drove a couple of blocks north, then pulled over to the curb. “You see the flophouse behind us? Word is he’s living upstairs with a hooker. Third window from the right.”
Joaquin studied it with the help of the passenger-side mirror. “Drop me off down the street. Then go home.”
Ten minutes later, Joaquin lay on a rooftop across the street, watching, his camera and the Glock ready. One hour went by. Two. Three. It was hot on the rooftop, the late afternoon sun beating down on shingles that reeked of tar.
And then he saw him—a man who looked just like the man in the police sketch, a jagged scar stretching along his jawline on the right.
Joaquin focused the shot, clicked, and clicked again as the man disappeared into the flophouse, then reappeared at the window.
Joaquin clicked away, focusing in tightly with a telephoto lens on the bastard’s face, catching the address of the flophouse.
It took a moment before he saw that the man was looking in his direction.
He moved the camera away from his face, looked up, and realized that the sun was glinting off his camera lens. “Shit.”
That’s why you’re not a secret agent, Ramirez.
Pulse picking up, Joaquin reached in his pocket, grabbed his cell phone, dialed. “Hey, Darcangelo. I think I found our man—that Zeta with the scarred face. Yeah. The only problem is, I think he found me, too.”
By the time Joaquin looked back at the window, the Zeta had disappeared.
CHAPTER 27
“HE’S COMPLETELY MIA—no forwarding address, no landline, no calls made on his cell phone since the day he moved out. Same thing with his credit cards—no recent charges. He’s got two accounts with a total of fifteen grand cooling in the bank, and he hasn’t touched a dime. His parents and brother say they’ve had no contact.”