Tod Goldberg - The Reformed

But Fiona’s just might be. Not that she couldn’t handle herself, but it probably wouldn’t do anyone any good to have certain government agencies aware that she was in town.

Junior stood up and whistled. Officer Prieto and the tow-truck driver exchanged a few words, and then the truck drove off. “Give me a minute,” Junior said, and started off toward the policeman.

I got up from the table when Junior was far enough away that he couldn’t hear me. “Here,” I said. I handed her my phone. “Take some candid photos for our memory book, won’t you?”

“Love to,” she said.

“Keep my face out.”

“That officer is very handsome,” she said. “I’ll focus on him.”

“Good,” I said. “When I go over, you wait here. But keep snapping photos. You never know when we’ll want to relive this experience.”

“That was a smarter move than I would have anticipated,” Fiona said. “The fingerprints? The car? Very savvy.”

“He’s had a lot of time to think of great ideas.”

“Are you sure you’ll be fine?”

“What’s the worst that can happen-he finds out I’m a spy? Spy trumps local cop every day.”

“I hazard to remind you that you’re not a spy anymore,” she said.

“You know what I mean.”

Officer Prieto dipped into his car and came back out with something small and square. Probably an ink pad. Junior waved me over.

“I’m allowed to use a real gun here, right?”

“Try not to shoot the kids,” I said.

By the time I reached the Charger, Junior and the cop were already back in conversation. “You must be the crooked cop,” I said. I extended my hand to shake, but instead, Officer Prieto pressed my fingers into the ink pad and then onto a piece of paper. He did it in under ten seconds. It was fairly impressive. Since I knew it was coming, and since I thought maiming a cop would be more trouble than I needed that afternoon, I opted not to stop the process by breaking his arm in two. All that, and I don’t even think Prieto made eye contact with me, though it was hard to tell, since he wore mirrored aviator glasses.

“You got anything to hide?” Officer Prieto said.

“I’m a criminal mastermind,” I said, “but that’s probably pretty apparent. Other than that, you now have all the clues you need to my existence.”

“I find out you’re not who you say you are, I’ll bring your whole world down,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Good luck with that. I can tell you right now, I’m not really Cy Rosencrantz.”

The three of us stood there for a moment without saying anything. It was a nice form of posturing, one usually only seen in the wild. I decided to wait it out a few moments longer and then said, “You done?”

“A real joker here,” Prieto said.

“I’m just concerned that we have a job about to jump off, and you’re trying to stare me down. Either you’re a crooked cop or you’re not. If you’re not, just go on and run my prints. If you are, you need to decide how you’re going to get everyone out of that warehouse in the next twenty minutes or so.”

Prieto reached into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone and a phone number. “You want some diversion? You make the call,” he said, and gave me the cell. “My voice isn’t appearing on anything. I’ll do my job, but you do yours.”

I examined the phone. It looked like a burner, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I went into the Charger and took out one of my own disposables from the glove box. “I come prepared,” I said, and then dialed the number.

“Harding Pharma, this is Dan.”

Huh. Dan was a good choice.

“Dan,” I said, “this is Kirk Peterson from Diagnostic Partners. You in the warehouse?”

“Yes, sir.”

“We’ve got a report here that the cooling systems are going nuts there. What do you have?”

“Uh, well, I’m just on duty for the loading dock, sir. You got the loading dock on the line.”

“Then I need someone in the lab,” I said.

“No one like that here. It’s a Saturday.”

“Son,” I said, “I’m going to make your life real simple for you. You’re about fifteen minutes from a stage-three collapse in the CDH units. Who’s on call?”

“Uh, uh,” he said. Panic. It makes you sputter.

“Settle down, son,” I said. “Just calmly get everyone out of the dock. I got a call in to the police. They’re on their way.”

“We’ve got a truck leaving in the hour,” he said.

“Leave it,” I said. “And get your ass out of there, son. Police will be on-site in a few minutes. God help you all if this gets into the water.”

I clicked the phone off, took out the SIM card, and then crushed it on the pavement.

Junior and Prieto just stared at me.

“I told you,” I said, “you’re dealing with a criminal mastermind. So, why don’t you get moving there, Officer Friendly, before someone gets smart and starts actually thinking over there at the warehouse?”

Officer Prieto got into his car without saying a word and drove off. Within a few seconds, we could hear his siren.

“Nice work,” Junior said. He extended his hand.

Old friends. That’s what we were. I took his hand and said, “You ever try to corner me like that again, and I’ll torture you to death in a way that will make your ancestors hurt. We got a deal, hoss?” Junior said nothing. “Great.” I patted his hand lightly. “Good talk.”

I waved Fiona over. She sashayed across the parking lot, and when she got close to Junior, she gave him one of those smiles she normally reserves for men she’s about to hurt. “Always a pleasure,” she said, and then she got into the car.

I looked at my watch. “If that truck isn’t at Honrado within the hour, I’ll assume you want that ancestor thing early.”

When we drove off, Junior was still standing in the middle of the parking lot, looking for all the world like a man without a country.

The final execution of a counterinsurgency plan is to not just defeat the insurgency, but cripple the will of anyone who might want to follow in the insurgents’ footsteps.

For a man like Eduardo Santiago, there would always be people gunning to bring him down. He was too powerful now. He’d forgotten where he came from. He was no more than a crook with a collar. And then people really gunning for him: The Latin Emperors were not going to disappear. As long as there were prisons, as long as there was poverty and drugs and violence, there would be the Latin Emperors. And as long as Father Eduardo was alive, there would be a Latin Emperor who would think that the way to earn his stripes would be to get the man who snitched out Junior Gonzalez.

Unless they were too damn scared of the power Father Eduardo still had from his perch in the church. That meant creating a mystique of fear. And the only way you scared hard knocks like the Latin Emperors was to attack them in a way they could not quantify.

Like through the air.

Fiona and I sat idling in the Charger across the street from Honrado when we saw an eighteen-wheeler roll tentatively down the street. I couldn’t make out the face of the driver in the cab, but thought that the tattooed arm draped out the window was a pretty good sign that the driver wasn’t under the employ of Harding. It was seven P.M. and the Honrado campus was clear of people… except for the ones Barry and Sam were training in the art of counterfeiting this fine evening.

I called Sam. “Delivery is here,” I said.

“That’s great,” Sam said.

“You sound a little distracted,” I said.

“Mikey, we’re printing money in here.”

“I’d like to remind you that you’re a federal employee,” I said.