Elizabeth Lowell - The Wrong Hostage

“Custodial. Such a nice term, a legal term, one that sounds good in your American courtroom. But the legal system isn’t quite the same here in Mexico. Other, more realistic considerations hold here.”

“Are you saying that I can’t speak for my son’s interests in Mexico?”

Calderon blew smoke. “At this moment, no. Only Ted may do so.”

“In that case I’m taking Lane out of All Saints right now. When you find Ted, you can have a long talk with him about custodial parents.”

“Taking Lane with you isn’t possible,” Calderon said, refusing to meet her glance. “Because Ted signed the papers admitting Lane, only Ted can remove him.” Calderon threw her a quick, nervous smile. “So now you understand the importance of bringing Ted here, yes?”

Sweat gathered along Grace’s spine. She’d seen that kind of anxious smile before, in the barrio, when young vatos curried favor with gang leaders. At that instant she understood that Carlos Calderon, a very, very powerful man in Baja California and all of Mexico, was acting as someone else’s messenger boy.

Someone violent enough to make Calderon nervous.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Will I never get free of the gutter? Grace asked silently.

She’d spent her adult life forgetting the gutter, ignoring it, not looking back, climbing high and fast to a place where the air was clean and the nights were safe and women didn’t have to be arm candy to be allowed into the halls of power.

“Carlos.” Grace’s voice was quiet and calm, that of a judge presiding over her court. “Are you telling me that Lane is a prisoner here and only Ted can set him free?”

Calderon looked out at the field, where the referee had just blown the whistle, stopping play. Then he looked toward Grace without meeting her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “This isn’t the way I would prefer to do business.”

He got out of the vehicle and gestured in the direction of the sidelines. Two men separated from the crowd and strode toward the Mercedes.

“Please,” Carlos said urgently, “stand with me to greet him. It is simple respect, something a judge understands, right?”

Reluctantly Grace got out of the car and stood an arm’s length from Carlos. One of the approaching men was a black-haired Mexican in clean, creased blue jeans, ostrich-skin boots, and a crisp white pearl-buttoned shirt. Around his neck hung a heavy gold chain holding a large, diamond-crusted medallion.

It was hard to guess the man’s age, except that he wasn’t young. He had too much sheer macho confidence to be under forty. He walked with a faint limp, like a retired rodeo cowboy with narrow hips and old injuries. His dark face had the strong, blunt features of the people who had lived in Mexico long before Cortes rode roughshod over the land. The man squinted in the shimmering, hazy light. His left eye was milky. He was no taller than Grace.

Understanding went through her like an icy spear. I know him .

Hector Rivas Osuna was head of the most powerful, most violent crime family in Tijuana. Grace had seen his face in newspapers and in U.S. post offices on the ten-most-wanted broadsheet.

No wonder Carlos is sweating .

ALL SAINTS SCHOOL

SATURDAY, 12:25 P.M.

THE MAN WALKING NEXT to Hector was a younger, more polished version of the rough-edged crime lord. He wore a silk shirt, Italian slacks, and thousand-dollar loafers without socks. His hair was styled and blown dry. His skin was lighter, his body less beaten. He hid his eyes behind aviator sunglasses.

But the family resemblance was marked, right down to the narrow hips and swagger. Father and son, perhaps, or uncle and nephew.

“Who is the younger one?” Grace asked quietly.

“Jaime Rivas Montemayor,” Calderon said very softly. “He’s the heir apparent to the Rivas-Osuna Gang. The ROG. Very violent. Very dangerous.”

Grace didn’t answer, but now she understood why the federal policeman had been eager to cover his badge. He and his buddies were dancing to a tune called by either Calderon or the most corrupt crime boss in Mexico. Seeing Calderon’s nervousness, she was betting on Hector Rivas Osuna being the man in control.

Hector stopped a respectful distance away and bowed his head formally to her. “Your Honor.”

There was only the faintest trace of derision in his tone.

Grace nodded in return and kept her mouth shut.

“You tell about her son?” Hector asked Calderon.

Hector’s English was close to Spanglish, the border creole, rough but useful. As he spoke, he watched the banker with his good eye, tilting his head in a way that pulled apart the lids of his blind eye. It was obvious that he’d been injured-scar tissue puckered whitely in a ragged line all the way to his thick hair. Most men would have worn a patch to conceal the eye’s ruin.

Hector wasn’t most men.

“Not completely, Carnicero, ” Calderon said. “I thought some of the details would be more convincing if they came from you.”

Carnicero .

Butcher.

Grace was surprised that Calderon would use such a nickname to Hector’s face. She glanced beneath her eyelashes at the nephew. He was watching his uncle with an expression of distaste. Either Hector didn’t notice or didn’t care.

Hector looked at Grace again, examining her the way the Mexican customs inspector had, but Hector’s expression was more complex. Some traditional Mexican males were fascinated by powerful women, so long as that power didn’t extend south of the Tia Juana River. Apparently Hector was one of those men.

Grace couldn’t decide if that was good or bad.

“I hear you ver’ important woman, a judge,” he said to her. “That mean you smart, so pardon me if I speak plain. I am a plain man. Do you know me?”

Grace nodded.

“ Bueno . Tijuana is my world,” he said calmly. “I make law. I enforce it. ?Claro? ”

She nodded again.

“Your husband stole my money. Mucho dinero .”

Grace’s eyes widened and her stomach knotted.

“He don’t give that money to me,” Hector said, “I kill el nino, the son. Is simple.”

Bile rose in her throat. She swallowed it back down.

Hector straightened himself out of his slight stoop, stretching stiff muscles in the middle of his back.

Grace remembered reading somewhere that he’d been badly wounded in a shoot-out on the streets of Tijuana. Yet Hector still had a kind of primitive physical power, the kind of raw charisma that some criminal leaders possessed. A very few men like Hector had come through her courtroom, men who lived violently and often died the same way.

But never soon enough for the innocent.

Hector turned and gestured toward the field where play was winding down. “You saw?”

Grace didn’t trust her voice, so she simply nodded, feeling like a puppet whose strings were being jerked.

“ El nino, he get small bump,” Hector said. “A warning, so you unnerstand.”

Her stomach knotted more tightly and her throat closed. She couldn’t have answered if her life depended on it.

It didn’t matter. Hector was still talking.

“The big hombre, the one that hit Lane? My nephew. He like to give pain.” Hector smiled, showing hard white teeth and a few steel ones. He gestured to Jaime Rivas. “This one, he think we hit your son more hard, make bigger unnerstanding.” Hector’s smile changed, thin and dangerous now. “Jaime no happy. He talk me into el banco grande with Calderon and Franklin. Jaime want to kill el nino, but I want solamente my money. ?Claro? ”

Grace glanced at Carlos Calderon. He’d turned his back, plainly showing that he wasn’t any part of their transaction.