Page 7 of Vice
“Get on with it,” I growl.
“So she’s there. Your sister is there. I recognized her from the pictures Rebel showed to me a few years back. I took copies. I’ve been looking for her, too.”
“Why? Why the fuck would you be keeping an eye out for my sister?”
Julio squirms, a big, ugly grub on the end of a hook. “Why do you think, cabron? If Rebel wants something that badly, I am going to try and get it first.”
“So you said you’d trade Alaska for Laura?”
“Yes.”
I punch him as hard as I can in the throat. Julio makes a gurgling choking noise as I lean down, shoving my face into his. I am all he can see, hear or worry about. “That was a seriously shitty thing to do,” I tell him. “You should have called me. You should have called Rebel. Where the fuck is my sister now, Julio?”
“I told you, I don’t…know!” he chokes out. “He took Alaska when he left. He said he’d send three men back with your sister in a few weeks. He left another three hundred thousand as security. His men answered the phone when I was in that hotel room with Rebel, they let her speak to him, but that was the last time I heard from him. He never showed up with her, and he never came back for his money. He must have wanted to keep both of them.”
“Or you freaked him out when you put her on the phone with Rebel. You’re a stupid son of a bitch, Julio. Fuck, I should just kill you right now for being such a cunt.”
Julio opens his mouth, is about to say something else, but I clench my fist over his head, implying what will happen if he even dares to breathe one word. Whatever he was planning on saying dies on his lips.
“Who was he?” I demand. “This guy who showed up out of nowhere, wanting to fuck your girls?”
“I don’t know. I swear, I don’t fucking—”
I punch him in his throat again. He coughs, rattling, wheezing, and I lean back, sighing as I wait for him to sort his shit out. When he’s done, I continue. “You don’t let anyone through your gates unless you know exactly who they are, what they had for breakfast and how many shits they’ve taken since they woke up. So you had to have known who he was, Julio.”
“I didn’t.” He winces, screwing his eyes shut, anticipating my next blow. I decide to give him a second to finish his sentence, though. “He came with one of my regulars. Manny. He’s my brother, ese. I allowed him to bring people in with him all the time.”
“Bad business. Very bad for business,” I say. “Where’s Manny now? Back in the States?”
“No. No, he’s dead, okay? He was shot in Downtown LA.”
“Convenient.”
“Not convenient for me,” Julio gasps. “If I could send you off after him, I would. Then you wouldn’t be here, messing up my shit.”
“I suppose that’s true.” I stop leaning quite so heavily onto his neck. “Describe this guy to me, then. What did he look like?”
“South American, olive skin. Brown eyes, brown hair. Fuck, Cade, I don’t know. Wait, he was really thin. His shirt and his pants looked like they were a size too big for him or something.”
“Did he speak Spanish when he was with you?”
“Of course! Why the fuck would he have been speaking in English?”
I want to pistol whip the motherfucker for being rude, but I don’t think I can hit his head again without him losing consciousness. “Any recognizable scars? Tattoos? Any other defining features?”
“No. No, nothing! He looked…”
“He looked what?”
“He looked like an accountant or something. He wore nice clothes. Glasses. He wore glasses!”
Glasses? Strange, but then again what’s to stop a kidnapper and probable rapist from having bad vision? I shift my weight over Julio, scowling. “You have three seconds to tell me something useful about this guy, Julio, or I’m burying this knife in your carotid artery and I’m watching you bleed the fuck out. Do you understand what I am saying to you right now?”
“I don’t know…damn it, Cade. You’re gonna suffer for this, I promise.”
Ignoring his panicked chatter, I hold up three fingers, and then I tuck the first into my palm. “One.”
“I can’t tell you something I don’t know!”
