Power and Empire

“Okay, asshole,” Clark said. “You have exactly one chance to stop me from turning your head into bits of skull and goo. Answer my questions as I ask them to you. Don’t pause. Don’t beg for mercy. Just answer the questions. Do. You. Understand?” Clark bore down with the boot at each word, grinding the man’s face into the ground and muffling his reply.

“Yeeesss,” he said, sounding like a deflating tire.

“Who’s the top guy? Cantu?”

It turned out to be harder to get the tattooed gangbanger to shut up than it had been to get his car stopped.

“Cantu is boss of the girls around here,” Flaco said. “But Zambrano is the top guy in Texas. Everybody who runs girls gotta pay him.”

“Zambrano?” Clark said. “Same name as the Cubs pitcher?”

“Same name,” Flaco said. “Different dude. This one’s from Mexico.”

“Where is he?”

Flaco shook his head. “He’s everywhere, man. He moves all the time.”

Clark nodded. “How about Matarife?”

“That dude’s evil as shit, man,” Flaco said.

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

Clark bore down again.

“Seriously, man,” Flaco whined. “I never been to his house. I been places where he does his stuff, though, and it’s pretty damn sick.”

“Who would know where to find him?”

“On my mother,” Flaco said, “I got no idea.”

Clark looked at his watch. “There’s a Chinese guy been hanging around. What’s his name?”

“Eddie.”

“Another Chinese guy.”

Flaco began to hyperventilate. “Man, since the triad moved in, there’s like a hundred Chinese guys hanging around. I’m not tryin’ to lie to you, man. I swear it. I’m just not sure who you mean.”

“Coronet?”

“Okay, okay,” Flaco said. “I only heard him called that once, but I know who you’re talking about now. Sharp dresser. Likes his girls fresh and young. That dude’s weird. Acts like he’s James Bond or somethin’, but I heard he just sold Christmas cards. His name’s Chen. Vinnie Chen… or Vincent, I think. Hey! He would know where Matarife is.”

“That doesn’t help,” Clark said. “Describe Vincent Chen.”

“Dude, I can do you one better,” Flaco said. “I got his picture on my phone.”

Clark nodded and Ryan retrieved the cell from Flaco’s hip pocket. Fortunately, he’d been facedown when he wet his pants, sparing the phone and Ryan’s hand.

“Password?” Ryan said.

“Eleven-eleven,” Flaco said.

“Want me to do it?” Ryan said, thumb hovering over the touchscreen. “He could have a distress signal preprogrammed.”

Clark scoffed. “Does this look like a guy who plans that far ahead?”

“Right,” Ryan said, and punched in the number. He opened the photos and, after scrolling through some seriously gut-churning pictures of girls that would be enough to put Flaco away for a very long time, he found a photo of a nattily dressed Asian man. Rather than leave a virtual trail by sending the image anywhere, Jack used his phone to take a photo of the screen.

“How about his phone number?” Clark asked.

“It’s in my contacts,” Flaco said. “But he was here a day and a half ago. He dumps his phones every few days and gets a new one.”

“Every few days?”

“See what I mean?” the gangbanger said. “Weird shit for a Christmas card salesman.”

“Where is Chen now?” Clark prodded.

“No idea,” Flaco said.

“Who gets the girls for Cantu?”

Ryan shot a glance at Chavez. This was outside the scope of their mission. They had what they needed on Coronet.

Caruso’s voice came across the radio again.

“Want me to let everyone know we’re less than ten out?”

Callahan’s muffled voice followed. “They’re all behind us,” she said. “Pretty sure they know already.”

Chavez twirled his index finger in the air, reminding everyone that they needed to hurry.

Flaco nodded, unaware of the conversation going on in their earpieces.

“A guy named Parrot.”

Chavez raised both palms to the sky. “Seriously, boss. We need to haul ass.”

Clark nodded. “Okay.” He pressed down on Flaco’s neck with his boot one last time before stepping back. “Dump his body by the gate.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Flaco pleaded. “You don’t have to kill me.”

“We never had this conversation,” Clark said.

Flaco’s head wagged so hard it looked like it might roll off his skinny neck. “Never, man. I swear it.”

Clark hooked a thumb toward the Dodge without another word.

Ryan and Chavez dumped the sobbing gangbanger alongside the road, bound hand and foot and gagged with a piece of tape so he couldn’t warn his buds about the approaching parade of vehicles coming down FM 644.

Ryan kept his lights off and his foot off the brake until they were well over a mile away. He smiled to himself when he heard Callahan’s voice gasp.

18

Special Agent Callahan put two Ellis County ambulances on call when she was two minutes out from Naldo Cantu’s farmhouse. The headlights of her Bureau-issued Expedition played on the grassy ditch as she came around a slight curve in the road. She nodded toward Caruso. “Jump on the radio and tell Ellis County where we are. I don’t want them to— Oh, shit!”