Without warning

Jules was almost whispering now, softly and gently, like an old lover. ‘Not many ex-mil types here though – are there, Capitбn? Just you, really. You’re the only true pro here, which means you know what’ll happen if my guys back there open up on you. I’ll get shot, almost certainly, just because I’m standing so close to you. My friend Fifi, with that enormous Russian machine-gun, she’ll probably make it to cover because she’ll put out enough fire to make sure nobody draws a bead on her. And Shah and Thapa, well, look at them – they’re cold motherfuckers. They’ll do the job. But your guys… well… I think we both know what’ll happen when thousands of rounds of ammunition start heading towards them, don’t we? So let’s not even go there. Let’s see if we can work something out between us, you and me, so that everyone’s a winner. Perhaps you could start by telling me your name.’

‘Miguel Pieraro,’ he said quietly. ‘I am not police, no. I was vaquero – a cowboy… a boss of cowboys.’ His shoulders straightened with real pride. ‘But that was before. I worked in the north, by the border. I worked for an American cattleman, with large herds below the Rio Grande. I ran his business there. He supplied McDonald’s.’ Pieraro invoked the name of the Golden Arches with reverence and awe.

Jules eased back a little, giving him some room. He was a proud man and very obviously cut from finer cloth than his comrades. His grasp of English was excellent. The chorus of sexual taunts and whistles from the makeshift barricade had died away completely now. All of Pieraro’s men watched him closely, straining to hear what had passed between el jefe and the white slut.

‘I will take you in myself,’ he declared. ‘We will discuss your proposal. You have a proposal, yes?’

‘I do,’ she confirmed.

He nodded and called out to another man who was sitting on the bonnet of an old ‘79 Camaro, reclining back against the dirty windscreen. The car was a dinosaur, with faded red racing stripes to match a thick coating of rust and dust. ‘Roberto, you are in charge here! I will take our new friends through to the Fairmont. Call me on the radio if you need to. The phones are useless.’

Jules noted that like Miguel, Roberto was notable for being clean-shaven and sober. Where his boss was a tightly wrapped bundle of steel cord and knotted muscle, however, Roberto slid from the bonnet of the car in one fluid movement. He reminded her of a snake, uncoiling in the sun. In Miguel’s position, she wouldn’t have trusted him to sit the right way around on a toilet seat. Oh well, not her problem.

A few hand gestures from the two men saw their followers hurrying to turn over engines and reverse the cars out of their herringbone arrangement. Pieraro indicated that Jules should follow him, so she signalled to Fifi to hurry back to the Jeep. ‘It’s cool,’ she said over the radio. ‘We’re going in with this chap.’

With the tension evaporating, she allowed herself a few moments to check out the locale as she followed the former cowboy through the gauntlet of leering street toughs. They’d set up their barricade across an avenue that most of them would never have seen before. Twee little fashion shops, jewellery stores and cafйs lined both sides of a street that recently had been a well-manicured boulevard. She noted Givenchy, Prada and Armani boutiques, all looted and burnt out. Rubbish choked the gutters and footpaths, and a couple of spent brass shell casings twinkled in the mid-morning sun.

Pieraro stopped at his car, forcing Jules to suppress a snigger. It was a micro, some sort of courtesy vehicle from the Fairmont resort, according to the livery; not much more than two doors and four dinky little wheels. Pieraro caught her sceptical expression.

‘It is new,’ he said. ‘And environ… environo-mentally sustainable.’

‘Does it run on tanning butter or something?’ she smirked. She would have taken him for a muscle-car tragic. But then she’d taken him for a crooked cop too, hadn’t she?

‘It is just for running about… with work,’ he emphasised.

She made sure the safety was engaged on the shotgun and then climbed in. A misfire would probably peel off the entire roof. ‘My name is Julianne, by the way – Jules, if you like,’ she told him as they fastened their seatbelts. ‘Do you mind if I ask you something?’

‘Will you mind if I don’t answer, should the question be none of your business?’ he said. ‘I am an honest person… Not like you, si?’ he added pointedly.

‘Really? Your little shakedown racket here – you’re earning an honest peso with this, are you?’

He started the car but didn’t drive off. ‘I have a family. Three children. I am providing for them. Those men back there, my men now, they have their own to look out for too. Unlike these people…’ he waved a hand to take in all of the Diamante district, ‘my men have nothing to fall back with. La Desapariciуn , it will hurt the poorest the most.’