LITMIR.BIZ

      THE LION LOOKED at his kid brother, and what he saw didn’t please him. Nacho had turned eighteen that year and for six months had been pestering incessantly for an opportunity to move up. Yotuel had finally relented. Killing Inspector Constante, which had needed doing for some time anyway, was to have been Nacho’s ticket into the big leagues. It had turned into a slaughter. El León sighed heavily. So had the rescue operation to get Nacho back. The young man sat flinching and unable to look into his big brother’s eyes. The room was dark except for two small ceiling lamps that illuminated each man at the table. Other men hovered back in the darkness. Yotuel eyed his brother again. Nacho’s nose was broken, his arm was in a sling and his shoes and his pants were scorched black. Yotuel’s nose wrinkled and his down-curved lips curled with contempt.

      Nacho stank of rum.

      Yotuelo sighed again. “Brother, what am I to do with you?”

      The two men could not have been more different. Nacho was a sack of chicken bones in a very expensive designer track suit. Yotuel, El León, looked every inch his nickname. He was a lion of a man, over six feet tall with a wide brow and a protruding lower jaw. He’d had his hair straightened, and it fell around his shoulders in a blue-black mane in the style of the Taino Indian ancestry he claimed. Taino tribal tattooing crawled down his heavily muscled arms entwined with La Neta prison tattoos. His symbol of power was a seventeenth-century Spanish lance head he carried thrust under his belt. The socket was wrapped with leather cord to make a hilt. Catholic saints’ medals and beaded Santería fetishes hung from it in braids. The two-foot steel blade was pitted and brown with age execpt for the edges, which gleamed like mercury from sharpening.

      He drew the antique iron and began cleaning his fingernails with the needle-sharp point. “Tell me about the cops.”

      Nacho eyed the spear blade nervously. “One was an old man, but tall, tall like a tree, like he should’ve played in the NBA or something.”

      “Flaco Ordones.” Yotuelo nodded. He knew him. Ordones came on like a kindly grandfather with suspects, but he was the same old-school-style cop as Constante. “And the others?”

      “I knew one of them.” Anger kindled in Nacho’s eyes. “That goddamn Roldan.”

      Yotuel knew Roldan by reputation. Ruzzo “el Santo” Roldan was a cop, reportedly unbribable and a former Latin King. As far as Yotuel was concerned, that was strike one, strike two and strike three.

      “The other was that bitch, Gustolallo.”

      The Lion smiled slightly. Detective Guistina Gustolallo. The redheaded cop had used her beauty to run several very successful undercover stings against the Puerto Rican drug cartels until her face had become too well-known, and she had gone on to make detective. Like a lot of criminals in Puerto Rico, El León harbored some fantasies of getting his hands on Gustolallo when she wasn’t wearing her badge and gun. Yotuel put those fantasies aside for later. “And the Yanqui?”

      Nacho shuddered. “Mother of God, brother, you should have seen this dude.”

      “Brother, you were supposed to kill this dude,” Yotuel stated.

      Nacho stared glumly at his blackened sneakers.

      “Perhaps you would like a second chance?”

      What Nacho would’ve really liked was the first flight to Miami, where he could spend a couple of weeks getting lap dances, betting on jai alai and restoring his shattered nerves.

      A long sigh rumbled out of Yotuel’s thick chest. “But then, with what has happened tonight, perhaps it is best if we lie low for a little while.”

      Nacho nodded vigorously. He obviously thought lying low was an excellent plan.

      “Tell you what, brother,” Yotuel continued. “We need to get you out of sight for a while. I’m going to send you to Miami. We’ll have a doctor fix your nose. Set your arm. Then you rest up. I’ll send for you in a week and then we will kill this Yanqui asshole together.”

      Nacho sagged with relief. “Thank you, brother—I mean, yes! We will kill him! We will kill him together!”

      “Yes.” Yotuel nodded with more conviction than he felt. He turned to one of his men. “Raciel, go with him. Have Mario fly you, and take Cuco. You two? You will have my little brother’s back.”

      “Yes, Yotuel. Like he is our own little brother.” Raciel was short, violent, built like a fire hydrant and he considered Nacho worse than useless. However, Raciel liked Florida, blond strippers and jai alai, and Nacho spent money like water. There were worse jobs than a one-week mission babysitting him in Miami. Raciel jerked his head at Nacho and they left the room.

      A man came out of the shadows from behind Yotuel. He was knife-thin with brush-cut gray hair, and he radiated command presence. “Your little brother is a liability.”

      “I have known that for eighteen years,” the Lion rumbled. He glared at his visitor. “What are you suggesting?”

      The thin man smiled, but his flat black eyes were as cold as a shark’s. “I am suggesting we turn him into an asset.”

      One normally cruel corner of Yotuel’s mouth turned up in amusement. “If you can do that, then you really are an orisha.”

      The visitor’s smile reached his eyes. “Oh, but I am.”