The Territory (Josie Gray Mysteries #1)(42)
*
At midnight, Josie walked Dillon to his car. The air was soft on her skin, and a billion stars and a fat white moon lit up the night. Dillon leaned against his car door instead of getting inside and put his arms out to her. He pulled her toward him, rested his hands on her hips, and offered a half grin that she couldn’t read.
“Nothing’s changed, Josie, but I can’t stay away any longer.”
She felt the familiarity of a fight coming on. “I’ve tried to explain…”
He put a finger up to her lips and shook his head. “That’s not what I’m saying. I’m not passing judgment. I just miss you. I need to be around you. You make me smile, and I want to make you smile. You have this gigantic heart that’s locked up inside you that I want to open up.”
She took a step back. “Don’t speak in metaphors! What does that mean—I have a heart locked up? If I need to change, then give it to me in black and white.”
He laughed at her anger and pulled her back in again, kissed her to shut her up, then kissed her again, soft and long, his hands down her back pulling goose bumps up her arms. He finally kissed her forehead and cradled her face in his hands. She had a perfect heart, he told her, that needed sleep. Then, he drove off down the dusty road toward town.
EIGHT
After a shower in an open-air bath off the main dressing area, the Bishop sat for morning breakfast on the veranda. He watched as two light-skinned teenage girls laid out his clothes for the day in his room: white linen slacks and a light linen-blend white shirt, huarache sandals and a Cuban Exo cigar. He had stopped smoking ten years ago but found he missed the roll of the cigar between his fingers and the taste of the tobacco on his lips more than the act of smoking. So he had switched to carrying a fresh cigar with him throughout the day.
He watched the girls through the glass wall that separated his bedroom from the veranda, looking with pride as they snapped a fresh white sheet and tucked it under the mattress. They laughed and slipped quietly out, so unself-conscious, they never realized he had been watching.
He had overseen every detail of the construction of his estate, and he was proud of the outcome. The house was built five years ago to represent his family’s wealth and status, and it had achieved that goal. Reminiscent of an M. C. Escher print, the three-story white stucco home held mysterious passageways, arches, and twisting stairs. Hand-carved teak lintels and moldings had been waxed to an ancient sheen, giving the home a substantial old-world feel that he prized. Outside the home, terraced desert landscaping wrapped all sides of the house and created quiet retreats.
The Bishop reclined slightly in his chair and breathed deeply, forcing a calm exterior that he did not feel. The damp morning air was infused with what he thought of as the smells of earth: mesquite, creosote bush, and juniper. In the midst of family or business crisis—and in fact, they were often both—he retreated outdoors. The smells, the solitude, the heat and space gave him the calm he required to make the life-and-death decisions demanded of him daily. He looked across the sprawling desert and took deep breaths to control the rage that once again was threatening to overcome him. He imagined his father’s dead body, shot up beyond recognition by a man whom he had once loved as family. He wanted to destroy his cousin and every member of La Bestia: personally shove the knife through each beating heart. But he could not afford to react out of emotion or grief. Revenge was justified and expected, but revenge unplanned was inexcusable.
The Bishop’s influences in life were twofold. A mother whose entire being centered on perfection: her children were fastidiously clean, neurotically prepared for life’s little problems, and taught the manners of the upper class. And a father whose devotion to family and obsessive need to control had led to a dynasty feared and respected throughout Mexico. Hector Medrano gave his oldest son the nickname “the Bishop” on his twenty-fourth birthday. As the Bishop, Marco ruled the family business, organizing the leaders of the narcotics, firearms, and money-laundering divisions to carry out the missions that his own father had given him: Control the drug routes through the northern states of Mexico. A simple idea but an incredibly complex task.
The media perpetuated the myth of the Bishop as a ruthless killer with no respect for life, a fact those close to him understood was untrue, pure myth. The killings were just a necessary part of his business, no different from a priest assigning penance, a boss firing dead weight, or the presidente firebombing a cocaine factory: all necessary parts of the bigger picture to be undertaken with integrity and fortitude.
The Bishop smiled at the young woman who had appeared to place a carafe of fresh coffee on the table. She wore her hair in long, oiled cornrows that hung behind her back, and had a perfect chocolate-colored complexion. She stole a look at him, smiled in return, and then left, her head lowered in deference.
The Bishop watched her walk away and thought of the arrogant policewoman who had interrogated his cousin through marriage, Miguel ángel Gutiérrez, in the American jail. After the interview with the police chief, Gutiérrez talked with an attorney provided by La Bestia. The Bishop paid a large sum of money to the rival attorney to receive the confidential details of the meeting. The attorney claimed the woman called Gutiérrez a pedophile, said he would rot in her filthy jail with the perverts and degenerates until he gave up information about the business. She had taken on a cause bigger than her abilities.