The Paper Swan(47)

“Rafael.” Damian stared down the barrel of the gun. “How many grams of cocaine can I get for a thousand pesos?”

Rafael looked at him, confused.

“Answer the question,” said Damian.

Rafael quoted a number.

“And how many grams for a thousand U.S. dollars?”

Again, Rafael answered.

Damian repeated the question for euros, yens, rubles, rupees . . .

Each time, Rafael shot back with a figure.

“Is that right?” El Charro asked Comandante 19.

“I don’t know. Let me check.” Comandante 19 got out his phone and started punching numbers. His jaw dropped open. “He got them all right, El Charro.”

“Well, what do you know?” said El Charro. “The boy is no sicario, but he has a knack for numbers. We can use someone like him.” El Charro lowered Damian’s hand. “Well done, Damian. You managed to save your friend and impress me. Sicarios!” He turned to the boys who had made it, his arm still around Damian. “You too, my little whiz kid,” he said to Rafael. “Congratulations! This is the beginning of a new chapter. Come. Let us celebrate.”

Damian followed El Charro out, the horrific images of black garbage bags, and mangled body parts, and blood-splattered walls etched forever in his mind.

Yes. This is the beginning of a new chapter, El Charro. The beginning of your end, he thought. Because I won’t stop until I have destroyed both you and Warren Sedgewick.





DESTROYING EL CHARRO TOOK TIME and careful deliberation. Damian knew he would only get one chance, so he had to make it count. Even if he managed to kill El Charro, the other members of the cartel would come after him, and Damian wasn’t ready to call it quits without taking Warren Sedgewick down. Not only did Damian have to plan his attack, he also had to put together an escape plan.

Two things worked in Damian’s favor. The first was that El Charro kept him clean. After Comandante 19 perished in a shoot-out, Damian slowly took over as the explosives expert, too valuable to waste on the streets. El Charro consulted him when he needed to obliterate rival safe houses, evidence, bodies—Damian had El Charro’s complete trust. The second thing Damian was grateful for was that El Charro sent Rafael to a private school outside of Caboras. El Charro needed more than muscle to run his organization. He saw the value of investing in young professionals, early on in their careers. Damian knew that Rafael would have to work for El Charro, but he intended to finish the capo off long before it was time to collect.

Over the next few years, Damian saved his money—and there was a lot of it. By the time he was sixteen, he had moved into an apartment facing the ocean and traded in his panga for a secondhand yacht. When he saw the fishermen coming in, their boats heavy with the day’s catch, Damian went down and bought fresh fish and crabs and shrimp. He loaned them money to repair their tired trawlers and fishing nets. In turn, they invited him on their voyages and shared their secrets of the sea with him. If they noticed the looks their daughters gave Damian when they took him home for dinner, they didn’t say anything.

Damian didn’t just work with explosives, he was a slow, burning fuse, waiting to detonate. The bad-ass vibe that surrounded him both thrilled and intimidated the girls. The fact that he was removed—unattainable and uninterested—only spurred their desire for him. But Damian steered clear of romantic liaisons, the heady flush of first love, the sweaty palms and stuttered words, the sweet, painful yearning for a lover’s kiss. He remembered his first kiss, the night of the initiation ceremony, but not the lips or the face. El Charro had thrown a party in honor of the new sicarios. Food and booze and drugs and women. Damian had been introduced to the world of sex, and it suited him to keep his involvement limited to women who were paid to please him. Relationships were a weakness he did not allow himself.

Every year, Damian left a bouquet of Mexican sunflowers on MaMaLu’s grave. He picked the deepest orange blossoms with the brightest centers. MaMaLu was buried in Paza del Mar, in the cemetery behind the church of Archangel Michael—the same church where Damian had made his first drop for El Charro, the same church he had attended as a boy with MaMaLu. Her grave was surrounded by those of all the other dead, unclaimed prisoners from Valdemoros—a pile of rocks with a plain slab, engraved with her name and prisoner number. There was no date of death, because someone had forgotten to jot it down, and it broke Damian’s heart that she had been robbed of that dignity. Damian did not get a new stone for MaMaLu. He needed that reminder. Every year, when he saw that incomplete slab, the fire in him blazed higher, and he needed it to burn eternally so he could take a chisel and hammer to the hearts of the two men who had put her there, and carve out retribution. Then, and only then, would he get MaMaLu a proper tombstone.