"Are you high?" I ask. "Since when do you have a sense of humor?"
"Back at ya, boss-lady."
I sigh. "You're spending too much time with Saxon and Chance, I think. Now. Enough nonsense. I have an important update, but I would like to know your situation first."
"Fine, fine. No appreciation for a new page having been turned in the book of Solomon."
"There is already a book of Solomon, I believe," I say.
"It's theSongof Solomon, actually." He speaks over anything I might have said. "Anyway, you asked for a sitrep. We'vetracked Pugli and his minions to Los Angeles. There was some chatter about an op in Vegas, but the one lackey we managed to capture and, um, question, didn't seem to actually know anything concrete about anything happening in Vegas."
"When did you question him?"
"Say hello toLa Víbora, shitstain." There's a wet, raspy gurgle. "He says hi."
"Enhanced interrogation?"
"Nah. Just a good old-fashioned face-pounding."
I sigh. "You may as well let him go, Sol. The reason he doesn't know anything about a Vegas op is because it happened already."
The line goes ominously silent. "What op already happened, Inez?" His voice is deadly cold.
"Calm yourself. They hit the club in force in an attack in broad daylight. Forty-some men, either mercenaries or cartel soldiers, I'm not sure. The women are fine—we're all fine. Fonz took shrapnel to the back of his leg and Toro took a hit to the arm. Our employer put us up in a pair of suites at the Bellagio he owns through shells and subsidiaries, and they found us there, too, but only a half-dozen or so. We took care of them in short order, no casualties on our side.”
"They hit the fucking club? With our women in it?"
“Everyone is unharmed and accounted for. But yes." I pause. "And that isn't all."
"Fuck me running, what else?" Sol asks.
"They've put Jay—our employer—on the run."
"That's the second time you’ve almost said his name, Inez."
"I know. I think it is likely that he will introduce himself to you when this is all over, but I cannot and will not reveal his identity before he's ready to do so himself."
"And I'd never ask. He gave all of us a second chance when none of us felt like we deserved one. We all respect his needfor privacy, but hopefully he—and you—know we'd never reveal anything we may know about him to anyone else beyond the circle of Broken Arrows. And I include the women in that circle, obviously."
"I do understand, Solomon. It's just not mine to reveal."
"Understood. So. Anything else?"
"Yes, actually. He—our employer—received word from a CIA contact that Pugli and Rafael will be meeting in LA in the next 24 hours. We—meaning everyone, the women, Fonz, Toro, and Taj as well as Ren and I—are approaching downtown LA. We'll need to put out feelers so we can figure out when and where the meet is happening so we can end this fucking bullshit once and for fucking all."
"No shit. That makes sense. We've been focusing on Pugli as instructed, but my own contacts tell me they’ve had word of someone fitting Mercado's M-O being in LA."
"Elaborate," I say.
"Well, my contact is in the ATF, and they've been tracking the movement of a stolen shipment of small arms. It was jacked out from underneath the Army or some shit a few months back, but I guess the ATF had a lead that it was gonna be hit, so they put trackers in the cases, and they've got it sitting in a container at a warehouse in the Port of LA.”
"And how does this connect to Mercado?"
"The hit was surgical, with overwhelming numbers. The squads assigned to guard the shipment had no chance whatsoever. One of them did manage to record and send a video before he ate a round himself, and it shows a figure who no one can identify inspecting the arms. I saw the video and it is one hundred percent your boy Rafael."
"A few months back is hardly proof that he's in LA right now, though," I point out.
"Right, but the ATF tried to get agents close enough to the container to verify that they didn't just find the trackers. The agents vanished. Yesterday, all three of the missing agents were dumped outside the LA field office."
