But MaMaLu’s earrings hung limply in Esteban’s hands. She was not coming to save him or chastise him or love him or sing to him.
Esteban waited for the tears. He didn’t care if the guards manning the towers, or the women, or the children saw him. He wanted to release the sea of grief that was welling up in him, but the tears would not come. All Esteban felt was rage. He wanted to ram his fists into the tall, concrete walls, until big, gray boulders toppled over and buried everything. All of the helplessness and injustices and betrayal turned his heart into cold, hard stone. Esteban did not cry when it sank to the bottom of his soul like an abandoned anchor; he did not cry as he followed Concha through the tunnel, back to Cantina Man’s car.
“Did you see your mother?” he asked.
“My mother is dead.” Esteban’s voice was as hard and corroded as the metallic cigarette box he was holding.
“I’m sorry.” Cantina Man paused. “You have family?”
Esteban thought of the father who had abandoned him. He thought of an empty bottle of tequila, rolling from his uncle’s hand. He thought of the friend who’d left him in a cloud of dust. He thought of trampled paper animals, and three hundred and fifty pesos, and Juan Pablo, and Camila, and tangerine peels decaying in the dirt.
“I have no one,” he said.
Cantina Man was quiet for a while. “You saved my life today. I will take care of you. From now on, you are not Esteban. You are Damian—the tamer, the slayer.”
Dah-me-yahn. Esteban liked the way it sounded—like someone who didn’t give a damn. All he cared about now was bringing Warren Sedgewick and El Charro to justice, the kind of justice they wouldn’t be able to buy their way out of, the kind of justice MaMaLu had been denied.
Damian was going to make them pay for what they had done to his mother.
Cantina Man’s driver gave Concha a whack of bills. The other guards watched, eager for a cut.
“Where to, El Charro?” asked the driver, when he got back in the car.
El Charro.
The name jump-started Damian’s stone cold heart. He looked from the driver to Cantina Man and back again, as a sick, twisted realization hit him.
Cantina Man was El Fucking Charro.
Damian had saved the life of the man responsible for his mother’s death—one of the two men he had just sworn to take vengeance against.
“Home, Hector,” said El Charro. “We are taking Damian home.”
‘HOME’ TURNED OUT TO BE the city of Caboras, a three-hour drive from Paza del Mar. Although El Charro had many bases, he lived behind gated walls on the misty hills surrounding Caboras, and even though Damian had saved his life, he wasn’t about to invite the boy into his own home. El Charro didn’t get to the top by being sentimental.
“Keep your mouth shut and stay low until I call for you,” he said, when they were parked outside a pink three-storey building in a middle class neighborhood of the city. It looked innocuous enough, but it was one of the safe houses that the cartel ran in the city.
Damian understood. It wouldn’t do to advertise the fact that a twelve-year-old had saved El Charro. Reputations had to be maintained, machismo kept intact, and Damian was happy to play along, to wait until the perfect opportunity presented itself.
Hector, the driver, let him into a second floor apartment. The smell of marijuana was heavy in the air. A dozen young men lounged on sofas, watching TV.
“Your new compadre, everyone.” Hector introduced him to the group.
They seemed more interested in what they were watching. New recruits were on the lowest rung of the organization—disposable and barely worthy of acknowledgment.
Hector gave Damian a quick tour and settled him into a bedroom, where three others were already sleeping on mattresses, lined up in a row.
“Get some rest. Training starts tomorrow,” he said, before leaving.
Damian lay in the dark and listened to the drone of the television. He slid MaMaLu’s box under his pillow and caressed the worn edges. It wasn’t rest that Damian craved. It was something much, much darker. Damian was going to train hard. He was going to learn everything El Charro could teach him, and then he was going to use that very knowledge to destroy him.
It wasn’t long before El Charro summoned Damian. News of the attempt on his life had sparked rumors and El Charro was itching to send a message to his enemies.
“You are going to accompany this boy to church,” said El Charro, as they drove through the urban sprawl of concrete and glass that was Caboras.
Damian looked at the boy sitting between him and El Charro. He looked about nine or ten and he was staring ahead vacantly. His hands were wrapped tightly around a canvas bag, like he was carrying a fragile baby.
“You know what to do.” El Charro turned to him when they stopped outside a church. They had driven about four hours to get there.
The boy looked out the window, at the tall spires that framed the entrance and nodded.