The Silent Widow

‘I know what you’re doing, though,’ Williams retorted, his beer-addled brain trying to work out how this douchebag knew his name, or where to find him. ‘Nothing! You guys never even tried to find Charlotte.’

‘That’s because Charlotte was a cheap whore who more than likely got popped by some small-time drug dealer out there.’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ mumbled Williams.

‘Actually, I do,’ the man said. ‘You need to drop this. And while you’re at it, you need to stop harassing the Badens. And Luis Rodriguez.’

‘Harassing? I didn’t harass anyone!’

‘Rodriguez is a good man, a great man actually, and a friend to this country.’

‘I never said he wasn’t.’

‘You’re not fit to shine the man’s shoes.’

‘Ah, go screw yourself.’ Williams waved an arm dismissively. He was done arguing with this idiot, and too hammered to try to figure out his cryptic insults.

The man stood up and left a twenty on the bar.

‘Consider this a friendly warning,’ he told Williams. ‘The next one won’t be so polite.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Present day …

‘Aaaaagh! Luis. Ay, yes! Yes!’

Luis Rodriguez closed his eyes and tried to tune out the girl’s exaggerated moans of pleasure. Why did women do this? Did they think he was too stupid to realize they were faking it? Or that he cared, in any way, about their pleasure?

With his wife – his ex-wife – it had been different. With her it had been making love. Something real. But these twenty-something model/actress/whores that flocked to his bed since his wife left him, hoping for crumbs from his vast fortune? They were there solely for Rodriguez’s own pleasure. He couldn’t care less whether they lived or died.

‘Grrrrrrr-aaaagh!’ he grunted, climaxing at last inside the writhing beauty beneath him. Annabella. Or was it Isabella? Something like that. They were in his office on Colonia del Valle after a lunch date that had spilled into the early afternoon. The girl had gotten a Tiffany gold bracelet out of it, and Rodriguez had enjoyed an excellent meal, accompanied by the envious stares of his fellow diners, followed by twenty minutes of decently satisfying sex with the girl showing off her yoga moves as he bent her backwards, then forwards, over his couch.

‘Oh my God! That was incredible, baby.’ She was still gushing as she stepped back into her panties and dress. But he was already back in work mode, sitting at his desk and flipping open his laptop. He had a big deal to close this afternoon with Willie Baden, owner of the LA Rams, and an important new contact to meet before he boarded his private plane to Los Angeles tonight.

The Baden deal had ended up being more complicated than he’d anticipated. Luis had been introduced to Willie through his wife, Valentina, who grew up in Mexico City and who often attended the same charity functions that he did. As two committed philanthropists with a common tragedy in their pasts – Valentina’s younger sister had ‘disappeared’ in her teens, never to be seen again, at the exact same age that Luis’s beloved sister, Carlotta, had lost her life to drugs – Luis and Valentina had instantly understood one another. As a result, he’d expected business with Willie to be plain sailing. Unfortunately, the man’s greed had made negotiations difficult. Willie was attempting to play hardball. But when push came to shove, no one’s balls were harder than Luis Rodriguez’s. He could be generous and compassionate, qualities that had won him an adoring fan base amongst the city’s poor. But he remained a street-fighter at heart.

Nonetheless, he was anxious about the trip. The streets of LA were Willie Baden’s streets, not his, and the rules of warfare were different there.

His nerves were one of the reasons, probably the main one, that Luis had needed sex this afternoon. Isabella’s attentions had been a distraction and a release.

He tried to analyze his fears, as he tried to analyze everything. The Baden deal was a part of it, for sure. A bigger part was the fact that this would be the first time in some years that he had set foot on US soil, an event that always raised his stress levels, but that felt even more unpleasant than usual now, amid the new political climate in Washington. This wasn’t a good time to be an extremely rich Mexican national, known to the FBI, however decent and honorable your intentions might be. It didn’t matter to the American Government that you’d donated millions of dollars to drug rehabilitation charities and other worthy civic causes. It didn’t matter that you were part of the solution in Mexico. Once you were a mark

ed man, that was it. They hated you.

Bastards! What was it about Americans that made them so envious of success in others, no matter how hard those others might have worked to earn it? Luis Rodriguez was a businessman, pure and simple. The way he saw it, his only ‘crime’ had been to succeed. Half of Mexico City already belonged to him and the other half would one day, yet he had come up from nothing, from less than nothing. Dirt poverty of a kind that most ordinary Americans couldn’t even imagine.

‘You look stressed, baby. Let me help.’ The girl had crept up behind him and was attempting to massage his bull-like shoulders with her long, bony fingers. She smelled of some heavy, musky perfume and sex. Like a fish dipped in patchouli. Luis felt revulsion, his earlier desire utterly spent and his excellent lobster linguini churning violently in his gut.

‘You have to go now. I need to work.’

‘Really?’ she pouted. But the look on his face answered her question succinctly and she took the hint. ‘OK, baby. Well, you’ve got my number. See you soon.’

Luis didn’t even look up as she sashayed out in ridiculously high wedge heels, her narrow hips swinging along with her waist-length hair. Stupid whore. He longed for his wife like a child longing for its mother. Everything was worse since she left him.

As soon as the girl had gone, Marisol, his secretary, stuck her loyal, unattractive head around the door. ‘The Colombian delegation has arrived, Mr Rodriguez. Should I show them up or do you need a few minutes?’

Luis smiled. He loved Marisol for her tact and discretion. He paid her well, but at the same time he knew that her loyalty ran deeper than money.