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“Th—the boss just wants you out of the way!” Santiago cried.
“By which you mean El Luchador.”
“That’s what Mig—”
“Santiago!”
The boy stopped abruptly, and I made a show of beginning to pull on Jose’s second nail.
“Stop! Stop, you sick freak! It’s only been a minute!”
“Two, actually,” Boris chimed in, and I sighed again and released the nail, moving over to crouch beside the barely-adult who was panicking so much his spider tattoo appeared to be crawling.
“You were going to say Miguel, right?” I said. Santiago took in several panicked breaths and just stared at me. “I already know of him.” Admittedly, I had only just learned of the man thanks to their conversation, but they didn’t need to know that. “So you’re not giving me anything useful.” I lifted the pliers and rested them ominously against the back of his hand. “Continue what you were saying. You’ve got eight minutes left.”
“M-Miguel…that’s what he said. That the boss wants you out of the way. So we hit the auction and tried to get it done.”
“Santiago, I swear to fucking Christ I will kill you myself.” Jose hissed in rapid-fire Spanish.
“I’m not saying anything that isn’t already obvious!” Santiago looked like he was on the verge of hyperventilating.
“I see,” I said, partially overriding their chatter so they wouldn’t catch on that I understood. “And whose idea was it to involve a large number of innocent bystanders by attacking me at my uncle’s estate sale?”
“I don’t know!”
“So you’re not sure that orders came from the top? Is there a mutiny brewing in your ranks?”
“I didn’t say that,” Santiago snapped, although his voice was raising in pitch.
“So it isEl Luchador who’s trying for a war?”
“I-I didn’t say that, either!”
“Boris?” I looked questioningly over my shoulder, and my second glanced up from the stopwatch.
“Six minutes.”
“Jesucristo, Jesucristo, Jesucristo”
Santiago was properly panicking now, his face bone-white and sweating, his fingers trembling so much the pliers I still had against them were visibly shaking. Looking at him properly now, I reassessed my estimation of his age. He could be even younger than I’d thought.
I lifted the pliers…
“Hey, eyes over here, shithead,” Jose snarled. “Leave the kid alone.”
“This isn’t your war,” I said patiently down to the two of them as I stood. “This is your boss’s war. I’m a reasonable man. I wanted to negotiate. But he decided to send a killer after my friend, and then a lot of you after me. Now your people are dying and getting captured—that’s five already, to his one murder—and he still thinks he’s going to win in an all-out street war? It looks to me that you’re on the losing side.”
“El Luchador never wanted a goddamn war,” Santiago said weakly, slumping in his chair as I moved away. “Miguel and some of the others, sure. But El Luchador probably figured we could just carve things up without shedding blood. He’s a good man. He’s not… He’s not crazy like you. He’s good.”
“Then how is it that you find yourselves captured and left for dead after an attempt on my life?”
When no-one immediately responded, Boris helpfully chimed in with a cheerful, “Three minutes!”
“Listen, man,” Jose said wearily, eyeing the young Santiago as if his panic was hurting him more than his lost nail, “you’re crazy if you think El Luchador is just out there pouring his heart out to every one of us. You don’t do that, right? So why would you think he does? He’s not fucking stupid, he knows there could be information leaks and shit. I don’t know what you think we know, but you’re barking up the wrong tree. Nobody tells us jack shit.Nada.”
Interesting that he would bring up information leaks, as if it was normal to be assuming backstabbing and traitors. Thing is, it’s normally leaders who have those paranoid thoughts. Grunts won’t usually hold that stress on their shoulders, not unless they personally know of a traitor in their midst—or in their enemies ranks, feeding them intel.
I moved back to Jose and put my pliers to his next finger without emotion. He just sighed, hung his head, and clamped his lips shut.
