The line picked up. “Memo, I—” The woman exploded again. “You motherfucker! I’m still on speaker!”
“Listen, Najelli, you—”
“Memo…” The woman sounded like she was about to start crying. “Tell me you haven’t sold me out. Tell me you’re not sitting next to some American DEA prick.”
“Uhh…” Dominico was at a loss again. “He’s not DEA, and I’m pretty sure he’s no prick.”
“Memo, give me the phone,” Bolan said.
Dominico handed back the phone sheepishly. Bolan covered the receiver and whispered. “Last name?”
“Busto.”
Bolan raised the phone to his ear. “Miss Busto? My name is Cooper.”
The invectives flew. “Yanqui federale chingaso cabrón—”
Bolan interrupted and threw a card on the table. “Miss Busto? I’m not a cop. You are not under surveillance. You are not under arrest and you are not a suspect. I’m here in Culiacán to help Memo kick Varjo Amilcar’s ass.”
That tidbit of information was met with a profound silence. A tense ten seconds passed. “Put Memo back on.”
Bolan covered the receiver with his hand as he passed the phone back. “Don’t mess this up.”
“Man…” Dominico took the phone. “Najelli, whatever is happening, it isn’t me. I gave no orders. I’m coming out of retirement to fix this, understand?”
“Okay, so who’s the American?” she retorted.
Dominico ad-libbed. “I didn’t know who I could trust. I hired a Special Forces mercenary. He’s all professional and shit. Real badass.”
Bolan shrugged.
Silence reigned for a long time before Busto spoke. “Memo? I’m telling you. Things are bad.”
“I know. Let me pick you up. We’ll talk. If you want out, I got a plane.”
“You got room for my mother? And my daughter?”
Dominico looked to Bolan, who nodded.
“Yeah. I got room. You’re family, Najelli.”
“Then come and meet me at Davilo’s shrine.”
“When?”
“Now, chico.” The line clicked dead.
“Who’s Davilo?” Bolan asked.
“Davilo Fonseca, fellow pilot. He was Busto’s boyfriend. She learned a lot from him. Then the federales punched holes in his ride on the way back from the U.S.A. and he made a smoking hole in the ground. Man, I tell you, I tried to steal her from Davilo a thousand times, but she was in love. After he died, a lot of guys wanted her. Some were bad, including Varjo. I let everyone know they had to go through me. You know, I offered to marry her. Instead she asked me to teach her how to shoot. Then she up and left to Mexico City to became a bodyguard. There’s more call for women guards there than you think. You know, rich guys want someone who can stay with the women and children and girlfriends twenty-four-seven. Someone the hombres feel safe with operating in their harem. Then she got pregnant. Word is it was one of her clients. One of her married clients. He denied it and she got fired and moved back here to Culiacán. She didn’t think Mexico City was a place to raise a kid. Like any place is anymore.”
“It’s not where you raise a kid but how.”
Dominico shot Bolan a look and then suddenly pointed at a dirt turnoff. “We go there.” The road wound for another ten minutes through the hills and they came to a tiny valley. Dominico sighed in memory. “They call it El Corona.”
Bolan examined the ring of hills that formed “The Crown.”
Weeds overgrew the floor of the vale, but it was clear that it had once been leveled into an airstrip. It was a picture-perfect, hidden landing zone for a daredevil narcotraficante willing to risk everything, but it was short. Very short. For a pilot with a damaged aircraft the Crown would turn a hairy descent into suicide. Dominico pulled up beside a cairn of stones covered with tarnished religious medals, faded ribbons and burned-out votive candles.
It was the last resting place of Davilo Fonseca.
Bolan could see unshed tears in Dominico’s eyes by the glare of the Bronco’s headlights. “I taught him everything he knew.” Dominico scraped the back of his hand across his face. “She won’t be long. Her mother and father were farmers. She took over the old place. It’s not far from here.”
Bolan found a courtesy Thermos of DEA coffee and a foam box laden with street-vendor tamales wrapped in corn husks. He and Dominico leaned against the Bronco and ate and waited. Dominico was right. It wasn’t long before headlights showed up on the dirt road. Bolan drank coffee as a primer gray and rust red Mercury Grand Marquis pulled up in front of the Bronco. A woman got out from behind the wheel. She wore old cargo pants, a man’s cardigan sweater a few sizes too big for her and some ancient-looking cowboy boots. She was runway-model thin with brown hair worn in two braids. Her brown eyes were huge above a little ski-jump nose and bow lips.
Najelli Busto looked like a lost waif from the streets of Rome rather than a Mexican gun moll—except for the stainless-steel Ruger pistol thrust into the front of her pants. She wore a scowl on her face and was smoking the stub of a cigarette. Bolan could tell by the sweet smell of the rice paper binder that it was an unfiltered Mexican Faros. She chain-lit another as she and Bolan sized each other up in the glow of the headlights. She spoke to Dominico without taking her eyes off Bolan. “You look good, Memo.”
“You, too, baby!” Dominico grinned.
Busto made a bemused noise.
“Miss Busto, you said everything in Culiacán is messed up. May I ask what you meant?”
“Well, you’re a polite son of a bitch, I’ll give you that.” Busto looked warily to Dominico.
He nodded. “You can talk to him. He’s cool.”
“I am cool,” Bolan agreed. “Tell me what’s messed up, Miss Busto.”
Some pent-up anger began to simmer to the surface. “You want to talk about messed up? First you got Pinto and Varjo acting like they own the place, and they don’t play nice. What’s worse is even guys who don’t normally sweat guys like Pinto and Varjo, men of reputation, are acting like they’re scared. That gets everybody scared. Some people disappeared and suddenly Varjo and Pinto can get away with just about anything. Then Pinto gets hit—”
“That was me,” Bolan admitted.
Busto’s big brown eyes blinked. “That was you?”
“Yeah.”
“You and Memo took out Pinto?”
“No, just me.”
Busto was incredulous. “Memo, who the hell is this guy?”
Dominico sighed. “I stopped asking.”
Busto struggled with it all. “So you kicked Pinto’s ass? And all of his men? By yourself?”
Bolan nodded. “Yeah, and now I’m gonna do the same to Amilcar. You in?”
Busto just stared.
“Listen,” Bolan went on, “I’ve gotten to know Memo a little bit. I believe he’s on the up-and-up. I also believe he’s being set up for a big fall. When I spoke with Pinto, he didn’t know who the head of the operation was, but he thought Dominico was calling the shots from the Mexico City leg. I want to know if Varjo believes the same thing and if he knows anything more than Pinto did.”
“What