Scout’s Honor: Chapter 16

Terminal

The LAX international terminal was crowded, bustling, its check-in lines long, with unshaven arrivals embracing their excited families, while embarking passengers bid teary farewells. A stylish handsome man dressed in a blue tailored suit stood talking to a remarkably fat man eating fistfuls of popcorn. The stylish man was smiling, in his happiness gesturing with fluid movements most men avoided. His companion nodded as he chewed, glancing about the terminal, his mouth set in a smile. 

“How can I leave you in charge of the entire West Coast when you cannot tie your own shoes?” said Juan, laughing, his face aglow. Medellín had called two days before, asking him to take over distribution in New York, requesting he fly home to meet with his counterpart to discuss the territory. Relieved, Juan could explain the missing cocaine in person, how he would recover it, and how, if unsuccessful, he would personally reimburse the family for its loss. “Héctor, it is bad manners to forget one’s employer while standing in his presence.”

“I’m sorry, I have been so preoccupied with the problem I am bad company,” said Griego. Thrown off guard by Medellin’s ploy for ensuring Juan’s return, Héctor Griego was unprepared for his superior’s flood of goodwill. He rolled his sloping shoulders, worried over his nagging chest pain, telling himself it would disappear once Juan stepped onboard his flight. 

 “But perhaps you are working too hard on it,” Juan said. “You look tired. Are you getting enough rest?” He was grateful to Griego for talking him out of garroting Roy the first evening. His King must still die, but the passage of a week would remove the last scintilla of doubt. When he returned from Colombia, he would drive to Tijuana alone, arrange Roy’s release and then gently quiz him like an errant schoolboy on the drive back to Los Angeles. His King would enjoy a final sunset overlooking his beloved surf. 

“Yes, I’m fine, but shouldn’t you be boarding?” Griego asked.

 “The pendejo—no possibility of escape?”

“No, of course not.” Griego hid a smile behind the greasy popcorn box. “He cannot escape, I took care of it myself. He is safe, but madre dios is he scared. The comandante—a strange man—told me the pendejo screamed all night after he saw our little present. His partner’s cojones were never so useful.” 

“He is all right?” asked Juan. He couldn’t help it, he loved the boy so. 

“He is fine, just badly frightened. By the time you return, he will be begging to tell us everything. And now you must go. Vaya con dios.” 

Griego was determined no one from the family would ever speak to the boy again. His quandary was when to have him killed. Juan had to be dead first of course, but even then, his revenge-minded clan might challenge Griego’s tale of Juan’s all-consuming homosexuality. Cross openly coddled in La Mesa’s finest carraca was the insurance policy Griego needed. The proof that Juan had placed his young lover’s care above the family’s needs. As Griego shuffled toward the exit in shoes he could neither reach nor tie, he thought he’d give it a year, possibly two, before he had Cross knifed in a La Mesa brawl. He might have done it sooner out of sheer anger had he learned that his Mexican assassin—unable to find the long-gone Tommy Mahoney—chose the simple expedient of disemboweling another border officer. 

As it happened, Griego outlived Juan by less than six months, his heart more victim to his elephantine girth than the stress of his criminality. Despite these personnel losses, the Trujillos’ tons of cocaine rolled ever northward and Roy Cross was soon a footnote, then forgotten altogether, save by the terrified Comandante García who would keep the güero alive, well, and under lock-and-key until the murderous Colombian returned one day to claim him.

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