The Bones of Wolfe. James Carlos Blake
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Название: The Bones of Wolfe

Автор: James Carlos Blake

Издательство: Ingram

Жанр: Триллеры

Серия:

isbn: 9780802156969

isbn:

СКАЧАТЬ of our arms shipments go to our Mexican kin, who in turn sell them to their clients. Like us, the Mexican Wolfes are a large family of social standing who own and operate an assortment of lawful and profitable businesses in addition to engaging in various unlawful pursuits. And like us, they have always trafficked in such activities primarily for the satisfaction of asserting their independence from the horde of bastards who own the government and devise laws that first and foremost serve their own interests. It’s a matter of self-respect, of a pride that’s bred in our bones. Our Mexican cousins don’t like being played for saps any more than we do. Unlike us, however, they conduct their illicit dealings by means of a small outfit of their own creation called Los Jaguaros. To this day, not the Mexican government, the police, or the press is conclusively certain the Jaguaros even exist, notwithstanding the pervasive rumors that they’re the principal suppliers of arms to some of the country’s largest criminal societies. It has long been alleged by much of the news media and by political enemies of the current administration that the Jaguaros are a fabrication of the federal government, intended to cover up many of its own misdeeds. Over the years a number of captured cartel operatives have said that much of their armament come from the Jaguaros, but none of them knew where that organization is headquartered or could name any of its members. Some government critics insist that such prisoner allegations of the Jaguaros’ existence are outright lies intended to conceal the true sources of cartel arms. Despite all such conjectures and suppositions, the Jaguaros’ tie to the Mexico City Wolfes remains an impenetrable secret. Even the cartels chiefs who do business with the Jaguaros don’t know of the connection to the family. Not even most Jaguaros know of it—except, of course, for their Wolfe crew chiefs, all of whom use false surnames.

      Also, unlike ours, the Jaguaros’ primary stock-in-trade isn’t guns but information, and the cartels are their foremost market for that commodity, too. They sell military intelligence, police records, names of informants. They sell blueprints of banks, jewelry stores, art museums, prisons—of any venue someone might want to break into or out of. Much of that information comes from insiders at government bureaucracies, police and military agencies, corporate offices, construction companies, et cetera. But almost as much of it originates from the Jaguaros’ squads of ace hackers. Their access to so many sources of information also serves the Jaguaros very well in finding people who may or may not want to be found. Their boundless web of informants—whom they call “spiders”—reaches to every region of the country and every level of society, from shoeshine boys house maids, whores, and gardeners to hotel staff, media reporters, cops, and politicians. Not even the federal police have such a comprehensive network of eyes and ears as the Jaguaros do, or as secure a system for transmitting, sifting, cataloging, and storing the data they amass. And even while the cartels are their primary buyers of information, the Jaguaros have compiled vast files of data on each of them as well. That knowledge, however, is not for sale. It’s maintained by the Jaguaros solely for their own purposes. They of course also have a security unit, and it says something about Rayo Luna that she was a member of it before she came to live with us and joined the shade trade.

      It’s a rock-hard rule in the Texas family that no member of it can work in its unlawful trades without first earning a college degree, which can be in any major except phys ed or one that ends in the word studies. Charlie got his BA in history at A&M. Frank and I both got ours in English at UT Austin. He’s a Hemingway man, Frank, and his senior thesis contended that Stephen Crane’s influence on Hem’s short works was even more significant than had been previously recognized. His mentor thought that with a few minor tweaks the paper could get published in an academic journal, but Frank shrugged it off. My thesis was on Alexander Pope, who could express more insight in a heroic couplet than most poets can muster in an entire poem. The department offered Frank a graduate fellowship, but he turned it down. And even though he’d told the baseball scouts he wasn’t interested in a pro career—he had a rifle-shot fastball, plus a changeup that made a hitter swing like a drunk, and he came within four strikeouts of breaking the conference strikeout record in his senior year—the Orioles picked him in the third round anyway, hoping to change his mind with a big-bucks offer, but he nixed that, too. I was a good-field, good-hit third baseman and got a few offers myself, but the scouts didn’t swarm me like they did him. We’ve now been in the shade trade about fourteen years, and I can’t speak for Frank, but I think it’s safe to say that, like me, he hasn’t any regrets about his college major or career.

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      This time it’s Jessie who shouts, “Look!” She’s pointing at a fish hawk that’s appeared to our left, circling, on the hunt. It’s a beautiful thing, its breast and shoulders bright white against the gray-and-white checkering of its underwings and tail.

      “Osprey!” Frank tells the girls. “Name comes from the Latin ossifraga. Means ‘bone-breaker’!”

      “Bone-breaker!” Rayo says. “That’s so perfect!”

      I wouldn’t say Frank’s a showoff, but he does like to impress women every now and again with his erudition, and I have to admit most of them get a kick out of it. Just a few nights ago, Rayo and I were at a bar with him and a girlfriend of his, a nursing instructor at UTB, who got riled at the bartender for some reason and said to Frank, “Hit him with an English major put-down, baby.” So Frank said to the guy, “You, sir, are the terminus of an alimentary canal.” We all laughed, even the bartender, who admitted he didn’t know what Frank called him but thought it sounded funny.

      Now the osprey spies a fish and wings around to the east before turning back again.

      “He’s coming into the sun so the fish won’t see his shadow,” I tell the girls. Frank’s not the only one on the boat who knows stuff.

      The osprey’s gliding now as it starts angling into a descending trajectory and picking up speed, tucking its wings back as it swoops down. It’s just a few feet above the water when it slings its legs forward with the talons spread and wham, it hits the surface with a terrific splash and flies up with a sea trout in its grip.

      We all cheer and watch the hawk rise and start angling off to wherever its nest is. Then it jerks sideways a split second before we hear the gunshot, and it drops into the water about twenty yards from us, still holding the fish. It’s trying to fly but is just splashing around in a small circle.

      “Son of a bitch!” Frank shouts, slowing the boat and turning it toward the hawk.

      “It was them,” Rayo says, pointing at the small boat we’d noted earlier.

      I pick up the big field glasses and home in on it, a little over a hundred yards off and bobbing at anchor. A bowrider, twenty-two, twenty-three feet, stern drive, its Bimini top furled. Two guys standing in it, long-billed fishing caps, dark glasses, looking this way. One holding a scoped rifle with one hand, muzzle up, the butt resting on his hip.

      We draw up beside the hawk, and Frank tells me to take the wheel and hold us in place, then gets his SIG nine from the bridge locker and goes down and around to the fishing cockpit, where the girls are discussing how to get the hawk out of the water. It’s beating one wing in a spread of blood, and even from the bridge I can see the other wing’s crippled and the chest torn. No way it can be saved. Frank picks up a long gaff and Jessie says, “Not with that, you’ll hurt it worse.” Then she sees the pistol in his other hand and says, “Ah, hell.”

      Frank steps around them and starts to take aim at the hawk, but it abruptly goes still. Before it can sink, he gaffs it out of the water, the fish still in its clutch, and lays it on the deck. He looks up at me and points at the other boat, and I start us toward it, then reach down and take my Beretta nine out of the locker and slip it into my waistband.

      Frank detaches the trout from the СКАЧАТЬ