I smile, but my gaze lingers on my phone’s notifications screen. “I don’t know. I have a bad feeling about this. Do you think it’s creepy if I ping her phone?”
King of control fairies March delivers his verdict without so much as a blink. “Of course not.”
Having received the simultaneous blessing of my partner, my boyfriend, and Struthio’s entire chain of command, I raise my phone and bring it a few inches from my face, allowing the iris scan to unlock what I like to call “the dungeon”: a suite of obscenely expensive software covering all our illegal needs, from advanced geolocation to access to police databases worldwide.
It feels strange to type in Joy’s number, as if I were crossing an unspoken boundary. Over the past year, I’ve acquired all sorts of skills and equipment that could technically allow me to unearth every last secret of my friends and relatives. Take Vince: I could have found out whether he was cheating much faster than Joy did, but the idea never crossed my mind. I was compartmentalizing, I guess—at least until now.
March leans to peer over my shoulder as the onscreen map zooms in on a pin in the city center, less than a mile away from the shores of Nichupté lagoon. My first thought is that maybe the pin appears to sit in the wrong place because of the zoom level. So, I pinch some more. And more, until I no longer can, and the pin is still sitting in the same place. I can feel the corners of my mouth tugging down. “Her phone is in the Sector 5 police station.”
“Do you believe this could be an error?” March asks.
“No. Not in Cancún anyway; there are cell phone towers everywhere for the signal to bounce on. Actually . . .” I load the signal data; blinking green dots pop up all over the map. “There’s a tower less than five meters from the station. It doesn’t get more precise than that.”
He strokes his chin. “Didn’t you say she flew there to kill Vince?”
“I didn’t mean it like that!” She wouldn’t? Would she? I massage my temples to soothe the painful drumming there. “Okay, okay . . . I’m calling Vince.”
“I doubt he’ll be pleased to hear from you, but I agree that it’s the next logical step,” March concurs, and already there’s something a little cold, mechanical to his voice. His mind is switching back to work mode. He compartmentalizes much better than I do, though, and I mean that in the literal sense: he gets up and starts pulling a sliding mahogany door that serves to partition the cabin. “I’ll stay with the Rotwangs and give you some privacy,” he whispers.
“Thank you . . . I’m so sorry,” I mouth back, even as I punch Vince’s number on my phone and turn on the speaker. One ring, two, three. With every second that passes, I can feel myself become jittery as I mentally rehearse crappy opening lines. At the seventh ring, I’m starting to fear she actually killed him, and his phone is ringing in a dark Cancún alley while he bleeds to death from a fatal testicular wound . . . but the chime is cut short and replaced by a tired male voice.
“Vince here. I was trying to decide if I should call you or her parents. Let’s get this shit over with.”
“What do you mean? What’s going on?”
“I’m in Cancún; she showed up tonight.”
“I know. She texted me this afternoon. And I know why she flew there.” I can feel my nostrils flare as I stress this particular point.
“That’s none of your business. I’m not going there with you, Island.”
“Fine, I don’t care!” I hiss, struggling to keep my voice low. “I’ve been trying to reach her, but she’s gone silent and her phone pings inside a police station.”
There’s a bitter snort before he says, “You bet it does. She got her ass bagged.”
I picture again the pin sitting right on top of the police station on the map, and I so wish I heard that wrong. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Joy got arrested here, in Cancún.” He marks a pause and seems to check something. “They’re keeping her at . . .”
“Sector 5 police station, on Calle Acanceh,” I complete.
“Yeah.” He sounds a little surprised. “Why did you even need to call me?”
If I grip my phone any tighter, my phalanges are going to snap. “Because I have no idea what the hell happened!”
On the other end of the line Vince, too, sounds shaken. “She tried to fucking kill me with a birthday cake. She missed, but she hit . . . a friend.”
“Oh, you mean Cachemire?”
“Yes. I was with her at a restaurant. Joy barged in, and she lost her shit.”
I draw a slow breath to steady my voice and clear my head. “How bad is it?”
“I’m at the hospital right now. The cake plate broke, and Cachemire’s got, like, five stitches on her forehead!”
I hold my breath, unsure whether to give in to relief or renewed alarm. The good: Joy spared Vince’s miserable life. The bad: she committed assault with a creamy weapon against his side-chick and got a taste of Mexican Law as a result.
There’s a tense pause on the other end of the line, before Vince shouts, “I’m done with that shit! I know I fucked up, okay? But she’s mental. You wanna hear the best part of this freak show? The cops actually told her she could get out now if she paid them a few hundred bucks. But she had to get on her big lawyer horse in broken Spanish. Good for her. They said she’s in there for at least a week with hookers and coke mules!”
This is a complete disaster, and all I manage to stutter is, “But, can’t she call another lawyer . . . someone?”
“She told the cops that they have to notify the US consulate or something, but I don’t think they’re gonna be in any hurry to make that phone call after she tried to bite them.”
Indeed. I’ve never been thrown into a Mexican jail by corrupt cops, and I don’t have a law degree either, but even I know that offense isn’t always the best defense. A prickling sensation in my cheeks informs me that I’m blanching. “Okay, can you—”
“No, I can’t. I told you, I’m done. She’s your problem now,” he barks before hanging up on me.
Of all Joy’s past boyfriends, I’m probably going to miss Vince the least—although it might be a photo finish between him and Clown-dick.
FOUR
The Wild Card
The moment Fabio Sanchez laid his eyes on the milky curves barely covered by her torn dress, he knew only the blistering pulse in his aching morcilla. He would have her, no matter what it took or cost.
—Kerry-Lee Storm, The Cost of Rica #5: Blaze of the Phoenix
“I expected no less from a man who cheats at Uno,” March decrees after I conclude my hushed recap of the phone call. We have three hours of flight left with our clients. I don’t want them to overhear the words ‘prison’ or ‘police’ and freak out all over again. They’ve been through enough as it is.
March fishes a promotional mint tin box from his jeans pocket and gobbles a few. We had them printed with Struthio’s ostrich logo—March’s favorite animal—and clients love them. “Should we call her parents?”