Page 330 of The Black Trilogy

“He made Black work for everything, but that left him with a lot of respect for his dad. That’s why he followed in his footsteps into special forces.”

“That’s more or less what I got too.”

I sighed. “So how do we find out more? His only living relative is Miriam, and I’d rather pull out my own toenails with pliers than ask her for information. I doubt she knows much anyway—I got the impression from Black that his father hated her as much as everyone else does.”

Nate stared off into space for a minute, pondering. “When he first joined the Navy, Black used to speak to one man. An old colleague of his father’s. I think he was the one who pulled strings for Black to get into the Navy in the first place, even though he was technically too young. He might be worth tracking down.”

“What’s his name?” I asked.

“Arthur Stapleton.”

“Black used to go and see him from time to time, and I tagged along occasionally. Arthur’s old now, and I’m not sure his mind’s what it once was.”

“You game for a visit?”

“Sure.” It wasn’t like I had any better ideas.

“Where is he? Do you know?”

“In a retirement home in Maryland. He wanted to be near his daughter. Sloane will have the exact address—Black used to have her send gifts on the holidays.”

“We’ll see what these guys come up with today, and if things aren’t moving, we’ll go back and talk to Arthur.”

Eduardo sent out anyone available to dig up whatever they could on Hector Ramos and his sons, Nate started digging through Blackwood’s contacts, and I asked Mack to look at things from her end as well. By midmorning, information started coming in.

Hector Ramos’s name cropped up a number of times in DEA reports, which confirmed Eduardo’s opinion that he wasn’t a nice man. His rise up the ranks had been relatively recent. Until he murdered his boss seven years ago and took over his operation, he’d been floating on the periphery.

We’d found little mention of Carlos, but Hector’s other son, Diego, appeared to be even more vicious than his father. According to the Colombian authorities, Diego had been single-handedly responsible for the murder of over a hundred people, including a handful in the States. At the bottom of the list of his known acquaintances were the names of the men who’d killed Black.

We had to be on the right track, didn’t we?

I became more certain of Hector Ramos’s guilt when Luke sent over a police report from the previous year. The cops suspected two of his henchmen had blown up a rival’s car with an RPG on the outskirts of Cali. Sound familiar?

Mack dredged up more photos of Carlos, and blimey, he looked like Black. He had a beard in every picture so I couldn’t see the shape of his jaw, but the top half of his face was identical. My mind started wandering. What if Black got killed in a case of mistaken identity? Anyone seeing one without the other could be confused.

Then a crazy seed of hope sprouted in my chest. What if I’d been mistaken? What if Carlos had been in the car and not Black?

That stupid notion lasted about half an hour, until Marco returned in the early afternoon bursting with news.

“I talked with an office assistant who works for Ramos’s lawyer. He told me everything I wanted to know for a couple of grams.”

Good to hear the barter system was alive and snorting in Cali. “And?”

“The lawyer visits the estate every month to meet with Carlos. Always Carlos. The lawyer never speaks to anyone else because there’s some sort of written agreement that says he’s not allowed to. Carlos deals with the finance and legal sides of his family’s business and insists that all meetings are held at his home.”

“When was the most recent meeting?”

“Last Wednesday, out at the compound, as usual.”

The last ember of hope in me fizzled out when Marco threw that bucket of water, and I struggled to keep my face neutral as he continued. I was not about to cry in front of him.

“My guy overheard the lawyer say Carlos is sharp as a tack. He’s made some good investments over the years. A lot of the money is locked away, but Carlos has been releasing cash each month for a while now. The year before last, it was the other way around. He invested for the long term back then.”

“Things change in the murky world of finance.” Luckily my own portfolio was well balanced. “At least we know Carlos has been around recently.”

“Yes, it seems that way. I will speak to more people this evening.”

I felt bad for not doing more to help, but I was out of my depth here in Colombia. Kind of numb too. Just when I thought the pain of Black’s death was starting to fade, a new revelation popped up and punched me in the face.

---