“Yeah,” I said. “You could’ve driven a Mack truck into her—”

“And the truck would’ve lost. I hated that big self-righteous bitch,” Tomás grumbled.

“What about her?”

“Doesn’t my gun locker look like her now?”

“Holy cow,” I said after nearly choking on a shot of tequila. “You’re right.”

He poured me another shot of tequila. “You gotta stop this half steppin’, Octavio. You got something to ask me, you ask. No more dickin’ around.”

“If you haven’t already noticed, you’re kind of a scary dude,” I said.

“Yeah,” Tomás said, knocking his shot of tequila back. “To everybody else I may be El Sepulturero—”

“Which you are not.”

“But to you,” Tomás continued unfazed, “I’m your godfather. And I made a blood oath with your papa to watch out for you like you was my own.”

“A ‘blood oath’?”

He held the open palm of his right hand up for me to see. A big, calloused stevedore’s hand I’d seen many times before, crosshatched with nature’s lines and a faint four-inch white linear scar.

“Summer, five years ago,” he said. “’Bout two months before his heart and the diabetes got him, we was drunk, havin’ a good time, talkin’ shit. Which one of our women had the best ass—”

“You can skip that part.”

“So, anyway, he gets to talkin’ ’bout you. How much he loves you. How he’s scared for you in a world that seemed hell-bent on tearin’ itself to shreds. Worried Black folk won’t accept you. And worried brown folk won’t take you in. I tell him ain’t nothin’ gonna happen to you as long as I got breath. I take out my huntin’ knife and slice his right palm, my right palm, and we clasp hands. I swore on the graves of my folks that I’d look out for you.” Tomás poured another shot. Then he laughed. “Your momma and Elena went apeshit when they saw us bleeding. Called us estúpidos y grandes cerdos idiotas. Bandaged us up. Took us home. Threw our drunk asses in bed. But your papa and me, we never forgot that pledge. That blood oath. To you.”

“Thank you, gran papi.”

“You’re welcome,” Tomás said. “Now tell me what’s going on straight up.”

I gave Tomás the lowdown on everything, starting with the fact that the drug dealers he’d put down were a setup to devalue Mexicantown property in general and Authentico’s location specifically.