“Like you killed Cathy?” I threw at Tony Guerrero.

“You think we killed her?” he said, exploding in disbelief.

Before I could answer him, Emma Garcia spoke again. She clearly wanted to prove to us, if not him, that she was El Jefe. “One of our contacts in the community talked to her, got her interested, then brought her here.”

“She was always open, always growing,” Tony Guerrero added, jerking the gun in my direction for emphasis. “She was a good compañera.”

“Look, I don’t want to be smart with you because my head hurts and I can see you people are not fucking around, but I don’t think this is a good way for you to go about getting new members.”

“She sought us out, she wanted to be with us,” Tony Guerrero maintained. He dropped the gun back down to his side as though he had been caught in an awkward pose.

“Us, not you. Remember that, Antonio,” Emma Garcia interjected with a sneer.

“She believed in social justice, in the people,” Tony Guerrero insisted. He would look great on a poster. Fierce, dedicated, the intense eyes. I’m sure he was not unaware of this.

“What did she do here?” Lupe wanted to know.

Emma Garcia shrugged as she continued to glare at Tony Guerrero. “Not much. Little things. Handing out fliers, running the mimeograph machine, then painting slogans on walls at night.”

“The more she did, the more she wanted to do,” countered Guerrero.

I could imagine that was true. I’d seen what passed for an agent’s office. Cathy Vega had been sent out on one too many calls, one too many singing telegrams as Carmen Miranda.

“So, Tony, what happened to her?” I asked.

“We decided to test her,” Emma Garcia said hurriedly, answering for him. She did not look me in the eye when she said this, instead fixing him with a cold glare.

“Rough test! Do a lot of people fail it?” I tried to gesture toward Cathy Vega, but I needed both hands on the ground to keep upright.

Emma Garcia ignored this, but Raul seemed to use it as an opportunity to pull Lupe a little closer to him.

“She proved to us she was a good compañera, “ Tony Guerrero said, addressing himself more to Emma Garcia than to me. “We decided, as a group, it was time to send her to Mexico to pick something up for us.”

From the nervous way he emphasized “group,” I guessed it had been his idea she go. And I was sure he had been in love with her. “To pick up what?”

“The video you saw tonight,” said Emma Garcia a little too quickly. She stepped forward slightly, and the baggy dress swirled around her calves.

“No.” I decided to throw out some bait. See what came to the surface. “It wasn’t the video. It was drugs.”

“¿Drogas?” Raul repeated in amazement.