Frankie comes through the open door, wearing a tomato-red shirt and black jeans. He stops when he sees me sitting behind my uncle’s desk. I stand up quickly, the chair creaking and rolling back on its wheels. “Hey,” I say.

“Hey,” Frankie says. “You holding up okay?”

“Yeah, I’m okay.” I step around the desk. “You?”

Frankie puffs his cheeks, lets out a breath. “I’ve got a bar tap that’s broken, a dinner cook who just called in sick, and a cooler full of salmon I have to sell this week before it starts to stink.” He gives me a wan smile. “The usual.”

“And the rest?” I ask. Meaning the other business.

Frankie runs a hand through his black hair. “That’s more complicated.”

“I saw Gus Cimino downstairs.”

“Yeah, Johnny Shaw sent him over this morning.”

“Why?”

“Because the sharks are circling.” Frankie glances at Uncle Gavin’s empty chair. “The people your uncle does business with are nervous. They want to know what happens next. And, forgive me for saying this, but some people are acting like he’s already dead.”

“What people?”

Frankie frowns, his nostrils flaring with disgust. “Brandon Cargill, for one. Wants to know why he should have to keep paying a percentage to Mr. Lester. The pendejo actually called me this morning and asked if the bar was for sale.”

Cargill is a nasty piece of work who runs a garage on Northside. My uncle isn’t an honorable man—hell, he’s a criminal—but he generally operates in a moral gray zone rather than dealing with the darkest parts of the world he inhabits, like child trafficking or murder-for-hire. Cargill, by contrast, would kill a baby if he could make a profit from it. Mostly he deals with stolen cars, but he’s always looking for the next big score and doesn’t really care what he has to do in order to grab it. And he resents my uncle.

“I can pay a visit to Cargill,” I say.

Frankie shakes his head. “Thanks, but I’ve got it. I have Gus here for security. Cargill’s a problem, but he’s also a coward. And Caesar told me you’ve got your own problems right now. That Tane kid you found, he ran off?”

I nod. “With the FBI looking for him. Frankie, I know Uncle Gavin didn’t tell you anything about Tane or what he was doing. But is there anything else you can think of? Anything with the feds or Sureños 13, or anything Uncle Gavin might have said or done that’s out of the ordinary?”

Frankie hesitates. “Only thing I can think of is something your uncle said maybe a week or two ago, about some guns. Somebody was looking to buy a lot of guns.”

“What kind of guns?”

“AR-15s, AKs.”