“I need to see how Delarosa is doing after his setbacks, and how Nunzio Luca did after all the fuckups he’s had lately. We’re sitting in a good position—we have the product, but it won’t mean shit if we can’t move it into the US.” He put his head back but kept his eyes trained on the passing landscape. “The safest thing is to sell it before it leaves Mexico, but the real money is in street sales. It’s how Delarosa made enough money to climb to the top.”

“You have any idea how you’re going to build an organization that can go from field to street corner?” His father sounded curious and almost excited. He’d been in search of the easy money for as long as he could remember, and Jerome was about to hand it to him. “It took Delarosa and that asshole Luis years to get there.”

“I’m not that patient, and I don’t want to settle on the pittance we can make selling it and turning over the profits to the men gutsy enough to take chances on this side of the border.” He finally closed his eyes as they hit the interstate.

“You don’t trust me enough to tell me what you have in mind?”

“Come on, Dad,” he said and laughed. “The reason I wanted you with me is to keep me on track. You’re the only person in this world I trust, but we need to be smart before we make any kind of move.”

“That’s what I want to know. What direction are you thinking will be the best? You’ve been at this long enough to make an educated guess.” His father never raised his voice, but he managed to get his point across.

“If we want to skip recruiting and building a network, we have to take one that already exists. Like we talked about before. All we need to do is research which one is the most vulnerable.” In his mind the best-case scenario was Hector Delarosa. The investment he’d made into completely blowing Hector’s world to shit would eventually pay off, and he wasn’t done with his plan to speed up that timetable.

“While you were gone, I was quiet about it, but I did some research as to what was going on from Florida to Arizona.” His dad reached into his pocket and removed the small leather-bound notepad he’d used back when he was an agent, when he’d tried to reach into the dirty cookie jar too. “Delarosa is bleeding cash, and if the rumors are true, his supply took some serious hits. It won’t be long before he’s dead in the water.”