Novel - Arcanum 101 (with Rosemary Edghill) Read Free Page B

much I value your participation in my little enterprise, shall we say… a thousand a week?”
    A thousand a week!
    Tomas did his best not to stare slack jawed. That was more money than both Mama’s jobs put together. Rosalita could stay in school and have the pretty dresses she craved—and even new dolls to replace the ones she’d lost. Mamacita could quit one of her jobs. Not both of them—Tomas wasn’t going to be crazy enough to tell her how much he was really making and who his boss was, but he could tell her he’d found a job and bring her enough money that she’d be happy to quit one of her jobs so that she could spend more time at home. It would be easy to sneak more cash into the house without her noticing, and the rest he could save for tools, for his own car…
    “A smart young man such as yourself you knows a good deal when he hears it, does he not?” the padrone said.
    You don’t want to be a runner but you’ll take his money?
    Tomas’s conscience reared up and he crushed it down ruthlessly. Anyone stupid enough to take a favore—especially a loan—from the padrone and then not make whatever payment was owed deserved what he had coming to him.
    “Si, señor,” he said, respectfully. “I will do this thing for you.”
    “Excellent.” The padrone leaned back into the shadows of the back seat. “Jorge, give him the cell.”
    The muscle-man fished a tiny cell-phone out of his breast pocket and handed it to Tomas, who could not help noticing the scars across the backs of the knuckles, as if Jorge was accustomed to hitting things often and hard.
    “Do not give that number out to anyone. Your orders will come when someone calls you on that phone, so I don’t want it busy. Ever.”
    Tomas nodded. “As you say.” He suppressed another reminder from his conscience about how this was just like the way the dealers operated.
    “I see we understand each other. This is good. After you do your first job for me, Jorge will bring you your first week’s pay. And I do not want to discover that you are working for anyone else. I would be gravely disappointed.”
    Tomas shook his head.
    The padrone nodded, satisfied. “But I do not want you to feel as if you are being taken advantage of,” he added. He motioned again to Jorge, who again reached into his breast pocket once more and pulled out a roll of bills, peeling off five twenties. “Go take that little sister of yours for pizza. I’m sure she likes pizza.”
    Tomas took the money and stuffed it into the pocket of his jeans. “She does, Señor. Thank you—”
    But the padrone was finished with him. The window rolled up, Jorge got into the sedan’s front seat on the passenger side, the driver started the car, and the car rolled slowly away.
    And only after he had gone back upstairs to the apartment did Tomas realize something. Nothing about these last few minutes—even the “gift” of money—had been an act of kindness. The money—and Señor Prestamo’s final words to him—had been a warning. We know you have a sister and we know where you all live. It would be a very bad idea to change your mind.
    He told himself he wasn’t scared.
    It had been three days since Señor Prestamo had given him the cellphone. Long enough for him to imagine that it might never ring, to pretend to himself that the whole night had never happened. Then this afternoon, while he’d been waiting outside Rosalita’s school to pick her up—the money meant they could take the bus to and from school, and there was pizza and ice cream after school—the cellphone he carried with him everywhere now had rung.
    He hadn’t recognized the voice at the other end. It had given him a time and an address. And instructions.
    And here he was. Out in the extremo del extreme of Queens—a place he’d never wanted to be—hanging around outside some old dusty warehouse in the middle of the night.
    Everything here was dark—not many lights—and despite the heat of the night, Tomas