o()o

Author's Note: Well, here's our main bad guy, I hope you guys like him as much as I do. We'll be getting back to the boys next chapter, I promise.
Nifty fact for the day: Sacerdotes de la Calle means Street Preists. Toto means fool.

o(17)o

Smecker had a headache. It had started about an hour ago, at the base of his skull, and had steadily gotten worse until he was certain that his eyeballs would explode from the pressure building behind them.

He'd been at the office all night long, fueled by coffee, cigarettes, and Puccini, poring over the files that Annie had sent, as well as Croghan's crime reports. Box upon box of dossiers, newspaper clippings and police reports surrounded him.

And now, as the sun rose, and people began to filter into the building, he wasn't any closer to the Street Priests than he had been when he had started. All of the files seemed to be pointing him in different directions.

Tilting his head back, Smecker exhaled a stream of smoke toward the ceiling, trying to roll some of the tension from his neck and shoulders. All round him, he could hear snippets of conversation from people slowly funneling into the precinct. Already it was shaping up to be a busy day.

" . . .anything you say can and will be used against you . . ."

"So I say to her, I say listen up bitch . . ."

" . . . if you'll just step this way, please . . ."

"Tell unit 52-15 to 10-22 that call. Turns out . . ."

" . . . near the Mericana Motel. It doesn't look like she's been dead for very long."

Smecker opened his eyes, sitting up at the mention of the motel where the MacManus brothers were staying.

"Shit, was she in the explosion?"

Explosion?

Headache forgotten, Smecker was out of his seat and advancing on the officers outside his door before he realized that he was moving.

"What explosion?" He demanded.

The two officers that had been talking shot him a cagey look.

"You didn't hear?" one asked, "Someone blew up a fucking motel last night. Injured almost a dozen people; killed at least two more that we know of."

"Jesus, do you have a list of the victim's names?"

The officer, whose badge read Humes, shrugged, "The M.E. has one, I'm sure."

The other officer scoffed at his partner and turned to Smecker sullenly, "What's it matter to you, Agent? This case doesn't have anything to do with you."

A corner of Smecker's mouth quirked, "Listen to me, asshole, everything in this Mickey Mouse precinct has to do with me until I say otherwise."

"Funny," the officer said, nastily, "You don't like the Captain to me."

"That's because in this division, I'm God and if I want to use your friggin' badge to wipe my ass, I will.

Ignoring the man's outraged spluttering, turning away from both of the officers and Smecker made his way towards the Medical Examiner's office. He needed answers, and those pricks were about as useless as a screen door in a friggin' submarine.

The M.E.'s office was at the opposite end of the building. Pushing open the door, he was greeted with a sudden chill, the sharp tang of disinfectant and polished chrome as far as the eye could see.

Despite his best efforts, a shudder raced up Smecker's spine. It wasn't the corpses. He'd seen plenty of bodies in his lifetime and they had ceased to bother him after his first dozen or so. But there was something about the autopsy area, cool and impersonal, that made his skin crawl.

The M.E. was a tall man, or would have been if he weren't permanently stooped, his back bowed from years hunched over the autopsy table. Hearing aids graced both ears and a microphone array hung around his neck.

"Can I help you?" he called to Smecker, never looking up from the cadaver he was examining.

"Paul Smecker, F. B. I. I need to know if you have a list of victims from this morning's explosion."

The M.E. nodded, slowly, frowning at the body in the table. "Of course I do. It's on top of John Doe over there, sitting next to my breakfast."

Working hard to suppress another shudder, Smecker strode to the opposite side of the room and snatched the list off of the shrouded corpse. Scanning the typed names, he breathed an inaudible sigh of relief to see that all the victims had already been identified and that neither of the MacManus brothers were listed.

Carefully replacing the file, and pointedly ignoring the half-eaten egg sandwich that was resting on the corpse's chest, Smecker inclined his head toward the cadaver on the table.

"Is this the girl from the Mericana?"

The M.E. nodded, "Gabrielle Prado," He said, circling the chrome table," identified by her mother, 26 year old female, Hispanic, worked as a maid at the Mericana Inn. Cause of death was a fracture to the frontal bone, probably blunt force trauma. It shoved fragments of her skull into her brain; she also has several other injuries consistent with being beaten to death."

"So she wasn't involved in the explosion?"

The M.E. shook his head, "No, all the burns are post-mortem. See here?" he pointed to the girl's shoulder. "There's no fluid in these blisters, there's also no blood around these deeper burns, she was already dead when the bomb went off"

Smecker nodded, looking at the girl. She might have been pretty, once, but now her face had the sunken, pinched, look that only years of drug use could procure. The pristine white sheet covering her from the chest down left her arms exposed, displaying a multitude track marks surrounded by a gruesome rainbow of bruises.

"What was her poison of choice?"

"I don't know yet, we're still waiting on the toxicology report to . . ." the M.E. paused as an antiquated printer on the far side of the room clattered to life. "Well never mind, there it is now." The man crossed the room, grabbing his sandwich on the way and Smecker tried not to cringe as he took a hearty bite, reading over the newly printed document.

The M.E. frowned at the paper in his hands, "Well, that's unusual," he said, his wrinkled brow creasing further.

"What is?" asked Smecker.

"She tested positive for opiates, but her levels are too high to indicate any of the drugs that I normally see coming through here, almost three times as high as normal heroin even."

"So it's a purer form of heroin, then?"

"No, I don't think so. I'll have to run a few more tests on her blood and vitreous fluid before I make any sound theories, but in 34 years, I've never seen anything like this on a tox report before. I think we're looking at something entirely new here."

"A new drug?" Smecker said, the wheels of his mind turning furiously, and the M.E. nodded.

"Man, with an opiate content this high, heroin addicts would be practically knocking down your door for a fix. You could take the drug world by storm; it'd be a done deal."

They were small time until a couple of years ago. I haven't found any record of what changed yet, but this petty little gang suddenly became very, very important in the drug world.

The thought reverberated throughout Smecker and a puzzle piece clicked into place. Was something like this that had made the Street Priests so important? Was this their bargaining chip to get into the U.S.?

"Is there any way you can get me those tests results when they come back?" he asked.

"Sure. I'll send them to your desk ASAP."

o()o

Seated in a comfortable leather chair, surrounded by a beautiful rosewood desk, Arturo Mendoza studied the tattoos on his wrists thoughtfully, ignoring the greasy man that was stammering nervously in front of him.

Redima con Sangre.

All of the Sacerdotes De la Calle had the words permanently embedded into their flesh, a symbol of their devotion to the gang. But to him the words bore a personal significance, making them a little more precious and a little more powerful than most people found them.

Those three words signified everything that he had done throughout his lifetime, his rise from nothingness to power. How he liberated himself from poverty through spilling the blood of others and through the spilling of his own blood.

Through ruthless violence and a razor sharp business sense, he had made his way to the top of the Sacerdotes De la Calle, and he had turned them into something much more than your common street gang. He had offered them Absolution.

Arturo was proud of what he had done. The Street Priests lorded over many of the Colombian cities now, having uprooted some of the most well established cartels in the country, and were now trying to get their first tentative foothold in the United States. He was certain it was only a matter of time before he proved to the Russian and Italian Mafias that he was not a man to be ignored.

The events of the last month had been . . . unfortunate, certainly, but from what the tonto in front of him was babbling on about, they had found the men that had caused him so much trouble and the problem had been resolved.

And that idea made Arturo's day.

He didn't know who the men were that had ruined his first big shipment. When he had gone to the storehouse the morning after the shipment he had been dismayed to find it crawling with police, a slaughterhouse inside. Only one of his men had survived the attack only to die hours later.

But not before telling his story to the police.

His acquaintance on the force had salvaged what drugs he could, but it wasn't much, not nearly enough to accomplish the task that Arturo had labored so lovingly to bring about. So Arturo had returned home a fraction of the Absolution he had started with, and a vendetta.

But now, the men had been found and dealt with, sent to whatever god they worshipped with a little help from a hotel maid and a pipe bomb, and Arturo was free to try again. After having almost a month to recover from the attack, he was more than ready.

"Carlos," he said, his native Spanish rolling off of his tongue like a lullaby "What in the name of the Virgin María are you still going on about?"

Carlos stilled, his dark rodent eyes widening, "I was talking about the druggie chocha that found those guys."

"What about her?"

"She's dead."

Arturo cocked an eyebrow. "Oh?"

"Si, she disrespected me in my own home, right in front of that poli." Carlos gave a smile that was more a sneer. "I taught her that she can't disrespect a Sacerdote like that and get away with it."

"You killed her?" Arturo frowned, his voice still deceptively gentle. "Not in front of our officer friend, I hope."

"Fuck no, por supuesto no, of course not!" The greasy man seemed genuinely mortified by the idea.

"That's very good to hear. Still you did kill a paying customer, a woman no less."

Despite his apparent fear, Carlos still managed to look defiant, meeting Arturo's eyes for the first time since he had entered the room. "So?"

Arturo shook his head, smiling sadly. "My boy, to be respected in this game, we must conduct ourselves in a manner befitting businessmen. If we don't earn respect we are nothing but pawns."

Fast as lightning, he rose from the comfortable leather chair, drawing a gun from seemingly nowhere and aiming with lethal accuracy. Carlos was dead by way of a bullet in his brain before he even had the chance to crumple to the floor.

Though, Arturo reflected, straightening his suit and stepping over the dead man at his feet, every good chess game needs it pawns.

o()o