Or maybe she enjoyed it for other reasons. Maybe she got some pleasure from knowing her son’s very existence grated on Edna. But Roderick wanted to distance himself from the Dunlaps and all they represented as much as they wanted to distance themselves from him. He was satisfied with his mother’s name. Guerrero meant warrior. That suited him better. He’d been fighting since the day he was born.
Milton Berger stuck his head out of the conference room a few feet down the hall. “What are you doing?”
Roderick had almost forgotten that his boss was waiting to be debriefed on his latest assignment.
“Nothing.” He started to slide his cell phone into the pocket of his khaki shorts when it rang again.
“Can you shut that off and get your ass in here? I don’t have all day!” Milt snapped. As sole owner of Department 6, Milt couldn’t seem to focus on any one thing longer than five minutes. He was too busy juggling. Always in a meeting or on a call, he wasn’t an average workaholic; he was like a workaholic on speed. Roderick was beginning to think the fortysomething-year-old never went home at night.
But he didn’t care what Milt did in his off-hours. Milt wasn’t the kind of guy Roderick liked spending time with. Milt had six operatives, and every single one of them thought he was a bona fide ass**le. What did that say about a guy?
As his phone continued to jingle, Roderick’s thumb hovered over the red phone symbol that would send the call to voice mail. It was his father again. Why the hell was the old man making an effort now? At thirty, Roderick was no longer a dirt-poor Mexican boy with no prospects and no family beyond a weary mother who’d come into the country illegally when she was barely twenty and cut lettuce in the fields of the selfish jerk who’d impregnated her. Whatever Bruce wanted, it was too late.
But Milt’s impatience grated on Roderick almost as much as his father’s untimely call, so he answered out of spite. “How did you get my number?”
“What the hell!” Milt complained.
Roderick ignored him.
“I’ve been keeping tabs on you.”
The question that immediately came to Rod’s tongue was why, but he knew his father’s answer wouldn’t make sense to him, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear it anyway, so he went with “How?”
“Jorge mentions you from time to time.”
Jorge was Bruce’s overseer. He was also the closest thing Rod had to a grandfather and the only person in Bordertown Rod stayed in contact with. Jorge loved hearing about Rod’s undercover exploits, so Rod humored him by checking in every few months and catching up. The old man had never told him that Bruce had expressed an interest. Maybe he hadn’t; maybe Jorge was attempting to engineer some sort of reunion. It’d be like him. He’d always had a soft heart. Jorge was part of the reason Rod’s mother had never left the ranch despite her difficulties. She knew he couldn’t go anywhere else and make the money he made working for Bruce. And she, no doubt, hoped Bruce would eventually “come to his senses” and accept Rod. Mostly, she’d stayed to see her son eventually have more and be more than she could hope to give if she left. “Since when did the two of you become friends?”
“Time has a way of changing things, Rod.”
“And some things will never change. So are you going to tell me what you want?”
“To hear me out. That’s all I ask.”
Hoping his father was about to lose the ranch and needed a loan or something, Roderick decided to indulge him. To a point. “You’ve got three minutes. Make it fast.”
“I’d like you to come to Bordertown.”
This made Roderick laugh. “You’re joking, right? I’d sooner go to hell.”
“Rod, I think you might be able to help with a situation down here. If half of what Jorge tells me is true, I know you can.”
The gravity of “a situation” should’ve piqued his interest. It didn’t. “I have no intention of helping you with anything. Ask one of your lazy-ass white sons.”
Dropping several F-bombs and claiming Rod’s “ass was grass,” Milt stormed out of the conference room, marched to his office and slammed the door. But Rod wasn’t worried about his boss’s reaction. It wasn’t as if he’d be fired. He’d just busted a large child- p**n ring in L.A., which was a major coup. Local law enforcement hadn’t been able to accomplish that in more than a year, and he’d done it inside of three months. His stock at Department 6 had never been higher.
“This isn’t for me,” Bruce said. “This is for her, okay?”
Roderick gripped the phone tighter. “Who’s her?”
“Your mother.”
Now his father had his full attention. “My mother is dead. Partly because she wore herself out before she could reach forty. Partly because you ripped her heart out and stomped on it every chance you could get. You’re the reason she’s dead. You and Edna.” He pronounced Bruce’s wife’s name with the disdain he believed it deserved.
“I’m not the one who encouraged your mother to come to America. That was her decision. And I never promised her more than I gave her. I provided work, that’s all. It was as good a job as she could get anywhere.”
“You gave her a baby, that’s what you gave her,” Roderick growled. “A baby she struggled to take care of, along with her little brother.” That brother had returned to Mexico not long before Carolina’s death. Roderick had lost touch with him, but he thought about Arturo often. From time to time, he considered looking him up. He would have done it, except he was afraid Arturo was dead from some drug deal gone awry. He’d caused a lot of trouble before he left. Chances were that if he’d survived, he wasn’t on the right side of the law. He was one of those restless spirits who could never find peace. At least, that was what his mother had always said.
“I gave her some money…now and then,” his father said.
Rod was surprised he didn’t mention how hard he’d tried to persuade her to get an abortion. Or the money he’d offered her in those early years to leave the ranch, leave Bordertown. “So…what? You paid her medical expenses and gave her a few bucks to help feed the kid you fathered? That means you deserve a medal?”
“No, no, you’re right. I—I didn’t do enough. I’m sorry about that.”
“Life’s a bitch, Mr. Dunlap. Babies don’t go away just because you regret making them.” Especially if the mother refused to get an abortion and refused to give up hope that her child would someday be accepted.