Chapter 7

Claire parked her dark blue Land Rover at the Des Moines airport and took a cab downtown. She knew that Tiago ‘Teeny’ Delgado was probably under surveillance by the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation. Possibly by the feds too — Border Patrol, maybe even ATF. Uber would have meant providing ID; an old fashioned cab was anonymous.

Visiting his office complex meant she might well be photographed by the officials, so she wore a blonde wig, large, dark sunglasses. It wasn’t foolproof, but it might help a little.

Delgado was suspected of several things — fentanyl distribution, guns, smuggling immigrants, human trafficking, prostitution, protection rackets, loan sharking, child pornography — the list went on.,

It was rumored, and Delgado seemed to encourage the gossip, that he was affiliated with the once-defeated, and now resurgent, Knights Templar Cartel from the Mexican state of Michoacán. The connection, real or not, gave him some additional street creds and maybe shielded him from some of the local competition.

Des Moines, like the state, was a little under 15% Hispanic. Claire directed the cab to a diverse section of town — some barrio, some gentrification, some Asian, but mostly Latino. She got off two blocks from Delgado’s compound.

Security was provided by men, not infrastructure. No fences, no alarm systems, no visible security cameras. Just four teams of two men each that continually circled the block. Since 2021, carry permits were not required in the state, so Claire, and everyone else, assumed his thugs were armed.

As she approached the largest house, made, like all the others, of cinder blocks, a skinny young man came out and smiled at her, “Blonde? Really? I’d still like to fuck you, Claire.”

“In your dreams, Mateo.”

He moved with an easy languor, but Claire had heard the rumors. Mateo De Toro was lighting quick with his Colt M 1911. And, deadly accurate. He was maybe 18 years old and had the blank eyes of an old man who had seen it all, and wasn’t much impressed.

Although she had met with Teeny Delgado three previous times, Claire was still stunned at his size. ‘Fat’ didn’t begin to describe him. Colossal was an understatement. Teeny was easily over 400 pounds. She had never seen him standing, although his arrest record showed him to be 6’ 1”.

This afternoon, he was sitting on an enormous, reinforced chair, easily five feet wide. He dwarfed the chair. He was wearing his usual ankle-length caftan, this one in a colorful red and yellow pattern.