The room had transformed since my last visit.Maps wallpapered every surface from floor to ceiling.City grids stretched across one wall, county lines dominated another, and pieces of the state with highlighted routes filled the remaining space.Photos hung beside scribbled addresses.Red, blue, and yellow strings connected seemingly random dots across the geography, creating a web of connections I couldn’t yet decipher.
Except this wasn’t paranoia.This was Diaz’s world.And Spade had mapped it.
“Holy shit,” I breathed.
“Pretty, right?”Spade said, shutting the door behind us.
“Pretty isn’t the word I’d use.”
Lines in different colors marked roads and connections.Little sticky notes labeled certain points: WAREHOUSE A, PORT EAST, MILK MONEY, SNAKE DEN.
Names I recognized from Jason’s notes had tiny stars beside them.Others I’d never seen stood out under the harsh overhead light.On one wall, a separate cluster of notes and photos sat under the heading: DIAZ -- INNER CIRCLE.Roth’s picture had an X over it now.Victor’s sat next to it, cigarette dangling from his fingers, that smirk I hated so much on full display.A woman’s photo pinned below them squeezed my chest tight.Dark hair framed sharp cheekbones.Her eyes held the wary gaze of someone who’d witnessed too many betrayals to believe promises anymore.Elena, I thought.Next to her, a smaller picture -- school photo style -- of a girl missing her two front teeth.Sofia.
Spade followed my gaze.“You mad I put them up?”he asked.
“No,” I said quietly.“She deserves to be seen.”
He nodded once.He moved to his desk and dropped into his chair.“Okay, here’s what we’ve got.Between Jason’s drive and Roth singing for his supper, we know Diaz’s structure around here.This.”He swiveled and pointed at a cluster of lines.“These are his main import routes through this state.Product comes in on those roads.This.”Another cluster.“Is how he moves cash.Laundromats.Fake construction companies.A church charity that doesn’t know half of what goes through its hands.”
“You’re telling me a church washes his money?”I asked.
“Church board might not know,” Spade said.“He uses a shell company to funnel donations.Nice people think they’re feeding kids in another country.Meanwhile, Diaz pays port bribes.You see the game.”
My stomach turned.
Spade pointed at a short line with three points on it.“See this?The part matters most to us.The piece touching our roads.Our town.”
I leaned closer to the map.“Can you block him off completely?”
“Not overnight.”Spade ran a hand through his already messy hair.“Blowing up trucks and torching warehouses would only push him to brute-force his way around.He’d hit us and the town harder.”He lowered his voice.“We need subtlety first.Bleed him slowly.Make him appear weak to his own men.Force him to scramble.”
“How?”I asked.
He grabbed a stack of sticky notes and slapped three down on the table between us.Spade pressed the marker to the first note.“Option one.”His handwriting slanted across the yellow paper.“We use Jason’s drive plus some of Roth’s intel and drop an anonymous package on the feds’ doorstep.Not everything.Enough to make them look at Diaz’s city operations hard.He’ll divert attention and money to deal with federal heat.Gives us room locally.”
The marker squeaked across the second note while I watched.“Option two.We hit his money laundries.Not the church -- I consider myself many things but never cruel to innocents.The laundromats.The fake construction.The front companies he believes remain invisible.We mess with his numbers.Quietly.Checks bounce.Permits vanish.Inspections appear at the worst moments.He seems sloppy.”
His pen moved to the third note, pressing harder now.“Option three.We attack his pride.Victor.We create a wedge between them.Diaz questions his favorite errand boy.We leak information suggesting Victor skims from the top.We prove he lost more cash than reported in a deal.”Spade tapped the note with his finger.“Men are rather simple creatures.You shake their confidence, you destroy everything.”
He slid the notes toward me.“You’re our tiebreaker.I know what I want to do first.I know what Atilla’s leaning toward.But this started with your brother.Your life.You get a say.”
The weight of it hit me hard.I shook my head.“I’m not a strategist.Strategy belongs to you.I read my brother’s scribbles.”
Spade leaned forward.“You survived him.You understood your brother’s shorthand, recognized what type of men Diaz surrounds himself with.You understand their fears.Your knowledge matters.”
My gaze drifted across the notes.I wanted him to bleed.I also wanted to hit Diaz somewhere he’d feel immediately without spraying innocent people with shrapnel.
I tapped the “Feds” sticky.“What would we send?”I asked.“Evidence?Names?”
“Enough to make them move without giving away our whole hand,” Spade said.“We don’t dump everything Jason had.We give them enough to kick in a few doors for us.Preferably in the city, where they’ll hit Diaz’s ego more than our backyard.”
“Can they protect Elena and Sofia?”I asked.
He hesitated.“I can’t promise safety.The feds would receive anonymous coordinates with a warning about Elena and Sofia’s location.My note might read, ‘Cartel wife and daughter live here -- clear premises before raid.’Beyond sending this information…” He shrugged, palms turning upward.“The rest falls on federal shoulders.”
That didn’t sit perfectly.It sat better than “do nothing.”
“Option two?”I asked, pointing.
