Lupercio took a deep breath and tried to clear his mind of everything but that memory.

When he had gotten to Miracle Auto Body at two-ten that morning, he assumed the outdoor lights would be on and the indoor lights off, but the opposite was true. He knew that a diamond merchant was supposed to have arrived over an hour ago with four hundred and fifty thousand dollars’ worth of high-quality cut diamonds to pay off an outstanding loan to the two ranking Wilton Street Asian Boyz. The Bull had told him all of this. And he told Lupercio that four heavily armed and proven MS-13 gunmen would take control of the body shop and the diamonds by whatever means necessary. Their leader was supposed to have delivered the diamonds to a knowledgeable and neutral courier who would divide them in half by value and bring one half directly to the Bull. When the leader never showed, the courier had called the Bull and the Bull had called in his lone wolf-Lupercio. He’d told Lupercio that half of what he recovered would be his to keep.

By the time Lupercio had counted ten bodies, he knew that everyone who was supposed to be there was dead and three men who weren’t supposed to be there were dead, too, which meant that the diamonds could also still be there.

“I knew something was wrong,” he said. “Because of the lights.”

“And this yellow Corvette, what did you think when you saw it parked away from the others, facing out?”

“That it was part of what had gone wrong.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s not a gangster’s car. There’s not enough room for men and guns and products.”

The Bull looked down at Lupercio. Lit from above, the Bull’s face was cleaved by shadows, so his expressions were unreadable. His face was tanned and his nose was wide and formidable. His hair was light and thin and combed straight back and the scalp beneath it was tanned, too. He was barrel-chested-built like a bull, thought Lupercio. A bull who spends time outdoors in the sun.