If you didn’t catch part one last week, be sure to go read it now. This week, we follow through on Finnegan McGrath’s plans and watch as Abel is introduced to how the family business is expected to run.
I hope you enjoy!
Finnegan held up his hands. “What are you doing, my friend?”
Reynato removed his hat with his free hand and tossed it onto the sofa. He paced the room, gun shifting its sights from Finnegan to Abel and back.
“Señor Medina,” Abel said.
“Shut up. Both of you. You are thieves, the two of you.”
“I assure you, my father—”
“Cállate,” Reynato yelled. He walked up close to Finnegan and pressed the gun to Finnegan’s chest. “You thought you could steal the ledger and, what, skim?”
“Steal the ledger?”
“Don’t insult me, please. I know the ledger is gone. The client list is gone. All of it.”
Abel looked at Finnegan, eyes wide. Finnegan shrugged, smiled. He looked up at Reynato. “None of it is gone. The ledger, the client list, all of the McGrath-Medina Shipping Company paperwork has simply shifted hands.”
Reynato backed up, turned around, ran a hand through his thinning hair. Finnegan started to stand up, but Reynato spun around, gun outstretched. “Sit back down and tell me who you gave this information to? Carlos Oestre? Jonathan Cooper?”
“Now you insult me, Reynato. Those men are bootleggers, not enterprises. We, what we built, it’s an enterprise. I would not give those idiots anything.”
“What are you talking about?” Abel asked.
Reynato turned to Abel then looked back at Finnegan. “Your family doesn’t even know your plan? They don’t know what you’re doing?”
“Well,” Finnegan said, lifting his hands toward Abel—a preemptive apology. “Some of my family knows exactly what’s going on. Abel just needed to know the business behind it. See, we’re expanding, Reynato. We’re just doing so without you.”
“What the fuck?” Abel said.
“You will be doing nothing,” Reynato said. “I will take it from you. I will expand the business on my own.”
Finnegan shook his head. “Aye, that might be the right play. You have the gun. You seem to have the leverage. Except, you don’t know who I gave our paperwork to.”
Reynato’s eyes widened, he mashed his jaw. “Who?”
“The sheriff, the mayor. They had concerns about illegal alcohol flowing through the city of Bisbee and the county of Cochise.”
Reynato laughed. “Then you have ended us both.”
“Not quite. See, I’m a businessman, Reynato. It is my duty to report wrongdoing even if it impacts my own business. McGrath-Medina cannot be allowed to be a front for bootlegging.”
“What are you talking about?”
Abel stood. “This is ridiculous.”
“Sit down,” Finnegan and Reynato said simultaneously.
“Finnegan, you’re not making sense,” Reynato said as Abel sat back down.
“I gave the authorities everything they needed to stop the independent distribution of illegal alcohol by one Reynato Miguel Medina—a violation of Volstead Act.”
“You did not think this through. Without me, you have nothing.”
Abel nodded and looked at his father.
Finnegan smiled. “I have everything. I have the production facility in Oaxaca. I have the distributors. I have the storage facilities in Agua Prieta.”
“No,” Reynato said, pacing.
“It turns out, people are motivated by money. My youngest son should be completing his last round of payments as we speak. Law of diminishing returns or not, I’ve offered them all more money to funnel everything through me, and me alone.”
“My son-in-law oversees the storage in Agua Prieta. He will not allow this.”
“I’m afraid your son-in-law has no room for complaint now.”
“What do you mean?”
Finnegan looked at Abel then turned back to Reynato. “My oldest son—you’ve met him, haven’t you? He provided the leverage we needed to make sure everyone in Agua Prieta understood the new hierarchy.”
“And Sandoval? What have you done with him?”
Finnegan held up his hands. “Oh, it was not me. I couldn’t say what happened to your son-in-law. You’d have to ask Charlie about that.”
“Jesus Christ,” Abel said, leaning his head back against the sofa.
“You’ll need more than Jesus, now,” Reynato took two steps toward Finnegan and pulled the hammer back on his revolver.
Abel leapt from the couch and threw a shoulder into Reynato, knocking him to the floor. The gun skipped across the carpet as Abel and Reynato struggled.
Finnegan crossed his legs, looked at his watch. He waited, then he turned toward the double-doors just as they opened. Three sheriff’s deputies entered followed by two men in suits. The deputies rushed Reynato and pulled him off of Abel. The men in suits explained the charges to Reynato as he was dragged away. Finnegan nodded to the men.
And then he and Abel were left alone in the silence of a room that had been begging for violence.
When Abel caught his breath, he pulled himself off the floor. Finnegan smiled and patted the cushion next to him on the sofa. Abel’s hair was disheveled, vest missing a button, white shirt untucked. He sat next to Finnegan but didn’t say anything.
“You understand why you couldn’t know about this, don’t you?”
Abel didn’t respond.
“You, my son, are too important.”
Abel looked at Finnegan. “If that’s true, why did I find out as Reynato found out?”
“Because I could not risk you in the things I asked your brothers to do.”
“Instead, you risked us both being shot here in this room.”
“I admit, it was a risk I had considered. But when weighed against the alternative, I thought this best for you.”
“And what about what’s best for the family?”
“This is what’s best.”
“How?” Abel asked, sighing. “We gave the business away.”
“No, son. We gave Reynato away. The business is secure. It is all ours.”
Abel shook his head for a long time. Then he looked at Finnegan. “We can’t run this entire operation on our own from the hotel. Before, we had Reynato’s offices. Now what?”
Finnegan stood, pulled out the flask, took a sip, then replaced it. “I hear there is plenty of land available south of here. I’ve had my eye on a ranch in Gleeson that would be a wonderful operations base.”
“And who owns it?”
“Just a couple of Mexicans who are in over their heads. They’ll sell cheap, that way we don’t have to worry about that whole law of diminishing returns business.” Finnegan winked, then walked away.