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even want to be in proximity to the contents I was pulling out and sharing with Sam. But the thing was, there wasn’t anything particularly incriminating in the envelope, just old photos of Eduardo with various other members of the Latin Emperors. There were several photos that featured pictures of Eduardo with guns and a few that showed drugs, but none of this was a mystery to anyone—it was, apparently, what had made Eduardo such a superstar.
    “I don’t get it,” I said.
    “Those men,” he said, “most of them are dead.”
    “Did you kill them?” I said.
    “No.”
    “Then what’s the problem?”
    “No one knows where their bodies are, either,” he said.
    I gave Sam a look. This was where things tended to get dicey. I reminded myself to give Ernie Paseo a call at some point to tell him to forget I ever existed. “Do you know where the bodies are?” I said.
    “No, no, of course not,” he said. “But someone does.”
    “Here’s the deal, Eduardo,” I said, “I need you to just tell me what the problem is. I’ll tell you if I can solve it, and this will all be over in a matter of moments.”
    “I have divorced myself from this life, you understand,” he said.
    “I understand. Everyone does. President Clinton does. God does. Now, spill it.”
    Eduardo peeled himself off the sofa and came back to the table, went through the photos one time, very quickly, and then stopped when he landed on a picture of himself at maybe twenty-five, his shirtless torso thick with muscles and ink, his eyes hidden behind wraparound sunglasses, standing beside a man who could have been his twin, right down to the prison tattoos. “This is Jaime Gonzalez. People called him Junior. He’s a few years older than me, but was held back two years. Played football, too.”
    “He ever smack around Mike’s brother?” Sam asked.
    “Most likely,” Eduardo said.
    “I don’t remember him,” I said.
    “He recruited me into the Latin Emperors, jumped me in, helped me run the set. We both went up at the same time, ended up taking over the prison branch, diversified our interests.”
    “He help with El Salvador?” Sam asked.
    Eduardo actually twitched backward in surprise. “How did you ...” he began. “Never mind. Never mind. But yes. His mother is from El Salvador, so he had dual citizenship. It was his idea to start moving into the voids there.”
    It was actually a smart move on Gonzalez’ part, even if it was an illegal one that caught the attention of the United States government and certain covert operatives. I didn’t bother to tell Eduardo that, but I believed it to be true nevertheless.
    “Let me guess,” I said, “you snitched on Junior to get a break on your sentence.”
    “It wasn’t snitching,” Eduardo said. “It was a calling. It was the right thing. I didn’t know it would reduce my sentence, and I, frankly, didn’t care. It was the right thing to do.”
    I took a look at the photo again. Junior Gonzalez had muscles where other people had hair follicles. “Where was he when this all went down?” I asked. “Because I can’t see him not putting a shank in you if he knew about it.”
    “I’d already been transferred to the minimum-security section,” he said. “I was a priest, after all.”
    “What did you give up?” I asked.
    Eduardo did that big exhaling thing he seemed to enjoy. A guy that big, when he exhaled through his mouth, it was like a jet engine starting. “Everything,” he said. “Me, you know, I didn’t get dirty. I kept up above the game, you know? Slang here and there. Set up jobs. Maybe move a little product myself. Maybe make a big deal about someone disrespecting us, but I didn’t put a cap in anyone, you know?”
    There was that weird language shift. It was funny. When Eduardo Santiago was in his element, talking about his mission in life now, he sounded like a CEO, but when he got involved in the old times, he started to sound like a gangster again.
    “You talk