Endless (The Drug Lord's Wife #4)

No One's Innocent

Chapter 26

Jennifer

Peeking out the blinds of my motel room I look down at the street and saw the city. It felt hollowed-out, almost post-apocalyptic. The city grew out of the cracked sidewalk like the jagged gap-toothed grin of an old junkie. The only splash of color in the grime came from the lurid graffiti and the sidewalks were littered with injection paraphernalia. From every covered doorway came the dejected stares of men and women in their cardboard sleeping bags. From upper windows came the boom of sub-culture music. Hookers stalked the streets in their skimpy outfits and high boots looking for work, their drug-addled bodies as thin as pins, their cheekbones jutting out through pallid skin.

So a normal day in East St. Louis.

"But the perfect setting for a war to break out", Edgar said appearing sitting at the windowsill next to me.

It's not like my motel room was any better. The motel was one of those seedy places men with beer guts went to bang other men's wives with promises they couldn't afford to keep. Or where the hooker's brought their john's too and paid for rooms by the hour.  There were external wooden stairs that lead to a second floor, a second row of doors, that looked like the building inspector was either bribed to pass it or drunk on the job. There were at least two screaming matches going on in separate rooms, and the cars in the lot below wouldn't have been out of place in a wrecker's yard.

But for ten dollars a day. I couldn't beat that price. Especially, since I was working on a Walmart-ASDA budget range.

Since we were in the busiest part of the city I got a bird's-eye view of the normal every day going on. Which taxis worked for which cartels, which girls worked for Hector and which worked for Ismael García. Once I had a good idea of who the players were, I could outmaneuver them.

"Patience. It takes time and money to overthrow a regime", Edgar said looking out the window with me.

I focused on a girl standing on the street corner below me. She had to be in her late teens early twenties she looked sick and too thin. Her pale skin had heavily applied blush and her lips were as red as blood. Her dress was a primrose cotton and styled in a way that suggested it was homemade, and not by a skilled hand either. Her mid length chestnut hair wavey.

"With some food and makeup she could be beautiful", Edgar said.

"Anyone can be beautiful with the right amount of money", I thought back.

Ignacio, Eduardo and Samuel were playing cards on the bed. Until Eduardo stood up and banged on the wall yelling,"Shut the hell up".

"Fuck off!" A women yelled back,"You know you want this good pussy".

"Let the poor woman work", I said speaking to the room continuing to look out the window from my post.

"No one asked you", Eduardo spat returning back to his card game. All three of the men didn't like me. I couldn't really blame them I did blackmail my way into The Sinaloa Cartel. Once I found a way to get the twenty-five thousand dollars from Shepherd  I was going to try them and bribe them over to my side. But, just in the short time I've been with them I could tell they were loyal.

"To the wrong person", Edgar said.

"Don't worry, I have plans for them too", I silently thought. More than 11,000 people have been murdered in  town in the last four years, and 110,000 homes sit abandoned.

Looking out the window I saw... Shepherd? Was that him? I couldn't tell if I'm where I was standing. But, if I squinted my eyes, stared really hard and tilted my head to the side; that was Shepard.