Earlier that day, Valenti was instructed to deliver the money to a spot in the middle of the Cornfields, a long park that used to be a railway yard just south of Chinatown. Hector was the natural choice to perform the deed, but Valenti did not count on my being involved, and Hector did not expect Badger to be there as well. He stared at Badger’s outstretched hand with visible contempt.

“No hard feelings, paco,” said Badger, doing his best to provoke an already-annoyed man.

Hector looked to me for an explanation.

“Another set of eyes can’t hurt,” I told him. He didn’t like it but he didn’t have much of a choice as we were an hour away from the appointed time. “Do you have the money?” I asked Hector because that felt like the right thing to do, though the idea that he would forget the money on the night of the drop was absurd.

Despite all that, Hector moved around to the back of the sedan and opened the trunk for us. Three million in cash was surprisingly smaller than I anticipated. I envisioned a forklift and a heavy pallet but instead got a medium-sized duffel bag. But it was heavy — very heavy.

For a moment while holding that bag, I felt the warmth and comforts of being a millionaire. And I had an impulse to bolt. I heard Badger grunt behind me. Even Hector cast a sly, little smile. This was the moment when someone would casually suggest the money getting lost and the three of us running off to Mexico. Hector squelched that dream by snatching the bag from my hand and replacing it in the bed of the trunk.

We went over the plan while standing there in the bakery parking lot. Hector would deliver the money as expected. He was going to enter the south side of the park, off of Spring Street. Badger with his WWII battleship binoculars would position himself on the Gold Line platform towards the west end of the park that offered an elevated and unobstructed view of the entire area. I would wait in my car on the north side of the park on Broadway. This also offered an elevated view of the area as the land gradually sloped upwards towards Elysian Park, the 110 freeway, and Dodger Stadium. But it also was an exposed area with very little cover and almost no human activity at night. I needed to be careful lest I was spotted before the drop could be made.

The idea was that once Hector delivered the money to the requested spot, Badger and I would watch the area for the individual who picked it up. Part of me wished it would be Jeanette, despite the complications that would involve. But deep down I knew it was an unlikely scenario. The more logical outcome would be that whoever picked up the money was behind her disappearance, and possible death. We weren’t going to let that person out of our sight.

“I’m on point,” Badger explained. “I can reconnoiter from the shield wall on the platform.” Badger was using an inordinate amount of military lingo for my taste and I could see it was grating on Hector as well.

“If you screw this up,” Hector warned, “I will kill you.”

“Listen, chief, I know what I’m doing.”

“He does this for a living,” I added but had little effect on changing Hector’s overall mood.

“You brought him,” Hector reminded me. It was clear that in Hector’s mind, the threat towards Badger also included me. We all wanted to do this right, but Hector was the only one with something to really lose.

We tested our cell phones for good coverage and established a three-way text as a communication channel. As Badger’s “ROGER THAT” text buzzed in, Hector stomped off to his sedan and drove away.

Badger set off to the train station on foot, while I got in my car and drove the short distance down the road to a spot just on the edge of complete desolation where the industrial buildings ended and the run down to the L.A. River began. There was a bus stop inexplicably placed on this stretch of road like a last stop to nowhere. Even more perplexing than its existence was the fact that four or five people were waiting in the glass structure. It looked like a perfect cover for me to watch the proceedings in the park below.

I shuffled over to the bus shelter and mingled among the riders. There were two old Asian ladies with canvas sacks full of leafy vegetables and what appeared to be a plastic bag of chicken feet. The other three were Latino laborers either coming from or on their way to a nondescript manufacturing center on the other side of the river. They had the tired eyes of someone on the eternal night shift.

The tie and jacket were left behind in the backseat of my car but I was still odd man out in my pressed pants and recently-shined loafers. And while the coterie of late evening riders watched with longing eyes for any signs of the bus emerging from the flickering neon of old Chinatown, I was fixated on the black pool of park below me, a flat mass broken only by evenly-spaced lampposts and their white circles of light.

My cell phone hummed with a text from Badger: “IN POSITION.” I replied that I was in position as well, but a third confirmation never came from Hector. Not that I expected one, but it would be better if we communicated at a high level during this. I regretted not giving my “over-communication” lecture before we disbanded from the bakery parking lot. It was ingrained in the corporate world that there is no such thing as too much communication. This pervasive “feedback loop” resulted in inboxes filling up with “FYI” emails at a five-per-minute clip. But in a scenario like the one we were in, knowing everything was vital.

It was still five minutes from the appointed time when Hector was to deliver the duffel bag of money, but that didn’t keep me from checking my watch every thirty seconds. Of all the people in the bus shelter, I was the most impatient. They had the resigned looks of people waiting for a ride that was perpetually late.

That’s when I spotted Hector.

He was a solitary figure in a white shirt that flared up as he passed under each pool of lamplight. He moved with purpose despite the heavy load slung over his shoulder. I scanned the park but saw no other activity. He was close to the drop point, a garbage can near the center of the park.

“LOCKED ON TARGET” came the text from Badger.

Hector approached the garbage can and let the heavy duffel slip from his shoulder into his hand. He placed the bag on the ground right on the edge of the cone of light from a nearby lamp. I could barely make out the dark lump from this distance. Hector turned and headed back towards Spring Street.

Around me came the rustling of bags and shuffling feet. Barreling down on us was the 762 bus to Boyle Heights, a brightly-lit number with a few ghost-like passengers and a driver cast in shadow. As my shelter-mates formed a makeshift line, I turned back to the park and looked for any activity. There was none. I strained my eyes on the spot where Hector left the bag but couldn’t quite make out if it was still there. I shielded my eyes from the glare of the oncoming headlights but still struggled to see anything in the darkness. The whine of bus brakes squelched behind me and the doors exhaled to let on the passengers. After a moment came a voice.

“You coming?” asked the driver. I waved him off without turning around. “There ain’t no other bus than this one,” he came again.

“I’m good, I’m good,” I said.

The driver brought the doors in and pulled back into the street, leaving a plume of exhaust that got caught up in the shelter.

“TARGET IS IN PLAY” came another text from Badger.

Again I scanned the area but didn’t see anything. I replied, asking for clarification.

“HAS THE BAG MOVED?”

“TARGET IS IN PLAY” repeated the text.

“FOR FUCK’S SAKE HAS THE BAG MOVED?” I rattled back.

Badger replied with one word: “AFFIRMATIVE”

I saw nothing, just the same dark landscape with the white polka-dots. But then something moved in and out of one of those dots. I quickly trained my eye on the next one and after a moment the figure appeared again under its harsh light and then slipped back into the black. It looked like a man pushing something. My eyes jumped ahead and waited. He came into view again and this time I got a better look at him. He wore a long, dark coat and pushed a shopping cart filled with something a good foot above its sides. He moved back into the darkness.