The flora around the compound had been severely damaged, but he could see how, in normal circumstances, the jungle would have obscured much of the infrastructure that had been created around the compound. But nothing, he thought, would have ever masked the massive wind turbine he found himself approaching now; he was dwarfed by it. The base had a small staircase leading up to a portal door, for maintenance, he imagined. Above the door, a manufacturer’s label of sorts. He climbed the stairs to read it: Podremos. Fucking Reggie King. This was the company he was a partner in. The fucking insulin, too. That’s why it had seemed familiar. He saw a small garage in the distance, painted the same dark green as the main house; he’d have missed it were the trees not stripped bare. As he made his way over, he thought of the op-ed. Replayed Reggie’s interrogation from his Hamptons fundraiser. How much had his mother been a part of all that show? How the fuck did they link up in the first place? When Reggie had been dating Olga, their mother had sent Prieto countless letters attempting to enlist him in the cause of breaking them up; now he seemed to be, at least in part, financing her commune? Or was it a cult?
He pulled at the garage door, which rolled up easily, the bright sun illuminating a small arsenal. But before Prieto could take in the full scope of weaponry it contained, he heard what had suddenly become the familiar sound of a Glock cocking. He put his hands up before he could turn around.
* * *
A FEW MINUTES later he was back at the big house, his armed escort right behind him, smiling Tirso waiting to greet him, another bottle of water in hand.
“Yo, man,” Prieto called out as he walked towards him, “I thought you said you had no secrets here?”
“We don’t! All those weapons were legally purchased. We’re U.S. citizens. We are protected by the Second Amendment. But, obviously, we keep it guarded as we do have minors on property. That’s only being responsible, isn’t it, Congressman?”
Prieto decided that he hated Tirso.
“So, um, when do I get to meet with ‘Leadership’？” he asked.
“Actually, now.” And so, Prieto followed Tirso into the main building, down a corridor and to a closed wooden door, goose bumps forming on his arms, despite the oppressive heat.
THE CALL
For nearly two weeks, Olga had been trying to give Chef José Andrés $9,999 to help with the makeshift kitchens he had set up to feed Puerto Rico in Maria’s aftermath. If videos of the hurricane’s devastation had been her tragedy porn, their antidote were the clips of the dynamic chef making meals for thousands under impossible conditions. She searched social media for them, each one eliciting cathartic tears. The issue with the gift was, of course, that it was in the form of a duffel bag of cash, adding a layer of logistical difficulty to her philanthropic inclination. She tried to send it down with her brother on his last trip, but when he realized that she didn’t want him to pass along a check, but actual cash, he balked.
“Why do you have this much cash?” he asked.
“My client’s in a cash-based business and pays me accordingly.”
“？Loca! Just deposit it and make an online donation like everybody else!”
She didn’t bother making an excuse, instead resorting to guilt. “Why do you have to make everything so difficult? I do so much for you; why can’t you do this for me?”
“I don’t even think this is legal! He won’t be able to accept this.”
“I purposefully made it under ten K to keep it aboveboard. If you get it to him, he’ll figure out how to put it to use. He’s a hospitality person; we figure shit out.”
Still, he refused. She had thought about going down herself but felt paralyzed to book a ticket. Though she knew it was important work, helpful work, something about swooping in and handing out supplies like she had seen all the white relief workers do on TV made her grimace. Not the labor of it—she was not a person afraid of hard work—but the feeling of it. It made her feel American in the worst possible way: dropping in and out of your own comfort, doing work of limited skill, then patting yourself on the back for it. Or worse, feeling pity for a people to whom she was connected. Furthermore, she had not heard from her mother, directly or otherwise, since the encounter with Reggie, and Olga felt somehow that the island was her mother’s place. She should not go without an invitation.
For related reasons, Olga had been steering clear of Reggie King. However, she recognized now that he could easily resolve her charitable dilemma. Since the storm, Reggie had been going back and forth on his own plane—with supplies, with the media, with musical artists—and, as she suspected, he listened to her objective with little question or concern, saying only that he would send Clyde to get the bag. This disappointed Olga only in that she was sorry to hear Clyde had not yet gone back to school. So, when she heard the knock on her door, she quickly ran through her planned script to gently scold him.