Winthrop, Washington was where the call supposedly came in from.
Miguel Gutierrez knew it was actually from his younger brother Balbino.
He didn’t take the call. He hadn’t flown up to Vegas from Veracruz for the first round of Final Four college basketball games.
Miguel Gutierrez liked college basketball, but he was about to close on the acquisition of two community banks. One in Reno and one in Spokane, each would be a fine investment.
One final spin, burrowing through their operations and opportunities, appealed to him more than betting on college basketball. So he spent the weekend reviewing documents.
The woman who had navigated the due diligence was thorough.
A few days previously, she had brought to his attention an inconsistency with the asset ratio of the bank in Reno. This was investigated and turned out to be what was represented by the bankers as a reporting error.
The two of them doubted this but the issue was quickly resolved in his favor.
He liked this woman. She functioned without the shackles of a job description as the cartel’s chief financial officer. He respected her reticence, her way of drawing attention to information of benefit to him without drawing attention to herself.
He appreciated opportunities she bypassed to quietly take credit. He liked her punctuality and her consistent demeanor.
From time to time, he also wondered what prompted her to leave the New York investment bank to go to work for him and his brother.
She had told him about an annual bonus that had not been paid.
He had this looked into. It was true. At least with sufficient shades of murky financial truth to satisfy him.
What he learned was more true than the display on his phone indicating a call from Winthrop, Washington.
Miguel Gutierrez allowed his initial trust in her to expand. He sensed an irrevocable deepening which took place within cautious guardrails he could never entirely dismantle.
Buttressed by cautious ways and driven by analytical winds, he ferreted out her motives, few of which he felt he had identified with certainty.
For all her qualities, he grasped she was not the kind of woman to be watched over by guardian angels.
