Beef at the Taqueria (You Always Pay for it Later) [ attn: Kali & Mercy ]

[Samael]

The apartment that Kali takes Baja and Mercy to is situated in Downtown Denver and, conversely to how Kali might present herself, isn't a shithole. It's hardly a high-end place but it's located in that rare range that allow her a certain amount of freedom in coming and going without running into her neighbors yet aren't in any particular state of disrepair. The inside is almost set up more like an office than a home; the front area is arrange for meetings and there's a desk in the corner with a few stacks of papers. Three maps are on the wall; one of Denver, another of the state and a third covering the US as a whole. They're all marked up in red, blue and green Sharpie with roads outlined showing major trucking regions, several X's with indecipherable shorthand and the like.

It's essentially Kali's secondary business location. The primary is too likely to have humans around and in Baja's state, that would be bad.

Kali lets the three of them in and gets Baja over to the upholstered couch. (She'll get a new one later.) The hand lands on the table next and the Ravnos woman's pistol clunks down next to it. "Jesus, man." She wrinkles her nose. "What the fuck did she do to you? Will some food even help with that?"

She can't help but smile when he slips in and out of Romani. It's a language she knows well and she shakes her head, pulling out her cell phone. She gives a quick look to Mercy and shrugs, gesturing around. "Make yourself at home. Just don't poke around anything on that desk."

A quick phone call in Spanish to one of her employees at the warehouse ensues; the Rroma is good-natured but clearly controls the direction of the conversation as she tells them to keep an eye out tonight. She doesn't ask; she tells. And she only has to tell once, directing the person on the other end to call her about anything remotely out of routine that might happen. She flips the phone shut with a flick of her wrist (she goes through cell phones with relative frequency; a good trait for drug lords anyway) and without a goodbye.

When Baja starts ranting in increasingly-broken English, Kali sighs. "Baja...Baja! Daca nu se concentreze am de gând sa pun sare pe picioarele tale!" She slips into Romani to get his attention; the phrase translates roughly as "If you don't calm down, I'm gonna poor salt on your legs!" She sighs and slips back to English as she picks up the book and starts leafing through it. "What's so important about a book about a 2,300 year-old war that she resorted to this?"

Yes, the girl has some education. Shocking, we know.