He had a mental image of the self-styled tough guy Jesús Jiménez.
The badass is being a crybaby.
Delgado thumbed: CALM DOWN . . .
TELL EL GIGANTE HE WILL LIVE
PUT CLEAN SOCK OVER HOLES & WRAP W/TAPE
GET ANGEL 2 FIX HIM
Delgado then had a mental image of the frail-looking Angel Hernandez in his West Kensington “clinic.”
The gray-haired sixty-year-old had been confined to a wheelchair for the last twenty-two years. He had been a medical technician working for an ambulance company. On his last call, he had been working on a car wreck victim in the back of an ambulance en route to University of Pennsylvania Hospital. The ambulance itself had been broadsided by a stolen Lincoln Town Car.
There had been a twelve-year-old African-American male at the wheel of the swiped Lincoln. He was fleeing at a high rate of speed from a Philadelphia Police Department squad car, its siren screaming and lights flashing. The investigators at the scene of the accident found it practically impossible to estimate accurately the Lincoln’s speed at impact. There had been no skid marks going into the intersection—the kid never braked.
The collision had been spectacular. The Lincoln opened up the box-shaped back of the ambulance. The car wreck victim inside had been ejected and thrown against the side of a building. He died instantly.
Angel Hernandez had not been ejected, but he had been trapped in the mangled metal of the wreckage. He had suffered a spinal cord injury, one that left him paralyzed from the waist down. The kid—who could barely see over the dashboard—split his head open like a ripe melon on the steering wheel. He died at the scene.
The ambulance company paid for Hernandez’s doctors and subsequent rehabilitation therapy. But he would never walk again, and as he could no longer perform his duties from a wheelchair, the company eventually let him go.
There were suits against anybody and everybody, including the cops for carelessness. The claim was that their hot pursuit of a juvenile had made a more or less harmless situation go from bad to worse. That lawsuit, of course, had done nothing but enrich Hernandez’s lawyers. They made off with most of the out-of-court settlement that the city had paid out to Hernandez.
All of which had left Hernandez with a bitter outlook, particularly toward the city and the cops—never mind that it had been the lawyers who’d made out like bandits.
Regardless, the end result was that Hernandez found himself trying to find a way to earn a living somehow. He did still have a fine skill set, even if he was stuck in a goddamn wheelchair.
And as there were plenty of brothers in Philly too quick to settle their disagreements with fists and knives and guns, and as hospitals crawled with cops looking for homeys showing up in the ER with some bullshit story about their wounds being accidentally self-inflicted, Angel Hernandez became the man for someone to get patched up on the QT.
Juan Paulo Delgado had Hernandez take care of his girls when there were problems with them, from a flu to the rare occasion some john got abusive. (El Gato ensured that the johns never made that mistake again—nor any others henceforth.) Getting prescription drugs, though very expensive, was no problem; someone was always willing to rob a pharmacy for the right price.
For that matter, everything about Hernandez was pricy. Delgado knew that it was going to cost him at least five hundred bucks for Angel’s services to mend Jesús Jiménez in his West Kensington living room that he’d converted to a makeshift clinic.
But he also knew that that was the price of doing business.
At least that fucking thief Skipper finally got what was coming to him.
Delgado’s phone vibrated just as West Kensington made him think about the van getting tigertailed.
He read the text:609-555-1904
OK . . . WE GO 2 ANGEL NOW
Then he sent to Quintanilla:WHAT ABOUT MINIVAN?
Quintanilla replied:609-555-1904
GONE . . . IT & CHEVY
What Chevy?
Delgado thumbed and sent:CHEVY?
Delgado sat staring at his cellular phone screen. And waited.
What the hell is he—
The phone vibrated, and he read:609-555-1904
SORRY . . . WAS TAPING LEG
JESUS JACKED A CHEVY . . . AFTER COP SHOT HIM
Delgado said, “Cop?”
He wrote: COP? U SURE? HOW U KNOW IT WAS A COP?
There was another long delay.
This time when Delgado finally got the reply, he decided the delay had been because Quintanilla had been trying to figure out what to say.
The text read:609-555-1904
MAYBE CAUSE THATS WHAT JESUS SAID THE FUCKING COP YELLED AT HIM??
Shit.
Delgado thumbed and sent:OK . . . OK . . . LET ME KNOW IF ANYTHING ELSE COMES UP
After he hit SEND, he stared at the phone for a long moment.
What else can go wrong?
Then he thumbed a text and sent it to Jorge—El Cheque’s name was Jorge Ernesto Aguilar—in Dallas:STILL COMING 2NITE . . . ANY WORD ON THE KID?
El Cheque replied: 214-555-7636
NOTHING . . . GETTING CALLS FROM HIS STOPS ASKING WHEN HE COMES
U THINK ZETAS?
Zetas! Shit! I hope not.
Maybe he just took off?
I thought he could be trusted.
He replied:NOT ZS
NOTHING . . . C U 2NITE . . .
Delgado’s phone vibrated with El Cheque’s reply:214-555-7636
OK . . . HOPE U R RITE
Delgado then put the phone in his pocket, reached down and grabbed the tan backpack with the Nike logotype from the passenger-side floorboard, then got out of the Tahoe.
Inside the front door of the Mall of Mexico, Juan Paulo Delgado found that he had to step around two long lines of Latino men and women in order to get deeper in the building. He’d never seen it this busy.
The lines almost wound out the front doors. He started walking, following the lines to the right and down around the corner. He saw that they led to a yellow-and-black Western Union counter.
There were two teller windows there, and next to them a couple dozen yellow fiberglass bucket chairs bolted to an iron rail painted a glossy black. At least half of these were filled with more Latinos, people either waiting for a cell phone call to say that their money had been sent and they could join the queue to collect it, or those who had just sent or collected their funds.
As Delgado continued toward the back of the mall, he noticed that few of these people were making much effort to conceal from anyone the fact that they were handling wads of cash, in some cases hundreds of dollars each.
Might have to get someone to check this out.
Figure out what day and time the line’s the longest.
Why send all that remittance money south when it can go in El Gato’s pockets?
Delgado passed a vendor selling pay-as-you-go, no-long-term-contract cellular telephones featuring inexpensive calling rates to Central America. Then he reached the back of the mall. He stopped at a storefront with a wooden sign etched with TITO’S TORTILLA FÁBRICA.
He went inside the “factory,” then to the stand with the register in the right corner.
A teenage Latino perked up when he saw Delgado coming his way. He had a white fiberboard box imprinted with TITO’S TORTILLAS already on the stand when Delgado got there.
“Hola, El Gato,” the teenager said.
“Hola,” he replied as he pulled a bulging FedEx envelope from the outside pocket of the tan backpack.
“Gracias,” the teenager said as he took it.
Delgado nodded once and grabbed the box of corn tortillas.
As he walked purposefully back to the Tahoe, he scanned the mall for anyone who might have an interest in his unleavened pancakes, ones covering U.S. Federal Reserve notes.
He also made one last inspection of the lines for the Western Union.
Got to be an easy way to get a piece of that. .
. .
Then he got in the Tahoe, picked up I-95 south, and drove along the Delaware River the five or so miles to the Philadelphia International Airport.
[TWO]
Terminal D Philadelphia International Airport Wednesday, September 9, 3:01 P.M.
“Yeah, Jason, I do understand that I’m really to keep a low profile and that this time Coughlin really means it,” Sergeant Matt Payne said into his cell phone. He was walking down the airport’s D/E Connector. “I will bring this Texas Ranger by the Roundhouse, and we will work out of Homicide. I got it.”
Due to construction work at Terminal D, which served United and Continental Airlines and others, Payne had had to park his rental Ford near Terminal E, which served Northwest and Southwest Airlines.
He left the car in one of the three parking spaces at Terminal E that were marked OFFICIAL POLICE USE ONLY, and put one of his business cards on the dash. He realized that the rental Ford easily could be ID’d as such—a simple running of the plates would show the name of its corporate owner, never mind the thumbnail-size tracking sticker with the corporate logo in the corner of the rear window. He further realized that an airport traffic cop could jump to the conclusion that it was a rental by some idiot who thought he could get away with parking in a cop’s spot—Philly wasn’t about to run out of idiots anytime soon—who would then call for a Tow Squad wrecker and have it hauled off.
So Payne had taken a black permanent marker and redacted everything on the business card except SERGEANT M.M. PAYNE, PHILADELPHIA POLICE DEPARTMENT, HOMICIDE UNIT, and his cell phone number. If any airport cop questioned the validity of the vehicle being there, a simple call to the Roundhouse or to Payne—or both—would answer that.
The Philadelphia International Airport’s D/E Connector was a wide mall-like passage that, as its name suggested, linked Terminal D and Terminal E. It was lined with towering white columns flying flags. And it had a marketplace that offered air travelers quite a few of the conveniences of the retail world, everything from newsstands and bookstores to well-known national chains selling clothing, jewelry, computer accessories, and more.
In the center of the highly polished tile floor were kiosks for smaller vendors. One of the kiosks that Payne approached sold what it called “specialty” pretzels. He thought that they were outrageously priced even if one were traveling on an expense account. Another kiosk was home to an Internet access provider called the Road Warrior Connection. Its signage advertised that it offered PHILLY’S FASTEST, CHEAPEST INTERNET.
Something familiar caught his eye as he passed, and he glanced inside. Then he found it, and shook his head as he kept walking.
Maybe Skipper was onto something.
In the kiosk he had seen a guy working on one of the rental laptop computers. He’d had his back to Payne, but on his back was a black Sudsie’s T-shirt. And just as Chad Nesbitt had said, this guy looked to be about the right demographic for a place like that—a clean-cut, decent-looking Hispanic male in his early twenties.
He got to Terminal D, to the point where the passengers from the airline gates in the secure Concourse D came out to go to Baggage Claim D or, if they hadn’t checked any luggage, simply made a straight exit of the airport.
Payne took a seat so that he had a clear view of the area. He sighed audibly, then realized he was somewhat tired.
And that caused him to begin thinking about all he’d been through in the course of the day.
It’s been surreal . . . and I’m far from being done.
He looked at his watch. It showed it was quarter after three.
Jesus! In the course of—what?
Chad called me at quarter of five this morning. So that makes it right at eight and a half hours.
And in that time I’ve gone from being on nearly thirty days’ R & R and shopping for a Porsche to being back on the cops to a shoot-out with a critter to being put back on ice.
And, now, to whatever happens with this guy from Texas.
Liz Justice—wearing the hat of Houston Chief of Police Justice—said he was tracking some critter who cut off girls’ heads?
He shook his head.
Un-fucking-believable.
Talk about an animal. That’s inhuman. . . .
He watched a clump of people flowing out of Concourse D. He had no idea which flight they had come in on, but not one of them looked like his idea of a Texan, let alone of a Texas Ranger law-enforcement officer. There were only two males in the group, neither close to resembling an active LEO. One wasn’t old enough to shave. The other, in a crouch, walked with a cane.
His mind went on:
And in the course of those same eight and a half hours, five people in Philly—three of whom I more or less crossed paths with—are no longer among the living.
And the fate of another is not looking damn good at all.
An image of a laughing, full-of-life Becca Benjamin flashed in his memory.
Godspeed, Becca. . . .
And what about those two Hispanics killed in the motel?
I’d hoped Skipper would’ve told us something about how that one guy got his throat slit.
But now all the witnesses are dead.
Unless Becca knows something . . . but that’s a long shot, both (a) on the chance that she knew what was going on in the motel room and (b) if she actually survives and can tell us that she does.
Or doesn’t. Then we’re back to square one.
And that crazy sonofabitch coming into the hospital and pumping thirteen nine-millimeter rounds into Skipper.
What if he came back?
Thank God we beefed up the cops sitting on her.
Jesus! What next?
A big group of air travelers, easily thirty of them, came out from Concourse D. They were mostly teenagers. They had a handful of chaperones. All wore the same bright blue style of T-shirt. Payne could read some part of what had been silk-screened on the shirts, something about a church mission trip.
I do know what I’d like to happen next.
I’d like another shot at that sonofabitch who popped Skipper.
Not a gunshot . . . just a chance to bring him in.
First, because he doesn’t need to be on the street.
And second, because he damn sure knows something.
That’s obvious because he knows Skipper knew something. Why else target him for assassination? That’s what they were calling it at the scene in the ICU.
And that’s exactly what it was—thirteen rounds’ worth of nine-millimeter assassination.
Which means that the sonofabitch may very well know what went on in that motel room. Or, if not what went on in there in the last few minutes, hours, whatever, then who the players in there were.
And it’s damn sure no coincidence that the guy I shot and the two crispy critters from the motel are all Hispanic males.
Payne heard the rhythmic thump, thump, thump of hard rubber wheels rolling over an expansion joint in the tile floor. He turned to find a heavy-duty polymer custodial cart moving in his direction. It had two twenty-gallon plastic garbage cans on either end and the handles of a broom and feather dusters poking up between them. Pushing the cart was a hollow-faced Hispanic female. She looked to be maybe thirty. She stopped at a trash receptacle, and there went about her cleaning job quietly and effortlessly and, Payne noted, more or less completely unnoticed by anyone.
Then he was struck by the fact that that had been the exact same response he’d had to the Hispanic “orderly” at the Burn Unit when he saw him pushing the gurney into the corridor.
I didn’t give him a second thought.
Why is that? And is it good or bad?
I have no idea. But I know there’s something there I can’t put my finger on.
Where is that sonofabitch now?
How badly did I wound him?
There hadn’t been hardly any blood at the scene, either where he went down or where he carjacked that Chevy Caprice.
But maybe that one round di
d enough damage to get the critter to find an ER.
Payne knew that it did not matter which hospital emergency room. As long as it wasn’t, say, ten states away. But even ten states away there was a chance of catching the guy. It just would take longer.
And the hospitals did report, either officially or quietly, someone coming in with a gunshot wound. Even if—for whatever reason, say, some sanctimonious bastard at the intake desk took offense at the release of the scum’s “personal and privileged information” to the cops—not right away. There were others on staff who knew that almost all gunshot wounds were dirty and eventually would leak the info to the authorities. Not to mention the ones working security, who were either once cops or were cops moonlighting; they didn’t have to be convinced that keeping a critter off the street was all-important. They would call it in right then and there, damn any consequences.
Already the Philly Homicide detectives had begun distributing an Armed and Dangerous Alert to all of the hospital ERs within a fifty-mile radius. The single-page alert had a grainy black-and-white snapshot of the doer that had been pulled from the city-owned surveillance camera video on the exterior of the Temple University Hospital wall. (There had been as yet no luck with the hospital’s interior video equipment.)
The Armed and Dangerous Alert also contained, of course, a description of the Hispanic male, including the detail that his wound had been inflicted by a .45-caliber bullet to the left leg at a point believed to be somewhere above the knee. And, of course, there was the directive to first call 911 in the event anyone requesting medical attention came even remotely close to the description on the alert. Then the hospital could contact the Philadelphia Police Department Homicide Unit at the Roundhouse via the information provided, or the responding cops could do so.
The Traffickers Page 20