by Marc Rainer
He drew another box, writing the names of Diego Morales and the two other victims from the Georgia Avenue sniper shootings inside it, and then another for the two other MS-13 casualties from the Langley Park convenience store murders. He thought a moment, and then drew another box for the two MS-13 bangers who’d been mowed down at the back of the car wash. A line between the Langley Park and Georgia Avenue boxes was labeled “sniper.” Even though ballistics said it was a different rifle, it was the same modus operandi. Lines were drawn between all the boxes having to do with MS-13, which were simply labeled “13.”
The next box was simply labeled “Armando” for the ambassador’s son. Trask thought for a moment. He drew a line from this box to the one containing the name of Diego Morales, marking the line “probable.” Lynn’s analysis had made sense. Fresh tats and bruises and a new Salvatrucha, initiated shortly after the body of the ambassador’s son was dumped in front of the embassy. Bad blood between the Maras and the new government, and an MS-13 signature killing. He decided to concentrate his focus on the ambassador’s kid and his probable killer for now. That puzzle seemed to have more clarity than the others. If he got lucky at all, if there were in fact connections to the other boxes, some of the pieces in Armando’s jigsaw would point the way to pieces in the other puzzles.
As an afterthought, he drew a final box at the bottom of the page and wrote “M-18 victim” inside it. The single victim found in the project in Northeast. He drew an arrow pointing toward the other boxes above it, with a question mark just above the arrow.
Maybe unrelated. Make a note. Check the ballistics.
The clock on the DVR beneath the TV indicated 1:15 a.m. Trask switched off the TV and the lamp on the end table and headed for the bedroom with a large dark shadow trotting dutifully behind him.
It was 7:00 a.m. when Trask left the house. Saturday morning. He took 301 North out of Waldorf toward Brandywine until he reached Surratt’s Road.
The good old Surratt family. Co-conspirators with Booth in the Lincoln assassination, or so the verdict read. Old Mary Surratt hanged with the rest of them.
He made the first left onto Dangerfield Road.
Dangerfield, huh? Am I here because I don’t get no respect, or is a “dangerfield” really what I’m wading into now?
At a stop sign, he took another right, and another turn took him to the main gate of the Cheltenham Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, FLETC, or “fletcee” for short. Junior Walker’s Shotgun started playing in his head.
He spent two hours under the tutelage of a US marshal firearms instructor, becoming acquainted with the weight, feel, and shooting characteristics of the Glock on the firing range. It was not the hand cannon that his .45 at home was, but it had some kick to it.
Enough to stop somebody if I actually hit them. The Post would love that.
His target was pulled back up from down-range.
“Nice shooting. Very tight pattern.” The instructor nodded with approval.
“I always qualified expert with the pistol at the Academy,” Trask said. “Had fits with the M-16. Funkiest balance I ever saw on a rifle.”
“We’re not giving you one of those. Just sign here, and you’re good to go with the Glock.”
He signed the forms and left with the pistol in a shoulder holster.
He drove into the District but did not stop at the Triple-nickel. There was no rush hour gridlock, and he made respectable time as he pointed the Jeep up Wisconsin Avenue, NW, toward Bethesda. He saw a sign for the turn to Fort Reno Park.
July 1864. Lookouts on the highest point in town—all of four hundred feet—see some of Jubal Early’s Rebs prowling around and notify Fort Stevens in time to turn back the only Confederate attack on Washington. May 2008. Some alleged scientist with the Geological Survey thinks he finds arsenic in the dirt and they close the park. The city fathers panic, build a fence around the whole damned thing, at the cost of a pretty penny to the taxpayers. Park opens two weeks later after they conclude that the first tests were a false positive. Fence is still there.
Trask looked at his image in the rearview mirror.
Why do I remember all this stuff?
He kept left and passed the turn to the right for 41st Street. Two blocks later, he turned into the parking lot. He got out and walked up to the storefront. The brick façade bore a brass plate: “The Law Offices of Victor Scarborough.” As he had expected, the place was locked down tight. No lights inside.
Nor would there be, Trask thought.
He turned and looked to the other side of the street.
No bank this time.
He returned to the Jeep and headed back to the FBI field office. Saturday or not, there was plenty of work to do.
“His name is Brian James,” Carter began, “but he goes by Peewee. The citizen’s tip I got this morning said that he was buying lots of high-dollar weed from a car wash in Northeast. I figured it might be our MS-13 crew’s dope, so I stopped by Peewee’s place, picked him up, and brought him in. We’ve got some history. I’ve arrested him twice before for dope, once for weed, once for crack. He took felonies on each one.”
“Which means career offender status and a boatload of time if he takes another hit,” Trask said. “So we have some leverage to encourage cooperation.”
“Finally. A break.” Doroz leaned back in the tilt chair at the head of the conference table. “Did he flip?”
“Yes, he said he’s seen the error of his ways and is ready to join the forces of truth and light,” Carter said. “Tim and Puddin’ are downstairs printing him now.”
“Good catch, Dix,” Trask said, trying to mask his suspicion. “You say this was a tip you got?”
“Came in on the hotline early this morning. Shortly after 2 a.m. Anonymous call on a throwaway cell, unlisted. I’ve had Peewee flagged for years, so the tip-line guys called me on my cell. Turned out to be good information. He was firing up a big blunt of weed when I knocked on the door. No denying the smell. He tried to tell me he’d just bought a dime bag to smoke, but I bluffed him, told him I had a team with a dog on the way, and he could tell me the truth now or later. He caved and showed me a duffle bag of the stuff. Had to be at least fifty pounds of high-grade kush.”
Trask nodded. “Kush” was the generic street name for superior-quality marijuana. He thought that he remembered reading somewhere that the name had originated in Afghanistan.
I’ve got it now, the purple Indica marijuana from the Hindu Kush mountains. Grand Daddy Purple, GDP, or Purple Kush. That’s it.
“Was Tim with you when you pitched him?” Trask asked.
“No. Like I said, I stopped at Peewee’s place on the way in this morning, and he knows me. Tim sat in on the interview, though, after I brought him in.”
“What did Peewee say about how he bought it?” Doroz asked.
“He told us he got it from ‘those damn wets’ at our car wash. Apparently, he has some contempt for those who violate the law by entering our country illegally, although he likes the quality of their weed. No phone contact in advance. He said they won’t give out any numbers. He knocked on the back door and flashed his roll, and they ushered him back into the office. That’s where they’re doing their business.”
“They haven’t had time to grow their own yet,” Trask observed. “Even if they planted the same night that you and Tim saw the pipe going in, the plants would just barely have sprouted.”
“My conclusion also,” Carter agreed. “They had to import some product, and in the meantime they’re cultivating a customer base as well as their crops.”
“Any objection if we sign him up?” Doroz asked Trask. FBI policy required that an AUSA sign off on the recruitment of a source if the cooperator faced potential charges of his own.
“No. Just make sure he understands that he’s still getting charged. He’ll just be working his sentence down if he follows directions.” Trask looked at Carter. “When can he buy again without it looking like it’s too soon
?”
“He told us he sells the whole load twice a week,” Carter said. “Today’s Saturday, and he was due to go back in on Wednesday.”
“Good,” Trask said. “Wire him up. Transmitter and a recorder. I need some hard confirmation of the location, in case he can work it into the conversation. Have him say something innocuous about the office once he gets in. It’ll help with the T3.”
“T3?” Doroz asked. “He said no phones…” Doroz stopped himself. “Oh, you’re not talking a phone tap, you’re talking a bug!”
“Exactly,” Trask said. “Think we can get it in?”
“Get us the court order, we’ll get it inside,” Doroz said. He paused for a minute. “And I think we can tickle the hell out of it.”
“How so?” Trask asked. “Tickling” was the Bureau word for generating relevant conversation on a wiretap or bug.
“Think about it, Jeff. We’ve got reason to send ATF in on the arson at the convenience store. We can send the locals in because they’ve had a tip about the weed, and we can even go in as our big bad FBI selves to ask about the ambassador’s kid, the shooters we grabbed, whatever. Odds are they’ll lie to us in the office, then talk about what really went down after we leave. It’s worked before.”
“Excellent.” Trask nodded. “Something that will probably lead us somewhere and make one Ross Eastman a bit more comfortable.” He looked at Carter. “Good going, Dix.”
“Thanks,” Carter said. “I better go help Tim. We’ve got some work to do explaining the rules to Peewee.” He walked to the door of the conference room. “Open or shut, Bear?”
“Shut for now, thanks Dix.”
Doroz looked at Trask with the question on his face. Trask answered it.
“No, Bear, I don’t want to hear the tip call. I do want to verify that there was one, otherwise we’ll have perjured testimony when he says one came in. But no, I don’t want to hear Carter’s voice on the damned tape calling in his own tip. Hopefully, he thought far enough ahead to mask it or have someone read the script for him and use a throwaway cell phone. For now, I want the bug. If we have to manufacture our luck to get it, so what? If Dix is camping out at the car wash again, he’s not violating the Constitution, just Willie Sivella’s order.”
“Willie slapped a GPS on his car. I have no idea how he got around that.”
Trask froze in disbelief for a moment, then shook his head and laughed out loud. “I’m very glad that Dixon Carter is on our side,” he said. “One more thing.” He handed Doroz a slip of paper. An address was written on it. “Have your tech guys put a pole cam on this place for a few days, please.”
“OK. Where is this?”
“Northwest, up toward Bethesda. It’s Victor Scarborough’s office.”
“Skippy Turner’s old defense lawyer? I heard that Vic died last night.”
Scarborough had represented Turner, one of Doroz and Trask’s former defendants. Turner was a low-level heroin dealer who had sold his poison at local sporting events such as unsanctioned boxing matches and cockfights before being sent away for twenty years.
“Yep. Cancer. He did all his own work, was too cheap even to hire a secretary. Didn’t have many friends. There wasn’t even an obit in the Post. I was up there this morning. There are some streetlamp poles on the other side of Wisconsin. Have the techies aim the cam at the office, if that’s possible.”
“And why is it we’re watching this dead guy’s joint?”
“We aren’t. Not yet, anyway. I’ll get us the bug, you get me the pole cam. And once it’s set up, we’ll go see our friend the ambassador.”
“There’s that ‘we’ again.”
Trask walked out of the conference room into the squad area, stopping long enough to bend over Lynn’s shoulder and give her a peck on the cheek. “Do me a favor?” he said.
“Sure.”
“Give this a read and see what you think.” He dropped the file on her desk. “Eighteenth Street gangbanger got shot in Northeast. See if you see anything that the homicide guys missed.”
“Will do, sir.”
“‘Sir,’ huh? I could get used to that.”
“In your dreams.”
Trask returned to the conference room. He saw that Doroz was signing some overtime sheets for the task force officers. “Not even doing that in your office anymore, Bear?”
“Nope. I like it better in here.”
Crawford looked at the photo on the bookshelf. A pretty little girl who would grow up to be the gorgeous woman who was now cooking dinner for him in her apartment was being held by a man who would become the ambassador of his country to the United States. “How long have you known the ambassador?” he asked her.
“All my life, as you can see. I call him my Tio Juan. My uncle. He and my family are very close.”
“Did you come here with him after the elections in your country?”
“This last time, yes. I have lived in America before, when my father and my uncle Luis went to college in California with Tio Juan. I went to elementary school there.”
“Which is why your English is so good.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. What’s that you’re cooking? It smells wonderful.”
She giggled. “After three nights of fast food at your place, I thought you might like to try some Salvadoran dishes. We are having bistec encebollado, a beef steak simmered in onions, and popusas. They’re like tortillas, only thicker and stuffed with cheese. Sometime they are stuffed with meat, but we’re already having the bistec, so I thought the cheese would be better.”
“It smells great.” Crawford looked at another of the photos on the shelf. He could see the same girl, a teenager this time, standing with another girl and four adults. “Your family?”
“Yes.” She put a dish on the dining table, removed the oven mitts from her hands, and placed one on his shoulder. “That’s my father there, my mother, her brother and his wife, my Tío Luis and Tía Anna and Carolina, my cousin. The one I told you about.” She wiped tears from her eyes with the sleeve of her blouse. “I miss them.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have figured that out.” He decided to change the subject.
“How long has Mr. Rios-García been with the embassy?”
She hesitated a brief moment before answering. “He got here just after Armando, the ambassador’s son, was killed.”
“Did you know him in El Salvador?”
“Yes,” she said. “Very well.”
She smiled and kissed him.
“Sit down. Dinner’s ready.”
Chapter Sixteen
August 28, 11:00 a.m.
Trask and Doroz sat in the waiting room outside the office of the ambassador. Trask had decided to risk not notifying Murphy. Their excuse would be that it was a routine call, just a status report.
The pretty secretary with the long, dark hair offered them coffee again, which they both politely declined. The Eagles’ “Witchy Woman” started playing in Trask’s head.
He turned to Doroz. “With all the defense counsel running away from the case, our MS-13 friends might have to wait a bit for their trials.”
“First time I’ve been around that kind of problem,” Doroz said. “How does the court handle something like that?”
“Judge Noble’s first move was to ask for volunteers,” Trask replied. “He’s looking for the brave champions of civil rights, the ones who aren’t all speeches and no substance. The hypocrites will keep their heads down or claim schedule conflicts. These appointments will take some guts.”
“Any takers so far?”
“Just one that I know of,” Trask said. “Victor Scarborough. Solo practitioner. He has an office on Wisconsin, up toward Bethesda.”
The warning glance that Trask shot him caused the obvious question to freeze in Doroz’ throat. He paused for a second, and then gave a slight nod.
Good, Trask thought. He understood the play. We’ll see if it works now. Nobody’s neck�
�s on the line. He thought for a moment. Just mine.
“The ambassador will see you now, gentlemen.” The secretary opened the door into the inner office.
As before, Lopez-Portillo joined them around the low table. He waved the secretary out after the handshakes. “How can I be of assistance today, gentlemen?” he asked.
“Just some routine questions, sir.” Doroz took the lead, as they had agreed. “We find that it often helps to reflect on a tragedy like this after some time has passed, after the initial shock wears off.”
“Of course.” The ambassador nodded.
“Things that may not have seemed significant when they happened can take on a new meaning, make more sense later. A remark Armando may have made to you or his mother, a new friend who seemed to have popped up just before your son’s disappearance. Have you thought of anything like that?”
“No.”
Trask saw that the ambassador appeared to have lost a considerable amount of sleep. There were lines around the man’s eyes that had not been there before. He seemed to have aged five years in a week.
He’s starting to look like Dixon Carter. The reflection on a lost life always brings guilt. There’s the notion that something could have, should have been done. The weight’s a lot heavier when that’s true.
“Are you making any progress at all?” Lopez-Portillo asked.
“We think we are,” Doroz said. “Unfortunately, we have to ask you to bear with us a while on that. If we fill you in on everything—especially since you haven’t been able to supply any facts yourself—your grief might cause you to start creating things to go along with whatever patterns we think we’ve seen. It’s only natural, but it can throw us onto some false trails. We need whatever evidence you might have to come from you, without us suggesting it to you. It’s a one-way street, for now. I hope you understand.”
“Yes. Of course,” the ambassador said quietly.
“The minute we have something firm, you’ll be the first to know.” Doroz nodded sympathetically.