by Rodolfo Peña
“Both, Mrs. Delgado,” he said truthfully and after thanking her again for her time, he walked away.
Chapter 35: Lombardo Talks to the New Boss
The morning after his visit to the widow, Lombardo sat watching the news, and drinking his morning coffee. He paid little attention to the economic news that announced yet another crisis in the world economy and the analysis of the “economic experts” that predicted a dire future for Mexico, which depended so much on oil and tourism.
Lombardo couldn’t concentrate on any of it because his thoughts were with the widow. It was clear that from the moment he saw her he had been smitten, utterly infatuated by her. God! She was at least 20 years younger. The old cliché “she could be my daughter” was never truer. Yet, he had never had such feelings for any human being, let alone a woman, before, so he didn’t know how to deal with them. He wanted to protect her, take over where Victor had left off. Such a beautiful thing should not be left to the mercy of this world, of the uncaring humanity of this city, of men like that bastard who slept with her, got her pregnant, and then fired her. Those rich bastards got away with everything; they never had to own up for the crap and the damage they left behind, as they moved like sharks through this life.
“Damn, I’m mixing my metaphors,” he said aloud as he got up from his easy chair. He went into the bedroom to dress. “I ought to look up the bastard and break his goddamned neck.”
His cell phone rang. “Captain Lombardo?” It was the new Director’s secretary.
“Yes?”
“Mr. Loera Neri would like you to come to his office as soon as possible.”
“OK. I am at home so I’ll be in the Department soon.”
“What time do you plan to be here?” she asked.
“That’s the last thing I damn well need,” said Lombardo, “is a damned secretary busting my balls. Tell your boss, Miss Whoever-you-are, that since the damned Department has not been able to find the money to give me a decent car, I have to use taxis to get around, and since I have no idea how long it will take me to find one, I have no damned idea what time I will be there.”
“Well, try to be here as soon as possible,” she said and hung up.
“Stupid bitch,” said Lombardo to the dead connection.
When Lombardo got to the Department, he went straight to the Director’s secretary’s desk. She was talking to a young, newly hired investigations officer. “Probably came with the new boss,” said Lombardo, and then he said to the girl, “Listen…”
The secretary turned to Lombardo and said, “Just a minute, please.”
Lombardo turned to the young man and said, “You, beat it!”
The boy was so startled he walked away without a word.
“Captain Lombardo,” the girl started to complain.
But Lombardo interrupted her, “Listen to me, Minerva,” he had noted the name plate on her desk. “I already have one boss, I don’t need two. You don’t tell me what to do, when to come here, or how to get here, understand?”
She started to speak again, but Lombardo in a cold rage now said loudly, “Understand?”
People in other desks turned to see what the trouble was.
“I am blocking your phone number,” continued Lombardo while holding up his cell phone, “you have no permission to call me at any time for any reason. If your boss wants me, tell him to call me from his phone.”
The door to the Director’s office opened. He saw that his secretary was nearly in tears and that Lombardo was standing in silent rage looking at her as if he were going to beat her senseless with his cell phone.
“Captain Lombardo,” said the Director, “please come into my office.”
As soon as Lombardo closed the door, the Director started to speak, “Captain, you can’t go around…”
“I don’t need some girl calling me to tell me I’m late for school,” said Lombardo. “With all due respect, Director, if you need to talk to me you can call me yourself.”
“And I don’t need a second-grade investigator telling me how to run my office,” said the Director just as firmly. Lombardo had to respect that the man wasn’t easily cowered.
Lombardo saw that the Delgado case file was on the Director’s desk. The Director sat down and without asking Lombardo to do the same he began,
“I got a phone call this morning…”
“From Guadalajara?” interrupted Lombardo insinuating that the call had been from the DEA.
“…from the acting Governor, Mr. Nepamuseno Gomez Cruz. He wants me to review the Delgado case in view of the fact that the former Dean of the University, Filiberto Herrera, sent in his resignation and left the country. Governor Gomez thinks that there might be a connection between the death of Victor Delgado and the sudden departure of the Dean. Additionally, there will be fraud charges filed against the former Dean, because a subsequent audit has discovered irregularities in the University’s accounts.”
“They always find them after the fact,” said Lombardo.
The Director ignored the remark and continued. “It seems to me,” he said opening the case file, “that the report you filed is, how shall I put it, incomplete.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Look, Lombardo, let’s stop the bullshit. I also got another call telling me that the persons you want to find in Guadalajara are DEA agents, and that you’ve been getting help from the Gulf Cartel people in tracking them down.”
“I get my information from whatever source is available. The man owed me a favor so I called him on it.”
“Owed you a favor or gave you the information as a favor—a favor you’re going to have to pay back!”
“Oh, do you think I’m on the Cartel’s payroll? Director, that would be unheard of in this Department.”
“Lombardo, I know you think I’m some political flunky just minding the store before the elections and that a new Governor will appoint the real head of this Department, but I know more about what’s been going on here than you believe, and I mean to do a good job while I am here. Now, as I said, let’s stop the bullshit or I will not only not sign the authorization for you to go to Guadalajara, I will take you off the case, put you under review for insubordination and hiding case evidence, then I will fire your ass and put you in a cell next to your Cartel buddy.”
The Director took Lombardo’s report out of the case file and put it on the desk. “Now, take this piece of crap back and write a real report with all of the facts we know about the case and all of the evidence you have gathered. Understood?”
Lombardo took the piece of paper, tore it up, and tossed it into the waste basket. “All right,” he said, “you want no bullshit, I don’t either.”
Lombardo sat down and lit a Delicado. “Don’t tell me you got a call from that puppet they’re now calling interim Governor. It was from your DEA friends and they want to know how much evidence I have against them.”
The Director said nothing but stared coldly at Lombardo.
“They also want to know if I have certain information which would not only incriminate them but would also open up a sewer full of shit about what has been going on in this country.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I am talking about two groups of powerful, high-level people who are fighting each other, who will go to any lengths, even murder, to achieve their goals. I am talking about a group of people who want to legalize drugs, much to the Cartels’ joy, and another that wants to stop them and is so rabid about it that it foams at the mouth. I don’t know for sure which side you are on but I can make a pretty good guess.”
“Which side are you on, Lombardo?”
“I’m on Victor Delgado’s side. I am on the side of a little guy who gets killed and everyone wants to just brush his case into that sewer you guys have built for the purpose. Well, you can tell your DEA friends that they can’t come into my territory, crap all over the place, and then get away with it clean.”
“What do yo
u want, Lombardo? What’s in it for you out of all of this?”
“What do I want? I want those three murdering bastards in jail, that’s what I want. And I don’t give a damn who they are or what they are; I want their asses in a cell with a twenty-year sentence pinned to their balls.”
The Director thought for a few seconds and then said, “Look, these are very dangerous times. As they say, ‘the devil is loose.’ This could be very dangerous for you or anybody who helps you.”
“I’m an old man by today’s standards, Director. I’ve been a cop for 30 years. A bullet in the head doesn’t scare me; in fact, they would do me a great favor—put an end to my misery. But, here are the facts, sir. I have a CD, with copies, that would go to a lot of people if something were to happen to me. Oh, the national newspapers and that magazine, Progreso, would have a field day with this stuff. But I don’t give a rat’s ass about that so I am willing to make a deal.”
“What sort of a deal?” The Director’s eyes narrowed like a cat’s eyes narrow when it has a bird within grasp.
“You sign that authorization so I can go to Guadalajara and I will give you all the dirt on the former Governor and the Dean. I know your party wants to thrash the ruling party in the next election and that this would be some pretty good ammunition for them. And, don’t tell me that that would not earn you boy scout honors, because you know and I know that your party is just a step away from grabbing power and this will help a lot toward that end.”
“OK, so I authorize for you to go to Guadalajara with full powers and expenses—then what?”
“Then I go to Guadalajara and cut another deal—with the head man, the gringo who sent the three men down here. You won’t be blamed for anything that happens after that because it will be up to him to save his government the embarrassment this case would cause, never mind the damage he would inflict on your party, which he has been funding for quite some time.”
The Director looked at Lombardo as if he was deliberating between signing the damned authorization or shooting him on the spot.
“OK, so he gives you the three guys. What the hell are we going to do with them? It would be just as bad for them to have the media say that DEA people are going around the country committing murder.”
“You know and I know that there are a lot of ways to handle this. They can be just three gringos, dealing in drugs, caught in a sting operation. There’s no need to say that they are DEA. Their asses wind up in jail; justice will have been done.”
“OK,” agreed the Director, “but give me a couple of hours. I have to make some phone calls.”
“Thank you, Director. You are a very reasonable man. You have a bright future ahead of you—if you survive.”
Lombardo left the Director’s office thinking, “Little people don’t win big victories, they win small victories, but small victories can add up to become big ones.”
Chapter 36: Off to See the Wizard
John Wayne hesitated before calling Washington.
He’d thought of calling Robert Miller but he knew what Miller would say: “Call Washington; ask their advice.”
He also thought of writing a situation report and sending it in with a high priority status, but then a back and forth would ensue. They’d want substantiating evidence, original authorization for the team being down in Mexico, and all that bullshit.
No, he’d have to find a way to handle this unofficially. He mistrusted most of his superiors, but he knew that his boss had spent a lot of time on the field before being tied down to a desk. He’d probably gone through situations like this one and probably knew which was the best way to handle it.
He picked up the secure phone and dialed.
“How ya doin’ Big John?” said the deep, raspy voice.
“Awright, Boss; how ‘bout you?”
“Fuckin’ bored—up to my ass in paperwork.”
“Well, you wanted the life of Riley. I bet your wife is thrilled to have you home by seven every day.”
“Except on Thursdays when all the other hags come over for tea ‘n’ bridge, ‘n’ crap like that.”
“Ooh, the other hags—I gotta tell her you said that next time I see her.”
“I’ll kick your ass upside your brain; God knows there’s enough space up there to put it.”
John Wayne laughed.
His boss said, “What’s up, Big John? I know you don’t call just t’ shoot the breeze.”
“Boss, I gotta situation down here.”
“Yeah?”
John Wayne told him he’d had a call from the Director of the Investigations Department in Nuevo León. He’d told him that one of his men, a guy called Lombardo had a copy of a bunch of documents, emails and such, which would do a lot of damage to their project if that information got into the wrong hands or if it was given to the media, especially the American media.
“How did he get hold of stuff that belongs to us?” his Boss asked.
“The thing is, it didn’t belong to us. The email and documents belonged to the people that are pushing the legalization thing. Let me explain where this thing is coming from and how it got like this.”
He took a sip of whiskey and said, “Remember that I asked for an interrogation team to be sent down?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, if you remember, the reason was that those documents we were trying to get had been locked up.”
“Locked up where?”
“In a computer—not in a safe or anything.”
“Yeah, so what happened?”
“Well, they fucked it up. They snatched the guy who could help us unlock the files where the documents were stored but they got too rough and killed him, accidentally by their account, and yet they got nothing out of the guy.”
“Oh, shit. OK, so they’re finding dozens of bodies a day down there; I’m sure they could find a way to ‘overlook’…”
“Yeah, well, they tried but, you see, this guy Lombardo from the State Investigations Department started sniffing around and somehow got hold of the stuff before we did.”
“Geez, what are you guys doin’ down there? How could this Mexican cop get the stuff and you couldn’t?”
“It’s a long story,” said John Wayne and he downed the rest of the whiskey.
“I bet it is,” said his boss. “Tell me more about this stuff we’re trying to get; why is it so important, anyway?”
John Wayne said, “As I said before, the stuff includes a bunch of emails and other documents. And, there are conversations our, uh, opponents were having about how they were going to advance their legalization agenda, but they also talk about who is opposing them. The problem is that they name a lot of the people we’ve been helping out and a lot of the people we’ve got on the payroll.”
“Geez! Is the stuff credible? I mean, can’t it be discredited or say it was falsified or something?”
“The stuff is pretty credible, all right. There are emails from Governors, federal representatives, senators, you name it. And, I understand, there are scanned documents with signatures and what not. It’s all pretty lethal.”
“OK, so we’re in a pretty big tub of shit here. What can I do about it? What do you want from me?”
“The guy on the case, this guy Lombardo, is coming to see me.”
“To see you? How in the Hell did he know…”
“I’ll explain that later. The thing is, he wants to cut a deal, from what I was told. He wants the three guys, our guys, the ones who interrogated and killed this Mexican. He wants them put in jail.”
“He’s fuckin’ crazy!”
“I know boss but he has the goods on us, and he has evidence, according to my source, which proves that our guys did the deed. So, he wants us to give up our three guys or he will turn the documents over to the media, press charges, and so on.”
“Shit, what an understatement when you say you got a situation down there.”
“Yeah, this is a bad one. We could get kicked out of the country all toge
ther if the leftists get hold of this.”
“Give me some details. If I am going to go to somebody with this, I need some more details. Who else is involved?”
John Wayne told him that they had managed to neutralize the head of the opposition, the President’s cousin, who had ordered the assassination of the man walking point for them, Senator Juan Alberto Romero. He told him that the Governor of Nuevo León, who had been doing all sorts of jobs for the President’s cousin, had handed in his resignation, and had gone into the FBI’s witness protection program. What the FBI wanted him for, John Wayne was not too sure because Robert Miller wasn’t saying anything.