by C. S. 96
Hector’s excuse was partially true—he did have twelve or more kids with an assortment of women—but I also knew Hector had other enterprises outside of the drug business as well. He owned homes and properties all over the country, and he liked to spend big-time.
Hector’s scam wasn’t even a good one. He had to know the lies would eventually catch up to him, or he simply deluded himself into thinking this could go on forever. As long as we were paying the Beltráns back most of their money, every month, they’d let it slide. But as I said, the Beltráns knew every dollar owed to them. Hector’s ridiculous scam was delivering the money back to the couriers in partial payments, telling them week after week one lie after another: One of our clients got arrested and would pay us back within the month; we’d lost a load on the road behind a random stop; one of our clients didn’t pick up the load and we were sitting on it.
Hector swore that he was eventually going to pay the money back, but that did not seem to sway the brothers one way or the other. I could tell they were enjoying watching the fat man tremble with fear, but I could also tell that Tony read that, too, and it must’ve gotten under his skin that they were making sport of toying with his devious friend. The brothers didn’t say a word; they turned to Tony, waiting to see what he was going to do.
Tony moved an inch from Hector’s face, staring at him for at least half a minute. Hector understood every word of that silent communication, and I read the complete embarrassment and dejection in Hector’s eyes behind the betrayal he had perpetrated against his closest friend. I knew this was going one of two ways: Tony would ask for a pistol and end Hector’s life right there, or he was going to tell the brothers to take him with them, allowing them to make an example out of him.
What Tony did shocked me to this very day.
He casually moved to the brothers, sitting down next to them. He calmly told them that he was going to pay them back every week until the debt was paid, and he also told them he would handle this betrayal internally.
The next five seconds were the longest five seconds of my, and certainly Hector’s, life. The brothers stared at Tony, again, same indifferent attitude.
So many scenarios crossed my mind. Were they going to pull out their guns and kill all of us? Is this where it ends, in some swanky drug den on the beach in San Diego? Would my wife, Inez, be able to identify me at the morgue? What will happen to my family? And then, like nothing had occurred, both brothers stood up, shook Tony’s hand, agreed that they’d be paid back an additional $25 for every pound of weed we bought, and, without looking back, they left the room.
Tony waited a few minutes, saying nothing. Hector remained standing stoically in the same spot, knowing this wasn’t over, not by a long shot, waiting for his fate to be determined. He knew Tony had every right to kill him where he stood, and I have to give Hector credit because he didn’t try to talk or worm his way out of the unenviable situation he’d placed himself in—he’d either live or die, and that all depended on the level of Tony’s big evil at that very moment.
Tony kept his distance from Hector because—I knew—if he were within striking distance of the fat man, he might not be able to stop himself from going through with it. And Tony was so combustible that once he started he would not be able to stop himself until he tore Hector fully apart. Tony could never kill Hector; he was the godfather to one of his sons and they’d been friends for too long. It was a strange symbiotic relationship, like twin brothers who could do or say anything to the other, but at the end of the day they’d die for one another. Had this been anyone else, Tony would not hesitate and that man would be dead the moment his duplicity was revealed. Then Tony went off—screaming at the top of his lungs how close he brought us to the brink of death. Telling him that if it were anyone else they’d be dead already. He laid into him for ten minutes, bringing up everything he’d done for Hector, leaving not one stone of their emotional and storied past unturned. I saw the tears dropping down Hector’s thick cheeks and into the folds of his jowls.
Tony calmed down, but Hector’s fate was sealed—he could never be trusted again. Tony told him that after this nut was paid off they were through. In the meantime Hector would do whatever Tony asked of him without pay. He was completely cut out of the business, not to be anywhere in the vicinity of product or money ever again. Tony also told him that if he found out Hector was working on the side selling, he’d forget he was his son’s godfather and, without hesitation, find him and his loser brother Raul—also hanging on by a frayed thread—and eviscerate them both.
I knew better than to completely trust this bravado—as I mentioned, he’d never kill Hector. Raul, however, was an entirely different story, Tony was just waiting for that last snowflake to hit the snowcapped bough, which would snap it from its trunk. Hector, on the other hand, would be sidelined and he probably wouldn’t touch any of Tony’s money again, but eventually Tony would soften toward his closest friend and slowly Hector would be able to earn again.
Tony stopped abruptly. Then he asked Hector why he didn’t come to him for money if he needed it, and Hector had no answer. Depleted of his usual energy, Tony told Hector to leave and never return to The Sweet Water again. He also told him to sell his properties because Tony wasn’t picking up the nearly $2.5 million alone.
Hector agreed and left.
Raul
The reason for my trip to Temecula this early Sunday morning was Hector’s older brother, Raul, the thirty-eight-year-old, rail-thin, stone-cold junkie with a twenty-year jones for crack cocaine. He had shoulder-length, inky black hair, perpetually greasy and matted, falling across his skeletal face like tattered wet shoelaces. His face was long and angular, and one could see hints of the chiseled, handsome face it once was before the interceding years of abusing the glass stem of a crack pipe. Crack had turned him into the poster boy for the “Just Say No” campaign of the Reagan era.
Raul was neither ruthless nor smart, and for the most part did what he was told; that is, unless he was off getting high, which occurred frequently. But Hector had a soft spot for his only brother, and, regardless of his newly revealed duplicity, Tony had a soft spot for his oldest friend, Hector. So when Raul dipped a little too deep into the company’s material for his personal use, or a few thousand dollars came up short on a sale, again for his personal use, Raul got a pass. Anyone else would’ve been tortured for weeks until they begged and pleaded for death.
Today was one of those days; Raul had screwed up in obscene proportions.
Our resident crackhead was supposed to stay clean for the week, and on the prior Thursday was to have rendezvoused with one of our best drivers and couriers, Pedro, relaying the message that the two of them, along with Tony’s common-law wife and their two children, a five-year-old and an infant, were going on a road trip in an RV at two o’clock on Sunday, today. They were to deliver thirty kilos of uncut cocaine to our processors and clients in Detroit.
Raul had woken, after a four-day binge, just an hour before I received my page. Raul had also failed to alert Pedro about today’s run.
Our loads were on a very tight schedule; we had buyers set up to take possession of all thirty kilos in exactly five days. However, our 100 percent pure cocaine had to be stepped on, or “spanked,” by 30 percent, meaning we’d dilute the pure cocaine down to 70 percent pure, still excellent street powder, giving us an additional 30 percent on top of our profit margin. That breakdown of the cocaine would take place at one of our many safe houses; this particular one was in Detroit. Combine three-and-a-half days of nonstop travel and two days to process and repackage into varying amounts of weight for our many clients, it equated to exactly five days. If we did not show with our product at 5 P.M. the next Friday night, completely buttoned up with our product intact, we’d end up losing all of the deals. Johnny-come-lately drug dealers usually brought out the paranoia in other drug dealers. Tony wasn’t about to lose the deal and risk alientating solid customers.
But there was an ev
en bigger elephant in the room. Two, in fact.
Buses were a relatively easy way to move coke across the country; however, no transport is completely bulletproof. Our last consignment of cocaine, forty kilos, from the Beltrán brothers, was seized at a Trailways bus station in a border town between California and Nevada.
Two of my female mules, chosen and trained by me because they were smart and could physically tone themselves down to avoid attention, but if needed—in a snap—sex themselves up, were each carrying twenty kilos of pure cocaine in their luggage stored above their seats. As they approached the rest stop, a targeted hot spot by the DEA and customs agents that I’d previously prepped them on, they noticed two unmarked cars following the bus. Without raising suspicion they changed their seats. The bus rolled into the station, a busy gas and food mart for tourists and gamblers, all with varying degrees of degeneration, and stopped to let the passengers out for a break. The girls separated and quickly intermingled with the crowd—as trained.
Two of the customs agents checked all of the tickets and names on the driver’s manifest while the second team of agents carefully scrutinized the occupants of the bus and walked the perimeter with a drug-sniffing canine. Within minutes the dog hit on the cocaine inside the bus; the girls saw this and disappeared.
Seizures are a norm in this business and you’re given a pass by the cartel if there is paperwork, such as an arrest report to back up the confiscated or lost load of drugs. With that report in hand you did not have to pay for the load because it was considered a work-related hazard, or the price of doing business. The problem was that since the girls were not arrested, we had no paperwork to prove that it was seized—we had to pay for the load.
We were given this second thirty-kilo load we were looking to bring to Detroit on consignment as well, worth $510,000, so this load had to be sold to pay for both loads. And though our relationship was semi solid with the Beltráns, regardless of Hector’s stupidity and greed, they were definitely the two strikes and you’re out type of operators. If we didn’t get them back their $1,190,000 within two weeks, well, we were as good as dead. That’s just the way it works.
The second elephant in the room—larger and far more dangerous—was, of course, the money Hector skimmed from the Beltráns. Tony had been paying down the debt, but we still owed at least half. So the grand total we owed including the cost of the seized cocaine was $2,466,000.00.
We were now at strike two, or to put it in military terms, DEFCON ONE, meaning everyone working under the umbrella of Tony Loco Tony had AKs pointed at their heads, me included. Without Pedro to drive, we had another big problem. On such short notice we would never be able to get a suitable driver who knew the routes and secondary routes as backups just in case of police activity. Raul could never be allowed to travel alone—he was just too erratic and the temptation of all that cocaine in such close proximity to a crackhead would’ve been like closing down an amusement park, leaving all the rides on, and sending a hyperactive nine-year-old kid whacked on Adderall in.
After explaining the situation to me, Tony just tilted his head and said, “Get packed, tool up.”
I was beyond confused. I hadn’t handled product in over eight years, and that was a promise I made to my wife, Inez, and a deal I’d made with Tony, which he had conveniently forgotten. I wasn’t about to become a drug mule all over again.
My job was strictly oversight, facilitation, and, like any good businessman, expansion and seeking other diverse opportunities within our reliable client base. I earned that title and the respect it warranted, not based on the years I’d put in, but by the sheer money I’d made for Tony and the cartel—hundreds of millions of dollars.
I shook my head no over and over but was unable to speak.
Tony’s mausoleum-black eyes were focused on mine. The pulsing energy that permeated through and around him, like a battalion of killer bees waiting to swarm, suddenly joined us together. Gone was the decorous father-son relationship, the heir-to-the-throne bullshit. This was about dollars and cents and Tony’s true loyalty wasn’t to me, his “surrogate street son,” but to his prized offshore bank accounts he had hidden all over the world—and to his masters, the Beltráns.
My knees weakened at the thought of this and it took a moment to regain my composure when I finally said, “No way, Tony, I’m not driving 3,000 miles with a crackhead, an illegal who doesn’t speak English, and two crying kids with one still in diapers, not gonna happen.” It really was a recipe for disaster. And had we not owed the Beltráns for the last load I’d have called the trip off altogether. I’d developed a solid relationship with the clients in Detroit. I’d promise them a better deal on the next load, something—anything—to keep Tony from making me coordinate and participate in this suicide haul—because that’s exactly what it was: fucking suicide. But Tony was like a bull in a caged pen, coiled rage and power just waiting for that gate to be opened.
Tony moved within two inches of my face and he smiled; gold blingy eyetooth so suggestive in the sun, though his eyes radiated unhinged mayhem. He said, in a very soft voice, “Not gonna happen? Roman, poppy, you get paid well, yes?” His eyes squinted and he moved in closer, for greater effect, I’m sure. “The kids, your wife, all good, sí or no?”
There was something in his voice when he made that simple reference to my family, a veiled threat. It felt like I’d been shanked between my ribs. My children, each of them, flashed before my eyes, and at that instant, if I had a weapon on me I might’ve pulled out and blown a gaping hole through Tony’s face. It was at this exact moment that I knew it was time to start looking for an exit strategy. I knew all of Tony’s foibles, but threats, veiled or not, weren’t one of them. Something had gone off the rails inside of him. It was time to get out while I—and my family—still could.
I calmed and listened, and in that moment I knew for the first time that if I ended up trapped working for this man for another decade, I might kill him.
He continued, “You have everything you could ask for, no? When have I ever asked you for a favor in return for what I’ve given you and your family, huh?”
The mention of my family struck home again; I felt a blinding sting behind my eyes, a furious red flash furthering my contempt. What Tony failed to mention was that favors weren’t part of the bargain between us. I’d moved his business from a mom-and-pop operation to a virtual empire—he went from the corner bodega to Walmart since bringing me on. I was loyal, trusted, honest, and I did not do drugs. I was the one who had traversed the country finding better routes, but also searched out new locations to plant our flag; in other words, more clients, more than Tony had ever imagined he’d have. At first I tripled our net profit, and then tripled that, and soon, rather than earning a very good living as a drug courier and dealer, Tony became an American kingpin worth tens of millions of dollars, all of which apparently meant nothing to him. In the beginning this was as much a start-up business venture to me as it was to him. Only difference was I wasn’t a lifer, or so I told myself, and yet ten years later here I was—back to muling. I was living a lie I couldn’t untangle myself from. And as bad as today was, something good came from it, that push I needed. Tony hadn’t realized it but he opened the door for me to step outside myself and finally assess where our relationship had taken me, the life I was living.
His voice went from sotto to withering heat in a flash. “Never, that’s how many fucking favors I asked from you, cero! And now when the motherfucking chips are down this is how you come at me? It’s bad enough I have to put up with this puta maricone Raul, whose face I should tear off with these fucking hands.”
Tony lifted his giant hands up to my face, shaking with rage, and I knew if he could get away with the total dismemberment of Raul without Hector knowing, he’d do just that. I was now certain that my existence to Tony was but a simple afterthought. He’d do to me in a hot second exactly what he couldn’t do to Raul if I didn’t get with the program.
Tony made i
t very clear who and what he was, in fact he wanted the world to see because he was smart, careful, and calculating. And though he looked, acted—was—every bit the killer and American drug kingpin—Tony was never getting caught with product; no, that he’d leave entirely up to someone else: Raul, Pedro, any number of our other couriers, and now me.
I could see there was no way around this; I was going one way or another. I stepped away from him resigned to a destiny that awaited me. Now, more than ever, I wanted out. I wanted a life of normalcy, wanted my children to know what their dad did for a living, but most of all I wanted to see the light in Inez’s eyes once again, that light that told me how much she loved and respected me; one I hadn’t seen in so many years—I wanted it back, and I was going to get it. Ironically, Tony had become the impetus that would set my out-of-control life on track.
I looked into his eyes, still blazing with intensity, and after an ugly awkward silence I nodded, affirming his demand.
Tony relented instantaneously, smiled, and held out his arms, “Esa es mi ahijado, mi chico, mi pareja!”—That’s my godson, my boy, my partner: I wanted him to choke on the words.
I backed away from Tony because I couldn’t bear to embrace this conniving animal. Instead, I looked directly into his eyes, unwavering and unafraid, and I said, “Okay, Tony, I’ll go, but I don’t want to know where the product is, and if Raul doesn’t follow my orders from the start I’m throwing the dope out of the RV and I don’t give a shit if it’s in the middle of the desert. If I see he’s getting high, I’m tossing his ass, we clear?” I spoke with as much emphasis as I could under the circumstances, because it’s very hard to dance with the suicide king—the devil.