Confidential Source Ninety-Six

by C. S. 96

  Tony was supremely careful, and behind this arrest who knows what he might think. I’d been with him long enough to know once one of our couriers was arrested they were sidelined for months, all the while being followed by highly paid private investigators. If they had snitched they would suddenly disappear, never to be seen or heard from again.

  Any type of deviance or disloyalty toward Tony upset him more than a sour business deal ever could. He was, after all, in the business of obedience and rules, and without them he was just another soon-to-be property of the state. But he was also a sadistic bastard. If you broke those rules, he made an example out of you, and those horrifying examples kept everyone in line. And that was the unbreakable link of Tony’s operation; he was insulated because under the harshest of interrogations, no one talked.

  Once Tony’s workers were cleared of any duplicity, he did eventually bring them back into the fold. I suspected this was going to be his plan of action with me. Getting Tony dirty, actually holding drugs, or on tape setting up a deal was going to be a monster, if not impossible, operation. I’m certain that as soon as he found out we were arrested he’d already switched safe houses, locations unknown to me, that held his product and, I’m sure, money he squirrelled away. But I knew more about Tony than he knew I did.

  The bus ride back was uneventful. Once Raul leveled off from whatever drugs he huffed or smoked, he fell asleep for most of the trip. When he was awake for a few moments, he’d just look at me then drop his head, nodding off to sleep. He knew—or thought—I was livid, and my eyes relayed that to him just in case he’d forgotten, and he also knew I was willing, and very capable, of doing exactly what I said I would do to him if he didn’t keep his mouth shut.

  We arrived in downtown Los Angeles at 1 A.M. Raul went his way and I went mine. So much had gone unmentioned—namely that I had no idea what Raul said to Hector, and Hector in turn said to Tony, quite possibly to save his brother from a rather gruesome end—but I couldn’t ask about that without drawing suspicion. I was completely in the dark. But what did I think Raul would do? I assumed he was going to hole up in some crack den for a few days before he resurfaced to face the wrath of Tony. First he’d call Hector to assess how bad the damage was and if he needed to go on the lam for a while until this all cooled down. But as it turns out, I was very wrong. The little junkie would play me, and play me good.

  I took a cab from the bus terminal heading to Pasadena, where my in-laws lived. Inez’s mother, Minerrands, had no idea what I really did for a living and knew nothing of my arrest. She believed the story we told her: I was an executive at a large building company. I was going to her house that day because I needed cash—in case something happened and Inez and the kids and I needed to disappear quickly. I had installed a safe in Minerrands’ home years before, where I kept $30,000 in cash for emergency money, as well as a Mercedes 500 SEL, which she happily agreed to keep as long as she could use it for special occasions.

  In the meantime, I would plan with the DEA agents how I could approach Tony and dispel any suspicions, a confrontation I was not looking forward to.

  It was good to drive in the luxurious ride. After I picked up the cash, I got in the car, opened all the windows, and once I got onto Interstate 101 heading south toward San Diego I opened up all eight cylinders, feeling the power of the engine carry me away, as if to a different existence. The arid desert air filled my lungs. I felt alive, free for the first time since I’d left Puerto Rico at eighteen years old, which seemed like a lifetime ago. Yes, incredibly dangerous terrain lay ahead for me—the Beltráns, Hector, Tony—and I knew I had to mitigate the risks that could get me into trouble. But at that moment, nearing 100 M.P.H. on the interstate, I was smiling. I couldn’t get home fast enough to tell Inez that this whole charade we were living was finally over. We were free.

  It was around 4 A.M. when I pulled the Mercedes into my driveway. I noticed the lights were on in the yard. Inez was in the exact same place we had started this odyssey, just a handful of Sundays prior, sitting in a chaise lounge gazing into the pool. Yet, our whole lives had changed, come full circle in that short period of time. When I left, I was an American kingpin drug dealer, both of us unsure what the future held; upon my return I had morphed into someone completely different, a man I was sure I would become proud of, and my God, how I hoped she’d feel the same way. For better or worse I was fully committed, and there was no turning back.

  I approached her; her eyes were wet, rimmed in red, though she smiled when she saw me, patting the chaise next to hers. I was afraid that while I was away she had come to the realization that this episode was just another in a series of elevating mishaps in the dirty world of drugs with more to come, same old Roman, same old tired bullshit, and that she was truly beyond her threshold of pain and anguish. I’d resigned myself to the fact that it was a possibility she was leaving me for good. And I couldn’t have blamed her if she did just that.

  I sat down next to her, cautious of her emotional state considering what she had to have been contemplating since receiving the call of my arrest. She sat up, grabbed both of my hands, looked me directly in the eyes, and quietly said, “Roman, you made me a promise on the phone, that you were out. I want you to know that I love you and I always will love you. But if you betray this last promise you made to me”—she paused, squeezing my hands ever so gently while continuing to look me dead in the eyes—“you’ll never see me or the children again.”

  It was a cold, calculated statement, and I believed her.

  I had a second chance, a reprieve from a fate worse than any time in prison. In that moment all I wanted to do was envelope her, feel her warmth, listen to her heartbeat.

  The Angel of Death

  I did exactly what I was told in Sevier County. I destroyed my phone and made sure there was nothing on my person that tied me to any federal agents. I stared at the landline phone in my study for hours. Playing devil’s advocate, thinking about the way Tony, my coconspirator, my mentor, and a heartless, stone-cold killer, would think. The questions he’d ask, the traps he’d set, the clever repetitiveness of it all, just waiting to catch me in the smallest of lies that would, without question, lead me to his torture chamber where I’d be turned into a skin suit. Tony’s chronicles of evil were legendary, but never had they left me so breathless.

  I had to convince him the paperwork I received from the agents was legit. It was a weak case and my lawyer got Raul and me off without a Mapp hearing. If I could convince this brilliant, conniving savage, I would beat him at his own game—treachery. It was going to be an epic three-dimensional game of chess, playing six different personalities at once—one more devious and perverse than the other. I stared at that phone until it was an inanimate white blur, all of the back-and-forth lightning repartee between us playing out in my head till there wasn’t one question I did not have the answer to. I leveled off my breathing, stood, and dialed the phone.

  Tony was cool. He let it ring three times before picking it up. Lull your target into a false sense of security, kill him with kindness, then rip his fucking heart out with your bare hands. Tony’s lessons were teeming inside of me. Considering the loss we’d just sustained and his doubtless suspicions regarding my loyalty, his demeanor was cheery, upbeat, almost happy to hear from me—no doubt a deception.

  Tony whistled into the phone and said, “Wowy wow, wow, look at you, the prodigal son finally decides to call? Raul, yeah sure, that fucking crackhead cabron, yes, I’d expect that shit from him, but you, baby boy, c’mon?” He laughed, “So you had a premonition about the run, and you were right. I think maybe I should’ve listened to my right hand this time, no?”

  If this was anyone other than the devil himself, I would’ve bought into the fatuous bullshit, hook, line, and sinker—he was that good on the phone. He’d ask for a meet at one of the safe houses, and I knew he’d expect that would be the last place I’d go after just escaping the drug charges. I had to stay on the offensive, rattle his cage
a little—I’m pissed off; we shouldn’t have done the run; Raul should have never been allowed to drive, stuck in that shitty little town jail for a month—I had to knock him back a bit, off balance, then make it seem like I couldn’t meet at a location of his choosing without allowing him to think I was worried, a telltale sign I was hiding something. You see, I was most at risk in this organization because I was basically the brain behind all of the transports. I had the names and locations of all of our clients because over the last eight years I’d cultivated all of them—both in the United States and in Mexico. If the cops turned me, Tony’s business would go tits up in a week. I knew how much he needed me. He’d have no one to sell to because without me in the picture every client would easily put together what had happened: I was either busted, in which case Tony was being watched, or I ratted or was eliminated, which also meant Tony was likely being watched. Even worse for Tony, no one (aside from me) would be stupid enough to move anything for him given Raul’s and my arrest. And without cash on hand to pay back the Beltráns, Tony was as good as dead.

  But I had one more wild card in my pocket that just might completely burn Tony Loco Tony to the ground. I knew where Tony kept all of his money. Safe houses, bank accounts, offshore accounts, I had it all, and to kill Tony, I mean really kill Tony—to take out the thing he loved most—all one had to do was bankrupt him. That’s exactly what I intended to do.

  Tony’s biggest mistake to date was taking himself off the street selling the product because he viewed that as dirty work, work that was beneath him, but he did not remove himself from the consignment business—buying from the Beltráns. You see, Tony had an ego the size of Inland Empire, he liked to be on Front Street with the Mexicans. It made him feel like one of them, as if he was actually a blood member of the Beltrán Cartel, which in reality he was not, not even close. However, Tony was a ruthless, hard-hitting Cuban thug who could, without question, do time, and he possessed a huge pair of steel balls. The Beltráns, along with their acolytes, recognized these excellent street traits, their usefulness in the United States—money, power, and above all else, loyalty to them. However, the lowly sales department, which by the way generated all the money for this miserable business, Tony had bequeathed to me.

  The entire machination of getting the product to the buyers, as well as getting the money back to Tony and the brothers, was my department, my sole responsibility. Tony had to be 100 percent sure I flipped before actually skinning me alive. And that was the purpose of this Cuban sitdown.

  Tony was always super cognizant of wiretaps, but now he had to be thinking every federal agency, including the NSA, was on the line listening, so in semi-coded language that a five-year-old could figure out, he asked for a meet at the safe house he shared with Maria.

  Tony said, “So… long trip. Let’s talk about it, come by Maria’s bakery, we’ll have a nice Cuban coffee and talk about your… vacation.”

  I shot back quickly, “First of all, I got in at four in the morning and was a little tired as I’m sure you can imagine. I was a little pissed off, too, because on the sudden—and please don’t take this the wrong way, no disrespect meant—delightful vacation you insisted I take, well, let’s just say the crowd there was a little rowdy and in an ensuing brawl my phone got smashed to shit. And by the way the accommodations at the alleged five-star hotel were more like some crack den no-tell-motel in fucking Port-au-Prince.”

  There was an extended silence on the line; I knew he was assessing every word I uttered. Then, “You’re tired, Chico, I get it,” he said with the slightest trepidation in his voice. I was glad I had knocked him off balance a bit. Too cool and happy, he’d know I flipped. This call would set the tone for our meeting, and without question how and when he’d kill me. This was all part of Tony’s ritual, and he enjoyed it. Having the power to determine a man’s fate with a simple phone call.

  Even though massive amounts of adrenaline raced through my veins and I was shaking like a newborn calf, I did one of the things I’ve continued to learn how to do best as a CI: acted my ass off, appearing tired, ragged, with just the right amount of a pissy attitude.

  “Tony, I haven’t slept much these past few weeks and I’m not exactly in the mood to drive all the way to the bakery. You kidding me? I’m serious, man. I’m fucking exhausted. Let’s meet halfway for a triple play.” “Halfway” and “triple play” meant a Denny’s restaurant about fifteen minutes from my house, a very busy and public restaurant in the middle of a busy outdoor mall. Even Tony Loco Tony wasn’t crazy enough to club me over the head, drop a hood over my bashed-in skull, and kidnap me right out in the open in broad daylight. Was he?

  If he insisted I come to the bakery, I would then know that if I went, I might be driving to my death. And then I’d have to move to plan B, alert the DEA field team in San Diego for protection, get Inez and the kids safely to her mother’s house, and then somehow try and rendezvous with agents, whom I’d never met before, unaware of their true motivations or if they in fact could be trusted with the lives of my family, all the while trying desperately not to be located or tailed by Tony.

  After an agonizingly long pause he said, “No, poppy, you right, you right. I’m askin’ a lot from you. I know you had a rough trip. That sounds like a plan—let’s say, uhh, one hour?”

  “Perfect. And thank you, I’m really beat to shit, my brother.”

  I’m sure he was thinking the same thing. You can’t remove the spots from a leopard.

  Before I ended the call, he quickly said, “Oh and by the way, that paperwork from the trip, you do have that with you, yes?”

  He was referring to the arrest reports and the accompanying letters between my lawyer, the DA’s office, the judge, and the sheriff’s department; the report that would save his ass from having to pay the Beltráns for the confiscated gack, but also the paper that he’d study with a fine-tooth comb for any inconsistences.

  I was already dressed, and after strapping on my ankle holster that held my Glock 17, a god-awful illegal semiautomatic pistol loaded with seventeen .45-caliber hollow-point rounds, possessing the stopping power of a runaway locomotive, I made my way briskly to the car. I needed to get to the Denny’s immediately. I had to beat him there just in case I was wrong and he did plan on clipping me right there in the parking lot, then having some kid rifle through the dead guy’s pockets—mine—to jack the paperwork from the seizure, and he’d be off the hook with the Beltráns, two birds with one bullet, knife, garrote, or club. I’d preempt that strike by getting there early, seated at our usual table with the perfect vantage point of the entire parking lot. I could see everyone who came and went. Anything I saw that was remotely suspicious, I was hightailing it the hell out the back where my car was parked feet from the kitchen’s fire exit.

  I was taking a big chance carrying that Glock—the feds had warned me that if I got into any kind of trouble while on the outside I was going back in, deal of the century completely rescinded, and that meant twenty years in some federal hole in the ground—but I had no choice. I needed to be able to protect myself from Tony.

  I was positioned at our usual booth, declined coffee for herbal tea, which the waitress brought over with a smile at the exact moment I saw Tony’s shiny purple, garishly refurbished 1978 Cadillac Sedan de Ville roll slowly into the parking lot. No cars entered before his, no cars followed. Could he have really come alone?

  The waitress asked, “Anything else I can get you, sir?”

  I was fixated on the parking lot and that purple love boat that just rolled in, sweat dripping from every pore of my body. It was go time. It all came down to this meeting: would I live to fight another day, or would Tony Loco Tony be true to form and lose his mind, blowing a gaping hole in my head, gray matter landing in the cheese Danish the gentleman behind me had just ordered? I felt my hands begin to tremble. I quickly grabbed hold to steady them. Noticing a knife on the table I quickly unwrapped it from its napkin, separating the spoon and fork, placing it un
der my left thigh while keeping my hands below the tabletop. I looked up for the briefest of moments and that’s when I realized the now-terrified waitress had been watching this whole bizarre episode. I stared into her eyes, unsure of what to say. I heard the hoarse words tumble out of my cottony dry mouth, “I’m, I’m fine, the tea is all I need, thank you.” Before she walked away, I conspicuously placed the knife back on the table, pretending to thoroughly wipe it down with the napkin.

  She walked away quickly, though I did feel a little more comfortable knowing that she’d be carefully watching me, the crazy man with Tourette’s by the window—if Tony decided to go jailhouse, she’d notice and call 911 immediately. Not that it would matter because neither the cops nor even a comic book superhero would beat a bullet to my head. That is, if I didn’t beat Tony to the punch.

  Tony did not disappoint anyone inside that restaurant; heads nearly snapped in his direction as he strolled in like a king meeting his court jesters. He was dressed like Robert Plant, twenty-five years in the past. He wore a floppy white cowboy hat with a colorful peacock band and matching feathers protruding from its side. In the center of the ridiculous hat he pinned two three-inch solid gold crossed .45-caliber pistols; beige leather pants flared at his ankles, which I knew was for easy access to his pistol. His gold belt buckle was the size of a turkey platter and loaded with diamonds, rubies, and sapphires replicating the Cuban national flag. Capping off his ensemble were a silk purple shirt with lavender stripes unbuttoned to the top of his rotund belly, mocha-brown velvet boots—which in all probability contained a “stinger,” what we called a .25-caliber five-shot pistol—and a boot knife. I remember the first time I watched him tool up, surprised at all the armaments he carried. “You never know, hermano, what happens when there’s just you against four pandejos? Always be prepared for that close wet work, daddy.”