Confidential Source Ninety-Six

by C. S. 96

  Tony was fuming. He stood up and looked at the crowd of employees, now gathered in a tight little huddle near the kitchen. Suddenly all of them quickly looked away and began to studiously focus on the food to a degree that for a Denny’s felt almost suspicious.

  Tony, doing his best Tony Montana impression, began slowly walking out. He pulled a two-inch-thick wad of bills out of his pocket, balling up a twenty-dollar bill, tossing it over his shoulder, then another twenty, and another, till he exited the restaurant, one I’d never be coming back to. In a loud voice he said, “What, we can’t have a fucking conversation, that not allowed in here? Family friendly? MI PUTO CULO, HA! CHUPAME EL BICHO! You fucking people heading right to the incinerators just don’t know it yet, PEDAZO DE MINERRANDS! You all can go fuck yourselves, dying your little lives here making motherfuckin’ pennies, BUNCH’A PUTA PENDEJOS!”

  I followed with my head down.

  We walked about three blocks, away from any cops that might’ve been called to the restaurant. I could see Tony was conflicted. Gone was that wild jump in his step, that air of invincibility.

  Was Tony actually worried?

  He had plenty of reason to be. He was now a man without protection. Once his crew found out he was being watched, they’d all jump ship like the rats they were. Once they found out the Beltráns were dispatching an army of fanatical killing machines to wipe out Tony and all who worked for him, they’d leave the state, some even the country.

  The moment I saw the concern in Tony’s face was the moment I knew I was built for this new life.

  Tony agreed that we would separate for a while. He said he’d have to cash out some of his assets to pay back the Beltráns and then explain to them it was getting too hot and he needed to lay low for a while.

  I pretended to have second thoughts—if this ship is going down I’m going down with the captain sort of nonsense. But then he said something that startled me.

  “Listen, poppolitto. We can’t trust these… cops,” he spit the word out as if it were a hot load of venom, “especially these townie putas makin’ that white man’s welfare all for the sake a carrying that fuckin’ badge and gun.” He spat on the ground. “I don’t trust they won’t get to the judge and come up with some other booty charges sending you up for thirty years. So what about this? The United States has no extradition agreement with the Mexican government. We fucked up big-time with the Beltráns, but they always liked you. What say I give you $125,000 to get set up over there, then I’ll send you another $250,000 once you’re settled, and the debt I pay back to the Beltráns you don’t have to worry about—I’ll give you a pass on that.”

  He was giving me a pass on money he owed? I wanted to laugh.

  He continued, “This way you become our conduit there as opposed to here, shipping the material across the border, the Beltráns will go for that, sabe? Less loads they’ll lose on the border crossings…”

  I held out my hands. “Wait a minute, Tony. What about my family? I don’t want to raise my kids in Mexico. Plus, we’re not Mexican citizens, we’d have to live there behind bribes and the relationships the Beltráns have with the government. That could change as fast as the wind changes direction, you know that.”

  “I’ll watch over Inez and the kids.” This he said with the tone of an old paternal grandpa, the patriarch of the family he cared for so very deeply.

  My blood began to boil. Right up to the very end this prick was scheming. Inez had always suspected he had a thing for her—and now he wasn’t even trying to hide it. I had to make him think my decision to stay was reasoned carefully, the pros and cons thoroughly weighed.

  I turned away from him, appearing to contemplate his plan. I was startled by how naïve Tony actually thought I was, and it added fuel to the fire raging inside of me.

  After a long pause of false reasoning I slowly shook my head, “no.” “Inez will never go for it. She’ll want to come with me and bring the kids and I’m not putting her through a life of hell. I’m going to ride this out. The lawyer I have is an ex-prosecutor and he assures me the case is over. They’re not coming after any of us on some trumped-up new charges—that’s you being paranoid. They have nothing on us. We’ll be fine, okay? Right now you get in touch with the Beltráns and give them the paperwork. Tell them that we’re shutting down for no more than a few weeks. I’m going to find out through my lawyer if the feds have anything at all they can leverage against us. I need to find out if Raul gave them anything. But, Tony—do not go after Raul. If you do, they’ll start questioning me for the hit behind his treachery in Utah, and after this arrest, do we really need a murder rap following us as well? Just cool out, talk to Hector, see if he got anything out of Raul. I’ll be in touch in a couple a days.”

  Tony acquiesced. What choice did he have?

  He began walking away then stopped, turning to me excitedly. “Roman. Holy shit! I have an idea how we can get back some of the money we owe the Beltráns without actually going out of pocket for it, and it’ll buy us some time. Fuck me, maricone, why didn’t I think of this earlier?”

  I knew whatever the idea was bouncing around his head like so many loose screws, nuts, and bolts, it was not going to be some easy pickup and transport, or he’d have one of our couriers do it. But I was glad to see he was ready to unknowingly set up his own sting operation. I was back within his trust, and I had him in the palm of my hand—for now.

  I would’ve laughed at the insane request then cried if an amazing idea hadn’t presented itself behind what I could only describe as the stupidest request the man had ever suggested, and Tony Loco Tony was full of them. He told me that three days ago a car was confiscated at the San Ysidro border crossing where a number of kilos were found inside its airbags; however, they missed another twenty kilos of uncut cocaine hidden inside the back two tires of a beat-up Nissan Sentra, and he wanted me to set up a team, jump the fence at the militaristically fortified facility, and recover the cocaine.

  The San Ysidro Port of Entry connected San Diego to Tijuana, Mexico, and is, by far, the busiest, most guarded and watched border crossing in the world.

  Tony laughed; back was his manic bounce, the quick hand movements, the rough excitable grab and shaking of my shoulders. There I was, Roman, his surrogate son all over again, the only one he trusted enough that would even consider going on this suicide mission.

  I told Tony that I’d need to survey the area and come up with a plan. “I think I know how to do this, but it’s no smash-and-grab. I’ll need to pick my own men. You get word to the Beltráns that we’re going to try and recover it.”

  He moved in to hug me and said, “We going to be all right, Roman. We back, and there ain’t no one out there gonna stop us now!” Tony started to dance around slowly, pretend-swinging his dance partner in a ’70s hustle movie.

  I laughed, backed away, and said, “I’ll get started on this. I’ll be in touch.”

  We parted ways. I looked back and the fool was still dancing in the street. There was no demarcation line in the man’s psyche differentiating sanity from insanity. Tony lived with a false sense of security based on his own delusional mind that made it impossible for him to fear anything. But, as I would learn happens to most street-smart and devious people in the two decades of undercover work I was embarking upon, all the people harboring that sense of security while living a dangerous, drugs-driven life—all the ones I sniffed out, anyway—would eventually fall prey to their complacency.

  And just like that I received a call from Tony later that night. I didn’t want to pick up the call, but I had to pretend that we were still on solid ground, and I was truly planning the most reckless heist in the history of theft. Pretending to be woken up from the call, I whispered groggily into the phone, “Hello?”

  He mumbled something. I could tell he was high on his blow. “Roman, poppy, I woke you? Oh man, I’m sorry, daddy, I didn’t wake up the little mejos, did I?” Tony showed great love and affection to me when he was jacked up on
cocaine and bourbon.

  He didn’t let me answer, all motored up. “I just want you to know you’re the only one I trust, and you the one gonna run this operation once we get through all this bullshit. I’m gonna take a step backwards and relax a bit, get out of the day to day, you know I’m getting too old for this!” He laughed and slurred and laughed some more. He cleared his throat and said, “Listen, that thing we was planning over there at Ysidro. Well, I talked to the brothers about it and they didn’t think it was such a good idea, so we gonna put that on hold a while.”

  And just like that the line went dead.

  Burning Down the House

  For the next two days I remained at home waiting for my phone to ring. Though I knew Tony had bought everything I told him, he was still—always—a wild card. And there was also Hector to contend with. With the information I gave him about Raul, I knew Tony wanted him dead. But certainly Hector wasn’t about to allow me to send Raul to his untimely death. Needless to say, while waiting for that call from the feds I slept in my downstairs family room well-fortified with three guns and plenty of ammunition.

  And then my phone rang—one of the burners Tony knew nothing about.

  The coded message I was to receive, which Chris gave to me before I left Sevier County, was easy to remember. A man would say he was calling from a bank in San Diego, which was the signal I was talking to a customs agent from the San Diego field office. Then he would give me a number of an alleged account I had at the bank with the message that there seemed to be a problem with the account. The account number would start with two zeros, the next set of numbers was the address; then he would tell me his name, which was the street where we were to meet, and finally he would ask if there was a better time to call, give me a time, and that was the time we would meet.

  I took all the information down, and at eleven that morning I was on my way to San Diego.

  I left two hours earlier than I normally would so I’d be able to decipher if I were being followed by one of Tony’s PIs, one of Hector’s hitters, or, worse, a carload of them. Once I determined I was clean I headed to San Diego’s National City neighborhood—or, as it was known, “Nasty City”—to meet an agent, oddly enough, at another Denny’s. Chock-full of predicate felons, wanted men and women, hookers walking the track, illegals running numbers, and dealers hawking every high imaginable, the place felt like it was fortified with more illegal weapons than the entire LAPD had in its arsenal—it was a gangbanger’s paradise. I’d done many deals in this neighborhood, and I was always strapped.

  I parked my car on the roof of an enclosed parking lot about four blocks away from the proposed meet. I wanted to get a 360-degree view of the area—alleys, main streets, the quickest and also the most secluded ways to and from my spot. The last thing I needed was to run into anyone I knew, even peripherally. I was starting to think like an undercover operative, trying to enjoy the cat-and-mouse of it all. It was exciting to have a chance to channel my instincts for good.

  The moment I walked into the mildly busy restaurant I saw him, way in the back, facing the entrance across the dining area away from the bathrooms, close enough to the hot, busy kitchen to keep customers away, and most important away from any windows; the exact place I would’ve chosen had I called this meeting.

  I truly hoped he’d understand the risk and magnitude of danger an undertaking like this was going to be. What I could give the feds could potentially tear apart a billion-dollar-a-year entity and destroy the lives and careers of many monsters. I was as close to the point of the spear in the world of narcotics smuggling as this guy or any of his buddies would ever get, and if he didn’t realize that, I’d have to show him.

  He was watching me as I slowly made my way to the table, as nonchalant as my pounding heart allowed. He gave me the slightest of head nods.

  I sat down facing him. At first glance he looked like he was on his lunch break in between cutting down redwoods up north. He wore a red plaid shirt, worn dungarees, and, just in case there were any doubters that he was anything other than a blue-collar dude meeting up with an old buddy for lunch, a yellow hard hat sat atop the table. He had shoulder-length dirty blond hair, a full beard of blonde curls, and he was as big as a redwood at about six-feet-four and close to three hundred pounds.

  He smiled, did not shake my hand because that would indicate a first meet to anyone watching. Instead, he gave me a perfunctory slap on the shoulder as normal friends might do and said, “Rome, man, how’ve you been? Long time, brother.” On the table in front of him was a newspaper and he quickly indicated the top of the paper with a gentle tap of his finger. There scribbled in legible ink it read, Tim Dowling.

  I smiled and went along with the game, “Tim-Tim, my brother from another mother. How are you? I’ve been well.”

  “Inez, the kids—all good?” he asked.

  “Same old, same old. Kids are getting big, man. Inez started her new job at the clinic…” The conversation went on, more of the same theatrics to create the appearance of two old friends hooking up just in case Tony had a private investigator glued to me. After a few minutes, Tim asked, in a low voice, if I thought we were okay to chat.

  I nodded. “We’re good. I got clearance from Inez and the boss to take the afternoon off.”

  Then I noticed Tim relax, just enough to focus on the conversation we were about to have. Though his eyes kept surveying the restaurant for any signs of a threat, his shoulders sagged. He began assessing me, smiling, almost amused, and I’d find out why soon enough. He checked out the Daytona I was wearing, smiled, and gestured to it. “Business must be as good as ever.” I shrugged.

  “I feel like I know you so well,” he said. “I do, in a way; we’ve been on you and your organization for over two years. I’m sure Chris briefed you on all of that.”

  “Oh yeah, and then some.” I found myself laughing as I realized that the man sitting in front of me was one of those agents I’d lose, and occasionally give the finger while doing so. “There’s no hard feelings, are there?” I asked, a little guarded.

  He laughed. Watching me like a kid on Christmas morning ogling his favorite gift, just dying to take it outside for a spin. “No way,” he said. “It’s meetings like this that make the long car rides where we’d follow you out into the sticks worth it. I wanted to meet you first, sort of ease you into this slowly. I figured you might get a little raised up if you walked into a room full of guys scrutinizing every inch of you.”

  In order to avoid coming off like too much of a fool, I apologized for my finger-flipping antics, and I also explained why I’d dressed like a Hollywood pimp. “I don’t want anyone to think I’m showboating or anything like that,” I said. “This is the way that I normally dress to fit in with my colleagues. If I were to leave my house in a baseball cap, sunglasses, windbreaker, a pair of dungarees, and someone was following me, it would get back to Tony very quickly.”

  Tim assured me there was no need to explain myself. “We’re all psyched to have you on our team.… Well, maybe one of them has a little beef, but he kinda has a good reason to.” This time he was laughing hard, as if at some inside joke.

  “Well, can you give me a heads-up so when I meet whoever this guy is it’s not too uncomfortable and I know what I’m walking into?”

  He laughed again, threw his hands up like it was out of his control. “It’s nothing. So, like I said, I wanted to meet you first, having worked this case the longest. From here we’re going to a satellite office we have out in the country. We’ll debrief you there and see how we can start working together. We’ll take two cars, if we lose each other I’ll be on the phone. Did you lock in that number I called you from?”

  “No, I have it memorized,” I said.

  “Excellent. From now on you’ll have to memorize everything. I’m sure Chris explained to you the scrutiny you’re going to be under with Tony.”

  I could only hope that all this guy’s federal friends were as on top of their jobs as Tim was.


  I followed his pickup truck and forty-five minutes later we arrived in a desolate wooded area in central San Diego County—Ramona, California. There were old copper and silver mines, miles and miles of horse and cattle farms, stately wine vineyards that suddenly melded into avocado and citrus orchards, the air held a sweet aroma that, when combined with the lush colors of the indigenous flora, gave the whole ride a surrealistic feeling, and it was stunning. I couldn’t stop smiling. In fact, I hadn’t smiled like that since my son Mathew was born, and before that my other three children. The metaphor was not lost on me; I was moving from a bleak career of being indebted to the scariest man I’d ever come in contact with into a new life.

  We headed into the valley’s foothills that fed us into the base of the Laguna Mountains, from which we drove skyward for another fifteen minutes. I understood why the feds would choose this location: It was relatively close to the Mexican border, surrounded on two sides with mountainous terrain, so secluded that it would be impossible for anyone to follow you without being noticed.

  We crawled on a dirt road up a mountain until it seemed impossible to drive any farther, as we were blocked by a stand of soaring white pine and cypress trees. But there, we turned off onto what I can only describe as a deer path with outcroppings of rock and heavy moss. A path that, without question, was not designed to be driven on with a Mercedes 500 SEL. Finally, at the end of this ever-tapering path we came upon the first signs of life—locked gates of chain-link fencing and a sign in big red block letters that read: “PRIVATE PROPERTY, KEEP OUT,” indicating to the most adventurous and curious of hikers, don’t even think about going beyond this point.

  Tim got out, unlocked the gates, and drove in as I followed. Once we were beyond the gate, he got out and locked it back up, giving me a smile and thumbs-up as he passed my car again.