The Hidden Light of Mexico City

by Carmen Amato

  '

  Her name was Sonia Velardo and she had been a senior teller at a Banamex branch office until her son Ramon got involved with a gang and began using cocaine. When she stole money from the bank to support his habit she got fired. About six months ago her son’s friends had needed someone with her skills. Since then she’d worked at the office above the hardware store moving money between accounts and filling out money orders. She didn’t seem to know that she was dealing with accounts held by the Minister of Public Security or that she was working for the El Toro cartel; she’d never met any of them, never gone to any meetings. When Eddo asked her if the office was called Banco Limitado she said yes, but that the name was like a joke and no one said it very often.

  For three hours Eddo and Sonia traveled, walking and changing buses and finally taking a taxi to the small resort hotel south of Anahuac where he’d left the SUV and had a room booked in a different name. He was sure they weren’t followed. Once in the room Eddo called Tomás. Sonia sat on the small sofa, obviously unsure whether to regard him as savior or kidnapper. She made no attempt to get away from him but Eddo kept the Glock visible just in case.

  “What’s your name?” she asked, her voice shaking a little, as he hung up the phone.

  Eddo was ready for the question. “Reynoldo,” he said.

  Sonia blinked and her eyes slid to his backpack, which now held the laptop and folders taken out of the Banco Limitado.

  “What would you like to eat?” Eddo asked.

  She looked at him blankly. He ordered for both of them from room service.

  He turned on the television while they waited for the food to come. A Nuevo Laredo station showed local news, all horoscopes and fluff.

  The food came on two trays. The waiter put them on a table in front of the sofa. Eddo let Sonia sit there and pulled out the desk chair to sit across from her. He was ravenous but after three bites he was ready to throw up.

  Eddo put down his fork. “Sonia, tell me again what you did in the bank.”

  She shrugged around a forkful of rice. “I made sure all the transactions looked just like a real bank.”

  “How many accounts?”

  “In the whole bank?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sixteen.” Sonia ate in small bites as if she had a hard time chewing. “Including yours.”

  The central bank data had shown four accounts each in Hugo’s name and that of his son Reynoldo. The other eight accounts might be connected to Hugo or to another El Toro affiliated operation; something for Vasco to deal with. “And you handled them all?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did the money get into the accounts?”

  “Money orders. Or wire transfers.” Her eyes slid to her plate.

  “Who sent the money orders?”

  “You did.”

  Eddo didn’t say anything for a few minutes. Sonia finished her food. She was so thin that the veins on her hands and forearms were like blue cords.

  “You moved the money between the accounts in the bank.” Eddo made it a statement but Sonia nodded as if he’d asked a question. “And then moved it out of the bank. Always within four or five days.”

  Sonia swallowed hard, the veins in her neck pulsing.

  “Where did the money go, Sonia?” Eddo asked.

  “Just money orders,” she said.

  “To whom?”

  “I don’t remember,” she whispered.

  “Always the same place?” Eddo demanded.

  “No.” Sonia wrung her hands, bony fingers pressing down on those fragile veins. “Different. I don’t remember.”

  “How did you know where to send the money each time?”

  “They told me,” she faltered and her eyes darted to the backpack again.

  “You wrote it all down, didn’t you?” Eddo reasoned slowly. “It would have been a lot of places, seeing as all the accounts got emptied at least once a week.”

  “No.”

  She started to sob, frightened now as well as confused. Maybe once she had been attractive, but now she was wraithlike and broken. She covered her face with her hands and rocked as she sat on the sofa. “I have to go back. My son . . . my son needs me.”

  Eddo put the trays in the hall. Sonia looked at him hopefully as he came back through the doorway then cried again as he double-locked the door behind him.

  “Tell me what happened today, Sonia,” he said.

  She nodded, now trying to please him, obviously worried that she’d done things with Reynoldo de la Madrid’s money without his permission. “The man who came in said he could shut down the office unless we gave him money.”

  “We?”

  “Rico was there.”

  “Rico?” Eddo frowned. When Sotos Bild went in they’d been sure she was alone.

  “The tailor. He . . . he helped me with the bank. And Ramon.”

  “Ramon? Your son lives in the bank?”

  “In a room . . . over the tailor shop.”

  “And Rico stayed with him? Got cocaine for him?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was barely a whisper.

  Eddo digested this information. Ramon was probably little more than a hostage, kept close by and filled with cocaine so that Sonia would continue to use her banking skills for the cartel. “So finish telling me about what happened today.”

  Sonia swallowed convulsively a few times. Eddo got some tissues out of the bathroom and thrust them at her, feeling the stress beginning to break him down.

  “People came . . . with the usual papers.” She swallowed again. “Then in the afternoon a man came up who wasn’t anyone who’d come before.”

  Sotos Bild. “And what did he do?”

  “He knew the password and I thought he was like the others.” Sonia wiped her eyes. “Bringing papers or money. He was nice at first. Made some jokes. I had fun talking to him.” She looked wistful and Eddo had a glimpse inside a life that had fallen into an abyss; subservient to cocaine, locked in a one room office, frightened by the cartel henchmen who passed through and probably used her when they had nothing better. “But then he said that the federales knew about the bank,” she went on. “He said if we gave him money he would make sure the federales looked somewhere else and left the bank alone. But we had to pay him right now.”

  Eddo went cold. “You’re sure that’s what he said?”

  “Yes.” She cried again, but softly, as if she was too drained to make more of an effort. “He had a phone in his hand the whole time. I think it was on and someone was listening. When Rico said no, the man said that the bank would change hands. That’s the way he said it. Change hands. But I don’t think the people who came were his friends like he thought they were.”

  “Go on.” Eddo didn’t want to believe what he knew she was going to tell him. Rage battled with relief that Sotos Bild had never known his true name or identity. Or had he?

  “We heard fighting in the street and someone said the password but Rico wouldn’t let them in.” Sonia talked in between soft sobs. “But they broke down the door and a man with a gun came in. Rico managed to barricade the door again but the man shot him and the man with the phone, too. Then you came in and shot him.”

  Eddo rummaged through Sotos Bild’s backpack, coming up with his wallet, bottles of water, a spare shirt, and two cell phones. One was the phone Eddo had taken out of the dead man’s hand, the other was the phone with the radio feature he’d seen Sotos Bild use during the week. The call log of the first phone showed three calls to a cell number Eddo didn’t recognize. He hit redial and called the number again. It wasn’t in service. On impulse, Eddo rifled through the wallet, finding a few pesos, a piece of paper with the mystery cell number on it, and a spare SIM card that could be inserted into either cell phone to change the number.

  “Fuck,” Eddo swore.

  Cross and double cross. All that untraceable money had been too much to resist. But once Sotos Bild had shown the rival gang the bank, he’d become a liability.

&
nbsp; Eddo sucked in air and paced the hotel room. Sonia stopped crying and was motionless. For the first time Eddo noticed that her hair was streaked with gray. Her feet in their flat brown sandals were dirty from all the walking they’d done. She wore a print blouse and navy skirt and both were old and cheap. Everything the cartel had paid her had probably gone up her son’s nose.

  Or her own. Sonia’s eyes were ringed with shadow and her skin was translucent. She was probably as much an addict as her son.

  She looked up at him. “I have to go back now.”

  “If Ramon’s friends still control things they’ll wonder where you’ve been and how you got out alive,” Eddo said. “They won’t trust you any more and they kill people they don’t trust. If the other gang is in charge they’ll make you tell them everything you know about Banco Limitado and then they’ll kill you for having been part of it. Either way you can’t go back.”

  Sonia’s bony shoulders slumped in despair.

  It was past midnight. Eddo got up, his body sore inside and out, and put a hand on her shoulder. “Get some sleep and we’ll decide what to do in the morning. You take the bed.”

  Sonia crawled into the bed fully clothed and they turned off all the lights except for the one in the bathroom. Eddo sat in the chair, his feet on the sofa and the Glock in his hand.

  He woke Sonia a little after 5:30 am. She looked like hell as she went into the bathroom. Eddo heard her vomit.

  Sonia walked out of the bathroom and gave him a thin smile. “Thank you for not . . .” She indicated the bed.

  “Let’s get you some help, Sonia,” Eddo said.

  Chapter 28

  44Gg449M11: 7s at Site 1, multiple arrangements.

  44Gg449M11: Site 2 interrupted, shipment delays.

  Gustavo Gomez Mazzo considered if there was anything else to say about the firefight at Banco Limitado and decided against it. The bank had been caught in the crossfire of a gang rivalry in Anahuac, which meant either that some upstart didn’t realize he was in El Toro territory or didn’t believe the stories of what happened to people who didn’t respect El Toro. But it was a situation that Chino would deal with as soon as he got back to Mexico. It wasn’t too serious; Gomez Mazzo had lost a few replaceable sicarios and the accountant had disappeared. Her body might turn up, likely raped to death, and maybe it wouldn’t. A new location for Banco Limitado would be up and running in a week or so. He logged off the website, handed the laptop to Chino and got himself a rum cooler. “Your turn.”

  Chino wasn’t so good with computers and it took him almost five minutes to laboriously type in the required information, find the attachment and set up a posting. Gomez Mazzo read over his shoulder, unconsciously bracing himself against the gentle swell of the deck.

  CH5299xyz9: Intruder team @ Site 3 in 5 days.

  “Good workers?” Gomez Mazzo asked.

  “Best.” Chino’s reply was characteristically brief, delivered in his flat, whispery voice.

  “Just have them make it fast,” Gomez Mazzo said. “El Toro doesn’t like going into the city.”

  Chino logged off the site and closed the laptop with almost visible relief. He nodded at Gomez Mazzo and left the main cabin.

  Gomez Mazzo leaned back in his chair and put up his feet. He could hear the happy sounds of his grandchildren in the lounge on the upper deck. Some cartoon marathon with the Saudi children from the yacht three slips down. The breeze carried a slight salt tang and kept the day from being too hot. Later they’d swim in the pool and then go ashore for dinner.

  He’d come a long way from the brickyard in Culiacan and wasn’t done yet. He’d been just 16, with two children and 12 years hauling bricks behind him, when he went north and joined a rip crew stalking the cartel mules who crossed the border with packs of drugs on their backs. He was so scared he pissed his pants that first night, but he’d impressed the leader of the rip crew when they found a group walking north and ambushed them. He was a big, powerful teen, able to kill a man with his bare hands. It was hard work but in one night he made more than a month’s salary from the brickyard. A week later he killed two men with a knife, gutting them with arms made strong hefting sand and stone. When the leader of the rip crew was killed by a gang working for the Colombian cartel that owned the plaza, or smuggling route, Gomez Mazzo struck a deal with the man most likely to become the new leader. Gomez Mazzo would let him keep his penis and he’d let Gomez Mazzo take over the crew. The deal lasted two days and then Gomez Mazzo killed him. Those were the best years, he sometimes thought, the years when he was stronger than anyone else and learning the taste of freedom and power.

  The rip crew grew. Eventually Gomez Mazzo pushed out the Colombians. His organization became known in northeast Mexico for its ruthlessness, mobility, and financial acuity. The specter of the brickworks in Culiacan pushed him hard and Gomez Mazzo moved around restlessly, never staying in one place too long, buying a succession of local officials to ensure his freedom of movement. He became an obsessive money manager. Those within his own organization who tried to cheat were dealt with swiftly. He prized loyalty.

  He earned the name El Toro after he hung a rival’s body from an Osborne Brandy black bull-shaped billboard, a message to the dead man’s adherents carved into his chest. By the time he was 35, Gomez Mazzo controlled all the drug routes in northeast Mexico and was pushing west, into Zetas territory, buying gangs and freelance sicarios and killing with impunity to consolidate his territory. The legend of El Toro was large.

  Chino, the son of a Chinese whore and an unknown Mexican father, had started on a rip crew, too. He’d grown up on the streets of Nuevo Laredo and knew the eastern border area better than anyone Gomez Mazzo had ever met. Chino wasn’t sure how old he was, but Gomez Mazzo guessed he was about 27 or 28, strong and wiry from years of living on the edge of survival.

  Chino ran things on the ground, moving between Anahuac, Nuevo Laredo, and wherever Gomez Mazzo happened to be. The thin man with the papery voice and slanted eyes wasn’t the dealmaker, but the enforcer and the transportation chief. Gomez Mazzo was still in charge but trusted Chino to move the stuff and avoid the free-lance rip crews, to hire gangs to consolidate territory, to get rid of witnesses and the temporary cocaine factories and the rivals who were stupid enough to try and challenge El Toro. To make sure the local officials knew who they worked for.

  If Hh23051955 had a problem, Chino would take care of it.

  The deck moved, just enough to remind Gomez Mazzo where he was. It was a comforting feeling, knowing that he could order the anchor to be raised and head out whenever he wanted. No one else told him where to go, when to get up, what load to shift. There were no brickworks on the water.

  He reached into the cabinet next to his chair and got another rum cooler. He unscrewed the cap and mentally toasted Hh23051955. A man had to move fast to catch fortune in both hands whenever it came flying by, Gomez Mazzo had always believed, and he’d done just that when they’d met at that yacht show. Gomez Mazzo had known who Hugo de la Madrid Acosta was, of course. They were well into the negotiations and a third bottle of brandy when Hugo finally realized that Gomez Mazzo was the notorious El Toro. Realization had spread over the man’s face, yet he didn’t blink. Hugo was all about money and the power. And the woman.

  There were bound to be a few bumps along the way. Hugo’s nattering about who they were recruiting to mule across the border, the occasional person who had to be eliminated--these were all to be expected. But if his partners didn’t lose their nerve, in a year the new president of Mexico would have the army take care of the Zetas and then go back to barracks.

  Leaving El Toro in control of the entire northern half of Mexico.

  Chapter 29

  “The key is this Hermanos Hospitality company,” Vasco said. For the past hour he’d taken notes from the files taken out of Banco Limitado. “Sonia kept busy moving all the account money around, using at least 12 accounts. But according to her code, eventually there’d be a money or
der made out to Hermanos Hospitality.”

  “She said there were 16 accounts,” Eddo said, slumped in his chair at the dining room table. At some point his coffee had gone cold.

  “Eight we knew about from the central bank records,” Vasco confirmed. “Sonia used another four to park money from time to time before moving it on. The other four are registered to different names and don’t seem to be as active. More deposits than withdrawals and not much money. Give me a couple of days on those.”

  “I bet we’re going to see connections between the userids, the fake bank shit, and this company,” Tomás said.

  Eddo nodded, although he was too wrecked to read all the stuff Miguel had printed out. Sonia’s laptop had yielded a treasure trove; one of the five userids, along with the password, had been stored on her browser. When Miguel logged in with Sonia’s userid, BppBB16003, he’d been able to access the page and print out all the postings from all five userids. The same password worked for two of the other userids, CH5299xyz9 and 1612colcol.

  “That Panamanian company Montopa hasn’t shown up so far,” Vasco said. “My guess is they made a mistake early on, letting Montopa touch Hugo’s accounts.”

  “So what are you saying?” Eddo asked. “Montopa is the beginning of the money trail and Hugo and Reynoldo’s accounts are at the end?”

  “The accounts are two steps removed, I’d say.” Vasco stood up and tore a sheet off his pad. “Hermanos Hospitality is the end of the line and the postings are the dialogue along the way.” He left Eddo and Tomás sitting at the dining room table and went into the living room. The sound of Miguel’s fingers tapping a keyboard slowed. Vasco’s voice was heard indistinctly and then the tapping resumed, faster than before. Diego said something and Vasco replied.