Confused, the group's leader—a man named Gaspar Huerta—decided to go with the coyote who had the biggest truck. The man they picked also looked to be the richest of all the coyotes they had seen, which made them think that he knew what he was doing. But instead of taking them to the border, the man took them to a ranch outside the city. It was full of armed men who took everything they had and separated them from each other. El Chango didn't know what had happened to his friends, just that he was taken to this house the same day as Ned and told he was going to work, but nobody explained what that work was. Because they had given him a gun, he was scared about what that work might be.
Ned agreed that the men they were with were criminals, and that no matter what they planned for them, it was almost certain to be very dangerous.
* * *
Even though he had tried to prepare himself, Agent Tovar still couldn't help but laugh a little inside when he stepped off the plane in Minneapolis. He had long wondered if the people there really would sound like the characters on Fargo, and when they actually did, he was delighted. He knew it was wrong to mock people, even to himself, so he just thought of it as enjoying their regional eccentricities. A native of Brownsville, Texas, he had long found the Philadelphia accent funny, but the Minnesotans really put them to shame. Though most of the agents at the office were tough or dour, using only gallows humor and pranks to break the tension, Tovar was different, almost an oddity in his ability to stay detached. That quality endeared him to Meloni as much as it unnerved other agents. And in that way that was typically Tovar's, he was thinking not about the case, but whether or not he could sweet-talk his way into a free rental-car upgrade.
Things got more serious when he arrived at the hospital to interview Dario Lambretti. Chedoke House seemed like any kind of normal outpatient facility, except for the high, razor-wire-topped fence and guard towers. Once he was past the front security desk, a uniformed and armed guard took him through the halls on his way to the interview room. Throughout the center, men who he took to be patients milled about in comfortable clothes, and a few uniformed orderlies—who he noted were all Hispanic—quietly attended to their tasks. By institutional standards, the place seemed tranquil, even comfortable, with not much of the tension and coldness one feels when visiting a prison. It really did feel to him like a place of rehabilitation, not incarceration.
The guards led Tovar to what looked like a very ordinary corporate conference room with no windows. Inside was a morose-looking man with round horn-rimmed glasses and very short hair. He barely acknowledged Tovar as he entered. Tovar knew it was Dr. Hesse-Grimwald, the man he had spoken with on the phone. Hesse-Grimwald was an expert on drug-induced psychosis and was a leading voice in experimental rehabilitation methods. When he finally looked up from the papers he was reading, he glared at Tovar from over his glasses. “You know that Lambretti is a very advanced case, don't you?” he said with an accusatory tone. “He has been put through questioning dozens of times, and nothing he has ever said has stood up in court. I can't see why you would want to talk to him at all.”
Tovar sighed. He told the doctor he understood, that he had a cousin, a close one, about his age who was a heroin addict.
“They are not the same,” the doctor snapped. “Heroin is a narcotic. Meth is a stimulant. They are completely different. They have different effects on the mind and body. If you are not the right man for this . . .”
Tovar assured him he was. The doctor reluctantly picked up the receiver of the phone in the middle of the table. “Geraldo, send him in.”
Two orderlies escorted a man in jeans and a denim shirt into the room. He was thin and spent-looking, but nowhere near as badly off as the toothless, hollow-cheeked pictures Tovar had seen of him. There was a vacant appearance in his eyes and he had a tendency to fiddle with things, but otherwise Lambretti looked very much like someone you'd encounter on the street and barely notice. The agent shook his bony, unsure hand and made some ineffective small talk about the weather. Sensing that the two men were eager to get the whole interview over with as quickly as possible, Tovar stormed right in. “How do you know Ned Aiken?”
“Sons of Satan back in Springfield. I was a full patch and I was told to look after him and another kid,” Lambretti recalled. “The other guy was an idiot, but Crash Aiken was a good kid.”
“Really? Did he ever get into trouble?”
Lambretti smiled, but it betrayed no happiness or mirth. “If I had a dollar for every time,” he sighed, “I'd probably buy some more meth.” Then he laughed. “Like I told you guys, I saw him kill a guy—it was an accident, really, a fight that got out of hand—and I helped him get rid of the body.” He made a splashing noise and gestured with his hands. “It's at the bottom of Springfield Harbor . . . or at least it was. Those suckers and bottom-feeders will tear you up pretty good.”
They discussed the circumstances of the death, which seemed entirely plausible to Tovar, as did the breakdown and ultimate disposal of the body. Lambretti said he did not know the victim's identity, nor could he put specific details together like time or date. They also talked about the raid that took them all down, but Lambretti apologized for not being able to remember large chunks of what had happened.
“Tell me about Ned Aiken.”
“What, as a person? As a biker?” it was clear Lambretti was trying to recall everything. Hesse-Grimwald had told Tovar that it was part of Lambretti's therapy to recall as much as he could about his past truthfully. “Some of the guys thought he was stupid, but he wasn't really. He was just unsure of how to go about things. Ned was brought in by his uncle—who was something of a fuck-up in his own right—and when he was offed right away, everybody wanted a piece of Crash. He worked hard, but always seemed a bit, you know, ill at ease.”
They spoke for about a half-hour about various aspects of Ned's life and character. Tovar asked the same questions over again and crossed a few over to see if the overlapping answers checked out. Everything Lambretti told him jibed with what he already knew. Lambretti apologized frequently for having holes in his memory, and Tovar assured him it was okay.
By the time they were through, Tovar assembled a pretty well-defined picture of Aiken's character. He seemed something of a babe in the woods, naturally intelligent, but unschooled in the ways of the world and especially crime. He seemed a passive character, but in possession of a survival instinct a rat would envy.
* * *
Ned and El Chango were sitting together on the ranch house's front porch nervously waiting for a sign they had not been forgotten about. Ned guessed it was close to noon when three casually dressed young men headed in their direction. One of them, taller than usual for the area but still shorter than Ned, approached them. He was wearing sunglasses with mirrored lenses. “Gringo, Chango, you are coming with us,” he ordered them. “He led them to a giant Chevy Suburban SUV. It was bright white with blacked-out windows and elaborate pinstripe decals. Ned could hear heavily synthesized Ranchera music from inside before he they even opened the doors.
El Vaquero Loco was sitting in the third row of seats. One of the men who had brought them to this place joined him. Ned and El Chango were instructed to take the second row, while the tall man took the seat next to the driver, the youngest man of the group, who turned down the volume on the stereo. El Vaquero cleared his throat and then made an announcement. “Today is your first day on the job,” he said pompously. “What I see today can have lasting effects on your future. Be smart, do what we say and you could become very, very rich. Otherwise, things will not go so good for you.”
The other men in the SUV began to laugh. Ned noticed that they were taking dirt roads from the ranch, but the area around them was growing increasingly populated. He tensed up when he saw a state police checkpoint at a bustling country crossroad, and he was surprised to see the big, ostentatious car simply waved through.
The man in the sunglasses spoke to them as though nothing had happened. “Your job today is
to make some deliveries,” he said. “Take a small package to who we tell you and get a small package back—very simple, even for you, El Chango!”
Everyone in the car laughed, expect Ned and El Chango. Ned looked over at him, in part to judge what his own reaction should look like. El Chango did not look good. He was staring intently at nothing. There were beads of sweat on his face even though the air-conditioning had cooled the inside of the big truck. He was visibly shaking when the Suburban stopped at the next intersection.
Ned looked around outside. The Suburban had stopped at a roadside melon stand. From his own experience, Ned knew that many people in Sonora really value farm-fresh food, and he had come to enjoy it as well. Watermelons were particularly appreciated in the hot, desert region. There were three men at the stand. Two were sitting, and the other had approached the SUV to speak with the man in the front passenger seat.
As the window rolled down, El Chango pulled his handgun from under his seat and pointed it at the head of the tall man in the front seat. He squeezed the trigger. Nothing but the tap of metal on metal. He swung the gun around and aimed at the driver. He pulled again with the same result. Realizing that his gun wasn't loaded, El Chango dropped it, opened his door and ran, stumbling when he hit the ground.
The driver and the tall one quickly ran after him. The melon-stand guys ran in the other direction. Since both sides of the road were bounded by steep, scrub-covered hills, El Chango had no choice but to run along the road the way that they had come. His pursuers bounded after him. Suddenly, the driver stopped, raised a handgun, and fired. He missed. El Chango ran more frantically, with his hands on the back of his head. The tall character stopped running and fired. El Chango fell to the ground. As he was stumbling back to his feet, he was hit again. Ned could see from how his neck snapped that it was a headshot and realized that El Chango was not going to get up ever again.
The driver turned and returned to the car. He stuck his head in El Chango's still-open door and asked El Vaquero Loco what he should do with the body. “Leave it there, put a sign on it,” his boss ordered in an annoyed tone. “And close the fucking door, the noise is bothering me.”
The driver then opened the truck's tailgate, and took out a bright green sheet of cardboard, some string, and a Sharpie. He wrote something on the cardboard, then took it over to El Chango's body and tied it to his finger.
As he was returning, the two men in the backseat were joking about how stupid Mayans were and how El Vaquero Loco had bet the other guy that El Chango would never work out and that he now owed him 100 pesos. When the other two men were back in the car and the laughter died down, El Vaquero Loco asked Ned: “Okay, El Espagueti, what did El Chango do wrong?” All the men laughed again.
Ned did his best to grin. “He did not do what you said for him to do.”
El Vaquero Loco grinned widely. “Yes, that is exactly right.” They sped off for Nogales. The guys in the front seat waved as they passed by the out-of-breath watermelon salesmen, sitting by the side of the road.
* * *
Meloni had called O'Malley and Tovar in for a discussion about the state of the case. He had read their reports from their respective trips and other investigations and wanted to brainstorm before making his next move. He especially wanted to hear from O'Malley. She had not told him anything about her recent investigations into Aiken's and Andersson's pasts. It was almost like, he feared, she was conducting a separate investigation. Over coffee and biscotti, they discussed what they already knew. Meloni opened the session. “So what do we know about Ned Aiken?”
“Not a whole hell of a lot,” said O'Malley. Meloni wondered if she was withholding information.
“Oh, come on,” Meloni encouraged. “We know he joined the Sons and bailed on them after the raid. We know he had a terrible job and was useless at it. We also know he found his own job, a better job, and did quite well. What about his boss, Andersson?”
“Andersson's story totally checks out,” said Tovar, oblivious of the tension between the other two officers. “State department, local cops, immigration, I have been back and forth over this guy's records and there is nothing to indicate he has done anything wrong.”
O'Malley smirked. “Except that he just happened to employ a guy who disappeared the same day his agency contact was murdered, watched two people get murdered at a conference, and took possession of a small child that we were told had been in company with our missing perp.”
“Suspect,” Meloni corrected. “But you are right, Andersson can't be as clean as his record indicates—it's impossible to do big business in Eastern Europe without some connections. He's smart, but I'm sure something will come out if we look under enough rocks.”
“Yeah, and Sophia didn't instill me with a ton of confidence on that front, either,” O'Malley answered. “I could see Aiken wanting to give her to Andersson—he's a family man with good standing in the community—if he cared about the girl at all, he would know to drop her with the boss.”
“Indeed, but why would Ailken care about the girl? How did he come in contact with her in the first place?” Tovar interjected. “It's clear she was being sent over here against her will . . .”
“But why?”
“Lots of perverts out there,” Meloni said with a quick glance at O'Malley. “You should know that better than either of us.”
O'Malley was angry that her new boss would bring up her bungled child porn case. “Okay, let's say that's why she was kidnapped and smuggled,” she said, trying not to sound annoyed. “What would Aiken be doing with that element—he's a Midwestern biker not an international man of mystery.”
“A former Midwestern biker who just happened to work in shipping and receiving for a company that contracts work all over Eastern Europe,” Meloni pointed out. “He had almost unlimited access to bad guys when you really think about it—anyone could have made him an offer.”
Tovar agreed. “He certainly was ambitious,” he said. “Raced through the ranks of the Sons in record time then re-established himself in the legit world, without our help, while under protection.”
O'Malley snorted. “Maybe we gave him too much help.”
After a brief discussion about who Ned knew and how, Meloni brought up the key piece of evidence he thought could connect all the threads together—the Indian.
O'Malley agreed. “Bikers often love their bikes, and he put a lot of money and effort into that one.”
“But he gave it up the second he got a luxury car,” Tovar pointed out.
“And stole it back soon thereafter,” O'Malley one-upped him.
“Yeah, not the brightest plan,” Tovar said. “Not many people can even start, let alone ride, one of those things, so he very likely did steal it. If he still had the key, why did he get rid of it in the first place?”
Meloni agreed. “And the bike was ancient. Those things always need parts—Tovar, can you track down all the Indian parts wholesalers and retailers, see if anyone has bought anything for that particular make and model?” Tovar agreed.
“You're right,” O'Malley said. “He is an idiot. Keep in mind that he's the guy who tried to flee into Canada in a rental car. With a woman.”
That comment struck Meloni with another possible line of inquiry. He had forgotten about Aiken's attempted escape into Canada. And he had forgotten about the woman. Ned wasn't alone in that rental car. After questioning she'd been deported to some obscure Eastern European country . . . he tried hard to think of the name. He had to track her down. He'd put Tovar on it because of his experience with international investigations. O'Malley would look for the bike.
* * *
At the edge of the city, the Suburban pulled into a Pemex gas station. Pemex was the government-run petroleum company and their green-and-red filling stations were everywhere in Mexico. Ned instinctively glanced at the car's gas gauge, it was three-quarters full.
El Vaquero Loco handed Ned a small paper bag. “Here, take this to the man inside; make sure
you give it to Ivan, not Pedro,” he told him. “You, Guason, go with him.” The guy in the front passenger seat, the tall one who had shot El Chango, nodded and got out of the car. Ned idly wondered why his nickname was regional slang for “lazy.” As instructed, Ned got out of the car and walked with Guason to the gas station's store.
Inside there were two men: one sitting and reading a magazine, the other manning the cash register. Guason slapped Ned on the back and told him to get on with it. Ned looked at the man behind the till, whose left hand was missing, and asked if he was Ivan. The man just sighed, raised his good hand and pointed at the man with the magazine. Ivan looked up from his magazine and asked Ned what he wanted. Ned handed him the bag. Ivan looked surprised, and looked inside the bag. He made a questioning look at Ned and looked like he was about to speak when he caught sight of El Guason. He then smiled and nodded. He took the paper bag into a back room with a door marked “Employees Only,” returned with a plastic shopping bag full of Mexican currency, and handed it to Ned. Ned thanked him and Ivan laughed. Pedro sighed.
Ned and El Guason left the little store and started toward the Suburban. El Guason spotted a pair of cops sitting in a bright white Sonora state police car behind the Suburban and, to Ned's utter confusion, walked over to them, motioning Ned to come with him. The plastic shopping bag was translucent and stuffed with cash. There was no way Ned could hide it. “Hello, officers,” El Guason said to the cop on the passenger side. “You know why I like a fat cop?”
The officer, who was pretty heavy, was angered and obviously insulted but also intimidated, and just grunted. El Guason answered anyway. “Because he's always hungry and he can't chase you,” he said. “Espagueti, give these nice officers something for their time.” Ned didn't know exactly how much money he was supposed to give the cops, so he just pulled a bill out of the bag. It was a 500-peso note. He handed it directly to the fat cop who just nodded.
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