“And your men won't?”
“Not with me in command they won't,” Poco Loco said confidently. “All movements require a charismatic leader. Once we are in charge, things will be better, much better.”
Ned, aware that he was in little danger as he seemed to be part of Poco Loco's master plan, changed the subject. “What can I do?” he asked.
“It must have been obvious to a fellow man of the world from the start I had some plans for you,” he said. “I trust the men at the ranch house treated you well?”
Ned nodded.
“Good, good, I instructed them to treat you as they would me,” he said. “When I came to check on you, you seemed well, but somewhat trapped—that's why you got the house.”
“Thank you.”
Poco Loco smiled. “Well, you're not going to need it anymore,” he said. “It's a case of relocation . . . a transfer, if you will.”
“Relocation?”
“Yes, and you will be happy about where it is—Nogales!”
“I'm already in Nogales.”
“No, you did not hear me, my friend, not Nogales, but Nogales.” He did pronounce the second one slightly differently, less Spanish. “Not Nogales, Sonora, but Nogales, Arizona.”
Ned could feel the blood rush from his face. “I can't go back to the United States.”
“Yes, yes you can—just don't get in trouble up there.” Poco Loco looked dismissive. “Pay cash for everything, drive the speed limit, don't get in fights, wear a golf shirt . . . there will be no problem.”
“American cops are not like Mexican cops.”
“Oh, I know, they are harder to bribe and harder to kill,” Poco Loco laughed. “But all cops can be bribed or disposed of. Don't worry. You will be well armed with both money and weapons. Besides, they have to worry about warrants and probable cause and all of that. They are no problem. And you will have men.”
“Men?”
Poco Loco shrugged. “I have a small organization based in Nogales,” he said, again using his American pronunciation. “They are called the Cossacks.”
“Bikers?”
“Why are you surprised?” Poco Loco asked. “You are a biker, my friend (yes, I know exactly who you are), and you can't ever leave it completely. I know you, Mr. Aiken, and your type.”
Ned sighed. “I've heard of the Cossacks,” he said. “They move a lot of product; have a reputation for violence; and really, really hate the Hells Angels.”
Poco Loco smiled again. “I'm afraid with them and the Hells Angels, their differences come from more than just business, but that won't be a problem,” he said. “Because of the Cossacks and a major infiltration by law enforcement, the Hells Angels are very weak in Arizona at the moment and I don't see them fixing that right away.” He made no effort to hide the pride on his face. “The Cossacks are very much in charge up there and there is essentially no violence.”
“Why me? What's my job?”
“My friends in Arizona like to talk. I have heard you are experienced and organized, we need that up there, and . . .”
“And?”
“You're white,” Poco Loco said with a shrug. “People like to buy product from people who look like them—you wouldn't go selling weed on the streets of Harlem, would you? Lots of buyers, just not for you. And the Mexicans that are up in Arizona? They have no money. We need to move to the gueros, that's where the money is. Besides, we have enough Mexicans addicted already. I have no desire that more of my people should fall prey to drugs.”
“But I thought the Cossacks were white.”
“Depends on the area,” Poco Loco said. “In most of California, they are about fifty-fifty and it works very well, but in some places they are all Mexican—and that works less well. In places like Nevada, they have to sell through the Crips and even less savory groups.”
“So I'm going to be on the street?” Ned asked.
“No, no, no,” said Poco Loco in a tone Ned was sure was supposed to be reassuring. “You will be the president; you won't be anywhere near the street. The customers don't need to deal directly with you; they just know that you're there.”
Ned put his face in his hands. Poco Loco's reassurances did not fill him with confidence. He knew that going back to the United States, let alone living there, was dangerous. But he also knew that Mexico was now far more dangerous, because it would be impossible to refuse Poco Loco and walk out of the townhouse alive. “So . . . let's get started,” he said with all the enthusiasm he could muster.
* * *
Dudley Weise could not believe his luck. He had been sifting through stolen and recovered motorcycle reports when he struck pay dirt. Just outside the town of Sahuarita, Arizona, a man had been killed when his motorcycle had been destroyed by a semi. While the other officers were looking for living people's motorcycles, Weise thought it would be prudent also to look at dead people's. The truck driver claimed not to have seen the man he hit, who was stopped for reasons unknown, probably—the local cops guessed—engine trouble due to the bike's age.
The dead man's name was Harry Lucas. A local magnate of sorts, Lucas was probably the richest man in town on the strength of a business that made custom air-conditioning systems for commercial and industrial properties. But the local police had some questions. A positive ID was made on Lucas's body, and his friends and family said that he rode the bike frequently, but the cops quickly found that it was not registered to him. The bike's VIN had been rather sloppily filed off, and the license plate belonged to a Mark Troutman, a former employee of Lucas's who been killed by a drunk driver while on a trip to the Dominican Republic. The plates identified the bike as a 2009 Suzuki Hayabusa, a supersports bike that had almost nothing in common with the ancient Indian Lucas had been riding.
The local cops were pretty sure Lucas was riding a stolen bike, though they couldn't be sure if he was aware of that or not. Considering his reputation as the most successful man in town, it was hard for them to believe he'd risk it all for an old bike. And after checking for stolen Indians in Arizona and finding none, they sent a request to the FBI. As soon as he finished reading the report, Weise printed it and ran toward Tovar's cubicle.
“I think I found the bike!” he said.
“Aiken's Indian? Where?”
“Arizona.”
* * *
A few of Poco Loco's girls had bought Ned some clothes for his new career—khaki shorts and a lime-green Nike golf shirt. “White-guy uniform,” Ned thought to himself. Poco Loco had assigned Ned a handler who would take care of him until he was sent over the border. The handler—Hilario, better known by the ranch-house gang as “El Seinfeld”—wasn't a bad guy by any means, but he had an annoying habit of laughing and giggling at anything that anyone—even, maybe particularly, himself—said. The fact that Ned was an American sneaking over the border never failed to make him erupt into laughter whenever it occurred to him. And it did, over and over again.
He had taken Ned out for some fancy meals and had given him his border-crossing kit. Ned would have no weapons and only a token amount of cash until he could hook up with the Cossacks on the other side. His story, if he was intercepted, was that he was a tourist and had gotten lost while bird-watching. They supplied him with binoculars and a field guide to the birds of western North America. He was given a wallet that had identification and credit cards identifying him as Ian Wuerth. The picture in the driver's license and other cards had been altered to look like Ned. It was a professional-looking job, but Hilario had warned him they were only good for Border Patrol and not cops, because the cops would run the cards through their computers while the Border Patrol guys would just give them the eyeball test. Ned asked who Wuerth was. “Just some gringo asshole partying down at Cancún,” Hilario said. “In the old days when you took a wallet, you'd grab the money and throw the rest away. But now the identification is worth more than the money.” Ned realized that some guy from Kenosha, Wisconsin, getting his wallet stolen in Cancún would not be a
t the top of the news for Border Patrol or the police in Arizona, so it made him feel a little less uneasy. Along with the wallet was a card key from the Doubletree Resort in Tucson.
When it came time, the girls wished Ned luck and one of them, Luz, kissed him on the cheek. In his heavily customized pickup, Hilario drove Ned down the Cuerta highway back to the spot where the drug caravan had been attacked, narcocorridas blasting from the many speakers inside the cab. Realizing that Ned was nervous about the spot, Hilario told him that the Sinaloans had been dealt with and they were perfectly safe in this area.
“Dealt with?”
Hilario's eyebrows went up and he started laughing again. “Yeah, the boss had a conversation with the army commander here—whatsisname, Gutierrez or whatever,” he said. “His boys and some Federales rounded up a bunch of their shooters, threw 'em in jail.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” he said between giggles. “But they'll be broken out in a few days.”
“How do you know?”
“Escajeda, the warden, is in Sinaloa's hands—just like Gutierrez is in ours,” he said. “He owes them a favor. He'll keep them for a couple of weeks, go on vacation, and then when he's away, truckloads of armed men will show up and free the Sinaloas without a shot being fired. Happens all the time. It helps maintain the balance.”
“What will happen to the warden?”
“Depends,” Hilario actually stopped giggling for a second while he was thinking. “If the investigator is aligned with us, he'll lose his job, maybe go to jail for a little while, but if he's aligned with them, then nothing will happen—there will be, as we say here, ‘insufficient evidence' to move on with the investigation.”
“What if the investigator is not on either side?”
That question made Hilario laugh harder than Ned had ever seen before. He continued to laugh until he stopped the truck by the side of the road. He pointed at the fence. “Pick your hole,” he said, laughing. “They all go to the same place.”
As they had discussed, Ned would cross the border and then walk down the trail until he came across an old bathtub full of water. The bathtub had been placed over a natural spring in a clearing and was always full of fresh, relatively clean water. Because of this, it was frequented by hikers. When he got there, he would be greeted by some Cossacks dressed as hikers. They would take him back to the city with them and set him up with a place to live and a vehicle. Ned took the backpack Hilario had prepared for him. Along with the bird book and binoculars, it was full of water bottles. Hilario had pointed out with pride that they had labels in English to prevent the Border Patrol from becoming too suspicious.
They said their good-byes and Ned ran to the nearest breach in the fence. He had to duck and contort a bit to get through it, but was otherwise fine. There was no mistaking the trail. As soon as he was over the border, he encountered a mountain of trash, most of it the discarded packages of decongestant pills, used in the manufacture of methamphetamine. The trail itself consisted of sand trampled by thousands of human feet.
Ned walked for about twenty minutes before he realized he was back in the United States. The trash left behind by the border-crossers was behind him and he was now on a trail cared for by the National Forest Service. It was, he had to admit, quite beautiful and serene. It actually prompted him to put his water bottle back in his backpack when he emptied it, rather than just throw it to the ground.
He walked for almost an hour, following the trail markers, when he came to the bathtub. In a clearing surrounded by a few sparse trees, the old white tub stood out. Ned could hear the water from the spring even though someone had covered the tub with wooden boards to protect the water. He wasn't alone there, but it wasn't his contacts. As Ned sat and rested on a rock facing the tub, he saw that a quartet of somewhat older hikers was enjoying the trail as well. One of them, a big man with what Ned thought was a “porn star” mustache, approached him and asked “sprechen sie deutsch?” Ned said he didn't, and the man apologized for his poor English. To discourage further conversation, Ned took out his book and his binoculars and started looking around aimlessly. The German guy backed off and his group soon left.
Ned was reading about roadrunners when he heard some men approaching. There were three of them and they did not move with the slightest indication that they wanted to escape detection. Although they were dressed like he was, Ned had no problem identifying them as bikers, or at least as bad guys. All three were Mexican, steroided-up bodybuilder types. All of them had goatees and were covered in tattoos. Two of them had shaved heads and the other had long black hair in a ponytail.
“You our guy?” the ponytailed one, the obvious leader, asked.
“I think so,” Ned answered. “You the Cossacks?”
“Some of 'em,” the big man said. “Who sent you?”
“Poco Loco.”
“What's your name?”
“Ian, but you can call me Crash.”
“Well Mr. Crash, our pickup is about a half-hour's walk that way.” The man extended his hand, but the other two did not. “I'm Duane, but they call me Weasel, these guys are Speedy and El Borracho.” Both men nodded coolly in acknowledgment. As a group these three seemed far from warm, even by biker standards. “You have water?” Weasel asked. Ned acknowledged that he did, and the group started walking after Speedy, who was already several yards down the trail.
* * *
When the lab determined that the bike Harry Lucas had died on was in all likelihood the one formerly owned by—and allegedly stolen by—Ned Aiken, Meloni called a meeting of his team. Weise was invited, but Tovar instructed him to stay in the background. Interns tended to be seen and not heard at this kind of meeting.
Tovar admitted that he was temporarily confused. Because Aiken's cover identity in the witness protection program, Steadman, came from Gila, Arizona, he believed for a moment that Aiken was going home to visit friends. But then he wondered why Aiken had gone to Arizona. A very “red” state, Arizona had a few libertarian and even anti-government types who make hiding an identity part of their philosophy, but it was nothing like Idaho or Montana where that kind of thing is commonplace. If he was going to hide in plain sight, Arizona was not a great choice.
O'Malley pointed out that Arizona had a large Native American population and that testimony from the Sons of Satan trial indicated that many members (including Aiken) had close ties to Natives back in the Midwest.
Tovar countered that the Navajos, Yaquis, and Zunis of Arizona had little in common with the Mohawks the Sons were dealing with and had almost no contact with either group. In fact, the Arizona Native groups registered as just tiny blips on the organized-crime radar, while the Mohawks were more like a tsunami. It was truly unlikely, he opined, that Aiken would have any friends among the Natives in the southwest.
O'Malley could not help but agree, and introduced the idea of outlaw biker gangs. “There are no Sons, Outlaws, Lawbreakers or, despite the proximity to Texas, Bandidos chapters there,” she said. “Although any or all of those clubs will ride through the state to get to Las Vegas or Southern California, none have any feet on the ground there.”
Tovar asked who the main biker presence was. “Reflecting the demographics, history, and culture of the state, it was strongly Hells Angels territory for several decades,” she said. “They were the top dogs in organized crime there until . . .”
“Until Jaybird Dobyns and the ATF's Operation Black Biscuit knocked them down,” Meloni interrupted.
“Exactly,” O'Malley continued a beat later. “After the ATF infiltration, the Hells Angels were in terrible shape in Arizona—bikers had to be imported from California just to keep the chapters there alive.”
“So who's filled the vacuum?” Tovar asked.
“That's where it gets complicated,” O'Malley answered. “The logical successors would appear to have been the Mongols, the Hells Angels' sworn enemies who have done a great job stealing territory from them in Cali, but a federal
court judgment against them has forbidden them to expand. And they have abided by that.”
“And the Bandidos?” asked Meloni.
“They've been severely set back by arrests and a massacre in Canada,” she said. “And they have given up a lot of territory to the Mexicans.”
“The Mexicans?” Tovar asked.
“Yeah, drugs have been coming from Mexico since forever, but traditionally, they have used the bikers to move them to primarily non-Hispanic communities,” she said. “But they have been gaining in confidence and have begun retailing locally and moving product to other primarily Hispanic gangs as far away as Seattle, Toronto, and Boston. As in Texas and California, the major Mexican cartels have working associations with largely Mexican gangs on this side of the border. But nothing with the clout of a Barrio Azteca or White Fence.”
“Anyone else?” Meloni asked. “Anyone?”
“Not too much, the Italians have ties there, but nothing on the ground outside of Phoenix-Tempe and even there they rarely get their hands dirty,” she said. “Aside from Mexicans and bikers, you still have a few crazy meth cooks, but they've mostly blown themselves up or been chased away by the bigger fish from south of the border.”
Jerry Langton Three-Book Biker Bundle Page 51