They left, and Ned waited. Despite the oppressive heat, he waited outside. After about an hour, a Mexican-looking kid rode by on a bike. He circled the block and came around again. He stopped in front of the store. “You the guy?' he asked Ned.
“I guess so.”
“You better be the guy.”
“I am.”
“Here,” the kid said and handed Ned a large envelope.
Ned handed the kid a twenty, then went back inside. He poured the contents of the envelope onto his coffee table. It was a wallet and a passport. He opened up the passport and saw himself looking back. “Okay, so I'm Colin McCarthy.”
* * *
The ATF officers were exactly as Tovar had feared—all steroided-up musclemen with shaved heads, goatees, and wraparound sunglasses who spoke too loudly. The FBI agents were led to Detective Rasmussen's office on the fourth floor of what appeared to them like a fortress, even by FBI standards.
Rasmussen was friendly, but tight-lipped. After a great deal of negotiation, Tovar convinced him to let the FBI in on their current operation involving motorcycle gangs in the area because of the likelihood that Aiken would seek out any bikers if he was in the area. “We're trying to repeat the success we had when Jaybird Dobyns infiltrated the Hells Angels,” Rasmussen said. “We have some men who are posing as an outlaw biker gang moving in from Colorado.”
Tovar was dumbfounded. He was sure the same plan would not work twice and it showed great hubris on the ATF's part to try it again. “Who are they infiltrating?”
“That's the beauty of it,” Rasmussen said. “This new gang—the Tortured Souls—will set up just south of Tucson and let it be known they are open for business. Then when someone comes in to challenge them, we get our evidence.”
“So you're setting up a trap, and hoping someone walks into it?”
“You might say that, but only because you're not from down here,” Rasmussen said bluntly. “The Mexicans are overrunning the area with drugs carried in on illegals. These people near the border have had enough, they are scared for their lives, and there's no way we can stop the violence from spilling over the border if they think they can get away with it. Make no mistake—drugs will be sold in southeastern Arizona, and we want to catch the organizers whether they are here already or not.”
“So when is all this happening?”
“Already started, the Souls have bought a house just outside Sahuarita and are setting it up as a clubhouse,” Rasmussen sounded proud. “They have colors, tats, bikes, guns, the whole bit. I used to be a street cop and detective up in Wisconsin and I can tell you these guys really look the part. Just like the Outlaws I used to deal with.”
“Well, there is a strong chance that if our man Aiken is in the area, he will try to get into contact with your men,” Tovar said. “He may even try to join them.”
“In that event, I will let you know immediately.”
Chapter Nine
It was hot, it was dry, and it was boring—but Ned loved it. Being back in the relative safety of the United States—a place he understood, no matter how far off the mainstream he got—was something he never realized how much he appreciated before. There were all kinds of people out for his head in the States, but it was something he could deal with, something he understood. He felt secure, despite the obvious threats, because he knew that Poco Loco had his back. Not like Mexico, where violence and death just seems to come out of the blue.
Ned walked out of his luxurious home to his Jaguar, got in and turned the key. The hum of the engine was joined by the welcome blast of the air conditioner. He turned on the stereo and was disappointed that all the preset stations were classic rock or country. He hit scan over and over again until he found something a little more modern. He finally came across an old Eminem song. It wasn't perfect, but it was good enough.
He drove down Highway 19 to Nogales. He stopped in the southernmost Gibby's location within sight of the border. He greeted the staff, who nodded politely and asked him what he wanted. Breakfast choices at a fast-food barbecue restaurant are limited, so he decided on the breakfast burrito—powdered scrambled eggs with bits of chorizo and processed cheese wrapped in a sodium-laden wheat tortilla. After his first bite, he longed for the girls at the ranch house and their exquisite cooking.
Nobody took much notice of him until a couple of tough-looking guys came to sit with him. “You're Crash?” one asked.
“Yeah.”
“I'm Chancho,” the guy said. “We're supposed to help each other.”
“I understand.”
“So how do you want to do this?”
“Well, we're supposed to be seen together,” Ned told him. “Supposed to hang out, so let's just hang out.”
“Uhh, okay,” Chancho said. “How do we do that?”
“Just start talking.”
And Chancho did just that, joined by his partner, Little Willie. They spoke about their cars first, and told tales of bad drivers and accidents they almost had. From there it went to sports, about how the Cardinals' recent Super Bowl run was just a mirage—all quarterback Kurt Warner's doing, and now that he was retired, they looked like they'd never be close to being a winning team ever again.
All in all, it was a fairly pleasant way to spend a half-hour. The dealers turned out to be pretty interesting guys. After finishing his breakfast with Chancho and Little Willie, Ned drove up to the next spot on his route, another Gibby's about three miles up Highway 19. Because he had already had breakfast at the first one, he just ordered coffee. He was soon approached by another dealer—this one named Fermino—who sat with him. After an awkward few minutes, Ned encouraged him to talk about his motorcycle. Although Ned had never really had a great deal of interest in Japanese sports bikes, he knew enough to keep Fermino comfortable and keep up his end of the conversation.
The process repeated itself until he had visited the last Gibby's. After taking a break at Balboa Heights Park, Ned started visiting every Dave's location in the area. It was a little harder to talk in the bars, which could be loud with music and shouting, but he met his connections at each one and started talking. The hardest part was being in bars in such a hot climate and not being able to drink any beer. But Ned knew that a drinking and driving arrest could put him behind bars forever, so he laid off the alcohol until he got home.
That first day, Ned actually visited all fifteen of Garcia's franchises. It was a remarkable amount of driving and the process took him well into the night. To save driving time and allow himself more face time at each outlet, Ned decided he would hit three a day, visiting each location once a week, taking Sundays and Mondays off. He'd rotate them, so that he didn't spend every Tuesday night in the same bar or every Saturday morning at the same rib joint. Of course, adjustments could be made if it meant a potential deal.
The dealers were all kind of the same—Mexican-American men in their early twenties who had a look of street toughness that Ned understood made many people nervous. His job as a gateway between them and potential customers became quickly apparent.
But he had been visiting the bars and rib joints for two weeks without any action, He saw Melendez once, but they didn't acknowledge each other. He also ran into Weasel, who assured him everything was cool, despite the fact he hadn't seen any action yet, and that things would pick up. The drug drought created in the community by the downfall of the Hells Angels would force people to come to Ned.
And a day later, someone did. Ned was sitting in a Gibby's, nursing a coffee and reading the Tucson Citizen, waiting for his contact when a woman took the seat across from him. She was a little older than him, her hair was dyed blonde, and she seemed ordinary in just about every way. She introduced herself as Marni. At first, she was slightly flirtatious, but gave that up when she saw Ned wasn't biting. After some small talk about the quality of Gibby's food—they agreed it was just a step or two above atrocious—she revealed her true intentions. “My husband and I are having a party, and we'd like you to com
e,” she said.
“Whoa, what kind of party?” From the look in her eye, Ned knew what she was talking about, but wanted to force her to be more direct. “I don't know . . .”
“Nothing like that, silly,” she said. “Just a get-together with some friends and coworkers to blow off some steam. It's been crazy around here for the past few weeks, months even.”
“But why me?”
“Well, I've been watching you,” Marni said conspiratorially. “You're new here, you seem nice, you dress very well, and you don't seem to have any friends.”
“I have friends,” Ned corrected her. “I was waiting for one when we met.”
“Oh yes, the Mexican fellow,” she acknowledged. “Seems a bit rough.” It sounded like a question.
“Not really, he just dresses that way,” and then he lowered the boom. “It's the business he's in.”
Marni smiled and nodded. “I'd invite him, too, but it wouldn't look right, you know.”
“I understand completely,” Ned said. “But I think I'm just a bit too busy to go to a party right now. How about if I just send a little something along in my place?”
Marni sighed and smiled. “That would be perfect!” she said. “As long as we are talking about the right ‘little something’ at the right price.”
At that moment, Ned's contact, Chancho walked in. Seeing Ned talking to someone else, Chancho ordered some food and sat at a different table.
Ned nodded at Marni, then at Chancho. “It's very, very good and it is, from what I hear, the only game in town, so the price is the price,” he told her. “I'm sure you'll be satisfied with it.”
“So how do we do this?” she asked.
“Well, I don't handle anything myself, so let me introduce you to my friend Chancho,” Ned said, indicating Chancho, who was staring at his food and looked up only after hearing his name.
Marni's eyes betrayed her tension. “Oh, I couldn't,” she said. “Can't I just deal with you?”
“I'm sorry, but it's like I said, I don't handle anything, ever,” Ned told her and gestured for Chancho to come over. He did, and brought his food with him. “Marnie, this is Chancho—don't let his looks deceive you, he's just a regular guy, even has a pet hamster.”
“It's not mine, it's my daughter's,” Chancho said sheepishly. Marni smiled. Ned continued to engage both in conversation, and when he felt Marni was confident enough to make a deal with Chancho, he left them to it.
It was the first of what became a small flood of customers. Ned had met more people who approached him as Marni had, and many of them sent friends. After two more weeks of making his rounds, Ned had hooked up at least one customer in each location and a total of seven different clients at one particularly meth-hungry Dave's location.
As the number of clients ballooned, Ned's role finally made sense to him. The users were there all along, and so were the dealers, but the two groups were separated by too many cultural divides for either to make the crucial first move. Without him, drugs didn't get sold; with him, they did. The Cossacks needed him, Poco Loco needed him. He was the key to their whole business.
The days settled into a pleasant routine. Ned would wake up early—it was the first time in years that he could sleep well enough to do so—before the sun had burned off the nighttime coolness, and went for a run. He got to know several other morning joggers and they would often trade jokes or just talk. Then he'd shower, fire up the Jaguar, and head off to his first visit of the day. He didn't really like the breakfast they served at Gibby's, so he had gotten the cooks just to scramble him some real eggs and serve it with sausage and a biscuit. Then he'd go to his next location for lunch and to another for dinner.
When he went to a Dave's, he always had someone to talk with or a game to play, but at Gibby's, he tended to read the newspaper, buying both the Citizen and the Arizona Daily Star. He immediately went to the Mexico section of each paper, as he had become fascinated by the news from down there. While in Mexico, he knew it was rough and violent, that the cartels and the government were fighting each other, but he had no idea of the scope of things. It was hard to tell from the hit-and-miss reporting of the American papers, but it seemed to Ned that literally thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people were being murdered every year. And it wasn't just the number of murders that stunned him. There were slaughters—forty people here, fifty there—people killed for the most mundane of reasons. Bodies were displayed in public places. Body parts were sent to police or the families of the victims. Crowds of innocent people were targeted simply to scare an opposing cartel by nothing more than its pure coldhearted brutality. It was as though the whole country had gone crazy. He knew he had developed more than a passing interest when he found a store that sold the New York Times and started buying it for its Mexico coverage, looking especially for mention of the Jalisco Cartel or Poco Loco himself.
* * *
To an outside observer, it didn't look as though the ATF had picked the right man for the job. Wayne “Big Red” Hauser was tall, but unlike most southwestern bikers, he was not overly muscled or covered in tattoos. Instead of the shaved head, multiple piercings, and thick beards most of his type had, Hauser looked like he could be in just about any business. He was handsome, but not remarkably so, and had the commanding presence of a future CEO. Rather than arouse suspicion by sending in an obvious stereotype of a long-haired, big-bellied biker, the ATF craftily recruited a more modern style of outlaw biker, the gangster businessman. Before he was an agent, Hauser was in the navy. He had failed his test to become a SEAL because of a lack of focus, and left the service.
He rode his ancient Harley—its thundering pipes shattering the calm wherever he took it—through the streets of Tucson from his home to the clubhouse he and some fellow officers had set up. He even had a fellow officer posing as his wife. She agreed to be tattooed, but maintained her own bedroom.
Big Red and eight other agents made up the Tortured Souls. Their cover story—which the ATF had leaked to local media, law enforcement, and their informant community—was that they were an independent Denver-based gang with three chapters in Colorado, and their government-made website backed it up. Said to be aligned with, but not actually that close to the Outlaws, the Tortured Souls were supposed to be making a push into Arizona to take advantage of the weakened Hells Angels. The members all looked like bikers, wore leather jackets with their patch—a skull surrounded by flames—and rode Harleys. To help underscore their claims of authenticity, Big Red was said to have beaten the rap after having murdered a Hells Angel in Salt Lake City.
Like Ned, Big Red and his men did little more than be seen on the streets of Tucson, Nogales, and all the towns in between. But unlike Ned, they did their best to let people know exactly who they were—or at least who they were pretending to be. The Tortured Souls would frequent bars in the area and almost invariably cause trouble. At one, a strip joint called The Cap'n's Booty, they picked a fight with some tough-looking guys inside, causing more than $100,000 in damage. Big Red was arrested for aggravated assault, but was released when the arresting officers found out that he was an ATF agent. After that, Big Red embraced his character and did whatever he wanted when he wanted, protected from prosecution by his status as an agent and from retribution by his size and malevolence. His superiors at the ATF frowned on that kind of behavior, but considered the mission too important and Big Red too essential to its success to pull him from it.
At the clubhouse, he asked Nickels, one of his fellow Tortured Souls, about what he had learned after a week on the street. “People are freaking out over how dry the streets are since the Hells Angels went down,” he told him. “The Mexicans have some shit, but nothing big time.”
“That's it?” Big Red asked. “What about the other biker gang, the Cossacks?”
“All Mexican,” Nickels replied. “And down here, it seems like Mexicans just sell to Mexicans.”
“That'll change,” Big Red said. “When people want drugs, they'll f
ind a way to get them. And they always want drugs.”
“So you think the Cossacks are going to be the big target?”
“Unless someone else comes in,” he said. “Let's keep an eye on them. It's only a matter of time before people start knocking on their door.” Big Red thought to himself that he'd go out and find someone himself if he had to.
* * *
It wasn't easy, but Tovar managed to convince Meloni to allow him and Weise to stay in Tucson a few more days. Meloni had wanted to pull them once he found out that the ATF was running its own sting operation that overlapped with the Aiken investigation, but Tovar argued that if Aiken were indeed in the area, he was unlikely to seek out an outlaw biker gang, new or not. And he pointed out that if the ATF solved the Kuzik case it would look bad not just on them, but on the FBI itself.
They distributed pictures of him, claiming he was a missing person who required his medication. They didn't expect a big response, but it was the kind of thing that showed they were still working the case in Arizona, that allowed them to keep investigating Lucas and his ties on both sides of the border.
They interviewed Bryan Latos, who had taken over Lucas's business on behalf of his family. He didn't know much about the bike, just that some bankrupt guy back east had given it to the boss. Latos had pressed Lucas on the provenance of the bike. It was his job to account for every penny the company spent and took in and that the bike, he found out from the Internet, could be worth upwards of $35,000. But Lucas wouldn't budge; he told Latos to take it out of his personal account. Latos didn't push further. It was Lucas's company and he did things his own, stubborn way. He told the agents he would love to give them more information, but just didn't have any.
When they asked him about Lucas's dealings in Mexico, Latos became visibly nervous. “We have a wholly owned subsidiary in Heroica Nogales—on the Mexican side—called Holsamex,” he told them. “It assembles components, taking advantage of favorable labor costs.”
Jerry Langton Three-Book Biker Bundle Page 54