by Dick Wolf
Fisk nodded his approval. “Good one.” Fisk received the information on Silvia Volpi. The photograph was apparently from her quinceañera, the celebration of her fifteenth birthday. She was wearing a pink, promlike dress with a matching bouquet of pink roses, the photograph taken professionally. Fisk shook his head as he forwarded it along.
CHAPTER 35
Fisk’s greeting upon his second visit to the Secret Service’s New York field office in two days was not as cordial as the first. Dukes was even more tense than the day before.
“Christ, Fisk.”
“I know. I think we need to brief ICE, Customs, State, DEA, maybe Carlisle at the UN. Along with the Mexican contingent, of course.”
Dukes looked at Garza. “This guy Virgilio, why didn’t he register with us coming in?”
Fisk intervened. “Let’s work that out after we find him, okay?”
Dukes backed off after a moment, raising his hands, conceding the point. “We will get into it later, though,” he said to Garza. “We are, after all, the world’s premier agency at protecting government representatives. I get national pride and all, but . . .”
“Dukes,” said Fisk.
“All right, all right. Let’s get your man back, and let’s protect your boss, Señor Presidente.”
Fisk knew why some said that the Secret Service was difficult to deal with. They were very smart and hard-nosed, but by the nature of their mission, they also tended to be myopic and high-handed. If you weren’t part of the solution, well, you were part of the problem—that kind of thinking.
Garza was not intimidated by Dukes. “My sole priority is to protect the president of Mexico,” she said coolly.
Dukes said, “All the stuff we have on this Chuparosa is related to drug gangs. You’re convinced he’s a legit threat?”
“Entirely convinced,” she said. “Based upon my examination of the corpses from Rockaway Beach, as well as certain information which is confidential to my agency. It is my belief that an attempt on the life of President Vargas will be attempted while he is in New York, and I further believe that Virgilio’s disappearance is connected to that attempt.”
Dukes said, “What is Virgilio’s real name?”
Garza shook her head. “I cannot see how that is a concern right now.”
Dukes smiled. “That’s exactly the attitude I don’t want, Comandante. Certain information which is confidential to your agency? I trust you will reveal the pertinent aspect of that information so as to make it possible for us to incorporate specific and credible threats into our planning scenarios?”
Fisk knew that her credible information consisted of a bloodstained piece of paper clipped from a newspaper.
“Not at this time,” she said.
“Not at this time.” Agent Dukes gave her a strained smile. Fisk could see the wheels turning in Dukes’s head. He had no dog in the turf battle over the crime scene in Queens, and no reason to doubt her suspicions about the missing Virgilio, but he suspected that Garza’s reticence was part of an attempt by the Mexican government to cover up some potentially damaging or embarrassing news about the murder of a Mexican spy operating in the United States.
Dukes’s dilemma was clear. If Garza was bringing him a bogus assassination plot, it would create a vast amount of work for him—work which could potentially make it difficult for him to fulfill his duty to protect the dozens of other world leaders on hand, never mind the heads of the United States government. On the other hand, if he failed to properly prepare for a legitimate threat, he would be committing career suicide.
“Comandante Garza,” he said, “I would be pleased to offer the full resources of the Secret Service’s Threat Assessment Division to assist you in determining if such a plot is, in fact, imminent.”
“That will not be necessary. The threat is imminent.”
Dukes gave her a wincing smile. “Perhaps I’m not being clear enough, Comandante. If you expect to have our fullest assistance and cooperation in the protection of your president, it is imperative that you present us with any actionable intelligence you might possess with respect to any imminent assassination plot.”
Garza sat silently, looking at Dukes as though he had not spoken at all. Dukes shook his head, exaggerating a shrug.
“Are you refusing to accept our assistance?” Dukes asked.
“My agency, along with assets of the New York Police Department, is following up on several leads at this very moment, Agent Dukes. We will bring them to you the moment that we have reached more solid and actionable conclusions.”
Dukes folded his arms across his chest. “That is absolutely unacceptable, Comandante Garza.”
“You may take it up with my boss.”
“General de Aguilar? I’ll call him right away,” said Dukes, the wincing smile still frozen on his face.
“I was referring to President Vargas,” said Garza, producing her phone and ready to press a speed-dial button. “I’ll let you speak with him directly.”
Dukes frowned, unimpressed by this power play, but having to stand down anyway. “That won’t be necessary at this time, Comandante.”
She tilted her head a few degrees to the side, then thumbed her phone off. “As you wish,” she said.
Dukes gave Fisk a look, as though to say, You fucking owe me for this.
“The way I see it, three things need your immediate attention,” said Dukes, speaking to Garza. “One is already taken care of, and that is the hotel move.”
Garza looked perturbed. “How did you know?”
Dukes smiled flatly. “We know,” he said. “The second is the Mexican Independence Day celebration in Woodside, where Vargas is due to speak. An outdoor daytime event, that’s an obvious red flag. And the big one is the dinner with POTUS, currently scheduled at that Mexican restaurant . . .” Dukes snapped his fingers, trying to recall the name.
“Ocampo,” said Garza.
“It’s almost too late to reset and rescreen everybody for that event.”
Fisk was shaking his head. What was this?
Dukes said, “A dinner at a small restaurant in the West Village, on Waverly, a half block off Seventh Ave. It’s already a nightmare, that venue. Now with the thermostat turned up even higher, I don’t know if it’s going to fly.”
Garza said, “President Vargas will not alter his schedule—”
Dukes didn’t let her finish. “Well, it may get altered for him. I’m going to set up a fresh walk-through at this Ocampo, my office will let your people know when. Try to talk him out of the festival. The earlier he cancels, the better. For him.”
Fisk’s telephone and Garza’s telephone buzzed almost simultaneously. They were answering theirs when Dukes’s phone rang.
CHAPTER 36
St. Michael’s Cemetery on Astoria Boulevard in East Elmhurst is one of the oldest cemeteries in the New York metropolitan area. The cemetery is open to all faiths, though it is owned and operated by St. Michael’s Episcopal congregation on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It is the final resting place of Granville T. Woods, better known as “the black Edison,” and ragtime composer Scott Joplin.
Again, a secondary entrance gate had been breached overnight. But the gate had swung back to its usual position, making it appear closed as usual. The bodies had been discovered by a groundskeeper removing dead flowers from a nearby grave.
Silvia Volpi lay floating in a small pond on the southeastern corner of the property. She was facedown, only her back and shoulders out of the water, but Fisk recognized the dress from the hotel security camera. He could see abrasions and blood on her neck and shoulders.
They were pulling her to the bank as he arrived. That she was floating indicated that she was dead before she was put in the water. A drowning person swallows water, expelling oxygen from the lungs, usually resurfacing a day or two later as gases build up inside the body. An already dead body in still water generally remains buoyant due to its air-filled chest cavity.
The other body f
loated closer to the bank on the other side of the pond. Fisk could tell by the way Garza looked at the body that it was Virgilio, even before they hauled him to dry land and turned him over.
He had been beaten, but the wounds were barely swollen, indicating that he had been in a fight and died soon after. His shirt was torn and bloodstained. The way the fabric lay against his chest, Fisk could see multiple stab wounds in his chest, a half dozen or more. His hands were also cut with defensive wounds. His eyes stared at the sky, but lacking the supreme blankness of most corpses Fisk had seen. He wondered if knowing he was dying for a cause—choosing death over betrayal—informed Virgilio’s steadfast expression.
Garza stared down at the man. Fisk could only guess at their relationship, but felt it had been purely professional. Perhaps she saw in Virgilio a dedication to lawful order complementary to hers, but which, as a woman in Mexico, she felt herself unable to fulfill as completely as he had. Perhaps she envied his easier road to success . . . and perhaps it was this ease that had allowed him to let his guard down at the worst possible time.
Fisk went around backing off arriving law enforcement. There is, even in veterans, a human impulse to get close to the scene of a crime. He wondered why they had chosen two different cemeteries.
He came back to Garza, who was on the phone with General de Aguilar. “Yes, General . . . It would be most proper for you to come, I think. I cannot remain here a moment longer than is necessary . . . No, too many things to do. Yes. Thank you. . . .”
She hung up. Fisk watched her. She seemed to be okay. Maybe too okay.
“No cameras in a cemetery,” said Fisk. “I’m thinking they dumped the other car and body first, hoping to get something out of your man. Looks to me like he went down fighting.”
“Of course he did,” said Garza quietly.
“And the girl? Probably killed because she was a link to them.”
“Exactly why,” said Garza. “No witnesses. Ever.”
“We should key on her. I know she’s an illegal, but she had to live somewhere, sleep somewhere. Know someone.”
Garza nodded, still looking at the ground.
Fisk said, “There are enough traffic cameras in the areas surrounding both cemeteries that we should get some images of them. License plates, maybe faces. It will take time, but we will have something.”
Garza nodded again, saying nothing.
Fisk said, “I’m not going to ask you if you are okay, because I know you are not.”
“I am fine.”
Fisk waited for more. “We’re going to get this guy. This is New York City, not Mexico.”
She looked up at him with heated eyes, as though taking offense.
Fisk said, “What I mean is, this isn’t his native country, he doesn’t know how everything works. He’s going to screw up.”
A crime scene tech came over. “We checked his pockets, no phone.”
Garza stared at the young man, then nodded. She e-mailed this news back to her people. “He will have cloned the phone by now, disabling GPS and cellular service. He wants to know what Virgilio’s schedule was . . . and by extension, President Vargas’s.”
Fisk said, “I’m sure he had it encoded. It was a secure phone?”
“It was,” said Garza. “But how can we assume anything except that he has that information, or will have it soon?”
“It’s mostly public, I imagine.”
“It is something to check. To make sure. We should go now.”
“Go where?” asked Fisk, surprised.
“To go over the president’s itinerary.”
“Hold on,” said Fisk. “Take a minute here.” He pointed to the body, just a few yards behind her. “It’s okay.”
“I am fine,” she said. “Let’s go.”
She started past him. Fisk hooked her arm, spinning her around . . . and raising her ire.
“Take a moment,” he said. “Pay your respects.”
Garza glared at him, all fire. “I will pay my respects when I have time, Detective. Let go.”
Fisk let go. She walked around to the girl’s body, speaking to the arriving Mexican EMP agents, then continuing on to the car.
Fisk followed, watching her climb inside while checking her phone. He knew he should let it go, but he could not.
He climbed in behind the wheel, leaving his door open. “Look,” he said, “maybe this is none of my business, but you should—”
“It is entirely none of your business. This is the business of the Policía Federal and the Estado Mayor Presidencial.”
“Use this anger, this pre-grief. Don’t run from it.”
Garza did not look up from her phone. “Is that your professional advice? Is that what you did when your comrade was killed by Jenssen?”
Now it was Fisk’s turn to stare at her. Garza was tapping out an e-mail with her thumbs.
“You know about that?” he said.
“Of course,” she said, clipped. She tapped in a few more letters, then said, “I suppose you were sent to therapy and pursued a talking cure.”
Fisk said, “I did. I had no choice. It is built into the system.”
“If we did that in Mexico, there would be no time for work. No time at all. You tell me to honor my fallen comrade? I will do so by pursuing the man who killed him.”
Fisk nodded, still digesting her attitude. “And by pretending not to be distraught over his death?” he said.
Garza did not look at him, did not say anything.
Fisk started the engine and said, “I can see you come by your reputation honestly.”
Garza resumed typing out her e-mail as she opened her door and got out of Fisk’s car, walking back to the cemetery gate.
Fisk did not follow her. And she did not want him to. She was going to ride with someone else.
CHAPTER 37
Fisk returned to Intel headquarters. He fed more money into the vending machine and ate another chicken salad sandwich on damp white bread from a triangular plastic carton. He badly needed a long run or some gym time, but couldn’t foresee either one happening until after United Nations Week was over.
He filed the forms to get eyeballs on corner cameras within a four-block grid of each cemetery. He narrowed the window of time from 10:00 P.M., when Virgilio departed the Four Seasons, and 7:00 A.M., just after dawn.
He had a long list of e-mails, which he was able to cull by two-thirds without too much effort. The rest pertained more directly to his desk duties. A few of them he was able to pawn off on others. The rest remained, needing to be addressed.
Two of them were from the U.S. Attorney’s office downtown. Those he did not even open.
Fisk went back to the break room for a bag of barbecue potato chips. He sat at the only table, brushing away the last person’s crumbs, and finished the large bag in about ten handfuls. He crumpled up the evidence and tossed it into the trash, stopping to buy a Coke Zero before returning to his desk.
Nicole had gotten back to him. Nothing yet on the tattoo sent for face recognition. He checked his phone and found he had a missed call from Kiser.
“I heard there are more dead Mexicans,” said Kiser, answering on the first ring.
“There are,” confirmed Fisk.
“These ones have heads?”
“They do.” Fisk gave him the details, just generally. “There is a link, but I would pursue your own case independently for now. You don’t want a piece of this interagency morass.”
“That’s good advice I already gave myself,” said Kiser. “You can thank Comandante Garza for me.”
Fisk exhaled. “I could if she were here. Thank her for what?”
“The break. You don’t know?”
“Not unless you tell me.”
“Her agency used the tattoo photographs to identify four of the headless horsemen. Two of them they got from Mexican driver’s licenses, no criminal histories. They were illegals, but apparently not bad guys. Bystanders who got caught in this Hummingbird guy’s
nest. The other two are illegals linked to the Zeta Cartel. And the Terrorist Screening Center has both on the No Fly List.”
The little-known Terrorist Screening Center is a division of the National Security Branch of the FBI, though it is a multiagency organization including representatives from the Department of Justice, the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, and the U.S. Postal Service. While the No Fly List began as strictly a register of terror suspects not permitted to board a commercial aircraft for travel into or out of the United States, it had since grown to include other more generalized criminals, including known traffickers.
“I’m writing,” said Fisk, grabbing a pencil and paper.
“A Mexican national by the name of Carlos Echaverria. Nickname Carlito. Big huge guy, one with the gang tats. I guess Carlito translates as Little Carlos. Kind of like calling a big guy Tiny. Unless there’s a bigger Carlos in his family.”
“I get it,” said Fisk, not in the mood for Kiser’s banter. “Stay on point here.”
“Anyway, this Carlito guy, he’s Zeta Cartel connected. U.S. No Fly, but okay to board in Mexico and land in Canada, apparently. He flew into Montreal on July twenty-third, Aeroméxico Flight 269 from Mexico City. Payment for his ticket was on a credit card, a prepay Visa from a check-cashing store in Laredo, Texas. Presumably somebody bought it for him and carried or mailed it to him.”
July was when Chuparosa would have fled Mexico after the beheadings, Fisk remembered.
“The other corpse’s name is Elias Rincon—also a No Fly—flew in to Montreal the next day, July twenty-fourth. No hotel registrations in Montreal under those names, at least none that we can find. No record of either of them entering the United States, obviously.”
Fisk said, “Flying into Montreal . . . it’s a pretty good bet they snuck in across the border into upstate New York.”
“Right. Of course.”
Fisk remembered the smoky-bomb fiasco. “It happens to be an area I have some expertise in,” he said drily.