by Dick Wolf
Her lead car pulled just past the limestone front of the five-story consulate building. There were two entrances. One faced the sidewalk, beneath a giant black globe housing the consulate’s security cameras. The other was inside a very small, gated courtyard, not much larger than a limousine. That was the public entrance, reserved for consulate business, such as visas, passports, immigration paperwork, and the like.
They idled and waited for the second and third vehicles to fall in behind them. An EMP agent in the backseat was monitoring the radio.
Garza grew anxious, watching more bystanders arrive, drawn by the police presence and the idling motorcade. What was taking so long?
“Visto bueno,” said the EMP agent.
Garza was out of the vehicle quickly, striding around to the rear, ready to escort President Vargas over the few yards to the entrance, which was controlled by security from inside the consulate. A small knot of consulate employees, including Consul General Francisca Metron, awaited him near the entrance.
Vargas exited through the door to the sidewalk, as planned, buttoning his jacket once he emerged and turning to wave blindly at the gathered crowd. Voices were raised, questions being shouted by reporters across Thirty-ninth Street, a one-way street with two traffic lanes and a parking lane. A number of Mexicans in the crowd cheered, and Vargas slowed to further acknowledge them, flashing the smile.
The gathered media misconstrued this action as an opportunity to shout more questions, which frankly neither Garza nor Vargas could hear above the din. Garza was sweeping her eyes over the crowd on the other side when she heard a voice yelling.
“Stop! Stop! Stop!”
A man wearing a heavy black backpack had hopped the barricade fence and begun striding quickly across the street toward the president. The perimeter EMP agents were the ones yelling at him to halt.
The man wore a dark ball cap with no insignia on the crest. As he came, he readied a Nikon camera strung around his neck, as though to get a picture.
At the same time, he swung his backpack forward off one shoulder, as though he were about to throw it.
Garza perceived all of this as happening in extreme slow motion.
Both items—the camera and the backpack—were potential weapons.
Her reaction time lagged just a second. Because to her eyes, this man did not match the video image of Chuparosa she had been playing and replaying in her mind since yesterday evening.
A Secret Service agent broke from the rear SUV of the idling motorcade and drew his weapon, a SIG Sauer P229. Into his suit jacket cuff, he shouted, “Breach! Breach!”
Garza was also drawing, her Beretta coming out of her shoulder holster as she jumped in front of President Vargas. She shouted, “Amenaza! Amenaza!” Threat! Threat!
A third individual sprang from the crowd behind the side barricade, wearing a dress shirt with rolled-up sleeves and dark pants. He was aiming a Glock at the man and shouting, “Get to the ground! Get on the ground!”
The man with the camera stopped, momentarily mystified by the triumvirate of armed people yelling at him. Then he recognized the weapons in their hands. He went down to one knee, then the next, half collapsing, half complying.
The Secret Service agent was on him first, grabbing a free hand and driving his knee into the photographer’s back.
The gunman from the crowd was a close second. The Secret Service agent, not knowing this man, pointed his gun at him.
Fisk’s hands went up quickly. “Fisk! NYPD Intel!”
“Jesus!” said the agent.
Garza kept her grip on Vargas, watching the photographer grunt and try to explain himself on the ground. When the Secret Service agent rolled him over, there was a wet spot on the pavement where the photographer’s groin had been.
Garza did not remain to watch any more. She turned and pushed President Vargas’s head down and ran him to the consulate entrance, past the stunned greeting party, getting him inside as fast as possible.
Once safely inside, she scanned the interior of the consulate entrance. She began to relinquish her grip on the president’s suit jacket when she felt it pull away from her.
“It was only a goddamn photographer!” he said behind her.
Garza turned. She saw the flash of anger cross the president’s face as he fixed his jacket. It stunned her.
“Have we not had enough bad press!” he said. “A photographer. Not an assassin!”
Garza was stunned. It was all she could do to walk away from him, quickly, before she said something back to him. She left him to the watchful eyes of her EMP compatriots, striding back out through the door to the sidewalk.
The photographer was being led to a police car by two uniformed officers. Every photographer in the media throng was still snapping away.
Fisk had turned his face away in an attempt to avoid them, but it was much too late. The Secret Service agent was huddling with his compatriots. One of them held an M4 carbine.
Garza went to Fisk, pulling him behind the president’s SUV, blocking them from view.
“What are you doing here in disguise?” she said.
He billowed out his shirt, trying to air out his sweat. “It’s not much of a disguise. I left my jacket in the car and rolled up my sleeves.”
“Why weren’t you at the hotel this morning?” she asked.
Fisk frowned. “I’m not supposed to be here at all. Dubin—my boss—thinks I’m spending too much time on one visiting dignitary. I think he got a complaint from Dukes about us. And if I’d gone to the hotel first, I would have had to check in with them.”
Garza said, “They know you’re here now.”
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s not good. Thanks to that idiot with the camera.”
“What’s going to happen?”
“I don’t know,” said Fisk. “Got any openings in Mexico?”
Garza smiled. “Depends. Can you be corrupted?”
“Only by red wine,” he said.
Garza grinned, then backed off.
“What is it?”
She shook her head. “Vargas. He didn’t like the way that looked.”
Fisk sighed. “Believe me, he would have loved it had that idiot had an explosive device in his backpack.”
Garza was steamed.
“Interesting start to the day,” said Fisk.
“Was that urine I saw on the road?” she asked.
“Oh, yeah,” said Fisk. “Looking into the business end of a handgun does that to people.”
Garza took a moment to scan the crowd. They were starting to disperse now that the show was over.
“I was feeling good about having an image of Chuparosa,” she said. “But now suddenly I feel we are no closer to him. No how, or where, or when.”
“He’s killed off everybody who could answer those questions.”
“He couldn’t have killed everybody,” said Garza. “He is staying somewhere. Someone is helping him.”
Fisk said, “I had a look at the seating plan for the dinner tonight. Obama and Vargas are seated at separate tables, which I guess is a power hosting thing. It gives the gathering two prime tables for guests to sit at, and by guests I mean donors.”
Garza nodded. “So?”
“Obama’s seatmates were all named on the diagram. As were Vargas’s seatmates . . . except for one. One was left empty.”
“Why?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
Garza shook her head. “I haven’t seen the chart.”
“Well, then two other things came to mind. One was the mysterious presence of a U.S. marshal at the security review. I recognized her on the way out. She gave me a very vague nonanswer about what she was doing there. As you may know, they handle fugitives and federal witness relocation. And where was the restaurant owner? Two heads of state are coming to your establishment for an important dinner, and you’re not present at the security review? You’re not overseeing every little detail?”
“Fair point,”
she said. “Who is the owner?”
“A limited partnership. Some shell corporation. But even shell corporations have to file legal papers and tax forms.” Fisk crossed his arms, looking down at her over his sunglasses. “I think we need to go pay this fellow a visit, Comandante.”
Garza nodded. “I think we do, too.”
CHAPTER 54
Chuparosa entered the garage dressed in a pair of light coveralls. He lifted the rear door of the fish truck with the Teixeira Brothers logo on the side and loaded in the deep tray of finely chopped ice.
He opened the four cases of shellfish, kneeling on the floor of the van. Blue Points, Chincoteagues, littlenecks, and Wellfleets, one box each. He spread the fresh ice in and around the oysters.
Packed in the ice beneath several layers of Wellfleets were the plastic frames of two Glock 17s. The trigger guards of each frame had been ground off, and all of the straight edges of the frame and handgrips had been modified with a Dremel tool in order to mimic the shape and roughness of an oyster.
Both guns had been fieldstripped, their slides and magazines distributed in the lining of a box of oyster knives. Each handle of the sixty-eight knives contained a single 124-grain 9mm Hydra-Shok hollow-point round sealed inside a lead lining so that they could not be detected by X-rays.
The barrels of the Glocks had been inserted inside the handle of a hand truck he had bought at the Home Depot on DeKalb Avenue in Brooklyn.
Silencers were the easy part. The two AAC Ti-RANT cans were top-of-the-line military-grade suppressors, slightly modified. Each had been disassembled, the tubes and pistons painted the same color as the hand truck and attached to the cross member, the baffles disassembled and slid onto the handles of the truck in place of the original rubber grips and painted matte black.
The locking blocks of the Glocks, too, had been painted and attached unobtrusively to the frame of the hand truck with Loctite. All that was left of the Glocks were the trigger groups, the trigger bars, the sears, and the trigger connectors—all of which were small pieces containing little more metal than a ballpoint pen. They were installed inside a tablet computer labeled ORDER TRACKING MODULE, effectively immune from detection.
The most distinctive parts—the gun barrels—had been set aside. They would have the most distinctive X-ray profiles, and so they would have to go in through an entirely different route.
Chuparosa heard footsteps and grasped the handle of the knife he carried in his belt, just as a precaution. He turned and waited.
Tomás Calibri came around the corner carrying two formal-looking outfits on hangers, wrapped in dry cleaner’s clear plastic. Tuxedo shirts and black pants.
Servers’ uniforms.
From his pocket Calibri pulled out two black bow ties.
“I hope you know how to tie a real bow tie, patrón?”
CHAPTER 55
Fisk and Garza spent some time out of his vehicle at the security station before the gate built into the twelve-foot-high stone wall. It was a beautiful, blue-sky day on Long Island. Their respective credentials were examined by a security guard while a second guard, a backup, remained inside the booth, watching them carefully.
The first guard carried their identification into the guard booth and spent a considerable amount of time on the telephone. He finally returned, again checked their faces against their identification cards, and only then signaled the second guard to roll back the gate.
When they were back inside his car and rolling up the wide driveway, Fisk said, “Getting on an airplane is easier than that.”
The lawn was beautifully landscaped, the main house not coming into view until the wide driveway took a leftward turn.
The mansion was slate roofed, with multiple dormer windows set symmetrically between red-trimmed gables. It was three stories and wide, fronted by a large circular driveway ringed by perfect green shrubs, offset by a pond with a fountain in its center. Picture perfect against a clear blue sky on a warm September day.
“My goodness,” said Fisk.
“How much would you say?” asked Garza.
Fisk said, “Seven million. The upkeep alone would be beyond any cop’s reach.”
“All from one tiny restaurant?” said Garza.
They parked outside the front door. The door was opened by a butler, who welcomed them inside. He was Mexican by appearance, stern looking, in his fifties. “Comandante and Detective, Don Andrés insists upon a strict no-gun policy inside his home,” said the butler.
Fisk said, “That is simply not possible.”
“I am afraid I will have to insist. Or else Don Andrés will not be available to sit with you today.”
Fisk checked with Garza to be sure he was speaking for both of them. “You tell your boss that we wear our weapons wherever we go.”
A woman stepped into the entrance from one of the three rooms that fed into it. “Then I will have to insist,” she said.
Fisk smiled. “Marshal Graben.” The U.S. marshal he had seen at the restaurant during the briefing.
“Good to see you again, Fisk. You shouldn’t be here.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s no concern of yours. But since Andrés León does not object, I am making it happen. But not with your service pieces. Again—his house, his rules.”
“Fine,” said Garza, unsnapping her holster and removing her Beretta.
Fisk, after a moment’s consideration, pulled out his Glock.
The butler was waiting with an open box. They laid them inside.
“And any electronic devices,” added the butler.
Fisk glanced sideways at Graben before relinquishing his phone. Garza laid hers inside the box next to Fisk’s.
The butler closed the box and set it on a table near the door. “Thank you,” said the butler. “Now, if you don’t mind . . .”
He did not give them a chance to mind. The butler frisked Fisk, thoroughly and professionally. As a courtesy, Graben walked over to pat down Garza.
Garza stared at the marshal during the frisking.
“Satisfied?” said Fisk.
Graben said, “He is on the patio in back.”
Fisk said, “Care to draw us a map?”
CHAPTER 56
Through an open glass door in the back, they stepped down onto a brick patio arranged in a wide circle with inlaid tiles set to resemble a glowing sun. Beyond the patio, trees rose before the wall that circled the property. Above the patio was strung a thin netting that did little to block out the sun.
From one of three deck chairs set before a table containing the remains of a fine breakfast, Andrés León set down his iPad and stood. He was an older man, his hair long, held back in a gray-black braid that came halfway down his back. He wore loafers with no socks, linen pants, a loose, long-sleeved shirt, and a wide straw hat. He smiled in a grandfatherly way, greeting them.
“Welcome!” he said. He took Cecilia Garza’s hand politely, almost as though he were about to kiss it, then shook Fisk’s hand.
“Mexico City and New York, working jointly,” he said, having been appraised of their identities in advance of their appearance. “It is rarely a pleasure when police appear, but to what do I owe it?”
He offered them the other two chairs, but neither Fisk nor Garza sat.
Garza said, “We are preparing security for a special dinner tonight between two heads of state—”
León said, “Of course, of course. At my restaurant. But I believed all security matters were being seen to already.”
Fisk said, “We were curious. We hadn’t met you personally and wanted to come by ourselves.”
“Curious, I see. You won’t sit?”
They did, reluctantly.
“Anything? Orange juice? So fresh?”
“No, nothing,” said Fisk.
“I might have some,” said Garza.
“Wonderful.” He waved to a servant standing off to the side, and she departed.
“As you can see,” he sai
d, “I live in a beautiful prison here.”
Fisk nodded. “We were going to ask you about that.”
“That was my assumption. Inspector Fisk, I followed your exploits in the news last year.”
“It’s Detective,” said Fisk.
“And you, too, Comandante Garza. I follow Mexican news most closely. You have made quite a name for yourself. I am not surprised you would seek me out here, due to my involvement in the dinner tonight. I am happy to answer all questions.”
Garza said, “Who are you?”
“Who I am now is a protected individual living under the careful watch of the United States government. A retired Mexican financier. An expatriate. A man in self-exile.”
Garza’s orange juice arrived in a crystal glass, sunlight glinting off the facets and sparkling. As the servant leaned forward to hand Garza the juice, Fisk saw the strap of a shoulder holster beneath his white jacket.
When the servant retreated, León said, “Who I was was a money manager for certain interests in Mexico, many years ago. I was heavily involved—you might say, desperately involved—in many illegal enterprises, as an accountant and a banker, laundering many millions for fifteen cents on the dollar.”
Garza said, “for the cartels.”
León tucked his chin and set his lips, looking resigned. “Corruption always begins with small things, Comandante. It comes at you sideways. I was a legitimate banker once. A long, long time ago. The movies make what I did look daring and exotic. It was hell. Daily hell. Ulcers. Paranoia. No sleep.”
“Not everyone is corrupted,” said Garza.
León opened his hands as though to concede the point. “The age I am now, I think more and more of mi papi, my poor father. I can never forget the expression on his face when he got himself out of bed every day. His back had been broken in an industrial accident. He was a wreck of a man physically. He was never treated properly and spent his life in physical agony. Still, every day he dragged himself out of bed and worked twelve hours a day selling newspapers in a little stand near the Palacio Legislativo. Every day, politicians came by his newspaper stand. They called him by name. I would see this, I would help him, hawking. This was back in the day when the PRI monopolized Mexican politics, of course. They all wore sparkling rings and fine suits. And they would flip me a ten-centavo piece because I was the broken newspaper vendor’s son. You know, ten centavos . . . it was worth less than nothing. They knew it and I knew it. And my father would always say to me, ‘That was Deputy So-and-So. He made sixty-three million pesos in bribes for putting a road across Oaxaca.’ Papi never said it, perhaps never even thought it, but to me the lesson was that, in a just world, those sixty-three million pesos would have gone to fixing the broken backs of the unfortunate men who hurt themselves in an industrial accident, and not to lining the pockets of politicians.”