Miguel's Gift

by Bruce Kading

  Young and very pretty, she had almond eyes, radiant black hair, and smooth, cinnamon-colored skin. She was dressed casually but expensively in tight-fitting designer jeans and a white, sleeveless blouse that highlighted her beautifully tanned shoulders.

  “I like older men,” she whispered to Joe Willis, her eyelids falling seductively.

  “Find my bald head attractive, do you?” snapped Willis, who had seen agents fired for yielding to this sort of temptation. As he continued typing, the girl became visibly nervous and produced a business card of DEA agent Ike Torres.

  “He is friend of mine,” she said, with a touch of defiance.

  “I’ll bet he is,” said Willis, whose eyes lit up as he examined the card. “How does he like it? With you on top or is he into something a little more kinky?”

  “Is not like that,” she said bitterly. “You call him and find out.”

  “He said he would protect you from INS, didn’t he?”

  Taken aback by Willis’s fierce glare, she was momentarily speechless.

  Willis persisted. “That’s what he told you, didn’t he?”

  “He is important federal agent, no?”

  “He’s a lying piece of shit. As far as I’m concerned he’s a criminal for harboring illegals.” Willis flashed his crocodile smile as the woman eyed him nervously and shifted in her chair.

  As the time of his age-forced retirement grew more imminent, Willis, realizing opportunities for revenge were dwindling, had developed a list of enemies. He’d let slip to Payton just a few days earlier that Ike Torres was number three on the list.

  “A list of enemies? Who the hell do you think you are—Richard Nixon?” said Payton with a shake of his head.

  The seeds of Willis’s hatred for Ike Torres had been planted months earlier, when he encountered a Mexican who admitted he was illegal but claimed he was “working for the government” and should therefore not be arrested. Willis had ignored the comment and grabbed him by the arm, whereupon the Mexican punched Willis in the nose, drawing a small amount of blood. There’d been a brief scuffle before Willis was able to handcuff him. Determined to charge the Mexican with assaulting a federal officer, Willis transported him to the office and threw him into lockup. The Mexican promptly called Torres, who had told him that he would protect him from INS, as long as he supplied useful drug information. Though he had no authority for it, this procedure had become routine for Torres.

  Ike Torres, learning of the Mexican’s predicament, had spoken to the DEA chief in Chicago, who, in turn, called INS district director Jerome Farber to ask that the “misunderstanding” be overlooked and the man be released so that he could continue working on a case that had the “highest priority.” Farber, more concerned with avoiding interagency strife than the fate of one illegal alien, had not bothered to inquire with Moretti or Willis before ordering the release. So Torres and Farber were added to the enemies list, though Farber was farther down as Willis made allowances for the predictable betrayals of politicians and high-level bureaucrats.

  Now this young woman, who desperately wanted to remain in the United States, presented a rare opportunity. Convinced that Willis now controlled her destiny, she provided detailed information on two Colombian brothers, the Padillas—both illegal—who were possibly holding several kilos of cocaine in their apartment. One of the brothers had boasted just yesterday about the drugs. But was it only a boast to impress her? She said she hadn’t yet told Torres about the Padilla brothers as she was still collecting information. Willis doubted that she ever planned to tell Torres, but it made no difference. It was his case now. If it checked out, Willis assured her, he would see to it that she was released and given a year to depart the country on her own, which they both understood meant that she’d be allowed to disappear. On his way out of lockup, Willis told the detention officers to make sure she was given no access to a telephone or visitors, particularly any government agents such as Ike Torres.

  Willis wasted no time in gathering a team to meet the next day before dawn. He located a file on Francisco Padilla showing he had been deported two years earlier. In a brief meeting with the agents, Willis distributed mug shots of Padilla. The agents couldn’t get a search warrant because the US Attorney would find the probable cause weak and insist on bringing the DEA and Ike Torres in on the case, so they would have to be creative. The plan was simple: get into the damned apartment by whatever means necessary and find the cocaine without the assistance or knowledge of Ike Torres or anybody from the DEA.

  * * *

  It was a diverse neighborhood on the far north side of the city, dense with apartment buildings, small houses, and three-flats with tiny yards or no yards at all. A bit of gentrification was in evidence, with an occasional rehabbed graystone next to a dilapidated high-rise, but it remained a relatively high-crime area. As agents took up their positions, the first glimmers of light emerged, softly brushing the street with color.

  Hayden had eagerly accepted Willis’s invitation to participate in what sounded like an interesting criminal case, but he hadn’t counted on being partnered with Tom Kane. It had been three years since their altercation over the fleeing Jamaican, and though Nick had always been curious about why there had been no repercussions from the incident, he’d thought it wiser to let the issue fade. Since they were both in area control, a complete lack of contact had been impossible, but the branch was big enough—some forty agents—that he’d managed to quietly avoid Kane.

  They sat in Kane’s Fury, one of several INS vehicles scattered throughout the neighborhood, watching for any sign of the Padilla brothers entering or leaving the apartment building. It was quiet except for occasional bulletins from Willis, always happy to fill dead airspace. Hayden decided the lull was an opportunity to clear the air.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”

  “What’s that?” asked Kane.

  “You never told anybody about that problem we had with the Jamaican when I was a trainee, did you?”

  “If I’d said anything, the ex–Border Patrol guys might’ve seen an opening. As I recall, you were partnered with Joe Willis, who hates all trainees. Once those guys get a bad feeling about somebody, it’s all over. Anyway, you’d just started and didn’t have a chance to figure things out.”

  “I was pretty naive back then,” said Hayden. “The way I look at it now, if they come here illegally, they’re not entitled to be treated like everybody else. If they don’t like it, they can go back where they came from. I have zero sympathy for them.”

  “Everybody changes on this job,” said Kane. “You have to, otherwise you get steamrolled.”

  “Well, I owe you one for not saying anything to Willis and the others.”

  “That’s ancient history. Forget about it.”

  Despite their earlier confrontation, Nick had come to respect Kane, who had a solid work ethic and didn’t play political games.

  “You still want out of area control?” asked Hayden.

  “Yeah, but they never want to move you if you’re producing. I’ve done OK on short assignments to the fraud unit, so maybe I’ll eventually get a shot at staying there.”

  Willis’s voice came over the radio, this time with more urgency. A man wearing a black leather jacket and a Yankees cap had left the apartment building and was walking swiftly toward Kane’s vehicle. It could be one of the Padillas, Willis said, but he couldn’t be sure. If it was Francisco or his brother, Enrico, they were to take him down out of sight of the apartment building.

  “Not just a doper, a Yankees fan,” said Kane, who could see, through his rearview mirror, a figure walking toward them, about twenty-five yards away. “Here he comes, on your side.”

  In his side-view mirror, Hayden saw the man looking suspiciously over his shoulder. Perhaps he had spotted one of the other surveillance vehicles. More likely he was just paranoid, especially if they were holding several kilos of cocaine in that apartment. Nick feared the man would spot two guys in the
vehicle, assume they were cops, and take off.

  “I better grab him,” said Hayden, stepping out of the car. In the faint light, he stood face-to-face with a startled man who had close-set eyes and a wide nose: Francisco Padilla. The Colombian spotted the gold shield on Hayden’s belt and pivoted away, but Hayden grabbed him by the shoulder and thrust him savagely into the brick stairway of a two-flat apartment just off the sidewalk. Padilla gasped in pain as his knees slammed off the pointed edges of the bricks. Hayden pushed him into a prone position against the steps, pulled his hands behind his back, and quickly slid a pair of handcuffs around Padilla’s wrists. Hayden thrust his right hand into the man’s pants pocket, dug around, pulled out a ring of keys, and threw them to Kane, who had just arrived.

  “What is wrong? Why you do this?” Francisco sputtered in heavily accented English, a gash on his nose leaking droplets of blood.

  Kane pulled the man’s shoulder back to view his face. “Yeah, this appears to be Francisco.”

  Hayden felt something metallic pressed between Padilla’s belt and abdomen, and a clip attached to the belt. “Hey, what do we have here?” he chirped. It was a black leather holster holding a nickel-plated .38-caliber revolver. He handed it back to Kane, who was now standing at Padilla’s feet. Kane looked up and down the street while Hayden continued his search, pushing his hand into the inside pocket of the leather jacket. He pulled out a small glass vial of white powder and passed it to Kane.

  “You have any papers, Francisco?” asked Hayden.

  “What papers?” asked Padilla.

  “Immigration papers, you idiot. Do you have permission to be here or not?” demanded Hayden, as Kane pulled Padilla to a standing position next to the steps.

  Padilla stared defiantly at Hayden.

  “I’ll take that as a no,” said Hayden. “That means you’re going back to Colombia. But first, let’s make sure you have your passport and all your belongings. We wouldn’t want to send you back there without your personal stuff. We know how important that is to you.”

  “I no need anything. I no have passport.”

  “Let’s get him into the car for this,” said Kane. They each grabbed one of Padilla’s arms and shoved him into the backseat of the Fury, Hayden climbing in beside him.

  “Five-fourteen to Kane and Hayden,” said Willis over the radio.

  “We’ve got him, Joe. It’s Francisco,” said Kane.

  “Good. Any trouble?” asked Willis.

  “No. He had a gun and a small vial of powder. Give us a minute to talk to him.”

  Hayden knew as soon as they’d arrested Padilla how they would do it. He leaned forward over the seat. “Tell him Francisco wants to get his belongings at the apartment.”

  “I no live around here,” sputtered Padilla.

  “I guarantee the apartment key is on that ring,” said Hayden. “And he’s going to give us permission to go into that apartment.”

  “I no give permission!” cried Padilla.

  Kane, a bit startled that Hayden would hatch such a scheme, paused for a moment before an impish grin came over his face and he lifted the mic. “He wants to get his stuff before being shipped, Joe.”

  “I think we can accommodate him on that,” said Willis sarcastically.

  Two agents were stationed in the alley beneath the second-floor apartment. Inside the dim hallway, six agents with guns drawn were poised just outside Padilla’s apartment door as Willis inserted the key. Francisco Padilla stood at the end of the row of agents, cuffed behind his back. To keep him from calling out a warning, Kane wrapped his hands around Francisco’s mouth from behind. Willis turned the key, and the bolt slid away from the doorjamb. He kicked the door open and, seeing nobody inside, waved the others to follow. The tension of anticipation released, the agents stampeded through the apartment like a herd of elephants.

  Willis and another agent charged into the first bedroom off the hallway to find Enrico Padilla next to the bed pulling on his pants. He looked up, a mixture of fear and defiance in his eyes.

  “Let me see your papers if you have any,” said Willis, showing his badge.

  “You no have right,” Enrico blurted, standing unclothed from the waist up.

  “Call the ACLU,” barked Willis, already pulling Enrico’s arms behind his back to cuff him. He looked a lot like his brother, short but muscular, with a barrel chest and a wide nose with flaring nostrils.

  It took only minutes to check the obvious places where several kilos of cocaine might be stashed: closets, dressers, mattresses, appliances, kitchen cupboards. Al Winfield even unscrewed the grilles on the heating vents, but to no avail. All they found was a loaded .357 revolver and the men’s Colombian passports under Enrico’s mattress. It was a spare, clean apartment and, given the absence of personal clutter that tends to accumulate over time, appeared not to have been occupied very long.

  The Padilla brothers were sitting on the couch in the living room, handcuffed behind their backs, when Hayden marched in from the hallway.

  “What do you do for work . . . to make a living?” asked Hayden. Francisco glowered, while Enrico hung his head and looked at the floor.

  Hayden thought there were too many reasons to believe the girl—the guns, the vial of cocaine, Francisco’s jumpy and belligerent reaction. He decided to give Francisco’s bedroom a second look. The room had old hardwood floors that had recently been refinished with a fresh coat of polyurethane. He pulled up an imitation Oriental rug that was lying alongside the bed, and he was about to move on when he noticed an unusual configuration in the oak boards. At first glance the smooth finishing obscured the variation, but now he could see that a number of boards had been shortened to end at the same place, the edges forming an almost perfect square.

  “Anybody got a flathead screwdriver?” he called out.

  In the living room, Francisco exploded. “You have no right for search! I want lawyer,” he bellowed angrily, rising to his feet. Kane shoved him back onto the couch.

  Winfield pulled a screwdriver from his belt tool holder and walked past the Padillas to deliver it to Hayden, whereupon Francisco became even more animated. “Is illegal search!” he cried.

  “You guys must be getting close,” Kane shouted toward the bedroom. “Francisco’s a human Geiger counter.”

  Hayden worked the screwdriver along the edges of the suspicious square until it came loose. The hollowed-out cavity beneath the square was only a few inches deep, but it widened beneath the floor, and they could see a number of packages wrapped in brown tape.

  “We hit the jackpot!” said Willis excitedly. “Better get some photos. We need fingerprints, so nobody touch the bags without rubber gloves.”

  Winfield came in with a 35 mm camera and took several photos of the opening and packages. Slipping on rubber gloves, Hayden removed the packages—seven kilos altogether—and stacked them on the floor. He used a pocketknife to create a tiny slit in the wrapping of one, revealing a sparkling white powder. He looked up at the hovering Willis.

  “Looks like good coke,” he said.

  “Good work, Hayden,” said Willis. “Damn fine work. I’ll take the dope in. You and Kane can take Francisco in, if you don’t mind. I’ll have other guys take Enrico.”

  Hayden couldn’t believe Joe Willis would ever say “if you don’t mind” without a touch of sarcasm. That alone was worth more than whatever accolades might come from his supervisors.

  In the car, a scowling Francisco Padilla sat awkwardly in the backseat with his hands cuffed behind him.

  “Nice job, Nick,” said Kane, pulling the car away from the curb.

  “We got lucky,” said Hayden, unable to restrain a smile. It wasn’t false modesty. He knew it hadn’t taken any great skill. But everything was different now. The key had been his willingness to do something he wouldn’t have considered a year earlier—sidestepping laws that seemed to him designed to thwart legitimate efforts to get criminals off the streets. In so doing he was reaping tangible benefi
ts: a major seizure of drugs and the admiration of his colleagues, even Willis. He’d finally penetrated an invisible wall that had separated them.

  They sped down Lake Shore Drive beneath a clear indigo sky, everything glowing in the morning sunshine. On Lake Michigan, rolling waves broke smoothly near the shoreline. Beyond the waves the lake spread out, flat and shimmering, appearing as vast as an ocean. Buoyed by an unfamiliar sense of belonging, Hayden felt something close to euphoria.

  * * *

  The cocaine had a street value of over a million dollars. The story was on the front pages of the Chicago papers and among the lead stories on television. District Director Farber was delighted to answer questions from the media that were, for a change, not about some perceived gaffe or violation of policy, and Jack Connelly received a congratulatory call from a top INS official at headquarters. It was good for morale; even agents not involved in the bust seemed to carry themselves with a bit more swagger. Joe Willis took great pleasure in letting Ike Torres know that his unauthorized “informant” had supplied the tip that led to the seizure. Though he feigned indifference, Torres was furious.

  Fingerprint analysis would seal the fate of the Padilla brothers. The slick tape on the kilo-sized packages proved to be an excellent surface from which to lift fingerprints. The brothers couldn’t plausibly claim that they’d known nothing about the seven kilos found in their apartment because their prints were all over them.

  Still, their attorneys declared the search illegal, and this led to a suppression hearing at which Hayden and Kane were called upon to testify. They looked like young bankers in their dark suits, and testified almost identically: Francisco had provided a key to the apartment and given them permission to search it, which led to the discovery of the cocaine. According to them, it was all very straightforward.

  Then the defense attorneys pounced. Why hadn’t the agents obtained written consent to search? There was no legal requirement for it, said Hayden correctly, and there had been a witness to the verbal consent.