by Bruce Kading
“Right,” Hayden said. There was a moment of awkward silence. “Remember, you’re being recorded.”
Miguel shut the door and returned to his car. Hayden could hear his breathing and the rubbing of the microphone against his shirt through the receiver. It sounded like a scuba diver under water. Hayden picked up the mic.
“We’re on our way. I’ll let you know when he’s out of his car.” A series of ten-fours came back.
Hayden followed Miguel east on Belmont Avenue. Mexican music came from Miguel’s car radio through the receiver on the backseat, a lively tune featuring a singer wailing about the woman who had left him, though Miguel’s microphone was cutting in and out—fuzzy snaps followed by brief silences. Hayden found it unnerving. He’d tested the equipment with Floyd Baker and everything seemed to be working fine, though Baker had warned it could be temperamental.
The pace of Hayden’s thoughts accelerated. He thought again of the surveillance units, their distance from the bar. He grabbed the mic. “Tom, if Nieto isn’t still out there watching, maybe you can get closer.”
He knew Kane wouldn’t appreciate the suggestion. The silence went on for at least ten seconds.
“You read, five-eleven?” said Hayden finally.
“We can’t start moving around now,” said Kane coldly. “It’ll draw attention.”
Nick let the statement linger without a response. Kane was right—again. Hayden sat rigidly at the wheel. Everything that had happened that morning sharpened a sense of looming disaster: the receiver connection to Miguel breaking up, the other agents being too far away, Nieto’s nervousness, even Miguel’s request for a gun. An image came racing through his mind: Rico tearing Miguel’s shirt off, exposing the network of wires, and throwing Miguel against the wall . . .
The transmitter cut out again, and Hayden looked up to see the Fairlane turning north on Western Avenue. Nick swung into the passing lane, pressed his foot to the floor, and made a squealing left turn just after the light turned red. The scratchy sound of the microphone and music from Miguel’s radio again came through the receiver and then, moments later, another dreamlike image arose: Rico pulling out a semiautomatic and rapid-firing several rounds into Miguel’s chest . . .
They turned east on Irving Park Road. Though it was cool, Hayden had begun sweating. He concentrated on gripping the wheel firmly to prevent his mind from drifting. In a few minutes, Miguel would enter El Palacio. It was out of his hands. Just let it happen, he told himself, but yet another vision flashed through his mind: Carmen and the children gathered around a crude memorial—photos of Miguel, a cross, and soft-glowing candles . . .
Kane’s voice seemed to shout through the speaker. “Nick, we have an ETA?”
Hayden felt like he was sliding in and out of a dream. He could see the Fairlane passing a cemetery in the distance. “He should be there in less than five minutes,” he said, surprised at how calm his voice sounded.
They went past the cemetery into a mixed commercial and residential area. Miguel turned south onto Sheridan Road, passed under the elevated tracks, and slowed to find a parking spot across from El Palacio, which was on the other side of the street. Moments later Hayden turned onto Sheridan and pulled over where he couldn’t be seen from the bar. He watched as Miguel began squeezing the Fairlane into a vacated spot.
Suddenly the receiver made a fuzzy snap and the sound of Miguel’s breathing stopped. There was a low hum from the receiver that hadn’t been there before, as though the connection had been severed. Nick stretched over the seat to check the dials and settings. The needle was in the red zone, meaning no signal. Perhaps the microphone had worked its way loose, though he had been careful to fasten it securely. But it was too late to intercept Miguel to check the equipment without being seen by somebody at the bar. Hayden grabbed the radio mic.
“Our guy is parking on Sheridan, but there’s a problem with the transmitter.”
“It’s normal for it to cut out here and there,” said Kane dismissively. “It’ll come back.”
Hayden watched as Miguel stood next to his car, waiting for the traffic to clear so he could cross the street. He knew there were only a few seconds to decide what to do. He desperately hoped that Miguel’s microphone would come alive, but it remained silent.
Then, in a moment of absolute clarity, he knew that it was irresponsible to leave Miguel’s fate in the hands of Salvador Rico, especially with no way to monitor the deal. He couldn’t let that happen.
“The transmitter isn’t working,” said Hayden into his microphone. “We’re gonna have to take ’em down right now. I’m going in.”
A moment later, Rick Meadows called out over the radio: “Hayden’s out of his vehicle—running toward the bar! What should we do, Tom?”
Miguel had crossed the street and was twenty feet from the bar when Hayden grabbed his shoulder and spun him around.
“Get the hell out of here, Miguel. Go back to the meet site!” he shouted. He looked at the window of El Palacio. The curtains had been pulled back, and he could see faces and somebody, possibly Nieto, waving his arm frantically in a warning. He had to get inside before they destroyed evidence or tried to escape.
Hayden pushed on the solid wood door, but it opened only a few inches and then hit against something at the bottom. He could hear the shuffling of feet and somebody shouting. Stepping back, he lowered his right shoulder and drove it into the door, feeling bodies being pushed away as his momentum carried him inside. Two young men moved aside, grinning as though blocking the door had been a joke. Chacon, standing behind the bar, looked terrified and didn’t move.
Hayden, pulling his .357 revolver from the shoulder holster, ran toward the beaded curtain in front of Rico’s office. The door, a few feet to the right behind the curtain, was slightly ajar, and there was light coming from inside, but as he pushed through the beads, the light went off. He swung the door open and turned to face Rico’s desk, but the darkness stopped him. The only meager light came through the open door behind him. He could barely make out a figure—he assumed it was Rico—sitting behind a large desk at the far end of the room.
“Federal officer,” Hayden shouted and pointed his gun toward the figure at the desk. “Get your hands up against the wall.”
The room was silent as Hayden struggled to see through the darkness. There was a shadowy figure standing against the wall on his left, next to the sofa, and another figure against the wall to the right. They stood motionless, facing him, trying to assess what they were dealing with and, perhaps, waiting for orders. He knew they could see him much better than he could see them, as he was silhouetted by the light behind him.
A calm voice came from behind the desk. “Federales no do things alone. Who are you?”
“I’ve got a shield on my belt. Turn on a light, and you’ll see it,” shouted Hayden, trying to fill the darkness with his voice. But his command was met with silence.
“I said get your hands up against the damn wall!” Hayden bellowed. As his eyes slowly adjusted, he could see the large figure to his left had his arms folded across his chest: Nieto. And then he could see Rico’s head nodding toward Nieto. Hayden instinctively pivoted toward the Bolivian and fell into a crouch. Nieto was moving, his arms rising. Hayden began to squeeze his trigger slowly, not yet committed, aiming at the center of the man, and then an orange muzzle flash lit up the room, and Hayden completed the squeeze of the trigger, firing twice in quick succession toward the gun, and he felt the heat of a bullet searing his left shoulder, and there was a hollow moan and the metallic sound of a gun bouncing off the tile floor, and before he could swing toward Rico, another shot rang in his ears, its reverberations so loud that he thought for a moment he’d been shot in the head.
Some force had stopped Rico, who was motionless in the chair, his elbows pinned awkwardly inside the chair’s arms.
The man to Hayden’s right had turned around, placed his hands against the wall and was looking back over his shoulder.
&
nbsp; “No shoot, please no shoot,” the man cried.
Hayden could feel a presence behind him and glanced over his shoulder. Miguel stood with his arms lowered, his hands gripping a blue-steel revolver.
“Miguel, what the hell!” he gasped. “See if you can find a light switch.”
Miguel found the switch for the overhead light and flipped it on. Hayden looked back at the motionless figure of Salvador Rico and a black semiautomatic pistol that lay on the desk.
“Get Rico’s gun, Miguel,” said Hayden, as he kicked Nieto’s pistol under the desk and out of reach. Nieto was lying curled on his side, his hands pressed into his abdomen, making soft moaning sounds. There was a pool of blood on the floor next to him.
Nick turned toward the other man. “Get on your knees and put your hands behind your head,” he shouted at the shaking man, who he could see was Felix Pinal. The man instantly complied.
Hayden felt alternating sensations of pain and numbness in his shoulder. “Watch him, Miguel,” said Hayden, nodding toward Pinal. Nick stepped around the desk to get a better look at Rico.
Salvador Rico had been pushed so far into the chair that his feet dangled, not quite reaching the floor, his head tilted back. There was a fresh bullet hole through his left eye. The bullet had pushed the pupil inside his head, and blood flowed from the hollowed socket, across the side of his nose and into his mouth. He had died instantly.
Kane and the team of agents charged noisily into the room, guns drawn. Four agents surrounded Miguel Chavez, grabbed the two pistols he was holding, and threw him against the wall, gamely sticking to the original plan.
“The semiauto is Rico’s,” Hayden called out. “There’s a gun under the desk, and that guy needs to be searched.”
Three agents stepped around a pool of urine near Felix Pinal, who was still on his knees. They did a thorough frisk, finding a semiautomatic pistol wedged into the small of his back, and placed him in handcuffs.
Several agents surrounded the curled figure of Rosario Nieto, and one of them grabbed Nieto’s gun from under the desk. Moments later, Nieto let out a high-pitched moan and went limp.
Hayden sat down on the sofa next to where Nieto lay. His shoulder had gone numb, and he was sweating profusely. Kane used his walkie-talkie to call for an ambulance and had Stark call the police.
“Looks like both of these guys are dead,” somebody called out.
Kane helped Hayden remove his leather jacket and could see that the bleeding was steady but not gushing. He yelled for Meadows to get a towel from the bar. “It may not be too bad,” Kane said hopefully.
Meadows returned and handed a small towel to Kane, who wrapped it around Hayden’s shoulder. The other agents padded nervously around the room, frustrated that the action had occurred before their arrival.
A bluish haze of smoke had drifted toward the ceiling, and the smell of gunpowder filled the air. The room had quieted, the agents trying to absorb what had happened and unsure about what to do next.
Hayden, though woozy, summoned the strength to jolt them into action. “We better leave the bodies where they are so the cops can take photos. Somebody needs to talk to Pinal about where the documents are located.” His voice sounded uncharacteristically loose and slack. The other agents looked at Kane for direction. Hayden became angry at their hesitation and shouted, “Somebody get those cuffs off Miguel! He just saved my life, for chrissakes!”
Finally Kane spoke. “Yeah, let’s see what we can find. I’ll talk to him,” he said, motioning toward Pinal. “Meadows—take a couple of guys and serve the search warrant on the bartender and look around out there. The rest of you can search this room.”
Kane called over to Miguel, who was standing against the wall. Miguel walked over, and Kane used a key to undo the cuffs. Kane winked at Miguel. “Just sit here a minute, amigo.”
Kane sidled up next to Hayden. “Who the hell shot who here?”
“I shot Nieto,” said Hayden. “Miguel got Rico. They were ready for us.” He nodded toward Felix Pinal. “If this guy hadn’t frozen, we would have been in deep shit. And thank God Miguel disobeyed me.”
“Where’d he get the gun?”
“Must have had it in his car.” There was a brief pause before Hayden said, “Tom, I had no choice when the transmitter went down. I couldn’t let Miguel go in like that.”
“I know. You did what you thought you had to,” said Kane. “Anyway, we have to get you to the hospital. I’ll take care of things from here.”
Hayden was very weak and felt he was about to lose consciousness.
17
Hernan Garza had moved swiftly since his return to Chicago—reclaiming his basement utility room, and then discreetly following Salvador Rico in an old Buick Regal he’d borrowed from a Peruvian friend. To prevent easy recognition by Rico or the Colombians, Garza now concealed his layers of tattered garb beneath a blue nylon jacket that fell almost to his knees. A navy baseball cap and oversized sunglasses completed the makeover.
Garza had discovered that Rico was living in a modest apartment building on Paulina Street. He’d twice seen Rico park his car in the lot behind the building and then walk to a small garage across the alley, briefcase in hand. Rico would spend a few minutes in the garage before heading back to his apartment building. Garza suspected that Rico was storing contraband there. It could be nothing at all, but he couldn’t resist making at least one attempt to have a look inside the garage before providing information to the feds that would blow the lid off Salvador Rico’s lucrative document empire.
At eleven o’clock in the morning on September 27, Garza drove down the alley and saw that Rico’s car was gone, so he parked and jumped out of the car. Seeing nobody around, he tried to lift the garage door, but it wouldn’t budge. On the side of the garage he found a window protected by iron bars and, nearby, a narrow wooden door. He tried opening the door, but it, too, was locked. Going back to the window, he peered between the bars and could make out an assortment of shovels and rakes, a stepladder, and stacks of old newspapers in the corner. The center of the garage was empty, the cement floor covered with oil spots. In the far corner he could see a large metal trunk, the kind that might be used to store tools, its lid fastened with a heavy padlock. The trunk was intriguing. He would come back after he figured out how to get into the garage.
Garza drove off, hopscotching through side streets, and stopped at a liquor store just off Diversey Parkway. Behind the counter an old man with pale skin that hung in folds beneath his chin was sitting on a stool, sleepily watching a small television.
Garza’s hands were shaking as he stood at the counter and struggled to remove a ten-dollar bill from his wallet. “Give me pint Old Crow,” he demanded. As the man went to retrieve the bottle, the flashing red lights on the television screen caught Garza’s attention. They had interrupted the regular program for a live news report, and he recognized buildings along Sheridan Road. There was a shot of ambulances on the street, and a reporter was talking excitedly about the shooting deaths of two men at El Palacio. Garza thrust his head forward and leaned over the counter to catch every word.
The men were purported to be involved in the sale and distribution of counterfeit documents. Two suspects, Salvador Rico and Rosario Nieto, were dead, and another man was under arrest. An INS agent had been wounded. There was a brief shot of paramedics carrying a covered corpse on a stretcher.
Garza grabbed the bottle of whiskey, twisted the cap off, and guzzled the flaming liquid so eagerly that some dripped down his chin and onto the floor.
“Hey, this isn’t a tavern,” said the old man disgustedly. “Go outside if you can’t wait.”
Garza stumbled out, dazed, and piled into the Regal. He took another pull from the pint, felt the biting heat through his chest, and let the news settle in his mind. His plans were now destroyed. He had wanted to take Rico down. He took another swallow of whiskey, wiped his lips with the back of his hand, and let out a warm belch. Well, it was good that
Rico was gone, he reasoned, even if it upset his plans for revenge. He considered that for a moment, and then remembered—the metal trunk! It might be too late. The agents might already be on their way to Rico’s apartment and the garage. He would need the bolt cutters he’d seen among the janitor’s tools in his basement hideout.
* * *
It was a quiet working-class neighborhood, most of the homes unpretentious brick two-flats. Maple trees filled with maroon leaves lined the street.
Marvin Johnson, clad in overalls and a gray sweatshirt, was kneeling down, spreading mulch into a flowerbed when he heard something behind him. He turned and looked up at Hernan Garza.
“Hello, sir,” said Garza, bowing respectfully.
Garza’s appearance—the purplish nose, furtive eyes, and smell of alcohol—set Johnson off balance. He waited for Garza to state his business.
“My cousin, Salvador Rico . . . he die today,” Garza said, struggling to produce his best English. “I come . . . to get properties.”
Johnson, a tall, elderly man with a long face, rose from his knees and, towering over Garza, looked down suspiciously. “Died? He was a young man. How did he die?”
Garza’s heart leapt. The old man knew Rico!
“He shot today,” said Garza, who quickly crossed himself. “The police shoot him dead. Is on the TV.”
Johnson had always been wary of Salvador Rico, ever since Rico had approached him six months earlier to ask about renting space in his garage. Rico had offered him fifty dollars a month just to use Johnson’s metal trunk to store tools. It was easy money.
“How do I know you’re his cousin?” asked Johnson, noting the absence of any resemblance between this man and Salvador Rico.
“Here—I have letter from Salvador,” said Garza, pulling a folded piece of paper from the pocket of his jacket and handing it to Johnson.