The House of Wolfe

by James Carlos Blake

  Frank was irked at being left out of this one, but Charlie needs him to run things in his absence. Eddie Gato wanted to come too, naturally, but was already assigned to go to New Orleans tomorrow night to lend a hand to the Youngblood family. They’re our relatives through marriage, and our most important arms supplier east of Texas. They’re having a problem with a smuggling outfit that’s been trying to poach some of our southeastern sources and is suspected of hijacking shipments meant for us. It’s not so much that the Youngbloods need the help, but Charlie’s been wanting Eddie to get acquainted with them and saw this as a good opportunity to send him on his first solo job.

  Immediately following the call from Harry Mack, Charlie filled us in on the situation with cousin Jessie. We knew she’d gone to Mexico City a few days ago to be a bridesmaid at the wedding of a couple she’s known since her college days, and she was expected to return to Brownsville the day after tomorrow. But according to Harry Mack—who received the information from Juan Jaguaro, the head of the Mexican Wolfes—she’d been kidnapped tonight, she and nine other members of the wedding party, including the bride and groom. Kidnapped late last night, to be more accurate, since it’s now Monday morning. The ransom’s five million, U.S., and the bridal couple’s parents have agreed to pay. The transfer’s set to begin at four o’clock this afternoon. The parents do not intend to tell anyone about the snatch and are unaware the Mexican Wolfes have learned of it. That’s all Harry Mack knew. We’ll get the details in Mexico City.

  Evidently, the parents believe they have no choice but to trust the kidnappers. That’s their prerogative. We choose not to. We’re tolerant and liberty loving, as I’ve said, but we’re not free with our trust except with each other, and even then we can sometimes be chary. It could be that the snatchers truly intend to release the captives on receipt of the money. It works out like that more often than it doesn’t. But we know of too many kidnappings in which the ransom was paid in full and in exactly the manner dictated and without any violation of the agreement with the kidnappers, and the captives were killed anyway. Mainly for the age-old reason that the dead don’t tell tales. Even if the perpetrators don’t plan on doing away with the captives when they get paid off, they might get riled or panicked about something for whatever reason and decide to kill one for effect. To make a point of their seriousness. In such a case, the likely victim would be the captive who’s most expendable. The only one of the bunch not related to either bride or groom. Meaning Jessie.

  It’s a possibility we can’t risk.

  Find her before the money changes hands—and move fast to get her out. That’s our plan in a nutshell.

  By tonight we’ll know how it went.

  As we make our descent, the cloud-blurred lights of Mexico City materialize. It’s almost dawn but the overcast is well entrenched and the pilot says the prediction is for rain all day. I managed a catnap but I can tell that Charlie didn’t even try to sleep.

  I’ve been to a number of places in northern Mexico, but this is my first time in the capital. Some might find that odd, considering the large family we have here, but that’s how it is. The Three Uncles have all come here at one time or another, but I don’t think any of them have been here in ages. Other than Charlie Fortune, who comes down once or twice a year to see the Jaguaros about things that neither he nor they will discuss in any way but face-to-face, Jessie’s the only Texas Wolfe who’s been in Mexico City in recent years, so far as I know. The Mexican Wolfes are the same way about Texas. The only one of them who’s visited us in years is our cousin Rayo Luna. We’re all under the same roof and in business together, but the two sides of the family generally tend to keep to their own side of the house.

  The Beechcraft lands smoothly and taxis to a small building where a mustached man in a dark suit stands waiting by a door. We debark into a light wind threaded with the scent of rain. The man comes over and welcomes us, saying, “Bienvenidos a México, primos!” He introduces himself to me as my cousin Rodrigo Álvaro Wolfe but says to call him Rigo. We shake hands and embrace each other tight in a backslapping abrazo, then he and Charlie do the same. Charlie has met with him a number of times before and thinks highly of him. They’re about the same age, and as operations chief of the Jaguaros, Rodrigo is Charlie’s Mexican Wolfe counterpart. He has a degree in economics from UCLA and is as fluent in English as any of us. Like Charlie, he reports only to the heads of his family—his father, Plutarco, and his uncle, Juan Jaguaro, who is Plutarco’s big brother and the top man.

  “Let’s get the customs bullshit over with,” Rigo says. “Then we’ll talk in the car.”

  Over the generations, the Mexican side of the family has prospered even more than ours. They own two investment firms and are part owners of two banks. They own data processing companies. They have controlling interest in a shipping line. They’re established in Mexico City society and are prominent philanthropists who have endowed a number of education foundations and research institutes. And under the guise of Los Jaguaros, they’ve long been buying arms from us and selling them all over Mexico. Like us, they don’t deal in guns only for the money or because they believe strongly in the right of self-defense and in ownership of the means to exercise it. They do it because, like us, they believe in greater allegiance to our own rules than those of governments owned by powerful interests who play the public for fools. It’s a matter of self-respect as much as anything else.

  Although the Jaguaros have received very little attention in contrast to the major crime cartels, they haven’t wholly escaped public notice. As periodically described by the news media, they’re the most covert criminal organization in the country, and some reports call them a cartel of their own. No one can say when their name first became known. Their home territory is rumored to be the capital itself but no one has ever proved it. The number of members in the organization is anyone’s guess, and so far as journalistic investigators have been able to determine, not a single member of the Jaguaros is known by name to any government agency. The only thing the federal authorities know about them is that they traffic solely in the sale of firearms, but on a scale that makes them the largest arms dealer in Mexico.

  Some news outlets, however—their editors in the pay of shadowy intermediaries of the Jaguaros—have expressed chronic doubts that a Jaguaro organization even exists. They’ve repeatedly conjectured that the Jaguaros are nothing more than the fabrication of federal officials, one more ploy to distract the public from the government’s failure to stem the arms flow into Mexico or curb the spreading violence of the real cartels, and maybe even—as some of the bolder tabloids have insinuated—to cover up their collusion with those cartels. Some apprehended members of various crime gangs have told police that the Jaguaros certainly do exist and that their organizations have many times bought guns from them. The same skeptical media sources have dismissed these claims as a clever tactic to keep secret the cartels’ true suppliers.

  The truth is that not even the other cartels know who the Jaguaros are. They know the Jaguaros work out of the capital, yes, and they know how to make contact with them to arrange an arms purchase, certainly. But to this day, none of the outfits has any inkling that the Jaguaros are connected to the estimable Wolfe family of Mexico City.

  14

  A white Tahoe picks us up in front of the terminal. The smell of the coming rain has grown stronger. In better weather the sun would be up now, but the cloud cover is so thick I don’t even know in which direction the sun might be. Rigo takes the shotgun seat and Charlie and I sit in back. Despite the overcast, the driver wears dark wraparounds. Wood-faced dude. He nods when Rigo introduces him as Chuy.

  Even at this early hour the traffic into the city is already something to reckon with, but Chuy navigates it with ease. According to Charlie, you haven’t really risked your ass until you’ve tried driving in Mexico City.

  Sitting half-turned toward us, Rigo asks how much we know ab
out the snatch.

  “Only what Harry Mack got from Juan Jaguaro,” Charlie says, and gives him the spare rundown.

  Rigo then gives us the full account, which he says originated with his cousin—and ours—Rayo Luna, though he doesn’t say how she came by the information. The key points are that the kidnapped party’s being held in two groups at different sites, each group to be ransomed in turn, then all the captives released at the same time, and that the guy who claims to be running the show calls himself Mr. X.

  “Number of perps unknown,” Rigo says. “But no question it’s an inside job involving the Huerta guy, the security chief working for Belmonte. What we don’t know is if Huerta’s the only security guy involved or if some of his men are in it too. It’s a small company, seven agents, all of them on duty at the reception, but we haven’t found any of them. Could be the whole outfit’s in on it. He’s got two secretaries, both single, both live alone. We’ve braced them, told them we were federal cops, grilled them good. Neither one seems to know anything. Got them under house arrest, man posted with them so they can’t contact anybody. We tossed the office but found nothing.

  “What do you have on the Mr. X dude?” Charlie says.

  “Nothing but what the parents said. Came across as a cool customer. Smooth talker, they said, educated.”

  “Cartel?” Charlie says.

  “Don’t think so,” Rigo says. “They’d be breaking an agreement the big guys have about Mexico City. The cartel honchos have to live somewhere, too, after all. A lot of them have homes here, their families. The understanding is it’s okay to talk business here but not do business here, and for damn sure not make war here. Some of their cowboys might get in a dustup now and then but it doesn’t happen often, and it’s always some personal deal, not war. The big guys don’t want undue attention here. They don’t want to alarm the good citizens or the tourists or hurt the city’s business. The government will deny it till doomsday, but word has it that as long as the resident big boys don’t make trouble in the capital, the feds will leave them alone in the capital.”

  “So you figure small-time locals for the grab,” Charlie says.

  “Who else?” Rigo says. “God knows how many kidnap gangs there are in Mexico City. Hell, man, snatcher gangs have made the bodyguard business a boom industry in this town. The thing is, most of their grabs are middle-classers who can’t afford a ransom like—”

  “Smalltimers fuck up,” Charlie interrupts. “They’re reckless. The people they grab tend to get hurt, even killed, sometimes by accident, sometimes not. That’s what I know about small-time snatcher gangs. It’s riskier to Jess if it is a small-time bunch.”

  “Normally I’d agree with you, cuz. But these Mr. X guys, they grab ten richies at once, and, according to the parents, without hurting anybody. Pretty smooth, no? The parents treated politely, taken to meet Mr. X so he can explain the deal in person instead of by phone or a letter. He has them driven home. Cool. Reassuring. They’re smart, these guys, they’re not greedy. They could tag these people for more than five mil but they don’t. They figure the families can pony up the five faster than, say, even ten. And they figure that two and a half mil from two banks is easier and faster than five mil from one. I think speed’s their thing. The faster it moves, the less chance of cops coming into it, of anything going wrong. My money’s on a small and highly competent bunch that’s looking to move up in status and knows there’s no percentage in harming the hostages. They get the money, they’ll let them go.”

  “Unless they don’t,” Charlie says. “Look, man, ease up on the fucking comfort campaign. I don’t need it.”

  Rigo gives him a narrow stare. “Fuck your comfort, Charlie. You wanna believe they’re gonna do her, whoever they are, go ahead and believe it. I don’t. Odds are they’re not gonna hurt any of them. All I’m saying. Those are the odds.”

  For a minute nobody says anything. Charlie stares out the window. Rigo makes a show of checking his watch, the overcast sky.

  “Sorry, man,” Charlie says without looking at him.

  “Skip it, cuz,” says Rigo.

  We’re in the central city now, in a six-lane river of nearly bumper-to-bumper traffic ranging from scads of limousines and luxury sedans to hordes of junkers trailing clouds of smoke. The Mexico City soundtrack, some call the steady blaring of car horns.

  Rigo tells us his people have the groom’s parents’ house under surveillance from a house two blocks away. A three-story house whose top floor affords an excellent telescopic view of the Belmonte place. An associate of the Mexican Wolfes, a realtor dealing in exclusive homes, knows the owner of the house, who is vacationing in Hawaii. As a favor to the Wolfes, who told him they’re doing it as a favor to a filmmaker friend of the family, the realtor was able to rent the property for two days and nights so the director could shoot a few scenes set on a sumptuous estate. A Jaguaro team went there with movie equipment and told the household staff they could take the next two days off and paid them all a sum equal to a week’s wages.

  We’re headed for the offices of Jiménez y Asociados, a legal firm dealing mainly in customs and international trade contracts. It’s only a few blocks from the Zócalo—the city’s immense central plaza containing the major federal offices, the National Palace, and the Metropolitan Cathedral. Jiménez has got the top six floors of a twelve-story building whose owner of record is Grupo Azteca Mundial, SA, a Latin American conglomerate whose financial ties would be very difficult for anyone outside the firm to unravel. In fact, the conglomerate is headed by Plutarco Wolfe, Rigo’s daddy, and the building belongs to the Wolfe family.

  “The top floor is our operations center,” Rigo says. “It’s got a suite, if you’d like to clean up, have a bite.”

  “Rayo be there?” I ask.

  “For sure. I figured you’d want to talk to her, since she’s the one came up with the info. I’ve put her on this thing. Her first biggie.”

  “She’s a Jaguaro?” I say.

  He nods with a look of mock rue. “Insisted on a tryout. Wouldn’t take no for an answer. Thing is, and just between us, she might actually work out.”

  I grin back at him, not really that surprised by any of it.

  Rigo clears his throat. “Look, guys, I know how you—”

  Chuy hits the brakes and we all sling forward and hear the screech of tires behind us. A green-and-white microbus that cut in front of us from the lane to our right now cuts into the faster-moving lane on the left, squeezing in ahead of a braking taxi whose driver leans hard on his klaxon as if its squall means anything in the incessant cacophony. Then the traffic in that lane slows and we come abreast of the microbus. It looks like an oversized bread box, and I’d noticed a number of them since leaving the airport, all of them as packed with riders. Look like they can seat maybe two dozen and carry that many more standees holding to overhead rails. The driver of this one wears a red bandanna headband and looks to be in his twenties. He’s obviously irked at his mistake in moving into a slowing lane and he’s flicking glances at ours, looking for a break to slip back into it.

  Chuy lays on his horn to attract the driver’s notice and says, “Chinga tu madre,” enunciating slowly so the guy can read his lips.

  The driver’s eyes cut away from Chuy and go wide as he points ahead of us and mouths, Watch out!

  Chuy taps his brakes as he whips his attention forward—and the microbus zips into the sudden gap in front of us.

  The driver sticks his arm out and gives us the finger. Then he swerves ahead of a full-sized bus in the lane on the right, and the micro’s gone.

  Motherfucker, Chuy says under his breath, the deep darkness of his ears evincing his embarrassment at having been faked out.

  Rigo tells us there are thousands of such micros plying the streets of Mexico City, the cheapest form of public transportation in the capital. A lot of people still call them peseros bec
ause for many years their fare was one peso. Only after they’ve earned a daily quota determined by the company do the drivers start to earn their own pay. It’s a cutthroat competition, Rigo tells us, and hardly any wonder the drivers take such chances.

  Charlie’s staring out at the passing traffic, not really listening.

  “Hey, cousin,” Rigo says, and Charlie turns to him.

  “They didn’t just take your niece,” Rigo says. “They didn’t just take a Texas Wolfe. They took somebody from the house, man. Jessica’s our blood, too, and we want to find her as much as you do, as fast as you do. I want to find her yesterday. But I don’t know if it can happen before payoff time. All I can say is we’ll probably hear something soon. We’ve got our spiders on this. Gave them the word without giving them specifics. They know how to do it, ask around without tipping anybody off. We don’t want the perps getting wind of somebody maybe being on to them. We want them believing they’re the smartest guys on the planet and this is the coolest snatch that ever was and nobody knows about it but them and the snatchees and the two sets of parents. The longer they believe that, the lower their guard and the better our chances of getting a fix on them.”

  Charlie nods. Then goes back to staring out the window.

  I understand why Rigo’s so confident about getting a quick lead of some kind. Charlie’s told me all about the “spiders” Rigo mentioned. They’re the Jaguaros’ information collectors. Every day, they range through an enormous web of sources that extends into every corner of the Federal District, sources from every social level—street rats, corporate staffers, shoeshine boys, political aides, cops, whores, bartenders, newspeople, you name it. The federals are wrong about the Jaguaros dealing only in guns. They also sell information. Almost exclusively to the cartels, who are always ready to pay for any report or rumor concerning anything that may affect them by way of the federal authorities and their American advisers, who are in this country in greater numbers than either the American or Mexican public knows. All the crime outfits have their own information sources, naturally, but, according to Charlie, they all know that none of them can match the network of Jaguaro connections in the capital.