by Lou Dobbs
His head was already spinning slightly as a result of the gin. John made the decision to leave his car in the parking lot behind the pub. He could make it the five blocks to his house without being stopped. God knew he’d done it enough times before. That was the main reason he liked this place. Shitty food, fair service, one short ride home. HSI put up with drinking, but a DUI would not only hurt his employment, it would seal the deal with his wife.
The muscular guy sitting next to him raised a glass to the highlight clip of a homer by the Diamondbacks first baseman. He had the look of a military man.
John said, “You’ve got to be from around here if you’re a fan of the Diamondbacks.”
The man shook his head and said, “I lived here a while back, but I’m just visiting now.”
“What brings you back?”
“Just a little reunion at Fort Bliss.”
John nodded, pleased with his ability to evaluate someone accurately. He stuck out his hand and said, “Hi, I’m John.”
The man shook his hand with a firm grip and said, “My name is Ari.”
TWELVE
Tom Eriksen sat at his desk, reading reports related to Dr. Martinez and other people with recent information on the growing unrest in Mexico. The squad bay held all ten desks of the various law enforcement agents on the task force. Five were HSI agents; that was why the unit had an HSI supervisor. The desks were separated by cheap cubicle dividers that did nothing for the sound that carried across the bay. Generally there were only a few agents in the office at any one time.
Lila had already been at her desk when he arrived at eight, and she grunted her usual greeting, her dark eyes barely flicking up to assess him. She had the ability to focus on a task unlike anyone else he’d ever met.
He leaned back in his rolling chair with a funky wheel, stretched his back, and said, “It seems like no matter how many reports I read, there’s always a stack to catch up on.”
Lila looked up and said, “Maybe if you spent a little more time reading and less time flirting with the NSA chick in the TV room, you’d be all caught up and we could go out and interview more people instead of waiting for you to get up to speed.”
Eriksen stared at her for a moment, wondering if she was pulling his leg like cops tended to do. When he saw she was serious he said, “I didn’t realize you were my supervisor and I had to check in with you.”
“It doesn’t matter if I’m your supervisor or not, I’m your assigned partner. I have a certain pace I want to keep, and having a typical entitled FBI agent in tow slows me down.”
“There’s more to life than this bullshit.”
“Is that right?”
Eriksen just nodded.
“Then why don’t you tell me what you do with your free time? Because my guess is you sit at home and sulk about being shipped over here to the Island of Misfit Cops and you talk with your old partner about how you’re being shafted by your respective agencies.”
Eriksen stared at her, wondering how she knew so much about him. “I manage to do a few other things, too.”
“Like sniff around Katharine Gleason?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“Anything that affects the operations here is my business. Whether you know it or not, this is a vital job, and one day you might come to appreciate it. You need to focus on something real, like information Luis Martinez is providing us. He wouldn’t be bargaining unless he had something good. Everything else around here is a smoke screen. Whether it’s that crazy Senator Ramos or chatter about a nebulous terrorist threat, it isn’t as real as whatever Martinez could give us.”
Eriksen had the sense that she wasn’t angry as much as anxious for him to figure out the benefits of the assignment.
* * *
Cash concentrated on driving even though he felt a headache coming on as Ari repeated the story of his “special assignment” and how he engineered his brilliant encounter with the HSI agent they had been told to deal with. The fact that he’d been jabbering away since midmorning had made this one of the most unpleasant workdays Cash had ever experienced.
The little Israeli said, “Ari really researched this one. Ari looked for his weaknesses and saw that he was a drinker, so Ari followed him to a bar where he drank. Just played to his weakness. Nothing unusual or flashy, that’s the key to this kind of work.”
Cash couldn’t help but roll his eyes.
Ari continued. “Told him Ari was a vet here for a reunion at Fort Bliss and just kept letting him throw back the gin and tonics. He offered Ari a ride, and when we got outside, Ari told him he was too drunk to drive and he bought it. Let me drive you home, Ari said, and I’ll call a cab from there. By the time we got to his place he was stumbling drunk. He invited Ari inside to wait, and we had another drink. Then Ari came up with the most brilliant part of the plan.”
Cash mumbled, “I can’t wait.”
“Ari told him he needed an Alka-Seltzer to avoid a hangover. Ari fixed him one, then mashed up a couple of prescriptions that were lying around, Xanax and Ambien and some pink pills. Then Ari made him drink down the whole mixture as quick as he could. He dribbled down his chin and shirt but finished every last drop. By the time Ari left he was barely breathing. Just laid out on his couch. I put the TV on ESPN and crossed his legs. There is not one piece of evidence linking Ari to him. Not that anyone will ever suspect anything. Maybe if the drugs weren’t prescribed to him or if he had a reputation as a nondrinker, but Ari did good this time.”
“Except he was still alive when you left.”
“Don’t sweat it, Cash, he’s stone cold right this second.”
As much as Cash hated to admit it, his little partner had done a good job, and best of all it kept Cash out of the dirty business he wanted no part of. Cops were just doing their job and shouldn’t have to face stuff like this.
Now Cash and Ari were looking up at the apartment building where Martinez lived. Cash mumbled, “I don’t see the Toyota. And I know there’s a security guard inside. Maybe we should wait until we see him walk in the building.”
Ari immediately said, “There’s a fire escape on the back of the building. We could surprise him and be waiting in the apartment.”
Cash looked down at the sheet of paper he had been given with the diagram of the third floor and location of the apartment. He’d seen the fire escape, too. It was at the end of the hallway. There were also smaller escape ladders on each bedroom window. Someone had been afraid of fire. This was a plan that could work, but there was no way he would ever admit it to Ari.
* * *
Tom Eriksen had spent a troubled morning at his desk after Lila knocked him back to the reality of his job. She wasn’t wrong, and he couldn’t even say she was nasty about it. But it made him wonder about her background. He’d called a couple of friends with the DEA to see if any of them knew her. He waited while they looked her up on their computers, but no one had had any personal encounters with the beautiful agent. It was odd, because the agency was small enough that they should at least know someone who knew her.
He let it slide and called John Houghton, but got his voicemail. He’d left a message earlier, then again just after lunch, and at two in the afternoon he left another one. It wasn’t like his partner to ignore him. Sometimes, in the morning, he was slow to respond if he was sleeping off a night of drinking. Eriksen wondered if he wasn’t in some kind of disciplinary meeting or getting dressed down for something he had done.
As he thought about it, John was the only person in the Southwest that Eriksen worried about personally. When he was back home he worried about his parents and his brother and sister, but out here there was only one person for him to look after.
At least for now.
* * *
Cash was surprised how easy it was to boost Ari up with his hands to grab the lower bar of the fire escape and climb to the third floor and slip in the unlocked window at the end of the long corridor. At the door to apartment H, Ca
sh hesitated. Ari stepped to the other side of the door and reached under his shirt, where Cash knew he had a small semiautomatic handgun. He had seen the Beretta Model 85 and wondered if it was a firearm the Israeli Army used. He liked Berettas himself but carried an older, powerful Colt .45.
Ari was clearly impatient and wanted to kick in the door like a SWAT team, but Cash had a better idea and tapped on the door lightly. They waited for a full thirty seconds before Cash wondered if he would have to force the door open. Just as he reached for the knob, it turned and the door opened a crack. A small woman with dark hair peered out past the chain. He vaguely recognized her from the short trip across the border.
Cash gave her a warm smile. He knew she couldn’t see Ari from where she was standing. Mrs. Martinez had never seen Cash clearly in the light, so he doubted she could recognize him, and she was unlikely to expect the man who smuggled her across the border to show up at her comfortable apartment supplied by the Immigration Service.
Cash said, “Mrs. Martinez?”
The pleasant-looking woman nodded and smiled.
“I’m here to check the smoke detector.”
Mrs. Martinez hesitated, then shook her head and mumbled, “No English, I sorry.” Before Cash could take another tack, Ari came from his side and threw his shoulder into the door, knocking Mrs. Martinez to the floor. Ari pulled his pistol and rushed into the apartment as Cash leaned down to help the woman to her feet.
A few seconds later, Ari stepped back into the living room and said, “He’s not here.”
Cash frowned, but he knew it was time to sit and wait.
* * *
Ramón Herrera didn’t mind sharing a few personal minutes with the five most influential bankers in all of Mexico. He was not a particular fan of Mexico City, with its sprawling barrios and smoggy air, but the top floor of the Scotia Bank building was not unpleasant. There were other Mexican bank buildings, but the rotating basis of this meeting left Scotia on the schedule.
The palatial conference room, with a sweeping vista of the city, a wet bar, two big-screen TVs playing international news, and a table full of fresh seafood and fruit made the meeting tolerable.
The discussions today had been about the financing of infrastructure across the country. The oldest banker present, Vincent Diaz, was a proponent of spending to create jobs that weren’t connected to the drug trade. Herrera thought such notions admirably quaint.
Diaz was sixty years old and had the complexion of a man who had not spent any time outdoors, so he had none of the leatherlike appearance of his contemporaries. His Brooks Brothers suit also indicated his status as a simple banker, not a ruler of the country like Herrera.
The senior financial man had already expressed his concerns about the high casualty rate in the country, noting that in the last four years more than thirty thousand people had been killed. That topped the casualty rate in several of the countries currently engaged in war. It was more than the total fatalities suffered by the Americans and their allies in both Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Herrera dismissed the concerns of Diaz as a sign of weakness.
Herrera said, “I am making efforts to stem the violence in the very near future. There are many factors to consider and many armed men to placate. I have plans for all of this to eventually straighten out.”
Everyone at the table knew when Herrera closed a subject for further debate. They moved on quickly.
Diaz hit on his other favorite issue. “Don Herrera, you’re on the board of Pemex.”
“I am. What’s the problem?”
“All of our banks hold stock in the company. We’re concerned about the amount of oil that is missing. We know a certain amount will disappear as part of doing business, but this threatens to bankrupt the company.”
Another banker, Raul Matos, the only man under forty, with the wide, full build of a man who rarely missed a fine meal, said, “We could all be in the poorhouse.”
“That would seem more urgent if you weren’t wearing a Brioni suit that costs more than most Mexicans make in two years.”
The younger man looked stung by the comment and stepped back, plopping his girth into a wide leather chair.
After an awkward silence, the group moved on to the next topic, the U.S. media coverage of Mexico. To emphasize the point, Matos played a clip from the Ted Dempsey show featuring the Texas senator Elizabeth Ramos. All the men in the room spoke English virtually without an accent and understood the proceedings on the show, which was apparently taped outdoors in Dallas.
The segment of the show focused on Dempsey, who told all of his panelists, “Forget about immigration. Let’s talk about how the average Mexican citizen is forced to live. Ten thousand drug-related murders a year in Mexico, and their government seems powerless or unwilling to stop the cartels. Do we need to assist the Mexican government far more than the past two administrations have? I’ve even heard contingencies to use U.S. troops if necessary. Would U.S. military intervention really be wise?”
As usual, the first to speak up was the senator from Texas. “No one wants us to get involved in another country’s problems, but we’ve used troops in the past on a limited scale. It worked in Bosnia, and our efforts in the Middle East have contained that powder keg. I would hope things don’t get so bad in Mexico that we are forced to take action, but we can never take an option like that off the table.”
Herrera found himself fuming at what the senator said, as the men around the table murmured in disbelief.
Diaz said, “They discuss us like we are children.”
Herrera said, “Then we must make them see us as equals.”
* * *
Manny had crossed the border into the United States with impunity over the last twenty years. One thing he’d learned was a simple lesson, to hide in plain sight. He used a trail west of El Paso and called a spotter on the other side on a no-frills cell phone to ensure no one was around when he, the giant assassin, Hector, and his crazy cousin entered the United States. Manny never bothered to remember Hector’s cousin’s name because he wasn’t someone Manny wanted to be associated with. He doubted the guy would be much use today or in the near future.
Hector’s cousin, who was only about thirty-five and a good three inches shorter than Manny’s five feet ten inches, was known to use only knives and was silent as a snake. That was generally a plus in this kind of work, but in the United States, where forensics was a true science, the use of the same weapon over and over might lead to identification, or at least the linking of killings. Manny would see what use this man could be soon enough. His only complaint so far was that the car he’d been given to drive in the United States was a two-door Chevy and it was difficult for three grown men to slip in and out of it. Other than that, things had gone smoothly until they drove past the apartment complex where Luis Martinez was being housed with his wife. The red Toyota he had seen the doctor drive was nowhere in sight. It would’ve been prudent to place surveillance on the apartment complex, but Manny hated to waste resources on a personal vendetta that didn’t help business in any way.
Manny eased the car into a spot down the block in the shade of a building. He said, “We’ll wait a while and see if he drives up.”
Hector said, “And if he doesn’t?”
“We’ll make a decision then.”
Hector said, “I’ve been in El Paso a couple of times in the past few days. If I’d known this was the area he lived in I could’ve checked up on our target.”
“Why were you in El Paso?”
The big man cut his eyes toward Manny, then said, “You’re not the only one I work for, my friend. Some people have a real problem with big mouths in the United States. I scored a big job to shut one of those mouths up.”
Manny knew he didn’t want to ask any questions. Once they were done here today he could leave his friend to do whatever he wanted.
The afternoon zipped by. Every vehicle attracted his attention, and he appreciated being away from the constant nagging p
hone calls he got from distributors and suppliers, as well as pilots and everyone else in the organization run by Pablo Piña. The only problem was that Piña didn’t run it anymore; he had given all the responsibility to Manny. Just as he felt his stomach rumble with hunger for the first time, and he was about to suggest they eat and come back, the red Toyota pulled past them and parked on the same side of the street, a mere fifty feet away.
THIRTEEN
Tom Eriksen needed to get out of the office for a few minutes. One of the main reasons was the fact that John Houghton had yet to answer his phone and no one at his office had seen him. Eriksen didn’t want to set off alarms unnecessarily, and he didn’t want to get John in trouble by calling attention to the fact that he had not come to work. The hardest part about leaving the office was turning down an invitation from Kat Gleason to share an afternoon cup of coffee. But he couldn’t focus on anything now except his former partner.
When he was done, he and Lila were going over to Dr. Martinez’s apartment to have another chat. He decided he didn’t want to be stuck at the apartment without his own vehicle in case the interview went late. Lila didn’t seem upset that she wouldn’t get to ride with him out to the apartment.
Eriksen had only been to John’s apartment one time, but he knew it well. There was a joke among the federal agencies that the complex housed all the agents going through divorces, which meant that it housed all the federal agents in El Paso. Known for heavy drinking and the occasional wild party, the complex was notorious among the separated spouses, who in many cases had traveled halfway around the country to get stuck in a “shitty little border town.” At least that’s how the spouses viewed it.