by Lou Dobbs
Cash barely heard him. He was worrying about the company’s plans for Carol DiMetti.
* * *
Lila enjoyed the sub at Luther’s Sandwiches on North Ochoa Street. It was cool, clean, and close to the office. She’d seen how careful the owner was about freshness and trusted him. That was her biggest issue, trust. She was still getting used to having a partner she could trust and confide in. This was not how she was trained. She tended to work alone and hoard information until she was prepared to use it. She’d seen the results of many of her reports sent back through the channels. Raids on both sides of the border took place, which never would’ve happened without her information. Although her main duty involved national security, drug activity could be tied to it very easily. She’d even once helped to quietly rescue a young Austrian tourist kidnapped in Mexico, using her contacts to arrange to pay a Mexican police unit to make a lightning strike and kill the kidnappers. The woman was on a plane back to Vienna before there was an official announcement of the rescue. That kind of stuff stayed with Lila.
Now she and Tom Eriksen were conferring over a sandwich. Increasingly, she felt uncomfortable speaking freely in the Border Security Task Force office. Occasionally they would use the National Security Agency’s safe room, but they couldn’t do that too many times without attracting attention. Eriksen’s girlfriend, Kat Gleason, had proven she could keep her mouth shut, too. Lila liked the pretty analyst with a very high security clearance. But she still hadn’t confided her secret profession.
Lila said, “Instead of just avoiding everyone at work, we need to start looking at events and figure out who could have spilled important information. It’s no fun to go through life not trusting anyone.”
“I thought you guys were trained not to trust anyone.”
She looked at Eriksen and grinned. “You’ve seen too many Jason Bourne movies. One way to look at us is that we’re a government agency like anyone else. I’ve found that my work with the DEA is not too much different than my work with the CIA. It’s just the focus of our attention that’s different.”
Eriksen looked down at a page of notes he’d brought with him, concentrating. Finally he said, “How did anyone know where Dr. and Mrs. Martinez were staying?”
Lila nodded, agreeing with that line of questioning. “They should’ve been protected and were using an alias. I think they were listed as Mr. and Mrs. Brian Fernandes.”
Eriksen said, “Does that mean that someone at Immigration? It seems the simplest explanation.”
Lila didn’t say it out loud but knew that he was thinking it also provided them with an opportunity to blame someone they didn’t know personally. Then she thought of something. “Andre was the one who suggested the apartment. I heard him arranging it the day after the border shooting you were involved in. It was before you even came to our unit.”
“That doesn’t necessarily mean anything on its own. Wouldn’t he be involved in securing someone who is a potential source for you?”
“The apartment was supposed to be secret. And don’t forget my source in Juárez who described John Houghton and said that he had a giant man with him.”
Now Eriksen said, “But he was John’s friend. That’s the kind of stuff he would do for another federal agent.”
Lila felt herself biting the inside of her lip, a nervous habit she’d had since she was a teenager. Finally she looked at Eriksen and said, “Let’s play it safe. We’ll keep him at a distance until we can figure everything out.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Tom Eriksen was learning not to be surprised by anything Lila Tellis said or anyone she knew. Of course she had contacts with the El Paso police homicide unit, and now they were in the squad bay of that unit talking to the lead detective who was investigating the deaths at the tourist market the week before. The way the thirty-three-year-old detective looked at Lila, Eriksen had the idea that they were more than just business contacts, but he figured his partner would tell him what she wanted him to know.
The squad bay looked like any working police office: files stacked on top of cabinets, old statute books stuffed under desks, half a dozen detectives working at their desks. There was the constant sound of phones, movement, and chatter. It was great. He had been very impressed with the professionalism of the police department and the pride they took in keeping their streets safe. The town of El Paso was quiet in comparison to the horrible example of the much larger Ciudad Juárez right across the border, and its mounting body count. In fact, the last two weeks had been the bloodiest in the city for the past twenty years. First Mrs. Martinez and the father and daughter a few blocks away, then Dr. Martinez and the unidentified man at the market. The two incidents taken together had set the residents on edge, and this detective was feeling the pressure from above to get some answers. Much like Lila, he appeared ready to step out of bounds of a typical investigation to come up with some answers.
The detective spent most of his time looking at Lila. “We still don’t know the identity of the younger guy killed at the market. He’d been stabbed at the base of the head with some kind of ice pick or stiletto. It was a very unusual choice of weapon but apparently didn’t draw any attention. The witnesses said all the men just sat talking together at the picnic table. It wasn’t until the cop approached that anyone noticed one of the men had his head resting on the table. The guy our cops shot out on the street is a pretty well-known captain for a major drug runner in Mexico named Pablo Piña.”
Eriksen noticed Lila react slightly to the name, but she didn’t make any notes as she had earlier. “And the other victim at the market was Dr. Martinez. Were you able to find any forensic links between the market and the scene at the Martinez apartment from last week?”
“Ballistics matched on two of the weapons. We dug out some .45 rounds from the wall of the apartment last week. They matched the two slugs that hit our cop. There was also a .380 round that matched. But we have no idea who fired which rounds. There was a fingerprint on the .380 round, but it came up negative in the FBI database.”
Lila said, “Is there anything we could do to help you guys?”
Now the detective leaned in closer and said, “We did recover a thumb drive from the scene. It was just sitting on the picnic table. We pulled a single fingerprint off of it, but we haven’t been able to match it to anything in the database either.”
Eriksen said, “Was there anything on the thumb drive that might point to the identity of the victim or any of the shooters?”
“That’s the problem. Our computer guys say there’s nothing on it. As a cop, my gut says you don’t kill someone over a blank drive.”
Eriksen nodded. “You’re right.”
“Think you might be able to help?”
Eriksen exchanged a silent glance with Lila and hoped she was thinking about Kat Gleason and her agency’s ability to look at things like that. He said, “I think we can work something out.”
* * *
Ted Dempsey hustled through the lobby of the downtown Marriott. He’d moved from the ritzy hotel where he’d originally been staying when he realized the staff was almost all Croatian. That, in itself, wasn’t the problem. The problem was that they had been imported as temporary workers for six months at a time, at a much cheaper rate than the hotel would’ve paid local workers. It was, in effect, outsourcing jobs inside the U.S. His reaction had nothing to do with his public image as a crusader for the middle class and the working man; the practice went against everything he stood for personally. Dempsey now felt very comfortable in the much smaller room at the simple Marriott. He was curious to see how it operated and if the employees liked their jobs.
Dempsey had turned his lifelong natural curiosity into a pretty good living. He had the big house, and expensive vacations when he and his wife wanted. It allowed him to keep his mother in a monstrously expensive assisted-living center in Trenton, New Jersey, and his brother in a house on the coast of Florida, and he paid for college not only for his own four chil
dren but for his nieces and nephews as well. Mostly, though, he did his job because he liked it. He enjoyed exposing hypocrites and taking contrarian positions against mainstream ideas. He liked debate. That was one of the things about his time at Harvard he always enjoyed, and there had been plenty to debate in those days.
He sensed a connection with Tom Eriksen and hoped he could help the young FBI agent in some way. Eriksen was quiet and contemplative as opposed to Dempsey’s more confrontational style. For that matter, Dempsey would have preferred a country of greater civility, a quieter time. But Washington had set the tone, and the atmospherics weren’t going to get any less corrosive soon. Gone were the days in Congress when you could compliment someone on the other side of the aisle or support a bill that didn’t originate within your own party. The only time he ever saw a Democrat reference Reagan was to justify a tax increase, and the only time he ever saw a Republican reference Clinton was to justify cutting entitlement programs. The president was in full-time campaign mode now, and the language of politics was increasingly acrid. The president showed no interest in leading all Americans, only in prevailing in the partisan battles that rendered the country ever more polarized. Dempsey knew all this and tried to discuss as much as was sensible on his show.
He had a number of reasons for doing one show every week from El Paso. Initially, it was to help the FBI agent and his friend, who had been accused of murdering a Mexican national on the southern side of the border. Now that that situation didn’t seem to be hanging over Tom Eriksen’s head, Dempsey liked having a base in the Southwest. Most of the talk shows originated in New York. The danger with that was the overwhelming feeling that living in New York, you were in the center of the country. New York might be a big city, but so was Chicago or Denver or Seattle, and even El Paso. A New Yorker would never agree that any other city, other than perhaps Washington, would be worthy of comparison. By coming to another part of the country, Dempsey left behind his favorite city, but also its sometimes suffocating parochialism. He got to see how other people lived, listen to their ideas and opinions, and show some of it to his audience.
He couldn’t believe Elizabeth Ramos had agreed to visit the show each time he broadcast from El Paso. She was a ratings bonanza. Smart, articulate, controversial, and attractive, she was an absolute TV dream and an excellent role model for ambitious young women in every career and walk of life. She also stuck to her convictions. Even if Dempsey didn’t agree with everything she said, he could admire her conviction and commitment. She seemed to be doing things for the right reasons. There wasn’t much more you could ask of a politician. Agree or disagree, integrity was really all that was important.
The senator’s personal story of growing up the daughter of a hardware-store owner who earned an academic scholarship to Princeton was compelling, but her family history of immigration made her difficult to criticize. The senator’s critics had been forced to focus on such silly issues as her hairstyle or the sometimes rambunctious behavior of her two teenaged children.
As he headed toward the main door at the front of the lobby, Dempsey heard someone call his name and turned with his ready smile. He paused as he recognized the man in the suit who walked toward him with his hand extended.
The man said, “Rich Haben, with the Technology and Research Center.” Dempsey was wary as he grasped the man’s hand and gave it a quick shake.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Haben.”
“You probably feel like you already know me since you mention us on your show so frequently.”
“Would you like to come on the show and tell your side of the story?”
Haben gave a polished laugh as he patted Dempsey on the shoulder. “There is no ‘my side.’ I run a business that answers to stockholders. I’m not sure what else you would want me to do.”
“Maybe assemble your computers inside the U.S. since this is your primary market for your product.”
“Then I’d have to raise the price of each computer considerably and we’d lose what little market share we have.”
“Why don’t you come on the show and say that?” Dempsey could see all good humor draining from the man’s expression.
“You and I both know I can’t make a statement like that on television. All I’m asking is that you lay off us for a few months until we get our market share up. If you do that, I’ll see what I can do about adding on a few dozen more workers at our factory here in El Paso.”
“The way I hear it is that you have more than a hundred undocumented people working for less than minimum wage. If you added on a few jobs, would that mean you’re cutting back on your slave labor?”
The man gave him a cold stare and said, “I don’t know who’s worse, you or Senator Ramos. This is America, Mr. Dempsey. It is based on capitalism. Private industry pushes our massive economy. If you think it should be some other economic model, maybe that’s what you should spout on your TV show. Frankly, the rumors and innuendo you spill onto the screen every night do nothing to help people get back to work.”
Dempsey held his temper in check. You could insult him, but not his ethics. “Anything I said on the air I can back up. That’s why I mention that you employ only one U.S. employee for every nine Mexican employees, yet you sell sixty computers to Americans for every one you sell outside the country. That’s a fact I’d like to hear you discuss on air, or prove wrong and we can set the record straight.”
Haben gave him a mean stare but didn’t say anything.
“I also talk about your corporate statements. You sell computers at a cut rate, yet your profits are healthy. How do you manage such a business miracle?”
“Is any of that helpful to our employees who would lose their jobs if we go belly up?”
Dempsey gave him a TV smile and said, “Maybe not today or tomorrow, but one day, someone speaking up like me will keep guys like you from taking advantage of the workers in both the U.S. and Mexico. I know you say you’re just a businessman, that it’s all about profits. But you know better, and so do the politicians who look the other way while our trade deficits run up and our trade debt rises. While our middle class loses jobs, and those who want to be in that middle class lose hope. But don’t lose sleep, because I blame our elected officials with their bromides and bullshit that our citizens swallow whole. Hell, the truth is you may get away with it all until there’s no country for any of us to worry over.”
Dempsey could tell by how the man stalked away that he had not made a new friend in industry and commerce. He felt good about that. Hell, you’re known as well by your enemies as by your friends. And you have to be particular about both.
TWENTY-NINE
Tom Eriksen took advantage of his visit to the El Paso PD homicide unit to seek out the lead detective handling John Houghton’s case. Lila had elected to give him some privacy and chat with the detective handling the market shooting, much to the young detective’s delight.
A middle-aged detective with a soft midsection greeted Eriksen at his small office with a smile.
Eriksen said, “How’s it going?”
“I’m busier than the lawyer for the University of Florida football team.”
“Anything new on John Houghton’s death investigation?”
The detective said, “I’m glad you told me to take a closer look at your friend’s death. I left it open, and the autopsy results pushed me to go back with a crime scene geek and do a quick check of the apartment.”
As Eriksen eased into the chair on the other side of the desk he said, “What’d you find?”
“The autopsy was exactly as we expected, with the cause of death being a mix of prescription drugs and alcohol. All the pills were prescribed directly to the victim, but it was a curious combination. One of the pills in his system was an amphetamine, which was probably what counteracted all of the Ambien and kept him moving. That’s how we think he ended up in the laundry room.”
Eriksen could hear the man’s interest in the case, but he still didn’t see the
unusual aspect of it.
The detective continued, “Here’s the tricky part. The stain on his shirt was water and a mixture of all the drugs, Xanax, Ambien, and the amphetamine. I’ve spoken to his wife, and there was no indication he was trying to commit suicide.”
Now Eriksen said, “No way. He was interested in a big case and talked about it too much to be thinking about ending his own life. He also thought he was going to get back with his wife and kids soon.”
“Even if I didn’t know that, the biggest factor is that there were no dirty glasses at the apartment. There was one glass, the one I think he drank the water and crushed pills from, that had been hand-washed and was sitting in his sink. Who washes a glass after drinking shit like that?”
Eriksen looked at him and said, “So there had to be a second person at the apartment.”
“Exactly.”
“Did your crime scene unit pick up any prints or DNA that might identify that person?”
“We’re not exactly CSI: Miami. We have the victim’s exclusionary prints, but we don’t have the resources to really check the whole apartment for DNA, and there were no prints on the glass or around the kitchen.”
“What if you go back? I know no one else has been in the apartment. His wife can’t bring herself to clear out his stuff.”
The detective considered the request.
Eriksen pressed him. “I’ll go back with you and use my basic fingerprinting skills I learned in the academy. Whatever it takes. There are too many unanswered questions, and as good a homicide guy as you are, I know you can’t leave something like this open.”
The tubby detective let a smile spread across his face and said, “How can I turn down help from the FBI? It’s the first offer we ever had.”
* * *
Ramón Herrera relaxed in the gigantic Jacuzzi, letting the stress run out of the muscles in his shoulders. The hand-crafted seats in the marble tub held just the right amount of heat. Two naked young women, both of them from Peru, giggled as they exchanged comments on massaging his neck. He had chosen these two girls because of their lack of English skills and his need to conduct business over his utterly untraceable cell phone. He only used the throwaway phone to talk to people over the border. The cheaply made phone had cost about fifty dollars in a department store in El Paso yet defeated the most sophisticated tracking equipment the U.S. government had.