by James Lepore
39.
8:00 AM, December 19, 2004, Miami
The bullet that put Gary Shaw on his back shattered his collarbone and lodged behind his right shoulder, requiring immediate and extensive reconstructive surgery by a team of specialists at Miami’s Beth Israel Hospital. He was unable to speak intelligently to anyone until Saturday afternoon, when Jack Voynik and Ted Stevens descended on him. Heavily sedated, he managed to tell them that he had gone to meet his friend, Angelo Perna, at El Pulpo for a drink on Friday evening. He was late getting there. When Angelo did not show, he left. On the way to his car he spotted the Feria brothers heading toward the restaurant. He recognized them from the pictures he had seen earlier that day. He confronted them, they drew their guns, he drew his, and shots were exchanged. He went down, and the next thing he knew, Sam Perna was kneeling beside him; then he blacked out.
Shaw’s statement meshed with Sam’s, and there was no one else in the restaurant or the neighborhood who had heard or seen anything unusual. But Chris Markey was suspicious. That morning, when his men had gone to the Silver Sands to begin their stakeout of Cassio, they learned that he had checked out late the night before. Coincidence, maybe, but if Cassio were warned it had to come from someone on his team, making the local cops—Shaw and Kendall—the likely suspects. Markey ordered his people to find out as much as they could about Angelo and Sam Perna, and to check airport manifests for departures by Cassio and Dunn, and he called a meeting for Sunday morning to plan strategy, which was about to begin. Present in the conference room were Stevens, Voynik, Gatti, Ramirez, and Jack Kendall.
“Let’s start with you, Ted,” Markey said.
“Cassio left on Aeromexico flight 435 for Cancun on Saturday at nine a.m. Dunn we haven’t located yet, but he hasn’t left by a commercial flight. We’re staking out his house in Jersey. Angelo and Sam Perna grew up in Brooklyn. They both served in the Army. Sam moved down here in 1965 and fought professionally for a few years under the name Kid Brooklyn. He’s been bartending ever since. He’s single, never been married, lives on one side of a duplex in Little Havana, his brother and his wife on the other. He was arrested twice for assault in the sixties in Miami Beach, but there were no convictions.”
“And Angelo?” said Markey.
“He was a cop in New York City until 1974, a detective at the end. He quit and moved down here with his brother. He’s had a Florida PI license since 1979, and a carry permit since 1980. No arrests. He married in 1988. The wife is Cuban. She works at the Cuban Cultural Center on Eighth Street, and hostesses at El Pulpo at night. She’s clean. It seems that everybody in Little Havana knows Perna and his wife, and vice versa.”
“Why did he quit?”
“He turned in some cops who were beating on a black kid with a telephone book. He was hounded out.”
“Was the wife working on Friday night?”
“Sam says she took the night off.”
“A Friday night?”
“That’s what he says.”
“Dunn was a New York cop, too.”
“Right. Why don’t we bring Angelo in? He says he’d be happy to talk to us.”
It was no secret that Shaw and Angelo Perna were friends. If Perna and Frank Dunn had a similar relationship, then the dots were easily connected: Shaw to Perna to Dunn/Cassio, making Shaw the traitor. But why would the Feria boys show up at the Pernas’ restaurant, unless they expected to find Isabel there?
“Not yet. I have other plans for him,” said Markey. “How are you guys doing?” This question he addressed to Kendall and Ramirez.
“We’re ready,” said Kendall. “Matt’s going in as a truck driver from Jersey. He’s just been separated from his wife. We have telephone numbers, addresses, an ex-employer—the works—set up to corroborate him if it’s needed. He rented a room today. He’ll start looking for a job tomorrow, doing anything, bartending or bouncing preferably, working the Eighth Street joints, etc.”
“Good. He can start at El Pulpo. The Ferias might have been going in just to ask questions, or they might have tracked Isabel there. I also want him to get a line on Angelo Perna. Was he helping Dunn and Cassio? Did he know Isabel? Was he helping her? Did he know the old guy, Alvaro Diaz? We’ll lay off Angelo for now, make him think the heat is off. Then, if we learn that he was helping Cassio, or he was involved in hiding Isabel, we’ll get him in, let him lie to us, and then put the screws to him.”
“What about Cassio?” said Gatti.
“Are the papers ready?”
“Yes.”
“Deliver them to Mexico City personally. Try to get one of your people attached to the case.”
“They may realize who he is and eliminate him,” said Kendall. “I mean, if Lazaro Santaria is really the top bad guy, he’ll know who Cassio is. He’ll have an accident or something, or be killed ‘while fleeing police officers.’”
“Maybe not,” Markey replied. “The bureaucracy there is unbelievably fucked up. They may just pick him up and hand him to us. If they do make the connection, then of course we’ve lost Cassio as a lure for the Feria brothers, but we’d never find him down there ourselves, anyway.”
“And the Feria brothers?” said Gatti. “We can’t exactly ask Lazaro to pick them up—they’re his boys—assuming they’re back in Mexico.”
“We need to do everything we can to pick up their trail ,” Markey answered. “They’ll lead us right to Isabel. We need people on the ground in Mexico City, undercover. The blood on the street doesn’t match Shaw’s so it’s a safe bet one or both of them was hit. Maybe they went home to lick their wounds. If we spot them there, then we have to stay with them at all costs until they locate the woman. Take care of it, Phil. Don’t stint. Any problems with the suits, come to me.”
“And Frank Dunn?” said Voynik.
“Find him, but don’t confront him. We’ll get an order for a phone tap. His connection to Cassio should be enough of a basis. He’s a fugitive. I’d like to tap the Pernas’ phones, too, but first we need something that connects them to Isabel or Cassio. If they’re involved, we’ll arrest them all later, but for now I’m hoping they lead us to Cassio or the woman. There’s one more thing. I don’t want anybody talking to Shaw except me, and I want to know who visits him from the civilian world. Keep the cop by his door, and have him get names and addresses, except for the immediate family.”
“What about the press?” said Stevens. “The guy from the Herald called twice this morning.”
“Call him back,” said Markey. “Tell him we’ve traced Cassio to Cancun, and that we’re asking the Mexican government to execute our arrest warrant pursuant to treaty. He was a witness to a murder in New Jersey, and he withheld evidence duly subpoenaed in a second murder investigation. That’s enough sex appeal for another story, I would think. Any questions?”
There were no questions. Markey didn’t expect any. He cared little for Shaw, but there was nothing like a cop getting shot to motivate other cops, so Shaw, whether he was a traitor or not, had made himself useful.
40.
5:00 PM, December 18, 2004, Merida
“Where are we going?”
“Here,” said Isabel, handing Jay a map and pointing to a spot toward the right half of Mexico’s twelve-hundred-mile-long southern coast.”
“How far is it?”
“Seven hundred miles, maybe seven fifty.”
They were sitting in the jeep. Jay, behind the wheel, studied the map, their route marked in red pencil. Around them, people were making their way to and from their cars as the late afternoon sun blazed down on them and shimmered off of the asphalt surface of the terminal parking lot in visible waves. Jay had changed into khaki shorts, a T-shirt, and sandals at the airport in Cancun, and had the feeling that he would be getting a lot of use out of this basic outfit. He had made the mistake of taking a second-class bus from Cancun, spending the two hour ride standing in one hundred-degree heat next to a family of six peasants, the parents sullen, their eyes downcast, t
wo of the children carrying chickens in burlap bags. The canvas sides of the jeep were open, but he was still very hot, his long hair matted to the back of his neck with sweat. He could use a shower, but there was no point in wasting time. This was not a vacation.
“Do you know the roads?” he asked.
“No, but the map says they are major highways.”
“What about this stretch here?” Jay said, pointing to an area called the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.
“A wasteland, I am told, but the road looks good.”
The quarters were close in the jeep. As Isabel leaned toward him to look at the map, Jay caught the scent of her—sweat and skin lotion—and something else, probably the cologne he had found on her dresser. There was no ignoring her as a woman: her soft, golden olive skin, her breasts pushing against her cotton blouse, the secrets of a lifetime in her blue eyes. Danny had been right about how beautiful she was. For once he wasn’t exaggerating. Danny—always ready to fuck first and ask questions later—had probably sat in a car like this with Isabel, smelled her perfume, maybe even licked away the dampness in the hollow of her throat—and been killed before he could ask any questions. Keep that in mind, Jay thought to himself as he started the jeep and headed toward Calle 65, which would take them to Highway 180, and the first leg of their journey. Highway 180 took them inland and south for fifty miles or so before it swung back to the coast where they would have the Bay of Campeche on their right for about two hundred miles. Night fell as they entered this long stretch of blacktopped road, but there was little relief from the heat or the humidity and no appreciable breeze from the bay, which was dotted with oil rigs rising mutely from the shallow water. Flocks of exotic-looking birds flew across the wide expanse of open water, some landing to perch for a while on the rigs before taking off again en masse at the silent command of the flight leader in their midst. The moon, waxing, just past half full, rose over the bay and followed the jeep as it made its way south along the flat, monotonous coastal plain of the eastern Yucatán.
“Are you tired?” Isabel asked, looking at her watch. It was eight p.m. She had tried to sleep, but the jeep’s hard, bumpy ride made it difficult. They had both been awake for the better part of thirty-six hours.
“I’m okay.”
“I would like to stop to pee.”
“Of course.” And it’s time to talk, Jay thought, before I lose my nerve.
Jay slowed down and pulled the jeep to the right into the sandy scrub that bordered the highway, beyond which, only a few yards away, lay the stony shore and the calm blackness of the bay. Jay watched Isabel walk toward the beach, then turned on the interior light and looked at the map. They had just passed the town of Sabancuy, and had perhaps two hours of driving ahead of them before they reached Villahermosa, a city of two hundred thousand people, where they planned on spending the night. He then checked the box of supplies that Isabel had bought in Merida: bottled water, chocolate, potato chips, six bottles of beer, insect repellent, paper towels. He grabbed one of the beers, turned off the interior light, and headed to the beach.
When he got there, Isabel was buttoning her jeans at the edge of the water, her back to him. He walked toward her, and when he got closer he saw that she was taking her jeans off, not putting them on. Her panties, blouse, and bra quickly followed and she dove in. Jay drank off half of his longneck bottle of Corona, then took off his clothes and waded into the bay, bringing the beer with him. Holding the bottle aloft, he dunked himself, rising to see Isabel, her naked body shimmering in the moonlit water, swimming slowly across his path. He finished the beer, threw the bottle far out toward the horizon, then dove and swam straight out for maybe three hundred yards before turning and swimming back. When he reached the shore, Isabel, dressed, was sitting on the pebbly beach drinking a beer and smoking. She handed him a beer when he finished dressing, then lit a second cigarette and handed it to him as he settled next to her.
“You are a good swimmer, and strong,” she said.
“I almost didn’t make it back. I’m beat.”
“We’re both tired.”
Jay flipped over a shell and rested his cigarette on it, then took a long swig of his beer. Behind them a tractor-trailer went screaming by on the highway, and then a bus, and then the night’s stillness and silence fell on them again, broken only by the soft rush of the surf.
“Talk to me, Isabel.”
“If you’re tired, we can talk later, in the car, or when we arrive.”
“I’m fine.”
“There is no good time for this, I suppose.”
“No.”
“I liked your friend. He was a funny man, and brave.”
Jay said nothing.
“He arrived at the airport in Miami and put the money in a locker there. He took a cab to Miami Beach, where he got a room. This was on a Monday. The next day, I picked him up in front of the Fontainebleau. We drove to Jupiter. We wanted to make sure we weren’t being followed before getting the money.”
Isabel stopped here, and took a drink of her beer. Jay watched her profile for signs of calculation or spin control as she stared for a long moment at the bay. He had assessed her in this way several times during the long, quiet ride from Merida, but, as now, had come up empty. There was no telling from looking at her proud, beautiful face what she was thinking or feeling.
“Go ahead,” he said, breaking the silence.
“I was staying at a hotel in Jupiter. We drove there. I was in fear at all times of being discovered and killed by the Ferias. I knew they had killed Bryce and his wife—Jose likes to take heads as trophies when he can—and were looking for me. Dan was certain that we had not been followed. The next morning he left for the airport to get the money. He assured me that he would not get it if he thought there was any danger. He must have crossed paths with the Ferias. We had agreed that I would change hotels, which I did. The next day I saw in the newspaper that he was killed. I called my friend Alvaro Diaz. I did not want to involve him, I was afraid he would be killed, too, but I was desperate. I stayed with him for three days, and then he took me to Maria.”
“Did Dan know the name of your new hotel?”
“No. I was supposed to call him on his cell phone.”
“Did you?”
“Yes. Edgardo answered.”
“What hotel did he check into in Miami?”
“I don’t know. He cabbed to the Fontainebleau.”
“You had a car at the time?”
“I left my car at Royal Palm. I took a cab from there to the hotel in Jupiter, where I rented a car, the one that Dan drove to Miami.”
“Did you tell Dan what he was getting into?”
“Yes.”
“Did you mention the Feria brothers, and Herman Santaria—that they killed Bryce and Kate Powers?”
“Yes.”
“When was this?’
“When he arrived in Florida. I offered him more money, told him he could back out.”
“What did he say?”
“He laughed. He said I could buy him dinner.”
“What happened to the rental car?”
“I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter. I rented it with false ID.”
“Do you know these Feria brothers personally?”
“Yes, I have met them.”
“You sound like you’re pretty familiar with Santaria’s operation.”
“I started working for him when I was fourteen years old.”
“Doing what?”
Isabel shook her head, just slightly.
“Do you want another beer?” she asked. “I will get it from the car.”
“No. I have another question.”
“Yes.”
“How is it that Danny and the Ferias happened to ‘cross paths’? If they were following him, they would have gotten you, too. Or did you set him up?”
“You’re sitting here with me right now. Are you afraid for your life?”
“There’s a big hole in your story.”
“I sent him to Royal Palm, to get my passport. Two passports, actually, one real, the other false. I left the condo very quickly, and took nothing with me except my purse. I was trapped without the passports, especially if we did not recover the cash. They must have been watching the condo.”
“You sent him.”
“Yes.”
“And he followed orders.”
“I was paying him.”
Jay went to the jeep for two more beers. Danny wouldn’t take more money. A deal was a deal. Which meant they had slept together. For that his friend would take extra risk, follow certain orders. Pussy, he recalled Frank Dunn saying on the night of the Powers murders, it makes us weak.
On the beach, Jay opened the beers and handed one to Isabel as he sat down next to her. She again lit a cigarette for him and handed it to him. They smoked and drank for a minute or two, watching the bay, then Isabel said, “I am sorry about your friend. Truly sorry.”
“Did you have dinner with him?”
“Yes.”
“Did he hit on you?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“He said I was so beautiful it was killing him. He said if I slept with him it would make him immortal.”
“Danny,” said Jay, finishing his beer in one long drink, then throwing the bottle into the bay, watching it bob in the moonlight. “Danny.”
Then Jay put his head down onto his drawn-up knees, facing away from Isabel, and cried, murmuring Danny’s name as he did. Isabel took Jay’s head in her hands, laid him on the sand, and held him until he quieted. Soon they were both asleep, too exhausted to change positions or slap at the insects that buzzed around them in the sweltering eightyfive-degree night air.
41.
9:00 AM, December 21, 2004, Mexico City
The section of the Mexican Justice Department that dealt with requests by foreign countries for the issuance of arrest or search warrants in Mexico was the Division of International Warrants and Arrests, or DIWA, and was headed by Lazaro Santaria’s nephew, Pedro Alvarado. Handsome, in his mid-thirties, educated at Amherst and the National University Law School in Mexico City, Pedro had known only good in his life. His family’s fortunes had risen with those of his uncles Lazaro and Herman, one high-profile, the other decidedly not, but very rich. Uncle Lazaro had climbed steadily to very near the top of the Institutional Revolutionary Party—the PRI—the political party that had held power nationally for over seventy years, before adroitly switching to the new Mexican Action Party—PAM—the year before it took power in 2000. A switch made easy by large donations from Herman, under cover of unregulated political action committees, to PAM. Very large donations. Pedro’s work was routine and handled by a jaded but competent staff of lawyers, investigators, and clerical help. One task that Pedro took to himself was the daily review of requests for action by the US government pursuant to treaty, with comments attached from his department heads indicating the suggested response by the Mexican government. To these Pedro added his own comments before handing a copy personally to Lazaro late every afternoon.