Wolf Boys

by Dan Slater

At the meeting with Miguel, they bantered about business. Two months after Fito’s death, Miguel still bemoaned the loss of his little brother. “It wasn’t fair,” he kept saying. “Fito wasn’t involved.” Gabriel sympathized. But Richard thought: How many innocent people have you killed, Miguel? Weren’t you the one who started all this family stuff? Killing children no older than ten?

  Miguel wanted to know if they’d located Robert Garcia yet. Gabriel said he knew Robert’s schedule, where he lived, even where his son played hockey; knew his Jeep and had memorized the license plate. He also knew, but didn’t say, that killing an American cop got you sent “straight to the chair.”

  The detective, Miguel said, was worth $500,000.

  J. J. GOMEZ AND CHRIS Diaz fumed.

  They’d made a lot of promises to a lot of people. Funding was laid out. Angel Moreno backed them. As far as confidential sources, they didn’t consider the death of Chuy Resendez a major loss. They had several sources within the Zetas; Rocky was the closest one to the cartel’s top commanders. But if Operation Prophecy failed now, because their informant got locked out, well, Diaz and Gomez would be Fucking New Guys forever. They berated Rocky.

  “We’re not losing our careers over this!”

  “Get them in the fucking house!”

  Calm under pressure, Rocky ran scenarios through his head, discarding those that seemed likely to end with him being tortured and killed. He thought back to the day when his body lay broken in a Nuevo Laredo stash house, and Omar Treviño was seconds away from putting a bullet in his head. On that day, it was Iván Velásquez-Caballero, the Zeta leader known as Talivan, who saved Rocky’s life.

  So, on the morning of Saturday, April 8, 2006, Rocky called Talivan. He mentioned that he was waiting to hear from a commander about a safe house, and wondered if Talivan had heard anything about it. Thirty minutes later, Rocky’s phone rang. The commander told him to meet two guys in the parking lot of Best Buy, just east of I-35.

  And just like that, Operation Prophecy was back. The federal, state, and local agencies mobilized. The DEA techs booted up the wire room at the main DEA office, on Shiloh Drive, and rechecked all the wire equipment that had been installed at the safe house on Orange Blossom Loop, a quiet suburban street on Laredo’s north side. DEA planes were reserved if needed. Four marked PD squad cars would be on standby, plus a dozen unmarked units. Two SWAT teams, one from PD and one from the sheriff’s office, would alternate eight-hour shifts, hanging out in a DEA conference room set up with cots and food. A DEA tractor-trailer, rigged with cameras and microphones, would handle mobile surveillance of the house and the hit men.

  At 2 p.m. on Saturday, Diaz and Gomez followed Rocky to the meeting at Best Buy, but couldn’t get close enough to see the two guys that Rocky gave the keys to.

  Rocky escorted the assassins to the safe house, a white-brick rambler on Orange Blossom Loop, nestled inconspicuously in suburbia.

  Back in the wire room, at the DEA office on Shiloh Drive, less than a mile away, three screens displayed three camera feeds. The first camera, installed above the safe house garage and facing outward, showed the house’s driveway and the street in front of it. The second screen showed the kitchen, with a white Formica island in the middle, cabinets above it, and a breakfast nook with a small table overlooking the lawn and the house next door. The third screen showed the furniture-free living room. Microphones picked up everything, except in the bathroom and bedrooms. The cell phone of everyone in the safe house would also soon be tapped.

  As Operation Prophecy got under way, there was no reason to think Gabriel Cardona figured in the sting. Such were the vagaries of Laredo’s bail protocol that no one even knew Gabriel had walked out of jail three weeks earlier. From the wire room, Robert and the agents watched the assassins enter their new pad and settle in.

  “Holy shit!” Robert said. “That’s the guy I’ve been arresting all year!”

  27

  Catch That Pussy

  Shit, Rocky thought, where are they?

  After getting the keys from Rocky at Best Buy, and going to inspect the house on Orange Blossom Loop, Gabriel told Rocky, “We’ll come back later.” Then Gabriel and Richard drove to Mexico, and Team Prophecy lost contact with them.

  Now midnight approached, and Rocky, dressed in a striped button-down shirt and baggy shorts, paced the living room of the empty safe house. Rocky’s primary role in Operation Prophecy was to keep the Wolf Boys in sight, and try to report their movements before they moved—duties he’d already messed up. He could almost hear Diaz and Gomez screaming at him from the wire room: Fucking call them! Find out where they are!

  Rocky called Gabriel, and tried to sound casual. “Qué onda, güey?” What’s up, dude?

  “Nothing,” Gabriel said. “What’s up with you?”

  “Nothing. I’m just here at the house. You haven’t told me to do anything.”

  “Well, we’re already working. We’re gonna do a job, güey. But we already have the group ready.”

  “What do I do?”

  “Well, nothing. We already have everything. Everything’s very well organized.”

  “All right,” Rocky said. “I’ll be here.” He wanted to ask, “Where’s the job?” but restrained himself from a question that might sound suspicious coming from a mere concierge.

  Gabriel hung up.

  Then Gabriel called back. “Listen, güey. There is a mission for you. The job we’re on is like this: There’s a blue Hummer parked outside Cosmos. A blue Hummer. Outside Cosmos. We need someone watching for the vato who’s gonna be walking toward the Hummer. You watch for him.” Gabriel explained that as soon as Rocky spotted the vato, the guy, approaching the blue Hummer, he was supposed to call the Wolf Boy doing the job. “I’ll give you his number. You call and say, ‘Hey! The vato is getting into his truck! The vato is getting into his truck!’ ”

  “All right,” Rocky said, heading outside to his car so he could speed over to Cosmos Bar & Grill. “Trae juguete?”—did he bring a toy?

  “He already has a toy,” Gabriel confirmed. “He already has a toy.”

  “GUN,” ROBERT TOLD THE WIRE room. “Toy means gun.”

  Robert headed down to the DEA parking lot. The console of his Jeep Cherokee was full of radios, one each from FBI, DEA, and Laredo PD. He ordered ten unmarked units stationed near the safe house to head toward Cosmos Bar & Grill. Then he drove there.

  There were two driveways in and out of the Cosmos lot, an unmarked unit parked near each. Another unit located the blue Hummer, parked nearby. A six-man SWAT team stationed itself in an armored vehicle a quarter mile away, behind some water tanks. Robert hid himself in a lot across the street, behind a stand-alone Sprint store: headlights off, AC on. He listened to his three radios.

  Within two minutes, an unmarked unit reported that it spotted men who fit the descriptions of the sicarios from the safe house.

  “How about Cardona?” Robert asked.

  “Negative. Don’t see him yet.”

  Outside Robert’s car, traffic cruised by. Cosmos was part of the nightclub strip in central Laredo—including Tonic and District and F-Bar. Lots of SUVs and pickup trucks came and went.

  Every second vehicle in Laredo was a pickup.

  A pickup came by that moved more slowly than the others. The blue Dodge Ram held up traffic, oblivious to the cars accumulating behind it. The driver of the Ram rubbernecked at Cosmos but didn’t pull into the lot.

  Instead, the driver of the Ram pulled into a lot kitty-corner to the one Robert was in, and parked near a bank, backing into the spot so the nose of the Ram pointed at Cosmos. The driver was young, looked about twenty, wore a black Polo golf shirt and khakis.

  “I got him,” Robert said.

  Gabriel was on his phone, using the push-button walkie-talkie function. A slight delay, then the wire room relayed Gabriel’s call back to Robert.

  “Mackey is the one we’re going to kill,” Gabriel told Rocky, who was now parked near
Cosmos as well. “Before Mackey gets into his truck, you call J.P. and you tell him, ‘There goes Mackey, there goes Mackey! He’s the one wearing such and such!’ ”

  “J.P. is the only one I’m supposed to call? Just him?”

  “Yes, just him. He’ll do the job, and then another guy will be waiting around the corner for the getaway.”

  Okay, Robert thought, they had enough on this attempted murder: Mackey is the one we’re going to kill.

  Robert ordered two marked cop cars to pull into the Cosmos lot, flash their lights, and sit there. The squad cars would spook Cardona, make him cancel the job.

  The squad cars pulled into the Cosmos lot and flashed their light.

  Gabriel didn’t move.

  Robert watched Gabriel watch the cop cars. Gabriel got back on his radio.

  The wire room relayed the call to Robert. Gabriel wanted his crew to stay in place until Mackey left Cosmos. They would let Mackey get into his blue Hummer, let him drive away, then follow him. They would each take turns tailing him for a little while, then drop back and let the other take the lead, like cyclists in a peloton. They would do so, Gabriel instructed, until Mackey got somewhere isolated, alone. And then Gabriel would kill Mackey himself.

  Sixty minutes passed. The nightclub cleared out. It was 2 a.m.

  The owner of the blue Hummer pushed through the doors. His eyes took a moment to adjust to the halogen lamps in the parking lot. He climbed into the Hummer. When he turned the ignition, Robert issued an order to the squad cars: “Pull Mackey over as soon as he hits the road.”

  The wire room conveyed another conversation to Robert.

  “What’s up, güey?” Gabriel asked. “Where’s the Hummer going?”

  “He’s coming out through the north side,” Rocky said. “The north side. He’s leaving the lot. But, um, there are two cop cars behind him.”

  “The north side? Like he’s heading toward Del Mar?”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. The north side. But be careful, man. The cop cars are right behind him.”

  “Okay, I’m headed over there.”

  “He’s parked!” Rocky said. “The police pulled him over!”

  “Qué onda?!”

  “Pinche puto!” Rocky said. “This culero is very lucky.”

  “Let’s wait and see if they let him leave.”

  “All right. I’m watching everything. It looks like they’re arresting the guy! It looks like they’re handcuffing him, like they’re gonna take the puto away. Do you think he was drunk or what?”

  A TOW TRUCK CAME AND hauled the Hummer away. The Wolf Boys departed.

  Robert walked across the street to the squad car, and looked in back. The man inside was not Mackey. He was a local dentist who looked a little like Mackey and owned a blue Hummer that looked just like Mackey’s. The dentist was apoplectic over why his car was being towed while he sat in a police cruiser. Robert said some hit men almost killed him. “We arrested you to protect you.”

  “It’s my fucking wife, isn’t it?!” the dentist screamed. The dentist’s wife had nothing to do with it, Robert assured him. “She must have hired them! I know it! We’re going through a divorce. She wants me dead!”

  BACK IN THE WIRE ROOM, the main members of Team Prophecy collapsed on the couches, highly emotional after the close call: What the fuck just happened?

  For them, the only thing worse than getting “burned”—having the bad guys find out about the investigation, and split—was getting someone killed. Operation Prophecy, they realized now, would be no typical wiretap investigation, where you could use your informant to wield some control over the criminals’ actions. The boys had their own agenda, and would do whatever they wanted.

  Team Prophecy decided to keep the operation going, so they could record conversations between Gabriel and Company leaders in Mexico, and so Rocky could find out who else was on the hit list. They would have to be in a reactive mode constantly. Only twelve hours had passed since they gave Cardona the keys to the safe house. How long could they keep up with these kids?

  THAT NIGHT, GABRIEL AND RICHARD went looking for an old and familiar target on Miguel’s list, Mike Lopez, at Taco Palenque, where many in Laredo went after the bars closed, but they couldn’t find him. Driving north on I-35, Richard noticed they were being followed by an unmarked car, a white Ford Explorer. Richard sped away. The Explorer followed. Richard exited the highway, made a U-turn beneath the underpass, and got on I-35 heading south. He stepped on it, exited at Saunders Street, called ahead to a friend who lived nearby, asked him to open his front gate, and a few minutes later Richard and Gabriel pulled into a driveway and shut off their lights.

  “Lost them,” Gabriel said.

  The Explorer drove by slowly.

  “Fuck!” Richard said.

  “The FBI must be investigating the kids,” Gabriel said, referring to Poncho Aviles and the other Laredo teen, both Sinaloans, whom Gabriel and Richard kidnapped from a Nuevo Laredo nightclub a week earlier. Gabriel shrugged it off. Those murders were done on the other side, he assured Richard, so it didn’t matter.

  Still, the tail made Richard skittish. “We’re calling too much attention to ourselves,” Richard said. He wanted to call it a night and go to Nuevo Laredo while the heat cooled.

  “You catching that pussy, man,” Gabriel said. “Let’s do this job.”

  Gabriel and Richard had never differed so openly. The argument’s subtext was clear. During their younger years in Lazteca, Richard had the money and the power. He was the boss. Now the roles had reversed. Deep down, Richard was angry at himself. Six months earlier, he got into the killings for what seemed liked a good reason: to meet Miguel Treviño and get back to smuggling.

  In recent months, Richard and Miguel had had many conversations about Richard getting back into logistics with a start-up grant and all the cocaine he could move. Miguel trusted Richard because Richard was with Gabriel. Every time they saw each other, Miguel asked if Richard was ready to start a new smuggling operation. Richard always invented an excuse. The real reason being that the assassin’s power to instill fear had sapped his ambition to work hard and make real money again. Fear, over the long term, might be a weaker power than money, but in some ways it was a more addictive one. It was one thing to have money and be able to get out of a jam with Mexican authorities. But you still had to go by their rules. Because enemies might have more money, and therefore more power over the cops. Whereas the power of fear meant running off cops without paying them. The privilege to humiliate had seduced Richard, and he’d lost his way.

  “We’re looking for a fucking ghost,” Richard said. “I’m done for today.”

  Then Gabriel’s phone rang. It was Meme Flores calling from Mexico. Meme explained that there were two young Company men in Nuevo Laredo who were taking their weekly salaries but never doing jobs. They needed to be disciplined. Could Gabriel handle it? In an endless war, the enforcer’s work was never done. Yes, Gabriel said, he could do it.

  “Okay,” he told Richard, “you get your wish. Take us across.”

  Later, Richard stayed in Mexico to continue partying. Gabriel returned to the safe house on Orange Blossom Loop in the predawn hours. It had been a long night. He slept.

  SUNDAY PASSED WITHOUT ACTIVITY. ON Monday, the third day in the safe house, Robert watched the boys. None of the bedrooms had cameras. But he could imagine Gabriel sleeping on the deluxe air mattress bought at Wal-Mart. While plainclothes officers followed them through the aisles earlier that day, the boys bought bedding, kitchen utensils, and a triangular cabinet for the old TV—the singular living room item furnished by the U.S. government.

  At noon, the Wolf Boys woke up and Gabriel went into his neat-freak mode, putting each associate on a task: clean the kitchen, the bathroom, find a mower and cut the lawn, assemble the TV stand. This place was going to be a “straight house,” he told them, not a dump. They would all learn to respect what they’d been given. He unwrapped the kitchen utensils, filled a
drawer, went to the garage, and came back with an armful of Martha Stewart towels, new white ones with stripes, some of which he hung on the rack and the rest he distributed around to the other Wolf Boys.

  Now, in his bedroom—where Robert could hear but not see—Gabriel tried to make up with Christina on the phone.

  “Are you busy or what?” she asked.

  He could hear his underlings working away in the garage. “I’m cleaning the car,” Gabriel said into the phone. “What’s up, love?”

  “I was checking in because you haven’t called.”

  “All right.”

  An uncomfortable silence.

  “Help me be strong, Gabriel,” she finally said with a heave. “I don’t have anyone else. You don’t understand how I feel when you don’t call me! It just feels so . . . terrible!”

  Gabriel’s renewed dedication to his Company work, specifically this killing spree in Texas, put major stress on their relationship. She’d call him about plans and he’d say, “You don’t understand! I’m working!” “But you said we were going to be together!” “Fine! I’ll come get you!” And Gabriel would come get her, and they’d go somewhere for fast food and Gabriel would bitch at her to reorganize the pickles on his burger, to lay them out evenly so that there was one pickle for each bite.

  She could no longer claim ignorance of his work. Not since the recent night he returned from Mexico and removed his black Versace shirt, which hung so attractively over the late-adolescent bulk. She noticed it was splattered red. A rumor floated: Two kids from Laredo were taken from the Eclipse night club in Nuevo Laredo, beaten, and stewed in the guiso. Shacked up at another hotel, Gabriel asked Christina if she wanted a new car. She said she’d love a new car. She could have any car she wanted, he said, so long as she helped him deliver La Barbie’s head in a box. “What the fuck, Gabriel!” she yelled. “What?” he shrugged. She clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth, what she did when she was sad. They could be good together, strong, she thought, but the Company was coming between them, and she was tired of it.