Rip Crew

by Sebastian Rotella

  Porthos murmured instructions into the radio. Davila eased the Suburban into the area marked by the traffic cones and came to a halt. Pescatore and Facundo put the rifles on the floor.

  The officer in charge spoke to the driver of the lead vehicle and examined documents. Then he approached the second vehicle. Pescatore watched him. A crusty old-timer with self-importance in his stride. The officer had a furry brown mustache, a bald dome between neat half circles of hair, a high protruding rib cage beneath his armored vest. Stripes adorned the shoulder of the navy-blue jumpsuit. Removing his Ray-Bans with a flourish, he asked Davila for license and registration.

  Abrihet clutched Pescatore’s sleeve. He patted her hand. This was her third run at this border. The last one had ended in catastrophe. He couldn’t blame her for thinking this time might not be the charm.

  Porthos leaned forward. He spoke to the officer in a mild voice.

  “Que onda, Chuy? What a long time it’s been.”

  Pescatore’s hopes soared. He wasn’t surprised that Porthos and the cop knew each other. Porthos was something of a legend in local law enforcement. Pescatore liked how he had played the moment. He could have leaped at the opportunity, all eager and phony. Instead, his manner was breezy, casual, as if he were mildly amused at running into an old acquaintance. As if it weren’t a life-or-death encounter.

  The officer’s smile was surprised. His stance became more relaxed.

  “Look who’s here,” he declared. “El mero mero. Comandante Porthos, how are you?”

  “Very well. And you, mi Chuy?”

  “As you see. Working hard on the Lord’s Day.”

  Porthos extended an arm to shake hands with Chuy. He held out a company identification badge, which the officer took, examined, and returned. To Pescatore’s relief, Chuy holstered his gun.

  Porthos said, “Us too, Chuy. Security never sleeps.”

  “You’re working?” The deep-set eyes were quizzical.

  “That’s right. We have executive escort duty this morning.”

  The officer glanced again at the rest of the convoy. He peered into the back of the Suburban. Pescatore met his stare, feeling a new twinge of concern. Chuy sensed something.

  “We’ll have you on your way in a minute,” Chuy said. “I just need to see identification for the rest of the passengers.”

  Goddamn it, Pescatore thought. By-the-book bastard. He’ll get us all killed.

  He had thought for sure the guy would let them go. Maybe he was just a ball-breaker. Maybe he had an old beef with Porthos related to the fact that the Diogenes Group had specialized in locking up cops. Or maybe he was in league with the rip crew that was on the lookout for an African refugee and would pay handsomely if some enterprising lawman came across her.

  Abrihet didn’t have a passport. Pescatore and Facundo had foreign passports that would draw attention. This couldn’t go any further. Pescatore’s hand crept toward his shoulder holster.

  “Listen, my friend, I apologize, but unfortunately we’re in a bit of a hurry,” Porthos said. “I’d appreciate it if we could just get moving. It would be better for everybody.”

  The officer tilted forward in a wide-legged stance, his hard pate gleaming. Consternation spread across his weather-beaten face. Yes, Porthos had apologized politely and called him a friend. But Porthos’s voice had grown colder, and he had paused before stressing the final word, everybody. Porthos was defying a command. It added up to a veiled threat, a verbal sword thrust.

  Pescatore could tell that everyone was hanging on Chuy’s reaction. Chuy was surely calculating the numbers and firepower of the occupants behind the polarized windows of the Suburbans. Did he want to go to war over an identity check? Did he want to breathe his last on Calle Internacional on a sunny Sunday morning?

  Motionless, the officer looked through the window at Porthos. A stare as loaded as the words that had triggered it. Chuy’s mouth tightened.

  “Until next time.”

  He said it like a man with a long memory.

  And he stepped back. And they were off again.

  Nobody said a word as the convoy snaked through downtown streets. The traffic thickened. The Suburbans pulled over at the edge of the sprawl of ramps, bridges, and walkways that led to the concrete hulk of the U.S. border station. Reluctantly, Pescatore shed his guns and put them under the blanket in back. Facundo followed suit. Porthos turned to Pescatore and raised his eyebrows.

  “Very good,” Porthos said. “Time for the licenciado’s little show.”

  Remembering the instructions, Abrihet pulled off her hood. Pescatore helped her climb out of the vehicle. She looked excited, determined and a bit overwhelmed by the sun, the noise and the reception committee waiting next to the smoke and hiss of a taco stand.

  Padre Bartolomeo was resplendent in his white robes and biblical beard, a cross on his chest. The tanned, scholarly-looking guy with him was an American lawyer friend of Méndez’s, a human rights expert from Los Angeles and an adviser to the news website. The two Mexican hipsters were Méndez’s reporters: a lanky, ponytailed young man who scribbled notes and a frizzy-haired woman in an army jacket who dictated into her phone. The photographer, an athletic American blonde in overalls, carried a camera that shot both photos and video.

  A group of Porthos’s men formed a perimeter. They had left the long guns in the vehicles with the drivers.

  “Giovanotto,” Padre Bartolomeo said to Pescatore.

  Pescatore made introductions. The priest clasped Abrihet’s hands and murmured in Italian, beaming when she responded in the same language. He offered his arm nonchalantly, as if he were escorting her to brunch, and smiled with practiced ease while the photographer got up in his face, firing from multiple angles.

  The padre’s kind of a media hound, Pescatore thought. In a good way.

  He had to give Padre Bartolomeo credit. When they had called from Italy, they said they needed his help for an emergency. That had been enough for the priest to rush up to San Diego from Tapachula.

  The phalanx set off. Pescatore, Athos, Porthos, and Facundo formed a diamond. The priest and the lawyer walked on either side of Abrihet. She carried the backpack over one shoulder. The photographer and reporters backpedaled in front of her, making the most of the moment. The Mexican woman kept up a stream of narration.

  They better blur my face like Leo promised, Pescatore thought. I need to stay low profile.

  They advanced into the tumult of the border crossing. Heads turned. Kids ran alongside them. There was plenty of activity for a Sunday morning. Music echoed from shops and stands: banda, cumbia, bachata, mariachi, rock. Pescatore’s eyes roamed over the crowd: vendors, beggars, tourists, migrants, partiers, commuters, miscreants. He watched for furtive moves, glinting gun barrels. The little procession crossed a bridge over hundreds of cars idling in the inspection lanes. Engines grumbled. Horns honked.

  Moments later, Athos, Porthos and their men came to a stop. They were armed civilian foreigners, so they didn’t want to get any closer to U.S. territory. Pescatore pulled out his passport, a private investigator’s credential, and a card identifying him as a former Border Patrol agent. He spoke in Abrihet’s ear.

  “We’re going into the port of entry,” he said. “The padre and the lawyer will do the talking. You okay?”

  “Yes.” Her luminous eyes opened wide. “Big production.”

  “The more publicity there is, the safer you’ll be.”

  She smiled tightly.

  “Don’t worry, the dangerous part’s over,” he said. “It’s just bureaucracy now.”

  Lines of border-crossers on foot filled the sidewalk east of the traffic lanes. Pescatore led the way, feeling exultant, plunging into the throng enclosed by portable pedestrian control gates. He held aloft his credentials, declaring, “Sorry folks, law enforcement emergency, coming through!”

  Accustomed to official types barking orders, people moved aside. At the entrance of the indoor pedestrian-crossing stat
ion, a group of blue-uniformed U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers hurried out to intercept Pescatore’s group. They ordered the blond photographer to stop taking pictures. She made a fuss while the Mexican reporter kept filming and narrating.

  Padre Bartolomeo and the lawyer identified themselves. The lawyer explained they were accompanying a refugee who wished to request political asylum because of urgent and imminent threats to her life.

  Padre Bartolomeo addressed the camera and the inspectors.

  “This is the young lady,” he boomed. “Her name is Abrihet. It means ‘She who brings the light.’”

  Part IV

  Chapter 16

  Don’t wake your father, m’ijo. Renata, finish your juice. No, Juan, if you shut up and find your cleats we won’t be late…Is Papá coming?…Let him sleep…Corazón Espinado…my ringtone…must be Porthos…corazón…My phone…Porthos said he’d pick me up…espinado…What time is the NYPD…My phone…corazón…Locked in the drawer with the gun…Forget it…Call him back…espinado…Porthos likes Santana as much as I do…We met at a Santana concert. The Tijuana bullring. Athos was in charge of security. He introduced us…Twenty years ago…Meet Leo Méndez. A trustworthy reporter, believe it or not. Leo, this big lug is Abelardo Tapia. He’s partners with El Zorro Etcheverry at the state homicide group. And where is your partner today, Abelardo? You ate him?…Very funny, guey. A pleasure to meet you, Licenciado Méndez. I read your article about…Papá, are you awake?

  Méndez lay facedown. It had been his first real night’s sleep since Abrihet Anbessa’s exfiltration. Like a brush with oblivion. Like his brain had been wiped clean. Gradually, he remembered. He was home. It was Saturday morning. The somber boy in the soccer uniform next to the bed was his son.

  “Mamá says you can’t see the game because you’re too tired and you have to work again,” Juan whispered.

  Méndez was impressed, even moved, that Estela had roused herself to drive Juan to the game. He scuttled his plan to sleep in.

  “Absolutely false,” he croaked. “I will be there by the second half.”

  “Great!” Juan lowered his voice. “The school coach says I have to use my right foot. He doesn’t care what Maradona did.”

  “He’s got a point. Now get going before you’re late.”

  Renata darted into the room, kissed him on the head, and chirped her latest American expression—pitch-perfect, if not appropriate for the hour: “Good-night-sleep-tight. Hasta luego, Father.”

  A few minutes after they left, Méndez rolled to a sitting position. His head swam. He called Porthos and asked if he could come by earlier than planned so they could go to the game first.

  “At your orders, Licenciado,” Porthos said. “I was on my way to meet the guys for breakfast. We can catch up to them after.”

  “I don’t want you going without breakfast.”

  “On the contrary, you do me a favor. If I go to the diner, I will eat waffles, and if I eat waffles, my wife will give me a sermon.”

  “If she finds out.”

  “She’ll find out. She has a drone that follows me around monitoring what I eat.”

  “Are we set with the detectives from New York?”

  “Yes. They interviewed Señorita Abrihet yesterday. We see them at eleven.”

  “Fine. What about Isabel?”

  “Nothing new.”

  Isabel Puente was still in bureaucratic limbo in Washington. Méndez had avoided contact to protect her from any suspicion of collusion with the press. He asked how Abrihet Anbessa was doing.

  “As far as I know, fine,” Porthos said. “The FBI still has her in that fancy hotel.”

  “Good. See you shortly.”

  Méndez showered and shaved. Although it was especially onerous on a weekend, he put on a gray blazer, white shirt, blue slacks, and clunky black shoes with laces. Appropriate attire for a sit-down with the NYPD. His eyes felt raw, but—keeping the vow he’d made to himself in Italy—he put in his contact lenses. After mulling it over, he decided to carry his gun in a shoulder holster rather than in his belt. Less chance the soccer parents would see it and freak out. He ate a yogurt and a muffin in the kitchen and took a cup of coffee to his desk in the garage. The newsroom was strewn with the debris of an epic week: documents, printouts, notebooks, coffee cups, pizza boxes, dirty plates.

  The story was still on the front pages. A British financial newspaper analyzed the damage to the Blake Acquisitions Group’s image and stock prices. U.S. and Mexican newspapers reported the latest: the FBI had announced it would lead an investigation of the accusations in the Italian criminal complaint. A Rome correspondent had slapped together a profile of Giancarlo Maio, the crusading prosecutor who had “taken on a U.S. billionaire.” An Italian magazine featured an interview with Padre Bartolomeo, “the Italian guardian angel of refugees in the Americas.” The media in the United States and overseas continued to republish or write about the package of articles that Line of Investigation had posted Wednesday after a reporting, writing, and editing marathon by Méndez and his team. Fred Weinstein had donated hours of high-priced legal advice.

  Although he had missed the rescue in Ensenada, Méndez was reasonably satisfied. He felt like a choreographer, a spymaster pulling strings. He hadn’t wanted Abrihet disappearing into the labyrinth of the immigration system. That was why he had scripted out her public request for asylum, complete with a lawyer and a telegenic priest. The goal had been to make noise, and it had worked.

  Méndez had coordinated closely with Maio in Italy. The reporting was built on the Italian criminal complaint, and Méndez posted his articles two hours after Maio filed the document. The sourcing had been a complicated exercise for Méndez because the Italian legal papers rested partly on his own actions and testimony. He had kept first-person details to a minimum. Abrihet’s account of her odyssey appeared in a separate story, accompanied by excerpts of her videotaped conversation with Pescatore.

  Méndez had also written a profile of Vincent “El T” Robles, the accused chief of the rip crew. The article was based on the Italian complaint, information from Athos and Porthos, and reporting by Santiago. With his usual aplomb, Santiago had managed to talk briefly to Robles’s widowed mother through the screen door of a red stucco house in Riverside, a pit bull barking beside her, baleful homeboys watching from neighboring lawns and porches. Santiago had even tracked down a photo of Robles in his army days. The Italian prosecutor’s report named him as a chief suspect wanted for questioning, though the investigators had not found a connection to Krystak yet. As agreed with Méndez, the Italian succinctly described the incriminating Blake Group documents in his report but did not reproduce or quote from them. With this kind of figlio di puttana, you always want to have ammunition in reserve, Maio had said.

  Méndez reread his main article. It recited the Blake Acquisitions Group’s litany of unpunished wrongdoing: taxes dodged, money laundered, markets manipulated, politicians bought, companies crushed, unions busted, jobs lost, lives ruined. All without sanction. Until, finally, if the allegations were true, Perry Blake had committed a vicious act against a woman who was not as powerless as she’d seemed. The aftermath had spiraled out of control. The article read, in part:

  Gangs like the one that killed the migrants in Tecate are called “rip crews.” They lack even the discipline and industriousness to traffic drugs, migrants or contraband. Instead, they rob those who do, slaughtering and violating at will. In the arena of the “legitimate” economy, the Blake Acquisitions Group is a predator. A rip crew. The U.S. and Italian authorities are investigating Blake and his company because of suspicions that he crossed the line into criminality that is easier to prosecute. In this complex case spanning four continents, different kinds of mafias have allegedly blurred together.

  Méndez sipped coffee. He was still waking up. His euphoria mixed with uncertainty. Combined with all his reporting, the Italian court documents were a solid shield for his stories. But he had been forced to t
one down allegations with caveats and questions. It was of course possible that forces connected to the Blake Group had tried to silence Abrihet without the approval of the executives. It was even theoretically possible, as Fred Weinstein had made him write, that the violent events in different countries were coincidental and unrelated. That was why the authorities had to, at a minimum, question Robles, Krystak, and Perry Blake. Responding to his articles and the Italian charges, the Justice Department and the NYPD had publicly promised to get to the bottom of the affair. Yet they hadn’t done much, as far as he could tell. He was impatient for results: a search, an arrest, something.

  An e-mail pinged on his screen. Santiago had sent him a video. The subject line read Public Enemy #1.

  Until now, the Blake Group had not commented beyond issuing a statement denying wrongdoing by any of its employees. The company promised to cooperate fully with law enforcement and respond vigorously to libel and slander.

  The video was an interview with Perry Blake. The same big-haired, brassy reporter from the financial network, but in a new setting: the patio of a mansion in the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles. Perry Blake and his father were meeting there to discuss strategies for responding to this controversy, the reporter said in a hushed and dramatic voice.

  Perry Blake wore a tennis sweater. He sat erect with his hands clasped on a round glass table. His face was drawn. His tone was folksy and combative. He was going to fight this thing and win. The Mexican reporter and the Italian prosecutor were publicity hounds, antibusiness extremists. The indictment and the articles read like a gangland screenplay. It smelled like a foreign conspiracy.

  “This Mexican reporter keeps talking about mafias,” Perry Blake snapped. “He sure knows a lot about mafias. Isn’t that interesting? I wonder who bankrolls him. We’ve got this awesome historic merger shaping up, unprecedented jobs and growth and profit for Mexico and the United States. And we’re under attack. Lookit, maybe the cartels don’t like me. The bad guys, the foreign competitors, don’t want a cutting-edge American company doing positive transformational business down there. Maybe the Mexican and Italian gangsters teamed up. Well, here’s news for you, Sophia: they picked a fight with the wrong guy.”