Triple Crossing

by Sebastian Rotella

  “Você no comprende con quien esta metiendo,” the smuggler said in a chiding tone. More or less: You don’t understand who you are messing with.

  Méndez and Athos left. They glanced through the thin rectangular window in the door of the second interview room. The state police detective who had been caught harboring the illegal immigrants slumped in his chair, a caricature of dejection. Abelardo Tapia, the second deputy chief of the Diogenes Group, sat across from the prisoner. He was scribbling industriously on a legal pad. The bearded Tapia was all shoulders and belly and—despite his reputation as a bone-crusher—good cheer. So Méndez called him Porthos.

  “Who is the state policeman?” Méndez asked.

  “De Rosa,” Athos answered. “One of Mauro’s protégés in the homicide squad. Fat and sleazy. This monkey always liked making money. He owns the safe house.”

  As they watched through the window, De Rosa leaned forward over the legal pad, which his interrogator turned at an angle so the prisoner could read it. De Rosa nodded morosely and scribbled on the pad with his right hand. His left hand was chained to the leg of the table. Porthos beamed and wrote, chatting all the while.

  “What is Porthos doing with the pad?” Méndez asked.

  “De Rosa is terrified that we are wired for sound,” Athos muttered. “But they go way back from when Porthos worked on the homicide unit. Porthos convinced him to give us information off the record. They are writing down the real questions and answers while they talk about trivialities. They’ve been at it for a while.”

  The headquarters of the Diogenes Group was a prime eavesdropping target for other Mexican police forces, intelligence agencies and drug mafias. After the discovery of phone taps, Isabel Puente, an American federal agent who worked with Méndez, had recommended a San Diego private investigation firm that did contract work for her government. The Americans did periodic electronic sweeps free of charge. If anyone was bugging the Diogenes Group, it was with the help of the gringos.

  “What will De Rosa want for his cooperation?” Méndez asked.

  “I think the fat slob would like to avoid the state penitentiary.”

  “Alright. Put him in the Eighth Street Jail instead. Special federal custody.”

  Méndez went into the adjoining house and upstairs to his office, which had once been the master bedroom. The walls held a portrait of the current president of Mexico, a portrait of former president Lázaro Cárdenas, a crucifix, diplomas, a poster of Salvador Allende, and a poster from a concert by Carlos Santana at the seaside bullring in Playas de Tijuana. The bookshelves contained a mix of English and Spanish titles about organized crime, law enforcement, politics and sociology, as well as literature: Arriaga, Benedetti, Borges, García Márquez, Paz, Poniatowska, Vargas Llosa, Volpi. There was a row of books about the border. There were caps, mugs, plaques and other trinkets from U.S. and Mexican law enforcement agencies. And a matchstick sculpture of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.

  The bay window behind Méndez’s desk offered a view of Mexican territory just south of the port of entry: an epic convergence of legal and illegal commerce and migration. Vendors hawked ceramic Bart Simpsons and Porky Pigs and Virgins of Guadalupe. Buses loaded up with legal crossers bound for California’s far-flung Mexican-American strongholds. Armed with binoculars and cell phones, smuggling lookouts posted on the multicolored pedestrian bridge spanning the crowded car lanes scanned the U.S. inspectors in their booths to see whom they could outwit—or which of their paid-off yanqui allies was on the job today.

  Méndez turned from the window and picked up the phone. His secretary told him the state attorney general’s office wanted to discuss the arrest of the state police detective as soon as possible. There was also a message to call Araceli Aguirre, the state human rights commissioner.

  Méndez went into the bathroom and washed his face. He looked tired; the lines slanting from the base of his nose to the corners of his mouth seemed especially pronounced. Back at his desk, he took a breath and dialed the number of the apartment in Berkeley, California, where his wife and five-year-old son now lived. As the phone rang, he remembered the last conversation: the long silences with his wife, his son’s distractedness. He thought back to the grim good-bye at the airport. He hung up without waiting to see if anyone answered.

  For the next hour or so, he made phone calls, read reports and scanned newspapers. He listened to the group Molotov and Silvio Rodríguez, the Cuban singer-composer, on his computer’s compact disc player. At eleven-thirty, two American journalists arrived for an interview.

  Their visit was the idea of a friend at City Hall who had worked with Méndez at a newspaper long ago. The friend wanted the Americans to meet Méndez, to learn about a group of police in Tijuana who were fighting the good fight. Contacts in the U.S. press could be helpful, a shield for Méndez and his officers. On the other hand, they could also cause him grief.

  Here’s a yanqui who is going to waste my time, Méndez grumbled to himself as he welcomed a television reporter with a Captain America jaw, a beefy frame in a tan sport coat, and a silver helmet of hair that looked labor-intensive. The newspaper reporter, a bright-eyed young woman with frizzy blond hair, wore a shaggy sweater, jeans and hiking boots. She greeted him in confident Spanish, then stayed quiet and watchful while the TV guy made small talk. Her name was Steinberg. Méndez’s friend at City Hall had said that she was not the typical American reporter who talked instead of listening and confused being aggressive with being obnoxious.

  His secretary served coffee. The TV reporter, whose first or last name was Dennis, appraised the diplomas on the wall.

  “I see you went to Michigan,” he said in an Olympian broadcast voice.

  “Just a year. Graduate studies in Latin American literature. I did the work in Spanish, fortunately or no, so my English is not so good. In reality, it was exile: I had political problems here at those times.”

  “Go, Blue,” Dennis said, pumping a genial fist at him. “Primo football up there, right?”

  Méndez’s smile wavered. He wondered if the man really thought he had ever attended a football game. For Méndez, Michigan had been an icy wasteland full of fraternity-house brutes, spoiled suburbanites and addled drug users who united on fall Saturdays for a fascistic spectacle.

  Méndez told the reporters the history of the Diogenes Group. How it had formed a year earlier because of pressure from Mexico City and Washington to do something about lawlessness in Mexico in general and in Tijuana in particular. How big shots in Mexico City had surprised Méndez by asking him to resign as state human rights commissioner and lead the new unit. How Méndez had resisted because of his aversion to the country’s new ruling coalition, which he had derisively called “Jurassic Park” in public statements. How he had reluctantly accepted because of his respect for the Secretary, the high-ranking security official who had proposed the anticorruption initiative with him in mind. The unit consisted of thirty carefully selected officers from the federal, state and city forces, as well as investigators from his human rights commission. U.S. federal agents had helped screen and train the officers.

  “As you know, in Mexico the journalists and people of human rights often do the job that should be of the police and prosecutors. So we are not newcomers.”

  Dennis asked the predictable question about the unit’s name.

  “Our formal name is the Unidad Especial Contra Corrupción Pública y Crimen Organizado. A horrible acronym. The Special Unit Against Public Corruption and Organized Crime. When we presented ourselves to the press, a reporter said: ‘Listen, Licenciado, let’s speak clearly: Your mission is to hunt bad policemen, correct?’ And I said the first thing that occurred to me. I said that in this city, unfortunately, I look at it another way: We are like Diogenes. We are hunting for honest policemen. We hope to help them, encourage them. And while we do that, since honest ones are hard to find, we will arrest as many dishonest ones as we can. There was a lot of complaints about my declarations. But ev
erybody calls us the Diogenes Group.”

  Dennis returned his grin briefly. “How can you be sure the cops you chose aren’t corrupt?”

  “Well, that is relative, no? They came from a corrupt system. Anyway, I would put my hands in the fire for my comandantes. When I was a reporter like you, they were my best…. fuentes.”

  “Sources,” the blond woman said. Méndez nodded gratefully. She left off chewing her pen and picked up the pace. “Licenciado Méndez. The case that made your group famous is still pretty interesting to those of us north of the border. I mean when you arrested the chief of the state police in October with the two tons of cocaine and the dead bodies. Could you tell me where that stands?”

  The arrest of Chief Regino Astorga of the state police, also known as the Colonel, had been something of a fluke, Méndez explained. Acting on a tip, the unit raided a warehouse, found the cocaine—and the Colonel and his state police detectives standing over three freshly tortured bodies, one of them a boss in a powerful cartel.

  “We have confidence that he will be convicted, no matter how influential he is,” Méndez said. “That case shows that this city, this country, is capable of change. We came close to war between police forces, but it was worth it.”

  “One thing,” Steinberg said cautiously. “Supposedly the Colonel worked for a new cartel that is pushing out the old groups. What exactly is this new mafia?”

  “As well as drugs, we think they are connected to the increase in illegal immigrants from other nations, especially Asiatics and Arabs. In recent years in Mexico we have had an era of drug lords who were vicious, politically connected businessmen, then drug lords who were crazy pistoleros. This mafia combines both traditions. It also has unusual international connections. Including elements of American agencies, I should tell you. The new mafia is opening the valves of corruption and violence in a way I have not seen before.”

  Steinberg gulped coffee, fueling herself. Dennis watched her with mixed resentment and interest. Méndez could picture the interview from her perspective, gauging how hard to push, the questions building on each other.

  “But is it really a big mystery who this mafia is? What about the allegations that the Ruiz Caballero family is aligned with them?”

  Méndez wished that they were talking one-on-one. He reminded her they were off the record. He said: “Drug lords come and go. But certain elites have enduring power, both legitimate and criminal. They have alliances with gangsters. I can say nothing right now, responsibly, about the names you mention. But that family definitely belongs to the super-elites.”

  “Listen, I give you credit,” Dennis interjected, interrupting the blonde’s rhythm, her blue eyes jumping at him in annoyance. “How can you do what you do?”

  Méndez wasn’t sure he understood the question. “It was difficult to change mentality when I began the job. There was a time when I believed, as Bakunin said, that society organizes crimes, and people only execute them. That all police were repressive and corrupt.”

  “Yeah,” said Dennis, whose eyes had glazed until the word “corrupt.” “It’s such a cesspool. The police running dope, the government stealing elections—”

  “Excuse me, elections?” Méndez said.

  “Um, yes.”

  “Pardon me,” Méndez said. “Elections are one thing here that is not corrupt. Even despite the recent crisis of government.”

  “That’s well known,” Steinberg said forlornly, hoping to get back on track.

  “Is it? What does television show Americans about Mexico? It amazes me to watch the news of San Diego. They start: a story about animals in distress. An important topic in the United States. Some dogs got mistreated in La Jolla. A fire burned a stable in, eh, Carlsbad. And by the way, seven Mexicans were shot in Baja. Fifteen Mexicans killed in bus crash. Corrupt Mexicans steal elections. But first, the sports.”

  “You’re exaggerating,” Dennis said, his Adam’s apple bobbing in discomfort.

  “And the corruption. Isn’t it curious we know the names of the Mexican drug lords, nombres y apellidos, and nothing about the American ones? Who are the American drug lords? Who protects them?”

  “It seems to me,” said Dennis, “that the big traffickers in the U.S. are Colombians and Mexicans in immigrant communities.”

  “But it’s impossible no Anglo-Saxon names are involved,” Méndez said. “Like the traffickers of arms in Phoenix and Las Vegas who sell guns to the narcos of Tijuana. And the legal gangsters: the businessmens who are partners of Mexican companies that launder drug money? American corporations, banks? I remember in New York years ago when they arrested all those Wall Street people and walked them in Wall Street in chains. Marvelous. You should do this every year. A parade, like Thanksgiving.”

  “They say you are pretty left-wing,” Dennis said tersely.

  Méndez grimaced, his eyes narrowing. “Ah sí? I’m not sure what is left-wing anymore. Señor Dennis, I answer your question: Why do I do what I do? At this point in my life, the most revolutionary thing I can do is to be a policeman. To arrest people regardless of who they are, what power they have. In this place, in these times, enforcing the law has become an act of subversion.”

  The silence filled with the scratching of the woman’s pen on her notepad. Méndez looked at her until she glanced up and smiled.

  “I have talked too much,” Méndez said. “Thank you for coming.”

  During the good-byes, he accepted when Steinberg asked quietly if she could talk to him again soon. Having done his part to advance inter-American understanding, Méndez summoned Athos and a driver.

  They drove to the Río Zone, the modern downtown east of the Avenida Revolución tourist district. They entered the square-block complex housing the courts and the state police behind a brawny detective with a prisoner in tow. The detective wore a flower-print shirt, denim jacket and cowboy boots. His pawlike hand rested lightly on the long-haired youth’s shoulder. The prisoner was not handcuffed. This was the macho style of the state police; they believed no prisoner would dream of running from them.

  It was cold in the long drab hallways of the justice complex, one of those Tijuana government buildings with cinderblock walls that generated either an insidious chill or sweatbox heat. Méndez and Athos stepped over regularly spaced streams of water on the floor, leaks from the radiator system.

  The receptionist wore a high-necked sweater and scarf along with her miniskirt. Her cheerful greeting contrasted with the glares of half a dozen cops, aides and other officials lounging in the outer office. A standard welcome for the Diogenes Group.

  “Ah yes, from the Special Unit. Licenciado Losada is expecting you. And Commander Fernández Rochetti. Please go in.”

  Deputy Attorney General Albino Losada, chief of the state prosecutor’s office in Tijuana, greeted them glumly. His narrow shoulders were encased in a trench coat that was belted against the cold. He had a small mustache jammed up under a pointy nose. He remained standing with his fists in the pockets of the coat. Losada’s predecessor had been murdered. His predecessor’s predecessor had been arrested with great fanfare, then released and fired. It was Losada’s custom to pace behind his desk, giving the impression that he was about to bolt from the room.

  Homicide Commander Mauro Fernández Rochetti, meanwhile, reclined in a chair to the left of the desk. He looked more comfortable in the large, sparse office than Losada. Fernández Rochetti crossed his legs in shiny gray slacks and lit a thin cigar.

  Here we go, Méndez told himself. At a gesture from Losada, he and Athos sat down.

  “A busy morning for you, Licenciado,” Fernández Rochetti said. He commanded the homicide unit of the state police, a job reserved for highly paid operatives of the drug cartels. Since the Diogenes Group had arrested his former boss, Regino “the Colonel” Astorga, the homicide commander had come to be considered the shadow chief of the entire state force.

  “That’s right,” Méndez said. “I’m afraid your detective was directly i
nvolved in the smuggling ring.”

  “You can imagine how concerned all of us are here,” Losada said.

  Fernández Rochetti blew smoke. His voice had a crust to it.

  “Perhaps he was set up,” he said. “This smells of a setup, as I was just telling the deputy attorney general.”

  “Let’s not be ridiculous, Mauro,” Athos said quietly. “What, somebody planted twenty-five Chinese in his house when he wasn’t looking?”

  Fernández Rochetti arched his eyebrows. Losada said, “Well, the principal issue, Licenciado, is that we want to thank you for the courtesy of coming to see us. And we’d like to discuss keeping De Rosa out of custody. Perhaps a house arrest…”

  “I’m afraid that’s impossible,” Méndez answered. “We have already turned the case over to the federal prosecutor. The best I can do is put him in the Eighth Street Jail.”

  The argument about custody arrangements went in circles. A cell phone rang. Losada fished in his trench coat, produced the phone and answered it. Fernández Rochetti turned expectantly. The prosecutor’s stutter-stepping intensified.

  “Yessir. Yes, thank you. Well, you should really talk to him, he happens to be right here.” Losada pressed a hand over the phone and made an apologetic face at Méndez. “This lawyer has been pestering me all day. A pain in the neck. Best if he talks to you, Licenciado. It’s a federal matter.”

  Losada handed the phone to Méndez, who exchanged a glance with Athos.

  “Hello?” Méndez said into the phone.

  “Licenciado, how are you?” The voice was resonant and mannered. “This is Licenciado Castrejón greeting you, from the law office of Castrejón and Sáenz? At your service. What a pleasure to hear your voice. You and the family are well, I hope? I’m so lucky to have found you there.”

  “Yes.”

  “Listen, Licenciado Méndez,” the lawyer said. “It turns out that I’ve been engaged by certain parties on behalf of certain parties in this business of these foreigners from China. I have a matter I’d like to take up with you.”