Triple Crossing

by Sebastian Rotella

  “Comandante Rojas is the operational chief of the Diogenes Group, Valentine. The number-two guy. And Comandante Tapia is of utmost confidence. I vouch for both of them. They wouldn’t be here otherwise. Why don’t you guys have a seat, take off your jackets, make yourselves comfortable. I’ll get some coffee.”

  The Mexicans sat. They did not take off their jackets. The alcove quickly became claustrophobic. Pescatore tilted his head back again. He regarded Méndez from beneath heavy lids. His posture reinforced his tone: He clearly wished the Mexicans would go away. Wild-looking kid, Méndez thought.

  Méndez had a visceral nationalistic aversion to Border Patrol agents. Although he did not work with The Patrol, from a distance they reminded him of a species he had come to loathe during his year among the gray skies and gray buildings of the University of Michigan: fraternity boys. They had struck him as crude, swaggering, well-off rednecks with a clannish mentality that reeked of racism and fascism. But Méndez had been mystified to discover that Athos and other veterans in the Diogenes Group did not share his disdain. In fact, Mendez’s officers viewed the Border Patrol with a comradely we’re-all-cops-doing-our-job attitude. And he knew that, unlike the frat boys of Michigan, the Border Patrol agents tended to be working class and many were Latinos.

  Nonetheless, reasonable or not, Méndez had a problem with the Border Patrol. And the young Border Patrol agent clearly had a problem with Méndez and his men, if not Mexicans in general.

  By the time Puente had served the beverages, there was an interruption: a pizza delivery. Puente bustled around putting the deep-dish pizza, a plate and utensils in front of Pescatore.

  “Valentine was hungry,” Puente explained. “He’s had quite a night.”

  Pescatore gave her a smile so affectionate and sheepish that Méndez found it endearing in spite of himself. He looked back and forth between the agent and Puente, wondering if personal factors might be complicating Puente’s relationship with her informant. When she had first recruited him, she had told Méndez that it was a calculated risk. As the weeks went by, though, she had sounded unusually enthusiastic about the kid.

  Pescatore gestured at the Mexicans to join him; they shook their heads. After he had consumed a slice of pizza, Puente broke the silence with a gentle “So…”

  “OK,” Pescatore said to Méndez, wiping his mouth carefully with a napkin. “First I gotta say I’m doing this under protest. It’s messed up: I didn’t even tell my own bosses how it really went down. And now I’m gonna tell you guys. But Agent Puente says I gotta help you out. And what Agent Puente says, goes.”

  Méndez nodded. Pescatore explained that, an hour before the shoot-out, Garrison told Pescatore that the Colonel would cross the border at the beach. The plan was for the agents to give the Colonel safe passage past the Patrol checkpoint in Orange County. Just before the rendezvous, Garrison received a phone call, changed plans and sent Pescatore and another agent to meet the Colonel at the fence.

  “Right then I knew some evil shit was gonna happen,” Pescatore said, head down, grimacing. “But I went ahead and walked right into the kill zone. Least I had my gun out.”

  Pescatore described the gunfight in detail, reliving it, his eyes and nostrils flaring. He was unsophisticated but not stupid, Méndez concluded. The agent had an agile mind; ideas and images spilled out of him. Méndez felt a pang of empathy. He understood Pescatore’s stare of frozen ferocity. It was awe at his survival. Awe that he could sit here eating pizza and describe the first time he had killed a man as if recalling how he had hit a home run.

  Méndez’s first and only gunfight had taken place in Playas de Tijuana when he was still human rights commissioner. A skull-faced drug addict in a ragged poncho had confronted him outside his house as he got out of his car: a death mask materializing out of the night behind a .38. They struggled. The assailant stumbled. Méndez broke away, ducked around behind the car and drew his own gun. They traded fire across the hood. Méndez killed him, emerging unscathed probably because the gunman had a headful of heroin. The police called it an attempted robbery. But Méndez believed that someone had sent the hapless attacker to eliminate him, or at least scare him. They succeeded in the latter.

  Méndez noticed that Pescatore was talking more to Puente than to her visitors. Her cheek was propped on her hand, black hair cascading to the marble tabletop. Her eyes were locked on the agent.

  Now we are getting somewhere, Méndez thought. This U.S. angle was powerful new ammunition against Mauro Fernández Rochetti and the Ruiz Caballeros. Things were moving fast. Araceli would be elated.

  Most of the kid’s story sounds true, Méndez thought. But he had his doubts about certain aspects. Pescatore’s depiction of himself as a dupe seemed convenient and exculpatory. This was no time to give anyone, much less a Border Patrol agent, the benefit of the doubt.

  “Listen, let me say I appreciate the fact that you are telling us this now, just after it has happened,” Méndez told Pescatore. “I am happy you were not hurt. I do not want to sound macabre and congratulate you, this is not appropriate. But obviously you are a professional or you would not be alive.”

  Pescatore tried to restrain a grin.

  “One thing, if I may,” Méndez said softly, sipping coffee. “I am thinking the Mauro mentioned by Garrison was the homicide comandante. Was it your impression when Garrison said this name Mauro on the phone that he spoke to him or about him?”

  Pescatore retreated into his head-against-the-wall pose.

  “I think he was talking to Mauro,” Pescatore said.

  “Why?”

  “When the shooters were gone and Garrison finally came down to the beach to help with Dillard, I went off. I screamed at him, I told him he was a chickenshit asshole, almost got me killed. Garrison just shook his head and said: ‘Fucking Mauro, what a mess, fucking Mauro,’ like that.”

  “I see. What did Mauro tell him on the phone?”

  Pescatore enunciated as if he were speaking to a simpleton. “I just said. I don’t know. Garrison didn’t tell me.”

  “I’m sorry. What do you think Mauro told him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where did the Colonel intend to go? Los Angeles, perhaps?”

  Pescatore took a bite of pizza and slurped Coke with a straw. He mumbled: “No idea.”

  You are hiding something, you little punk, Méndez thought with mounting irritation. All the English, combined with the late hour, was giving him a headache.

  “I suppose something confuses me,” Méndez said. “What you have just told us is not what you tell the investigators a few hours ago, is this correct? You, eh, told them something different, did you not?”

  “Well yeah. I wasn’t gonna rat out Garrison right there, for Christ’s sake. We said we saw these guys coming across and they drew down on us. I figured Isabel was gonna help me straighten things out later.”

  Pushing a tangle of hair back on top of her head, Isabel Puente said: “I think we’re getting off track, Leo. Valentine went with Garrison’s story because otherwise he could have compromised my investigation and himself. He made a judgment call in a difficult situation.”

  Méndez felt bad for Puente, who seemed to think he was leaning too hard on the kid. But Méndez also found her protectiveness annoying and naive. He suspected the agent was working both sides. If that were the case, Méndez wanted Pescatore to know he was not fooling him.

  “I understand, Isabel,” Méndez said. Then he stuck in the knife. “I just want to be clear that this young man is recounting to us the complete truth.”

  Pescatore’s voice got throatier. “The fuck is that supposed to mean?”

  Méndez swiveled his angular profile from Puente to the agent. “I want to assure that, because of the confusion and emotion, or because you wish to protect the investigation, or yourself, or someone, that nothing has been left out.”

  “Now ain’t that a bitch,” Pescatore raged. “I just got finished shooting some Mexican co
p who blew a PA’s head off right in front of me. I didn’t particularly like Dillard, but he was a United States Border Patrol agent. And he didn’t deserve to get his head blown off by some scumbag Mexican cop. And—”

  “I think you should—”

  “Now I got another Mexican cop sitting—”

  “Make yourself a favor and calm—”

  “Sitting here, in U.S. territory, I might add, cross-examining me. Practically calling me a liar to my face. Well you listen up you—”

  “Alright!” Puente glared at them. “Nobody’s calling you a liar, Valentine. I’m sure Leo didn’t mean to insult you.”

  “In fact, you insult me,” Méndez told Pescatore. “You are too young and uninformed to comprehend, but my men are in more danger from ‘Mexican cops’ than you are.”

  “We about done with this guy?” Pescatore asked Puente, scowling.

  Puente spread her hands soothingly at Pescatore and Méndez. Athos slowly mangled his cap on the table, probably imagining that he was throttling Pescatore. Porthos eyed the pizza.

  “Let’s everybody take a deep breath,” Puente ordered. “Anybody want more Coke, coffee, water? Abelardo, do you want some pizza? Sure? Leo, could you and I step into the living room a minute?”

  Méndez rose, feeling suddenly like he was about to get a scolding. Isabel Puente slid nimbly past Porthos’s oxlike bulk and went into the living room, her jaws clenched.

  As Méndez followed, he heard Pescatore whisper to Porthos: “Hey big fella, for real. Go ahead, take a slice, I’m not gonna eat the whole thing by myself. Ándale, con confianza.”

  It could have been genuine or sarcastic. Either way, it showed a hard-edged composure. Perhaps the agent’s tirade had been more controlled than it appeared. And Pescatore’s Spanish was better than Méndez had expected.

  This kid is hard to read, Méndez thought. I wonder if he’ll last long enough for me to figure him out.

  7

  PESCATORE STOOD IN THE LIVING ROOM at the door to the balcony, staring through his reflection into the darkness of the bay.

  He heard Isabel and the Mexicans in the hall. She was walking with them to their car, probably discussing the less-than-friendly session in the kitchen. Pescatore and Méndez had apologized to each other, but the vibes were still bad.

  Fine. Whatever. The hell with Méndez and his stuck-up anti-American make-yourself-a-favor attitude. Pescatore floated in a zone on the other side of exhaustion and fear. He was wide awake, aware of danger all around him, in synch with it. He kept seeing afterimages of Dillard’s corpse, muzzle flashes in the rain, Rico going down in a halo of fire. He was focused on being alive. And on the fact that he was in Isabel Puente’s apartment at three-thirty in the morning.

  After interrogations at Imperial Beach by city homicide detectives, the FBI and the OIG, the station chief had given Pescatore three days off to rest. The chief offered counseling if needed and told him he had done some good shooting out there. Still, Pescatore knew that doubts were hovering. He had never seen so many bosses from so many agencies looking so uptight.

  When the chief was done, Isabel Puente had buttonholed him and told him they would meet secretly at an intersection in Mission Beach. Minutes later, Pescatore passed Garrison lumbering toward the chief’s office for his turn to face the music. Garrison said: “Slow motion, Valentine.” It could have been an encouragement or a warning. Or both.

  In Mission Beach, Puente had him park on a side street. Once he was in her Mazda, she told him they were going to her apartment. They needed a safe place to talk.

  While he was getting his mind around that, she dropped another bomb. She wanted him to brief her top Mexican contact, the chief of the Diogenes Group. She gave Méndez a big buildup: the Eliot Ness of Baja, the guy who had busted the Colonel. She steamrolled Pescatore’s objections.

  Despite Pescatore’s dismay when Méndez showed up with two sidekicks, he had to admit they were not run-of-the-mill dirtballs. They didn’t have that sleazy strut that comes with years of torturing people and getting away with it. They were quiet and intense. With his sad wolfish face and dry sarcasm, Méndez resembled a streetwise professor in a leather jacket. His comandante in the SWAT gear came off like one of those hardcase old cops who get meaner to compensate for any loss of physical strength. Even the panzón with the beard looked like serious business.

  But the fact that they were presentable only worried Pescatore more. He could not trust them. It went against all his instincts. The more he talked, the more he decided that Puente had pushed him into a big mistake. Then Méndez had disrespected him.

  Puente came back into the apartment talking on a cell phone, which for some reason annoyed him. She hit him with a smile. Her hair was somewhat disheveled. The dark blue of her shirt played into the brown of her cleavage and her slender throat. He liked her even more like this, padding around at home, than when she was all slicked up for work.

  He sounded less challenging than he had intended. “Who’d you talk to?”

  “The office.”

  “At this hour?”

  “This is a major border incident, Valentine. We’re working it around the clock. The Mexicans too.”

  “Your boy Méndez worked me over, that’s for sure.”

  “Oh, I think you handled yourself,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Go ahead and put one of those on if you want.”

  Pescatore thumbed through a shelf of compact discs containing what appeared to be the collected works of Shakira and Gloria Estefan, some Latin jazz and a lot of Old School soul artists. He selected an Earth, Wind & Fire disc.

  “There you go,” Puente said. “I wasn’t born when that came out, so I know you weren’t either.”

  She lowered herself onto the couch with her legs coiled under her. Pescatore paced, unsure of his next move.

  “I thought you said Méndez was cool,” he said. “I was waiting for him to shake a Coke can and spray it up my nose.”

  “He thought you were holding out on him.”

  “Plus he thinks I’m young and ignorant. That’s when I really wanted to slap his face.”

  “Uninformed, not ignorant. It was your fault, starting off so hostile.”

  “What did you expect? Can’t he leave his boys out in the car or something?”

  “Valentine.” The wide-set eyes homed in on him. She reached out and patted the couch at a carefully extended arm’s length from her. “Take it easy. Sit down for a minute.”

  He could not gauge her expression. It occurred to him that she might be toying with him. Trying not to seem enthusiastic, he came around the coffee table.

  The couch felt like an island. The apartment seemed to recede from them like an image in a wide-angle lens.

  Her voice got softer. “I know it’s been an awful night. I know it freaked you out talking to Méndez. You have to understand: Without him there’s no investigation, no case, nothing. He’s not an informant, he’s like my partner.”

  “You’re putting my life in his hands.”

  “I put my life in his hands all the time. That’s why we are shaking things up. Do you understand what kind of individual it takes to run a squad that investigates police corruption in Mexico?”

  She had turned so that she was almost kneeling, her left side propped against the cushion. The jeans marked the half-circle of her right hip. Pescatore leaned back to maintain eye contact, reclining thankfully into the plush black fabric. His bones ached as if they had been pounded with rocks.

  “The police in Mexico are hopeless,” he growled. “They’re always announcing some hotshot new chief, some elite unit. They’re gonna clean up, the real thing this time. And then the guy gets arrested, or fired, or just sits around getting rich. How many times you seen that, Isabel? You know how you can tell the Mexican cops who really go after the bad guys? They get killed.”

  “I know a little more about that world than you do. Besides, Leo is an outsider. He was a journalist and a human rights activist.”


  “Great,” he snapped, sitting up. “I couldn’t think of anybody who hates the Border Patrol worse. A Communist newspaperman, playing detective. Your partner.”

  Her face tightened. “So the ideal thing would be if he was a real cop, and honest. Which means he’d have to be dead, right?”

  “That’d be perfect.”

  “Well you might not have to wait too long. Every time I say goodbye to him, I think it might be the last time.”

  “Oh man. Cry me a river. I’m the one you better say good-bye to, I’m the one who got shot at. Thanks to you.”

  “Thanks to me?” She grabbed his arm when he tried to turn away. “Thanks to me? Nobody watches out for you except me.”

  She was in his face, disorienting him. His mind was whirling, soaring. He imagined hitting her. He imagined kissing her. He snarled: “You’re about to get me killed, you’re all worried about Méndez. What is he, your boyfriend?”

  “I don’t have a boyfriend.” Small steel fingers dug painfully into his forearm. “Watch your mouth.”

  “Talks that shit to me. Then he turns around all smooth with you. Fuckin’ snake.”

  “You sound like you’re fifteen years old.” She was up on her knees now, taut and quivering and furious. “Are you jealous of him?”

  “Damn right I’m jealous.”

  A pause. A hint of a grin.

  “Oh,” she whispered. “Well, we got that cleared up.”

  Taking advantage of her grip on his arm, he pulled her toward him. She let herself be pulled. He wrapped his other arm around her lower back and nuzzled into her hair, her throat, her face. After a moment, her arms encircled his neck. She pressed herself against him, her breasts full and round against him. His mouth found hers. They slid together down onto the couch.

  He didn’t know if it was weeks of imagining it or the real thing, but she tasted like cinnamon. Her breath was warm in his ear. Her whisper was close to a sob.