“Drive.”
He’s on to me, dammit, Pescatore thought. I’m DOA.
His hands throbbed from clutching the wheel. Rolling south around the curve of the freeway past the steel ramparts of downtown, past the high slender span of the Coronado Bay Bridge, he remembered the speed trap near National City. On his way to work he often saw a California Highway Patrol car work the area around a viaduct, as busy as a shark at feeding time.
He nudged the accelerator. He turned on the radio as a diversionary tactic.
In a voice both pompous and folksy, a local talk-show host was complaining about Mexicans on weekends: Mexicans at the zoo, Mexicans in Horton Plaza. Can’t get away from them. Can’t kick them out either, because I guess these are the legal ones.
“Later with that noise,” Pescatore scoffed, twirling the radio dial, increasing speed.
Garrison grunted. He was fiddling with his cell phone.
Pescatore tuned to a cross-border bilingual freeway report, then a Tijuana program. An older Mexican woman’s amplified telephone voice, kitchen noise in the background, complained about graffiti, tattoos, drug use and other American influences. Decadence, she said. Bad manners. Imperialism.
One side of the border is always bitching about the other, Pescatore thought.
He was going over eighty miles per hour. The speed-trap overpass approached. He left the dial on a banda tune, oompah tuba and manic trumpets and rattling drums. It was one of the top Baja stations: X99, La Que Pega y Mueve. The One That Hits and Moves.
“Ah-hiiiiyy,” he whooped mariachi-style, cranking the volume, edging past eighty-five.
“Hey Valentine, slow the fuck down, what’re you doing?”
Too late. Pescatore almost cheered the lights erupting in the rearview mirror, the CHP cruiser swinging into the lane behind him, gathering velocity around a curve.
Your turn to sweat, Pescatore thought. Buddy.
“I do not believe this,” Garrison snarled. “A Chippie. You stupid asshole.”
“My fault,” Pescatore said. He maintained speed in order to irritate the CHP officer and make him suspicious.
“Pull it over right now,” Garrison said. “Goddammit. Just take it easy and let’s get this done with.”
Garrison told Pescatore to get his badge out; they were going to claim to be working plainclothes. Garrison’s hand went under his vest. Pescatore figured that Garrison was worried they would run his license and registration. If the feds were getting ready to scoop them up, one thing might lead to another. And if the indictment talk was just a setup to murder Pescatore, Garrison did not want to leave a record that he had been with him that morning.
Pescatore took his time pulling over. The CHP officer got out and approached in the rearview mirror: a black officer in his forties. The strong-legged stride of an aging sprinter, a crisp tan uniform, gold-framed glasses. As the officer came around to the window on the passenger side, keeping the Cherokee between him and the high-speed traffic, Pescatore saw him unsnap the flap of his holster.
Pescatore raised his voice over the drone of passing cars, reaching in front of Garrison to push his badge and license at the officer.
“How ya doin’, Officer, Border Patrol, we—”
Garrison blocked Pescatore with his back. He proffered his own badge and declared: “Hi there, U.S. Border Patrol antismuggling, sir. We’re conducting a surveillance here.”
“Wait a minute, one at a time,” the CHP officer commanded in a flat voice, examining Pescatore’s badge and license. “I don’t care who you are, son, you need to slow this vehicle down.”
“Yes sir, but we got this hot pursuit going,” Pescatore said. He winked, grimaced, bobbed back and forth behind Garrison, hoping to catch the guy’s attention. The officer’s glasses had a designer’s logo on the frame and were tinted, impeding eye contact.
“Pursuit? We weren’t notified. CHP is s’posed to get notified on a pursuit.”
The Chippie’s right hand snapped and unsnapped the holster flap. He stood in a textbook ready stance, knees slightly bent, shoulder pointed forward, front foot aligned with the shoulder.
“Not a pursuit, no sir,” Garrison said quickly, anger barely contained. “We’ve got a load vehicle in our sights. A smuggler. Problem is he’s halfway back to The Line by now.”
“Goddamn right, this is fucked up, we’re gonna catch hell,” Pescatore declared.
“Well, wait a minute now…” The CHP officer handed back Pescatore’s badge, but kept the license. He craned his neck to peer past Garrison at Pescatore, who made an imploring and terrified face. The officer seemed to realize that something was wrong; even if he thought Pescatore was drunk or deranged, that was a step in the right direction. He worried at his holster, fastening and unfastening it. Snap-snap. Snap-snap.
The officer asked Garrison: “Are you a supervisor with The Patrol?”
A murderous undercurrent built in Garrison’s voice. “I’m a supervisor. Sir.”
“This a U.S. government vehicle?”
“No sir, my personal vehicle.”
“Huh. Why’s he driving?”
“I’m directing the surveillance, sir.”
“You work smuggling out of Border Patrol sector HQ?”
“No sir, Imperial Beach station.”
“So they could verify—”
“Yeah absolutely, they could verify,” Pescatore exulted. The station would rush over a carload of supervisors when they heard about them badging the CHP and posing as antismuggling investigators. The day after the shooting on the beach, no less.
Garrison shouldered him aside again.
“Sir, we’ve got an operation going, couldn’t we just—”
“If you got an operation going, where’s your radios at?”
Pescatore did not want to look at Garrison in the silence that ensued. He noticed that the CHP officer’s nameplate said Boyd.
“I need to see your license and registration documents as well, sir,” Boyd said to Garrison, officious and determined.
“Sure, no problem,” Garrison said. He did not move. “About the radios, listen—”
“We’re gonna lose ’em, we’re gonna lose ’em!” Pescatore blurted, playing the loony all out. “This is fucked up!”
“Shut up, Valentine!” Garrison roared, sounding close to the edge.
Boyd took a fast light step backwards, his eyebrows jumping in alarm. His hand was planted on the butt of his pistol.
“I’m calling in,” Boyd said. “They’ll patch me through to Patrol communications, get this clarified right now.”
Garrison cursed under his breath. Pescatore began to see a drawback to his maneuvering: He had laid the groundwork for a confrontation between two frightened men with guns.
8
BY GOD, man, doesn’t anyone in this part of the world wear a suit and tie? I just saw the governor in Mexicali. He was wearing one of those abominable jackets like the baseball players, you know, with the leather sleeves? What a sight.”
The Secretary shook his head in a burlesque of despair. His suit was impeccable—pin-striped, three-piece. His tie was mustard-colored. A matching handkerchief poked up out of a breast pocket. A watch chain hung across his vest, an affectation acquired during an ambassadorship in Europe with which he had been rewarded years earlier for perilous government service. His long white fingers tapped a cigarette over an ashtray.
“Well, it’s a curious thing, Mr. Secretary,” Méndez said. “There was some interesting research done on that here at the university. Our scientists determined that wearing a tie constricts the flow of ideas to the brain. A very serious condition, we call it chilanguitis.”
The Secretary bent forward in silent laughter, holding up a hand as if asking for mercy. He seemed unfazed by the stuffiness of the cramped second-floor office that had been hurriedly cleared for their meeting. Aviation manuals were stacked on the desk behind the Secretary. A glass wall beyond the desk overlooked a private hangar.
/> Méndez was not in the mood for banter, not even poking fun at chilangos, natives of Mexico City. He wore the same leather jacket and jeans he had worn the day before at the prison. He was unshaven. His eyes were red from a night without sleep; he had replaced his contact lenses with glasses before coming to the airport. Méndez was not in the mood, but it was a ritual: The Secretary liked him because Méndez was not one of the obsequious, humorless sycophants who infested the ministry. The Secretary prided himself on his sense of humor. And he expected Méndez to play the irreverent maverick.
“Very good, Méndez. Your wit prevails even when you are exhausted.”
Despite his nattiness, the Secretary’s pallor, pinched face and stooped posture reminded Méndez of a priest. The Secretary had no vices or pastimes other than clothes and books. He lived alone in a cavernous apartment full of bookshelves in a less-than-fashionable neighborhood of the capital. He had a reputation for integrity and bureaucratic infighting skills. As Araceli Aguirre never failed to point out, he was also a true-believing loyalist of the ruling party.
“I imagine you don’t have much time to read these days,” the Secretary said. “Have you read Castañeda’s new one? It’s about aging warriors of the left, like you. I must say it is excellent.”
Another ritual. The Secretary had utmost respect for writers and liked to talk about books. During the gilded exile of his diplomatic post, he had written erudite essays that were published by scholarly journals and, reportedly, plays that he kept to himself.
“I haven’t had a chance, Mr. Secretary. I’ve been trying to finish a book about the mafia judges in Sicily.”
“By God, man. That’s not exactly escapist fare. You should clear your head. Take refuge in a bit of Borges, I don’t know. Reread ‘El Quixote.’ How is your family?”
“They seem fine. My wife is treated well at the university, thanks to my friends there. It’s hard to tell how they are from this distance, of course.”
“Of course, that must be difficult.” The Secretary nodded primly.
Méndez handed the Secretary a manila envelope containing photos and a ten-page memo. Opening the envelope, the Secretary swiveled toward him in the chair. The office was so narrow that their knees almost touched.
“The report on the Colonel’s murder, sir.”
“No doubt that it was a murder?”
“None. The final pages review the larger investigation and lay out what we intend to do. The moment has arrived to act on our work of the past year. The Americans agree. Frankly, I don’t think we have a choice.”
“Why?” The Secretary extracted reading spectacles from a pocket.
“If we don’t act now, they will know we are frightened or unwilling. It would be dangerous after the events of last night.”
“I see.”
“This was an escalation. A provocation. By no means did the Ruiz Caballaros have to kill the Colonel the way they did. There were opportunities in the prison. But they waited, aided his escape, then orchestrated everything to be messy and spectacular. The finishing touch, the signature, was killing him at the border. Involving the Border Patrol, doing it under the noses of the Americans. Telling them, and us, that they can do what they want to whom they want.”
Although he was speed-reading the report in his lap, the Secretary was listening. His smile uncovered nicotine-stained teeth.
“You have always had a flair for interpreting the semiotics of organized crime. Even in your columns. I used to tell my intelligence analysts: Read everything Méndez writes.”
Méndez nodded his thanks. “Politically, it’s important to emphasize the American involvement. They will make big arrests of their own functionaries: Border Patrol, inspectors. Even DEA.”
“Good. The last thing the presidential palace wants to hear is more howling from the troglodytes in Washington about corrupt Mexicans. If we do nothing, they howl. If we attack our problems, instead of congratulating us they have new examples to howl about.”
“No, this will be about a dangerous criminal network that functions on both sides and is being confronted on both sides.”
The Secretary fingered an odd prow of black hair that jutted from the center of his receded hairline. He thumbed through the photos.
“And these unsavory-looking gentlemen?” he asked.
The surveillance photo had been taken by U.S. agents in the Gaslamp district of San Diego and supplied by Isabel Puente.
“The older one is known as Ibrahim Abbas. He has ties to terrorist cells in Paraguay and Brazil, according to the Americans. He has bought guns from a Border Patrol agent. He is an emissary of the mafias at the Triple Border. The others are his Brazilian bodyguards. They are brothers: Mozart and Tchaikovsky Moreira. Real names, not aliases.”
“Mozart and Tchaikovsky? Marvelous. Totally Brazilian.”
“If they are in the area and the timing permits, we will nab them too.”
The Secretary resumed reading. Méndez spun half-circles in the rolling chair. He had composed the memo at dawn. He had outlined the strongest possible case, building to the list of arrests on the final page. The names would not surprise the Secretary, but Méndez still found it hard to believe what he was proposing.
Méndez had been a journalist when he had first met the Secretary, at the time an intelligence official leading an anticorruption campaign in Mexico City. Despite the man’s genteel ways, he scared people. Méndez had decided during their first interview that he had to cultivate him as a source. And the Secretary had cultivated Méndez: from favored reporter to discreet unpaid adviser to overnight troubleshooter. The government had convinced the Secretary to take a key security job, hoping his reputation would improve its dubious image. Creating the Diogenes Group had demonstrated the Secretary’s flair for bold moves.
The Secretary made a ruminative sound, as if acknowledging the weight of the document in his hands. “Impressive. And ambitious.”
“We have an entire room filled with evidence files. If it were anybody else, we would have acted long ago.”
“Essentially you want to charge Junior Ruiz Caballero with being the boss of organized crime in Baja California and beyond. Are you satisfied that you can prove that?”
“Absolutely. As I explain, he has decapitated the different border mafias and consolidated them into a single structure. All the evidence puts him at the top.”
“I know he’s heavily involved, but I still see him as too young and deranged to run something so massive. What is he, twenty-five?”
Méndez was getting nervous; they were going over old ground. “Twenty-nine. He might be deranged, but he’s not stupid. Look at how well he’s done in legitimate business, thanks to his late father’s fortune. Not that it is an enviable gene pool.”
Junior’s father had been a famously sleazy power broker. He had died in a mysterious kidnapping attempt while awaiting trial for a scandal involving embezzlement and murders for hire.
“I suppose a childhood spent following his mother to resorts and detoxification centers in San Diego and New York didn’t help Junior’s personality,” the Secretary said. “And the Senator is not the ideal role model either.”
“No. Junior grew up on both sides of the border and absorbed the worst of both worlds.” Méndez gestured at the memo. “As you can see, we are not going to charge the Senator for the moment. We could make a strong case that he provides political cover for his nephew and participates directly on the financial side. But I thought it best to hold off.”
The Secretary cupped his chin in his right hand and his right elbow in his left hand. “On a legal level, Leobardo, I’m concerned about the weakness of our organized-crime laws. You’d really have to catch Junior in the act to make charges stick.”
The Secretary had raised this objection before. Méndez thought he had dealt with it.
“Yes, Mr. Secretary, but the new laws on money laundering and drug trafficking will help. We have proof of specific crimes. We have well-documented connec
tions to Multiglobo Productions and Junior himself. And the direct testimony of the Colonel.”
“Which you yourself told me was limited. The Colonel is dead.”
“What we know about his murder strengthens our case.”
The Secretary stubbed out his cigarette, a chess player’s pause. “When do you and the Americans hope to act?”
“We were talking about a week from today,” Méndez said, his voice wavering. More resolutely, he added: “It’s the right moment.”
The Secretary smiled patiently. “I’m afraid that crosses the border between ambitious and reckless.”
“Why?”
“Arresting Junior is not just a judicial matter. It is a political bomb. Whether or not you charge the uncle, it is an attack on him and his political group at a delicate moment. You and I understand what monsters these people are, but as far as the public is concerned, the Senator is an elder statesman. And his nephew is a playboy who manages very popular singers and boxers.”
“In my humble opinion, none of that makes a difference. We are being pushed by events.”
“Before anything happens, I have to consult at the highest levels. This is a question of state.”
“We have been discussing this for months.”
“Only now is it a concrete possibility. Only now can I approach the people who must be approached.”
Méndez cleared his throat. Very quietly, he asked: “How long?”
“More than a week, certainly.” The Secretary’s long fingers pried his handkerchief from his breast pocket, dabbed at his forehead and his upper lip, then replaced the handkerchief. He patted Méndez on the knee. “Listen, Leobardo, think for a moment. This is a very dangerous step for you.”
“As I said, the dangers are worse if we back down.”
“It is my duty to protect you and your boys. I know something about the codes of the underworld, too. It is one thing to catch the Colonel red-handed. Those are the risks of battle, they can’t really take offense. But now you have the temerity to attack the very top. My God, man.”
Méndez plowed on, imagining Araceli’s scorn.
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