by Kirk Russell
The super meth labs were still in Mexico and big warehouses sat on the border filled with drugs and protected by the police, but some of the meth production had migrated north along with a lot of dope growing. That’s what the KZ Nuts operation had been so long ago, the Salazars establishing a distribution system in anticipation of growing large amounts of dope in California. He felt drawn back into that world tonight as he drove toward home. Its dark presence rode with his grief.
He drove through the delta on the way home. He stopped at the dock in Potato Slough and looked at Holsing’s boat. In the dope operation he knew Holsing was a low level manager who probably handled a dozen grow fields. Sheryl would know much more. He’d talk with her in the morning, but he called Katherine from here.
She started to cry as he told her Cindy Alvarez’s reaction. Brad had been at their house many times. He drove on now. They’d board Holsing’s boat tomorrow and go through his house. Moonlight turned the old eucalyptus along the delta road spectral. Dawn wasn’t that far away when he rose along the curve of the Antioch Bridge. At home he sat outside in the early light with Katherine. She made coffee. He picked at food and tried to communicate the depth of the loss and the responsibility he felt. He showered and held her and fell in and out of brief shallow sleep.
Later that morning Sheryl Javits drove up to the delta and was there when the SOU went through Holsing’s boat. Like Marquez, Sheryl had grayed. She’d thickened a little in the middle, but still had the face you could put on a coin and trust. Decades of law enforcement blunted the emotions of some, but not hers. That was her gift. Her sad smile today acknowledged the reach and the depth of the cartels and she told Marquez what she said she shouldn’t.
‘We know Holsing. We’re working a large operation he’s part of. We’re closing in on a very big bust.’
‘Did you know about the Capay grow field?’
‘Yes.’ She added, ‘They’re using Zetas to keep the farmers in line. They have more sleepers in California than anywhere, except maybe Texas.’
Marquez nodded. It made sense. The Zetas were hired assassins who later formed their own cartel Kerry Anderson taught him about the Zetas years ago.
Nothing came of the search of Holsing’s boat and mid afternoon Marquez was at Fish and Game headquarters as a grim-faced Janet Blakely told reporters the SOU would stand down pending the investigation into the death of Lieutenant Brad Alvarez. She said it was a great loss for the department. She didn’t answer any questions about the killing. That night Marquez saw a sound bite from the press conference on Fox News. They showed Brad’s photo and those of the two shooters, now identified as illegal aliens working for remnants of the Salazar Cartel. Below the TV reporter in large white letters was the question, ‘ Are Mexican Cartels Stealing America? ’ By itself, the murder of a game warden wasn’t enough to sell TV news.
Brad’s body was autopsied and released to Cindy Alvarez four days later. He was cremated and a service was held in Folsom on an afternoon when thunderclouds boiled over the Sierras. Marquez attended the service in uniform. Katherine and his stepdaughter, Maria, came with him. He spent the next day with Yolo County detectives jointly investigating Brad’s murder with the FBI. He walked back up to the grow field with them.
A fugitive warrant was out on Holsing, but there were no leads, and that night Marquez packed and told Katherine he’d be back in three days. At first light the next morning he left for the Sierras. He crossed to the eastern slope and drove down to Mammoth. There, he caught the shuttle out to Red’s Meadow and hiked into the Minarets and up the trail to Lake Ediza, arriving after the sun had fallen behind the rim of the mountains and the small lake rippled with cold late afternoon wind. There was little snow this year and even now in late May the stream that fed Ediza was easy to cross. He drew water from the lake and set up a camp.
Brad was always collecting things and the running joke between Marquez and him was that he always later imbued those things with special powers, the smooth quartz pebble that carried good luck, a bear claw pulled out of tree bark that warded off evil, part of an antelope horn, a polished piece of petrified redwood he’d once given Marquez. He wasn’t a guy who wore ornaments or believed in much he hadn’t seen firsthand, yet he was funny about these natural fetishes. And he was passionate about Fish and Game work.
Marquez understood that. You didn’t get into this work for the money. It was a calling and Brad just liked being out there. When he’d started across the slope to see where Holsing and Talbot were going, good chance that a part of him was just glad to be outside on that open slope in the spring morning.
Marquez carried the piece of redwood with him, zipped it into the pocket of the jacket he’d wear tomorrow. He heated water on a gas stove as the Minarets reflected the setting sun and snow on the shoulders of Mount Banner and Ritter turned a rose hue. Before it got dark he slid his sleeping bag into his bivvy sack and got out the things he would carry up the mountain tomorrow.
Then he boiled water and cooked noodles and cut up two tomatoes he’d bought in Mammoth. He emptied sardines out of a tin on to the noodles. He tore up basil leaves, folded everything in, and cracked pepper onto the pasta. He ate out of the pot. It felt good to eat. He used the last piece of bread to wipe the inside of the sardine can clean and left the gas stove out to boil water for coffee in the morning. He washed the pot and packed up everything else he would carry out. Black bear were always around, but he doubted any were up here yet in this part of the late spring, and left his pack cinched tight, leaning against a rock. And maybe it was the grace of the mountains or the exertion of the hike in and finally eating. Whatever it was, he was able to sleep.
At dawn it was quite cold and he made coffee, ate bread, cheese, and dates, and then walked down to the lake and filtered enough water for the hike up. He slid the water bottles into the pack. He slipped the pack on and started up with an ice axe in his right hand.
There was no trail or any real need of a trail. The weather was fine and he could see ahead and knew his route. It was steep and long and jumbled with granite and talus, and then he climbed on snow. It was steep and there were places where you wouldn’t want to fall, but nowhere did he need a rope. On the saddle between Banner and Ritter he drank half his water and cleaned his sunglasses before starting up again. Here, the snowfield steepened and he kicked the toe of his boot in harder and used the ice axe.
When he summited Mount Banner just before noon he could hear Brad’s voice in his head. On top, it was cold and clear. Over the Minarets the sky was dark blue. He caught his breath sitting on a rock looking down at Lake Ediza, small and beautiful below, and at Thousand Island Lake and east toward the desert, and then down the long reach of the Sierras. This was a place Brad loved and Marquez walked the summit looking for a spot, then climbed down between rocks and found a place to tuck in Brad’s good luck talisman.
We do things to say good bye that defy rational explanation. You take what you remember and loved in a human being and you hold it in your heart, but still at times you need a photo or a ring or piece of clothing, something you can touch, a tombstone to visit where you can talk. Marquez knew from time to time he’d come back to this mountain. When he could no longer climb it, the mountain would still be here, and if part of Alvarez’s spirit lingered with it, and if the talisman held any good luck, the mountain would be safer for those that climbed. What better spirit to guard climbers than Brad?
TWENTY-NINE
Marquez was in Sacramento in Chief Blakely’s office on the thirteenth floor of the Water Resource Building. Blakely moved out from behind her desk and they sat at the table and talked.
‘You’re not going to be suspended, but the SOU won’t do any undercover work until the investigation is over.’
‘On some of our ongoing operations it’s going to be hard to pick up the pieces later.’
‘I know.’
‘How long will we be down?’
They looked at each other, Marquez with hi
s big right hand resting on the table, his sun-weathered face in the shade of this room, Blakely not wanting to answer.
‘You’ve got court dates coming up and paperwork to do. You can check out leads, but the SOU can’t initiate any new undercover operations.’
Blakely didn’t address the real question, so he did it for her before leaving.
‘Melinda Roberts could step in for me.’
‘No, we’re not going there yet. There aren’t going to be any snap judgments. Go pick up the loose ends. Finish the reports. Get your team to focus again. If you want to check out the bighorn tip, that’s fine, go do that.’
The Fish and Game hotline, CALTIP, had recorded a call last night from a young woman reporting an alleged illegal bighorn hunt in the southern Sierra. That might be trophy hunters or bone merchants. A pair of the horns could net you sixty thousand dollars on the black market. The young woman who left the tip also left her phone number, and Marquez had left her a message.
When he walked out the temperature was close to a hundred degrees and the valley sky a hazy white-blue. He drove through the delta on the way home, past Holsing’s boat and then out to Holsing’s house in the Green Valley, a three thousand square foot, cedar-sided, two-story house there was no way Holsing could afford, yet had bought for cash. The house had been searched after the boat but the only thing of interest was a notebook and Holsing’s private cocaine stash. In the notebook was a page of handwritten codes that looked like this:
N178SW43 SE47N634 SW212NE21 WSW98S65 ESE015WNW87
Marquez had jotted the codes on a page in his logbook and the DEA was trying to unravel their meaning. He doubted Holsing came up with them on his own and Sheryl backed that up, saying the DEA believed they were part of a Salazar Cartel code. They’d seen something similar on another case. He parked in front of Holsing’s house, walked up and looked through a window near the door. Nothing looked any different. The DEA would keep an eye on the house and collect Holsing’s mail for him while he was away being a fugitive, but no one was doing anything about the newspaper delivery. Marquez stepped over yellowing newspapers as he walked back out the driveway.
In the Bay Area gray fog sucked in by the valley heat darkened the sky as he drove across Marin County. He took a call from his stepdaughter, Maria, after he was on Mount Tamalpais and climbing toward the house.
‘Dad, when are you getting home?’
‘I’m almost home. What’s up?’
‘Mom says you might lose your job. How could that happen if you weren’t even there?’
‘I was Brad’s supervisor.’
‘But you weren’t even there.’
‘I’m responsible for my team wherever they are. That’s the deal.’
‘You can tell me to shut up, but how can that be fair?’
Brad’s death was about chain of command and he tried to explain that, but wasn’t sure he got through. Then Maria revealed that she called for another reason, as well.
‘I broke up with a guy I’ve been seeing.’
‘That can’t be easy.’
‘It’s not.’
‘When did it happen?’
‘Last week, and I’d like to talk with you, but not on the phone.’
Maria shared a house with three roommates in the Noe Valley in San Francisco. She worked part time for a web designer and part time for a guerilla web marketer. She was bright, quick, and restless, twenty-three and trying to figure out what to do with her life. She was an inch taller than her mother and with dark hair and a body made lean by cycling. She was currently anti-car and very worried about global warming. She’d also had something of a political awakening and asserted her opinions with the confidence of a TV preacher.
That night Katherine asked, ‘Did Maria call you?’
‘She did.’
‘I’m glad she’s breaking up with him. I didn’t like him at all.’
Later that night Katherine woke him by kissing him. He was never going to be exactly what she hoped for in a marriage. He loved the warden work, the SOU too much. He needed the feeling he was making a difference more than he needed money, and Katherine would never say it but she was more than ready for his undercover career to end. But sometimes you forgive a person for being who they are, as opposed to what you want them to be. He and Katherine had been separated once and close to it a second time, before they found a way through. He woke to her kisses on his face and chest and belly, and drew her close, and she whispered with her face pressed against his, ‘They’ll never have anyone ever again as good as you.’
THIRTY
‘ Kerry Anderson is going to call you,’ Sheryl said. ‘I talked to him this morning.’
Marquez was with Sheryl at a coffee place in Sausalito that he liked. Wardens worked from home and he came down here sometimes in the afternoons with a file, mostly in the winter when they tended to have fewer operations running. Everything lit up again in early March when the stripers and sturgeon started jumping on the Sacramento River and the bear came out of hibernation and deer herds congregated around the new grass. Most of this morning he had been on the phone with his team. Most of that conversation was about Brad, but he also gave them assignments.
‘OK, why is he calling?’
‘That’s the weird part, stranger even than Anderson. He says he has recent information on a phone intercept in Mexico where Stoval was talking about you. Maybe you know this, maybe you don’t, but Anderson’s role changed after 9/11. He does more analysis and shares more and that goes out to several agencies. He straddles several of the agencies. Anything they think is terrorism related they share and Anderson is pretty good at cooking that up. As you know, he’ll talk to anybody about Stoval. He’d talk to you if he was sitting next to you on a bus. I’ve never met anybody so obsessed with one person. Can you imagine what it would be like to be married to Anderson?’
‘He’s not married.’
‘Talking to him you’d think the only analysis he works on is Stoval.’
‘Where are you going with this?’
‘You are so patient, John. You’ve never changed. Where I’m going is Anderson called me yesterday fishing for anything I know about this Stoval task force that Ted Desault is heading. Talk about a blast from the past. Ted Desault – there’s a name I hoped I’d never hear again.’
‘Desault wants to meet with me. He wants to make me an offer. He called me just before Brad got killed.’
‘No kidding?’
Marquez nodded. They were sitting outside in wicker chairs in the coffeehouse garden less than a hundred yards from the bay. There were gulls, boats, tourists, and a chill wind this afternoon. He thought about Desault’s call and why he still hadn’t called Desault back. Now it hit them both at the same time and Sheryl said it aloud.
‘Stoval knows an offer is going to be made to you. That’s it, isn’t it? Is that scary, or what? He’s hooked into Desault’s task force. What kind of offer did Desault make you?’
‘I haven’t heard it yet.’
Marquez looked at a gull wheeling out over the water and Sheryl talked quietly about Stoval and the regeneration of the Salazar Cartel.
‘He’s still there. He still bankrolls short term loans for drug smugglers and we think he’s more involved in the new Salazar operation. And he doesn’t use the same contract killers to make sure he gets paid back. He does what the cartels do, he uses the Zetas.’
‘What’s anybody’s guess about his net worth now?’
‘Anderson says one point seven billion.’
‘He’s done well.’
‘Yeah, a lot better than you and me.’
‘What are you talking about? You’ve had a great career.’
‘You know what, John, the Group Five days were the best. When it was just our squad and we were working the Salazars and nobody else, that was great. Remember how close we all were? I hit a real low point after you left and after I moved back to California.’
‘When you married Phelps.’
/> ‘Yeah, that two and a half years of marriage was the absolute rock bottom of the ocean.’
Marquez rarely thought about Pete Phelps, the ATF officer who’d been in Baja when they were there. He no longer felt any animosity toward Phelps, which was saying something.
‘I never told you I caught him in bed with my neighbor,’ Sheryl said. ‘I almost shot him, and I still think the only reason I didn’t is that it would have been one more mess of his to clean up.’ She sighed. ‘I have something else to confess. It’s why I drove over here. It’s why I didn’t want to talk on the phone. Stoval mentioning your name isn’t a surprise to the Feds, or at least this is what Anderson told me and should tell you. They know there’s a leak and they’re playing a cat and mouse game with it.’
‘I’m not following.’
‘OK, well, it’s possible Desault doesn’t know that Stoval mentioned your name in a phone intercept. Anderson knows because he’s lead analyst. He told me because he knows I’ll tell you, but it’s possible no one on the Stoval task force knows because the Bureau is frantic to find the leak. They have the same problem we had back in the Group Five days and I don’t know exactly what Anderson is going to tell you, but you shouldn’t go anywhere near the FBI task force. Stoval hasn’t forgotten that you went after him all those years ago. There’s probably nothing he’d like more than you coming after him again. These many years later and he’s keying off on your name. Maybe I’m getting older and less brave, but of all of them over all the years, Stoval scares me the most.’
‘I owe Desault a call.’
‘Don’t do it, John. I really mean it, don’t do it.’
THIRTY-ONE
Marquez googled Zetas and came up with a Dallas News story.
American youths did Mexican drug cartel’s dirty work Court records describe how Zetas gave money, instructions to hit men 09:32 A.M. CST on Saturday, November 10, 2007 By DAVID McLEMORE / The Dallas Morning News dmclemore@dallasnews. com LAREDO – Rosalio Reta killed his first man at age 13. He didn’t like it much, he told police. The guy was tied up and kneeling. Mr Reta just had to pick up a pistol and shoot him in the head. Rosalio Reta ‘He told us that wasn’t his style. There was no challenge,’ said Webb County Assistant District Attorney Jesus Guillen, who successfully prosecuted Mr Reta for murder. ‘He preferred to run surveillance on a victim, pick the right moment and surprise him. Like he was playing Grand Theft Auto.’ By July 28, 2006 – one day after his 17th birthday – when Laredo police charged him with the contract killing of Noe Flores in Laredo, Mr Reta had been involved with 30 murders, Mexican and Texas investigators believed. All were on behalf of the Zetas, the ruthless enforcement arm of Mexico’s Gulf Cartel drug smuggling operation. His trial last summer for the Flores killing offered tantalizing glimpses into the shadowy workings of the Zetas and the inroads of cartel violence into this border city. Court records revealed a portrait of a group of young American killers who were well-paid to do one thing: kill people the Zeta leadership in Nuevo Laredo wanted dead. And they highlighted a group of young killers who followed orders from Mexican drug lords with ruthless efficiency while often behaving like teens with poor impulse control. Mr Reta sought his own extradition for the murder. He called a DEA agent and Laredo homicide Detective Roberto Garcia from a prison in Mexico, saying he wanted to stand trial in Texas for two homicides. He told US investigators he feared reprisals from the Zetas over a botched hit in Monterrey – a grenade attack on one of the city’s nightclubs that killed four and injured 25. He was supposed to kill only one person, police said, but had missed the target. Laredo police had already identified Mr Reta as one of three people responsible for the Flores killing. Their investigation had linked him to one of three three-member scicarias, or hit man cells, the Zetas had set up in Laredo. They believed Mr Reta was responsible for at least five killings in the city – either as a shooter or organizer. After he was charged in Laredo, Mr Reta gave a statement to Detective Garcia, detailing the Flores killing and his role in it. Mr Reta told police he drove on the night of Jan. 8, 2006, when his three-man cell hit Mr Flores in a Laredo residential neighborhood. He described how one of his cell members, Gabriel Cordona, walked up to Mr Flores and calmly fired eight bullets into his body – three of them into his head. And he told how the third member, Jessie Hernandez, panicked and began firing while in the car, shooting out the rear window. But the wrong guy got killed. Mr Flores had no criminal history and was just visiting a family birthday party. The Zeta commander for Nuevo Laredo – Miguel TrevinMorales, a fugitive wanted on five state warrants for murder, kidnapping, and organized crime – was believed to have ordered a hit on Mike Lopez, Mr Flores’ step-brother. Mr Trevinwas angry at Mr Lopez for dating a woman he was interested in. A month after the Flores murder, on Feb. 26, 2007, another group of Zeta gunmen killed Mr Lopez, according to Laredo police. Cells on retainer Much of the specifics of the inner workings of Zeta operations in Laredo came out during testimony of prosecution witness David Martinez, a former Zeta gunman serving a federal sentence for weapons violations. He provided details on how the cartel set up three cells, composed of three people each, who were on retainer at $500 a week, just to wait for instructions. Sometimes they were called on to buy cars for gang use. Other times, to perform killings.