by Kirk Russell
Marquez read through the middle section of the article detailing testimony at the trial, and then stopped on the last piece. The Zetas’ reach into Dallas The trial of Rosalio Reta offered a glimpse into the shadowy workings of the Zetas, the enforcement arm of Mexico’s Gulf Cartel, and the inroads of cartel violence into Laredo. Below is a look at some cases in the Dallas area that were linked by police to the cartel or to the Zetas…
He left a message for Anderson late that afternoon and listened once more to the CALTIP message he’d heard at Fish and Game headquarters. The young woman who left the tip hadn’t called back yet and he tried her again now.
This time she answered her cell phone. Her name was Terri Delgado.
‘I live in Los Angeles and I don’t want to say exactly where, if I don’t have to.’
‘You don’t.’
‘I met this older guy at a cocktail party in Brentwood and we talked a lot out by the pool. He told me he was going to hunt bighorn sheep on Mount Williamson in the eastern Sierra.’
She sounded unfamiliar with hunting, but she didn’t sound naive or as if she had exaggerated a party conversation into something more.
‘He wanted me to meet him in Bishop after the hunt, and then I was supposed to go to Las Vegas with him for the weekend. But you know what that sounds like, so I changed my mind and called him the next day.’ She added with a wry note in a slower voice that made him smile, ‘That was after I was sober and my best friend lectured me.’
‘Did he say why he was going to shoot bighorn?’
‘Yes, and that’s probably why I called the hotline. He said, and this is an exact quote, because he didn’t have a California bighorn yet. It was disgusting.’
‘Where was this party where you met him?’
‘At a producer’s house, but he’s a friend, I want to keep him out of this. I probably shouldn’t have called.’
‘No, you did a good thing. It’s OK, keep your friend out of it.’
Marquez wanted to know. He wanted the name off a guest list. That would make it a lot easier to warn the guy off and track him down, but she sounded too skittish. He decided to try her again on it later.
‘Talk to me about the hunter. Give me a description if you can and tell me when the hunt is supposed to happen.’
‘I don’t know for sure. When I called him to tell him I wasn’t going, he made it sound like his plans had changed also. I don’t know if they did or he just wanted me to think that, but at the party he mentioned a place called Anvil Camp. I remember the name because it’s so old school.’
‘What did he say about it?’
‘That the trail up to it is really steep, like straight up. He’s like early sixties or around that age, but he’s in really good shape, and I think he told me about Anvil Camp to impress me.’
Marquez jotted down everything she said. The man had black eyes with gold flecks in them. He was friends with the producer, but he wasn’t in the movie business. She thought he’d invested money in movies and that’s why he was there. He had a really funny line about the movies, but she couldn’t remember what it was.
‘He’s really intense, but I like men who are.’
This man, Patrick Maitland, had houses all over the world. When she had called him to back out, she tried to talk him out of hunting bighorn.
‘Did you threaten to report it?’
‘Not really, but I did say I thought it was really bad karma and he shouldn’t do it.’
‘There is a place called Anvil Camp. Describe anything else you remember about his physical characteristics, height and weight, for example.’
‘He’s a little over six feet and about a hundred and ninety pounds. I already said he’s very fit. But his face is lined. I mean, he is older. From his clothes and watch and stuff, I’m pretty sure he is rich. You know that way you can kind of tell. And I’m a pretty good judge of men’s bodies. I worked for a year helping pick male models for clothing ads, underwear and everything – that was a great job. He’s got a really good body, especially for someone his age. And there’s only one thing that’s sort of weird, and that’s his hands. I don’t know if it’s from a disease or some congenital thing, but it’s like the bones going out to his fingers are thicker than normal. When he closes his fists they stand out.’ She added, ‘It’s not that big of a deal.’
‘Not enough to keep you from going to Vegas.’
‘Not that night. You know, I got introduced to him and then we were just out by the pool talking and I think I said I wanted to travel all over the world and he jumped on that and started talking about his houses. I mean, I knew what he wanted. It’s not really any different than most people I go out with. He talked about a place in Argentina, but I can’t remember the name of it. I think it started with a B. I’m sorry I can’t remember.’
‘If you do remember, call me, OK?’
‘Sure.’
‘And thanks for calling it in to CALTIP. A lot of times the tips make a big difference.’
She giggled and said, ‘Now you sound like an ad.’
If the SOU wasn’t standing down, he’d pick up the phone now and relay all this to the warden out of Bishop, Adrian Muller. Instead, he debated driving down there. The tip sounded legitimate. The hunt sounded like it might happen.
Sheryl Javits called before he made a decision.
‘We got through Holsing’s code. It turns out they’re GPS coordinates with some bogus numbers and letters thrown in. The coordinates correspond to addresses. From the addresses we got owners. Then we started digging into the owners.
‘We came up with a few unlikely coincidences and I want to run some names by you, but with only initials for the first names because one of them works for a local DA’s office. So just tell me if you recognize any of these other names.’
‘OK, go for it.’
‘There are nine names. Here’s the first one. F. Garcia.’
‘I once knew a Frank Garcia.’
‘Frank is wrong, and don’t mess with me. This might be bad and it might affect your team. P. Aldred?’
‘No.’
‘O. Castle.’
‘No.’
She read the rest and Marquez didn’t recognize any. Then she asked, ‘Did you talk to Anderson?’
‘I did.’
‘And?’
‘He says don’t get anywhere near Stoval. Stay away from any FBI task force offers.’
‘And what about the leak?’
‘Not much.’
‘Not much to me either.’
When he hung up with Sheryl he made two calls, the first to Anderson. He wasn’t surprised to get him. Sheryl told him that ever since computers came on, the word from headquarters was Anderson never left his desk except in the summer when he went to baseball games.
‘I’ve got a question for you, Kerry. You said Stoval has made several trips into the States in recent years.’
‘That’s right.’
‘What’s he doing on those trips?’
‘I don’t know. He’s hard to track once he’s here. I know he was in Texas twice. And he’s been in California.’
‘Where in California?’
‘He flew into LAX.’
‘Does he still trophy hunt?’
‘Yes, definitely.’
‘Then I’ve got an off-the-wall question for you. We got a tip to our Fish and Game hotline about a trophy hunter planning an illegal bighorn hunt in the southern Sierra, and I know this is highly improbable, but there’s a physical description that sounds like Stoval. Similar height, general build, age, and black eyes with gold flecks – this is coming from a young woman who sounds like she paid close attention to his face. This was at a producer’s party in LA. Our tipster believes this individual is planning to hunt bighorn. He also made comments to her about having houses around the world.’
‘It’s possible. I mean, it really is. Like you, the eye description grabs me. If he’s putting money into movies, that’s news to me, but, sure, i
t’s possible.’
Marquez called Muller, the warden in Bishop. Muller listened and then jumped in.
‘I got a call from a biologist monitoring the radio collars on bighorn sheep in the zoological preserve on Mount Williamson,’ Muller said. ‘Two collars haven’t moved for a couple of days. He wanted to know if I’d heard anything from anybody coming off Williamson.’
‘Can he pinpoint the locations of the collars?’
‘He can get close.’
Marquez thought about that a moment. He had time available he wouldn’t otherwise have.
‘If I drive down there, do you want to hike up there tomorrow with me?’
‘Let me check what I’ve got going on, but I think I can do that.’
After hanging up, Marquez made another call, this one to Ted Desault.
‘I heard about your warden, so I understood why you didn’t call back,’ Desault said. ‘I’d still like to meet with you.’
‘I’m driving to the southern Sierra in very early morning.’
‘I’m in Reno. Which way are you driving down?’
‘Do you know Lee Vining?’
‘Sure, the little town just before the road up to Yosemite.’
‘Meet me there at 8:00.’
‘Are you going to get there that early?’
‘I’ll get there, and there’s a place near the center of town called the Latte Da. See you there.’
THIRTY-TWO
Desault’s dark blue Bureau car was parked up against a chain link fence on a side street half a block from the Latte Da. He sat upright in his seat, but his eyes were closed and after watching him a few moments Marquez realized he was asleep. He read the fatigue on Desault’s face, dark slashes under his eyes, the sag in his cheeks. Etched lines marked his mouth. We’re all older, he thought, and then rapped lightly on the glass.
They bought coffee drinks at the Latte Da and drove across the highway to the Mono Lake Visitors’ Center in Marquez’s truck. There they walked out through the gray soil and sage to a rock overlooking the lake. Gulls wheeled through a blue sky above the tufa islands in the lake. The water was topaz-colored, the snowless mountains to the east pale. The wind smelled of sage and it struck him that neither he nor Desault could have ever imagined that here was where they would meet and measure each other again.
‘I was too much of a hard charger in those days,’ Desault said. ‘I was full of ambition to make a mark and I made a mistake with your DEA group. I still owe you an apology I’ll make now. I’m sorry. I made a mistake. I used to think you get information out of people by being tough. It took me another decade to learn it’s the opposite, but then I’m not a fast learner.’
‘Neither am I. I wouldn’t be here if I was.’
‘You’re here because you have to be. You haven’t forgotten what he did.’
‘So make your pitch.’
‘All right, let’s get to it. What I’m doing with the task force is taking a shotgun approach to bringing down Emrahain Stoval. We’re going to try every angle and one of those is an animal angle, the illegal trophy hunting, the trafficking in animals and animal parts. That’s how your name came up. I’d like to bring you on and make you a TFO, a Task Force Officer. Deputize you for a year and give you a Bureau badge. I’ll also run you by the US Marshal’s office and get you deputized there, so you’d be cleared for both articles twenty-one and eighteen. We give it a shot for a year and when it’s over you go back to Fish and Game, or maybe you’ll like being a Fed again. Maybe that’s the big circle for you and you become the animal guy for the Department of Justice.’
Desault took a sip of coffee and continued.
‘I’m talking about giving you a license to chase Stoval around the world. You’d be the one and only for the Bureau, the James Bond of wildlife enforcement.’
‘James Bond.’
‘Sure, why not? The Department of Justice needs a wildlife agent, so it really could grow into something. I’m told you still talk to Kerry Anderson of the DEA. That says you haven’t forgotten, and this is a funded opportunity, Marquez. We’re going to use terrorist dollars and get him. All we have to do is prove he smuggles mixed contraband into the US and leave a few question marks about the contents of the contraband and we’ll be funded.’
‘OK, so I’m James Bond with fur and chasing him around, with what goal?’
‘Build a wildlife trafficking case or help bring him down for poaching a black rhino in Africa. If it’s in the right place, the locals will help.’
‘No one will hold him. He’ll pay and go.’
‘I think we can slow him down and if he shoots the wrong animal or traffics in animals and you can prove it, I think we can lean on police in some of these countries to hold him. If he pays and goes and gets tried in absentia, that’s still a score for the good guys. At that point he’s a fugitive. That’s how we’re going to get him. We’ll bleed him out one small cut at a time. But, look, we’ve studied him. Hunting is a passion for Stoval. He’s less careful there and he’ll make mistakes you’ll be able to work with. I’ve got the money, Marquez. I can send you anyplace he hunts or traffics in animals.’
Even after all this time it reached Marquez. He went years looking to the day he caught up with Stoval. He looked down at the wind-riffled water of Mono as Desault continued.
‘I want your expertise, your grit, your ability to get it done. No one else has your resume. I’ll pay for translators, guides, vehicles, equipment, whatever you need. Anywhere the US flag flies you’ve got jurisdiction. In most foreign countries we’ll have to work through the State Department, but once things are in place I can bring agents in to back you up. That’s a sketch but you’ll have all the latitude you want. I’m looking to you to figure it out. I’m your backstop. I’m resource when you need it. I’ll get you new creds and a passport, and you’ll travel on behalf of the US Department of Justice. You’ll go anywhere in the world you think it’s going to help us take him down.’
‘You’ve said that. I get it. I’m just wondering if it could work.’
‘Look, I’ve got people trying to unravel bank accounts, people tracing the arms trading, drugs, counterfeiting, money laundering, you name it. I’ve got an army trying to smoke this guy’s operations and I tell my guys all the time, we are not as bright as Stoval, but we can wear him down.’ His voice rose a notch. ‘We can bring this guy down, Marquez. We can finally bring him down. I’m giving you a chance to go after a major player in the black market for animal parts who killed friends of yours.’
‘No, it’s like you said, you’re looking for a new angle for your task force and when you started looking at poaching, my name made the list.’