Courage Matters: A Ray Courage Mystery (Ray Courage Private Investigator Series Book 2)

by R. Scott Mackey

  “Are we getting to the point yet? Because if we’re not I’m going to have to run to the store to buy some more tequila.”

  “Guillermo and two of his main men meet with the guy at a Mexican restaurant in West Sac. Mexican restaurant, go figure. They weren’t told the guy’s name or anything. But Guillermo says he is real smooth, dresses well, no accent, an educated guy about thirty. The guy is amiable but doesn’t budge on the business side, says they need to keep growing, that the guys in Mexico are expecting more, blah, blah, blah. The guy talks about ROI this and marginal cost that. You know, Mr. Smooth Businessman. So the more Guillermo is telling me this I’m picturing something in my head, something you told me.”

  “Something I told you?”

  “Yeah, think about it.”

  I just looked blankly at her, still not getting it.

  “Ray, you know this guy.”

  “Blake Rios,” I said, Rubia’s description now connecting to the image of Rios in my mind.

  Rubia nodded. “I had gotten the more information you asked for on Rios, Burke and Tylers the day before, but didn’t take the time to look at it. I figured that part of the case wasn’t nearly as important anymore.”

  “So you opened the file on Rios and found something,” I said.

  “You got it. His dad is the founder and leader of Los Rojos.”

  I could feel my face draining of color. I saw visions of decapitated men, women and children, their heads skewered on sticks and put on public display as warning to those who dared consider crossing the cartels. I pondered the other unspeakable horrors the cartels had become notorious for—mass killings, torture, rape, infanticide—all in the pursuit of becoming the biggest and baddest in the world.

  “Born in Texas, educated at the finest prep schools and colleges in the United States and fully Anglicized, Blake is the son of Armando Luis Rios, well known head of Los Rojos, the second largest drug cartel in the world. All I can say, Ray, is that you know how to pick your enemies.”

  forty-two

  Rubia drove us the following morning as I pondered Blake Rios and all that he stood for. First we dealt with the congestion on Westbound 50 where it merges with Interstate 80 and soon after funnels down to three lanes across the Yolo Causeway. We passed the City of Davis, home to UC-Davis, affectionately referred to as The People’s Republic of Davis by anyone right of, say, Karl Marx. Years before they established themselves as a nuclear free zone, starting a trend that spanned college towns from Berkeley to Madison. I’m not sure why I thought about this, but for a few seconds it took my mind off of Rios. I turned on the radio to listen to sports talk. I turned it off, then back on, before deciding I preferred silence.

  Rubia took the Highway 113 turnoff and continued three miles before turning onto Covell Boulevard on the north side of Davis. We were about 25 miles from Sacramento, tooling along just under the speed limit, Rubia constantly checking the rear view mirror. We headed west until Covell became County Road E6, a straight as an arrow road that bisected farm and ranch lands lush from the winter rains.

  “Is this really necessary?” I asked.

  “Can’t be too safe.”

  “We’ve been driving for a half hour. No one’s following.” To confirm my assessment I turned around to see no one on the road behind us.

  “We’ll go to Winters and if it still looks good then we’ll drive back. But not before.”

  The city of Winters survived the 1990s onslaught of urban dwellers seeking their own Green Acres experience, some eager to raise sheep, others to breed horses, still others to grow grapes. During this phase of the city’s history the population grew from about 5,000 to nearly 8,000. I had two married colleagues at Sac State who joined the trend, determined to raise llamas and sell their fur to boutiques in San Francisco. They, like the other urbanites who came before and after them, soon abandoned these dreams when the reality of 18-hour workdays didn’t mesh with their idyllic visions or their day jobs.

  We passed through the sleepy town and I made a mental note to take Jill to dinner at the Buckhorn, one of several surprisingly good restaurants in the small town. After circling through the two-square block downtown, Rubia was satisfied that we were not being followed.

  “We’re good to go,” she said.

  “It’s about time. We’re going to be late.”

  “So what? Let him squirm a little.”

  “I don’t think Trujillo is the squirming type,” I said. After Rubia had broken the news to me about Blake Rios I knew that I now needed to reach out to Detective Trujillo.

  From the beginning it never made sense that a client would kill Norris for blowing the whistle on Stroud. Now it did. Rios had denied that Norris had warned him about his investments in Stroud’s firm. He did so either because he didn’t want his father and Los Rojos to know that he had lost a couple hundred million dollars or because he didn’t want any scrutiny of his investments by the authorities, who might discover he was laundering drug money. I knew this in my gut. I just had no proof.

  Somehow I would need him to admit what he’d done. And for that I would need Trujillo and his resources.

  We returned to Sacramento thirty minutes later, backtracking the same route that took us to Winters. We parked in a gravel parking lot on Front Street, next to the California Automobile Museum. At 9:30 in the morning there was just one other car in the parking lot.

  “And we’re not meeting Trujillo at the police station because why exactly?” I said.

  “I told you, Ray, a guy like Rios probably has someone watching the station looking for you to show up there. If he does, he’ll know something’s up. This place is much more private. My man Mickey said we could have the office in the back all to ourselves.”

  We had covered this ground before but I needed to talk, to remain convinced we had a plan, a damn good plan, and that it would work. We walked into the museum, a massive stucco and wood warehouse. A man the size of an NFL tackle greeted us from behind the counter. He and Rubia exchanged “Wassups?” while conducting an elaborate five-part handshake.

  “Professor, Mickey. Mickey, Professor,” Rubia said as an introduction. Rubia, the Miss Manners of her generation. I got fouled up in about the third step of the handshake ritual and finally we just settled for a good old-fashioned white guy palm-to-palm clasp.

  “Your guy’s not here yet, Rubes,” Mickey said.

  “See, I told you we wouldn’t be late,” Rubia said, turning to me. She told Mickey to send Trujillo to us when he did arrive and then we started for the back of the building.

  We passed through an exhibit identified as “American Muscle” by a poster propped up on an easel. I wasn’t a car buff, but even I could identify some of the makes and models. A Pontiac GTO and Dodge Charger from the early 70s, a Chevy Camaro and an American Motors AMX from the late 60s, and even a 1970 Plymouth Superbird that I recognized because my best friend in high school had worked two jobs to buy one that was six years old. All the cars were meticulously restored, buffed and shined. They were works of arts, lovingly created by people with a true passion for their craft. It reminded me of a conversation I had with a guy who restored vintage motorcycles. He could not understand why people like me loved baseball or any sport so much, when every year the slates were cleaned and a new champion was crowned. On the other hand, he argued, restoring a motorcycle, or a car, or some other machine, was as close to permanent as anything could be in this life, a testament to passion and artistry. Looking at these cars I saw his point.

  Rubia used a key that Mickey must have given her to open the small office at the back of the museum. The space looked like it didn’t get much use, with dust settled on every surface. It seemed less an office than a storage room for maintenance and user manuals. Rubia found three folding chairs in one corner, unfolded them and sat in one. I sat in another and we awaited Trujillo’s arrival. His tone on the telephone the day before had been curt and he almost hung up on me before I could tell him what I’d learned abo
ut Rios. I talked. He listened. Each sentence uttered bought me one more. I presented a plan, while not embracing it, he did not dismiss it outright. Today I would find out if he would go for it or not.

  Trujillo arrived ten minutes later. He knocked on the door and told us to come out of the office with our hands up. What the hell? Was he arresting me again? We did as told, slowly walking out of the office, hands on our heads, Trujillo’s gun pointed at my chest. He stepped behind me and patted me down before moving on to Rubia and doing the same. A long glance into the office convinced him that nobody else was hiding inside.

  “What’s your deal?” I said.

  He holstered his gun. “Making sure,” he said.

  “And I thought we’d become so close after our conversation last night,” I said. “Now I feel so used.”

  “Let’s talk.” Trujillo went into the room and sat in the chair that I had formerly occupied. I chose the chair opposite him, while Rubia chose the one that put her back to the door.

  “Who’s this?” Trujillo said to me, pointing his thumb at Rubia.

  “I get a full pat down and you’re only now asking my name?” Rubia said. “No second date for you detective.”

  “She’s a friend,” I said.

  Trujillo turned from her to look at me. “She goes. We agreed just you and me.”

  “I said no attorneys. No defense attorney. No DA. We didn’t say anything about having a colleague present. She stays.” When I called Trujillo the night before I knew he wouldn’t agree to meet with me if accompanied by Mark Scofield. I also knew the DA would have been disinclined to have me involved with any plan to entrap Rios. Leaving the lawyers out of the equation made things cleaner, and Trujillo knew that.

  “She goes or the deal is off. I’m sticking my neck out big time on this just by meeting with you. The fewer people who know about this the better.”

  “She stays. I go in alone with Rios so he doesn’t know about her. But I want her here now.”

  “What, as a witness to our agreement?”

  “More or less,” I said.

  “Fine. But this is all confidential, got it?”

  Rubia and I both nodded. “So you agree that we can take a shot at him,” I said. Up till then I hadn’t been certain Trujillo would go for what I’d proposed on the phone.

  “I checked Rios out after we talked,” Trujillo said. “You were right about his father. But it doesn’t make him a suspect in the murders. By all accounts the kid is an upstanding citizen.”

  “Yeah, and I’m the center fielder for the San Francisco Giants. You know it’s more than a coincidence. At the very least Rios has got to be laundering money for Los Rojos. The kid is twenty-eight and worth more than $400 million. Doubtful he earned that through elbow grease.”

  “I’m willing to concede it’s a possibility he might be involved in the killings. What a fucking mess.” Trujillo looked even more tired than I’d last seen him, the case obviously wearing on him. I didn’t like the man, but I did have to respect him for trying to get things right. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “I got a judge to agree to the wire. Twenty-four hours is all he would agree to. He said our evidence was thin, but the cartel connection was enough to justify it. Justice Department has a priority of going after the Mexican drug trade. If we can nail one of the top guys in Los Rojos it will look good for us locals.”

  “And for you personally,” I said.

  “Yeah, that too.”

  We went over the basic script that we had discussed the night before. Wearing the wire, I would confront Rios at his office. I would tell him that I knew he’s the son a Mexican drug lord and that he had killed Andrew Norris and Craig Ziebell. To get him to talk and, it was hoped, admit culpability in the killings, I would tell him that for $2 million I would leave town and never utter a word about what I knew to the police. As a bonus I would give him the whereabouts of Lionel Stroud. If it worked as planned, Rios would incriminate himself and Trujillo would have enough to arrest him.

  My biggest concern was that Rios would see me trying to blackmail him as too bold and from there he would conclude I was trying to entrap him. Despite this risk, Trujillo and I knew it was our best chance at Rios. If it didn’t work, Rios almost certainly would try to kill me for what I knew. Probably not there, in his office, but sometime when I wouldn’t see it coming.

  “Do you have the wire?” I said.

  He reached into his other pocket and pulled out a black object the size and shape of a matchstick. “Wear a shirt with collar stays in it. This fits behind one of the stays. It’s wireless with a small memory chip in it that will record everything you and anyone in the room says. It also has a transmitter. We’ll be about two hundred yards away monitoring what you say in case things go wrong.”

  Two hundred yards. Not close enough to stop Rios if he decided to pull out a gun and shoot me on the spot. “What about a vest?”

  “A vest?”

  “You know, a bullet-proof vest.”

  “Too bulky. He’d spot it in an instant. Your best bet at pulling this off is how convincing you are with Rios. If you’re right about him, I think you have a decent chance at getting him to say something incriminating.”

  Trujillo offered me the recording device. I took it, fingers trembling, not feeling anywhere near as optimistic as he did.

  forty-three

  As a precaution I spent the night at a Marriott Courtyard in Rancho Cordova. I’d driven by this hotel just south of Highway 50 countless times, never imagining that I might someday need to stay there, a mere eight miles from my home. I feared Rios might come after me. He had to know that with my arrest I would be even more motivated to investigate Stroud and his clients. He wouldn’t want me doing that or even the attention my trial might generate. If I simply fell off the face of the earth he would be rid of me and probably stall further investigation into the murders for a while, the authorities putting their full attention into tracking me down, the prime suspect.

  I considered inviting myself over to Jill’s to spend the night but remembered how Angel and Hector, who I now assumed worked for Rios, had followed me from there before. If they were looking for me they would certainly try her house after they found my own house empty. I still wasn’t sure why Rios had these two thugs try to scare me off instead of simply taking me out, shooting me and burying me in some toxic waste dump somewhere.

  I went over the plan in my head. Not much of a plan, more of a script of how to draw Rios out. I had called Rios that afternoon and practically had to beg to get the fifteen-minute meeting in the morning, my promise of ‘key information’ from Lionel Stroud the only thing that swayed him.

  I couldn’t sleep. I looked out the window at the cars passing by on Highway 50. I checked my e-mails on the laptop and surfed the Web. I watched Letterman and Fallon. I watched a soccer game from Mexico broadcast in Spanish. I watched the Golf Channel and learned a putting technique that could take five strokes off my next round.

  At four-thirty in the morning Rubia called my cell phone. I picked up after the second ring.

  “Didn’t wake you did I?” she said.

  “No, I can’t sleep.”

  “Something’s not right is it?”

  “I think that’s why I can’t sleep,” I said. “I’m missing something but I’m not sure what.”

  “Rios is dirty. Stroud ripped him off. He probably thought Norris did, too, so he killed him.” She sounded like she was trying to convince herself as much as me.

  “Then why would he kill Ziebell?”

  “I thought about that and here’s what I think,” she said. “Rios probably made Norris tell him everything, you know, the night he shot him. So Norris tells him about Ziebell figuring out that Stroud is scamming clients. And Rios doesn’t like a guy like Ziebell snooping around. You know, like he might figure out where Rios got all his money, or at the very least bring Stroud down. So it was better to kill him off. And as a bonus it looked li
ke you did it.”

  “I guess so.” It made some sense. Cut from cartel cloth, Rios would probably be ruthless in keeping his financial affairs private. “And if Ziebell went forward with his threats to go to the SEC then it could lock up Rios’s money—if there was any left—and cause them to maybe look closer at Rios.”

  “There you go,” Rubia said. “You just convinced me.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel much better.” We said our good-byes and I clicked off.

  I watched a Seinfeld rerun, the one where Kramer designs a bra for George’s father. It distracted me for a few minutes, but my thoughts kept drifting back to Rios.

  I thought again about Angel and Hector. They had to be Rios’s guys and they’d been sent to keep me away so that I wouldn’t connect their boss to the murders. My mind went back to the parking lot and the beating Hector had inflicted and how Angel had spat on me before leaving. A warning only. It didn’t make sense. It was then that I remembered the license plate. I had only gotten a partial, but I’d forgotten to follow up on it, believing it offered very little, the plate likely stolen. It took me almost a minute to remember the number, but it finally came to me. 6CUZ. Six cuz. Practically a sentence.

  I logged onto the Website I’d used only a couple of times since getting my PI license and navigated to the right page. I typed in the license plate, selected the “partial number” box and pressed enter.

  I netted 19 California plates with 6CUZ as a partial. I looked on the list for any of the 19 that were white Honda Accords. There were three, one in San Diego County, one in Santa Clara County and one in Sacramento County.

  The listed owner of the white Honda Accord in Sacramento was Angel Herrera. He lived at 971 Acacia Way in the City of Sacramento.

  I went to Google Earth and entered the address. A satellite image of the house appeared. I zoomed in and went to a street view, though I already knew what the house would look like.