by Mia Flores
I was on the same page. I just couldn’t live through that again.
We knew it wouldn’t be easy, though. The Sinaloa Cartel and the BLO had just gone to war with each other, and Junior and Peter saw that things were headed in a bad direction, like worse than ever. They were on the fringes of the kind of personal retaliation they’d never seen before.
Mia
On January 21, 2008, Mochomo was arrested in Culiacán with $900,000 in cash and an arsenal of rifles, automatic, weapons, bulletproof vests, and grenades. The Beltrán Leyva brothers believed that it was El Chapo and the Sinaloa Cartel who had tipped off the authorities to Alfredo’s hiding place in a Culiacán safe house, and they were enraged, vowing revenge. This incident sparked the beginning of the feud that quickly turned BLO against the Sinaloa Cartel.
Olivia
The arrest of Mochomo infuriated his brothers. With Alfredo behind bars, Arturo took the helm of the Beltrán Leyva Organization, vowing he’d get back at Chapo. Violence in Culiacán shot through the roof, and the months of February and March—and beyond—saw all-out warfare on the streets of Culiacán. Chapo’s men were cut up into pieces, which were then thrown into the trunks of their cars. BLO workers were shot at random in the mom-and-pop bars they frequented at the end of every work day. It wasn’t uncommon for safe houses to be firebombed, with the workers inside so badly burned that their bodies couldn’t be identified.
Mia
Right away, Peter and Junior had found themselves in the middle of the two warring factions. Both the BLO and the Sinaloa Cartel needed them, though, so while they felt somewhat protected, the heat was on. To each side, the obvious way to get more power over the other was pull Peter and Junior closer into the fold, so each brought up the idea of a plaza. The BLO wanted them to control Tijuana, while Chapo and Mayo hoped to turn over Mexicali.
Olivia
A plaza is a piece of real estate specific to trafficking. There was a plaza in Vallarta, another in Culiacán, and one in pretty much every major drug center in Mexico. The head of a plaza controlled that area, coordinating which drugs were coming in and which were going out. He negotiated police protection, and anyone who sold drugs in that area would have to get his permission. It was a powerful position to be in, and to a lot of the cartel members in Mexico, it was the highest you could go without actually being the boss.
The idea was to have Junior and Peter control a plaza together—after all, they’d always run a dual business—and there was no way one would go to one cartel and the other go to another. They were a team, and two heads weren’t just better than one, they were one.
But they respectfully declined. “We don’t want that kind of power,” they said. I’m sure Chapo and the Beltrán Leyvas just shook their heads and looked at them like they were crazy, but Peter and Junior weren’t chasing that kind of massive ego drug lord life. This was just a business to them, and they were always going to choose family over everything.
Mia
They knew that if they got a plaza, they would have had to send us back to the United States to live. Just like Chapo or all of the other cartel bosses, they’d have to go into hiding, and we’d only see them once they sent for us. Chapo didn’t care about being in the mountains; he’d just have girls come to him. But Peter and Junior wouldn’t think about giving us up. It was totally out of the question.
Olivia
They could turn down a plaza, but they couldn’t escape their associates who’d started putting pressure on them.
One day, after Mochomo got arrested and the Beltrán Leyva brothers soured on Chapo and Mayo, Músico called Junior. He wanted my husband to come see him, but Junior said that he couldn’t.
“I can’t come see you because Rambo’s here,” he said. “He’s been in town on an operation and said it’s not a good time for me to come out.”
If Músico had a problem with Junior hanging out with Rambo, he didn’t say it on that call. Sure enough, though, the next day Músico found out that Rambo had picked up Arturo Beltrán’s right-hand man, a guy they called El Comandante, taken him back to his ranch, and killed him in front of his whole family. The “operation” Junior had mentioned was a deliberate act against the BLO, and Músico was pissed.
He called Junior and said as much. “Rambo killed El Comandante! You better tell me where the fuck Chapo is, because I’m going to kill him myself!”
Junior just sat there, worried. He had no idea the operation was a direct blow to the BLO.
“Músico,” he said. “You know my brother and I have nothing to do with this war. We’re not fighting. You know us. You know we don’t get involved. Don’t be mad at us, we’re just working.”
But Músico kept screaming. “You better pick a side! Pick a fucking side!”
Mia
You could see the stress on Peter’s face. I’d been with him through three kidnappings, but I’d never seen this kind of pressure bubbling up inside him. He and Junior were two warring cartels’ biggest and best pipelines for sending drugs into the United States, and bodies were piling up to their right and their left.
He came to me just a few weeks after I found out I was pregnant.
“I think Junior and I need to stop doing this.”
Without taking a moment to think about it, I pulled him to me, looked him straight in the face, and said, “Yes.”
“Let’s go talk to Junior and Olivia then.”
Olivia
Mia didn’t know that Junior and Peter had actually been talking for days. Maybe it was because Peter had tried to protect her, like he always did, or maybe she was just so happy about being pregnant that Peter didn’t want to spoil that moment for her. But I was always in Junior’s ear, and I’d been begging for this more than anyone.
Mia
We initially started talking, all together, every few weeks after dinner. Some conversations were vague, and some were specific, with names and details and dates. We were scared. After all, we were considering changing everything in our lives.
Olivia
One night that April, we were sitting around the kitchen table at Mia and Peter’s place. I don’t know who started talking first, but I think it was Junior.
“Peter, things are changing, and we have to put our family first. I just don’t think we can slow down and scale back. And if we move overseas, the cartels are just going to hunt us down. They’re killing everyone, even their own fucking family. There’s no walking away from them, and we’ll have no protection. We risk the feds grabbing us and extraditing us.”
I don’t think Junior had to convince his brother. He already had his mind made up. Peter got really serious and said what we were all thinking. “We should call our lawyer and see if we can cut a deal. We can’t keep doing this to our family.”
Mia
Peter and Junior had put their blood, sweat, and tears into their organization, so leaving it all behind wasn’t going to be easy. But there were three things weighing on us.
First, we had unborn children. Bringing them into the drug world wasn’t just unsafe, it perpetuated a cycle that had started the day Junior and Peter were born. They didn’t want our kids to be raised the way they had been, and Brandon had already been exposed to too much. There was security around the perimeter outside where he played, a room packed with millions of dollars in cash next to his nursery, and two parents who didn’t come home one night because they were handcuffed in a torture chamber.
Second, this life wasn’t guaranteed. Sure, Peter and Junior had worked day and night to build their business, but all of it could change at a moment’s notice. The people they’d helped make rich could betray them anytime, then kill them and our whole families and not lose a second of sleep over it. There was no loyalty. People were dying left and right, families murdering families. They wanted no part of that, and neither did we.
Finally, what they were doing just wasn’t right. Peter and Junior had morals, but their job didn’t. People in Chicago, a city we all loved,
were strung out on drugs they’d shipped. Mothers had lost their teenaged sons in cartel crossfire. Olivia’s second husband had been murdered by a gang that was fueled by drug dealing.
Peter and Junior turned to us. With one look of doubt from either me or Olivia, they would have had a change of heart.
“What do you think?” Peter said.
Olivia and I nodded our heads in unison. Get out.
It was decided. Pedro and Margarito Flores were going to become federal informants, bring down the cartels, and dismantle everything they’d helped create.
PART FOUR
INFORMANTS
CHAPTER 18
No Promises
Olivia
By 2008, Junior and Peter’s organization was pumping almost $50 million worth of cocaine onto US streets every month, and they had over one hundred employees in ten cities.
Yet they hadn’t stepped foot on American soil in almost five years. They were fugitives, and if they’d taken that risk, they would have been arrested on the spot.
Mia
They had to take precautions, so they steered clear of the United States no matter what—even to talk to their lawyer about how to become the biggest drug informants in US history.
Someone had to fly to Chicago to lay the groundwork, though. It wasn’t going to be them, and it didn’t make sense for it to be me, either. Junior and Peter’s lawyer was just a voice on the phone to me, and I didn’t have the background or the experience to effectively relay all that he needed to know.
“Who’s going to do it?” asked Peter one night.
“Olivia,” Junior said. “No question.”
We all turned and looked at her, knowing she’d be perfect.
Olivia
It had to be me. After all, I’d had a relationship with Junior and Peter’s lawyer, Joe Bonelli, long before I got together with Junior. When I was married to K, and the government asked me to wear a wire to gain intelligence against him, I’d decided I needed to talk to a lawyer, so I’d called Joe. He’d defended people in the drug trade, and on the street he was considered to be the best in the business.
He’d also represented Peter and Junior’s employees, wholesalers, and countless other big drug conspiracy cases in Chicago. He’d defended Adrian before he was sent to prison in the 1990s, and he’d stayed in touch with Junior and Peter over the years. He seemed to care about them, in fact. He never failed to ask about our family, and when I called and told him I needed to meet with him in Chicago, he seemed genuinely pleased.
Joe had always been sharp. He was tall and handsome and wore nice, tailor-made suits, so he looked the part, but he acted it, too. He was a great speaker, really commanding. I’d never seen him stumble; if anything, he was so confident he almost seemed cocky. But in March 2008, when I walked into his fancy office in the Loop, all business, and started talking, he became a different person.
“Junior and Peter want to tell everything they know about Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán, Arturo Beltrán, and Ismael ‘El Mayo’ Zambada.” I said their first and last names and nicknames just to be totally clear and avoid any confusion. Chapo wasn’t all over the news like he is now, and most Americans, aside from the government, hadn’t heard of him. “Junior and Peter have been working with the cartels for four years, and they know where the bosses are hiding. They’re willing to do anything to bring them down.”
Joe sat behind his big wooden desk with his mouth wide open. He was holding a pen in his hand, but I think he’d forgotten that he wanted to take notes because he suddenly stared at the papers at his desk and hunched over, then started writing really fast. I realized he didn’t know what to ask, so I kept on talking.
“I can tell you exactly how many tons Junior and Peter are bringing in every month, how many workers they have, and where the tunnels are that they use to get loads across the border. Chapo’s been investing in submarines, and he’s asking them to purchase rocket launchers from the military, and Junior and Peter own a fleet of tractor-trailers they use to transport loads…”
“Slow down. Stop. Did you say ‘rocket launchers’?”
“Yes. They’ll tell you every single detail of their business and how they’re working with the cartels. They want to cooperate. Fully.” I put extra emphasis on that last word.
Joe finally looked up and paused. He was thinking. Then he started talking slowly.
“So, if I call this DEA agent I’ve worked with, maybe he can tell me exactly what you need to do.” He went a little white. “Wait, you don’t have a wire on you, do you?”
“What?”
“A wire. Is anyone listening?”
“Why the hell would I be recording you? Are you okay?”
“Yes, yes, I’m fine, sorry.”
I’d known this guy for years, and he was usually cool as a cucumber. He never got paranoid. Then I realized I was putting him in a sticky situation. He was a kick-ass defense attorney who represented guys on the street, like regular drug dealers, and he probably didn’t want to be known as the person who represented snitches. No one likes a rat, and they like their lawyers even less. To top it off, even though Joe had ten times more experience with the drug trade than any other lawyer in Chicago, one of his clients cooperating with the government—on the international stage—was on a whole different level. He wasn’t just nervous; he might even be in over his head.
“Look, relax,” I said. “I brought a secure phone. Let’s call my husband and Peter.”
Mia
Olivia had given us a heads-up that she’d probably call us from Joe’s office, but Peter, Junior, and I were still so nervous, sitting there in our penthouse with Brandon. We had no idea if Joe would even want to take the case, and we were really depending on Liv to tell him everything. Plus, I couldn’t stop feeling strange; we had this secret that no one else knew, and it occupied my mind constantly. I trusted Peter completely, and I knew his decision was 100 percent in my best interest, but still, I was seeing him—and everything—in a new light.
When the phone rang, Peter grabbed it and proceeded to tell Joe absolutely everything he and Junior wanted to do. Then he put it on speaker so we all could hear.
“Peter, Junior, Mia, hello,” Joe said, deliberately. “Are you sure this is what you want to do?”
Junior spoke up. “Absolutely. We’re sure.”
“Because there’s no turning back.”
“Yes. Definitely,” said Peter, then he stopped. “But do you want to do this?”
Joe paused. “Do I have a choice? I don’t want you guys to talk to the wrong people and then have something happen to you and your families. Just let me make some calls. I need to reach the right people.”
Peter leaned in toward the phone and lowered his voice. “Joe, listen to me. Be careful who you contact, because half of the people we know in Chicago and half the people you represent have ties to the cartels. Chapo and Mayo have lawyers and officials on both sides of the border who weed out rats and snitches. They report to them weekly. If anybody finds out what we’re doing, they will kill my whole fucking family. You got that?”
“I got it.”
“So what’s going to happen next?” Peter asked.
“I’ll call you after I speak to the feds. After that, the ball’s in their court.”
“But you’ve got our backs, right?” Junior asked.
“I do.” Joe went quiet for a second. “Look, I can’t promise you what kind of deal you’ll get, and I can’t even promise the amount of prison time you’ll get, but I’ll give you my word that I’ll defend you no matter what. I’m on your side from here on out. That’s probably the only promise you’ll get this whole time.”
“We trust you,” Junior said.
“I’ll call you in a few days. I hope. No promises.” Then Joe hung up.
The next thing we knew, Olivia was on a flight home.
Olivia
“No promises” became the theme of those first few months Junior and Peter were cooperatin
g. Like, Sure, we’ll tell you we’re assigning a bunch of agents to your case, and they’ll probably call you at some point, but we can’t promise when. Or, Give us all the intelligence you can, but we can’t promise you how it might affect your case. We knew nothing—like absolutely zero—in the beginning.
The only thing we could do was try to take care of our situation at home, which meant deciding who’d meet with the feds, whenever the hell they did call. It didn’t take Peter long to make a decision.
“I don’t trust the feds,” he said. “When we meet with them, they could arrest us and extradite us right then and there. We can’t go together.”
“Then what are you thinking?” Junior asked.
“I’ll go alone. I can’t separate you from Brandon; if he loses you right now, I couldn’t live with myself.”
Junior looked at Peter and slowly nodded his head. There wasn’t even a need to say thank you; they were in this together, like they’d always been. Junior had put his life on the line during Peter’s kidnapping, flying into the mountains to meet with Chapo and hammering out an arrangement to free him. Making sacrifices for each other was just what they did.
We planned, and we waited. Joe was our only lifeline.
Mia
We called Joe all the time, and he was patient and reassuring most of the time, but sometimes, he was as concerned as we were. “It’s going to take a while,” he’d say. “And, seriously, I wonder if you boys are doing the right thing.”