Suspicion

by Joseph Finder

  “I—Abby said she had permission?”

  “And Celina should have checked with you. I don’t know what else I can say but that she screwed up. She meant well, Celina did, but she screwed up. We screwed up. In loco parentis, all that crap.”

  Danny couldn’t help laughing with relief. “I’ve already cooled down. I mean, I was angry last night, but, well, if that’s the extent of her teenage rebellion, I’m lucky. She’s not pregnant, and she doesn’t have a tattoo on her butt or something.”

  “As far as you know.”

  Danny groaned comically.

  “My parents wouldn’t let my sister Linda get her ears pierced until she graduated from high school.”

  “I don’t get the whole piercing mania anyway, to be honest.”

  “Danny, listen, I’m not one for deep talks, you know? Feelings and all that? Not my department. But you and I both know this isn’t just about the piercing. Right?”

  Danny felt trapped. He heaved a sigh of frustration. He couldn’t keep pretending that this was all about a nose piercing, not anymore, not face-to-face with Galvin. He hesitated.

  Galvin went on: “It’s about the money, isn’t it?”

  No, Danny was about to say, but then he caught himself. “Maybe that’s it.” His iPhone emitted the tritone text alert, but he didn’t dare check it.

  “You know, I was afraid this might happen. That’s why I never lend money to friends. I made an exception in your case because I saw how desperate things were for you. But it almost always causes tension in a friendship. I’m a man, you’re a man, I get it. You feel somehow embarrassed that you had to take money from me. Now you feel obligated. There’s just no way around it. Maybe I didn’t handle it the right way. I don’t know.”

  “No, Tom,” Danny said. He shook his head, fell silent. Of course he felt awkward about it, who wouldn’t? But if only that were the problem. “It was incredibly generous.”

  His iPhone made another text alert sound.

  “Danny, you gotta understand something. Abby’s like family. What she’s done for Jenna—I can’t even begin to express my gratitude. Your girl, her heart, her friendship—she’s—” Danny was quite sure that Tom Galvin’s eyes were moist. “I don’t want anything to happen to that bond between the two girls. It’s too important to her. It’s too important to me. So listen. Whatever I’m doing that makes you uncomfortable, we have to sort this out. Okay? Whatever it is.”

  “Of course.”

  “I have an idea. We’ve got a place in Aspen. How about we all go out there this weekend, just the two families? You guys and us. Bring your girlfriend, too. We’ll take my plane; it’ll be fast and easy and a good time. My two sons both have other plans, so it’ll just be the girls. You and I can hang out, schmooze, talk this thing through. For the sake of our daughters, huh? What do you say?”

  36

  The little boy was screaming. He was afraid of the big vaccine needle. And the young woman aide clearly didn’t know how to stick the needle in without inflicting pain.

  Dr. Mendoza saw this and placed a gentle hand on the nurse’s shoulder. “¿Puedo probar?” he said. May I try? He never liked to make the aides feel inadequate.

  “Por supuesto, Doctor,” the young woman said right away, nodding, handing him the hypodermic.

  The boy, who looked to be around three, was yowling and bucking in his mother’s strong arms. And who could blame him? To little children, all hypodermic needles looked big and scary. “What is his name?” he asked the mother.

  “Santiago,” the mother said. She was missing most of her front teeth.

  “Santiago, I’d like you to meet my friend Nicolás.” He pulled from the front pocket of his white coat an orange rubber toy with colored nobs for eyes and ears. “Nicolás is a Martian. He’s very, very scared of needles. Look.”

  Santiago stopped struggling for a moment and looked warily at the toy. His cheeks were wet with tears, and a dribble of mucus ran down from one nostril.

  Dr. Mendoza moved the hypodermic needle near the toy, touched the needle against the orange rubber skin of the toy’s tummy, then squeezed its belly. Its eyes and ears bugged out in comic fear. Santiago burst out laughing and reached for it, and Dr. Mendoza let the boy have it. He had a dozen more in the back room of the clinic. Every time he visited the United States, he bought them at a toy store in San Diego. The children loved them.

  “Can you help Nicolás? He needs his shot to make him all better.”

  Santiago was happily squeezing the rubber toy’s belly, making the eyes and ears pop out, and laughing delightedly.

  “Now maybe you can show him what a brave boy you are. Can you close your eyes and count to three, very slowly?” asked Dr. Mendoza.

  He held the needle just above the boy’s shoulder.

  “Uno . . .”

  The needle’s point touched the shoulder.

  “Dos . . .”

  Then Dr. Mendoza inserted the needle lightning fast, and it was over.

  “Tres,” the boy said, squeezing his eyes tight, bracing for the shot that had already come.

  “We’re done!” Dr. Mendoza said. “You did it! You did such an excellent job!”

  The boy opened his eyes wide. “Really?”

  The clinic was located in the outskirts of Culiacán, the capital of the Sinaloa state in Mexico. The neighborhood was desperately poor, and the people couldn’t afford to see a doctor. So they queued up for hours, sometimes all night, to see a doctor without charge. Some days, there were dozens waiting when he arrived at seven in the morning. Some brought tortillas for their lunch.

  Dr. Mendoza volunteered here two days a week. It was a good break from his surgical practice at the private hospital in downtown Culiacán, where all his patients were well-heeled. He felt it was good karma.

  It had been a long and busy day. A man of around seventy, complaining of tenderness in his groin, had a bulge the size of a lemon. It had been there for more than a year. It was a right inguinal hernia that was incarcerated but not, thank God, strangulated. Dr. Mendoza scheduled the man for an outpatient procedure.

  A young man had accidentally slashed one of his wrists with a machete while chopping weeds in a coconut grove. He’d come in with the laceration bound in a dirty, bloody handkerchief, blood dripping everywhere. A little girl had stepped on a sewing needle at home, and her mother, a seamstress, had tried to pull it out but succeeded only in breaking off one end. A teenage boy’s arm had been broken for three weeks, had been reset wrong, and Dr. Mendoza had to yank it into place to reset it properly. An adorable little baby girl with tiny stud earrings, wearing a pink sweater, was screaming in pain. Her eyes were red. He reassured the baby’s nervous parents that their child had nothing more serious than a bad case of conjunctivitis, easily treated with ophthalmic Cipro.

  The waiting room bustled with patients and their families, people dirty and sweaty from working in the fields or the maquiladoras, many of whom had no teeth and no last name. With the squalling of infants and the screams of children and the shouting of the adults, you could barely hear yourself think. But Dr. Mendoza didn’t mind it at all.

  Even though he was a surgeon, most of the work he did at the free clinic was general medicine. He was vastly overqualified. But that was fine. He believed in balance. He believed that the good he did here two days a week compensated for . . . his other work.

  Then he noticed the clamor of the waiting room subside. Something had happened to quiet all but the youngest. He stepped out of the examination room and saw a man standing at the entrance to the waiting room. He wore snakeskin boots and jeans and a gaudy silk shirt. He wore a little gold AK-47 on a gold necklace, and a black cowboy hat. A tattoo covered most of his neck.

  Everyone in the room was frightened of the man. They recognized his type. He was a gavillero, a trigger man for the cartel. A killer. The
man squinted, his shrewd eyes scanning the room, then falling on Dr. Mendoza. Heads turned toward the surgeon and back toward the gavillero.

  Dr. Mendoza beckoned him in with a flick of his hand.

  • • •

  Away from the eyes of an audience, the gavillero seemed to become another person. He was polite and deferential, almost obsequious.

  “Don Armando,” he said, bowing his head. “I come with a message from el gran jefe.”

  Dr. Mendoza’s eyes bored into the gavillero’s.

  The younger man handed the surgeon a folded slip of paper and gave another nod.

  Dr. Mendoza took it, glanced at the name and telephone number, folded it, and slipped it into the breast pocket of his white coat.

  “Tell el gran jefe I will take care of this tonight. After I see my last patient.”

  “Yes, sir,” the gavillero said with another nod.

  “Well?” Dr. Mendoza said.

  “Sir?”

  “You may go,” Dr. Mendoza said. “I have patients waiting.”

  37

  Galvin’s invitation, the more Danny thought about it, was baffling, even nerve-racking.

  Was it some sort of mind game? Was Galvin toying with him? On two occasions he’d caught Danny in compromising, or at least highly questionable, circumstances. That time when he returned home unexpectedly to find Danny loitering in his study. And when he noticed his BlackBerry had unaccountably migrated to the wrong suit pocket. His driver had taken the fall for the transmitter discovered on his desk. But how could Galvin not suspect Danny? He’d have to be oblivious or hopelessly naïve—neither of which described Thomas X. Galvin.

  Or playing him in some patiently twisted way. Why else would he have invited Danny to spend a weekend in Aspen, to burrow even deeper into the bosom of his family—unless he was three steps ahead of Danny and was playing the long game. Some complex scheme in which Galvin would confront him, trap him, expose him.

  Or worse.

  On his way back home, he called Lucy and told her about Galvin’s invitation. He half expected her to react negatively, or at least skeptically. He always trusted her instincts. She’d been right, probably, to warn him against accepting a loan from Galvin, even though she had no idea what the terrible cost would be.

  “Aspen!” she said. “Are girlfriends invited?”

  “Expressly.”

  “Aspen sounds great.”

  “Really? I’m surprised.”

  A secure text message alert interrupted the call, that strange plinking sound. It was from AnonText007: 10 a.m. McDonald’s Central Square, Cambridge

  “I’ve never flown in a private plane,” she said.

  “You don’t mind all this?”

  “All what?”

  “Extravagant, conspicuous wealth.”

  “Why should I mind it? It sounds fabulous. I haven’t been skiing in years, ever since Kyle started snowboarding.”

  “How about all that time up close and personal with the Galvin family?”

  “It’ll be fascinating.”

  “You have no idea.”

  “Aren’t you and he becoming best buds?”

  “I wouldn’t put it that way. We get along.”

  “Well, let me remind you, I’m a trained psychiatrist. Maybe I’ll gain some useful insights into Abby’s relationship with the Galvins.”

  “I’m surprised.”

  “What, you expected me to tell you not to go?”

  “I expected you to agree with me that it might not be a good idea.”

  “Is there some reason I’m overlooking?”

  He exhaled. He was keeping so much from her now that he was finding it hard to keep track of what he’d told her and what he hadn’t, what she knew and what she didn’t.

  “I suppose not,” he said.

  • • •

  Central Square in Cambridge was barely a mile away from Boston’s Back Bay but a world apart. The Back Bay was wealth and European sophistication: harmonious Victorian architecture, redbrick sidewalks, tree-lined streets, gas streetlamps, stratospheric real estate prices. Whereas Central Square, just across the Charles River, was seedy and shambling, perennially run-down, in a state of constant urban decay.

  Danny had driven past this McDonald’s probably a thousand times before but had never noticed it. As soon as he pulled into a space on Mass Ave, half a block away, he had a fairly good idea why Slocum and Yeager had selected it for a meeting. The restaurant was inconspicuous and was on the corner of Mass Ave and a narrow side street, with plate-glass windows on either side, a glass box. If you were sitting inside the McDonald’s, you could observe everyone coming on both sides.

  It was also the kind of place where you could sit at a table and hang out indefinitely without being disturbed. The counter staff were talking among themselves and taking the occasional order from a customer.

  Danny entered, grabbed a corner table, set the gym bag on the floor. The whole place smelled like French fries, which was not unpleasant. The DEA guys weren’t there yet. Two young men were speaking Portuguese, one wearing a Red Sox cap. An Asian kid in an MIT sweatshirt was devouring a Big Mac, wearing giant headphones, and fiddling with his iPod or iPhone at the same time. No one else was there.

  He glanced at his watch, brushed a crumpled drinking-straw wrapper off the table along with the crumbs of the last patron’s meal, touched a splotch of something sticky.

  The side entrance, on Douglass Street, opened, letting in a rush of cold air. It was Glenn Yeager, in a black North Face fleece ski jacket and an oversize pair of sunglasses. He went right up to Danny’s table without looking around.

  “Bad cop,” he announced in a low, guttural voice, “will not be joining us. In answer to your question.” He removed his sunglasses. His eyes looked slightly out of focus.

  “Bummer,” Danny said.

  Yeager removed a glasses case from a zippered side pocket of his fleece, took out steel-rimmed bifocals, put them on as delicately as a surgeon doing microsurgery. He glanced down at Danny’s feet, at the gym bag containing the device. “See, I told you that thing was idiot-proof.”

  “How did you know it worked?”

  “It uploaded the data remotely, right after you finished.” He shimmied his hands. “The magic of the Intertubes.”

  “So now you have everything you need,” Danny said brightly. “You have the mother lode.”

  “Well, we have some, anyway. But a lot of the contents of his BlackBerry were encrypted.”

  “That surprises you?”

  “Not at all. The cartels have gotten really sophisticated about their comms. And they don’t use BlackBerrys for the really sensitive stuff. They use the Internet. Still, they like to use BlackBerry’s PIN-to-PIN messaging system for routine communication because it doesn’t go through a server. Doesn’t leave any digital bread crumbs. We didn’t capture much of his e-mails, but at least we got the phone numbers of contacts in his address book.”

  Danny shrugged. “So we’re done here.” A statement, not a question.

  Yeager smiled thinly. “We were delighted to hear about Aspen.”

  “To hear what about Aspen?”

  “That you’re joining the Galvins there this weekend.”

  Danny stared at him for a few seconds. Then he hunched forward. “If you have some kind of bug in his limo, what the hell do you need me for?”

  Yeager’s face was impassive.

  “I didn’t give Galvin an answer. I haven’t decided yet.”

  Something about Yeager’s eyes.

  “You son of a bitch,” Danny said. “Did you plant some kind of bug on me?”

  Yeager shook his head slowly. “Come on. Anyway, point is, he’s meeting someone in Aspen. We think it’s someone quite high up in the cartel hierarchy.”

  “In As
pen?”

  “The ski weekend is probably just a cover. They’re extremely careful about locations and venues. If they’ve chosen to meet in Aspen, it’s because they know they can do it without being monitored. Any trackers will be spotted at a distance. They’ll stand out. The terrain in Aspen works well that way.”

  “So why don’t you fly out there and tail him? You don’t need me.”

  “That’s not how it’s going to play out. You’ll be with him. You’ll have access to him. We want to know who he’s meeting. If we get that, it’s huge. The definitive link between Galvin and the cartel we’ve been trying to nail down for three years now.”

  “You don’t get it, do you? This is a family ski weekend, not some Iron John initiation. Tom Galvin and I aren’t going to be sitting around nude in a drum circle in the snow, howling at the moon.”

  He smiled. “He trusts you.”

  “I’m not doing it. I almost got caught downloading his BlackBerry. The fact that I’m still alive is a miracle. I’m not doing any more.”

  Yeager spread his hands on the table. His left hand drew back when it touched the sticky gunk. “Danny, you’re understandably nervous. I get that. But if he were suspicious about you, he wouldn’t have invited you to spend time with his family.”

  “Unless he has some other plan.”

  “Come on, now. You’re overwhelmed, I can see that. I completely sympathize. Every confidential informant I’ve ever worked with goes through a crisis of nerves. Look, Danny, you’re not alone. You have the full force of the US government behind you.”

  “And that’s supposed to reassure me? The fact is, the more often I do this, the greater my odds of getting caught. I got you the contents of his BlackBerry. Now I’m done. We’re done.”

  He stood up. There was a steady stream of people entering and leaving, getting late breakfasts or early lunches. The MIT kid was gone. A couple had taken a table nearby, both of them in their midforties with matching bushes of Chia Pet hair.