“But . . . that’s obviously ridiculous.” Danny shook his head.
It took all the composure he could muster to keep up the façade. Inwardly he was racked with guilt. Danny knew that he was the DEA informant whose existence must have somehow leaked, setting off alarm bells at the top of the Sinaloa cartel. And while Galvin was spilling his guts, revealing the deepest, darkest secret he could possibly have, Danny wasn’t saying a word.
While putting Galvin and his entire family in peril.
Tom Galvin, who was a friend. Was that an exaggeration? Maybe they hadn’t been before, but they’d become friends, sort of, as much as men their age were capable of making new friends. Danny needed to sit down. Somewhere, anywhere. His heart was knocking wildly.
He argued with himself. He told himself he’d had no choice about cooperating with the DEA. He’d been cornered, blackmailed into it. He hadn’t even given Galvin a thought at the time. He’d barely known Galvin.
But that didn’t make it feel any better.
“Is it so ridiculous?” Galvin said. “I’ve been at this a long time. Long enough for the DEA to dig down deep into what I’ve been doing. And trap me. Force me to flip. That doesn’t seem crazy, does it?”
“No,” Danny admitted. “But it’s not true.”
“Of course not. But that was why we were meeting in Aspen. They demanded it. They almost never meet with me in person—way too risky. That was who I was meeting with on the mountain, when you followed me. Their North American chief of security.”
“He’s able to enter the country?”
“He’s a naturalized US citizen.”
“Well, they didn’t kill you. They just talked. That must mean something, right?”
“It means either they’re not sure I’m the source—too much contradictory information—or they need me alive a little while longer. My bet’s on the second theory. They want me to transfer assets and provide financial records. Until I do that, I’m too valuable to them. Then the wood chipper.”
“Jesus, Tom, I . . .” Danny found himself agonizing, arguing with himself. He couldn’t keep up this lie. He couldn’t do this to his friend.
“So while we were meeting, Alejandro was patrolling the north sector, and that was when he—well, he obviously didn’t recognize you. I assume you remember that.”
Danny nodded. Galvin thought he’d seen Alejandro’s face. No sense in pretending otherwise.
“I’m sorry about that,” Galvin said. “It was a stupid mistake. As soon as I saw your face, I told them you’d innocently followed me down the back of the mountain. Which happens to be true.”
He paused. Danny nodded.
“Basically, I was vouching for you, and they took me at my word. For the time being, anyway. But we had to abandon the meeting and call for help.”
“I guess I was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Danny said.
“It could have ended a lot differently. Fortunately, it didn’t.”
Danny nodded uneasily. “Fortunately.”
“Danny . . . I gotta ask you something. This—this is really important to me.”
Danny turned and saw that something—was it agony?—had come over Galvin’s face. He didn’t recognize it at first, because he hadn’t seen it before, but Galvin was overcome by emotion. “Of course—what is it?”
“Listen, if anything happens—to me, to me and Celina . . .” He fell silent.
Danny nodded, encouraging him to go on.
“Will you promise me?—promise you’ll take care of my kids. Especially Jenna.”
“Well, I mean—um, of course—”
“Danny, I need this. I need to know. I’ve got nowhere else to turn.”
52
As they wound their way back along the cliffside road to the car, Danny felt light-headed, woozy.
He glanced to his left, at the chasm below. Here and there the jagged rock face was dusted with patches of ice and powdered-sugar snowdrifts. The sight made his head swim with vertigo.
“Okay,” Danny said, because he didn’t know what else to say. He nodded. Galvin was trapped just like Danny was trapped.
“Brother?”
Danny turned. Galvin was looking down.
“Danny, I’m trusting you like I’ve never trusted anyone in my life. It’s a relief just to be able to talk about it. You know, to know I can trust you.”
Galvin’s words sliced into him. Danny was almost overcome with guilt. All he could manage to say was, “Of course.”
The Suburban was parked in the same place it had been. But Alejandro the driver wasn’t behind the wheel. Galvin stopped ten feet or so away and peered warily around.
“What the hell?” he muttered.
The car was there, but not the driver.
“Maybe he went to take a piss?”
Galvin, who had a stricken look on his face, shook his head.
Danny took a couple of steps and looked. The ground in front of the Suburban was stained dark, in a large irregular oval, like an oil slick. The snowdrifts and ice-crusted ruts were stained with red. Strewn here and there were gobbets and streamers of wine red and greasy tangled cords of sickly yellow.
It looked like the kill floor of an industrial slaughterhouse.
Danny whispered “No” and came closer and saw a carcass on the ground, too small to be human. The body of a horribly slaughtered animal. A dog or a fox, maybe?
Galvin followed Danny around to the front of the Suburban—Alejandro must have moved it while waiting for them—looking perplexed. “What the hell is this?”
Even stranger, the carcass appeared to be fastened to the front of the truck. A stainless steel winch cable had been tied around the hump, which was in turn looped into a galvanized hook fastened to the trailer hitch behind the front bumper.
The hump moved. It was still alive.
Danny looked at Galvin, who suddenly pitched forward and vomited, the splash audible.
“Jesus,” Danny said and took another step closer.
Once out of the shadow, the carcass began to take on a recognizable contour. It was too small, indeed, to be a human body; it was maybe half the length of a body, and now it became clear why.
A chuff and a ragged breath and then a keening, an animal whimper.
What he saw he knew at once he’d never forget.
Something scrabbled in the blood-soaked earth, something attached to the hump, and he saw fingers, human fingers, twitching and wriggling.
“Oh, dear God in heaven,” Galvin whispered. He lunged for the door handle on the driver’s side, doubling over, then struggling up to grab the handle, steadying himself.
Danny, too, vomited, and the keening filled his ears and he stared dully at the crab-scuttling fingers.
Galvin yanked the car door open. All the while he was gasping and gagging and moaning. “My God, my God,” he said, again and again.
Galvin now came around the front of the car, a black pistol in one hand. He thumbed the safety, racked the slide like a seasoned hunter, and then he pulled the trigger and shot his chauffeur in the head. Finally, thank God, the desperate clawing fingers were still.
53
Danny knew now what had happened.
His understanding came in waves. Isolated details aligned and then realigned themselves into new patterns like a kaleidoscope turning.
Ten feet from the Suburban’s grille the tire tracks of a much larger truck rutted deeply in the ground. It was where the other truck must have parked and spun forward, Alejandro’s legs yoked to its rear bumper. He must have been gagged so that neither Danny nor Galvin could hear his screams.
He knew from his web searches that what had just happened there was a type of execution favored by the Mexican drug cartels in certain instances.
He wondered whether the cartels knew they we
re reenacting one of the most macabre executions of the medieval era, reserved for those found guilty of high treason. He’d read once about a Frenchman named François Ravaillac, who assassinated King Henry IV of France, for which he was punished in a particularly gruesome manner. Each of his arms and legs was roped to a different horse in the Place de Grève. The horses were then whipped to run in four different directions, tearing the man apart, literally limb from limb. Drawn and quartered.
The Mexican drug cartels preferred the brisk efficiency of two cars or trucks driving in opposite directions, though. Lacking a key to the Suburban, they’d obviously used just their own vehicle.
But it did the job.
• • •
“We have to dump his body,” Galvin said. “No choice.” He looked around wildly, pointing the weapon. “Can’t involve the cops.” Danny looked around as well. Whoever had done this might still be in the immediate vicinity. He saw no one.
Galvin beckoned him over. Danny moved like a sleepwalker, as if hypnotized. Slowly, like wading through a pond.
The lower half of Alejandro’s body had been dumped on a snowbank a ways down the road. Galvin waved Danny over. Danny followed the broad swath of blood on the ground that had gouted from the man’s dismembered legs and torso.
Wound around his feet and ankles was more steel cable, also attached to a galvanized hook. On the feet were black leather boots. On the legs, dress slacks. Above the belt tumbled loops of glistening viscera.
He said, “Oh, dear God,” and was sick again.
“Do you have gloves?”
Danny shook his head.
“Me neither. Just—” Galvin leaned over and grabbed the steel hook, which was dappled with blood. He tried to lift the ruined body, but it was too heavy. Instead, with concerted effort he dragged it along the ground as if it were a side of beef, toward the cliff road. His mouth was set, his face drawn.
“You’re going to throw it over?” Danny asked.
When Galvin didn’t answer, Danny said, “Why?”
“For the vultures, damn them,” Galvin said.
Danny looked at him. He was gritting his teeth in exertion. “At least it’ll slow down the identification of the body.”
“Someone’s going to see all that blood and the . . . and call the police.”
“Luckily, it’s snowing. Maybe that’ll cover this up. Buy us some time. You take the other . . .” Galvin gestured with a nod toward the Suburban, toward the horror that had been his driver’s head and hands and torso. He had gone quickly from a near catatonic to a man firmly in control.
In any other circumstance, Danny would have refused. To cover up a crime was to be implicated. But now he assented without a word. He went to the front of the Suburban and reached down and unhitched the galvanized hook from the bumper.
“Oh, good God,” Galvin said, looking away from the torso. “They carved a Z on him.”
“A Z? What’s that—for?”
But Galvin just shook his head.
• • •
The shadows cast on the mountains had grown longer and more distinct, midnight blue in the clefts and hollows. The jags and promontories were bathed in amber light. The sun hung low in the sky, a fat orange globe against the deepening blue. Above it, streaks and ribbons and whorls of clouds, charcoal and white, seemed to be lit from within. Opposite the sun the narrow pink smear of alpenglow glimmered over the mountaintops.
It had grown cold.
“We have to get the hell out of here. Get the hell out of Aspen, I mean.”
“Who, all of us?”
“All of us, right. Back to Boston.”
“You think—the women are in danger?”
“Maybe. It’s possible.”
“How are we going to explain it to them? Does your wife . . . ? No, of course she knows.”
“We’ll tell them I have an emergency meeting in Boston that just came up. I have to fly back, and since I’ve got the plane, everyone’s going with me. It’s a bummer we have to cut the weekend short, but they’ll deal.”
Danny nodded. “The girls won’t be happy.”
“Call your girlfriend and tell her to pack up,” Galvin said. “Your stuff, too. And Abby. Tell them we need to leave immediately.”
54
Galvin noticed blood spatters on the front bumper and grille. He pulled out a handkerchief and tried to wipe them away, but couldn’t. The blood had frozen on the metal.
“Shit,” he said. “We have to hose the car down or something. I can’t have blood tying this thing back to me.”
“I saw a car wash back in Carbondale,” Danny said. “You think we’d have time to stop?”
Galvin grimaced. “No, not really. But we don’t have a choice.”
• • •
After they’d gotten into the Suburban, and Galvin was behind the wheel, he tore open the Velcro closure of the left-hand pocket of his parka and took out his phone.
“Curtis,” he said. “Change in plans. I need the jet fueled up and ready to go in an hour. Can you do that?” A pause. “And file the flight plan. Ninety minutes, then. That’s fine. Thanks.” He disconnected the call without looking at the phone.
Galvin was driving crazily. He gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles were white. A few times, on the winding narrow road, he nearly slammed into the guardrail.
“Jesus, Tom—slow down.”
Galvin just muttered to himself. The car veered off the side of the road and hit a snowbank, then swerved back onto the road. Danny caught his breath and gripped the door handle for support.
“Holy shit! Let’s get there in one piece.”
Galvin groaned. “Great choice of words.” He sighed in frustration. “We gotta get home, make sure they’re okay. And make sure they hustle.”
Danny waited until Galvin’s driving was less frantic, then he called Lucy.
“What happened to you?” she said. “Where’d you go?”
“For a ride with Tom—listen, Tom needs to get back to Boston right away, which means we have to fly back with him.”
“Huh? Did something happen?”
“An important meeting just came up. An emergency.”
“We can’t stay on, the rest of us?”
“He’s taking the plane.”
“Okay, right. Well, that’s a shame. Baby, are you sure you’re okay? You sound—I don’t know, different, somehow. After that head injury—”
“Just bad reception. I’m fine. We’ll be back soon—maybe half an hour or so. Just—hurry.” And he ended the call.
“There it is,” Galvin said, pointing to a car wash up ahead on the right. Tires squealing, he pulled into the lot. It was open, with no other customers around.
A minute or so later, the Suburban bumped along the conveyor track through the clear vinyl panels and into the tunnel, with Danny and Galvin inside.
Danny interrupted the tense silence. “What happened back there, Tom? This is the second driver of yours to be targeted. That I know of.”
Galvin said nothing for a few seconds. He seemed distracted, but maybe he was just scared. “I told you, they’re not just drivers,” he said finally. “They’re babysitters. Minders planted by the cartel. To watch me—and to watch out for me. Which also makes them convenient targets.”
The car moved through the mitter curtains, hanging flaps of cloth that slapped the car’s exterior, swishing and wriggling back and forth. It crawled along at what seemed an excruciatingly slow pace.
“So who did it? Your bosses, the Sinaloans?”
“No . . . Remember that Z carved into his . . . abdomen? Tells me it’s Los Zetas.”
“Zetas? What—?”
“That’s another cartel,” Galvin said. “There’s seven major cartels. Biggest players are Sinaloa—my guys—and Los Zetas. Some people
say the Zetas are the most sophisticated, the most dangerous of them all. And that thing with the body and the two cars? That’s a Zeta signature.”
“But why would a rival cartel target your driver?”
He shook his head. He shrugged. “I don’t have any earthly idea,” he said, looking at Danny, fear in his eyes.
Danny thought of Alejandro standing outside the coffee shop that morning. He’d seen Danny meeting with the DEA guy, Slocum. Obviously, Danny couldn’t say anything to Galvin about it, but he couldn’t help but wonder: Did Alejandro’s murder have something to do with his seeing Danny that morning?
His BlackBerry played “Sweet Home Alabama.”
“Sweetie,” he answered. “Querida.” He launched into a hurried conversation in Spanish. Danny could make out only a few words. Inmediatamente. And protección. And peligro, which he knew meant “danger.” Words like that. He was telling her what had just happened, maybe. Telling her they had to leave.
The high-pressure nozzles assaulted the Suburban’s windows and its flanks. It was like driving through the worst rainstorm ever.
He hung up and for a long while he said nothing, just watched the hot air blast from the nozzles on either side, blowing the droplets away, the wind from a dozen hair dryers.
“My time is up,” he said finally. “I have to vanish.”
“Vanish?”
“And only you and my wife can know about it.”
55
Graciela Arriaga had worked at the Drug Enforcement Administration headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, for almost eighteen years.
She was a file clerk in the Records Management Unit. She knew her colleagues mocked her behind her back, considered her humorless, uptight, rigid, rules-bound. A stiff. They called her Debbie Downer.
The truth was, she was none of those things. She was a woman who just wanted to do her job and do it right, keep her head down, earn a living, be left alone.
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