by Marc Rainer
She's right. Two attacks on the old homestead in the last case, and a dead cop and prosecutor in the one before that. Maybe that's why I have the shakes. He wondered if he should tell her about his hand, but decided against it. I don't need to worry her until I know exactly what it is.
"I was thinking more of romance novels," he said.
Lynn almost dropped her coffee. Her last sip was running out of her nose.
"Damn you! Don't do that when I'm drinking something."
"No, really." He began to type on an imaginary typewriter on the table in front of him. "The Trapper and the Trollop" by Jeffrey Trask. I need a subtitle, like the ones you see on all those hot-blooded book covers. A rhetorical question."
He air-typed some more. "Could this purring minx steal him away from his furry minks?"
"Oh my god!" she howled.
"Chapter One. Misty Gale was a steamy tramp as she descended the gangplank from the tramp steamer into the streets of Skagway—" "Misty Gale? Skagway?"
"It's a real town in Alaska. I'm going for realism here, and there's no real town named 'Skankway.'"
"You're crazy."
"Probably. Let's see now." The air-typing resumed. "Misty had never met a man like—I need one of those soft porn names here—I got it. Misty had never met a man like Phil Sizemore."
"No, no, no, no, NO!"
"What, too low-brow?"
"I don't think you could sink any lower."
"Wanna bet?"
"I think you've already hit bottom, Mr. Author."
His fingers pounded the imaginary keys again. "'How was your inside passage?' Phil asked her. 'Pretty rough,' Misty replied, 'but then some nice seaman gave me some cranberry juice—'"
"OH MY GOD!" She turned and headed for the bedroom. "Stick to your day job, you crazy man!"
Tampico, Mexico
8:03 a.m.
Aguilar was almost out the door when the phone rang.
"Yes?"
"LU1S!" His wife's voice was a tortured scream.
"Linda—what's wrong?"
"It's the Vacas. They're dead! All of them, even the children. They've been butchered, Luis!"
Aguilar raced to his car, grabbing a radio as he lunged into the driver's seat. "Listen to me, Linda. Get out of there. NOW!"
El Huizachal Village
San Fernando, Tamaulipas, Mexico
August 24, 2010
Aguilar sat across the table from the young man. The boy, eighteen years old, was still in pain, but was holding up remarkably well after his ordeal. His head was heavily bandaged, and his speech was slow and somewhat slurred from the pain medications, but he was functioning.
The table was in what had once been the kitchen of a farmhouse. Aguilar could see through a window that his men were still swarming over the walls of a large building that had stood adjacent to the house. The roof was gone now, collapsed years before. From time to time, another body would emerge from behind one of the walls, carried out on a stretcher by two marines to a waiting truck.
"Just a few more minutes, Freddy," the Captain said. "You'll be on the way to a hospital very shortly, and we'll make sure your room is well-guarded. If you can, I'd like to make sure I have understood your story accurately."
The boy nodded. "I understand. I think I'll be alright for a little while."
Aguilar wondered if it was the drugs or the events of the day that made his witness speak in a dull monotone. "You were on the way to the US. You made your way here from Hidalgo, and you boarded the bus which was supposed to take you up to Nuevo Laredo." Aguilar looked up from his notes with raised eyebrows.
The boy nodded.
"Good." Aguilar wrote a checkmark by the paragraph on his notes. "On the 22nd, the bus that you and the others were riding in was suddenly surrounded by three trucks. There were eight men, all armed, who forced you and the others into their trucks, and they brought you all to this house."
Another nod.
"You remained here overnight, and were afraid to run because the men said they were all Los Zetas, and they seemed to be trying to recruit you as soldiers, or to force you or your families to pay a ransom. Nobody in your party agreed to join them, because everyone was trying to get to Texas to find work or relatives. No one had any money to pay them. When you all refused to join them, the Zetas took everyone to the old warehouse."
Freddy nodded again. Aguilar could see tears welling in the boy's eyes.
"Inside the warehouse, you were blindfolded and forced to stand facing the walls. How long were you standing like that?"
"I'm not sure," the boy said. He was sobbing now. "Maybe twenty minutes or so."
"This is important." Aguilar looked at his notes. "Tell me again what happened in the warehouse.
The boy seemed to go into a trance for a moment, then shook his head and started speaking.
"They started shooting. I could hear them coming down the line toward me. At first I flinched with each shot, but then I just listened … and smelled. I could hear and smell each gunshot. I heard the bodies falling and a few screams. Every time I heard a body fall, every time I heard a shot fired, I could tell they were getting closer to me. Then I could smell the gunpowder as the gun was fired at the man next to me. I heard and felt him fall to the floor. I smelled the gun, and knew it was being pointed at my head."
The sobs grew deeper, and the boy took another moment to recover.
"I must have turned my head just as the gun was fired, and the bullet just grazed me. I played dead until I heard the men leave in their trucks. I waited until nightfall. I ran toward some lights and knocked on some doors in the village, but no one would help me. They were afraid to open their doors."
The boy was crying again, catching fitful breaths between the gasping whimpers.
"You walked all night until you saw some of my men at a checkpoint," Aguilar continued for him, "and told them what had happened. You brought us back here, and showed us the warehouse."
Freddy nodded, sobbing pitifully. Aguilar reached across the table and put his hand on the boy's shoulder.
"My next question is also very important, and it is the last one I have for you today, Freddy."
The boy tried to stop crying, and looked up. He nodded once more.
"Did you hear any of these guys call each other by name, or by a number, or by any other title?"
"A couple," Freddy said. "One called the guy who seemed to be in charge 'Number Three.' I thought that was strange because he seemed to be running the show. He called another one 'Rider,' and another name I heard was 'Rat.' They called one guy 'Rat' behind his back, after he had gone outside. I also heard someone call one guy El Wache."
"Thank you, Freddy. You've been very helpful," Aguilar said. He turned to a sergeant standing by the door. "Take him to the medical facility in San Fernando. Guard him well."
The sergeant saluted and helped the boy stand before walking him slowly to a waiting ambulance.
Aguilar walked toward the warehouse. A lieutenant met him halfway.
"How many, Torres?" he asked.
"Seventy dead, Capitán. All shot in the back of the head. Two more alive for now, but not in very good shape. Two more missing, according to the survivors. Did the boy have any idea who did this?"
"Los Zetas" Aguilar replied. "Lazcano's crew. The kid mentioned El Wache. That's Édgar Huerta Montiel, one of Lazcano's top lieutenants. The Zetas all use little titles. El Wache, ElToto, The Rat, The Rider, Lazcano has taken to calling himself 'El Lazca! He probably took the two missing victims to his ranch to feed his damned tigers. That psycho thinks he's Pablo Escobar."
The lieutenant walked with Aguilar toward a waiting armored car. "Have you heard from your wife, Capitán?"
Aguilar nodded. "Yes, she is safe with her parents in San Antonio. I miss her, but after what happened to poor Vaca and his family—"
"You don't owe us an explanation, Capitán. If we could send our families to safety, we would all do so. You are still here with us
, sir. We know you could have resigned and gone with her."
The lieutenant stepped back and saluted him.
Laredo, Texas
September 20, 2010, 9:19 p.m.
The stockbroker had retired early, before he was fifty. His success on the floor of the exchange had provided him a very comfortable living, more than he needed, and the extra cash had enabled him to buy the ranch north of town.
He watched in the moonlight as the ton-and-a-half headed up the gravel drive toward the gate. The gate, the highway, the capital, the Big Apple, the broker thought. He scanned the edges of his property. Nothing moving, no lights except for the truck. Good. I'll see him in a week.
He looked around the ranch again, the flats of south Texas. This was his mother's country, where the dark-haired Mexican girl had met his father, the Italian from Bensonhurst. His father had enlisted in the Air Force while 'Nam was in full swing, hoping to avoid the rice paddies. The old man had been assigned to Laredo Air Force Base as an aircraft mechanic, and had met his mother on one of his frequent adventures across the border. The broker had been born on the old air base before it closed in 1973, part of the force reduction as the war had drawn down. The old base's runways now served as the Laredo International Airport.
His father's skills with planes had landed the old man a job back in New York at JFK, and enough union money and benefits to get his son a decent education. He had degrees from NYU and Columbia, a BA and an MBA, and had eventually punched his ticket to the floor of the exchange.
He had been good in the city, and had wheeled and dealed his way through hundreds of thousands of dollars and dozens of pretty and willing young ladies. While young himself, he had been unwilling to give up the fast life for any commitments. As time passed, he found himself left more and more alone with his money and his receding hairline, and New York began to sour for him. He had always enjoyed his trips back to Texas with his mother. The visits with her family in Nuevo Laredo had always seemed honest and relaxed compared to his life in New York, so he emptied his bank account and headed south, arriving in Laredo in mid-2009.
He brought some of the city with him. He still knew how to cut the corners on a deal, how to get and use the inside knowledge he wasn't supposed to have.
He also brought to Texas a substantial appetite for cocaine.
It had worried him a little before the move. He told himself, in alternating moments of good and bad intention, that he'd just kick his expensive vice "cold turkey" and get healthy; the next minute he'd figure it would be easy to find a new plug. Hell, he was minutes away from Mexico, where you could score anything if you waited five minutes.
It had actually taken him about ten minutes in a Laredo bar and a knowing glance at a Mexican who looked like a rodent to line up not only a new source of supply, but a new career.
It had started easily enough. An ounce of coke here or there, some innocent chatter with the Mexican with the narrow jawline and protruding front teeth. They spoke in Spanish, his mother's native tongue. He told his new coke dealer about his friends in the city, that he could afford the ounces he was buying on a regular basis because he'd put up some money from his former life. He had some land north of town, he kept quiet, and never sold the stuff to anyone else. No need to worry. He was a safe customer.
He awoke one night to find someone prodding his foot with an assault rifle. The lamp on his nightstand had been switched on, and he had seen the formerly friendly face from the bar smiling—no, leering—at him, from the foot of his bed. There were others in the room. They called one El Verdugo—The Executioner. That had gotten his attention.
His visitors offered him a simple business proposition. He would help them by using his ranch and his contacts in New York to set up a new route for their products. He would hire and direct the transportation for these products to New York and other destinations en route as directed. He would be responsible for developing some marketing contacts and customers on the East Coast. His visitors told him they were sure that he already had some such contacts, given his love for the white powder. In return, he would be compensated handsomely. They were sure he would accept their offer, they said, because—if he refused—they would kill him. Slowly.
He had accepted their proposal.
Hiring the truck driver had been his biggest challenge, but he had been up to the task. He had, after all, been a professional gamer, playing the edges of the market very well for all those years, and he had learned to recognize the others who lived on those edges. There was always just something about them. The way they sat on a bar stool, smoked a cigarette, watched a room. It was something he couldn't define, but it was something he knew.
You could never trust the loud ones. They were trying to be noticed; it was why they were loud. The quiet ones came in two varieties. There were the ones who were a danger to everyone else—the seething, bitter ones who would remain quiet until they exploded in anger. He had learned to mark those men after very brief conversations. Once marked, they were left to their demons. The quiet, careful ones who had learned to live in the shadows were the ones he had always hired for anything not completely kosher. As long as they were paid, they stayed quiet. They would share information about their companies, their friends, their bosses. Stocks rose and fell on such tips, and those who knew how to ride those waves prospered.
He first saw the little man in the same bar where he had first met The Rat. Their conversation at the bar had not lasted long, and would not have meant anything to anyone who had not shared their view of the world and their view of what they believed to be business. The chat had concluded with a brief, yet informative, exchange.
"Been on the road?" he had asked the man.
"Quite a bit."
"CDL?"
"Yeah."
"Interested in hauling some small loads off the books? No scales?"
"How's the money?"
"Good. Real good."
"Sure. What the hell."
A business card had been passed. It had been enough.
555 4th Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C.
November 10, 2010, 8:30 a.m.
That damned light's on again. Trask punched the message button on the phone hard enough to rock the handset in its cradle.
"Jeff, this is Julia. Mr. Eastman would like you to come up when you get a chance, please."
Eastman was alone this time. He motioned for Trask to shut the door behind him.
"Jeff, you know the question before I ask it. I got another call from Heidelberg this morning, and—"
"And what exactly does he want me to do, Ross? Pull some evidence out of my backside after his private hires tromped all over our crime scene?"
"I know, I know. You just have to understand the pressure he's putting on this office, and—"
"I understand the pressure he's putting on you. I don't understand the pressure you're putting on me."
"You don't?"
Trask took a deep breath, trying to measure his words. Back off. This guy's backed every play you've made. It's not his fault. He supported Lassiter's decision to promote you out of cycle, kept the departmental know-it-alls calm when the Salvadorans were shooting up the town, and gave you a chance to solve the mess. Take it easy.
"I'm sorry, Ross. You've been the best boss I could imagine, with all we've been through. I'm not blowing smoke up your skirt. You've kept the political hounds at bay in all my past cases, enough to let me focus on the real job at hand; enough to let me always do the right thing. It's just that—for whatever reason—I keep getting the feeling that the squeeze you're getting from Heidelberg may be more serious than what you've deflected in the past. Am I wrong?"
It was Eastman's turn to pause.
"Maybe not. I was told this morning that the senator is losing faith in my ability to handle this job. He's the most powerful figure on the Hill, Jeff. He could pull a lot of strings if he wanted to. He's very close to the president and the attorney general. I could be out the doo
r tomorrow if he made the call."
Trask nodded. "Obviously, I hope to heaven that doesn't happen, and would feel horrible if it did, but I know that you don't expect me to create evidence, or to charge someone who may not deserve it just to satisfy some political or PR concern. I won't do that."
"I'm not asking you to. I am asking you to think the investigation through again, and to consider some avenues you haven't pursued yet."
"Sure. Got anything in mind?"
"Don't get defensive. Knock it around again with your task force, please. Anything to let me tell Heidelberg's office you're working on some new angle."
Trask nodded again. "Will do. There's something you can do for me, though."
"What's that?"
"In your most deferential, political, and diplomatic fashion, please inform Hugh Heidelberg that my oath of office—like his—is to the Constitution, and that our canons of ethics require us to do the right thing. This isn't Rome, and we don't swear allegiance to some consul or tribune."
"I'll work on that. Maybe. Cool off and go see your team."
Trask headed back to his own office and dialed a number from memory. He never forgot the important ones. He could still remember the two his mother had told him to memorize as a child in case of emergency. One at home, the other of some family friends. The Munns. 583-1328.
"What's up, Jeff?" Barry Doroz asked.
"Squad meeting in your conference room in about fifteen?"
"Sure. We can do that. What case?"
"The Heidelberg girl."
Doroz sighed audibly. Trask could visualize him rolling his eyes at the ceiling.
"We need to look at some new directions, Bear." "You have some in mind?"
"See you in fifteen." Trask returned the handset to its cradle, and rolled his own eyes upward. No, I don't have anything in mind at the moment. He stood and headed for the hallway, pausing at the door when he saw his overcoat hanging on a wall hook. He left it. It's not that cold today, and I'm not going far.
He paused again when the elevator opened on the lobby floor. Guns? Naah. Not just to cross the street. Too much of a hassle. He took a right outside the front of the building, heading north. He stopped at the curb even though there was no traffic, and stared at the corner across the street.