by Marc Rainer
She took a moment before leaving the vehicle to gather her courage, and her motivation. She raised her head and spoke to the sky. "Little sister, I promised you I wouldn't tell anyone who you and Misty were with that night. I know you were scared to death of him, and it looks now like you had reason to be. I mean to make that right for you; for you and those other poor girls. Life's hard enough on the track to have to worry about your protection sending you to the grave."
She opened her purse and checked the gun, a compact .38. It was loaded, with a round chambered. She got out of the car and headed for the door. He opened it before she had a chance to ring the bell.
"Well, well, well," Tommy Harris said smiling. "If it isn't the queen of the track. Finally gettin' tired of the dangerous independent life, Bootsy?"
"I thought we'd talk about that, Tommy."
"C'mon in." He led her into the living room. You know my policy, baby. I gotta be real familiar with the merchandise I'm offering to my customers."
"I know. I'm gonna make you forget every other girl you ever had, baby."
She reached into her purse.
The Casino Royale
Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico
August 26, 2011, 3:50 p.m.
Four vehicles—a Mini Cooper, a Chevrolet Equinox, a blue GMC truck, and a gray Volkswagon Beetle—arrived at the entrance to the casino. Nine armed men piled out of the vehicles and stormed inside. One of the Zetas struck the receptionist in the face with the butt of his assault rifle.
"Everybody out! Now!" The one known as La Rana waved as a few patrons followed his direction and ran for the door. Many more ran in the opposite direction, seeking refuge in rear bathrooms and stairways. "We are Los Zetas, and the management here has proven that they do not recognize our authority."
The Zetas began dousing the walls with gasoline, and La Rana tossed a match into the pool on the floor, igniting the inferno. The patrons who had fled toward the rear of the casino tried the emergency exits, but found them locked.
Tampico Naval Air Station
Tamaulipas, Mexico
August 27, 2011, 9:12 a.m.
"Fifty-three dead in the casino fire, Major," Torres handed Aguilar the report. "Witnesses on the scene said it was Los Zetas."
"Any idea who was in charge of this little massacre?" Aguilar asked.
"Initial intelligence has identified the leader as someone calling himself 'La Rana.'"
Aguilar nodded. "Carlos Oliva Castillo. My source told me he had been promoted. No sign of Lazcano?"
"None reported, sir. Are we going to Nueva León, Major?"
"Not this time, Torres. The president has ordered three thousand troops and federal police to the city. The rest of the state is being patrolled by Black Hawks—the helicopters we bought from the Americans. I imagine it's quite a dragnet. What have you learned about the victims?"
"Ten men, forty-two women. Two were pregnant. Most died from inhaling poisonous fumes. Only seven were actually burned. I don't have any word on their identities yet."
"Thank you, Torres. Keep me informed if there were any relatives of our men among the dead. They may need some leave to take care of their loved ones."
FBI Field Office
Washington, D.C.
August 29, 2011, 10:15 a.m.
Trask knocked on the frame of the open door to Barry Doroz' office.
"Morning, Bear. You said we had a major setback?"
Doroz didn't say a word, but handed Trask a police report. Trask sat down in one of the black plastic chairs facing the desk and scanned the paper. Officers responded after neighbors complained of afoul odor emanatingfrom the residence. After ringing the doorbell and receiving no response, entry was forced into the residence. The body of the sole occupant of the home, Tommy R. Harris, black male, DOB 07/15/1980, was found on thefloor of the living room in an advanced state of decomposition. The deceased was transported to the office of the medical examiner. Autopsy revealed the cause of death to be a single gunshot wound to the head.
Trask looked up at Doroz. "Guess that explains why we haven't been able to find him to follow him. Any leads on the shooter?"
"Nope. If I find him, I think we'll bill that citizen for our overtime last week, and then maybe give him a medal. Where does that leave us for now?"
"I'm thinking of a song: 'The Bug,'" Trask said. "You heard of Mark Knopfler? Dire Straits?"
"I know the band."
"'Sometimes you're the windshield. Sometimes you're the bug.' I feel a lot like a bug right now."
FBI Field Office
Washington, D.C.
August 31, 2011, 11:14 a.m.
"They can't stop making their deliveries," Carter said. "Tommy or no Tommy. They'll either have to find another distributor, or our friend Roscoe will have to pick up the slack. Heroin's too addictive for them to just cease operations. Every junky customer they have will be going into withdrawal—not a pretty sight if you've never seen it—and starting to act crazy out of desperation. They'll have to keep things calm, and keep their money flowing."
"Briggs is the most likely target at the moment," Doroz agreed. "We need to decide where and when to pick him off. It'll have to be the right time and place or we still risk blowing the case up completely. If he's not holding when we hit him, he'll run straight to his boss."
"Just a couple of questions, and maybe some ridiculous thoughts first," Trask said. "Dix, you've seen the homicide file. First, did the guys on the scene get Harris' phone, and second, did he keep any records of which girls worked for him?"
"The answers, respectively, are yes and yes."
"My third question, then, is this: Does anyone—Metro PD, FBI, whoever—have an undercover asset who could fill the void left by the untimely death of Mr. Harris?"
"What on earth are you thinking, Jeff ?" Doroz asked. "Plug a UC in cold?"
"If done correctly, with the right, street-wise undercover cop, it wouldn't look cold even to Roscoe Briggs. Our UC moves into Harris' house. We pay the rent. He starts contacting the hookers first. We have a roster and probably contacts for them from the phone and other notes. UC tells the working girls that he's Tommy's cousin, and is taking over his business, same terms. That word gets back to Roscoe from one or more of the girls. If Roscoe is as nervous as I think he is about making the dope deliveries himself, he'll be glad to offer our new pimp an opportunity to make some more money on the side."
"Why do you think Roscoe's nervous about handling the dope himself?" Rhodes asked. "Just trying to learn the ropes here."
"Because he hasn't been doing it all along," Trask replied. "In the dope game, every level in the distribution chain costs money. It's why customers try to cut out their plugs and deal directly with that plug's supplier. They get the same amount for less because they're not paying another middleman. If Roscoe wasn't hinky about carrying the stuff, he could make more cash just doing it himself. Tommy Harris was either cutting the dope or raising the price—or both—before it went to the hookers. He wasn't working for free. Roscoe wasn't willing to do that himself for some reason."
"You think Briggs will buy that?" Wisniewski asked. "What about the club owner, Adipietro?"
"Odds are that Joe the tennis pro doesn't even know about Harris," Doroz said. "He's interested in insulation. We can't trace something directly to him if he didn't know about it. We have to go through Briggs to get to Adipietro, then through Adipietro to get to his suppliers."
"I know a guy in homicide," Carter said. "He just got there from Georgetown. He hasn't worked vice, so the girls on the track won't know him. If he's willing, he'd fit the bill."
"There's one big rub, maybe two," Doroz said. "I'm sorry to have to be the bureaucrat in the room, but first, what do we do when we get the dope, and two, is the Metropolitan Police Department going to be okay with us using one of their assets as a pimp?"
"If we get the dope, let's check the weight," Trask said. "A hundred grams of heroin gets the distributer—in this case, Br
iggs handing it to the UC—a mandatory minimum of five years. If we get lucky and he hands off a kilo, it's ten years. If we get some recorded conversation to establish the history of this thing, you know, the past deliveries to Tommy, the weight in the past deals drives the sentence a lot higher, even without proof that it was their dope that killed the victims. That's some leverage to throw at a first timer like Briggs with no prison record, especially at his age. He might well roll over on Adipietro.
"We don't even have to pay for the dope—or let it hit the street—if Briggs trusts the UC; it's probably getting handed off on consignment. Briggs gets paid after the hookers pay their pimp. If we have to pick up some cash from the working girls for the tricks they're doing, we can pay them back later if the police department gets queasy."
"A pimp rebate?" Wisniewski asked. "That's new."
"We're in uncharted waters, gang," Trask said. "This isn't 'out of the box,' it's off the map. I know that. We all know that if we have to make any payments to Briggs for the dope, we can record the bills and maybe find some of 'em back in Adipietro's mitts. That wouldn't hurt the case. We hold the dope for evidence."
"I might find enough money—with approval from up the chain—to go one or two rounds on that," Doroz said. "No more. Once we get enough for a sizeable charge on Roscoe, we'll have to move. Nobody in my chain of command is going to like paying thousands to Adipietro or the Zetas."
"If you have any trouble with that, let me know," Trask said. "I know a certain senator who's willing to intervene on our behalf."
"What about the girls going through withdrawal?" Lynn asked. "Are we giving them anything to prevent that?"
"We can't be in that business," Doroz said. "She's got you there, Jeff."
"Yes, she does," Trask said, smiling at his wife. "We can't be responsible for any overdoses ourselves, so we can't push the dope to the customers. We hold it for evidence, and hope we get enough dope and conversation from our initial contact with Briggs to charge him. The addicts will have to deal with their addictions on their own terms. Briggs is probably keeping them from their withdrawal pains at the moment."
"We'll need to move on this yesterday," Carter said. "I'll run over to homicide. We'll sign our man up and plug him in. I kind of like the idea."
"Speaking of homicide, any leads on the Harris murder, Dix?" Wisniewski asked.
"Nothing, from what I hear," Carter replied. "That file is on a fast track to the cold case shelves."
Washington, D.C.
September 12, 2011, 1:18 a.m.
"Hit your lights and siren and stay behind him long enough to make him think we're on him," Carter said. "We just want to heat him up."
"Yeah, I got it," Rhodes replied, shooting a look at Carter. "You're lucky I don't have a cup of coffee."
She was back in her patrol uniform, and they had borrowed a marked patrol cruiser for the night. She activated the equipment and waited for the van—about forty yards ahead—to pull over. She kept a constant speed, and veered just enough into the parking lane behind the van to give the driver reason to sweat before she steered back into the center right traffic lane and shot by him, pretending to be on the way to another call.
Inside the van, Roscoe Briggs was sweating profusely. He waited until he was sure that the police cruiser had gone by before he felt his heart rate start to slow. He sat for a moment, and finally reached for the small duffle bag that he'd kicked under his seat. His hands were shaking.
Three blocks ahead, Officer Rhodes made a right turn, then cut the lights and siren.
"Perfect," Carter said. "Let's do this again sometime. Like a couple of nights from now."
Tampico Naval Air Station
Tamaulipas, Mexico
September 15, 2011, 2:15 p.m.
"We have a report from a little town in Zacatecas, Major," Torres said. "It's called Juchipila. There are apparently eighty gunmen there who've seized the town and are claiming that they are there to wipe out any Zetas in the area."
"My source with the Zetas reported that they were expecting a fight with their old bosses from the Gulf Cartel," Aguilar said. "And so it begins. It would not be a problem if they'd just kill each other, but there are citizens to protect. Get the men ready. I'll see what assets might be available in the area. We'll be in the air to join them as soon as the choppers are fueled. We can form up outside the town and move in after dark."
Washington, D.C.
8:38 p.m.
Detective Jerry Winstead of the Metropolitan Police Department switched on the digital device hooked to his belt as he looked through the curtains of the brownstone. The device was designed to appear to be a smart phone, and could actually function as a cell phone if anyone checked, but its purpose for the next few minutes would be two-fold—to record any conversation that Detective Winstead might be having with the driver of the vehicle that had just pulled to the curb, and to transmit that conversation to another van waiting a block away. Winstead noted the lettering on the truck at the curb.
"Metro Maintenance Services. Here we go, Dix."
Winstead waited for the doorbell to ring. He shuffled to the door as if he'd just been awakened from a not-long-enough night's sleep. Gotta look like I'm keeping pimp hours. He opened the door to face a man wearing a shirt with a name embroidered in an oval over the right breast pocket. Roscoe. Bingo.
"Yeah? Help you with something?" Winstead asked.
"I'm lookin' for Tommy," Briggs said.
"Bullshit. I know who you are, and I know you know Tommy's dead. He told me 'bout you, Briggs, so get the hell off my porch."
"Easy, okay?" Briggs said, flashing his most apologetic smile. "I was just bein' careful, my man. Now who are you? What are you doin' livin' in Tommy's house, and what exactly did he tell you about me?"
"I’m his cousin, I’m takin’ over his business, and he told me that it was your smack that was the reason he was havin’ to recruit a bunch of new ho’s to pay his bills. So why don’t you get the hell off my porch?" Like you said, Dix, best way to put ‘em off guard is to make ‘em think you don’t want nuthin’ to do with ‘em.
"Easy now, easy," Briggs said. "I may have a business proposition that might interest you."
"Business is goin' just fine, and it's goin' to get better. I don't need you or any bad dope complicatin' my life or my girls' lives right now, so—"
"How much of a complication would an extra five grand a week be?"
Winstead stepped back from the door, looking as if someone had just shown him a unicorn. "What the hell did you just say?"
"Five grand a week."
Winstead looked up and down the street as if he was checking for police surveillance. He looked back at Briggs. "Come on in."
They sat on opposite sides of the living room, Winstead still appearing skeptical.
"What's the deal?" he asked Briggs.
"Same deal I had with Tommy before he died. I supply the white, you piece it out to the girls, collect the money, keep your cut, and I'll be around to collect. Speaking of cut, you can step on the stuff before you hand it out. Cut it to fifty percent pure if you want and double your money. Makes no difference to me long as I get paid."
"I ain't into putting' nobody in the ground, even if it's just ho's. That ain't good for business, or stayin' outta the joint."
"That never has to happen, know what I'm sayin'? Tommy's girls that OD'd just didn't know how to use the product correctly. Once we got the word to 'em on the right amounts to shoot, everything was cool. We didn't have no problems at all after that."
"You sure?"
"Hell, yes, we went through a half a key a week to his bitches and other customers, and never had an issue or a complaint. When it's done right it's safe, and the money's real good, brutha."
"I'm still not too sure 'bout this. How much would I need to put together to start?"
"Not a dime. I'll front it to you. You pay me when you get paid. Just turn the stuff around quick. We've got other customers askin' f
or it, if you can't handle the job."
"I can handle it. Tommy told me about it. I used to stay with him some, but he didn't want you seein' me. He said that woulda made you nervous."
"He was right."
"When do we start?"
"Now if you want. The shit's in the van."
"Fine."
Briggs walked out the door and bounced down the steps from the porch to his van. He walked around to the driver's door, and was about to open it when he saw a police cruiser, its lights flashing and siren wailing, skid around the corner and head in his direction. He stepped close to the van, expecting it to pass him. Instead, the unit pulled in behind his truck just as two unmarked cars and another van pulled in front and beside his truck, boxing him in.
A female cop in uniform was out of the squad car in seconds, pointing a gun in his face and ordering him to the ground.
Juchipila, Zacatecas, Mexico
9:48 p.m.
"They all appear to have left yesterday, Torres," Aguilar said, walking out of the little town's administrative building. "The mayor says that the Gulf troops took over his city hall for about five hours, made all their proclamations, and then drove off."
"Kind of a wild goose chase for us, sir."
"It appears that way. If this is the worst the new Gulf bad asses can do, Lazcano will feed them to his damned cats. Let's go back to base."
FBI Field Office
Washington, D.C.
11:34 p.m.
Trask turned off the recorder. Roscoe Briggs sat across the table in the same interrogation room where he had answered questions from Carter and Wisniewski months before. This time he was in handcuffs, he had been read his Miranda warnings, waived them, and he had listened to his entire conversation with a man he now knew to be an undercover cop, not Tommy Harris' cousin.
"I just have one question for you, Mr. Briggs," Trask said, "and I'm not here to dance with you. This is the way it is, and there's no doubt about any of it. I wouldn't even be having this conversation with you if I didn't know that there are others out there who are at least equally guilty of killing five women with this poison—" Trask picked up the package of white powder and slammed it down on the table, "and probably more guilty of blowing up seventeen others. Your choices are cooperation, and by that I mean total, truthful, and right now cooperation, or life in a federal pen. What'll it be?"