For a moment Cooksin seemed to be in retreat, backing away from the oncoming cowboys, withdrawing into the corral. With a jerky, splay-legged motion he turned his back on the men, but finding himself facing the pen, the place where he had been captive, he abruptly stopped. "Oh-oh," Pete said. "Easy," Py said, sensing that the bull was about to panic when suddenly that's just what he did. Cooksin spun awkwardly once again, swinging his rear end around in deference to the "banderillos." And he charged.
First he came at Pete, who froze like a deer on a highway. "Whoa! Whoa!" Py said, seeing what was happening, and quickly Cooksin dodged in his tracks and retargeted him. "Hey! Hey! Hey!" yelled Sheriff Miller, trying to distract the bull, and in a flash Cooksin was reoriented and charging hard toward him. And this time he couldn't be stopped. The big bull lowered his head as he came forward and, seeing that, Sheriff Miller turned and started to run. Fleeing in panic, not watching where he was going, he ran directly into a light pole. The bull seemed momentarily confused as the Sheriff came to a dead stop against the greasy mast and bounced back flat on his back to the ground. "Oh my God," Tory said, watching from the yard as the sheriff lay supine.
Cooksin instantly veered away from the fallen lawman and trotted, head high and alert, around Pete's right flank and in the direction of the house. Tory, standing inside the fence, was now the only thing standing between rolling thunder and havoc and she began to wave her arms wildly, trying to shoo the Charolais away from her domain. "Get out of here! Get out of here!" she scolded, but he kept coming, walleyed as Pete and Py rushed from behind, admonishing him with desperate pleas to stay well clear of the house.
Nothing worked. Cooksin went through Tory's freshly restored white picket fence like it was so much kindling. Pickets went flying as the bull followed the fence line right around the perimeter of the yard, Tory unknowingly directing him in his rampage by flailing wildly at him. The bull snapped a 4 x 4 fence post off at ground level, flattened the rose bushes Tory had artistically arranged in the landscape, and pulled down the clothesline that she had strung between the house and a large elm that stood outside the fence. As Cooksin rumbled by, apparently headed for the main road, fifty yards from the house, Tory dropped to her knees in defeat. "Cut him off, Py!" she heard Pete yell, and in the background she heard Sheriff Miller moaning as he slowly got up off the ground. "You work your way around that side to cut him off and I'll go through the windrow!" Pete's voice grew distant as he disappeared into the pines. She saw the rear end of the big bull in a cloud of dust in the distance, and then looked around at the damage done to her yard. It didn't matter now whether they caught him or not, as far as she was concerned. Her picket fence was in shambles. Enchantment lay in pieces on the ground.
CHAPTER 11 – Meeting with the Devil
"So Jake – did you bring what we wanted?"
This was going to be no easy meeting, and it had been all Jake could think about as the Greyhound rolled south on Federal Avenue and past the railroad yards on Denver's gritty north side. There seemed to be no way to avoid having a scene with Pico. It was just going to be a question of trying to keep things from getting out of control, that in the unlikely event he had anything to say about it. Pico and his boys weren't easily led, and Jake was already late for their appointment, so he knew they'd be in a foul mood. As the bus crossed over Clear Creek on its way through Arvada, he tried to imagine a scenario, an escape plan. By the time the bus turned east on Colfax he still hadn't come up with one. Jake was in for trouble and he knew it.
Lorenz Pico was holing up at the Glenwood Crest, a little hotel on Colorado Boulevard not far from the state capital. He was registered under the name Leonard Filer, an alias that would be used only for as long as Pico was in Denver – a visitation that was not expected to last for more than a week or two. Down the hall from him were his two main counterparts: Wynn Frye, who was registered as Danny Votalo, and Thomas Larson, who was registered as William Holts.
Pico was a convicted felon, an extortionist and a racketeer who had been engaged in black market activities since the late '20s. He'd run bootleg whiskey as a kid during the prohibition, working indirectly for the Chicago syndicate. During the depression era '30s he branched out to durable goods, pulling heists east of the Mississippi River, selling the goods throughout the west. His favorite targets were trucking firms, some of whom participated fully in his scheme, sharing in a percentage of the illicit profits. Chicago bought him protection from the law. Teamsters apprised him of freight activities and cargoes and there were kickbacks all around. By the war years, Pico was connected well enough to expand into government properties, which he diverted from the war front through a network of underworld contacts. He could get hard to find materials like rubber and scrap metals and could resell items that the average American had forgotten about in deference to war needs.
By the '40s, Pico had a war chest so large that he used it to start a mortgage lending operation, his primary interest being in buying out legitimate truckers that had fallen behind on their bank notes. He got bankers' lists of independent truckers who were in financial shortfall and in danger of losing their rigs, or even their homes. Pico would buy out their outstanding loans and put the truckers in his employ, creating new repayment schedules and new interest rates. It was a hard offer to say no to as it kept the drivers working. It also made it virtually impossible for them to ever clear their debt and become, once again, independent. Instead, they became Pico's men, underwritten by a percentage of his illicit gains. He hired them cheap to trucking firms, using them to undercut legitimate drivers who also became Pico's men when they, too, were unable to meet their bank notes. Sometimes Pico stranded men permanently in his employ, selling their rigs out from underneath them, then hiring them out to freight companies as drivers, where they worked as moles, feeding Pico information about what was being shipped, load sizes and cargo values. Pico's operatives would heist selected trucks and sell their loads, the freight companies would file insurance claims to cover their losses, the drivers would book another run and remain employed, and everybody made money. Pico remained virtually anonymous atop his criminal empire, constantly relocating to temporary quarters throughout the middle United States, always changing his name and using legitimately uninformed managers to run semi-permanent offices in Cincinnati, St. Louis and Kansas City.
Jake had been one of Pico's drivers, though his entry into Pico's underworld had been different from that of most who made the descent. He had been pursued by a loan shark who had paid a $1,000 fine the government hit him with following a conviction on shipping stolen goods. When interest rates on the loan escalated Jake's balance to almost $2,000, Jake went underground, fearing the goons who were combing the Midwest trying to find him. Pico stepped in and bought his contract, putting Jake in his debt and his employ. It got the apes off Jake's case, but within months Pico's interest charges had raised his debt to nearly $4,000 – four times his original fine. Unable to meet that kind of financial obligation, he was hamstrung, virtually owned by Lorenz Pico, who put no pressure on Jake to pay, but continued to compound his interest.
Pico had special plans for Jake. He was pioneering a new criminal enterprise the mobile chop shop – and he was using Jake as his point man.
Pico had developed a scheme for targeting big, rural property owners, particularly wealthy men with disposable assets, like machinery and livestock. Frank Walker was one of these. Pico’s operation was seasonally based. He stole cattle in late summer and in the late fall and winter months he stole machinery, usually not from the same property owner.
It was a scheme that had been worked to perfection in Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. Pico put a mole in the employment of some baron – the "mark" – whose profile was right for the kind of sting he had in mind. Once inside, Pico's man would inventory the mark's assets, feeding the information back to Pico who would use it to set up a clearing house operation. He had lists of "in demand" items and through his insid
e man he stole what he needed to fill his clients' needs. He created delivery schedules, e.g. "We can get you a 1945 Dodge flatbed delivered in March," or "In November we can get you parts for an International Harvester combine." Pico's men would schedule the heist and fill the order. Usually these lifts took place over the cold weather months, when ranching activity slowed and machinery often sat idle and unattended for weeks at a time. It was banal, as grifts go, routine as a shopkeeper's day. Pico, however, was possessed of a certain genius for invention and he gave his criminal scheme a new twist – one that put detection of his fencing operation beyond the range of small town law enforcement.
The hallmark of Lorenz Pico's nefarious activities was "industry." His operation was run with the sophistication of a Special Forces team, complete with intricate staging plans and the machinery to make it happen. Once the mark was identified and his business infiltrated, Pico's men set up temporary operations at various remote locations around the target's property. Temporary "chop shops" were established that could reduce a truck or a piece of machinery to a pile of resalable parts in the course of a single night.
"You need a part for a Massey Ferguson tractor? We'll have what you need by June first." Or, for those clients who wanted machinery intact, Pico set up paint stations. He could rip off a piece of machinery, pound out the dings, repaint it to order, replace any identifying tags, and have it on the road to a customer within forty-eight hours.
Pico used the same techniques to wholesale slaughtered beef, which was a personal peccadillo of his, a pet project that was high risk-low return, and that his lieutenants were constantly entreating upon him to stop. But it had grown out of his personal history, and was part of a vendetta. The son of Mexican peasants, Pico harbored strong class resentments that he directed against his "wealthy," land owning targets. The "cattle rustling" part of his business was done in the late summer months, when steers were fattening on green pasture grass and ranchers were diverted with haying operations and annual maintenance of windmills and fence lines. His favored targets were ranchers of the Flint Hills in Kansas and the Texas Panhandle, which were known as "steer country."
Part of his point man's task was identifying isolated herds of six hundred to seven hundred pound feeder weight cattle. Usually around late August or early September, after they had spent the summer grazing on grasslands, and when they were only a few weeks away from the feedlots, Pico would target a small herd or, sometimes, part of a large herd, for a little clandestine "harvesting." These herds were often owned not by the rancher who was employing the mole, but by his surrounding neighbors. Pico believed working with an "inside man" in the employ of a large rancher was strategically advantageous, because the barons seemed to keep track of the business of everyone around them. There was information at the center of commerce. It also created a layer of security for the mole, making it unlikely that he could be directly connected to the heist, since it was rarely his employer who got hit. Once the vulnerable herds were located, a team of Pico operatives would come in with portable corral panels and a good sized truck with an enclosed box, and on successive nights they would round up and slaughter cattle right on the range.
A crew of ten or so men, mostly migrant laborers who knew the Pico family and were recruited for their allegiance, set up temporary slaughter sites. Pico often used gypsy construction outfits as "legitimate fronts" for his operations, so often there was heavy equipment, a caterpillar or a back hoe in the area, which could be brought in during the night to dig shallow pits, which would become abattoirs. Forty head of cattle could be slaughtered in a single evening. These herds were usually the property of ranches that were undermanned and which had livestock scattered widely across the countryside.
Usually these operators didn't check their grazing herds more than once a week, partly due to lack of manpower, and partly because they tended to become lulled into complacency over the summer months, as day after day their cattle got fatter and fatter, leisurely grazing on long green grass. By the end of summer a weekly check for cancer eye and to count their number seemed to be all that was necessary. These were just the kind of cattlemen Pico exploited.
The targeted beef would be led into the abattoir one by one. Pico’s men worked in an assembly line fashion, often trained to handle only one aspect of the slaughtering operation. The first man stunned the beef with a sledge hammer, striking them on the forehead at a point right between the eyes. The key to effective bleeding is to keep the heart pumping, so Pico's boys avoided shooting cattle, which was too noisy anyway, and would have left them with bloody cuts that would have quickly spoiled.
Next they'd hoist each fallen animal by its hind legs, so that its head was a couple feet off the ground. Using sharp skinning knives they would make incisions from in front of the forelegs to the jawbone. They'd open the carotid arteries at the point where they forked under the breastbone, being careful not to cut too deeply into the chest or to pierce the heart. The idea was to avoid blood accumulating in the chest and to keep the heart pumping. Sometimes they'd hurry the bleeding process by pumping the forelegs up and down a few times.
As soon as the bleeding was done, they'd go to the next station, where a man would skin out the forelegs and the head. They would cut across the leg between the sole of the foot and the dew-claws, releasing the tension in the leg by severing the tendon.
The skin was split over the back of the forelegs by quickly making a cut four to five inches above the knee, then the leg was cut off at the square joint. They'd skin out the head by cutting from poll to nostril, then across from jaw to jaw. After the skin was pulled back, they could easily remove the head by cutting across the neck through the Atlas joint. With the head severed, they'd quickly remove the tongue and the cheek meat, immediately chilling them in cold water. A cleaver would be used to split the skulls and remove the brains.
The carcass would then be lowered to the floor and moved to the next station, where it would be propped into place with a pritch pole. The hind legs would be removed. Tendons would be expertly cut so the legs would relax, the skin would be split a few inches below the hock joints, and a knife would be used to locate the lowest joint of the hocks. After notching the spot, a quick sideward push would break the legs right apart.
The next step was to open the carcass, which was accomplished by splitting the skin from breastbone to rump. The knife went in the opening in the neck, which had been made for bleeding, then was drawn straight back over the brisket and just past the last rib, cutting through the hide and meat over the breastbone. A cut was made at the midpoint between the hind legs, exposing round muscle. Beginning at the last rib, a cut was made through the hide and the abdominal wall and on back through the opening between the hind legs, which exposed the paunch. Pico's peasant cutters were trained not to cut into the intestines, reaching inside the carcass with the knife point up to push it in a straight line to the opening between the hind legs. The skin inside the thighs was split just back of the scrotum or udder, and then a cut was made that adjoined the split made in removing the hind shank. Again the knife edge was always pointed outward to avoid cutting the flesh. The insides of the thighs and the forelegs were skinned.
Special siding knives were used to peel the skin off the abdomen, shoulders and round. Again, Pico's cutters were expert at leaving the "fell" intact – the thin membrane that lies between the meat and the skin on the carcass. They were going to be shipping this beef, and they knew leaving the membrane would protect against molds and insure that the meat would not dry too rapidly.
The carcass was then moved to the next station for "hoisting," and to prepare for that the cutters sawed through the breastbone, separating the rounds, and on through the aitchbone. A spreader would be inserted between the large tendons, and the carcass was then hoisted with a block and tackle. After cutting the hide down to the center of the tail, it could be pulled right off and the tail could be disjointed. Someone would usually wipe the hocks and rounds with a clean cloth and warm
water, then loosen the anus by cutting around it on the two sides and the back, then they'd loosen twelve to fifteen inches of the colon and allow that to drop down over the paunch. The viscera could be removed with the carcass hanging above ground level. The connective tissues holding the intestines would be cut, with care being taken not to tear the kidney and bedfat, and then a quick tug at the paunch would pull the viscera right out of the carcass. Pico's men worked over small trenches dug into the earth, into which they let these innards fall directly. They'd use knives to cut out the liver, intestines, and gall bladder, and then they'd remove the heart, lungs and gullet as a single unit.
The hide could be pulled right off to the forelegs and neck at this point, and then all that was left was to split the carcass for quicker chilling. The cutters sawed through the sacral vertebrae and the pelvic arch, then on through the center of the backbone to the neck. A cleaver was used to split the neck and free the two halves of the hide and once that was removed the carcass would quickly be washed with cold water to remove the blood and the dirt, and they were done. As long as they could get the carcasses to a cooler within twenty-four hours, where the temperature of the meat could be cooled below forty degrees, they were home free. That was all it took.
Most of the beef was be shipped out immediately, sometimes in trucks carrying block ice, headed for resale to restaurant owners and grocers who had placed orders through "legitimate" brokers in Illinois and Missouri. Some of the sides of beef went to Pico’s own freezers. He made gifts of it to his workers, often paying his illegal aliens in this way, which to them was a windfall of good fortune. A family of four could eat for a year on a single carcass. The hides would immediately be salted and then go to tanners. Equipment would often be used to push dirt back into the slaughter pit, covering over the blood and the disposed innards, having it all hidden out of sight by the next morning.
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