by Mark Wheaton
As his girlfriend crouched next to him, Sittenfeld looked up in anger. “What’re you talking about?”
“This isn’t your scheme. That wouldn’t make sense. The cartels have shifted over the years, but the money remained consistent. You get a cut, sure, but someone else does, too. You’re a middleman. Who is doing the actual laundering? Who is getting the money from the cartels to your banks without anyone raising so much as a finger?”
“Is that what you’ve come all this way to ask?” Sittenfeld replied indignantly.
Michael cocked his fist to punch the semi-disgraced banker again. Sittenfeld raised a defensive arm and clambered to his feet.
As if that will do him any good.
“Paul told me what you threatened to do,” Sittenfeld protested, feeling his jaw to see if anything was broken. “You’re a thug.”
“So are the men who killed my girlfriend to hide your crimes. So was the man who tried to murder me a few weeks back and ended up killing a young woman named Carrie Meallaigh. So are the literally thousands of people who have carried out as many murders over the past several decades in the name of the money you are using right now to finance your ridiculous lifestyle here in Sweden, when you should be, at best, rotting in jail, at worst, hanging from the end of a noose. Your money is steeped in blood. You’re not a money launderer, you’re a war profiteer. But you’re not alone. I might not be able to touch you, but I can get the others. And I don’t care how long I have to stand here to get what I came here to get. You’re going to tell me.”
Sittenfeld stared at Michael for a long moment. He looked from Brigitte to the young woman from Gotland, who’d already begun taking steps away from him, and then went to a nearby desk and withdrew paper and pen. He wrote a name and a series of numbers on the paper, then handed it to Michael.
“This is the account commissions were paid into. Pretty sure it’s a dummy account that was used by someone else like me to funnel the money out again, but you’ll get your answer.”
Michael took the slip of paper and walked out.
In the driveway he found that a second van had arrived, but there was no sign of its driver or any passengers. Even their footprints were covered by a light snowfall that had begun while Michael was inside.
“If you didn’t have to turn right around and get on another plane, I’d offer to buy you a drink,” Brigitte said, jogging down the steps after him as she pulled on a coat. “He’s already on the phone with his lawyer in Los Angeles.”
“Doesn’t matter. He can’t sue me in an American court, and I doubt I’ll be back here anytime soon to face trial in Sweden.”
“That’s too bad,” Brigitte said. “There’s a museum in Stockholm you’d like.”
“A museum?”
“It houses a single artifact, a great Swedish warship called the Vasa, built in the early seventeenth century under the instruction of King Gustavus Adolphus,” Brigitte explained. “Though the shipbuilders countered his every request to build the boat bigger or add more cannon or sails, the king was the king and had the final say. They finally completed this monstrosity, meant to be the most imposing warship of its day, and launched it on August 10, 1628. It sank a thousand three hundred meters from the dock, killing thirty people in front of a crowd of thousands. It was so large that the tops of the masts were visible above the waterline even as it settled on the seafloor. The king had them sawn down to extinguish the humiliation.”
“It was raised?” Michael asked.
“Yes, then brought to this museum,” Brigitte said. “It’s probably the only museum in the world dedicated, ultimately, to the hubris of power. It’s worth seeing, Mr. Story. Or maybe you’ve had enough hubris for one day?”
Michael smiled, exchanged information with Brigitte, and watched as she drove off. By the time he climbed back behind the wheel of his own rental car, Special Agent Lampman had written him back about the information on Sittenfeld’s piece of paper that Michael had texted to her earlier.
The bank turned out to be a small private financial institution in the heart of Mexico City. It had a sterling reputation and was favored by foreign companies who wanted that dedicated personal touch, but with boots on the ground in the heart of Central America. Part of what had endowed it with such prominence was that a controlling amount of its ownership rested with Mexico City’s Catholic archdiocese, the largest in the world, which ministered to the needs of the city’s seven million Catholics.
XV
Luis had stayed close to the hospital in the days following the shooting. He hadn’t done so out of fear for his life as a witness to the shooting, but because he didn’t want to face Father Arturo. He still didn’t know how he felt about Arturo using drug money to build a hospital and a school for his church. The fact that he’d taken the funds from his own son was also troubling. So he confined himself to his room, prayed from the breviary, and focused on getting back to Los Angeles.
He’d managed to get on a computer downstairs in one of the administrative offices to read the stories in the Los Angeles press about Bishop Osorio’s murder. It had been international news, with even the Vatican weighing in. Osorio was praised for continuing to live in a “crime-ridden neighborhood” to “maintain his connection to his congregation” even though it had cost him his life.
Crime-ridden neighborhood?
Father Belbenoit was relegated to two or three sentences, but little more. He’d had a sister back in Lyons, who’d taken his body back to France for burial. It was suggested that he died trying to save Osorio.
The motive was reported as robbery. There were no suspects. Luis’s own stabbing wasn’t mentioned as, he surmised, there was no body in a hospital bed or morgue drawer. He searched for information on Michael Story, only to find that his profile was still on the county district attorney’s website. He’d considered contacting him but wasn’t sure it was worth risking his own exposure.
Sebastian came by every morning, every day at noon, and every night to check on his son, but their conversations had taken a turn for the superficial.
“Got a shipment of lumber, good Mexican cypress—sabino—from Yucatán,” Sebastian would say. “But the nails! The nails were bent! Worthless, all of them. Worse, I stepped away, and one of the other workers used them. We had to undo his work and destroy the nails. One step forward, two back.”
Luis commiserated but could tell Sebastian was flagging. He figured his father must’ve known about Father Arturo and where the money was coming from but had managed to conjure some fiction that made it all right with him in his head. When his own son was endangered during a shoot-out, likely perpetrated by gunmen whose pay came from the same pocketbook as his construction materials, the fiction was shattered.
While Luis couldn’t be sure that Victor Canales’s outfit was responsible for the deaths of the two people in the truck, the quiet word around the hospital was that this was so. This was why no real investigation had been pursued. An aunt of the dead girl had ranted and raved out in front of the hospital’s morgue to a police detective for the better part of half an hour, before she herself was arrested. That was the last Luis heard of it.
When Sebastian arrived one evening, he mentioned in passing that Father Arturo’s relationship with his son made him call into question his own with Luis and Nicolas.
“Were there things I could’ve done differently that would have meant Nicolas would still be alive?” Sebastian asked. “You can say that you wouldn’t have found the church that way, but maybe you would have. Maybe you wouldn’t have drifted into gangs.”
Luis assured him that this wasn’t the case, but Sebastian waved him off. “It’s not something we can know. But it weighs on me.”
When Sebastian left, Luis called Vera and asked to be moved to a communal room.
“Why? Father Arturo has arranged the private room for as long as your recovery takes.”
“I am grateful for his generosity,” Luis said. “But it is too luxurious. My comfort is im
peding my recovery.”
Vera raised an eyebrow but could tell that Luis was sincere. She checked a nearby dry-erase board and selected a room. “There is an open bed downstairs in the post-op ward. You can move there if you like.”
“Thank you,” Luis said, returning to his room to collect his few personal items.
His new roommates turned out to be friends of the youth shot dead in the truck. Both eyed Luis with suspicion when he entered. This deflated after he introduced himself.
“Ah, you were the man stabbed by 10K,” the older of the two patients, a young man with close-cropped hair and a thin mustache, said.
“10K?”
“Munuera, but let’s not say his name. I’m Rogelio. This is my cousin Oswaldo. The guy you saw killed was his brother.”
“What was his name?” Luis asked.
“Sergio,” Oswaldo said. “How’d you survive 10K anyway? Don’t think of him as one who misses a target.”
Luis had heard his purported killer’s nickname first from one of the nurses, then from Sebastian. He hadn’t been sure that this was the man whose face he’d seen reflected in the side of the Bronco until one of the orderlies heard Luis’s description and confirmed it.
“Not sure how I survived,” Luis admitted. “Which generally means it was the hand of God.”
Oswaldo scoffed. “Yeah, because my brother was such a jerk and deserved to die for flirting with a girl Victor had his eyes on.”
“I’m sorry,” Luis said. “I didn’t mean it that way.”
Oswaldo shrugged. “I mean, can you believe a guy like that? You think some girl’s hot, got it going on and so on. Then she goes to share a cigarette with somebody that’s not you, and that’s it. She has to die. Either fall at your feet or that’s that. I mean, Sergio—I can get that twisted logic. Guys fight over girls all the time, and my brother probably even knew Victor had his eyes on her and wanted to prove something. But shooting up the girl like she was nothing? That’s crazy.”
Rogelio eyed his cousin warily for a moment, then shook his head. “It’s all crazy. But we’re more accustomed to some crazy than others.” He turned back to Luis. “Hope you recover quickly.”
“Why’s that?” Luis asked.
“I heard 10K and his crew were in Michoacán. But don’t worry. They don’t know you’re here or you’d already be dead. Either that or they’ve heard the good word that the hospital is neutral ground. I think it’s 10K’s bosses, one of the splinters off the Zetas Cartel, that’s poking around Canales’s bosses, you know? They look for where the rival cartel is the weakest. Right now that’s El Tule. Might be another reason Victor wants to shoot up people—to show what an unpredictable badass he is.”
“I hope it doesn’t devolve into an all-out war,” Luis said.
“What do you care?” Oswaldo interjected. “You get paid either way. Paid to pray for everything to stay on the straight and narrow. Paid to put people in the ground.”
And paid to assuage any vestiges of guilt the narcos feel.
Michael’s words returned to Luis. Government’s watchdog programs relating to charities. They’re a nonprofit. ICE hoops, not banking institution ones. It suddenly all made sense to him. Luis knew exactly how the cartel cash moved from the drug lords to the US banks without alerting the government.
Luis didn’t reply to Oswaldo and settled into his new bed. He found that he couldn’t sleep, however, as his mind returned to Father Arturo. He realized he’d been wrong to avoid the priest.
Toward sunset Luis rose from bed, changed into street clothes, and made his way out into the courtyard, past the gate, and into the town itself. He was unsteady out of the wheelchair but knew he had to make the journey without it.
As he moved through town, nothing seemed to have changed since the shooting. People milled around, walked in and out of bars and cafes, and chatted amiably as if nothing had happened. The gaping hole in the building where the truck had struck it had been covered over with two large boards screwed into the wall. The broken stones in the road and the bullet hits in the nearby walls, now at a remove, could’ve been caused by anything.
The dogs on the roofs continued to bark and continued to stay well off the ground. Luis figured they might’ve had the right idea all along.
As he turned onto the next street, one he’d self-titled the Avenida de los Perros de Techo, he could hear the sound of the tiring hammers losing a race with the setting sun. When he reached San Elias Nieves, he found the chapel door open and slipped inside.
The chapel was illuminated by more candles than usual. The votive rack was filled to capacity as about forty candles sent thin plumes of smoke to stain the ceiling above. Luis wondered how many of them had been lit for Sergio or the girl, whose name he still didn’t know. If Rogelio was right and 10K had been sent to Michoacán to wage war on Victor, there’d soon be many more.
There was a creak from within the nearby confessional, and Luis realized he wasn’t alone. He genuflected and crossed himself toward the altar and took a seat in the pews to wait. A moment later an older woman emerged from the confessional and walked down the aisle, blessing herself with holy water as she stepped out into the street. Once she was gone, Luis moved to the confessional himself.
“Forgive me, Father. It’s been several weeks since my last confession.”
“You’re forgiven, Father,” Father Arturo said wearily from the other side of the screen. “But why do I sense you’re here for my confession, not the other way around?”
Luis said nothing. Father Arturo fell silent for a moment as well, then sighed. “I was sorry to hear about your brush with calamity the other night.”
“I’m sorrier about those who were killed,” Luis replied. “I thought the local authority was meant to keep order.”
Luis heard the bench on the other side of the confessional creak as Father Arturo stiffened.
“You’ve got it all figured out, don’t you?” Father Arturo said.
“Not yet I don’t,” Luis said. “How much money goes to you, how much to the archdiocese, then how much goes on to the United States?”
Father Arturo rose and exited the confessional. Luis went after him. Father Arturo was halfway up the aisle to the altar before turning on Luis.
“It’s easy to look through some lofty prism at me and decide I’ve compromised myself. But I’m no more compromised than any other clergyman in this country save the noble few who have stood up to the drug lords and swiftly paid with their lives. The same goes for the police, the government, and even the army that can’t handle the cartels any more than they can provide for their own people. Who steps into that void for their communities? We do. We’re hanging by our fingernails, but without us there’s nowhere for anyone to turn.”
“So collaboration and complicity is the answer? Even when it means mass murder?”
“Tell me, Father Chavez, what would you do in my place? What’s your perfect solution?”
“I’d expose the links between the church and the cartels. There are two things that keep the cartels running with impunity. One is fear. The other is the money they pay those they can’t scare. Not much you can do about the former, but a lot you can do about the latter. You’re in a unique position to expose the whole arrangement. The money flows through the archdiocese. We need the records.”
“Then what? Take it to the Policía Federal Ministerial? Or to the regular police? The press? What happens when we choose wrong, and no matter what kind of a crusader the person has painted themselves to be on the outside, they turn out to secretly be in league with the cartels?”
“The answer isn’t to do nothing,” Luis said. “Or haven’t you read your Bible?”
Father Arturo seethed, his eyes burning into Luis. “You are asking me to condemn myself, which is one thing, but also my son. That isn’t something I can do.”
Luis shook his head. “Your son has condemned himself. But maybe what you’ve done is worse. You’re telling yourself that it’s o
kay because there will be children educated with their money, they’ll have a place to worship, they’ll have a hospital to go to when they’re sick. But what kind of life will they lead if they, too, must live in fear? You’re perpetuating a nightmare that is about as unholy as can be. You need to help me stop it.”
Father Arturo shook his head. “I wish I had been born in America. Maybe then I could afford these high-minded ideals of yours. But this is where I live, and these are the problems faced by my parishioners. The Catholic Church in Latin America has long served at the pleasure of whoever or whatever was in power, because that’s what it takes to stay close to the faithful. The one real criticism of the sainted Pope Francis is that during Argentina’s Dirty War he kowtowed to the government and looked the other way during their worst abuses, even when it involved the imprisonment of other priests. We do what we have to do in times of trouble, like the ones we face now. So tell me, how can I listen to you when what you’re asking forces my congregants to face these troubles alone?”
Luis didn’t have an answer. Father Arturo turned and walked out of the chapel.
“I can’t believe this! You are my savior! Our savior!”
Oscar allowed the man opposite him, a less-than-successful restaurateur named Raul Bega, to continue his praise, which included emphatically slapping the table between them, for another moment. The truth was Oscar could barely stay still. He had no interest in bailing out the restaurant. The only feature of the establishment that garnered his attention was the front door, which he glanced feverishly toward every few minutes. This was fear.
And he hated it.
“This is the kind of deal that binds people together,” Raul continued, oblivious. “You and I are family now. There’s nothing you cannot ask of me. Nothing.”
Can you take a machete to the man who threatened my family and all of his henchmen?
“Glad you feel that way,” Oscar said, pushing away from the table. “You see how this works to your advantage then?”
