Traynor looked at Skidgel and thinking about his own propensity for making wisecracks, decided that he would watch his words when he was around Manuel. After all, discretion had always been the better part of valor.
1 Slang for Tijuana, Mexico.
The perimeters of a crime scene may be easily defined when an offense is committed within a building.
—FM 3-19.13, Law Enforcement Investigations
17
The small house was on a dirt road a two-hour drive from LA. The exterior was stucco, the front porch sagged, the roof needed to be replaced, the yard was hardscrabble and covered with dark spots where oil and other fluids had leaked from a multitude of vehicles. As the four of them approached the door, McMahon said, “Why the hell didn’t Mindy get back in her car and leave as soon as she saw this dump?”
“Who knows what was going through her mind,” Traynor said. “Maybe she felt flattered that a hunk like Skidgel would be interested enough in her to give her a shot at stardom.”
Manuel looked thoughtful as he studied the structure. “This doesn’t look like a place where she would feel comfortable.”
“Even though he denies it, we’re certain that Skidgel brought her here,” Deborah said. “I know she wanted to get a job as an actress, but I find it hard to believe that she thought any reputable production company would film way out here.”
Manuel said, “If there were cameras, sound trucks, and other filming equipment around, it might have encouraged her.”
A gust of wind blew from the surrounding desert, whipping debris at them until Traynor felt as if he were being sandblasted. “What are we trying to prove here?” he asked.
“I need to see it,” Manuel said. “It will help me get a feeling for the people we’re dealing with.”
As convoluted as his explanation was, it made sense to Traynor—although from the look he saw on Deborah’s face, he knew that as much as she believed she needed to see the site of her sister’s death, the thought of actually standing in it was a bit much for her. She held back by the car, an apprehensive look on her face. “Are you all right?” he asked.
“No.”
“You can wait in the car while Manuel sees what he needs to see.”
“I know you may not understand this, but I want—no, I need—to see this. Maybe it will help give me closure.”
“It may do the opposite and just cause you more pain,” Traynor replied. He looked to Manuel and McMahon for support.
They shrugged and McMahon said, “She signs our paychecks. In my book that gives her the right to do whatever she wants.”
Traynor stepped onto the dilapidated porch and tried the door; it was unlocked and swung inward. The windows were shuttered and the interior was dark enough to keep him from discerning anything until his eyes adjusted. Once his vision returned, it took no time at all to see that they were looking at the place where Mindy Hollis had been raped, brutalized, and murdered. The furniture was covered with industrial-grade poly, which was coated with a thin film of dust from the blowing sand.
McMahon stepped past him into the miniscule living room and stated the obvious. “This is where it was filmed.”
“It’s been cleaned,” Traynor said.
“Obviously,” McMahon said. “What did you expect?”
“That means,” Traynor added, “that they either cleaned it themselves or brought a cleaning crew with them from LA. Or they could have hired someone local.”
“An operation like this wouldn’t take chances,” Manuel said as he walked through the room and stopped before a door that led into the bedroom. His fists were clenched and his face flushed with indignation and anger. “They’d bring their own crew. People they could trust to keep their mouths shut.”
Traynor watched Manuel as he lifted the poly from the bed and studied the mattress. “I don’t care how much you clean, given the degree to which she was butchered, there’ll still be trace evidence.” At that moment, Traynor realized why Manuel wanted to see this place—he was hunting, and like a hound, he needed to pick up his quarry’s scent.
Traynor studied Deborah. She was as pale as a bucket of milk. She roamed through the room, touching the furniture and peering at the walls. “Does this look freshly painted to you guys?”
The three of them were mute. Traynor visualized Mindy’s blood and tissue splattering on the walls and floors during her mutilation. It sickened him, and more than anything else, he wanted to bring down every last one of the bastards who had perpetrated this crime.
Deborah seemed to strengthen and said, “I had to see this place. If for no other reason than I needed it to piss me off enough to know that I’m doing the right thing by not leaving this to the authorities.”
“At least we got Skidgel,” Traynor commented.
“On what? Conspiracy?” Venom and righteous indignation filled Deborah’s voice. Traynor noticed that she displayed nothing of the perky little cheerleader who had walked into his office five days prior. In her place was a businesswoman who was as strong as tungsten steel.
“There’s no way but the lying bastard was part of this. He knew what was going to happen when he set her up to come here. If he hadn’t, they’d have found his body with hers,” Traynor said. “That’s more than enough to make him an accomplice—that should get him a long stretch in prison.”
“Anything he gets—short of death—is a more lenient sentence than my sister got.”
She had him there.
They roamed the rest of the building in silence until Deborah said, “I’ve seen enough.” She stormed out of the house.
When he heard the car door slam, Traynor looked at Manuel and McMahon. “Think she got pissed off enough?”
“Right now,” McMahon said, “I wouldn’t want to be one of the people who did this.”
As Traynor walked out of the house and approached the car, he thought: What was it that Kipling said? “The female of the species is more deadly than the male …”
Forty-one of the top fifty most dangerous cities are located in Latin America.
—Business Insider
18
The sun had barely punched a hole through the smog when they gathered on the tarmac for Manuel and Traynor’s flight south. Deborah said, “Anything you need, call this number.” She handed each of them a business card. “That’s Hollis International’s man in Mexico City. He’ll get whatever you need.”
“Thank you, Ms. Deborah, but it will be better if I work through people I know down there.”
“Keep that number just in case—you never know what might happen.”
“That brings something to mind,” Traynor added. “Is there any chance we’ll meet someone who remembers you from your undercover days?”
Manuel seemed to ponder the question. “I don’t think we have to worry about that. It has been more than eight years since I was last in Mexico City—and the sort of people I dealt with have the life expectancy of an insect in a pesticide factory.” A predatory look came over his face. “I can attest to that …”
Traynor decided not to push that issue any further.
As the Gulfstream descended toward the runway of Benito Juárez International Airport, Traynor stared out the window at the mountains that appeared to be only an arm’s length away. He turned to Manuel and said, “I never realized how high Mexico City was.”
“It sits on a dry lakebed in the crater of an ancient volcano. In fact, when the Spanish first arrived, it was a lake. It has its good points and bad.”
Traynor waited for him to go into more detail.
“Because of where it sits, it shakes like a bowl of gelatin during an earthquake …” Manuel paused and added, “The September ’85 quake killed ten thousand people and almost destroyed the city.”
He fell silent and Traynor realized Manuel was not going to offer any more information. He asked, “It killed ten thousand people?”
“That’s how many they found. Only God knows the true count—it was the highes
t death count on record until the earthquake and tsunami in Japan a couple of years ago.”
Forty minutes later, they entered customs. Beside each aisle was a stoplight. So long as it was green all a traveler had to do was present a passport and they were passed through with minimum hassle. However, if it turned red—which it supposedly did on a random basis—customs officials inspected each and every piece of luggage. They got lucky—they hit it green.
When they walked out of customs and into the terminal, Manuel strode over to a tall, nattily dressed man, and they hugged, patting each other on the back. When they disentangled, Manuel turned and introduced him to Traynor: “Felipé Shoucar, Eduardo Traynor.”
Traynor offered his hand and he took it with a firm grip. “¡Encatado de conocerle! ¡mucho gusto!” Traynor said, hoping that he had pronounced the Spanish for “my pleasure” correctly.
Shoucar smiled and said, “Se hablar español?”
“Only a little,” Traynor replied, holding his right hand up with about an eighth of an inch between his thumb and forefinger, “certainly not enough to survive on my own.”
Shoucar laughed and said, “Ah, but a little is better than none, is it not?” He motioned toward the exit. “Gentlemen, our car is this way.”
Once they were in the car and the driver had merged into the congested stream of traffic, Shoucar turned and said to Traynor, “Your first visit to Ciudad de México?”
“Yes.”
“I hope you won’t find it too overwhelming. We are twelve millions of people living in a city that should hold six millions. Unfortunately, a large percentage of our people live in poverty.”
Traynor believed him. Shoucar must have noted that he was looking through the window at a neighborhood of hovels built inside a stone wall. “As you can see,” he said, “those huts are made of cardboard. Fortunately for them, it does not rain often.”
The arid nature of the climate was evidenced by a layer of smog, which made the air in LA seem pristine, and the streets were littered with trash and debris. “Doesn’t the city have a sanitation department?” Traynor asked.
“Of course we do, but when the population is twice what your city is able to support, providing services is …” He paused as if struggling to find the proper English word and then added, “difficult.” Once again he motioned to the cardboard shacks. “Most of those people are from the countryside, where poverty is a way of life. The huts are illegal, but there are too many of them for the policía to deal with—many of our poor live in these shantytowns, much like the hobos of America’s Great Depression did.”
“Sounds as if you’ve read Steinbeck,” Traynor said.
“Yes, one of my favorite American authors …”
“I found The Grapes of Wrath depressing,” Traynor said.
“The book makes me think of the plight of the majority of my people,” Shoucar said. “One could say that one of the few benefits of living in a country like ours is that, unlike other countries, we don’t feel economic downturns—it is the norm for us. Now to the business at hand …”
“We’re looking for Giuliano Olivas Toledo.” Manuel spoke for the first time since they had entered the car.
“Ah, that one. I’ve been trying to get him for years. He’s like smoke—no matter how tightly you grasp it, it slips through your hand. What is your business with him?”
Traynor looked at Manuel, unsure of how much he should disclose to this man. He had no idea who Shoucar was, nor did he have a feeling for how trustworthy he was.
Manuel said, “It’s all right to tell Felipé everything. He’s Policía Federal, similar to our FBI. I would trust him with my life.”
Which, Traynor was sure, they were doing.
“Why don’t you fill him in?” Traynor said.
Manuel and Shoucar spoke in Spanish, while Traynor stared out the window, looking at the sights.
When they finished some minutes later, Shoucar switched to English and said, “I cannot be a part of the murder of one of our people.”
“That is not why we are here,” Manuel explained. “We want to entice him to go to the United States, where the authorities can deal with him.”
Shoucar did not seem entirely convinced. “Manuel, you wouldn’t lie to me, would you?”
“No, Felipé, as much as I would like to put a bullet in this son of a puta’s head, that is not why we are here.”
Shoucar’s eyes narrowed as if still unsure of them. Traynor could not blame him; he wasn’t sure how he would actually react when he finally met with Holy Toledo.
“Meeting Toledo will not be as easy as you hope,” Shoucar said. He turned and looked at Traynor as if he were reluctant to say something.
Traynor tried to put him at ease. “Say what’s on your mind—I’m not easily offended.”
“Toledo and men like him are like prairie dogs … They are curious and want to know everything, yet they are wary to the point of paranoia. They will not be open to meeting with …”
“A gringo?” Traynor said.
“Not so much that. May I be frank?”
“By all means,” Traynor answered.
“Señor, one does not have to look at you very long to decide that you are policía. You wear the job—as do all of us who have been poli for a long time. Toledo will know you are not who you would have him think.”
Traynor looked at Shoucar and said, “Even a cop who’s fallen from grace?”
Traynor wondered if maybe Deborah should have sent McMahon with Manuel instead. After all, he had been there, done that, and bought the T-shirt.
“The DF (Distrito Federal—Federal District) remains safe, in fact safer than some American cities in terms of the homicide rate. Recent jumps in the rate of extortion and kidnapping are worrying tendencies.”
—Duncan Wood, Director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center
19
Hombre was not the worst strip club in Mexico City, but it was by no means the best. The strippers, Traynor thought, were a mixed group, spanning from the very attractive to the extremely homely. The lights were low, and two circular stages—one at each end of the room—took up more than a third of the available floor space and the bar took half of what remained. In his official capacity, Traynor had been in any number of these places, but this was the first time he’d ever been professionally frisked and patted down by a bouncer at the entrance. Fortunately, he and Manuel had left the weapons that the Hollises’ man had procured for them in their hotel room safes.
They were led to a corner table, away from the crowd, but still had an open view of the stage. No sooner had they been seated than a scantily clad waitress appeared, asking for their drink order. Traynor looked at Manuel and said, “You know your way around down here much better than I do. What do you suggest?”
“Tequila. What else does one drink in Mexico? Drink it straight up. You may as well drink the water as have ice in a drink.”
He turned to the waitress and spoke to her in Spanish. She smiled and rushed away to fill their order.
“What did you say that brought on that smile?”
“She wanted to know which type …”
“How many types of tequila are there?”
“Who knows? But I can take you to a shop that sells only tequila and the shelves will be full of different ones.”
“Hardly seems like a reason for her to smile like she did.”
Manuel grinned. “That was because I told her that you were a tequila virgin and to bring us something that was not too strong.”
“Thanks a lot,” Traynor replied. “It didn’t take you thirty seconds to completely destroy my macho image.”
“You’ll survive.”
The waitress returned with a bottle and two glasses that were slightly larger than a shot glass. After she placed it on the table, Manuel spoke to her once again; this time she did not smile. She was nervous when she looked around, and then she bent over, displaying more cleavage than Traynor had seen i
n a long time. She said something, and when Manuel handed her a roll of peso notes, she looked as if she wanted to run as far from them as possible. She stuffed the money between her breasts and almost sprinted away.
“Well, that reaction was different.”
“Wasn’t it, though? I asked her if she knew a man named Arquímedes Treviño. She told me that he was not a man we should be asking about. That’s when I gave her the money. Unless I miss my guess, we’ll have a visitor—or more—very soon.”
Manuel knew his business. In just a few minutes, a large man in a gray suit approached the table. He wore a white shirt open at the neck, and Traynor thought he saw the flash of a handgun in a shoulder holster. “I think our man is on his way,” he said. “Nice suit. He must have a good tailor. You can hardly see the piece he’s wearing.”
“Relax and let me handle this,” Manuel said.
“All things considered, I don’t see where I have a lot of say in the matter.”
Manuel grinned. “McMahon said you were sharp.”
Before Traynor could think of a wisecrack, the gun-toting tough was beside the table. “Good evening, señores. Marisol told me that you asked about Señor Treviño.”
He looked at Traynor when he spoke, but when Manuel answered him in Spanish, he discarded Traynor like he was a pair of boxer shorts with a loose waistband. The thug sat in the empty chair beside Manuel and slid his chair close. They leaned forward as they spoke, and Traynor’s limited knowledge of Spanish kept him from understanding most of their conversation, so he stared at the stripper who was performing on one of the two stages.
Suddenly, their guest rose from the table, walked through the cigarette smoke, and stopped beside a door that was on the back wall between the stages. He punched in a code and disappeared. Traynor turned and peered at Manuel through the dim lights and spiraling smoke. “What gives?”
“We have to wait and see.”
“That’s it?”
“Not quite. He was concerned that I would bring an extranjero with me—especially one who was a cop.”
Black Orchid Page 10
