Even though Agent Tovar had assigned a junior agent and two interns to communicate with all the Indian parts suppliers in the United States and Canada, he had little hope any would actually cooperate with the agency. It was just another mountain of work that was dumped on him as Meloni and O'Malley pursued the more glamorous aspects of the case. The reason he had little faith in the dealers was because more than a few of them traded in parts under the table and even illegally to places like China and the United Arab Emirates where rich collectors would often pay a little extra to avoid mountains of paperwork.
But he persevered and he double-checked everything they found through established dealers, eBay, Craigslist, Kijiji, and other places people trade parts. He talked to the Indian owners' clubs and even a few motorcycle customizers he knew, but they adhered to the same code of silence as bikers because their business sometimes came from people who would rather not have their name bandied around. If word spread that a parts supplier or customizer was giving out information to law enforcement, their business would quickly become extinct.
Although he knew it would likely come to nothing, Tovar kept going on the Indian parts, not only because of the slim chance it could yield something but also because he often got his best, most creative ideas while concentrating on something else.
* * *
As instructed, Ned did ask one of the girls to make him something to eat and to show him the “nice place” out back. As soon as he said it, he thought she would take it as a euphemism for sex, and was relieved when she didn't. The girl, Juana, guided him to an area behind the house that was surrounded by trees (the trunks of which had been painted in the red, white, and green of the Mexican flag), flowers, and other decorative plants. The wall of vegetation not only sealed the little spot from the sun, making it about ten degrees cooler than the rest of the area, but it made a string of tiny white lights necessary. Combined with the pristine metal-and-glass furniture, the little glade had an idyllic appeal, nothing like the slovenly, drunken dorm-room atmosphere in and around the house.
Juana soon returned with a bowl of puchero, a thick beef stew laced with chickpeas, corn, squash, and other hardy vegetables that grew in the dry parts of northern Mexico. It had become a favorite of Ned's since he had moved to the area. He asked her to join him, to talk for a while. She sat, but seemed nervous, even jumpy. When she demurred about what her tasks were at the ranch and how she had gotten there, Ned let her return to her duties.
Ned thought about the women in the house. Most of the men he knew in Mexico were very strict about what they considered women's work, and never lifted a finger to help the women they knew, whether they were relatives or romantic partners. He also realized that the women were expected to provide the men of the house with sex any time they wanted it. Twice since he had been at the ranch house, women had offered him sex and he didn't think it was because of his looks or personality. It was clearly just part of the job.
His reverie was broken by a man calling him. It was El Guason. Ned emerged from behind the trees and approached him. “Hey, what's going on?” he asked.
“Time for work,” he replied. “Same as yesterday, but this time, it's just me and you.” El Guason led him through the ranch house, in which there were signs of life as men started waking up. One of them, Ned noticed, was wearing a police uniform. Once out of the house, El Guason and Ned walked over to a bright red Ford Mustang and got in. “My other car is a Corvette, but there's no room to carry anything,” El Guason said to him. “All the other guys want trucks, they are a bunch of güeys, fresh off their dad's chicken ranch—they have no style.” He pointed his thumb at the back seat of the car. It was filled with dozens of identical brown paper bags, each with the top folded over and stapled shut. Each one had a number written on it with a Sharpie.
As they drove down the dirt road, Ned noticed that they were again waved through the roadblock. Indeed, one of the cops politely moved his SUV so that El Guason could get through. “How are you finding everything—the house, the food? Good?” he asked Ned while waving at the cops without looking at them. “You're comfortable?”
Ned was surprised that El Guason would take such an interest in his welfare. “Yeah, I'm good,” he said. “Just a little confused is all.”
El Guason looked genuinely surprised. “Confused? Why?”
Ned didn't want to anger him, but couldn't help trying to get answers. “Well, I know I work for you now, but I don't know who you guys are.”
El Guason snorted. “All you had to do was ask. We are just a group on entrepreneurs. The media calls us the Jalisco Cartel, but we prefer to be called the Rincon-Bravo Organization.”
“Cartel?” Ned instinctively knew these guys were involved with a drug cartel, but hearing it from one of them still sent a jolt of panic though him.
El Guason laughed. “Don't let that word scare you; the DEA made it up to make us sound scary,” he said. “Look, we know enough about you to know that dropping off bags of weed at gas stations, bars, and fruit stands isn't exactly the kind of work that will keep you awake at night.”
Ned couldn't help but smile. “Yeah, I'll admit that I'm no stranger to this particular business,” he said. “But when you say ‘cartel,' it makes me think about a lot of money, a lot of violence.” As they passed by the melon stand, Ned was reminded of El Chango's demise and it sobered him a great deal. He had been growing familiar with the ranch house, its people, and its way of life, but the image of the little Guatemalan being killed in front of him reminded him that he was being held captive and that he was still in an incredible amount of danger.
“There is money, no doubt, and some violence, too, but not the way you're imagining,” El Guason told him as he threw his cigarette out the window and lit another. “But look at what you've seen—the cops are no problem here. People just buy our weed and pay us our money. We keep things quiet.”
“Keep things quiet?”
“Yeah, this area used to be run by the Caro-Quintero Organization, what you people would call the Sonora Cartel, but when they went down, Sonora became a battleground between what you call the Tijuana Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel. Bodies were everywhere—hanging from bridges, mailed in pieces to police stations, rotting in the streets.” El Guason sounded bored as he described the carnage. “But there was a summit and it was decided that we would control this area—the TJs and the Sinaloans still get their cuts, but it's our place now.”
“What do you mean by ‘control’?”
El Guason looked at Ned like he thought he was stupid. “You know, sell weed, move product, pay off or threaten cops, keep the bad guys out,” he said. “Just like you do up north.”
“Seems like you're doing a great job.”
“Yeah, every once in a while one of the old Caro-Quintero loyalists will do something stupid or a TJ will step on some toes,” he said. “But they get taken care of pretty quickly.”
El Guason wasn't trying to sound ominous, but that's how it hit Ned. He, too, was a member of a cartel. He wondered why they would want someone as conspicuous as him, with his blue eyes and halting Spanish, to be part of their group. But that was not the kind of question one asked El Guason.
Their first stop, just like their previous run, was a now-familiar Pemex station. El Guason parked outside and told Ned to take care of things. He went inside and was met by the one-handed cashier, Pedro. “Ivan is not here,” he said. “You can just give me the bag.”
Ned remembered that he had been told not to give the bag to Pedro. This could be a test, he thought to himself. And even if it wasn't, it could be the kind of classic fuck-up that could put him in a lot of trouble. “No, I can't,” Ned told him. “I'll wait for Ivan.”
“Could be a while.” Pedro shrugged and went back to what he was reading. Ned had three choices: give the bag to Pedro, wait for Ivan (potentially angering El Guason who was idling in the Mustang outside), or go back to the car and ask El Guason what to do. Then he remembered something his bos
s at Hawkridge had told him—the best employee is one the boss doesn't have to worry about. He took that to mean that El Guason would have more respect for him if he solved the problem himself. He decided that he would wait for Ivan.
It did not take long. Ivan soon popped out of the door with the “Employees Only” sign while Ned was leafing through a stack of magazines, many of which were months out of date. “You're El Guason's guero friend,” he smiled. “You have something for me?”
“Yes,” Ned said, producing the bag. “And you have something for me?”
Pedro went behind the counter and pulled out a plastic bag full of cash. “It's all there,” he said. “So, you're our man now?”
“Looks like,” Ned said, nodding. “Can I get a bag of chips, those, the Barcels, the El Diablos, with lime.”
Ivan handed him about a half-dozen bags. Ned said he only wanted one and asked how much they were. Ivan looked shocked. “For you? Nothing, everything in here is free for you. Here, take a couple of pulques with you, El Guason loves it.” Ned couldn't stand the milky, opaque, and mildly alcoholic drink himself, but took both cans to shut the guy up and because he knew El Guason would indeed enjoy it.
Back in the Mustang, Ned handed the pulque to El Guason. “I was going to complain about how long you took, but not anymore,” he said. “How did you know I love pulque?”
“Ivan told me,” Ned said, handing him the bag with the cash.
El Guason took a swig of pulque and pointed to the back seat. “Just tie it up and throw it back there,” he instructed. “That pendejo Pedro wasn't in there was he?”
“Yeah, he even asked me for the product,” Ned told him.
“What? Really? That son of a whore,” El Guason looked really angry.
“Why is it such a big deal?” Ned asked. “It's just a bag of weed, and it's not like we don't know where he works.”
“You don't understand.” El Guason, his voice rising. “Pedro can't handle anything. He's not allowed. He stole an entire kilo of meth from the Caro-Quinteros two years ago. Didn't you see his left hand had been cut off? He's a thief.”
Of course Ned had noticed that Pedro was missing his left hand, but he hadn't read the significance of it. He had seen plenty worse since he'd arrived in Mexico. “Well, he didn't really ask for the bag, he just . . .”
“Don't try to defend him,” El Guason said. Before Ned could reply, El Guason stopped at a car wash. Like most other cash washes in Sonora, this one—the Crystal Clear—was really just a couple of covered parking spots and some guys with hoses. “Okay, now take this package to Miguel Ricardo, not Miguel, Miguel Ricardo, you got that?”
Ned assured him he did and took the bag to the car wash's office. He asked for Miguel Ricardo and was directed to one of the guys sitting out front waiting for a car to wash. After making sure he was the right guy, Ned handed him the bag. Miguel Ricardo went into the office and returned with a thick manila envelope that he handed to Ned.
The pair continued to visit locations all over the south side of Nogales until all twenty-six bags of weed in the back seat had been replaced by twenty-six bags or envelopes of cash. This was going to be Ned's delivery route, said El Guason. He would take him around for the first week or so to get him familiar with the people and all the stops. After that, he said, Ned would do the route alone or with a friend if he had one he trusted. The organization would get him a car, find him a nice place to live, all he had to do was make deliveries. He would get 5 percent of the money he brought in. Ned asked if he would need to bring any muscle along, and El Guason laughed. “Nobody ever holds out,” he said. “Nobody doesn't pay.”
Ned knew it wasn't an ideal situation, but also that he didn't have much of a choice. It certainly beat the screen-door factory and it could be a springboard back to a little cash and independence. He agreed.
Ned slept at the ranch house that night and went with El Guason on the same route at about noon the next day. The first stop was the Pemex station. Ivan ran out to see Ned. Pedro wasn't there.
Ned never saw him again. But thousands did. During the night, someone hung Pedro's now completely handless body from a tree in the park on the east side of the city. Tied to it was a pair of signs—one in the front, one in the back. Both read “I stole.”
Chapter Five
It was an absolutely beautiful morning. The sun hadn't scorched off all the moisture and coolness yet, so Ned sat on the veranda and looked at the ranch for the first time without assessing it for danger and possible escape strategies. Ordinarily, he was unimpressed by, even contemptuous of, Sonora's the dry, bleak landscape, but at this moment, it was ruggedly beautiful. His attention had turned to a little roadrunner that was frantically pacing among the scrub and occasional cactus on the lot in front of him, looking for lizards and snakes and caterpillars. Every time Ned moved, the roadrunner darted away, only to regain its confidence and scamper back.
Ned's five-day trial period with El Guason—the cartel worked Monday to Friday—was on its last day. It seemed to Ned to be going very well, but the two had not become friends. Ned found El Guason so obsessed by his appearance and possessions—especially his cars and jewelry—that they had little else to talk about. Of course, that didn't mean El Guason didn't talk. In fact, he went on and on, constantly bragging about this or that, as though he had a deep-seated need for Ned to be envious of him.
And, as Ned had experienced before when he joined the Sons of Satan, his immediate superior felt not just that he could tell Ned what to do all the time but also that Ned had to perform tasks and jobs that were well beneath him or even humiliating. Cleaning El Guason's guns and washing his cars were one thing, but doing his laundry and preparing his food was another. Ned noticed that none of the other men did such work, and wondered if his refusal to take advantage of the house girls—who came and went, sometimes on the same day—led them to believe he was less of a man than the rest of them.
It didn't matter now. If they were telling him the truth, it was the last day he'd have to ride with El Guason, who had told him that he was getting bored with teaching him the ropes and wanted to go back to his old job. When Ned asked what that job was, he quickly changed the subject.
The deal they had worked out was that, if Ned passed his trial period, the organization would set him up with a car and a place to live. Although Ned knew it was hardly an independent life, it would be a great step away from the claustrophobic feeling he had in the ranch house.
He was just killing time before one of the girls showed up. He had hoped Juana would be the first he'd see. He still hadn't managed to get three words out of her, but she was easily the best cook of the lot. If he could get her to whip him up something, he could retire to the nice spot out back and enjoy a few more quiet moments before the sun and work made life in Mexico a reality for him again.
As he walked back inside, he heard a phone ring. One of the men Ned knew simply as El Ardilla Voladora sprung awake from the sofa in the main room. He answered the phone, said yes a couple of times and hung up. Immediately, he started shouting for everyone in the house to get up. He ran upstairs and out back. Once the other men started to wake up, they all looked very serious. Every man in the house was doing something, obviously in preparation for a major event, but Ned didn't know what it was. When El Guason—who, as he often did, had stayed the night to avoid his sharp-tongued wife—appeared, Ned asked him what was going on.
El Guason looked startled, as though hearing Ned's voice had broken his concentration. “Oh, yeah, yeah, El Espagueti,” he said. “This is not for you; go wait upstairs until I call you. I can send up . . . uh, uh . . . Monica.” He paused as though he had caught himself in a faux pas. “To bring you some food.”
“No, really, if it's part of my job . . .”
El Guason looked very angry. “Look, I've been told this is definitely not part of your job,” he ordered. “Now, go upstairs, close the door, and stay in there until I or someone else comes to get you.”
&
nbsp; Ned knew better than to argue. Just as he was turning to go upstairs, he saw the front door burst open. Two Federales burst in with AR-15 assault rifles. Sure the shit was going down, Ned put his hands up. The first Federale laughed. “Put your hands down, you guero asshole,” he said. “You're on our side.”
Behind the two cops (who Ned quickly realized were members of his own organization in stolen uniforms) were three men who were in handcuffs. They were shirtless and masked. The first two shuffled silently behind the fake cops, while the third, a much smaller and younger man, wept and begged for his life. Behind them were six more armed men, one in a Sonora state police uniform, the rest in street clothes.
El Guason grabbed Ned by the arm. “Upstairs! Now!” he ordered. Ned complied, going directly to the room in which he slept. He immediately went to the window, but it pointed east and the group had gone out the back of the building on the south. Ned jumped when he heard the door open behind him. It was Monica, one of the girls. She sat on the bed, holding herself tight. She looked at Ned expectantly, then turned and looked straight ahead, rocking slightly on the edge of his bed. As Ned turned back to the window, two more girls rushed into his room—one he had never seen before and one whose name he could not remember—and joined Monica. They huddled together as though they were very, very cold.
Although he still couldn't see, Ned heard some indistinguishable shouting and then what sounded like popcorn popping, just a few random cracks that increased in frequency then died down. One of the girls screamed and began to cry. The others tried to calm her down, but were obviously stressed themselves. When the popping stopped, there was a quick budda-budda, sounding almost like a muffled drum roll, then a great deal of celebratory shouting.
Once the shouting started, the girl who had been crying fled from the room, running downstairs. The others followed her. Not knowing exactly what to do, Ned went downstairs, too. The men, led by El Ratón, were coming back in the house. They were smiling and laughing. El Guason ordered the girls to get them food and beer and to put on some music. They complied. As she was headed toward the kitchen, Monica was intercepted by one of the younger men. He grabbed her right hand and put his left around her waist, forcing her into a poorly executed waltz before releasing her to her duties. Clearly the men were celebrating.
Jerry Langton Three-Book Biker Bundle Page 46
