Stalking Moon

by Неизвестный

“Here's your money. At least, what we found in bank accounts on the island of Niue. We're looking at banks on Naura, but we don't have that information yet.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “This is what I do for a living, remember? I track money.”

  “What makes you think it's my money?”

  “I don't.”

  He'd recovered enough to pull the director's chair to the desk opposite me. It was a stall, the elaborately slow movement of the chair, sitting in it, getting up to adjust its position, sitting again, tucking his jeans into the boots.

  “Somebody's set up a very elaborate scam,” he said finally. “Used my name on these accounts. The name means nothing.”

  “I agree.”

  “So why are you bothering to show me these things?”

  “Here's what I figure. I've got account information for Zamora and Garza, but there's not much need to show that to you. I figure, they're making a whole lot of money with their smuggling scheme, and you decided that what they were paying you wasn't enough. You got me to look for this financial information so you could pressure Zamora. Get more money from him.”

  “This is ridiculous.”

  “You're not reading me at all. I don't care what they pay you. I don't care how you're involved, what you do or don't do, who you prosecute or don't prosecute.”

  “It's not really his money,” Nasso said from the doorway.

  He held a small Beretta loosely in one hand and shut the door with the other.

  “You want a taste,” he said to me. “But you're shaking down the wrong man.”

  “Call it whatever you want. I don't care. But yes. I want in. Pay me, and I'll go away. An untraceably long way away.”

  “Garza was greedy. You've got most of it right, except that I never dealt with Zamora. Garza set up the smuggling ring. He had connections with the El Chapo drug cartel. Garza also had connections with the Russian mafia. He knew about how they used banks in Naura to launder their money. But he was greedy. He wouldn't give me what I asked. So I set you against him. I threatened him with you.”

  “So how much?” Dance said quietly.

  “Oh, a million dollars?” Nasso shifted his weight onto his left leg. “Two? Five?”

  “You'd give her five million dollars, just to make her disappear?”

  “Ten million. There's just so much money in this. Ten million is nothing.”

  “I've seen your Niue bank accounts,” I told him. “You've got forty million in one account alone, twenty-seven million in another.”

  “Niue, Naura, Panama, I've got money in all those places.” Dance cocked his head. “How many of my accounts do you really know about?”

  “Actually, none.”

  “What?”

  I turned over the left collar flap of my blouse, showed him the microphone.

  “Jesus! What are you doing?” Dance said.

  Reaching into the briefcase, I took out a digital recorder and set it on the desktop. He ran both hands through his hair, staring at the recorder, his mind incredibly transparent, thinking how quickly he could grab it. I took a small black aluminum box from the briefcase.

  “Transmitter. You can take the recorder. That's what you're thinking right now, you'll grab the recorder, remove the memory card, nobody will know. But this box is a transmitter. Right up to a satellite. The entire conversation is being recorded.”

  “Wheatley,” Dance said.

  I nodded.

  “Never trusted lesbians,” Nasso said, raising the Beretta.

  “Jake, Jake,” Dance said excitedly. “Let's work something out here.”

  “I've already got it worked out. Outside, boss. Come on, get up, get up.”

  “Jake, don't be a fool.”

  Nasso tucked his free hand inside Dance's jacket collar and squeezed on a nerve. Dance gasped in pain and rose out of the director's chair. Nasso shifted his hold on Dance's neck and pushed him rapidly toward the door.

  “Nasso, wait!” I said. “Wait!”

  But he'd already pushed Dance through the doorway and backed him against the balcony railing. When Nasso moved back into the doorway, out of sight of anybody two floors below, he leveled the Beretta at Dance. I suddenly realized what Nasso was going to do, but I couldn't get to him in time. Just as I reached out to him, he shot Dance twice in the chest, the gunshots astonishingly loud and rebounding off the huge atrium walls.

  “Here,” Nasso said, thrusting the Beretta into my outstretched hand.

  I took the gun before I even thought what I was doing.

  “Michael!” Nasso shouted, rushing out of the doorway to Dance, who was clearly dead. Nasso propped him up, maneuvering his body over the railing as though he was trying to hold Dance from falling, but instead pushing him over the railing. Women screamed as Dance's body floated two stories down and landed with a bloodspattering thud on the marble flooring. I saw Nasso wringing his hands together, no, he was pulling off latex gloves and shoving them into his pocket.

  He turned to me with a smile and came back to the doorway. I raised the Beretta, but he grinned wildly and waved his finger at me.

  “No bullets left. Of course, nobody down there knows that. Just hold the gun up high, run down the stairway. Nobody's going to want to come near you. I'll pretend I'm trying to catch you, but I won't.”

  I drew back my arm, relaxing my fingers, ready to drop the gun.

  “She's got a gun!”

  Nasso shouted down to the people staring up at us.

  “She shot him.”

  Two men pointed at me and started to move toward the stairway.

  “Let her outside,” Nasso shouted. “I've got men out there, she won't get anywhere. Stay away from her. Let her get out of the house, so nobody else gets hurt.”

  “On your way, Laura Winslow,” he said quietly to me. “Those old arrest warrants were nothing. But now thousands of people are going to look for a murderer.”

  I held up the transmitter.

  “Wheatley knows the truth.”

  “Oh, she's not a problem. Better run now. Run as long as you can. But just remember, honey. As of tonight, you are absolutely, totally fucked.”

  36

  “Can you please come closer?” Pinau asked. “I'm not wearing my contacts, and I broke my regular glasses yesterday. All I've got are these drugstore reading things. So I can't really see you very well.”

  “Not a problem,” I said.

  “You're being hunted by every law enforcement officer within a hundred miles. Do you know that?”

  “Because I murdered Michael Dance?”

  “Or so they say. I'm not so sure.”

  “It was Jake Nasso. If you want, I can tell you what happened. But I don't really have much time.”

  “It's not necessary.” She bent over and tapped an immaculately red fingernail on the stack of papers. “I did read all of your documents.”

  “And?”

  She pressed her back into the chair, moved into the circle of her hotel lamp. I hardly recognized her, and for a moment wondered if it was an entirely different person. A tired, older woman, sitting in her faded chenille bathrobe, all makeup wiped from her wrinkled face, and completely unconcerned how she looked.

  Seeing me look her up and down, she smiled.

  “I'm sixty-seven years old,” she said. “When I'm out in public, I'm a very traditional Mexican woman. Always look your finest, always be presentable to the extreme, because you are a woman in a macho society that values women mainly for their beauty. Or maybe even just for their bodies. But this is the real me.”

  A cigarette burned in an amber ashtray, but she seemed unaware that it was even lit. I saw a pair of worn flannel pajamas laid out on the bed. All the papers I'd faxed her were stacked on the floor beside her chair.

  “What do you know about Mexico's judicial system?”

  “Corrupt.”

  “In many ways,” she said, “that's unpleasantly true. Presidente Fox wants to make a diff
erence. But the corruption of the last century, the pervasive influence of the drug cartels, the underpaid policia, dirty money, dishonest bureaucrats—it must seem very strange to you people from El Norte.”

  “We have our own problems. Um, Mrs. Medina, I'm not here to talk politics or morality. You've read all the financial stuff? The offshore bank accounts?”

  “Yes. Most of the names—I wasn't surprised.”

  “You provided the names, so you can't be surprised.”

  “Yes. That is true. But Francisco Zamora. What can I tell you about Mexico's hopes for better citizens? Better wages? Even—yes, even better water.”

  “Did you suspect him?”

  “Garza, most definitely. Garza was always a greedy man. But Francisco? No.”

  She took a pack of cigarettes and an old Zippo lighter from her bathrobe pocket. About to light the cigarette, she noticed the one burning in the ashtray.

  “What can you do?” I asked.

  “I am the chief officer of the Public Ministry. The prosecutorial arm of the Mexican judicial system. And yet there are many things I can not do. Hector Garza, for example. He works for me, but he does not work for me. I have the power to put him in prison, but I can not touch him. Fox may have won the election. But hundreds of officials from the old regime didn”t stand for election. Their power is fading in some circles. In other ways their ancient power is absolute.

  What do you want me to do?“

  “Confirm what's in those documents.”

  “I do so.”

  “And?”

  “I cannot prosecute. Embezzled monies, perhaps we can recover them from the offshore accounts you have identified. The men themselves? I am powerless.”

  Frustrated, she jammed the smoldering cigarette into the ashtray and quickly lit another. She inhaled deeply, like a marijuana smoker, and slowly let out the smoke.

  “You know about El Chapo?” she asked.

  “Guzman? The drug lord who bought his way out of prison?”

  “Yes. Some people in his cartel financed Zamora's maquiladora. From the start, the entire plan was to build a model maquiladora, one that your government would hail as a champion of NAFTA. From the start, El Chapo's men planned to use the buildings as a base for smuggling. From the start, it was meant to be drugs. But in the past few years, major money has been made by smuggling people. Zamora brought his entrepreneurial spirit to smuggling women. He realized that you Americans have many appetites. Drugs is one of them, sex another. Tell me, Laura. I may call you Laura?”

  “Yes.”

  “You must have suspected me.”

  “I did.”

  “You went to Kykotsmovi. You asked if anybody knew a young girl named Pinau. But that was a family name, almost a secret name. I dreamed of having my butterfly hairdo, I dreamed of the ceremony. People died. I was taken to Mexico. I'm not surprised that nobody remembered my secret name.”

  Her cell phone burred, a slight sound, almost like an insect.

  “Yes? She's with me now. I'll call you back soon.”

  “What can you do?” I said once again.

  “Do you play poker?”

  “Played at it. Nickel, dime, nothing more.”

  “I've just raised somebody an enormous amount of face.”

  “Face?”

  “Men. Mexican men. As I said before, men tolerate women like me. Especially men in power. They tolerate women in general, but they don't really want women to have any power outside of the home. My husband died five years ago. I've given my life to Mexico. And I play a truly vicious game of poker.”

  “I don't understand what you're telling me.”

  “In Mexico, there are both official and unofficial ways to get things done. All too often, money works in unofficial ways. But sometimes, those of us who are true to our country, we use those other methods. I have just made certain that word is passed to the drug cartels that Francisco Zamora's smuggling operation is about to be shut down. Word has been passed that he took twenty percent of the profits off the top and diverted them to offshore bank accounts. The ones you've told me about. Ten percent might be tolerated, perhaps even fifteen. Those who steal twenty percent are punished. And now, I'm tired. If you'd be so kind, an old woman would like to crawl into bed.”

  “I still don't understand.”

  “If I've read all these documents correctly, there is a scheduled delivery tomorrow of another group of women to a ranch in the San Rafael Valley. By tomorrow, Zamora will know that the cartels no longer wish him to stay in business. In the short run, it will make a difference. In six months. . . do you know much about these cartels that traffic in women?”

  “I've talked with a few of the women in chat rooms.”

  “On the Internet? How interesting.”

  “Survivors. Helping each other. But only a small percentage of the women. As for the cartels, I only know what I read in that CIA report you told me about.”

  “By any conservative estimate,” she said, “over one hundred thousand women were smuggled into the US last year. Zamora only worked a percentage of that. By tomorrow, the cartels will already have divided who gets the women supplied to Zamora. So. I'm tired. I think that's all. Oh. Please. Would you thank the woman I first contacted? The woman who hired you.”

  “I can't do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “She died yesterday.”

  “Madre de dios!”

  Pinau collapsed in her chair, made the sign of the cross.

  “I am so sorry,” she said faintly. “I think you should leave now.”

  “Can I have your guarantee about something?”

  “In return for what you've given me? Ask. If I can do it, I will.”

  “Basta Ya. Let it flourish.”

  “The workers' union? For Indian women, mestizo women? I will try.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “Señor Johnny. Do I understand correctly, he was once your husband?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was he a good man?”

  “Once, a long time ago, I thought he'd hung the moon.”

  “Ah. My Cristóbal was that kind of man. I will do my best. I can't promise anything. Since the Public Ministry controls prosecution of Basta Ya, I can speak to some of the correct people. That's all you want? In return for what you've done?”

  “Yes.”

  “If I were you” she said, “I would tell him to vanish for a while.”

  “He already has.”

  “If I were you, I would also vanish. The drug cartels will put Zamora out of business, but they will hate you for it. They have long memories.”

  “I am leaving tomorrow.”

  She stood and extend her hands, taking mine and squeezing them.

  “Mexico thanks you, Laura Winslow.”

  Outside her hotel room, I leaned against the corridor wall, exhausted. My cell phone rang and I moved quickly away from her door.

  “It's all set up,” Rey said. “You say the word, I'll start the ball.”

  “Go,” I said, and started to turn off the cell phone.

  “Lock and load,” I heard him say to himself. “Rock and roll.”

  37

  We came in on horseback along a ridge two hundred yards above the ranch. While I tied the horses' reins securely to a large mesquite branch, Rey started glassing the ranch with his binoculars.

  He wore total cammies. Hat, long-sleeve shirt, multi-pocketed fatigue pants tucked into cammie-patterned army boots. An M-16 slung behind his back, a Glock nine on one hip and on the opposite shoulder a Benelli M3 Super 90 combat shotgun.

  During the night he'd shaved his head entirely bald.

  Why? I'd asked.

  It's an edge, he'd said with a shrug. A combat edge. They think they know what I look like. Now I want to show them that I'm the wrath of God.

  “We early enough?” I asked.

  “No truck yet. No people. Check that. Somebody just came out of the barn. Going back in.�
�

  I checked my watch, a new Timex I'd grabbed in Walgreen's when I realized that Meg had taken my old watch with the implanted tracking device.

  “Seven. According to the computer records that Don Ralph found, the truck should be here by eight.”

  “I want you to stay up here.”

  “Can't do that.”

  “Then take the shotgun.”

  “Don't want to do that either.”

  “Damn it, Laura. You're just in the way here.”

  I went twenty yards away. We waited.

  “Vehicle coming down the road.”

  “The truck?”

  “A Suburban. Inside the fence, at the barn. People getting out.”

  “It's only seven-thirty. Who can it be?”

  He lowered the binoculars suddenly, took a deep breath, raised them to his eyes.

  “We've got real trouble.”

  Handing me the binoculars, he shook his head angrily. Zamora got out of the driver's door. I had to refocus and gasped as I saw Garza pull Alex Emerine from the car, and then Amada.

  “Rey, look!” I gave him the binoculars. “What are they doing here?”

  “I don't know,” Rey whispered in shock. “The two of them were supposed to be driving to Scottsdale.”

  Rey unslung the Benelli shotgun, racked the slide, and reached into one of the pouches in his pants to take out another shell. Inserting it into the magazine, he handed the shotgun to me. I backed away.

  “Two dirt bikes,” he said. “I figure at least two other men in the barn. Zamora, Garza, two in the bam. I'll need you with a gun.”

  “I'm going to call for help.”

  “No time. This is a hostage situation.”

  “At least wait for the truck.”

  “Don't you get it? Laura, the truck's never going to show.”

  “What do you mean? It's scheduled.”

  “By who?”

  “Zamora.”

  “And you trust him?”

  “No, but. . . ”

  “The tanker's not going to show. My guess? They're here to torch the ranch. With Alex and Amada inside.”

  I took the shotgun by the barrel.

  “Seven rounds in there. Deer slugs. Like a really big bullet, not like buckshot. You put one of those slugs into somebody, they're going down. And take this.”