Two of them stayed twisting and moaning on the floor. The third began to get up. Señor Ruiz simply looked at him and pointed between his eyes. “Are you sure it’s worth it?”
The man just dropped back onto the floor, rubbing the back of his head where he’d fallen.
Señor Ruiz rose to his feet. “Thank you, gentlemen. The cash in this pot will repay the amount you cheated. It might even provide a nice remuneration for the afternoon’s entertainment.”
As he turned, he said over his shoulder, “You might spread the word in San Juan. We frown on cheating.”
Señor Ruiz walked out of the room. He nodded at two men at the end of the bar. They walked into the card room and removed the disabled visitors to the sidewalk outside of the bar.
The old man beside me called over, “Nestor, a gentleman to see you.”
Señor Ruiz pocketed the money and walked toward us as calmly as if he were just returning from the men’s room. He raised one finger to the bartender who immediately produced a large shot of rum that he seemed to have already poured.
Señor Ruiz poured a few drops over the cracked skin of the knuckles of his right hand without flinching. The bartender handed him a towel to dry his hand.
“This is Michael Knight. He’s from the mainland. He says he was sent to see you by Señor Ramon Garcia.”
Señor Ruiz drank the rest of the shot of rum in one swallow. I waited. He leaned both hands on the bar without looking at me. “Did Señor Garcia say anything else?”
I knew it was another test. I was groping for an answer. I finally said the only thing I could remember. “He said I could trust you. And that you were the only one I could trust.”
I saw the trace of a smile. “He said the same to me about you.” He looked over and started to hold out his right hand. When he saw that it was still oozing blood, he took it back. “Perhaps later.”
I sensed that small talk was not Señor Ruiz’ style. I cut to the chase in a low tone. “Señor Garcia said you could help me find Victor Mendosa.”
“And why would I do that?”
I had the sinking feeling that my connection with this enigma was a fragile thread at best. The wrong word could break it, and I had no idea of the right word. “If it’s my Anglo name that bothers you, I’m—”
“I’m half Puerto Rican, too. My father was Mexican. He was a torero. A bullfighter in your language.”
“Then what are you—”
“Your bloodlines are of no concern to me, Mr. Knight.”
“So what is?”
“Your heart.” He tapped his chest. “If I commit to this quest of yours, it could be the last thing either of us will do on this earth. I want to know how committed you are. Like a torero, are your feet firmly planted, or do they shake and run when the horns of the bull come close?”
I sat back on the barstool, but I was looking into his eyes. “Words are cheap, Mr. Ruiz. I could tell you I’ll never run under fire. But how would I know? I won’t lie to you. I could tell you I haven’t cut and run under fire yet, but why would you believe that either?”
The best I could say is that I had his attention. It was enough to go on. “I’ll say this. Victor’s my cousin. He’s also my client. To some that doesn’t mean much. To me it’s everything. His life is at stake. I’ll give everything I have to save it. That’s all I can tell you. On that, you’re in or you’re out. If this is going to be what I think it is, I need your commitment just as much as you need mine.”
I could see the hard crust of his look soften, almost to a smile. “That’s what our mutual friend, Mr. Garcia, said you’d say.”
He wrapped the bar cloth around his still oozing knuckles and held out his right hand. I took it. It was the beginning of a commitment that I felt sure neither of us would break. And four words consumed my mind: “God help us both.”
NINETEEN
NESTOR REACHED OVER the bar and took the half-full bottle of rum out of the hand of the bartender. He took two fresh glasses and motioned with the bottle to a table in the rear of the bar.
I noticed that he took the seat that had his back to the wall. It being a small table, I sat with my back open to the rest of the bar. At that point, I had the feeling that I could have no one better watching my back.
We sat in silence while he filled the two glasses. He handed one to me and raised the other. “God help us in whatever lies ahead.”
I wasn’t sure whether it was a prayer or a toast. I drank to both. I also prayed that this might be the last toast of the afternoon while I could still hold a rational thought.
Nestor looked me eye-to-eye. He was not one to waste words on preliminaries.
“Why you?”
By way of groping for an answer, I stalled. “Why not?”
He took the cryptic return of his serve, so to speak, with a half-grin. He leaned his chair back against the wall. “Well, let’s see. You say you’re half Puerto Rican, but you look like a gringo to me. And probably to everyone else on this island. No offense. You asked. Your Spanish is good, considering. Even a touch of the Mayagüez accent, probably from your mother. But you still sound like you’re working a second language. In a tight spot, you’d pass for an hermano like I’d pass for the Duke of York.”
“I suppose—”
He held up his hand. “I’m just warming up. You know about Victor’s race fixing at your little track up north, but I’d bet the pot that you’re totally clueless about what this game is really about. How am I doing?”
“You make a good case.”
“I’m still not through. You walk in here with nothing but a couple of names that may or may not be known down here—more likely not. You talk about all this concern for a Victor Mendosa, this jockey, who, by the way, nobody in this place gives a flying crap about. What I’m saying, it’s a wonder you’re still breathing.”
That set me back about ten yards. “You mean . . .”
He leaned in close to the table and close to my ear. “I mean if that old man at the bar hadn’t been here . . .” He grinned and shook his head. “Damn, you are clueless. If that old man hadn’t recognized Paco’s name, you’d probably be food for the barracudas. Are you beginning to get the lay of the land?”
On that one, I slugged down the last inch of rum in the glass.
“I repeat. Are you beginning to get wise?”
“I think so.”
“I don’t think so. This is not hometown U.S.A. This is a war zone. Except the soldiers don’t wear uniforms. We have enemies sprinkled around this city that would give an arm and both legs to get through that door to bomb this place to hell. You hear me?”
“I hear you.”
“Good. Then maybe my question makes more sense. The information I have is that your jockey, Victor Mendosa, is in the hands of those enemies I mentioned. The job your Boston friend, Ramon Garcia, passed on to me is to get Mendosa out of there, preferably alive. And so, who does he send for my right-hand man to ride into enemy territory?”
He held up his glass gesturing to me, before finishing the last few drops. “That said, you’ll forgive my directness in asking—why you?”
I shook my head and couldn’t suppress a wry grin.
He matched my grin. “You’re offended.”
I shook my head again. “Not in the least. I think I’ve asked myself that same question about two hundred times.”
“And have you found an answer?”
It was my turn to look him in the eye. There was no grin now.
“Yes.”
“Good. Would you share it?”
“You said it yourself. I care about Victor Mendosa, apparently more than all the rest of you people put together. I told you. He’s my client and he’s my blood cousin. You might say I’m really the only one on this island who has a horse in this race. I’ll do whatever it takes to get him home.”
He just nodded.
“And one more thing, Señor Ruiz. I’m not quite the village idiot you describe. I learn fast. E
specially when my life’s on the line. Check around. I walked in here with a name and a prayer because this was my only lead. I knew the risk, but I had no choice. So that’s the whole package. If you buy it, we’re in it together. If not, with all due respect, to hell with you. I’ll go it alone.”
I caught the beginning of a smile. He rubbed the stubble of his beard and poured another round. “You left out one thing, gringo. You’ve got a set of rocks on you that may make up for all the rest. What the hell. No one lives forever.”
He held out his hand. I was replaying in my mind the oration I’d just given. The thought occurred that I might have overstated my case. Especially the part about going it alone. Too late to take it back. In a “what the hell” moment of my own, I took the hand he offered and sealed the partnership.
“Now what, Señor Ruiz?”
“Now we drop the ‘Señor’. If we’re riding into hell together, it might as well be on first names.”
“Done. I repeat, now what, Nestor?”
“It’s school time. You need to understand what you may be giving your life for. Yes?”
“Could not agree more.”
He took in a breath and let it out slowly. I think his problem was where to begin.
“You know about that fixed race at the track in Boston. That’s what got you into this. What you don’t know is why that race was fixed. This wasn’t just to make a few bucks on bets. It was for that, of course, but a hell of a lot more. The group behind it needed a large and quick windfall of cash to buy into a major operation. It would multiply their winnings a few hundred times.”
He was speaking softly, so I leaned in closer.
“Where the hell to start. If you know Ramon Garcia like he says you do, can I assume you’re familiar with the group called the Nyetas?”
He looked over for an answer. My nod told him that I had a working familiarity with the gang. I didn’t tell him how much history I had with a gang called the Coyotes associated with the Nyetas from my teen days in Jamaica Plain before Paco bought my release at a personal price. But the nod said enough. He looked straight into my eyes.
“Good. Because you’re now sitting in the middle of one of our Nyeta headquarters. If you know us, maybe you’ve heard of the blood enemy I talked about. It’s another Puerto Rican gang. We call them insectos. You understand that word?”
“It’s about the same in English.”
“Then listen. For the first time ever, the insectos partnered up with the Italian mafia in Boston for one big operation. The Italian mob did their part first. They did what they do. They fixed that race. Then they bet with bookies all across the mainland and in Canada. They won enough cash on that one race to finance an operation put together down here by the insectos.”
He paused again in thought.
“Take your time.”
“All right. Now you know the cast of characters.” He checked the barroom behind me and leaned in even closer. “Let me ask you something. What do you think is the second largest illegal business in the United States? I mean right behind the billions of dollars made on illegal drugs every year. It’s also the third largest international crime after the world trade in illegal drugs and arms.”
No nod this time. I had no idea.
“It’s the illegal poaching, smuggling, and sale of exotic and endangered wild animals.”
He must have caught my reflexive look of disbelief.
“Just listen and learn. The trade is mostly in exotic wild birds, but it’s also heavily into monkeys, tigers, bears, lions, fish, reptiles of all kinds. Anything that’s exotic, and that means all of the endangered species. In fact, the closer to extinction, the higher the demand and the higher the price.”
“No offense. I have trouble believing that.”
“No surprise. Most people do, because they never hear of it. And most of those who hear of it, don’t much care. That’s what makes it easy money.”
“It’s just not what I expected to hear. Where do they get the animals?”
“Mostly the rainforest of the Amazon in Brazil. It’s the richest source of wild animal species in the world. It’s a chain operation. Traders in Brazil get the dirt-poor natives in villages in the jungles around the Amazon River to capture birds and animals. The more rare, the closer to extinction, the better. For the natives, it’s a means of surviving. They trap and sell these animals to the traders by the hundreds of thousands every year for less per animal than the cash you’ve got in your pocket right now. Then the traders bring them by riverboats to the Brazilian coastal ports like Belém and Macapá.”
“Then what?”
“That’s the hell of it. These animals and birds get stuffed like sardines into tubes and boxes in every compartment of a ship to get them up here to Mayagüez. This is the major shipping port. From here they’re carried by ship to get smuggled into the United States.”
“Why Mayagüez?”
“Because the route’s already been established years ago by the drug trade. The drugs, mostly heroin and cocaine, still come up from the cartels in Colombia and Venezuela to Mayagüez. They ship by the Mona Passage direct to Florida, usually around Miami. That traffic’s been flooding the United States with drugs for decades. So when they needed a route to ship the animals, this was a natural.”
It sounded like science fiction, but Nestor had a convincing way of telling it. He had my attention. “What do they do with them from there?”
“Once they’re smuggled into the United States, there’s a bigger market than you could imagine. There are about a dozen live auctions around the United States, but the biggest pipeline to the buyers is the Internet and specialized magazines. You can buy any exotic animal you want, even a species on the verge of extinction. It’s almost as easy as buying a pair of shoes if you’re willing to pay the price. You want a baby tiger, that’s $1000. Just put it on your credit card. It’ll be illegally poached and delivered to your back door. Hell, you can get a baby giraffe for $22,000. There’s a price on everything. A little golden lion tamarin monkey can easily get $20,000. If they’re nearly extinct like a Lear’s Macaw, we’re talking real money, at least $90,000.”
“I’ve never heard of any of this.”
“Most people haven’t. But the organized crime gangs all over the world have. Russians, Chinese, Italians. Most of them are up to their ears in it. This is now a twenty-billion-dollar-a-year illegal industry. Some say it’s already bigger than drugs and arms dealing. Even the major terrorist organizations are getting into it. And the hell of it is that the closer these animals are to extinction, the easier to sell and the higher the price. More species have gone totally extinct by this route than you can count. This, amigo, is the truth.”
It was coming almost faster than I could absorb. “Where is this big market for animals? Who buys them?”
“Ah. That’s the other side of this crap-eating picture.” He stopped long enough to pour and swallow three more fingers of rum. “A lot of them are bought by thousands of people with more money than brains. They get their jollies out of owning a cute little exotic baby ocelot or tiger or monkey. Even bear cubs or lion cubs. The problem is these idiots have no idea how to care for them. Then, if they live at all, when they outgrow being cute and cuddly and become inconvenient, they get abandoned or bounced around like foster kids. They usually wind up being mistreated till they die in some sleazy roadside menagerie or, just as likely, at the wrong end of a gun or dumped in some vacant quarry. But I’ll tell you this for sure, those clowns who buy them for pets are not the worst.”
Another swig of rum. “There are the ones who buy them to stock hunting ranches for the sacks of crap who get an expensive ego-boost out of killing exotic animals, especially endangered species. The more endangered, the higher the price.”
“How could I not have heard of any of this?”
“That just makes you typical. Then there are the wealthy, self-indulgent slimeballs who’ll pay any price to make a damn meal on an endangered spec
ies.”
“I still can’t believe—”
“You better start believing. There are also the so-called scientists who pay the price to use thousands of poached monkeys to do illegal research. There are experimenters who pay over $30,000 for one illegally trapped endangered coral snake. And that’s documented. Am I beginning to open your eyes?”
“If it’s that big, why isn’t it known?”
“Because, damn it, I mean it. Nobody gives a crap about these animals. No one cares enough to listen. And the worst part is that the rough way these animals are caught and shipped, ninety percent of them die a death you don’t want to think about in the shipping. That’s also a fact. But the profits are so high on the ones that survive it that the smugglers don’t care about the ones they kill. Every year, the profits are rising higher than even illegal drug sales.”
“Is that even possible?”
“Open your ears, Michael. It’s true. Over thirty-eight million of these pathetic animals are taken out of Brazil every year. And trust me, what makes it possible is that no one gives a damn.”
“Wait a minute, Nestor. I don’t buy that. People care about animals. I know they do.”
“Oh, is that a fact? Then how is it that the governments of every country involved know it’s going on, and still, there are practically no laws against it, or the law’s a joke. Only ten of your mainland states regulate the sale of exotic animals at all. Most of them just require a license so the state gets a cut. And if the traders are caught, which they almost never are, the fines don’t amount to cigar money.”
“But if it’s a black market industry . . .”
“Here’s the key. There’s still no stigma attached to trading in animals. The few laws that exist are not enforced. The agencies are too understaffed and underfunded to make any difference. Last year, the percentage of smuggled animals recovered by the authorities was one half of one percent. And most of those animals were too far gone to save.”
It was beginning to sink in. “I didn’t know any of this.”
Fatal Odds Page 15
