Spiral

by David L Lindsey

  In his computation of Ireno Lopez's surveillance records, Bias had determined that Gamboa had traveled west over this crossing nearly twice as many times as he had traveled east, usually taking advantage of one of the other east-west arteries to return to Inverness. He had decided, then, to put all of the explosives between the ties in the westbound lane. Rubio placed the amber flashers in the center of the lane, screwed the orange lens over his flashlight, and diverted the occasional car while Bias began digging out the caliche from between the ties.

  Only minutes after beginning, his clothes were clinging to him like cellophane. He tried to ignore the idea of suffocating. The caliche bedding had not been replaced in a long time and was packed tight. Bias had to use the pick every inch of the way. Pick, then shovel the loose dirt, then pick again. Luckily, he didn't have to dig far below the surface. The white chalky earth covered the new low-cut street shoes, falling in the gap at his instep until the insides were filled with crumbly clods. His feet kept slipping on the slope of the caliche bed.

  Rubio paced back and forth, never saying a word. Sometimes when there were several cars in a row, he would wave them around, get the line of them started, and then walk over to the control box and pretend to work with the wiring, looking back at Bias as if they were coordinating their tasks. The only thing they had to worry about was someone coming along in one of the darkened cars who actually knew how the crossing lights functioned, and might notice that what Bias was doing bore no relationship at all to the flasher control box. There was no need to be digging between the rails and ties.

  He did not put the explosive in containers, but dug the holes in the shape of inverted cones and molded the plastic to fit, thereby guiding the direction of the blast. The tightly packed caliche bedding of the track was the perfect repository for the explosive. All the force of the charge would be concentrated within an eighteen-to-twenty-four-inch zone directing the charge upward. It would be as close to the car as possible without actually being attached to the chassis.

  By eleven-forty, they were almost through. Bias, drenched in sweat under the hot coveralls and his arms trembling from the hurried digging, covered the explosives with an inch of caliche and ran the wire connecting the two cones under the rail tie to avoid possible accidental severance. He had brought a lot of lead wire, and now began stringing it along under the rail on the east side of the track toward a slope and a stand of brown, sun-parched Johnsongrass. It was the nearest cover large enough to hide the toolbox which would contain the receiver and switch.

  The traffic had slowed to only an occasional car now. Bias walked to the pickup, leaned over the sides of the bed, and transferred the receiver and switchboard from the airline bag to the empty toolbox, from which he had already removed the shelving. The rigid toolbox provided excellent protection for the moving parts on the board. When he had the board set as he wanted it, he turned on the receiver and ran two lead wires out of the bottom corner of the box which he then locked. There was no risk until he connected the lead wires to the wires coming from the explosives. He lifted the box out of the truck and walked off toward the Johnsongrass. In less than three minutes he had connected the lead wires to the RDX with plastic screw caps. The explosives were now live. He made sure the grass completely hid the box before he hurried back to the truck.

  Within another ten minutes, they had loaded everything back into the bed of the pickup, put the crossing signal box back in order and double-checked the caliche around the plastic explosive. Then had left the Southern Pacific Railroad crossing at San Felipe near East Briar Hollow Lane primed with enough explosive to rattle all the windows in the Remington Hotel when it was detonated. They drove off, and never looked back.

  Chapter 37

  DURING Celia Moreno's recitation, neither Dystal nor Haydon took notes. They had come to rely on the transcriptions of interview recordings for future reference, and besides, there weren't likely to be many details of any importance that either of them would forget. Several times during the forty minutes she talked, Haydon glanced at Dystal. The bearish lieutenant never once took his eyes off her and had let almost all of the ice melt in his drink before he reached out and took his first sip.

  Celia Moreno sat up straight in her chair as she talked, her feet together, with her dress falling over her knees to the floor. She held her drink in her hands, resting on her knees. Her story was more smoothly told this time, and she astutely incorporated answers to all of the questions Haydon had asked earlier. From time to time she would stop talking to sip her drink, or she would cut her eyes at Nina, not apprehensively or defensively, Haydon thought, but rather as one woman looking to another for some kind of tacit feminine alliance under the steady, uninterpretable stares of the two detectives to whom she was talking.

  When she finally finished, Dystal, who also had been leaning forward in his red leather wing chair, straightened up and settled back, drinking from his glass with several relished gulps as if it were water, not liquor. His eyes continued to rest on her for a while, and then he turned them to Haydon.

  "Well, this clears up a lot of stuff," he said, with a dry wink at Haydon. She had raised as many questions as she had answered. He shook his head, then turned to Celia again. "Miss Moreno, what was the post office box number you mailed your reports to?"

  "Box 1821, Main Station."

  "Uh-huh. And this Rich Elkin fella was the only contact you ever had with them?"

  no

  "Yes."

  "Did he ever show you any identification, any proof that he wa employed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation?"

  It was a moment before she spoke, though the answer require no thought. She obviously had realized the implications of her response long before tonight.

  "No," she said. "I'm afraid not."

  "Uh-huh. Well, do you happen to have a picture of Mr. Elkin'

  "No," she said again. "I don't."

  Dystal smiled kindly. "Well, it's not like it used to be. People don't exchange pictures anymore. Life clips along too fast." I wanted to ease back on her. He had no wish to embarrass her make her any more uneasy than she already was.

  "Tell me," he said then. "After you got on your own, did he ever make any comments on those reports? Do you think he ever saw 'em?"

  She thought a minute. "I don't know if he saw them, but after we learned that Ireno Lopez had arrived in Houston, he called me twice on the telephone—he had already 'disappeared' at that time and told me 'they' were wanting to know if I had any more details since my last report."

  "Uh-huh." Dystal nodded thoughtfully.

  "You said Elkin dropped out of the sight several weeks ago. Do you have any idea why that was?" Dystal asked.

  "No."

  "Where's he live?"

  "I don't know, now," Celia said, her tone slightly embarrassed again. "I knew when we were dating, but, well, he grew more and more distant after I started doing the reports, and I didn't see him much. Then one time I tried to call him, and got a recording that telephone had been disconnected. I called information, but he wasn’t listed."

  "Uh-huh. You ask him about that next time he called you?"

  "Yes. He just said he was going through some 'life changes' he wanted to be left alone. He pretty well cut me off. I never he from him anymore except for those telephone calls."

  Dystal finished his drink and declined an offer of another.

  "Miss Moreno," he said slowly, "when you went down in Mexico to visit the teco people, you stayed a week or so, is that rig

  "Yes. In fact it was a week."

  "And you met a lot of their people?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, tomorrow we're gonna ask you to write up a little report of that trip for us. A kind of debriefing. Like for you to give us as many names, descriptions, things like that, as you can. It would be a big help to us. Mr. Haydon's got a typewriter and a CRT here that you can use. Okay?"

  Celia Moreno nodded.

  "Now, your first item in this little pr
oject is going to be to give us everything you know about the tecos de choque. Right? I mean rumors, hints, maybe-type thoughts, anything that goes through your mind that we might work a wedge into. Know what I mean?"

  Celia nodded again.

  "We need it as soon as possible."

  Another nod.

  "That's good. I appreciate your help, Miss Moreno," he said, standing with a restrained grunt. "I'm sure we're going to be talking some more. Stu," he said, turning to Haydon, "you got another telephone around here I can use?"

  "Sure. We can go into the living room."

  The two men excused themselves, and Dystal walked out into the hall. Haydon paused beside Nina and asked her to make a copy of the tape for Dystal, then followed the lieutenant around to the living room. When they got inside, Dystal squared his huge frame to face Haydon.

  "Okay. Now I want to hear everything. Don't leave anything out, Stu. Not anymore."

  Haydon turned and closed the double doors to the living room. While both men stood, he started talking, beginning with the first half hour after he left Dystal's office the day before when he went to see Mitchell Garner for the first time. He told him about Renata Islas, his brief encounter with Lucas Negrete, about copying Cordero's address book, talking to Celia Moreno for the first time, working out Cordero's code and going to La Concha Courts, then to Waite's house, to Gamboa's to see Negrete, and then picking up Celia Moreno.During the course of Haydon's account, Dystal had listened with his arms folded, his head bent down as he looked at the toes of his Nacona boots. Haydon paced, walking to the windows to look out to the lawn lights, to the ebony grand piano where he unconscious' touched some of the picture frames, to a collection of red Conte drawings above the fireplace, and back again.

  Dystal had finally sat down on the heavy divan of Haitian cotton by the time Haydon finished. Haydon sat on the piano stool and looked across at him.

  "Well, I can't say you didn't make a lot of mileage on your own Dystal said. "It wouldn't have happened just that way otherwise That damned little old notebook was the key. We sure as hell miss that."

  "Celia Moreno has saved us a lot of time," Haydon said. “We could have spent weeks trying to clear up some of that."

  "Yeah, we never would've got anywhere without that gal," Dystal conceded. "This is the biggest mess I've seen in a long time. We got dead people scattered from here to Hondo and this little thing comes in here and tells us all about it like it was office gossip." narrowed one eye at Haydon. "Who the hell you suppose she's been feeding all this to?"

  "Not the FBI."

  "No, of course not, but it'll be easy to check out. If this I Elkin is for real, I'm gonna raise old Billy Hell. But I think the gal’s been taken for a long ride."

  "It was a pretty elaborate setup," Haydon said.

  "Yeah," Dystal agreed, "it was." Still looking at Haydon said, "You got any guesses?"

  Haydon shook his head. "I almost wish it was the Bureau. We might not like what we'd find, but at least we'd have a reasonable insurance it could be dealt with. As it is, I don't know. We're dealing with exiles; with foreign radical groups backed by wealthy men considerable power. We didn't even know something like the existed until yesterday. Who knows what we'll uncover tomorrow two days from now? I don't think we're anywhere close to the source of this thing." He stopped. "But when we get to the bottom of it – if we do—I won't be surprised to find some of our own people."

  "Our own people?"

  "I think what we're seeing here is only a sideshow, but it may all of the circus we'll ever be allowed to see. I keep asking myself who would want to monitor, but not influence, the impending assassination of a former cabinet minister of the Mexican government. Especially daily a notoriously corrupt cabinet minister who could easily have been involved in a lot more than we've uncovered so far. And who would have the expertise to do it the way Celia Moreno has been handled? Does that methodology seem familiar to you?"

  Dystal stared at Haydon. "What—you mean State Department?"

  "It's occurred to me."

  "Goddam, Stu. That's a little hard for me to get a grip on."

  The two of them were quiet a minute, Dystal thinking, Haydon wondering just how bizarre his suggestion had sounded to the lieutenant.

  Then Dystal said, "Okay, listen, maybe that's a little crazy, but maybe it's not so far wrong either. I'm sure as hell not going to turn down the possibility of anything right now. In the meantime we got to get on with the business at hand here. As soon as I give the Bureau people the tip on the other hit targets, they're gonna want to talk to the girl. You sure you don't want to move her to a motel somewhere? I don't know if they're gonna be satisfied with this deal here."

  "Let's just wait and see what develops."

  "Fine." Dystal fixed his eyes on the toes of his alligator boots. The one thing on which he was willing to spend a lot of money. "You think this Rubio Arizpe's our man?"

  "According to Renata Islas he's been to Texas twice for the same reason."

  "I'll tell you what we need to do. We need to get this Islas woman's help on this. Get back with her, maybe get her over here to compare notes with Moreno in there. Get back to her people in Old Mexico who told her about this guy in the first place." Thinking, he propped one boot across a beefy thigh and idly traced a stubby finger over the Spanish stitching. "I'll call the Bureau's hand on this one. Them and the CIA's the boys that's got intelligence operations down in there. We'll put the snake in their britches, and see how they like it. They're supposed to be on top of this terrorist shit."

  "And what do you want to do about Negrete in the meantime?" Haydon asked.

  "I want that son of a bitch," Dystal said, looking at Haydon. "This ain't Beirut, for God's sake. You told him we were going to keep our nose on him, right?"

  Haydon nodded.

  "Well, we're gonna do just that. And I'll get somebody over there to get that list you told him you wanted of the names of the boys he's got working for him."

  Haydon nodded again.

  "I'd like to run about half of 'em off, but we don't know which ones were mixed up in that Waite mess, or the Lopez thing for that matter. We're gonna have to keep an eye on all of them. I'll talk to the DA and see what kind of damn order we can get confining every one of them to Gamboa's place. And I'll set up a task force to work full-time on building a case against Negrete. I told the crime-lab people to take that Waite place apart with a microscope. As long as those people were there, they had to leave something behind. Somewhere in that house we're gonna find some evidence."

  "Shouldn't we send the explosives dogs over to Gamboa's?"

  "Yeah, we'll do that. Once the dogs give his place a clean bill of health, then it's going to be up to them to keep it that way. If we can get that whole bunch confined to that one place, we'd be getting rid of half our lice in one dose."

  "I just hope they haven't already gotten their hands on Ferretis."

  "Yeah, me too. That was a big mistake, Stu. When you first got those names you should've given them to us and we could've gone after them all at the same time. Right now I don't see any other way of getting to the bottom of this except through that professor." Dystal grimaced, and made a hissing sound between his teeth. "Goddam. What a mess."

  Haydon looked at him. The big lieutenant slumped on the divan.

  "Bob," Haydon said, "supposedly all of this has come about as a result of Mexican political 'flight' money. What do you think about those figures I quoted you?"

  "Too damn much money."

  "Do you believe those figures?"

  "I don't know," Dystal said, looking at Haydon with weary eyes. "You trust your source?"

  "Explicitly."

  "Then I guess I accept the figures. It's hard to understand how a nation of people would settle for that kind of crap from their politicians, though."

  "Garner says most of the money came here, to the States," Haydon said.

  Dystal sighed heavily, then nodded slowly. "That don't s
urprise me."

  "He says it came in cash, huge shipments of it. Larger than the drug cartels. You couldn't get enough Smurfs to peddle it for you. One, two billion."

  Dystal was still, gazing out through the tall windows across from him. Slowly he turned his face to Haydon and said, "You wonderin' about the currency transaction reports?"

  "That, and simply the mechanics of any bank accepting millions of dollars in cash. Let's suppose the depositor proved the money was not drug-related. Fifty million, five hundred million, nine hundred million. The logistics are staggering. What did Portillo's people tell the bankers? What banks? Don't you suppose they had to be told where it came from? How was it explained? Do you think that with all the nervousness caused by the money-laundering scandals of the drug cartels these last few years, a bank is going to accept that kind of cash without checking with federal authorities? What did the Mexicans tell these authorities—This is Mr. Portillo's nest egg from the Mexican national treasury'?"

  "What does Garner say about it?"

  "I didn't really start thinking about it until I'd left him."

  The telephone rang, and Haydon got up and walked across to a small rosewood chest and answered it.

  "It's for you, Bob."

  Dystal pulled himself up off the divan, groaning, and slouched over to the table.

  "This's Dystal." He stood with his weight shifted to one side, one of his pants legs caught on the top of a boot. He listened, mumbled a reply, a one-or two-word question.

  "Okay," he said. "Every time you get a little biddy fact, let me know. Much obliged."

  Dystal turned to Haydon. "Waite worked for the port authority. The lady was his wife, Ruby. Other guy was named Don Farrell. A neighbor says Farrell's got a wife named Cissy. They're trying to find her."

  Dystal walked over to the windows, one hand in his pants pocket jiggling change. He stood with his back to Haydon, his shoulders slightly humped under a suit coat that had never fit very well in the first place, too tired to attend to his posture. When he finally turned around, his eyes were sagging with lack of sleep.