Spiral

by David L Lindsey

  The FBI special agent in charge of the Houston field office been there since seven-thirty, and had already established that Richard ard Elkin was not one of their agents or employees or contacts, did any of their computer indices checks come up with any hit on a Richard Elkin. Not even in Mexico. The Drug Enforcement ministration agents in Mexico City and Guadalajara were in process of running through their computer checks, not only on Elkins, but also on their Rubios and Biases. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms was doing the same.

  The U.S. embassy in Mexico City was on overtime too. Mexico was the only place in the world where the FBI and its State Department counterpart, the Central Intelligence Agency, worked in uneasy tandem. The number of FBI agents, known as "legal attaches," attached to embassies around the world rarely exceeded one or two, and frequently were positions of mere formality. But in Mexico City, the FBI personnel numbered in the high twenties, and the agents were active. As for the CIA, Mexico City was one of its most important stations in the world. Not only did Mexico stand as a physical buffer between the United States and the sometimes unstable and communist-prone countries of Latin America, but it was also, for the same reason, crawling with KGB activity. With well over three hundred people attached to it, the Soviet embassy on Calzada de Tacu-baya in Mexico City was the largest diplomatic mission in the world. It also bristled with the most sophisticated electronic equipment available to the KGB. Mexico City was a circus of East-West espionage activity.

  Representatives of both the FBI and the CIA in Mexico City would have extensive files on extremist groups operating there, but Haydon and Dystal were practical, and held little hope of learning anything from those sources soon enough to help them, if they learned anything substantive at all. In the meantime, they had to go with what they had.

  Lapierre had been brought up to date on everything Haydon had discussed with Dystal the previous night, and the three men sat together in Dystal's office to reevaluate their position.

  "There were three nine-millimeter casings in the passenger side of the Volvo," Lapierre said. Though always precise and pleasant in a subdued manner, Pete Lapierre was beginning to show the strain of being in command of a task force that was receiving a great deal of political heat. He reacted by being excessively methodical. Haydon felt distinctly uneasy for ducking the official responsibility.

  "Two in the floor, one in the passenger seat, which would seem to indicate that the gun was fired inside the automobile. The passenger door was closed, but Ferretis's door was standing open." Lapierre referred to his notebook, though he probably had all the details in his head. "Ferretis seems to have been standing outside the car with the door open when he was shot. In the aisle in front of the car, there were skid marks from both directions in front of the Volvo, up to within fifteen feet of each other. It appears that they closed in on the car and skidded to a stop almost bumper to bumper. The skid marks of the car that came from the direction of the exit ramp are overlapped, indicating that that car seems to have been thrown into reverse after coming to a stop, and then peeled backward, turning an open space and going down the ramp forward followed by other car. The guard said they came out fast, one after the other."

  Lapierre stopped and carefully sipped from his coffee mug, tl continued, "Four more nine-millimeter casings were found in aisle. Two in the aisle itself, one of them mashed by one of the c and two near the outside barrier. At the barrier, we also fo seventy-three forty-five casings. Directly under the barrier, on ground, we found an additional twenty-eight forty-five casings aro some crushed shrubbery."

  "Goddam," Dystal said. "Those MAC-lOs again."

  "I'm sure they were," Lapierre agreed. "Converted, a co' of men could pump out that many casings in a second."

  "So you think they fired at somebody who jumped over the rier," Dystal said. He, too, was beginning to show a grim tensei Despite his ability to display elaborate courtesy to Cissy Fai Dystal was quietly doing a slow burn. Aside from the real anguis felt at Mooney's death, the burly lieutenant felt personally sii against by the storm of turmoil that the killings had unleashe Houston. He was furious at the sudden disorder, at the reckless in which Gamboa and his henchman Negrete had brought flaj death in their wake. Dystal put no man above the law, and wa sworn enemy of those who considered themselves to be so. "Right."

  "But the guard didn't hear any shooting," Dystal said sour

  Lapierre shook his head.

  "You know, this business is changing fast." Dystal's expre was sarcastic. "I went to one of those gun shows myself a cou{ months ago. Out in Pasadena. Guy at one booth was selling ponents for a MAC-10 silencer for ninety bucks. Ten yards away other guy was selling the container tube for thirty-nine ninety. Put those pieces together, and you could get twenty years for manufacture and possession. But there they were, for sale."

  He raised his heavy eyebrows and impatiently wriggle booted foot where it rested on a drawer he had pulled out of his

  "So that would be Negrete's boys in the cars," he postu looking at Lapierre and Haydon. "Thinking they'd trapped other boys, except one of them gets away." He squinted at Laj "That's a purty good drop from the second floor. Maybe he bro butt. Why don't we put some checks on emergency rooms."Lapierre made a note.

  "Now," Dystal said. "Who shot Ferretis?"

  "After listening to Cissy Farrell's account of the explosives sale," Haydon said, "we now know there is yet another teco: Bias. I think we have to consider him a new actor. If Cissy had named two names we had never heard before, then I might have been inclined to think the teco buyers were using fictitious names. Yet she named not only Rubio, but also Ireno, as being involved. So I think we have to take Bias as a real name too."

  He paused, thinking through what he was going to say.

  "Since Rubio and Bias were the ones purchasing the explosives, we can hypothesize that they're the hit team, and for some reason one—or both—of them met with Ferretis. The circumstances could have been similar to that at the limousine shooting. Surprised by Negrete's sudden arrival, Rubio or Bias, or both, shot Ferretis to prevent him from being taken alive, and possibly tortured to talk."

  Lapierre nodded. "That's the way I would read it, too. We should have something from ballistics this afternoon to indicate whether the three nine-millimeter casings inside the Volvo were fired from the same weapon that fired the nine-millimeter casings found on the garage floor. And the same distinctions for the forty-five casings."

  "God a'mighty," Dystal said. "There's a lotta high-powered law looking for those two Mexicans."

  "That's only one scenario," Lapierre put in cautiously.

  "True," Dystal said. "True. You see another story?"

  Lapierre shook his head. "I guess I don't understand enough of what's going on to lay one out."

  "What do you suppose they were doing in the garage?" Dystal said. "And how the hell did Negrete know they were there?"

  "Maybe he learned about Ferretis's part in this from Waite," Haydon said. "And instead of going through another 'interrogation,' he could have decided to tail Ferretis, hoping the professor would lead him to the other two."

  Dystal looked at Lapierre. "You people didn't find any blood in that shrubbery, did you? One of them could have been hit."

  "Nothing."

  "Regardless," Haydon said, "we need to remove Negrete. So far we haven't been able even to get close to these people because he's gotten to them first."

  Dystal dropped his leg heavily to the floor. He leaned his elbows on his desk in his familiar discursive posture, and looked at Haydor and Lapierre.

  "Number one." He held up a thick index finger. "It's gonna take some time to get enough court-admissible evidence for the DA to agree to let us arrest Negrete. It's as plain as day what's happening but it's all circumstantial.

  "Number two." A second stubby finger went up. "The son of bitch is running his own goddam little army out there on the street; Him and his boys have dusted this Ireno fella, the two Waites, an Farrell. Stu'
s right, we gotta stop him, plain and simple.

  "Number three." Dystal held three fingers up to Haydon an Lapierre and slowly shook his head. "We don't have one goddai ounce of a lead as to how to get to these asshole madmen who wai to blow up Benigo Gamboa with the twenty-five kilos of RDX. Hei it is Friday morning, and ever since Tuesday afternoon when tl limousine got shot up, we've just been going around picking up N grete's turd droppings, a day late and a dollar short."

  There was a brief silence as Dystal sat with his elbow proppi on the desk, his three fingers up in the air, looking at the other tv men.

  "So what do we do?" Dystal asked suddenly and rhetorical letting his hand fall to the desk with a thunk. "We're gonna pick the up. All of them. Mercer's talking to the DA right now to see how we can make it tight. We're gonna bring Negrete in and explain to h how he can cooperate, or he can get his ass deported. We're gon bring all his boys in. We've got that list Stu snookered outta Negrete, and the DEA down there in Guadalajara is checking it out us. Anybody's got a sheet down there can cooperate with us, or extradited. If they don't have a sheet, then they can cooperate or deported. And we're not going to just haul them across the border and turn them loose like wets, we're gonna do a bunch of fancy paperwork, make a big deal out of it. Kick up some dust. We're gonna d Gamboa into it, get him some nasty publicity."

  Dystal had started to say something else when his telephone rang. He said, "Shit," and answered it.

  "This's Dystal." He listened, looked at Lapierre, and said, I'll be damned. Sure I do, just a sec." He cradled the telephone between his beefy neck and shoulder and grabbed a pencil and note pad.

  "Okay," he said, and began taking notes, saying, "Uh-huh," "Wait," and "Uh-huh," as he copied down what he was being told. Finally he said, "Much obliged, Robert. We'll be getting back to you."

  He stared down at what he had written, shook his head, and looked up.

  "That was Nunn down there at that garage," he said. "They were prowling around in all the crannies around the Volvo and one of the boys saw a piece of paper stuck in a crack by a cement pillar, right where whoever it was jumped over the barrier. It was a note."

  Looking down at his paper, he read what Nunn had dictated:

  C fled to Mexico. Police know A is involved and looking

  for him. Negrete's men broke into my office and looking

  for me. Cannot go home. Has there been a leak? Need to

  know. Be careful. Am floating until I hear from you. F.

  "He was writing to Bias," Haydon said immediately.

  Dystal nodded, his mind already working.

  " 'C' is Cordero," Lapierre said. " 'A' is Rubio Arizpe. 'F' is Ferretis." He had taken his own notes in shorthand, and was studying them on his pocket notepad.

  "Then maybe it's this Bias, not Rubio, who's heading this thing up," Dystal said, more to himself than to the others. He was looking at the message and tapping the end of his pencil on the piece of paper. "A damn mess," he added.

  "The garage was a dead drop," Haydon said. "Negrete knew it was there."

  Dystal nodded. "Yeah, that's right. Negrete seems to know a hell of a lot more than he ought to." He looked at Lapierre. "Pete, put together however many men you need to go get them. Every last one of them. If Mercer doesn't have something trumped up with the DA by the time you bring them back, we'll think of something ourselves."

  He looked at Haydon. "Stu, you get that Islas woman over to your place with Moreno, and pick their brains. We've gotta get something on the boys with the explosives."

  Dystal stood. "I'm going to stomp and cut up rough with these other agencies. These tecos didn't just drop out of thin air—somebody down there's got names—" He stopped in midsentence and snapped his fingers. "Stu. Get back with Mitchell Garner."

  "One more thing," Haydon said. "Why don't we distribute a description of Rubio Arizpe to the media? We've only got Islas' secondhand description, but it's distinctive: the deep notch in th center of his lower lip, Indian, very dark, below medium height. A description of the notch alone could do it. We might be able to have a sketch ready by the time the evening papers go to press, certainly in time for the six-o'clock news."

  "Do it," Dystal said.

  Chapter 45

  It was a clear, hot July morning, and inside the chapel of the Church of the Good Shepherd there was standing room only. The morning sun set fire to the colors in the stained-glass windows, washing the white walls of the high-ceilinged chantry and the silent crowd in a haze of rich hues. Haydon found the service stoic, far removed from the reality and emotion of Mooney's death. Mooney's brother and sister had already taken his body back to Arlington, so there was no family there. Nina had had to stay home with Celia Moreno. There were only Mooney's professional associates, a fifteen-year accumulation of friends and enemies, mostly men, and a scattering of older and retired prostitutes who had known him from his years in vice and who were possibly the only persons on earth toward whom Mooney had been known to exhibit an unguarded tenderness.

  The chief spoke. A brief, generic essay on fraternity, honor, service, and duty. Captain Mercer gave the eulogy. Gray-headed and somber, he outlined Mooney's career, talked briefly in a personal way of Ed Mooney's life. To Mercer's credit, in addition to straining memory with the traditional retrospective of the dead that had more to do with euphemism than with accurate remembrance, he honestly, but kindly, mentioned the irascible side of Mooney's nature. Mooney had good friends, and close friends, but he had come by them the hard way. He had not been an easy man to endear, but the value of his friendship was not in its facility. He was a man wary of tranquillity, and suspicious of people and circumstances that wanted to be accepted at face value. He professed to have few misconceptions, and met life head on, never blinking. Only death deceived him, taking him by surprise.

  Haydon did not sit in the front pews with the department and city officials as he had been invited to do in deference to his relationship with Mooney. Instead, he took a place three-quarters of the way toward the back, next to one of the large stone pillars that reached to the vaulted ceiling. He sat behind a middle-aged woman in a navy dress that fit her a little too snugly across her back so that he could see her bra strap cutting into her flesh. She wore the dress with a bit of a flair, and her silky blond hair was in a style many would have considered a little young for her. One of Mooney's girls. Haydon watched her, and when she bent her head from time to time, a splash of wine light bathed her hair from high above. Symbol within a symbol. What had she ever meant to Mooney? What had he ever meant to her that she should come to this place that she knew was alien to him and alien to her, and sit among strangers speaking strangely of him she knew to be so different from his memorial? Exiles, the two of them, and content to be so. Haydon suddenly felt a great compassion for her, for whatever it was they had shared, however unsentimental it might have appeared to the rest of the world, it had been a binding affection, truer than ceremonies and words.

  The circumstances of Mooney's death had robbed him of the kind of funeral he would have liked to have. A big dinner afterward, or barring that, at least a casual leave-taking with time to stand around and visit with old friends, and tell time-worn stories that you had had plenty of time to polish. But that wasn't to be. After the last prayer, the chapel emptied without the delay of lingering conversations. Practically every man in attendance had only stolen the time to be there, and the moment the service was concluded they immediately turned their attentions in other directions. Mooney's death had initiated an investigation the urgency of which quickly superseded any tranquil consideration of his life.

  Haydon stopped on the far side of the courtyard arcade that separated one side of the chapel from the church's business offices and put a quarter in a telephone located in a covered walkway that led to the front of the building. It was ten-thirty. It took a minute to get from the receptionist to Garner's secretary, and then to Garner himself.

  "It's me again," Haydon said. "I need some mo
re help."

  "Sure," Garner said.

  Haydon brought him up to date, explaining in as much detail as he thought he could under the circumstances.

  "I'm getting ready to call Renata Islas right now, and ask her ii she'll let me pick her up and take her to my house to compare note; with Moreno. If you think you could contribute anything to this, I'd like you to come over too. Or if you thought you could contact anyone in Mexico . . . we're at the bottom of the barrel, Mitchell. We don't have anything."

  "I'm afraid you're not going to get a great deal of help from the agencies," Mitchell said. "They've got informants all over the place down there, but they're competitive and the connections are so convoluted ... but, yeah, I'll be there. I'd like to hear what Moreno's got to say, too. What time?"

  "Let's make it eleven-thirty. We'll have sandwiches while we talk."

  Renata Islas listened to Haydon's synopsis of the events that had taken place since he had first spoken with her. He expected some equivocation, but she agreed immediately. With a third quarter he called Nina and told her of his plans, and asked her if she would get Gabriela to make sandwiches for all of them.