by Brad Parks
I walked Tina back to the newsroom and promised her I would spend the afternoon safely at my desk, doing my expense report. Then I went to my computer for three minutes-just long enough to get an address for the National Drug Bureau’s Newark Field Office-and scooted across town.
The NDB was housed in an appropriately stern federal building, a solidly built rectangular edifice without much in the way of architectural imagination. Upon entering, I was met by a metal detector and three square-jawed U.S. marshals.
“Can I help you, sir?” one asked.
“I’m a reporter with the Eagle-Examiner,” I said. “I’m here to see L. Peter Sampson at the National Drug Bureau.”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“No.”
He nodded, went to a nearby phone, and immediately started talking in a voice that was inaudible from twenty feet away. One of his partners, meanwhile, eyed me like I was something that had crawled out of the sewer.
As a general rule, making unannounced visits to federal agencies was not a very efficient use of a reporter’s time. Bureaucracies abhorred such displays of spontaneity from the Fourth Estate. And they discouraged them by assuring that such attempts would be met with minimum cooperation and maximum fuss.
“Can I see some identification?” the marshal asked me after he got off the phone, and I obliged him with a business card and my New Jersey State Police Press ID.
“Driver’s license, please,” he said.
“I came here on foot,” I said pleasantly. I hadn’t, of course. But I didn’t like the idea of giving Big Brother more information about myself than absolutely necessary. Plus, the guy was being a dick. The marshal frowned and returned to low-talking at the telephone. The partner was now staring at me even more contemptuously. I gave him an exaggerated smile-merely because I felt sticking out my tongue would be too juvenile.
Meanwhile, I considered how I might approach L. Pete differently this time. I had exactly zero leverage on the guy. One of the reasons the feds were so much harder to crack than the locals was that, in short, feds didn’t really need good publicity. The local police chief knows his boss, the mayor, is eventually going to have to win an election and that friendly relations with the newspaper will help him do that.
A place like the NDB doesn’t have nearly that level of local accountability. Its money comes from faraway Washington committee meetings and its employees enjoy the kind of job security only the world’s most powerful government can offer. Sure, it doesn’t mind good pub. But, more than anything, it looks to avoid bad pub.
And that, I realized, was my only recourse with L. Pete. If the carrot didn’t work, I’d have to make him think I had a big stick. Somewhere.
The marshal eventually hung up the phone and instructed me to go through the metal detector. Then the second marshal passed a wand over me. The third one patted me down.
Having been sufficiently probed, I was led across a polished floor to a small padded bench near an elevator, where I was instructed to wait. The elevator soon produced a cheerless man in a suit, who relieved the marshal and took over his job: making sure I didn’t cause trouble.
“Nice day today, huh?” I said.
“Yes, sir,” he said, his expression unchanging.
“Any big plans for the weekend?” I asked.
“No, sir,” he said, and I decided to stop antagonizing the poor guy.
Fifteen minutes passed, during which time suit guy remained grim-faced and I grew bored. I’m sure, somewhere in the building, L. Pete was simply hoping I’d leave. But I wasn’t going to give him that pleasure. After a half hour passed, I took a quarter out of my pocket and began flipping it, gangster style. I thought I noticed a slight change in the suit’s face, like he was a little jealous I was getting to have all the fun.
Finally-prompted by nothing I could discern-the suit said, “Come with me.”
He slid a card into the control panel, punched the up button, then took me to the fifteenth floor. The top floor. I was escorted to an office next to a corner office, whose name plate announced it belonged to L. Peter Sampson.
“Wait here,” the suit told me. “Agent Sampson will see you shortly.”
Agent Sampson was apparently a very big fan of the New York Jets.
He had one of those Jets firemen helmets sitting on one of his bookcases, a miniature Jets helmet next to it, and a framed ticket hanging on the wall from Super Bowl III, one of the rare proud moments in the franchise’s otherwise abysmal history.
Behind his desk was one of those panoramic photos of Giants Stadium from a Jets-Bills game. On the desk, next to the usual wife-and-kid pictures, there was an autographed picture of Richard Todd and a football that had been signed by Joe Klecko, Marty Lyons, and Mark Gastineau.
A short, thin, energetic man with thinning hair and a dark suit walked in the room.
“Hi, Pete Sampson,” he said affably. “Nice to meet you in person.”
“Carter Ross, Eagle-Examiner,” I said as we exchanged an extra-firm, manly-man handshake.
“Sorry about the wait,” he said, smiling thinly. “I was in a meeting.”
“The wait wasn’t that bad. It gave me time to put my anus back in place after the body cavity search I got at the front door.”
“Yeah, that,” L. Pete said. “But, you know-Oklahoma City, 9/11-the rules have all changed. When the threat level is high, this place gets locked down tighter than a duck’s ass.”
Lovely image. Don’t get me wrong, a little small talk was a good way to start an interview. But since I didn’t want that talk to center around a duck’s anatomy, I switched topics.
“So, I’m guessing from your decorations you’re a fan of the Sack Exchange,” I said.
“Best defensive line in football. Too bad Miami was able to slow ’em down in the mud at the Orange Bowl that one year.”
“A. J. Duhe,” I said.
He shuddered. Having lived in New Jersey most of my life, I was accustomed to the inner torment suffered by Jets fans.
“Well,” he said. “I’m guessing you didn’t come here to interview me about how the AFC East is stacking up.”
“Not really,” I said. “But to keep this in football terms, my friends at the Newark police tell me they’ve handed off the Ludlow Street quadruple homicide to you guys.”
L. Pete paused for a beat, just long enough for me to hear the gears switching in his mind.
“Well, as you know, the National Drug Bureau is a federal agency ultimately responsible for fighting this nation’s war against illegal narcotics smuggling both at home and abroad,” he said, like he was quoting from a brochure. “And from time to time, we here at the Newark Field Office use that authority to claim jurisdiction over crimes we believe are extensions of that war.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “So. . you’ve got this Ludlow Street thing all figured out, then?”
“I can’t comment on an ongoing investigation,” he said, smiling at me.
I matched his insincere smile with one of my own. Time to use the stick.
“Well, don’t take this the wrong way, Pete,” I said. “But this son of a bitch blew up my house this morning and killed my cat. So I didn’t really come here to get a polite no comment.
“Now, we can do this one of two ways,” I continued. “I can team up with a forensic accountant and crawl through every line of your budget. No matter what we find, we’ll run a headline that says, ‘The drug war’s answer to the $1,000 hammer,’ along with grainy head shots of you and your bosses that make you look like criminals. And your wife can explain to her friends at playdates that the article wasn’t really that bad.
“Or you can spare me the runaround and we can play nice and share some information. It’s up to you.”
It was empty saber rattling, of course. My bosses frowned on using the newspaper to carry out reporters’ vendettas. And, in any event, I didn’t really have the time-or the interest-to do the kind of intensive reporting I had just described.
But L. Pete, who looked like he had just taken a very large bite of lemon, didn’t necessarily know that. I think my sudden lack of house and cat gave me just enough credibility as a crazy that he was taking me seriously.
“I, uh. .” he began. “Will you excuse me for a moment?”
He left without another word and, I’m sure, headed next door to ask his boss what to do with the lunatic reporter in his office. I hoped they would come to the conclusion I needed to be placated.
He returned five minutes later.
“Can we be off the record?” he asked.
“Sure.”
“Good,” he said. “I’ve been authorized to tell you certain things but not other things. You understand we have people in the field working on this and the wrong information in the wrong hands could be disastrous. We’re not putting our people at risk, no matter how many exposes you write about us.”
“Fair enough,” I said.
He paused then said, “The first thing I’m authorized to tell you is that we have good reason to believe this is the work of Jose de Jesus Encarceron.”
“I’m supposed to know who he is?”
“Colombian drug lord, and a real badass one,” L. Pete said. “Some of the things he’s done make other drug lords look like street-corner hustlers. Our agency has a file on this guy that could fill your garage.”
“I don’t have a garage anymore.”
“Right. Sorry. Point is, we’ve been after this guy for more than five years now. And I don’t mean to sound insensitive, but those bodies down on Ludlow Street are just four more debits on a very large tab.”
“So this guy sits in his palace in Bogota, orders the hit, and the local muscle takes care of it?”
“Something like that, yes,” L. Pete said.
“So why don’t you start by going after the local muscle?”
“I’m afraid that falls under the category of things I can’t tell you.”
“And Encarceron’s people are responsible for distributing ‘The Stuff’ brand?”
“Can’t tell you that, either,” L. Pete said, shifting his weight uneasily.
“Why, because he’s slipping it past you guys at the airport and you’re embarrassed by it?” I said.
He just shrugged. “Despite what you might assume about how we’re spending taxpayer money here, we’re actually quite close to putting a case together against this guy. But we have to proceed carefully or we could screw up the whole thing.”
Now it was my turn to shrug.
“Look,” I said. “I don’t care if or when you get around to putting away this Jose de Whatever guy. I care about the guy who tried to put a stick of dynamite up my ass this morning. Specifically, I’m a little worried he’ll return to finish off the job.”
“Well, that gets around to the other thing I’m authorized to tell you.”
“Which is?”
“I wouldn’t press too hard if I were you,” L. Pete said.
“Oh?”
“We have good reason to believe Encarceron’s people consider this matter settled. All the loose ends are tied up. All the evidence is destroyed. They want to go back to business as usual.
But if a certain newspaper reporter kept nosing around, kept making himself a pest, they might feel the need to exterminate the pest.”
“That sounds a bit ominous,” I said.
“Call it what you want,” L. Pete replied. “I call it prudent advice. These are some bad hombres we’re dealing with. I am urging you in the strongest possible terms to leave the Ludlow Street investigation to our agents and trust we’ll get the job done. We can’t guarantee your safety if you keep sniffing around.”
“I see,” I said. “Are you authorized to tell me anything else?”
“Nope,” he said cheerfully. “But when we’re ready to announce our charges against Encarceron, I promise we’ll give you an exclusive interview. Seems like you’re owed the pleasure.”
“Terrific,” I said, though I really meant the opposite of terrific. I had no intention of waiting for L. Pete and his fellow flatfoots to get around to making a case against some international drug lord.
But, at least for the time being, I had to keep up appearances.
L. Pete and I swapped phone numbers and bid each other a fake-fond adieu, then I departed the National Drug Bureau’s fortress with a friendly wave to the square-jaw boys. Despite my new information, I still felt wary of large men in white vans. Not to say I didn’t trust our government but. . well. . I didn’t trust our government. And since them being wrong could result in me being dead, I felt caution was still advisable.
At the very least, I wanted to educate myself more about this Jose de Jesus character. So I spurred my Malibu back to the office, where an hour of trolling through clips on Lexis-Nexis laid out a fairly complete life story. He was young for an intercontinental villain, just thirty-four. A poor street thug from Bogota, he got his start in the business in the mid-1990s, which turned out to be a fortuitous time for an ambitious would-be drug lord: Pablo Escobar had just been killed, and the instability created by his passing made it easy enough for Encarceron to rise up the ranks.
He was pretty much your garden-variety ruthless sociopath. He terrorized and/or eliminated anyone who dared oppose him, kidnapped and/or imprisoned anyone he didn’t feel like killing, bribed and/or murdered any government official who tried to slow him down, and generally didn’t play well with others.
His nickname, La Cabra-the Goat-derived from an infamous episode early in his career. He’d killed a rival’s entire family, decapitating them and placing goats’ heads on top of the stumps. Charming.
As L. Pete said, U.S. law enforcement and U.S.-backed Colombian authorities had been after the guy for a while. Within the past few years, La Cabra had climbed the ranks of the NDB’s Most Wanted and the price on his head had reached $2 million.
But Bogota was a big city and Colombia was an even bigger country. He never stayed in the same place long. And he was generous enough with the spoils of his enterprise-hosting huge cookouts, sponsoring sports teams, paying hospital bills for indigents-that people in the barrio never gave him up. Of course, fear played a part, too. Legend had it, he had once been tipped off that someone in the neighborhood was going to inform on him. The would-be snitch’s body was dragged through the streets by two horses. One towed the head and torso, the other the butt and legs.
So, yeah, he was on Santa’s naughty list. But I couldn’t drive away the thought that something didn’t feel right. Why would a drug lord in Colombia concern himself with a few Newark street dealers? And, even if he did, why kill all four at once? And why leave their bodies where they could be so easily discovered? I can’t pretend I knew a lot about the preferred modus operandi of the Colombian cartels, but this didn’t feel like it.
Besides, the identity of the person giving the orders in South America was, in some ways, just academic. There was still someone on this side of the equator pulling the trigger. And it bothered me that my government, in its zeal to put La Cabra’s head on its mantel, was treating this trigger-puller like he was such a trivial piece in a larger game.
Because I knew how this stuff worked. The foot soldiers would be given lighter sentences in exchange for their testimony against the Big Boss. Yes, Your Honor, I murdered four people and torched all those buildings, but La Cabra made me do it. Van Man would do twenty or thirty years but would end up enjoying his old age as a free man. Meanwhile, his victims got no reprieve on being dead.
But there was one way to possibly change that equation: if I could get to the foot soldier first and put his name in the paper, there would be pressure for the NDB to do something about it. The families of the victims would be clamoring for justice, and this crime had become high profile enough that they might be able to get someone with pull-a congressman, maybe-to listen.
So I just had to find a way to infiltrate a Colombian drug lord’s local organization, implicate it in a major internat
ional drug-smuggling ring, and find compelling evidence it had committed a series of heinous crimes. I could have that wrapped up by, what, dinnertime?
Or not.
Knowing L. Pete wasn’t going to be any assistance mapping out La Cabra’s network, I had to leverage the information he had given me to try to get more from somewhere else. And, really, I could only think of one guy I knew who might even have more information. I picked up the phone and dialed Irving Wallace, hoping his part of the government-whatever part that was-had an agenda different enough from the NDB that he wouldn’t mind being helpful.
“Yes,” he said.
“Hi, Irving, Carter Ross from the Eagle-Examiner.”
Pause. “Are you in your office?”
“Yeah.”
Click.
Ten seconds later, my phone rang.
“Carter Ross.”
“Hi, it’s Irving.”
“You want to explain to me why that was necessary?” I asked.
“Because someone could have been impersonating you.”
“Besides Buster Hays, no one knows we’ve ever spoken,” I said. “And I’m sure Buster isn’t sharing.”
“Good thing, too,” he said. “I understand your sources get their houses blown up.”
Obviously, someone had been watching the news.
“Cheap shot,” I said. “Now that you’ve hurt my feelings, you have to help me. What can you tell me about Jose de Jesus Encarceron?”
“I don’t know. That he’s not very nice, I guess,” Wallace said. “I’m just a lab guy, remember? I know what his drugs look like after they’ve been passed through a spectrometer.”
“Aw, come on. I’m sure you hear little tidbits from. . whoever it is you work for.”
“Say the magic words.”
Magic words? What magic words? Oh.
“Off the record,” I said.
“Very good,” he said. “What do you want to know?”
“Well, I want to know what kind of muscle he has on the street here.”
