by Dick Wolf
“Ah,” said Garza, nodding as though accepting a challenge. “Corruption. Malfeasance. That is what you think of all federales.”
“I’m saying admitting the problem is the first step toward curing it.”
Garza said, “That sounds like good advice for our noisy neighbor to the north, with their voracious appetite for illegal narcotics.”
Fisk nodded once, pulling back emotionally from the exchange. “You came here asking for help, or offering to help? Either way, you won’t identify the problem you need help with. This cartel-type violence, the point of it is to do something to get people’s attention. You can’t look away from thirteen beheaded bodies, you can’t bury that at the bottom of the news hour. It’s to announce their presence and intimidate their enemies. If you’re expecting trouble for your president, I would like to know. Otherwise?” Fisk shrugged. “I’m afraid this is United Nations Week. Not Mexican beheadings week.”
Garza looked at him with quiet contempt.
And Fisk wasn’t quite sure how or why it happened, but he knew that he had, here, this afternoon, made an enemy for life.
“Thank you so much for your careful attention to this matter,” she said.
Fisk shrugged again. “Good day, Comandante. Gentlemen.”
CHAPTER 18
The silver Chevrolet Suburban had been transported up to New York ahead of UN Week, along with the Mexican president’s black Suburban and the rest of his convoy.
Garza sat in the front passenger seat. Once the reinforced doors closed, the silence inside was profound. Even the running engine was fire-walled off from the passenger cabin.
Aguilar, familiarly known as Jefe, said from behind the wheel, “We approached the wrong policeman. That is clear. We will find someone more sympathetic, and with more authority.”
Virgilio, not looking up from his phone in the backseat, said, “Someone with any authority at all.”
Garza simmered. She felt the sting of failure, as well as the pain of embarrassment in front of these two men. She had thought she might find a compadre in Detective Fisk; on this point, she was quite incorrect.
“Perhaps there is still time to go to Rockaway . . .”
Jefe shook his head, his tanned hands on the steering wheel, pulling out past the automobile yard and a plumbing supply warehouse. “The Aeroméxico 737 lands soon. I must be there at Vargas’s arrival, and so must you.”
Garza made a fist of her hand. The beheadings, so dramatic in their cruelty: it had to be the work of Chuparosa. He was here in New York City. She only needed proof.
“I’ll go,” said Virgilio from the backseat.
Garza turned. “You have no credentials to go to this Detective Kiser.”
“Not to Rockaway,” said Virgilio, popping a square breath freshener into his mouth. “Not to the police. I go to the neighborhoods. Boots on the ground. North Corona. Jackson Heights. I have a cousin who knows some people who might know anyone who could be missing.”
“Fine,” said Garza, wishing she could go with him. “But very quietly. That is imperative.”
“Sí, Comandante,” said Virgilio, with a smile.
Jefe said, “And now we will turn our full attention to the president’s security, no?”
Garza sat back in her seat. “It has been foremost in my mind the entire time.”
CHAPTER 19
Back inside, Fisk caught Dubin as his boss was leaving for dinner. He needed to report the meeting.
Fisk said, “Our president and their president are set to sign a cooperative treaty Monday night. Drug interdiction, something like that. Calling it narcoterrorism. So that’s something we need to keep an eye on.”
Dubin nodded. “Look, maybe they’re just embarrassed, looking to cover their ass. Damage control for their new president. Or maybe something is brewing and they’re not being as cooperative as they say they are. Maybe it’s pushback from these cartels. If so, if they think they can get away with that shit here in New York, they’re in for a real surprise.”
Fisk said, “I’ll dig in a little deeper.”
“Only as it relates to diplomacy. You’re still on the UN desk.” Dubin was powering down his computer. “You have enough to do.”
Fisk said, “Narcoterror is a bullshit euphemism, right? Narcotics traffickers, from the lowliest mule to the fattest cartel leader, have zero interest in attacking the political foundations of the United States. They have one interest only, and that is dinero.”
Dubin stopped him there. “They can be called terrorists if that brings funding to our efforts. Maybe their profits are used to fund some sort of backdoor political action or terror squad. That much illicit money can do a lot of damage.”
“Committing horrific acts does not make them terrorists, though. It makes them violent narcotic dealers.”
Dubin said, “You’re so sure these thirteen headless bodies are a drug hit?”
Fisk shrugged. “What else could it be?”
Dubin grabbed his briefcase. “I don’t know. But whatever it takes to give us a smooth ride through next week, that is what we will do.” Dubin checked his watch. “Don’t you have the dinner with the UN security team tonight?”
“I do,” said Fisk.
“Crosstown traffic,” said Dubin, himself heading for the door. “Better be on your way.”
CHAPTER 20
Back at his desk, Fisk had Nicole call and cancel the meeting with the UN security team. For the past few weeks, he had been doing lots of very long strategy meetings, lots of hand-holding, lots of bureaucratic back and forth that didn’t feel anything like police work.
Fisk called up Garza’s bio, running her name through Intel’s own interior search engine. She was a lawyer who had somehow migrated out of the Ministry of Justice and into actual law enforcement. Vargas, the newly elected Mexican president, had been one of her professors. Fisk watched one video on the LiveLeak video-sharing site, stamped with the Policía Federal seven-starred silver shield, showing Comandante Garza walking around a murder scene wearing a black uniform with a SIG Sauer on her hip. He wondered how she had become attached to the EMP: Was it perhaps at her former professor’s special request?
The unfortunate thing was that a person like Garza in Mexico was liable to get blown away eventually. Her two predecessors had both been killed on the job. His respect for her rose, even as he wondered what truly drove her. Especially someone—and this trait was impossible to overlook—so attractive. In such a male-dominated field as law enforcement, beauty was an impediment to success, because others tended not to take an attractive person quite as seriously as a person of average looks—and even more, because such people are used to being catered to and generally are given special consideration early in life, advantages they come to take for granted. Garza apparently had never fallen into this trap.
Aguilar had a straightforward military career. Vargas, the new president, had no military background, and the choice of Aguilar to be the head of EMP was read as a political rather than a personal selection. The corps of the EMP was more than 15 percent female, Fisk noted, and this number struck him as substantial, especially in a traditionally patriarchal society such as Mexico. Perhaps they were more progressive in that respect than the United States. Fisk understood now why the chief had let Garza take the lead with Fisk.
Virgilio was a question mark. Assuming Fisk had been given his legal name, the man showed up on none of Intel’s many databases. He was registered as part of President Vargas’s security team, but nothing deeper than that. Fisk put in a request for more background on Virgilio . . . and realized that he suddenly felt invigorated.
He was onto something here. He could feel it.
CHAPTER 21
Kiser called him back just over an hour later.
“I thought you weren’t interested in our little Rockaway Beach party,” he said.
“I’m not,” said Fisk. “What’s the latest?”
“No identifications yet, but it’s early. Goin
g at it from missing persons reports, but nothing definitive yet. Not even after the story has hit all the news shows.”
Fisk said, “Immigrants or even first-generation Mexicans might not watch the mainstream channels. If you want to use the media, go on Telemundo or Univision.”
“Speaking of good advice,” said Kiser, “your sweep-the-beach idea netted us something. A bottle.”
“Cerveza?”
“No, a soft drink named Jarritos. Heard of it?”
“I think so.”
“Most popular soft drink brand in Mexico, the country that drinks more sugary soft drinks per capita than any other.”
“Good.”
“Wiped clean. No fingerprints.”
“Oh well.”
“But,” said Kiser, “inside the bottle was a cigarette butt.”
Fisk rolled his eyes at Detective Kiser’s dramatic storytelling, even though he got the adrenaline thing of a hot investigation. “You can’t wait for DNA. Takes too much time.”
“Crime Scene Unit pulls a partial print off the cigarette. Very partial, but the lab thinks they can get something out of it.”
“Good,” said Fisk. “Meanwhile, where do they sell this Jarritos?”
“We’re on it. The flavor is tamarind. Heard of that?”
“No.”
“Me neither, but it’s the second most popular flavor of Jarritos in Mexico. So, very common. I checked with the Organized Crime Control Bureau, they said you can tell a Mexican neighborhood in New York City by two things, a short woman selling churros at the subway station and a convenience store with a Jarritos sign in the window. I’m trying to get a couple of Mexican American uniforms transferred over to help out.”
“Someone is going to come forward with a missing son, boyfriend, or husband,” said Fisk. “Let me ask you this. Have you gotten a call from the Mexican consulate or the Mexican president’s advance team?”
“No. Why? What am I looking at?”
Fisk smiled at the note of concern in Kiser’s voice. “Maybe nothing, maybe something.”
“I will say a prayer tonight that it is nothing,” said Kiser. “I got enough to deal with as it is.”
CHAPTER 22
Cecilia Garza made it to JFK Airport just in time to see the president’s Boeing 737 touch down. The aircraft sat dormant until members of the Estado Mayor Presidencial drove out onto the tarmac in black Chevy Suburbans.
Garza stepped out of the silver Suburban, eyeing the airport in the dying light of day. She knew it had been swept, and that all the sight lines had been taken into consideration for President Vargas’s brief walk down a flight of wheeled steps and into his waiting Suburban. She also knew that Chuparosa liked to do his killing at close range. But the news of the beheadings had her on edge, and nothing felt assured or guaranteed anymore.
She watched General de Aguilar stand at attention, awaiting his president. She was stirred by the sight of the aging general in his uniform, standing so crisply against the night, dwarfed by the Aeroméxico aircraft. It reminded her that there was purpose and meaning behind such military formalities regarding heads of state, beyond its great expense.
The president’s personal EMP soldiers exited first, dressed in suits, eyeing the scene. A few moments of waiting, and then President Vargas appeared, descending the stairs sure-footedly, looking smart and vital as he saluted General de Aguilar and ducked inside his armored Suburban with the twin Mexican flags on the fender.
An aide closed the door and the vehicle started away immediately. It was a warm night, but Garza felt a chill. Why had Chuparosa come to the United States just to kill President Vargas? What kind of statement was he trying to make, if any, by threatening the Mexican president away from his own soil? Was it a message aimed at the United States? And if so—why?
And was the Zeta cartel behind this action, or had Chuparosa gone off on his own? And if he had—again, why?
Jefe returned. “The easy part is over,” he said.
“Indeed,” agreed Garza. The airplane began taxiing away. “Where will it go?”
“An airfield nearby. It will be guarded, of course.” The general removed his hat before climbing back inside the vehicle. “You have a good mind, Comandante,” he said, paying her a rare compliment.
She followed him inside the car bound for Manhattan.
CHAPTER 23
Fisk called ahead to Felix Dukes before heading over to the Secret Service’s New York field office, in a secure and anonymous office building next to a major chain hotel in downtown Brooklyn. It had formerly been located with the New York City emergency command center and the CIA station in 7 World Trade Center.
In an average week, the New York field office—the Secret Service’s largest away from Washington, D.C.—pursued six protective assignments. United Nations Week had of course multiplied that number many times, with up to two-thirds of the world’s leaders—many of them the object of previous assassination attempts—coming to one of the most crowded and yet still most open cities in the world. This in addition to the dozens of counterfeiting cases the agency was working at any given time. Fisk was a familiar sight at the building, and was brought up to the highly secure top floors.
Homeland Security funds had made the Intel Division what it was, and the Secret Service had benefited from post-9/11 expenditures as well. Their new facility was a marvel. The Secret Service did their own phone tracking from a state-of-the-art wire room. Dukes had once shown Fisk a vault filled with disguises, false vehicle decals, and the fake-grass tarps agents hid beneath during both protective and undercover assignments. The Secret Service’s polygraphs were considered the gold standard, and the New York field office conducted theirs in a warren of rooms they referred to as “the truth laboratory.”
United Nations Week qualified as a “national special security event,” in national security parlance. That put it on a level with U.S. presidential nominating conventions, inaugurations, and the G20 summits. Complicating security measures was the fact that many foreign leaders stayed in the same hotels, providing would-be assassins clusters of targets—and they moved in conspicuous, slow-moving motorcades from event to event. Even with NYPD escorts and sirens wailing, New York motorists and cabdrivers were much more reluctant to make room for emergency vehicles than drivers in most of the rest of the country. And it wasn’t just the world leaders: almost all traveled with spouses and children, all of whom needed protection.
“Broadside” was the name they had given to the Secret Service’s command center. From the secure room, agents tracked the movements of dignitaries and their attendant security details in real time. Many foreign leaders were familiar with their case agent after multiple trips to the United States. Dukes had graduated up from detail leader for former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—one of the biggest of the big-target dignitaries of the past few years—to heading the Dignitary Protection Division at the command center.
He came at Fisk with a meaty hand. “Fisk,” he said, trying to kill him with his grip.
“Easy,” said Fisk. “What’s with the squeeze?”
“Catching me at a bad time, bro,” said Dukes. “I got all this shit on me, and my wife is due to deliver our third in nine days.”
“Nine days?” said Fisk. “First of all, congrats. Second of all, I think you’ll make it through UN Week.”
“It’s not the birth I’m stressed about,” said Dukes, leaning closer. “She’s big as a house and feeling every pound. And we got two kids already under four. You hearing me?”
Fisk shook his head.
Dukes looked at him with disgust. “I forget you don’t have kids. I’ve never hated you more than I do this moment.”
It was hard to tell sometimes when Dukes was joking, but Fisk was pretty certain this was one of those times. “What am I missing?”
“It’s what I’m missing, you son of a bitch.” Dukes leaned in again. “Sex, all right? I have to draw you a picture? I’m going out of my skull. But
you don’t care. Talk to me when you get married, man. When you got little ones running around, climbing in your bed. When your wife’s feet are swelled up like a Flintstone’s. I ought to shoot you right here.”
“Easy, big fella,” said Fisk. “Didn’t know what I was walking into here.”
“I’ve got two hundred door-to-door details going simultaneously, not including sixty-some-odd State Department security details for lower-level protectees. I’ve got nine hundred aircraft going in and out of JFK over the next handful of days, all bearing dignitaries. I’ve got prescouting and security on literally hundreds of events across the city. All of which has to be done safely and expeditiously.”
Dukes sat down on the edge of a desk. Even inside the office, he wore the Secret Service uniform: a dark suit with a noticeable paunch, a light blue shirt, a red tie. The paunch, of course, was not the result of a lack of exercise or late-night bowls of sugary cereal. It held his gun, his radio, his handcuffs, and his badge.
The Secret Service was different from any other branch of law enforcement anywhere, in that its most important tool was not handguns but radios. The agency zealously maintained and monitored some sixteen distinct radio channels—an enormous luxury given the limited amount of available bandwidth—each of them encrypted by the National Security Agency. An agent’s lost radio was many times more serious than a lost gun. The quickest way to earn a demotion in the Secret Service was to lose one’s radio. Any time a radio went missing, every single receiver had to be rekeyed by the NSA, which took a lot of time and effort.
“Hey,” said Dukes, suddenly appearing contrite. “Sorry about all that marriage talk, that was stupid.”
Again, people walking on eggshells around Fisk because of Gersten. Fisk quickly waved it off, needing to move on. “How’s it looking?”
“It’s holding together. But that can change in an instant. I don’t need to tell you, the last few terror attempts in this city failed not because they were detected by law enforcement, but because the dumb shits made stupid mistakes. With one glaring exception.”
