Freeze Frame

by B. David Warner

  By the late nineties, with most of the Cali leadership in prison, the balance of drug activity shifted to Mexico. Lobo followed, finding work with the notorious Arellano drug family. Their Tijuana organization ranked as the second largest drug cartel in the country, and the most vicious. Lobo soon became chief bodyguard for Ramon Arellano.

  President Nordstrum's action in sealing off the border sent the Arellano family's revenues into freefall. Lobo suggested calling in Mendoza from Europe to assassinate Nordstrum. But Mendoza arrived in Mexico armed with a different plan.

  "Assassinate the American president, and you will make him a martyr," he said. "Nordstrum’s anti-drug policies will be cemented in place. You must make certain he is not reelected."

  "But how can we do that?" Arellano asked. "Supporting a candidate in an American election is very expensive. It cost us thirteen million dollars just to ensure the election of Niles VanBuhler, a congressman from a small district in California."

  "I am not talking about simply supporting a candidate," Mendoza said. He told them of the work of Andre Kursov, the Russian expert in subliminal persuasion under whom he had studied at Patrice Lumumba University. The Russians had begun with the discoveries of the Americans’ MKULTRA Project and built on them with experiments that made the CIA program seem like a tea party. Parents had been programmed to kill their children, and visa versa. But there had been positive results too: Mendoza described how Kursov cured patients with drug addictions by inserting messages into the videos they watched.

  “Americans too have an addiction,” Mendoza told Arellano. “They are addicted to television. But instead of curing that addiction, we will use it to our advantage.”

  79

  Ramon Arellano called a meeting of the three major cartels, the families that ran the Mexican drug trade. Ramon and his brothers Carmen and Thomas of the Tijuana cartel attended, along with three members of the Fuentes family of the Juarez-based Chihuahua cartel, and Juan Garcia Abrego representing the Matamoros Gulf cartel.

  The seven sat in the back room of one of Tijuana's finest restaurants, a room with white walls, white cabinetry and a snow white linen cloth covering the large oval table in the center. They wore expensive suits and handmade shoes, smoked hand-rolled Cuban cigars and eyed each other with suspicion.

  In a drawing room just outside the door their bodyguards waited, watching each other with the same cold expressions.

  In normal times, this meeting could never have taken place. These were men who coveted each other’s territories, and would kill each other gladly to obtain them. But these were not normal times. The American President had to be dealt with and they had come to hear Ramon Arellano's plan.

  Arellano rose to speak. David Nordstrum would be defeated in the next election, one year away. Further, their own candidate, California congressman Niles VanBuhler, would be elected.

  Arellano called on Mendoza who spoke of the Russian Kursov and his work in subliminal persuasion. He described a plan to spread subliminal messages through the commercials of a large American advertising firm.

  Mendoza's talk generated a predictable degree of skepticism and arguments from strong-willed men not accustomed to working together. But in the end, they embraced Mendoza's plan as the sole alternative to watching their money drain away.

  The meeting broke up with the leaders of the two other cartels agreeing to take part in Arellano's scheme. They had heard the stories about Mendoza, and had confidence in his ability to execute the plan. But none of them, not even Arellano, knew that Mendoza had plans of his own. As the person responsible for VanBuhler's election, he would have a strong influence on the man. With President VanBuhler in his pocket, Mendoza - not Arellano or the others - would in time control the flow of all illegal drugs from Mexico into the United States.

  Ordinarily, Mendoza insisted on working alone. But he recognized a plan this ambitious called for the help of others, men he could trust. He suggested Arellano lend him his bodyguard, his friend and former pupil, Lobo. Lobo had been an apt student who had mastered three languages in addition to Spanish, and had become nearly as adept as Mendoza at disguise.

  Alone, each stood as a master of his craft. Together, they would be unstoppable.

  80

  I waited anxiously in Garry’s apartment for news from the Media Center. Sean and Garry had joined Matt Carter to examine the master DVD of the Ampere commercial scheduled to debut this evening.

  When Sean and Garry finally returned, I read the bad news on their faces.

  "We played the Ampere commercial frame by frame,” Sean said. “Nothing."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Sure? Of course I'm sure." He took a deep breath and collapsed on the couch. "I’m sorry, Darcy. It seemed so obvious VanBuhler's people would use tonight's game to telecast another message."

  Garry cleared his throat. "More bad news. I got a call from Homicide on my way back.

  "They found two bodies near your uncle's cabin. They also found the Avatar, painted white. They know you're driving a blue Chevrolet Lumina registered to your uncle, and they're looking for it here."

  "Damn!" Sean echoed my feelings.

  Garry looked at us with the expression of a man who had walked five miles with a stone in his shoe. "You're the major suspects in four murders now, and the net's getting tighter by the minute."

  "Those DVDs scheduled for shipment to the stations are our only hope," I said. "We've got to find them."

  "I said they're tightening the net, Darcy. The game's up."

  "Damn it, Garry. If VanBuhler’s elected it’ll open a spigot of drugs pouring onto the streets. You were a narc. Think of the crime rate, not to mention the danger it’ll mean to cops doing your old job. We’ve got to find those DVDs."

  Garry looked like he might be weakening. I stared him down.

  "Midnight. You've got until then. But you’ve got to promise to surrender voluntarily if we don't find anything."

  I glared at him.

  "I need your word."

  "Alright, damn it. You have it." I flopped on the couch. "Now, let's figure out how we're going to get to the person who knows where those DVDs are."

  Sean turned to Garry. "The keys: did building security give you a list of people with keys to both back door and Media Center?"

  "Yeah, and I cross-checked both lists. Twenty people have keys to the back door, twelve have keys to the Media Center. Just eight have keys to both."

  "Who are they?" Higgins asked.

  Garry took out a small piece of paper from the breast pocket of his gray sport coat.

  "Sid Goldman, Joe Adams, Michelle Ryder, C. J. Rathmore, Baron Nichols, Jonathon Goff, Sean Higgins, here, and Ken Cunningham."

  "Michelle Ryder's been in Europe for the past month," Sean said.

  Garry looked up. "That leaves seven suspects."

  "C'mon," said Sean, "it leaves six. You don't think I..."

  "Of course not," I said. "And you can’t tell me Ken Cunningham or Sid Goldman are involved either. Or Joe Adams. Or..."

  "You can't have it both ways," Garry said. "If your story is true, one of these people is guilty as hell. If you want to stay out of prison, you’d better find out who deserves to be there."

  "What about the people who have keys to one or the other?" I asked.

  "With five hundred employees, you've got five hundred potentials. Midnight’s the deadline. These eight people are your best shot.”

  "Great," Sean Higgins chimed in at his sarcastic best. "Why don't we just find out who he is and get him to lead us to the DVDs?"

  "I’ve got a better idea,” I said. “Let's get him to lead us to the DVDs and then find out who he is."

  81

  The concept was as old as time: fight fire with fire.

  The technology, as new as today: subliminal persuasion.

  Management planned to telecast the Ampere commercial continuously on the lobby’s closed circuit TV after it aired at halftime. We would plant a subliminal
message warning that the DVDs scheduled for shipment had been discovered and "must be moved." That message would be meaningful to only one person: the SOB who knew the compromised Ampere DVDs existed.

  Carter had recognized the technique used on the tainted Ampere discs and said our young computer wizard Jimmy Klein could plant the message “in his sleep.” He’d sneak Jimmy into the Media Center during the crew's dinner break from five to six o'clock.

  The trick: making sure we could follow the guilty party to the DVDs once he took the bait. With Michelle Ryder in Europe, six suspects remained, but just four of us to watch them. The plan I suggested had Sean and Garry watching the side door from the parking lot. As usual the front doors would be locked to discourage party crashers. That left the back door where Carter would be watching from his car for anyone trying to exit that way.

  I would sneak into one of the offices looking down over the lobby. The lights off, I’d be invisible from below, but have a clear view of the proceedings. We’d keep in touch via cell phones. When the guilty person made a move, one of us would inform the others.

  Or so the plan went. If it failed, Sean and I would have a lifetime to figure out why.

  82

  3:54 p.m.

  The noise from the television on the bedroom dresser appeared as a whisper to the white-haired man seated on the bed. He concentrated on the events planned for the evening. The nine-millimeter Glock, silencer attached, lay beside him on the white bedspread.

  When Mendoza and Lobo arrived in the United States earlier that year, they had brought two others, both Americans, former military men, who on occasion performed unauthorized wet work for the CIA. They had no allegiances and were for hire to the highest bidder. One, Frank Leath, had recently been sent to northern Michigan to take out the James woman and her boyfriend. The same agency-wide wiretaps that betrayed Caponi and Cato, had revealed the couple's hiding place. The other American, J. R. "Jack" Roland, decorated Gulf War soldier, bounced around Central and South America for a decade as a mercenary. Lately he had acquired an obsession for alcohol that turned him from a fighting demon to a man fighting demons within. Roland disguised his weakness, and by the time his addiction had been recognized, it was too late. Killing the policeman had been unnecessary and attracted unwanted attention.

  A noise outside the door returned the white-haired man to the present. He opened the door to find Roland lurching about the small front room. Roland had gotten one arm in an overcoat and was attempting to pull it around his back.

  "Leaving?"

  "For another bottle. One you brought's gone."

  The white-haired man put his hand on Roland’s shoulder and guided him from the door. "You’ll get your bottle," he said. "First, I want you to kill the Russian."

  Roland's eyes lit up.

  "Where is your gun?"

  "Right here." Roland patted the front pocket of his trousers.

  "I want you to go to the basement and shoot him twice in the head."

  "You got it."

  The white-haired man waited for the gunshots. When they came, he walked to the stairwell door and pulled it open. Roland stood at the bottom of the stairway.

  "No problem," he said, starting up the stairs.

  Roland got no farther than the fourth step. A quiet poof slid from the silencer as the man at the top of the stairs shot him once between the eyes.

  "No. No problem at all."

  83

  5:14 p.m.

  Kaminski wanted to be present when Jimmy Klein inserted our subliminal message and it didn’t take a master detective to figure why my ex-husband insisted Sean go too.

  He wanted to make it impossible for Sean and me to take off together.

  The two left for the A & B Building just after four-thirty, so when the telephone rang a half hour later, it surprised me that the caller I.D. pinpointed the source as Homicide Headquarters, 1300 Beaubien. Had Garry changed his mind and turned Sean in?

  I lifted the receiver. "Garry?"

  "It’s Joe Washington, his partner. This Rosie D?"

  The last thing in the world we needed: Garry’s partner finding out he hid a fugitive.

  "Sure is." I did my best Rosie D impersonation. The recipe called for heaping tablespoons of enthusiasm.

  "Kaminski’s forever talkin’ about you, Rosie. Hope we meet someday."

  "Me, too. Garry's not home, Joe. Something I can do for you?"

  "Just ask your fiancé if the invite to watch tonight’s game there is still on. Have him call me at headquarters. I'll be here until eight."

  "I'll let him know, Joe."

  Two thoughts occurred to me. The first and most obvious: there was no way Garry's partner could come here. The second: with Bacalla on the loose and events coming to a head, Manny Rodriguez’s life was very much in danger. He needed a bodyguard at the hospital more than ever. Joe Washington needed a place to watch tonight's game, and there were TVs in every hospital room I ever visited.

  I waited five minutes before calling Washington back. Falling into my Rosie D impression, I told him I relayed his message to Garry and he had asked a favor.

  "I owe him, Rosie. Name it."

  I told him Garry wouldn’t be home to watch the game because of a friend who had suddenly taken ill, and he worried about another friend who was in a coma. Would Washington stand guard at Henry Ford Hospital until Garry could take over?

  "It would be a big favor, Joe,” I said. “The man in the coma is a friend. His wife knocked him unconscious with a frying pan and Garry’s afraid she might come back to do even more harm.”

  I sensed Washington’s disappointment. "Oh, Rosie," he moaned. "Not tonight." It took some talking, but in the end Washington agreed to watch Monday Night Football in Rodriguez’s hospital room. But only until the game ended.

  "I can't get there 'til seven fifteen or so," he said.

  "Thanks, Joe, I'm sure that'll be fine."

  I hung up and called Rosie D to ask if I could borrow her car.

  "Certainly. But, it's not a car, it's a truck. Do you mind?"

  Not if it has wheels.

  Rosie expressed curiosity about her pickup’s destination, so I told her. Concerned that I was putting myself in danger, she volunteered to go along. I used logic to talk her out of it. The "no visitors" sign was still up for Manny’s room, and one person had a better chance of getting past the nursing staff than two. In the end, Rosie agreed, but when I came by to pick up the keys, she made me promise to take along a pistol Garry had given her for protection. I’m not crazy about guns, but since it would make Rosie feel better, I agreed. The small, nine-millimeter Beretta fit comfortably in the palm of my hand.

  "I wouldn't be giving you this if I didn't have confidence in you," Rosie D said. She’d heard I had shot a man at Lake Manuka.

  She had a hell of a lot more confidence in my ability to use the gun than I did.

  84

  I found Rosie D's blue Ford pickup fifty feet from the front door. Twelve minutes later, I pulled off Poe Street into emergency parking at Henry Ford Hospital.

  Clouds had hung overhead like a dark, wet blanket all day. Rain fell now, and a dense fog cloaked the parking lot. Lights from the windows of the Clara Ford Pavilion on my left pierced the mist with an eerie yellow glow. Halloween loomed just around the corner and tonight seemed tailor-made for ghosts and goblins.

  The fog hugged me on all sides, making it seem like walking through a narrow tunnel. Fine cold drops of mist settled against my face and my footsteps beat against wet pavement. Shivering, I pulled my dark green knee-length coat around me, tightened the belt and plunged both hands into the pockets. A scarf protected my head and ears from the chill.

  The thought of Bacalla on the loose prompted another shiver that had nothing to do with the damp, cold air. The bastard enjoyed killing for the thrill and seemed to have an uncanny premonition of the future.

  How had he known Vince Caponi, Darren Cato and Manny Rodriguez knew the secret of the Avion
DVD? Did he suspect Sean and I also knew? Did he know the man sent to kill us at the Gaylord cottage had failed? If he did, how long before he came after us again?

  I told myself to relax, but began to finger the pistol in my pocket, wondering if I had the nerve to use it.

  ***

  Manny’s room was four-eighteen, and as I neared it, a new worry struck home. What if Manny had visitors? The sign on his door clearly warned against it, but what if someone from the agency had come anyway?

  Luckily, my concerns proved unfounded. The room was dark, the only light coming from the hallway behind me. I could just make out a shape in the bed. Not until I stood immediately beside it did I know for certain it was Manny Rodriguez. He seemed to be sleeping, a pained expression masking his face. He was a long way from the jovial Manny I remembered.

  The apparatus Sean described had been removed, but as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I noticed a tube in his right arm.

  "Manny?" I reached down and touched his arm through the covers.

  His eyes opened, at first staring blankly at the ceiling, then locking on my face. I thought I detected a smile.

  "Manny? Do you hear me?"

  He nodded. "Yes...weak."

  "We know about the DVD...why you were beaten." Another nod.

  "Can you move?"

  Looking down, I could see his left arm move beneath the cover.

  I removed my scarf and coat and set them on the chair between the bed and window. “It's lucky you're alive. There’s going to be a policeman guarding you tonight."

  "Policeman?"

  "The people who did this to you, we want to make sure they can't hurt you again.

  "I brought this." I reached over and took the pistol out of my coat pocket. I held it out. Manny smiled as he recognized the weapon.

  The room suddenly grew darker and I looked up to see the silhouette of a large person standing at the door. A nurse making the rounds. I brought the pistol down quickly and, lifting Manny’s head, shoved it under the pillow. I hoped she hadn’t seen the gun.

  She hadn’t. The nurse walked to the foot of Manny’s bed and reached for the chart.