by Mark Allen
He turned his body in one movement and discretely pushed past the platform door and slipped out. He eased the door back closed so it latched with a soft click.
A few blocks away from the bus station, the hunched, limping homeless man staggered down a squalid alleyway. Litter, rotting food, dirty pavement, overflowing dumpsters. The alley ran directly behind a high-rise hotel, one of San Diego’s best and most exclusive. He felt positive this view was not in any of the San Diego tourism brochures.
He looked around, over his shoulder, making sure he was alone. He also scanned the tops of the buildings, looking for security cameras covering the alley. There were none. To his right stood a large trash bin. From the smell emanating from it, the garbage truck was long overdue. One more series of glances, and the man disappeared behind one corner of the dumpster.
He unslung the bag, dropped it to the pavement. Standing up straight, he took off his silly sunglasses, revealing piercing green eyes. He pushed the hood backwards, off his head, revealing his face.
Reginald Downing glanced around once more. No such thing “too careful” when you’re an undercover cop on the run. Satisfied for the moment no one was shadowing him, he knelt down and unzipped the bag. A quick, cursory inspection told him everything he needed to know. He noted a change of clothes, a forty-caliber handgun with a loaded clip in the mag, three more loaded clips in the bag, three boxes of ammo, and thirty thousand dollars in cash.
He stood up, unzipped his hoodie all the way down to his waist, peeled it off. He unceremoniously shucked T-shirt underneath, and placed the 9mm he had been carrying atop the bag. You know, just in case he needed to reach for it quickly. He stood up, unbuckled his belt, and dropped his trousers onto the pavement. He stepped out of them, a fabric puddle around his ankles. Now naked except for his briefs, he quickly donned the new clothes – a pair of tan khaki pants, military–style web belt, white T shirt, thin Navy blue pullover sweater, brown leather loafers, a black ball cap.
Reggie gathered his old clothes in his arms. He wasted no time dumping them into the dumpster beside him. He shoved them down, making them more difficult to notice. He pulled a bag of garbage back down over them, further obliterating them in this contained ocean of refuse.
He put his shades back on, stuffed his 9mm in his waistband at the small of his back, then slung the duffle filled with cash and firepower over his shoulder. He walked easily down the alley until it opened onto a city street.
Reggie turned right and walked away, melting into the crowd.
The main dining room at la Trattoria bustled with activity. The noontime rush was in full swing, with most tables and booths occupied. Situated in the heart of San Diego’s famed Gaslamp District, the pricey Italian eatery attracted the well heeled of the downtown business crowd. Investment bankers compared notes in a booth. The market was up today, but was it going to stay up? Four well-dressed women sat at a table, drinking white wine spritzers while they waited on their meals. The elaborate array of department store bags sat under the table at their feet.
Waiters and bussers swarmed, busy bees carrying out a delicately staged and meticulously balanced dance. The dance whisked customers to their table or booth, courtesy of the vivacious young hostess. Complimentary water got delivered by the busser, who then took their drink order. He was followed by the server about three minutes later, who made sure their drink order was correct, and then took their food order.
Deeper in the restaurant, at the bar, the bartender, a tall, lean young man with blonde hair, a long, angular face, and darting blue eyes, mixed the drinks and poured the cocktails. He placed them on serving platters for the servers, occasionally throwing a wink of an eye or a flash of a crooked grin to the women he found attractive.
Off to the left of the main dining room hid a smaller room, arranged with a discreet single row of booths situated lengthwise along the far wall. The area was strictly reservations only, only for the most special of guests and VIP’s.
A maître d’, decades older than most of the other workers on duty, stood guard beside the single arched entryway. Thick iron gray hair, which set off his dark eyes and deeply lined face. Between his nose and his lips grew a pencil – thin moustache, which he had cultivated and groomed to perfection for over thirty years. The maître d’ fastidiously brushed a tiny piece of lint off the sleeve of his impossibly white and impeccably crisp shirt. He ran his hands down the front of his jet-black vest, smoothing nonexistent wrinkles. He tugged gently at his throat, adjusting his matching bow tie, so black it did not appear to be a color, but seemed somehow to simply suck all the light from around it. A black hole bow tie.
From his vantage point, the maître d’ surveyed the entire restaurant. The bar to his left along with the narrow hallway to the bathrooms, the main dining room in front of him, and the entrance to the restaurant on his right where people came in from the sidewalk. He could also see part of the patio where still more patrons dined al fresco.
So of course he noticed the rough man who passed by the hostess with not so much as a look or a break in his stride. Wearing jeans, cowboy boots, a black T-shirt under a brown leather jacket, he did not fit the usual lunchtime clientele. Muscular, thick in the neck, he had a crooked nose that had been broken too many times. He looked like an ex fighter. His steely gaze and set jaw accentuated his mouth, which was not much more than a thin cruel line.
Someone you definitely did not want to mess with.
He walked up to the maître d. “Hey, Giuseppe,” he said, extending his hand.
Giuseppe, the maître d’ shook his hand. “Mr. Oakley,” he greeted. “Lovely to see you, sir. It’s been a while.”
“Too long.” Rick Oakley tried to smile, but failed. Small talk and banter had never been his strong suit. “Is he in?”
“Always for you, sir,” Giuseppe nodded.
Rick stepped past Giuseppe and into the almost deserted VIP room. Farther from the street, the light was dimmer. Rick waited a moment while his eyes adjusted. Then he moved forward towards the back booth where he knew his boss would be reading the newspaper and eating lunch. Nervous, he wiped his palms on his pants.
As he continued walking down the aisle, his boss came into view. - Antonio Vargas.
A large man, black, with very dark skin, he wore his hair shorn close to his skull. Clean-shaven, he wore a slate grey herringbone suit and an olive green mock turtleneck. He was finishing a plate of penne pasta alfredo with a charbroiled chicken breast. He looked up from his meal and motioned to Rick.
“Richard,” he said. “Don’t be shy. Have a seat.”
Rick slid into the seat across from Vargas.
“Have you eaten yet?”
“I’m fine, sir,” Rick responded. He fidgeted in his seat.
“You look nervous.”
“I have bad news, sir.”
Vargas wiped his mouth on his linen napkin. “We bad news was coming. How bad is it?”
“Seven dead, including El Gecko and Johnnie Wolf.”
“Damn,” Vargas huffed. “What about Mongo?”
“Mongo, too.”
“Awww, that’s too bad,” Vargas said. “I liked Mongo. Do you know how hard it is to find a good driver in this town?”
“It gets worse, sir,” Rick warned.
“It always does,” Vargas said. “How much merchandise did we lose?”
“None of our own.”
“Say what?”
“The Gecko and the Wolf were doing something off the books.”
Vargas frowned, worried but intrigued. “A side deal?”
“Arms shipment. Crates of AA-12’s.
“What the hell is an AA-12?”
“It’s a fully automatic combat shotgun.”
Vargas turned this over in his mind. Gun running was not this thing. Arms dealers gave him the creeps. “So none of our got exposed?”
“No sir.”
“Too bad about El Gecko. We’ll have to find someone else to handle the weight.”
>
Rick cleared his throat. “I’m not done yet, sir.”
Vargas got quiet and serious.
“Rudy Valdez survived,” Rick said. “He got nicked by the cops.”
Vargas felt a migraine coming on. “What else?”
“Remember Jorge, El Gecko’s bodyguard? Well, turns out his name’s not Jorge.”
“No?”
“He really Detective Reginald Downing, San Diego Police Department, on loan to a Federal Anti-Drug Task Force.”
The food in Vargas’s stomach turned rancid, curdled, threatening to come back up. With Herculean effort, Vargas fought back that tide. He swallowed hard, willing himself to stay outwardly calm.
“Please tell me he’s one of the seven.”
“He survived, sir.”
Vargas thought hard and fast. “Get Rudy bailed out. Bring him to me.”
“He’s still being processed. He hasn’t been arraigned yet.”
“Let the lawyer deal with that shit,” Vargas said. “Just get him out.”
Rick nodded. “Done.”
“Secondly,” Vargas said, “Damage control. All El Gecko records destroyed. Hard drives, laptops, support packages, phones, text messages, emails, standard drill. No electronic trail. I want it completely sanitized. You know what to do.”
Rick nodded again. “I understand, sir.” He stood up from the booth and turned to leave.
“And Richard?”
Rick stopped. “Yes sir?”
“Kill Downing.”
“He’s a cop, sir.”
“I know.”
“He’s gone off the grid.”
“I don’t care if he’s been kidnapped by a UFO and flown off the Goddamned planet. He’s been embedded for almost a year. He knows our business model, our administrative structure. He knows me. He knows you.”
Vargas paused. Rick stood there. He knew the boss had more to say.
Vargas continued. “We have no idea what he’s turned over to prosecutors, or how damaging it is. But evidence doesn’t convict without corroborating testimony.”
Vargas paused again, took a sip of wine to clear the unpleasant taste in his mouth. “I don’t care where he is. I don’t care how long it takes. Track him. Find him. Kill him. Nothing fancy. Don’t go all Scarface on him. Just make him dead.”
“Yes sir.”
Rick turned and walked out.
Vargas sat in the booth, looking tough, until Rick disappeared from sight. Then his entire body slumped. He wiped away the sweat that had popped out across his upper lip.
He looked down and saw his almost empty plate. The mere thought of food nauseated him.
He pushed his plate away.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The century–old red brick and mortar building stood on K Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues, on the border between the Gaslamp District and San Diego’s newest neighborhood, the East Village. This southernmost part of downtown had sat fallow twenty-five years ago, its residential motels populated with pensioners, druggies, and the destitute one step away from homelessness.
People at the bottom of society with nowhere else to go.
A recent influx of money, urban redevelopment, and newly affluent hipsters flooding San Diego seeking biomedical and tech jobs had changed all that. The poor got evicted. The homeless got rousted out; the criminals and hustlers arrested. Real estate values skyrocketed. Long neglected buildings got retrofitted and brought up to code. They converted to condos, live/work lofts, or otherwise repurposed. In addition to the new upscale tenants, trendy bistros, organic grocery stores and freshly paved parking lots sprang up with breathtaking speed.
The building on K Street, its facade still aged and faded, had escaped gentrification. Heavy iron front doors hung so they could swing out from the center, stood mute testament to when in the late 1890’s it had been a fire station. Six men and four horses pulled a water truck. San Diego’s Fire Department mechanized in 1917, and shined as one the most modern, professional departments in the country. The horses went to the city yards and hauled garbage to the dump.
In the 1930’s, the station was shuttered. The Company moved to new facilities several blocks away. San Diego hurt for cash during the Depression to provide essential services. The city debated renting the property, or selling it. Renting meant steady income, but selling meant a cash windfall initially, and property taxes in perpetuity.
Edmundo Boroquez bought the building. A man of honor, Boroquez enjoyed strong business contacts across the Southwest on both sides of the Border. He needed a warehouse to store goods until he could truck them out.
His business prospered. He stored and shipped coffee, engine parts, tractor tires, firewood, flour, cattle feed, sugar, and beans. When they were old enough, Edmundo’s sons started working at the warehouse, learning the business from the ground up. He sent the oldest, Ernesto, to college in 1948. Raymundo enrolled in 1952. Both graduated, and took over the business as partners. Boroquez and Sons continued to prosper throughout the fifties and sixties.
Edmundo happily handed over day-to-day operations to his sons. His health had been slipping, and he was diagnosed with high blood pressure and a heart condition. Retired and content, he spent the rest of his days with his wife. He grew bell peppers and tomatoes in his back yard. He passed in 1969.
The bottom fell out of the economy in the early 1970’s. Boroquez and Sons began a downward spiral. Increased operating costs and weak wholesale prices cannibalized profits. The county reappraised the building. Property taxes went up over nine hundred dollars. In 1971, California closed several loopholes in the State Tax Code, and killed several deductions, which effectively raised business tax rates significantly.
Through no fault or malfeasance of their own, the brothers went from prosperous businessmen with country club memberships to barely scraping by, paying their workers and having little left over to continue operations.
In 1973, OPEC quit selling oil to the United States in response to the U.S.’s rearming of Israel during the Yom Kippur War. Supplies of gasoline and diesel dwindled, prices skyrocketed, and gas rationing ensued. The embargo would last for over a year. When the Boroquez brothers lost out on what would have been a lucrative Navy contract, their fate was sealed. They limped along, but they knew it was all over but the slaughter.
In 1977, Boroquez and Sons closed for good. They laid off their six remaining workers, gave them severance pay out of the brothers’ own pockets, sold the inventory at cost, sold their trucks and barely broke even.
It was ugly, but it got done.
Ernesto sold his interests in the building to Raymundo. Having been in the business to please his father, he was relieved to divest himself. He moved to a small beach house in Ensenada where he pursued a passion for painting. His acrylics and watercolors would hang in some of the most prestigious galleries in Latin America by 1984.
Raymundo felt a deep need to hang on to the building. The warehouse represented the life’s work of two generations. Rather than sell, he decided to rent. He hired a management company to handle the details. Because of the blight in the area, property values had plummeted, along with their taxes. Raymundo, like his brother, was in a position to retire.
Raymundo, married, with one child in college – pursuing a liberal arts education, of all things! – relaxed, visited his brother in Mexico, and every once in a while, imported a few hundred boxes of top quality cigars from a certain Caribbean nation to sell to a small, elite clientele he personally cultivated and maintained.
In 1984, a hotshot young Investment banker named Josh Hamm got a couple of college pals to help him finance a boiler room investment firm. They rented the old building because it was cheap. They illegally tied into the power lines outside and stuffed the main floor with rows of computer stations manned by bright, young brokers who were pressured to close the deal, close the deal, close the deal. Commissions, commissions, commissions.
Money flowed like the wine. Deregulated markets opened
up new possibilities, and the young wolves on K Street exploited them. After all, it was legal, right? Morality never entered into it. The Friday evening parties became the stuff of legend. Food, booze, hookers hired for the night. Nothing off-limits.
They started staying open twenty-four hours a day to piggyback off of the foreign markets – Hong Kong, London, Tokyo. The partners lived in the building.
Over time, their clients expanded from doctors, lawyers, restaurateurs, and dentists. They handled pension funds for outside companies, investments from other brokerage houses, and local branches for international banks.
Josh Hamm himself was flown first class to Barbados. He was greeted at the airport by some very polite Latin gentlemen. He was given the finest accommodations, the finest foods, and the most enthusiastic women for his amusement. Life was good.
The very next day, these same gentlemen Josh to a private meeting at a single -story villa nestled discretely amongst banana trees and old sugar cane in the central highlands of the island.
Josh Hamm met five wealthy men who had substantial funds to invest, reinvest, and then reacquire. And while their current cash happened to be in various currencies, they would prefer to reacquire their money in American dollars, either delivered personally in the form of a bank draft, or delivered electronically via international wire transfer. Naturally, Mr. Hamm and his company would be compensated for their efforts. They suggested a two percent commission of the gross amount moved, taken at each step of the process.
Mr. Hamm responded his commission was usually quite higher. They all smiled mildly, glanced at each other, and told him they felt they deserved a “volume discount” and that two percent at each step, which would add up to six or eight percent total, would be more than satisfactory over time.
Hamm took a drink of his mojito, mulled things over a moment. Glancing around the room, he wanted to figure out a polite way to thank them for their hospitality and then decline their offer.
Then he noticed the three men in the back of the room. They were much younger than his prospective clients. Wearing sunglasses inside, they had muscular chests, trim waists, tough faces. It was only then he noticed the faintest glint of metal inside the coat of one of them, and only then did he notice the bulges in their jackets below one armpit.
