Rip Crew

by Sebastian Rotella

  “Air Chiapas,” Porthos said.

  Rather than blocking the border, the Mexican police concentrated on strategic choke points, intercepting illegal crossers in and around the freight yards. The police pulled Central Americans off the trains in droves and deported them—an enforcement campaign encouraged and assisted by Washington.

  The Trailblazer rolled through congested streets. Pescatore and his companions visited an old address for Chiclet. Then they met with sources—an immigration official, a bartender in a dank club where squat women in shorts sat along a wall. No results. But Athos and Porthos had high hopes for their meeting that evening with Padre Bartolomeo, an Italian priest who ran a refuge for migrants in nearby Tapachula.

  The drive into the compound took them uphill past banana trees, dormitories, a dining hall, a pink chapel. Two South Asian women in saris walked close together in the dusk. African kids chased a soccer ball. Latin American youths clustered at a picnic table. Some sat facing outward, like inmates in a prison yard.

  Padre Bartolomeo greeted his visitors in Italian-accented Spanish. He served them glasses of chilled grappa from his home region in the mountains near Venice. He had met Athos and Porthos during a visit to the Diogenes Group in Tijuana, where his religious order operated a shelter for northbound migrants as well as deportees from the United States.

  “Do you remember we took you on a ride-along, Padre?” Porthos asked.

  “How can I forget? You made an arrest while I was there, a corrupt federal officer who was extorting migrants. Exhilarating. Leo Méndez created a police experiment full of hope and grace, a mystique of service and idealism. To the Diogenes Group!”

  Padre Bartolomeo downed his drink. He shook his gray cropped head with gusto, his prophet’s beard bobbing. The four of them were sitting on a patio behind a one-story structure housing the priest’s office and living quarters. Pescatore glimpsed a cell-like enclosure with a hammock. Birds warbled in a palm tree above the table. Pescatore was tired. The night was steamy. He was drinking mainly from thirst. The grappa had a kick to it.

  The priest reached across the table—the rock-knuckled hand of a bricklayer—and refilled Pescatore’s glass.

  “Salute, giovanotto. Are you of Italian origin?”

  “Italo-Argentine.”

  “Like His Holiness Papa Francesco.”

  “Mexican-American too.”

  “Better to drink it all at once. It burns less that way.”

  Pescatore glanced blearily at Porthos, who beamed as he downed his shot. Athos had turned his baseball cap backward like a catcher or a sniper. The Mexicans were comfortable with the interview becoming a drinking session. And they were being deferential. Porthos called the priest “Father” every time he addressed him. Pescatore, however, made a point of omitting the title. He repeated the question he had asked moments earlier.

  “Yes, my son, I have been thinking about it.” Padre Bartolomeo’s eyes widened as if he were going into a rapture. “I think there are some Talaveras who operate to the north. Honduran smugglers in San Cristobal and Palenque. My staff will ask among the migrants. We must be prudent. Anything resembling the police frightens our guests. They live in fear. They breathe, eat, drink fear. It smothers them, it crushes them, like the heat.”

  Pescatore had seen the priest on Spanish-language television in his Franciscan-style robes, the thick hands waving, accusing, imploring, as he thundered about the plight of immigrants, the dangers of La Bestia (the trains known collectively as the Beast), and abuses by mafias and security forces. Porthos had said earlier, “It’s a wonder no one has put a bullet in el padre.”

  “All that fear, all that tribulation,” the priest continued, lighting a cigarette. “Yet the migrants, especially the Central Americans, have such faith. A deep, pure, profound faith. An absolute intensity of faith that I, for example, do not have. A wondrous—”

  “So you think we should go to the smuggling corridor at Palenque?” Pescatore wasn’t in the mood for a sermon.

  “I do.” Padre Bartolomeo squinted through smoke. “First of all, Chiclet may well be related to the Honduran Talaveras. Also, there is a large police presence here in the southwest corner of the border. Military and intelligence activity. Pressure—media, political, diplomatic—to crack down on people riding La Bestia. Palenque is a better place to hide, especially from the repercussions of a case as notorious as the killings in Tecate. Salute!”

  Pescatore returned the toast and polished off his grappa, blank-faced. They had not said why they were looking for Chiclet. He wiped his brow.

  “What makes you think we’re working that particular matter?”

  “Allora.” The green eyes turned roguish. “A process of deduction. I ask myself: What would such high-caliber investigators be looking into? Two veterans of the Diogenes Group and an American pursuing a minor smuggler from Baja California, the scene of a recent massacre—close enough to the U.S. border to perhaps interest the American government.”

  “The father gathers a lot of information in this place,” Porthos said. “When he did us the honor of visiting us in Tijuana, I told him he had the instincts of a first-class intelligence analyst.”

  The priest shrugged, raised his glass, and sent another shot of atomic Venetian grappa down the hatch. He was average size, but sturdy. He sure could hold his liquor. Pescatore drained his glass, eyelids heavy. In a flash of disturbing clarity, he recalled the photos of the crime scene in Tecate.

  “Without confirming or denying,” he said slowly, the words thick on his tongue, “I can tell you the facts of that case are nasty.”

  “I don’t doubt it, my son. And yet it is one small chapter in a litany of cases. An epic saga of horror. The cartels have built an economy based on exploitation, brutality, barbarity of every imaginable variety. They inculcate it in the youth gangs they use to expand their empire. A business model.”

  The priest started telling stories. He puffed rhythmically on the cigarette. Pain shone in his eyes, as if he were seeing the cruelties he described, reliving them. He talked about torture and murder. He explained the term body card: migrant women pressured into paying their way with sexual favors, like a credit card. He described how gangsters had killed a migrant and forced his companions to eat pieces of his flesh.

  The priest’s work had filled him with the suffering of others, Pescatore realized. Padre Bartolomeo felt a duty to express the agony, chronicle the atrocities, bear witness. Pescatore listened. He drank. His head spun.

  Then the priest recounted the deaths of a Guatemalan mother and her baby at the hands of human traffickers in Tamaulipas. And it was too much.

  “Oh God,” Pescatore exclaimed. He shook his head, jaw clenched, wanting to banish the image that had just been burned into his brain forever. “Oh God, a little baby? That’s the worst thing I ever heard in my life!”

  He slumped. Athos’s head hung low. Porthos wiped away a tear.

  We are all very drunk, Pescatore thought. A bona fide borrachera.

  He turned to Athos and demanded, “Isn’t that the worst fucking thing you ever heard?”

  The web of wrinkles around the ex-cop’s eyes made him look old and mournful.

  “One of the worst,” Athos said. “One of the worst.”

  Pescatore contemplated the idea that Athos lived with the knowledge of something even more atrocious. The priest patted Pescatore on the wrist. Pescatore withdrew his arm.

  “You see,” Pescatore said. “You see, that’s why I don’t go to church. Because of shit like what you just told us.”

  Padre Bartolomeo’s eyes were sad now, and attentive.

  “Is that the reason you don’t go to church, Valentine?”

  “Well, since you ask, it’s more than that. Tell you the truth, I’m disgusted with the clergy. Priests in general. I have been for a long time.”

  Porthos was trying to get his attention. Pescatore plowed on, hearing himself as if from a distance.

  “I know you do g
ood work in this place, and my colleagues here admire you and everything. But I think ninety percent of priests are tainted. Child molesters or corrupt or both. Or they protect the ones who are child molesters or corrupt or both. A giant ongoing criminal conspiracy. A mafia. I expect smugglers to be animals. Like narcos, politicians, businessmen. But priests are supposed to help people. Like cops.”

  Eyebrows raised, mouth open, Porthos stared in consternation. He said, “Valentine, one moment. There are bad people in all professions. You—”

  The priest waved his cigarette, smoke swirling. “Please, Comandante, don’t worry. I admire this young man’s candor.”

  The green eyes had locked in on Pescatore, who looked down and ran a hand through his curls.

  “When I was a kid in Chicago, I went to church every Sunday,” he said. “I read the Bible stories in these little picture books—the prodigal son, Jonah and the whale. I liked the images, the rituals. I was gonna be an altar boy. It was a mixed parish, Italian and Mexican. They brought in this new priest, Father Rogelio. Young, slick, smooth talker. From Mexico City. A total predator.”

  Porthos rose, planting his hands to push himself up off the table. He muttered something about finding the facilities and lumbered away.

  The priest nodded at Pescatore to continue.

  “Father Rogelio never did anything to me and my friends,” Pescatore said. “No, he was too crafty. He went after new kids, from immigrant families. It went on for a while, rumors and stories. Sure enough, the police caught him at his place with a twelve-year-old. But they didn’t press charges. The archdiocese transferred him out to some monastery in the desert in California. The Antelope Valley.”

  “Outrageous,” Padre Bartolomeo said.

  Pescatore toyed with his glass. “When Father Rogelio said hello—on the street, at Mass—he’d take your arm. He’d ask if you’d been good. That snotty chilango accent: ‘¿Has sido buenooh?’ I didn’t become an altar boy. I stopped going to church.”

  “Do you miss it?”

  The question surprised him. “I guess I do. In the States, you know, we move around a lot. Families separate. Neighborhoods change. It would be nice to have something to hang on to. I still wear this cross around my neck. But I stay away from church.”

  “Listen, my son,” the priest said. “If His Holiness Papa Francesco in his infinite wisdom were to put me in charge of internal affairs”—he said it in English—“I would be a twenty-first-century Torquemada. Heads would roll. Monsignors, bishops, cardinals. Arrests, punishment, prison. Dante’s Inferno!”

  “Infernal affairs.” Pescatore chuckled.

  “Assolutamente sì.”

  “You got some cop in you, you know that? Here’s to you: Detective Torquemada.”

  They clinked glasses. Porthos returned and sat down.

  Athos raised his head. His red-streaked eyes focused.

  “Mi querido padre,” he said. “I would like to ask a great favor.”

  “Of course.”

  “I would like to ask you to give your blessing to us. And to our mission.”

  “It will be an honor.”

  Athos and Porthos stood up. They bowed their heads and crossed their hands over their belt buckles. As Pescatore rose, the world reeled. He concentrated on keeping his balance.

  He didn’t know why all that stuff had come pouring out of him. The liquor, of course. The tension. The facts of the case. And something about Padre Bartolomeo that invited trust, that almost made him want to believe.

  The priest’s hand traced shapes over Pescatore’s head. The voice was a soothing rumble.

  Pescatore said, “Thank you…Father.”

  Chapter 4

  Estela called the staff of the website “Leo’s garage band.”

  The Méndez family barely fit in the one-story house, so he had converted the garage into a work space. Computer stations, filing cabinets, bookshelves. A photo of Méndez, Athos, Porthos, and the Diogenes Group occupied a place of honor among journalism prizes and framed articles. There were posters of Carlos Santana in concert, Al Pacino as Serpico, and the Sinaloan reporter Javier Valdez Cárdenas, slain by cowards in Culiacán, smiling beneath his trademark straw hat.

  This was the “newsroom” of the website known as Line of Investigation (Línea de Investigación). On Wednesday night, Méndez sat at his computer enduring a lesson from Santiago, a twenty-eight-year-old with a ponytail and a scraggly beard.

  “You see, Don Leobardo?” Santiago leaned over his shoulder to tap the keyboard. “Now the file is encrypted. Just don’t forget the password.”

  “Bless you,” Méndez said. “What’s on the pen drive?”

  “Your material,” Santiago said, referring to the secret document from the Secretary. “And everything we found on the Blake Group: articles, public records, court files, interview notes.”

  “Good. Before I forget, on a separate matter, anything new on the massacre of the African migrants?”

  “I’m afraid not, Don Leobardo. A few days ago, I buttonholed my best source in Tecate, a comanche in the municipal police. He got all nervous. He told me, ‘Listen, cabrón, that case is too hot to handle. The American federales were sniffing around, and nobody talked to them either.’”

  “The Americans?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “Interesting. Well, don’t worry about it. One story at a time.”

  Méndez could imagine Santiago cornering the police commander. The mellow manner and bohemian-cholo wardrobe masked a fearless reporter. Luz, Santiago’s bespectacled girlfriend, was the website’s other reporter, a dynamo who wrote and talked at high speed. Luz sat at a computer with Karen, Méndez’s assistant and the staff photographer. A blonde from Santa Barbara, Karen had served in the Peace Corps in Peru. She had abandoned her graduate studies at the University of California after convincing Méndez to hire her as his Sancho Panza for this venture into the new frontier of journalism.

  In addition to doing investigative projects, the team occasionally covered breaking stories for news outlets, which—along with Méndez’s syndicated column—helped pay the bills. His family was never far. Renata sat on a tricycle by the door to the kitchen, wearing pajamas. Juan stopped in to ask about new soccer cleats. When Estela returned from the university where she taught Latin American studies, she maneuvered through the fray distributing coffee and cookies.

  By the time the work was done, goodbyes said, and children in bed, it was eleven. Méndez had to leave for the airport at dawn. He sat behind his desk with a Coronita. Estela sipped a glass of red wine across from him. The Pacific rumbled faintly in the distance. On the computer, Maná played a rock cover of “Somos Más Americanos” (We are More American), the immigrant anthem by Los Tigres del Norte.

  “Ay, mi amor,” Méndez said, reclining in the high-backed rolling chair. “All this effort, and frankly now I’m wondering if the trip will be worth it.”

  “We already had this conversation,” Estela said.

  “I know. But it won’t be easy. And I’m feeling lazy.”

  “Lazy? You?” Estela pushed a tangle of black hair behind her ear. She had put on weight since Renata’s birth and her face had gotten rounder. At forty-five, she retained a sweet, good-humored energy, a counterpoint to his tendency to brood.

  “It has been a great summer. Calm, predictable. Regular meals, exercise, soccer games, the playground. Even”—he raised his eyebrows—“the occasional amorous interlude.”

  “Beast.” She scowled. “I used to complain that your work separated us. Now I’ve got you prowling around the house behind me all the time.”

  “As Robert De Niro said in a movie, isn’t that the final irony of life.”

  She crossed her strong brown legs in the summer dress and waved a mocking goodbye at him.

  “Ándale, go to Washington. Take advantage of this opportunity. But come back soon. And talk to your son.”

  “Why?”

  Her smile faded. “Juan ha
s been asking about the visit from the Secretary’s bodyguards.”

  “He has?”

  “It made an impression on him, Leo. He said you seemed very sad and very angry.”

  Méndez sipped beer. “Well, I was. Also frightened.”

  “He asked me yesterday if he should learn to shoot a gun.” She lowered her voice. “So he can defend the family when you are away.”

  “For the love of God. My brave boy. I will talk to him.”

  “I assured him this trip will be totally safe.”

  “The only danger, if it is fruitless, will be to my pride.”

  The next afternoon, he checked into a hotel on L Street where the FBI had lodged him once when he gave a lecture on police reform in Latin America.

  The contrast between capitals never failed to impress him. Mexico City was a monster metropolis, a swarming, roaring, squalid labyrinth. But he understood it. He knew how to maneuver in it. The urban grid of Washington was clean, orderly, startlingly quiet. The stately gleaming facades hid a different kind of labyrinth, the vast apparatus of American power. This wasn’t his turf. He needed guides.

  Daniels had suggested the basement bar of a 1920s-era hotel near the White House. Méndez descended into a grotto of chandeliers, mahogany, and red velvet. He slid into a corner beneath a framed caricature of a jowly senator from the Nixon years. Méndez liked the sense of place and history, a respite from the generic spaces that filled the U.S. landscape. The bar was half empty. Television news had reported on the president’s vacation, the official peak of the summer doldrums.

  A text message buzzed on his phone—an apology from Daniels for running late. No problem. Méndez’s return to journalism had reminded him that some reporting skills were simple. One was to keep your mouth shut and listen. Another was to be patient.

  Daniels had been the highest-ranking American official Méndez knew. As a federal prosecutor, he had worked with Méndez and Isabel Puente on the Ruiz Caballero case. More recently, after the assassination plot that had forced the Méndez family to flee Tijuana, he had won Méndez’s gratitude. Daniels had made sure that federal agencies provided them with everything from security to green cards. Now he was a partner at a powerhouse law firm. Isabel Puente predicted that he would end up in politics—if he got bored making money. Although Méndez hadn’t communicated with him for months, Daniels had replied quickly to the e-mail and had agreed to meet without asking the reason.