She kissed him on the cheek.
“Good luck finding a way to tell it.”
The cabdriver who took him back to the District of Columbia was an aging African in a skullcap. He was listening to a talk show on National Public Radio. Méndez lolled his head back, almost asleep, the low cultured voices murmuring a blur of words.
What a day. He had learned a lot. But he didn’t have much he could use. He didn’t know whether to feel hopeful or defeated.
The cab sped through the moonless night. There were few streetlights. Trees and bushes deepened the darkness of the suburban highway.
He had forgotten about all the greenery in metropolitan Washington. The rolling parkland, the urban forests. Deer wandered in yards. Raccoons raided trash cans. Eagles hunted along rivers. The wilderness was never far.
Chapter 5
Chiclet wanted a drink first. Tequila, if they had it. Or rum.
Pescatore told him this wasn’t fucking happy hour on Avenida Revolución. They had already removed his handcuffs out of the goodness of their hearts. All he was going to get was water.
Chiclet gulped from the bottle. He patted his disheveled pompadour.
Pescatore sat in his chair with his elbows on his thighs, fingers intertwined. He had strapped on his shoulder holster over his black T-shirt to emphasize his change in status from undercover captor to chief interrogator.
Early that morning, Pescatore, Athos, and Porthos had returned to the Catholic shelter in Tapachula. With Padre Bartolomeo’s help, they had talked to some Cuban migrants. The Cubans had heard of Chiclet. Their smugglers had instructed them to meet a contact with that alias in Palenque, but a police sweep had scattered them back into Guatemala. The Cubans had eventually entered Mexico via Tecún Umán instead.
It was Saturday night. The hunt for Chiclet in Palenque had produced results fast. Pescatore’s hangover was a distant memory. He felt sharp and poised and in sync with his partners. Porthos stood on the prisoner’s right, casting an ominous shadow. On the prisoner’s left, Athos stepped back to film the interrogation with his phone. Chiclet’s wallet and phones lay on the coffee table in front of Pescatore.
Pescatore started with basic questions. Chiclet explained that he had arrived weeks earlier by car from Tijuana and had taken charge of the smuggling ring in Delicias Hondureñas. His uncle had bought the diner at the southern border a year earlier with money Chiclet had sent from the northern border.
“I own it,” he said with sullen pride. “I’m going to buy another one.”
“Wonderful. You’re so enterprising. Tell me about Tecate, guey.”
Chiclet made the humming-moaning sound. He slouched, his thick legs akimbo. His jowls, wide neck, and weak chin created the impression that his head sprouted directly from his shoulders. His face looked even worse than it had in the dimness of the diner. A drunkard’s face. His words slurred the way a drunkard’s do, even when sober. He still had a Honduran accent, but over the years it had absorbed the slang and intonation of northwest Mexico.
“I don’t know much,” he muttered. “The business is spread out in cells. Drivers, gunmen, money collectors. All I do is run safe houses. I don’t know where the foreigners go.”
“Who were you working for?”
“A gang. El T’s gang.”
“What do they do exactly?”
“Tumbes.”
“Rip-offs?”
“They are tumbadores.”
Central American slang, Pescatore thought. “Meaning what?”
“They rob loads from smugglers. Drugs and immigrants. Hold the pollos for ransom.”
“A rip crew.” Pescatore said it in English. Chiclet nodded. Pescatore asked in Spanish: “Who’s El T?”
“A mafioso. A chingón. A killing machine. He’ll kill you as easy with his hands as a gun.”
“What else?”
“Everyone’s scared of him. Even the federales. He was in the military.”
“The military? He’s like a Zeta or something?”
“I don’t know.”
“Mexican or American?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where does he live?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m getting tired of hearing you say that.”
“He has cells in Tijuana, Tecate, Nogales.”
“What about north of the Line?”
“Probably.”
Chiclet didn’t know what the T stood for. He described the gangster as tall and with a crew cut, late thirties, light-skinned. El T’s gang terrorized smugglers, robbing them or demanding transit “taxes” and robbing them anyway. The rip crew used Chiclet to house kidnapped migrants and provide intelligence on smuggling rings, which he also worked for now and then.
“El T paid well,” he said. “I gave quality information.”
You were in the backstabbing business, Pescatore thought.
A week before the massacre, a guy in the rip crew had asked Chiclet if he knew about any African women coming through the smuggling pipeline.
“Specifically African women?” Pescatore asked.
“Yes.” Looking befuddled, he mispronounced nationalities: “Eritreas, they said. And Ethiopias.”
“Why?”
The noisy air conditioner in the threadbare presidential suite was doing a poor job, yet Chiclet hugged himself as if he were cold.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t hear anything again until the day of the, uh, thing. El T called me.”
“Was that normal, him calling you?”
“Not at all.”
“Then what?”
“He wanted me to take care of a load. I didn’t have a drop house available so fast. We decided on the motel. Two rooms for a couple of nights.”
Chiclet claimed not to know that a corrupt U.S. border inspector had helped the migrants cross while tracking them for the rip crew. El T had called Chiclet several times. Chiclet was waiting at the motel in Tecate when the henchmen arrived about four thirty a.m. with a van load of women.
“How many?”
Chiclet hesitated. “Twelve.”
Although Pescatore kept a poker face, his adrenaline flared. There had been only ten female corpses. To his surprise, though, he had found photos of twelve women on one of Chiclet’s phones. The individual face shots had been taken in the motel room—Pescatore recognized the decor, the images of birds on a bedspread—before the murders. The women’s faces, some encircled by hoodlike shawls, were terrified and exhausted. Their stares searched beyond the camera for a sign of hope or humanity.
“Twelve,” Pescatore said. “You sure?”
Chiclet nodded.
Pescatore told him to go on.
The Honduran knew the kidnappers from previous jobs. They were Mexicans. Ramiro and El Nightowl were the gunslingers in cowboy hats and coats. Escuincle was a young flunky. Once the migrants were installed in the motel room, Ramiro and El Nightowl went into the adjacent room to rest. El T had given them orders to get some sleep because the job would last a few nights. Escuincle and Chiclet stood guard over the load.
El T phoned again. Another odd request: He ordered Chiclet to photograph each woman and send him the photos by text. Chiclet obeyed.
“What happened next?”
Chiclet cleared his throat messily. He gulped water. “Could I please get a real drink?”
“Hell no. What happened next?”
Chiclet had gone in search of liquor. The desk clerk sold him a bottle of tequila, and he rented a room in which to drink it. The room was across the courtyard from the others and one story higher, on the third floor.
“You left Escuincle in charge of the migrants by himself?”
“He had a sawed-off shotgun.” His lip curled disdainfully. “They were women. Scared shitless. He could handle it.”
“Why the new room?”
“I was tired. I thought I’d sleep. Or watch TV.”
He’s lying, Pescatore thought. But I’m not su
re why.
“Then what?”
At about five thirty a.m., Chiclet heard noise, gunfire, horrific screams. The angle from his window didn’t allow him to see much. He spotted a body in a cowboy hat, probably El Nightowl, sprawled in a doorway, and gunmen storming down the second-floor walkway outside the rooms.
“I didn’t waste time,” he said, his voice lifeless, his chin resting on his chest. “The window in the bathroom opened onto a roof. I went through the window. I ran and kept running.”
Pescatore rose. He picked up a phone from the table and showed photos to the prisoner.
“Are those the women?”
“Yes.” Chiclet slouched down even farther, arms folded.
“Sit up! There were only ten bodies, guey. Explain that.”
“I don’t know. Two must’ve got away.”
“How? They overpowered a hit squad?”
“I wouldn’t know what to tell you.”
No sabría decirle. What you say when anything you say could be dangerous. Pescatore flipped to the two faces he had not seen in the crime-scene photos.
“Are these the missing ones? Are they still alive?”
Fear bulged in Chiclet’s eyes. “Could be.”
Pescatore examined the faces again; they were the prettiest of the group. He looked at Porthos. The Mexican’s frown was eloquent. He was wondering what was taking Pescatore so long to figure things out.
“Oh, you lying piece of shit,” Pescatore snarled. “Fuck your mother. I know why you rented the room. You had yourself a little party, didn’t you? A threesome. That’s what animals like you do. Am I right, you repugnant despicable son of a bitch?”
Chiclet cowered, shaking his head. Pescatore stood over him. On his right, Athos moved closer to keep filming. Pescatore contemplated methods of inflicting pain: breaking fingers, stomping organs, cracking an arm over his knee. As if watching through the lens of Athos’s phone, he imagined handheld video footage of himself beating Chiclet to a pulp. The temptation was tangible.
Pescatore shouted, “You raped them, didn’t you?”
Chiclet buried his face in his hands. Growling, Porthos grabbed his collar, wrenched him upright, and swatted him across the head. An open-handed blow, but it promised plenty more where that came from. Chiclet whimpered. He took a while to shake it off. Reluctantly, he looked up into Pescatore’s eyes. The smuggler’s stench was a physical force.
“It’s not true,” he wailed. “I mean, it’s true I wanted to. But I didn’t. It all happened too fast.”
“I’m right on the edge with you. Tell me the truth, Chiclet. Before something bad happens.”
Chiclet nodded repeatedly, wiping his eyes and nose.
“I was drunk. When I drink, I lose control.”
He had slipped twenty dollars to Escuincle to keep him quiet, then taken the two women with him to the room.
“This one was Brazilian,” he stammered, pointing at the photo. “Mulata. The only one who wasn’t from Africa. She spoke Brazilian. The other one was from Eritrea.”
Chiclet had ordered the women to drink with him. The shooting outside started minutes later, just when he was telling them to take off their clothes. He bolted out the bathroom window without looking back, forgetting his watch and money clip in his panic. He had no idea if his captives followed him, went out another way, or stayed in the room. But he was convinced they had escaped.
“What makes you so sure?”
Chiclet’s sidelong look made him resemble a trapped animal. El T had phoned after the massacre. Furious, he demanded to know what had happened, who had attacked the motel. And where the two survivors were. Chiclet lied. He said he had left to buy himself a bottle, so he didn’t know anything. El T wanted to meet right away. Instead, Chiclet fled town.
“You see, I didn’t hurt the ladies. If you think about it, I saved them.”
“Yeah, you’re a real hero. We should give you a medal instead of a gigantic ass-kicking.”
Pescatore sat down. He was breathing fast. His heart was pounding. He had to find the two survivors. He had to tell Isabel. He had to get to the bottom of this.
In a calm but menacing voice, he asked, “Do you know their names?”
“No.”
“Did you see their passports?”
“No. The smugglers take their papers. If they get caught, it’s harder to deport them.”
“Do you remember details? What they said? A way to identify them?”
“The Eritrean seemed educated. She spoke some Spanish. English too. The Brazilian was from Rio de Janeiro. She begged me to let her call her family. I said I would later if…she behaved.”
Pescatore gritted his teeth, restraining himself. He waited.
“She gave me a phone number in Rio,” Chiclet said. “I put it in my phone. It should be in there.”
Pescatore exchanged glances with Athos and Porthos. A lead.
“So why did this happen? Some hard-ass went to war with El T’s crew?”
The Honduran looked at the floor, shaking his head. “No. He’s el mero mero. Top dog. Too strong. No one would dare.”
“Then who slaughtered thirteen people?”
Chiclet snuffled, tears spilling. He spoke in a hoarse, halting voice: “I’ve been thinking and thinking. I come back to the same thing: El T must have done it. To his own guys, his own load. Don’t ask me why.”
“What makes you think that?”
“All the weird things. Him calling so much. The photos. The timing. It felt like a setup.”
Sounds sincere, Pescatore thought. But he kept up the pressure.
“Why would he organize a butchery like that? Take money out of his own pocket, cause himself grief? It doesn’t make sense.”
“I know.” Chiclet slumped again. “And no matter why it happened, I’m dead meat.”
Pescatore regarded him: a picture of abjection. Weak with the strong, strong with the weak. He sighed in disgust, then turned to Porthos.
“Cuff him up again and put him in the bedroom. We need to talk.”
It was a real-life three-dimensional chess problem. Pescatore had to figure out how to hang on to his prisoner, how to keep him alive and, ultimately, what to do with him. Pescatore and his team conferred into the night and consulted by phone and encrypted messages with Isabel in Washington and Facundo in Buenos Aires.
Although Chiclet’s captivity was essentially a kidnapping, it was also—as Pescatore explained over breakfast in the suite the next morning—the best thing that could have happened to him. Chiclet needed to cooperate with his captors, whom Pescatore described—truthfully, if omitting caveats—as a joint team of U.S. and Mexican investigators. The Honduran did not care as much about their affiliation as he did about the fact that they hadn’t tortured or executed him yet. He perked up at Pescatore’s use of the term protected witness and promised to be on his best behavior.
“No drinking, no bitching, no sneaky moves,” Pescatore warned.
Chiclet slurped coffee, raising the cup with both hands. He had bathed and shaved. He looked relatively presentable in the morning light.
“Your confession could be your death sentence or save your life,” Pescatore continued. “Depends how you play it, guey. You are going to help however you can. To save your ass. But you’re gonna do it for another reason. You listening?”
Chiclet raised his head. He blinked but made eye contact. “Yes, Comandante Valentine.”
Pescatore didn’t know where the comandante came from. He let it go and pointed across the table.
“You’ve done evil, horrible shit. This is a chance to rise above yourself. Do something good for once. You promise to do that?”
“Yes, Comandante Valentine. I promise.”
“Orale. You better not be saying that just because it’s what I want to hear. Don’t think we won’t fuck you up.”
The second problem, keeping the witness alive, required immediate action. After breakfast, they transported Chiclet to Tuxtla Guti�
�rrez, the state capital. The five-hour drive wound through remote spectacular country: jungles, mountains, waterfalls. They rode in silence, on alert for bandits, police, or soldiers.
That night, two trusted officers from Porthos’s security force at the factory in Tijuana—hired urgently over the phone—flew in to Tuxtla Gutiérrez to reinforce the team at their new hotel.
The third problem: what to do with the witness. Pescatore had discussed scenarios with Isabel before his departure. On the phone, though, it became clear she hadn’t decided the next step. The interim solution was that Athos, Porthos, and the two new men would drive Chiclet to Mexico City and guard him in a discreet apartment-hotel. Pescatore would fly to Miami to meet with Isabel, then continue to Rio de Janeiro to chase the Brazilian lead.
Waiting for a taxi in the hotel lobby Tuesday morning, Pescatore told Porthos and Athos, “I hope you don’t have to babysit this lowlife too long. Keep him away from the booze.”
“No problem,” Porthos said. “He will be clean and sober and well behaved. Or else.”
The taxi arrived. Pescatore fended off Porthos’s attempt to carry his suitcase. He embraced his friends.
“Good work, muchacho,” Athos said.
“We remain at your orders,” Porthos said.
Speeding away without the musketeers, Pescatore felt alone and unsafe.
Miami always had a pleasant effect on Isabel Puente. Her voice got livelier. She smiled more. She relaxed.
Granted, this was a whirlwind visit. No family feasts in Hialeah or Coral Gables, no dance clubs or beach expeditions. But she was home. She looked radiant in a sleeveless blue top and white jeans. Pescatore watched from the kitchenette as she took a break from her conversation with him and, pacing back and forth, led a phone meeting with field offices about a multistate drug takedown. Although she had a lot going on, his secret mission was important enough for her to zoom down from DC for the day to meet with him.
The high-rise one-bedroom apartment in Miami Beach had a view of Biscayne Bay. Isabel had inherited the place from a widowed aunt. She predicted she would retire there one day, alone, like her tía Lupe and all the other old ladies.
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