“You give him the benefit of the doubt regarding the Colonel, then.” Aguirre’s short hair glistened, still wet from a shower. She wore a white cotton sweater with the sleeves rolled up, her long brown forearms extended on the round table.
“Let’s keep in mind that the Secretary created the Diogenes Group,” Méndez said. “Without him we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“Don’t exaggerate.”
“It’s true. We’d be sitting in some pathetic rented office like that one you had behind the supermarket ten years ago. Smelling truck fumes. You’d be begging yanqui foundations for grants, feeding me futile human rights reports for my column about how someone should maybe investigate the Ruiz Caballeros one day and—”
When Araceli Aguirre got mad, it was like someone flicked a switch, a current that sparked through her. She became baleful and hyperarticulate. This served her well in a job that called for public displays of indignation.
“Do you want to know what your problem is with the Secretary, Leo?” Aguirre demanded.
“Not especially, but please enlighten me.”
They were interrupted, perhaps intentionally, by Rodrigo, Araceli’s husband. He walked onto the patio, smiled at Méndez and put a hand on his wife’s shoulder. She squeezed the hand without looking at him. Rodrigo gently lifted his sleeping daughter off Méndez’s chest and carried her inside.
Rodrigo was bearded and distracted, a biologist of great intellect and serenity. His detachment from the harsh realities with which his wife dealt was the key to their marriage, Méndez believed. He liked Rodrigo, but felt uneasy around him. Rodrigo seemed to have no problem with his wife’s friendship with Méndez. And Méndez assumed Rodrigo knew about Méndez’s brief romance with Araceli when they were all university students—a topic no one ever mentioned.
Aguirre chewed a fingernail.
“The problem,” she said, “is that the Secretary was your source. A very good source. He was an official in this foul system who actually told you the truth now and then. So you idealized him. Journalists do that. And when he put you in charge of the Diogenes Group, you idealized him more. He takes advantage of that. He’s manipulating you. He doesn’t deserve your trust.”
“The fact remains that thanks to him, I’m inside. We are inside. We have the power to do something. It’s easy to sit on the outside and whine.”
“We’ve had this argument before. Until the Colonel died, I would have said you might be right. But this spectacle at the airport is revolting. A cabinet functionary in charge of upholding the law chatting with the worst gangsters in the country? While a bunch of murderers and goons and floozies stand around smirking? Please. If he had any pants, he would have had you arrest them on the spot.”
“A childish fantasy, Araceli.”
“You have used up all the power they are going to give you on the inside. Unless someone pushes from the outside.”
“Like you?”
“Like me.”
“What are you going to do?” He felt defeated. He had known it was coming.
“I’m working on that.”
“He told me to appeal to you as your ‘friend and mentor,’ to be sensible.”
“How pompous.”
“As your friend and mentor, can I please ask you to wait and see what he says next time I talk to him?”
“I’ll wait one more week and that’s it. And only because I’m your disciple, or acolyte, or whatever it is mentors have. I’m not going to wait long.”
“Thank you.”
“You really look terrible. Drink juice.”
The fountain gurgled. Birds chirped. A grumble of traffic floated up from downtown. The sound of his cell phone startled him awake.
It was Athos calling from headquarters. He said Isabel Puente wanted Méndez to call her immediately on a secure line.
“It seems you are a good judge of character, Licenciado,” Athos said. “Concerning that young man we discussed recently. The one in green.”
“You don’t say.”
“He shot a policeman on the freeway in San Diego this morning and disappeared. They are looking for him. They want our help.”
Méndez felt vindicated. He also felt sorry for Isabel. He imagined that she was so distraught over her pet informant’s debacle that she could not bring herself to call Méndez directly. His wavering about Pescatore was over. Pescatore had hurt Isabel. He was a sneaky little thug.
“Athos, I hope we find him,” Méndez said. “I’m in the perfect mood for a conversation with that young man.”
9
BLOOD SEEPED OUT OF Garrison’s sleeve onto the cell phone. The phone slid out of his hand into his lap. He fumbled to retrieve it.
“Buffalo,” he groaned. “Talk to me…”
Garrison slumped against his door. He was fading fast. But his left hand jabbed the silver Beretta into Pescatore’s ribs.
Cursing, Pescatore skidded up to a red light. Drivers honked behind him. The traffic circles in Tijuana were brutal. He didn’t understand the rules: The boulevards emptied into the circle and drivers just blazed on into the slalom—battleship Chevys, rattletrap Volkswagens, rust-eaten pickups—somehow knowing when to go and when to yield.
“Come on, Arleigh,” Pescatore implored. “Point that somewhere else.”
“Shut up and drive you motherfucking wussy,” Garrison gasped, an ugly gurgle in his throat.
“We gotta get you to a hospital, man. Let me talk to him.”
Pescatore reached slowly for the phone. He encountered no resistance. He pried the phone out of Garrison’s hand, recoiling at the sticky smeared blood.
“Buffalo?” Pescatore said, making sure the phone didn’t touch his mouth.
“Valentín. That you, homes?” Buffalo sounded unperturbed. In the background, water splashed and a child’s laughter echoed. Buffalo said: “How is he?”
“Hurt bad.”
“Where?”
“Couple of impacts in the chest up near the throat.”
“And you?”
“No damage.”
“Where you at?”
“Going up a hill. Coming up on that big boulevard, Agua Caliente?”
“Turn left on the boulevard. Tell me what you see.”
“Shit, I don’t know…”
The vehicle and foot traffic was oppressively dense. In San Diego you could drive for blocks without spotting a pedestrian. When he had first arrived in Southern California, he had wondered where all the people were. It turned out they were in Tijuana.
“Valentín?”
“Big Boy. I just passed a Big Boy sign. Some kinda stadium on the right. Smells like cows.”
“El Toreo. Está bien. I got you.” Buffalo was walking with the phone, giving orders to someone. Pescatore heard the static of a police-type radio in the background.
“OK, Valentín, tu tranquilo,” Buffalo told him in a take-charge rumble. “You just kick it behind the wheel. Kick it stone cold, homes. You’re out for a cruise, that’s all.”
“Alright.” Pescatore felt the gun slip down along his side. Garrison’s eyes clouded over. A police car passed in the opposite direction.
“Couple of municipal cops just gave me the eye, goddammit,” Pescatore said.
“Uh-huh.”
“They’re turning around. They’re comin’ after me. Holy shit.”
“Easy. No seas pendejo.” His voice muffled, Buffalo spoke Spanish into the radio.
By now the CHP had spread the alert to police on both sides of the border, Pescatore thought. Surely someone had seen the gunfight on the freeway. Pescatore had been terrified that a quick-thinking commuter with a cell phone would be their undoing. But Garrison had called his buddy Nacho, the Mexican customs supervisor, who had waved Valentine safely across The Line into Tijuana, bloody passenger and all.
The squad car trailed Pescatore at a distance, no lights or siren. After a few minutes listening to Buffalo alternate between the radio and a second phone,
Pescatore asked: “Now what, Buffalo?”
“Nothing. The municipales are on the home team. You just listen and I’m gonna talk you in, cabrón.”
The boulevard curved along the base of hills. He reported landmarks: a twin-towered hotel, a racetrack, a golf course. Buffalo told him to take a right. The street rose into a neighborhood with less dust and more shade. The houses were bigger and nicer. A grass median divided the street. The Cherokee bumped over cobblestones past well-scrubbed children carrying backpacks and wearing blue private-school uniforms.
He heard the roar of a motorcycle. It zipped downhill toward him on the other side of the median, a high-powered beast. The driver crouched in a black ninja helmet that obscured his face. When he came even with Pescatore, the motorcyclist braked into a controlled hotdog skid. He maneuvered up and over the grass median, the bike roaring and jouncing, and turned onto Pescatore’s side of the street.
The officers in the municipal police car behind Pescatore did not react to the flagrant traffic violation. In fact, the squad car reduced speed.
The motorcycle overtook the Cherokee on the passenger side. The motorcyclist rose nimbly off the seat to peer at the inert Garrison. Sunlight glinted off the helmet.
“Guy on a motorcycle buzzing around,” Pescatore said.
“I know,” Buffalo said. “You got a Suburban behind you too. In a minute it’s gonna pass you. Follow the Suburban.”
Pescatore saw the red Suburban in his rearview mirror. Two men were inside, the passenger talking into a walkie-talkie. At a circular intersection with a fountain in the middle, the Suburban sped up and led the way. The police car had disappeared.
The street got steeper, winding among full-fledged mansions. The high walls were topped with spikes, sentry turrets, encrusted broken glass. The sidewalks had emptied to San Diego–style barrenness save for the occasional security guard, pushcart vendor or uniformed maid. Tijuana seemed a long way below.
“You’re almost here,” Buffalo told him. “I’m hanging up. No fast moves, you’ll make the vatos nervous.”
The motorcycle whined around like a bumblebee. The motorcyclist appeared to be making sure they had not been followed. He hung back, zoomed in and out of side streets, reappeared right behind Pescatore.
Pescatore saw with grim satisfaction that Garrison had stopped moving. He scooped the supervisor’s pistol off the floor and stuck it in his belt. Steering one-handed, he reached roughly into the pockets of Garrison’s vest and liberated an ammunition clip, a wad of bills, a cell phone and a USB flash drive.
Garrison had done his best to get him killed, but it hadn’t been good enough, Pescatore thought. His voice shaking, he hissed: “That’s right, asshole. Hurry up and die. Hurry up and die.”
That was real cold, and so was his methodical looting of the wounded man. But he remembered something Garrison had once told him about gunfights. When the shooting starts, you stop thinking, Garrison had said: It’s all instinct and reflex. Well, Garrison was dying. And Pescatore was obeying his instincts and reflexes. He was doing everything he could to stay alive.
The Suburban stopped at a violet-colored wall at the crest of a hill. Someone looked down at them over a rampart. The passenger of the Suburban got out: a young man with short hair holding a Tek-9. He was met by a man who came out of a sentry box. A gate slid open.
Pescatore entered a wide driveway between two sprawling houses. Two lots had been combined, forming a compound around the mansions. Buffalo’s Buick Regal was one of the half-dozen vehicles in the driveway.
Pescatore got out slowly. The young man with the close-cropped hair stalked up to him. He pointed the Tek-9 at Pescatore’s shoes.
“Hey, how you doin’?” Pescatore said, affecting earnest relief. “My man here ain’t doing good, I’ll tell you that. Where’s Buffalo at?”
The gunman answered by scratching his stubbled chin and appraising Pescatore at an angle. He was Pescatore’s age. His oversized white T-shirt, “Pacas” tattoo on his bicep and cholo scowl behind Ray-Bans recalled the gangbangers Pescatore had arrested at The Line.
The biker joined them, pulling off his helmet. Pescatore saw a small microphone for a two-way radio rigged inside the face shield. The biker had a shaved head, a rugged, narrow-waisted build and a Zorro mustache. His eyebrows arched high, giving him a diabolical aspect.
The biker grunted and got to work frisking Pescatore, who spread his hands wide. He felt desperation as the biker yanked his Glock out of his shoulder holster and Garrison’s Beretta out of his belt. The biker relieved him of his phone and Garrison’s phone as well.
Pescatore’s hosts turned their attention to the Cherokee. When they opened the passenger door, Garrison flopped heavily sideways; the seat belt prevented him from falling into the driveway.
“Damn,” the shaven-headed biker said. “Puro fiambre.”
Pescatore heard Buffalo’s voice approaching from a backyard where a swing set and pool deck were visible. Buffalo wore jeans and a sleeveless black undershirt on his massive torso. His hair and down-turned mustache were spattered with droplets of water. He held hands with a sturdy little boy of about seven who wore swim trunks and carried an inflatable green sea horse. The boy was deep in an animated monologue that had Buffalo enthralled. He held the boy’s hand with great gentleness and ceremony.
Buffalo’s contentment evaporated when he saw Garrison. With the linebacker quickness that Pescatore had noted before, Buffalo moved between the boy and the Cherokee. He crouched, tousled the boy’s wet hair and spoke in his ear. Then he sent him trotting toward a side door of one of the houses. A woman in a maid’s uniform stood behind the screen door.
“Yolanda, take Ivan inside,” Buffalo ordered in Spanish, his eyebrows low and dark. “Now.”
The maid yanked the boy through the doorway.
Buffalo squatted next to the Cherokee, his girth supported easily on his haunches. He studied Garrison with the air of a mechanic looking under a car hood.
“You want me to call Dr. Guardiola?” the gunman muttered.
“Nope,” Buffalo said, intent on the corpse. “Este cabrón ya se fue a la chingada. Sniper, have Lucho deal with it when he comes back.”
The tall homeboy who had driven the Suburban nodded. His stiffly combed hair flared out at the back of his neck. His half-closed left eyelid had probably inspired his nickname.
Buffalo straightened with a finality that suggested that the late Supervisory Agent Arleigh Garrison of the U.S. Border Patrol was no longer an issue.
“Va-len-tín,” Buffalo said, drawing out the syllables.
“How you been, man? We made it, huh? Thanks for talking me in.” Pescatore offered his hand to Buffalo, who gripped it mechanically.
“What went down, Valentín? La placa pulled you over and then what?”
Pescatore told the story largely as it had happened. The sun beat down, the four cholos listened. To his alarm he found himself improvising his way into another risk: He implied that both he and Garrison had shot the highway patrolman.
“You definitely smoked him?” Buffalo asked.
“We didn’t exactly stick around to take his pulse, but he didn’t get up. I just thank God he missed me. It was a miracle.”
In fact, Pescatore had not drawn his gun. He had been about to yell a warning to the CHP officer and grab Garrison when the supervisor made his own move. Garrison had slammed Pescatore across the side of the head with his left arm as he drew on the Chippie with his right. By the time Pescatore had shaken off the blow, the Chippie was down. And the wounded Garrison was pointing the smoking Beretta at Pescatore’s face and ordering him to drive.
With his thumb and forefinger, Buffalo touched the ends of his thick mustache.
“OK, wait here with Momo and Pelón,” Buffalo said. He went into the house.
Momo, the gunman, and Pelón, the motorcyclist, smoked cigarettes and eyed Pescatore like leashed Dobermans. Momo’s gun stayed pointed at Pescatore’s feet. Pescatore str
etched, yawned and sat down on a ledge jutting from the wall of the second house. He played sleepy and disinterested while imagining escape plans. All of them ended with Momo cutting him in half with a burst from the Tek-9.
The blood dripping onto the driveway from Garrison’s out-flung arm was driving him crazy. The corpse entangled in the seat belt gave him the sensation they were at a twisted crime scene where Pescatore was the suspect and the homeboys were the law.
Finally, Buffalo sent his cousin Rufino to get him. The chunky yokel from Guanajuato looked eager to please. Momo and Pelón ignored him. They think he’s a rinky-dink border brother, but he’s related to the boss, Pescatore thought.
“Come on, Valentín, my cousin Omar wants to see you,” Rufino declared, his shy and friendly tone giving Pescatore a moment of hope.
Pescatore followed him into the house. A hallway and swinging door led into a high-ceilinged living room dominated by a glass chandelier the size of a monster truck tire.
“What a palace, eh?” Rufino whispered. “Don’t worry, Omar will take care of you.”
The living room was busy with furry sofas, thick rugs and velvet curtains. There were crucifixes and religious art. A life-size painting depicted a kneeling Virgin Mary at prayer, the mournful elongated face encircled by a shawl. There were reliefs and statuettes of Greco-Roman gods, wrestlers, nymphs. Isabel had once raided a gangster’s apartment that she described as “narco-chic”; Pescatore had an idea that this was the kind of decor she meant.
Pescatore saw a framed sketch near the well-stocked bar. The sketch was done in black and white: In the foreground was the tear-streaked face of a lovely Latina. Behind her rose a prison wall, a gun tower with a searchlight, the moon among clouds. At the top was the word “Esperándome” and below that “Mule Creek SHU.”
Mule Creek was a prison in Northern California. SHU stood for “Security Housing Unit,” the cell blocks reserved for gang chiefs, hit men and other problem inmates.
Pescatore turned when Buffalo came in.
Triple Crossing Page 17
