The woman looked sharply at her father. Munir gave his daughter a smile so radiant and reassuring that Pescatore himself believed for a moment that everything was going to be alright.
Pescatore squatted next to the squalling boy with the Big Wheel, trying to shush him.
“Come on, little guy,” Pescatore implored. “Hey. Come on. I’ll give you a push.”
The Big Wheel had a long handle in back that rose waist high. Pescatore clutched it, inspired. He made loud engine noises.
The kid stopped in midwhimper. He got with the program. He climbed aboard and started pedaling down the main aisle. Pescatore trotted behind him, vroom-vrooming half-heartedly, steering with the handle. The mother hurried alongside with the smaller boy in her arms.
Sniper, on guard just inside the doorway, looked at Pescatore as if he were crazy. Pescatore lifted the boy off the Big Wheel, catching a momentary smell of orange-scented shampoo. He fought down an impulse to hug the kid to his chest and run like hell.
Instead, he handed the boy over to the mother. She hoisted a brother under each arm, like sacks of groceries. Halfway through the plastic streamers of the doorway, she stopped. She looked back. Horror twisted across her face.
“Run, lady,” Pescatore rasped in Spanish, his mouth tasting like steel wool. “Run and don’t come back.”
Silently, she took his advice. The streamers were fluttering in her wake when the shooting started.
Sniper shouldered roughly past him to check if the sidewalk was clear. If the dudes at the butcher shop had heard the shots above the snarl of traffic and chatter of commerce, they had prudently retreated.
Buffalo, Momo, Sniper and Pescatore trotted back to the Suburban. A couple of street peddlers, Brazilians in sun hats with multicolored blankets and hammocks piled on their arms, backed out of their way. Nobody on the street made a move. This was not a town where people were in the habit of calling 911.
Buffalo rode in front. Not far from the hotel, he turned to look behind them. Pescatore managed to catch his eye.
Pescatore blurted: “That was fucked up.”
Buffalo faced front again. He was seething. Pescatore thought for a moment that the big man was going to ignore him and make him look bad. But he could not restrain himself.
“That was fucked up, with the kids there and everything, huh?” Pescatore said.
Buffalo did not turn around. He spoke through tight lips.
“It was his own fault. He talked too much. Broke the rules. Somebody talks too much, that’s what happens: You shoot him in the mouth. Somebody double-crosses”—Buffalo used his hand to mime a gun pointed at himself—“in the back of the neck. A spy, in the ear. It all means something. It’s for a reason. I don’t do this shit because I like it. If people would act right, follow the rules and shut the fuck up, I wouldn’t have to.”
The Death Patrol reported to Junior. He was getting ready for a massage on a second-floor veranda. He lay on his stomach wrapped in towels that were soaked with sweat. A radio played Paraguayan harp music.
There was a distraction: Two masseuses arrived. They looked like Brazilian beauty queens. They wore flimsy silk wraps over bathing suits. Thick, shiny, African-style braids cascaded down their long slender backs. They walked with throwaway grace, completely comfortable with their bodies and the reactions of the men in the room. One of the women—upturned nose, shimmering eyes, golden-brown skin—met Pescatore’s stare and returned it, smiling with easy intimacy.
Junior greeted the women with a sleepy kiss each. Time for a freak show, Pescatore thought. This cabrón better be careful or he’s gonna have a heart attack.
Facedown in his towel pillow, Junior asked Buffalo what he wanted.
“All set, jefe,” Buffalo said. “Just took care of that Munir asshole for ya.”
Junior’s head came up slowly. His fingers pried apart a curtain of hair. His eyes searched through cobwebs and fog. He focused finally on Buffalo.
“Munir,” Junior said.
“Yeah. All taken care of. Un buen jale, bien limpito.” Buffalo’s head was bowed. His hands were crossed one over the other on his Harley belt buckle.
“Who? Did I…”
“Sí señor, last night. Sure did.” Buffalo looked crestfallen. “The one was talking that shit on TV, remember?”
Junior shook his head.
“El canijo árabe?” Buffalo said. “Viejo, con lentes? Mr. Abbas told us about him?”
“Oh. Yeah. OK.” Junior didn’t sound convinced. But he made a languid thumbs-up sign. Then his eyelids and his head succumbed blissfully to gravity.
“Muy bien, muchachos,” he mumbled into the towel.
As the Death Patrol descended a long staircase to the lobby, Sniper whispered to Momo: “Just like that time with the lawyer up in Montebello, you remember? Same thing. He was all wasted, yellin’, givin’ orders. Next day he was like, ‘Licenciado who? What you guys talkin’ about? I said to pop the lawyer?’ Didn’t remember jackshit…”
22
THE DRIVEWAY LEADING INTO the courthouse compound was guarded by a line of riot policemen. Chest-high Plexiglas shields, helmets with visors, blue overall-type uniforms. And oversized clubs that were almost as tall as the boy-cops holding them.
From his vantage point at the courthouse entrance, Méndez looked over the gleaming helmets at the protesters on the edge of a shantytown outside. They chanted at the policemen and waved signs protesting the border blockade. Their jeers turned to cheers when a cow wandered out of the shantytown among them.
The cow was black and white, gaunt, heat-stunned. Protesters slapped and pushed its haunches, urging it forward. Tail switching, trailing flies and dust, the cow meandered toward the police. It gathered momentum. The police braced visibly at its approach. Méndez wondered if they would use their batons or, if they felt insulted enough, their guns.
The cow nosed around at the boots of the cops. The cheers increased. But the cow seemed to lose initiative. It turned in a slow circle and tottered back from where it had come.
“What?” Isabel Puente asked, hearing Méndez chuckle.
“Nothing. It reminded me of a book, The Autumn of the Patriarch. There’s a part where cows invade the presidential palace: ‘A cow on the balcony of the palace, what an awful thing, what a shitty country.’ ”
“Oh,” Puente responded. She didn’t have much time for his literary references.
Facundo returned a few minutes later. He strode through a hallway lined with statues of bearded national heroes.
“If we could only get that guy in a room with Junior, he’d talk him to death,” Puente muttered.
“I have to say I kind of like Facundo,” Méndez said.
“I thought spies were supposed to be quiet.”
“I don’t care if he calls himself Russian, Jewish, whatever: He’s a first-class Argentine big mouth. But I like him.”
“He gives me a headache,” Puente whispered.
Facundo looked grimly triumphant.
“The prosecutor came through,” he said. “He’s serious about the Munir case.”
“He’s not scared of Junior or Khalid?” Puente asked.
“The prosecutor has a brother who is a general in Asunción, so he has strong protection. He works with military intelligence rather than the police. And frankly, this particular prosecutor is kind of a madman.”
“Is he honest?”
“Not at all. When I showed him your warrants and told him the Americans want Junior, his eyeballs turned into dollar signs.” Facundo produced a cigarette and handed another to Athos, who lit them both. Facundo savored the smoke. “Oh, you can be sure he is going to cause trouble. It’s like firing a human missile at Junior.”
“Greed works wonders.”
“Not greed alone. The prosecutor is indignant. We can’t have foreigners coming into town and knocking off the director of the chamber of commerce. It is unacceptable. It isn’t done.”
Méndez appraised Facundo, whose
usual sarcasm appeared to have deserted him. “I thought you despised Munir.”
“A strong word, Doctor: ‘despised.’ ”
“You said he was a gangster, Facundo. A financier of terrorists.”
“Oh, he was. A scoundrel. Absolutely without morals. Also anti-Semitic.”
“So?”
Facundo avoided eye contact. He spoke in a mumble. “Well, what can I tell you? For years I had many dealings with him. I’d go in the store. He would call me a Zionist dog. I’d call him something equally nasty. But he would give me coffee. Always coffee. And we’d talk. Many insults, arguments, but we talked. It was business. He was a grandfather, I’m a grandfather. Who knows, Dr. Méndez? They say hate is closer to love than indifference.”
Wiping a sleeve across his forehead, Facundo turned and led the way down the stairs. Méndez winked at Puente. Surprise: The big brassy Turkish Russian was a softy at heart.
In an attempt to tighten the noose around Junior, Facundo’s men had set up surveillance on the El Naútico Resort. Athos and Porthos took turns overseeing the operation. But they had had no luck intercepting phone calls, leading them to think Junior was using an encrypted satellite phone. Today, however, Facundo announced that a “friendly government” wanted to share information with them.
Their destination was the consulate of Taiwan. It was located in a mostly residential hillside neighborhood overlooking the lagoon and Junior’s hotel. The street was blocked off by a Paraguayan police checkpoint backed by an armored vehicle. Before entering the brick guardhouse, Facundo explained that the consulate worked closely with a few other governments—Argentine, U.S., Israeli—that monitored the Triple Border.
“They have had access to a wiretap of Junior’s phone calls from the hotel. Mr. Han was kind enough to let me know right away. Always a good man to trade information with.”
The consulate was a hilltop fortress complete with gun towers. They climbed a steep outdoor flight of concrete steps and passed through more checkpoints. Mr. Han received them in a high-ceilinged, highly refrigerated conference room. He was in his thirties, sleek and athletic in an off-white designer suit that had to make him a contender for best-dressed diplomat in town. His slicked-back hair and gold bracelet gave him a touch of street-cop flair. He told them he had become interested in Junior Ruiz Caballero after Junior’s emissaries had entered into a major deal with a Chinese network, brokered by Ibrahim Abbas, to smuggle immigrants into California.
“The Asians and the Arabs usually do not do business together,” Han said, in solid Spanish. “Frankly, it is not my priority. I spend eighty percent of my time on the mainland gangs. Big Circle Boys, Fuk Ching, you name it. I have to worry about them shaking down and killing Taiwanese businessmen. But anybody they get involved with, I want to know all about it.”
“The Tijuana smuggling connection is booming,” Méndez said.
Mr. Han nodded. “The Asian criminal organizations know a moneymaking opportunity when they see it. But here in this country they mainly keep to themselves. They have many rules. They rarely go out except at night: a few restaurants, stores, the casino. They only deal with certain people in certain ways. If they want money from an Asian shopkeeper, they do not need to spell it out. They just send him whiskey. One bottle means forty thousand dollars, two bottles means eighty thousand. Good luck proving extortion. Everybody understands. Or else. Here, let me show you something.”
Han led Méndez and Puente from the conference table where they’d been sitting to a window. It overlooked an internal patio. There was an Asian garden with rocks, sculptures and an ornamental footbridge over a little brook. On the lawn, a middle-aged Asian in a black outfit was immersed in a martial-arts exercise. His salt-and-pepper hair and thick-backed physique suggested a military background. He swiveled, changed stances, threw slow kicks. He was absolutely absorbed in the workout.
“That is the biggest money man in our community,” Han said softly, his tone clinical. “He came here a year ago to build a plastics factory. This crazy city, everybody sells every kind of junk. But nobody makes anything. Unless you count the warehouses that do pirate videos and CDs. We need bona fide industry.”
“Is he a diplomat or something?” Puente asked.
“No. Private sector. He showed up from Taiwan, started building the factory. The boys came around asking for money. But he would not pay. They firebombed his site, harassed his workers. They killed his business partner. But he was stubborn. He got it into his head that he was not going to pay. One day two guys came to see him. They told him it was his last chance. Started pushing him around. Rubbed him the wrong way. So he pulled a gun: bam-bam-bam. Cleaned them up.” Han fanned his palm over an imaginary gun hammer, Wyatt Earp–style, surprising Méndez with the pantomime and the Argentine street slang.
“Quite a story,” Puente said.
Han turned back to the table; the show was over. Méndez took a last look at the industrialist-gunslinger on the grass. The man’s eyes were half-closed in a kind of rapture. His body coiled and unfurled as he engaged invisible enemies. Méndez saw that his feet were bare.
“So now he has to live with us, here in the consulate,” Han said. “He sent his family to Buenos Aires. The Paraguayan police take him to his factory every day. And there is a new lottery in Ciudad del Este: People bet on when the gang will eliminate him.”
They sat back down. A Paraguayan woman entered carrying a tea tray. Han waited patiently for her to fill and distribute cups and leave.
“The point is,” Han said, leaning toward Méndez, hardly any trace of the diplomat left now, “the Asian gangs do not mess around. When they do business with an outsider, it is always a risk. This deal with Ruiz has been lucrative. But frankly, I do not think it will last. As long as he was far away, fine. But now he is here. Throwing his weight around. Making enemies. It is not their style.”
“He lacks discipline,” Méndez said. The word caused Han to nod deeply.
“Exactly. That is good for us, bad for them. So everybody’s watching him.” Han reached at last for the digital recording device that his visitors had been eyeing since their arrival. “These calls were recorded during the past two days and provided to us, to our great surprise, by a well-informed source. We’ll give you the whole recording. You are the experts.”
Méndez wondered about the provenance of the wiretap, whether the Taiwanese were working with the Americans. It all seemed very roundabout to him. But then the tape started and he recognized Junior’s voice immediately. It sounded thick and slurred. The phone call had clearly awoken his uncle, Senator Ruiz Caballero.
SENATOR: What? What time is it, for God’s sake? What’s wrong?
JUNIOR: I don’t know. I don’t care. I’ve stepped in a ton of shit and it’s your fault.
SENATOR: My fault? What’s the matter with you?
JUNIOR: I thought you said your people put a muzzle on Méndez. The son of a bitch is down here. He’s fucking things up with Khalid.
SENATOR: I told you, that’s the Americans. If Méndez is there, he’s freelancing for that Cuban woman I told you about. We don’t have any control over that.
JUNIOR: You do too. You talk to California, or Wash—
SENATOR: Careful, careful on the phone, Hugo!
JUNIOR: These fucking Arabs don’t stop asking for money. They say they’re getting heat because of me. They’re feeding off me, what the fuck is this? I’m thinking about going back to Baja.
SENATOR: That would be problematic right now.
JUNIOR: So you haven’t done a thing. You haven’t taken care of those warrants yet!
SENATOR: I’m working on it. I can’t guarantee there wouldn’t be inconveniences, legally speaking, if you came back right now. Especially in this mood you’re—
JUNIOR: All right, that’s it. Now you have to get up off your ass and lend a hand.
SENATOR: How?
JUNIOR: First you send me a contribution for Khalid—
SENATOR: It’
s not like you don’t have the dough—
JUNIOR: A contribution! And help me set up him up with that man from Monterrey. He’s interested in contributing. He’s breaking my balls about a trip to meet the candidate—
SENATOR: Careful!
JUNIOR: And find out exactly what the fucking gringos are doing down here. And then get your supposed American friends to make them disappear. Because if I do it, there will be a bloodbath like you can’t imagine, do you understand? Get moving, you stingy old bastard. I will not stand for this shit.
SENATOR: Calm down. And listen carefully. You may need to do some housecleaning. Our friends say you may have picked up an undesirable employee.
Han’s cell phone rang on the table next to his elbow. He glanced at the display, grimaced apologetically and stopped the recording.
As the diplomat murmured into the phone in Mandarin, Méndez realized that all of them had been straining toward the recording device as if on leashes. Isabel’s thumb had gone to her teeth early in the conversation; she had started biting it after the reference to “that Cuban woman.”
It did not concern Méndez that Junior knew they were on his heels. That was part of the strategy. But who were the Ruiz Caballeros’ friends in the United States?
23
JUNIOR HAD NO ATTENTION SPAN. He didn’t listen. Twice within the space of fifteen minutes, he had asked Pescatore what kind of name Valentín Pescatore was and where he was from.
Junior was acting friendly. Too goddamn friendly. It was their first real conversation. It worried Pescatore more than the confrontation on the basketball court. Pescatore was still trying to understand how exactly he had ended up in the presidential suite with Buffalo and Junior. Just the three of them kicking back in front of the television. Pescatore spoke when spoken to and puffed on the joint when it was handed to him.
“Chicago, huh?” Junior mused, spewing a jet of smoke. “Never liked it. Too cold.”
Junior had stretched himself out on the couch. He sniped at the television with the remote control, jumping between MTV Latino, a sports channel and a nature channel showing cheetahs and buzzards. His T-shirt was decorated with a picture of one of his company’s Mexican bands, a dozen norteños in feathered cowboy hats and outlaw leather coats. A room-service cart gave off a smell of leftover steak and vegetables that mingled with the reefer and Junior’s atomic cologne.
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