The Traffickers

by Griffin, W. E. B.

  Payne sighed.

  “Looks like we’re at what’s known as a dead fucking end,” Payne said.

  Then he saw Radcliffe staring at him with a look of dejection.

  Andy looks like he’s truly sorry this went nowhere.

  Like it’s his fault.

  “Hey, it happens, Andy,” he said.

  Harris offered, “Maybe he will write again, and we can draw him out.”

  Payne turned to Byrth. He saw that the Texas lawman not only appeared to be in deep thought but that he had that dry white bean tumbling again across his left fingers.

  “What’re you thinking?” Payne said seriously. “You look damned introspective.”

  “Thinking about Plan B,” Byrth said. “We let your cat out of the bag.”

  Payne nodded.

  Harris said, “I can call Lee Bryan at the paper and give him the story he can write and post.”

  Payne felt his phone vibrate, and he found himself in what he realized was a Pavlovian moment. He was grinning, and it was because he’d already conditioned himself to associate the phone vibration with a text message from Amanda Law.

  But then it vibrated again. And when he picked up the phone, the smile quickly went away.

  The cellular telephone instead had been ringing. The color LCD screen flashed: SOUP KING—1 CALL TODAY @ 0902.

  Well, I’ve put him off long enough.

  Now certainly qualifies as “later.”

  “Hey, Chad,” Payne said into the phone after hitting the keypad. “What’s new?”

  XI

  [ONE]

  Philadelphia International Airport Thursday, September 10, 9:01 A.M. Eastern Standard Time

  Juan Paulo Delgado pulled out of the parking lot at the Avis Rent A Car facility, the tires of his Chevy Tahoe squealing, speeding off so fast that he almost snapped off the white barrier arm at the security booth.

  Delgado was pissed off. The causes were many, and growing, the most recent being the attitude of the Avis assistant night manager. They had had a long-running arrangement in which Delgado could park in the employee parking lot for as long as he wanted, in exchange for which Delgado saw that the guy got an occasional FedEx envelope of heroin, sometimes cut and mixed and packaged as Queso Azul, sometimes pure, uncut smack. The guy sold it to supplement—very damn nicely—the income he got from the Avis gig, which he said he kept only because he needed the health benefits for his daughter’s sickle-cell anemia.

  But now, like the others, that’s not good enough anymore.

  No. The bastard wants more.

  Just like that fucking Skipper Olde was always squeezing me.

  And that pendejo who worked with him and cooked Skipper’s meth.

  They both got their payback. . . .

  Delgado was also still pissed, of course, at Ramos Manuel Chacón and his incredibly stupid mistake.

  Make that mistakes.

  First, not paying the bill.

  Then sending that text from jail.

  Who knows what he had to promise the other inmate so he could use that phone?

  Delgado knew that all kinds of contraband existed in Texas jails. Almost anything could be had for a price paid to the right guard. And that included cell phones.

  It was well known that in the state slam in Huntsville, Texas, the Mexican Mafia handled their outside business dealings using cell phones. The gangbangers called in hits on rival gang members, for example. Once, they’d even phoned a judge at his home, threatened him, then named his daughter and said they knew where she went to high school.

  That, of course, had triggered a clean sweep of the cells. Contraband was always confiscated at these things, but then the bribes to the guards would begin again. And then there’d come another sweep. And on and on.

  It’s only a matter of time before that phone he used gets picked up.

  And then who knows how long till they track down the phones that were called from it.

  If Miguel and Jorge are smart, they’ll get new phones.

  Me, too. I’ve had this one a week now.

  And Ramos can rot in jail.

  I’d be careful not to drop the soap, if I were you, mi amigo. And keep your back to the wall. . . .

  Then there’d been that newspaper photograph and story this morning.

  That one really pissed him off.

  Stupid doctor bitch.

  After they had fled the Dallas house, Delgado got the hell out of Dodge as fast as he could. He’d had Miguel Guilar and Jorge Ernesto Aguilar drive him the twenty-five miles out to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport so that he could catch the first direct flight to Philadelphia. Dallas Love Field didn’t have anything departing for Philly till hours later, and those flights made stops en route. His American Airlines Boeing 727 had left DFW at four thirty Texas Standard Time.

  When the American Airlines plane had landed in Philly at eight thirty Eastern Standard Time, he’d turned on his phone.

  The phone had pinged three times, announcing three new text messages. One was from Guilar. He’d written that he and Jorge Ernesto Aguilar had driven the Suburban back past the stash house—and reported that the place was crawling with cops. And ambulances.

  Delgado had replied that the sooner he and El Cheque got on the road headed for Philly with the guns and money and drugs, the better. Especially if they were going to finish with the ransom calls; that window of financial opportunity was quickly closing now that the people had been found in the house. It would slam shut very soon.

  They could establish another stash house in Dallas, or maybe even Fort Worth, or both, sometime soon.

  Delgado, still on the plane, had next sent a text message to Omar Quintanilla:

  meet me @ mall de mejico in 30 mins

  itʹs payday

  Then, as he was walking from the concourse to get his bag, he passed a newsstand with three neat tall stacks of the Thursday edition of The Philadelphia Bulletin.

  Actual paper newspapers, he thought.

  No computer required.

  As best as he could recall, Juan Paulo Delgado had never bought an actual newspaper. And he’d had no intention of doing so.

  But then he noticed the big color photograph, on the newspaper’s front page, of an attractive blond woman in a white medical lab coat. She stood behind a bank of microphones at what looked like a hospital.

  The headline above the photograph read: DOCTOR CONFIRMS BURN VICTIM SHOT TO DEATH IN ICU BED.

  He picked up a copy and unfolded it.

  Then he read the caption:

  Dr. Amanda Law, MD, FACS, FCCM, spoke late Wednesday at a news conference and confirmed that a patient had been shot to death in the Temple University Hospital’s Burn Unit ICU around 11 A.M. She confirmed the identity of the murder victim, first reported in Wednesday’s editions of The Bulletin, as that of twenty-seven-year-old J. Warren Olde, Jr., of Philadelphia. His murder was one of four in Philadelphia on Wednesday. “The cowards who carried out these killings are despicable,” Dr. Law said at the end of what became an emotionally charged statement. “Shooting a helpless patient as he lay unconscious in his hospital bed is a vile act. And then there were those helpless bystanders shot in the Reading Terminal Market. I would personally like to stare these evil people in the eye and see that they suffer real justice.” Police said the investigations continue in both shootings. See full story on page A3 and online at www.phillybulletin.com. (Photograph by Phan Hoang / Bulletin Photographer)

  “So you would, Dr. Law?” Delgado said aloud, bitterly. “Well, I’d like to meet a lovely girl like you, too.”

  He looked at the stand that held the stack of newspapers. The sign on it said the paper cost seventy-five cents.

  No wonder I don’t buy papers!

  He dug in his pocket, and found three quarters among his change. He left them on the stack of papers, then went to Baggage Claim for his duffle. And then he caught the Avis shuttle bus to the lot.

  When Delgado turned off South
Sixth Street into the parking lot of the Mall of Mexico, he saw Omar Quintanilla sitting on the sidewalk.

  Slender and wiry, the twenty-two-year-old Quintanilla stood five-eight and weighed 110 pounds. He had dull, vacuous eyes and kept his dark hair cut close to the scalp. Baggy jeans hung loosely on his thin frame, as did a white droopy sleeveless T-shirt.

  Quintanilla saw Delgado’s SUV pull into the lot and stood slowly, then more or less sauntered across the parking lot. He did so slightly bent over, making it look as if it annoyed him to expend the effort.

  Delgado watched, and shook his head.

  That’s not the same guy I played football with in high school.

  Around the drugs, he’s a really different guy. . . .

  Delgado found a parking spot in the shade of a small tree. The spot not only provided him relief from the morning sun, it gave him a view of the front door and the sidewalk along Sixth Street.

  Quintanilla walked up to the driver’s door. Delgado already had the window down.

  “Hola,” Quintanilla said absently, reaching in with his right hand to bump fists with Delgado.

  “Everything’s gone to shit in Dallas,” Delgado said.

  “Sí,” Quintanilla said, nodding. “I heard from Miguel. That’s some bad shit.”

  Delgado nodded. He scanned the parking lot. There was nothing unusual. Just a steady stream of cars and trucks coming and going. A white Ford pickup was stopped at the sidewalk along Sixth. Three Hispanic male day laborers were at its driver’s window and negotiating some business.

  Hell, Delgado suddenly thought, we could just pull up in the van, negotiate some bullshit price for some bullshit construction job, and those idiots would just jump in the van.

  Then we could ransom them back to their illegal families. If they have any money.

  Need to give that some more thought. . . .

  Delgado looked at Quintanilla and said, “Everything good here?”

  Quintanilla nodded.

  “How’s Jesús?”

  “Sleeping again. Those pills Angel gave him make him very sleepy.”

  Or Jiménez is just being his usual lazy nineteen-year-old self, Delgado thought.

  “Where’s Eduardo?”

  Quintanilla looked at his wristwatch and said, “Should be back at the house by now, getting the cutting crews going.”

  Delgado considered that. It was important to keep the lawn-mowing schedules, if only for the cover the business provided for their other activities. Should anyone ever question them, they’d simply mumble that they were humble yard boys.

  Then he reached into his wallet. He removed a driver’s license and handed it to Quintanilla.

  Quintanilla looked at it. He recognized it as Delgado’s counterfeit license from Texas, the one with Delgado’s picture but the name Edgar Cisneros.

  “What am I supposed to do with this?” he said.

  Delgado nodded toward the mall.

  “Go in there to the Western Union counter. There should be a two-thousand-dollar wire transfer waiting for Edgar Cisneros.”

  “But this has your picture on it. Why don’t you do it?”

  “Because I want you to do it!” El Gato snapped. “That’s why.”

  He did not want to tell Quintanilla that he thought there was a slight chance someone could be looking for him in there, waiting for him to show up at the Western Union counter.

  And the reason he did not want to tell him was that he didn’t really know why the thought had come to him.

  Delgado had had time to think on the plane, and he didn’t want to admit it, but he’d realized that coming so close to getting caught in Dallas had both shaken him up and made him at least a little paranoid.

  Which really pissed him off.

  All because that idiot Ramos made a stupid mistake.

  And now I’m upset to the point I might make a mistake.

  So that is why I want you to go in, Omar.

  But I’m just not going to tell you that. . . .

  “But,” Quintanilla protested, “do you think they’ll let me get the money with this ID’s photo?”

  Delgado was about to snap again, then looked at Quintanilla’s dull gaze—Nobody home . . . why bother?—and decided against it.

  He said slowly, “How would you know to come and get the money if you weren’t who you said you were? That is what you tell the teller. Bueno? ”

  Quintanilla shrugged, showing absolutely no confidence.

  Delgado then added, “And if that does not work”—he pulled a wad of folded bills from his pocket and peeled off one note—“then slip this to the teller under the license.”

  Delgado gave him a hundred-dollar bill.

  “Nobody says no to Ben Franklin, especially in Philadelphia,” Delgado said with a smile.

  Quintanilla took it, then turned, and sauntered toward the front door of the Mall of Mexico.

  In the twenty minutes that Quintanilla was in the mall, Delgado sat in the SUV, watching the patrons come and go. Occasionally, he would glance at the picture on the front page of the newspaper, which was on the front passenger seat.

  The more he looked at it, the more he thought about the bitch’s comment. And the more he thought about that, the more he really wanted to fulfill her wish.

  Teach her a lesson to say things she knows nothing about.

  And why not?

  A doctor makes a lot of money . . . somebody would pay to get her back.

  And pay good.

  Or we could just have some fun with her.

  He looked at the picture of Dr. Amanda Law.

  Yeah, why not . . . ?

  Delgado then saw Quintanilla come out of the Mall of Mexico carrying a letter-size envelope. As he sauntered across the parking lot, a ten-year-old battered Chevrolet Venture minivan pulled into the parking space two spots away. An elderly Hispanic woman, so squat that she barely could see over the dash, eased the dirty black vehicle to a stop. She was alone.

  As Delgado looked at the van, he remembered that they had had to tigertail their minivan. It had been the one he’d used to take the dead headless girl to the river.

  All we have now is the big Ford van. I don’t want to use it.

  So we need another minivan.

  And Abuela’s looks like it’d work just fine. Price is right.

  Delgado got out of his Tahoe and walked toward Quintanilla.

  He told him, “The keys are in my truck. You get in it and wait till I text you when and where to go. Got it?”

  Delgado saw Quintanilla’s vacuous eyes staring back.

  “Got it?” he repeated.

  Quintanilla nodded, then handed over the envelope. “It worked. License is in with the cash.”

  Delgado took the envelope and looked around. No one was paying them any attention. And the elderly woman, who wore a rumpled tan sack of a dress, was just getting her door open and unbuckling her seat belt.

  He folded the envelope and stuffed it in his back pocket.

  “Follow me to the truck, then get in it.”

  “Okay.”

  Delgado walked quickly toward the Tahoe, then turned toward the Chevy minivan. The woman didn’t hear him approaching.

  “Abuela!” he called out affectionately, as one would one’s grandmother. “Hola!”

  She turned in her seat in time to feel Delgado stepping into the minivan and quickly shoving her across the bench seat.

  She screamed.

  The keys were still in the ignition, and he fired up the engine, then threw the gearshift into drive.

  She screamed again.

  Two blocks later, Delgado pulled to the curb. He motioned for her to get out. She quietly complied.

  As he drove off, Abuela screamed again.

  Delgado drove another two blocks, then pulled to the curb and sent a text message to Quintanilla.

  [TWO]

  823 Sears Street, Philadelphia Thursday, September 10, 9:21 P.M.

  Detective Anthony Harris pulled S
ergeant Matt Payne’s white rental Ford sedan to a stop in a parking spot behind a bright blue BMW M3.

  “That’s Chad’s coupe,” Payne said.

  “And 823’s right there, across the street,” Sergeant Jim Byrth of the Texas Rangers said from the backseat. He had The Hat on his lap.

  As he got out of the car, he put on The Hat.

  With Payne’s announcement that they might have found the girl’s head, Byrth was anxious to add another piece to the puzzle that would help hunt down El Gato.

  Harris and Byrth were halfway across the street when Byrth looked back at Payne. He was standing at the curb, checking his phone.

  “You coming, Marshal?”

  When they had approached the rental car at the Roundhouse, Harris saw that Payne had his cell phone out. He appeared to be anticipating either a call—or, more probably, a text message—at any moment.

  “Give me the car keys, Matt,” Harris had said with mild disgust. “You’re damned dangerous with that phone. Can’t believe what it’d be like with you on that and trying to drive, too.”

  “I’ll take my usual spot in the back,” Byrth said, looking at Payne. “You, Marshal, can ride shotgun.”

  Harris drove from the Roundhouse over to Sixth Street and took it toward South Philly.

  With one eye on his phone, Payne went over with Jim Byrth the little bit of information Chad Nesbitt had told him in the diner by the Philly Inn. And he gave Byrth more background on his relationship with Nesbitt and Skipper Olde, both long-term and specific to the previous day.

  He glanced again at his phone.

  Nothing! Dammit!

  He checked to make sure it was still on, that the damned battery hadn’t crapped out or something. It was still on, but the battery was low.

  It had been almost a half hour since Matt had sent that text message to Amanda. And she hadn’t replied. And that worried him.