Killing Cortez

by A. L. DeNova

  Jacobo paused to appreciate Jo’s appetite and aptitude for acquiring attractive and unlikely lovers. He thought perhaps post-trial Jo might share a few savory details, but now was not the time. Jacobo turned to Jo, “So Jo, how about an introduction.”

  Jo laughed quietly and shrugged,” Well, Jacobo, we can both get that information at the same time.” Jo extended her hand and said with a warm smile, “Carmen, it is nice to meet you, I’m Josephine Gemma, and you are?”

  Carmen knew she could not give her real name in this company. Great. The Feds, of all people, the Feds had to save her after JC’s flat tire. Well, she was not going to federal prison for 40 years for JC and his family’s greed, corruption and stupidity. This was exactly why her mother had forbidden her from hanging out with him. “Carmen Cortez,” was the even response as a millennium of savvy forbears had produced a steely core in this luscious progeny.

  Jacobo, quick to the draw, quipped “It’s very nice to meet you Señorita Cortez, any relation to the Conquistadora?”

  “Sure,” Carmen parried adept at verbal dueling in two languages “we both like all the same things.”

  “And that would be?” inquired Jo.

  “Why gold, art and adventure,” countered Carmen careful to use euphemisms for greed, lust and gore.

  Her English was no match for the passion and description of her Spanish, and in these circumstances, this was fortunate for Carmen.

  Jacobo and Jo laughed at what they took to be a quick retort all in fun. In years to come, there would be time to reflect on the uncanny revelation in a simple sentence.

  The hefty waitress set down plates of plentiful chilaquiles smothered in sour cream and salsa fresca, before the two women. Jacobo asked for the same dish from the waitress. In Spanish, he asked the waitress to add hot salsa, and spooning out a double entendre, he commented- “I like everything in my life to be spicy, fresh and hot.” Carmen arched an eyebrow.

  Jacobo took a swig of the coffee, hot and black and the two young women tore into their pile of corn tortillas fried with eggs, onions, and green chiles. Intrigued by this new conqustadora, Jo kept the conversation rolling, “Carmen do you have any place you have to go this morning? We have a vehicle viewing this morning at the impound lot here in town and then you can head back and get your car fixed.” “That’s fine with me,” agreed Carmen.

  “How long had you been there on the side of the road before I came along?” Jo inquired.

  “I don’t know,” answered Carmen, “I figured I’d get help when the sun came up. And you know that is exactly what happened, my prayers were answered, thank you Jo,” and as an afterthought “and Ja-COBO?” she added, emphasizing the first syllable of his name. Carmen continued, “You work at the U.S. Attorney’s office? That must be really interesting.”

  Jo’s answer was an exaggerated roll of her eyes. Her humorous reaction overplayed the opposite feeling. She chose this job the way she chose a lover, or a sport- it called her. Justice, for Jo, was a serious subject. At twenty-nine years old the United States Department of Justice was a serious job. She felt pride every time she stood up in the paneled, somber expanse of the federal courtroom in downtown San Diego and declared “Josephine Gemma for the United States.” She believed she represented both the might and right of the legal system. Her defendants in the cases she prosecuted were getting paid $1,000 to $5,000 to cross drugs at the ports of entry that separated Mexico from San Diego County. Defense lawyers, prosecutors and cops called these criminals “mules.” These mules were not more than pack animals because they received a tiny portion of the enormous profits earned by the drug trade.

  From her studies in college and experience, Jo had learned that Northern Mexico was in fact a stew of cultures: Spaniards, Mayans, Americans, Germans, Chinese who produced a culture at times explosive, thrilling and tragic. Each condiment of culture added its unique piquancy to the Mexican mestizo over five centuries. Jo had been raised on her own family’s immigrant saga of traveling to America for a better life. She empathized with the allure of America.

  For Mexico thousands of miles of arid open, neglected border meant revenue—exporting people, raw goods, followed by a U-turn back south with the prized American exports. Dollars came to Mexico - from narcotics sales, from wages, cars stolen from suburban driveways. Prized American exports entered Mexico as well in the form of guns, cigarettes, and whiskey.

  All of this, swirled in her conscious mind, but Jo’s only words were “Yes, interesting.”

  Three years earlier, when she finished her federal clerkship, Jo had told the meat-faced United States Attorney for San Diego that it would be “fascinating” to work as a federal prosecutor.

  At the time Jo believed it to be the ultimate feather in her cap. She swam competitively at Stanford, did well at University of Chicago Law School, and it was then her love of swimming and surfing that pulled her to the beaches of San Diego. She figured crime was crime. Boy was she wrong.

  “Make a difference,” that is what Jo mumbled to her bathroom mirror. After all her academic honors and access to the fast-track, she wanted to believe that somehow a few more bad guys were off the streets, and the innocents-the average decent person had a safer and better life because of her toil, dedication, long drives into desiccated towns, and long nights of culling through documents, phone logs, and interview notes.

  Later, and forgoing the big dollars of a swanky New York, L.A. Or Chicago law firm, Jo looked down into her chilaquiles and felt doubt about this choice of dust versus dollars. Swallowing a mouthful of chorizo and egg, she nodded, and smiled.

  After some small talk and a spicy breakfast, Jo said, “Carmen, ready to roll? Jacobo and I want to get this car viewing knocked out before the afternoon sun gets too scorching.” Carmen stood up and collected her purse, saying nothing.

  Jacobo glanced at the tab for breakfast, put it in his pocket, slapped a five dollar bill on the marbled wood patterned vinyl diner table and resolved the bill with the cashier while Jo savored the last drops of coffee. Carmen followed Jacobo to the cashier. Jo stood, stretched, and met up with her breakfast mates.

  Jacobo held the metal door open as the two women transitioned from the cool of the air-conditioned diner to the glaring sun of summer in Tecate.

  7

  Show Your ID

  “Want to ride in my El Camino,” Jacobo said “It’s got room enough for three in the front seat for you ladies.” He pronounced these words flatly, trying to hide all of his lascivious fantasies. Jo rolled her eyes and Carmen twisted her lips in a wry smile. And yet they slid right into the front bench seat, seat-belted and sticky in the dry, building heat. The dust particles in the diner’s dirt parking lot glistened, and beads of sweat collected on Jacobo’s sideburns, pausing for the ready signal to roll down to his chiseled jaw.

  Jacobo turned the engine on the powerful V-8, surely one of life’s essential and reliable pleasures, the macho certainty of American muscle cars. He drove through downtown Tecate passing a cluster of one and two-story buildings from the 1940’s.

  Jacobo Sanchez then made a right turn down a dirty, dusty road. The road meandered through a flat stretch of chaparral, barely wide enough for the truck and for one way traffic.

  The three soon came upon a two-acre flat expanse contained by a low barbwire fence on four sides with the far border being a railroad track.

  They were soon met by a grizzled man in dirty jeans and an undershirt flecked with the memory of cigarette ash. In a baritone voice reminiscent of Marlene Dietrich, he called out to Jacobo and his recognizable El Camino: “Hey Jacobo!” After parking the truck, Jacobo greeted the impound lot guard, “Hola, Diego. Can we take a look at the tractor trailer rig?”

  Diego stared with no emotion for a moment. “The big one, that was the 2000 kilos of cocaine in March?” Diego whistled and swiped his left hand through his surviving silver strands of hair.

  Still in Spanish, Agent Sanchez whispered “and keep your eyes off my two fine g
irls.”

  Diego cackled and ambled into a squat tan stucco building, almost a hut with a swamp cooler. Just large enough to accommodate a desk and a corroding commode. He soon retrieved a numbered key from a phalanx of brass hooks on the “office” wall.

  He grabbed a legal sized clipboard with a sign in sheet. “Tu firma, por favor.” In accented English, Diego rasped, “Agent Sanchez we need your identification, your ID, and those of these two girls if they are going to see the rig. We need them to sign here too, and the ID.” Jacobo motioned to the two women.

  Carmen watched as Jo quickly reached into the back pocket of her slacks and whipped out a gold embossed billfold. Jo opened the billfold exposing a photo of a serious, suited Josephine I. Gemma, Assistant United States Attorney. It was part mugshot and part glam shot.

  Carmen walked right up to Diego and in softly Spanish explained: “I had a fight with my boyfriend, we got a flat tire, and then I just forgot my Id.”

  Diego shrugged. Diego looked at Agent Sanchez and in Spanish said, “You take charge of her then. You make sure she behaves.”

  Diego handed Agent Sanchez the keys. He ambled into the stucco office and gazed at the mesmerizing rear view of Carmen.

  Jacobo and the two women passed rows of cars of every size, make, color and year. Jacobo stared at the bounty of seizure vehicles that filled a two-acre lot.

  Finders keepers was the law of the land and Jacobo knew this gave federal agents the added incentive to arrest so the U.S.A. could keep for itself the illegally gotten gains of the narcos. Regulations made cataloguing, and securing the storage of such seizures an integral part of his duties, He thought confiscating personal property by force could be called robbery.

  The impound lot resembled a junk yard in the wide variety of vehicles represented. Arranged across the wide lot were pick-up trucks, speedboats, motorcycles, motor-homes and jet-skis. Anything with a motor, and even the engine itself was a potential hiding place for drugs.

  After walking to the edge of the lot, Jacobo stooped before a tractor trailer rig. He called out to the prosecutor: “Hey Jo, let’s see what’s in the cab.” Jacobo walked out front and opened up the driver’s door effortlessly.

  Jacobo hauled himself with his brawny arms and then calmly looked inside the cab. Jo called up to the searching agent-“Find a log?”

  Jo shouted up to the cab. “Hey, of course you are going to follow protocol, but before you remove anything, take a photo.”

  Jacobo paused, and snapped a dozen photographs before gathering the assorted objects and stacking them on the driver’s seat.

  Jacobo then jumped out of the cab onto the grey gravel. He walked to the rear of the long trailer. He opened the trailer door to the refrigerated truck. On the floor of the trailer were a few rotting cabbage leaves, remnants of the decoy harvest. Towards the rear of the trailer, were dismantled plywood boards.

  Jo stepped up and into the trailer. She kneeled down and touched the board that was affixed to the entire rear length of the trailer. “This was the false wall then, Jacobo? What do you think?”

  “The cocaine was loaded in that false space between the real end of the trailer and this plywood fake wall, according to our reports. 2000 kilograms of cocaine, hidden behind cabbage. Cool,” Jacobo deadpanned, expressionless behind his aviator sun glasses.

  “Sort of a Trojan Horse?” retorted Jo. “We are going to go through the evidence for trial. Hey Carmen, we can take you back to the restaurant while we work here. Just say the word,” Jo added.

  Carmen, who had been standing many feet away, walked up to the trailer’s edge. “Jo, that’s fine. I can stay here. There were drugs in this commercial load of cabbage? Why would anybody put that much cocaine in a cold cabbage truck?”

  Jacobo beat Jo to the answer “Just like Jo said, it was hidden in a very innocent seeming place. This company crosses the border every day from Tecate. They come in the same time, in the same truck.”

  Carmen looked at Jacobo and tried to look confused. Confusion was seldom an emotion she experienced. Working in her family’s elegant café since her quinceañara, she had dated exciting men who dressed well, flashed cash and knew how to entice a sassy beauty. Those eight years had taught her much about flirtation as well teaching her the finer points of the cross-border drug trade. Working the cash register and waiting tables she acquired the ability to calculate the total bill and tip in her head. She had a talent for numbers and fast mental calculations. Her mother worried that this mental acumen for math did not transfer to judging appropriate boyfriends. When dating café patrons, her mother cautioned Carmen to never overestimate character. Remembering her mother’s stern warning gave her a shudder even in the heat of the impound lot: “A mistake in love, is made in blood, and is not easily erased.”

  Jacobo continued, “The driver is the defendant, a real truck driver.” Carmen continued to stare vacantly. “His defense is that he was tricked, and did not know. All we have to prove is that he knew because there is no question that the white stuff we found is cocaine, and that he was driving,” Jacobo said.

  “I can’t believe that this is a trial,” Carmen said.

  “Believe it and even better come watch the trial next week,” Jo said. Jo wanted to get to know Carmen better. This was her foot in the door to ask Carmen out.

  “Why did they use this truck and trailer?” asked Carmen

  “Why? They want to make sure their product gets to market. Think about the time and expense to make cocaine. To grow it in Columbia. To transport it to northern Mexico. They get their profit only when that cocaine sells in America,” Jo said.

  “For drugs, anything is possible,” said Jacobo. “Some have called America ‘insatiable’ when it comes to hunger for drugs, but I don’t know if that word even begins to explain the extent that these cartels will go to smuggle drugs across the border,” Jacobo said.

  “Can you give me an example?” Carmen asked. She understood that timing was everything. She knew to play her advantages. This was a once in a life time opportunity.

  “Yeah, they hide drugs everywhere,” Jacobo said.

  “What do you mean by that?” Carmen asked.

  “I have found drugs hidden in car wheels, in tires, in trunks, engines, side panels, bumpers, dashboards, seats. Then there is the canned food category, mole´, chiles and frijoles. I have found drugs in baby diapers, luggage, and of course strapped to a body, inside underwear and shoved inside where the sun does not shine.”

  “The smugglers put a lot of thought into this, so they don’t have to work. That’s the easy answer,” said Jo.

  Carmen looked at Jo and said, “Have you arrested anybody?”

  “Oh yeah, when he first came in,” Jo said.

  “He is in jail?” Carmen continued.

  “The driver is, yeah,” Jo confirmed.

  “Always seems it comes down to money, doesn’t it?” Jacobo said. He continued, “My parents’ Mexico needed a release valve for a population explosion. This happened in my own grandparents’ life. Mexico was a quiet rural country at the start of the twentieth century with 13 million people. Today, the late 80’s, Mexico has about 84 million people, and growing. Now, that’s motivation, feeding a growing family. And to escape corruption. Why not walk north for a shot at the American Dream? Ain’t we living it?”

  “We can’t catch them all, we just wave everybody through our border. We have every single day on that border just in our district in California about 38,000 cars coming north, and 19,000 people walking in,” Jo said.

  “Now that’s what I call a golden opportunity,” Jacobo joked. “And especially for those aching to hire some cheap labor.”

  “More like an incessant game of hide and go seek,” Jo said.

  “Yeah, Jo, just an endless, mind-numbing game of hide and go seek,” Jacobo replied.

  “Anybody looked at rig before us?” Jacobo asked Diego slowly in Spanish.

  Diego answered in English “Agent, you can look at the
clipboard, everybody who comes in the lot, signs the sheet.”

  “Looks like Heidi Vandeweghe has been here,” Jacobo said.

  “Ayer,” Diego agreed nodding with his head.

  “That is interesting news. Usually defense lawyers call to help with the red tape to see the seizures. I guess they didn’t need any help from us for this one,” Jo said.

  “Why does that matter?” Carmen asked. “The jury wants us, the prosecution to re-enact everything for them to check everything for them, just like on television, only this isn’t television. We have 1000s cases and just a few weeks to put together a case,” Jo said.

  “A jigsaw puzzle, with no picture, and lots of missing pieces. Sure, we can put those puzzle pieces back. But look around here, they are sure hard to find,” Jacobo said with a smile. “We can only investigate here in the United States but the defense sends their investigators all over Mexico.

  “Well, my work is done,” Jacobo said. “No deals here?”

  “No way,” Jo said.

  Jacobo tapped the steering wheel and gazed out into the impound lot, watching the seized cars sizzle in the July sun.

  “Looks like the cartel hired Heidi Vandeweghe to make sure our bad boy keeps his mouth shut,” Jo said.

  “My game is baseball. But this game, has rules too.

  I never go on that other side though I have a lot of family. Not after Kiki Camerana,” Jacobo said.

  “How long are we going to fight this war, is what I want to know,” Jo said.

  “I can retire at 50, but I might go another twenty years. That gives me until 2008 to win this War on Drugs and then I will retire with pride,” Jacobo said.