“Yeah,” Diaz muttered, her chin working up and down in a quick nod. Laced through her tone was no small amount of astonishment, most likely for both the fact that such information was shared and the manner in which it was delivered.
“What was it Martin always told us?” I asked, raising my voice to be heard clearly by the phone balanced on my knee. “Just have to find the right leverage point.
“For her, that meant leaning on her brother. After we told her he’d been arrested and was looking at Murder One, she couldn’t get it out fast enough.”
While a bit of an oversimplification, it wasn’t far from exactly the way it had played out.
In the wake of my bringing up her brother, it had taken a few more minutes for Salinas to completely calm down. A few tears had managed to leak out and her voice cracked a bit each time she spoke, but the longer the discussion went, the calmer she became.
Almost as if tricking herself into believing what she was saying might in some way help us – and by extension her brother – she shared what she knew, providing the last bits of information we needed to bring the story together.
To hear her tell it, her father had two great devotions in his life.
His children, and Junior Ruiz.
Starting out as little more than a common hustler in the streets of Tijuana, he had met Ruiz in a chance encounter years before. With a wife at home and a child on the way, he had jumped at the chance to come and work for Ruiz, at the time still only a mid-level himself.
Entering on the low end of the cartel pecking order, he’d put his time in doing whatever was asked, ascending to warehouse foreman.
That much of the story Salinas had delivered as little more than background. Basic information of the sort that could be read from a Wikipedia page, as unremarkable as the daily weather report or sports scores.
It was from there that things began to get interesting.
It was no secret what generally happened for people like her father that worked the streets in Tijuana. The life was hard and fast, ending with either prison or a bullet, but there was little someone like him could do about it. He had people at home that needed him. No education. No clear path to ascension.
Because of that, the man always openly stated that Junior Ruiz had saved his life, and the lives of his family. It was the reason he had named his son Tres, a clear homage to someone that had earned his undying loyalty.
It was also why he worked so hard to cultivate a friendship, the sort of thing that would lead to Ruiz hosting a quinceañera for Juana.
In the wake of our raid on Ruiz, her father had sent his children north of the border. Years before, her mother had tired of having to fight for her husband’s affection, throwing her hands up and fleeing the situation, knowing that relocating to America was the only way to escape the reach of Junior Ruiz.
Even then, though, her father had remained behind. Unable to shed his unflinching allegiance to Ruiz, he had remained in his post. He had weathered the storm, pretending to be nothing more than a low-level rube and taking up with the man that would become the cartel successor, even going to great lengths to quietly cultivate continued allegiance to someone that might never make it out of prison.
Among his converts apparently being his own son.
To hear Salinas tell it, the last she had heard from either her father or her brother was a few years before. On separate occasions, each had come to try and convince her to take up with the organization, though she had firmly told them both to go to hell.
The last experience she had had with such things was that night in Baja.
The longer it remained that way, the better.
Start to finish, it took her almost ten uninterrupted minutes to relay the tale. When she was done, she sat with her chest heaving just slightly, out of breath from sprinting straight through.
On her face was a mix of different thoughts and emotions, all of them dancing across her young features.
A cocktail I could readily recognize, many of them the same things I’d been feeling since Luis Mendoza showed up at my office several nights before.
“You say the name was Mejia?” Diggs asked, his voice piping in through the speaker.
“Yeah,” I replied. “The kids both went by Salinas, but their old man’s name was Arlin Mejia.”
Several times since she’d first mentioned it, I’d gone back through my mind. I’d tried repeatedly to place it, to get it to shake something loose, though each of my attempts came up in vain.
Outside of Martinez and Valdez, there were precious few other names I could readily recall. One case of hundreds we worked together, most of the people that we tracked had managed to blend into a random amalgam, the passage of the years since doing nothing to keep them from becoming muddled in my mind.
“Don’t remember the guy,” Diggs muttered, seemingly coming to the same conclusion.
“No reason for you to,” Diaz inserted. “Sounds like he was pretty low at the time, has made a point of keeping himself hidden ever since.”
Grunting softly, I couldn’t help but agree.
When we’d first arrived at Salinas’s house, I’d expected to encounter something similar to what we’d gotten from Esmerelda Ruiz. I’d anticipated she would be cagey, clearly not enthused to see us standing on her doorstep. After a few minutes of back and forth, she’d find some reason to dismiss us before immediately running back to phone someone about what had happened.
Again, that seemed to be how most things went, in this business and in Latin culture.
What we had encountered was a different animal entirely. Someone that had been wronged badly enough in various ways to make her sidestep that thinking entirely.
No longer could she swear loyalty to someone that had clearly given his to someone else long before. Just as she couldn’t pretend to overlook the turmoil such allegiance had caused in her own life, no matter that it appeared she had managed to come out okay on the back end.
“And I guess that leaves the biggest question,” Diggs said. “Can we trust her?”
In the semi-darkness of the front seat, Diaz and I shared a glance.
The question was a fair one to ask, one I had already been considering, knew Diaz to likely be doing the same. Meeting each other’s gaze, we considered it a moment before both nodding slightly.
“Yes,” we said in unison.
“Good,” Diggs replied. “Which brings me to my next question.
“These two white boys that just showed up – Jones and Smith. Can we trust them?”
Chapter Seventy-Six
Junior Ruiz’s first inclination was to tell his sister to get out of the house. To pack a bag and go stay with one of her friends, or rent a hotel, or even take a short vacation.
No place that would require a flight. Nothing where her name would turn up in some database that the government might be monitoring.
Simply jump in the car, point it either due north or east, and start driving. When it got low on gas, stop and pay with cash. Keep going until she was far enough away that there was no chance at acting Director Diaz and Dead Man Walking Tate just stopping by to see her again.
For as fast as the thought materialized though, it disintegrated just as quickly.
Telling her to go anywhere would only alert anybody that might be keeping an eye on her. Never really good at hiding her emotions, they would easily spot her climbing into the car, a bag over her shoulder, tears likely streaming down her face.
Within minutes, a call would go up. Somebody would either stop her before she made it to the end of the street or they would put a tail on her. No matter that she had done nothing wrong, they would hound her for as long as it took, hoping she would lead them to him.
He’d seen similar things done too many times before to count. Had even employed the same tactics a time or two over the years himself.
“Sorry about this afternoon,” Ruiz said. Standing just inside the rear of the office on the second floor, Ruiz leaned a
gainst the side of the desk, his legs were extended before him, crossed at the ankles.
Left arm folded over his stomach, his right elbow was propped against it, holding the phone to his face.
“Just a disconnect between the two teams,” Ruiz assured her. “One of those left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing sort of things.”
He considered adding a joke about government workers, but decided against it. Already he was employing his best placating tone, knowing that pushing things much further would make what he was doing too obvious.
“You sure?” Esmera asked, her voice relaying the obvious uncertainty she still felt. “They were firing some pretty pointed questions this morning. Seemed like more than just a simple miscommunication.”
A flicker of movement caught Ruiz’s attention, drawing his gaze to the far side of the room. Standing rigid, he watched as the door swung inward, Arlin Mejia sliding through.
Arriving without a sound, he allowed the door to shut behind him, waiting with his hands clasped behind his back, his head bowed slightly.
“For sure,” Ruiz replied. “You were there, you saw how it went. They opened the gate and let me walk right out. Would that have happened if everything wasn’t copacetic?”
The explanation was far from being the truth - or even some sliver of it - but there was no way for Esmera to know that. At face value, it seemed plausible, the sort of thing that most people would believe.
Folks just don’t walk right out of prison a fraction of the way through their sentence unless everything is on the up-and-up.
“Okay?” he pressed.
Ruiz could still sense a bit of hesitance over the line, though to his sister’s credit, she didn’t voice it.
“Okay,” she eventually managed. “Give me a call tomorrow night? Just so I know everything is alright?”
A tiny jolt of annoyance passed through Ruiz as he leveraged himself up from the side of the desk. Extending his left hand, he motioned for Mejia to come closer.
“Will do,” he said. “Bye.”
Cutting the line before his sister had a chance to respond, Ruiz slid the phone onto the desk behind him. Rooted in place, he waited as Mejia came closer before falling in beside him. Together, the two men exited onto the balcony, going straight to the railing and peering out at the grounds below.
The house, the office, the various outbuildings, were all things Ruiz could do without.
In Baja - a place predicated as much on style as substance - having a majestic spread was a prerequisite. It was what set them apart from the various other organizations.
But even at that, every last piece was vital. There were no lavish costs sunk into faux businesses, no trying to irrigate a chunk of desert sand into a garden oasis.
Each time Ruiz stepped out onto the balcony, he couldn’t help but feel his distaste spike for all that he was looking at. Nothing more than sunk investments, the single thought that kept entering his head was the enormous chunk of profits it was taking to maintain such a place.
A fact that was currently sitting second on his list of priorities, to be dealt with after their most pressing matter was properly addressed.
“What’s the word?” Ruiz asked. Without looking over to Mejia, he stared straight ahead, gaze focused on an indeterminate point in the distance.
“It is done,” Mejia replied. “The few that were fully in Reyes’s camp have been removed. Those that remained were either already loyal to you or were easily convinced it was in their best interests to become so.”
Allowing himself a small snort, Ruiz nodded, knowing exactly what Mejia meant. In their business, people tended to have allegiance to one of two things – either the people they worked for, or the money they made doing so.
The first group was preferable for obvious reasons, but it was never bad to have plenty of the second around as well.
“How many?” Ruiz asked.
“No more than a handful,” Mejia replied.
“And where are they?”
Lifting a hand, Mejia gestured past the warehouse before them, pointing into the distance. “Same place as Reyes.”
For the second time in as many minutes, Ruiz allowed himself to snort. He’d never known Mejia to be funny – if that was even his intent – but he couldn’t help but find a bit of humor in the irony there.
“Anybody vital?”
“Not at all,” Mejia answered. “All workers from the business side of things. Guys that saw their livelihood tied to the new direction Reyes was trying to take things.”
Shaking his head slightly, Ruiz continued to stare out. Even in the gathering darkness, much of the land before them was still illuminated by the lights from the various buildings, long shadows playing out across the ground.
“Manny?” he asked.
“Ready to go,” Mejia replied. Shifting slightly, he added, “In all the years working together, Reyes had no idea the man was on our side. Hell, he thought we hated each other.”
Ruiz recognized that the comment was meant to elicit some form of response from him, though at the moment, he couldn’t bring himself to provide it. Not with so much else seeming to be afoot, phone calls from his sister and Mejia’s son both arriving earlier in the day.
The opportunity that Jones and Smith had provided for him was too good to pass up. For eight long years, he had lay in his cell and thought about what happened. He’d remembered the night in question, thought about how he’d been tackled to the ground and led out in handcuffs. Paraded past most of the guests in town like a common thug.
Untold times, he’d promised himself that if ever he got out, if ever he breathed free air again, he would make those responsible for his demise pay.
When the proposal had first been presented to him, the notion of waiting had occurred to him. He had considered settling into his new post, letting things get quiet before making a move.
After a few days though, that notion had shifted. There was no reason for him to pause. Never would he get a better chance, long before anybody even knew he was out.
There was nothing special about the date. No sort of anniversary, nobody outside of the three men in that basement room deep within Lompoc to even know an agreement had been made.
He could get to the men that arrested him without them having their guard up, using Burris as a conduit, trusting Mejia to put it together.
A plan that was made that much sweeter by Jones’s agreement to wipe away everything that happened prior to the moment he stepped aside.
The only pitfall in the entire thing ended up being the execution of it, one lingering detail he needed to clean up before settling back into his post as El Jefe.
“And the guards?” Ruiz asked.
Jerking himself to attention, focus returning straight ahead, Mejia said, “Exactly as you requested. All still present, told to be on watch for an imminent threat.”
Grunting softly, Ruiz kept himself planted in front of the railing. He swept his gaze over the assorted vegetation before him, again wishing that Reyes had been able to hem in his ego.
Instead, he’d created a damn jungle, replete with plenty of places to hide, innumerable angles from which to launch an assault.
“First thing tomorrow, I want the men to use some of that equipment and start knocking these trees out back here,” he said.
“Of course,” Mejia replied.
“Maybe take down a few of the smaller buildings we don’t need, too.”
Repeating the same throat click that he so often used, Mejia bowed the top of his head just slightly.
Already, he knew that Tate was in the area. More than that, it was clear he was hunting, earlier stopping by to see Esmera.
If what Ruiz remembered of the man was any indicator, there was little chance he would be letting up until one of them was dead.
And even if there was no way to know for certain when he might show, there was no point in making his task any easier.
Chapter Seventy-Seven
> When I stepped away from the Administration six years before, weapons drop boxes were just starting to pop up. Positioned outside of prisons, courthouses, anyplace where a bit of extra firepower might be needed, they usually looked like a small bank of mailboxes. Inset into a brick or concrete wall, there were often a half-dozen or so stacked up, all capable of concealing handguns or assorted other small arms.
In our dealings, rarely did we ever go near any of those places. Never had I used them, but I knew many of the larger cities were installing them with increasing regularity.
Still, that was a far cry from what stood before us now.
“Just for the record, this never, ever happened,” Diaz said. Swinging the door open, she stood to the side, letting the glow from our headlights illuminate the interior.
Designed to look like a regular electric transformer box, it was positioned just off the side of the road on the outer reaches of a suburb known as Lemon Grove. Standing four feet tall and three across, it was made from solid concrete painted tan on three sides. Across the front was a stainless-steel door in the same color on a pair of hinges.
Completely non-descript, it matched a thousand other similar structures positioned around the city, my mind immediately jumping to wonder how many of those were functional and how many were camouflaged to serve the same purpose as this one.
A few feet away, Diggs let out a low whistle. Bending at the waist, he peered past the open door to the stash filling the box, a small ammunition bunker squirreled away in plain sight.
“Nice,” he muttered. Twisting his focus back our direction, a thin smile cracked his features. “Do I even want to know?”
“An idea we borrowed from NCIS, actually.”
“Really?” Diggs asked, his eyebrows rising. “So all the government agencies have shit like this stashed around the city?”
“Not the agency, the TV show,” Diaz corrected. Pulling the door open, she turned to stare in at the cache. Extending a finger, she said, “Handguns, couple of submachine guns, even some light explosives.”
Wild Fire: A Suspense Thriller (A Hawk Tate Novel Book 6) Page 30
