McGinley watched him for a moment, then gave him an empty smile. “Quite a picture, ain’t it? Now here’s where I tell you what I want. You might want to pay attention. First, I want to know about any runners the Nortes are moving south, and any rags coming north. That’s what I came here for, and that’s what I need to hand the locals. I don’t give a damn about quitters. If they’re leaving ‘cause they just want to get out, well, more power to ‘em. But if they break out of a camp or they’re coming up here, their asses belong to us. You got that so far?”
Luis nodded. He couldn’t figure how this would get worse, but knew it would.
“Second. I want to know about Zetas, and what you Nortes plan to do about them. Where they are, what they’re doing, who they’re talking to. Especially if they’re talking to Nortes. I won’t say I came here for this, ‘cause I didn’t, but I’m here and them fuckers are too and that’s one of them things I’m real serious about, remember?”
Luis nodded again. He wanted nothing to do with Zetas or even asking about them. That mental picture still vibrated in the back of his mind. “You want me to snitch.”
“Yes I do.”
People who told stories on a cartel—any of them, not just the Nortes—ended up tortured and dead by the side of the road, usually in pieces. On the other hand, if he didn’t play ball with McGinley, what would happen? Would ICE throw him in jail? Dump him in the desert? He turned back to the window, tried to take a deep breath. “I don’t have that kind of access.”
“Then get it. They got a job opening. I expect you to go for it.” McGinley raised his finger as if he was going to shake it again. “You know, something real interesting happened a few days back. Someone put Nestor Villalobos away. You know who he is, don’t you?”
“Another cartel guy?”
“You can say that. He was the big chief of the Pacifico Norte cartel, but you know that. Now it looks like his brother Octavio is fixing to replace him. If you’re keeping score, that means your best buddy Ray Esquivel now works di-rectly for the man who runs one of the last two cartels along the border. That sound like access to you?”
Chingado. “I never asked about Cartel business. On purpose. I can’t just start now.”
“You’d better.” The smile disappeared; the amusement in McGinley’s eyes dissolved. For the first time since Luis met him, the man was dead serious. “I can arrange for you to lose that nice job of yours so you’ll have some incentive—” oh, fuck, no no no “—but I won’t just yet, ‘cause I want something to keep your attention, you know? I can arrange for that pretty wife of yours to end up in an ID check, and damn if there won’t be a problem with her ID—”
“Stay away from my family, goddamnit!”
McGinley shot a finger at Luis. “I’ll do what I have to, Ojeda. If that means your pretty mamacita winds up in a desert on the other side of the line, well, it’ll be real bad for her. And your mama and papa? They’re a little old for a camp, but—”
Luis charged out of his seat. “Leave them alone! Your beef is with me, not them. Leave them out of it.”
McGinley drew his pistol, aimed at Luis’ chest. “That’s too close,” he growled. “You set your ass down now.”
Angry but not suicidal, Luis backed into his bench. It took a few moments for him to put out enough fires inside his head before he could sit. All he could hear was the roaring in his ears.
“It’s up to you, amigo.” McGinley rested his weapon on the forearm he’d draped over his seat back. “Be a good boy, they’ll be fine. If you don’t, I’ll fuck up your life so bad you’ll want me to deport you, but I won’t, ‘cause I reckon you’d do just fine down there, and I’d rather put you in a camp where I can keep track of you. I’m thinking Elko, how’s that sound?”
Jesús Cristo. That was the badass camp, the one where the violent prisoners went. A hundred miles of desert between it and anything else. He’d never survive a place like that.
McGinley would destroy Bel, his parents, maybe Nacho too if his reach went that far. He’d probably leak Luis’ name to the Cartel just for spite. And there was nothing—nothing—Luis could do to stop him.
McGinley smiled at him. “We understand each other, now don’t we, amigo.”
Yeah, they understood each other.
Luis was trapped.
27
This justifiable fear of eavesdropping has led to some extreme behaviors…Based on sales figures released by the two remaining American wireless carriers, CTIA estimates 37% of Americans carry a second mobile phone, usually a prepaid, non-contract handset not registered in their names…
— “The Burner-Phone Shuffle,” Wired.com
MONDAY, 10 MAY
The last cop car screeched out of the parking lot. The bus had left a few minutes before.
Luis stood on the sidewalk in front of the shop, shaking with rage and humiliation. McGinley had trapped him like a chicken in a pen. He wanted to hit something, kill something, the way he’d felt so often when he was young, before Bel had turned him into a civilized man.
He let the feelings flow for a few minutes to clean them out of his system. When his hands started to ache from clenching his fists, he used the positive visualizations he’d learned in the VA to drain the festering mess inside him. Bel’s and Nacho’s faces flashed through his mind. He loved them, and they’d suffer if he didn’t wise up and think.
Luis needed to warn Ray and Salma. He had to get his burner back online. That meant a trip to Target for new chips, a new identity for his phone. Thank God the cops didn’t find it.
Until then…email? No; the cops had been in the office unsupervised. Planted a keylogger? Installed a camera? Bugs?
Paranoid?
He couldn’t discount paranoia. Now that McGinley had him by the huevos, he’d have to live knowing people really were out to get him again. With any luck, it would keep him alive.
Tell Bel? No, not yet. McGinley wouldn’t do anything to her until Luis pissed him off. This would just set her off again. He’d tell her when he had to, which he hoped would be never.
Another complication: they had his truck for over two hours. Had they planted anything? Did he dare go anywhere if there was a tracker on it? He’d need a sweep immediately, this morning. Worry started backing up in his stomach.
Luis borrowed a phone from one of the techs. He called a car service number he had on a sticky note under the counter, told them to come to the corner. No names, no destination on the phone. An unregistered cab, no meter, GPS disabled, drivers with terrible memories for faces and places. The way poor people got around in the 1950s and ‘60s, still working today.
Pacing usually didn’t calm him down, but he tried it anyway. It still didn’t work.
He bought a dozen new chips at Target with his Cartel expense card, a Visa drawn on a Gambian bank in the name of a front corporation with two or three cutouts between it and a pot of some exotic online currency. Since it didn’t require a signature, there was nothing to tie it to him. A thousand pounds fell off him when his burner phone blinked on with a new number.
The big problem with burners was that if used right, nobody would know the number, and so couldn’t call them. He had to register his phone with the Cartel so the people who were supposed to be able to call him could.
Through the phone’s browser, he hit a website with a name that was all numbers ending in “.pl”—Poland—and got the expected 404 error. He keyed in a PIN; the site downloaded the shred and 512-bit encryption apps and uploaded his new number. This system worked out all the call-forwarding.
Nathan the Exterminator came by just after lunch and ran a full scan of the shop. No bugs, no keyloggers. He found a tracker puck in the truck’s rear bumper, though. “Pull it out? Leave it in?”
Luis tried to read his vee-shaped face for a clue to the right answer. As usual, Nathan’s dark eyes revealed nothing. “Can you hack it?”
Nathan turned the puck over in his fingers, said “hm” a few times, then,
“Let me see what I can do.” Half an hour later, he waved Luis into the shop’s racket. “Fixed it. If you’re here or at your house, it’ll report the right position. Anywhere else, it’ll offset two miles west and a random distance north or south. They’ll figure it out eventually.”
Ray phoned a few minutes later. “You clean?”
“I think so. The bar’s under surveillance. McGinley told me this morning.”
“Yeah, we’ve seen them. I think they want us to see them, you know? So, what happened?”
Luis told him about the ID check, but didn’t mention McGinley’s offer-he-couldn’t-refuse. There are things that have to be said face-to-face. “We need to talk.”
Ray paused long enough for Luis to wonder if the call had dropped. “Yeah, we do. There’s shit going down you need to hear about, not on the phone, you know?”
What now? Ray rarely got too cagy to talk on the phone. “Sure. I can get down there around three. Make sure you call it in. Do I need to be worried?”
“No.” Ray didn’t sound very convincing. “Maybe. Hell, yes. Just…be careful out there, keep your eyes open. See you at three.”
28
3. United States. Despite its well-known problems, the U.S. is still an excellent place to be rich…With no corporate taxes, no federal or state taxes on incomes over $1 million, and no federal tax on capital gains, dividends or estates, it’s easier to hold onto your money here than in nearly any other developed nation…Secure enclaves such as Newport Beach, CA, Greenwich, CT, and Potomac, MD provide top-notch services for your homeowner’s fees…
— “World’s 10 Best Places to be Wealthy,” Forbes.com
MONDAY, 10 MAY
Luis slumped in the driver’s seat, the Cartel-loaner Nissan in neutral, on Jamboree half a block north of Highway 73, waiting in line to leave the United States and enter Newport Beach.
The full-motion ads on the vidboard a block back—the last he’d see in Newport—couldn’t have been more different from the ones in Orange. High-end products (North Pole cruises, genetic breast augmentation, Bentley, voluptuous models wearing the latest from Mumbai) and political ads (“Re-elect Senator Kardashian”). Back home, it was guns and booze, and nobody bothered with political ads. Poor peoples’ votes were bought and sold, or disappeared in the system. Actual green grass stretched along the parkway next to him. It was hard to believe Newport was still officially part of the U.S.
The “No City Pass” lane inched south, while the “Resident” and “Employee” pass lanes to his left flowed freely. Ads crawled across the e-plate on the car ahead of Luis. On the opposite corner, riot cops pounded a clutch of scraggly “Eat the 1%” protesters into the otherwise-pristine sidewalk. Up-armored SUVs and big luxury sedans—probably some of Luis’ customers—whooshed north out of the city, the coveted blue “Resident” passes bright on the blacked-out windshields.
Luis eventually reached the entry gate and a starchy NBPD cop in pressed blues. Ray had remembered to call in an appointment, thank God. A Level 1 ID scan, mirrors under the car, a trunk-and-engine-compartment search, then the cop slapped a red three-hour visitor pass on the center-top of his windshield and waved him through.
Sunscreen-smooth streets. Working stoplights. New cars. Pretty Anglos and Asians—somehow, they were all pretty—in the latest clothes and most fashionable tropical colors, wearing the latest phones, talking into the latest dataspecs. No surgical masks for the smog (no smog), no empty storefronts. Knots of well-fed teenagers out having fun, not working. No thrift stores, no missions, no street markets. Luis felt like a skunk at a wedding reception.
Tavo’s—no, Ray’s—neighborhood was all sprawling, low-slung ramblers set just feet apart, huge banks of glass looking seaward, manicured plantings. Luis doubted anyone lived in these three- and four-car garages, and he bet all the streetlights worked. He parked in front of Ray’s white modernist blockhouse, sat back, stared into space as the engine ticked away its heat.
He’d spent the afternoon thinking hard about what to tell Ray, and how. It ought to be easy: “Ray, McGinley wants me to snitch. What do you want me to do?” But nothing’s ever that simple. With El Tiburón dead and Tavo jockeying to replace him, everyone was running scared. Luis would take the fall for any leaks even if he didn’t have anything to do with them. It’s faster and easier to kill the known snitch than find the new one.
But if he didn’t tell Ray, he’d be dead the moment someone found out. Well, not “the moment”—they’d draw it out—but close enough.
Which way to go?
Luis heaved out of the car, nodded to the lurking guard, stepped along the pebbled concrete path into the entry courtyard. No sound from the doorbell. It probably worked anyway.
A moment later, a pretty, tanned young blonde hauled open the front door. She was what they used to call a “surfer girl” back when the ocean was clean enough to surf in. Was she here three years ago, the last time he’d visited this place? She sure hadn’t been barefoot, in tight denim cutoffs and a low-cut yellow tank top. That, he’d remember.
“Welcome back, Mr. Ojeda. Follow me, Ray’s waiting for you outside.”
Ray stood up from behind his glass-topped patio table. His collarless shirt’s iridescent blue matched the water in the big infinity pool. Sun glinted off the frames of his dataspecs. He reached to shake Luis’ hand. “Ever been here in the daytime?”
“No, just at night. Jesus.” Balboa Island and Newport Bay stretched golden in the afternoon sun from the foot of the bluff to the blue curve of the Pacific. Haze fuzzed the dark hump of Catalina and the spiky silhouettes of drilling rigs on the horizon. The coast was far enough out that Luis couldn’t see or smell the oil sludge he could picture flopping onto the shrunken beaches, but close enough that the breeze could carry off the smog to Luis’ house.
Luis heard a palm slap denim, and a quick giggle. When he turned, he caught Ray watching the blonde’s cute little butt wiggle away. “Who’s the rubia?” he asked in Spanish.
“Keira. She came with the place. She’s the maid.”
“That all?”
Ray snorted out a laugh. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want answered, hermano.”
Luis gave him a hard look, glanced back to the house, then shook his head sadly. “You didn’t just dump Salma, you dumped her for a fucking maid. Nice.”
Ray’s jaw tightened. He stabbed a finger at Luis. “Fuck you. Anyone but you says that to me, I feed them to Pancho. Sit.”
They settled into chairs on either side of the table. A six-sided blue umbrella screened them from the sun and any lurking drones. Luis watched the guards melt into the tall hedges on both sides of the yard. A wolfish dog sprawled panting on the pool apron a dozen yards away. Ray hadn’t had a dog at his old place. “Pancho?” Luis asked, pointing.
“Yeah. You should be glad we split, you know? Salma’s always been sweet on you, now she’s available. Go for it.”
Luis crossed his arms and frowned. “I’m married.”
Ray shrugged. “Look, I got bad news. The Zetas got Tavo Tuesday night.”
“They what?” Luis lurched halfway out of his chair. “How did that happen?”
“Sit down. Nobody knows how it happened. They killed the guards, they killed Pilar, the kids, the guests. They shot one of the damn horses, not sure what that’s about.” Ray paused. “Thing is, they took Tavo, they didn’t kill him. Nobody knows where he is. I didn’t tell you before now because I’m working the problem, and I knew you’d freak.”
“Goddamnit!” Luis rattled the tabletop with a fist. “You know what this means, right? They’re going to find out about all of us. What we’re doing, where we live.” Disgust turned to panic inside him. “Are we working for them now? For the Zetas? Is that how it is?”
“Not yet.” Ray leaned forward, spread his hands. “Look, hermano, we need a capo before the Zetas give us one. Me and a couple of the other guys, we’re working up a three-part capo—”
“I think they
call that a troika.”
“Whatever. If we spread out, it’s harder to cut the Cartel’s head off.”
“Bad choice of words, compa.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Luis fell back into his chair, wiped his palms down his face. He’d heard about what happened in Sinaloa and the three or four other cartels the Zetas had taken out in the past few years. The people they figured might be useful got a visit and an invitation nobody sane would refuse. The others—and the ones who said “no”—ended up hanging from a freeway overpass or lying in pieces in a parking lot. Now it was happening to the Nortes.
He finally focused on Ray and not Ray’s words. Lounging around out here by the pool, grab-assing with his new toy girl—he wasn’t acting like someone high on the list of people expecting a Zeta knock on the door.
“All kinds of shit’s going down,” Ray said, as if he’d been listening to the static in Luis’ brain. He held a hand out toward Luis. “I’m just hanging on. This could get real bad, you know? I need to know you’re behind me. I need good people backing me up. If everything goes right, there’s room for you to move up, get you out of that sorry-ass garage. I need—”
“When was the last time I said I wanted to get in deeper with the Cartel?”
“Come on, I’m talking the legit businesses here. I know you don’t want to do the other. Look, we’ll talk about this again when things settle. I need to know you’re with me, okay?” His tone said he wasn’t asking. “Anyone comes looking around, you let me know.”
That was Luis’ cue. His eyes aimed at the view, but he didn’t see it. “How come you didn’t tell me Zetas killed Federico?” It was stalling, but he needed to think some more.
“Does it matter who killed him?”
“Claro, it matters. If they’re that far west, I’m running out of crossings in Cartel territory. You want me to drop these people into the middle of the war? Where’s the front line now?”
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