Pipeline (21 page)

"How
long are you going to be in Austin?"

"Going
back to San Antonio in a couple of hours. There's not much more to find here,
and I need to check in with Pauli."

"Have
you spoken to Kyle about what you've found yet?"

"No.
I'd like to keep it as far from him as possible until it's actually time for
the story to break. I might call Sarita tomorrow though. If it looks like he's
stuck and just spinning his wheels, maybe whoever was responsible for having
him shot will lay off. No sense going after him if he doesn't know
anything."

"They
might decide you're a better target."

"I've
made copies of everything I've found. Pauli will have them. If something does
happen, he'll give them to Kyle. He'll have to decide if the story's worth
pursuing after that."

"Damn,
Jo, I didn't involve you in this so you could become a sacrificial lamb."

I
reached across the car and touched the tips of her hair. "I know," I
said. "But considering how little I've given him, this doesn't seem like
much."

Her
eyes glistened. "I hate this. I wish you would chuck the whole
thing."

"It's
too late for that now, darlin'." I opened my door and went to the
passenger side to help Cate out of the car.

"Promise
me you'll be careful, Jo. Stay in San Antonio with your friend."

"If
you'd ever heard the way he snores, you wouldn't ask me to do that."

"I
want you to promise anyway. And look me in the eyes when you do, so I'll know
you're not lying."

She
knew me too well, and she knew the power her eyes had over me. I promised to
stay with Pauli as I walked her to the entrance of her building and gave her
his address and phone number in case she needed to contact me.

Chapter
Twenty-One

I
SPENT A sleepless night in Pauli's spare bedroom, and it wasn't just that his
snoring shook the wall between our rooms. All the little pieces of information
I had gathered were floating around inside my head looking for a way to connect
with one another. On my way out of Austin, I had stopped back at the Alumni
Association and spent a little more time with Cedric Evans. He may have been
older than dirt, but the man knew how to find information. He had dug back in
the filed student records and come up with Felix Camarena's financial
benefactor, a small company called Pan American Investments, which listed its
headquarters in Kimball, Texas, a suburb of Houston. According to Professor
Evans, Pan American Investments had gone belly up in the mid-eighties.

I
gave up on sleep and felt my way down the dark hallway into the living room. At
four in the morning, I was parked in Pauli's kitchen going over my notes again
and waiting for his coffee maker to finish spitting and burping out its
contents. In an effort to kill time, I began making lists of people to call and
places to look on one sheet of paper. On a second sheet, I compiled a longer
list of questions. Was there a connection besides business between Susan
Bradley and Camarena? Had Susan known Camarena at UT Law? Was Camarena
responsible for the death of Julianne McCaffrey? Even if he was, what did that
have to do with the illegals story? Or with Susan Bradley for that matter?
Maybe in my zeal to track the original story I had allowed myself to become
sidetracked, and there were actually two stories in front of me linked only by
coincidence. I made outlines, drew mind webs, anything to put all the pieces
together, and was getting nowhere fast.

Around
five thirty, I heard Pauli padding down the hallway. He was bleary-eyed as he
came into the kitchen, barely acknowledging my presence as he headed straight
for the coffee maker. Bringing his cup to the table, he eased down on a chair
and looked at the papers in front of me. "Drives you nuts, don't it?"

"There's
so much and yet so little here," I said, throwing my pencil down in
frustration. "How did you do it for so long?"

"You
were a fuckin' reporter, how did you?"

"My
job was to go where they told me and shoot pictures. I didn't have to
investigate the backgrounds of everyone involved."

"You
never know where the next big piece of the puzzle will come from, so you just
have to keep pokin' around until it turns up."

"What
if it never turns up?"

"Then
you're fucked and move on to the next case." He shrugged. "It
happens."

"Do
you have a plan for today?"

"I
plan to sit here all day doin' grunt work —phone calls, that sort of thing.
Gimme that list." He read over the things I had written down. "How's
about I take the Pan American Investment Company and the Austin PD. You can
call Mr. or Mrs. McCaffrey."

"Thanks
for nothin'. I guess you haven't found out anything more about the illegals
Escobar is bringing in."

"Remember
Mercado? The dumb shit told me he heard there were some comin' in this week,
but he was really flyin' when he told me, so who knows. To make that one you'd
have to see them come in the front door illegal and go out the back door
semi-legal. Then, if we could follow them to their final destination, at least
we'd see the whole route. And that's only if you believe Mercado's
hallucinations and want to sit on your ass for God knows how many days and
nights to wait for the big arrival."

"Do
we have another choice?"

"Nope.
We're down to the most borin' part for now."

Less
than an hour later, I found myself sipping coffee from the plastic lid of a
Thermos bottle across the street from the San Antonio Produce Terminal. Pauli
had insisted that I bring my camera and any telephoto lenses I had, the bigger
the better. Now the camera rested on the car seat between us, equipped with a
500-millimeter lens that would have taken a picture of a gnat's ass on a grape
from where we were parked. Lack of sleep, coupled with extreme boredom, began
to overcome the gallon of coffee I had already consumed, and periodically, I
dozed off, slouching down in the seat. Every time I got comfortable, Pauli
punched me to get a shot of something. The chances were the person in question
had absolutely nothing to do with anything, but Pauli planned to run them all
past his buddies at the police department anyway.

By
nine that morning, the Produce Terminal was bursting at the seams with
restaurant owners looking for a deal on fresh produce. The Terminal was a huge
open warehouse with half a dozen oversized garage doors that had to be hoisted
open with chains. Samples of fruit and vegetables were displayed everywhere.
Customers told each vendor what they wanted, and it appeared from the backs of
trucks, which had been backed into makeshift stalls throughout the building.
Seemingly it was not an efficient way to do business, but the San Antonio
Produce Terminal had been operating the same way for decades. The really big
produce buyers, primarily grocery chains, picked up the produce themselves in
their own trucks. The Terminal wasn't big business the way most people think of
it, but from everything I heard it was a decent livelihood for most of the
vendors.

I
was halfway into a dream that made me smile when Pauli punched me again. He was
really beginning to piss me off, and the bruise on my left arm grew with each
punch.

"Now
what?"

"One
of Escobar's trucks just came into a back bay."

I
looked through one of the big doors and decided Pauli must have X-ray vision to
see through all the crap inside the building.

"The
tan one with the eagle on the side. See it?" he asked as I picked up the
camera and used the lens as binoculars.

Peering
through the eyepiece of the camera, I panned the camera around until I found
the truck he had described. "Got it," I said. "Now what?"

"Keep
watching it. If anything but lettuce comes out the rear, take its
picture."

A
500-millimeter lens isn't designed to be hand-held. I looked around the car and
found an old oil rag on the back floorboard. Folding it to make a pad, I laid
it on the dashboard and rested the camera lens on it.

"Pretty
chancy bringing illegals through in broad daylight," I said as I watched.

"Best
time. So many fuckin' Mexicans around, who's gonna notice five or ten more?
Once they're out of the truck, they just blend in. They'd be too easy to spot
if they brought them in before the Terminal opened. Might as well carry a sign
sayin' 'arrest me.'"

The
truck backed into a vacant space and stopped. Two men climbed out of the cab
and went to the rear of the truck. It looked like another lettuce day to me.
The driver and his passenger were talking and laughing as they pushed the
backdoor of the truck open.

"Well,
there's a face I recognize," I said as I snapped three or four pictures.

"Who
is it?"

"One
of them is that guy who was with Escobar at Consuela's."

"Ernesto
Lopez. Saw his sheet yesterday while you were in Austin. He's an
Escobar-in-trainin'. Petty criminal until recently."

"In
the gang?"

"Absolutely.
But not into the street stuff anymore. That's for the new punks. Ernesto's
workin' on his management skills now. Anything in the truck?"

"Don't
see anything."

"Watch
under the truck."

I
took my eye away from the camera and looked at him.

"For
what? An oil leak?"

"Just
watch," he said with a smile.

Ernesto
and his companion began unloading cases of lettuce and Ruby Red grapefruit. I
hadn't eaten since the night before and looking at the produce was making me
hungry. As I continued watching, I couldn't believe my eyes.

"What
the hell..."

"Trapdoor
in the floor of the truck, right? A friend over at INS told me about them. See
if you can get pictures of whatever pops up."

Eight
shots later I didn't see any more leaks under the truck. Eight men had slid out
from under the truck and rolled out onto the floor of the Terminal within a
minute and walked away.

"Remember
those faces," Pauli instructed as he started the car and pulled quickly
away from the curb.

We
went around the block, looking into bay doors as we went. I spotted three of
the men leaving the Terminal and walking down the alleyway behind it. They
weren't carrying anything with them, and Pauli told me their bags were probably
still in the truck. The men entered the backdoor of a building a block from the
Terminal as Pauli wrote down the address and returned to our original parking
place.

Two
hours later, Lopez and his companion were joined by another trio of men. Lopez
and his buddy climbed back into the truck and pulled away from the stall,
leaving the other three with the produce boxes.

"Showtime,"
Pauli said as he shifted the car into gear.

He
kept us a block and a half behind Lopez's truck. Lopez pulled over at the front
entrance of the building we had seen the illegals enter and honked once. A few
seconds later, all eight men came out of the building and climbed back into the
truck, as I continued capturing them on film. We followed the truck through the
San Antonio streets until we hit an on-ramp for the interstate.

"Might
as well settle back and relax," Pauli said as he readjusted himself behind
the wheel. "Just hope we don't wind up in Bumfuck, Iowa."

An
hour later, we were approaching Mountain View. We pulled over and waited as the
truck stopped at the main gate of ABP. I rested the camera on the dashboard
again and continued my chronicle of events. The gates closed behind the van as
it entered the main parking area. Stopping near the front door of the company,
Lopez jumped out of the truck cab and bounded up the front steps. Ten minutes
later, he came out of the building accompanied by Camarena, and I got a nice
shot of them together.

"I'd
like to get Camarena's attention," I said. "Let him know that I know
what his game is."

"What
good would that do?"

"We
need to flush him out, get him to make a move."

"The
only move you might get is a bunch of guys reachin' in their pockets for
pistolas."

"Well,
we're not getting anywhere with this undercover shit."

Pauli
started the car again and made a U-turn to drive away from the plant.
"Don't worry, Jo. You'll have everything you need in a day or so. I
guarantee it."

He
didn't offer any more details, but I knew there was something Pauli hadn't told
me. He drove back to San Antonio with a shit-eatin' grin on his face. He didn't
stop again until he pulled into a fast food place not far from his house and
picked up a bucket of chicken. We still had some telephone work to do.

Pauli
made a couple of calls, putting out a search for information about Pan American
Investments and then turned the phone over to me. I wasn't looking forward to
making my call.

"Hello,"
a man's voice answered.

"Mr.
McCaffrey?" I asked, almost hoping it wasn't.