Triple Crossing (16 page)

Méndez hung up with Puente. He got into the back of the Jetta next to Aguirre. After a while, he said: “You must have been
at the prison all day.”

Aguirre removed her glasses, rubbed the bridge of her nose. He tried to remember when he had seen her look more tired and
depressed.

That morning, the Colonel had taken his usual brisk exercise walk around the prison yard. The tape from prison surveillance
cameras that the guards rewound for Méndez afterward showed the Colonel striding stumpy-legged in his warm-up suit, accompanied
by his pit bull and Rico. Then the Colonel repaired to his quarters.

The diversionary gunfight broke out around noon. The video showed two hit men in cowboy hats passing a joint back and forth
as they advanced through the crowd at the Sunday basketball game, tossing away the joint, pistols coming out. A narco slurping
an ice cream bar got a fusillade in the head.

By the time Méndez and Aguirre arrived at the prison, there were barricaded snipers, cell-block fires and melees provoked
by gangs of addicts whom the Colonel’s men had furnished with drugs. The Colonel, Rico and the Colonel’s servant, César, were
long gone, ushered out a loading dock to a waiting convoy of sport utility vehicles. César was still missing. Méndez and a
federal police chief ordered the arrest of the warden and his depu
ties. The federal police had escorted Aguirre into the prison. She had gone among the inmates, convincing the foot soldiers
to return to their cells, negotiating with and browbeating the ringleaders with the help of their wives. She had eventually
restored a semblance of calm.

“Araceli,” Méndez sighed. “Are those tears for the Colonel or for us?”

Aguirre looked up with a flash of ferocity, replacing her glasses.

“Because if they are for the Colonel,” he continued, “let me say you did everything you could for him. And I imagine he appreciated
it, in his way. What he did in the end was in his nature. Astorga was the kind of man who sees any sign of humanity or trust
as a weakness to be exploited. He couldn’t help himself.”

“Perhaps you and I can convince ourselves we did everything we could for him,” Aguirre said, looking at the silver-blue fortress
of clouds over the ocean. “But as far as I’m concerned, your boss might as well have pulled the trigger.”

“Not to defend the Secretary, but I know for a fact that he was trying to get the Colonel transferred to another prison. As
you wanted.”

“Please, Leo, let’s not be infantile.”

“Things don’t move that fast, believe it or not. Even for the Secretary.”

“The Colonel said it. After he gave his testimony, he told me: ‘Now it’s up to the Secretary. After what I just did, he should
send a helicopter and take me away. If he doesn’t, I’m a dead man.’ ”

The escape had been a shock. A week earlier the Colonel had kept his promise and given sworn testimony in the prison to Méndez
and a federal prosecutor. He had mainly talked about cases with which they were already familiar. He had made brief and general
accusations about the Ruiz Caballeros. Then he cut
off the session, saying he would continue only after his transfer to a new prison.

“What’s happening down there?” Aguirre asked.

“A mess,” Méndez said, thankful that she had held fire on the subject of the Secretary. “The Border Patrol says nothing. The
state police are tainting the evidence. The federal police seem mainly interested in the issue of imperialist aggression against
our national sovereignty.”

“What’s the hypothesis?”

“Well, there’s the Fernández Rochetti version, which I reject automatically: The Colonel escaped on his own and got himself
killed playing Pancho Villa with the Americans. Another possibility: The Colonel convinced Junior the best way to shut him
up was to help him escape. Then Junior double-crossed him. And of course, there are many others who despised the Colonel and
wanted him dead. What doesn’t make sense is the shoot-out with the Border Patrol.”

“I wonder if there will come a day in this city when crimes have less than a dozen possible intellectual authors,” Aguirre
said.

“If that day comes, you might as well move to Ohio or somewhere, because your services won’t be needed around here anymore.”

Aguirre rolled her high shoulders, shaking off her mood.

“Alright,” she said.

“What?”

“I’m going down there.”

“Araceli, I really don’t think that’s necessary. You’ve had a long day.”

She leaned over, kissed him on the cheek, and opened the door.

“I owe it to him,” she said. “He was counting on me to save him. No?”

“But it’s raining,” Méndez protested, pulling out his radio.
“Athos, Doctora Aguirre is coming down to the beach. Send someone up here with an umbrella. Confiscate Chancho’s if necessary.”

Aguirre managed a weak grin. “You realize that, in a way, all of this helps us. It raises suspicions. It shows that the Ruiz
Caballeros are scared.”

“I suppose that’s good.”

“Coming?”

“Not for long. I have a meeting on the other side. I think I’ll have something to tell you tomorrow.”

When Méndez returned to his headquarters, he received a phone call from Mexico City. The Secretary, who was on a trip to Sonora,
had heard about the shoot-out. The Secretary had decided to stop in Tijuana and wanted Méndez to meet with him the next day.

It was 2 a.m. when Méndez, Athos and Porthos climbed into the Crown Victoria. Porthos drove. A carload of Diogenes officers
followed them as far as the port of entry, where they crossed into San Diego.

The traffic on Interstate 5 was fast and sparse. But the center median of the freeway was full of illegal immigrants trudging
north. Méndez rested his head against the window in the backseat. He watched the ghostly army on the march. Headlights swept
the immigrants. The concrete gleamed wet and black beneath their boots and gym shoes. His countrymen covered their heads with
hoods, baseball caps, newspapers, plastic bags. Or they simply hunched their shoulders, impervious to the rain, the fatigue,
the roar and hiss of metal monsters rushing by a few feet away. The immigrants knew the freeway median was a reasonably safe
limbo in some ways: no bandits, no Border Patrol, no rough terrain. Just put one foot in front of the other. Pray the cars
stay in their lanes. Try not to think about the moment when you’ll have to sprint across this cement deathscape hauling your
wife, your kids, your worldly possessions. Maybe the moment
can be postponed indefinitely. Maybe you can just keep walking north and the freeway median will take you where you want to
go.

Sliding along the edge of sleep, the ragged parade blurring and dissolving on the other side of the wet glass, Méndez thought
about the Mexican presidents who gave speeches lamenting the exodus of illegal immigrants from the country. The presidents
said the bravery and determination of the immigrants made them Mexico’s best and brightest. Méndez had melodramatic visions
of hauling the Mexican presidents across the border and exacting poetic justice at gunpoint, forcing them to run with the
best and brightest on the freeway in the rain.

Fifteen minutes later Méndez and his men arrived at Isabel Puente’s condominium complex, which overlooked a bay near SeaWorld
in the Crown Point area of San Diego. There was a guardhouse, walls topped with cameras. They walked into a five-story building
with a faux-Mediterranean tiled roof, Moorish archways and curved balconies.

Méndez had visited Puente’s home once before, in October, during the days of vertigo that followed his arrest of the Colonel.
Her invitation had surprised him. Puente had shared case information with him about the Colonel. And she played him a tape
from what she called a “U.S. military subsource wiretap”: a conversation between a San Diego drug dealer and a Tijuana police
detective about a rumored plan to kill Méndez. On that day he had realized she was a friend as well as an ally.

Athos and Porthos hung back respectfully as Isabel Puente opened the door to her fifth-floor apartment. She practically bounded
into the hall. Her hair was tousled and damp. She wore jeans, a denim blouse, gym shoes. Her smile and her voice were exhilarated.

“Listen, Leo, this is delicate,” she whispered, her fingers digging into his arm. “I’ve got Valentine Pescatore in there,
the Border Patrol agent. You know.”

“The star informant.”

“
El mero.
He was involved in the shooting. Right in the middle of it. He’s going to tell you the whole thing. But he’s not happy about
it. ”

The cobwebs of sleep evaporated from Méndez’s eyes.

“Another thing,” Puente continued, rapid-fire. “He speaks Spanish, but I think he’ll be more comfortable in English. Alright?”

“Fine with me,” Méndez said with a mock bow. “Your house, your rules.”

“No, please, it’s your house, you already know that. All of you,” Puente said, flashing a high-voltage smile over her shoulder
at Athos and Porthos, who stammered their thanks.

The apartment was long, high-ceilinged and divided into three step-down levels. At the end of the living room, glass doors
to a balcony overlooked a marina, city lights shimmering on the water, the low forms of moored sailboats. The furniture was
dark and minimalist, the carpet thick and spotless. Except for a table full of family photos and a framed pop-art relief of
old Havana by an exile artist, Isabel Puente’s home could have been a chic hotel suite.

Total solitude, Méndez thought. He had once read a line in a novel about how Americans pursued loneliness in myriad ways:
they lived alone, drove alone, ate alone. He remembered weekend cross-border excursions with his wife and son to the supermarkets
and home-supply stores of Chula Vista and San Ysidro. He remembered commenting with his wife on the contrast between the shopping
rituals. The solitary Anglos hunched behind their carts; the Latino families were boisterous platoons of children, grandparents,
cousins. He thought ruefully about his own home in Playas de Tijuana, which after four months seemed big in a way he had never
thought possible: the silent kitchen, the dusty toys. His home had acquired its own musty air of disuse. He had known the
job with the Diogenes Group
would be tough, but he hadn’t imagined it would turn him into an American.

Puente led them into a breakfast nook. A youthful Border Patrol agent reclined behind a rectangular marble-topped table, leaning
his head against the wall. The agent’s short-sleeved green uniform was bedraggled. A stain on his shirt appeared to be dried
blood.

“Valentine, this is Leo Méndez, the chief of the Diogenes Group. And Comandantes Rojas and Tapia,” Puente said. “Gentlemen,
this is Agent Valentine Pescatore.”

The agent half rose. He was younger, darker and shorter than Méndez had expected. He had muscular biceps and shoulders and
black curly hair. Puente had told Méndez that her informant was of Mexican and Argentine descent. He could have passed for
either, but his looks were more South American. With his compact bulk and wide, edgy eyes, Pescatore reminded Méndez of a
rookie soccer player or prizefighter, boiling with youth and nerves and aggression.

“A pleasure,
a sus órdenes,
” Méndez said, shaking hands vigorously. “Thank you for seeing us.”

“How you doin’?” the agent responded, his voice throaty with street inflections. “I heard a lot about you. I thought it was
gonna be one-on-one, though.” He nodded curtly at Athos and Porthos without offering them his hand. “I didn’t know you were
gonna bring the whole team.”

Athos and Porthos stiffened. Méndez had never heard Athos say anything more than “Ten-four” and “Nice to meet you,” but Athos
understood his share of English. And Porthos had gone to high school in Inglewood, California. Méndez tried to think of a
diplomatic response, but Puente spoke first. She put a hand on Pescatore’s forearm, patient and steely.

“Comandante Rojas is the operational chief of the Diogenes Group, Valentine. The number-two guy. And Comandante Tapia is of
utmost confidence. I vouch for both of them. They
wouldn’t be here otherwise. Why don’t you guys have a seat, take off your jackets, make yourselves comfortable. I’ll get some
coffee.”

The Mexicans sat. They did not take off their jackets. The alcove quickly became claustrophobic. Pescatore tilted his head
back again. He regarded Méndez from beneath heavy lids. His posture reinforced his tone: He clearly wished the Mexicans would
go away. Wild-looking kid, Méndez thought.

Méndez had a visceral nationalistic aversion to Border Patrol agents. Although he did not work with The Patrol, from a distance
they reminded him of a species he had come to loathe during his year among the gray skies and gray buildings of the University
of Michigan: fraternity boys. They had struck him as crude, swaggering, well-off rednecks with a clannish mentality that reeked
of racism and fascism. But Méndez had been mystified to discover that Athos and other veterans in the Diogenes Group did not
share his disdain. In fact, Mendez’s officers viewed the Border Patrol with a comradely we’re-all-cops-doing-our-job attitude.
And he knew that, unlike the frat boys of Michigan, the Border Patrol agents tended to be working class and many were Latinos.

Nonetheless, reasonable or not, Méndez had a problem with the Border Patrol. And the young Border Patrol agent clearly had
a problem with Méndez and his men, if not Mexicans in general.

By the time Puente had served the beverages, there was an interruption: a pizza delivery. Puente bustled around putting the
deep-dish pizza, a plate and utensils in front of Pescatore.

“Valentine was hungry,” Puente explained. “He’s had quite a night.”

Pescatore gave her a smile so affectionate and sheepish that Méndez found it endearing in spite of himself. He looked back
and forth between the agent and Puente, wondering if personal factors might be complicating Puente’s relationship with her
informant. When she had first recruited him, she had told Méndez that it was a calculated risk. As the weeks went by, though,
she had sounded unusually enthusiastic about the kid.