Triple Crossing (25 page)

“Do you think the yanqui informant is alive?” Aguirre said.

“We heard a rumor that Pescatore was with the
pochos
and that Garrison is dead. Nothing solid. Isabel thinks Pescatore is alive. She also refuses to believe that he was involved
in the killing of the highway policeman. Despite the evidence to the contrary.”

Aguirre made a derisive noise with her lips. “She acts so high and mighty. Then she has a fling with this little murderer
and turns to mush.”

“I don’t know with certainty they were having a romance, Araceli, I only told you I suspected that,” Méndez said uncomfortably.

“It seems obvious to me.”

“Isabel is loyal to her informant, though I won’t defend the wisdom of her personal choices. She got upset when I told her
my men have orders not to take chances with him, given that he’s been involved in two killings that we know of. In any case,
I think the mafia is hiding Pescatore, dead or alive. He’s not smart enough to stay underground in Mexico on his own.”

“And there is no way they can give you the yanqui and leave it at that,” Aguirre said. “He opens the whole Pandora’s box:
Garrison, the Colonel. No wonder the Secretary won’t take your calls.”

“He takes my calls. But he says it’s a very delicate political moment and he doesn’t know when he’ll have news.”

“Have you heard anything more about the South American connection?”

“No. You’re not going to get into that with the press, are you? I’ve reached the point where I don’t trust them anymore.”

Isabel Puente had recently passed on a tip: U.S. wiretaps had picked up talk that heavy hitters from the Triple Border had
been in town. The intelligence suggested that the South American visitors and Junior had discussed an “operation” targeting
Méndez.

“A traitor to your profession. You’ve really taken this police secrecy thing to heart.”

“The media in this town have too many agendas. Too many spies. Too many of them working for Junior or terrified to cross him.”

Aguirre smiled benevolently.

“No, Leo, I’ll do my best not to compromise your case. I will focus on the Colonel: He filed a human rights complaint which
I investigated. It pointed me at the Ruiz Caballeros, and everything else developed from there. I am going to make it clear
that the federal government has a responsibility to do something, to back up people like you. This state has become an empire
of impunity.”

She was rehearsing lines for the news conference. She had a talent for it; she charmed, entertained and browbeat journalists
into submission.

“Araceli, this is going to be a bombshell,” Méndez said.

“I’m just trying to help,” Aguirre said. “I hope it doesn’t cause you too many problems with the Secretary.”

“That should be the least of your worries.” Méndez got up, his shoulders hunched in the sport jacket, and looked out the window
again.

Porthos and Athos talked to the bishop in the courtyard. The
priest and the nun were organizing objects on the hood of the Eldorado. Athos shaded his eyes, looking up at the second-floor
window. He waved at Méndez, holding his arm up a couple of extra seconds to denote urgency. Méndez waved back. They were waiting
for him.

“To be frank, I have done as much as I can do,” Méndez said. “The indictments are ready. My officers are ready. If the Secretary
tells me to bring him Junior’s head on a platter, I’ll do it. And if he says it’s time to resign, I’ll say thank you very
much, sir. At your orders. With great pleasure.”

Aguirre blew smoke at the ceiling. “I have trouble imagining that.”

“I’m serious, Araceli. I am ready to walk away. And it’s basically your fault.”

“Why?”

“You kept harping on me to talk to Estela. So we finally talked. For hours; I don’t want to see the phone bill. We talked
and talked. About Juancito, us, and frankly, a lot of trivialities. But I can’t wait to see them. I can’t believe how I’ve
neglected them.”

Her dark eyes softened, scrutinizing him. She spoke with a bit of difficulty.

“How nice, Leo. It turns out you were listening to me.”

He turned back to the window, collecting himself. “So if your show tomorrow is successful, the Secretary will relent and we
go to war with the Ruiz Caballeros. Once and for all. Jihad. If not, you will have saved my family and cost me my job. Either
way, it’s your fault.”

“Leo…”

“Who knows, maybe I’ll just stay in Berkeley and do nothing. I understand they treat bums very well, even Mexican ones. I
could give seminars. The progressive gringos up there can’t get enough of the human rights song and dance.”

Aguirre looked as if she wished he hadn’t broken the moment
so abruptly. But she played along. “What an image, the stern Mr. Méndez on campus. You wouldn’t last a week. You’d miss the
violent emotions.”

“You’d be surprised at my capacity for sloth.”

“We should go downstairs, the bishop is waiting.”

“Let the old pervert wait.”

“Leo, please!”

It was a perennial point of conflict with them: Except for a few scrappy Jesuits and liberation theology types, Méndez could
not stand the church. And he could not understand how Aguirre could be so tolerant of the clergy.

In the courtyard, the officers of the Diogenes Group had lined up as if they were on parade. Their solemn, absolute engagement
in the ritual made Méndez feel ashamed about his snide comments.

The bishop moved along the row of officers. The nun accompanied him, holding the plate of blessed ashes. The bishop smeared
ashes in the shape of a cross on the forehead of each officer and murmured a blessing.

Aguirre stepped to the end of the line, straightening her jeans jacket and pulling it close over her white blouse. She grinned
at Méndez. She gestured at him to join her. He shook his head.

The bishop reached Aguirre. He marked the cross on her forehead. He blessed her in a resonant tenor he had cultivated on his
weekly television show.

“Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris.”

The bishop hesitated, looking expectantly at Méndez. Aguirre made an insistent face, enjoying Méndez’s discomfort. Now all
the officers were looking at Méndez.

Méndez relented and stepped forward.

The bishop beamed and reached for the plate held by the nun. The well-manicured fingers made gentle contact with Méndez’s
forehead. Méndez gritted his teeth.

“Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris.”

And it was over. The bishop shook hands with Méndez. They murmured pleasantries at each other. The officers milled around,
their crucifix-marked foreheads making them look like members of some kind of urban tribe.

Araceli Aguirre appeared in front of Méndez. Her eyes were bright and amused, her smile half mocking, half tender. She kissed
him on the cheek.

T
HE MOOD IN THE HOUSE
changed after the Brazilians left.

Momo woke the homeboys up early on Tuesday, banging on doors. He warned them to keep a lid on the partying and be ready to
work. They watched TV and waited for orders. The next day they remained at battle stations. The TV showed images of Ash Wednesday
Mass. Buffalo visited briefly, glowering, his mood foul. Momo handed out radios, black bulletproof vests with the word
POLICíA
stenciled on the back, and heavy weapons. Pescatore received an AK-47 to complement his pistol.

More waiting, television, lassitude. Nobody knew the details, but a big job was in the works.

It rained that night, pattering on the roof that sloped down just above Pescatore’s bed. Thursday was clear and felt like
summer.

In the morning, Momo ordered Pelón, Sniper, Pescatore and two others to bring their stuff into the driveway, where Rufino
sat at the wheel of a brown Chevy van, wearing mirrored sunglasses. They loitered in the shade, weapons piled in the driveway.
They gorged themselves on takeout from McDonald’s.

At about 11 a.m., Buffalo came out of his house carrying a sawed-off shotgun. He wore a black turtleneck under a police flak
vest and fingerless leather gloves. He got into the van next to Rufino.

The others strapped on their body armor and got in back. The interior had been cleared out to leave only a bench seat along
each wall, as in a helicopter or a cargo plane. There were no side windows.

“Right now we’re Plan B,” Momo explained by way of a briefing as the van whizzed east along a highway into the factory district.
“We’re backup. But let’s be ready. Everybody stay awake, you understand what I’m sayin’? If we give the word, you jump out
and shoot whoever I tell you to shoot.”

That’s it? Pescatore thought. That’s all the intelligence you’re gonna give up? He was disturbed by the thought that he did
not know how he would respond at the moment of truth. Kill for the Death Patrol? Turn his gun on them? He cursed himself:
He had not succeeded in making a break or calling Isabel. He had bided his time, playing it slick. Now things were moving
too fast.

Feeling bulky and cramped in the bulletproof vest, the weight of the body armor digging into his thighs, Pescatore leaned
forward to look past Sniper at the windshield. He caught glimpses of Otay Mesa, the arid industrial lowland interspersed with
shacktowns where the factory workers lived. The van rolled along a ridge between urban valleys formed by the
colonias,
a low patchwork skyline dominated by homemade television antennas and blue water drums on rooftops.

The van slowed and turned. They rumbled off cement onto an unpaved, jaw-jarring road that dipped steeply. It was the main
entrance to a
colonia.
Rufino cursed at the mud and rocks, swerving back and forth.

“
Cuidado,
Rufi,” Pelón jeered. He sat across from Pescatore, legs akimbo, steadying the butt of an assault rifle on his knee. “They
got them Godzilla potholes around here. Eat you alive.”

The going was slow. Rufino skirted swamps and craters left by the night’s rain. The wheels whined and churned up mud. The
windshield acquired a layer of grit. Through it flashed
images: an aerial spaghetti of electrical cables. Grocery kiosks with hand-painted signs. Walls of brick, wood, sheet metal,
cardboard. Listless dogs, shirtless kids, a white horse pulling a cart. A banner on a peaked red roof proclaimed the arrival
of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The street rose to reveal a smokestack horizon: an industrial complex on a nearby hill. There were Asian insignias on a wall.
The van rolled downhill again past a junkyard fence plastered with hubcaps, then snaked among low, closely packed houses.

The van stopped. Buffalo told Rufino to honk the horn. Buffalo checked his watch.

“Don’t tell me this lame-ass
naco
overslept,” Buffalo snapped. “Can you believe that shit?”

Buffalo and Momo got out. A dog barked shrilly.

Rufino turned on the radio. Over an opening salvo of drums and horns, a disc jockey declared: “We’re off to Sinaloa.”

The sliding door of the van rattled open. Momo ushered in a short dark youth wearing a navy-blue canvas windbreaker with a
turned-up collar. The kid had slicked-back hair, a smudge of a mustache and an earring. At first he looked to Pescatore like
another
pocho.
But then Pescatore changed his mind: The guy seemed Mexican in the way he shook hands with each passenger, muttering a deferential
“Buenos días”
with each handshake.

The newcomer sat next to Pelón, who made a production of clapping his shoulder. Pescatore recognized him. He had been at the
shooting sessions that Pescatore had led at the ranch. Pescatore remembered his tense, short-armed stance on the target range.
His name was César; somebody had said he was a fugitive. César’s gaze met Pescatore’s, lowered without acknowledgment.

The van did a U-turn and picked up speed. César leaned his head back against the metal, seemingly unaffected by the bouncing
and shaking. His eyes closed, as if he were dozing off. But he chewed gum at a rapid pace. His small fists clenched and
unclenched. A cowboy ballad came on the radio, a
corrido,
and he mouthed the words.

The ride back to the city center took about twenty minutes. They parked on a tree-lined side street in the Río Zone. Momo
told them to get their weapons ready.

Buffalo turned off the music and produced a walkie-talkie. He talked and listened for a few minutes. He rose and made his
way into the back among knees and gun barrels. He hulked in a crouch in front of César, smiling tightly.

“Alright, champ,” Buffalo said, his hand on the youth’s knee. “Everything good?”

César chewed gum and nodded. He fiddled with a short black necklace.

“Your
placa.
” Buffalo gave César a wallet-style case containing a police badge. “Clip it on your belt like the
judiciales.
By the buckle. Lemme see the pistol.”

César handed over a .38 revolver. Buffalo examined and returned it. César stuck the gun in a side pocket of the jacket.

His voice low, Buffalo told César it would be a walk in the park. Buffalo told him to do it just like they had rehearsed.
Head shot if he could get close enough. If not, the body mass. Shoot until the target is down.

“And then you go out the way you came. Arturo Ventura and El Bebé will be waiting for you in the parking lot. Like we planned.
Fast and calm. They get you out of there before anybody knows what the hell is going on.”

César nodded. He worked open his dry, cracked lips. He asked, apologetically, what would happen if he fucked it all up.

Buffalo gritted his teeth. “Don’t worry. That’s why we’re here. If we have to, we come in and finish the job. Fire up the
whole place, put on a real show, this and that. But I know you’re not gonna need us. Right?”

César mentioned a bank account and his uncle who would take care of things if needed.

“Just in case, sir,” César said. “You know? Sir?”

“Sure,” Buffalo said. “But there’s nothing to worry about. You’re playing in the major leagues now, little brother. Pure professionals.
Stick with the plan and everything will be fine.”