Ground Truth (13 page)

Chapter 24

July 4

1:00 a.m.

JACK SAT IN the Town Car where he’d parked behind a bar on the main road near the Palmer plant. He checked his watch, again. Just after one a.m. Now that it was time, he couldn’t believe he was really about to break into Guzman’s office. This was crazy. How had he gotten sucked in to this? But he hadn’t. It was his idea. This was the most dangerous thing he’d ever done. And, oh yeah, it was also a crime. The Professional Standards Committee of the California Bar would yank his Bar card so fast it would smoke. As if he gave a damn. What filled his mind now was The Ape. He closed his eyes to steady his nerves. His eyes popped open when he remembered what kind of a neighborhood he was in. Okay, no more stalling. Time to hit the road.

After a ten minute walk, he reached the plant’s vehicle entrance gate. It was secured with a six-inch padlock, but the lock on the pedestrian entrance was hanging loose. He let himself in quickly and started walking a wide arc that would end at the Admin building. For part of the way, there was some cover from rough brush, but the last stretch was in the open and brightly lighted by mercury vapor lights on poles.

When he got to the open stretch, he rehearsed what he’d do if spotted by armed guards.
“Yo soy un abogado,”
he’d say, a lawyer, returning to pick up some documents.
Yo trabajo en el edificio de Administration con Señor Montana.”
Saying he worked in Admin with Montana should make them think twice before shooting him. He would even act a little drunk. His plan should work—unless they shot him before he got the words out.

After he passed the Admin building and got deeper inside the plant grounds, his cover story made no sense, so he ran the rest of the way to Shipping & Receiving. He was totally vulnerable outside the door in the bright lights as he tried one of the keys. It almost jammed in the lock and wouldn’t work. The second was obviously too small. The third did it. He rushed inside and locked the door behind him. The odor of toxic chemicals was so invasive he took only shallow breaths.

He moved cautiously across the rough concrete floor, trying not to make a sound. In the near-dark, he made out a small crane on a flatbed, a forklift, and several pickup trucks lined up along the far wall.

He unlocked the door to the Plant Manager’s office where Juanita worked, ducked inside and closed it. Now he was less exposed, but also trapped. Only one way out. He stopped and tried to settle his nerves.
What the hell was he doing here? Was it really worth it?

He didn’t bother answering the question. Instead, he shielded his flashlight with his palm and saw that both side walls were lined chest-high with file cabinets. On Juanita’s desk were small framed photos, a glass holding several pens and a stapler, all neatly placed. The space where a computer would usually sit was empty. Several disconnected wires and cables dangled around its perimeter.
Was it coincidence that her computer was missing? Not likely.
He quietly pulled out the desk drawers but found nothing unusual. That meant he had to do what Ana-Maria had warned him against.

Pointing the flashlight at his feet, he unlocked the door to Guzman’s inner office, slowly turned the knob and stepped in. He closed the door fast.

Other than an old desk calculator, there was no electronic equipment in the room. No computer, not even a clock.
No surprise. After all, he is “The Ape.”
The metal table was covered with piles of invoices and unopened mail, a platter of congealed refried beans, and several hand tools.

Even if he didn’t find anything, Ana-Maria would have to give him credit for coming here. She’d have to talk to him. Like hell she would. Ana-Maria would use her inside knowledge as leverage to keep him searching for Juanita.

In his haste, he almost overlooked the cardboard box full of manila envelopes against the wall on the floor. He set it on Guzman’s desk and sat in his chair. Every sound outside the office made him freeze. His ears were playing tricks, interpreting the slightest sound as a footstep. His forehead and palms were damp.

Opening the manila envelope on top, he immediately understood what the contents were because Ana-Maria had delivered similar files to him yesterday morning. They were called “trip files.” Each manila envelope bore a number, the name of the client, and the city and state of its headquarters. Inside were details of each shipment to Palmer, including the number of trucks in the convoy, types and quantity of toxic wastes delivered, weight, and trip mileage. They also showed the amount of gas or diesel fuel received at the Palmer fuel pumps. Something about discrepancies in the amount of fuel use had thrown Guzman into a rage—not at the discrepancies, but at Juanita.

Because most entries were numbers, he was able to scan each envelope quickly. Nothing caught his eye until he came to an envelope marked “Delta Technical Engineering, Portland, Oregon.” One difference was obvious. It was the only one where the first page wasn’t typed. The information was entered in a handwritten scrawl that couldn’t have come from the pen of fastidious Juanita. But it could belong to The Ape himself. If so, this envelope held material Juanita was not meant to see. It was Guzman’s private file, and that made it important.

The contents of the Portland envelope also differed in that its pages weren’t completely filled in. There were separate pages, one for each convoy. Entries showed only dates of arrival and departure, number of trucks per convoy, which varied between three and six, and how much fuel each received from the company pump. Nothing else. The type of waste on board, mileage, and the other categories were blank. Maybe Guzman left out what he didn’t want in writing.

This one envelope was a Rosetta stone, if he could read its code. Flipping through the pages, it struck him how many there were, all from a single source in Portland, Oregon. But maybe they weren’t all from Portland. Maybe they came from many locations and Guzman used Portland as a cover. But if that were true, why go to all that trouble? The answer was in this envelope if he could open his mind.

He froze at a sound coming from the cargo bay, sure it was the scrape of a boot on concrete. Motionless, straining to hear, he waited out anyone listening on the other side of the door. After a minute of silence, he decided it was a false alarm.

Holding the flashlight under his right armpit, he scanned Portland again, then a few of the other envelopes. Maybe it was his heightened senses and fear of being trapped that made the clue pop out as if written in red ink. The routine for all incoming trucks was to log into the plant, unload, take on fuel, and immediately leave for home. But every convoy entered in the Portland envelope—and only in that envelope—arrived one day, filled up with fuel, filled up again the next day, and then left.

What was that about?

Maybe those were the simple facts Juanita had innocently pointed out to Guzman. Why would that be so secret that he threatened to kill her if she mentioned it to anyone else?

Each Portland truck used a full tank of fuel overnight which meant it had made a long trip during that time. Why would those trucks make local trips when using a Mexican truck would be much cheaper? The amount of fuel consumed on that round trip, dutifully recorded, could tell him how far they went but not where.

It was important to Guzman, and presumably Montana, to keep these overnight trips out of company records. But then Juanita uncovered a telltale. She didn’t understand its significance, but that didn’t matter to them. Rather than risk their secret being revealed, they killed her. He’d been sure she was dead from the moment he saw blood on the wire cutter.

A powerful beam of light showed under Guzman’s door. Jack shut off his flashlight and rolled under Guzman’s desk, almost choking on the stinking debris. He’d been so caught up in playing detective that he hadn’t heard the outer office door open. A gruff voice called something to a partner who must still be in the cargo bay. The other called back, something about “Guzman.”

The door was jerked open. Light slashed around the room. The guard’s dusty boots were visible under the edge of the desk. Jack imagined the guard sniffing, trying to get the scent of an intruder. Maybe not really expecting anyone to have violated The Ape’s inner sanctum, he backed out and closed the door. A moment later, the outer door closed. It could be a trick to lure him out. He stayed hidden for several minutes.

After he struggled out from under the desk he used short bursts of light to stack the manila envelopes into the box and put it back in place.

He tucked the Portland file under his arm as evidence, then realized that would be genuinely stupid. When Guzman discovered that the Portland envelope was missing, he’d go to red alert. Since he’d already been suspicious of Juanita, he’d damn sure go after anyone Juanita might have confided in. That would lead him straight to her best friend, Ana-Maria.

Exactly where had the manila envelope been in the stack before? If Guzman noticed it was out of place, he’d know he’d had a middle-of-the-night visitor.
He slid it into the stack and hoped Guzman wasn’t that observant.

He fished out the key, locked the door of Guzman’s office then felt his way to the door leading into the cargo bay. He cracked it open a fraction of an inch at a time. Any second, guards waiting in ambush could fire a hailstorm of bullets. Instead, he heard nothing more than the normal creaks of an empty warehouse. In the cargo bay, he turned back and locked the office door.

Damn it!
He’d trapped himself. He should have locked that door behind him when he first went in. The guard who routinely tested the door as he passed by on his rounds had found it unlocked. That’s what had alerted him to check inside. If he found it locked on his next round, he’d know it hadn’t been left open accidently earlier and would sound the alarm immediately. To buy time, Jack had to leave the door unlocked, but that would only delay the inevitable.

When the guard reported the unlocked doors in the morning, Guzman would know it was no oversight. To make it worse, in the dark Jack had probably disturbed more than he knew. Guzman might spot that, and if he did, it wouldn’t be long before he remembered the
gringo
lawyer sent in to snoop on the company. And he’d wonder where the keys had come from.

Nothing to do about it now, so he crept along the wall of the cargo bay and unlocked the outside door. He opened it a crack and listened for guards on patrol. He crouched and stuck his head out. No one in sight, so he bolted for the front gate.

Before turning the corner of a building, he stopped to listen for thuds, scrapes, echoes, anything ahead. Silence. Then from behind him came two voices, low, serious. The patrol. If he stayed where he was in the light from the mercury vapor bulbs, they’d have him. If he ran, they’d kill him. There was no shelter except a trash bin with the top raised. He swung his legs over the greasy rim and rolled inside, landing on his back, cushioned by garbage. If they’d seen him, the last sound he’d hear would be a barrage of slugs penetrating the metal bin.

Their boots crunched gravel. As they got closer, a fierce cramp stung his left thigh demanding that he straighten his leg. He gritted his teeth against the pain. If either guard glanced inside the bin, he was done. The steps slowly receded.

This was his only shot to make it to the gate. He hauled himself out of the bin, smelling like week-old fish tacos, and sprinted, adrenaline at gale force, through the gate.

A half-mile away from the plant, pushing the Town Car past 80 mph, he shouted “Yes!” into the night and pumped his left fist up and down out the car window. He was alive. He’d penetrated enemy lines and escaped.

But he’d left a trail. It was just a matter of time until someone started tracking him.

Chapter 25

July 4

6:30 a.m.

THE “CLICK” BARELY registered in his sleep-fogged mind. It had no context until he heard the bottom of the door to his suite brush across the thick carpet then close with another click. Someone was inside. Guzman had found him. Lying in bed, back toward the door, he was totally vulnerable. He’d have to roll out of bed and defend himself without knowing where Guzman was in the room or what kind of weapon he had.

Before he could move, a soft voice asked, “May I come in? My cousin at the desk gave me the key.”

He sat up and, in the faint light coming through the curtains, saw it was Ana-Maria. “What are you doing here?”

“I was so worried about you I couldn’t sleep. I had to find out what happened.” She started unbuttoning her long gray cloak, the uniform many women in Juarez wore to fend off leers and jeers.

“Nothing I couldn’t handle.” It was easy to talk like a Harrison Ford character now that he’d escaped from the plant. “But I didn’t find out where Juanita is.” He wouldn’t tell her that what he had found made it almost certain that Juanita was dead.

From outside he heard the unmistakable yelps kids make as they jump into a pool.
What time was it anyway?
He checked his watch. Six thirty! Damn short night.

Ana-Maria stopped unbuttoning her cloak. “I know where she is.” Her puffy eyes and flat tone said it all. “She’s dead.”

“I’m so sorry.”
He hadn’t been able to help Juanita. Had he somehow put her more at risk?
“How do you know?”

“My neighbor works a night shift for the city. He was down by the river when they found Juanita. His wife came to my house and told me. I’ve been crying ever since.”

She undid the last two buttons, slipped the cloak from her shoulders and laid it on a chair. Her dress was dark blue, tied at the waist with a white sash, cut so low that her full breasts were almost bare. No bra. She sat on the edge of the bed, shoulders bowed, eyes downcast.

He felt very naked under the covers.

“They threw her away like she was nothing,” Ana-Maria said bitterly. “They made it look the same as the others so people would say, ‘oh well, another one.’ But I know better.”

He reached out and squeezed her hand.

“You’re a good man,” she said, looking up, “not like the others. I had to see you, to have you hold me.” She touched his cheek, stared at him for several seconds, then nodded as if she’d just made up her mind about something.

She moved closer to him. Her fingers slid down the side of his neck then along his collarbone and across his chest, her eyes on his. She lightly touched his nipples, then took his face in both hands and kissed him gently, warmly, then more intimately.

She was Montana’s assistant, so he had pegged her as an adversary, someone he had to persuade to reveal what she knew. Now she was a woman who smelled of musk and whose tongue signaled him that . . . what?

She drew away and stood up beside the bed.
Was she having second thoughts? Had he misunderstood?
She looked slowly around the suite, taking in the carved furnishings and the Freda Kahlo print, maybe imagining the extravagance of staying in such a place.

With her left hand she reached inside the dress and caressed her right breast. Her other hand undid two small buttons, and the blue dress opened down to the sash. She reached behind her back, untied the fastening, and the sash dropped to the floor. She shrugged her shoulders. Catching for a moment at the tips of her breasts, the dress became a dark blue puddle at her feet.

Her audacity made her incredibly alluring. He reached out, but she shook her head slightly. She cupped her hands beneath breasts that needed no support; golden skin, aureoles that were a mysterious canvas for erect nipples. She squeezed them gently, as if milk might flow.

Under the sheet, his penis had risen stiff as a totem.

Her hips swayed side-to-side, more primal than dance, not performing, simply being. She brought her middle finger to her mouth, sucked it and used it to circle her left nipple. Her hand slid in slow motion down her smooth belly into the silky hair. She kneaded the knoll of flesh like a cat. Her hips moved toward him and away and toward him again.

He’d never been so aroused, but wouldn’t reach for her until she was ready.

Hands on her hips, she leaned slightly toward him. “I will fill your mouth with my breast and lick your nipples. And then, Mr. Jack Strider from San Francisco, you will make love with me until you can’t stand.”

She drew the sheet away from his body and pushed him back on the pillows. She kissed him deeply, twisting her head from side to side, brushing her body over his. The weight and fullness of her breasts was driving him crazy. Her mouth started to search out his body’s secrets. Always, some part of her stayed in touch with his penis. He lost track of time.

With a heroic effort, he tore himself away and dashed to the bathroom for the protection he always carried in his leather Dopp kit.

Then, deep inside her, during seconds when movement was tensely suspended, he said things to her that came from a place he hadn’t known existed in him. Every time he was about to explode, she gripped his shaft and held back the tsunami. Then she didn’t, and he couldn’t maintain control, didn’t want to, and he erupted.

Afterwards, he curled up behind her, cupping her body inside his, feeling their breathing slow. As his mind roamed back over where they’d been together, he realized she hadn’t climaxed. Her every move had been about him—to arouse him, tease him, bring him to a peak and hold him there and, finally, to let him cross over. He wanted to give her the pleasure she’d given him, so he put his hand on her thigh and slowly drew his fingers up between her legs. Heat radiated from her center. His finger rose into the silk.

Her hand covered his and brought it back to rest on her thigh, her eyes open, watching him. He kissed her forehead. “You didn’t enjoy this as much as I did. Was it me?”

“Not you. It’s something other men did, men who just took what they wanted. I learned to not be in the room when it was happening.”

“I’m sorry.” He wanted to comfort her, wanted to erase those experiences from her memory, but he knew words couldn’t do that. But something bothered him so he asked, “Ana-Maria, why did you come to my room?”

She turned her head away again. “To see if you were all right.”

“Please tell me the truth. Did you have this in mind?”

“All right, you want the truth, but maybe the truth is not so nice. Guzman will come for me next. I feel it in my belly. I can’t stop him. Unless you help me, I will die. You don’t know what it’s like to be helpless.”

She was right. He’d lost a lot in the past weeks, but education, money, and a lifetime of success were firewalls between him and feeling helpless. It was a chasm between them he wasn’t sure he could cross.

He wrapped his arms around her, felt the satin of her skin, kissed behind her ear. He wanted to admit the real reason he’d courted her at lunch, but couldn‘t risk telling her. She was okay with using him, but she might resent the hell out of him using her. “I’ll do everything I can to keep Guzman from hurting you.”

She smiled slightly, fluffed up the pillows and lay back against them, hands clasped behind her head, bed sheet at her waist. “Then I’m ready.”

After the intimacy they’d just shared, he was barely able to focus his eyes, but if she was ready again so was he. He leaned forward to kiss her. And this time he’d find a way to help her enjoy it.

She gently pushed him away. “No, I mean I’m ready to tell you what I know about Palmer Industries.”

The quick shift into the moment he’d been working toward surprised him. She was about to be his GPS.

“That’s good news. Do you know if Juanita had a computer on her desk?”

“Yes.”

“It’s gone.”

“Then Guzman took it. The workers are terrified of him. They wouldn’t go into that office if the door was wide open with a million pesos piled on the floor.”

“The power cord was still there, so he didn’t care about using the computer.” He paused, considering where the logic took him. “He wanted to prevent anyone from getting into the hard drive and reading the files. But that doesn’t help us.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t know what was on it and can’t prove he took it. It’s no more proof than the wire cutter, which I still have, that we can’t prove was Guzman’s. Even if his fingerprints are on it, he can say it was stolen. Think hard. Can you remember anything else Juanita told you about Guzman?”

As she ran her fingertips through her hair, his eyes kept sliding to her breasts. Recent memories were about to get him way off track. He felt a stirring and shifted to hide it from her.

“Maybe I know more than Juanita did,” she said. “When she told me about the missing fuel, it didn’t mean anything to me. Now it does. I know where it’s going. The fuel pumps are right outside my office window, so I see all the trucks coming in and going out. A while ago I noticed some trucks that were different.”

“Different how?”

“They’re all black and come into the plant close together, nose to tail. Nothing is unloaded from them except the crews that bring them in. There’s always a van waiting with new crews. They refuel and leave right away. They’re back the next day, sometimes early, sometimes later. The first crews, always hung over, take on more fuel, and leave. Then about a week ago a convoy of trucks began arriving in the morning too. They change crews, get fuel, and keep going. I don’t know when they come back because I’m off work by then.”

Her description helped explain what he’d read in the Portland envelope, except that frequency of trips was increasing. “Anything else?”

“Those black trucks are the biggest I’ve seen at the plant. At first, there were only three trucks at a time. Now, sometimes five or six. I tried to look them up in the trip files, but I couldn’t find them.”

She couldn’t find those trip files because they were in a manila envelope in Guzman’s office.
“How often do the trucks show up?”

“I don’t keep track, but they never load or unload anything at Palmer.”

“Where could they go and get back the next day?”

“Quien sabe?
Who knows. Chihuahua City? Even farther.”

“Did anyone else notice them, maybe talk about them?”

“The men work shifts. Anyone on duty when the trucks arrive wouldn’t be working when they come back. Only me, working all day, staring out the window when I get bored.”

The mystery trucks only existed in hidden files. Now he had descriptions and schedules. In the meantime, he had to get back to what Montana was doing on-site.

“I asked you before whether Montana keeps two sets of records, but you wouldn’t tell me.”

“I didn’t trust you then. Now I do. There
are
two sets. One is in his office. One he keeps somewhere else. The set you saw shows purchases of equipment needed to treat hazardous waste. Some of those purchases never happened. And it shows payments to dump sites for disposal. Some of those payments were never made because nothing was sent.”

“Don’t the government inspectors realize that equipment is missing?”

“They walk around the plant for a few minutes, do a few tests, make some notes, then come to the air-conditioned Admin building to get out of the hot sun. They hit on women and tell stories until
Señor
Montana sends for them. All four inspectors are smiling when they leave his office. We don’t see them until the next month.”

“Montana bribes them?”

She gave him a look that said “only a blind pig wouldn’t understand what’s going on” and didn’t answer.

“If the inspectors aren’t filing negative reports, why is PROFEPA going after Palmer?”

“I overheard
Señor
Montana on the phone saying some local company that Palmer Industries takes business away from must have paid PROFEPA to get him in trouble.”

“Could the PROFEPA lawyers have gotten a copy of the real records?”

“No. All the data that goes into the real books, I enter into my computer. Then he stands over me while I transfer those files to a DVD. He takes it and watches me delete those files from my computer.”

This information tied Montana to bribery and fraud, but so far, the evidence was all indirect. Montana had covered his tracks well. That’s why he was so cocky.

“Anything else?”

“A couple of weeks ago, a man came to the office with an envelope stamped “Confidential.” He had been ordered to deliver it only to
Señor
Montana’s hand and wouldn’t tell me who it was from. After an hour,
Señor
Montana returned and took the envelope. Later, while he was out of his office, I saw the envelope and what looked like some sort of form on his desk. I read it as fast as I could. It was a copy of a PROFEPA report that said the Palmer incinerator was sending out too much di . . . something.”

“Dioxins?”

“That was it, dioxins. The report said the fumes cause birth defects and poison the breast milk of some mothers.” She pressed her fingers against her own breast.

In Alvarez’s hands, that letter could be the smoking gun he planned to use to nail Montana. “Did you make a copy?”

“I was afraid.
Señor
Montana was still in the building.”

How had PROFEPA gotten incinerator readings? Maybe one of the inspectors had taken a reading and accidentally let it slip through to a supervisor. What mattered was that PROFEPA had the information. Maybe that explained why Alvarez was being allowed to go forward.

Ana-Maria’s oral testimony would be far less than conclusive, but for his purposes, she’d confirmed what Montana was doing, part of it anyway. He made a silent vow to take that miserable son-of-a-bitch down.