Horns of the Devil - Jeff Trask [02] (26 page)

“I do. Thanks, Mitch. We’ll get back to you shortly.” Trask looked at Wilkes. “Feel like doing some more work on our case today, Frank?”

“Of course.”

“Great,” Trask said. “Who has the keys to the car wash?”

“Our forfeiture guys have ’em,” Doroz said. “The property was subject to becoming the property of the government since it was used to facilitate the marijuana grow. I’ll get the keys and meet you in the parking garage.”

“Call our DEA and CIA friends and tell ’em we’ll see them tomorrow morning, Bear,” Trask said. “We need to get to that crime scene now, before what evidence may be left disappears, and I need a little quiet time to think about what we can do with Moreno.”

“Sure. Any ideas for now?”

Trask shook his head. “Not a damned one.”

He followed Doroz to the squad supervisor’s office. “Santos’ attorney said that his guy can tell us where Ortega is holed up,” Trask said. “I’ll try and get some plea terms approved and then we’ll roll on that. If Frank Wilkes can do his magic at the car wash, we may have a homicide we can actually prosecute.”

“Just give me some lead time to write the arrest plan. You know how detailed the Bureau wants its operations plans these days. You’d think we were planning D-Day the way they want everything triple-checked in advance. I’ll have to get the SAC and ASAC on board.”

“Sure. Maybe we can give Ortega a nice heads-up so he won’t move in the meantime. You know, an invitation to remain in place, awaiting arrest.”

Doroz shot him a warning glance. “It’s not my FBI anymore, Jeff. We’ve forgotten how to do crim work. Everybody just sits at computers and chases terrorism ghosts now. We have a War on Terror, in case you haven’t heard.”

“Sorry. I know it’s not your call. We’ll give you as much lead time as possible. See you downstairs.”

Trask and Doroz watched as Wilkes walked the length of the car wash floor, spraying luminol, then waving his UV light over the areas he’d sprayed.

“Who was that old Greek guy, the one with the lamp?” whispered Doroz.

“I heard that.” Wilkes didn’t even look up from his work.

“Diogenes of Sinope,” Trask said. “The original Stoic. He carried a lantern in the daytime, looking for an honest man.”

“Yeah, him.” Doroz looked at Trask and shook his head in disbelief.

“I’m looking for an honest clue in the dark,” Wilkes shot back. “I didn’t actually expect to find much here in the middle of the track, even though it’s a great place to cut somebody up. You run the wash after you’re done, and there are torrents of soap and water to wash everything down the drain. The more washes, the fewer clues.” He stood up, looking around the building.

“Quiet, genius at work,” Doroz said, smiling.

“Only if I find something, Mister Special Agent.” He pointed toward the door where cars would enter the wash. “There, I believe.”

“Because?” Doroz asked.

“Because they needed to load the body in a vehicle to dump it. The corpse thrown in front of your building had been used as a cutting board. It would have been leaking like a colander. If you are a functioning, thinking criminal, and you’re using a pickup, you can wash the blood off the side of the truck by running it through the wash after you’ve dragged the bleeding corpse down there and thrown it into the truck bed. You don’t want to do that in the middle of the wash while it’s running. You’d get yourself soaked. There may be some dried blood in the concrete seams at that end. If they didn’t hose it down well enough, we might get lucky.”

Trask watched Wilkes get down on all fours, crawling the length and width of the entrance to the wash. Spraying, lighting, spraying, lighting.
I wonder if
obsessive compulsive disorder is a prerequisite to being good at that job,
he thought. Then he smiled.
Or to my job
.

“Bingo!” Wilkes pointed to a corner of the wash where the walls met the floor. “Looks like they hosed it down some, but just shot the blood into this corner. They didn’t think to hose the corner out.” He pulled a swab from a small plastic bag, ran it along the joint, and returned it to the bag, marking it with a number and his initials. He then stood up and took a series of photographs of the area.

“Enough for some DNA, Frank?” Trask asked.

“I think so. Hope so,” Wilkes said. “It’ll take a while. It’s not a TV show. I’ll let you know.”

Trask nodded. “Thanks, Frank.”

7:15 p.m.

Crawford handed her the wine bottle as she answered her door. She was cooking for them this evening.

He sniffed the aroma as he walked in.
Another gourmet meal from the most beautiful
girl on the planet. I should pinch myself, but I can’t.
“That smells wonderful, as usual,” he said.

She smiled, turned and kissed him long and hard. “I have many more dishes from my country to share with you,” she said. “And many more days and nights, if you will let me.”

“I’d love all of that, and all of you.”

She smiled, kissed him again, then pulled back a little. “Have you ever thought of living in another country?”

“Not really, why?”

“I love you and your country, but I love mine, too. I don’t know that I can keep this job forever. I may have to go home soon, depending on the situation at the embassy. I’m sure the government will name a new permanent ambassador, and he may want to bring a new staff with him.”

He nodded, frowning.

“You could come with me, Michael,” she said. “We—my family—have connections. You could be a permanent resident, and someone with your background would have no trouble finding work. The cost of living is very cheap compared to America. We could be together.”

“There’s nothing that means more to me than being with you, Marissa. But that would mean the end of my career here, and leaving
my
country is a lot to think about.”

“You could have a similar career in El Salvador. We know many people there. I will help you with the language.” She smiled at him and kissed him again, pulling herself tightly against him, her head on his shoulder. “I love you, Michael,” she whispered. “We are so much alike. We love each other, like the same things.” She looked into his eyes. “We even hate the same things, like criminals and murderous gangs who have no respect for order or society.”

A timer on the stove went off.

“Dinner is ready. Will you at least think about it?”

“I already am,” he said.

“Good!” She kissed him again. “Don’t wait too long to give me your answer.” She smiled at him over her shoulder as she walked toward the kitchen.

Luis Moreno-Montillo, also known as Jorge Rios-Garcia, also known as His Excellency, the acting ambassador of El Salvador to the United States of America, sat cleaning his sniper rifle at the desk formerly occupied by the late Juan Carlos Lopez-Portillo. He looked up as the big man entered the office.

“How is your wrist, Hugo?”

“A little sore, Jefe. It is healing, but bruised. The dog bit through some blood vessels.”

“A pity you were not able to take care of both the woman
and
the dog.” Moreno slapped the bolt assembly. “It is an impressive animal, however, even if not a purebred. At any rate, you may get another chance.”

“Tonight, Jefe?”

“Perhaps. I don’t know yet. I do know the FBI expects to learn of Ortega’s whereabouts very shortly. As soon as we learn where he is hiding, I want the full team moving within minutes. Understood?”

“Of course, Jefe.” The big man hesitated before leaving the room. “Jefe, you said the full team. We are short two men.”

“I know. Have our alternates briefed and ready to participate. If they are willing to share in our venture’s bounty, they must also be willing to share in the burdens.”

“Jefe.” Hugo bowed slightly as he left the ambassador’s office.

.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Thursday, September 14, 9:30 a.m.

D
espite the pressure of the impending deadline, Trask was in a relatively good mood when he got to the squad conference room.
No reason to get down
today. Either we’ll make some real progress, or we won’t. Not much else that could go wrong or
make things worse at this point.
Lynn walked in with a cup of coffee, and he smiled at her.
We’re both alive, after all, and there’s a lot to be said for that, given all we’ve been through
lately.

She saw his fingers drumming on the table. “Song?”

“‘Second Chance’ by .38 Special. Best slow song of the rock era, in my opinion. Poetic lyrics, soaring lead vocal, a dialogue between the vocal and lead guitar, and a gorgeous melody line and hook.”

“I know the song. You have something to apologize for?”

Trask laughed. “No! You’re focusing on the lyrics too much. I think they’re good and heartfelt, but with the music in that song, they could be singing in Hungarian and I’d love it.”

She nodded. “It
is
a great song.” She sipped her coffee.

Carter and Wisniewski came into the room and sat down.

“No sunglasses today?” Trask asked. He got only sharp looks in return.

Willie Sivella was the next to enter. “Morning, Jeff, Lynn. Barry wanted me to tell you that the DEA guy is bringing someone with him. Somebody who’s been in-country in El Salvador. He went down to the entry desk to let them in. Should be here any second.”

“Good,” Trask said. “Like Lassiter used to say, ‘Info is ammo.’ I’ve been feeling a bit unarmed lately. At least I was before Lynn uncovered the true identity of our Mr. Moreno.”

“He’s likely to be the main subject of our conversation today,” Doroz said. He was standing in the door, motioning three other men into the conference room.

Trask recognized two of them: Steve McDonald from CIA, still wearing the bad sport coat, and Kevin Hall from DEA, still looking like a chemistry professor. The third man was carrying a laptop. He was shorter than McDonald or Hall, but he looked like he could have been a bouncer from a bar in a bad neighborhood. He was solidly built and dressed in a form-fitting polo shirt that accented every muscle in his arms and torso. Trask shook hands with McDonald first.

Hall was the next to extend his hand, and as he did so, he made the introduction. “Jeff Trask, this is Jason Mays, DEA’s current station chief in El Salvador. When the name of Moreno-Montillo came up in our inquiry, Jason decided to fly up for the meeting.”

“Nice to meet you,” Trask said, barely avoiding a wince as Mays almost crushed his hand.

“You, too.” Mays said. He put the laptop on the table. “How do I hook this into your display screen?”

“Puddin’!” Doroz barked. Crawford came into the room within seconds.

The three visitors glanced at each other.

“Just a nickname,” Doroz said. “He has a real one. Gentlemen, Michael Crawford.”

There were more handshakes.

“Mr. Crawford, please be so good as to work your Wi-Fi magic and connect Jason’s computer to our wall monitor.” Doroz shrugged. “Sorry guys, but too many new tricks for an old dog. I often require help in the digital age.”

McDonald nodded in agreement. “I get left behind myself.” He quickly shot a glance at Hall. “No comments required.”

Trask saw that Crawford had apparently entered the required passwords. “Let’s get on with this. What do you have for us, Jason?”

“Luis Moreno-Montillo,” Mays began, pushing a key. A photo of Moreno flashed onto the monitor, the first in a series of PowerPoint slides. “He first came to our attention as one of the opposition activists, one of the FMLN opponents of the ARENA government. We also had street intelligence tying him to one of the smuggling operations in San Salvador, some real bad asses involved in the coke trade. I think you’ve already figured out that he went to UCLA with Lopez, the late ambassador.”

“Yes, thanks to an incredible analyst whom I personally selected for this squad,” Doroz said, nodding in Lynn’s direction.

Lynn smiled at Trask, who saw that Mays noticed.

“She’s my wife,” Trask explained.

“Interesting,” Mays said flatly. “Anyway, both Lopez and Moreno were part of the opposition for years and actually had contacts within the gangs in El Salvador, first with Barrio 18 and then later with MS-13. They certainly weren’t members themselves, but they viewed the
Maras
as victims and byproducts of the ARENA government policies. Again, we had files on them because Moreno kept coming up as a money man for the coke smugglers and because Lopez was very close to Moreno.”

Trask looked across the table at McDonald. “Did CIA have anything corroborating this?”

“Some,” McDonald replied. “The activism, yes. The dope stuff, no.”

“Looking the other way again?” Hall jabbed.

“Up yours, Kevin,” McDonald shot back. “We weren’t concerned with every two-bit snort merchant. We were trying to keep a friendly government in control.”

“No two-bit ops here,” Mays replied, fixing a stare on McDonald. “Tons of coke. Enough to help fund a lot of the FMLN politics, once the cash got washed a little. Our info is that Moreno was hooked into the Texis Cartel, the guys who control the smuggling routes from Colombia through Central America into Mexico. So if you’d followed the money—even though it was dope money—you’d have been interested in this, too. Moreno just kept his dope contacts after he switched sides politically.”

And checkmate,
Trask thought.
I think I’ll be listening primarily to my new friend Mays
for a while.

“Anyway,” Mays continued, “the fiction that the
Mara
punks weren’t as bad as the ARENA government made them out to be hit the Moreno family before it came back on the Lopez family.”

Mays hit a key on the laptop. The photo showed the body of a teenage girl. The top half of her head was missing.

“This is a Salvadoran police photo of Carolina Moreno—Luis’ daughter—after she ate the wrong end of one of her daddy’s shotguns. She’d been getting closer and closer with some of the
Mara
toughs from her school, and they invited her to a party one night. Her initiation party. She was gang raped and couldn’t live with it. Her father found her body, heard what had happened to her at the hands of the MS-13, and went looking for the gangbangers who’d raped his daughter. He hunted them alone and did pretty well, all things considered. The Salvadoran cops I’ve talked to said he managed to kill five of the six who’d been involved in the rapes before the sixth one decided not to wait on his own fate and ambushed Moreno with some other
Maras
. They shot up his car pretty good, and the leader of the group hauled him out of his car and took out one of his eyes with a machete. They left him for dead, since he’d been shot seven or eight times. To everyone’s surprise, he lived.”

“Any idea who the banger was that slashed his eye?” Carter asked.

“Yeah. A real tough kid named Ortega. Esteban Ortega.”

“Son of a bitch,” Wisniewski exclaimed. “We’ve got Central America’s Ahab up here hunting his whale!”

Dead on, Tim,
thought Trask.
Melville, not Dumas. I should have figured it out before
now. Blind rage is all that explains this. That’s why it made no sense before. No political motives,
not even gang warfare. Blind hatred and revenge is the only thing that explains all the indiscriminate
killing.

“Did Moreno stay affiliated with the FMLN after his daughter’s death?” Trask asked. “I’m just wondering how he ended up here in their embassy.”

“No,” Mays said. “The cops in El Salvador, who’d been closely allied with the ARENA party, had been turning their heads while Moreno hunted the
Maras
who’d raped his daughter. Hell, they were probably feeding him leads. They were the ones who scraped him off the road and got him to a hospital after he got ambushed. When he was back on his feet, the ARENA guys recruited him to their side. He even started running some of their black shadow death squads. Mr. Hall here told me you’d done your homework on them.”

“Yeah,” Doroz said. “Moreno has left some of their calling cards in the area.”

“So how does he wangle an appointment as the number two in an FMLN embassy?” Wisniewski asked.

“Through his buddy Lopez, after Lopez’ son gets murdered—ostensibly by the MS-13—and only then by using an alias,” Trask offered. “Lopez is facing the same grief and rage that Moreno did after losing a child, and knows that—despite the broad gulf in their current political views—Moreno has considerable expertise in
Mara
hunting. So Lopez imports ‘Jorge Rios’ into the embassy, and the next thing you know, we’ve got a wall full of murders. What do you think, Mr. Mays?”

Mays nodded. “Makes sense. There’s no way the new government would have approved Moreno as an embassy official if they’d known who he really was. They really weren’t prepared for the success they had in the election, no appointment systems in place since they hadn’t been through it all before. They probably took Lopez’ vouching for this ‘Rios’ guy and didn’t ask many questions.”

“Any way of finding out who he brought up with him?” Carter asked.

“As a matter of fact, yes,” Mays said. “We were up on some coke deals involving Moreno and his people and even thought we’d be able to arrest Moreno himself, all with the blessings of the new government. In fact, I was at the airport in San Salvador with an ops team about to take him off when his goons start slapping diplomatic pouch tags on all their luggage, including the cases with the coke in it. I wasn’t willing to risk alienating the new government when I saw the stickers. I figured somebody in the new regime was either on the take or knew something I didn’t. Maybe Moreno was still on their side, a double agent or something. Anyway, I aborted our op at the airport, came away with nothing but some pics. Here they are.”

The monitor image changed to show a photo of a large, dark blue sedan parked at the airport curb. Moreno was pointing to some bags at the rear of the car and an entourage of six men appeared to be carrying out his instructions.

“Do you have files on any of Moreno’s goons?” Sivella asked Mays.

“Just a couple. The big guy there at the back is Hugo Vaca. I’ll see if I can get a close-up out of this.” Mays zoomed in to get a better view of the big man’s face.

Lynn was suddenly standing, pointing at the monitor. “That’s the asshole who tried to kill me!”

“
What
?” Mays asked. “Are you sure? If Hugo Vaca tries to kill you, you usually die. He’s been with
La Sombra Negra
for years and—”

“You bet your ass I’m sure,” Lynn said. “I was just lucky because—”

“Because they have a wolf,” Doroz tried to explain.

“She’s not a wolf, she’s…never mind,” Trask said, noting that Mays seemed to be very confused. “Can you zoom in on the other faces in that crew?”

Mays moved the cursor.

“Hold it there,” Trask said as the zoom highlighted the face of another member of Moreno’s team. Trask went to a file cabinet and pulled out a folder. He took an eight-by-ten photograph from the folder and slid it across to Mays. “A match?”

Mays looked at the photo, then the screen. “I’d say so. How’d he get the bullet in the face?”

“From me,” Lynn said, “as he was trying to decapitate Jeff with a machete. That’s actually an exit wound. I hit that one in the back of the head.”

“That one?” Mays asked.

“There should be another one in that crew who we have in the morgue with an entry wound to the
front
of his head,” Doroz said.

Mays moved the cursor again.

“Yep, him,” Trask said, pulling another photograph from the folder.

Carter saw that Mays looked totally off balance, unaccustomed to a world in which attorneys and analysts chopped down thugs and escaped certain death. “Lynn is a former OSI agent,” he tried to explain, “and a very good shot. She and Tim here took out a Jamaican hit man last year.”

“We are overwhelming Agent Mays, guys,” Trask said.

“Yeah, I’d say so,” Mays acknowledged. “I don’t know what I walked into here, but I’m glad that I could help. I think. Is there anything else—”

“Possibly,” Trask said. “How are your contacts in the Salvadoran diplomatic corps?”

“I know some people,” Mays replied.

“Good,” Trask said. “Let’s talk.”

Trask excused himself from joining the others for lunch, saying he had a loose end or two to tie up at his other office. That was only partially true, as the single loose end he could think of was there in the squad room.

Puddin’s been too smitten, and Lynn too busy with other things, to do a real review of that
pole camera at the lawyer’s office. I need to have a chance to look through it myself without offending
anyone.

He found the disc and loaded it into one of the computers in the bullpen. Setting the video on fast-forward, he watched the hours roll by to see if any vehicles at all stopped at the law offices of the late Victor Scarborough. He saw one sedan pull into the parking lot, turn around, and re-enter the street.