The Execution (11 page)

CHAPTER 24

T
he midtown Four Seasons was a fifty-two-story, five-star hotel. President Umberto Vargas was staying in one of the three-bedroom royal suites located on the thirty-second floor, the same floor as delegations from Namibia and the Republic of Georgia.

With the soft click of a door, the frenetic task of transporting a head of state from JFK Airport to midtown Manhattan was over.

The corner suite featured views of the southeast corner of Central Park through floor-to-ceiling bay windows. A balcony offered further views of the city, but the door was locked and the president was expressly forbidden to step outside. Seven plasma HD televisions, three marble bathrooms, handcrafted sycamore furnishings and leather surfaces. In a word: luxury.

“What would the people say?” asked Cecilia Garza, seated on a plush chair near the corner window, holding a glass of water.

“They would be outraged,” said the president, nodding to one of his EMP guards to step away, dismissing his valet and his personal secretary and his chief of staff, then sitting on the sofa before a set of briefing papers. “Everyone from the farmer to the banker. If they saw this.” He smiled his campaign smile as he slackened the knot of his necktie. “But, if I were to move to a chain hotel without any amenities, they would say, ‘Why does our president sleep in a flophouse while the Japanese prime minister stays in luxury?’ And in this case, national pride trumps the fear of a trumped-up scandal.”

Garza nodded. It was so strange sometimes, remembering her old UDLA law school professor and reconciling that man with the president of her country. He still had his idealism, only now it was tempered by the reality of everyday concessions. It had not hurt his campaign that he had aged so well. Tall, broad shouldered, his thick, dark hair graying at the temples. His expression was intelligent without being judgmental, commanding without being imperious. Looking the part is so important in politics, as in all walks of life, where meeting preconceived expectations gets you halfway to your goal. Garza, herself, had no such advantage as Policía Federal, a woman leading men.

President Vargas waved at the cityscape. “Life. So strange the paths we take. I think that to meet anyone on a crowded city street, even for an appointment, is a small miracle. But for us, for our lives, to intersect again like this, twenty years after leaving the incubator of the university . . . it is not mere fate, it is something richer. Not necessarily fraught with meaning . . . but profound nonetheless. Agree?”

She smiled as he lapsed back into his professorial way of speaking—something the campaign trail had required him to abandon early on, after reports that audiences felt he was bloviating and talking down to them. “I agree it is remarkable, Señor Presidente.”

He was in an expansive mood, but could tell that she was not. “Comandante Garza, your eyes are sadder than I remember. The weight of responsibility?”

And fatigue, she might have added. And squinting into the sun whenever she lost her sunglasses, which was frequently. “Perhaps,” she answered. “I am quite concerned about the incident.”

President Vargas’s lip curled a bit at the thought of it. “It is how they see us, no? And how they want to see us. Their inferior neighbor to the south. Violent and unruly. It is all they want to know. What was it Díaz said? ‘Poor Mexico . . .’ ” Garza finished the words of Porfirio Díaz, a former Mexican president, “. . . so far from God and so close to the United States.”

“They, who are the cause of all this drug violence, look down upon us for it. That is one of the many things I hope to achieve with this landmark treaty, Comandante. For it is not only to cut down on trafficking and the attendant violence, but to force the United States of America to take responsibility for its role in it.”

The so-called drug war in Mexico had claimed well over fifty thousand lives since 2006. Three times the number of murders in the United States, in a country one-third its size. And while that statistic seemed to speak to chaos, in fact the drug trade had become a complex global operation . . . as well as an immensely financially successful one. “A treaty is a great first step, Señor Presidente, but it is just a piece of paper to those who matter.”

“And you have faced those corrupt and violent souls, I know. After this trip is concluded and once the treaty is ratified, I would like to have you back in Mexico City. I have not figured out the exact role just yet, but we may need some equivalent of the American drug czar—only, one who can be effective. Someone to oversee the decline—and I say this confidently—the decline of the Mexican drug cartels.”

Garza smiled, both at his optimism and at the misnomer
cartel
. Cartels collude to fix prices and/or supply. As the saying goes in Mexico, one wishes the narcotics gangs were cartels. Then they would not constantly be killing each other and driving up the violence.

Garza did not deny the flame of ambition that burned inside her, driving her each day. But she felt instantly that taking such a stance would be exactly the wrong move. She needed to remain in a position to be active and do good, even if on a smaller scale than Señor Presidente foresaw for her.

“I think police work agrees with me,” she told him. “I cannot see myself spending the entire day making phone calls and flattering men in neat suits.”

“Is that what I am now? A flattering man in a neat suit?”

“You are that when you need to be, I think.”

“Don’t say yes or no just yet. Think about it. Nothing is set, and as I said, the role itself has yet to be fully determined. It might be something that interests you. And, as I say, it would be nice to have you back in Mexico City, the two of us, working for the national good.”

Garza nodded, but inside her head she was spinning. He was coming on to her. She remembered Herrera teasing her, “You would make a fine first lady
.
”

She could admit to a certain crush on him back in her school days—and she was not alone. An idealistic law professor holding forth before a room full of naive young students. And now that attractive man wore an air of authority about him, her magnetic president.

“My focus right now is Chuparosa.”

Vargas threw his head back at the mention of the assassin’s name. “The damned Hummingbird. Isn’t your focus supposed to be on me?”

“It is, Señor. And the office of the president.”

Vargas nodded, looking at her with the faintest trace of a smile. “I see. Well, I must say, I have every confidence in you here. We knew we would ruffle a few feathers signing this treaty—to say the least. But you do your job and I will do mine. It helps to have someone close at hand who I can trust.”

He smiled again. No malice, no disappointment. If anything, his manner appeared to be saying,
Until tomorrow
.

Garza took that as her cue, swallowing the rest of her now-warm water. “I will leave you to prepare.”

The president liked to write his own major speeches. He sat back, pulling his papers into his lap, sliding on a pair of reading glasses. “Perhaps tomorrow night, we can have a late dinner, as our schedules allow?”

She wasn’t sure. “Your schedule is my schedule,” she said. “Let’s see what the day brings.”

“Excellent.”

CHAPTER 25

C
ecilia Garza was also staying at the Four Seasons, albeit in a single room on a lower floor. In-room dining was a tempting option, but she was waiting for a report from Virgilio, who, according to his texts, was on his way back to the hotel. So her work was not quite done for the evening.

She went downstairs into the lobby in search of food. The Garden, just off the main lobby on the Fifty-seventh Street side, was a twenty-minute wait for a table between towering indoor acacia trees. The host suggested that, as a single diner, she try the bar, which Garza was reluctant to do. She went as far as the revolving doors, but she was tired, and the thought of wandering up and down the block looking for something moderately healthy offered no appeal. She turned back, looking into the bar. Lots of beefy American males meeting after work, many in casual clusters at the long bar. A few females in pairs, alternately accepting or fending off attention from the opposite sex. A knot of robed Africans stood around two tables. Garza went a little farther inside, spotted an open chair, second to last along the bar, and made her way to it.

She ordered a very pricey baby shrimp ceviche with fiery horseradish sauce and a light American beer. The cocktail menu was extremely tempting, especially now that the president was safely ensconced for the evening, but as a single woman seated among high-energy chatter it seemed to her that a martini glass would be seen by others as an invitation to chat. She leaned over her phone instead, the technological refuge of the shy and not-to-be-bothered, though that did not deter two separate approaches by men, one offering to buy her another drink—when she was but two sips into her first, and last, beer—and another clumsily complimenting her on her hair. “I saw you from across the room and just had to come over to tell you that,” he gushed, expecting something more than a polite thank-you.

Five minutes,
read Virgilio’s text.

She cycled through news reports about the beheaded bodies, knowing she would learn nothing new but needing to pursue the matter nonetheless. She was copied on an e-mail from President Vargas’s staff, a memo detailing the official response to the incident, should anyone in the administration be asked about it. The preferred response was essentially to defer all questions to the local NYPD authorities, which was the opposite of what Garza was trying to do.

A tap on her shoulder and she turned and it was not Virgilio but yet another potential suitor, asking about her food. Garza, tired and cranky by this time, dead-eyed him until he backed away. Not to say that she preferred the more peacocklike machismo of the Mexican male, but the American gambit of slinking into a conversation left her cold.

She glanced around the bar, glowering, hoping to send a message to any other potential interrupters that she was not there to be picked up. In doing so, she noticed a handful of women who, to her practiced cop’s eye, clearly were there to be picked up. Glamorously attired ladies of the evening, young women with clinging dresses, pouty lips, and low-dangling necklaces forming bejeweled arrows pointing right to their cleavage.

Prostitutes. Drawn to the hotel by the promise of United Nations Week, or a nightly occurrence, she did not know. Though she strongly believed that a few of the men talking to them believed themselves succeeding wildly with these women, and had no idea there was going to be a gift request once they repaired back to their room.

Into this scene came Virgilio, walking quickly, compact and muscular. “I was in the lounge looking for you,” he explained, when she asked what took him so long. He plucked the last shrimp off her plate. “We got nothing yet.”

Garza raised her eyebrows. She showed him her phone. “You couldn’t have called with that news? I would be asleep by now.”

“Nothing definitive, Comandante. But we did receive word of three men missing. They are illegals, of course. All three are landscapers, and there is a corner in Bushwick where they congregate every morning, hoping to be picked up by the trucks that head for the towns north of the city, where the lawns and shrubs are tended like a movie star’s eyebrows. Nothing has been reported to the police for obvious reasons, but the men are four days gone and are unreachable by telephone.”

They spoke quietly and confidentially, not to be overheard. “Any link to illegal activity?”

“A sensitive subject, as you can imagine. I only spoke to one direct relative. She said no, but that is far from proof.”

Garza puzzled over this. “Killing innocents—if they are—is not at all outside Chuparosa’s method of operation. But why fellow Mexicans here in the States? Except to draw attention to himself, and to the Mexican contingent.”

“Taunting, perhaps. Announcing himself does seem counterintuitive, but the Hummingbird is half a madman, in my opinion. Highly unpredictable. Part of what makes him so dangerous.”

“Next move?”

“I am returning early in the morning to the street corner to try to learn what kind of vehicle might have picked up these three men. Though I fear the trail may have gone cold. I want to offer them money, I believe that is the fastest way.”

Garza smiled. “That is why we meet in person. I have almost no American currency. You called Jefe?”

“I did. No answer. I need to be there at the crack of dawn.”

“I will pass along your request and the funds will be brought to you.”

“Have them find me. I’m not going to sleep tonight. I’m going to have dinner with a cousin. I have too much energy burning inside me now, too much anger. The American press’s news coverage of the killings . . . it’s a smear. It disgusts me. I am going to find the man who did this and restore our national honor.” Virgilio remembered who he was talking to. “I will save a piece for you, of course, Comandante.”

“We will get him together,” she said.

Garza nodded and Virgilio left. She returned to what was left of her food and signaled for the bill.

She would remember later that she did not watch Virgilio leave. He was one of the most competent, capable men she knew. She thought nothing of him heading off for the night.

CHAPTER 26

B
rendan Teixeira, to be quite frank, was not happy about the meeting. It seemed hinky. Wrong.

Brendan’s family had been selling fish at the Fulton Fish Market since the 1920s. Almost a century. The family joke was when a Teixeira died, you packed him in ice and put him in a cardboard box.

The Teixeiras’ specialty was shellfish: oysters, clams, scallops, and mussels. There was a time when it was just Wellfleets, Blue Points, quahogs, littlenecks, the usual domestic varieties. But the Teixeiras had managed to stay ahead of the curve, flying in fresh varieties from all over the globe: spiny oysters, abalone, sea urchins, nerites. Your Asians wanted all the weirdest stuff possible. And high-end restaurants were always looking for something distinctive, something that not every other restaurant in New York had. Variety and novelty.

So you had to stay on your toes, always looking for opportunities.

Two days earlier Brendan had gotten a call from a guy who said he had a special treat he wanted to show him. A Mexican guy, said he’d be in New York for one day only with a fresh catch of
almeja negras,
a rare clam from Mexico.

Here was the thing: Brendan’s dickhead uncle Raphael kept telling him he was going to give him more responsibility with the business. But it seemed like when the crunch time came, Uncle Raphael just wanted Brendan to be a gofer, driving one of the delivery vans around the city. Using Brendan as a glorified intern. Finding a new variety of clam, something the company could potentially sell for big bucks to select high-end restaurants in Manhattan, that might get Uncle Raphael to see that Brendan was good for more than just driving.

“Here is the situation,” the man had said, his accent thick, though not hard to understand. “I represent a fishing cooperative of Yucatec Mayan fishermen. They got a special monopoly on this particular location based on Mexican law respecting Native Peoples. I’m bringing in half a pound of oysters by air, packed in dry ice. Four hours from the docks in Ciudad del Carmen, seven hours from the ocean. At this point in time, I’ll be straight up with you, I have no permits, no paperwork, no nothing. Okay? I’m not gonna sell them to you, we not gonna do any sort of transaction that could make problems for you with Customs, Department of Fish and Wildlife, none of those guys. We meet in a parking lot over in Hunts Point, you taste the merchandise. You like the freshness, the firmness, the consistency . . . we gonna work out all the permits, the importation, make it legal going forward. You don’t like the merchandise? You don’t like the price? Hey, no hard feelings, my friend. That is how confident I am. Everything starts and ends with the fish, I know you agree. If I don’t deliver a great product, we have nothing to talk about, am I right?”

The way the guy talked, Brendan Teixeira could tell the man had some background in the wholesale seafood business. It didn’t matter what you sold—shark, tuna, mussels, octopus—in the business it was all “fish.”

Brendan wasn’t wild about rendezvousing with some Mexican dude he’d never met in a parking lot away from home. But what was the downside? Sometimes Customs would indeed run a sting on people in the fish business, try to sell them smuggled fish, entrap them. Or the New York State Department of Fish, Wildlife and Marine Resources would sometimes try to sell you endangered species or whatever. Big fines for that, even jail time.

But if there was no transaction, some guy just handing you a fish saying, “Here you go, taste this . . .”—nah, there was no bust in that. And since Brendan wasn’t carrying cash, there was no worry about a heist. Brendan had told him that on the phone. “I don’t carry cash to meetings, I just want you to understand that up front. No cash, and no merchandise in the truck.”

The guy reassured him and seemed to have no concerns. A taste test, he insisted. Brendan could not see any downside for him.

The point was, you did not get to be the leading shellfish wholesaler in America by tiptoeing around worrying about shit all the time. Boldness paid off. If a guy wanted to meet you in a parking lot with a piece of smuggled fish, you had to be flexible. Everybody’s got to start somewhere. He would see where things went.

BRENDAN DROVE HIS FORD ECONOLINE VAN
through the parking lot on the north side of the Co-op terminal, out into another parking lot. At the far end, over near the piers jutting out into the East River, he saw a man leaning against a Mercedes. A short guy, trim, compact, wearing a Yankees cap. Arms crossed. A wide smile on his face.

Brendan was not so wild about the other guy there behind him, leaning against the hood of their car: he was a big guy with a gut, wearing a Cuban-style shirt, untucked, hanging off his waist.

“You didn’t tell me there was gonna be another guy,” Brendan said.

“How are you, Mr. Teixeira?” the man said. He introduced himself as Ray. “This gentleman here, I told you about the Indian tribe I’m representing? I did not think I needed to inform you that I would be bringing them. Don’t worry, he’s a very good man. He speaks very little English, and understands not much more, so I will do the talking. Oscar here is the head of this fishing cooperative I talked about. He’s the head of the tribe, Yucatec Maya. I front for them. As I told you on the phone, they have certain exclusive monopoly rights based on Mexican law, which allows them to control this species one hundred percent. Very interesting opportunity, in fact, what these people—”

“Yeah,” Brendan said, not liking this as much as he did when it was a voice on the phone with an opportunity. “I’m not trying to be an asshole, but can I see the fish? I get calls like this all the time. End of the day, like you said on the phone, if the fish ain’t there we’re just three guys wasting time in a parking lot.”

“You are correct, absolutely correct,” the Mexican said. Then he turned and said something in Spanish to the guy with the gut.

Brendan had seen shows on Discovery Channel about the Mayans, these guys in the jungle down in Mexico, El Salvador, wherever the hell it was. Those men didn’t even vaguely look like the guy with the big gut. They were little guys, with distinctive hooky-looking noses. This guy, he looked nothing like that. More like a football player from Texas. Plus, something about him seemed vaguely threatening. His eyes, that was what it was, they had a dead look that made Brendan nervous.

But then he supposed being an Indian in Mexico was probably like being in one of these tribes that ran casinos in the United States, a bunch of scam artists, blond guys from the suburbs in Connecticut, cashing in on the fact they had one sixty-fourth part Narragansett Indian blood or whatever.

The only weapon Brendan had was his shucking knife, which he carried at all times, day or night, in a little holster on his belt.

“Oscar is the fish expert, you understand. Head of the fishing cooperative. His people have been eating these oysters for a thousand generations, and yet never sold a single one of them. They have some sort of religious significance to his people, whatever it is. Recently, though, Oscar here came up with his own way of farming them. Suddenly they had many more of these things than the locals could eat. He decided he would cash in. That is where my involvement began. The point is, Oscar is very protective of the fish.”

“I can see how that’d be,” Brendan said. “You gonna show me or not?”

“Come around the trunk here. I know you will be very impressed. I have been in the fish business for a long time, and I have never tasted anything like this.”

Ray went over and opened the trunk, leaning in to pick something up. Oscar, the tribesman with the gut, was just standing off at the front of the car, looking out at the river, not even paying attention to what was going on. Which made Brendan feel better. The guy didn’t seem nervous or worked up. He was just waiting, looking like he was ready to go home for the night, sleep in his own bed.

“Here,” said Ray.

Then he put his hand out. But instead of an oyster, he had a small black plastic thing with two shiny points protruding from it.

The shiny points flew out and struck Brendan in the chest. A wave of electric agony ran through his body. Suddenly he was lying on the ground, his arms crooked and stiff, legs straight out, his body a shivering spasm of pain.

He had been hit with a bolt of electricity from a Taser.

He stared up in the air, his vision filled by the side of his family’s van.
TEIXEIRA BROS. SHELLFISH—NEW YORK’S FINEST SINCE 1921.
Big gold letters edged in blue, ornately scrolled. Brendan saw Oscar cross from his vehicle to Brendan’s truck, yanking open the sliding door.

Sometimes trucks got heisted. A truck full of albacore could be worth eighty, a hundred grand.

But his truck was dead empty. He’d told the guy on the phone, very specific about it, he was bringing zero merchandise, zero cash to the meeting.

So why, he wondered, would these guys go to all this trouble to steal an empty truck?

Then he saw Ray, his eyes shadowed by the brim of his Yankees cap, standing over him, staring down. The look on his face was one of curiosity, not menace.

Brendan could not do anything, neither move nor scream.

The man lifted his foot, a cowboy boot with a scuffed heel.

He brought it stomping down on Brendan’s head . . . and everything went black.