Triple Crossing (40 page)

Han’s cell phone rang on the table next to his elbow. He glanced at the display, grimaced apologetically and stopped the recording.

As the diplomat murmured into the phone in Mandarin, Méndez realized that all of them had been straining toward the recording
device as if on leashes. Isabel’s thumb had gone to her
teeth early in the conversation; she had started biting it after the reference to “that Cuban woman.”

It did not concern Méndez that Junior knew they were on his heels. That was part of the strategy. But who were the Ruiz Caballeros’
friends in the United States?

J
UNIOR HAD NO ATTENTION SPAN
. He didn’t listen. Twice within the space of fifteen minutes, he had asked Pescatore what kind of name Valentín Pescatore
was and where he was from.

Junior was acting friendly. Too goddamn friendly. It was their first real conversation. It worried Pescatore more than the
confrontation on the basketball court. Pescatore was still trying to understand how exactly he had ended up in the presidential
suite with Buffalo and Junior. Just the three of them kicking back in front of the television. Pescatore spoke when spoken
to and puffed on the joint when it was handed to him.

“Chicago, huh?” Junior mused, spewing a jet of smoke. “Never liked it. Too cold.”

Junior had stretched himself out on the couch. He sniped at the television with the remote control, jumping between MTV Latino,
a sports channel and a nature channel showing cheetahs and buzzards. His T-shirt was decorated with a picture of one of his
company’s Mexican bands, a dozen
norteños
in feathered cowboy hats and outlaw leather coats. A room-service cart gave off a smell of leftover steak and vegetables
that mingled with the reefer and Junior’s atomic cologne.

“Italiano-Argentino-Mexicano, eh? And you end up with the
Migra.
Check that out.”

Junior’s eyes stared out of puffy purplish circles. He made strange noises when he breathed, as if he had excess phlegm or
saliva in his nose and throat. Whatever the problem was, it made him snort and spit a lot. He had developed an ugly cough
too.

Buffalo, sitting on an armchair near Pescatore, passed the joint without sampling it. Buffalo had barely said a word.

“Yeah, I didn’t fit in with those good ol’ boys and Tejanos and everything, I’ll tell you that,” Pescatore said.

“Uh-huh.” Apparently losing interest, Junior coughed and pawed around on the carpet for his drink.

Through the tall windows, Pescatore saw Moze on the dock with a machine pistol over his shoulder, a lean silhouette against
the dusk. The day before, the team of Paraguayan cops guarding the hotel had pulled out without explanation. Moze and Tchai
had intensified their vigilance. And Junior hadn’t stopped all day: phone calls to Mexico City, e-mails, couriers, conferences
with Abbas, more phone calls. Abbas had taken them to visit a warehouse Junior had invested in, a depot for contraband software,
videos and compact discs: boxes of swag as far as the eye could see. Khalid had been supposed to come along, but he had canceled
at the last minute. As far as Pescatore could tell, the vibes between Junior and Khalid were getting worse.

Junior flipped through two Arabic-language channels: a guy in desert headgear reading news, a dark-eyed woman ululating to
a disco beat in front of minarets. A Brazilian news program showed a prison riot: Buffed convicts on a cell-block rooftop
waved clubs and shanks, shirts furled over their heads for masks. A police helicopter banked through a column of smoke. Bare-chested
inmates, hands behind their heads, filed through a gauntlet of helmeted storm troopers.

“Valentín,” Buffalo said.

Pescatore turned in slow motion, realizing that Junior had produced a paper from somewhere and was poking it at him. Like
a camera zooming in for close-up, Pescatore focused: It was a photo of Isabel Puente.

The photo was posed, face front. It looked like a Department of Homeland Security personnel photo, which was theoretically
not an easy thing to get your hands on if you weren’t in the government. Puente’s hair was up, making her seem stern and vulnerable
at the same time, Pescatore thought fleetingly, as fear smothered him. What was this about?

Junior propped himself on an elbow. His casual tone wasn’t altogether convincing. The paper trembled in his hand. “You know
who that is,
gabacho?
”

Pescatore took the photo, actually a computer printout of a photo, and glanced rapidly at Buffalo. The big man looked ominously
sad.

“Sure,” Pescatore said. “That’s Isabel Puente, from OIG. Inspector General. It’s like internal affairs.”

Buffalo turned to Junior with satisfaction, the gesture saying: See, my boy tells it straight up, he’s got nothing to hide.

“That’s right,” Junior said slowly. “We been doin’ some research. This is the boss of the operation against us. With Méndez.
La muy puta.
She’s fucking Méndez too, did you know that?”

Isabel and Méndez. It made sense. It confirmed Pescatore’s worst suspicions. Junior hawked and spat in the direction of an
ashtray.

“No,” Pescatore said. “How’m I supposed to know that?”

“Well, you were fucking her too, right?”

Pescatore fought down panic. “Jeez. That’s a real personal question, you know?”

Buffalo slapped him without getting up. He simply reached out and slammed a planklike hand across Pescatore’s face.

Pescatore had been leaning forward. The impact knocked him clean out of the chair. He found himself facedown on the coffee
table.

Junior giggled and rumpled Pescatore’s hair. He let his hand linger in the curls. The caress terrified Pescatore more than
the slap. Images spattered his brain, memories of every war story, intelligence report and newspaper article he had ever seen
or heard about what the Mexican cartels did to traitors before granting their most heartfelt wish: letting them die.

Buffalo stood over him. His voice was hoarse.

“Next thing comes outta your mouth better be yes or no, and it better be the truth. Otherwise I take a lamp and I rip out
the wires and I light you up like a fucking Christmas tree. Understand, youngster?”

Pescatore hauled himself back into the chair, an ocean roaring in his head.

“Were you fucking her?” Buffalo said.

“Just one night I did,” Pescatore muttered.

“What was going on between you two?”

“Why didn’t you say nothing,
canijo?
” Junior was sitting up now. “We got sources everywhere. You gamin’ us?”

“Hell no. You never asked me, right?” Pescatore gathered himself, put on his best head-busting, mob-defying PA face. And plunged
over a cliff. “Garrison knew all about it. I figured you guys did too.”

“Garrison knew?” Buffalo asked.

“That’s right.” Pescatore told them about the Pulpo episode, being summoned to the Inspector General’s office, Isabel’s recruiting
pitch. Good lies build on the truth, he thought desperately. “So I told Garrison she was snooping around, cuddling up to me
and whatnot. He said go ahead and play along. Find out what the task force was up to, you know.”

“And you got yourself some leg on the side,” Buffalo said.

“Garrison didn’t tell you about it?” Pescatore demanded.

Junior’s greenish-gold eyes flickered wetly in the light of the television. Pescatore thought about his empty shoulder holster
under his jacket, which he had put on to withstand the air-conditioning that Junior had cranked into arctic overdrive. Pescatore’s
gun was on a table somewhere behind him. Or maybe on a shelf.

“Look, man, you guys are treating me like some kinda rat. It ain’t fair.” Pescatore’s indignation felt surprisingly genuine.
“Back in Tijuana, I brought you Garrison, Buffalo said that was totally clutch. And—”

“
Ya basta,
Valentín,” Buffalo snapped. But then he gave Junior a reproachful look that made Pescatore want to hug him, in spite of the
throbbing left side of his face. “Junior knows you got heart. You been earning your keep. But this is serious business,
cabrón.
”

Junior took a gulp of rum and a hit off the joint. He raised his chin petulantly and kept it there, his voice shrill with
rage.

“Méndez and that Cuban bitch think they can sweat me. Me.
Te imaginas?
And you worked for them.
Pinche
spy.”

“No way, man,” Pescatore exclaimed. “I got nothing to do with Méndez. He’s a scumbag. He hates my fucking guts. You know that,
they were hunting me all over Baja for shooting that cop.”

Junior crushed the joint into an ashtray.

“Now I am going to ask you another question,” he said, his voice getting louder and slower. “And remember this: If you give
me the wrong answer, I’m gonna have Buffalo cut off your ears and make you eat them. So listen carefully: When was the last
time you talked to Isabel Puente?”

It was the make-or-break question. The rest had been a warm-up. Buffalo was too close and too fast—going for the gun would
be suicide. Buffalo seemed to be sticking up for him, which made Pescatore think that Junior could be swayed. Either
they knew the truth or they didn’t. Either they had decided to waste him or they hadn’t.

In a way, he was relieved. The waiting and cringing were over. He had expected this moment ever since he had started this
masquerade. The biggest, and probably the last, masquerade of his short and confused life.

T
HAT’S WHAT I CALL A FIRST
-
CLASS ERRAND BOY
,” Méndez said.

Albino Losada, until recently the deputy attorney general of the state of Baja California, sat in a room on the other side
of the glass that separated him and his interrogators from Méndez, Puente, Porthos and Facundo.

Losada sweated profusely. His side-combed haircut was mussed, his mustache wilted in the heat. He was manacled to his chair.
Although Losada was a long way from home, he contemplated his dimly lit surroundings with a mute horror bred by familiarity.
As a prosecutor in Tijuana, he had seen and done things—memorable, unspeakable things—in rooms like this. But he had never
seen this kind of room through the eyes of a prisoner contemplating a prosecutor: a bald, bull-shouldered Paraguayan with
rolled-up sleeves. An ornery Paraguayan who did not seem inclined to go easy on a member of the Latin American judicial fraternity.

“A Mexican success story,” Méndez continued, leaning closer to the glass. “From attorney general to bagman. And the
chilango
bootlicker for a sidekick.”

Manacled in the chair next to Losada sat Senator Ruiz Caballero’s pudgy private secretary, whom Méndez had last encoun
tered on the tarmac at the Tijuana airport. His name was Rogelio Aragón. He looked as if he wished he had never been born.

The prosecutor and a Paraguayan military intelligence agent in fatigues and cowboy boots stalked back and forth in front of
the prisoners, barking questions. Another military man with a towel around his neck recorded the answers on a dinosaur typewriter,
flailing at keys that echoed like rifle shots.

There was a computer, dusty with disuse, on a table next to the typist. The table also held a suitcase that had been confiscated
when Puente, the Mexicans and Paraguayan intelligence agents, acting on information from a wiretap, had arrested Losada and
Aragón. The capture had taken place on a highway from the Asunción airport to Ciudad del Este. The Mexican functionaries had
flown in from Mexico City with two bodyguards, off-duty Baja State police detectives who had resisted arrest and were now
in the hospital.

The suitcase contained a million dollars.

“What a haul, Leo,” said Isabel Puente. She paced in time with the interrogators beyond the glass. She turned to Facundo,
who was reclined on a couch, a forest of black and gray chest hair blossoming out of his tropical shirt. “You think we can
use some of that money to buy more enemies for Junior?”

“Oh, I think so, Miss Puente,” Facundo said, fueling himself from his
mate
gourd. He lowered his voice with a nod at the interrogation room. “Once we subtract the prosecutor’s, eh, expenses. In any
case, we are chipping away. My men report that the police platoon has been removed from guard duty at the El Naútico Resort.
The police don’t like Junior’s antics.”

“Good.” Méndez took a sip of foul coffee. He was pushing Junior in the right direction. He wanted to keep up the momentum.
He picked up a notebook confiscated from Losada that contained a number for a satellite phone Méndez believed to be Junior’s.
“I think the time has come to harass Junior more directly.”

“Meaning what, exactly?” Isabel asked, warily, in English.

“As the great Tijuana journalist Fernando Romero once said, ‘When in Rome,
ponte cabrón.
’ ”

Minutes later, Losada and the Senator’s secretary had been transferred from the interrogation room. They sat on the couch,
looking a bit less miserable. Porthos handed the phone to Aragón.

“Have you got it?” Porthos growled. “Tell him what happened: You are in custody. Then hand the phone to the Licenciado. Is
that clear?”

The prisoners nodded.

“And stop cringing like little girls. Nobody has laid a finger on you. Yet.”

Isabel leaned against a wall, thumbs hooked in the belt of her jeans. Méndez gave her a conspiratorial wink as Aragón babbled
something into the phone about bad news and heartfelt apologies. He held out the phone to Méndez.

“Hello? Aragón you idiot, hello?” Junior’s mouth was too close to the phone. His voice sounded like it had during the recorded
phone call: distorted, dazed, sick.

“This is Méndez.”

Silence. He was starting to think Junior had hung up when he heard a cough.

“Méndez,” Junior said.

“That’s right.”

“Am I supposed to be impressed?” Junior’s tone was whiny and mocking. His breathing was noisy. “You expect me to piss myself?”

“Not unless you do that routinely.”

“What do you want?”