Horns of the Devil - Jeff Trask [02] (7 page)

“Just a feeling. Don’t you guys keep some sort of roster of personnel for foreign embassies?”

“Yes. It’s called the Diplomatic List. Why?”

“I’d be interested in seeing whatever information you have about the deputy chief of mission,” Trask said.

“And why is that?”

“Call it a feeling again, Murph. Call it whatever you want to. Is there a problem furnishing us that info?”

“Probably not, but I may have to get the Secretary’s approval. It’s on a need-to-know basis, that sort of thing.”

“See what you can do, please.” Trask looked at Murphy and smiled. “Tell the Secretary that my US Attorney is personally interested in the matter, and that we’d appreciate being kept ‘in the loop’ on our own investigation.”

“Of course.” Murphy was not smiling now. The train slowed. “This is my stop. I’m heading back to State. You fellows have a nice day.”

“I’m with you, Jeff,” Doroz said after the doors closed again. “Darth Vader recognized that photo. The fourth one, Morales.”

“What’s up with the State Department wanting to guard this Diplomatic List?” Crawford asked.

“State has always operated under the theory of ‘don’t make waves.’” Doroz said. “When you have to try and solve problems by talking them to death, you don’t want to see the problem in the first place. A lot of times, the messenger who brings the problem in gets shot—figuratively, of course. State hates real bullets.

“Murphy was probably hoping it would be either a quick solution—photo recognized, case closed—or a case of random violence with no repercussions for anyone. The last thing he wants is complications, especially complications over which State has no control. Don’t sweat the info, though. We’ll get it. If not from State, then through some of our other sources.”

Meaning CIA,
Trask said to himself.
That’ll stir the pot.

“Speaking of sources,” Doroz continued, “it seems that our man Puddin’ here was really cultivating one in the embassy. Think you can handle her, Mr. Crawford?”

Crawford was blushing again.

“Just remember to register her on the appropriate official Bureau forms when she starts providing you information,” Doroz prodded. “You did have your cell phone number written on the back of your business card, didn’t you, Mike?”

“You told me to put it on
all
my cards,” Crawford protested.

“Good man,” Doroz said as the cell phone on Crawford’s belt began to chime. “Wonder who that could be.”

“I better stop and take it here,” Crawford said as they neared the down escalator to the Metro.

“Yep, wouldn’t want to lose
that
signal,” Doroz agreed.

Trask started humming a song.

“What’s that?” Crawford asked, holding the Blackberry to his ear.

“
Hot Child in the City
. Nick Gilder. 1978. Before your time.” Trask’s fingers drummed the beat on the handrail as he descended into the Metro.

Trask and Doroz walked back through Judiciary Square, reached the FBI field office, and took the elevator to the squad room. Trask saw Lynn at her computer terminal.

“Hi, babe. Violate any international protocol this morning?” she asked.

“He did fine, as usual,” Doroz said, slapping him on the back. “The ambassador said he ought to go into the foreign service.”

“Not without me,” she said.

“No worries there,” Trask said. “But with the permission of the squad supervisor, I’d like the squad analyst to see what she can find out about a couple of things.”

“Granted,” Doroz said.

“Give me a rundown on anti-gang initiatives undertaken by the ARENA party before they lost the election in El Salvador. See what you can find out about any internal conflicts within the FMLN. And finally, since Very Special Agent Doroz assures me he can get some documentation from somewhere, I need to know all you can find out about one José Rios-García, the deputy chief of mission who doesn’t seem to want to extend the courtesy of speaking English to American visitors to his embassy.”

Lynn looked up at Doroz.

“Again, granted,” he said.

“Did you recognize any of the photographs?” asked Juan Carlos Lopez-Portillo.

“The one who killed Armando was the fourth on the sheet,” Rios said. “We have already dealt with him.”

“And the one who ordered it?”

“My information is that it was ordered locally by the head of a
Mara
clique here in Washington, Esteban Ortega. He probably got orders from someone in
La Esperanza
.”

“How reliable is your information?”

“The parasite who gave it to us thought he was saving his life by doing so. He was also wrong about thinking he would be allowed to live. I believe the information is accurate. The Americans seem to have arrived at the same conclusion, otherwise the photograph of Armando’s killer would not have been on their page of photographs.”

“How long do you think it will take to deal with Ortega?” the ambassador asked.

“Not long.”

“Good. But José,” the ambassador continued, “use your English when we have American visitors.”

The man with the eye patch grunted, then turned away.

Crawford paced nervously in front of the red panda exhibit at the National Zoo. She had told him to meet her there, but she had only said “after work” with no time specified. He had already been around the exhibit twice, had stayed there long enough for one of the keepers to remark that he “must really like red pandas.” He still wore the suit he’d worn to the ambassador’s office, not wanting to miss her by taking the time to change. He’d already sweated enough to require another dry cleaning despite the two snow cones he’d gulped down trying to fight the heat.

Her call had been just to inform him that she would meet him here to deliver Armando’s school records.
Or had it been just that?
She had seemed eager to see him again after the glances exchanged in the embassy. He recalled the smile…
and those eyes!

When he saw her coming down the walk from the visitor center entrance he noticed that she
had
changed clothes. The skirt and blouse from the office had been replaced with a sundress that did nothing to hide the shape that wore it. He knew he was staring but couldn’t help it, although he managed to close his mouth after a moment. She giggled as she reached him and handed him the large envelope.

“Am I that funny looking?”

“That thought never entered my mind,” he said.

“A penny, then, for the ones that did. As long as they’re not
too
evil.”

“N…nothing evil at all,” he stammered. He looked at her, summoning all the composure he could muster. “There are some women a guy looks at because they’re flaunting it. He thinks the way she
makes
him think by how she dresses, how she carries herself. Then—I hope you won’t mind me saying this—there are the true beauties, like you. My thoughts had only to do with appreciation of what I saw. Like when I saw the Grand Canyon for the first time, or a beautiful car like a Ferrari.”

“I’m like a canyon and a car?”

“Only the awe-inspiring ones.”

She laughed again. Her laughter calmed him, made him feel more confident. They walked through the other exhibits, not really looking at the animals.

“You should have changed clothes into something cooler,” she said.

“I didn’t know exactly when you’d be here.”

“I didn’t know myself,” she said. “I finished my work and locked up when it was done—no set time. I come here a lot after work, almost every day. I feel like I know some of the animals. Do you like them?”

“I like them more in the spring and fall. They smell a little worse this time of year.”

She laughed again. He loved her laugh. He had decided some time ago that if he didn’t like a woman’s laugh, there was no future in the relationship.

“Which ones are your favorites?” he asked.

“Probably the pandas—the ones from China. They’re like big stuffed toys, and they always seem to be playing, just rolling around, even when they’re eating. How about you?”

“The big cats, I guess.”

“So you’re a predator?”

Crawford paused and thought for a second. Should he give a macho yes or…

“I like to study them, like I study the predators we hunt. The criminal predators.”

“I see.”

She was nodding.

I think I made the right call there,
he thought.

“Should we go see them then?” she asked.

“Who?”

“Your big cats, silly.” She was laughing again.

“Oh, sorry,” he said. “Sure.”

They walked at a relaxed pace to the zoo’s great cat exhibit. A solitary Sumatran tiger paced back and forth at the front of his cage. They stared at the huge animal for a moment, and then walked to the next exhibit, which held a couple of African lions.

“Which one would you bet on?”

He thought for a moment. “The lions.”

She was laughing harder now.

“What?” he asked, laughing himself.

“I asked which
one
, and you said, ‘The lions.’ The tiger is bigger.”

“That’s why I’d bet on the lions. There are two of them.”

She laughed again, and she turned and held his hand for a moment.

“This was fun,” she said. “Let me know if I can help with anything else.”

“Of course.”

He watched while she walked toward the entrance, not moving until she was out of sight.

.

Chapter Seven

August 16, 2:00 a.m.

A
s the two vans pulled into the rear of the Qwik Shine Car Wash in northeast Washington, DC, a small army of Hispanic males emerged from the building and began removing crates from the truck beds. As each worker entered the building, he was directed up the pull-down stairs by another man. After climbing the stairs with his load, the
Mara
soldier was met by Esteban Ortega, who looked at each crate and then told the worker where to place it.

Ortega was pleased with himself. The car wash was the perfect front. It was a defensible structure, solidly built, and the long, cavernous attic—covering the building’s office, wash track, and waiting area—was big enough for the grow operation. Best of all, the legitimate commercial purpose of the building was the perfect cover, both for the massive amounts of electricity and water that would be consumed, and for the laundering of some of the profits that would be generated by the hydroponic marijuana.

He had plenty of seeds for the “white widows”: high-yield, hybrid marijuana plants with an extraordinarily high THC content, the product of years of experimentation and grafting by some of Amsterdam’s most dedicated disciples of horticulture.

The
Mara
commanders in
La Esperanza,
El Salvador’s largest prison
,
had suggested the switch to the marijuana from cocaine. The seeds were easily concealed and transported across the border from Mexico, the “white” was now selling in the United States for between $4,000 and $7,000 a pound, and it didn’t carry the heavy penalties that coke or crack did if the workers were arrested. Five kilos of cocaine powder, or just an ounce of crack, meant a ten-year mandatory sentence in an American federal prison, followed by deportation back to El Salvador and even more time in
La Esperanza.
To get a ten-year mandatory sentence for marijuana trafficking, the feds had to put 1,000 kilos on a defendant—a whole metric ton of weed—or find him with a thousand plants. Accordingly, Ortega’s grow would only contain eight hundred plants at any one time.

Ortega wasn’t concerned about deportation himself. Like several members of his
Mara
chapter, he had been born in Los Angeles and was an American citizen by birth, even though both his parents had been Salvadoran immigrants. He had spent enough time in El Salvador with the
Mara
chieftains learning his trade and fighting the ARENA government’s forces, but his US citizenship had been a factor in the commanders choosing him to head the Washington clique. The less jeopardy a subordinate faced, either in jail time or through other government leverage, the less likely he was to fold under the pressure of a federal prosecution if caught.

The crates were all unloaded. Ortega barked an order, and the worker bees began lugging the lengths of copper tubing off the trucks and into the building.

From the green Buick parked behind a strip mall about one hundred yards to the south, Detective Dixon Carter raised his eyes just above the bottom edge of the driver’s window and focused his binoculars on the activity in the rear of the car wash. He was alone.

Pipes? Makes sense, I guess…It’s supposed to be a car wash, after all. Helluva lot of them,
though. They could redo the plumbing in my whole subdivision with that much copper…What the
hell?

Carter felt the cell phone vibrating in the pouch on his belt. He always had it set to vibrate. Surveillances like this, court appearances, movies…all required silence. Judges hated it if your phone rang during a trial or hearing, and Carter hated it more when a cell gave away his position on a stakeout. He sank back down in his seat and answered the call.

“Carter.”

“Dix, turn your dome light off and don’t shoot me. I’m about to open your passenger door.”

Carter turned to his right and saw the face looking over the edge of the passenger side window. He flipped the switch so the light would not activate, then nodded. Tim Wisniewski, dressed in black from head to foot and wearing a black stocking cap, climbed in and sank down into the reclined bucket seat.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Carter demanded. “And where’d you get that outfit? Ninjas-R-Us?”

“I’m supposed to follow you around, partner. Orders of the triumvirate,” Wisniewski said.

“The what?”

“Your masters. Sivella, Doroz, and Trask.”

“Never say ‘master’ to a black man.”

“Sorry. Massa then.”

“You’re asking for it tonight, aren’t you?”

“Give it a rest. I’m half Pole, half Irish. If it weren’t for you black guys, I’d still be a member of two oppressed minorities myself. You ever hear the one about the Polish fighter pilots in World War II?”

“You don’t expect me to tell a step-and-fetch-it joke after it, do you?”

“Nope. Anyway, there were these three Polish fighter pilots stuck in a Warsaw ghetto, their planes had been blown to hell by the Blitzkrieg, and they’re sitting there in their little apartment feeling all depressed and guzzling vodka. They got drunk and figured they needed to whip somebody’s butt. They saw a rat run across the floor and into a rat hole, so they drew up a formal declaration of war on the rats, rolled it up, and crammed it into the rat hole. They figured they’d identified an enemy they could whip. By the next morning, two of ’em were POWs and the other one had a war bride.”

Carter didn’t want to, but he couldn’t help laughing.

“I know all the best Polish jokes,” Wisniewski said. “Just let me know when you’re ready for another one. What and who are we watching?”

“
I
,” Carter corrected, “have been watching the local clique of MS-13 in their relocation efforts following the fiery demise of the deli they used to run.
You
should be watching the insides of your eyelids. I don’t recall inviting you.”

“Like I said, the triumvirate commands, and I obey. No surveillance van tonight? Might be more comfortable.”

“I wasn’t expecting company. How’d you know where to find me?”

“Didn’t. I had to follow your ass out here. You don’t check your six very often do you? Traffic was awful light, and I’m sure you would have noticed my tail if you’d looked for one. I’m parked around the block.”

“Great. Now I’m a Polish surveillance joke.”

“That’s funny,” Wisniewski laughed. “Hadn’t thought of that.”

He glanced over the window edge toward the car wash. The silhouettes of several men carrying lengths of copper tubing were outlined in front of a security light on the corner of the building.

“What’s with all the pipe?”

“At first I thought they might be refitting the car wash system,” Carter said. “But that’s way more than they need for that job.”

“How’d you track these guys here?”

“Lynn Trask did some research on the guy who was on paper for the deli. Ortega’s his name. He put in a claim with his insurance company after the fire. They smelled an inside arson job and called ATF. ATF had Ortega listed as an MS-13 member and called Barry Doroz. He had Lynn run some financial screens on Ortega, and she found out he’d just filed a purchase deed on this car wash. I heard them talking about it in Bear’s office, and I found the reports on Bear’s desk after they left today.”

“So you snooped the boss’s office and assigned yourself some overtime?”

Carter looked at him hard. “I decided to check it out on my own time.”

“You’ve got some weird recreation hours.” Wisniewski glanced at his watch. “Two-thirty a.m.”

“I’m a dangerous man. Haven’t you heard? You’re lucky you called before popping up at that door, otherwise I probably would have killed my second partner.”

“You’re gonna be
real
dangerous if you never sleep. To everybody, including yourself. I’m more worried about becoming the partner who got ‘the best cop on the force’ killed than I am about getting whacked myself.”

“I don’t need a damned babysitter,
junior
.”

“Nope, but you need a partner,
pops,
so just let me do my job while you do yours. I could have snuck up on you and blown your ass away just now.”

Carter kept his binoculars trained on the car wash.

“You were following me in a black Dodge Charger. Nice wheels, so I assume they’re yours and not the department’s. Before you called my cell you’d been crouching beside the dumpster in the alley between this store and the Office Max for about ten minutes, and despite that wardrobe from
The Guns of Navarone
, your white face sticks out like a neon sign. Use some camouflage grease next time you want to hide in the hood. I was actually worried that I’d have to bail you out of some ambush, but you do pretty good surveillance for an Anglo from Santa Fe.”

Wisniewski whistled. “Very impressive. What’s
The Guns of Navarone
?”

“An excellent film. World War II period piece. Rent it sometime.”

Carter shook his head in disbelief. Even more copper tubing was being offloaded. Wisniewski noticed the silhouettes, too.

“That, my senior partner, is either going to be a very large marijuana grow, or they’re going to be counterfeiting pennies.”

Carter nodded. “My conclusion as well.”

He put the binoculars back in the case and started the car, leaving the lights off. He backed the Buick into the alley, circled around the end of the strip mall, and pulled up beside the Charger.

“You’re lucky. The wheel covers and tires are still there. Follow me out, if you can.”

Wisniewski followed as Carter pulled into a convenience store four blocks away. The Charger parked beside the Buick.

“I need some coffee before I head home for my nap,” Carter said. “Get what you want. This one’s on me.”

He poured a large cup of black coffee from the customer urn’s spigot and headed for the counter, nodding to the large black man behind it. “How’s things, Marv?”

“Been better, been worse. Who’s the midnight skulker with you, Dix?” He nodded toward Wisniewski, who was approaching them.

“New partner. I’ll get his stuff tonight.”

Carter looked down at his wallet to pull out a bill. When he looked back at the counter, he saw his coffee, a coke, six individually wrapped condoms, and seven Tootsie Roll Pops.

“You did say the usual, didn’t you?” Wisniewski asked.

Carter arrived at his townhouse at 3:27 a.m. He poured a half glass of red wine to help himself fall asleep. The light on his answering machine was blinking. It was Melody, saying she was just calling to check on him, that she still cared about him and wanted to make sure he was all right.

If you cared that much you’d still be here, Mel. You’d understand. I expect the divorce papers
any day now. Hell, YOU left ME; I didn’t desert you. Maybe I ought to file the damn things
myself and serve you with them…I miss you, Mel.

He hit the delete button on the machine, which politely informed him that he had no more messages, and sank into the recliner facing the television without picking up the remote. He downed the last sip of the pinot noir, staring vacantly at the dark screen.

Six condoms and seven Tootsie Pops. What was the extra one for?
Carter laughed out loud, remembering Marv’s face. “
The usual.
”
The kid got me good with that one. Polish
fighter pilots. Two POWs and a war bride.

He laughed again, then immediately began sobbing. He stopped crying only when the wine and exhaustion finally numbed his mind. He spent the brief remainder of the darkness sleeping in the chair.