Cartel (31 page)

"Why is Mike's death your fault?" Scott asked.

Benny took a deep breath. "I'm the one who told Hum-berto Larios about the video."

"Why?"

She didn't answer.

"Plata o plomo?" he asked.

She opened her mouth to say something, but didn't.

"Those weren't your only options," he said.

"Really?" she said as she wiped the tears from her face. "What were my other options?"

"You're a police officer."

She laughed. "What does that even mean, to be a police officer? That I was supposed to arrest him, put handcuffs on him, throw him in the back seat of my car, take him to jail? Humberto Larios, Z-50, one of the most wanted men in Mexico?"

"Yes."

"Even the Marines can't arrest him."

"That's because they can't find him," Scott said, "but you know where he is, don't you?"

"Sometimes," she said, her voice low, almost a whisper.

"You could have told the Marines."

"And what happens if they arrest him?" she said. "Do you think Los Zetas falls apart? Because that's not going to happen. Someone else would take over, Z-60, Z-70...Z-100. It doesn't matter. And the first thing he would do is kill whoever was responsible for leading the Marines to Larios." She jabbed her finger across the hood at Scott. "Do you know what happened when the Marines who arrested Z-40, El Coronel, Miguel Trevino?" She didn't wait for an answer. "Los Zetas butchered fifty people. Fifty people. Some they skinned alive. Because one of them-one of them!-might have been the informant."

"Then why are you a cop at all?"

"It's so simple for you, isn't it?" Benny said. "Every-thing is black and white. Maybe I should say brown and white. The bad guys and the good guys."

"That's not fair. A lot of good Mexican police officers have died fighting the cartels."

"Not fair?" Benny said. "Let me tell you what's not fair. American agents coming into Mexico to harass the cartels and making us arrest them for you. Then running back across the border in your big cars, to your big houses, to your gated neighborhoods. Because we can't run. We have to stay here. With them. So don't talk to me about what's fair and what's not. Not until you're stuck on this side of the border, until you have to spend every night wondering if tonight is the night they're going to come for you." She leaned against the car, exhausted.

Scott stared at Benny for a long time. Then he said, "You're right."

She looked up at him. Although she was no longer cry-ing, her eyes were still bloodshot. "About what?"

"I have no idea know what it's like to be a cop here."

"But you still don't think you would take their money, do you?"

"I'd find another way," Scott said.

"Alejandro Dominguez tried to find another way."

"Who's he?"

"A honest man who accepted the job as chief of police in Nuevo Laredo when no one else would. When the cartel offered him money, he refused to take it. His career lasted less than one day. Six hours after he was sworn in as the new police chief, Los Zetas shot him dead."

"Why did you tell Larios about the video?" Scott said. "You said you loved Mike Cassidy."

"I did love him," Benny said, her voice cracking but full of conviction.

Scott believed her. "Then why?"

"Because if Larios found out I knew about it and didn't tell him, he would have killed me and my daughter...or worse."

Scott didn't need her to explain the meaning of or worse. He already knew. Los Zetas operated a string of brothels along the border, where they kept women, and girls as young as twelve, shot full of heroin and turning tricks six-teen hours a day.

"Larios wants the video to come out," Benny said. "He wants to see it on American television. He wants the Ameri-can people to know their government made a deal with the devil."

"So maybe you're wrong," Scott said. "And it wasn't the Sinaloa who killed Mike. Maybe it was Los Zetas who did it because Larios wanted to release the video himself."

"No," Benny said. "There was no need to do that. Lar-ios knew the video would eventually come out, and from the best possible source."

"The DEA," Scott said, realizing just how much sense it made. A video released by a rival cartel could be dismissed as a fake, but a video used as evidence by the DEA in the criminal trial of corrupt U.S. officials...What was it that credit card company advertisement said? Priceless.

Benny nodded.

"Tell me how Mike Cassidy got that video," Scott said.

Benny wiped her nose on the sleeve of her black Polo shirt again. "Do you know what the PFM is, the Policia Federal Ministerial?"

"I know what they are," Scott said. "The Mexican FBI." But he knew more than that. The PFM, known in English as the Federal Ministry of Police, was indeed modeled after the American FBI and created to replace the thoroughly discred-ited, and now disbanded, AFI, the Agencia de Federal Investigacion, or Federal Investigations Agency, which had probably been the most corrupt agency in the entire Mexican government, and that was saying quite a lot because that bar had been set pretty high.

A classified report Scott had read during his tour at DEA Headquarters said that nearly half of AFI's 7,000 agents were under investigation for criminal activity, and that many of those agents were suspected of moonlighting as enforcers for the Sinaloa cartel. The general consensus at DEA was that AFI's successor, the PFM, wasn't any better than the agency it had replaced.

"When Oscar Ramirez was assassinated in Mexico City," Benny said, "because he was the deputy attorney gen-eral, the PFM was put in charge of the investigation. I knew one of the agents, Raul Fuentes. He was an instructor at a training school I went to a couple of years ago. We became friends, and we stayed in touch." She looked hard at Scott. "And before you say anything, he was an honest man and a good policeman."

Scott raised his hands. "Okay."

"Raul was one of the agents who searched Ramirez's apartment. He found the flash drive and after he watched what was on it, he knew he couldn't document it as evi-dence."

"Why not?"

"Because it would disappear."

"So what did he do?" Scott asked.

"He called me."

"Why you?"

"Because he knew about me and Michael."

"He wanted you to give the video to Mike?"

"Yes," Benny said. "To expose the corruption on both sides."

"You told me when we watched it that you hadn't seen it before."

"I hadn't seen it," Benny said. "All I did was arrange a meeting so Raul could give the video to Michael."

"Why didn't Mike show it to you?"

"He said he was trying to protect me."

"But you told Larios about it?"

Fresh tears formed in her eyes. "I had to."

"What exactly did you tell him?"

Benny rubbed her eyes. "Only what I knew, that Mi-chael had a video of a meeting and that if it got out, it was going to be bad for El Gordo and the Sinaloa."

"Nothing else?"

"I didn't know anything else."

"But did he ask?" Scott insisted. "Did Larios ask you what was on the video?"

Benny hesitated as her eyes shifted to her left, to Scott's right. He knew from his training and from years of experi-ence conducting hundreds of interrogations that when asked a question, a person trying to recall something, as opposed to trying to create something, looked to his or her left. Whatever she was going to say, it was going to be the truth. "No," Benny said. "He didn't ask."

"The reason he didn't ask was because he already knew about the meeting," Scott said.

"What do you mean?"

"Los Zetas killed Ramirez."

"How do you know?"

"Because nothing else makes sense," Scott said. "Gutierrez had no reason to kill him. He had just made a se-cret deal with Ramirez and needed him alive. But Larios, if he knew about the deal, would have a very good reason to kill the man who had just agreed to use the power of the federal government to take the Nuevo Laredo plaza away from him and give it to his archenemy."

"How would Larios know about the meeting?"

"I don't know," Scott said. "But there were three people at that meeting, and as Benjamin Franklin said, Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead."

"I don't understand," Benny said. "What does that mean?"

"It means one of them talked. And it means you weren't telling Larios anything he didn't already know. He had Ramirez killed before either you or Mike knew that video existed."

Benny was looking at him, her eyes red from crying, her nose crusted. "Do you really believe that?"

He nodded. "It wasn't your fault."

Benny laid her forehead on the hood of the Oldsmobile and sobbed so hard her whole body shook.

As Gavin pulled away from Tomas Sanchez Elementary School, Mr. Jones glanced into the back seat of the Suburban at Victoria Greene, sitting in the middle of the seat between her two children, nine-year-old Jake and six-year-old Sa-mantha, with a protective arm wrapped around each of them.

The principal of the school, a woman in her sixties with a gray beehive and a dress like a nylon sack, had not seemed surprised that Mrs. Greene wanted to take her children out of school early. Jones suspected the principal had seen the news about Mr. Greene because she kept glancing at Jones as Mrs. Greene filled out early dismissal forms for the children.

"Where are we going?" Victoria asked from the back seat.

"To see your husband," Jones said.

"Is he...all right?"

"He's fine," Jones said. "And you'll be with him short-ly."

"Who are you?" the boy asked.

"He...works with your father," Victoria said.

"Is daddy in trouble?" the little girl asked.

"No," Victoria Greene said. "Your father is not in trou-ble."

"Then why did we leave school early?" the boy asked.

"Hush, both of you," their mother said. "Wait until we're with your father. Then we'll answer all your ques-tions."

Behind him, Jones heard the little girl start to cry. He thought it was strange how children could sometimes be so much more perceptive than adults.

* * * *

"That was your uncle who called me, wasn't it?" Scott asked. "The anonymous caller who told me where Ortiz was hiding."

Scott and Benny were back inside the Oldsmobile, sit-ting side by side on the faded and cracked vinyl seat, still parked behind the closed-down mechanic shop off Boule-vard Anahuac.

Benny nodded. Her face was streaked with tears. "I wanted you to know where he was."

"Why?"

"For Michael."

They sat in silence for a while. Scott trying to make sense of everything.

The video, if it went public, would be a disaster for the Sinaloa cartel. There was no doubt about that. Even the cyn-ical American public might muster up some outrage at a rep-resentative of its government, a member of its premier intel-ligence agency, making a deal with the world's biggest nar-cotics trafficker to smuggle tons of illegal drugs into the United States. Congress would demand an investigation and public hearings. The president, who couldn't seem to get his public approval rating above fifty percent no matter how much taxpayer money he gave away, would be lucky if he didn't face a special prosecutor and the specter of impeach-ment.

And the outcry from the United States, particularly the American media, would force the Mexican government to crack down on the Sinaloa cartel and maybe even to actually hunt down and arrest its pudgy leader, Javier "El Gordo" Gutierrez.

Conversely, the public release of the video would shift a lot of attention away from Los Zetas, which was currently Public Enemy Numero Uno in Mexico, mainly because of the bloodthirsty cartel's penchant for mass beheadings, live flayings, and the hanging of dismembered corpses from bridges.

For reasons still unclear to Scott, Oscar Ramirez, the deputy attorney general of Mexico, had decided to surrepti-tiously record the secret meeting in Mexico City, and some-how, Humberto Larios, head of Los Zetas, had found out about the deal that had been hammered out between his archrival, the Sinaloa cartel, and the governments of Mexico and the United States, and he was pissed off enough about it to order the assassination of Oscar Ramirez, the second highest ranking law enforcement officer in Mexico. How Larios found out was anybody's guess.

Scott's guess was that Gutierrez had talked. From what he knew about the chubby, flamboyant leader of the Sinaloa cartel, El Gordo would not have been able to stop himself from bragging about brokering the three-way deal that guar-anteed his massive drug shipments into the United States and that would soon give him control of the lucrative Nuevo Laredo plaza. The Sinaloa cartel was bigger and richer and controlled more territory than Los Zetas, but the members of the Sinaloa, from the top down, lacked the discipline and or-ganizational integrity of the ex-soldiers who made up the bulk of Los Zetas. There was at least one piece of the puzzle still missing, though.

Scott turned to Benny. "How did Gutierrez find out about the video and how did he know Mike Cassidy had it?"

Benny shook her head. "I only told Larios. I swear."

"I believe you," Scott said. "But there's something we're missing. Something that ties it all together."

"How can we find out what it is?"

"We keep going. Keep pushing forward."

"How?"

"First, we're going to get your daughter back," Scott said. "Larios thinks I'm dead, that you killed me. That's our edge, our only advantage." Scott pointed to the prepaid cell phone on the floorboard next to Benny's feet. "So you're go-ing to call him. Tell him you did what he wanted. That you have the video. Now you want Rosalita back."

Benny picked up the phone.

Gavin turned the Suburban onto Santa Ursula Avenue and headed for the ramp that led to the Juarez-Lincoln Bridge. Jones noted that Gavin had not said a word since they left Scott Greene's house. He just stared straight ahead and drove. Jones couldn't tell if the ex-soldier disapproved of his plan or not, or if he was just being quiet so as not to attract too much attention from the wife. Jones really didn't care which it was. Gavin could be a wooden Indian as far as Jones was concerned, as long as he got them across the bridge.