In Desperation (22 page)

Chihuahua, Mexico

T
he mansion stood on a craggy palm-shrouded hill with a sweeping view of the mountains, fifty miles west of Ciudad Juarez.

The only way to access the property by ground was a winding road whose entrance was gated and guarded by private security officers, ex-soldiers armed with AK-47s.

Other security officers patrolled the grounds on all-terrain vehicles and by horseback. The entire property was fenced with razor wire and necklaced with motion sensors, laser-activated trip wires and several dozen security cameras.

Ownership of the land was not listed on any government records. On paper, the estate of Samson Zartosa, leader of the Norte Cartel, did not exist.

His security was formidable.

His fortress had never been penetrated, although two idealistic federal drug agents on a rogue operation drove near it one night, determined to arrest Zartosa for the cartel's murders of their fellow officers.

Soon after, their car was found parked at a federal police station—their corpses in the trunk.

Zartosa's compound was a small village of buildings for his cars, his security team, their quarters and vehicles,
their equipment, the servants and other compound staff. Zartosa's house was a three-story, ten-bedroom colonial hacienda overlooking a man-made pond, gardens, two swimming pools, a private zoo and a small amusement park.

The house had several offices. The largest was Zar tosa's. Next to it was the office for his second-in-command, his Comandante, Garcia Deltrano.

Deltrano was on the phone, managing a shipment with a troublesome contact controlling Norte routes into New York City. A problem had arisen from a greedy distributor, an ex-Wall Street player whose voice dripped with arrogance toward Mexicans.

“Give me bigger numbers or nothing moves,” he said. “That's the deal.”

The cartel had taken steps in advance and Deltrano would resolve matters with a few sentences and a few mouse clicks.

“Is this not your nine-year-old daughter entering her private school?” Deltrano sent a photo, then another. “And is this not your wife, only thirty minutes ago, shopping for your daughter's birthday?” Deltrano sent one last photo. “And here are the overweight, overpaid security men you hired to protect them.” Two white men, naked and bound, guns held to their heads stared in fearful humiliation at the camera. “Do you wish to accept our new number?”

Deltrano quoted a figure that halved that of the original shipment.

Stunned, the American said nothing.

Deltrano whispered a command into a second phone and the head of one of the naked men exploded from a gunshot. The man beside him, drenched with warm visceral matter, screamed for his life.

“This is the last time I ask. Do you accept our new figure?”

“I accept. Yes, God, yes.”

Deltrano ended the call, went to the kitchen and got a
cold Canadian beer, a gift from a distributor in Toronto. Upon his return, one of his secure lines was ringing. He didn't recognize the number. Deltrano checked his state-of-the-art call tracking system. The call was coming from Las Vegas, Nevada. Deltrano answered.

“Sí?”

“My Spanish is not so good, so I'll say this in English, okay?”

The voice was coming through a voice changer, making it sound digitized, robotic. Deltrano listened.

“This is for Samson Zartosa and concerns the unsolved murder of his brother Eduardo twenty years ago in San Francisco. Fate, it seems, has delivered an answer. The mother in the Phoenix kidnapping, Cora, is responsible for Eduardo's murder. She was there.

“Tell Zartosa that no matter what he hears or sees, all of his attention should be focused on Cora. To prove the validity of my information, tell Zartosa that I know Eduardo died with God in his hand.”

The line went dead.

Who was this caller? How did he get this number? Was this a police tactic?
Deltrano's mind raced. He used the most current phone tracking program, obtained from a military intelligence source; he had linked it to credit card and financial databases obtained through several international banks controlled by the cartel.

The number came up for a cell phone owned by Harry Burgelmeyer, of Muncie, Indiana. A deeper check showed he owned a tow truck company in Muncie. Recent credit card use showed he was a guest at Caesars. Deltrano called the cell phone number. It rang through to the message: “You've got Harry. You know what to do and I'll get back to you. If you need service, call the shop's twenty-four-hour line.”

Deltrano went with his instinct: Harry's phone was stolen for the call.

By who? Why? And was the information true?

After ruling out Harry Burgelmeyer, Deltrano continued using all of the cartel's resources to try to track down the person behind the call. He worked at it in vain for some forty-five minutes until he heard distant thunder, rising until it grew deafening.

Paintings rattled on the walls as the helicopter ferrying Samson Zartosa from his private airstrip landed on the compound's helipad. He was returning from a business meeting in Buenos Aires.

Deltrano's hair lifted in the prop wash as he greeted Zartosa, taking his bags as he walked with him into the house.

“I need to piss, then a little swim and eat, Garcia. Then we'll talk.”

Twenty minutes later, servants brought them club sandwiches at the poolside. The two men sat alone, working, while armed guards patrolled the grounds.

Deltrano had two laptops showing Zartosa the latest shipments, updating him on issues and outstanding security matters.

“You've taken care of the asshole in New York, Garcia?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I am growing tied of our situation in Arizona. On the plane I saw the latest news, all those pictures, all this attention on us. I don't like it, of course. We need to end it.”

“Just before you landed, I got a call, a strange call. I'm sorry to speak of this, but I think you should be aware. It was about Eduardo's murder.”

“Eduardo?”

As Deltrano recounted the call, he watched a dark curtain fall over Zartosa. It was Samson who had flown alone to California to bring the body of his little brother home.

“The caller said to tell you that he knew that Eduardo
had died with God in his hand. What does that mean, Sam?”

Zartosa's gaze bored into Deltrano, who then watched pain seep into Zartosa's eyes.

“It means the information is true. Only those who witnessed Eduardo die would know what was in his hand. Do we know who called?”

“We're working on finding out.”

“And the caller said the mother in the Phoenix kidnapping case is behind Eduardo's murder?”

“Yes. What do you want me to do?”

“I need to be alone, to think.”

Samson Zartosa looked to the mountains and back on his life, back to when he was a boy growing up with his brothers in the barrio in Juarez. For a few joyous years, they were so happy, never realizing how poor they were because everybody was poor.

Samson, Hector and Eduardo did everything together—played together, ate together, bathed together, slept in the same bed and dreamed together. Eduardo was always in the middle, safe between his two older brothers.

“I want to be a pilot and fly jets when I grow up,” he said.

“I want to be a bullfighter,” Hector said.

“I want to lead an army like Zapata,” Samson said.

Then came the night of their father's murder, the night the Zartosa family's destiny was written in blood.

They were all gone now, his mother, father, Hector and Eduardo.

While Zartosa could do nothing about his mother's death, he had avenged his father's murder and his brother Hector's murder. He thought back to that long flight from California with Eduardo's coffin in the belly of the plane—
I want to be a pilot
—thought back to the cemetery where Eduardo was buried.

Who would have thought that in all the galaxies of
chance that this arrogance by the Americans—Salazar, Johnson, this Lyle Galviera—to plot a betrayal of the cartel, would actually lead him to Eduardo's killer?

Anger began to bubble in the pit of Zartosa's stomach.

At first Zartosa only wanted to use Galviera's girlfriend's daughter to draw him out, to retrieve their stolen millions and teach them all a lesson about the Norte Cartel.

He had even contemplated returning the girl—if they'd cooperated.

But now this happens.

Zartosa thought of Cora, thought of the piece of information the caller had given:
Eduardo died with God in his hand
.

This changes everything.

Zartosa picked up his house phone and pressed a button.

“Garcia?”

“Yes.”

Garcia was like a brother to Zartosa. Garcia had grown up with him, with Hector, with Eduardo and was the first to join their little gang after they'd avenged their father's murder.

“Garcia—” Zartosa cleared his throat “—is everything still in play for Arizona?”

“Everything is in play.”

“You know Eduardo was the best of us all.”

“He was, Sam.”

“You know when we lowered him into the ground I made him a promise.”

“I was there beside you when you made it.”

“It is time to honor my promise.”

Phoenix, Arizona

A
s Cora, her lawyer and her brother were led through the FBI offices, she remembered that distant night when she'd given birth to Tilly.

She recalled the antiseptic smells, the blinding lights, everyone masked, leaving her afraid and alone, until the moment she held her baby in her arms.

Now her fear that she would never hold Tilly again grew with each step she took. It carried her along a blue hazy stream of sounds and images that flowed to the truth buried in her past.

They'd arrived at a large meeting room.

Here again were Hackett; Larson; their boss, Bruller; and the two San Francisco inspectors, Paul Pruitt and Russ Moseley.

“We'll be observing,” Pruitt said after the usual greetings. “We helped Agent Hackett with some questions. Then we'll talk to you afterward about your time in San Francisco.”

Cora nodded before turning to Oren Krendler, the FBI's polygraph examiner. On the polished table beside him was a collection of files next to a hard-shell case.

“I will need some time alone to chat with you.” Krendler offered Cora an officious smile.

After the others left, he acknowledged her anxiety.
“I've been doing this a long time and I know you're nervous—that's expected.” He unscrewed a fountain pen and for the next twenty minutes, asked her about her medical history, about medication, if she felt rested, able and willing to help with the investigation by undergoing the examination.

Satisfied that Cora was a capable subject, Krendler then snapped open the latches of his case and showed her his polygraph machine. He tried to make her comfortable with it, telling her that it was an older standard five-pen analog that he swore by.

“These models are very efficient.”

The machine worked by using instruments he would connect near Cora's heart and on her fingertips to electronically measure her breathing, perspiration, respiratory activity, galvanic skin reflex, blood and pulse rate, recording her responses on a moving chart as she answered questions.

Krendler said the questions would concern her original statements to the FBI about the kidnapping, her relation to it and her time in San Francisco. He would look at how her answers fit with the facts and known evidence, analyze her chart and determine one of three possible outcomes: She was truthful, untruthful, or the results were inconclusive.

Cora understood and was ready.

When the others returned, Hackett came to her and said, “Before we get started, I want to advise you of your rights.”

She glanced at Baker-Brown, who nodded, and Hackett proceeded.

“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you…”
How did her life come to this?
“Do you understand each of these rights I have explained to you?”
No, I do not understand any of this
. “Having these rights in mind, do you wish to proceed?”

“Yes.”

Hackett and the others took seats at one end of the room, behind Cora, who sat in a chair facing Krendler. As he connected her to the machine, she tried to remain calm.

This was her moment of reckoning.

Krendler began with establishing questions, reminding Cora to answer “yes” or “no.”

“Is your name Cora Martin?”

“Yes.”

“Did you change your name from Cora Gannon?”

“Yes.”

“Were you born in Buffalo, New York?”

“Yes.”

“Are your parents deceased?”

The needles scratched the graph paper. “Yes.”

“Do you have any sisters?”

“No.”

“Do you have any brothers?”

“Yes.”

“Is Jack Gannon your brother?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have a daughter?”

“Yes.”

“Are you married?”

“No.”

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

Cora hesitated.

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“I did.”

“Answer yes or no, please.”

“No.”

“Are you employed at Quick Draw Courier?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know Lyle Galviera?”

“Yes.”

“Did you have a romantic relationship with Lyle Galviera?”

“Yes.”

“Was your daughter kidnapped from your house?”

“Yes.”

“Are you in any way responsible for her kidnapping?”

Cora hesitated for one moment, then another.

“Are you in any way responsible for her kidnapping?”

A tear rolled down her cheek.

“I feel that I am.”

“Answer yes or no, please.”

“I don't know.”

Krendler made notations on the graph paper with his fountain pen.

“We'll move on. Prior to your daughter's kidnapping, were you aware of Lyle Galviera's involvement in any illegal activity?”

“No.”

“Did you know he associated with people involved in criminal activity?”

“No.”

“Do you presently know the whereabouts of Lyle Galviera?”

“No.”

“Since the kidnapping, have you had any contact with Lyle Galviera?”

“No.”

“Do you presently know the whereabouts of your daughter?”

“No.”

“Do you know who is responsible for your daughter's kidnapping?”

“No.”

“Have you ever used illegal drugs?”

“Yes.”

“Are you currently using illegal drugs?”

“No.”

“Do you know Octavio Sergio Salazar?”

“No. Wait, yes. No. I mean I know that name from the news reports on the men murdered—”

“Answer yes or no, please. Do you know Octavio Sergio Salazar?”

“No.”

“Do you know John Walker Johnson?”

“No.”

“Do you know Ruiz Limon-Rocha?”

“No.”

“Do you know Alfredo Hector Tecaza?”

“No.”

“Do you know of Carlos Manolo Sanchez, or anyone using that alias?”

“No.”

“Did you ever reside in San Francisco, California?”

“Yes.”

“Were you residing in San Francisco in 1991?”

“Yes.”

“Were you using illegal drugs at that time?”

“Yes.”

“Did you commit any criminal acts at that time?”

Cora's chin crumpled.

“Did you commit any criminal acts at that time?”

“Yes.”

“Were you ever arrested for your crimes?”

“No.”

“Do you know Donald Montradori?”

“No.”

“Do you know a man named Donnie Cargo?”

“Yes.”

“Did you associate with Donnie Cargo in San Francisco?”

Cora hesitated and started breathing a little deeper.

“Yes.”

“Did you and Donnie Cargo associate with a man named Vic?”

“Yes.”

“Did you associate with Eduardo Zartosa?”

“No.”

“Did you ever know a person named Eduardo Zartosa?”

“No. I don't know who that is.”

“Yes or no, please.”

“No.”

“Were you, Vic and Donnie Cargo ever in the vicinity of Haight-Ashbury in 1991?” Cora hesitated.

“Yes.”

“Were you in the vicinity of Belvedere and Waller?”

“I think so. Yes.”

“Was a fourth person present?”

“Yes.”

“Was a gun present?”

“Yes.”

Tears rolled down her face. It was raining so hard that night….

…Donnie wheels the car hard…there's a shadow standing under the building's overhang…taking shelter from the rain…. She's with Donnie and Vic. Vic's angry. Crazy mother is dealing on my territory…. Donnie and Vic leap out…don't leave me alone…she's so wired…wired to heaven she floats from the car…floating…everything turns blue…shouting…arguing…she's there…no, she's not anywhere… Vic's shouting, swearing…. What's happening…a gun…the muzzle flashes fire in the night… CRACK…groaning…

“Was someone shot?”

“Yes.”

“Were you present when someone was shot?”

…screams…now there's a hot gun in her hand and someone's squirming on the ground…. Donnie…Vic,
what's happening…she's holding the gun…why…why is the gun in her hand…did she fire the gun…the car is leaving…. Donnie and Vic are leaving…leaving her behind… DONNIEEE… VIC…

“Were you present when someone was shot?”

…everything is blue…confusing in the rain…who'll stop the rain…trouble on the rise…a hand seizes her ankle…a voice gurgling…begging…pulling her down to her knees…to see that he's young like her…scared like her…eyes blazing…help me…he squeezes…God help!!…
por favor…
touching him…warm blood on her hands…so much blood…help me…he's been shot…somebody help…the rain glistening on his face…he's young like her…begging in Spanish
…por favor…por favor…
he's praying in Spanish…he's dying…I'm sorry
…por favor…
she supports his head…I'm so sorry…holds his hand…sirens approaching
…por favor…
sirens getting louder…she's alone with him…with the gun…blood on her hands…sirens…I'm sorry…they're coming
…por favor…
he's calling his mother…he's dying…she has to go
…por favor…
I'm sorry…she has to run…but she can't leave him to die like this…I'm so sorry…she removes her necklace…a crucifix…he receives it…crushes it hard in his hand…blood to blood…I'm so sorry…blood on her hands she runs away
…por favor…
his pleas echo…follow her, haunt her in the rain…rip into her
…por favor…
she throws the gun into the trash and runs…God please forgive me…and runs…leaving him to die…alone in the rain clutching the crucifix her mother and father gave her for her fourteenth birthday at the kitchen table in their home in Buffalo…she ached for home…sirens are screaming…she is screaming…and running…running for her life…

Krendler is asking her…

“Was someone shot?”

“Yes.”

“Were you present when someone was shot?”

“Yes.”

“Did you shoot someone?”

The needles of the polygraph swayed wildly as if scratching in desperation.

“Did you shoot anyone?”

She turned in her chair. Her eyes filled with pain, she found her brother.

“Cora, please face me and answer the question,” Krendler said. “Did you shoot anyone?”

Cora did not turn back. She met the stares of Hackett, Pruitt and the other investigators.

“I can't do this anymore,” she said.

Krendler disconnected Cora from the machine. Then, against Baker-Brown's advice, she began recounting all she could of that rainy night.

“I was so stoned. I nearly died later when Vic told me that I shot the guy, that I took the gun from them and shot him. I don't remember doing that. I really don't think I did that. I was so wired. Donnie disappeared. I never saw Donnie again. But Vic told me I did it.” Cora sobbed. “Maybe I did. Vic said that the kid was connected to very bad drug people who would come after me, come after my family in Buffalo. So I could never go home again. Never contact my family. Vic said he would watch over me, that what happened would be our secret, that I had to hide and never breathe a word to anyone. I was terrified. He sent me to New York, then Miami. Then I went to L.A., where he had set things up.”

Cora was anguished by what she'd done.

“I never should have left him to die alone. After the shooting I wondered about him. Who was the young man who died on the street in the rain? Did he have a family? I was going to check the San Francisco papers to see what they'd reported, but I didn't. It was too painful. I didn't want to know. I never knew anything about him.”

While Cora was running, she had no one to turn to. Vic had sent her money, which she used for drugs. She was so messed up and so scared. She ached to go home
but thought she would be followed and killed, along with her family. Vic had control over much of her life because he knew about that night in San Francisco.

Cora looked to her brother for understanding but his face betrayed nothing.

“For ten years I drifted,” she said, “scraping along the bottom, believing I had taken a life and wasted my own. Then I was given a miracle. I had Tilly. She was my salvation, my chance to start over. I pulled myself together for her.”

Still, for some twenty years Cora had been tormented by guilt. Struggling to build a good life, she never told a soul about her past.

“I know I was wrong not to tell you when you were trying to help me find Tilly. I kept this one secret to protect Tilly, to keep anyone, especially cartels, from knowing my connection to the San Francisco murder because that would guarantee her death. If no one knows, then there's hope they might let her go.

“I swear to you that I am not involved in Tilly's kidnapping. I've worked hard at making a good life for her. I know nothing about what Lyle was up to. Nothing. Yes, I did dream that maybe I could have a better life with him, for Tilly, but that dream died the night she was kidnapped. Over the years, I read legal stuff about murder, about participating in crimes that result in murder. Before you arrest me, I beg that if you find Tilly safe, you will let me hold her one last time.”

A long moment of silence passed before Hackett shot Pruitt a glance.

“Cora,” Pruitt said, “Donald Montradori, the man you knew as Donnie Cargo, died a short time ago in Canada.”

“What?”

“Cancer. Before he died, he gave us a sworn statement about what happened that night. After seeing you
pleading for your daughter on the news, he wanted to clear his conscience. All I can tell you is that he said that you did not fire the gun. After the shooting, the gun was placed in your hands. He and Vic knew that you were too high to remember anything. He said you had nothing to do with the murder and that Vic knew the truth.”