No Way Back: A Novel (31 page)

“Agent Dokes is unavailable right now. I can assist you if you have information on the Wendy Gould case you’d like to pass on.”

“I do have information.” The man took off his sunglasses. “I want you to tell him I also have information about the tenth of March in Culiacán.”

The operator hesitated. “Can I have your name, please, sir? I’ll need to tell him who this is.”

“Just tell him it’s about Culiacán. He’ll come to the phone.”

He waited; the operator placed him on hold. He figured they had already begun a trace, but he had planned this out very carefully over the long ride out and a trace didn’t bother him now. Finally he was patched through to another line. The voice that answered sounded officious and not happy to be summoned. “This is Special Agent Dokes.”

“I know where she’s headed,” the man said, squinting into the setting sun.

“Who?” the Homeland Security agent answered, pretending surprise.

“You know who I’m talking about.”

“If you have information you’d like to share concerning a federal investigation, I can certainly pass you back to the tip-line operator . . .”

“If that’s what you want. I just thought this was something you were far better off knowing yourself.”

“Who is this?” Dokes lowered his voice, his tone still commanding.

“The better question would be
where . . .
where I am. And the answer would be Route One-Six-Oh in Colorado. I think you know that road, don’t you,
agente
? The town it goes through?”

There was a silence on the other end.

“She’s in Gillian,” the pockmarked man said. “And guess who she’s brought with her. Someone else you may be interested in. Someone Eduardo Cano would wet his panties to find.” He laughed. “You know why they’ve come here. So that ought to make you sleep like a baby tonight, right, huh
agente
?”

The man hung up and smiled, knowing where the next call would go.

And the call after that.

See you soon, amigo,
the man said, chuckling, as he got back into his car.

It felt like he hadn’t smiled in years.

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

T
he next morning we waited outside Lasser’s company’s headquarters.

Apache Sales and Marketing was situated in a modern, one-story brick-and-glass building attached to a large warehouse in a business park on Route 17, five miles outside town. I had no idea how I’d go about convincing him to tell us what we were there for. “I’m Wendy Gould. I’m on the run for the murder of my husband and for shooting a Homeland Security agent. I know you’ve been secretly selling weapons to the Mexican drug cartels. And knowing why your daughter was killed is the only way I can clear my name and show I’m innocent . . .”

That would sell.

He’d call the cops on us immediately. There had to be some kind of security department in a business this size; they wouldn’t even let me leave. No, I had to talk to him when he was alone. At home, or on his way back from lunch maybe. Not to mention that he wasn’t exactly an innocent victim in all this and had likely done things that had gotten his daughter killed. Things, like Harold said, he would absolutely want to protect.

We drove into the parking lot at 8:30
A
.
M
. and noticed an empty space marked
LASSER
next to the building’s entrance. He wasn’t there. We parked our Toyota in a visitor’s space nearby. An hour passed. A couple of dozen employees arrived and went inside. No Lasser. The longer he didn’t show up, the more worried I became. What if the guy wasn’t even around? What if he was on a business trip, visiting his other locations? Or on holiday? We could wait another day for him, maybe two. But not indefinitely. We’d stick out pretty good.

Around 10:00
A
.
M
., I was set to do the same thing I’d done while I was waiting for Harold at his office, call in and ask for him, when a white Audi A6 pulled into the driveway and parked in Lasser’s spot.

A decal on the back windshield read
UNIVERSITY
OF
DENVER
.

“That’s him!”

He stepped out of the car, and I recognized him immediately from the photos on Apache’s website. He was medium height and solidly built, wearing a blue North Face nylon jacket, plaid shirt, no tie. Fancy boots. He had close-cropped light hair and a sharp, chiseled face. He seemed around fifty.

He was on his cell phone, a leather satchel slung over his shoulder. He went behind his car and passed about ten feet from us. Lauritzia gave me a nod of good luck. I opened the door, but something held me back.

He was occupied. I knew it wouldn’t work, just running up and starting in. This guy had dealt with the cartels. His daughter had been killed four years earlier in some kind of retaliation. Harold’s voice echoed again:
You don’t have a clue what they have to hide
.

I hesitated, watching Lasser end his phone call and head up to the entrance. He opened the glass doors and went inside.

“I’m sorry.” I turned to Lauritzia. “I couldn’t do it now.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not.” I noticed my hands were shaking. I was afraid.

I suddenly realized how crazy it was to try and do this at his office. I suggested we could follow him when he went to lunch. But as we sat, people going in and out, large delivery trucks heading around to the loading gates, another hour going by, I just said the hell with it and took out my phone. “I can’t wait any longer.”

I called the number I had for Lasser’s company. An operator answered. “Apache Sales and Marketing.”

“Mr. Lasser, please.”

“One moment, please.”

I was patched through to a secretary. An accommodating voice came on. “Mr. Lasser’s office.”

“Is Mr. Lasser there?”

“May I say who’s calling?”

I took a breath. I hadn’t rehearsed this. I wasn’t sure what to say. “This may seem a bit out of the blue . . . but it relates to his daughter . . . Ana.” I shut my eyes. But what else was there to say?

If pauses could kill, this one was lethal. The voice on the other end grew guarded. “Can I ask you to be more specific, please?”

“I can’t . . . It’ll only take a minute of his time . . .” I was pretty much stammering.
“Please.”

My heart started to race as she paused an awkward moment more and then told me to hold on. I wasn’t sure that Lasser would even take the call. His daughter had been dead for close to four years now, so while the pain of it might have receded some, someone calling like this from out of nowhere, bringing it up again, might only hurtle him back to a place he did not want to be.

Then I heard someone pick up. “This is Bob Lasser.”

My heart went completely still. My throat dry. His voice was clipped and not particularly friendly. A knot formed in my throat. “Mr. Lasser, thank you for taking the call. I know I made that sound a bit vague . . .”

“I’m on the line,” he answered, “at least for about as long as it takes to tell you I’m not in the habit of discussing personal matters with someone I don’t know. Just what is it about my daughter, Ms. . . . ?”

“I was hoping I could get some time with you, Mr. Lasser. Alone. Maybe outside the office. Today, if that would work out for you. I have something I need to go over with you, and you’re the only person who can help me. I’ve come a long way.”

“Help
you
? You’re here? In Gillian?” He sounded surprised.

“Yes. I am.”

“Then in the ten seconds I’m going to allot you to explain why you’ve contacted me, just exactly what does this have to do with Ana?”

“I’m sorry, I just can’t tell you over the phone. But I know about the circumstances of her death. Including why . . . I also know how hard it is to lose someone.
I’ve
lost someone . . .”

“Listen, whoever the hell you are, I’m sorry, but I don’t really have the time or the inclination to go through this with you. I’m going to hang up now and ask you not to ever—”

“Do you know the name Curtis Kitchner?” I interrupted him.

This time there was only silence. A silence that strongly suggested that he did. Or that his secretary was dialing the police on the other phone at this very second.

“Are you a reporter? Because if you are, I’m sure you’ve been told, I don’t speak to them. At least, not about this . . . not to mention, you’re also a little late to the party. This all happened years ago. Now I’m going to hang up, so thank you very much for respecting the privacy of my family—”

“I’m not a reporter,” I said. I waited for the
click
, but there was none. “Curtis was. And now he’s dead. He was killed. Ten days ago in New York. I don’t know if you know. In a hotel room. By—”

“I watch the news.” He cut me off. “I know what happened. And what happened ought to make it pretty clear to you, you shouldn’t go around asking similar types of questions. Now this conversation is over, whoever you are. Do not bother me again. Don’t call me here. Don’t call me at home. Don’t bother my family. If you do, I’ll be calling the police. This is a small town, and I’m very well connected in it. Just get yourself out of town. Do you understand?”

This time I did hear the
click
, my heart plummeting with it. I turned to Lauritzia.

“I could hear the whole thing,” she said. “He sounds like a dangerous man. Maybe he’s right. Maybe we should go back.”

“To what, jail? And what for you—hiding?”

“If you call again, he could get the police on you as he said, and then what happens? Even worse . . .”

“We’ve come this far. I need to talk to him. Besides,” I said, putting the car in gear, “next time I’m not going to call.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

T
he heavyset man with the goatee in the poplin suit and white linen shirt stepped up to the passport control booth at the Denver International Airport. He nodded politely to the blue-shirted officer there and put his Guatemalan passport through the glass.

José Maria Rivera.

“How long do you plan to spend in the United States, Mr. Rivera?” the immigration officer inquired, looking up and eyeing him through the glass.

“Around ten days. I’m doing some business in Colorado,” the portly man said.

“What kind of business?” The immigration official flipped through the green passport, which indicated that the person in front of him was a very worldly man. There were stamps from Germany and the United Kingdom. Honduras, Argentina, and Brazil. Even from the United States several times.

“I’m in real estate. I represent a buyer in Central America who is looking at an investment here.”

“Yet you came in from Mexico?”

“My son is studying medicine there. In Mexico City. I try to visit when I can.”

The officer nodded and ran the document through the scanner, tapping into the shared databases of Homeland Security, the FBI, and Interpol. Not a single bead of sweat ran down the traveler’s face. Why should it? He had been through these interviews routinely under a number of different aliases.
And they say that the U.S. border with Mexico is porous,
he said to himself, chuckling. The easiest way to get in was to go right through the front door.

“My neighbor’s son is studying to be a doctor,” the immigration officer said with a sigh. “
Mine . . .
can’t figure out what he wants to be.” He leafed to an open page in the passport and gave it a stamp. “I hope your business goes well,” the official said, and pushed it back through the glass.

Eduardo Cano smiled and tucked it into his jacket pocket.

“And welcome to the United States.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

W
e couldn’t hang around Lasser’s place forever without attracting attention. So we crossed the road to another company’s parking lot that gave us a view of the road.

I was hoping Lasser would come out to lunch. He never did.

Around 3:00
P
.
M
., Lauritzia began to complain about feeling weak. Maybe from the drive out or the altitude—we were at eight thousand feet. So I ran her back to the motel to lie down. When I got back, Lasser’s Audi was still in its space. Around five, it began to get dark. Employees started to leave. I was still annoyed and frustrated that my call had gone so poorly.

My prepaid cell phone rang. Other than Lauritzia, there was only one person who had the number. It was almost seven back home.

“How’s it going?” Harold asked.

“It’s going,” I replied halfheartedly. I told him about my botched call. “You find out anything I should know?”

He was continuing to look into Lasser’s affairs, trying to confirm the gun transactions to Mexico.

“I have someone digging into the General Accounting Office records in Washington. According to what he’s found, Apache Sales and Marketing has been an approved government vendor for some twelve years. It was started by his father, selling to Indian reservations. He died in 1995. Then they opened up on the border and began doing consumer goods sales to wealthy Mexicans who came across the border. It was like a boom town back then. They would come over for the day and pay cash for Sonys, Samsung. Washers and dryers. Brands that were three times as expensive down there. They would literally back up trucks. It was a gray-market kind of thing, and both governments just looked the other way. Then in 1994 the North American Free Trade Agreement was enacted and that was the end of all that. These brands could now all sell direct without the punishing tariffs. Apache is a private firm, so actual numbers aren’t available, but in 2008 and 2009, the GAO lists several million dollars a year done in business with the U.S. government.”

“How many millions?”

“Two point five in ’08. Three point seven in ’09.”

“That is a lot. Any chance you happened to find invoices that list the items sold?”