The Devil's Necktie (17 page)

“Yeah, it's a fucking laugh riot, Ortega,” Jack said from inside his loft, eliciting another bout of laughter from his friend.

“C'mon, you're out there trying to keep all those starlets to yourself. You used to be a giving man.”

“Busted, but it's hard work having to beat them off with a stick.”

“Now you're talking, brother.”

With the pleasantries out of the way, Kenny got down to business.

“Nothing on Arturo Delgado. He's entirely off the grid if he's still alive, and that's up for debate. Word from the ‘office' was that he was called back to Colombia after his failure with operation Green Door. Faced a tribunal—that shredded his leg with an AK while he was hanging over an interrogation pit—and disappeared.”

Jack kept mum, but after spotting Delgado in person, he seriously doubted he was out of the game. It did explain the slight limp.

“I spoke with your old buddy Mateo. He sent his best. He's a real estate mogul now. Can you believe it? Found a way to flip foreclosed properties. He's making a killing right here in Miami while everybody else is still losing their shirts. But he'd do anything for
el jefe
. Said he'd put in a few calls and get back to me.”

Jack didn't doubt it for a second. Mateo was the best CI he had ever worked with. Brilliant, sharp looking, and fearless. Photographic memory. If he hadn't been sucked into the cartel's lure of easy money, with his quick wits and MBA he could have ended up the CEO of General Electric. He was that good. As it was, Mateo had worked off a twenty-five-year prison sentence and owed his personal freedom to Jack Bertolino.

“Delgado's still alive,” Jack said with dead certainty.

“Then we'll find him,” Kenny said with equal conviction. “The bus you tagged at Royce Motors is owned by Travel Associates,” he went on. “They have a fleet of eight to ten at any given time. Our particular bus was leased to Outlaws Incorporated. They're an L.A.–based hip-hop label and management company that handles all the tours for their recording artists.”

“Just for curiosity's sake, I'd like to take a look at Travel Associates,” Jack said, “see if there's any connection to Royce Motors or maybe a dummy corp for Outlaws Inc.”

Bertolino had e-mailed Kenny the information obtained from Nick Aprea's DMV search, and true to form, Ortega had gotten the job done.

“Are we thinking money laundering?”

“Just thinking.”

“Don't hurt yourself.”

“And?” Jack knew there was more. With Ortega, there was always more.

“The bus had two outstanding parking tickets—no great whoops on that score, right?—but are you ready for this? The bus was illegally parking in front of the Fountainebleau.”

“Miami.”

“Yes, sir . . . the hip-hop group Gold Nickel was playing at Mansion, over on Washington, in South Beach, and our bus was their chariot. The group checked out of the hotel Monday morning and should have rolled into L.A. on Wednesday, couple hours before you eyeballed it.”

“About the same time foreign product started hitting the street, according to McLennan. Foreign as in Dominican,” Jack said.

“A thousand keys were brought in on a go-fast boat the week before the concert. We tracked it from Colombia to the Dominican Republic; it evaded radar offshore. A piece of that could be what showed up on your coast.”

“The time line works.”

Jack liked the progression. Coke picked up and delivered to Miami. Bus arrived in town. Drives back to L.A. with the drugs in the cargo bay or in a trap, a secret compartment. Dominican coke floods the streets of Ontario.

“The driver of record was arrested last year on weapons charges,” Ortega said, on a roll now. “Carrying a concealed nine mil. He moonlights as security for Outlaw's talent. Charges were dropped when his lawyer delivered his permit to carry. He's connected, but no known gang affiliations.

“But here's the kicker. Three other men hired as roadie-slash-bodyguards, also doing concert security, all clean, except for one”—Kenny rifled through a stack of papers—“Thomas Vegas. He came up clean, but his brother was one of the twenty-seven picked up in the 18th Street Angels raid. Coincidence?” Ortega said with a flourish. “I think not.”

“Great work, Kenny. Really.”

“That's why they pay me the big bucks,” he said, deflecting the praise. Attaboys were a rare commodity in the DEA.

“I'm gonna have to spend some quality time at Royce Motors,” Jack said, moving it up on his priority list.

“Tread lightly. After last night, you're a walking bull's-eye.”

“Speaking of targets, was Ricky Hernandez under contract?”

“A card carrying G-man, working off time. Gave up the Angels' farm. He wasn't loved, but he'll be missed. Messy business, that. Why do you ask?”

“McLennan was tight-lipped when I ran it by him. Just looking for motive. Same MO as Mia.”

“Gene has one foot out the door and doesn't want to jeopardize his pension. Cut him some slack.”

Jack could live with that explanation. “Anything on Vista Haven?”

“I put in for a flight to Mykonos. Can you believe that the suits up here denied my request?” he said. “But Michael Kingman, the owner of Vista Haven, is a nonstarter. I'll interview his buddy Greg Stavos again when they're back in port the end of next week. Anything more at your end?”

“Still nothing with the P.O. box key. There are hundreds of potentials,” Jack said, letting the irritation he felt enter his voice.

“I have Mia flying out of Miami,” said Kenny, “but she'd become Sylvia Kole by the time she checked into the Ritz-Carlton Grand Cayman. She was styling, and money was not an issue. The concierge remembered her. Couldn't forget her tip, or her natural red hair.”

“That woman had sand,” Jack said with pure admiration.

“More than I can say for the banks. They're being less than forthcoming. I'll need more to go on before I can expect any cooperation.”

“I'll work it at my end. Signing off.”

“Till later,
mi hermano
.”

32

Too much information, too little time, Jack thought as he worked his way through Pro's Ranch Market, back to the manager's office, dodging shopping carts, wailing toddlers, and employees stocking shelves.

The market had the feel of an outdoor festival with the colorful banners and a mariachi band that played near the La Cocina, where the staff served up fresh Mexican dishes. With the volume of the music and the crowd of shoppers trying to compete, the decibel level in the store was ear splitting but festive.

Their La Tortilleria cranked out homemade corn tortillas. Su Panaderia offered fresh-baked bread, empanadas, cakes, and doughnuts. Then there was house-made cheese, fresh produce, and meats of all kinds. Jack was getting an appetite but chose to stay on mission.

The manager was averting a crisis in the seafood department, Jack learned after he had knocked on the office door. The assistant manager promised he was due back in five. That gave Jack time to sample the tortillas and some fresh salsa from one of the many demo stations.

He stopped at the meat department and watched as one man, a knife, and an upright band saw took apart a side of beef, cutting and slicing the meat into steaks, ribs, and chops with skill and finesse, his once white butcher's apron splattered with blood. Piling the scraps and fat onto one side of the large cutting table, he neatly stacked the finished product on the other. It left Jack feeling uneasy.

Big man, big smile, and a big hand greeted him as the door to the manager's office opened and Jack was ushered inside. The silence was welcome as the door was closed, and Manager Joseph Cardonas—a man who looked like he had visited the demo stations once too often—offered Jack a seat.

“I can see you've got your hands full, so I'll make this short,” Jack said as he flipped open a pad and checked the notes he'd taken in Sternhagen's office. “I'm looking for information on an employee who worked here from the late nineties until two thousand three. Name's Hector Lopez.”

Joseph's eyes creased into a smile, which Jack didn't understand. The manager read Jack's confusion. “I'm happy to look, but Lopez is a very common name. I wasn't here in the nineties, took over in two thousand seven. James Alfaro ran the shop back then. He's been retired three years now in August. That's when I was transferred up from Phoenix.”

“Anything you can do to help would be appreciated.”

“Why the interest?”

“Just trying to close the door on an ongoing case,” he lied, par for the course now that he was a PI.

Jack had chosen to dress like a cop that morning, but was still surprised when Cardonas didn't ask for his ID. But Jack wasn't about to question his good fortune.

The manager clicked some keys on his computer and then a few more. And then a few more. And then he cursed politely. And then he scrolled down another list and thankfully stopped.

“It's telling me that eight Lopezes worked here from ninety-five to two thousand three. Five of them were female, one Ramon Lopez is deceased, Miguel Lopez was fired in two thousand for dipping into the till, and Freddy Lopez is in his early thirties now and left Pro's Market to open his own organic produce store. No Hector Lopezes on file. Not to say he wasn't here. It's not a complete list. The supermarket strike in 2006 got nasty and someone hacked into corporate and many of the files were wiped clean. Nobody won in that strike. I can give you a printout if you like.”

Jack was disappointed but let the man print out a sheet.

He walked out of the store with a bag of fresh corn tortillas and the address of the retired manager, James Alfaro.

—

Ex-IRS agent Margaret Monahan was all business, trying to keep any trace of emotion out of her voice. Arturo Delgado was not a man she liked to disappoint. She had pulled up another chair for Delgado, who sat stiffly at her side.

“The records only go back for a five-year period,” Margaret explained.

Delgado knew that was when Alvarez first went away and Mia took control of the books.

“So, for that five-year period, regular payments were made into three different offshore corporations that had been set up in the Grand Caymans, Panama, and the Dominican Republic.”

She laid out the entire convoluted process. A year ago Mia had merged the three corporations, and all of the monies, close to the twenty-four-million mark, were transferred to the Cayman IBC and a new corporate entity.

Over the course of the past year she'd slowly acquired the shares of the consolidated companies until she controlled 98 percent of the bottom line. Two months ago, she'd liquidated her shares and wire-transferred the entire sum of twenty-four million dollars to the HSBC Bank Canada in Vancouver. And then two weeks ago she'd zero-balanced that account and wired the money to God knows where.

“It could have gone into a Swiss bank account, or any of the offshore banking centers that protect these sorts of transactions,” she concluded. “Without account numbers, passwords, and verified signatures, there's no way to get to the money even if we could trace it.”

Margaret sat perfectly still. She worried that if she reached out and touched Arturo Delgado's face, her hands would blister.

—

The Alfaro house was painted a bright pastel blue with a black slate roof, an upper-middle-class California ranch. The garden had so many flowering annuals in bloom that it looked like a commercial for a garden center.

Jack sat uncomfortably on a blue Adirondack chair that matched the color of the house, with James Alfaro seated next to him. He had brought the tortillas as a gift, and the man gratefully received them.

“It's not my shop anymore, so I don't go back all that often. A man can do only so many victory laps.”

“I know what you mean,” Jack said, hoping to expedite the interview but not wanting to offend.

“I liked golf, but it didn't like me back, so the garden won.” Alfaro's face broke into a deep craggy smile that showed off straight teeth the color of aged ivory. His hair was astonishingly white and offset his dark brown skin, which had seen more that its share of sun.

“Looks like a piece of heaven,” Jack commented. “Now, what I'm interested in,” he said, trying to steer the conversation, “is anything you can tell me about an employee who worked for you back in the late nineties till about two thousand three. Name's Hector Lopez.”

Jack knew that he was on to something as soon as the name passed his lips. Alfaro's expression darkened.

“Funny thing about that,” he said.

“How so?”

“I remember Lopez very well. He was a good man. Hard worker. Loved America. He was a citizen and proud of it. Never missed a day of work and then one day he picked up and left without a word. No thank you, no good-bye, no nothing. Wasn't right.”

“What do you think happened?”

“A man doesn't leave a wife, a son, and a high-paying job to move back to Mexico. People are dropping dead crossing the desert to come in illegally.”

Obviously, the man had spent some time worrying over this.

“Any ideas?”

“I went over to the Lopez home after a couple of days of not hearing word one. Thought there might have been a family emergency or something. Maybe he had a heart attack. Something.”

“Who did you speak to?”

“I spoke with Hector Junior. Or tried to.”

Alfaro looked like he was struggling with the memory, and Jack didn't want him to get lost and lose his train of thought.

“What was the problem with the boy?”

James's brow furrowed, and then he made a mental decision and continued. “He was off somehow.”

Jack had used the same description when he'd met with Joan Sternhagen, the guidance counselor. He sat up a little straighter.

“Off how, Mr. Alfaro?”

“It was something about his eyes. Like he was challenging me. Said his father was homesick and went back to Mexico to visit his family. But I remembered very clearly that both of Lopez's parents had passed away the previous year, within a month of each other. Father first, mother died of a broken heart soon after. We had discussed it, you see. And I approved a two-week paid vacation so he could go back to—”

“Guadalajara,” Jack interjected.

“That sounds about right, to handle the arrangements,” the older man said in almost a musing tone. “I asked the boy if I could speak with his mother and was told she wasn't at home. Again, it was more a challenge than a statement. You know,” he went on, “I had the strangest feeling that she was in the living room, listening to our conversation, but I didn't push it. I asked the kid to have his father give me a call when he spoke with him, and I left. What could I do?”

Jack hiked up his shoulders by way of an answer, not wanting to stop the flow.

“I looked back at their house as soon as I got into my car and watched the boy close the door. Big kid, built like a bull. He had the strangest smile on his face. It was . . . unnatural somehow. Made me feel bad, you know, in my stomach.”

“And you never spoke with Mr. Lopez again?” Jack asked.

“Never. Not a word. I spoke with my wife about it and then filed a police report the following week. But, well, you know how it is. Cops—oh, excuse me, the police—couldn't spare the time. A wetback gone home. End of story.”

Jack had butted heads with racism in his career. Hell, the old Irish guard had never been fond of the Italians. Some things never changed.

“I'll look into it,” Jack said, “let you know if I discover anything of interest.”

“I'd appreciate that,” Alfaro said before he turned thoughtful again. “Didn't seem right . . . good pay . . . benefits . . . great butcher . . .”

“Lopez was a butcher?”

Jack got that familiar itch on the back of his neck—like an electric current—when a case was about to break, or when a piece of a puzzle fit snugly onto the game board.

“Talented man. Up for a promotion to run the entire department.”

Jack and Mr. Alfaro stood at the same time. Both men grunted in unison. Jack stretched his back. There was a storm front moving in, and the clouds blowing over the San Bernardino Mountains were taking on an ominous gray hue.

A butcher. A butcher's knot. Jack didn't believe in coincidences.