The Execution (21 page)

CHAPTER 54

C
huparosa entered the garage dressed in a pair of light coveralls. He lifted the rear door of the fish truck with the Teixeira Brothers logo on the side and loaded in the deep tray of finely chopped ice.

He opened the four cases of shellfish, kneeling on the floor of the van. Blue Points, Chincoteagues, littlenecks, and Wellfleets, one box each. He spread the fresh ice in and around the oysters.

Packed in the ice beneath several layers of Wellfleets were the plastic frames of two Glock 17s. The trigger guards of each frame had been ground off, and all of the straight edges of the frame and handgrips had been modified with a Dremel tool in order to mimic the shape and roughness of an oyster.

Both guns had been fieldstripped, their slides and magazines distributed in the lining of a box of oyster knives. Each handle of the sixty-eight knives contained a single 124-grain 9mm Hydra-Shok hollow-point round sealed inside a lead lining so that they could not be detected by X-rays.

The barrels of the Glocks had been inserted inside the handle of a hand truck he had bought at the Home Depot on DeKalb Avenue in Brooklyn.

Silencers were the easy part. The two AAC Ti-RANT cans were top-of-the-line military-grade suppressors, slightly modified. Each had been disassembled, the tubes and pistons painted the same color as the hand truck and attached to the cross member, the baffles disassembled and slid onto the handles of the truck in place of the original rubber grips and painted matte black.

The locking blocks of the Glocks, too, had been painted and attached unobtrusively to the frame of the hand truck with Loctite. All that was left of the Glocks were the trigger groups, the trigger bars, the sears, and the trigger connectors—all of which were small pieces containing little more metal than a ballpoint pen. They were installed inside a tablet computer labeled
ORDER TRACKING MODULE
, effectively immune from detection.

The most distinctive parts—the gun barrels—had been set aside. They would have the most distinctive X-ray profiles, and so they would have to go in through an entirely different route.

Chuparosa heard footsteps and grasped the handle of the knife he carried in his belt, just as a precaution. He turned and waited.

Tomás Calibri came around the corner carrying two formal-looking outfits on hangers, wrapped in dry cleaner’s clear plastic. Tuxedo shirts and black pants.

Servers’ uniforms.

From his pocket Calibri pulled out two black bow ties.

“I hope you know how to tie a real bow tie,
patrón
?”

CHAPTER 55

F
isk and Garza spent some time out of his vehicle at the security station before the gate built into the twelve-foot-high stone wall. It was a beautiful, blue-sky day on Long Island. Their respective credentials were examined by a security guard while a second guard, a backup, remained inside the booth, watching them carefully.

The first guard carried their identification into the guard booth and spent a considerable amount of time on the telephone. He finally returned, again checked their faces against their identification cards, and only then signaled the second guard to roll back the gate.

When they were back inside his car and rolling up the wide driveway, Fisk said, “Getting on an airplane is easier than that.”

The lawn was beautifully landscaped, the main house not coming into view until the wide driveway took a leftward turn.

The mansion was slate roofed, with multiple dormer windows set symmetrically between red-trimmed gables. It was three stories and wide, fronted by a large circular driveway ringed by perfect green shrubs, offset by a pond with a fountain in its center. Picture perfect against a clear blue sky on a warm September day.

“My goodness,” said Fisk.

“How much would you say?” asked Garza.

Fisk said, “Seven million. The upkeep alone would be beyond any cop’s reach.”

“All from one tiny restaurant?” said Garza.

They parked outside the front door. The door was opened by a butler, who welcomed them inside. He was Mexican by appearance, stern looking, in his fifties. “Comandante and Detective, Don Andrés insists upon a strict no-gun policy inside his home,” said the butler.

Fisk said, “That is simply not possible.”

“I am afraid I will have to insist. Or else Don Andrés will not be available to sit with you today.”

Fisk checked with Garza to be sure he was speaking for both of them. “You tell your boss that we wear our weapons wherever we go.”

A woman stepped into the entrance from one of the three rooms that fed into it. “Then I will have to insist,” she said.

Fisk smiled. “Marshal Graben.” The U.S. marshal he had seen at the restaurant during the briefing.

“Good to see you again, Fisk. You shouldn’t be here.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s no concern of yours. But since Andrés León does not object, I am making it happen. But not with your service pieces. Again—his house, his rules.”

“Fine,” said Garza, unsnapping her holster and removing her Beretta.

Fisk, after a moment’s consideration, pulled out his Glock.

The butler was waiting with an open box. They laid them inside.

“And any electronic devices,” added the butler.

Fisk glanced sideways at Graben before relinquishing his phone. Garza laid hers inside the box next to Fisk’s.

The butler closed the box and set it on a table near the door. “Thank you,” said the butler. “Now, if you don’t mind . . .”

He did not give them a chance to mind. The butler frisked Fisk, thoroughly and professionally. As a courtesy, Graben walked over to pat down Garza.

Garza stared at the marshal during the frisking.

“Satisfied?” said Fisk.

Graben said, “He is on the patio in back.”

Fisk said, “Care to draw us a map?”

CHAPTER 56

T
hrough an open glass door in the back, they stepped down onto a brick patio arranged in a wide circle with inlaid tiles set to resemble a glowing sun. Beyond the patio, trees rose before the wall that circled the property. Above the patio was strung a thin netting that did little to block out the sun.

From one of three deck chairs set before a table containing the remains of a fine breakfast, Andrés León set down his iPad and stood. He was an older man, his hair long, held back in a gray-black braid that came halfway down his back. He wore loafers with no socks, linen pants, a loose, long-sleeved shirt, and a wide straw hat. He smiled in a grandfatherly way, greeting them.

“Welcome!” he said. He took Cecilia Garza’s hand politely, almost as though he were about to kiss it, then shook Fisk’s hand.

“Mexico City and New York, working jointly,” he said, having been appraised of their identities in advance of their appearance. “It is rarely a pleasure when police appear, but to what do I owe it?”

He offered them the other two chairs, but neither Fisk nor Garza sat.

Garza said, “We are preparing security for a special dinner tonight between two heads of state—”

León said, “Of course, of course. At my restaurant. But I believed all security matters were being seen to already.”

Fisk said, “We were curious. We hadn’t met you personally and wanted to come by ourselves.”

“Curious, I see. You won’t sit?”

They did, reluctantly.

“Anything? Orange juice? So fresh?”

“No, nothing,” said Fisk.

“I might have some,” said Garza.

“Wonderful.” He waved to a servant standing off to the side, and she departed.

“As you can see,” he said, “I live in a beautiful prison here.”

Fisk nodded. “We were going to ask you about that.”

“That was my assumption. Inspector Fisk, I followed your exploits in the news last year.”

“It’s Detective,” said Fisk.

“And you, too, Comandante Garza. I follow Mexican news most closely. You have made quite a name for yourself. I am not surprised you would seek me out here, due to my involvement in the dinner tonight. I am happy to answer all questions.”

Garza said, “Who are you?”

“Who I am now is a protected individual living under the careful watch of the United States government. A retired Mexican financier. An expatriate. A man in self-exile.”

Garza’s orange juice arrived in a crystal glass, sunlight glinting off the facets and sparkling. As the servant leaned forward to hand Garza the juice, Fisk saw the strap of a shoulder holster beneath his white jacket.

When the servant retreated, León said, “
Who I was
was a money manager for certain interests in Mexico, many years ago. I was heavily involved—you might say, desperately involved—in many illegal enterprises, as an accountant and a banker, laundering many millions for fifteen cents on the dollar.”

Garza said, “for the cartels.”

León tucked his chin and set his lips, looking resigned. “Corruption always begins with small things, Comandante. It comes at you sideways. I was a legitimate banker once. A long, long time ago. The movies make what I did look daring and exotic. It was hell. Daily hell. Ulcers. Paranoia. No sleep.”

“Not everyone is corrupted,” said Garza.

León opened his hands as though to concede the point. “The age I am now, I think more and more of
mi papi,
my poor father. I can never forget the expression on his face when he got himself out of bed every day. His back had been broken in an industrial accident. He was a wreck of a man physically. He was never treated properly and spent his life in physical agony. Still, every day he dragged himself out of bed and worked twelve hours a day selling newspapers in a little stand near the Palacio Legislativo. Every day, politicians came by his newspaper stand. They called him by name. I would see this, I would help him, hawking. This was back in the day when the PRI monopolized Mexican politics, of course. They all wore sparkling rings and fine suits. And they would flip me a ten-centavo piece because I was the broken newspaper vendor’s son. You know, ten centavos . . . it was worth less than nothing. They knew it and I knew it. And my father would always say to me, ‘That was Deputy So-and-So. He made sixty-three million pesos in bribes for putting a road across Oaxaca.’ Papi never said it, perhaps never even thought it, but to me the lesson was that, in a just world, those sixty-three million pesos would have gone to fixing the broken backs of the unfortunate men who hurt themselves in an industrial accident, and not to lining the pockets of politicians.”

His face looked almost clownishly sad, but that was his manner. León was a man of broad expression.

“But I never hated Mexico. My father made sure I would never follow his fate, and I did not. I built myself. But I was too ambitious at times. Too eager to meet with the wrong people. I had a bit of self-destruction about me. It seemed so remote, the violent source of the funds I was entrusted with moving and investing. I was willfully ignorant, I fully admit that.” He patted his knees, wanting to be done with his own story. “And so now I am trying to repay a debt.”

“You do not seem to be suffering,” said Garza.

“Not in the least. That offends you.”

“Yes,” she said.

León nodded.

“Which cartel?” she asked.

“The unofficial name was the Sonora Cartel, but these things change. People make pronouncements, naming this and that, but it is so fluid. I started low on the pole, I had my fingers in many pies. It was a different business thirty years ago, and yet very much the same. What knowledge I learned—I was always a good student—I have tried to put to good use here from the other side of the border.”

Fisk said, “You are an informant?”

“Bigger than that. I know informants. I still have several well-placed contacts in Mexico. I am an aggregator of information, Detective. I have assisted the Mexican government in curtailing the cartels’ activities, inasmuch as anyone can. The United States offered me this sanctuary in exchange for my offer of help in keeping such outrageous drug violence from drifting north, over its borders. And so I defected, though that is not the word that is used between friendly countries. To this end, I have been most helpful, I think. Until these past few days, that is.”

Garza nodded. She seemed to be hanging on the man’s every word.

“That is the language of Mexican crime now, is it not, Comandante? Atrocities. Meant to shock. It is terror.”

“Chuparosa,” said Garza.

Fisk felt she was uttering his name in order to watch León’s reaction. Fisk saw nothing in the man’s face to indicate anything out of the ordinary.

“I have heard the name,” said León. “Whispered, most often. Friends speak of him as though he is not real.”

“He is real,” said Garza.

“And he is here? He brings you to New York?”

Garza gave him a very brief summation of what she knew: nothing privileged, nothing revelatory. Fisk noticed a softening in her manner here, which confused him at first. Then he began to think it was a cultural thing, brought on by a conversation with this older, grandfatherly man.

Fisk admitted that there was something impishly likable about León, his blarney and bluster. But he needed to know more.

“He sounds like quite a gentleman,” said León. “Do you have a photograph, by any chance?”

“No,” said Garza.

“One wants to see the face of a man who could do such things, no?” León swiped at his mouth with his linen napkin, tossing it back upon the table. “Do you have any insight as to why he wants to bring down President Vargas? And perhaps die in the process? It seems so . . . extreme, no?”

Garza was appropriately cagey with León. “He holds a grudge, I believe. He is wedded to the old ways, the old Mexico. The one you seem to know. This treaty could—I think—effect real change in our country.”

León nodded, deep in thought. “You give me pause, Comandante. I wonder if it is wise for me to attend tonight.” He shook his head. “Forgive me, I am not a coward. But I am certainly not a brave man either. How I would hate to miss it.”

Fisk said, “Security is going to be incredibly tight. You can feel confident.”

“But nothing is ever guaranteed, Detective Fisk. You know that as well as I. My position here is precarious. In fact, I rarely leave this home. By rarely, I mean no more than once a year. I am a paranoid man, and rightly so. The restaurant is my only commercial enterprise. I miss the tastes of home, you see. These dishes I used to have prepared here, we started serving at Ocampo. Have you read our Zagat review? I’ll have someone hand you a copy on your way out. Extraordinary Mexican seafood cuisine! Others scoffed when it opened. We have three stars from Michelin! I am sorry to brag, food is a weakness.” He patted his belly. “I live too well. Living well is addictive.”

Fisk said, “So why is it that the president of Mexico chose your restaurant for his celebratory dinner?”

“It should be obvious to you both by now,” said León. “Umberto Vargas got his start in politics as a prosecutor, after leaving academia, roughly around the time I repatriated here. He made his name going after organized crime and the cartels.” To Garza, he said, “You know that started him on his stunning trajectory toward the presidency. He has been an anticorruption, antidrug guy all the way. And I, in my own manner, have been of some help to him. Some prosecutions, I helped make possible. Even from afar. I was his secret weapon, in a sense . . . though I do not want to be thought of as taking too much credit. President Vargas is the one whose face is out there. He is a man of valor, of principles. I have been, so to speak, his counsel in the shadows. Not to overstate it, but we have become . . . I don’t know what you want to call it. Friends? Associates? Neither. Strange bedfellows, perhaps. I have been very, very useful to him, and for that I feel wonderful. I still love our country, Comandante. I love it like . . . like an ex-wife I once wronged, who is still raising my many, many children. President Vargas is . . . an expression of my penance. I supported his campaign in every way, including financially. I honestly believe that a man like him comes once a generation. Now is the time to do great things.”

León grasped Garza’s hand for emphasis.

“You must keep him well and safe. We cannot afford to let these forces of evil stop the progress we have made. This antitrafficking accord with the United States is the greatest attempt Mexico has made at stemming the tide of violence, corruption, and terror. This treaty is a great step forward. And, in many ways, I am its crux.”