Angel Dance (Danny Logan Mystery #1) (44 page)

Toni knocked on my door and walked in. She sat in one of the chairs, looked at me, and said nothing at first.

“What?” I said. “What do you want?”

“How are you doing?” she asked.

I looked at her, confused. “I’m doing fine. Why? What do you mean, how am I doing?”

“I mean how you are doing getting over Gina Fiore.”

“I’m over it,” I said. “It’s history.”

“You’re not seeing anyone,” she said. It was a statement, not a question.

“You know I’m not seeing anyone,” I said. “Why? Do you want to go out on a date? What’s this all about?”

She ignored me. “Are you still having the dreams?”

I looked at her, and then smiled and said, “Toni, you know the only person I dream about nowadays is you. There’s usually a fireplace.” I stared off into the distance, like I was recalling the dream. “You’re wearing this short, see-through little sexy thing—” I paused and stared at the wall, as if I had a picture in my mind’s eye. “My God!”

“Freeze the picture, you jerk,” she said, laughing. “That’s as close as you’re going to get.” She got up and started to walk out.

“Wait a minute,” I called out to her. “Don’t you want to hear about the rug? There’s this bearskin rug in front of the fireplace!”

She laughed as she left my office. Does this make me sexist? I don’t know.

From down the hall, I heard her call out, “Read the newspaper, moron.”

Read the paper? What did she mean by that? That’s what I’d been doing. I looked at the
Seattle Times
on my desk and picked it up. The paper was dominated by coverage of the New Hampshire primary. The Iowa caucus had been held the day before, and the results were spread all over the front page—something that interested me not at all. I churned through the front section, then tossed it aside when I was finished. Nothing interesting there.

I started reading the second section—local news—and almost immediately stopped. “Wow!” I said out loud. The front-page article of the second section was headlined “IRS DROPS CHARGES AGAINST FIORE.” The article went on to explain how, after a four-year investigation, the IRS agreed to a small monetary adjustment in the prior years, but that all criminal charges had been dropped. Apparently, the IRS now felt that there was not sufficient evidence that Mr. Fiore had committed a crime. All that the IRS felt he was guilty of now was misclassifying revenue numbers. They wanted this fixed, but that was it. This was good news. This would have made Gina very happy.

I hopped out of my chair and walked next door to Toni’s office.

“This is good news,” I said happily.

“Good news?” she said, questioning. “What article did you read?”

“About the IRS dropping their tax evasion charges against Angelo.”

She looked at me, and then said, “Give me that.” She reached for the paper. She turned to the next page and handed it back. “Read that,” she said, pointing.

The article:

CHARGES DROPPED AGAINST CHICAGO
MOBSTER IN FIORE CASE

Robert Miller, U.S. Attorney in Seattle, announced today that all charges against known Chicago mobster Francisco “Frankie the Boot” Rossi in connection with the murder of Gina Fiore have been dropped. Citing insufficient evidence to continue the case, Miller said that Rossi was to be released immediately. . .

I stopped reading.

“Holy shit!” I read some more, and then said, “Holy shit!” again. My vocabulary seemed to have shrunk. “Insufficient evidence?” I said, incredulously. “Insufficient evidence? Jesus Christ! There were thirty people standing right there! Twenty of ’em were Feds, for shit’s sake! What the fuck? This bastard’s just going to walk?”

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I stared at the paper for several long moments without saying anything. Slowly, I turned and walked back to my office. I walked inside, closed the door, and sat at my desk. I spun the chair around so that I could look outside at the rain.

No justice at all, it seemed. Frank Rossi released because of “lack of evidence.” I was stunned. I sat there and stared outside for ten solid minutes, reliving the events of that morning, looking for answers and finding none.

~~~~

My phone rang, breaking my contemplation. I picked it up, and Toni said, brusquely, “Come out here, Danny.”

The tone of her voice told me she was serious, so I snapped out of my funk and hustled outside to the lobby. Toni was there, along with two men in long, gray raincoats.

“Mr. Logan,” one of them said, “you may remember me. I’m Special Agent Regis Jackson, U.S. DEA Seattle. This is Special Agent Mike Hamilton.”

I looked at him. “Sorry,” I said, “hard to recognize you guys when you’re not fucking up an operation and getting someone killed. Funny you should show up today.”

He stared straight at me for a few seconds. “Let me guess,” he said, “you’ve been reading the newspaper.”

“That’s right,” I said, shaking my head in disbelief. “How could the U.S. Attorney drop charges against Frank Rossi? Insufficient evidence? Holy Christ! The son of a bitch was surrounded by Feds when he shot Gina! You yourself were standing right there, not eight feet away. What would he have had to do to actually get indicted, drag her to the U.S. Attorney’s office and shoot her in the goddamned lobby?”

“I understand your frustration,” Jackson said, “but we’re here this morning to explain things. Is there a place where we can talk privately?”

“Our conference room,” I said. “But excuse me if I don’t trust you guys completely. I want my partner here to be with us.”

He nodded. “We met Miss Blair on the way in,” Jackson said. “Suit yourself.”

I led everyone back to the conference room.

Toni said, “May I offer you gentlemen a cup of coffee? Bottled water?”

We all asked for coffee. “Do you need help?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Got it.”

When she came back, Jackson started.

“I need to explain something to you that’s confidential—we’d have to deny it if it ever leaked out. Still, you need to know.”

“Go ahead,” I said. “I’m all ears.”

“Sometime near the end of last July, we were approached by Gina Fiore with an idea,” he said. “She wanted to make a trade. Gina’s idea was essentially to use her position within the Calabria family as an inducement to get the Mendez brothers to travel from Tijuana to the United States for a meeting where they could be arrested on American soil. Gina figured that the opportunity for the United States to arrest one or both leaders of the Tijuana-Mendez cartel would be highly coveted by the Department of Justice. Both of these men were on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. Gina designed an entire operation around this concept and presented it to us.”

I was stunned. Jackson continued.

“I ran her idea past my superiors, and they were indeed impressed. Surprisingly, they agreed within a week. The Mendez brothers were such a notorious, high-value target that their potential capture—especially in a presidential election year—really seemed to get their attention.

“Although we didn’t know it, Gina had actually started working this plan more than three months prior to the time she ever contacted us, probably in April of last year. I guess she wanted to move the operation beyond the hypothetical stage before she presented it to us.

“Initially, she needed a contact within the cartel. Where do you go to establish such a contact if you’re a young woman, an accountant at that, with no contacts with a Mexican drug cartel? She’d already studied up on the cartel operations in the United States—marijuana-growing operations, in particular. She knew that Washington State is a hotbed for this type of activity. So she came up with the idea that, since she was young and good-looking, she could hang out in a popular Mexican bar and hopefully locate someone involved in the cartel drug trade. Essentially, she went fishing and used herself as the bait. It was a long shot, but by using what amounts to good acting and brilliant undercover detective work, combined with a fair measure of luck, she ferreted out none other than Eduardo Salazar at Ramon’s Cantina. She flirted with him, dangled herself in front of him, and cozied up to him. Finally, one night, she promised him a home run but instead she slipped him a couple of Quaaludes when he wasn’t looking. He fell fast asleep.”

“And while he slept,” I said, “she copied his notebook with her cell phone.”

“She told you, then,” Jackson said. “I suspected she had.”

I nodded.

“Well, that’s right. She copied his notebook. That notebook contained GPS coordinates—actually latitude and longitude—of forty separate marijuana grows here in the state of Washington—complete with sketches. Salazar didn’t know it yet, but with this information, Gina had him nailed to the cross. In early July, she explained to Mr. Salazar who she was and the nature of her Chicago relatives. She told him that her family wanted to create a joint venture with the Tijuana-Mendez cartel that would allow them to move the marijuana being grown here more profitably. Initially, Mr. Salazar’s ego wouldn’t accept her in this new position. He couldn’t wrap his head around it, so he just blew her off. I guess he wasn’t a very big thinker. Anyway, Gina responded by anonymously turning in one of Salazar’s plantations to our office as a way to turn up the pressure on him. It also had the effect of establishing future legitimacy with us, although we had no idea what was going on at the time. She had someone other than herself make the call to us on an untraceable cell phone, so we didn’t even know whom the tipster was; but we checked it out and got a large bust as a result. We were happy.

“This same scenario repeated itself three more times over the next month and a half before the light finally went on in Salazar’s pea brain, and he made the connection—he realized that Gina was the one turning in the fields using his own data against him because he had refused to work with her and make the connection with the cartel that she wanted. Things started happening fast. Salazar exploded and began searching for Gina. Gina was a step ahead of him, though. She’d gone into hiding a week after the last bust, just in case. And, at about that time, she talked to us and proved that she was the one providing the tips. Our top brass was already inclined to give this a shot, but now that they were really convinced of her legitimacy, they gave the green light on the operation to set up and arrest the Mendez brothers.”

“And that’s about the time we were called in by the family to help find her. Apparently, they were unaware of all this,” I said.

“Correct,” he said, “they knew nothing.” He paused and sipped his coffee.

“Unfortunately for Eddie Salazar, by this time, it was already too late for him. Eventually, it must have occurred to him that his bosses might add two and two and figure out that the only fields being busted were his. They would not be pleased. They’d think he was either dishonest or incompetent. Neither would be conducive to long life in a Mexican drug cartel. He undoubtedly started fearing for his own skin, with good reason. We figure he decided he’d better call his bosses and do a mea culpa. They probably said thank you very much for the update. Then, because they are who they are, we figure they had him executed. Stupidity is not tolerated in those organizations.

At the same time, they sent an e-mail to Gina. As it turns out, Gina’d been right all along. The Mendez brothers were very interested in venturing with the Calabria family. Weren’t too happy about losing four marijuana grows, but they were very excited to partner up with a famous American crime family like the Calabrias. Ironically, if Salazar would have simply turned over the contact originally instead of getting all puffed up, he’d still be alive today.”

“Trust me, we’re better off without him,” I said.

“No argument there,” he said. “There was a flurry of e-mails between Gina and the cartel representative, Francisco Miranda, which eventually led to a planned meeting of the principals in Port Townsend last August.”

“At that point, Gina had all her pieces put together. All that remained was to actually set up and conduct the meeting between the principals. We were working with her by this time, so we knew everything that she was doing.”

“What did she want in exchange for setting this up?” I asked.

“In exchange for setting up the meeting with the Tijuana-Mendez brothers, essentially luring them to America on the pretense that they would be arranging a business transaction with the Calabrias, she wanted all IRS charges against her father dropped.”

Again, I was stunned. “Really? That’s it? There was never any intent on her part to go into the marijuana business?”

Jackson smiled. “Certainly not. That was the ruse. All she asked was that her father be cleared of his tax problem. She felt that there was a strong possibility that he might die in prison, so she came up with this whole entire plan to keep him out.”

“That means the Calabrias were never going to team up with the Mendez brothers?”

“Of course not,” he said.

“And their arrest?”

“Like yours, just for show.”

“Goddamn,” I said, shaking my head slowly.

“My sentiments exactly. It was a very noble action on her part,” Jackson said. He continued. “The days after Salazar was killed were the days when Gina was conducting her e-mail conversations with Francisco Miranda. At the same time, your team was closing in. When it became apparent that you’d caught Roberto in a lie, Gina assumed that you’d soon break him and force him to spill secrets. So she instructed Robbie to go ahead and invite you to Port Townsend. She figured that in light of your past relationship, it would be an offer that you couldn’t refuse. She felt that with only one day to go until the meeting, it would be better to have you close where she could keep an eye on you, rather than have you potentially show up randomly.”

“Well, it looks like I played my part perfectly,” I said.

“Don’t beat yourself up,” Jackson said, smiling. “I never met a more resourceful young woman. She had the entire thing planned.”

I thought about it. “Except for getting shot,” I said.

He simply looked at me. “Which brings us to the topic at hand, which is, what you’ve seen today in the newspaper. Bottom line—Gina did her part. She told us that she would lure the Mendez family to America, and she did. They’re busted, and they’ll never get out. As a matter of fact, the entire Tijuana-Mendez organization seems to be crumbling. The factions within the organization are fighting among themselves rather than coalescing around new leadership. Anyway, yesterday, as you can see in today’s newspaper, the IRS formally dropped all charges pending against Angelo Fiore. He’s completely exonerated. Which means that we’ve now done our part as well.”