Crossing the Line (19 page)

I was high enough to see Hidalgo turn right—not left, which was the direction that would keep him on the road toward the mine. With a sick feeling I realized he was heading up for the path that ran along the ridge above me. The path that Tom was probably lying across.

“He’s coming up the trail,” I whispered into my wrist.

“I see him.”

Above me I heard a scrabbling noise as Tom slithered under some cover.

The impulse was strong to jump up and run for it. There was little doubt that we could get away. We could easily outrun these fat bastards. But there was no doubt that we would be seen and heard. So while the night sky continued its transition to gray, I stayed still.

“You could take him out. Right now.”

It was whispered in my ear. For a second it seemed like my own thought. But it was Tom, over the radio earpiece.

“Think about it. No warrants. No trial.”

Is he kidding?
I wondered.
He doesn’t sound like it.

Is it a test? To see if I’m that QuickDraw of rumor and legend?

“Go on, QuickDraw,”
Tom whispered.
“Do it.”

It would be so easy,
I thought.
To just drop him, right here, and slip away into the hills. He deserves it. El Doctor.
La corbata.
Shit. No one would know. No one but Tom and Mary and my brother.

It seemed a lot longer, but it was probably only three or four minutes before I could hear sneakers thumping and scratching along the path above me. A half-minute later I could hear the sound of two men breathing hard. I had slipped my gun out of the paddle holster on my hip.

“I’m getting tired, boss. I need to rest,” I heard the kid whine.

“You will rest when I do,” Hidalgo commanded him.

I didn’t doubt that Hidalgo had chosen one of the fatter bangers for this very reason. It wouldn’t do to be run into the ground by one of his more muscular hirelings.

“My heart,” the kid continued to whine, closer now. Very close. “It’s going to burst, man.”

“All right,” Hidalgo gasped. “You may rest.”

The tread of tennis shoes stopped. All I could hear was the ragged breathing just a few feet above me. So close. As much as I felt a dread of discovery, I also felt a thrill at being so close to Hidalgo. I could just stand up and shoot him. The kid, too, before he got anywhere close to getting the gun off his back.

QuickDraw.

I glanced up at the sky and saw that it was so light that the stars were only barely visible.

Then there was the sound of water being poured on the ground. Not poured, but sprayed. One of them was urinating.

“Feel better?” Hidalgo asked after a moment.

“Not really.”

“Come. We continue.”

And then they were gone.

When I got to Tom five minutes later, he was trembling with rage. And he smelled of piss. He’d taken off his shirt and was rubbing it vigorously against the back of his head and neck.

“You pussy!”
he hissed at me.

EIGHTEEN

Y
ou want me to swear on a stack of Bibles or something?”

“That won’t be necessary, son,” the judge told my brother. “This isn’t a formal hearing. But I expect you to tell me and this tape recorder here the truth.”

The “son” sounded disingenuous. From the way Judge Koals was looking at my brother, Roberto was not the kind of son the judge ever wanted to have.

We were back in the judge’s chambers in Pinedale. He’d once again preferred meeting here to at his home. And he’d refused Mary’s request to convene with Roberto in any other nonjudicial location, concerned that it would make him appear a party to the sought-after warrant rather than an independent arbiter. It was long after regular court hours, though—we hadn’t wanted to bring Roberto in when people were likely to be around.

With the addition of Roberto to the small room, as well as the weird energy that accompanied him everywhere, it was so crowded that I could barely breathe. The four of us were not across the desk from the judge but gathered all around it, like it was a conference table. Mary—in a courtroom skirt, blouse, and jacket—had managed to shoehorn herself into a chair between the wall and one end of the judge’s desk. I stood at the other, leaning against the wall. Roberto and Tom sat close together and opposite the judge, who was peering at my brother over the top of his reading glasses. He wasn’t wearing his robe, but there was no doubting that he was judging us all.

“Ms. Chang and her cohorts here would rather I not know your name,” the judge said, speaking to Roberto. “That’s their prerogative with confidential informants. But they are required to convince me that your information is reliable, and that’s why I exercised
my
prerogative to have this little talk.”

It was evident from his tone and his gaze that he wasn’t pleased so far with what he saw. I wasn’t either. Roberto’s tangled hair was spiking out from his head. His cheeks were creased with a slack grin. The pupils in his blue irises were so small they were hard to find. Above his faded and torn T-shirt, his neck muscles were tight against the leather cord with its turquoise stone.

“We’ve explained it to him, Your Honor. He understands why he’s here,” Mary said needlessly.

She sounded anxious to speak for my brother. She’d been anxious ever since we’d picked Roberto up that afternoon, way up at the trailhead in the Winds. I wasn’t sure if Mary’s unease was from concern about him or concern for her warrant.

“Thank you, Ms. Chang. Then we’ve both made it clear,” the judge said, intending to shut her up. “Now let’s start at the beginning, son. What’s your relationship to this fellow, Jesús Hidalgo-Paez?”

Roberto shrugged. “He’s just a guy I met ’bout twelve years ago. Down in South America, where he was freezing to death on this mountain he was trying to climb. I got him down. We got to be friends, sort of. Anyway, he makes a lot of money selling dope, and he thanked me for saving his butt by giving me some.”

“Money or drugs?”

“Both.”

“When you say he sells drugs, do you mean he sells them on the street?”

Mary spoke up, before Roberto could answer.

“As our warrant states, Your Honor, Mr. Hidalgo-Paez is a distributor of cocaine and heroin on a scale that is truly—”

“Please, Ms. Chang. Let me speak with your informant. I asked him here so I could talk to him, not you.”

Mary colored and shut up. The judge turned back to Roberto.

“He’s not out there slinging dime bags, if that’s what you mean,” Roberto said in his soft, slightly slurred voice. “He runs what he calls a
sociedad
—like a corporation. Hidalgo’s the CEO. The Man. He doesn’t get his hands dirty. The guys who work for him—the
capitáns
—have other guys, who have other guys, to do that kind of stuff. You know what I’m saying?”

The judge nodded. It was a good explanation of how Hidalgo operated so successfully. It was also a good explanation of why he’d never been indicted. That and
la corbata.

“Tell me more about how he runs this corporation.”

“Like a dictator, I guess. It’s just him, you know—there’s no board of directors or anything.”

“No, I mean, how does he run it? Give me an example of how things are done. Something you know about firsthand.”

“Okay,” Roberto said, nodding. “Sure. The way it works is kind of like this: Couple of years ago, Jesús asked me to talk to this guy who works for him. A
capitán
who goes by the name of Zafado. Anyway, Jesús doesn’t say anything about drugs, but I know that’s what it’s about. This guy Zafado tells me he knows a way to make me some scratch, tells me how much, and asks me to talk to someone else. He doesn’t say anything about drugs, either. So then I talk to the little guy, way down low on the chain, and he’s very open because he’s such a little guy. Telling me about how he’s having trouble getting his loads of black tar—that’s heroin—across the border in Arizona because his mules keep dying. Heat, snakes, hijackers, vigilantes, all that. Guy says he heard El Doctor—that’s Jesús—thought maybe I could help, and that his boss, Zafado, will make it worth my while. So then somebody else drives me to Sonora and has me show these mules how to get through the desert and into the States. I was, like, their guide. Each time I got a bunch of them through, all the way to Tucson, I got paid ten grand. That’s how it works. I made the run on foot ’bout five times.”

The judge was nodding.

“When was that?”

“I don’t know, seven years ago? Maybe less. I only did it those couple of times. I got out of it then. I saw how the mules—the real little guys—were being treated and I didn’t like it. So I took some money and split.”

“How were they being treated?”

“They were mainly just kids,” Roberto said, not smiling now. “Boys and girls in their teens. Going north for jobs and school and to hook up with relatives already there. This guy who worked for Zafado would drive around in Mexicali and Nogales and just pick them up. They knew better than to say no. There were a lot of bodies in the desert. Word had gotten around not to refuse. They were supposed to be paid a few hundred bucks for humping a pack through, but usually a truck would meet us in Tucson to pick the kids up and drive them back south. They never got paid and they had to do it all over again. Some of them who did a second trip with me told me what that truck ride back south was like. They weren’t treated too well.”

Roberto had already told us about this, when Tom and Mary had been debriefing him. The girls were often raped. Sometimes the boys, too. Once back in Sonora or Mexicali, they were locked up like beasts of burden—real mules—to await the next run north. He didn’t elaborate now for the judge, but what he meant by them not being treated too well was evident on his face.

So far, so good,
I was thinking. Even if nothing Roberto had said so far was exactly damning to Hidalgo for the current case. There was nothing to connect him to it but Hidalgo asking him to talk to Zafado and then another guy, but I was pleased all the same. The whole drive in I’d pounded on only one thing with Roberto: Don’t be a smart-ass, don’t be a smart-ass. I knew he didn’t respond well to authority. Especially in the form of judges. So far he was doing well.

“So you ‘split,’ ” Judge Koals said, using Roberto’s terminology, “seven years ago or less. Tell me what your relationship with Mr. Hidalgo-Paez has been like since then.”

“We didn’t stay in touch, if that’s what you mean. No Christmas cards. Then I just showed up at his place a few days ago. Said I was on the run, which is sort of true. He’d heard about it. Out of friendship, he said he’d help get me out of the country. He still owes me for how I helped him off that mountain. So he said he’d figure out a way in a week or two, but to hang with him until then.”

“Even though you hadn’t seen him in seven years or so?”

Roberto lifted both hands, palms down, and let them waver a little.

“Like I said, I was never a
capitán
or anything. I was just a guy who saved his ass one time and who he thinks can keep his mouth shut. A friend, sort of. Someone he can talk to about stuff other than business. See, Jesús doesn’t have many friends. Not even among his
capitáns
. Everyone’s too afraid of the dude. Afraid he’ll tell someone to cut their throats for knowing too much about him.”

“And you aren’t afraid of him?”

Roberto smiled.

“I’m afraid of my own shadow, Judge.”

The judge actually smiled back at Roberto. Seeing the judge amused by my brother’s comment—the way it was so contradictory to my brother’s appearance—both Tom and Mary chuckled politely.

“Anyway, Jesús—he’s real careful these days. He’s been having some trouble down in Mexicali, and had to come up here for a while before someone put an extra hole in him. I showed up unexpectedly—his old pal, you know—and asked him for help getting out of the country. Said I could do some work for him, too, make a little money to get on my feet again. I said I could deal with the guys he buys uncut coca from. Down in Colombia, Peru, and Uruguay. Negotiate on his behalf, you know? For a piece.”

The judge’s eyes had narrowed a little. I knew what he was thinking—entrapment—but wasn’t worried. That wasn’t where we were going.

“He knows I’d be good at it. Nobody hassles me down there.”

Mary broke in, explaining, “Our informant has some high-level connections with various South American governments. These connections make it unlikely he would ever be harmed or extradited from a South American nation.”

This was Grandpapa’s—my mother’s father—proud legacy, I recalled bitterly. He’d earned it by being a murdering bastard during the Dirty War. Although he’d been dead for almost fifteen years, the world would have been a far better place if he’d never been born.

“Is that right?” the judge asked Roberto.

Roberto again shrugged, then continued.

“But he said he was getting out of that business for a while. The cocaine business, that is. Said he knows something that’s going to be a lot more profitable and that can be produced right here in the States. No worries about getting it in. He was talking mainly about crank—”

“He means methamphetamine, Your Honor,” Mary put in.

“Yes, I’m aware of that,” the judge said, his eyes staying on Roberto. “Go on.”

“About how it’s the thing now, and that blow and rock are going out of style, and since those motherfuckers from Saudi Arabia did that shit—9/11—it’s been too hard to move it across the border anyway. Jesús said he can make huge amounts of crank right there on his ranch and get it out and on the road without any trouble at all. Then he said he’d show me something in the old mine that’s near the house.”

Now we were getting to it. I felt myself growing excited. But also wary—Roberto was becoming too loose. He was using more profanity, and his soft slur was growing more pronounced. But Mary and Tom didn’t seem to notice it. They were perched on the edges of their seats, eager to see how the judge would take what Roberto was about to say.

We’d all been frustrated and nervous over the last two days. Mary had worked—editing the application again and again—with an even fiercer intensity. Tom moaned and bitched and either watched the camera or played with his guns. When I wasn’t with him—both of us barely tolerated each other’s presence—I attacked the short rock walls surrounding the hollow, climbing until my fingers bled. Working out the anxiety and getting strong. Some sixth sense told me I needed to be strong.

During that time we’d seen Roberto leave the house across the river, escorted by Hidalgo himself, as well as Zafado and hulking Bruto, and driven down into the mine. That caused a brief flurry of excitement for us—the secondhand hearsay knowledge Roberto had alluded to in his note was about to become firsthand. I’d watched with my eyes glued to the binoculars as one of the narco’s big SUVs was swallowed by the hill that held the mine’s entrance. It returned two hours later. Roberto sat by the pool after that. At one point he raised his sunglasses and I think he winked at me.

“What did you see in the mine?” the judge asked.

Roberto blew out a puff of air. “The place is huge, man. Tunnels everywhere, big rooms, equipment, and stuff like that. In this one big room there was this fence. On the other side were all these tables. With lab stuff on them, and big jugs of Coleman fuel and cartons of ephedrine. There were some people, too. Mexicans. Behind the fence, with the tables. They were some chemists Jesús had snatched in Mexico and brought here.”

“We believe he’s kidnapped them,” Mary said. “That he’s holding them as prisoners. They are a slave-labor force.”

“Did you see anything that substantiates what Ms. Chang just interjected?” the judge asked Roberto. His voice was sharp.

“Yeah. Some of the guys who work for Jesús were down there, too. With guns and shit. They were keeping those other guys on the other side of the fence.”

The judge was getting excited, too. He was leaning forward, looking at Roberto straight on. No longer peering at him disapprovingly over the tops of his reading glasses.

“Did you see them actually manufacturing drugs?”

Roberto shook his head.

“They were, like, sleeping. On cots. Nobody was doing much. I was only down there for a little while.”

“But Mr. Hidalgo told you they were there to manufacture methamphetamine?”

“Yep.”

Judge Koals leaned back. He picked up a pen and turned it with the fingers of both his hands.
He’s going to sign,
I thought. The judge reached forward and made sure the recorder was running.

In an official voice he said, “We’re here because Ms. Chang, Mr. Cochran, and Mr. Burns have submitted to me for my approval arrest and search warrants pertaining to Mr. Hidalgo-Paez and his property here in Sublette County. Can you tell me what you know about illegal drugs that are on his property right now?”

“Yeah, all this crank they’re getting ready to cook in the mine,” Roberto answered a little irritably, thinking probably that he’d just gone through this and not understanding that this portion of the tape would be transcribed and attached to the warrant applications.