Spiral (27 page)

When Professor Daniel Ferretis came inside behind a couple of girls who had made an indecorous rush for the door to get in front of him, it took a minute for his eyes to adjust to the tavernlike dimness of the little cafe. Finally he saw Cordero in the booth, staring at him. It had taken Ferretis six months just to train the stupid shit not to wave at him like an idiot. It had taken him a year to train him how to arrange a meeting by telephone without giving away what he was doing. Cordero had been the thorn in his flesh. The cafe's worn-out air conditioner was turned on high, and a greasy-smelling breeze was shoving its way among the tables and booths.

Ferretis walked over to Cordero and sat down in the booth, tossing the newspapers into the seat next to him.

"What were you doing out there?" Cordero asked.

"You have shit for brains," Ferretis said. He put his forearms on the Formica table in front of him. "Were you followed?"

Cordero looked at him quizzically. "No."

" 'No.' " Ferretis shook his head, mocking Cordero's dull-wittedness, and a lock of his longish straight black hair which always seemed in need of washing fell over his eyes. He pushed it angrily out of his way and glared at Cordero through his heavy Cazal eyeglasses. "This is the first you've thought about it, isn't it?" Ferretis said. "Well, I thought of it. I was trying to find out if you'd led a parade down here."

The waitress came, and they ordered mechanically, without looking at the menu.

Cordero ignored the rhetorical question. "The police have bean to see me," he said. He tucked his elbow into his belly and went at the cuticle on the ring finger from another angle.

Ferretis looked at him. "Cordero, was that a surprise? The police?"

"No, of course not. But they came twice."

"What do you mean?" Ferretis took off his Cazals and polished his thick lenses with the tail of his guayabera.

"Two detectives came about nine-thirty. Asked me everything you said they'd ask."

"And you told them everything they wanted to know," Ferretis said sarcastically.

"No! I was cool. They didn't press me. I said I'd never met anyone with the Teco Corporation. It was just another piece of business. I'd accepted the client by mail. A routine corporation thing. I took care of their annual tax business for them, my secretary paid the monthly bills on the Belgrano place. I never even went over there. All the stuff we talked about. It was smooth."

"Smooth. I'll bet." Ferretis was irritated because one of the air-conditioning vents in the ceiling was adjusted so that it blew directly on him. He was sweaty from standing outside for so long, and he could feel the breeze blowing through the thin, damp shirt. It felt good right now, but in three minutes he would be chilled.

Enrique Cordero's cheeks bulged like a trumpet player's as he took a huge mouthful of Corona and held it a moment before swallowing. "Honest, Daniel," he said. "No problem. But the second detective was strange. He came a couple of hours later. Said he was part of a parallel investigation. He told me to tell Rubio Arizpe to get a good lawyer, one better than me!"

"What!" Ferretis lurched forward on his elbows. "What did you say?"

"I said, he told me to tell—"

"No, goddammit! What did you tell him?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Yeah. I didn't say anything."

"Goddam!" Ferretis said in a hoarse stage whisper. "What did you do? Give him one of your boiled-egg stares?"

"What'd you want me to say?"

"You're missing the point, Enrique. You're missing the point! What happened, for God's sake?"

"He said I was in a tight spot, being the only contact with the tecos, and they were going to squeeze me—the police and the F.B.I."

"And..."

"And I said I'd never heard of this guy Arizpe."

"And..."

"And he gave me his card in case I wanted to talk to him off the record."

Ferretis leaned back. "Jesus." In a perfect world people wouldn't have to do business with other people's relatives. "Let me have the tape."

Cordero reached into his suit pocket and pulled out a small cassette, which he placed on the table. Ferretis popped the tape into a player he had brought with him and inserted an earphone. He rewound the tape, which Cordero hadn't thought to do, and listened to the interviews. This was a precaution he had decided to take as soon as he learned the Belgrano safe house was likely to be exposed. Since Cordero was the only one connected to it, he was in the most vulnerable position, the one most likely to be questioned. There was no way he could rely on this dim-witted nephew to tell him exactly what he had told the police. This way, at least, Ferretis would get the story straight. He could hear for himself how badly Cordero had screwed up.

The tape lasted about forty minutes, and he listened to it as he ate his chicken-fried steak, mashed potatoes, and black-eyed peas, which he washed down with several glasses of instant iced tea. He ate with his right hand while he used the middle finger of his other hand to block out the increasingly noisy cafe sounds. He completely ignored Cordero while he ate, and listened to the tape. Dessert was included with the price of the rubbery steak; a square of dry white cake with a yellow sugar icing which Ferretis dispatched in three bites. He finished eating before the tape was through, and sat picking his front teeth with the corner of the bill the waitress had left when she made her last pass to fill his iced-tea glass. He looked at an obscene limerick penciled on the Formica next to the chrome napkin dispenser.

Finally he jerked the earphone out of his ear by its wire and flicked the rewind button on the player.

"You have Haydon's card?" he asked.

"Yeah, right here." Cordero had to go into three pockets before he retrieved it.

Ferretis took the card and looked at it, turned it over, and looked at the telephone number Haydon had written on the back. He put the card in his pocket and glared at Cordero, who was working on his second Corona and had now made his ring finger as raw and red as the end of a wiener.

"I'm not sure I buy this parallel-investigation thing," Ferretis said. "That doesn't sound right, for some reason." He was going to ask Cordero what he thought, but dismissed the idea as he looked at the round-eyed nephew sitting across from him intent upon becoming the first man Ferretis had ever known actually to devour a piece of his own anatomy.

"Enrique," Ferretis said. "Listen to me. I want you to go back and get everything out of your files that relates to the tecos. I want those corporation papers to be the only evidence the police can get their hands on. You have any names anywhere in there, you get them out. Then I want you to go back to Mexico—"

"But the police said—"

"Goddammit, it doesn't matter what they said. You leave. Don't fly. Don't cross at a border station. Go to our condos in Brownsville, and let Hernan take you around to Matamoros by boat.
Comprende?"
Ferretis leaned forward, and spoke deliberately and with emphasis. "Enrique. Go straight from here to the office. Do it in a hurry. Put gas in your car, and drive straight through to Brownsville. Don't go back to your place.
Comprende?"

Cordero nodded. He looked scared. He was such a rabbit. This stupid nephew could bring the whole thing down. Still, Ferretis himself could not risk going back to clean out the files. Better Cordero than he, and if Cordero could get out of the country, they would have some breathing room. He hadn't expected to have to do this so quickly. He knew he couldn't depend on Cordero, but he would never know what madness had possessed the otherwise reliable Valverde to fire on the detectives at the Belgrano. It was that killing that would bring down on them the full force of the law in the form of a massive investigation. The killing of Detective Ed Mooney had been that unpredictable and unforeseen variable that is the ever present hidden threat of every clandestine operation. No matter how precise the plan, no matter how practiced its execution, you are, at best, playing long odds against an unknown factor.

"You'd better get going," Ferretis said. "When you're finished at the office, and are on your way out of town, stop at a pay phone and call me."

Cordero nodded again.

"Any questions?"

Cordero shook his head, swallowing.

"Okay, get going."

Ferretis sat at the booth and ate the ice out of his empty tea glass. He took the business card on which Haydon had written his telephone number out of his pocket and stared at it once more. How in God's name had this man gotten hold of Rubio's name? Rubio had no personal U.S. connections. It was Ferretis's understanding that Arizpe had made runs into Texas before, but it was strictly business. He was a loner, had left no trails. The people in Guadalajara even said they had gone so far as to check the National Crime Information Center files—no trace of Arizpe or Medrano. How the hell did this cop know?

Yes, he remembered the name. This man was the dead detective's partner, and it was odd that he should have called on Cordero separately from the other detectives. Odd enough that Ferretis believed it was significant, and significant enough that he believed it to be threatening. On the other hand, everything unexpected was going to look threatening now. He couldn't afford to let himself do what Valverde had done. The operation would not survive two such blunders. He, at least, had to be analytical, and be ready to react rationally to the unexpected.

It had been a little over thirty-six hours since he had talked with Bias. He didn't have any idea how the shooting at the safe house would affect the plans Bias had set forward, whatever they were, but Bias had said "soon." Would it be sooner now, or later? The killing of the policeman had stirred up a hornets' nest, which couldn't make it any easier for him. But Bias had been through this sort of thing before.

The question was, just how important was it that this detective knew of Arizpe's existence, and possible involvement? Was it a critical enough factor that Ferretis should use the dead drop to warn Bias and Rubio? Ferretis tried to sort out the implications of having learned this. In the first place, why would a detective conducting an investigation of this kind tip his hand like that? Why would he "warn" a prime suspect? Only one reason came immediately to mind, and the more Ferretis thought about it the more it made sense: Haydon didn't know anything about Rubio Arizpe. He was kicking the bushes, trying to flush out game. He was hoping to panic someone. It was the gesture of a man who didn't have anything to lose by doing it, because he didn't have anything to risk. Ferretis would take his chances. He wouldn't use the dead drop. Yet.

In the meantime, he had to keep the situation from unraveling at the edges. He had just spoken with the main loose thread. Cordero was the immediate worry. If he hadn't called back within the next two or three hours, he would have to be found. Cordero could not be permitted to talk at any great length with the police, even though he knew practically nothing about the assassination.

The second problem was that the tecos had not consulted with the Mexico City station on this because it involved hits in the United States, and moreover one of the targets was one of their own men.

However, Gamboa had caused them problems, a lot of problems, and they might not be all that disturbed if something happened to him But the tecos did not want to run the risk of being waved off, so there had been a high-level gathering and the decision was made to go ahead without consultation. Now he was sure they were on to them, but h had received no frantic "meet" signals, which he had been anticipating since the shooting at Belgrano. This seemed ominous to him though he had no intentions of answering such a signal should it come before either Gamboa was dead or the attempt was called off.

The third problem was Celia Moreno. He had expected to hear from her, too, by now.

All things considered, the tecos were running a dicey operation.

CHAPTER 28

HAYDON
didn't really know what he had found in Cordero's files. He had copied an address book he came across in a bottom drawer of Cordero's credenza, which he hoped would contain names not found in the more obvious Rolodex on Linda Solis's desk. The files themselves, the drawers and drawers of Pendaflex folders, were too voluminous. He looked for the names he already knew but, not surprisingly, did not find them. Nothing else seemed of any value until he came across the metal file box of bank statements. These turned out to be confirmation that aside from the fact the
tecos
had owned the Belgrano place for four years, they had been operating in Houston for a good while prior to the shootings of the last few days.
Tecos
activities were not confined to Mexico.

From the bank statements it appeared that Cordero was acting as the bursar for the organization in Houston. There were statements for checking accounts on three separate banks. It seemed that Cordero and his secretary drew their salary checks from one of these accounts, which was in the name of Cordero's firm, Enrique Cordero Rulfo, Attorney. The second account was in the name of the Teco Corporation. Taxes, utilities, and maintenance on the Belgrano property came from this account. Deposits were always in cash. A third account, again in the name of the Teco Corporation, received regular monthly cash deposits in the same amount and had regular monthly cash withdrawals in the same amount, so that the account maintained no fewer than $2,000 at any time. The regularity of the amounts of deposit and withdrawal were obviously intentional, and there were probably two reasons. First, the
tecos
did not want to attract the attention of bank examiners, who, since the scandals about money laundering, were attentive to large, erratic cash flows. Second, it appeared that Cordero was expending funds for a specific purpose, not randomly as needed, but always in the same amount, to one or more persons or organizations.