Triple Crossing (24 page)

So Pescatore smoked and drank. He sleepwalked in a realm of dread and wonder. He watched himself on television. The Mexican
news gave a lot of coverage to the freeway shooting. Pescatore and Garrison were the chief suspects. The news flashed an academy
photo of him, heaped abuse on the Border Patrol, and reported that the Diogenes Group and Mexican federal police were hunting
all over the state of Baja California. A breakthrough was imminent. Contemplating his clean-shaven smile in the photo, Pescatore
decided to grow a Buffalo-style mustache. Next to him, Momo spoke up with unexpected words of support.

“Don’t even worry about it,” Momo told him, giving Pescatore his raised-chin, slit-eyed stare. “That’s a lotta hype about
la federal. Puro pedo.
Long as you’re with us, they ain’t gonna sweat you.”

If Buffalo was the commander of the Death Patrol, Momo was his lieutenant. The stone-faced Momo partied as hard as
anyone else, but he was a stern taskmaster. Buffalo rarely visited the house; only Momo and Rufino visited Buffalo. The driveway
was a strict border between the houses. Buffalo’s family kept to their side of the line as well. Pescatore glimpsed Buffalo’s
wife on the third day, climbing out of an Escalade. Rufino helped her carry fistfuls of shopping bags—Neiman Marcus, Saks
Fifth Avenue, Nordstrom—into the house. She was statuesque in a long summer dress, a bit of a belly, sunglasses propped in
rich black curls. Her face had the weary beauty of the sketch on her living room wall.

Sniper and Pelón were the sergeants. The enlisted men were a shifting cast of a dozen youths, mostly gang members from California
in their late teens and early twenties. Pescatore got the impression they were an all-star team of prospects recruited from
a variety of gangs. They spoke the fractured Spanglish of penitentiaries, jails and juvenile lockups on both sides of the
border. Instead of killing each other over street corners, they were killing together and living large. Their days started
about noon when they drifted downstairs to the large modern kitchen. They ate steak, eggs and
chilaquiles
at the kitchen table or hunched on stools around a butcher-block island in the middle of the black-and-white tiled floor.
A matronly woman named Doña Marta cooked for them and cleaned up once in a while. Tent-shaped in a brown dress, she moved
in her own universe, her flat face wrinkled in disapproval, groaning periodically with exertion. She talked to nobody and
saw nothing.

On the third day, Pescatore felt safe enough to start looking for a telephone he could use to call Isabel. Even if he made
just a short call, he wanted her to hear his voice, to let her know he was alive. But he had already determined that the house
had no land lines. The only homeboys he saw using cell phones were Momo, Sniper and Pelón. He knew the organization was careful
about communications. Isabel had told him they had sophisticated intercept technology and countersurveillance techniques.
Once
he got his hands on a phone, it would be like carrying a time bomb. He would have to dispose of it or risk somebody finding
it on him.

Pescatore spent the morning sneaking around rooms and hallways in search of a stray cell phone. No juice. He set himself up
in front of the TV, hoping a
vato
might leave a phone unattended while getting wasted. It didn’t happen. The next morning, Momo, Sniper and Pelón left early.
That night, the news reported that a Mexican federal prosecutor had been machine-gunned in his driveway after his retirement
party; Sniper and Pelón reached over and slapped each other five. The TV news showed a quick image of Méndez walking into
a building past cameras. A voice-over explained that the Diogenes Group was on the case.

“That
cabrón
right there needs to get got.” Pelón gestured at Méndez, his bald profile making him look like a warrior-monk. “Fuck sending
messages. If we’re gonna do ’im, let’s do ’im, homes. Boo-ya, boo-ya”—he pantomimed the recoil of a shotgun with both hands—
“y se acabó.”

Momo took a swig of beer, wiped his mouth, and without looking at Pelón told him to shut the fuck up.

At breakfast the next day, Buffalo appeared in the kitchen. Without preamble or explanation, he handed Pescatore his Glock.
Pescatore nodded, exhilarated but trying to come off like it was all business. Buffalo did not give him back his cell phone
or mention it. Pescatore thought fast and made a decision on impulse: If they trusted him enough to give him his gun back,
a phone was maybe not that big a deal.

“Thanks, Buffalo,” he said. “Think I could get my phone too?”

Buffalo’s expression made him wish he had stayed quiet. “Who you gonna call?”

“Nobody!” Pescatore looked shocked at the notion. “Nobody. It’s just I had a lotta numbers stored in there for people, family
back home, you know.”

Buffalo’s forehead furrowed. “I don’t think I gotta explain why it’s not a good idea for you to call anybody right now, Valentín.”

“Yeah, I know, I sure wasn’t—”

“You’re a fucking fugitive. Murder One. Low profile,
silencio radio,
this and that.”

“Sure, you got it, man, of course,” Pescatore said. Now I’m fried if they even catch me looking at a phone, he thought. Nice
work, Valentine.

“Anyway.” Buffalo brightened. “Remember what I said about earning your keep? I got a
chamba
for you.”

They drove out to Junior’s ranch on the road to Tecate. Pescatore squinted, unaccustomed to daylight. At the target-shooting
range they met a handful of youths, a mix of U.S. gang members and Mexicans. Like motley soldiers, they stood at attention
as Buffalo told Pescatore to instruct them in rudimentary pistol technique—loading, cleaning, handling—then lead close-range
target practice.

“Introduction to guns, man, basic basics, like they don’t know a fucking thing,” Buffalo said. “These youngsters, they’re
always wavin’
cuetes
around, but they’re ignorant. They’re lucky they don’t shoot themselves or each other. Me, I don’t have the time or the patience.”

The assignment surprised Pescatore. But he warmed to the task. His pupils were diligent and respectful. He gave the demonstration
in Spanish and English, improvising, mimicking his Patrol instructors from the academy days. Buffalo nodded approvingly. During
the next week, they came back three more times and Pescatore led more sessions of target practice. Buffalo sat on a picnic
table, watching intently. He looked grim.

About two weeks after Pescatore’s arrival in Tijuana, the house had visitors: Moze and Tchai, the smooth cheerful Brazilians
from the night of the arms deal. The word was that they
were waiting for a kingpin named Khalid to visit from South America. They sat in lawn chairs by Buffalo’s pool, listening
to Brazilian party music on iPods plugged into a little speaker.

Isabel Puente would be interested in this development, Pescatore thought. He was still undercover, recording details, writing
reports in his head. But he was starting to feel cut off. Like the Imperial Beach station, Puente seemed to belong to a remote
and improbable previous life. He still thought about her, especially when he was high. But it was as if she were becoming
unattainable again: a fantasy as much as a memory.

That evening, the Death Patrol stood guard at a restaurant. The operation reminded Pescatore of the precautions the U.S. feds
took before a visit to the border by the attorney general. At dusk, he walked through the restaurant with Buffalo, Momo, Pelón
and Sniper. They checked entrances and bathrooms, frisked waiters and cooks. More gunmen arrived: homeboys, Mexican gangsters,
state police detectives in cowboy boots, stiff-legged slacks and leather jackets. They deployed sentries with radios on rooftops
and corners, on foot and in cars.

Buffalo and Momo left. Pescatore waited with Pelón and Sniper in the entrance vestibule. He was excited about the action—and
about the fact that they had brought him along. Once he started getting access to the street, an opportunity for escape could
develop. At least he might be able to slip off somewhere for a couple of minutes and find a way to call: maybe a pay phone,
or he could buy a cell.

The restaurant was decorated like a
hacienda,
long tables, white lace and dark wood, vegetation around an indoor waterfall. A trio strummed guitars in a corner. The place
was all fancied up for a Friday night, but bereft of customers. It stayed empty until 10 p.m., when the dignitaries arrived.

First came Mauro Fernández Rochetti, commander of the Tijuana homicide unit. He looked grayer than on television but easily
recognizable: withering stare, strong-boned profile, wom
anly mouth. He was escorted by a chubby-cheeked bodyguard in a cowboy hat. Then came the Brazilians. They held the doors for
Mr. Abbas, their sharp-dressed Arab boss. Abbas hovered in turn around an older Arab in metallic eyeglasses who carried himself
like an ambassador. Khalid, Pescatore thought. A nervous maitre d’ in a tuxedo led them to a long table off by itself.

A few minutes later, the walkie-talkies chattered. Sniper straightened and told Pescatore to look sharp.
“El jefe. Aguas, ponte truchas.”

Momo glided into the vestibule. He held the Tek-9 under a jacket draped over his arm like a Secret Service agent. Buffalo
filled the doorway, looking the place over. Pescatore felt a rush of expectation.

Junior Ruiz Caballero’s swagger verged on a waddle. He was built wide and thick. A two-tone leather jacket exaggerated his
shoulders. His brown hair was shaggy, with blondish sun streaks. The word that occurred to Pescatore was “user”: the tanned
face had the strained mouth and charged-up grimaces of a cokehead. The features were handsome, almost pretty, a broad nose
and sullen lips. But a layer of jowl spread on the sides and below the chin like a balloon inflating. His belly bulged in
a shiny silver shirt. Junior was a user, if not an abuser, and getting sloppy.

Junior’s green eyes glistened. He walked stiff-armed and bowlegged. He swept into the vestibule and gave Sniper, Pelón and
Pescatore an unexpected sleepy grin. Pescatore, feeling the same flunky’s smile on his face as on everyone else’s, wondered
if the guy knew who the hell he was.

Junior pointed two fingers at them extended out of a fist, mimicking a gun. He made playful popping sounds, his thumb moving
like the hammer of a revolver. Then he went inside.

T
HE BISHOP ARRIVED
in an ancient Eldorado driven by a slim young priest with wet-combed hair. A nun with goggle-sized spectacles accompanied
them.

Méndez watched from the window of his office. Athos greeted the bishop in the courtyard below. Diogenes Group officers assembled.

“His Eminence,” Méndez said. “Here to inflict another Ash Wednesday on us.”

“You do not sound grateful or respectful,” Araceli Aguirre said.

The bishop’s belly strained in his black soutane. His smile was unctuous. He handed out his trademark laminated cards, decorated
with images of the Virgin of Guadalupe, to the officers. There were rumors the bishop would soon leave Tijuana for a big job
at the Vatican.

“The bishop has gotten fat and rich baptizing the children of drug traffickers,” Méndez said, slumping into his chair.

“All children have a right to be baptized, Leo,” Aguirre said, taking a drag on a cigarette.

She should stop smoking, she’s too thin, Méndez thought. Her cell phone rang and she answered: a reporter, as usual. The Tijuana
correspondent of a national newspaper was on the line, apparently complaining that Aguirre was interfering with his
vacation plans. She told the correspondent that he would look like the biggest cretin on the planet if he did not postpone
his trip to Mexico City to attend her press conference the next day. She scolded him for daring to ask if she had called the
press conference to announce her gubernatorial candidacy and ordered him to keep his frivolous political speculation to himself.
The human rights commission was dealing with very grave, very delicate matters that required her full attention.

“A sneak preview?” she declared. “What do you think this is, a striptease? No special privileges for
chilangos.
You change your flight and you be there tomorrow like everybody else, my little friend. Have I ever let you down? I’ll make
a hero of you yet.”

Méndez touched the plane ticket in the breast pocket of his sport jacket. He had bought the ticket two days earlier. Instead
of locking it in his desk, he realized, he had carried it around with him, even during the predawn drive to Ensenada with
a federal police informant who swore that Pescatore was holed up in a hotel near the port. The raid had turned up addicts,
whores, two-bit hoodlums, illegal immigrants from China and Bangladesh. But no trace of the fugitive Border Patrol agent.

Méndez made sure the ticket was secure in the pocket. It was a San Diego–Oakland round trip, departure scheduled for Friday
with the return Sunday. He wondered if his failure to remove it from his pocket was Freudian. Maybe the lapse reflected his
eagerness to see his wife and son for the first time since November. Or maybe he had a subconscious desire to lose the ticket
because he was apprehensive about the reunion.

Aguirre hung up.

“I suppose it would be useless to ask you to postpone this a few days,” Méndez said.

“If it were for you, I would give you all the time you want,” she said. “But it’s the Secretary. You have run out of explanations
for his behavior. It’s clear he doesn’t want to do anything. He doesn’t even want to catch these Border Patrol agents.”

More than two weeks had passed since the Secretary had rejected Méndez’s request to make arrests, forcing the Americans to
postpone their operation as well. Convinced that the Secretary had let them down, Araceli had decided to make good on her
threat. She was going to hold a press conference to discuss the Colonel’s murder and the circumstances and the individuals
behind it.

“I told the Secretary that finding Pescatore and Garrison would be a perfect way to help the Americans and make them look
bad at the same time,” Méndez said. “That seemed to catch his interest. He promised to put the federal police at my disposal,
but they are just going through the motions.”