Crossing the Line (14 page)

But what I mainly felt was something quite different from sympathy or suspicion. For the first time in my life I wanted to strike a woman. As for Tom, I wanted to tear off his arms and beat him with his own pale limbs. Yeah, they were risking their careers. But they were risking my brother’s life. And mine and my family’s. But even over my own outrage, I was still able to sense theirs. I couldn’t help admiring their relentlessness.

With their four eyes boring into me—two blue and two narrow and dark, I picked up my cell phone and called McGee as I’d promised him I would.

“I need you to keep your big mouth shut for one week,” I told my boss.

“Now we need you to do your part,” Mary said. “Tell us what your brother is thinking and feeling. How he’s going to respond to a greeting like the one he received last night.”

It was something I should have been asking myself. Why hadn’t Roberto exploded? How had he kept his famous feral nature in check? He was
destraillado,
as Mom said. Unleashed. Unable to contain himself. Yet somehow he had. It must have taken a great gathering of will to do it.

“I don’t know,” I told her. “He’s going to be pissed, there’s no doubt about that. There’s going to be a reckoning with Bruto and that kid who hit him with the gun. But he kept his cool. I think he’ll keep it.” I didn’t say anything about my suspicion that he was still riding the horse.

“Better than you did, I hope,” Mary said with a tentative smile.

I let that go.

Another question came into my head. How well did Hidalgo know my brother? Would the lack of an explosion on his part be suspicious to the
narcotraficante
?

Mary was evidently thinking along the same lines.

“Is it possible your brother doesn’t know him as well as he says he does? It seems strange that Hidalgo would allow an old friend to be strip-searched and beaten like that.”

“Burns could be shining us on,” Tom said, nodding. “Guys like him lie about everything.”

“My brother’s not a liar.”

“Right. He’s just a junkie and a killer.”

I stood up. Tom did, too.

“Damn it, Tom!” Mary said. “Cool it! Both of you!”

Tom and I looked at each other. The relief on Mary’s face that I’d noticed during my short talk with my boss had never registered on his. He showed no appreciation that I was allowing their charade to go on—not that I really had any choice. He still wanted to put me in my place. Especially since I’d thrown him in the dirt a half hour earlier.

“Why is it that men are such children?” Mary berated us, the cautious smile gone. “We’re trying to do something significant here, and all you can think about is fighting each other. Squabbling like kids. Tom, your friend—our colleague—was murdered by this guy, but you’re so worried about being top dog that you keep forgetting that. And Anton, your brother is in there with that monster. Yet you seem to think guarding your precious machismo is more important.”

I suppressed the urge to say,
He started it.

But I wasn’t sure I’d be able to choke out an apology if she demanded it. Saying
I’m sorry
to the man who’d clearly reveled in my brother’s beating would be a betrayal of my blood. As would any act of contrition toward the two people who had put him in that situation. But I was relieved that our mutual aggression was being reined in. I imagined that it was finished now—that Tom and I would be able to work together with a sort of icy efficiency. We were pros, after all. I think Tom was relieved as well. He should have been. I’d really wanted to hurt him. I still did.

Instead of demanding that apologies be traded, Mary only insisted that we suffer the indignity of shaking hands. We did it, demonstrating our newfound maturity and professionalism by not seeking to grind each other’s finger bones. I was tempted, though, because I knew my climber’s grip could crush the bigger man’s hand.

“Now, is there any chance your brother could be playing us?” Tom asked.

“I know him. He’s not,” I said flatly, as if it were incontrovertible.

But what if he was? What if this whole thing was one of his games? What if he was just pimping the Feds, and what if his intention all along was to inform Hidalgo that he was being watched, make a game of it, then simply return to South America where he remained untouchable to American law enforcement?

If that was his plan, then he might get us all fired, or maybe even killed. Roberto had to know that. Even if he didn’t, I remembered what he’d said to me when we talked about Hidalgo.
He’s gotten twisted, he’s messing with women and kids.
I knew Roberto would never tolerate the abuse of women, children, or animals. I couldn’t explain it to the Feds in a way they’d believe, but I knew my brother. So I dismissed the possibility.

Mary was nodding slowly, looking at Tom. “Anton’s right. He wouldn’t turn on us,” she said in the same tone I’d used.

Tom didn’t say anything. He didn’t look convinced.

“We don’t have any choice but to assume that he’s with us, and that Hidalgo doesn’t suspect him,” Mary said. “The call from the embassy bears that assumption out. If we’re wrong, there’s nothing we can do about it at this point anyway.”

“What call? What embassy?”

She explained that she’d had Roberto’s NCIC file flagged. Anyone seeking to access information about him from the Bureau’s National Crime Information Center would trip the flag and she would be notified. Word had come in this morning—the morning after Roberto’s arrival at Hidalgo’s compound—of a request from a senior law-enforcement official in the Mexican Embassy for verification of Roberto’s status as a fugitive. Of course the foreign official was assured that Roberto Burns was still a wanted man.

I didn’t bother to ask if it was really possible that such a high-level Mexican official could be on Hidalgo’s payroll. Yes, I knew from what I’d learned over the past few days, one could easily be that dirty. And the request proved it.

It also proved that Hidalgo was as suspicious and smart as the Feds had assumed when planning this operation. As expected, he was checking up on Roberto. All according to plan. My brother’s infiltration of Hidalgo’s operation in Wyoming rested on the belief that the drug lord was smart, but that we were smarter.

“When did you get that call?”

“Two hours ago,” Mary said.

“Not long before that, someone across the river used a cell phone to call Mexico. That call was encrypted, but another one wasn’t. We picked it up on the scanner. Jesús has got a plane coming in this afternoon.”

“What does that mean? A plane?”

They both shook their heads. “We aren’t sure.”

TWELVE

I
spent most of the afternoon up on the ridge, where I squatted in the junipers’ shade while peering through either my binoculars or the powerful camera’s viewfinder. For once the wind wasn’t blowing. Mungo lay at my side, panting hard in the dry heat that reflected off the sandstone.

I’d suggested that the inbound plane might be full of drugs, but Tom scoffed, telling me not to count on it. Planes were extremely suspect in a post-9/11 world, while the remote border remained wide open. The narcos were smart enough to know that. If drugs were coming north to disperse east and west along I-80—the so-called vein of evil running through the state—they’d come by car or by truck. So a plane meant something else.

We’d speculated on the possibilities. It could be more of Hidalgo’s men coming north to relieve his current soldiers. It could be some of the lieutenants who were running the business in their boss’s absence. It could be his lawyer, the one in whose name the property had been purchased. It could be someone coming to make a deal—one that we’d hopefully learn about and use to nail Hidalgo for conspiracy. Or the plane could be coming to take Roberto south, either to kill him or put him to work.

That was my brother’s pitch: that he could negotiate the purchases of raw product from the South American syndicates better than anyone else. Nobody would mess with him, and, because of our dead grandfather’s lingering influence in that part of the world, he would be safe from interference by the governments there. Who would be better to negotiate on Hidalgo’s behalf than someone who couldn’t be arrested? Who was too crazy to double-cross? The only thing he would have to fear would be a kidnapping by American authorities similar to what Tom had done in Juárez several years ago.

That was funny. Roberto had already been kidnapped, only no one knew it but me.

As the day wore on, my worries began to ease. The household’s three maids, who must have been the only servants in Wyoming to wear black uniforms trimmed with white lace, swept the sand from the flagstone around the swimming pool. One of the bangers swung a net through the water when he wasn’t groping himself the way rap stars do on MTV. The maids later tied cushions to the iron chairs and lounges and set up a couple of umbrellas. Stacks of towels were laid out, and a table to serve as a bar.

I noticed that all of the maids were older, plump, and matronly. They might have been the bangers’ mothers. If men like that had mothers.

Clearly there was going to be a party. That meant that it was someone important coming north to pay a visit, not to take my brother away. Hidalgo was trying very hard to create a refined atmosphere in his isolated Wyoming home-away-from-home. I fantasized about Roberto sitting in on some major cocaine deal, dropping me a note, and the whole thing being wrapped up in just a day.

Mary had offered to bring me lunch, but it was Tom who scrabbled and slid up to the ridge in his cowboy boots. He threw a plastic-wrapped sandwich at me when he reached the notch. He threw it low and hard, just inches above Mungo’s head. I managed to catch it but not before Mungo, with a sudden lunge, nearly snatched it from the air.

I wished Roberto were here to see it—he loved it when Mungo showed some spirit.

“It’s gonna be girls,” Tom predicted.

Squatting before the tripod, he began to fiddle with the camera.

“Picture’s off,” he explained.

“Be sure to get it just right, Tom. You can jack off to it later.”

He turned to fix me with his close-set eyes. I closed mine for a moment and ground my teeth, remembering Mary’s lecture about cooperation.

“Sorry, Tom,” I said. “The heat’s getting to me.”

He took out one of the small walkie-talkies and switched it on.

“All right?” he asked into the mouthpiece.

“A little to the left,” came Mary’s tinny voice. “More. Now back. That’s it. Wipe the lens now. Thanks.”

“What’s she doing?” I asked.

He didn’t answer for a minute while he carefully dabbed at the lens with a small white cloth.

Then, turning to look at me again, he said, “She’s watching the monitor, QuickDraw. What do you think? Been there all morning. Doesn’t want to miss seeing her boyfriend.”

He had a sly smirk on his face. As if he meant something more than just an offhand remark by “her boyfriend.” I wanted to ask what it was but I held it in. Instead I raised my binoculars and stared off past the house to where clouds of dust were drifting from the mine entrance. A pickup truck was heading into the mouth of the tunnel, which was just out of sight behind a shrubby hill. What was in those cardboard boxes? Drugs? Cash? I knew that potash mines are usually miles deep and I couldn’t help but envy the driver’s courage. The one time I’d been that deep under the ground, I’d been absolutely terrified.

Tom was apparently disappointed that I hadn’t asked what he was talking about. I felt him watching me for a few more seconds before he headed back down the hill without another word, sliding and scuffling in his slick-soled shit-kickers.

Mary came up the slope a little later. She wore a sleeveless T-shirt, shorts, and, being smarter than Tom, a pair of lightweight hiking boots with lugged soles. She also was carrying two canteens, one of which Mungo and I made quick use of to wash down the peanut- butter-and-jelly sandwich we’d shared.

“You’ve been watching?” I asked her when I could work my mouth.

She nodded, making a seat for herself next to me by moving some small stones. We sat more or less facing each other, our backs propped against furry juniper trunks. Mungo had moved off into some bushes, where she pretended she was invisible just like a real wolf. Whenever I looked her way, she lifted her lips in her shy Cheshire grin. Her tongue snaked in and out, trying to rub the peanut butter from the roof of her mouth.

“It looks like it’s going to be quite a party. Any sign of your brother yet?”

Roberto hadn’t shown himself amid all the pre-party activity. Other men had been milling around the house along with the maids, but neither Hidalgo nor Roberto had shown his face. Another pickup had driven up to the mine and then down into the tunnel. Neither had come back out. Curiously, this one had been loaded with cases of bottled water. I wondered if Hidalgo was paranoid—if he was building some kind of shelter in the mine. Wyoming was full of bomb shelters awash in food and guns, but I’d never known a Latino to buy into end-of-the-world conspiracy theories. It had always seemed a peculiarly Anglo phobia.

“Nine Mexican nationals have been processed through Immigration in Salt Lake, but their names were unavailable to us. We don’t even know yet if they’re male or female,” Mary said.

“Tom’s hoping they’re female.”

“I expect he’s right. Hidalgo’s been known to fly high-priced prostitutes from Mexico City to his ranch in Baja. We know he has a taste for big-haired blondes.”

“That should make Tom happy. I’d guess that’s his type. That is, if Roberto was wrong about Tom being gay.”

Mary looked at me with her dark eyes.

“What’s your brother’s type?”

I shrugged.

“All types. Just not bleached blondes.”

“Does he have a girlfriend?” she asked, still staring.

“He’s had two that I know about. One left him because she said he didn’t have a future. The other said he’d break her heart, so she broke his first.”

“Only two? I find that a little hard to believe.”

“There’s been lots of women, but only two he cared for. You have something other than an idle interest, Mary?”

Now she looked away.

I’d seen this happen before. Several times, actually. There’d been a female rookie cop in Denver. A probation officer in Durango. A Deputy District Attorney in Boulder, fresh out of law school. Even an Air Force doctor—a major—when my brother was still a teenager. Women of a certain type—those that believed in rules and regulations above all things—were fascinated by Roberto. He was from a kind of opposite universe. He was an outlaw. An anarchist. And for some reason the women who fell for him the hardest tended to be those for whom such an attraction would seem the most repellent.

But Roberto’s thing had always been the broken birds. The fellow addicts, the abuse victims, those who had nothing left to them but a fragile beauty—they were the kind he’d gone for. And rebuilt into strong, confident, independent women. Who would then leave him.

As good as he was at climbing and general self-destruction, he didn’t have a clue when it came to women—not that I do, either. But I did know that with his looks he could have blown through them like a tornado, notching a thousand bedposts and breaking a thousand hearts. But he didn’t. It was
his
heart that had been broken twice too many times. Girls wanted to be with him for the moment, for the excitement and immediate gratification, but for the future they wanted someone more securely attached to the earth. It was true they lusted after him, but they didn’t love him. So he’d learned to keep them at a distance, only occasionally getting intimate when his physical needs became too great. Or, maybe, when he was high.

I explained a little of this. While I did, Mary reviewed our surveillance position. Checking to make sure the lenses were properly concealed, that the camouflaged tarps were covering any human sign on the ridge. She pretended to be only mildly interested in what I was saying. She even took the precaution of unwrapping a desert khaki poncho and pulling it over her T-shirt. She didn’t say a word, and I would have felt like I was talking to myself if it weren’t clear just how intently she was listening.

It wasn’t really surprising that she was more than a little curious about him. As uptight and serious as she appeared when I first met her, I should have predicted something like this might happen.

For a minute it worried me, so in my explanation I hit hard on the fact that it was the broken—not the rigidly erect—that he was drawn to. But I was beginning to see that maybe she saw herself as a little bit broken. Despite the camouflage poncho and the gun clipped to her hip, I saw again what my brother must have seen. An awkward, shy girl, working hard at coming off as a tough, ambitious FBI agent.

And that realization led me to understand that, from a selfish point of view, her interest in my brother might make him a little safer. She might bring him out sooner, once we had the smallest piece of necessary evidence, rather than leave him in too long in hopes of something better.

It came from the south, a silver bird steady in the sky, far in advance of the jet noise that trailed it. Like the mine entrance, the airstrip was out of our sight. According to Tom’s satellite picture, it was in a valley just beyond the first hills behind Hidalgo’s house. We could tell, though, that the plane was heading for it.

We both watched the plane through binoculars as it zoomed toward us. The pilot had obviously been here before, as he didn’t bother to circle the private strip. We’d been worried about that, and had taken extra precautions to be sure we couldn’t be seen from the air. But he just roared straight in, disappearing from view with the wheels down.

Mary and I heard the chirp of rubber hitting pavement, then the sound of the reverse thrusters being engaged, and finally the low roar of a taxiing jet.

Some of Hidalgo’s men came pouring out of the house. They headed toward where the cars and trucks were parked in the driveway. I recognized a few of them from Señor Garcia’s and others from our surveillance. The boy with the assault rifle who’d twice struck my brother was among them. He startled me by taking out a handgun and firing several shots in the air. Bruto grabbed him roughly and appeared to chew him out.

All the men were strangely dressed—it was as if they’d put on their best clothes. Most of them looked like a bunch of
Sopranos
wannabes. I’ll never figure out who is emulating whom—the real gangbangers or their TV and music-video counterparts.

For the low-level bangers the height of fashion was tracksuits worn halfway down their asses, tight, sleeveless undershirts, and a lot of tattoos and gold jewelry. I’d always appreciated the crack-exposing trend in pants, as it made them really easy to run down when they ran from a bust. For the older Mexicans—the true
sicarios,
the hired guns, the killers—the fashion was more cowboy-inspired.

Bruto, for instance, wore a clean white hat, a black leather jacket despite the heat, and black jeans. His skinny-fat and far smaller partner, Zafado, was dressed identically except that his hat was black. Shorty was dressed even more extravagantly than the others. He wore a wide-sleeved guayabera shirt unbuttoned to his waist and a pair of shiny gray slacks. His fat neck and wrists glittered with what must have been pounds of gold. He was going to be in trouble if he fell into the pool.

Dressed as they were, I hoped that tonight would be a going-to-town night once this outdoor party wound up. I desperately wanted word that Roberto was all right.

Tom was right—it was girls in the plane. Eight of them. They were far outnumbered by the men. Several cars and trucks ferried them from the airstrip to the house. The women were dressed up, too, with a lot of big blond hair as promised. Their clothes appeared at first to be expensive until I looked closely through the binoculars and could see that everything was a little too tight, a little too short, and a little too revealing.

None of them looked older than thirty. Several looked younger than twenty. They seemed nervous but like they were trying not to show it as they chattered among themselves and ignored the leers of the men escorting them into the house.

The men came out and gathered around the pool. Traditional folk music played over the outdoor speakers by the swimming pool. Mary and I could hear it all the way up on the ridge. It prevented us from using the directional microphone. The kid I’d seen cleaning the pool was now grilling tamales, husked corn, hamburgers, and hot dogs on the built-in brick grill. The black-clad maids disappeared after laying out a full bar on one table and a spread of snack foods on another. The men stood in small groups, laughing and fidgeting and fingering their groins.