Do They Know I'm Running? (17 page)

HAPPY SQUINTED AGAINST THE SUNLIGHT, NURSING HIS LAST
cigarette of the pack. Forklifts roared forward and beeped backing up, bearing pallets of shrink-wrapped bananas, plantains, mangoes and melons from long-bed containers, delivering them to the panel trucks abutting the loading dock. Hard hats—blue, white, yellow—bobbed everywhere like gumballs; the workday hustle kicked into gear. With the concrete floor still wet from its morning hose-down, every footfall slapped or screeched.

Secretly he envied these men, honest work, honest pay, if there was such a thing. At a glance he could pick out at least half a dozen he suspected of being illegal, drivers especially, like his old man. Ironic, since at that very moment there were enough feds nearby to arrest half of Richmond.

“Your guy’s in love with his fucking phone,” Vasco said, glancing for the thousandth time at his watch. “Feels like all I’ve done since you talked me into this is wait.”

“If I’ve already talked you into this,” Happy said, “what the fuck are we doing here?”

In truth, everybody was getting itchy, unless he had a badge. Happy’d heard that morning from his father in San Pedro Lempa that the
mareros
were suddenly jacked with impatience, leaning hard now, popping up in the middle of the night, wanting their money, ready to pull the plug if it didn’t get wired down yesterday. And Vasco just got greedier the longer Happy stalled, the greed made him edgy, his edge made him an impossible pain
in the ass. But Lattimore worked on government time, which seemed to have only three gears: Stalled. Stuck. Backwards.

It wasn’t like they had to wire up the warehouse. The feds had used it before, their favorite snare, home field, hidden video everywhere. When stings weren’t in play, the company that actually owned the place used the cameras to guard against employee theft—“shrinkage,” they called it. Even the office was miked, everything go. It was the paperwork jamming the gears.

Two days after that first face-to-face at the Vietnamese restaurant, Happy went in for his free talk, as Lattimore called it, or “off-the-record proffer,” per the assistant U.S. attorney. Happy laid out everything he’d done, no threat of prosecution: sneaking back into the country with the help of his ganged-up
polleros
, planning to do the same for his dad, lending some muscle to Vasco’s pathetic moving-van shakedowns, stripping copper wire for him. But it wasn’t Happy’s past that brought them all together. They wanted to hear about the future.

The conference room had a flag in the corner, a tray of coffee and ice water anchoring a long shiny table, a portrait of FBI director Robert Mueller III—Bobby Three Sticks, Lattimore called him. His supervisor, a reedy and taller-than-average Filipino named Orpilla, passed a consent form in front of Happy that asserted he willingly agreed “to assist in the making of undercover recordings at the sole direction of law enforcement officials.” The form promised Happy the federal government wouldn’t prosecute him for anything that popped up in those recordings; all bets were off, though, if state or county prosecutors went ahead. He’d have to work that out on his own. Happy read the form, waived his right to have someone from the public defender’s office advise him. Prior experience convinced him public defenders existed simply to slow things down, not change their direction or, God forbid, improve their odds. He signed where he saw his name. Orpilla took the executed form and tucked it into a folder.

It was the AUSA, though, who was driving the bus. The guy’s name was Jon Pitcavage—overachiever eyes etched with crow’s-feet, a tight scrub of graying black curls, the build of a serious gym rat. He wore a snappy pinstripe suit and leaned into his words. If Happy read Lattimore’s body language right, he had little use for Pitcavage, except he was the one AUSA in San Francisco, supposedly, who knew where the gas pedal was, not just the brake. He got points among the agents for that—though, apparently, only that.

Happy repeated for Pitcavage what he’d already laid out for Lattimore. The attorney listened with elbows on the table, hands clasped, thumbs bobbing against his chin. Once Happy wrapped up, the guy leaned back in his swivel chair, crossed his legs, rocked pensively back and forth. Guy likes being watched, Happy thought, while over the man’s shoulder, far beyond the conference-room window, an airliner razored a vapor trail across an otherwise perfect sky.

“This scenario,” Pitcavage said finally, “the quid pro quo—this Vasco character gets sole control of the narcotics operation involving the Valle Norte cartel and shot-caller status with Mara Salvatrucha, in exchange for funding the smuggling of this Arab alien, this would-be terrorist, into the country—as I understand it, this was all your idea?”

Happy felt the familiar bilge of nausea rising from below. “Yeah.”

“But there is no smuggling operation, correct? And the Arab, as far as you know, owes no allegiance to any known terrorist organization.”

“Samir—he’s Palestinian—he actually helped the coalition forces in Iraq.”

Pitcavage glanced toward Lattimore. “An interpreter.”

Happy said, “That’s right.”

“And this coconspirator in Richmond, the warehouse owner, the person who is supposed to receive these fictitious shipments
of cocaine from, where was it?” He leafed through his notes. “Turbo, Colombia—you just made that up.”

“Read about it on the Web, actually. Sounded good. Thought it’d get Vasco to bite.”

“But he didn’t bite, did he?”

Happy cleared his throat. “Not exactly.”

“He wanted verification. He wanted to see an honest-to-God warehouse, a real live owner. Golly, I’m stunned. Just like he’ll probably want to see a cocaine shipment before too long, don’t you think? Where do you suppose that might come from?”

Happy felt like he had a living thing thrashing around in his gut. “I figured I’d be in touch with you people by then. That was something we’d have to work out.”

“We.” Pitcavage’s eyes looked scorched. “How I always love the sound of ‘we.’”

“Look,” Happy said, “if you think I just made this crap up so I could shake Vasco down, get him to pay for my old man’s trip back, you weren’t paying attention. Get serious, I do that, and Vasco finds out everything else, the coke, the Colombians, the terrorist, it’s all just crap? He’d lean hard. Me and my family, we’d pay and just keep paying. Like I told you, I want citizenship, me and my dad both. Can’t get that from Vasco. I want that, I gotta come here. Way I see it, my cousin Godo already earned it, earned it for me, my dad, both. But I’m ready to go the extra mile, make sure you get what you want, ’cause yeah, I surf the Net, I read the articles about how you guys are trying to link up gangs and the ragheads. Dream bust, those two tied together. And I know how to make that happen, who to put with who. I give you your shot. And I know this doesn’t just stop here. I know this opens doors for you. People gonna read about this case and they’re gonna say: We gotta stop these
maras
, these gangs. We gotta let the cops off the leash. So instead of treating me like I’m the shit on your shoe, maybe you should see I’m not the problem here. I won’t ask for thanks but I won’t sit here and beg,
neither. Just want what me and my family deserve. And what I deserve, this minute? Is to be taken a little more serious.”

Pitcavage ran his tongue inside his lower lip, as though scouring out a speck of food. “You honestly believe that this bag of snakes you came in here with is a dream bust?”

“I
deserve
to be taken more
serious.”

The lawyer turned to Lattimore and Orpilla and, as though Happy had just vanished, launched off on a new tack. “I’ll sign off on the recording, it’s reasonable and legal. As for the setup, the way I understand it there’s been no Barraza harassment, no pressure, no cajoling. Admittedly, your genius here has devised the crime but we’re clear there, that’s established law. If there’s no prior disposition to terrorist activity there certainly is to the smuggling. No special feel-good motive’s been contrived, nobody’s gone all buddy-buddy. It’s about greed, period.

“The one weak spot, beyond the obvious tactical headaches, is the unusual attractiveness of the crime. What is it, anywhere from one and a half to three mil this Vasco clown thinks he’ll be clearing per annum? But there’s been no promise it’s a sure thing, he hasn’t been told they can’t get caught. He knows the risk. And one discussion, boom, he’s in. You get him and these other idiots on video, you get them on tape, plenty of it, you know the drill. And it’s all got to happen quick, before somebody catches on there aren’t any shipments coming from Turbo and never will be. I figure we’ve got a month, tops. Any longer, the thing will unravel. And unless I’m mistaken, this interpreter and the source’s father should be back in the States by then. So that’s your time line.”

Pitcavage rose from his chair, stole a glance out the window. The vapor trail resembled a line of coke on a blue mirror.

“Get these guys expressing full knowledge and consent. I don’t need a pledge to al-Qaeda, like those buffoons in Liberty City, though that would be sweet. But they make it clear they know what’s going on: quid pro quo, a cocaine franchise for a
terrorist across the border. You get me that, I don’t see a jury backing off a verdict. You’ve heard me say it before: We don’t have to wait until buildings come down to prove somebody’s a terrorist. And your genius is right, the MS-13 angle makes it particularly attractive. These guys want to claim they weren’t predisposed, they can walk away any time they want. Make sure everybody on the joint task force stays in the loop. I’ll be surprised if we don’t see plea deals all the way down the table. Defense will cry entrapment but they always do. And they always lose. Entrapment’s just what they tell their clients so the bills get paid.”

He tamped down his tie and turned to leave, stopping himself only to address Happy one last time. “You’re absolutely certain this interpreter’s name is Samir Khalid Sadiq?” He posed the question as though to imply there were varieties of deceit, especially in the Muslim world, that were not just hard to discern, they were impenetrable.

“Yes.” Happy swallowed. “At least, you know, that’s the name he always used around me. Always.”

The lawyer shot a warning glance across Lattimore’s bow, then left like time was money and the money was down the hall. And that was pretty much the last Happy saw of Assistant U.S. Attorney Jon Pitcavage.

LATTIMORE GUIDED HAPPY TO THE ELEVATOR AND DOWN TO A LOWER
floor where his own cubicle was buried. Happy felt a little shocked to see what a rat’s nest it was, binders stacked helter-skelter on every surface, copies of
National Gang Threat Assessment, National Intelligence Assessment: The Terrorist Threat in the U.S. Homeland, A Parent’s Guide to Internet Safety
and a dozen others scattered everywhere to the point you had to wonder if something might collapse if it was all hauled away. The only personal items he could see were a gym bag stuffed with ripe sweats
and three framed photographs on the shelf, one of a sprawling colonial-style house in the country somewhere; another of an older couple, parents maybe; the third of a tricked-out Harley with gold and crimson flames on the gas tank. Happy supposed the mess made sense. For all the sharp, battened-down attitude the man possessed, it wasn’t too much of a stretch to imagine a daredevil slob lurking just beneath the skin. He wore no wedding band, never spoke of kids. Maybe the whole of his life was contained, one way or another, in this clutter.

Removing a clump of files from the chair beside his desk, Lattimore waited for Happy to sit, then commenced to unpack his memory, searching out every possible detail he could bring to bear about Samir: schooling, family, wife, in-laws, best guess on dates he stayed in Abu Ghraib, dates he traveled with the convoy to Najaf, everything and anything so it could be passed along to field agents in Baghdad. “If your story doesn’t pan out on that front,” Lattimore said, “the plug gets yanked quick, understand? We can’t have a Trojan horse rolling toward the border. Everything shifts gears then and we focus on making sure he gets nowhere close.”

Happy glanced again at the pictures in their dime-store frames. “You live with a man day in and day out,” he said, “you go through hell with him—I told you, he saved my life—you get a sense of when he’s making crap up. You know, tell a good story. You figure out too, when he’s speaking for real.”

From there it was farther still into the bowels of the federal building, to the lair of a tech named Merriwether. Curiously, given the cutting-edge nature of his job, he was the oldest guy Happy met that day—mudslide of chins, wispy hair swirling around a freckled bald spot. Happy found it easier to picture him selling vacuum cleaners to housewives than miking up snitches.

It turned out there wouldn’t be a body wire. “Very old school,” Merriwether explained. Instead they had a flannel shirt
with a microphone in the collar, a tiny video camera in one of the buttons. Happy felt like 007 as he shouldered into it.

“We used to have an on/off switch right here in the cuff,” Merriwether said, “but defense lawyers complained that if the CI could switch the tape on or off himself, how did anyone know when he might have been making a threat, offering a bribe?”

The backup recorder turned out to be the battery for a cell phone. It sent out a continuous signal to the nearest relay tower, no need for a booster transmitter.

As they walked back to the elevator together, Merriwether put his hand on Happy’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about anything except getting these people to say what they’re supposed to say.” A few brisk pats. “You’ll be frightened. That’s understandable. If you find yourself at a loss for what to say, ask a question, any question. You’d be surprised how often that works.”

“THIS YOUR GUY?” VASCO POINTED WITH HIS CHIN ACROSS THE TRUCK
yard at the figure striding toward them. He was lithe but short, a boxer’s gait, decked out in a black suit, a silver silk shirt buttoned tight to the collar.

“He’ll call himself Zipicana,” Lattimore had said, “the name of some underworld spirit, Mayan Quiché lore. And don’t wear your flannels or bring the cell-phone battery to the meet. You’ll see why.”