Spiral (18 page)

"Yeah." Dystal looked at Haydon. "They're a little squeamish, Stu. All the shooting that's been going on. They don't want to give the media anything to rake them over the coals about. Being real cautious on this."

Haydon sat there a moment. Dystal pulled out a drawer and propped a boot on it. He picked up a rubber band, looped his big thumbs inside, and started strumming it with his ring fingers.

"What's on your mind?" he asked slowly.

"I'm going to make a request for a brief leave of absence."

Dystal studied him from under his eyebrows, fiddling with the rubber band. "Leave of absence," he said.

"That's not out of line under the circumstances."

"No," Dystal said, shaking his head a little. "I don't think anybody'd see it as being outta line." He shot the rubber band into the metal trash can with a hollow thunk. "Except maybe me."

Haydon waited.

"Somehow I can't see you wanting to take a breather just now," Dystal said. "How come I don't think you're just going to sit this thing out?"

"I just need to be away from it a few days," Haydon said.

"You mean you just don't need to be tied to a desk a few days," Dystal countered. "A kinda crucial time for this investigation."

Haydon didn't say anything. He was giving Dystal his chance to play it by the rules, take the request at face value.

The big lieutenant's face seemed suddenly heavy, and weary. The pressure and the lack of sleep caught up with him in a physical change that took place as Haydon watched. Dystal brought his booted foot down off the desk drawer, and he turned in his chair to face Haydon.

"Listen to me, Stu." He stopped, his eyes sagging. "You gonna make me do this? Have I gotta tell you what you're doing? You're gonna be stepping all over us, or we're gonna be stepping all over you. The first time one of the guys comes across your tracks he's
got
to report it. We're gonna have to haul you in. I mean, I can't even think about this it's so stupid."

"I need a few days' leave of absence," Haydon repeated, as if Dystal had never said anything. "I feel emotionally and physically exhausted," he said, using the rote phrasing he had heard in the department's bureaucratic handling of such cases. "It would do me good. I could get something from Fry to corroborate that. They're going to want me to talk to him anyway."

Dystal grabbed a piece of paper that had been lying on his desk and wadded it up, staring at it, thinking. He wadded it thoroughly, tightly, into a small compact ball, pressed it and molded it with his blunt fingers in the palm of his hand until the muscles in his massive forearms rippled and bulged. His jaw muscles worked just as hard. Then he stopped, opened his hand, and let the marble-sized pellet roll onto the desk, where it came to rest against the clear Lucite ashtray in the shape of Texas with the rattlesnake rattles embedded in the bottom.

He looked up.

"I'll do the paperwork for it before I leave tonight." He started to say something else, but stopped. Then he said, "I'm gonna trust you to let me know something when I need to know it."

"If I hear anything," Haydon said.

CHAPTER 19

HAYDON
walked directly out of Dystal's office and through the squad room to the third-floor corridor. He didn't look left or right, didn't speak to anyone, didn't give anyone a chance to speak to him. He took the stairs instead of the elevator, the gritty sound of his quick-paced footsteps amplified in the emptiness of the stairwell. Staring straight ahead, he strode out the rear door of the department headquarters and into the flat heat of afternoon, hurrying across the asphalt of the motor pool service yard and into the parking garage. The elevator door didn't open fast enough, didn't close fast enough. The ride was agonizingly slow. He didn't wait for the air conditioner to cool down before he wheeled the Vanden Plas into the down ramp of the garage, his tires screeching in the tight turns.

Not until he was out of the garage, and headed downtown on Washington, did he feel any sense of relief from the tightening in his chest. If he hadn't been through this before, he would have thought he was having a heart attack. But he knew himself, to that extent at least, though it had taken him years to recognize the signs for what they really were.He had felt the first twinges of claustrophobia while sitting at the computer terminal finishing the report. It had been difficult to concentrate on the details, and several times he had found himself simply staring at the screen, unaware of what he had written. Before he had finished, he knew he would not be able to continue within the framework that the department inevitably would impose on him. By the time he walked into Dystal's office the decision was behind him. As far as he was concerned, he was out of it. It had taken a tremendous amount of self-control to get through the conversation. He wanted out from under the restrictions of the department. If Dystal hadn't gone along with him, he would have resigned. It was suddenly that important to him. Within half an hour's time, it had become an absolute necessity.

Even in the four-o'clock migration that had already begun to curdle downtown traffic, he was less than five minutes away from the RepublicBank Center, which was only six blocks away across Buffalo Bayou, and the Gulf Freeway. He pulled into the garage entrance, took his ticket from the buzzing dispenser, and started looking for a parking place.

Again the sound of his own footsteps followed him across the granite paving of the northern arcade of the main floor. From a pay telephone he called Frank Siddons's law firm on the forty-eighth floor and asked for Mitchell Garner's office.

Garner was a young man in a hot field. He specialized in international law, and together with another attorney represented all the firm's clients involved in Mexican litigation. Haydon's father, whose own legal practice involved a great deal of Mexican law, had been responsible for convincing Frank Siddons nearly eight years earlier that he should acquire some Mexican specialists for his own firm. The first man Siddons hired, Edward Rhodes, had been an authority on Mexican business law, and then in 1980 Garner had been hired away from a political position with the State Department because of his expertise in Mexican politics and criminal law. After Haydon's father died, both Rhodes and Garner had helped Haydon with the legal complications of his father's considerable Mexican involvements, as well as handling the periodic paperwork involving Gabriela's nieces and nephews.

When Garner came on the telephone, he immediately expressed his sympathy.

"I was eating breakfast and flipped on the television," he said. "Usually I don't do that, but I'd just told Janice . . ." He paused awkwardly, as if embarrassed. "How are you holding up, Stuart?" he asked.

"I'm all right," Haydon said. "But I need to talk to you."

"Of course, sure. Come on up."

"I'd rather not. I don't feel like seeing Frank right now, or anyone else, really. Could you come down?"

"Sure. Where are you?"

"I'm on the ground floor now, but why don't you meet me on the bridge at the third level?"

"You want to go somewhere we can sit down?"

"No. The bridge would be best."

"I'll be right there."

Garner appeared at Haydon's side without speaking. He was breathing noticeably, his chunky frame beginning to take its toll even in the short brisk walk along the corporate corridors. His blond, prematurely thinning hair was cut short, still reminiscent of the conservative influences of Washington. He wore only white or pale blue shirts with button-down collars and striped ties. In the last year or so he had ventured into braces for his trousers. They looked good on him, suiting his style and manner.

"I'm sorry to get you down here like this," Haydon said, turning to Garner. "I appreciate your taking the time."

"No trouble." Garner tried to hide a hard swallow.

Haydon saw the curiosity in Garner's eyes.

"I'll get right to the point," Haydon said, glancing again out over the space. "The address on Chicon where Ed was killed last night was the site of a killing that Ed and I had caught early yesterday morning. A man was found lying on the sidewalk outside the gates of this large old house that appeared to be unoccupied. After we made that scene, I ran by the county clerk's office to find out who had been paying the taxes on the place. It turned out that for the last four years they were paid by a corporation. The Teco Corporation."

Haydon thought Garner's eyes narrowed slightly at this, but he didn't stop.

"Last night, when we got inside the house, we found some interesting literature in one of the bedrooms. It looked like radical right-wing material, even fascist. Anti-Jewish, antihomosexual, anticommunist. Pretty strong propaganda. In Spanish. The stuff was printed in Guadalajara, Jalisco. I got in touch with the secretary of state's office in Austin, and found out that the corporation was registered four years ago. All the officers are Mexican citizens. A couple live in Guadalajara, a couple in Colima, several in Mexico City." He took a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to Garner. "The registering agent is a Mexican-American here in Houston: Enrique Cordero Rulfo."

Garner looked at the list of officers. His face was set, and Haydon had the impression the names weren't of as much interest to him as something he had already heard.

After reading each name, Garner shook his head and looked at Haydon. "I've never heard of the Teco Corporation," he said, "but

I think I know what it is." He looked at the piece of paper, not seeing it, but thinking. He folded it, unfolded it, ran his fingers along the crease. Watching him, Haydon realized he had never before noticed that his friend's nails were manicured.

Garner seemed unsure how to begin. He turned square to the railing and stared straight across through the massive windows that reached up from the floor, looking out onto Louisiana Street.

"That attack on the limousine is tied to this, too, isn't it?" he

said.

"It's almost certain."

"The news said they got a Mexican named Sosa, Sosa Real."

"That's right. You know him?"

"I think I might."

Haydon wondered how many Sosa Reals Garner "might" know. He decided not to say anything about Gamboa.

"I don't know, Stuart. I'll just tell you what comes immediately to mind. Okay?" He frowned thoughtfully. "The states of Guadalajara and Colima are centers for some of the most right-wing political thinking in all of Mexico. In Guadalajara, much of this attitude grows out of the Autonomous University, which was founded by conservative, wealthy Catholics decades ago. The university system there is dedicated to inculcating its students with right-wing philosophy. Nothing wrong with that, naturally. The National University in Mexico City more than balances it out by leaning all the way in the other direction. However, in reality, the university in Guadalajara is much more than an educational system with a conservative philosophy. It's been charged that it receives funds from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the CIA, and has been a haven, a sort of safe house, for many of Anastasio Somoza's infamous guardia. It is also the seedbed, the center, of a secret order, called los tecos."

"I don't know the word," Haydon said.

"It's an abbreviation of
tecolote.
Owl."

Garner leaned his forearms on the wrought-iron rail, frowning, considering how to continue. He raised one hand and massaged the tips of his fingers across his forehead, where a glaze of perspiration had begun to glisten. He looked at his fingers with a slight frown and rubbed his hands together.

"Very little can be substantiated about this organization. The tecos , I mean. It's an obsessively secret movement. However, it is clearly a neofascist order, and rabidly anticommunist. Anti-Jewish. Fanatically Catholic ... the tecos are not tolerant of liberal or mainstream Catholicism. They are extreme in the extreme. For instance, when Pope John Paul II visited Mexico in 1983, their propaganda publications depicted him as a homosexual drug addict, and the Antichrist. These people are crazy. What makes them serious, Stuart, is their backing, and the people involved in their various levels and factions. The tecos are supported by a certain element of wealthy conservative Mexican politicians and businessmen. They have a close relationship with the administration of the Interamerican Development Bank, people in power in strong-arm Latin American countries, connections with the Fascists International. They are militant."

Garner shifted his weight to his other foot, and unfolded the list of names of the Teco Corporation officers.

"The
tecos used to be the Latin American affiliate of General John Singlaub's World AntiCommunist League. A few years ago it became evident that they were too extreme even for the league. They were eventually expelled. They've been named by a defected death-squad member in Honduras as having a significant hand in the death-squad activities there, as well as in other Central American countries."

"What do you mean, none of this can be 'substantiated'?" Haydon asked. "You don't sound like you're giving me speculation here."

"It's the same problem you'd have in acquiring court-admissible evidence against them," Garner said, shaking his head. "You know they're guilty as hell, but you can't put your hands on facts that will hold up. No one has ever produced unimpeachable evidence that the tecos are involved in violence in Mexico, or anywhere else in Latin America. Also, as a New York Times reporter told me, The way you get substantiation on the tecos is the same way you get dead.' There aren't a lot of people who want to ask probing questions about these people in Mexico."