Suspicion (22 page)

W
hen it finally came out, Danny was surprised at how matter-of-fact it sounded. How undramatic.

And what a relief it was to have this confirmed.

“Whoa,” Danny said softly.

Did he sound convincingly shocked? He hoped so. After all, it wasn’t entirely contrived. He was astonished that Galvin had just revealed something so explosive, so dangerous. That he trusted Danny enough to tell him.

But the question still remained:
Why
was he talking about this?

“Lina’s dad was what you call a
pez gordo
in the Sinaloa cartel. A big fish. A
jefe
. I guess he was sort of like their chief financial officer.”

“You had no idea until then?”

“I had a pretty good idea something was squirrelly. But like I say, I didn’t look too hard. Maybe I didn’t want to know.” Galvin furrowed his brow and scowled as he talked, as if it pained him to speak.

“You’re telling me you’re a . . . you launder money for the cartel?”

“No,” Galvin said firmly, almost with distaste. “I don’t
launder money
.”

A distant sound of a motor revving, big and throaty. A long way off, but it seemed to be coming from where they’d parked. Galvin turned around. It didn’t sound at all like the Suburban. Maybe just a passing truck.

Galvin gave Danny a quick, puzzled look, but then he resumed walking down the middle of the path, and Danny fell in alongside.

“They don’t need me for that anyway. They’ve got major banks for that.”

“In Mexico?”

“Here. In England. All over the place. You can Google the HSBC bank in London and the Wachovia bank here. Famous cases.”

“Then what did they want from you?”

“Their own money manager. Their own private equity investor.”

“The
cartel
did?”

Galvin nodded. “Lina’s dad was a smart dude. He saw all the cash they were generating—billions of dollars a year, and most of it sat in warehouses or locked away in suitcases. And he wondered why they couldn’t do something with all that money. Invest in real estate or restaurant chains or the stock market. Grow it, right? That’s what they wanted me for.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

He kept walking a while longer, as if he hadn’t heard.

“Tom,” Danny said.

Finally, Galvin stopped. He stood close to Danny. “I can’t have a private conversation at home. They’ve got it bugged. In Boston, too. They monitor my phone calls. They read my e-mails. Out here there’s no mobile phone reception, so no listening devices.”

“The cartel, you mean? They monitor you because they don’t trust you?”

“Oh, it’s nothing personal. They don’t trust anyone. They want to make sure I’m not cooperating with the FBI or the DEA, selling them out. I run two billion dollars of their money. They have to be careful.”

“I’d think you’re the one who really has to worry. You could go to jail.”

Galvin’s expression was inscrutable.

“Is your car . . . safe? To talk in, I mean?”

“Not in Boston. This one I just leased, so they wouldn’t have had time to wire it up. But the driver listens.”

“Your driver . . . ?”

“Works for them, not for me. He’s not just a bodyguard, he’s a minder, too. Golden handcuffs, Danny. Golden handcuffs.”

“But . . . I still don’t get why you’re telling me all this.”

“Because I know you’ve seen some things, and I don’t want you poking around and asking questions. For my sake, and for your own sake. You saw me on the mountain. I don’t know what else you’ve seen, but I want to protect you.” He paused to watch a hawk, black with a yellow bill and a white-banded tail, gliding on the wind, tilting and swooping and searching for prey. “And something else. I’ll be honest, I’m scared out of my mind, and I don’t know who else to talk to.”

Surprised, Danny looked at him. Galvin’s face was strained and creased.

“Scared of what?” Danny said.

“You understand you can’t tell a soul? I can’t emphasize that strongly enough. For your own sake. And Abby’s.”

Danny nodded. The mention of Abby’s name clutched at his insides.

“The cartels have sources in US law enforcement like you wouldn’t believe. Especially the DEA—that place is riddled with moles. A couple of weeks back, the cartel got an internal DEA report about a new informant. Someone who was giving the DEA extremely in-depth information on the Sinaloa cartel. Names of contacts in the US, cell phone numbers, e-mail addresses. The name of a logistics company I helped create that we use as a shell, mostly to move cash around. Information that could only have come from me, they decided.”

Danny swallowed hard. It tasted bitter, metallic.

“So they did a sweep of my office. The house, my cars, even the plane. Everything.”

“And?”

“At first they thought the informant had to be Esteban, my driver.”

“Esteban? But why?”

“I’m not entirely sure. But they said it had to be someone who had access to my home office. Not my office downtown. I’ve got close to a hundred people working for me, but as far as any of them know, they’re working for a family office. I’m the only one who knows the truth. I’m the only one who’s in touch with cartel leadership. I’m the only one who has their personal e-mail addresses and cell phone numbers. So it had to be someone who had access to my home computer or my BlackBerry.”

“And that’s why you had to fire him?”

“Danny, the truth is,
I
didn’t fire him. I told you, he didn’t work for me. He worked for them. One day he was just . . . gone. I’m pretty sure they killed the guy.”

Danny closed his eyes. That image of Esteban, mutilated so horrifically, came to mind. “Wow,” he said at last.

“You know what kind of retirement package these boys offer? An all-expenses-paid one-way trip through the wood chipper. Understand? But that didn’t plug the leak. The information kept flowing.” He paused for a long time. “Now they think it’s me.”

“You mean your own father-in-law would have you whacked?”

He shook his head. “Who knows. He might have, if he was still alive. But he’s been gone a while. He had a stroke ten, twelve years ago.”

“So you have no protector anymore.”

Galvin nodded.

“But why the hell would
you
cooperate with the DEA?”

Galvin was silent for a long moment. He looked uncomfortable. As if there was something he couldn’t bring himself to say. After a few seconds, he shrugged. “That’s their theory. They think I made a deal. That I’m cooperating with the DEA to stay out of prison. That I sold out to save my own ass.”

“But . . . that’s obviously ridiculous.” Danny shook his head.

It took all the composure he could muster to keep up the façade. Inwardly he was racked with guilt. Danny knew that
he
was the DEA informant whose existence must have somehow leaked, setting off alarm bells at the top of the Sinaloa cartel. And while Galvin was spilling his guts, revealing the deepest, darkest secret he could possibly have, Danny wasn’t saying a word.

While putting Galvin and his entire family in peril.

Tom Galvin, who was a friend. Was that an exaggeration? Maybe they hadn’t been before, but they’d become friends, sort of, as much as men their age were capable of making new friends. Danny needed to sit down. Somewhere, anywhere. His heart was knocking wildly.

He argued with himself. He told himself he’d had no choice about cooperating with the DEA. He’d been cornered, blackmailed into it. He hadn’t even given Galvin a thought at the time. He’d barely known Galvin.

But that didn’t make it feel any better.

“Is it so ridiculous?” Galvin said. “I’ve been at this a long time. Long enough for the DEA to dig down deep into what I’ve been doing. And trap me. Force me to flip. That doesn’t seem crazy, does it?”

“No,” Danny admitted. “But it’s not true.”

“Of course not. But that was why we were meeting in Aspen. They demanded it. They almost never meet with me in person—way too risky. That was who I was meeting with on the mountain, when you followed me. Their North American chief of security.”

“He’s able to enter the country?”

“He’s a naturalized US citizen.”

“Well, they didn’t kill you. They just talked. That must mean something, right?”

“It means either they’re not
sure
I’m the source—too much contradictory information—or they need me alive a little while longer. My bet’s on the second theory. They want me to transfer assets and provide financial records. Until I do that, I’m too valuable to them. Then the wood chipper.”

“Jesus, Tom, I . . .” Danny found himself agonizing, arguing with himself. He couldn’t keep up this lie. He couldn’t do this to his friend.

“So while we were meeting, Alejandro was patrolling the north sector, and that was when he—well, he obviously didn’t recognize you. I assume you remember that.”

Danny nodded. Galvin thought he’d seen Alejandro’s face. No sense in pretending otherwise.

“I’m sorry about that,” Galvin said. “It was a stupid mistake. As soon as I saw your face, I told them you’d innocently followed me down the back of the mountain. Which happens to be true.”

He paused. Danny nodded.

“Basically, I was vouching for you, and they took me at my word. For the time being, anyway. But we had to abandon the meeting and call for help.”

“I guess I was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Danny said.

“It could have ended a lot differently. Fortunately, it didn’t.”

Danny nodded uneasily. “Fortunately.”

“Danny . . . I gotta ask you something. This—this is really important to me.”

Danny turned and saw that something—was it agony?—had come over Galvin’s face. He didn’t recognize it at first, because he hadn’t seen it before, but Galvin was overcome by emotion. “Of course—what is it?”

“Listen, if anything happens—to me, to me and Celina . . .” He fell silent.

Danny nodded, encouraging him to go on.

“Will you promise me?—promise you’ll take care of my kids. Especially Jenna.”

“Well, I mean—um, of course—”

“Danny, I need this. I need to know. I’ve got nowhere else to turn.”

A
s they wound their way back along the cliffside road to the car, Danny felt light-headed, woozy.

He glanced to his left, at the chasm below. Here and there the jagged rock face was dusted with patches of ice and powdered-sugar snowdrifts. The sight made his head swim with vertigo.

“Okay,” Danny said, because he didn’t know what else to say. He nodded. Galvin was trapped just like Danny was trapped.

“Brother?”

Danny turned. Galvin was looking down.

“Danny, I’m trusting you like I’ve never trusted anyone in my life. It’s a relief just to be able to talk about it. You know, to know I can trust you.”

Galvin’s words sliced into him. Danny was almost overcome with guilt. All he could manage to say was, “Of course.”

The Suburban was parked in the same place it had been. But Alejandro the driver wasn’t behind the wheel. Galvin stopped ten feet or so away and peered warily around.

“What the hell?” he muttered.

The car was there, but not the driver.

“Maybe he went to take a piss?”

Galvin, who had a stricken look on his face, shook his head.

Danny took a couple of steps and looked. The ground in front of the Suburban was stained dark, in a large irregular oval, like an oil slick. The snowdrifts and ice-crusted ruts were stained with red. Strewn here and there were gobbets and streamers of wine red and greasy tangled cords of sickly yellow.

It looked like the kill floor of an industrial slaughterhouse.

Danny whispered “No” and came closer and saw a carcass on the ground, too small to be human. The body of a horribly slaughtered animal. A dog or a fox, maybe?

Galvin followed Danny around to the front of the Suburban—Alejandro must have moved it while waiting for them—looking perplexed. “What the hell is this?”

Even stranger, the carcass appeared to be fastened to the front of the truck. A stainless steel winch cable had been tied around the hump, which was in turn looped into a galvanized hook fastened to the trailer hitch behind the front bumper.

The hump moved. It was still alive.

Danny looked at Galvin, who suddenly pitched forward and vomited, the splash audible.

“Jesus,” Danny said and took another step closer.

Once out of the shadow, the carcass began to take on a recognizable contour. It was too small, indeed, to be a human body; it was maybe half the length of a body, and now it became clear why.

A chuff and a ragged breath and then a keening, an animal whimper.

What he saw he knew at once he’d never forget.

Something scrabbled in the blood-soaked earth, something attached to the hump, and he saw fingers, human fingers, twitching and wriggling.

“Oh, dear God in heaven,” Galvin whispered. He lunged for the door handle on the driver’s side, doubling over, then struggling up to grab the handle, steadying himself.

Danny, too, vomited, and the keening filled his ears and he stared dully at the crab-scuttling fingers.

Galvin yanked the car door open. All the while he was gasping and gagging and moaning. “My God, my God,” he said, again and again.

Galvin now came around the front of the car, a black pistol in one hand. He thumbed the safety, racked the slide like a seasoned hunter, and then he pulled the trigger and shot his chauffeur in the head. Finally, thank God, the desperate clawing fingers were still.

D
anny knew now what had happened.

His understanding came in waves. Isolated details aligned and then realigned themselves into new patterns like a kaleidoscope turning.

Ten feet from the Suburban’s grille the tire tracks of a much larger truck rutted deeply in the ground. It was where the other truck must have parked and spun forward, Alejandro’s legs yoked to its rear bumper. He must have been gagged so that neither Danny nor Galvin could hear his screams.

He knew from his web searches that what had just happened there was a type of execution favored by the Mexican drug cartels in certain instances.

He wondered whether the cartels knew they were reenacting one of the most macabre executions of the medieval era, reserved for those found guilty of high treason. He’d read once about a Frenchman named François Ravaillac, who assassinated King Henry IV of France, for which he was punished in a particularly gruesome manner. Each of his arms and legs was roped to a different horse in the Place de Grève. The horses were then whipped to run in four different directions, tearing the man apart, literally limb from limb. Drawn and quartered.

The Mexican drug cartels preferred the brisk efficiency of two cars or trucks driving in opposite directions, though. Lacking a key to the Suburban, they’d obviously used just their own vehicle.

But it did the job.

 • • • 

“We have to dump his body,” Galvin said. “No choice.” He looked around wildly, pointing the weapon. “Can’t involve the cops.” Danny looked around as well. Whoever had done this might still be in the immediate vicinity. He saw no one.

Galvin beckoned him over. Danny moved like a sleepwalker, as if hypnotized. Slowly, like wading through a pond.

The lower half of Alejandro’s body had been dumped on a snowbank a ways down the road. Galvin waved Danny over. Danny followed the broad swath of blood on the ground that had gouted from the man’s dismembered legs and torso.

Wound around his feet and ankles was more steel cable, also attached to a galvanized hook. On the feet were black leather boots. On the legs, dress slacks. Above the belt tumbled loops of glistening viscera.

He said, “Oh, dear God,” and was sick again.

“Do you have gloves?”

Danny shook his head.

“Me neither. Just—” Galvin leaned over and grabbed the steel hook, which was dappled with blood. He tried to lift the ruined body, but it was too heavy. Instead, with concerted effort he dragged it along the ground as if it were a side of beef, toward the cliff road. His mouth was set, his face drawn.

“You’re going to throw it over?” Danny asked.

When Galvin didn’t answer, Danny said, “Why?”

“For the vultures, damn them,” Galvin said.

Danny looked at him. He was gritting his teeth in exertion. “At least it’ll slow down the identification of the body.”

“Someone’s going to see all that blood and the . . . and call the police.”

“Luckily, it’s snowing. Maybe that’ll cover this up. Buy us some time. You take the other . . .” Galvin gestured with a nod toward the Suburban, toward the horror that had been his driver’s head and hands and torso. He had gone quickly from a near catatonic to a man firmly in control.

In any other circumstance, Danny would have refused. To cover up a crime was to be implicated. But now he assented without a word. He went to the front of the Suburban and reached down and unhitched the galvanized hook from the bumper.

“Oh, good God,” Galvin said, looking away from the torso. “They carved a
Z
on him.”

“A
Z
? What’s that—for?”

But Galvin just shook his head.

 • • • 

The shadows cast on the mountains had grown longer and more distinct, midnight blue in the clefts and hollows. The jags and promontories were bathed in amber light. The sun hung low in the sky, a fat orange globe against the deepening blue. Above it, streaks and ribbons and whorls of clouds, charcoal and white, seemed to be lit from within. Opposite the sun the narrow pink smear of alpenglow glimmered over the mountaintops.

It had grown cold.

“We have to get the hell out of here. Get the hell out of Aspen, I mean.”

“Who, all of us?”

“All of us, right. Back to Boston.”

“You think—the women are in danger?”

“Maybe. It’s possible.”

“How are we going to explain it to them? Does your wife . . . ? No, of course she knows.”

“We’ll tell them I have an emergency meeting in Boston that just came up. I have to fly back, and since I’ve got the plane, everyone’s going with me. It’s a bummer we have to cut the weekend short, but they’ll deal.”

Danny nodded. “The girls won’t be happy.”

“Call your girlfriend and tell her to pack up,” Galvin said. “Your stuff, too. And Abby. Tell them we need to leave immediately.”