“Fine. I'll call him when he gets in town tonight and tell him you will be coming out sometime in the morning to talk with him. How's that?” She nodded. “He'll be somewhere out there with the construction crew, I imagine. Name is Joseph Fisher. Okay?"
“I'll be there."
“As I say—you won't learn anything about Sam. But feel free. I don't want you talking about the Poindexters and Mr. Ellis being missing, Mary. There's no reason to get people worried more than they are."
“I won't say anything.” Her eyes hardened. “At least for a while. But I'm telling the FBI and the sheriff's office about it."
“They already know,” he said, letting a smirk show on his face for the first time since she'd gotten on his case. “Speaking of the sheriff, you know this dope fiend you been talking to about the case, this Royce Hawthorne, I want you to tell him it's only out of deference to you that his tail isn't sittin’ back in my jail.” Mary felt a hard knot in the pit of her stomach. It was bad enough with Sam—she didn't want to cause anybody else problems.
“He's been stickin’ his nose everywhere, asking questions where he has no business, and then he has the gall to pose as the county sheriff and interrogate my personal secretary. It took me exactly one minute with his good friend and fellow junkie Mr. Hite to know who had bothered Kelly."
“He was trying to help me find out something. It was more than the police seemed willing to do. You would have never said a word to me, would you?"
“Not until there was some reason to, no. But let me ask you—now that you know what you think you know, are you any more informed? Do you know anything more about Sam's disappearance? No, little lady. You don't really know anything more. It's just upset you, is all it's done."
She wanted to spit in his ugly face. The “little lady” really brought the red back into her cheeks, but she remembered what Royce had said and forced herself to keep her mouth shut.
“Do you know what Mr. Hawthorne is, Mary? This friend you seem so willing to confide in about a police investigation and whatnot?"
“I know him very well."
“He's a dope addict. He's a cocaine dealer, did you know that?"
“No.” She shook her head. “He's a friend, is all I know."
“We're watching him very closely. He's going to make a serious mistake one day, and he'll end up in the hoosegow for a long time. I'm telling you for your own good—not to help him. He's not about to change. He's been no good as long as I been knowin’ him. You'd be well advised to cut loose of him, Mary."
“Please—” He'd thrown her off with this talk of Royce. She knew that what he was saying now was probably the truth. “Just help me find my husband,” she said, quietly. Then she turned and left. Empty and hurting in the hollowness of her stomach. She imagined that Marty Kerns would be pantomiming blowing a kiss to her parting back, and she imagined she could hear the laughter of the other officers.
Royce had brought her a wealth of information. He'd caught the cops in lies—big lies—about a major missing-persons case. She'd thrown all of it in Kerns's face, and somehow it had all bounced off of him. He'd turned it around so that she and Royce had ended up looking like idiots, and he'd come off as the responsible public servant. If the FBI had all this information—and there were four persons gone, all connected in a land deal—what were the implications?
She'd go home and ask her personal adviser, her junkie buddy.
16
MEMPHIS
“Mark, I think we're about ready,” the daddy rabbit said in his command voice. The agent named Mark hit the lights.
“Okay.” The conversations in the room subsided. “Ladies and gentlemen, as you know only too well, the so-called war on drugs was never a war at all. It was a holding action. Not even that, really. It was a series of dog-and-pony shows.” Like this one, he thought.
“The Medellin, Cali, Bogota, North Coast—” his pointer flicked across the background display “—and various other Colombian organizations have operated for years without fear of serious reprisal by law enforcement agencies. It's only in the past year we've been able to mount a real campaign against the active drug cartels.
“As we're all aware, painfully aware, the U.S. government has done what it could to make the smuggling of drugs easy. We tell these Third World countries to give us their tired, their poor, their huddled masses. Give us your dope mules, in other words.” There was a murmur of agreement in the conference room.
“From the blue-collar immigrant who loads it, to the ones who mule it in, to the street kids who act as lookout for the peddlers and pushers, our open society and open borders have made it impossible to control the flow—especially in states like Florida and Texas. And—let's give the rats credit: they've been very smart.
“We've known for years there was little point in trying to stop the traffic once it hit the street. Our only hope in staving in the Colombian cartels’ machine has been to try to hit the second-level guys. The big boys have been all but untouchable, and the little guys are too numerous to do anything about. It has always been the secondary level where the Colombians have been their most vulnerable.
“The cartels’ traffic managers, the bagmen, the bankers, the intermediary distributors, the money launderers—that's where the weaknesses could be found.
“Purchases, transfer of funds, the actual shipment and so forth, these second-level activities—these were the primary areas where we've put our manpower, and it's really paid off.
“Because of limitless funding, they were always able to provide their secondary-level personnel with the best security money could buy. But they made a big mistake. When the state-of-the-art electronics gave them access to DISA codes and such, they couldn't resist the temptation to use it as a communications mode. We were waiting for them.
“How have the Colombian traffic managers communicated with their distribution links? Traditionally it has been by phone. Pay telephones or black boxes. Sometimes, in the more sophisticated operations, they've employed bounce systems and elaborate telephone-relay blinds.
“But when the computer hackers learned how to obtain the security passwords for Direct Inward System Access on private branch exchange numbers, it was a new ball game. They had a way to set up blind two-way phone security, with the added benefit of beating the telephone companies out of the charges.
“They bought the access codes from dumpster divers, or black and blue boxers, or from pirated voice mail bulletin boards, or pay phone taps—a dozen ways. Or used the second dial tone after accessing call-processing features. They'd get in—make their blind call—and get out free. The call would show on some corporate bill—uncheckable at either end and, in theory, as secure as an unscrambled land line could get.
“What our job was here at ELINT was to monitor all the DISA heavyweights in markets with abnormally high rates of DLD fraud. We'd had a ‘watch’ on the Romero family for a long time, for example. Papa Romero—” his pointer tapped an ugly face “—Midwestern traffic manager for the Medellin.
“His MO has been to set up call pads with his distributors. Then initiate the calls at prearranged times to untraceable units, using DISA passwords. Even if you tapped the line, the calls were so structured that Papa Romero would never be implicated. The distributors used codes, and everything was by the numbers. Romero did not personally touch either end of transport or delivery—only the money itself—keeping him insulated from the narcotics.
“We used an informant to begin a series of larger and larger buys. Establish his dealer credibility with the distributor. When we knew Romero had just muled in over four hundred keys of cocaine, we had our snitch set up a buy for real weight. Then—when the deal was down—go shy on the deal. It put the distributor, who works out of a small town called Waterton, Missouri, in one helluva bind. He then had to initiate a call for help to Papa Romero.