All the work and preparation had just been flushed down the toilet by a larcenous contracting company. He momentarily entertained a vision of the company owner, flayed alive and suspended over a fire, and then dismissed it. Satisfying as it might be to take his frustration out on someone, he needed to spend his time more productively.
Opening the door of the junky, beaten car he’d bought in the barrio for a thousand dollars, he fumed at his ill fortune, and then reconciled himself to plodding forward. It was a setback, but he was used to overcoming adversity. It’s what made him El Rey.
Which was all well and good, but wouldn’t get the job done. He was running out of time, and the clock was ticking even as he sat in the dusty lot cursing his fate. The engine turned over with a puff of alarming-looking black smoke. He wheeled around and headed for the exit, mind working furiously on alternatives.
He needed a plan. And he needed one fast.
That afternoon, two uniformed Federales entered the large administration tent that had been erected to house the hundred or so support staff for the project. They spoke with the project director. After a few minutes, he directed them to a computer terminal and brought over an overweight woman in her forties, who was chartered with keeping track of personnel. They unfolded the sketches of El Rey, with facial hair and without, and began the tedious process of going through sixty-five hundred badge photos on the off-chance they found someone who resembled their target.
The woman was chatty, regaling them with stories of her move to Los Cabos from Durango, where she’d had a travel agency in a past life, before the internet had obviated her business. She seemed singularly incapable of appreciating how little both men cared about her banal history or her opinions of the region’s charms, and how they compared with Durango, which to hear her tell it was the Garden of Eden crossed with Shangri-La.
They listened politely, but soon were exchanging glances of annoyance as she kept up a rapid-fire monologue of excruciatingly dull observations, many of which involved the antics of her beloved cats, which she believed possessed magnetic charms and would surprise and delight anyone within earshot. The older of the two leaned in and whispered to his companion, speculating on the ramifications of shooting her, maybe just to wound.
The hours dragged on as they stared at photo after photo, assembling a group of men that came relatively close. By the time they’d seen all the photos they had thirty-seven possible suspects, which they downloaded to a removable drive for forwarding to Mexico City. It was now two o’clock, and Mexico City was an hour ahead, so the photos probably wouldn’t be looked at until the next day.
The men thanked their new friend for the hospitality and headed for the exit with palpable relief, intent on getting back to the Federales outpost so they could send their findings via e-mail. They stopped at a Burger King on the way to the office, having missed lunch in favor of being regaled with the precocious hijinks of Mister Mittens and Tiger, and wolfed down burgers with air-conditioned relief. It was three before they got to the station and had sent all the photos, and they sat back, exchanging war stories with the local officers while waiting for instructions on what to do next.
~ ~ ~
Briones returned to headquarters late in the day, having spent much of it getting Cruz settled in and outfitted. There had been some complications with the internet that had taken time to work through, and then some shopping, so by the time he made it in, it was already five. He checked his e-mail and found twenty-two messages. With a resigned sigh, he began poring through them, sending single-sentence responses to most. The last five were the photos from the Los Cabos team. He rubbed his eyes and began paging through the various shots. A few looked close, and could have been the man. He just didn’t remember so clearly — too much time had gone by.
And then he stopped.
Briones peered at the screen, and then enlarged the image. He was almost a hundred percent sure, although there were some differences, most notably the goatee and the hair color, which was considerably lighter than he recalled. But the nose and eyes were the same. Not daring to jostle his mouse for fear of somehow deleting the image, he reached out and dialed Cruz’s number.
“I think I’m looking at a photo of El Rey, from the construction site in Los Cabos,” Briones said excitedly.
“You think, or you are?”
“I’m almost positive. Remember, I only saw him for a few seconds, assuming that was him. But I believe this is the guy.”
“Send it over to me,” Cruz instructed. “Find out if he’s at work or when he’s next due in. But let’s cover all options immediately. I want every officer in Baja to have that photo within the hour, and if he’s not at work, I want the man traced down and found. Send out a team to the address listed on the manifest. There’s the slimmest of chances he didn’t use a fake name and address, although I think it’s a given that he did. If so, I want everyone on the streets tonight, asking every bar, strip club and restaurant whether they’ve seen him. It’s show time — this is our first real break.”
Chapter 19
Sergeant Obregon, the head of the team that had been sent to Baja, crouched behind an abandoned car forty yards from the one-room dwelling that had been listed on the security pass docket for the suspect, whose name, Adrian Sendero, was undoubtedly fake.
After discovering he’d been fired from the project, they had been watching the house for several hours, but there was no sign of life. Sergeant Obregon had the sensation in his gut that this was going to be a waste of time, but his job was to run down all leads, and this was the only one they had. So here he was, carrying out surveillance on a hovel in one of the worst barrios in San Jose del Cabo — a section that had originally started off as a squatter camp, with electricity pilfered from overhead power lines and open sewage running downhill towards the ravine, and had gradually become a neighborhood, such as it was, with cracker boxes like the one they were staking out, built from cinderblock and bags of cement purloined from work sites.
It remained a grim area, redolent with the fetid odor of garbage and poverty; the pervasive squalor spoke of a population at the end of its rope. These were life’s losers — the sick, the drug addled, the hopelessly alcoholic, the mentally ill. Nobody with any sort of income lived there; even the lowest of the low, the unskilled laborers, could do better. Crime was constant, and never reported, partially because the police were unlikely to show up and partially because the denizens were mostly criminals as well.
It was the type of area where the residents kept to themselves. Nobody wanted to know what you were doing, and it was best not to be curious about their affairs. It was a place the unwashed came to die, enslaved by heroin and methamphetamines and alcohol. AIDS was a near-constant among the intravenous drug users, and corpses being hauled out by the coroner’s office was an almost daily occurrence.