“Bill’s been clean for years,” he said. “But from time-to-time, he’s been a valuable go-between for me. He has friends and relatives in the life. Because he did his time and never gave up his friends, he has respect. I’ve worked to never put him at risk, never make him seem like he’s a snoflon, a snitch. So that meant I had to give something up sometimes to get something better. Understand?”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to understand. Peralta’s wings spread far beyond my little cold-case boutique. I said, “So that was the deal tonight? Meet with La Fam and make a deal to save Robin?”
He took another puff and nodded.
“What did you have to give in return?”
“All sorts of things.”
I let that alone. But I asked how he even knew if these now-dead bangers could speak for La Fam.
“Mero Mero? His real name is Carlos Mendoza. He’s one of the top dogs of La Fam in the United States. Check out his sheet. The gold medals start with homicide and go from there. This is not just another street gang in Phoenix.”
“And he said he spoke with authority,” Robin said, hope in her voice. “He didn’t know me. He said he didn’t have anything against me.”
“That’s what he said.” Peralta studied the bright orange tip of the cigar. Cars zipped by benignly on Seventh Avenue.
Now Mero Mero and his crew were dead, taken out as accurately as bad guys in the sights of Marine scout snipers in Iraq. I asked what that meant.
“Maybe the theory has been wrong.”
“Are you ever going to clue us in on this theory?” I tried to keep my anger down, without much success. “I love theories.”
He said nothing, so I just let loose all the stress of the evening. “You’ve known more about this than you’ve been telling me since the start. You just show up at the house where El Verdugo was tortured and beheaded. You load me up on ordnance at home, stuff you just happen to have in the trunk. Then Kate Vare drops a case that just happens to lead to a gun shop being watched by ATF. And here’s my good friend the sheriff, taking me to meet his old gang buddy and some Mexican cop. Now a top La Fam guy is taken out and we get to walk away. What the hell is going on?”
“You need to calm down.” He gently tapped an inch of ash off into the air. “I’m on retainer to the state Attorney General. That happened after I left office so we could continue an operation that’s been going on for a year.”
“The gun-runners.”
“Exactly. The A.G. doesn’t have much confidence in the new sheriff. I have the institutional knowledge. So there I was.”
“You made Kate Vare back off?”
“It didn’t take much,” he said. “You ever read the Bad Phoenix Cops blog? The guy that writes it has great sources inside the department. There’s lots of turmoil in command and the homicide bureau right now. And it turns out Vare is being investigated by PSB…” The Professional Standards Bureau, what was once called Internal Affairs. “Botched case management on the Baseline killer. Alleged. The families are suing the city. Maybe it’s political-it’s a very screwed-up department. But she began leaving you alone right when PSB came down on her. Not a coincidence, if you ask me. Vare had a hard-on for you, but Robin’s an investigative dead end. The new detective team would go after this from the El Verdugo and gang angle. At some point, the A.G. told them about our interest. So it doesn’t surprise me they’ve left you alone.”
“And what exactly is your interest?”
“We know there’s been a big uptick in weapons crossing the border from Arizona gun dealers. There are a few, like the Jesus Is Lord Pawn Shop, that sell in volume.”
“The Blood leader said La Fam has a new route to move guns for the Gulf cartel.”
“That confirms other intel we’ve had,” he said. “The feds and the Mexican authorities took down the top Gulf boss a year ago, extradited him to Houston, and he’s been cooperating. So plenty of the Gulf cartel’s reliable U.S. gun suppliers in Texas have been prosecuted. They’re under real pressure now from the Mexican army, so they really need a new supply chain.”
“They sound like multinational corporations,” Robin said, “only with guns.”
“In lots of ways they are,” Peralta said. “The cartels have billions of dollars at their disposal. ‘Cartel’ isn’t even an accurate word anymore. These are highly organized entities. They can employ top-notch accountants to help launder the money. They compete for market share to sell drugs and tax the coyotes that bring the illegals across the border to work in legitimate industries. They work with gangs in this country. Consider those the subcontractors. Sometimes they cooperate with each other, because bloodshed is bad for business. Sometimes they don’t.”
“So what was the theory?” I prodded.
He waved his flaming cigar wand. “That the Sinaloa cartel found out that the Gulf cartel was poaching in a supply chain it considers its own, namely the perfectly legal industry of Arizona gun sales.”
“And they sent in a trouble-shooter, El Verdugo…”
He nodded. “To do a strategic hit on a high-value target, maybe a major gun dealer. Send the message: Don’t do business with the Gulf boys.” He nursed the stogie. The tobacco was such high-quality it must have been Cuban. “Mind you, I was skeptical when you found the snake’s-head ring. Nobody really knows who El Verdugo is, much less that he’d be up here. Antonio is convinced, the guy Robin was seeing was Vega.”
“But La Fam, doing the Gulf cartel’s dirty work, got him first.”
“That was the theory.”
I asked why Robin’s involvement hadn’t derailed the theory.
He shook his head. “She’s an attractive woman, clean record, middle-class, artsy. She might have been useful to El Verdugo’s cover. Hell, Mapstone, you might have been useful to his cover. He was in Phoenix pretending to be a professor and fooling both of you. It let him fit right in.”
“So it was tonight. Somebody took out La Fam, who was supposed to have taken out El Verdugo. Only maybe they didn’t even do that, or send the head to Robin. And you don’t know who fired those shots tonight.”
He took the cigar out of his mouth, started to say something, and just nodded.
“Maybe Robin is in the clear.” He spoke slowly. “You haven’t had any other trouble since you took down the guy in the pickup. Tonight La Fam said they didn’t even know her. And whoever was doing the shooting could have killed us all and didn’t.”
“Unless they want to snatch her alive.”
“Why not do it tonight, then?” he said. “We were totally exposed. This shooter was good enough to take both me and Mapstone out and leave you alive, Robin. He didn’t.”
I sighed. “Why don’t I feel better? Somebody delivered that package to her for a reason.”
He tossed away the cigar. “Maybe it was a demonstration. Nothing more than that.”
I asked what he meant.
“To show their power. They can find El Verdugo in this very respectable cover he’s taken on. They can kill him. And deliver his head to his girlfriend in a very public demonstration of their power. And don’t forget you live there, too. A deputy sheriff, and one who was in the media with his old cases. They showed, ‘We can do this.’ And maybe it was nothing more than that.”
“I never picked you for the cockeyed optimist.”
“That may not be our biggest problem. Whoever killed those four La Fam guys wasn’t some banger. You see where this is heading? It’s only been a matter of time. Maybe this is it.”
Robin said, “The war going on down in Mexico is here now.”
The truck rumbled to life. “That’s why I want to talk to Antonio.”
I asked about us.
“Go home. Have a drink for me. Have two.”