The two men headed toward Galvin’s office.
“I’ve got to show you something,” Galvin said.
“It’s gonna have to wait,” Danny said.
Galvin looked at him.
“I think you haven’t been honest with me,” Danny said.
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah.” At the door to Galvin’s study, he folded his arms.
Galvin looked at him sharply. “About… what?”
That was when Danny knew for certain he was right. “About how you’re working with the DEA.”
74
Until he learned the truth about Slocum and Yeager-that they were grifters-Danny had believed he was the leak, the confidential source of damaging information about Galvin that had so alarmed the Sinaloa cartel.
But he’d assumed wrong. Since they were frauds, someone else had to be the leak.
And that someone was Galvin himself.
It defied the odds that Galvin could have served as Sinaloa’s chief money man for so long without the DEA finding out and trapping him.
Galvin had as much as said so.
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?
Now Galvin looked at Danny for a long time. He blinked a few minutes. “You’re a smart son of a bitch, you know that?” he said at last. “I’m going to put all my cards on the table. The simple, ugly truth is, the feds got onto me about a dozen years ago. I should have expected it-the whole arrangement was too good to last. An agent with the DEA showed up at my office and started asking me questions. I guess they had a team of accountants poring over Mexican cartel cash flow out of the HSBC bank. And he had a theory that pointed right to me.”
“Which you denied.”
“Of course I denied it,” he said with a shrug. “Until I figured out that someone high up the chain of command in the cartel must have turned. They had me. I had a choice of cooperating or fighting it. But this one DEA guy-name of Wallace Touhy-was too smart. Or his sources were too good. He had me.”
“You didn’t… try to fight it?”
Galvin shook his head. “What was the point? You can’t prove a negative. I couldn’t prove to them I wasn’t cooperating with the DEA-they’d assume I was cooperating. Or that eventually I’d break down and give them up. Then they’d have no choice but to kill me. They’d write me off as just another cowardly gringo who’d sell them out.”
“You became a confidential source for the DEA.”
“They gave me a choice. Twenty, thirty years behind bars-or help them out. Tip them off. Hand them the occasional Sinaloan, as long as I could do it without the cartel suspecting me. That was the trick-you never know who inside the DEA might be secretly working for the cartels. So Touhy agreed to run me off the books. A silo operation. The only way to make sure the cartel didn’t find out. He locked up my file in a cabinet somewhere-I mean, there’s always documentation. Has to be. He assigned me a number, and that was about it for paperwork. I must have given up five or six high-ranking Sinaloans over the years.”
“And how do you think the Sinaloans found out?”
He shrugged. “Ever seen that World War Two poster of a guy drowning, says, ‘Someone Talked’?”
Danny nodded.
“I guess I’m just lucky I got away with it as long as I did.”
“This DEA guy can’t help you now?”
Galvin scoffed. “The DEA? What are they going to do, put my whole family in witness protection? I mean, short of giving me plastic surgery and stashing me in North Dakota, there’s nothing the government can do, once the cartel has it in for you.
“For days now, I’ve been trying to reach out to Touhy. They gave me a number; I call it, he answers twenty-four/seven. Always. Except not this time. I’ve been calling him. No answer.”
Danny felt a fresh panic rising. “And?”
“And I just found out why. I got a source in the state police. Touhy’s dead. Murdered, brutal. Like, tortured to death. And if I don’t act now, I’m next.”
“You say this like you’re certain.”
“I am. And I know who they’re sending.”
75
“I need to show you a picture,” Galvin said, nodding toward his open laptop.
The image that filled the screen was of a man in a dark overcoat. Danny leaned in closer. The image was slightly blurred, like a still from a surveillance video. The man was entirely bald and had rimless glasses and appeared to be sitting in a vehicle, his head turned toward the camera. Looking directly at the camera, in fact.
“Who’s that?” Danny asked.
Galvin turned away from the screen, his eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot. His face shone with sweat. It occurred to Danny that he looked as if he’d recently been sick to his stomach. He wiped a hand over his face.
“El ángel de la muerte. The angel of death, they call him. He’s the guy they send.”
“Who? Send to do what?”
“The cartel. Sinaloa. His name is Dr. Mendoza. That’s all I know-Dr. Mendoza, no first name.” He paused, took a deep breath. “He specializes in… coercive interrogation.”
“You mean like ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’? Torture?”
Galvin shrugged. “Whatever you want to call it. I’m next on his list.”
“But how do you know he’s coming?”
“This picture was taken about an hour and a half ago, from a security camera on my fence. The guy was just sitting in a car across the road, watching and waiting. Like he was biding his time.”
“So you think your guy-Touhy?-was tortured and gave up your name, that it?”
Galvin nodded. “And maybe we’re safe as long as we stay on the property. But I can’t stay here indefinitely. I’ve got to vanish. At some point soon I need to leave.”
“And then what? He’s gonna…”
“You know the videos on the Internet of those guys with chain saws cutting off people’s heads and all that? The ones you see in your nightmares?”
Danny exhaled audibly, nodded. He didn’t trust himself to speak. “Oh, yeah.”
“Well, this is the guy who gives those guys nightmares.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Danny said, and for a long time he was silent. Then: “What does he want from you?”
“Account numbers, access codes, everything.”
“Was he behind what happened in Aspen?”
“No, I don’t think so. That was a Zeta signature. And that’s what I still can’t figure out.”
“What can’t you figure out?”
“Blood in the water brings out the sharks. I get that. My guys-Mendoza-they’re Sinaloa. But I don’t know how the Zetas got involved. Or why they’re coming after me.”
He turned and looked at Danny curiously. Something in his expression seemed almost accusatory. As if he knew Danny was holding something back.
And Danny could no longer keep Galvin in the dark about the ex-DEA agents. No more. Keeping that secret from Galvin had become unbearable.
“Now I need to tell you something,” Danny began.
76
The air in Galvin’s study was thick with cigar smoke. It hung in the air like clouds, like suspended jet contrails. A cigar smoldered in a big glass ashtray on the desk in front of him. The husk of another one sat blackened in the ash.
Galvin had listened to Danny’s story in silence, barely reacting.
“I knew you were ensnared in something,” he said when Danny had finished. “I’ve known it since that squash game.”
Danny winced. “I don’t even know what I can say to you. How I apologize.”
“You think I’m gonna judge you? After what I’ve done? Come on, man.”