Fisk went around backing off arriving law enforcement. There is, even in veterans, a human impulse to get close to the scene of a crime. He wondered why they had chosen two different cemeteries.
He came back to Garza, who was on the phone with General de Aguilar. “Yes, General . . . It would be most proper for you to come, I think. I cannot remain here a moment longer than is necessary . . . No, too many things to do. Yes. Thank you. . . .”
She hung up. Fisk watched her. She seemed to be okay. Maybe too okay.
“No cameras in a cemetery,” said Fisk. “I’m thinking they dumped the other car and body first, hoping to get something out of your man. Looks to me like he went down fighting.”
“Of course he did,” said Garza quietly.
“And the girl? Probably killed because she was a link to them.”
“Exactly why,” said Garza. “No witnesses. Ever.”
“We should key on her. I know she’s an illegal, but she had to live somewhere, sleep somewhere. Know someone.”
Garza nodded, still looking at the ground.
Fisk said, “There are enough traffic cameras in the areas surrounding both cemeteries that we should get some images of them. License plates, maybe faces. It will take time, but we will have something.”
Garza nodded again, saying nothing.
Fisk said, “I’m not going to ask you if you are okay, because I know you are not.”
“I am fine.”
Fisk waited for more. “We’re going to get this guy. This is New York City, not Mexico.”
She looked up at him with heated eyes, as though taking offense.
Fisk said, “What I mean is, this isn’t his native country, he doesn’t know how everything works. He’s going to screw up.”
A crime scene tech came over. “We checked his pockets, no phone.”
Garza stared at the young man, then nodded. She e-mailed this news back to her people. “He will have cloned the phone by now, disabling GPS and cellular service. He wants to know what Virgilio’s schedule was . . . and by extension, President Vargas’s.”
Fisk said, “I’m sure he had it encoded. It was a secure phone?”
“It was,” said Garza. “But how can we assume anything except that he has that information, or will have it soon?”
“It’s mostly public, I imagine.”
“It is something to check. To make sure. We should go now.”
“Go where?” asked Fisk, surprised.
“To go over the president’s itinerary.”
“Hold on,” said Fisk. “Take a minute here.” He pointed to the body, just a few yards behind her. “It’s okay.”
“I am fine,” she said. “Let’s go.”
She started past him. Fisk hooked her arm, spinning her around . . . and raising her ire.
“Take a moment,” he said. “Pay your respects.”
Garza glared at him, all fire. “I will pay my respects when I have time, Detective. Let go.”
Fisk let go. She walked around to the girl’s body, speaking to the arriving Mexican EMP agents, then continuing on to the car.
Fisk followed, watching her climb inside while checking her phone. He knew he should let it go, but he could not.
He climbed in behind the wheel, leaving his door open. “Look,” he said, “maybe this is none of my business, but you should—”
“It is entirely none of your business. This is the business of the Policía Federal and the Estado Mayor Presidencial.”
“Use this anger, this pre-grief. Don’t run from it.”
Garza did not look up from her phone. “Is that your professional advice? Is that what you did when your comrade was killed by Jenssen?”
Now it was Fisk’s turn to stare at her. Garza was tapping out an e-mail with her thumbs.
“You know about that?” he said.
“Of course,” she said, clipped. She tapped in a few more letters, then said, “I suppose you were sent to therapy and pursued a talking cure.”
Fisk said, “I did. I had no choice. It is built into the system.”
“If we did that in Mexico, there would be no time for work. No time at all. You tell me to honor my fallen comrade? I will do so by pursuing the man who killed him.”
Fisk nodded, still digesting her attitude. “And by pretending not to be distraught over his death?” he said.
Garza did not look at him, did not say anything.
Fisk started the engine and said, “I can see you come by your reputation honestly.”
Garza resumed typing out her e-mail as she opened her door and got out of Fisk’s car, walking back to the cemetery gate.
Fisk did not follow her. And she did not want him to. She was going to ride with someone else.
CHAPTER 37
Fisk returned to Intel headquarters. He fed more money into the vending machine and ate another chicken salad sandwich on damp white bread from a triangular plastic carton. He badly needed a long run or some gym time, but couldn’t foresee either one happening until after United Nations Week was over.
He filed the forms to get eyeballs on corner cameras within a four-block grid of each cemetery. He narrowed the window of time from 10:00 P.M., when Virgilio departed the Four Seasons, and 7:00 A.M., just after dawn.
He had a long list of e-mails, which he was able to cull by two-thirds without too much effort. The rest pertained more directly to his desk duties. A few of them he was able to pawn off on others. The rest remained, needing to be addressed.
Two of them were from the U.S. Attorney’s office downtown. Those he did not even open.
Fisk went back to the break room for a bag of barbecue potato chips. He sat at the only table, brushing away the last person’s crumbs, and finished the large bag in about ten handfuls. He crumpled up the evidence and tossed it into the trash, stopping to buy a Coke Zero before returning to his desk.
Nicole had gotten back to him. Nothing yet on the tattoo sent for face recognition. He checked his phone and found he had a missed call from Kiser.
“I heard there are more dead Mexicans,” said Kiser, answering on the first ring.
“There are,” confirmed Fisk.
“These ones have heads?”
“They do.” Fisk gave him the details, just generally. “There is a link, but I would pursue your own case independently for now. You don’t want a piece of this interagency morass.”
“That’s good advice I already gave myself,” said Kiser. “You can thank Comandante Garza for me.”
Fisk exhaled. “I could if she were here. Thank her for what?”
“The break. You don’t know?”
“Not unless you tell me.”
“Her agency used the tattoo photographs to identify four of the headless horsemen. Two of them they got from Mexican driver’s licenses, no criminal histories. They were illegals, but apparently not bad guys. Bystanders who got caught in this Hummingbird guy’s nest. The other two are illegals linked to the Zeta Cartel. And the Terrorist Screening Center has both on the No Fly List.”
The little-known Terrorist Screening Center is a division of the National Security Branch of the FBI, though it is a multiagency organization including representatives from the Department of Justice, the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, and the U.S. Postal Service. While the No Fly List began as strictly a register of terror suspects not permitted to board a commercial aircraft for travel into or out of the United States, it had since grown to include other more generalized criminals, including known traffickers.
“I’m writing,” said Fisk, grabbing a pencil and paper.
“A Mexican national by the name of Carlos Echaverria. Nickname Carlito. Big huge guy, one with the gang tats. I guess Carlito translates as Little Carlos. Kind of like calling a big guy Tiny. Unless there’s a bigger Carlos in his family.”