She nodded. “He underwent extensive surgery, including a full facial reconstruction, liposuction, everything. And died on the operating table. Heart attack, or anesthesia overdose—it’s not known. Your DEA identified the body using DNA recovered from his house. Six weeks later his doctors were discovered in barrels encased in concrete, their corpses showing evidence of torture. ‘Uncle Ochoa.’ Disgusting.”
“And the Guerrero Cartel?”
“The cartel names are fluid. One disappears, another rises immediately to take its place. So no . . . my revenge has no direct outlet. But Chuparosa, above all others, reminds me of the brutality of Ochoa, who died before I could do anything about it.”
Fisk sat there, not knowing what to say. He wanted to refill his glass, and yet he had lost his taste for the wine.
Garza said, “You will look at me differently now, you will think of me differently. But here is the thing. It could have been me. If I wasn’t away at school . . . it would have been me. That is my reality. Ochoa would have served me up just like he did my mother and my sister—who were not rag dolls, by the way. They were not fighters as I am now . . . as I have made myself to be . . . but they must have fought, as much as they could. They were brutalized. They were victimized. And here I stand on the other side. A woman of the law, who looks out for the victims now. Who acts for those who cannot.”
“And your father?”
“He suffered, too. And then he moved away from Mexico City, to California. Remarried.”
Fisk said, “You resent that.”
“Sometimes,” she said. “Sometimes I envy him.” She leaned closer, speaking so that no one else could ever hear. “You faced down the man who murdered your lover. You saw your revenge.”
Fisk said, “I arrested him.”
“You faced him and you stopped him. You won. There was an ending. For me, there is no ending.”
Fisk sat back. She had touched something deep inside him, and he wanted to express this correctly.
He said, “All I can tell you is that it is never the victory you think it will be.” Fisk was remembering Jenssen’s words to him in that prison room, about America’s tolerant system of justice. Its weakness for the rule of law. “We have to be better than those we hunt. It is the very thing that defines us. We lose that . . . then we are lost ourselves. This cycle of murder and retribution, be it personal or international . . . it sickens us a little, just being exposed to it. Like radiation poisoning. There is no end. There is no cure.”
Garza listened, but it seemed to Fisk she was trying to understand how these words related to him—rather than giving any thought to how they related to herself.
“Aren’t you glad you asked?” she said. “About me?”
“Yes,” Fisk said, and meant it. “I want to know more about you.”
Her eyes narrowed a bit, shadowed by the candle flame. “You know the worst, and still you want to know more?”
Fisk nodded. “I think I want to know everything.”
She looked confused for a moment. Almost amazed. Then—as always—she pulled back. “Maybe we are too much alike. Maybe we have found our counterpart and simply want to ask it questions. Maybe we are a two-person support group.”
“Maybe,” he said.
“Maybe it’s the Malbec.”
“Maybe. And exhaustion. And overload.” He conceded all those points. “And maybe it’s more than all that.”
She smiled as though he might be right. “Tomorrow,” she said. “I won’t be distracted. I cannot be distracted. Not until . . . after tomorrow.”
“After tomorrow,” Fisk said.
Her eyes had gone dark again, her expression hard. He could tell she was picturing the image of Chuparosa in her head, visualizing him. Wondering where he was at that very moment, what he was doing, what he was thinking.
She stood, and so did Fisk.
“To be continued,” she said.
No handshake, no good-bye. He watched her walk out of the lounge and into the hotel lobby.
CHAPTER 51
Dubin called him into his office at Intel first thing in the morning.
He did not look happy. He stood immediately as Fisk entered. “You’re dropping the ball on UN Week.”
“I’m not,” said Fisk. “I’m doing my best—”
“I hear from Secret Service you’ve been running down this threat to the Mexican president, which is all well and good, but we’ve got other potential targets out there, and that’s the Secret Service’s brief. Your job is to protect the city of New York. Not one of its visiting dignitaries.”
“This is a serious threat, and it may—I say, may—involve our president. The background we have on the potential assailant is that he is a potential suicide risk. This could involve a crowded event, something public . . .”
“Who is this Comandante Garza?”
Fisk put his hands on his hips. “I think you probably know who she is.”
Dubin said, “Did you forget that there were something on the order of a dozen eyes on you last night? While you were getting gooey eyed and wine-drunk with Miss Mexico in a bar at the Sheraton?”
Fisk pulled back on his anger. Gooey eyed? If anything, it was the opposite. But he understood how their talk, her confessional, might have looked. Then his anger came out anyway. “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”
“First there’s an imminent threat in New York. Then there’s a wine date at a hotel bar.”
Fisk boiled. “The Mexican president was tucked away safely. We went there to eat and instead . . . we had a talk. Did your tattlers tell you we went our separate ways after?”
Dubin waved that away as though it did not matter—though, if he had gone up to her room, it would certainly have mattered. “You’ve been off your desk escorting this Garza around—”
“Escorting! Jesus, Barry.”
“You’ve been AWOL chasing an alleged cartel hit man who many people think is a legend, not an actual person. A cartel fiction, a bogeyman—”
“This is total bullshit.”
“You’re getting caught up in one woman’s personal crusade instead of doing your job here. Now, I don’t know if this has anything to do with the other thing, but for appearance’s sake alone—”
“What other thing?” said Fisk.
“The other thing,” said Dubin, adopting a softer tone, stepping forward. “Gersten.”
“God,” said Fisk. “Is that the talk? Nobody has any time to do any police work around here?”
“It’s in your after-action file from Dr. Flaherty. A caution about repeating patterns, trying to replay the past. About saving this Garza from a similar fate as Gersten.”
Fisk laughed out loud. In that moment, he was embarrassed for Dubin. “I’m working a case here,” said Fisk.
“Exactly. When you are supposed to be liaising with UN security and making sure everything in this city that employs us is running smooth.”
“You know what?” said Fisk. “I’ve got an employment file with quite a few victories in there, and now suddenly this therapy report is the number one thing about me.”
“You are a pipeline between the NYPD and the United Nations. You are not to be gumshoeing around the five boroughs with the head of security for another country’s president.”
Fisk tried one more time. “This involves New York. This is New York. There is an assassin here now. He’s killed three people in the last forty-eight hours. Dumped thirteen bodies in Rockaway, none of them with heads.”
“Believe me, I know all that.” He held up the New York Post. The headline screamed, in the Post’s usual fashion, CARNAGE. Then, below that, MEX DRUG WAR HORROR COMES TO NYC.