Fisk said, “You see?”
“I see it. We have people on this. I got a call from a supervisor in Rockaway saying that you authorized one of his homicide detectives working the headless thirteen to share evidence with the Mexican federales?”
“It’s how they made these guys!”
“Chain of command, Fisk. Not the first time I’ve uttered those words to you. Now listen up. You’re just back on full active duty. You want to stay that way? Distance yourself from Comandante Hottie. Okay? I don’t care how nice her ass is. Do your job. Show up at the UN briefings you are supposed to go to, and let the Secret Service do their duty.”
“Dukes, right?” said Fisk. “He call you direct, or have someone else do it for him?”
“Stay out of the way.”
CHAPTER 52
Fisk sat at his desk for a while, waiting for the usual thoughts of resigning to subside, so he could focus on the task at hand.
A couple of days ago, Dubin was singing his praises, worried Fisk might leave for another intelligence agency. Today Fisk was a liability, apparently.
He should have followed his gut. He should have quit after the Freedom Tower incident. After catching Jenssen and losing Gersten.
He should have walked away then. This was so obvious to him now.
“Hey, Nicole?”
He called to her from his desk. In a moment, she was in his doorway.
“Will you please get me the Mexican president’s full itinerary for today?”
Her mouth opened, but nothing came out. She went away, then came right back. “Don’t you want your schedule for the day?”
Fisk said, “Dubin spoke to you, too?”
She shared a pained expression with him. Fisk was not angry with her.
“President Vargas’s itinerary. I know he’s got a stop at the Mexican Cultural Institute sometime this morning, then a stop in El Barrio, then the independence parade and festival and the dinner tonight.”
Nicole nodded. “And you have a field briefing at the UN at eleven thirty this morning . . .”
“No,” said Fisk. “I won’t be going to that.”
“You won’t be . . . ?” She waited for further instructions. “So I should cancel you.”
“No, you can keep it on the books. I just won’t be there.”
“Okay,” she said, looking a little sick.
“Don’t worry, Nicole,” said Fisk. “You tell me what I’m supposed to be doing, and if I don’t do it, it falls on me, not you.”
CHAPTER 53
President Umberto Vargas’s motorcade exited from the garage beneath the Sheraton New York Times Square Hotel and rolled south down Seventh Avenue. Cecilia Garza was in the first SUV with General de Aguilar and two EMP agents. President Vargas rode in the middle car with a reporter for The New Yorker who was doing a long-range article on the bold new Mexican administration. More support rode in the third SUV, and an NYPD motorcycle cop led the way.
The streets were busy that morning, faces turning toward the dark-windowed motorcade of shiny black and silver SUVs but nobody reacting with anything more than a passing curiosity. The motorcycle cop up ahead bleated his siren at traffic lights and slow crossings so that the SUVs did not get held up. At the Fortieth Street intersection, Secret Service agents had shut down traffic so the motorcade could turn left without stopping. The SUVs drove to Park Avenue, where they turned right, then right again onto Thirty-ninth.
The Mexican Cultural Institute was located at the Mexican consulate, just off Park Avenue, across the street from a row of low-rise brick buildings and brownstones. The institute had been founded in the early 1990s as part of a “Program for Mexican Communities Abroad,” in order to nurture a sense of national identity among people of Mexican origin living in the New York metro area. They ran programs to strengthen awareness of Mexico’s history and rich traditions “as a democratic, plural, and creative nation,” read the press release in her hand.
A press release. She crumpled it. Why was the consulate publicizing Señor Presidente’s visit? Were they not aware of the security threat? Or were they just so overly confident of security in and around the consulate?
Blue wooden NYPD sawhorse barricades had been set up at Park Avenue, but sidewalk traffic was allowed to pass across the street from the consulate, behind a barricade fence. The barricades had evidently been up for some time, because a small crowd had gathered across the street from the consulate, drawn by the promise of an event of some sort.
Garza reviewed on her iPad a surveillance video taken from the second floor of the consulate, panning the faces in the crowd they were about to encounter. Garza went over it once very quickly, looking for Yankees caps, then admonished herself for looking for the obvious, the expected. She went back through each face, looking for anyone who might resemble the Chuparosa from the Montreal airport and Queens traffic cameras. She spotted a cluster of photographers wearing press credentials camped behind some TV news cameras on tripods, and saw that the headlines in the morning newspapers were going to dog them all day long—exactly as President Vargas feared. The antitrafficking-treaty signing might be overshadowed by the usual narrative of Mexico’s drug cartel violence.
Garza checked her phone one last time. No contact from Fisk. She had expected to see him with the security contingent as they left the hotel, but he was nowhere to be found.
She accepted this. Upon further reflection after a night’s sleep, perhaps he realized that her past marked her as too complicated. She had to admit that, upon waking, the night before in the hotel lounge seemed to her like a dream, in which a different version of herself unburdened her personal side to a man she had only recently met.
She needed to get back to Mexico. To get out of New York. She wanted to return to the familiar confines of the PF, to go about her business and leave the concerns of presidential politics and security behind.
But first she wanted to get Chuparosa.
Her lead car pulled just past the limestone front of the five-story consulate building. There were two entrances. One faced the sidewalk, beneath a giant black globe housing the consulate’s security cameras. The other was inside a very small, gated courtyard, not much larger than a limousine. That was the public entrance, reserved for consulate business, such as visas, passports, immigration paperwork, and the like.
They idled and waited for the second and third vehicles to fall in behind them. An EMP agent in the backseat was monitoring the radio.
Garza grew anxious, watching more bystanders arrive, drawn by the police presence and the idling motorcade. What was taking so long?
“Visto bueno,” said the EMP agent.
Garza was out of the vehicle quickly, striding around to the rear, ready to escort President Vargas over the few yards to the entrance, which was controlled by security from inside the consulate. A small knot of consulate employees, including Consul General Francisca Metron, awaited him near the entrance.
Vargas exited through the door to the sidewalk, as planned, buttoning his jacket once he emerged and turning to wave blindly at the gathered crowd. Voices were raised, questions being shouted by reporters across Thirty-ninth Street, a one-way street with two traffic lanes and a parking lane. A number of Mexicans in the crowd cheered, and Vargas slowed to further acknowledge them, flashing the smile.
The gathered media misconstrued this action as an opportunity to shout more questions, which frankly neither Garza nor Vargas could hear above the din. Garza was sweeping her eyes over the crowd on the other side when she heard a voice yelling.
“Stop! Stop! Stop!”