“I suppose that’s good.”
“Coming?”
“Not for long. I have a meeting on the other side. I think I’ll have something to tell you tomorrow.”
When Méndez returned to his headquarters, he received a phone call from Mexico City. The Secretary, who was on a trip to Sonora, had heard about the shoot-out. The Secretary had decided to stop in Tijuana and wanted Méndez to meet with him the next day.
It was 2 a.m. when Méndez, Athos and Porthos climbed into the Crown Victoria. Porthos drove. A carload of Diogenes officers followed them as far as the port of entry, where they crossed into San Diego.
The traffic on Interstate 5 was fast and sparse. But the center median of the freeway was full of illegal immigrants trudging north. Méndez rested his head against the window in the backseat. He watched the ghostly army on the march. Headlights swept the immigrants. The concrete gleamed wet and black beneath their boots and gym shoes. His countrymen covered their heads with hoods, baseball caps, newspapers, plastic bags. Or they simply hunched their shoulders, impervious to the rain, the fatigue, the roar and hiss of metal monsters rushing by a few feet away. The immigrants knew the freeway median was a reasonably safe limbo in some ways: no bandits, no Border Patrol, no rough terrain. Just put one foot in front of the other. Pray the cars stay in their lanes. Try not to think about the moment when you’ll have to sprint across this cement deathscape hauling your wife, your kids, your worldly possessions. Maybe the moment can be postponed indefinitely. Maybe you can just keep walking north and the freeway median will take you where you want to go.
Sliding along the edge of sleep, the ragged parade blurring and dissolving on the other side of the wet glass, Méndez thought about the Mexican presidents who gave speeches lamenting the exodus of illegal immigrants from the country. The presidents said the bravery and determination of the immigrants made them Mexico’s best and brightest. Méndez had melodramatic visions of hauling the Mexican presidents across the border and exacting poetic justice at gunpoint, forcing them to run with the best and brightest on the freeway in the rain.
Fifteen minutes later Méndez and his men arrived at Isabel Puente’s condominium complex, which overlooked a bay near SeaWorld in the Crown Point area of San Diego. There was a guardhouse, walls topped with cameras. They walked into a five-story building with a faux-Mediterranean tiled roof, Moorish archways and curved balconies.
Méndez had visited Puente’s home once before, in October, during the days of vertigo that followed his arrest of the Colonel. Her invitation had surprised him. Puente had shared case information with him about the Colonel. And she played him a tape from what she called a “U.S. military subsource wiretap”: a conversation between a San Diego drug dealer and a Tijuana police detective about a rumored plan to kill Méndez. On that day he had realized she was a friend as well as an ally.
Athos and Porthos hung back respectfully as Isabel Puente opened the door to her fifth-floor apartment. She practically bounded into the hall. Her hair was tousled and damp. She wore jeans, a denim blouse, gym shoes. Her smile and her voice were exhilarated.
“Listen, Leo, this is delicate,” she whispered, her fingers digging into his arm. “I’ve got Valentine Pescatore in there, the Border Patrol agent. You know.”
“The star informant.”
“El mero. He was involved in the shooting. Right in the middle of it. He’s going to tell you the whole thing. But he’s not happy about it. ”
The cobwebs of sleep evaporated from Méndez’s eyes.
“Another thing,” Puente continued, rapid-fire. “He speaks Spanish, but I think he’ll be more comfortable in English. Alright?”
“Fine with me,” Méndez said with a mock bow. “Your house, your rules.”
“No, please, it’s your house, you already know that. All of you,” Puente said, flashing a high-voltage smile over her shoulder at Athos and Porthos, who stammered their thanks.
The apartment was long, high-ceilinged and divided into three step-down levels. At the end of the living room, glass doors to a balcony overlooked a marina, city lights shimmering on the water, the low forms of moored sailboats. The furniture was dark and minimalist, the carpet thick and spotless. Except for a table full of family photos and a framed pop-art relief of old Havana by an exile artist, Isabel Puente’s home could have been a chic hotel suite.
Total solitude, Méndez thought. He had once read a line in a novel about how Americans pursued loneliness in myriad ways: they lived alone, drove alone, ate alone. He remembered weekend cross-border excursions with his wife and son to the supermarkets and home-supply stores of Chula Vista and San Ysidro. He remembered commenting with his wife on the contrast between the shopping rituals. The solitary Anglos hunched behind their carts; the Latino families were boisterous platoons of children, grandparents, cousins. He thought ruefully about his own home in Playas de Tijuana, which after four months seemed big in a way he had never thought possible: the silent kitchen, the dusty toys. His home had acquired its own musty air of disuse. He had known the job with the Diogenes Group would be tough, but he hadn’t imagined it would turn him into an American.
Puente led them into a breakfast nook. A youthful Border Patrol agent reclined behind a rectangular marble-topped table, leaning his head against the wall. The agent’s short-sleeved green uniform was bedraggled. A stain on his shirt appeared to be dried blood.
“Valentine, this is Leo Méndez, the chief of the Diogenes Group. And Comandantes Rojas and Tapia,” Puente said. “Gentlemen, this is Agent Valentine Pescatore.”
The agent half rose. He was younger, darker and shorter than Méndez had expected. He had muscular biceps and shoulders and black curly hair. Puente had told Méndez that her informant was of Mexican and Argentine descent. He could have passed for either, but his looks were more South American. With his compact bulk and wide, edgy eyes, Pescatore reminded Méndez of a rookie soccer player or prizefighter, boiling with youth and nerves and aggression.
“A pleasure, a sus órdenes,” Méndez said, shaking hands vigorously. “Thank you for seeing us.”
“How you doin’?” the agent responded, his voice throaty with street inflections. “I heard a lot about you. I thought it was gonna be one-on-one, though.” He nodded curtly at Athos and Porthos without offering them his hand. “I didn’t know you were gonna bring the whole team.”
Athos and Porthos stiffened. Méndez had never heard Athos say anything more than “Ten-four” and “Nice to meet you,” but Athos understood his share of English. And Porthos had gone to high school in Inglewood, California. Méndez tried to think of a diplomatic response, but Puente spoke first. She put a hand on Pescatore’s forearm, patient and steely.
“Comandante Rojas is the operational chief of the Diogenes Group, Valentine. The number-two guy. And Comandante Tapia is of utmost confidence. I vouch for both of them. They wouldn’t be here otherwise. Why don’t you guys have a seat, take off your jackets, make yourselves comfortable. I’ll get some coffee.”
The Mexicans sat. They did not take off their jackets. The alcove quickly became claustrophobic. Pescatore tilted his head back again. He regarded Méndez from beneath heavy lids. His posture reinforced his tone: He clearly wished the Mexicans would go away. Wild-looking kid, Méndez thought.
Méndez had a visceral nationalistic aversion to Border Patrol agents. Although he did not work with The Patrol, from a distance they reminded him of a species he had come to loathe during his year among the gray skies and gray buildings of the University of Michigan: fraternity boys. They had struck him as crude, swaggering, well-off rednecks with a clannish mentality that reeked of racism and fascism. But Méndez had been mystified to discover that Athos and other veterans in the Diogenes Group did not share his disdain. In fact, Mendez’s officers viewed the Border Patrol with a comradely we’re-all-cops-doing-our-job attitude. And he knew that, unlike the frat boys of Michigan, the Border Patrol agents tended to be working class and many were Latinos.