Hard Exit, page 19
“You still think you funny, I see. How’s it going with Jennifer?”
“We’re building our relationship one crisis at a time. It’s important to establish a strong foundation.”
“What’s going on with the murders?”
“We’re on our way to Mexico. I think Chris, Big Bill, and Gilson were murdered because they knew something about the drug-smuggling that Marty Milford, Chris’ producing partner, was doing. I’m pretty sure he’s importing cocaine in Big Bill’s kayaks.”
“For real? Can you prove something like that?”
“We’re heading to the factory. We’ll see what we find. I feel lousy about missing Chris’ funeral, but San Felipe is too far away for us to make it back in time. We could be waiting for days to learn anything. I want to know if you’re willing to do a big favor for me, although if you look at it as you unofficially working as a private investigator you might find that more exciting.”
“Sure. What you got?”
“Don’t agree yet, because if you agree to do this, you’ll have to fly the dreaded color red.”
“Stop playing.”
“I’m serious. This is your decision. I’m not putting pressure on you, and I can probably make the plan work without your help, but I’m hoping you can approach Milford at the funeral when he’s got people near him—even if the other elements don’t fall into place, he’ll at least be rattled.”
“What should I say?”
“Something like, ‘Didn’t get our delivery. White boy didn’t show. Amanda lost her blow and needs more. But we can’t supply her with no supply.’”
“I can do that. What reaction you looking for?”
“If you say that, it means his hierarchy has broken down. No Posse member should know who he is because he should have buffers. So, one or more of those buffers betrayed him. This will be the first he’s heard about another delivery being hijacked, which of course will make him suspicious of the white guy who got hijacked, what, a week ago? With luck, Milford will become suspicious of everyone. A star of Amanda’s visibility should not be getting her drugs from street dealers. Even if he doesn’t believe you, he’ll know he’s in trouble. He’s desperate enough to have killed three people and threatened to kill me, or at least I think he did.
“Your statement won’t prove anyone knows that Chris didn’t commit suicide, but Milford knows he didn’t, and the goons who killed him know he didn’t. Whenever more than one person is involved in a crime, at least one of them can turn on the others to save his skin. But the plan could easily go wrong. I’m worried about you getting out of there in one piece.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll be at a funeral. People ain’t gonna draw down on me there.”
“Okay, if you’re sure, this is how I think you should proceed. I left the BMW at the Wilshire Motel, at 12023 Wilshire Boulevard. The key is on the ground behind the rear wheel on the passenger’s side. Dress as though you were going to a job interview at a bank—a dress shirt, nice slacks, dress shoes, not Adidas. Take buses if you can, or get someone to drop you a few blocks away. Do the same thing if you take a taxi. Of course, I’ll reimburse your expenses and give you plenty more. When you’re at the cemetery, change into the gang attire you think will be convincing, but remember that in acting, less is more. Don’t overdue the garb or the attitude. You’re just a businessman trying to stay in business by keeping the supply line operational.”
“Got it.”
“I suggest you arrive about a half hour after the service is scheduled—it’s at three—and wait in the car near the entrance. When everyone exits, ease into the procession. It won’t wind through city streets. They’ll follow the hearse to the gravesite.”
“Okay. What’s he look like?”
“Long red hair, blue eyes that are almost always hidden behind tacky Elton John glasses. About five-ten, a paunch, but not fat. Just soft. Probably dressed expensively.”
“Cool,” Game said. “How will we know if it works?”
“One of the pieces I’m hoping falls into place is that the white dude who got jacked is there. He probably works for Milford, but I don’t know how many layers of insulation are between them. Maybe Milford has fired him for getting hijacked. That part’s not essential. What is, though, is that you give the message to Milford, and you aren’t seen by Mike. I don’t know if he’ll be there, but he could be, and he obviously knows you. But as I say this, I realize it wouldn’t be a disaster if Mike sees you. He knows you’re not in da Posse, so he’ll know something’s up. He’ll conclude I’m the only one who would put you up to this. So, now that I’ve said it out loud, it could even work to our advantage if Mike sees you.”
“Can’t believe Coach is involved. He’s the only teacher I liked.”
“I hope I’m wrong.”
“How do we know if it works?”
“After you give the message to Milford, take five steps, then turn and watch what he does. If I’m right, he’ll turn to the white dude, if he’s there, or to Mike, if he’s there, or at least make a phone call. If I were a movie producer who had nothing to do with gangs, drugs, and murders, I’d just say, ‘What the hell?’ I wouldn’t get angry or frightened, and I wouldn’t feel compelled to call someone immediately.”
“Got you. But ain’t you making yourself a target?”
“Yes, but I can’t think of another way. If everything goes perfectly in Mexico—but when does everything go perfectly?—I could call you to cancel the plan. We’ll see.”
“You want me to leave the keys in the same place?”
“Yes. But I can’t emphasize this enough: This isn’t a joy ride. You’re to drive as slowly and carefully as you can. If you get pulled over in a car that isn’t registered to you, with gang clothes in the car—”
“Got it. We cool. Won’t let you down.”
“Thank you, Game. I owe you one.”
“More like two or three.”
I texted him the address of Holy Cross Cemetery and hoped I didn’t just make an irreversible mistake.
When Jen and I arrived in Calexico, we filled the tank, used the restroom, and drove to the storage business I’d found online, Self Stor-It. I filled out the paperwork to rent the smallest unit available, and Jen drove until we found 104 B. I put the bag that contained the Beretta, ammo, and a thousand dollars in the unit, then locked it. Although I could need the gun in Mexico, I couldn’t risk being caught with it there. A car problem, a fender-bender, or just some Federales demanding a bribe could not only put an end to the plan but could also land us in a Mexican jail.
The frenetic pace of the daily commerce in Mexicali, the town on the Mexico side of the border from Calexico, was winding down. I’d taken the wheel before entering Mexico. I parked near a taco stand, then Jen ate two fish tacos while I ate five. We purchased supplies at nearby stands and shops, including bread from a bakery.
We had a two-hour drive to San Felipe on Mexico 5, the major route that had been nearly deserted the five times I’d previously been to San Felipe. On those trips I’d driven the route in daylight.
“Do you mind if I nap?” Jen asked after about twenty minutes.
“Of course not. Get some rest.”
She balled her jacket up, put it against the window, and leaned her head against it. After about three minutes, she asked, “Why do you think Mike’s involved?”
“I think he could be involved because I can’t figure out why people who were willing to kill to protect their operation would warn me twice. I’ve batted around possibilities since this garbage started, and I really hope Mike isn’t involved. I have no evidence he is, except I was warned twice, and he seems to have more money than he should as a teacher in Oakville School District. His residual checks from the acting he did long ago are sometimes only a few dollars. He showed one to me. He has expensive tastes, though.”
“I really hope you’re wrong.”
“So do I.”
Within a few minutes, she breathed the deep breaths of sleep.
The drive south was disconcerting, despite my having made it before. On a previous trip, four black-clad members of the Mexican Army had brandished automatic weapons at a checkpoint that sat in the middle of nowhere. They didn’t find anything that troubled them as they searched my truck, then waved me through. On another trip, two cars had passed me on the right shoulder of the road while a truck approached from the opposite direction in the other lane. The trip south that night, however, went smoothly, except for the armadillo that tried to double-back, after reaching the middle of the road. I knew not to swerve, so I tried to avoid a collision by stomping the brake pedal. But that wasn’t enough to prevent the armadillo from thudding under both tires on Jen’s side of the car. She woke up.
“What was that?”
“An armadillo. Hoping that’s the worst luck we have down here.”
I put on the hazard lights, pulled over, centered the kayak, retied the knots, then turned off the hazards and continued.
I hadn’t been able to find an address online for the Wave Skimmer factory in San Felipe. I drove through what had long ago been a sleepy fishing village but had turned into a thriving tourist destination. At least that’s what it had been when Jami and I had visited about fifteen years before. I noticed that many basic cinder block buildings had been built since my last visit, and many of them appeared to have been abandoned, unfinished. The Great Recession probably caused funding to dry up, and no one had deemed the projects worthwhile since.
At a Pemex station, I said to a man in his fifties, “Perdón, señor.” He looked at me and smiled. Pointing to the kayak on the roof, I said, “¿Tu usted sabe adónde es la fábrica de kayac, por favor?”
“Sí. Dos kilómetros de esa manera, cerca del mercado. A la derecha.”
“Muchas gracias, señor. Tenga una buena noche.”
We found the factory a few minutes later, and I drove around it on dirt roads that were parallel to the edges of the buildings but were not near it. One road was nearly half a mile away, so we couldn’t see anything on that side, but the other roads were closer, so at least we could tell the factory didn’t have any roads that ran from a rear entrance.
The building was a large cinderblock structure built in a perfect square. It only had one inadequate light shining down from the top of each corner, so the factory was mostly dark. Each of the four sides had two thirty-six-inch pedestrian doors about fifteen feet from the edges. The side that faced the dirt parking lot and was closest to the market—a hundred and twenty yards away—had an additional large, metal door that opened upward. It appeared to be large enough for a van to pull into, but not large enough for a semi. We didn’t see a sign advertising which product the factory produced. The lights affixed above either side of the large door weren’t on.
I pulled into the market’s small lot and parked in the space farthest from the market and closest to the factory. The lot only had one car parked in it, an ancient red Pinto. Jen and I went inside and bought far more snacks than we could eat, hoping our extravagance would buy us some goodwill if we were still loitering in the parking lot in the morning, as seemed likely. I stuffed a twenty into the tip jar and winked at the sixty-ish woman behind the counter. She winked back.
The factory seemed to be closed for the night, but one of us always had to be on watch. I told Jen I’d take the first shift, so she could get sleep. Three customers pulled into the lot in the next hour, spent a few minutes inside, and drove away. At 10:55 p.m., the woman who’d sold us the snacks locked the front door and waved to us before driving away. I didn’t see or hear any signs of life for nearly eight hours, except for Jen’s deep breathing, the growling in my stomach, and the seven vehicles that passed the market on the nearby road.
Jen woke up at about seven, waited a few minutes for the same woman who closed the market the night before to get the coffee going, then bought herself a cup and left another nice tip. I told Jen I didn’t want coffee because it was my turn to sleep. I’d reclined the driver’s seat and was in the middle of a dream when Jen shook me awake. I looked at the clock on the dash. 8:01. We watched as an eighteen-wheeler slowly backed up to the large metal door. The parking lot now had fifteen other vehicles in it—nine trucks and six passenger cars. Two men from inside the building flung the sliding metal door upward.
“How many did you see go in?”
“Twenty.”
We couldn’t see the back of the trailer, but it was obvious the driver had opened the door and dropped the lift because soon two men on the side we could see were rolling black fifty-five-gallon drums through the open door. They used the lift to lower the upright barrels, tipped them over, and rolled them through the door. The trailer blocked the right side of the door from our view, so we could only guess what was happening on that side. We counted four barrels being rolled in. Then the same men started loading kayaks into the hold, not using the lift but handing the kayaks to men inside the trailer. We counted twelve kayaks handed up on the left side—three orange, three yellow, three sky blue, and three purple. The trailer probably had racks to hold the kayaks, so they didn’t get jostled and scratched. Because the driver would want a balanced load, it was safe to assume that another twelve kayaks had been loaded on the right side.
“We’re going to follow him, right?” Jen asked as the driver closed the back of the trailer and headed to his cab.
“No. We saw four different colors but no red. It’s possible any red ones were loaded on the other side, but segregating them that way would bring attention. Too many employees are involved in this transaction for it to be illicit. I know I’m going all-in on the red kayaks, but the only red Wave Skimmer I’ve ever seen, was stolen the night Big Bill was murdered.”
“He’s leaving. Are you sure?”
“To bet my life on it, no. But I have to play my hunch. We just watched the powder arriving to be processed, and the legitimate kayaks leaving. If we follow that truck, it will head to Bass Pro Shops in Cucamonga or to any of a half dozen Dick’s Sporting Goods or REIs in Southern California. I think we wait for something more clandestine.”
“If you say so. I’m just here eating Red Vines, Corn Nuts, and Hostess Donettes for breakfast. What do I know?”
“We’ll wait. If I’m wrong, it will be the first time in … about ten minutes.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Over the next sixteen hours, we spent about a hundred dollars in the market, buying access to its parking lot and restroom. The owner of the market knocked on the driver’s window at five asking why we were still there. I asked him if we could rent his parking space for a hundred per day. He asked for two hundred. I shook my head and handed him a hundred. He smiled and accepted my offer. Within an hour, a Federale pulled up next to us. He knocked on Jennifer’s window. She gave him the two hundred he asked for, but only after she acted as though that sum would severely cut into our cash supplies. I thought she’d acted her part well, but he either wanted to see her again or just knew he could extort more from two people sitting in a Range Rover. He demanded another two hundred at midnight. Presumably, his shift ended because we made it through the rest of the night without another shakedown.
I felt awful about not attending Chris’ funeral. He was a good friend, and I really respected him, but the situation was what it was, so we were where we were. At about 5 p.m. on Tuesday, I wondered how Game had done at the gravesite. Had he spoken to Milford and gotten out of there safely? Did he see Milford’s response, and was that response useful to us? I looked at my phone but had no reception. If Game had called, I’d have to leave the dead zone we were parked in to find out how his mission had gone. Leaving the factory wasn’t an option then, so we continued to wait.
At 3:55 a.m. on Wednesday, a black Ford F-150 pulled into the lot and parked to the left of the large door. I nudged Jennifer, and she woke up slowly. The lighting on the building was inadequate—probably by design—and even after I pulled on the night-vision goggles, I didn’t learn much about the two men who got out of the truck, each carrying a backpack. They entered through the pedestrian entrance on the left. Both wore cowboy hats, cowboy boots, jeans, and long-sleeved shirts. I never saw their faces. Even $3,200 night-vision goggles can’t bend light or see around corners, so I couldn’t identify anything else about them except that they were both about five-six. They entered the door but didn’t turn on a light, at least not one I could see. They probably turned off an alarm after they entered.
At 4:10, a black Ford Transit Connect Wagon with tinted windows passed the market and pulled into the factory parking lot in front of the large door. As the driver turned the van around so he could back it into the door, he killed the headlights, and the door opened but the lights above it didn’t go on.
Jen couldn’t see anything in the moonlight but the hint of a black van, with its lights off, pulling into the black hole in the wall. The night-vision goggles didn’t deliver much more information because the cowboys were cautious enough not to face in our direction, keeping their backs to the outside while they opened the door and closing it behind the van after the driver backed in. Their vigilance concerned me because it could indicate they’d made us. We weren’t stupid enough to sit inside the SUV with the light on so they could see us, but we did stick out, sitting in a dirt parking lot outside a tiny market in a Range Rover with a kayak strapped to the surfboard rack on the roof. I was hoping the kayak on top of a vehicle sitting outside a kayak factory would make us less conspicuous. But, as we waited for them to load the van with red kayaks, I realized that once it became light, I was going to have to get rid of the kayak. If we spooked the driver after all this, the two of us not only wouldn’t be able to prove that Milford was transporting cocaine in kayaks, but we would also likely be dead, as the written threats suggested.
While Jen and I waited, I revised the plan. I’d originally hoped to tail whichever vehicle left the building carrying red kayaks, staying as close as possible without getting made. Then, when the vehicle approached the border checkpoint, I’d maneuver right behind it so I could see what was happening at the border. Would the vehicle go through a specific lane that was manned by a corrupt Customs and Border Protection agent who was willing to let the vehicle through because he’d already received a bribe? Would he only receive his bribe after the vehicle carrying the contraband had been admitted without incident? Or was something else going on?
