The Mexican Connection: Ted Higuera Series Book 3 Read online

  “Have you thought about money?” Jennifer asked. “How are you paying Mr. Weinstein? Can you afford to pay me?”

  “Money?” Lisa hesitated. All of a sudden the pressure was back. “Jimmy always takes care of the money. He’s paying Mr. Weinstein. I guess he’ll pay you.”

  “Do you have a job?”

  Lisa pulled a tissue from her sleeve and blew her nose. “No, I’m a stay at home mom. I married Jimmy right out of college. I’ve never worked outside the home.”

  “But you have job skills?” Jennifer asked.

  “Well, no. I have a degree in fine arts. I’ve always wanted to write children’s books.”

  “So you have no way to make a living?”

  “Why? I have Jimmy. He takes care of me, of us. I take care of the home; he takes everything else. It’s the way he wanted it.”

  Jennifer took off her reading glasses and stared at Lisa. “Where is your husband?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Can you reach him?”

  “I have his cell number.”

  “Well, call him and find out.” Jennifer pulled her smart phone out of her purse and handed it to Lisa.

  “The number you have dialed is no longer in service,” the voice on the phone said.

  “I don’t believe it. His phone is out of service.” Lisa broke into tears.

  Jennifer produced a small package of Kleenex from her purse.

  “Here, take one of these.”

  Lisa took the tissue and wiped her eyes. “Why . . . would he do . . . that? Where is he? Why won’t he talk to me?” She sobbed.

  “Lisa,” Jennifer said. “I think you’re in pretty deep here. We have to find Jimmy. He’s obviously avoiding the police. He’s ditched his cell so the authorities can’t trace him though the GPS. I’m going to need help on this. I have an investigator that we can trust. She’s the best there is. But it’s not going to be cheap. How are we going to fund this?”

  Chapter 6

  Seattle

  While Ted threw his backpack into Sara’s room, Chris grabbed a couple of Henry’s long necks from the fridge.

  Chris sat on the old sofa and took a good look at his friend.

  Ted hadn’t changed much in the last five years; maybe he put on a couple of pounds. He still had that short, stocky build with mile-wide shoulders, trim hips and barrel chest. He wondered if Ted could still bench press two hundred and fifty pounds.

  And that mustache. It was ridiculous. He couldn’t stop himself from saying something about it.

  “Hey, bro. What happened? Did a caterpillar climb up on your lip and die?”

  “You like the soup strainer, señor?” Ted asked.

  “I no like, señor. You look like a Tijuana whorehouse pimp.” Chris twisted off the cap and handed the brew to his bud. “Here you go, amigo, welcome home.”

  “It feels strange, dude.” Ted clinked the neck of his beer bottle against Chris’. “It’s kinda like I never left, but it’s kinda like I don’t belong. My room is all girly now. When Sara moved out, she left a lot of her stuff there. How is little hermana?”

  “Doing great. She got a job in San Francisco doing publicity for a law firm there. One of my dad’s friends. She has a nice apartment and is loving it.”

  “I’m happy for her. She really turned around after you guys almost got killed up in Canada.”

  “Not you guys. You were there. We all almost got killed.”

  The years had healed the wounds. At least it covered the scars. Chris still thought about the horrible adventure. The al-Qaeda attack on his dad’s cruise ship that had cost Jack and Meagan their lives, but at least he didn’t get the panic attacks anymore. He couldn’t remember the last time he had fallen into a deep depression.

  He still wasn’t going out much. After Meagan, his almost fiancée, was killed, Chris couldn’t bring himself to get close to another woman. First he lost his mom, then Meagan. It seemed like everyone he loved died.

  His reverie was interrupted by Ted’s cell phone playing La Cucaracha.

  “That’s Papa. Excuse me.” Ted pulled out his smart phone and pushed the talk button.

  “Bueno, Papa.”

  There was a long silence as Ted listened.

  “No. Are you sure . . . ?”

  More silence.

  “Papa, No. Not Guillermo. What did they tell you?”

  Chris could hear Papa’s excited speech from Ted’s phone, but he couldn’t understand the actual words. Christ had picked up a smattering of Spanish from Ted, but he couldn’t understand Papa’s machine gun chatter.

  “No, Papa. You wait there. I’m coming home. I’ll go online right now. I’ll change my return ticket to this afternoon. I don’t want you to do anything until I get there.”

  Now he really had Chris’s attention.

  Chris heard more rapid-fire Spanish from Ted’s phone. Ted’s parents always talked to him in Spanish and he always answered in English.

  “No. Listen to me. I’ll go with you. You’re an old man. You shouldn’t be wandering around a town like Juarez alone. I’ll get on the next plane home.”

  Ted pushed the “end” button on his phone and just sat, staring into space.

  “Well,” Chris said after a minute. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s Guillermo. He and a few buddies took off on a road trip to celebrate graduation. He’s disappeared in Mexico. A couple of his friends were found dead.”

  “Oh shit!” Chris slammed down his empty bottle on the side table. “When did this happen?”

  “A couple of days ago, I think. It’s all kind of a blur right now.”

  “My God, Ted. What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be in Mexico trying to help?”

  “I’m out of here on the next plane. I’ve gotta get home before Papa does something stupid.”

  “Something stupid?” Chris asked. “Like what?”

  “He says he’s going to Mexico.” Ted stared at the nearly full bottle of beer in his hand. “He says he’s going after Guillermo, to find him.”

  “Crap, that can’t be good.”

  “He’s an old man, Chris. I don’t know what kind of trouble he could get himself into. And he has money now. He still has most of his lottery winnings in the bank. If he starts tossing it around, he could get into big trouble.”

  “Holy shit! You’ve got to stop him.”

  “Let me get out my computer. I’m gonna change my flight right now.”

  “Better book two tickets. It looks like the Two Amigos will ride again.”

  ****

  East Los Angeles

  Mama and Papa huddled around the kitchen table. The clock on the wall said it was after three am. Hope pulled a two liter bottle of Coke Zero from the fridge and poured three glasses over ice.

  “So what did Ted say?” Hope asked.

  The family conference waited until Hope closed the restaurant for the night. Her younger brother and sister were still in school. They’d gone to bed hours ago.

  “He’ll catch the next plane out.” Papa took the glass from Hope. “He’s coming straight home.”

  Mama sat at the table and sobbed. “Guillermo, my little boy.” She dried her eyes on a dish towel and looked at Papa. “What did the policía say? Are they getting the federales involved?”

  “They didn’t tell me anything,” Papa said. “They want me to fly down there.”

  “No!” Mama shouted. “You’re not going anywhere. You stay here where you’re safe. Ted will go. He’s young and smart and strong. He can handle it.”

  “And I can’t?” Papa stood and paced the kitchen floor. “I didn’t get you across the Rio Bravo? I didn’t outsmart the migras?”

  “Papa.” Hope took his hand in hers and patted it. “Mama’s right. You’re older. The world has changed. These are very mean people. Ted has dealt with their kind before.”

  “You promise me, Eduardo Higuera, You promise me on your mother’s grave. You are NOT going to Mexico after Guillermo. I
’ve already lost one son there, I don’t need to lose a husband too.”

  ****

  As always, Mama was up at five thirty the next morning. Every morning she made coffee, then started a bowl of chili in her molcajete. After the chili was done, Mama would start a batch of flour tortillas. Then she fried potatoes with onions and chiles and finally fried eggs. Papa had filled his stomach with a hearty breakfast every day since he and Mama crossed the border as teenagers.

  Today, Mama did not start the coffee. She didn’t start the chili.

  “PAPA,” she shouted and ran from the bedroom. Papa’s side of the bed was empty.

  “EDUARDO.” She yelled again as she dashed down the hall into the living room. He wasn’t there. She looked in the kitchen, then the garage.

  Papa’s 1985 Chevy conversion van was gone.

  “Papa.” She dropped to her knees and cried.

  “Mama,” Hope darted into the garage in her night gown. “What’s wrong?”

  “Papa. He’s gone.”

  “Oh my God.”

  ****

  El Paso, Texas

  Papa took a United Airlines flight out of LAX at 5:30 and booked a room in the same hotel where Guillermo stayed. He would pay for Guillermo’s room, no problem.

  “Mr. Higuera, I’m Detective Robles” a tall, thin, obviously Latino man said as Papa entered the Terry Harris Judicial Complex, El Paso’s police headquarters. “I’m very sorry about your son.”

  Papa took the detective’s hand. “You know something else?” Papa’s breath caught in this throat.

  “No, Juarez is a black hole. We have nothing new.”

  Detective Robles led Papa through the station to a comfortable office. “Have a seat.” He waved his hand at a chair.

  The wall behind Robles’s desk was filled with photos and awards. A picture of a good looking Latina woman and two children sat on his desk.

  “What do you know? What happened to the boys?” Papa said as he took a chair.

  “I’ve talked to Roberto Lazaro, the chief of police in Juarez. He says the boys were seen at Chili Pete’s, a bar on Juarez Avenue. The bartender says they had a little too much to drink.”

  “Ay.” Papa uttered. “That Guillermo.”

  “At about eleven pm, they were approached by a man named Jose Ruiz. Ruiz is a pimp for Adelita’s brothel. We know he took them Adelita’s.”

  Papa noticed a gold band around Robles’s ring finger.

  "Adelita’s is owned by El Lobo, the leader of the Los Norteños cartel. At about midnight, gunmen from Los Conquistadores, a rival drug gang, blew down the door at Adelita’s and raided the place. As far as the Juarez police can tell, they killed everyone there, fourteen employees and twelve customers. Your boy and a Chapo Lopez are missing. They didn’t find their bodies. We surmise that they must have been with the Guevara boy and the Salvatore boy, but they weren’t found. We don’t know anything else”

  Tears ran from Papa’s eyes. “How . . . How can I find out? Who can I talk to?”

  “Lazaro says that he has a police comandante named Emiliano Ortega assigned to the case. You can talk to him, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Juarez is a very dangerous place. No place for a wealthy American to be wandering around asking embarrassing questions. It’s best if you leave it to the authorities.”

  “The authorities?” Papa’s voice rose to just below a roar. “I was born in Chihuahua. I know how justice works there. It’s for sale to the highest bidder. Well, detective, I have the good fortune of having a little money. I will use my last centavo to find my son. Someone in Juarez will be willing to take my money to help.” Papa stood, so enraged that he toppled his chair.

  “Mr. Higuera, I can’t caution you enough.” Robles rose and placed a hand on Papa’s shoulder. “That is not a good idea, going down there, waving your money around. You could get yourself in a lot of trouble.”

  “Señor Robles, do you have a son? Do you have children?” Papa picked up the picture off of Robles’s desk.

  “Yes. I have a boy and a girl.” Robles nodded at the picture.

  “Then you know. I cannot sit here and do nothing.” Papa handed the picture to Robles. “I must find my son. If nothing else, I must take his body home for his mama to bury.”

  “You need to understand what’s going on down there, Mr. Higuera.” Robles sat back in his chair and gestured for Papa to do the same. “There is no law, the cartels out gun the police. Half of the police are on the cartels’ payroll. You’ll only get as far as they allow you to. And they would think nothing of killing an old gringo like you.”

  Papa sat back in the chair, deflated.

  “The drug cartels have diversified.” Robles took a sip of cold coffee from the mug on his desk. “They’re into gambling, bars, restaurants, whorehouses. They even capture illegal immigrants trying to get into the US. They enslave them; sneak them across the border, then take whatever money they earn. If the immigrants don’t pay up, the cartels kill their relatives in the most disgusting ways.”

  Papa sank lower into his chair.

  “They behead them and hang their bodies from bridges. There’s one drug lord, called El Posolero, who boils his enemies alive, then drops their bones in front of their houses. These are very bad people.”

  “I know all these things,” Papa said. “I read the papers.”

  “Do you know that they’ve taken up kidnapping too? It’s the new Mexican national sport. There’s such a disparity between the rich and the poor that many stupid hermanos take to kidnapping as a way of making money. They snatch the wives and kids of wealthy people, mostly politicians and police officials and hold them for ransom. Half the time, even if you pay the ransom, you get them back in pieces. A wealthy gringo going down there, throwing his money around looking for his son would be a prime target. I wouldn’t give you two days down there.”

  “But still . . . I must . . . my son . . .”

  Chapter 7

  Seattle

  “No, you don’t understand . . . This is an emergency . . .” Ted shouted into his cell phone. “Yes, I’ll hold.”

  “Giving you a hard time?” Chris asked.

  “They’ll change my reservation for a measly hundred and fifty bucks, but they can’t get me out today. And don’t even think about getting you a ticket for today.” Ted paced back and forth in Chris’s kitchen. “Are you sure you want to go? I mean, you’ll miss your graduation and all.”

  “No question,” Chris said. “Your father and brother are a hell of a lot more important than graduation. I kinda wanted an excuse to skip it anyway.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Candace.”

  Ted remembered all the hard feelings Chris had when his dad married his paralegal. She was tall, black-haired, green-eyed with a body that could stop traffic. She was also young enough to be Chris’s sister.

  “What about Candace?”

  “She’s graduating with me. We kinda buddied up all the way through Law School.”

  “That sounds great. So you’re getting along with her now?”

  “Yeah, but she beat me.”

  “What do you mean she beat you? Beat you at what?”

  “She finished number one in the class. I was only number two.”

  Number two? Chris? No one ever beat Chris. He had a genius IQ and an eidetic memory. How did Candace beat Chris academically?

  “How? I mean, she’s smart and all that, but man, you’re The Man.”

  “She’s wicked smart. Scary smart. I’ve never met anyone like her. She reads it once and remembers everything.”

  Ted laughed, the first laugh since his father’s call. “Sounds like someone else I know.”

  “And she works harder than anyone I’ve ever met. Well maybe not as hard as Kathy Nguyen.” Kathy was the junior attorney that Chris had been assigned to as a paralegal because he was the only one in the firm who could keep up with her.

  “Yes, I’m here.” Ted’s attention turned back to the phone ca
ll. “Wednesday? You can’t get anything tomorrow? You don’t understand how important this is.”

  He listened for a minute.

  “Can we confirm for Wednesday, then on wait standby for tomorrow?”

  Another pause.

  “Okay. Thank you. Yes, put it on the same card.”

  He pushed the end button.

  “The best I could do was get standby for tomorrow. Where the hell is everyone going this time of year? Doesn’t anyone work anymore?”

  ****

  Ted pulled Chris’s silver Porsche Boxster into the parking lot at the old warehouse in South Seattle. What the hell, he had an afternoon to kill.

  He got out and surveyed the area. It hadn’t changed. The mostly empty parking lot had a few junkers in it, and Catrina’s burgundy Ford Explorer, her bat mobile.

  Ted remembered the car chase when the bad guys were shooting at them with machine guns. The bullets bounced off. Catrina had the SUV specially built by the people who made presidential limousines. It would take an anti-tank missile to stop it. He could only wonder at what it might have cost her.

  He walked up three dirty concrete steps to the door and pressed the button on the intercom.

  “Yes, Flaherty and Associates,” the throaty voice with a trace of British accent said. Abeba, Ted thought. She’s still here.

  Abeba was one of a couple dozen women that Catrina had rescued from one fate or another and given jobs to in her private investigation agency.

  “It’s Ted, Abeba. I’m here to see Cat.”

  “Mr. Higuera,” She cried. “Come on up.”

  The buzzer rang and Ted pulled open the heavy glass door. The poor potted ficus in the entryway was as sad as ever. Why hadn’t it died yet? Or maybe it did and this was the replacement. She should have gone for plastic.

  Ted climbed the long, worn staircase to the heavy door at the top. The brass plaque said “Flaherty and Associates.”

  When Ted opened the door, a huge black woman jumped into his arms. Abeba was a couple of inches taller than Ted and probably outweighed him by eighty or ninety pounds. His face was immediately smothered in her ample bosom.