The Mexican Connection: Ted Higuera Series Book 3 Read online

  “Mr. Higuera. Ted. It’s soooo good to see you.” She still had that funny accent. She originally came from Ethiopia. She learned her English from an English school marm.

  “Hi, Abeba. How’s your daughter?” Ted knew that Catrina had saved Abeba’s daughter from female circumcision.

  “She’s doing great, Mr. Higuera. She’s in high school now. She wants to be an actress. She’s a finalist in the Miss Washington pageant this year.”

  “She’s a beautiful girl.”

  Ted was surrounded by a couple of dozen women of all sizes, shapes and skin colors. They looked like refugees from some third world conflict. They were all women that Catrina had rescued and found work for in her agency.

  He was passed around, hugged, kissed and patted. He felt like the prize poodle at the Westminster Dog Show.

  “Is Cat here?” He asked Abeba.

  “Mrs. Flaherty is in her office. She’s waiting to see you.”

  Ted stopped at the office door. It was just as he remembered it, second hand furniture squeezed into a small space. A battered desk, a used lawyer’s bookcase and a beat-up credenza filled the room, along with two unmatched chairs sitting across from the desk.

  But it wasn’t the furniture that got Ted’s attention. Catrina Flaherty, Cat to her friends, was still a fine piece of womankind. She must be approaching fifty now, but she looked good as ever.

  Taller than Ted by an inch, she always wore boots with three-inch heels to give her a definitive height advantage. She had curves in all the right places, short blonde hair and steel-gray eyes. She could light up a room with her smile or cut you to the bone with a just look. For a second he wondered if she was coloring her hair now.

  Catrina flew into Ted’s arms. He grabbed her, lifted her off of the ground and twirled her around.

  “Teddy,” she sighed.

  He planted his lips on hers.

  She pulled away.

  “We can’t do this. You know that,” Cat pushed against his chest. “I thought we’d settled it before you left.”

  Ted took a deep breath. Her smell was intoxicating. She looked so damned good in tight jeans and a white Oxford shirt with the sleeves turned up.

  “I know.” Ted released her, held her at arm’s length. “It’s just so good to see you.”

  “It’s good to see you too, Ted.” Catrina broke from his grip and sat at her chair behind her desk. “I know you’re just visiting. I don’t want to open any old wounds.”

  “I know.” Ted took a chair and confessed. “I think about you all the time.”

  “I think about you too.”

  “You know, I never really knew you cared about me. Until that last day.”

  “That’s because I wanted it that way. You can’t mix work and romance. Beside, Teddy, get real. Look at the age difference.”

  “What’s a couple of decades among friends?” Ted smirked. “You still seein’ Tom?”

  Tom Bremen was the Seattle homicide cop that Catrina had dated off and on for most of a decade.

  “Yes, kinda. He always wants something more. I just don’t want to settle down.”

  “Well, when you get ready, you give ol’ Teddy a call. I don’t care about the years.”

  “You just in town for a visit?” She changed the subject.

  “Yeah, only here for a day. I was supposed to be here for Chris’s graduation, but I have an emergency at home. I have to go back.”

  Catrina leaned forward in her chair. “An emergency? I hope everything’s all right.”

  “I don’t know.” Ted let out a big breath. “My brother disappeared in Mexico. We don’t know what’s happened yet.”

  “Wow!” Catrina sat back and put her hands on her desk. “That’s not good news. There’s bad stuff happening down there. Your brother, is he mixed up in drugs? Is he involved with any gangs?”

  “No.” Ted was quick to answer. “He may smoke a joint now and then, but he’s a good kid. He’s not into the drug scene at all.”

  “I may have a case going on there myself.”

  “You? A case in Mexico?” Ted brushed back the lock of hair that always seemed to fall down over his left eye. “What kind of deadbeat husband are you chasing this time?”

  “Exactly that. A woman’s husband is a drug dealer. The feds have confiscated everything she owns. She is so naïve, she thinks the guy is coming back to save her. He’s taken off to Mexico and hung her out to dry. Now I have to go find him and bring him back.”

  “That’s bounty hunter work. Have you added a new division to your business?”

  Catrina glanced sidelong at her credenza, at the picture of a tall, blonde young man in a cap and gown. “You know, we do whatever pays well. I need the money to pay for Matt’s rehab.”

  “Doesn’t his dad help with that?”

  “That deadbeat never contributed a dime to his son’s upbringing.”

  Catrina picked up a file folder and opened it. “I could use a favor . . .”

  “Sure, whatever you need.” Ted’s spider sense started tingling.

  “You remember Rico Caglioni? The Seattle Mafia King.”

  “Of course. How could I forget? That’s how we met.”

  “Well, he owes you a favor, right?”

  “Yeah, he says that Rico never forgets a favor.”

  “Well, I need that favor. I’m going to Mexico. I can’t take firearms with me. I need a contact in Mexico that can help me arm Jeff and myself.”

  Ted hated guns. He hated violence. They had been a part of his life far too often. Every time he played with guns, someone ended up dead. But this was Cat. One of the reasons he left Seattle was that he could never say no to her. Whatever she asked for, she got.

  “Yeah . . .” He really didn’t want to do this. “I’ll give him a call.” Shit, she did it to him again.

  “Well, anyway,” Ted said. “I’m headed home to be with my parents to see what we can do about getting Guillermo back. Hopefully, it will just be a matter of paying a ransom.” Ted got up.

  Catrina jumped up from her chair too and put a big hug on Ted. She held him close and whispered in his ear. “Ted, you know you have a home here. There will always be a place for you here if you need it.”

  Ted held on to her like he couldn’t let go.

  Chapter 8

  Seattle

  Lisa sat in the interview room in her prison orange jump suit. Jennifer wore a charcoal gray pinstriped pant suit. She looked good in anything.

  “Lisa, my investigator, Catrina Flaherty, will be meeting us here in a few minutes. I wanted to talk to you first, to prep you for her.”

  “Okay.” Lisa sipped at the cappuccino that Jennifer brought her.

  “Cat is a little different. You need to understand her, what makes her tick, in order to get along with her.”

  Lisa looked questioningly at the other woman. She had asked around in the jail. Lots of the women there had heard about Cat Flaherty. She was something of a legend in Seattle.

  She worked on the fringes of the law. She was more interested in getting justice for her clients than winning court cases. She had a client who had been raped. The case was dropped for lack of evidence.

  The weasely district attorney, that horrible little Petrocelli man, said it was “he said/she said.” He said there wasn’t enough evidence to prove rape and let the man go.

  The suspect was found in an alley on Capitol Hill a few weeks later. He had been badly beaten, his testicles ruptured. No charges were ever pressed. Rumor was that he didn’t want to admit he was beaten up by a woman.

  Then there was the big shot from Millennium Systems, the big computer company headquartered in Seattle. He was arrested for murdering the female president of a Seattle software company, but he walked. The judge threw out the police’s evidence.

  The man simply disappeared. Rumor said that Cat had served justice, but no one could ever prove anything.

  “Cat was a Port of Seattle policewoman,” Jennifer said. “Her fa
ther and all five of her brothers are cops. We sued the Police Department for sexual harassment. It eventually grew into a class action suit. We got the largest settlement ever given by the City of Seattle, but it ended Cat’s police career. No one would hire her after that.”

  “So what did she do? Surely she didn’t have to work anymore with all that money?”

  Jennifer smoothed down her jacket and fussed with the sleeves. “She opened her own agency. She’s been dedicated to helping women in trouble ever since. She takes on divorce cases, battered wives, and sexual harassment cases. She’s very driven in what she does. She had a battered wife case a few years ago. The husband was a police officer. Actually, he was a police chief.”

  Lisa’s hand went to her mouth. “Oh my God!”

  “Cat lost her client. She’s vowed that it would never happen again. She’d kill to protect a client.”

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” the tall blonde said as she slipped through the door. “Hi, I’m Catrina Flaherty. I’m betting you’re Lisa.” She smiled and extended her hand.

  “Hello.” Lisa met the woman’s steel-gray eyes. “Yes, I’m Lisa…Lisa Adams.”

  “It sounds like you’re in a real mess, Lisa.” Catrina, dressed in jeans and a gray blouse with matching Mikimoto pearl earrings and necklace took the empty chair. “What can you tell me about your husband’s whereabouts?”

  Lisa shook her head. “I don’t know. When I called him, I heard loud voices and Mexican music, like he was in a bar. I’m not sure if he was in Mexico or not. It could have been Tacoma for all I know. Then he disconnected his phone and I can’t get a hold of him at all.”

  “Well, it looks like he’s taken a powder,” Cat said. “He won’t be coming back.”

  “I don’t believe that. I know he’ll come. He wouldn’t abandon me and Kayla.”

  “We have to be realistic.” Cat took Lisa’s hands in hers. “We have to move forward as if you’ll never see him again. If he shows up, that’s a bonus, but you need to take care of yourself and your daughter now.”

  “This is going to be expensive,” Jennifer interjected. “Cat will probably have to go to Mexico. She’ll have travel expenses, probably have to pay bribes. What kind of financial resources do you have?”

  Lisa thought for a moment. “I . . . everything we have . . . had . . . was in the bank. The ADA took it all. He even took the safety deposit box.”

  “That was a surprise,” Jennifer said to Catrina. “Fifty thousand in crisp new hundred dollar bills.”

  “Crap,” Catrina said. “That would have gone a long way towards straightening this out.”

  “There is one other thing,” Lisa said in a tiny voice.

  Both of the women looked at her.

  “Yes,” Cat said.

  “I have a key.”

  “A key?” Jennifer asked.

  “Jimmy gave it to me years ago. He said if I ever was in trouble I should use it.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Kayla has it.”

  Catrina and Jennifer looked at each other in disbelief. Had Lisa been holding out on them? Was she really as innocent as she seemed?

  “Kayla has it?” Catrina said. “They didn’t take it away from her?”

  “It’s inside a locket I gave her for her sixth birthday. She doesn’t even know it’s there. Jimmy told me I had to hide it really well. He said I couldn’t keep it in the house. I thought that was the safest place to hide it.”

  “Well, Miss Lisa,” Catrina said, “I think we need to pay your daughter a visit.”

  ****

  Seattle

  ”Good evening, and welcome to a special Monday Night edition of News Front,” the attractive blonde said on the television.

  Chris had upgraded to a huge flat screen TV with surround sound. Ted laughed remembering an old CRT TV they used to watch in his college years.

  “Hi, I’m Janet Peterson, and tonight Dave Garcia takes us deep into the drug war that rages south of the border.”

  Ted had been watching Janet Peterson and News Front for as long as he could remember. She still looked great and the show was still one of the highest rated TV news shows.

  “Dave,” Janet said on TV, “can you give us a little background? We all know that there has been terrible violence going on in Mexico. What’s it all about?”

  The camera panned out to reveal a devilishly handsome Latino man sitting next to Janet at the ebony news desk.

  “Well, Janet” Dave Garcia answered, “first of all, I don’t want to alarm anyone. This isn’t going to be a sensationalist newscast. Yes, there has been terrible violence going on in Mexico, but it is mainly in the border areas and between rival drug cartels. The cities of Juarez and Tijuana have been the main areas of concern. It has impacted very few Americans down there.”

  “Great,” Chris said as he handed Ted a bowl of popcorn. “The only place we have to worry about violence is right where we’re going.”

  “We don’t know yet that we’re going to Juarez,” Ted said.

  “Get real, bro. If your brother has been kidnapped, it’s not likely that it was in El Paso. He’s across the border. We’re just going to have to figure out how to get him back.”

  “. . . Mexican drug smuggling picked up when the DEA and the Colombian government finally cracked down on the Colombian cartels,” Dave Garcia reported. “As you know, in the Eighties, Colombia became the major drug importer into the US.”

  The picture on the screen showed an otherwise peaceful looking village littered with dead bodies.

  “A war raged for control of the country and the drug market. Rival drug cartels actually worked together to combat government troops.”

  The screen showed pictures of large cargo planes taking off and landing at remote airstrips, then changed to an aerial shot of what looked like a bathtub toy submarine.

  “Interdiction improved. US Navy and Air Force planes shut down the airways, the US Coast Guard and the Colombian Navy closed down the sea lanes. The drug cartels became ever more creative, using high speed boats and submarines to smuggle the drugs into the US.”

  “So how did Mexico get involved in the Colombian drug war, Dave?” Janet asked.

  “Well, Janet, shipping the drugs into the US got harder and harder for the Colombians. They discovered that they could import the drugs into Mexico much easier and found local gangs willing to smuggle the drugs across the border.”

  The picture on the tube changed to a dry desert scene. From overhead, they watched a pickup truck cutting across unmarked wasteland.

  “As the Colombian government took control of the situation, many of the drug lords were killed or arrested. Control of the American drug market shifted to the Mexican cartels. A massive struggle for dominance and access to the US border began. Eventually the Mexican cartels started producing their own drugs. They no longer relied on the Colombians, allowing them to increase their profits.”

  Chris took a pull on his Henry’s. “And you think we’re going to have to go down there into that? Jesus, Ted, that’s dangerous shit.”

  Ted had a gloomy look on his face. He’d been watching the TV, transfixed. “I don’t know what we’re going to have to do. I hope by the time we get there the kidnappers will have contacted Papa and we can just pay a ransom and get my brother the hell out of there.”

  News Front broke for a commercial and Chris took a bathroom break. Ted sat in his chair, popcorn untouched, brooding.

  What had the little Mouse gotten himself into? Was he alright? Was he even still alive? That last thought brought tears to his eyes. He couldn’t imagine the world without that little pest in it. It would kill Mama. Papa would disappear into his own world, but Mama would be destroyed.

  “Welcome back,” Janet Peterson said. “Tonight, we have a special Monday Night episode of News Front, bringing you the latest updates on Mexico’s drug wars. Dave . . .”

  “Janet, the violence took a sharp escalation in 2006 when Mexico’s then-president,
Felipe Calderon, declared war on the drug cartels.”

  The picture showed a good-looking Mexican man in a nice suit with a red, white and green sash across his chest speaking into a bank of microphones. The first couple of words of his speech were in Spanish, then the sound disappeared and Dave Garcia began speaking again.

  “Along with the drug cartels fighting for control of the border, President Calderon faced an army and police force raft with corruption. The general responsible for the northern section of Mexico is now serving time for taking bribes from the cartels, as are many of his officers.”

  The TV showed a proud-looking man in a general’s uniform being led from a government building in handcuffs.

  “More than six hundred police officers have been arrested or dismissed for ties to the drug cartels.”

  “So where does that leave us today, Dave?” Janet asked.

  “The police are outgunned and understaffed. There is still much corruption, but the situation seems to be improving. Unfortunately, the cartels have easy access to automatic weapons. In many cases they have more manpower and more firepower than the police. President Calderon has sent the Army into the war-torn areas to establish peace. The sad truth is that the weapons get bigger and more sophisticated every day. The gangs are as well armed as the Army. No one seems to know where the guns are coming from, but they’re flowing freely into the country.”

  “Shit, Ted,” Chris asked. “Are we really going to walk into the middle of that?”

  “Mexico is a dangerous place.” Ted reached for the control and turned off the TV. “But what can we do? We can’t let Papa go traipsing off down there by himself. I’ll say it again, this isn’t your problem, you don’t have to go.”

  “Yeah sure. Like I didn’t owe you my life. ‘I go where you go, we’re always amigos, we’re always together,’” he sang.

  Before Ted had a chance to rejoin Chris’s idiotic behavior, his phone played Adelita.

  “Bueno, Mama,” Ted said into the phone.

  He listened for only a moment.