Murder Key Read online

  I said, “You think that’s why he was killed?”

  “Yes.”

  I was quiet for a moment, thinking. “Can you connect it to the Mexicans’ murders?” I asked.

  “Not yet,” said Reich. “But it’s a reasonable assumption. The timing and location are right, and Conley was involved mostly with Mexicans. But we’re at a dead-end.”

  Jock had sat quietly, listening, saying nothing. Then, “Is that all you have?”

  Reich shrugged. “We think the Mexicans are being smuggled in by boat. They’re mostly from the state of Guerrero in southern Mexico near the Pacific coast. They seem to come from an area around the town of Tlapa, but that’s about all we know. It’s not much, but David wanted you to have what we have.”

  I tried to process all this, but nothing made sense. “Any suggestions for me?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Harris said. “Lay low.”

  * * * * *

  We left the U.S. Attorney’s office about as clueless as when we’d arrived. Parrish was apologetic about not being able to give us more information, but he assured us that we now knew everything the government did. Jock was skeptical, but then he always is.

  As we were getting into the car, Jock said, “Let’s go to Tlapa.”

  “What in the world for?”

  “Reich said the illegals in the Sarasota area mostly come from Tlapa. We might find some answers there.”

  “How?” I asked. “Do we just place a classified ad in the local paper and wait for somebody to call us?”

  “My agency has had a man in Tlapa for the past several months. He knows that area of Mexico.”

  I shrugged. “I’m game. I can’t get any deader in Mexico than I can on Longboat Key.”

  Jock had spent most of his government career in Central and South America and was fluent in Spanish. He explained that the agency he worked for had sent an operative into the mountains above Acapulco several months before. There had been some smoke wafting through the intelligence community about terrorists setting up a base camp in the rugged hills around Tlapa. Jock’s agency sent in a man who would blend in with the locals.He was still there. He and Jock had worked together in the past, and Jock was sure the agent would help us now.

  I called my former paralegal, Vanessa Brice, and asked if we could leave the rental car in her garage. I didn’t want to return it to Hertz or leave it at the airport in case somebody came looking for it. She was happy to help.

  We arrived at her home at mid-afternoon. Vanessa fed us a late lunch while Jock made a couple of calls from his cell phone. I called Continental Airlines and made two reservations for Aculpulco. When we finished our lunch, Vanessa took us to Orlando International Airport to board a flight to Houston.

  37

  Murder Key

  ELEVEN

  The Houston skyline appeared in my window. The plane was banking to the right as it lined up for its final approach to George Bush Intercontinental Airport. The sun was low in the west, the day fading slowly into night. Jock was dozing next to me, a soft rumble escaping from his throat with each breath.

  I nudged him with my elbow. “Home sweet home,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he grumbled, waking slowly. “I was dreaming about a woman. A beautiful woman.”

  “Have you ever dreamed about an ugly woman?”

  “Once. Didn’t like it.”

  Our flight to Acapulco was scheduled to leave early on Wednesday morning, so we planned to spend the night in Houston. Jock lived alone in an elegant loft condo in the middle of downtown, but since we were leaving so early, we decided not to drive to his home.

  We checked into the Marriott hotel in the terminal complex, had dinner in the restaurant and went to our rooms.

  I called Anne on my cell phone to let her know I was okay.

  “I wasn’t worried,” she said. “I know you and Jock can take care of yourselves. Where are you?”

  “I’d better not tell you, sweetheart. You never know who might be listening to our conversation.”

  “You’re right. Take care of yourself.”

  We chatted for a few more minutes and hung up. The tone of the conversation was off somehow, different in a way I couldn’t pinpoint. Maybe my paranoia was working overtime, and I was worrying needlessly. Or, maybe I was about to get dumped.

  I called Bill Lester at home, and he told me the crime lab had found a locator beacon on my Explorer and that the man in the coma, now identified as Pepe Zaragoza had not awoken. I dialed Jock’s room and passed on what the chief had told me.

  “That locator is a pretty expensive item,” he said. “I don’t think it’s just some local scumbag after you.”

  I agreed. I read for awhile, turned off the light and fell into a deep sleep.

  * * * * *

  We took an early Continental flight non-stop to Acapulco, arriving in mid-morning. We cleared customs without any hassles. The Mexican customs officer referred to Jock as “Senor Rodriguez” as they chatted in Spanish. I figured Jock was using a passport other than his own, so I said nothing.

  We left the air conditioned terminal and were immediately enveloped by the steamy air of the tropics. The sun was already climbing through a cloudless sky, generating a heat not unlike that of a Florida summer.

  The pores in my skin opened wider, and sweat poured out, my clothes beginning to stick to my body. The slight breeze carried a hint of the sea, its pungent smell making me homesick momentarily for Longboat Key.

  A small dark-skinned man who appeared to be in his thirties approached us, grinning. “Jock, you’re as ugly as ever. When are you going to get that damned hair transplant?” The man was obviously Mexican, but there was no hint of an accent to his English.

  “Fuck you, amigo,” Jock said, laughing. They embraced.

  Turning to me, Jock said, “Matt, meet Emilio Sanchez.”

  We shook hands. Emilio said, “So, Jock tells me somebody’s trying to kill you. You must be one bad hombre.”

  I laughed. “I’m just a guy trying to figure it all out, Emilio. Where do you know my bald-headed friend from?”

  “Can’t say much about that, Matt. But, I’ve known him for more than ten years, since I was in law school at UCLA.”

  “You’re a lawyer?” I asked.

  “Yeah. I’m not proud of it, but there you have it.”

  Jock laughed. “Emilio was born and raised in Los Angeles,” he said. “Undergraduate and law degrees from UCLA. I recruited him into the agency and saved him from a life of bullshit. He owes me.”

  “Yes I do,” said Emilio, chuckling. “He got me out of the posh downtown law offices in Los Angeles, and I get to live in a one- room shack with a dirt floor in my parents’ hometown. I couldn’t have done it without old Jock.”

  They were both laughing. I wasn’t sure who the joke was on, but Jock always knew what he was doing, so I just rode with it.

  37

  Murder Key

  TWELVE

  Emilio led us to a Volkswagen bug, one of the last of its line. A plant in Mexico had continued to turn these little cars out for a few years after the Germans moved on to more sophisticated models. But even that plant had now closed, and the bug was history. I’d owned one in college, and I was a little sad to see its demise.

  Jock crammed himself into the back seat, and I sat in relative comfort in the front. We drove out of the airport onto a four-lane highway, pointing east.

  Emilio said, “The weapons are in the sack on the floor, Jock.”

  I heard a rustling of paper and then the tiny clicks of gun parts being fitted together.

  Jock handed me a gun. “Nines, Emilio,” he said. “You are resourceful.”

  “Only the best. Those clips hold seventeen rounds, and I put a couple of boxes of hollow-points in the bag. I’ve got more if you need them.”

  “Any long guns?” asked Jock.

  “I’ve got several M4A1's in my house, with plenty of ammunition. They’re yours if you need them, but you do
n’t want to start a war up here.”

  I looked back at Jock. “Not if we can help it,” I said. I knew the M4A1. It was the modern assault weapon for the U.S. Military, replacing the aging M-16 that I’d used in Vietnam. “I’ve never qualified with the M4,” I said. “I’d probably kill myself if I had to shoot it.”

  “Jock tells me you were Special Forces, Matt,” Emilio said. “I don’t think you have to worry about using a weapon.”

  “That was a long time ago,” I said. “Now, I’m just an aging lawyer relying on Jock.”

  “Don’t let him fool you, Emilio. He’s still a tough bastard,” Jock said.

  We were climbing now, headed up the mountain range known as the Sierra Madres del Sur. The town of Tlapa was nestled in a valley at about six thousand feet, and I was beginning to have a little trouble breathing. I knew it would pass as I became acclimated to the altitude.

  Soon, the road narrowed to two lanes, and was potted with holes and rocks from the mountain to which it clung. An occasional truck would pass us coming down at breakneck speed. It was a little disconcerting, but Emilio seemed to take it in stride.

  We crested a peak and looked down into a valley of clustered, pastel-painted buildings, none above two stories. This was Tlapa.

  There were green fields surrounding the town, and Emilio told us that the farmers grew corn and beans, chili peppers and vegetables. Most still plowed with mules, just as they had done for centuries.

  “My parents left here and emigrated to California before I was born,” said Emilio. “They never did become legal, but I was born in L.A., and that makes me an American citizen.”

  He went on to tell me that the agency had sent him back to Tlapa because he would fit in. He had cousins there, and he spoke the local language, a mixture of classical Nahautl and Spanish.

  The people of the region were Nahautl Indians, proud descendants of the Aztecs. Emilio’s local family simply thought he’d made enough money in California to return and live in his ancestral home without the need to work.

  The largest industry in the area was the exporting of workers. The illegal immigrant to America sent an average of $300 every two weeks to his family, the money earned working for minimum wages or less in the fields and yards of gringos. Many of the young men and women from this region were working in the Sarasota Bay area.

  “They tend to go where they have friends and relatives,” Emilio said. “A generation or two ago, some of the people from this area ended up in your part of Florida picking fruit and vegetables, and now a lot of the young people head there.”

  We eased through the town’s narrow streets, passing trucks and cars parked haphazardly, partially on the cramped sidewalks. People in colorful clothes walked slowly, all seeming intent on their journeys. We passed an open air market displaying fruit and vegetables. Large slabs of beef hung from the ceiling, flies crawling over them. A butcher was busy cutting off parts for his customers.

  “I always boil the vegetables in a bleach solution,” said Emilio. “My ancestors may have come from here, but my stomach comes from L.A.”

  We passed through the small town, and took another road that meandered upwards. I asked, “Where are we going?”

  “I live in a village about ten miles from here and almost straight up,” he said. “We’ll stay at my house. I’ve told some of the villagers that a couple of gringo friends of mine from Los Angeles were coming for a visit.”

  We drove along a dirt road, deeply rutted in places, ascending the mountain, the air getting thinner. Occasionally, an Army truck would meet us coming down the mountain, or we’d pass one going up. Each one was filled with soldiers armed with M-16s.

  “What’s the Army doing here in such force?” I asked.

  “Nobody knows,” said Emilio. “It’s not a very big force, and they live in a barracks further down the mountain. They patrol the area, but I don’t know why. Some Army units are in the pockets of the drug lords, but there isn’t much in the way of drug trafficking around here. They might just be a show of force to make sure the local residents don’t decide to join the Zapatistas.”

  I knew that the Zapatistas were an armed revolutionary group of mostly Mayan Indians indigenous to the state of Chiapas, located in the mountains south of Mexico City. They had challenged the government on a number of occasions, but for the most part eschewed violence.

  I asked Emilio why the government would be concerned about the Tlapa area. “I thought the Zapatistas were primarily Mayan,” I said.

  “They are, but the government sees us all as Indians. The people around here are descended from the Aztecs, and they’ve never been completely assimilated. I think the Zapatistas gave the guys in Mexico City a scare. They don’t want the same thing to happen in other areas of the country where there are a lot of indigenous peoples.”

  We were driving into a small village clinging to the side of a mountain. We crossed what appeared to be a public square, with a church on one side and a basketball hoop on the other. Two boys, both about thirteen, wearing shorts and T-shirts, no shoes, were shooting hoops. Nearby, on a cement bench covered in colorful Mexican tiles, two teenage girls sat watching the boys and giggling.

  One-story buildings surrounded us, all painted in the pastels that seemed to abound in the area. Some were houses, and others appeared to contain stores and shops. There was a pole topped by a loudspeaker broadcasting in a language I didn’t recognize.

  “Nahautl,” said Emilio. “That’s the radio station down in Tlapa broadcasting messages to the people in the village. It’s our form of e-mail.”

  There were no overhead wires going to any of the buildings other than the church. It appeared as if electricity had not yet reached the rest of the village.

  We took a side street for about a block, and pulled up in front of a house sitting in a dusty yard. The building was one story, constructed of concrete blocks; no paint, no siding, no stucco. Just bare blocks and mortar. Every few feet, iron rebars stuck several feet above the flat roof.

  We went through the front door into a tastefully decorated room with Zapotec rugs lying upon a floor of Saltillo tile. The finished walls were painted a subdued beige, adorned with framed Mexican scenes, garish oils of bullfights and peasants in the fields wearing colorful clothes. A large chandelier hung from the ceiling, rustic in appearance, with an electric candle perched on each of its branches. I could see through a dining room into a modern kitchen.

  “Home,” announced Emilio.

  “Not exactly a dirt-floored hut,” I said. “Where do you get the electricity to run everything?”

  “There’s a line coming in from Tlapa. Not many people here can afford it, but if you have a little money the power company will send a truck and hook you up.”

  Jock, who had been quiet during most of the trip, said, “Do you own this place?”

  “No. I’m renting it from a guy in the States. He works in New York in a restaurant and saves all his money. He comes home about every six months and uses his savings to build a little more onto the house. Stays with his mother when he’s here.”

  “Why the rebar on the roof?” asked Jock.

  “That’s for adding the walls to a second story when he has the money.”

  I said, “How long have you been here, Emilio?”

  “About six months. I’m going home next week. It’s been pretty much a wasted trip.”

  “No terrorists?” asked Jock.

  “Nada. I didn’t expect to find any, but you know how Washington is these days. Everybody covers his butt on any intelligence he gets, no matter how far-fetched.”

  “Have you heard anything about the dead guys found on Longboat Key last Friday?” I asked.

  “No. Why would I?”

  I told him the story of my find on the beach, the murder of Dwight Conley and the attempts on my life. I recounted some of what we had learned at the U.S. Attorney’s office and the suspicions of the police.

  “The one in a coma was legal, and he
was from Tlapa,” I continued. “The two dead guys are probably from around here. We think there may be a connection between the people trying to kill me and some bad guys who smuggle people from this area into Florida.”

  We were standing in the living room. Emilio gestured with his hand to his ear, as if talking into a phone. “When Jock called,” he said, “he told me he had a problem that he thought started here. We were on the satellite phone, and I’m never sure how secure that thing is unless I can scramble it. I didn’t ask, so I haven’t done any leg work. But, there’s one guy in the area who seems to be in charge of getting people to the States.”

  Emilio grinned, but with no warmth behind it. “We’ll go see him after you get settled,” he said.

  Emilio showed Jock and me to bedrooms down a hall that opened off the living area. The room assigned to me was pleasant, holding only a single bed draped in a coverlet that looked like a serape. The walls were of plaster, painted in a pale shade of yellow, with, curiously, two watercolor prints of New York City street scenes hanging on walls facing each other. A large window opposite the door dominated the space, with a view of the dry hills rising beyond.

  People had emigrated for far less reason than the building of such a congenial home.

  37

  Murder Key

  THIRTEEN

  The altitude had cooled the air, and the humidity was low, a slight breeze reminding me of late October on Longboat Key. We had lunch on a flagstone terrace behind the house. There was no grass or other greenery near the building, only the packed dirt, loosely covered with a layer of soil. Dust eddied in the air currents hovering near the ground as Emilio served us ham sandwiches and bottled water.

  Jock said, “Tell us about this man we’re going to see.”