The Traffickers

FOUR

Delaware Expressway (I-95 North), Philadelphia Wednesday, September 9, 3:45 P.M.

Philadelphia Police Department Sergeant Matt Payne was behind the wheel of his white Ford rental sedan. Texas Rangers Sergeant Jim Byrth was in the front passenger bucket seat looking out the window at the Delaware River and, on the other side of that, New Jersey. The Hat was sitting upside down on the backseat.

When Payne’s cellular telephone started ringing, he had to do some juggling in order to answer it.

And the first thing he did was toss his “specialty” pretzel onto the dashboard.

As Payne and Byrth had headed for Baggage Claim D, the Texan had suddenly said, “Hey, look! Soft pretzels! I didn’t eat a damn thing on that lousy flight. C’mon. The Great State of Texas is treating.”

The pretzels had been huge, each weighing at least a pound. Payne had been impressed, but not to the point where he’d have paid for one.

The two cops had chewed on theirs while waiting for Byrth’s one leather suitcase to show up on the baggage carousel. And then chewed on them on the walk to Terminal E. And then after that during the drive up I-95.

When they had walked up to the rental car where Payne had left it in the Terminal E OFFICIAL POLICE USE ONLY parking spot, Payne had pushed the button on his key fob that remotely unlocked the trunk. Byrth tossed his leather suitcase inside, then put down his pretzel and went about opening the suitcase.

Payne had watched with curiosity as Byrth then removed from it a pair of Smith amp; Wesson chrome handcuffs.

Byrth felt him watching and said, “I left the standard-issue leg irons and transport belt in my truck at the airport in Houston. Figured you’d have some I could borrow if necessary.”

“I think we can find something suitable. Maybe even rope.”

Byrth slipped the cuffs into the right patch pocket of his blazer, then pulled from the suitcase two hard-plastic clamshell boxes. He put them side by side on the carpeted floor of the trunk. They were identical. Payne thought they looked like the case that had been on Denny Coughlin’s desk, the one containing the police department-issued Glock 17 pistol. Except these boxes were smooth-sided, with no markings whatever. There was only a combination lock and a luggage name tag on each.

Wordlessly, Byrth spun the dials of one combination lock, then the other, and removed them. Next he slid open the latches of the box on the right and opened up the box.

Now, Payne saw, the box did look like the one on Coughlin’s desk. It held a black semiautomatic pistol in a dense black foam cushioning that was customized to fit the exact contours of the gun.

Payne smiled.

A Colt Combat Commander.

Customized and engraved with a Texas Ranger badge.

Very nice gun.

When Byrth opened the other clamshell, Payne saw that it also had the black foam cushioning, but this one had been custom-fitted to securely hold five magazines, a polymer box labeled.45ACP TACTICAL JHP, 230-GRAIN, 50 ROUNDS, and a black leather skeleton holster.

Tactical jacketed hollow points.

Same rounds we use.

Byrth took out one of the magazines. He snapped back the top of the polymer box to reveal the shiny brass bullets inside.

“This’ll take just a second, if you don’t mind,” he said.

“No problem,” Payne replied. He added, “So you like the.45, too?”

Byrth clenched a magazine in his right hand and was pulling rounds from the box and using his thumb to feed them one by one into the top of the magazine.

“Too?” Byrth repeated. “I take it you’re a fan, then.”

Payne said, “You ever hear the story of the pacifist who got in the cop’s face and whined, ‘How come you carry a.45, tough guy?’ ”

Byrth grinned and made a soft grunt.

“Yeah,” he said. “And the cop replied, ‘Because they don’t make a fucking.46.’”

“That was no story,” Payne said. “That was me.”

Byrth chuckled.

Payne then discreetly reached inside his shirt and brought out his Colt Officer’s Model, taking care to keep it concealed from passersby.

Byrth nodded appreciatively. “I sometimes carry an Officer’s as my backup.”

He fed the eighth round to the magazine he’d been charging, then took a single round from the polymer box. He picked up the pistol, pulled back its slide, slipped the single round into the throat, and let the slide go forward. The moving of the slide backward caused the hammer to go into the cocked position. He then used his right thumb to throw the lever on the left rear of the slide, thereby leaving the pistol “cocked and locked.” And he slid the charged magazine into its place in the grip of the pistol.

He reached back into the clamshell box and took out the black leather skeleton holster. He unbuckled his belt and threaded the holster onto it so that it rode on his right hip inside his navy blazer. He secured the pistol in it. Finally, he loaded a second magazine, then a third. These he slipped into the front pockets of his pants, one magazine in each pocket.

He looked at Payne with what Payne thought was a look of satisfaction.

“Okay,” Byrth said with a smile. “I feel whole.”

“I know what you mean,” Payne said, securing his Officer’s Model back under his waistband.

“Excuse me, Jim,” Payne said motioning with the phone as they drove up I-95. “This won’t take a second.”

Jim Byrth shook his head in a gesture that said, No problem, then casually took in the river view.

Payne noticed motion at Byrth’s left hand, which he rested on his left thigh. He looked more closely and saw that Byrth had a small dry white bean on the top of his fingers. He manipulated the bean by moving the fingers in series-tumbling it end over end from his pointing finger to his middle finger to his ring finger to his pinky, then tumbling it back to the pointing finger.

He moved the bean quickly. It was evident that Byrth had had plenty of practice.

Some kind of nervous energy going on there, Jim?

Payne turned his attention to the highway. Into his cell phone he said, “Hi, Amy. Can I call you back in a bit?”

He listened for a moment.

“Yeah, that’s what I want to talk with you about.” He paused. “No, Amy, I didn’t ‘kill another one.’ I could do without your attempt at sarcasm.”

That caused Jim Byrth to twitch his head in interest.

“So then do you want to meet someplace later?” He paused. “Okay. That works. See you then.” He was about to push END but had an afterthought. “Amy? You still there?”

He pulled the phone from his ear and looked at the screen. It showed that the call was dead.

Dammit! If she’d just been talking to someone at Temple’s Burn Unit, she might know something about that Dr. Amanda Law.

He put down the phone, then retrieved his pretzel. He glanced at Byrth, who was still looking out the window, still tumbling the bean.

The guy looks tough as nails.

I can just see him riding the range, then single-handedly driving off a mob of marauding Injuns.

But how’s he going to do here in the big city?

Then again, he did just come in from Houston.

With Byrth sitting, the cuffs of his pants rode higher, and Payne could see the upper parts of the western boots. They appeared to cover the complete calf. They had some intricate patterns of stitching and there was another representation of the Texas Ranger badge, this one in silver leather, and the red leather initials J.O.B.

Payne then looked at the pointed-toe part. The material that made up the part covering the foot was a high-gloss black, textured with a grid of little bumps every half-inch or so the size of BBs.

“Mind if I ask what kind of leather that is on your boots?” Payne said.

Byrth glanced down at his boots as he lifted the flap of the left patch pocket of his blazer and slipped the dry white bean inside.

“Skin,” Byrth corrected.

“What?”

“We say ‘skin.’ ”

“Oh. Okay, what kind of skin is that? All those bumps. They look like tiny nipples.”

There was a moment’s pause as Byrth considered that.

“Do they really?” he said.

Oh shit!

He’s taking offense to “tiny nipples”? “No offense.”

Byrth laughed. “None taken. I’d just never seen my boot skins in that light. But I believe I will from this point forward. So is that what they call Freudian?”

Payne grinned.

“Quite possibly,” he said. “I’ll ask my sister. She’s a shrink. That was her on the phone just now.”

Byrth nodded.

Payne pursued, “So, what are they? What skin?”

“Ostrich. Ugly damn bird. But pretty skin. Soft, too.”

“Is that common?”

“Not as much as cowhide. But more than some snake skins. And eel or lizard. There’s a pretty long list.”

Payne shook his head.

“I had no idea,” he said.

“Let’s talk about why I’m here,” Byrth said suddenly.

Homicide Detective Matt Payne raised his eyebrows, surprised at the ninety-degree change of subject. He said, “Sure.”

“By the way,” Byrth said, “where’re we headed?”

“The Roundhouse. It’s Philly’s police headquarters. You’ll understand why we call it that when you see it. We’re maybe fifteen minutes out.”

Byrth nodded.

“So,” Payne said, taking the last bite of pretzel, “what did bring you here?”

“Texas government code section four one one dot zero two two,” he rattled off. “Authority of Texas Rangers.” He paused and looked at Payne chewing his pretzel. “It even covers your chewy there.”

Payne glanced at him with a curious look.

“Subsection (b),” Byrth went on, “and I quote: An officer of the Texas Rangers who arrests a person charged with a criminal offense shall immediately convey the person to the proper officer of the county where the person is charged and shall obtain a receipt. The state shall pay all necessary expenses incurred under this subsection.”

“What about the bad guy Liz Justice mentioned?” Payne replied. “The one who cuts off heads? What the hell is that all about?”

“That’s only part of it. It’s my personal opinion that this guy is a ticking time bomb. He’s a psychopath with one helluva temper.” Then, surprising Payne, he made the sounds “Tick, tick, tick… BOOM!”

“This guy got a name?”

“El Gato.”

“What?”

“The Cat. That’s his street name.”

“What about a real name?”

Byrth shook his head. “Nope. Not yet, anyways. But his MO’s pretty consistent. Won’t be hard to track him down. As far as we can determine, he’s not MDTO. He just has connections with them.”

Payne of course recognized MO-the short version of the Latin modus operandi, the critter’s “method.” But the other acronym was new to him.

“MDTO?”

“Mexican drug-trafficking organization.”

Payne nodded. Then he said, “You just quoted ‘a person charged with a criminal offense.’ How does the name on this guy’s-this El Gato’s-warrant read?”

Payne glanced over at Byrth, who looked back and said, “What warrant?”

What? No warrant?

No wonder Liz Justice asked for doors to be opened in Philly.

But she would not have done that unless this guy’s a straight shooter.

“How did you track him to here?” Payne said.

“Night before last night, we bagged one of his runners in College Station.” He looked at Payne. “Where Texas A and M University is?”

Payne nodded. “Yeah. And home of the Presidential Library, Bush 41’s. Its recent chancellor, like old man Bush, used to be DCI. He left A and M to be secretary of defense.”

Byrth stared at Payne.

“Secretary of defense?” Byrth repeated. “Director of the Central Intelligence Agency? If that bit of Texas Connection trivia was meant to impress, it worked. About all I can recite about Philly is that there’s a broken bell here somewhere.”

Payne made a face. “No, not to impress. It’s actually information I’d really rather be blissfully ignorant of. At least the Bush Library part. But let’s get off this tangent.”

“If you don’t mind, I’d really like to hear what all that’s about.”

“Sorry. Maybe later. You were saying about the runner?”

Byrth raised his eyebrows in a sort of surrender.

“Okay,” he then went on, “we tracked this runner while he was en route to Houston. One Ramos Manuel Cach?n, just turned age seventeen. He’s got the usual list of priors, mostly petty stuff like truancy and assaults. He’d made a stop in College Station to service his retailers-”

“Explain that,” Payne interrupted as he changed lanes to pick up the Vine Street Expressway.

“Convenience stores, places that he wholesaled to. Some cocaine. But mostly blue cheese.”

“Blue cheese?” Payne said with some enthusiasm. “I love blue cheese. But something tells me we’re not talking about Roquefort.”

“Unfortunately, no. It’s a snortable combination of diphenhydramine and heroin-”

“Die-what-dramine?”

“Die is right. It’s a killer. Smack mixed with cold medicine.”

Payne nodded.

Byrth went on: “This cheese crap all started in Dallas, and grew quickly. The dealers began targeting inner-city kids, mostly Hispanics. That’s where this El Gato got involved. He marketed it with a friendly look and name-‘Queso Azul.’ The coloring comes from a blue sugar candy he mixes in it. But the smack in the mix makes it highly addictive. Right from the first hit.”

“How much does it cost? Heroin isn’t cheap.”

“Ain’t none of it cheap. But here’s the math. A kilo of coke costs from fifteen to twenty grand. A key of smack from Mexico-which tends to be the cheaper black tar stuff but still is every bit as deadly as any from, say, Afghanistan-can be had for about that much, and on up to fifty, sixty grand a key. All depending on supply and demand, of course.”

“Of course,” Payne said darkly.

“So, understanding the target demographic-kids-they take the cheapest black tar they can get and make the cheese. Then they sell it at an affordable two bucks a bump.”

“Target demographic”?

Sounds like Chad’s buzzwords.

And probably Skipper’s…

“Cheese is about ten percent heroin,” Byrth went on. “Get them hooked on that, then when their body craves more, move them up to the real thing. And once they’ve had a good taste of the lovely effects of withdrawal, they’re up to a hundred- or two-hundred-a-day habit.”

“Jesus! That’s insidious. Snorting smack makes it easiser to get hooked. I’ve always thought that most people stayed away from heroin because of its difficulty. Especially the needle part.”

Although that needle phobia didn’t stop my lovely Penny Detweiler from doing herself in with that shit.

“Yeah, Matt, it is insidious. El Gato and his ilk started out supplying inner-city convenience stores. Ones close to middle schools and high schools. Next thing we knew, the nonprofit and state-funded rehab clinics and the halfway houses were maxed out. They were overrun with young Hispanic kids who had nowhere else to go. Their families, often single moms, were already on some type of government program-things like Emergency Assistance to Needy Families with Children, Section Eight Housing, et cetera. And it got worse because these rehab clinics and halfway houses are geared for teenagers, college kids, adults. Not for middle-schoolers. So that became a problem-first keeping the age groups separated, and then protecting the youngest from being preyed on.”

“I’m afraid to ask, but in what way?”

“Free smack. It wasn’t unusual at all for the girls to be bribed. They either were lured away from the overfilled facilities, or they ran away. And after they turned that first trick, they found they’d do anything for their next high. And some boys were no better.”

“Jesus! Middle-schoolers? What is that, twelve, thirteen years old?”

“Yeah. And sadly, it really wasn’t considered a ‘problem’ until cheese became chic in the suburbs, until kids there started getting strung out-and dying. And suddenly it was a problem. The difference was that the families in suburbia could by and large afford to send their kids off to a decent rehab. And having your golden straight-A teenager in drug rehab simply became a soccer mom’s dirty little secret.”

“What drove the kids to do that?”

“The usual. Peer pressure. The desire to fit a clique. That cute little blonde with the ponytail? The one trying to keep the weight off to make the cheer-leader or gymnastics squad? The cheese works like cocaine to suppress the appetite-plus the added benefit of a great high.”

Payne shook his head. He drove along in silence.

Is that what happened, ultimately, with Becca?

Did Skipper do that to her? “So,” Payne finally said as he exited off the expressway, “getting back to the runner you collared at A and M.”

“The punk had tried to throw away his cell phone during the chase; actually did toss it, but we recovered it. It was a pay-as-you-go one, paid for with cash. But the call list on the phone’s internal memory had a steady string of calls to the area codes here. And I’m betting that the phone records we subpoenaed from the cellular service provider will have more of them.”

“What about the cache of texts?”

Byrth nodded. “The text messages could have been a mini gold mine. But because this punk wasn’t very far up the ladder, there wasn’t much detail. When our computer forensic people worked on the memory chip, they uncovered a few new names and numbers and data that had been ‘deleted.’ So we’re working on connecting those dots.”

Payne made the turn off Race onto Eighth, then just down the block made a left into the asphalt parking lot behind the Philadelphia Police Department headquarters.

“Ah,” Byrth said. “So this is the famous Roundhouse.”

Payne pulled into a slot marked HOMICIDE. He shut off the car and turned to Byrth. “So does that cover all of this El Gato’s MO?”

Byrth shook his head. “Oh, hell no. Wait till you hear the good stuff. Starting with the sexual assault bordering on torture.”