The Traffickers

FOUR

140 South Broad Street, Philadelphia Wednesday, September 9, 9:45 P.M.

“Good evening,” Byrth said as he held the microphone and began addressing the audience. “It’s an honor to be in your city and here at the Union League. I hesitate to use the word ‘pleasure.’ If you had been with Sergeant Payne and Detective Harris and me an hour ago, I know you would understand my reluctance.

“So I will start with that. I came here hunting an evil man. We do know that he’s a drug trafficker. And that he’s Hispanic, preying mostly on illegal immigrants. He knows they fear the police and other authority due to their being in America illegally. And, among his other heinous acts, he has the horrific habit of cutting off the heads of family members of those who in some way have crossed him.”

He gestured to the table at the back of the room. “Sergeant Payne, Detective Harris, and I just came from the Medical Examiner’s Office. The autopsy had just been performed on the young Hispanic woman who had been beheaded. As horrible as the description sounds, I am here to tell you that witness ing such horrific abuse of a human being is manifoldly worse. It affects one in ways unimaginable. Even Dr. Mitchell, who in the course of his duties I’m sure has witnessed more than most of us can begin to consider, said he was deeply affected by the young woman’s murder.

“The animal-” Byrth caught himself. “Excuse me. The suspect who we believe committed this atrocity is up to something else in your city. We have evidence that this particular drug trafficker has also begun bringing to Philly what he started in Dallas. That is to say, the sale of a drug that combines a cold medicine with heroin. Its street name is ‘cheese’-and this guy markets his variety with a snappy blue logo under the catchy brand name ‘Queso Azul,’ or Blue Cheese. It’s particularly heinous because he targets kids as young as middle-school age. Two dollars a hit-and then they’re hooked on heroin.”

This news triggered more murmurs in the crowd.

An attractive young woman in a striped pantsuit was seated just to Byrth’s right. She raised her left hand. Byrth could not help but notice the giant gleaming diamond wedding ring. She held a pen and small piece of paper in her right hand.

“Sergeant, how do you spell that?”

Byrth spelled Queso Azul, and the young woman thanked him as she wrote it down.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Byrth then saw a hand go up at one of the back tables.

I guess we’re already into the Q amp; A.

But Matt did say this was a loosely structured meeting.

The hand belonged to the friend of the inbred one, the bearded one.

“Yes, ma’am?” Byrth said. “I mean, sir?”

The bearded one stood. He had a look that was antagonistic.

Small wonder.

We hardly became buddies earlier.

“Yes, I’m Dr. Stanton Hargrove-”

“You’re a medical doctor, sir? Pardon the interruption. Everyone here is new to me.”

“I have a double Ph.D.,” he said with obvious pride. “I chair Marsupialia Studies in the Biology Department at Bryn Mawr.”

“ ‘Ph.D.’?” Byrth repeated. “Of course. And the order Marsupialia? Aren’t those the pouched mammals. Right? Kangaroos, bandicoots-”

“Yes, they are,” Hargrove interrupted, clearly pleased someone recognized his chosen field of work.

“-opossums?” Byrth finished. “We have opossums in Texas.”

“Yes,” he replied, a bit bewildered. “And opossums.”

There were muffled chuckles in the crowd.

This pompous ass wants to be called “doctor.”

He doesn’t have a clue what it’s like to be a real doctor, one like Mitchell.

I’m damn sure not going to give him the satisfaction.

“Thank you, sir, for clarifying that for me,” Byrth said. “And your question?”

“It is this: As horrible as these acts today were, how do they possibly affect someone, hypothetically speaking, of course, enjoying, oh, shall we call it some recreational marijuana?”

As he sat back down, Byrth immediately said, “Well, for beginners, it’s an unlawful act-”

“I’ll take that one,” Denny Coughlin interrupted, his hand extended for the microphone.

Byrth passed him the microphone, and Coughlin went on: “As Sergeant Byrth was I think about to say, possession or consumption of an illicit drug is illegal in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and will find your hypothetical example duly arrested and quite possibly incarcerated.”

He paused for a sip of water.

“But there is a bigger point to your query that I want to make. While I am not able to give further details, I can tell you that the two injured in the explosion at that motel this morning come from two very fine families. Were it not for illegal drugs, those two young people from the Main Line would not have been at the back of some seedy motel at two o’clock in the morning. And they would not have jeopardized what otherwise would have been wonderful, productive futures.”

He started to hand back the microphone to Byrth, then stopped.

“I might add one other thing,” Coughlin said, “and Sergeant Byrth here can put it in better perspective than I. There are those who devoutly believe, and I count myself among them, that those who take so-called recreational drugs are funding not only these criminal gangs and their street wars, but also funding terrorism around the world.”

He then handed the microphone to Byrth.

Byrth saw that Professor Hargrove-the bearded one now had a name-called from his seat, “You can’t be serious!”

Coughlin’s Irish face looked to be reddening. But he simply nodded his answer, taking the high road by choosing not to get into a verbal battle.

“Count me in with Commissioner Coughlin’s crowd, too,” Byrth said into the microphone. “It’s unequivocally a fact that terrorists are funded by drug money. And it’s easy to understand why: The amount of money is beyond belief.”

He started pacing in front of the lectern.

“Anyone have an idea how much money from illegal drugs leaves the United States each year for Mexico and Colombia?”

“Tens of millions!” a young man in a tan blazer called.

Byrth smiled and shook his head. “Perhaps that much in a week,” he said. “Our friends in the federal government estimate that just those two DTOs-the Mexican and Colombian drug-trafficking organizations-take out of the U.S., either physically or by laundering it, somewhere between nine billion and twenty-five billion dollars. That’s billion-with-a-‘b.’ Every year. And that’s a lot of available cash floating around.”

The room fell silent.

Byrth added, “And that’s just from the wholesale distribution of marijuana, methamphetamine, and heroin from Mexico, and cocaine and heroin from Colombia. Doesn’t begin to count the other Central and South American countries, nor, say, heroin from Afghanistan, which basically supplies the bulk to the world markets.”

“That’s staggering,” a male voice said.

“Anyone want to take a guess at how much was budgeted in a recent year for the Merida Initiative, the U.S.’s antidrug program?”

No one took a guess.

“About three hundred million to Mexico,” Byrth said, “and another hundred million to Central America. Million-with-an-‘m.’ Meanwhile, not long ago, in a single raid in Mexico City, agents seized more than two hundred million in U.S. currency. Just from a single supplier of chemicals for making meth. That’s only one-fifth of one billion bucks. Imagine the logistics of keeping safe the multiple billions in cash of a wholesaler of final product.”

“Absolutely mind-boggling,” another man’s voice declared from the middle of the room.

“Small wonder there’s so much corruption south of the border,” the young man in the tan blazer added.

Byrth was silent a moment, clearly considering his words. “Not just south of the Rio Grande…”

Someone grunted.

Byrth paced again, then went on: “So, for just two countries, something between nine and twenty-five billion dollars in illicit money. And it’s a cash business. None of those annoying things we honest folk have to deal with, like taxes.” He paused. “But they do, however, have to deal with death. And sometimes that comes to them a little sooner than they expected.”

Byrth smiled. “Here’s a bit of trivia. There are a hundred one-hundred-dollar notes in a banded packet. That’s a stack worth ten grand, and it’s not quite a half-inch high. A hundred of those banded ten-grand packets equals one million bucks. And call it-what’s fifty inches? — call it four feet high. Or two stacks of two feet high.”

A very distinguished-looking silver-haired lady in a navy blue linen outfit raised her hand. She looked perhaps fifty-five or sixty years old.

“You could carry around a million dollars in a briefcase. No one would be the wiser,” she said in a very soft feminine voice.

“Yes, ma’am. Or in a UPS or FedEx box. A million bucks delivered overnight.”

Some of the faces looked incredulous. Most appeared shocked.

Byrth then said, “But a billion is…?”

“A thousand million,” a young man’s voice offered. “Using your ballpark figure, that’d be a pair of stacks two hundred feet high.”

“Right,” Byrth said. “And multiply that by more than twenty-five billion a year. Every year. And it’s not all in hundred-dollar notes. Twenties are common.”

The faces continued to look incredulous and shocked.

“The logistics of moving the money push the bad guys to the point of desperation,” Byrth said. “With so much cash, they smuggle it by truck, car, Greyhound bus. They will even ship it like a Christmas fruitcake via UPS, FedEx, or even the U.S. Postal Service. The drug traffickers drive out to suburbia and find a house with its yard littered with newspapers, indicating the homeowner’s out of town. Then they phone down to their stash house along the border and give them the address. Next day, a box gets delivered, no signature required. The courier just rings the doorbell and drives off. Soon as it’s dark, the traffickers drive back out and collect their package. If they lose a few in the process, it’s just the cost of doing business. Cash gets shipped back the same way.”

“So how is this cash laundered?” the distinguished woman asked.

“With U.S. law requiring that any cash transaction in excess of ten thousand dollars be reported to the U.S. Treasury, it’s a real challenge to move nine billion, let alone twenty-five billion. Year after year.”

“Then how-” she repeated.

Byrth put his right hand to the side of his head, the pinky at the corner of his mouth and the thumb to his ear. “Hello, Western Union?”

He put down his hand. “Not only that, of course. Lots of money moves through electronic transfers and other types of wire remittances. Prepaid Visa gift cards are popular. There’s also the Black Market Peso Exchange; you can guess how that works-the dirty dollars buying clean pesos at a steep premium.”

Matt Payne was writing down “Black Market Peso Exchange” and “FedEx” on a piece of paper. He saw Tony Harris move suddenly.

Harris had felt his cell phone vibrate.

He pulled it from its belt clip and tried to discreetly check its screen.

Both Payne and one of the waitstaff, a male, noticed him. Payne then saw the male walk over and slip what looked like a business card on the table before Harris.

Byrth looked over at it and read:

LEAGUE POLICY:

No Cellular Telephone Conversations Permitted Kindly Turn Off All Such Devices.

Thank You.

Payne rolled his eyes.

He whispered, “I’ve collected enough of those to start a fair-size bonfire.”

Harris showed Payne the screen.

“Shit!” he whispered after he’d read: 1 OF 2 CARS BURNED IN W KENSINGTON WAS CHEVY CARJACKED BY MATT’S SHOOTER.

“Forget getting any fingerprints or blood from that burned hulk,” Payne whispered.

Harris nodded as he put the phone back on his belt clip.

Payne looked back at Byrth.

He was pacing again as he spoke: “And, of course, often they don’t even bother to launder it. They just smuggle bricks of cash across the border. They do it exactly as they brought in the drugs, but, of course, in the opposite direction. Once it’s out of the country, it’s easier to clean. Want to guess how many of those multimillion-dollar high-rise condos on the water from South Beach Miami to West Palm got bought with squeaky-clean pesos?”

And all those Porsches, Payne thought, recalling his car search on the Internet.

Byrth made a face. “I know you’ve heard of the annual list of the world’s richest people published by Forbes magazine.”

The crowd responded quickly with “Of course” and “Yes” and “Uh-huh.”

Byrth went on: “In 1989, that list ranked Pablo Escobar, the cocaine drug lord based in Medell?n, Colombia, as the seventh-richest man in the world. Net worth of twenty-five billion. And that was in 1989-valued dollars. Here was a man responsible for murdering countless of his enemies, including hundreds of police, thirty judges, and an unknown number of politicians.”

“Mind-boggling,” the young man in the tan blazer said. “But, hey, he’s dead.”

Byrth nodded. “Yep. Score one for The Good Guys-our U.S. Army Special Forces by name. But there’s been plenty of boys ready and willing to take his place. The head of the Sinaloa cartel, for example, one Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman-who happens to be a fugitive, having ‘escaped’ from a Mexican prison-recently earned a place on that Billionaire Boys’ Club list.”

The room was quiet.

Then the distinguished-looking silver-haired lady in the navy blue linen outfit raised her hand again. She looked clearly concerned.

“I’m sorry, everyone,” she said softly. “I seem to be taking over this meeting. But I have to ask: What would you say is the solution, Sergeant? Is there one?”

“Ma’am, I don’t begin to suggest I’m smart enough to have the answers. But there are highly intelligent people who have spent a lot of time studying exactly that. And, as part of that, they have stated the obvious: We could follow the model of Thailand.”

“I am not familiar with that,” the distinguished lady said.

“In 2003, Thailand began embracing Mao Zedong’s example. The Royal Thai Police reported that in a three-month crackdown, some twenty-two hundred drug runners were summarily shot and by year’s end another seventy thousand arrested. Those seventy thousand were lucky. Chairman Mao’s com munists, calling illegal drug users and suppliers social parasites, just outright killed them all.”

Professor Hargrove’s inbred buddy called out somewhat indignantly, “That’s never going to happen here.”

Byrth nodded. “I agree. Nor is the other option, what the economist Milton Friedman, among others, calls for-legalize drugs and end the war. Get rid of today’s Prohibition, which is what some of those on that side call it.”

“That won’t happen either,” the inbred buddy called out, this time somewhat disappointedly.

“And I agree again.”

“So, what do we do?” the silver-haired lady said softly.

Byrth was quiet a moment, before he answered with: “Dante said, ‘The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crisis maintained their neutrality.’ “And I agree with that,” Byrth said after another moment. “As well as with those who’ve said that the illegal drug problem is (a) not going away and (b) is going to get worse if we do nothing-that is, ‘maintain neutrality.’ And these brighter minds have said that the solution is very simple. The laws are already in place. Start with real border security. Start applying RICO-that’s the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which has been successful at so many levels. Use all the other laws on the books. And use those twenty-five billion dollars a year as funds to enforce the laws. Nothing more, nothing less.” He paused, and sighed audibly. “I believe I’ve overstayed my welcome up here. I’ll say one final thing: Continue your fine support of those in law enforcement. Thank you very much for your kind hospitality.”

He turned to Commissioner Coughlin. “And for your hospitality, Commissioner.”

He handed back the microphone to him.

The room, with the notable exception of Professor Hargove and his pal, erupted in applause. D. H. Rendolok was pounding his table and calling out, “Hear, hear!”

Coughlin said into the microphone, “If there are no other questions…” He waited a long moment, and when no one raised a hand or called out, he added, “Then we’re adjourned till next time. I hope to see everyone again then.”

As Payne was standing and taking a sip from his fresh drink, Professor Hargrove said in another stage whisper, “Better start next time without me. What unmitigated bullshit propaganda…”

Payne walked around to that part of his table, then suddenly found that his left shoe had become snagged on the thick woolen carpeting. Luckily, he caught himself and his very full cocktail glass from falling.

But it had been an absolute shame that his trip caused him to dump a perfectly good Famous Grouse onto the head of Professor Stanton Hargrove, the distinguished chair of Marsupialia Studies in the Biology Department of Bryn Mawr College. Some even managed to strike his inbred buddy.