“One last chance old man, or you may wish you had taken up telling nursery rhymes to niños.” He leaned over the bar and touched the tip of the knife to Adolfo’s chest.
Sanchez heard the cantina’s door open but ignored it. A moment later a hand pressed down hard on the side of Sanchez’s neck and he turned. He saw three men larger then the bouncers at the door who now stood just behind him. All wore dark blue suits and ties and all had hard faces showing scar tissue and old wounds. One man’s eyelid dangled half closed.
“Is there a problem here, Adolfo?” the taller of the three said. He took his hand off Sanchez’s neck. The detective turned slowly to stare fully at the three men. All wore the trademark dark blue suit of an El Padre organization man. El Padre ran the huge drug wholesale trafficking business in Tijuana that reportedly channeled 90 percent of all cocaine and marijuana through the west coast of Mexico and into the United States.
Sanchez shrugged. “A small matter, a difference of opinion.”
The tallest of the three with a scar from his right eye in a curve to his chin spoke again softly so no one else could hear. “Detective Sanchez. We want you to understand that there are no hard feelings here. We are businessmen and we help Adolfo with his protection. If he’s in trouble, it’s our job to straighten it out.”
Sanchez had heard of these men, or others like them, but he had never met any of them before. He closed the knife, slid it in his pocket, and shrugged.
“Simply a small disagreement. He shouldn’t have troubled you gentlemen.”
None of them smiled or showed any emotion. Sanchez felt sweat under his arms. His nose itched. He frowned slightly. “Is there anything more?”
“Yes, we need to end this here, now. We understand that you are worried about the death of one of our representatives. Yes, he died and no one knows who did it. This man was a problem of ours, and we resolved the matter. We would appreciate it if you could simply let the matter rest.”
“I have a responsibility as a police detective—”
The taller man held up his hand stopping Sanchez.
“We’re sure that you have other cases much more promising that you should be working on. To encourage you to do that, we wish to make a contribution to your favorite charity through you.” He turned to one of the other men who handed him two thick stacks of peso bills. He held them out to Sanchez.
“This is eighty thousand pesos, roughly ten thousand U.S. dollars. We hope that this act of charity on our part will help you to move on to other cases.”
Sanchez felt a surge of delight, then fear. Buying him off? Why? What else had to be behind this? On the other hand, if he refused their money, he was sure that he would be taken into the back room and shot twenty times in the head.
His hands trembled when he reached for the money. “My captain said I had already spent too much time on the Chuci case. He ordered me off it this morning. Yes, yes I think that I can move on to other problems. I’ll see that this money goes to a good charity.”
Adolfo relaxed.
Sanchez thought his knees would collapse.
The three large men in dark blue suits only smiled, nodded and walked out the front door. Sanchez sipped at his tequila until it was gone, then slid the stacks of bills inside his uniform shirt and made sure they were safely stowed, stopped by his belt. Then he turned and with as much dignity as he could muster, walked out the cantina door and found his car. He was the good charity that the El Padre men had referred to. He had eighty thousand pesos. He would open a separate bank account that even his family would not know about. He drove a mile away but became angrier with each yard he traveled.
How could they do that? Walk in and buy him off in front of a witness? How? He had their money, El Padre’s dirty drug money, but they couldn’t buy his soul. He’d find out who the gringo was, and he knew exactly how. He did a U turn in the middle of the street and swore at the driver who swore at him. He drove back within a half a block of the cantina he had just left and parked. He walked to the back door of El Gallo Colorado and waited. The girls would be coming soon. He saw them arriving from where he stood in the shadows of the next building. They were bright, pretty, and available for two hundred pesos. He waited for the older one he had seen before called Teresa. A minute later, he stopped her and motioned her into the shadows of late afternoon.
“Sergeant Sanchez,” he said.
Her face turned upward quickly. “So?”
“I’m hunting a young gringo who comes to the cantina often. Sometimes stays several days. Do you remember him?”
“There have been two lately. One in his forties. Bad tipper. The other one doesn’t even pay. He’s twenty-five or — six. Keeps his hair short but it’s blond. Must be six foot three. Yeah, I know him.”
“I want his name and phone number.”
“Why?”
“He’s a hired assassin for the Mexican Mafia or for the drug cartel. Not sure which, but one of them. He recently murdered a man.”
“Haven’t seen him for a week.”
“So, a name?”
“Only one he uses is Howie.”
“Phone number?”
“I don’t carry that around with me. It’s home somewhere.”
“Let’s go, my car is right down the block.”
“I got to go to work.”
“The assembly line won’t break down if you’re a half hour late. Come on. Or I could just arrest you.”
She nodded and they went to his car.
Ten minutes later they walked into a modest apartment. It was furnished better than Sanchez’s home.
She moved to a small desk and looked through a book, then wrote something on a piece of paper and handed it to him.
“This a San Diego number?”
“Yes.”
“No area code. Need one up there.”
“You’ll have to find that out by calling them.”
“Cheeky little whore, aren’t you.”
She smiled. “You men like some fire, you don’t get any at home.”
“Since we’re here…” He reached out and began to unbutton the blue blouse she wore. She caught his hand.
“Three hundred pesos.”
He slapped her so hard she staggered two steps to the side.
“No more talk,” he said. “Take them off. I have a lot of work to do before the end of the day.”
16
The SEALs arrived back on board the carrier the same way they had left it, on a COD. They had landed almost twenty-four hours earlier and now they were getting ready for their new mission.
They were two men down. Vinnie Van Dyke was still in the ship’s hospital with his chest shot. Dobler was in no shape to go along. He was in the carrier’s medical unit where they were fighting infection in his leg wound.
“The Ganges might be the holy river of India, but it’s also the main sewer system,” one of the Navy doctors said. He had checked all of the men for any kind of infections or lung problems, gave them a clean bill of health, and sent them back to duty.
The twelve SEALs worked over their gear for this special mission. Murdock and DeWitt had been in a conference half the morning trying to iron out the logistics. None of the men had a clue except the two words, Hong Kong, that Don Stroh had told them in his radio message.
“No way it could be Hong Kong,” Jaybird chirped. “Hell, that’s right in the middle of about a hundred million Chicoms. They going to sit twiddling their tits while we walk in and take something or somebody away from them? Hell no. Even a million rifles is a lot.”