“And the Low Road?”
“Corporate money,” he says. “A lot of us in H-Town, we’re Low Roaders, I guess you could say. The energy companies do business all over the world, so wherever you happen to have contacts, there’s usually somebody you can provide with some added value. Think about it: you could spend your whole career with Langley, sweating it out at some station in Africa, a thankless backwater where you could always be kidnapped and shot just for being seen at the embassy, without any of the compensating charms. . ” He chuckles at the thought of said charms, but doesn’t elaborate. “And when you retire, there’s a Houston oil maverick looking to drill wells off the coast of your old stomping ground, and only you can tell him which palms to grease. It’s a beautiful thing.”
All this is interesting, but it’s not what I came for. “What about Nesbitt? Which road was he on?”
“Oh, I would have had him pegged as a High Roader. You know about his newsletter? You don’t?” He raises an eyebrow in surprise. “Nesbitt compiled an intelligence report specifically for policy makers, drug enforcement administrators. That was his bailiwick, international criminal organizations, particularly the Latin American ones.”
“The cartels?”
He nods. “The way he described it-and obviously I can’t vouch for the accuracy of this, considering our government’s denial of the whole thing-his career had two phases: there was Cold War Andy and then Drug War Andy. He’d cut his teeth doing the usual cloak-and-dagger, so he seemed like a good candidate for Colombia in ’91. The idea was to help the military set up networks for gathering intel on the drug lords. Shut down the problem at its source. The results, unfortunately, were mixed, but Andy came away a believer.”
“So he would have been interested in what’s going on with the Mexican cartels?”
“Very.” I wait for him to say more, but he doesn’t. An impish light shines in his eyes.
“Is there something more?”
“Funny,” he says. “I get the impression you have something more to say. I’ve been pretty candid, haven’t I? Maybe it’s time for you to show your hand.”
With a man like Tom Englewood, it’s hard to know how much information to share. As forthcoming as he seems, he could simply be priming the pump, feeding me just enough background to win my trust in an effort to discover how much I really know. If I tell him about the operation Bea inherited, he might be able to confirm that it was set up by Nesbitt. From what he’s saying, the Gulf Cartel op sounds like the kind of thing Nesbitt did for a living. On the other hand, he might respond by clamming up, filing away the information for future use.
“You’re wondering how much you should say. That’s smart. But remember, it was you who called me.”
“All right, then. If I were to say that, before he died, Nesbitt was running an undercover operation inside one of the major Mexican cartels, how would you respond?”
He calls a waitress over and orders a single malt, glancing my way to see whether I’ll have anything. The butt end of his cigar drops into the ashtray and he reaches into his jacket for another, withdrawing it from a hallmarked silver case. It’s his last, so he offers it to me first.
“No thanks,” I say. “I’m still waiting for your answer.”
“I’m thinking.” He clips the cigar and toasts the tip with a torch lighter before putting it to his lips for a few puffs. “The thing is, I know a little bit about your situation. After you called, I made a couple of enquiries. You aren’t assigned to the Nesbitt investigation. In fact, that investigation is closed.”
“I didn’t say I was.”
“No, you didn’t. So what I’m wondering is, why do you care? You’re not interested in drug enforcement, and as far as I know, as bad as things are south of the border, the drug war hasn’t made its way up here yet.” He cuts off my objection with a wave of the cigar. “Oh, I know, I know. The drugs are here. But no one’s assassinating prosecutors or snuffing police detectives.”
“I have a victim in the morgue,” I say. “He’s been decapitated and, before he died, he was de-gloved. You know what that means?”
His eyes narrow. “Oh, I know what it means. And I have an idea the sort of people who’d do something like that.”
“So you understand my interest.”
“Maybe. But you’re not planning to slap the cuffs on some low-level cartel enforcers. You have a different idea in mind.”
“I want to know whether Nesbitt had an operation going, that’s all.”
“Of course he did.”
“He did? You know that for a fact?”
“I don’t know anything for a fact. Let me put it this way: I was under the impression that’s what he was up to, or something like it. Andy had a theory. In the 1830s, the Texans set off a chain of events that led to a U.S. invasion of Mexico a decade later. A lot of people in the American government didn’t want that to happen, but the Texans led out and sucked the rest of the nation in.”
“More or less,” I say.
“Right. I’m not intending this as a history lesson. It’s just a point Nesbitt used to make. The reason Latin America in general and Mexico in particular are so unstable is that we’ve ignored them. We turned our attention to the other side of the world and left our backyard to fend for itself. A familiar complaint.
“Andy’s theory was, only a disaster could focus our attention on doing something. Only a disaster could shake us out of the complacent notion that we can just wall ourselves off from the problem. What he wanted for Mexico was what we’d already given to Baghdad and Kabul.”
“Regime change?”
He smiles. “Stability. When the border became such a contentious issue after 9/11, Andy started telling people the border would never be secure until the nation of Mexico was, and that wouldn’t happen without some kind of intervention. Cooperation simply wasn’t enough. The question was, what would have to happen before Americans would support such a move?”
“You mean, before they’d support an invasion of Mexico? That’s insane.”
“Not an invasion. What he had in mind was something similar to what he’d worked on in Colombia, only with a more effective U.S. component. And anyway, it’s not that insane. We’ve invaded Mexico before, and not just when Santa Anna was in charge. Remember Black Jack Pershing?”
“What does all this have to do with the drug cartels?”
He gives a theatrical shrug. “You tell me. You’re the detective. We put pressure on the Mexicans to crack down on the cartels, so they started waging war, which sent the borderlands into a death spiral. Now the headlines are full of the excesses and Americans are shocked, shocked at what’s happening on our doorstep. Someone has to do something.”
“That’s a very cynical point of view.”
“What can I say? My profession doesn’t breed many idealists. What I’m telling you is this: Andy tried to convince anyone in power who’d listen that the cartels were running wild and the Mexican government was out of its depth. If you were one of the people paying top dollar for his intel reports, that was the message he hammered into you day in and day out. So, no, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to find that Andy had a line into the cartels.”
The cigar in my hand has burned down to my fingers and my throat burns from sucking it down. The column of white ash suggests that Englewood has good taste in smokes, but I feel compromised somehow in partaking of his largess. When he signals the waitress again, I scoot my chair back.
“You’ve had enough?” he asks.