Either the killers had someone waiting for them, or they had other wheels already procured. That was the way pros would have done it, and these guys were looking like pros, which didn’t bode well for a quick resolution. Still, the agents had learned that all criminals, by way of their choice of profession, had some innate stupidity that, somewhere along the line, would cause a slipup. Catching the mistake was the trick.
“I’d say we have to find out why these guys wanted to kill Portero,” Frankie suggested.
“The busboy said one of them…” Art flipped back through his notes. “Medium height, curly black hair, mustache. That one called Portero’s name before they fired. He also saw the other one, the balding guy who shot at me, bend down and take something from Portero’s shirt pocket.”
“If this leads to anything, I think we owe that busboy a lunch.”
“I told him we’d put in a good word for him with the INS,” Art said. “He’s been trying to naturalize for a couple years now. Anyway, so we have two shooters who knew their intended victim and who wanted something from same.” His eyes asked for Aguirre’s read of the situation.
“Contract hit,” she observed flatly. “But still, why Portero?”
There were several possibilities that Art could think of, and probably a dozen more he knew would crop up along the way. “Okay, all the primary participants are Hispanic. One is from Florida.”
“Could have some OC involvement,” Frankie surmised, the activity of investigation easing the pain of grief. “There are several Cuban crime families that are trying to expand their influence, and they’re pretty ruthless from what I remember of the briefings.”
“Salvadoran and Panamanian, too,” Art added.
Frankie drained her first cup and slid it back for a refill. “That gives us a few thousand suspects, not counting the million or so we haven’t thought of yet.”
“Slow and steady. That’s how we win this race.” Art had come across that lesson after much grief. His natural tendency was to push, push, push. Getting past that sometimes destructive trait had been one of the biggest hurdles in his life. “We’ve got ten teams slated to run down things once we get a little more from Miami.”
Art’s phone rang. “Jefferson.” He smiled at Frankie. “Speak of the Devil. How’re you doing, Luke?… Yeah, it’s appreciated. He was a good kid. You have anything?” It took a minute for the Miami agent to relate the information. “Well, that is interesting. Sure appreciate your help. Hey, get some sleep. Bye.”
“Well?” Frankie inquired, wanting desperately for there to be something they could start with.
“Francisco Portero fled from Cuba earlier this year,” Art explained. “He came over on that commuter flight that just hopped across the Keys. There were a couple other flights that did the same thing back in ‘92 or ‘93. Can’t remember which. Maybe both. But that isn’t even the frosting.” His partner’s eyes scolded him for the pause in his release of the information. “Portero, up until he left, was translator for the Cuban ambassador to the UN.”
“So this was a defection,” Frankie observed, a question immediately coming to mind. “What language?”
“Lang—” Art smiled with embarrassment. It was the little things, the nuances, that he missed. He was a global thinker, while Frankie saw the trees in the forest. “I forgot to ask. I’m sure it’ll be in the hard copy he’s faxing.”
“Kind of a new spin on things,” Frankie commented. “A former Cuban diplomatic type defects and ends up dead before year’s end. Hit from home?”
It couldn’t be ruled out, Art thought, but the evidence didn’t point that way. “I don’t know about that. The busboy said the guy who called to Portero didn’t trill his R’s. He said it was pure gringo talk. If it is the case, though, then it points toward a silencing. Like Portero knew something that someone at home didn’t want him to tell.”
“Or he had something they wanted,” Frankie countered, remembering what the busboy had seen. “Or both.”
“Two places to check,” Art said. “INS and State. Portero would have automatically been granted asylum because of where he came from, so he would have had an interview with the immigration boys. They might know if he made any declarations when he came in, or if he asked to meet with any of the exile groups. That’s pretty common. They all offer some sort of assistance to newcomers. There might be something in there to help us.”
“And State?”
“I want to know what Portero did over the years, what sort of information he might have had access to. What other positions did he hold? Who he knew? Anything that could point to what he had that they wanted.”
Art jotted the requests for information down and had them taken to the office’s communication room for immediate transmittal to the respective government agencies.
“Good morning, folks.” It wasn’t, Special Agent Dan Jacobs knew. As supervising special agent of Technical Services in L.A., he had been there for the duration of this one. He had seen where Thom Danbrook had fallen and had made the tragic discovery of why the young agent’s gun had malfunctioned at the moment of truth. Bad news all around. But now he brought what could be some positives to the morning. “You want some leads?”
“What do you got?”
Jacobs pulled the first item from a manila envelope. “First is this.”
Art took the item, a business card advertising a place called Tony’s Tacos on Pico. He flipped it over, finding the real clue. “No area code,” he commented, handing the card with the scribbled phone number on the back across to his partner.
“The exchange is right for this area code,” Frankie observed. Her fingers squeezed the flimsy card. It was moist. “What’s with the dampness?”
“That brings me to number two.” Jacobs removed a clear plastic cassette tape from the envelope.
“Is that condensation?” Art inquired, noticing the fogging inside the unmarked protective plastic housing.
“You’ve got it. We found it balled up in a napkin on the table, like the dead guy had been trying to dry it off. The card was in his left-front pants pocket, and there was a good deal of wetness there. From what I could tell, he might have spilled some water on himself. There was a glass a little less than half-full still on the table. My guess is that the tape was in his pocket with the card, some water got on it, and he took it out to dry it off.”
“Any chance of getting to hear what’s on it?”
Jacobs nodded confidently to Art. “Luckily it was just water. We should be able to clean it up and at least get something off of it.
“Finally we have this.” He handed over a see-through evidence bag with tiny shards of clear plastic captured at the bottom. Several were stained dark by what appeared to Art to be blood. “We pulled these out of his shirt pocket.”
Bingo. “Shirt pocket. You’re sure?”
“Yeah,” Jacobs assured him. “They’re fragments of the same kind of cassette you have there. Identical, actually. Same manufacturer. There were also the same type of fragments in the wound right behind the pocket.”
Art looked to Frankie. “I think we’ll add that lunch to the ‘thank yous’ we give that busboy.” He turned back to Jacobs. “So we can assume that there was a similar tape in his shirt pocket that was hit by a bullet?”
“I think so,” Jacobs affirmed. “Oh, we also got the caliber of the guns. Three fifty-sevens.” Revolvers, unfortunately, did not give up their spent shell casings, requiring analysis of the bullets recovered from the victims. “I should have some model information later today, maybe tomorrow.”
“Great.” Art handed back the tape and the bag with the fragments. “Can I hang on to the card?”