29
The ranch is a full mile in, centered in an expansive meadow surrounded on three sides by sheer rock palisades topped with pines that have the last of the sun on them.
Strickland looks out at the big, sturdy house, newly built with the indigenous pine and fir. The lumber has been finished clear so the grain and color show. There are two barns, a smokehouse, a horse corral and stables, and a fenced pasture for the healthy-looking Criollo cattle. El Gordo’s builders have left some of the big trees for shade and privacy. Under a long low sunscreen hung with camouflage netting, SUVs and late-model Chevrolet sedans are neatly parked, with plenty of room for more. There’s a big grass lawn with an aboveground pool, covered by a blue tarp. Small bikes and trikes, red wagons and rocking horses litter the grass.
Villareal pulls under the sunshade. Strickland steps from the truck, noting the camo green Boeing Apache helicopter hiding in plain sight on a green asphalt landing pad not far from the house.
Strickland gets his duffel and follows Villareal to the shaded front porch of the house.
A tall man in jeans, his shirttail French-tucked behind a large silver belt buckle, waits in the open doorway. He’s got the sinewy face and suspicious eyes of a mountain rancher used to dealing with rustlers. Steps outside and gestures.
“Adelante.”
Strickland follows Villareal in. Sets down his duffel and turns slowly, admiring the classic Mexican mountain lodge great room: hardwood floors, rough-hewn beams, three majestic fir candelabra hung from black iron chains, white plaster walls, still life paintings of flowers and fruit, three brutal crucifixes. The furniture is simple, rustic, and inviting, leather mostly, and draped with blankets. There’s some Calderón furniture, too, Strickland notes. Maybe collected for Godoy’s “protection” of the family-run business. Villareal has stationed himself in a cowhide chair.
Godoy enters the room through the front door, just as Strickland and Villareal had, moments ago. So he got a sneak preview of me, thinks Strickland. Where was he lurking?
Godoy is tall and trim, with an ascetic face and a head of black curls. The opposite of fat. Jeans and white canvas slip-ons, an open-collared white shirt, worn out, with a pack of cigarettes in the pocket.
He inspects Strickland, ignores his lieutenant.
A long moment, Strickland inspecting back.
“Please sit.”
“Thank you.”
Strickland takes one end of a long black sofa and El Gordo the other. He lights a cigarette, sets both feet on a large vintage trunk with iron latches and leather bindings.
“Make me believe in you,” he says.
Strickland intends to give the best sales pitch of his thirty-three years. He’s been thinking about what to say, and rehearsing it for twenty-four-plus hours now, ever since watching the DEA bag Valeria Flores and drain Joaquín Páez’s pond up in Laguna.
“Joaquín is dead and Valeria is under federal arrest,” says Strickland. “I was there. I saw it happen.”
The anger is visible on El Gordo’s slim, boyish face. “I send them to buy a dog, and the Americans kill and arrest them.”
“The government is not releasing information,” says Strickland. “When and if DEA is asked about two possible cartel soldiers in Laguna Beach, they will refuse to comment. But you must have suspected what happened, Señor Godoy. Have you sent sicarios to Laguna for revenge on the reporter?”
“This is not your business.”
Strickland hears the cool threat.
He lets the words hang in the air a moment.
Then nods and continues his pitch with a brief bio: growing up in Southern California; early interest in nature, guns, and self-defense; college; military service; a year of San Diego PD; Knowles Security; then later, Knowles Academy of Self-Defense in Los Angeles. He’s not going to spill to Godoy what he so innocently spilled to Carlos Palma — his real name. So he uses his mother’s. If El Gordo decides to dissolve him in a vat of acid, at least Strickland will have kept one of his secrets.
Next, he confesses his part in the looting of Godoy’s treasures in Tijuana over this last year. He apologizes and admits how wrong it was.
Then he goes quiet for just a beat to let his mastery of the Sinaloa Cartel sink in. To let Godoy imagine such mastery over his enemies.
With growing excitement, Strickland explains the almost unnatural nose possessed by the mongrel Joe, presently known as Felix in the Coastal Eddy video. That Joe is formerly a DEA detection K-9 who was retired early because of poor performance and depression.
Godoy frowns at this.
“I know,” says Strickland. “But it happens to one in ten law enforcement K-9s. They come to dislike the work and the constant pressure.”
“Now the dog is yours?”
“Not yet.” Strickland explains the situation with Bettina Blazak and the dog, together 24/7.
“How did you come to have the dog in the beginning?” asks El Gordo, still frowning.
Without giving up Aaron’s name, Strickland says that Joe’s last handler was a former client of his who thought that he, Strickland, might enjoy Joe as a pet. The handler got the DEA to re-home unhappy Joe, whose work ethic — and work itself — had slacked off.
He wants Godoy to know that Joe is formerly DEA. It makes him more valuable, and it adds weight to Godoy’s desire for vengeance over the Americans.
“It hit me one day that he’d be a real weapon in Tijuana,” says Strickland.
He’s on thin ice now, about to tell two absolute lies.
One:
“Through friends, I contacted one of your Tijuana associates and offered him Joe’s nose for a cut of New Generation cash and product we would discover. He told me he’d kill me and my dog if he ever saw us in his plaza again. I felt lucky to be alive.”
Two:
“So I went to the New Generation and Palma took my offer immediately. I’d get forty percent of all the cash Joe found, and a forty percent cash equivalent for drugs. I have no interest in selling or using drugs, Señor Godoy.”
“Who of my men said no to you?”
“Rubén Cortázar,” says Strickland, who has never met the man but read about his grisly end in Blog Narco.
“Killed by Palma’s men in Hermosillo last year,” says El Gordo.
“They tortured him, first. They taped it. Gloated over it. I heard them.”
“But maybe you are lucky he’s not here. For to tell the truth of your story.”
“My story is true.”
“Go on.”
Strickland moves into what he believes is his sales pitch wheelhouse: the millions of dollars in cash and drugs that he and Joe can — over time — bring the Sinaloa cartel; his willingness to return Godoy’s $200,000 lost to the DEA in California plus $50,000 in “restitution.” Next, he’s willing to reduce his take to 35 percent for Godoy. Very important, he knows the New Generation plaza in Tijuana like the back of his hand — its properties and alliances, its bribed police, its warehouses, brothels, safe houses, its tunnels and caches. He even knows the passcode for the vehicle tunnel running underground from Otay Mesa to Tijuana.
“Palma’s goods are waiting for us, Señor Godoy.”
After what he hopes is a loaded silence, Strickland plays his trump card in a soft, solemn voice. He’s rehearsed it. A lot.
“Señor Godoy, I would enjoy helping the Sinaloa Cartel regain the plazas and prestige you once enjoyed in Tijuana. As you enjoy now, here in these mountains, where the people respect and protect you. I would enjoy helping you unmask your enemies for what they are: greedy animals, beneath your dignity.”
Of course, Strickland withholds the fact that he intends to remain in the employ of the New Generation too. For a time.