PD.
Lattimore took the manila envelope from the officer and unwound the thread, opened it, shaking out the contents, frontal and profile in-custody shots of Pablo “Happy” Orantes and Godofredo Montalvo, taken from their arrest on pot charges two years back. He felt a curious mix of dread and mystification at the sight of Happy’s face, a vaguely guilty sadness at Godo’s. He remembered the young man well, not just from his name cropping up in the undercover tapes but from that day at the trailer park, when he stood there with his pitted face and a Remington pump-loader, holding off two gung-ho morons from ICE. A miracle all three of them hadn’t died right there. Two marines from his own battalion had taken a similar turn after Desert Storm-a standoff with guns, one with a hostage-and they’d seen far less to justify it, though how did one measure such things?
Dunn waved toward the photos like a lazy magician. “Anything you can tell me?”
They were debriefing the surviving victims here at the scene because they only had two interview rooms at the station. The pictures were for six-packs they were showing to the cleaning lady, who had broken down the instant she was alone in a room with a cop, begging him and everyone else to understand, she’d been forced into the scheme, they’d threatened her girls. For now everyone, Lattimore included, was willing to accept that. She was cooperating, hoping to forestall deportation. They’d tell her the bad news on that front once they were done with her.
Lattimore puffed his cheeks. “They’re cousins, more or less. Not the easiest family to unravel.” He pronounced Godo’s full name, tried to explain the connection, him and Happy.
Dunn regarded him stonily. “Let’s stick with ‘cousins,’ shall we?”
“This one, Montalvo, he doesn’t look like this now. Came back from Iraq looking like a woodpecker mistook him for a stump, shrapnel wounds all over his face.”
“But this Orantes mutt, the ringleader, he was your boy?”
Lattimore glanced up. The man was thickly jowled, his stubble and brush cut the same dull gray. His eyes lay burrowed in creased flesh. “My CI.”
“Right,” Dunn said. “No offense meant.”
Lattimore had already endured his first quick interview with OPR; they were trawling through the case files now, seeing what laws or guidelines had gotten short shrift in his handling of things. He felt confident he’d survive the scrutiny-Pete Orpilla, his supe, had his back and for now things felt tense but not hysterical. This mess had come out of the blue, no hint that Happy had been side-balling him but that didn’t mean somebody wouldn’t want his head. All it would take is one call, a congressman, a mayor, somebody with juice paying back a favor. In the time it took to pick up a phone, his career could be history. Maybe that was just. It was possible, without even knowing it, he’d lost interest in the thing, gotten sloppy. Maybe he was just too old-at forty-four, an eye- opener.
Dunn gargled a knot of phlegm loose from his sinuses and spat. “Like I said, anything you could tell me?”
Lattimore shrugged. “Hard to know what to say. Happy was inward, suspicious, a plodder, not a showboat. He was in this for his family, that’s what he said anyway. Wanted everybody back together, home safe for good.” How could I, he thought, misread that so badly? “Never asked for much, listened when you told him things, followed orders.”
Dunn, glancing over his shoulder at the house, “Until today, I expect.”
“Exactly.”
“Maybe he was saving all his chits up for this.”
Lattimore shivered the pictures back inside the envelope. “That’s crossed my mind.”
The cleaning lady had already identified Ramon “Puchi” Parada and Manuel “Chato” Lopez in photo six-packs, no such luck with Vasco Ramirez. So far it looked like he’d kept his hands clean of the actual rough stuff, not that it had kept him from fleeing. They’d found his car abandoned at the Greyhound lot in Rio Mirada, about two hundred yards from the garbage bin where he’d dumped his cell phone. God only knew where he was headed, San Diego most likely, after that a brisk walk across the border.
Earlier that afternoon, Lattimore had come down hard on both the truck yard and Vasco’s home, only to find the icy wife, who’d already lawyered up, and the strange and sickly daughter. The wife had screamed obscenities at any agent who so much as cracked a door. “Where’s your fucking warrant?”-over and over, top of her lungs, like somebody’d pulled a string, and Lattimore must have told her fifty times they had a warrant, an arrest warrant for her husband, in response to which he got called every variety of fucker and faggot in the Latin bitch lexicon:
Using the envelope, he gestured to the door. “Shall we?”
The techs had already scraped and sampled everything they wanted, there was no need to put on the booties. Lourdes was sitting in the kitchen, a chunky woman cop standing guard. Dunn collected the sergeant who’d done the original photo displays and Lattimore gave him the pictures of Happy and Godo, told him to work them into six- packs for a follow-up.
They ambled into the kitchen and pulled up chairs across from Lourdes. Having cried herself out, her eyes were raw; her face, though, was a closed door. She sat there, hands clasped, waiting for the next bad thing to happen. Dunn smiled and did his magic-hand thing again as the sergeant arrived and placed the six-packs on the table.
He said, “We’d like you to go through some more pictures, Lourdes,” pronouncing it
She swept an invisible strand of hair off her face. “My daughters-”
“We’ve sent someone from CPS to watch over your daughters. They’re fine.”
“I would like to talk to them.”
Dunn’s smile slid a little downhill. “Let’s go through the pictures first, Lourdes. These men are at large. You want us to catch them, right?”
She turned her attention to her task. On the third set she stopped, looked, blinked. “This one.” She pointed, bottom center. Happy. “He the one who talk to me. The leader, I think. We talk a lot. All night.”
Dunn took a pen from his inside pocket, thumbed the plunger. “Take a good look, Lourdes. No rush. Be certain.”
She shook her head. “It is him. I know. His eyes. The chin.” She docked her head a little. “Hair, yes, this is different. And he look older now, more thin…”
That’s it, Lattimore thought, let her talk herself out of her own ID. “Lourdes-”
She waved her hands, fending off doubt. “It is him. I sure.”
Dunn pulled that set aside, jotted down the group and position numbers. She went on, picking through the photo sets. Reaching the one with Godo, she looked it over, paused, looked it over again, then moved on. So much for that theory, Lattimore thought. She was already scouring the next group when her face bunched up, she went back, looked at the last set again.
“Him,” she said, pointing out Godo. “I not recognize him first time. He different now.” She circled her hand about her own face.
From behind, a uniform cleared his throat. “Agent Lattimore?” A finger drumbeat on the doorframe. “AUSA Pitcavage just signed in at the barricade. Said you should meet him outside?”
LATTIMORE WAITED ON THE PORCH, WATCHING PITCAVAGE ADVANCE through the swirls of blue-and-red light. He had another attorney in tow, a corn-silk blonde in a smart gray suit, no overcoat, bucking the wind with a power stride, holding her hair out of her face with one hand, the other clutching her briefcase. Pitcavage came empty-handed, like a pasha. They climbed the driveway, the woman impressively sure-footed in her pumps. She had a Midwestern prettiness, everything in its place, dull as a prairie. Nice pair though, Lattimore thought, something even the suit couldn’t hide.
Pitcavage gestured him off the porch for a private conclave, shooting the blonde a knowing glance that told her
