I pulled up his name on my phone and he answered on the first ring.
“Phil, it’s Jesse McDermitt.”
“Semper Fi, Gunny. How’re they hanging? Or should I ask are they still hanging?”
I chuckled at the dig on my advancing years. “They’re hanging like the American Flag, brother—with dignity and pride.”
“Of course, they are! What can I do for you? Are you in town?”
“Not right now,” I replied. “I’m wondering if you can share any intel about MS-13 in Fort Myers?”
“Is this a DHS assignment?”
“You know I haven’t worked for the government in years.”
“Right…whatever you say, Gunny. Listen, I don’t personally know anything, but I’d be happy to make a few calls. Will you be around an hour from now?”
“Sure. I’ll listen for the phone.”
“Give me an hour.”
I set about doing some boat chores to kill time. Owning a boat meant constant upkeep and maintenance. Owning several compounded that. I rarely idled away minutes, much less hours.
Phil called back fifty minutes later.
“Found what you’re looking for, Jesse. The gang in Fort Myers is run by a banger named Diego Alturaz. His number two is someone who goes by the name of Esteban. They’ve got about twenty-five regular, full-time members and probably half that again they can call up if they’ve got something going on.
“Pretty standard banger shit; they sell meth and weed mostly—blow, when they can get it. But here’s where it gets a little different. Lately, here in Miami, and probably over in Fort Myers and the rest of the country, for that matter, they’re getting more and more into sex trafficking. They’ve got this horrific new business model where they kidnap young girls, do the gang initiation thing with them, then addict them to drugs and put them to work as prostitutes. The girls don’t last long, as you’d imagine, but the bangers don’t care—they just grab more. They used to snatch up primarily young, homeless women with drug habits who wouldn’t be missed. But lately, they’ve also been taking straight girls right off the street.”
This dovetailed perfectly with what Nancy had told me.
“What have your gang people been doing to push back?” I asked.
“Not much, I’m afraid. We try, but for all their incompetence as criminals, they’ve proven to be masters at witness intimidation and murder. Every time we put together a good case against one of them, our witnesses either die a gruesome death or develop memory problems right before trial. It’s incredibly frustrating.”
“Must drive you nuts.”
“It does.” Phil replied. “It’s like every one of them knows and accepts that their life expectancy is around twenty-one years and none of them seem to care about any life outside of the gang. They’d rather go down in a blaze of glory when backed into a corner. Fort Myers has had a series of incidents lately. The local PD thought they finally had a really good case against Diego Alturaz for the murders of two young gang members he shot and then chopped up. They also had him cold on the kidnapping and rape of two innocent thirteen-year-old middle schoolers.”
I felt the tension in my brow move to my jaw, clamping my teeth together like a vice. “What happened?”
“Once again, the gang got to the primary witness. He was in jail. And get this: they killed him with a jar of wasps.”
“What? How?”
“They must’ve known the mick had a serious allergy. Someone walked by his cell, threw in the jar of wasps, and bang; he gets stung like twelve times, blows up like a fucking piñata, and he’s dead ten minutes later.
“In another recent incident in Fort Myers,” he continued, “the gang went after some teenage girl on a motorcycle. The police set a roadblock to catch the guys, and because one of them had an immigration beef, he gets out of the car, pulls a cannon, and tries to shoot it out with like ten cops! How can you fight against people who have so little regard for their own lives, let alone the lives of others?”
I knew the answer. But Phil, just like Detective Andersen, had strict rules he had to abide by. I paused a moment before responding. The teenage girl on the motorcycle sounded like Nancy’s niece.
“The rulebook you guys are forced to play by only works if both parties play by the rules. Obviously, these guys don’t.”
“What’re we going to do, Jesse? You know what it’s like out there right now. It’s all over the news. When a cop pulls his piece, he gets totally screwed by the press. Doesn’t matter whether his life is in danger or what the perp was doing. If he’s a minority, it’s hands off. It’s like a get-out-of-jail-free card for whatever these punks want to do.”
Rules of engagement were motivated by politics. Our troops were hampered, the cops were hindered, and even a private citizen in his own home risked jail time if he shot an intruder. And because of that, good people died, because they were slow to act.
“I don’t envy you, Phil, with your hands tied the way they are. At some point, the media’s got to wake up. But it’s tough to fix stupid. It can be done, but like they say, it’s going to hurt.”
“You got that right, brother.”
“Okay, thanks for the intel, Phil. It’s just what I was looking for.”
“Anytime, Gunny. Keep one on ice for me.”
“I will,” I replied and ended the call.
It was obvious that Nancy Liddell’s niece and her family were all in serious danger. Something like this would take more time than I had. But I wanted to do something, and I had an idea.
I pulled up Billy Rainwater’s number. He’d be perfect to discreetly keep an eye on the girl and her family. If Billy didn’t want to be seen, he wouldn’t be. It was just a matter of whether he was available.
The phone rang twice.
“Billy Rainwater, original and authentic American Indian. How may I direct your call?”
“It’s Jesse.”
“No kidding, Kemosabe. You think I’d actually
