Epilogue

Javier Castro knew he was going to die. What he didn’t know was how agonizing his death would be. It was almost laughable that a man would actually pray to be shot in the head but that was what he prayed for now: a bullet in the head rather than being tortured for hours, his body mutilated, his heart finally bursting when it could no longer endure the waves of pain.

He was in a barn someplace in Mexico but he didn’t know exactly where. There were four empty horse stalls, saddles and bridles hanging from hooks, bales of hay stacked near one wall, straw covering a dirt floor. Leaning against one wall was a pitchfork and he hoped that’s where it stayed. He was bound to a chair with a rope, his hands handcuffed behind his back. His hands had been cuffed for the last six hours and he no longer had any feeling in his fingers. Standing near the barn’s double doors were two men—two of his former bodyguards, men who’d betrayed him. He’d been sitting in the barn for over an hour, waiting, he assumed, for his crazy cousin Paulo to arrive.

For the last six months, he’d been living in a home in Belize. He’d purchased it in a manner he thought was untraceable from the estate of a Russian oil baron who’d fallen out of favor with Putin. And he bought it because it was a virtual fortress with high walls and a sophisticated security system that included motion detectors, cameras, and a safe room—an impregnable vault that only an expert with explosives would be able to crack open. He figured the only way anyone would be able to breach the home’s security system and get past four men armed with Uzis was if there was a traitor in his ranks—and he turned out to be right about this.

Last night, while he was sleeping, la Leona, Maria Vasquez, had entered his bedroom accompanied by two of his bodyguards, men who had been loyal to him for years. She prodded him gently awake with a slim finger, and with his bodyguards pointing pistols at him, ordered him to get dressed. Maria had been dressed in black—a short black jacket, a black turtleneck sweater, tight black jeans, and black Reeboks. She looked like a cat burglar—or maybe the way a beautiful actress playing a cat burglar would look. He suspected Maria had met with his bodyguards when they were sent out for supplies, and she either bribed them to help her or threatened family members who still resided in Mexico.

How brilliant Maria had found him in Belize he didn’t know. The only good news was that his wife wasn’t with him because when the American investigation started to damage the cartel, he insisted his wife and daughter go live in a small place he owned in Switzerland—a place the Americans couldn’t confiscate—and had been paying a security firm thousands of dollars a day to protect them.

As he was dressing, he said to Maria, “Whatever Paulo’s paying you, I’ll triple it.”

“Please, Javier,” she said. “Don’t embarrass yourself.”

As they left the house, he saw the bodies of his other two bodyguards lying on the floor. Both men had been shot in the back, he assumed with silenced weapons, as he hadn’t heard shots. He also assumed that the two bodyguards helping Maria had killed them and then let her into the house.

He was handcuffed, placed in a large black SUV, then driven to an airstrip on private land where a small jet was waiting. On board the plane, Maria showed him a list of banks where he kept cash; the only way she could have gotten the list was from his lawyer or his personal accountant, and God knows what she did to them to make them cooperate. When she asked him to provide the passwords and security information needed to transfer money out of the accounts, he did so without hesitation. If he hadn’t given her the information voluntarily, he knew he’d be tortured until he did.

The money in the accounts amounted to about 120 million; all the rest of his assets were in real estate or tied up in businesses or stock held in various companies, and Maria knew this. Those assets would be harder for his cousin to appropriate and maybe he wouldn’t bother. Also not on Maria’s list was 25 million he kept in gold bullion buried beneath the courtyard in his Mexico City home, for no one but he and his wife knew about the gold. There was at least some consolation in knowing his wife and daughter wouldn’t be left penniless. After he gave her the bank account information, Maria spent a little time on a computer, most likely verifying information he gave her or transferring the money out of his accounts, then she slept like a baby until the plane landed, not a worry in the world, nothing troubling her conscience at all.

The plane landed at a private airport in Sinaloa that the cartel used. A hood was placed over his head before he left the plane, and then he was placed in another SUV that was waiting on the runway. From there they drove to the barn where he was now sitting, bound to a chair, waiting for his cousin to come and kill him. While he sat there, his unfaithful bodyguards watched him, looking regretful. He thought about railing at them for being the treasonous, ungrateful dogs they were, but didn’t bother. He didn’t know where Maria had gone, most likely to pick up his cousin.

Javier Castro’s troubles began seven months earlier, almost immediately after he thought he had dealt successfully with the Callahan problem. A federal task force led by the DEA, with help provided by the U.S. Treasury and Justice Departments, started looking at money coming into and going out of the Cayman firm he’d used for investing in Delaney Square. Thanks to the help of one of the Cayman executives who cooperated to avoid a jail sentence, the U.S. government was able to identify a number of properties and bank accounts in the United States where the cartel had placed considerable sums.

To date, the U.S. government had seized over three hundred million in cartel-owned real estate in the United States, including his daughter’s condo in New York. Also seized were three jets, each worth approximately twenty-five million, and a number of U.S. bank accounts holding approximately four hundred million dollars. These accounts belonged not only to members of his cousin’s cartel but judges, cops, and politicians who had helped the cartel over the years. A final problem caused by the investigation was that the cartel now had cash stacking up in warehouses on both sides of the border, moldering, because it was afraid to move the money.

The U.S. government also got an injunction to stop work on Delaney Square until the investigation was completed, and when the U.S. bank that had loaned money to Callahan for Delaney Square learned he had partially financed the project with money coming from a Mexican drug cartel, the U.S. bank, at least temporarily, had refused to make the additional loans needed to complete the project. Now in the place where Elinore Dobbs’s old apartment building had once stood there was nothing more than a large hole in the ground. No new structure would be rising from the hole anytime soon.

When the DEA money-laundering investigation began, Javier talked to a source he’d been paying in the DEA for years, and his source told him that Congressman John Mahoney was the one who’d initiated the investigation, and he did so because he’d been threatened by Javier Castro. It was outrageous! He’d done exactly what Mahoney had wanted when it came to Callahan, and he’d never threatened Mahoney—or at least, that’s the way he saw it. All he did was have Maria Vasquez tell DeMarco that if Mahoney didn’t leave the cartel alone, people like his insane cousin might come after Mahoney—but he never said that he would retaliate against Mahoney.

He realized now—now that it was too late—that he should not have killed Callahan; he should have just forced him to walk away from Delaney Square as DeMarco had suggested. Furthermore, he should never have tried to intimidate Mahoney by showing how easily he could frame DeMarco for Callahan’s murder. Mahoney clearly didn’t care about what happened to DeMarco; DeMarco was just hired help to him. All Mahoney cared about was proving that he was too powerful to be intimidated. The man was a dangerous egomaniac, and his egomania was going to cost Javier Castro his life, just as it had caused Sean Callahan his.

After the Americans began seizing money and real estate, his cousin went berserk, calling him and screaming at him that it was Javier’s responsibility to reimburse everyone who had lost money. He tried to tell Paulo that that was not only unreasonable but also impossible. He didn’t have enough money to reimburse everyone—he’d be a pauper if he did, and he had no intention of becoming one. Furthermore, he told his cousin, it wasn’t his fault the Americans had been able to identify assets the cartel and the cartel’s friends had in the United States. The blame for that lay with the Cayman investment company and the cartel’s accountants. He did offer to reimburse Paulo the fifteen million he’d lost on Delaney Square, but that did nothing to mollify the maniac—so he fled to Belize, not knowing what he was going to do next. He’d been hoping he might get lucky and that his cousin would be arrested or killed before too long and he wouldn’t have to stay in hiding forever—but luck had not been on his side.

Javier hadn’t seen Paulo Castro in almost two years, and when his cousin finally walked into the barn, Javier couldn’t believe how bad the man looked. Paulo was tall, almost six four, and when he was young, he’d had the build of a weightlifter who used steroids. Now he just looked like a fifty-year-old fat man. But it wasn’t just his body that had declined. Javier had heard rumors that his cousin had started drinking heavily and using cocaine. His face was now bloated, his skin red and blotched, his eyes looking as if he hadn’t slept in days. He’d also heard that his cousin had become even more vicious and unpredictable. The slightest annoyance would send him into a towering rage, and Javier had been told that Paulo beat one of his own men to death with a golf club, a man who’d worked for him for years, just because he was late for a meeting. He’d also become extremely paranoid, the paranoia most likely a result of the heavy drinking and drug use, and he’d killed several people because he was convinced that they were talking to the federales about him even though it was highly unlikely that anyone would take such a risk. Paulo Castro had become like a wounded grizzly bear, terrifying everyone within range of his long, sharp claws.

He was surprised, therefore, when Paulo walked into the barn and then just sat down on a bale of hay. He’d expected his cousin to walk up to him and smash him in the face and start screaming at him, but he didn’t. He just sat, breathing heavily, and Javier realized the man was so drunk that if he hadn’t sat down he would have fallen.

With Paulo were two more bodyguards, bringing the total number of armed bodyguards in the barn to four. Following Paulo into the barn was Maria Vasquez, still dressed as she’d been when she kidnapped him. She looked over at him—sympathetically, he thought—then went and leaned against the wall near the pitchfork. The combination of the pitchfork next to her honey-blond hair, her black attire, and the bright red lipstick she wore made Javier think: The devil’s mistress.

The last person to enter the barn was Ignacio Rojo. Rojo was in his late sixties, slightly built, wore glasses, and his hands were gnarled from severe arthritis. He was wearing a black suit, as he almost always did, and a white dress shirt with the top button buttoned, no tie. Rojo was the one who managed the cartel’s day-to-day operations, Paulo not being a person who had the patience for details. The thing that Javier had always appreciated about Ignacio Rojo when Rojo worked for him was that he was content with his role. He had no desire to be in charge of the cartel, being wise enough to know that the man who wore the crown also wore a target on his back.

Rojo went and stood next to Maria Vasquez but Maria, sensitive to the man’s age and arthritic joints, snapped her fingers and said to one of the bodyguards: “Bring that box over here for Señor Rojo to sit on.” When Maria spoke, the bodyguard moved like he’d been poked with a cattle prod.

Paulo started to say something, then started sneezing violently. Javier had forgotten about his cousin’s allergies. When he stopped sneezing, Paulo said, “Fucking hay. Why are we doing this here?”

“It was convenient,” Maria said.

“Convenient for who?” Paulo said.

Maria didn’t apologize, which surprised Javier, but then Paulo turned his head to look back at him.

“Cousin,” Paulo said. “You’ve cost me a lot of money. You caused me a lot of aggravation.”

Although he knew it was hopeless, Javier said, “Just tell me what I can do to make things right, Paulo.”

Paulo laughed—then he started sneezing again. In different circumstances, this might have been comical. This time when he stopped sneezing, he said, “I’ve got to get out of here.”

“You,” he said, to one of the bodyguards. “Do you have a knife?”

“Yes, sir,” the bodyguard said.

“Go put out his eyes, and cut off his ears. His nose, too. Do it quickly.” To Javier, he said, “When he’s done with your face, I’m going to have him cut off your head and mail it to your wife. She always treated me like I was a servant.”

But the bodyguard didn’t move. Instead, he looked over at Maria Vasquez.

“Why in the hell are you looking at her?” Paulo said to the bodyguard. “Do what I told you.”

No one answered Paulo, but Ignacio Rojo said to Maria, “Let’s be done with this.”

“Yes,” Maria said. She looked at one of the other bodyguards, a man standing behind Paulo, and nodded. Before Paulo could react, the man pulled out a Beretta and shot Paulo in the back of the head. Fat Paulo landed face-first in the straw on the barn floor.

Javier closed his eyes. He couldn’t believe it. Maybe he would survive after all. It appeared as if Maria, with Rojo’s concurrence, had decided it was time for her to take over the cartel and Javier was sure that everyone in the organization would appreciate the change in management. The best news for him was that Maria and Rojo were people who could be reasoned with and he might be able to come to an accommodation with them. Maria had already stolen 120 million from him but if she wanted more, he would gladly give it to her.

“Maria, thank you,” he said. “Now please tell me what I can do to make things right.”

Maria looked at him for what seemed an eternity, then shook her head. “Give me the gun,” she said to the man who had killed Paulo. He handed it to her and she walked slowly over to Javier. She was almost forty now but as beautiful as ever, he thought.

“Maria,” he said. “I don’t care about the money you took from me today. I really don’t.”

“I’m sorry, Javier,” she said. “You say you don’t care now, but you’re an intelligent man, and a ruthless one. I’m afraid I just wouldn’t feel secure with you around.” She smiled that sad, sad smile of hers and said, “So much misfortune because of one stubborn old woman.”

And then Maria answered Javier’s earlier prayer—and shot him in the head.

DeMarco was shoveling the two feet of snow that had fallen on Washington the night before off his front sidewalk. It had been the third heavy snowfall in January, and he wished he could afford to spend the winter in Florida. He was wearing a heavy wool sweater, jeans, and Gore-Tex-lined boots. On his head was a black stocking cap that he knew made him look like a thug. Which made him wonder if the romance writer who had taken his photo in Boston because she thought he looked like Bruno, her menacing villain, had ever published her stupid novel.

As he bent his back to dig another shovelful of snow, he heard snow chains clanking on a vehicle’s tires and looked up to see a D.C. Metro Police car coming down the street in his direction—and his heart started beating faster. In the last seven months, ever since Mahoney had convinced the DEA to go after Javier Castro, DeMarco’s heart rate increased every time he saw a cop. He wondered if this was the day they were going to arrest him for Sean Callahan’s murder. But the cop car didn’t stop, and continued along on its noisy way.

His phone rang just then, and by the time he yanked his gloves off and dug the phone out of his jeans, it rang for the fifth time; after the next ring it would go to voice mail. He said hello without looking at the caller ID.

“Joe?” a woman said, her voice low and sexy.

“Yes,” he said, wondering who it was.

“It’s Maria. You remember me from Boston?”

DeMarco couldn’t speak for a moment. “Maria, trust me when I say that I’ll never forget you. What do you want?”

“I just wanted to let you know that you can stop worrying.”

“You mean about being framed for murder?”

“That’s right. You can also tell Mr. Mahoney that he’s made his point, and that no one will bother him at any time in the future, no matter what the DEA uncovers in their investigation. As far as the cartel is concerned—or maybe I should say, as far as I’m concerned—what’s happened in the last few months is just the cost of doing business. It’s time to move on.”

“Really,” DeMarco said. “And Javier Castro is okay with this? I mean, from what I’ve heard, he’s lost a lot of money.”

“Where Javier is now, Joe, he doesn’t need money.”

That took a moment to sink in. “I see,” DeMarco said. “And the gun that was used to . . . You know.”

“Oh, the gun. It’s been, shall we say, recycled. Don’t worry about the gun.”

“That’s good to hear.”

“Well, that’s all I called to say, Joe. But if you ever come to Mexico again—it’s beautiful where I am right now; the temperature’s about eighty, not a cloud in the sky—give me a call. For some reason, I have a hard time getting a date down here, and I’d love to see you again.”

Then she laughed and disconnected the call.