IT WAS HARD FOR LAWSON NOT TO TAKE THEIR REJECTION AT THE FEDERAL prosecutor’s office as a crushing setback. The case’s future now seemed uncertain, and during his worst moments dwelling on it, even hopeless. But a few days after the failed meeting with the Laredo division, Hodge swiveled around in his chair to share some encouraging news. “I got us a meeting later this week with a prosecutor in Austin,” he said.
“Who is it?” Lawson asked.
“His name’s Doug Gardner. He wants us to come up and present the case to him.”
“Goddamn, that’s good news,” Lawson said. He felt like hugging Hodge. He swore to himself he’d never complain again to Perez about how Hodge never helped enough on the investigation.
THE U.S. ATTORNEY’S OFFICE in Austin was in a high-rise with an impressive view of the Texas Capitol’s pink granite dome in the distance. Doug Gardner, the federal prosecutor, received the two agents in a large conference room. Lawson and Hodge laid out their documents from the case on the conference table. They had Gardner’s undivided attention, which was encouraging after their experience in Laredo. Gardner had a wiry build and was in his mid-forties, with close-cropped dark hair flecked with gray. Still active in the Marine Reserve, he’d been a military prosecutor before taking the Justice Department job in Austin.
Hodge briefed Gardner on the horses, Miguel Treviño, and his brother José, then Lawson explained how their case had its nexus in Austin because of their source, Tyler Graham, who was being paid to board and breed several of José’s horses at his farm near Austin. As Lawson was making his pitch about venue he felt a growing anxiety overtaking him. What if Gardner and the Western District also passed?
But Gardner appeared to be fully engaged in the briefing and asked a lot of questions. As the OCDETF coordinator for Austin, Gardner handled a majority of the cartel and money laundering cases that came through their office. OCDETF was a long acronym for a Justice Department program with an equally long title: the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. The program had been created in the 1980s to encourage federal law enforcement agencies to work together by offering funding from the U.S. Treasury for overtime and other perks so they could do longer, more complex organized crime cases.
Gardner was intrigued by the direct link to Miguel Treviño through his brother José. He’d prosecuted numerous cases targeting midlevel smugglers and dealers, but it was a rare case that led all the way to a major drug kingpin like Miguel. But what gave him concern, he said, was the racehorses. What would happen when they needed to seize the assets—in this case, hundreds of expensive racehorses?
Lawson had been through this before with his boss, Villarreal. To anyone at management level or higher, it was tough to look past the problem of seizing hundreds of racehorses, which would be an expensive bureaucratic nightmare. All those horses would have to be cared for and later sold. He suspected that this was one reason why other agencies hadn’t pursued the racehorse angle. Maybe he was the only one crazy enough to go down that road. “We’ll have to come up with some kind of plan,” Lawson said. “I’ve got a background with horses.”
Gardner smiled as if he appreciated Lawson’s naïve commitment to the case. There was an awkward silence as the prosecutor thought it through.
“If we’re going to do this, you’ll need to open a new case in the Western District,” Gardner said finally.
Lawson couldn’t contain his grin.
“You’ve got it,” Hodge said excitedly.
“It’s an OCDETF case, so you’re going to need to collaborate with another agency on this,” Gardner said. “Who do you have in mind?”
There was one agency Lawson wasn’t going to mention. He’d already been burned once by the DEA.
“It’s a money laundering case,” said Hodge. “What about Steve Pennington at the IRS?”
Gardner nodded. “Steve’s a good, experienced agent.”
Lawson was relieved that Gardner was running with the idea of Pennington. He hadn’t realized the IRS had its own team of criminal investigators until Pennington had showed up in Laredo to work with Hodge, who had been stalled on his drug case for more than a year when Pennington found him.
The IRS criminal investigator was somewhat of a maverick because he ran his own task force in the city of Waco, north of Austin, called the Waco Treasury Taskforce, which dealt exclusively with money laundering and drug trafficking cases. He’d been investigating one of the drug gang’s dealers in Waco, and when Pennington ran his name through the deconfliction database Hodge and the FBI had popped up in the search. Within a few days he’d arrived in Laredo with the missing pieces of the conspiracy. Pennington helped crank out five document search warrants in one afternoon. It would have taken most agents a couple of days. In less than two weeks, Hodge had his indictment.
Pennington was also old school, which reminded Lawson of his dad. When they’d gone out to do the arrests on the case, Lawson and the others had suited up in their black tactical gear while Pennington had put on a bulletproof vest and plunked onto his head a well-worn blue baseball cap with “IRS” in yellow lettering. He carried his long rifle in a battered case that looked like it had seen a war or two. Pennington had more than two decades under his belt as an agent, but when he was in Laredo he’d worked as hard as any rookie. If anyone could help them take down José and Tremor Enterprises, thought Lawson, it would be Pennington.
“I’ll give Steve a call,” Hodge said.