BEFORE ARRIVING IN LAREDO, LAWSON HAD ALWAYS THOUGHT OF LAW ENFORCEMENT as a collaborative exercise. Working on narcotics, he’d never had a problem sharing an investigation with other cops or federal agencies in Tennessee.
Laredo showed him how naïve he’d been. There was no more competitive environment than the border, where state, local, and federal law enforcement agencies were all vying for the same targets. There was only so much government money to go around, and arresting a high-level cartel operative would mean a promotion and more funding from Washington. So the stakes were high.
Every agency had its sights on Miguel and Omar. But no one was looking at José. Lawson knew it was only a matter of time. He’d been working the investigation for three months, and sooner or later they’d need to pull in another agency to get a federal prosecutor to sign on to the case. The logical choice was the DEA, which had the largest presence in Mexico and could help them make the connection between Miguel’s cocaine business and the horses in the States.
Lawson had gotten to know a DEA special agent upstairs. Over beers, Jeff Hathaway was aggressive in his attitude and his opinions about how cases should be handled. He’d been at the border a couple of years already, and to Lawson he sounded like an experienced veteran from the front line of the drug war. But Hodge had warned him to be careful. Any investigation that had a nexus with drug trafficking, the DEA wouldn’t hesitate to claim for itself. There were only two things that could persuade the DEA to share an investigation, especially with the FBI, which it would view as treading on its territory, and those were wiretaps and an ironclad source, Hodge said. Lawson didn’t have the wires, which would make him dispensable in their eyes, but he did have Tyler Graham. As long as the agreement between Graham and the FBI held, he had something the DEA wanted.
With this in mind, he took the elevator upstairs. He considered Hathaway a friend, but he knew he had to be wary. Right off, he made a point of letting Hathaway know that he had a well-placed source inside José Treviño’s inner circle, but the source would only work with the FBI. So if the DEA was interested it would be a package deal. What Lawson had so far was a money laundering case, but they would have to prove that the money used to buy the horses in the States had come from the Zetas’ cocaine proceeds. And most of that evidence would be in Mexico, where the DEA had a much larger presence than the FBI.
Hathaway nodded and wrote a few things down in a notebook. He seemed open to the idea of a partnership. Lawson left the meeting feeling encouraged. But the good feeling didn’t last for long. A few days later, his boss, David Villarreal, summoned him and Hodge into his office, and by the look on his face they knew it wasn’t going to be good. “The DEA wants us to back off the case,” Villarreal said. “They’re working a case out of their Houston office and they’ve got their own source inside the horse operation already. So they want us to take a hike.”
Lawson let it settle in. He knew it couldn’t be Tyler Graham—there was no way. “Did they say who it was?”
“Are you kidding?” Villarreal said, running his hand through his hair as he sat back in his chair, contemplating their options.
“No way they’ve got a source like Tyler . . . You know it, Boss,” Hodge said, shaking his head. “They’re just pulling our strings.”
“I’ve already called Houston and set up a meeting,” Villarreal said. “They’re going to have to tell us to our faces if they want us to roll over on this case. I want to hear what they’ve got first.”