“Did he know anything about the explosion?”
“No, he said they bound Joe in the back of the van, drove to a certain parking lot, and then left the vehicle with Joe inside, as instructed. He doesn’t know what happened to him after they all walked away.”
“You believe him?”
“Sí. Like I said, amigo, we squeezed him. Believe me, he had no secrets left when we were done with him.”
I figured squeezed him meant a good beating. Out of necessity, I imagined they might do law enforcement a little different south of the border.
“If this was truly a CNI effort, Raul, why would Perez hire out local thugs?”
“They do it all the time. Deniability. If things go wrong, there’s nothing that leads back to them. The guy we brought in had no idea who he was or that he was an agent of the CNI. To him, he was just a rich guy.”
With both the CNI and the CIA somehow involved in this deal, I again wondered if Joe had been part of some kind of international intelligence operation that had put him in a crisis situation. Could the $50 million have actually been stolen from the Mexican government instead of a drug cartel?
“Have you been able to pick up any other noise about CNI involvement?” I asked Raul. “Outside of Antonio Perez?”
“No, not yet. I have a couple of connections with the CNI. But neither of them was able to give me any insider info about this. They know nothing. One of my contacts—my sister’s brother-in-law—was going to look deeper into it for me. But I do have some other trouble on my end.”
“What’s that?”
“My boss just ordered me to drop this whole thing. He actually threatened to fire me if I didn’t let this thing go and get back to work on other cases.”
“Damn, Raul, I’m sorry. What are you going to do?”
“Disobey that order and press forward. I made a vow to God and my city to uphold my duties as an officer of the law. I’ll just have to be very careful, amigo.”
“I’m glad to hear you say that. I’d be lost on this thing without you. Do you think there’s any chance Perez could be acting independently from the CNI?”
“I thought about that, too. But I can’t find any real reason for it. Perez doesn’t need the money. His uncle is a super-wealthy businessman down in Mexico City.”
This caught my attention. “Who’s his uncle?”
“Miguel Cortez. He’s head of a company called Grande Distributors.”
THIRTY-TWO
I felt so distracted as I got dressed in a black suit in our master bathroom and prepared to head over to Joe’s funeral service at the church. I kept trying to map out in my mind how all this might be connected. But there were still so many unresolved questions. Antonio Perez, a CNI agent, was the nephew of Miguel Cortez, the head of Grande Distributors. Through my online searching, I learned that Cortez was the son of the businessman who was brutally murdered in El Paso thirty-five years ago, only two weeks after the mysterious plane crash that supposedly killed Joe and his father. Fifty million dollars had possibly been stolen. Maybe this whole thing wasn’t a Mexican intelligence operation—maybe it was personal. But then why the hell was the CIA involved? Al Del Luca had been at that meeting with Joe at the Hay-Adams hotel in DC. I’d found nothing else on the man that said his participation was on a personal level. From what all I could gather from online searching, Al Del Luca went to the University of Pennsylvania, where he was on the wrestling team. He was not with Joe, Greta, and Ethan at SMU. So what was the connection?
I sighed and shook my head, which was really starting to hurt from trying to keep all this information straight. And now I needed to somehow put all this out of my mind for a couple of hours while my family properly mourned together.
“You okay?” Taylor asked me.
She stood in the doorway of our bathroom, all set and ready to go, wearing a simple black dress and black heels. Even though there was a clear sadness behind her eyes, I thought she looked beautiful.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Why?”
“You just seem . . . distant.”
“Sorry. I just want to say the right things up there today and really honor your dad. It’s got me a bit preoccupied.”
That part was true. I had agreed to speak today at the service. And I hadn’t given myself much time to prepare anything. I’d started making notes only this morning.
“I’m sure you’ll do great,” Taylor said. “You always say the right things.”