Chapter 10
TEN
Belinda Weck split her gaze between the three whiteboards set up at the front of the ops room, as if she hadn’t already memorized their contents days ago.
Oates’ voice came from the speakerphone on the table behind her. “Where are we at?”
She folded her arms and drummed her fingers against her biceps. “Well, we finally have our witness. A young man who was at the party and who saw Monaghan there.”
Oates waited for her to continue, but she could hear the skepticism in his pause.
She exhaled through her nose. “Admittedly, he was fairly intoxicated at the time. But he told detectives he’d been standing in the backyard, smoking weed with some of his friends. He saw Monaghan leave the house and head for Castano’s trailer.”
She paused, sensing Oates sitting up a little straighter in his chair.
“And he wasn’t alone,” she went on. “He was with a young blond woman. Heavily intoxicated.”
“So…his girlfriend?”
Belinda made a skeptical sound. “From what I’ve gathered, Monaghan wasn’t exactly the girlfriend type. But whoever she was, they arrived at the party together, then, at some point, made their way out to Castano’s trailer. The witness said they heard several gunshots sometime later.”
“So that was the cause of death?”
Belinda nodded, even though the AUSA couldn’t see her. “Two bullets to the head. Close range.”
“Execution style.”
Belinda made a sound in the affirmative.
“Hmm,” Rigg said. “So, I’m guessing Castano didn’t take kindly to trespassers.”
Belinda didn’t respond. It was the same conclusion she’d drawn.
Rigg said, “Have we found Blondie yet?”
She caught the missing but implied part of that sentence: have we found Blondie’s body yet? “No. We do have the security footage from earlier in the night of her leaving the club with Monaghan. But it’s black and white and grainy as hell.”
“Can they clean it up and run facial rec?”
“They’re trying.”
Another long pause down the line.
“And do we know why Monaghan was at the house party in the first place? Was it to buy drugs?”
“Probably,” she said, “he might have gone there to pick up some weed, a little coke. Maybe some pills. He had a couple of priors for possession, but it doesn’t look like he was dealing in a big way.
What he did have was a lengthy list of sexual assault charges leveled against him, going back a decade.
Two attempted rapes, one rape, and an indecent assault.
None of them made it to trial, but there’s a pattern there. ”
“Hmm,” Oates said again. “Maybe not such a great loss to humanity, then. Catchy Bee Gees covers notwithstanding.”
Neither of them spoke for a minute, having exhausted their evidence and theories. Finally, Oates said, “So, now what?”
Belinda uncrossed her arms and blew out a breath.
“What now is that I’m desperately fending off CPD.
They have their body, their ID, their ballistics and their witness.
All the probable cause they need. They’re champing at the bit to get a warrant and raid Castano’s trailer.
And if they find their murder weapon, that will be that. ”
Daniel Castano would be in police custody, staring down the barrel of a life sentence for murder. And the case that they had been working for the past eighteen months would be in tatters. A case that they hoped would net a much bigger fish than Daniel Castano.
She looked across at the two other whiteboards facing the table in their operations room.
Both were also covered with taped photos, but these had been placed in a much more deliberate order.
The one nearest her had the words LA MANO NEGRA—CHICAGO scrawled in her own untidy handwriting at the top.
Below it, they’d laid out the gang’s hierarchy, as far as they knew it.
Daniel Castano’s mugshot was there, as well as ones of Paquito Vasquez, Che Cardenas and Milo Bidois.
About ten others joined their names at various levels of their criminal family tree.
And at the very top, beside the scrawled acronym “CPOT”, was the frankly terrifying visage of Terry “La Arana” Bidois.
The other whiteboard showed the wider criminal enterprise, extending from La Mano Negra in Chicago to the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico.
It represented the pipeline of heroin that ran from the poppy fields of the Sierra Madre Occidental, under the border at El Paso, then spread like veins on the back of a hand across the East Coast and Midwest.
There were a lot of holes in that hierarchy, a lot of black silhouettes standing in for photos and initials substituting proper names.
Some were just big hand-drawn question marks.
They’d tentatively placed the names of the Russian Sokolov brothers in Philadelphia in the far-left corner.
But the biggest question mark had been reserved for the identity of the one they called “El Merc”.
He was the one who got the product over the border and into the hands of the likes of Castano.
And all this work, all this combined intel from their multi-agency task force, would be for nothing if the Chicago Police Department went wading in with their dirty boots and took down Castano.
He was the only piece on this board that Belinda believed she could get through to.
The only one who had lost enough to know he didn’t want to lose any more.
Castano’s life story was a cautionary tale if ever she’d heard one.
A story in which he was both the villain and the victim.
The problem, and—potentially—the solution.
“You want me to make a call?” Oates said. “Tell CPD to back off?”
She pictured him sitting in his brand new, plushly furnished office, in his thousand-dollar suit. The Justice Department considered Oates a rising star, and he could probably accomplish much with one phone call.
But Belinda was the one in the trenches with this case. If anyone was going to be making any calls, it would be her.
“They’re backing off,” she said. “For now.”
“So, what’s our next move?”
She put her hands on her hips. “Daniel Castano has a brother. Sebastián. Sixteen. Undocumented. Works at a Mexican restaurant in Little Village.”
“Yeah. And?”
She turned back to the whiteboard in front of her and its gruesome scrapbook of the man once known as Floyd Monaghan. “And strangely enough, I’ve got a sudden hankering for Mexican food.”
* * *
Martín Tostá looked down at the business card the woman was holding out. He didn’t take it. “I have got nothing to say to you.”
The woman, who was Black with cropped graying hair and a crumpled shirt, pointed at the logo on the top of the card. “You see what it says there? D-E-A. Not I-C-E.”
Martín gave her a chilly look. “I can read.”
The woman titled her head at him. “What I mean, Mr. Tostá, is that I am not here to poke around into anyone’s immigration status. It’s not my job.”
He folded his arms over his apron. “I am a legal resident of this country.”
The woman gave him a tight smile. “But one of your employees isn’t.”
Martín involuntarily cast his eyes toward the ceiling where Sebastián’s room was. He chewed the inside of his cheek but said nothing.
The woman followed his gaze upward. “Mr. Tostá, I am aware of Sebastián Castano’s legal status. Or lack thereof. I also know you gave him a job when few others would have. And that you let him live up there for almost nothing.”
Martín said nothing for a long moment. Everything the woman had said so far was true.
A year ago, Daniel Castano had sidled into his restaurant, his teenage brother in tow.
Martín had eyed the gang ink on the elder’s hands and had edged closer to the baseball bat he kept on a ledge under the till.
La Mano Negra gang members were a common sight on the streets of La Villita, and their bad blood with rival gangs often spilled over as actual blood on those same streets.
Martín had no affiliations with any gang, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t ready for trouble when it presented itself.
But Daniel had not been there to cause trouble. Not that day, anyway. He’d asked Martín to take his brother on, to give him a job and a place to stay. Martín had agreed, if only to make sure that none of that gang ink, or blood, made its way onto the younger boy’s hands.
He raised his chin at the woman. “Sebastián is a good kid. He works hard. He stays out of trouble.”
The woman nodded. “And I’m guessing you want to make sure he continues to stay out of trouble, correct?”
Martín sniffed and looked out at the busy restaurant floor. “I thought you just said you weren’t interested in making problems for him?”
“Oh, I’m not here for him. I’m here for big brother.”
Martín felt his lip curl. Obviously, Daniel was the reason for her visit. That guy was bad news from head to toe. “You want to deport Daniel, you go right ahead. Don’t let me stop you.”
The woman smiled. It didn’t reach her eyes. “Like I said, I’m not here to deport anyone. I just want information.”
“What kind of information?”
“I want to know everything you can tell me about Daniel Castano. His movements. His girlfriends. I want to know if he so much as grows a goatee or buys new sneakers.”
She was still holding out the card. He fidgeted with his apron but still didn’t take it.
She said, “If you help me out with that, I can help Sebastián out.”
“How?”
“I can get him his Form I-551.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “I thought you said you weren’t immigration.”
The woman didn’t blink. “I work for the government, Mr. Tostá. There are certain strings I can pull when the situation requires it.”
Martín stared at the card. He thought about all the things Sebastián could do if he could become an American citizen.
He’d be able to travel freely. Get his driver’s license.
Qualify for financial aid so he could attend college.
Go to the doctor. Report a crime to the police.
Just walk down the street without fear of someone asking to see ID.
She seemed to grow tired of holding out the card and placed it on the counter beside the register. “Think about it.” She picked up the plastic bag of carnitas she’d ordered. “Then call me. Anytime. Day or night.”
Martín watched as the woman left his restaurant. He glanced behind him toward the kitchen door. Then slipped the card into the pocket of his apron.