Chapter Thirty-Six
THE RAIN CAME down in sheets, hammering the slate rooftops and turning the cobblestones of Jackson Square into a slick, glistening mirror.
It was the kind of rain that made tourists duck into galleries and locals pull their hats low.
But Jarrett Stanton didn’t mind. He liked the rain in New Orleans.
It washed the city clean, or at least it tried to.
He sat alone at a corner table in Genevieve’s, a small café tucked just off the square.
The windows were open despite the storm, and the scent of chicory coffee mingled with the ozone tang of wet pavement.
If his table had been six inches nearer to the sill, the rain might have splashed into his cup.
Genevieve’s was a few blocks from the French Market, where he and Alma took the kids for ice cream treats on Saturdays.
Across the square, a jazz quintet played under a sagging awning, their brass instruments gleaming. The drummer tapped out a quick rhythm, unfazed by the weather. The band played on, dancing, moving, performing with gusto.
A man in a colorful shirt hurried over the bricks, anxious to get out of the downpour.
“Alvaro,” Stanton said, rising as the DEA agent shook water from his shoulders like a golden retriever coming out of a pond.
“Looking dapper as always, Jarrett,” Alvaro Mendez said, running his fingers along his two-day-old stubble.
His Hawaiian shirt was half-buttoned and speckled with water marks.
The chains that held the badge around his neck somewhere below the shirt were tangled in his chest hair.
He wore grungy Chuck Taylors and faded jeans.
Special Agent Alvaro Mendez reached into his back pocket and withdrew a brass case. At first, Stanton thought it was a flask. Mendez snapped it open. Cigars. He offered Stanton a stogie.
Stanton waved it off.
“Really?” Mendez said, surprised. “It’s a Cuban.”
“Perk of the job?”
“Straight from Havana.”
Mendez struck a match against a book from a bar in Juárez. The logo, a jaguar lounging in a tree. Puma Club.
It took the DEA agent three matches to get the cigar lit. The breeze off the square kept breaking the flame.
As in the rest of the country, smoking was prohibited inside restaurants, but the Big Easy was just that, lax on rules. The waitress said nothing as she took their orders—Mendez, a double cheeseburger; Stanton, a garden salad.
“I appreciate you meeting in the Quarter,” Mendez said, puffing smoke toward the slowly turning ceiling fans. “I got in late.”
“Mexico?”
A shrug.
Stanton knew better than to push. DEA agents lived in shadows and sometimes they forgot how to step into the light.
“Have you seen the local news?” Stanton asked after a sip of water.
Mendez puffed and blew. “What story?”
Stanton pulled out his phone and opened the Picayune article. The latest headline showed the Staub home wrapped in yellow tape. The headline: GARDEN DISTRICT RESIDENTS SHOCKED BY DRUG VIOLENCE.
“A month ago,” Stanton began, “a kid named Connor Staub OD’d in the Ninth. NOPD found bricks of heroin in his trunk. Now, a few nights ago, his mother, Leigh Ann Staub, a charge nurse at Tulane, was murdered in her home. Garden District. Four Latin males found dead at the scene.”
Mendez read the article, cigar clenched in his teeth, his eyes narrowing. When he finished, he stubbed the cigar out in a spoon with a sharp twist, preserving three-quarters of it for later.
“A turf war between Sinaloa and Jalisco? In the Garden District?”
“Maybe.”
Mendez snorted. “The article plays into Isaacson’s hands.”
“The DA favors that narrative,” Stanton agreed. “I’m sure you can imagine why.”
“It’s bullshit. There’s no cartel activity in town. I’d know.”
Stanton paused and looked at the rain, thinking.
“The cartels have been cooking Chinese fentanyl into opioids and smuggling them in through Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California,” Stanton said. “We are not that far removed.”
“There has been a huge crackdown on fentanyl. Deaths nationwide are down.”
“Fentanyl deaths are down but overdose deaths overall are not. Something new is coming in to take its place.”
“There’s always something new,” Mendez said. “Keeps us in business.”
“Bureau is getting reports on a drug called Snowball. Could be coming in from the cartels.”
“We aren’t seeing anything like that in this district.”
“No one from the DA’s office reached out to you about this cartel angle?”
“Not to me, but I’ll ask around. Fuckin’ politics. It’s not about compromise. It’s about blame and division. Fuck these people.”
The waitress returned with their food. Genevieve’s was quick, which was one of the reasons Stanton had chosen it. Between his official responsibilities as ASAC and this investigation into cartels operating in New Orleans, he was short on time.
The DEA man wrapped the dead cigar remnants in a napkin and popped it back in the brassy case before attacking his burger.
They ate in silence for a minute. The rain drummed steadily on the awning over the open windows. The jazz band played on, hitting the standards when a knot of tourists showed up with umbrellas.
“Oh when the saints… Go marching in…”
“There’s more,” Stanton said, dabbing his mouth with a napkin. “Not in the papers yet, but it will be.”
Mendez looked up from his meal.
“Another hit,” Stanton continued. “Ninth Ward. West end. Abandoned home over by the old levee.”
“Those bangers can’t go a day without killing each other. Usually low-level street stuff. Meth.”
“This was different. Two dead NOPD officers. An officer named Tim Rayne and a rookie named Keith Hendrick. They were both COPE unit patrolmen, but here is where it gets odd—Officer Rayne was the responding officer to the Staub kid’s OD.”
Mendez paused and dropped a fry back on his plate. “How were they hit?”
“Waiting on the ballistics.”
“The dealers in that area tend to move around those houses a lot, staying nomadic. Does NOPD have a line on them?”
“That’s the question,” Stanton said. “For now, we are keeping Bureau interest as quiet as we can.”
“Who’s read in?” Mendez asked.
“Agent Jennifer Jimenez.”
“J.J. She’s solid,” Mendez said, going back to his fries.
“The investigating detective, Gormley, hasn’t shared much. Agent Jimenez tracked down the CSI techs who worked the scene. They told her something noteworthy.”
“What’s that?”
“They think the scene had been cleaned up.”
“Cleaned up?”
“Yeah, either two wounded individuals left the scene, or someone removed two dead bodies; one from outside and another from the base of the stairs inside.”
“Now, why would someone remove two bodies but leave two dead cops?”
“That’s what I’m asking you.”
Mendez set the burger down.
“Weird shit happens around here all the time, Jarrett. You know that.”
“Yeah, I do. But this time, that ‘weird shit’ is being manipulated to fall back on the Bureau and DEA.”
Mendez pushed his plate to the side and leaned back. He might play the burned-out fed, but his mind was razor sharp.
“So, the story’s going to be that the drug war’s escalating,” he said. “The media will make it sound like New Orleans is the new Medellín because the feds aren’t doing their job. That’s Isaacson’s play.”
“It seems so,” Stanton said. “But here’s the thing: though it’s a convenient narrative for her, it doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”
“At the Staub house, the four Latinos working on the mother get iced by someone with sharp pistol skills,” Mendez said, walking it through in his mind. “Similar MO to what goes down a few nights later in the Ninth. Dealers, users, cops, and an unknown party crasher who doesn’t leave witnesses.”
“That’s the thing, we do have a witness.”
“Yeah?”
“No one saw anything the night of the murders.”
“Let me guess: J.J. presses.”
“She pounded the pavement, knocked on doors, and tracked down a junkie who claims to have been in the trap house. Girl. Seventeen. High as a kite.”
“Strong witness,” Mendez said, his tone thick with sarcasm.
“She’s not credible enough for a jury, but she saw something. She was crashing when Jimenez found her and called EMS. Paramedics gave her naloxone in the ambulance. Probably saved her life. J.J. interviewed her in the hospital.”
“Does NOPD know about her yet?”
“Not yet. It looks like she wandered into a neighboring house and collapsed in a drug-induced haze until Agent Jimenez found her.”
“If this girl is telling the truth.”
“That’s right, but she did say something, well, different…”
“What?”
“She said the shooter looked like a cyclops. One eye. Killed everyone with, in her words, ‘a gun that made no sounds.’ ”
Mendez raised an eyebrow.
“A cyclops with a silencer?”
“Yeah.”
Stanton pulled a folder from his bag and slid it across the table.
“Best sketch artist in the district,” he said.
Mendez studied the pencil sketch, looking at a man in a tactical helmet, a monocular night vision device over one eye, and a long-barreled rifle.
He let out a low whistle.
“Helmet. Mono NOD. Suppressor. Looks like something out of a fucking Clancy novel.”
“What do you think?” Stanton asked.
“I can see why you have questions.”
“Sicario? Some sort of contractor? He looks military.”
“We have reports of former U.S. mil selling their training to the cartels for top dollar.”
“We’ve seen those too, but this feels different.”
“Feels? Jarrett, you’re not going soft on me, are you? What about your data?”
“Try this on for size: A few days ago, a guy walked into the federal building, looking to talk to the DEA. When he was given the appropriate forms to fill out for a contact, he got spooked. Bolted. The U.S. marshal on desk duty said he drove off in a blue VW camper van.”
“Sicarios don’t drive VW buses. And they don’t ask to talk to the DEA. Who was he looking for?”
“Javier Gonzalez. You know him?”
“Gonzo? Yeah, I know him. Hasn’t worked Cajun Country for a few years. Not sure where he is now, but I can find out. Did some interagency time back in the day.”
“What kind of interagency work?” Stanton asked.
“The CIA type. In Afghanistan.”
“No shit?”
“No shit, Jarrett. That’s not unusual. You Bureau guys did a lot of that too.”
Stanton lowered his voice.
“Do you know what Leigh Ann Staub’s husband did for a living?”
“I have a feeling you are going to tell me.”
“Former SEAL who worked for the CIA.”
“Now it’s my turn: No shit?”
“No shit.”
“Where’s he now?”
“Lafayette Cemetery No. 1. Killed in Afghanistan.”
“I’m not as smart as you Bureau guys, but I’d say that constitutes a clue.”
“Agreed.”
“You got video of this DEA visitor from the Federal Building?”
“Yes, but it’s not great. Back of his head. He wore a hat. We know he’s white, bearded, with long blond hair.”
“There’s something else, isn’t there?”
“There is. NOPD has a statement from a Staub neighbor saying they saw someone matching that description in the area the night of the murder.”
“And?”
“And we have Ring doorbell footage of a VW van parked a few blocks down arriving before the first calls came in and leaving before the cops arrived. Too far away for facial recognition.”
Mendez leaned back and interlaced his massive fingers behind his head.
“Is this where you tell me you don’t believe in coincidences?”
“I do believe in coincidences. I see them all the time.”
“And the dead cops? What were they doing there?”
“Department is hailing them as heroes. Rushing into a violent scene. Could be. We don’t know.”
“Somebody knows.”
“Somebody always knows.”
“And in this case, that ‘someone’ is skilled in the art of snatching souls.”
“It would appear so.”
“I need another burger. What’s your theory?”
Instead of answering right away, Stanton tapped his foot to the beat. The tourists were clapping. Stanton liked tourists. They were a sign the city was healthy.
“Do cartels ever hire people on this side of the border? Hitters?”
“They might. They’re very results-oriented, but they tend to keep that kind of talent in-house.”
“I see,” Stanton said.
“My gut is that there’s no cartel war here in New Orleans.
Nothing’s come out of Venezuela since January.
We’ve got the Gulf locked down. Coast Guard, DHS, and the Texas border’s tighter than it’s been in a long time.
We’re shutting down fentanyl and precursor labs internationally.
Now, if we were in El Paso or Brownsville, maybe I could see a cartel war shaking out, but here?
” He shook his head. “This is Isaacson trying to shift blame so she can keep her hands clean on the way to the governor’s mansion in Baton Rouge. ”
Stanton knew that Mendez had run ops in Mexico and countries farther south for years. If the man said there was no spillover, then he was inclined to believe him.
“There is something, though,” Mendez said.
“What is it?”
“You buying lunch?”
Stanton nodded.
“We have someone on the inside, so high even I don’t know their identity.”
“A CI in the cartel?” Stanton asked, using the acronym for “confidential informant.”
“I don’t know, but I have my suspicions. My point is, I can file a query through HQ. With moms, kids, and cops dying in New Orleans, they just might tap him for information. We would at least know if what is happening here has a Mexican cartel connection. No promises but I can give it a shot.”
“Thanks, buddy.”
“Can I keep this?” Mendez asked, holding up the cyclops sketch.
“Yeah.”
“And Jarrett, be careful. I know I don’t need to tell you this, but these people don’t fuck around.”
Stanton stood and dropped three twenties on the table.
“Get that second burger and do me a favor; you hear anything about that van, give me a call.”
“Because you want to talk to your man before NOPD?”
“I have a feeling that if NOPD finds him first, we’ll never get the chance.”
Stanton buttoned his jacket and stepped back into the rain, his mind cycling through data as the jazz band continued to play, their notes rising above the gurgling gutters and the applause of tourists.