Chapter Fifty-Two
THE DEA FIELD Office in New Orleans was a squat, windowless bunker tucked behind a chain-link fence off Tulane Avenue.
It reminded Jarrett Stanton of the FBI’s district headquarters on Lake Pontchartrain.
It had the same brutalist architecture and the same institutional gray, but the vibe was different.
The agents here looked like they had crawled out from under a bridge.
Stanton clocked one after another, each with a badge swinging from a lanyard and a wardrobe that suggested they shopped at thrift shops.
He followed Alvaro Mendez’s administrative assistant down a narrow hallway lined with corkboards and wanted posters. Jennifer Jimenez was close behind, her heels clicking softly on the linoleum, a sound unusual enough in this building that several heads turned as she walked past.
They were led into a small conference room with a chipped laminate table and mismatched chairs. At the FBI, this kind of setup would have been replaced years ago.
Mendez was already waiting, cowboy boots crossed on a neighboring chair, a garish ceramic coffee mug in one hand and a cheap Naugahyde portfolio case closed on the desk before him. He didn’t move until J.J. entered the room. Then he popped up like a jack-in-the-box, smile wide, hand extended.
Stanton suppressed a grin and took his seat.
“Can I get you guys coffee? Water?” Mendez offered.
“I’m good,” Stanton said.
“J.J.?”
“I’m fine, thank you.”
“You make any progress on your mystery man?” Mendez asked, settling back into his chair and taking a sip of coffee. “What did the witness call him? Cyclops?”
Stanton slid a folder from his bag and opened it to a grainy black-and- white still from a security camera. The image showed the back of a man’s head as he exited the Federal Building.
“As a matter of fact, we did. Here he is at the Federal Building.”
Mendez leaned forward, squinting. “Can’t make out his face in these photos.”
“We interviewed the U.S. marshal who interacted with him,” J.J.
replied. “The man refused to fill out the ID forms and bolted. The marshal remembered his vehicle, a VW van. A witness near the Staub home said the van was parked a block away. Another witness at the hit on the drug house in the Ninth gave us the sketch you saw.”
“That still doesn’t make him your Cyclops,” Mendez said.
“No,” Stanton replied. “For that, I had to make a trip up to D.C.”
The DEA agent raised an eyebrow. “Oh yeah? Bureau database? Far as I can tell from this, your man is looking away. Not enough for facial recognition.”
“I didn’t tap the Bureau. I tapped the spooks.”
Mendez sat up straighter, coffee mug forgotten. “What’s this guy have to do with the Agency? And, for that matter, this agency?”
“His name is Chris Walker,” Stanton said. “Twelve years as a Navy SEAL before transitioning to the Special Activities Center’s Ground Branch. Served in Afghanistan. Picked up where he left off in the Teams.”
“And the CIA just handed you that info?”
“I know a guy,” Stanton said. “We worked counterterror together after the New Year’s attack. I handled domestic leads. He handled international.”
“The Agency isn’t known for playing well with others,” Mendez pointed out.
“We’re not always arm-in-arm, but a lot of the pre-9/11 barriers have come down.”
Mendez nodded slowly, lips pursed. “How can I help?”
Stanton glanced at J.J., who picked up the thread.
“Walker was at the Federal Building looking for a DEA contact. When presented with the standard forms to identify himself, he bolted. Now that we know more about his background, we looked up his known associates, specifically people he would have known in Afghanistan.”
“One of them is John Staub, husband of the woman killed in the Garden District,” Stanton said.
“Leigh Ann Staub was a charge nurse at Tulane. Her kid was found OD’d, heroin in the trunk,” Mendez said, recalling his earlier conversation with Stanton. “What’s that have to do with your sicario?”
“Chris Walker, our possible sicario, was tight with John Staub,” Stanton said.
“You saying the son was mixed up in some shit and now rival dealers are using Walker to eliminate the competition?”
“It’s a possibility,” J.J. said.
She opened her folder and produced a page of names. “We cross-referenced associates in Afghanistan with federal agents who served with Walker and Staub. One was DEA, who also worked New Orleans. Javier Gonzalez. We’d like to talk to him.”
Mendez swiveled in his chair, staring at the tabletop.
“We know Walker had a connection to Leigh Ann Staub through her husband,” Stanton said. “We also know he had a connection to Javier Gonzalez. We suspect Walker is now working for the cartels as a contractor.”
“You’re going to buy the DA-NOPD narrative?”
“We are just following the evidence,” J.J. countered.
“Other theories as to why Walker is in town?”
“Maybe a cartel hired him to hit Gonzalez next. Regardless, we need to talk to him,” J.J. said.
“That’s going to be tough.”
“Why’s that?” Stanton asked.
“Because Gonzo was killed yesterday afternoon in Mexico.”
Stanton and J.J. shared a glance.
“When Jarrett told me your guy was looking for Gonzo, I made a few calls. I kept hitting brick walls, which told me he was undercover so I let it go. Our SAC called me in this morning and briefed me up. I had no idea Gonzo was even in Mexico. He was in deep. A farmer found him dead in a field, his throat slashed, tongue cut out. I’m going down tomorrow to escort his body home. ”
“I’m sorry,” Stanton said.
Mendez retrieved three lukewarm water bottles from a stack on a side table. He offered one to each agent, then cracked his own and drank.
“What else can you share?” Stanton asked.
The DEA agent tapped his fingers on the portfolio.
“I don’t know about your Cyclops guy, but I can tell you that Gonzo was chasing a lead in Mexico.”
“What lead?”
“You’ve been following the recent uptick in opioid deaths around the country, I’m sure. After years of progress, we’re seeing a reversal. Some of that’s going on here in Louisiana.”
“Yes,” J.J. said. “We’ve analyzed the statistics. Recent trend is well above standard deviation. A lot of the Bureau intelligence is linking it back to Snowball.”
“Well, if that’s the case, then they’re half-right. Some of it is Snowball,” Mendez replied. “But it’s the chemical agent inside Snowball that’s doing the killing. We think it’s getting cut into a ton of other pills: Adderall, Xanax, Valium. The stuff kids buy.”
“Isn’t that what happens with fentanyl?” J.J. asked.
“It is, but between DHS, DEA, and you guys, we’ve had material success degrading the fentanyl trade,” Mendez said.
“We worked upstream to Chinese labs, upped border detection, cracked down on the Mexican cartels. Then something took its place, a chemical compound known as nitazene. It’s an opioid derivative and it’s about five times as powerful as fentanyl. It’s a killer.”
“I don’t get it,” J.J. said. “Why would dealers use this stuff? Doesn’t it just kill off their clients?”
“Portability,” Mendez answered. “Because nitazene is so powerful, a little goes a long way and that makes smuggling easier. Dealers use it to juice up heroin or illegal prescriptions.”
“What’s the source?” Stanton asked.
“We don’t know. It’s an evolution of the drug trade.
Ninety percent of users survive and buy another day, but you never know.
The juiced-up versions mix with other drugs and body chemistry.
That ten percent, their hearts just stop.
We can’t figure out where the hell it’s coming from, other than the link to Snowball. ”
“Snowball is a nitazene?” Stanton asked. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“It is, but it’s diluted. The problem is that once Snowball is out there, dealers concentrate it. They boil it down and use acid to create a nitazene distillate. At least that’s what we think.”
“And Gonzalez was chasing this down?” J.J. asked. “Trying to get to the source?”
“That’s what I learned from my boss this morning. Mexico may be the country of origin for nitazene-based product like Snowball.”
“Can you trace it?” J.J. asked.
“Snowball just materialized all over the country, out of nowhere. We have yet to identify a single mule.”
“And that lead?”
Mendez hesitated. “Remember when I said there’s a CI in New Orleans who produces very good information who is way above my pay grade?”
“I remember,” Stanton said.
“He’s what we call a pearl.”
“A pearl?”
“As in valuable but clammed up.”
“I see.”
“And in this case that pearl may be buried. This particular pearl is run through senior layers at headquarters to protect his identity.”
“How do you know it’s a he?” J.J. asked.
“Good point,” Mendez acknowledged. “The pearl reported that Snowball was coming from the Jalisco cartel.”
“And Gonzalez was working it?”
“I really don’t know,” Mendez said.
“We have a lot of connections here,” Stanton said. “And they all seem to lead back to Chris Walker.”
“All I know,” Mendez replied, “is that the day your Cyclops showed up, a lot of people started dying.” He tapped the surveillance photo. “We need to find this guy. Chris Walker, he’s the key.”