came up, you know, to shut them down.”
“But then, why the whole torture scene?” O’Brien asked. “These guys are brutal, but they’re not stupid. They really don’t do crimes of passion. They kill for business reasons. If they just wanted to shut Brooks down, they could have come up here, shot Brooks on the street, and gone back home. You guys would be scratching your heads. Nobody would even suspect anything other than a robbery…. Now, you’re gonna be chasing Mexicans all over town. The DEA gets involved, the Justice Department calls up the Mexican government, and they get more pressure put on them…. They’re not impervious to pressure, you know. They don’t want a battalion of Federales up their ass that might have gone up somebody else’s ass.”
T HEY ALL thought about that for a minute, then Lucas asked O’Brien, “You’re not really here to catch the killers, are you?”
“We’d certainly like to,” O’Brien said. There was a tentative note in his voice.
“But basically, you’re here to see if you can find a way to mess with the business,” Lucas said. “From that perspective, the guys who did the actual killing are probably small potatoes. You’rehere to look at the books, not to track somebody down in Minneapolis.”
O’Brien nodded. “Yeah. That’s pretty much the case. We’re not equipped to go chasing after individual murderers. We want to bust up their
system
. We’d like to find the cash that Brooks stole, and take it away from them. That’ll amount to a bunch of legal writs, freezing bank accounts somewhere. The street stuff—that’s you guys.”
T HE BCA guys all glanced at each other, and Shaffer said, “Well, that’s clear enough. We’ll be glad to cooperate on that.”
Lucas asked a few more questions, the most critical one, for his immediate future, being “Can these guys pass as Americans?”
O’Brien said, “Probably not. In the border states, their retailers are mostly Hispanic, recruited out of the prison system in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Some of them are native English speakers, grew up in Los Angeles or Phoenix. Some of them hardly speak a word of English, and settle down in the barrios in LA. Up north, here, they use a lot of Anglo prison gangs—just a straight money deal. But their gunmen, their hit men, they almost all come from Mexico. They grow up with the gangs.”
“So the guys we’re looking for, they’re probably Mexican.”
O’Brien nodded. “Yeah. If we’ve got this right. If it’s not some kind of … French connection.”
They talked around for a while, and then Shaffer said he’d put all the accountants together after the DEA agents walked through the murder scene.
L UCAS WENT back to his office and found a call from Billy Andrews, the St. Paul cop, who said they’d located the guy who knew about bad Mexicans in town. Lucas called Del, who was still in the building, and recruited him to go along for the ride.
Before he left, he called Virgil Flowers, an agent who worked southern Minnesota, and told him about the horse shit clue to the ATM robbers.
“Sounds like it’s right up my alley,” Flowers said. “Horseshit.”
“I’ve been told that we could call around to county agents to see if they might know about riding stables, and who’d have hired hands as cleanup people … or some such. I’d do it myself, but now I’m all tangled up in this Wayzata murder. We’re talking Mexican drug killers.”
“Lot more eye-catching than horse shit,” Flowers observed.
“Well, I’m a lot more important than you are,” Lucas said. “So…”
“I’ll do it, but I’m working on the Partridge Plastics thing, so there’ll be extra hours involved,” Flowers said. “If I get them, I’ll want to work a little undertime in the next couple of weeks.”
“Just locate them,” Lucas said. “You don’t have to
get
them. I want to be there for the
get
. We can talk about the undertime … if you
“But then, why the whole torture scene?” O’Brien asked. “These guys are brutal, but they’re not stupid. They really don’t do crimes of passion. They kill for business reasons. If they just wanted to shut Brooks down, they could have come up here, shot Brooks on the street, and gone back home. You guys would be scratching your heads. Nobody would even suspect anything other than a robbery…. Now, you’re gonna be chasing Mexicans all over town. The DEA gets involved, the Justice Department calls up the Mexican government, and they get more pressure put on them…. They’re not impervious to pressure, you know. They don’t want a battalion of Federales up their ass that might have gone up somebody else’s ass.”
T HEY ALL thought about that for a minute, then Lucas asked O’Brien, “You’re not really here to catch the killers, are you?”
“We’d certainly like to,” O’Brien said. There was a tentative note in his voice.
“But basically, you’re here to see if you can find a way to mess with the business,” Lucas said. “From that perspective, the guys who did the actual killing are probably small potatoes. You’rehere to look at the books, not to track somebody down in Minneapolis.”
O’Brien nodded. “Yeah. That’s pretty much the case. We’re not equipped to go chasing after individual murderers. We want to bust up their
system
. We’d like to find the cash that Brooks stole, and take it away from them. That’ll amount to a bunch of legal writs, freezing bank accounts somewhere. The street stuff—that’s you guys.”
T HE BCA guys all glanced at each other, and Shaffer said, “Well, that’s clear enough. We’ll be glad to cooperate on that.”
Lucas asked a few more questions, the most critical one, for his immediate future, being “Can these guys pass as Americans?”
O’Brien said, “Probably not. In the border states, their retailers are mostly Hispanic, recruited out of the prison system in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Some of them are native English speakers, grew up in Los Angeles or Phoenix. Some of them hardly speak a word of English, and settle down in the barrios in LA. Up north, here, they use a lot of Anglo prison gangs—just a straight money deal. But their gunmen, their hit men, they almost all come from Mexico. They grow up with the gangs.”
“So the guys we’re looking for, they’re probably Mexican.”
O’Brien nodded. “Yeah. If we’ve got this right. If it’s not some kind of … French connection.”
They talked around for a while, and then Shaffer said he’d put all the accountants together after the DEA agents walked through the murder scene.
L UCAS WENT back to his office and found a call from Billy Andrews, the St. Paul cop, who said they’d located the guy who knew about bad Mexicans in town. Lucas called Del, who was still in the building, and recruited him to go along for the ride.
Before he left, he called Virgil Flowers, an agent who worked southern Minnesota, and told him about the horse shit clue to the ATM robbers.
“Sounds like it’s right up my alley,” Flowers said. “Horseshit.”
“I’ve been told that we could call around to county agents to see if they might know about riding stables, and who’d have hired hands as cleanup people … or some such. I’d do it myself, but now I’m all tangled up in this Wayzata murder. We’re talking Mexican drug killers.”
“Lot more eye-catching than horse shit,” Flowers observed.
“Well, I’m a lot more important than you are,” Lucas said. “So…”
“I’ll do it, but I’m working on the Partridge Plastics thing, so there’ll be extra hours involved,” Flowers said. “If I get them, I’ll want to work a little undertime in the next couple of weeks.”
“Just locate them,” Lucas said. “You don’t have to
get
them. I want to be there for the
get
. We can talk about the undertime … if you
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