Gun Work

“Do you have any idea what a hot pot it is down here? More journalists are gunned down in Latin America than in Iraq, man! There are fourteen hundred municipalities down here that don’t even have access to banks — that’s how backward things are. Meanwhile the United States is getting ready to exploit eighty percent of Mexico’s natural gas resources — and do you know what they’re paying with? Water. Access to water. Water from the United States, which also buys four-fifths of the petroleum here, and it’s all owned by two companies, Petroleos and Pemex, and guess who owns them? And it’s not just oil. It’s trucking contracts, guys buying tanker ships, drivers, loaders, storage, all of it heading for America, baby. Along with stuff like genetically contaminated corn, for which the environmental reports were shoveled under; poultry and processed eggs with phytosanitary problems, pesticide-infected cherries — all of which winds up as your chicken Caesar or in your Manhattan. A dozen wars are going on, between Mexican sugar and American fructose, between milk companies in Coahuila and Jalisco. Beer distribution here has been taken over by Heineken and Coors, and they paid over a billion dollars for the privilege: Tecate, Dos Equis, Carta Blanca and Bohemia — even the Sol we’ve been drinking. Yet guerillas blew up seven oil and natural gas pipelines last week; that’s hundreds of millions in lost production. The whole system down here is caving in on a daily basis. It’s Wild Wild West time for opportunists, and that’s where Felix Rainer’s dirty money comes into the picture.”

If Carl had been looking for an opportunity to unburden himself, he had definitely been pacing and rehearsing.

“When cellphones liberated common people — when they allowed people who had never seen phones to have phones, just like in China — the telecommunications companies flooded Latin America with networking technology. Down here, people kidnap each other for ransom. Up there, in the rarified air, executives are cutting each other’s throats over satellite placement but it’s just as gruesome. And every single company suffers skyrocketing costs, due to guess what? Security. The paranoia that keeps security a big issue is important, because that, too, translates as money.”

“Cellphones?” What the fuck was Carl talking about? This was not just babble to buy time, or misdirection. Carl sounded as though he was honestly losing his mind. “You need to start making some sense. Now.”

“Listen. Illegal systems hijack billions of call minutes per year. That’s just one of the ways Felix collects his pennies. And no matter how many Cayman Islands accounts you try to hide, the Feds will notice a huge pile of money sooner or later, and you’ve got to move it around. If you can’t launder all of it, you redistribute it.”

“So the ransom Felix supplied you with goes to the kidnappers, who aren’t really kidnappers, and trickles through into dozens of ancillary business interests down here, legal, illegal and ‘other.’”

“I’m not sure exactly how. I don’t know all the details. But the kidnappers are real. They have to be real.”

“Or no one will buy the kidnapping?”

“Nobody cares about little meat-market hostages. But if it is big-ticket enough, it’s going to attract businessmen the same as the drug trade. So, point two: the score has to be big.”

“Two million big.”

“And that’s just one grab. Felix knew a corrupt Captain in the Judicial Police down here, and made a few calls, and then a few trips.”

Barney could smell rotting strawberries, or maybe rotting psyche. The stench of gone-over bouquets in rancid gray water.

“So they set up high-priced kidnappings,” Barney said, “and Felix is able to transfer money from his legitimate accounts to ‘save’ his amigos — probably under a variety of names — and that frees up shelf space for his less-legitimate money?”

“Something like that.”

Barney briefly considered resigning from the human race, turning his back on the world, and perhaps leaving civilization for the maggots to consume. No wonder he felt like an isolationist. He tried to shuck off the weight that had settled onto his shoulders. “So how’s good old Felix making out with this scam?”

“Way too successful,” said Carl. “So successful, in fact, they’re thinking of diversifying out of Mexico. Grabbing their hostages in the States and smuggling them down here for ransom.”

The gargoyles had really taken over the cathedral. Maybe it wasn’t too late to find a red button and nuke the whole planet.

“Is the goddamned kidnapping real or not, Carl?”

“Yes and no.”

“Please don’t make me start hitting you.”

“It has to pass muster as a genuine kidnapping.