Murder at the Watergate (7 page)

“The direction this great country of ours takes in the coming years will demand leadership characterized by integrity, commitment to values and human rights, and creating an open and equal economic playing field on which everyone is free to compete. In addition, tomorrow’s leaders will be called upon to wield a strong hand with nations whose chosen course is in conflict with America’s aspirations.…”

“Don’t start,” Hedras mumbled to himself, recognizing that Aprile was about to deviate from the prepared text. He looked to where businessman Manuel Zegreda stood with other Mexican-American business leaders. Zegreda, slender and aristocratic in carriage, had a drink in hand, one eyebrow raised in editorial comment, lips set in a way that you could read as disdainful or approving. It was said Zegreda looked like the recently deceased Mexican movie star Luis Aguilar Manzo, which Hedras accepted although he’d never seen a picture of the actor. Maybe it was the debonair mustache, Hedras decided. Didn’t all Mexican actors have mustaches?

“… and we are part of the global economy, and that same level playing field I spoke of must apply internationally, too. I sometimes wonder whether—”

Secret Service agent Mike Swales pressed his fingertips against his earpiece to make sure he’d heard right. He immediately stepped to Aprile’s side at the podium and whispered something into the veep’s ear. Aprile’s face mirrored his sudden confusion.

“Now, sir,” Swales said.

“Thank you for coming,” Aprile said into the microphone. “Thank you very much.”

Two agents flanked Carole Aprile. One said, “We have to leave, Mrs. Aprile.”

“But—”

“
Now
, ma’am.”

Carole looked to Annabel, whose raised hands asked the obvious question. The agents led Carole to where her husband was being escorted from the ballroom. Agents formed a tight wall around them.

“Out of the way,” Swales barked as he briskly managed the Apriles’ escape from the ballroom, down the carpeted hall, to the reception area, through sliding doors, through the second set of doors, and to the waiting black bulletproof limousine flying the flag of the vice president of the United States of America.

While the vice president and his wife made their way rapidly through the Watergate Hotel’s lower entrance, a dozen people looked down at the lifeless body of Morin Garza. A security guard had discovered it on his rounds. The single bullet hole in the back of Garza’s head had opened a spigot through which his blood drained freely, creating a crimson circle that had soaked into the porous concrete.

“Who is he?”

“Don’t know. No ID. No wallet. Nothing.”

“Robbery?”

A shrug.

“Latino. What do you figure?”

“Central American, maybe. Who knows?”

“Whoever did it got up real close.”

“The VP’s upstairs.”

“Gone. Secret Service got him out of there.”

“Any of these cars belong to the deceased?”

“Don’t know. Checking them.”

“I heard there was some concern about a Mexican tonight. The VP. An assassination attempt. Maybe this was the guy.”

“If he was,” said a detective from the MPD who’d just arrived, “he sure got it wrong.”

“His name is Morin Garza. Forty-two years old. Married, two children. Lived in Mexico City. Was a union organizer for the Federation of Organizations of Non-Salaried Workers. Started with the Shoe Shiners’ Union, worked himself up. Last job was in the political wing of the union. Then again, the whole union is a political wing of the PRI.”

The briefing took place at eleven o’clock in a conference room on the seventh floor of the State Department, between Twenty-first and Twenty-third streets at C Street, NW, Foggy Bottom, one floor below the diplomatic reception rooms, where visiting heads of state were lavishly feted.

Gathered around a long teak table were seven members of State’s Latin American division. They’d been summoned to the meeting by phone the night before by the chief of the Mexican desk within that division, Craig Verplank, who gave the briefing.

“Garza was turned by a CIA source six months ago.
He started feeding information to us, which according to our sources was of minimal value. Still, he was considered worthwhile enough to be given protection. As far as we know, he—”

Verplank was interrupted by Herman Winkler: “How did we nail down identification on him so soon? He was killed only a little over twelve hours ago. As I understand it, there was no ID on his person. No wallet. Nothing.”

“He was expected.”

“Expected?”

“Yes. About a month ago, his handlers got wind he’d been identified by PRI officials as being untrustworthy. They got him out of Mexico to El Paso, closeted him there until they decided what to do with him. He knew a lot. Nothing especially important involving national security. More political. Corruption within the PRI, kickbacks, coercion, that sort of thing.”

“You said he was expected, Craig,” another at the table said. “Please explain.”

Verplank sighed. It was always a problem deciding how much to share with colleagues. Need-to-know dictated the decision, but within that time-honored parameter was considerable latitude.

The men he’d called to the meeting on that bright, sunny Sunday morning had all been involved, to a greater or lesser extent, with Mexico. But missing were his two top Mexico analysts, Ward Kramer and Richard de LaHoya, who were in Mexico conferring with embassy officials about the upcoming national elections, to take place in two weeks. Verplank had been on the phone with them numerous times throughout the night;
they’d been the ones who’d filled him in on Morin Garza’s background, their source CIA operatives based at the American embassy in Mexico City.

Verplank was a hard worker, pragmatic, a good soldier. Colleagues joked that his idea of a vacation was to return late from lunch. Short, stocky, with a cratered bald head and heavy beard shadow, he did not fill the stereotypical description of someone involved with international diplomacy, which could be said of most employees at State. The diplomats were a different breed. Verplank, and others in similar positions, were there to soak up information, keep close tabs on what was going on in the countries for which they were responsible, crush facts and figures, run them through the computers, digest rumors, analyze speculation, make sense of it all—and pass on that knowledge to the diplomats and other higher-ups.

It wasn’t often Verplank was asked for his opinions, which was fine with him, although he certainly had plenty of them, which he shared with his wife and a few close friends.

He didn’t understand the administration’s soft policy on Mexico, not with its decades-old pattern of corruption, and especially since the country was serving happily as a profitable pipeline into the United States for South American drugs. Of course, he was well aware that behind that gentle policy was commerce and trade. NAFTA had been rammed through Congress, for better or for worse depending upon who you were, and this administration seemed content with the status quo where Mexico was concerned despite … 
despite
all the facts and
figures the Mexico desk had gathered, chewed on, spit out, and ingested again like cows. Verplank knew them by heart; he’d lived with them for eleven years.

Seventy-five percent of all cocaine entering the United States came across the Mexican–U.S. border, supplanting Florida as the route of choice for Colombian drug barons.

Billions of dollars in drug money were being laundered through myriad Mexican political leaders, officials, families, and hangers-on, making them rich. A recent listing by
Forbes
magazine of the world’s wealthiest individuals had thirteen Mexicans on it; Mexico now ranked only behind the United States, Germany, and Japan as having the most billionaires.

Certain drug lords in Mexico had recently gone on a killing spree, eliminating anyone posing a threat to their empires. These were equal opportunity murders: members of the clergy, reluctant politicians, rogue members of the police and other law enforcement agencies who didn’t cooperate, and citizens who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, all were fair game.

Mexico, Verplank knew, had become what was being called a narco democracy. As far as he was concerned, the country’s leadership and its drug kingpins were interchangeable. It wasn’t even debatable. The facts said it all, and Craig Verplank believed in facts. If he were calling the shots—and of course, he wasn’t—Mexico would be called to account, to purge its political system of the pervasive influence of drug money before benefiting from any future American largesse, and until what Mexico’s leading political analyst, Jesus Silva Herzog,
had written was no longer true: “Politics is the easiest and most profitable profession in Mexico.”

He answered the question. “Garza was brought here to testify.”

A burst of questions from everyone at the table: “Testify?” “Where?” “Congress?” “A committee?” “A hearing?”

“TMI. The Mexico Initiative.”

“That private think tank?”

“Yes.”

“Why would someone like this Garza character be brought to Washington to talk to them?”

Verplank said he didn’t know the details, just that he’d been told on the phone last night by LaHoya and Kramer that Garza was coming to Washington to brief The Mexico Initiative on corruption in Mexico.

The youngest member at the table said, “If that’s so, plenty of Mexicans would have wanted him dead.”

“My thinking exactly.”

“He had nothing on him. Am I right?” another man asked.

“That’s the information we have.”

“Then it could have been a robbery gone awry.”

“Possible,” said Verplank.

“Who’s funding that think tank?” Verplank was asked.

“People who want to change our direction with Mexico,” Verplank said.

“People with
money
who want us to change direction.”

A nod from Verplank.

Verplank wanted to end the meeting, hadn’t wanted to call it in the first place. But protocol dictated that he brief senior members of the staff. Besides, he knew that if he
didn’t, speculation would percolate and boil over, like an unwatched pot.

“Nothing in the paper this morning about this,” a man at the end of the table offered. “Just a DC murder. At the Watergate. Why was he there?”

“At the Watergate?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe he was staying there.”

Verplank said, “I think we might as well wrap this up. Naturally, this stays in the room with us. When and if I receive further information, there’ll be another briefing.”

As they filed from the room to return to their homes and an afternoon of golf, or tennis, or baseball watching on TV, the youngest staff member took Verplank aside.

“Craig,” he said, “I heard recently that the Initiative isn’t as private an organization as it wants us to believe.”

“Oh? Where did you hear that?”

“A friend over in the House, a staffer on the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee, International Relations.”

“What does your friend have to say?”

“Sort of vague but—”

Verplank grimaced. “Is anything not vague these days when it comes to Mexico?”

“Yeah, I know. He told me The Mexico Initiative is developing a case for reversing favored nation status for Mexico, and for killing those other proposals coming out of the White House.”

“That’s news? They’ve been stating that as their purpose all along.”

“But what they’re
not
saying is that they’re being supported, at least in part, by political interests.”

“Interesting. What political interests?”

“He didn’t know. But I read into it he meant Congress. Or somewhere in government.”

“I’ll give that some thought,” Verplank said. “Sorry to have fouled up your morning.”

“No problem,” the young man said, grinning. “My wife’s mother is visiting. Any excuse to get out of the house is welcome.”

Verplank watched his young colleague walk away, leaving him alone in the room. He went to the window and spent a few contemplative minutes watching the activities on the Mall. Good Sunday weather always coaxed everyone out of their homes and apartments. Frisbees flew, lovers walked hand in hand, and a game of touch football was being enthusiastically played in the shadow of the Washington Monument. Verplank’s wife’s mother, too, was visiting. But unlike his young colleague, he was anxious to get home and spend time with her. She was getting old; how many more years could he enjoy her company?

He locked the room, stopped by his office to pick up a few things, then rode the elevator down to the lobby, where he was greeted by the security guards.

“Catch the game this afternoon?” he was asked.

“I don’t think so,” Verplank said. “I have visitors, not baseball fans.”

“Well, enjoy what’s left of the weekend, Mr.Verplank.”

Although he made it a point to try and never bring work home with him, the conversation about the true nature of The Mexico Initiative would dominate his thinking for the rest of the day and evening. Until that moment, Verplank had been confident that he, and only he in the Latin American division, had been briefed on
what was really behind that allegedly private think tank. But that was obviously no longer true.

Make phone calls when he got home? Or could it wait until Monday morning when he could confer in person?

He returned to his office, called his wife to say he’d be there in an hour, and placed a second call.

Indiana Avenue was quiet on this Sunday morning, with the exception of activity in and around MPD headquarters. It had been a relatively peaceful night in the nation’s capital. The blotter showed two murders, a rape, three muggings, assorted domestic disputes, a few prostitution arrests, and the murder of an unidentified Hispanic male in the underground garage of the Watergate complex.

The two homicide detectives assigned to the Garza killing were working together as a team for the first time. Joe Peterson, his blotchy Irish face deeply scarred by severe teenage acne, had recently lost his partner of long standing to retirement. Wendell Jenkins, whose regular partner had injured himself while fixing the roof of his house and was on disability leave, was a young man with pitch-black skin and a weight problem.