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Hank nodded. “Okay, I’m willing to talk to him. But I wanted to warn you that I might just back out.”
Raven sighed. “Fair enough,” she said.
Brownsville, Texas
DEA Field Office
Tuesday Morning, 8:00 A.M.
Corbett and Freemanwere sitting in the field office waiting for the arrival of Special Agent in Charge Gomez and Supervising Special Agent Lewis and the director of the DEA. They were meeting at the Brownsville Field Office under the cover of secrecy. It tore Corbett apart that it was all happening because of Samuel.
The previous day, Corbett had reported to his supervisors what Barry had told him. They had all taken note of Sam’s phone call just after the meeting had ended. Corbett had asked Sam who he had to call in such a rush, and he’d told him some bull about forgetting to remind Tammy to pick up one of his suits at the cleaners. The bosses told Corbett and Freeman to go ahead to Brownsville, and they would meet them there with the director the next day, after they saw how the raid on the house that Sanchez had gone to went. Corbett and Freeman had arrived in Brownsville the previous afternoon.
Corbett tried not to dwell on what he had done. If he was right about Sam, he had no choice but to take action. As a snitch, Sam was putting the lives of his colleagues at risk every day. If Corbett was wrong, however, he would feel like hell as they tore his friend’s life apart, trying to find something to connect him to Heston. But as sick as it made him, he was sure he wasn’t wrong.
He told himself that for the time being he would stick to trying to find out what the Brownsville agents knew about Gilberto Sanchez and what he had been doing in Texas this past weekend. The agent they had spoken with on Monday, a good friend of Freeman’s named John Greene, told them that his informant had reported Sanchez was there for “business” but claimed that he didn’t know who the old man was meeting with.
The informant was a “sometimes” driver for Sanchez when his regular driver was unavailable. He told Greene he’d driven Sanchez to a ramshackle house on the south side of town. He said there were three “brainless-looking apes” in the front yard, and the old man had just barreled through, as if they weren’t there, and gone up to the front door. He stood there banging on it as the apes looked on, and finally it was answered by a hot little “señorita” in a short black robe. Sanchez went inside for fifteen or twenty minutes, and then one of the apes removed the two suitcases that Sanchez had loaded into the trunk of the car and took them inside. Sanchez came out, and the driver took him to Brownsville Massage and waited another forty-five minutes for the old man to come out. He then drove him home to Matamoros.
“How does he just jump back and forth across the border like that?” Corbett had asked Greene. “Is he a U.S. citizen?”
“No,” Greene said. “The driver says that the border patrol agent looked at whatever the old man handed him and flagged them on through. On his way back, after he’d dropped off the old man, the same agent tore the car apart searching it and hassled him almost to the point of a strip search. The driver is a U.S. citizen.”
“Hmm, I’d like to talk to that border patrol agent,” Corbett told him.
“So would I,” Greene said. “My guy couldn’t give me a name, though, only a description and the gate he was working. When I got there, it was a female agent, and she claimed she’d been there all day.”
“Nice,” Corbett said. “Have you been to the house yet?”
“No,” he told him. “For that, we were waiting on you. I did check it out a bit. It’s owned by a slum lord and has been since the seventies. This guy owns most of the crap properties in that area, and he doesn’t care who he rents to as long as they pay cash on time every month. It’s been used off and on as a crack house, and for a while, I think there were several hookers who did business out of the place. There’s been more police action there than you can imagine over the years. I remember responding to a few ‘shots fired’ and ‘domestics’ there myself, back in the late nineties when I was still on patrol. It’s a prime piece of real estate. Wait ‘til you see it. I was thinking we should head down there now. Y’all ready?”
Both confirming that they were, Corbett and Freeman retrieved their flak gear and weapons from Corbett’s car and rode in the DEA van with Greene and his partner, a guy named Johnston. They also took two local police units with them, just in case. They had no idea what they were rolling up on. When they got there, the cyclone fence was standing open and there were no signs of the “three brainless apes” the informant had said were guarding the front door. Moving in formation, they approached the house with Greene in the lead while the uniforms held back near the gate.
Greene knocked on the door and announced, “DEA, open up!” He shouted it twice, and then they used the battering ram to shatter the door open. Going inside with their guns drawn, they did a search of the house top to bottom. It was a quick search, considering the whole house was only about eleven hundred square feet. Greene gave the all clear and then the real search began. That, too, was a bust. Whoever Gil Sanchez had gone to see hadn’t left so much as a piece of trash behind.
“Damn,” Greene said, frustrated. “We should have come out as soon as I talked to the driver.”
“What time was that?” Corbett asked him.
“About eleven o’clock,” he estimated.
Corbett looked at Freeman, and then back at the other agent, and said, “That would’ve been too late as well. Our meeting was over by 8:30.”And Samuel had already been on the phone.
CHAPTERSIX
BUNS IN THE OVEN
Pendale, Texas
Tuesday Afternoon
Worried about her brother,Raven had called Ridge after talking to Hank. Her brother’s safety was the most important thing to her. She’d naturally find it very difficult to say goodbye to him if he was placed into Witness Protection, but she’d rather have her brother alive than dead. If she couldn’t convince him Witness Protection was his best option, she hoped Ridge could. Her brother admired Ridge. Knowing this, Ridge had told her to send Hank to their house while he waited for Corbett.
After giving her brother the invite, she returned to the phone. “Hanks says you’re the best boyfriend-in-law ever.”
“Yeah, well, tell him his sister will thank me later,” Ridge baited.
“She will?” she said with a giggle. “How will she do that… exactly?”
