Shutter(59)

“Are you in as deep as Garcia?” I was as straightforward as possible.

“Garcia has been in deep for as long as he could walk.” Armenta took another mug down from the cabinet. “I knew Marty since he was a kid. Both of our dads were cops. We knew the life.”

I shrugged off my coat, feeling the heat from the woodstove. “He has put in quite a few years of service, just like yourself.”

Armenta sat across from me at his kitchen table. “His father, Jose, was the kind of cop you would see on the television shows—helping everyone who crossed his path, saving cats trapped in trees, the whole nine yards. He received merits and outstanding service awards from the mayor. It wouldn’t have mattered how many years Marty’s dad worked for the department, though, he would never make detective. He studied for the test, always waiting for that promotion that never came. That’s how it was back then.” He poured two cups of coffee. “In the seventies, Marty’s dad joined a group of Chicano police officers who decided to sue the department and the department head, Chief Shaver, since their surnames and the color of their skin seemed to be making hiring and promotional decisions for all the higher-ups. The case was eventually settled after years and years of back-and-forth. During the eight years it took to get up to the Supreme Court, Officer Garcia was never promoted to detective, even after he had passed the test.”

“Did he leave the department?”

“Jose left and took his family south to Belen. He joined their three-man force for twenty years until, at sixty-five years old, he finally became the police chief.” Armenta took a huge gulp of the hot coffee. I wondered how he could stand the heat without even blinking. “Marty had told me the story a million times, especially after a few drinks. That badge wasn’t enough for him, not like it was for his dad. He worked around the clock and had a wife that he never saw. He had a mortgage on a house way too expensive for a detective’s salary. Every now and then he might pick a few bucks off some drug dealer, that kind of thing. Four years ago, that all changed.”

“What happened four years ago?”

There was a long pause. A small dog stirred to life in the corner, then came to sit next to Armenta.

“It was the beginning of the Marcos cartel’s move into meth trafficking. With safehouses all over, Albuquerque had become a central hub. It was the perfect town, midway between hubs in California, Mexico, and Texas, with interstate systems that moved north and south, east and west, right through the center of the city. We were about to end it.” He picked up the little dog and rested it on his lap.

“I remember that bust,” I said. “You guys stopped a lot of product. Wasn’t that a good thing?”

“It was. Garcia and I had tracked a major shipment coming up through Mexico into Albuquerque to be processed and distributed by the army of soldiers that the Marcos cartel had assembled around the city. When Garcia ordered the apprehension of two appliance trucks, we thought we had stopped about two million dollars in product.” Armenta looked out the window as branches from his iced-over trees scratched on the glass. “On the I-40 shoulder, with the winds blowing over forty miles per hour, Ignacio Marcos sat handcuffed beside our squad car while we searched through the back of his truck.” There was another long silence. Even Armenta’s dog looked up to his owner, waiting for his story to unfold. “‘I can make you a rich man,’ he kept saying. Garcia kept telling him to shut up, but Marcos kept talking. ‘I’ll give you one hundred grand. Right now. It’s in my duffel bag on the front seat,’ Marcos said. ‘I’m not that stupid,’ Marty said.” Armenta shook his head. “I could see his hesitation. I knew he was thinking about it.”

“Did he take it?”

“Ignacio told us that the truck had nothing in it, and when we went to check, he wasn’t lying. There was nothing there. Our big bust was going to go nowhere. We searched that empty trailer, knowing the real shipment had to be miles away.” Armenta got up and fetched himself another coffee, the hot steam rising as he gulped again. I hadn’t even touched my mug.

“Did you have to let him go?” I was almost afraid to ask.

“We didn’t have to, but we did.” Armenta peered out the window again. “We sat with Marcos on the side of the highway, the wind blowing through to our bones. Garcia walked to the front of the truck and opened the door. He walked away from the truck with that blue duffle bag and was never the same.”

“How much is he into the cartel for?” I began to think about the repercussions.

“Now? Who knows. Marty spent that money in a few weeks, paying off his mortgage and student loans. It didn’t take long for him to need more. Before long, he was turning a blind eye on certain Marcos deals and helping some of the small-time dealers stay out of jail. He obsessed about the money, saving it all over the place, even burying some in his backyard. I’m ashamed to admit it, but he gave me money to get this cabin.”

“Every person I have talked to says you just kind of vanished off the face of the earth.” I finally took a drink of my warm coffee.

“It was getting to be too much—the constant lies, covering our tracks, all of it. I took some money and I left. The Marcos family knows that I am part of this. I was Marty’s partner. I knew I had to stop being on the take and get out before I lost my pension. Now I have my pension and no more time.”