“In a way I am.”
“What the FBI did was very unfair. You knew the building was released to me that afternoon. You knew I would go there, and you hid like a criminal to watch me. You took money that was very important. You don’t understand what you did.”
“You’ll get it back any day now.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Well, then tell me. Where was the money going?”
He shook his head, gave a rueful smile.
“Where did the money come from?” I asked.
“From different loans. I borrowed from everyone who had money they could lend me. Now they see what’s happening and want the money back. The FBI is destroying everything I built. The FBI is good at catching a businessman who does not run and opens his home and businesses to them, but not so good at catching terrorists.”
“I’m not here about money,” I said. “And I wish I had news for you on it, but I don’t. I have a photo I want to show you.”
From an envelope I pulled the photo the Mex Feds had sent of Juan Gutierrez and handed it to him.
“It’s Juan Menderes,” he said. “What is this?”
“When this photo was taken, he was Juan Gutierrez, who’d been arrested in a drug raid and would go to prison. In prison he bought Juan Menderes’s ID and became him. Did he ever talk with you about any of this?”
“No, I am shocked. He was a good driver. He had all the required papers in the name of Menderes. I did not understand why he ran.”
“He was making drug deliveries in the Hullabaloo van.”
“That is not possible.”
“For some customers he would deliver a cake with a side order of cocaine. The van had a secret compartment.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“We don’t understand how you wouldn’t know.”
I thought I’d said that without being confrontational, but from his reaction I saw he was debating whether to end the conversation. He stared at me as he debated.
“I look in the vans only to see they are clean. They are serviced twice a year. I can ask the shop where they are serviced if they saw the compartment. I can call them now if you want.”
“We’ve already talked to them. The question to you is whether you were aware of the compartment.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Are you certain?”
“Do my other vans have this compartment?”
“No.”
He shrugged and said, “I am very surprised about Juan.”
He poured more tea for both of us, then took a delicate sip. I waited until he cradled the cup in his hands before changing up on him.
“I’m sorry for the delay in getting the money back to you,” I said. The true delay was that we intended to track the bills returned to him, and it took a few days to get that set up. “I’m sorry I had to take it from you. You have to understand that I had no choice.”
He said nothing to that. His eyes narrowed as he sipped again. The tea was quite fragrant and perfumed the air of the room.
“Did you supply phones to your drivers?”
“Yes, I buy phones on the secondhand market and have a good price with the carrier. It is for security and for a record of calls and to collect the phone number of clients for the database.”
“Are the drivers allowed personal calls?”
“This has already been asked, and the FBI has seen the phone records. Only if the calls are local and short can they use the company phone. I tell the drivers this. I am very stern on this point.”
“Do they keep the same phone?”
“As long as they are drivers.”
“If they need a replacement, how is that done?”
“They tell me and I give them a new phone. When they get dropped and lost or broken, they tell me and I give them a new phone. It is a cost of doing business.”
“Did Juan get a replacement phone on July 3?”
“This was asked the first night.”
“And you answered you were in Houston July 3, and no one else is authorized to activate a phone. But you knew Juan would be delivering cakes on the Fourth.”
“He used his personal phone. He texted as he was supposed to that the cake was delivered. I told the agents on July 4 that he’d called from his phone. This is not a secret.”
“He didn’t use his phone. Did you supply him another phone?”
“No, as I said, I was in Houston.”
“Could somebody working for you have done that?”
“Only me.”
“And you were in Houston.”
“Correct.” He gave me a quizzical look and said, “You are repeating yourself, you are asking the same things again.”
In the long interview our agents had with him that I’d watched, he’d demonstrated a remarkable memory. We’d confirmed a number of things he’d recounted. He didn’t make them up. I unfolded a piece of paper and handed it to him.