The Notebook of Carlos Moore

Elana, who suddenly no longer wants to be called Mercedes, is giving Teresa fits. She’s upset that her mom’s getting remarried, which is understandable. I don’t think I’m good enough for Teresa either, so we’ve got no argument there, but it doesn’t mean I won’t try. Elana also has a new boyfriend, who used to be a banger in San Diego. He probably dealt drugs, and he may have shot someone. I checked up on him, because my job is to provide security for the family, and because Teresa asked me to. Elana sees it as a violation of trust, I’m sure, but I’m willing to give this Roberto kid the benefit of the doubt. For a start, he left San Diego and moved away from his gang buddies. There’s no indication he’s got connections out here. He seems to have moved to get away from that life. As Elana and I both pointed out to Teresa, he may be suspected of a shooting but he was never charged, and I’ve shot plenty of people in my time for reasons related to the lifestyle. I also told Teresa that Elana can handle herself. If the boy tried anything untoward, Elana would feed him to her dogs. Given the way she grew up, I also don’t think she’d relate to a kid that hasn’t tasted the life. Roberto’s more likely to understand her, what she’s gone through, what she’s struggling with now. I’m giving the kid a chance.

I’m more worried about Solana right now. The meds are working, she’s taking classes, she’s functional but she’s still following Elana around like a puppy dog, and that’s going to explode soon. Elana moved out, and Solana took that as rejection. So Solana moved out, into the same apartment complex. Neither Teresa nor Elana nor Ray can make her completely understand. I’ve been trying to hold back, give the kid some room, but Teresa calls her every day to check on her, and I drop by once or twice a week to make sure she’s got groceries and is taking her meds.

Is this what normal feel like? Yeah, there’s stress with the girls, and the normal cargo transport, and Special Agent Wang hovering in the background, but life at the moment doesn’t involve shootouts with drug cartels or demons lurking in the shadows. Not that they aren’t there, not that they won’t return, but if family is the worst I have to deal with I’m counting myself as blessed. Actually, having a family to deal with makes me feel blessed. Frankly, I feel less creepy watching over Solana now that I am part of the family and not just a cop with attachment issues. How long has it been since I lived in an actual house with actual furniture? Unless I’m on a delivery run, I’m driving a nice car and wearing suits and taking Teresa to nice restaurants. I’m doing CI investigations for Wang not so much to keep him off my back or out of a burning desire to take down the Original Mexican Mafia as to keep busy. I’m a “security consultant”, that’s what my business cards say and that’s how I’ve got Teresa funnelling my money for tax purposes (my client list is confidential, of course, to explain why I don’t have any reciepts).

Teresa’s given me something the Marines and the DEA never did: a sense of belonging somewhere, and a sense that what I do matters.

Ray Saavedra asked me a while back about how long Teresa and I have been together. I don’t want to say we kept it secret, more like we kept it private, for a long time. There was one night, months ago, I don’t even remember when it was, something happened and I think it was either Solana or Mercedes that called everyone up and asked us to get to the house right away. Teresa and I showed up together. It raised some eyebrows but there was also a lot of denial, no one said anything or brought it up again. I figure it was hard on Mercedes especially, trying to image her mom with anyone other than her dad. That’s one of the reasons Teresa and I kept it private, while the two of use saw how things went. Ray asked me if it was before that. I just told him yes, it was before that. I while before that. I didn’t tell him how long.

I’m pretty sure that I had a thing for Teresa from the first time I met her. She’s gorgeous, she’s smart, she’s self-confident, it would be hard not to find her attractive. It was after the Gomez family massacre, after I’d pulled Solana out of that house of Hell. The kid was traumatized, practically catatonic. I insisted on riding with the EMT’s back to the hospital. I figured I’d sit there until someone from Child Protective Services showed up, I didn’t really think about surviving adult members of the family. Teresa, Solana’s aunt, came to claim her. Teresa’s own daughter, Mercedes, was the same age and they were already like sisters, so it just made sense that Teresa would take her in and eventually adopt her. We talked a little bit then, not much. I was the cop, it was a family matter.

Over the years I checked in. I felt an obligation to let Teresa know I was working the case, trying to bring the people that committed this atrocity to justice. Even after the DEA moved on and away from the case, let it go cold, I kept working it. It was personal for me, and Teresa knew it. I became a friend of the Gomez family, even though I knew they were coyotes and they knew I was a cop. That difference wasn’t something we talked about. I didn’t think Solana, this little girl who’s watched her parents get killed, was any less deserving of justice because her parents had been criminals. I didn’t think the surviving members of the Gomez family, the wives and kids and uncles and aunts, were any less deserving of justice because their family members had be executed by a rival drug cartel. There were people not directly involved in the drug war. Their relatives in the drug trade weren’t killing in a shoot out with the Montes de Oca cartel. They were executed, in their homes, men, women, and children, young and old. If they’d found Solana, they would have killed her, too. That she was alive was a miracle.

Anyway, I stayed in touch. Once in a while I’d drop a line, make a phone call, stop in the copy shop, just to left Teresa know I was keeping the case alive, and ask about the girls. I sent presents on birthdays and Christmas, without names, Solana and Mercedes had no idea who I was, other than maybe some vague knowledge that I was one of the DEA agents on scene at the massacre. Teresa and I became friends, that was all. It evolved into an occasional lunch, a cop of coffee now and then, that’s it.

The official story of how I was recruited into the Gomez organization is that Michael Saavedra recruited me. He saw that I was available talent, and suggested to Rafael Gomez, the head of the family, that they pick me up. Technically, that’s true. That’s how I understand it happened, that’s what Rafael told me, Michael Saavedra stood up for me and Rafael agreed and offered me a job. Now, why would the head of the Gomez family so readily offer a cop a job in a criminal organization? Because they knew me. Because they knew I cared about the family, and looked in on the girls and Teresa, that I was already a friend of the family. Because I’d gotten fired for insisting the Gomez family was deserving of justice. I think Rafael was doing me a kindness, repaying my kindness over the years by giving me a job. I’d never met Rafael before. I’d met Michale once or twice before, in passing, at the copy shop, and only really knew him through his rap sheet. Michael had no reason to stand up for me. Rafael had no reason to truth me enough to bring me in. It had to be Teresa.

How long have Teresa and I been going on, Ray? It depends on how you define it. We’ve been friends for around eight years. We started getting involved romantically once I started working for the organization. When it happened, and it just sort of happened, it felt natural, like it was a long time coming. Like it was something that was supposed to happen.

The night the shadow was coming for Solana, the night I was ready to sacrifice myself to keep it from taking Solana, the night I decided I was sick of lies and living this dysfunctional, segregated life, I bought a ring. I told Mercedes that I was in love with her mother and was going to ask her to marry me. Mercedes laughed at me, but I told her I was just being straight up with her. I told Solana, and true to the way her mind works and the bluntness with which she deals with the word got confused and said she thought we were just having sex and didn’t know we were dating. God love that kid. Ray laughed at me, thought I was crazy, but I think he respected me for going for it even though he thought I was going to get shot down.

For her part, all Teresa said was “not yet.” I told her that I wanted to tell her, because I was afraid I wasn’t going to be around in the morning, and I wanted her to know. She told me I was brave, and that she believed in me, and knew we’d all get through that terrible morning. And we did. We bound the demon, or did whatever it was we did to sent that thing back where it came from and keeping it from coming back. A few weeks later, Teresa and I got engaged for real .

Look at me, I’ve got a life.

I think I should be upset about what happened to Roy, but I really don’t feel anything at all. For a while I got upset that I wasn’t upset, wondering what that said about me, wondering what that meant, wondering if I was broken or crazy or evil because I wasn’t all broken up or guilty about what happened. It was when I realized that I was more upset about how I thought I should feel and act and behave than about Roy that I said fuck it and moved on.

Still, I’m going to write about it because if I don’t reflect on losing my humanity then I probably will lose it. If that makes any sense. A fucking shrink would call me a sociopath or a psychopath or something. I should be concerned about the fact that I’m okay with that. But I can’t lie. I’m not.

Roy was my partner in the DEA. He was a good little soldier and did what he was told, and got raises and promotions and pats on the back that you’re supposed to get when you don’t make waves. Roy always tried to keep me out of trouble. He tried to keep me from investigating things when I was told to let it drop. Roy called me an asshole for fucking up a good thing. When they kicked me out, Roy called me an asshole, because I had a chance to shut up and apologize and kiss ass. When I was still trying to fight the Montez de Ocas by myself and would turn to him for help, he’d help me. And he’d call me an asshole. When I threw him information so he could make some busts, helping his career and letting him take the glory I couldn’t because I was out on my ass, he’d call me an asshole.

Fuck you, Roy. I deserve more goddamned respect than that. Maybe it’s immature, but maybe I’m not all fucking broken up about the monster getting you because now I don’t have to listen to you calling me a fucking asshole all the time.

I got tired of lying. I got tired of juggling four lives. I’m the fucking stumblebum the Roy and that fucking FBI come to because I’m outside the system and can get access to information they can’t and can get shit done, the “discredited cop” life. Then there’s the criminal life, being a pollero, a soldier for human traffickers. Now add in the occult shit and fighting monsters. Then, on top of that, throw in the fact that for the first time since high school I had a personal life, a girlfriend, friends and family. I started to feel like Peter Parker, having to make up lies because I can’t tell Aunt May that I’m Spiderman and was out all night fighting the Joker or whoever the fuck Spiderman fights. I’m fucking emotionally stunted and can’t tell my girlfriend I love her or show my friends that I care about them because I’ve been programmed into cop mode, and discredited stumblebum cop mode at that. The criminals don’t trust me because I’m a cop, the cops don’t trust me because I was kicked out, I don’t know jack shit about this supernatural shit, and I’m such a fucked-up wreck of a human being that I can’t relate to other human beings.

Let me try to make a long story short. This guy escaped from a monster, and we picked him up along a delivery and set him up in Tucson. This pissed the monster off, so it was going to come take Solana Gomez to be it’s new slave as revenge. We knew when it was coming, we planned for it. I talked it over with Teresa, and told her I wanted the FBI and the DEA to know what I was really up to. If they saw it with their own eyes, at the very least they wouldn’t be able to tell anyone else about it either and they might lay off of me. I wanted you to stop calling me an asshole, Roy, because you had no fucking idea what I really have to deal with. So I told Roy, and I told Agent Snodgrass of the FBI, the fucking baby puncher herself, that I was having a meet with a major player. They showed up, and there’s all the occult shit set up, me and Ray and Mercedes with iron weapons and Solana and some freaky chick who’d fought this thing before in some kind of sacred circle. And I told them, this is what I do, I fight monsters.

We fought the fucking monster. We kicked its ass. We saved Solana. My family was safe. But it got Roy.

No, Roy didn’t deserve it. Yeah, he was there because I asked him to be there, and he wasn’t prepared for a fucking demon to show up. And yeah, I’m probably a prick, but Roy was never going to put his career on the line to have my back. I had his fucking back, always. I got kicked out and I still had his back. I tried to stop the monster from getting him. Yeah, I’m probably a cold blooded bastard, but I think there’s some fucking karma in action there.

It’s been months since I’ve written in this thing. I thought about deleting it entirely, because it really doesn’t serve any purpose any more. The idea was to keep notes on my investigations into the Southern Arizona drug trade, primarily the Montes de Oca cartel. I’d been kicked out of the DEA for not being a bureaucrat and political toady and trying to get some law enforcement done, so I thought I’d strike out on my own and keep fighting the fight. I even had some delusion about proving something, making them see that a difference could be made in this drug war, maybe even impress them enough for them to take me back.

Yeah, I don’t do that any more.

Along the way I just found that keeping this journal really helped me get my head straight and sort out my priorities in life. It’s kind of girly to keep a diary, too much of a shrink thing for me to ever be entirely comfortable with, but it helps. Just like keeping notes for a case, it helps to go back and review the facts, to see how pieces fit together, to makes some new connections while reviewing the evidence and then be able to plot your next steps. Yeah, I still think like a cop. I’ll always think like a cop. I’m not a cop.

I’m going to keep this journal going. Just for shits and grins, for my own purposes. I don’t have any deep thoughts and I’m not writing my memoirs or anything like that, but I think having some time alone with my thoughts, putting this down so I can put events and people into perspective, has saved me and the people I care about a lot of pain. Writing it down makes me think before I act, makes me really work it out in my head before I go ahead and just DO.

Enough of that shit. Let’s start over.

My name is Carlos Moore. I was born in Philadelphia. My mom is Puerto Rican, my dad’s Anglo. In high school, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, so I joined the Marine Corp. I was assigned to the Provost Marshal’s office in Kuwait during the Gulf War, what the other services call Military Police. I was good at it. I went to college and got a degree in computer science, because I figured law enforcement might be a good career choice and a guidance counselor told me there were good jobs to be had with Federal agencies if you had a computer degree. I figured I’d get a desk job with the FBI fighting cyber crime or something. I got picked up by the DEA instead, and got dropped into the middle of a bloody drug war on the Arizona border. As a rookie, I got called in to investigate a massacre. The Montes de Oca cartel massacred the rival Gomez family, killing peoples’ families, women and children. I pulled a little girl out of a house of blood. If I’d ever really been a cop, I stopped being one then. There was fucking evil in the world. If offended me. I wanted to stop it. If I couldn’t stop it, I wanted to do something about it. I couldn’t just let this shit happen in the world, not to kids.

The truth is that the DEA didn’t give a shit about that. With the Gomez clan wiped out, the war was over. The citizens weren’t screaming in outrage, and it’s all about keeping the citizens happy. It has nothing to do with justice. It has to do with keeping up appearances and making the statistics look good and keeping the citizens fat, dumb and happy. For almost eight years I tried to keep the Montez de Oca massacre investigation open. For eight years, they told me to shut the fuck up and focus on the public relations bullshit they wanted me to do, to work the cases that made their numbers and kept their funding and didn’t do a goddamed thing to actually stop the drug trade or help the citizens. They got sick of me, and they shoved me out.

Why am I writing all of this? I don’t know. Maybe because I wouldn’t be where I am right now, wouldn’t be the person I am, without that. Shit, it’s more important than saying what college I graduated from and what my grade point average was. That was four years of marking time to get a piece of paper. My time at the DEA was a real world education, and I learned about the real world. I don’t need to remember a goddamned thing they made me study about calculus or English Literature in college, but I do need to remember how shitty and evil people can be. Shit that matters.

My name is Carlos Moore and I fight fucking monsters. I left all of that shit out before because I thought I’d turn it all over to some authorities someday to help make a case or to exonerate me for some of the shit I’ve done. Not human monsters, although I run up on my share of them. I’m talking about fucking ghosts and demons and other shit I can’t even tell you what it is. Occult. Paranormal. X-Files shit. The kind of shit I always thought people would say I’m crazy if I told them about it.

Fuck them. They’re as clueless as the people that think the DEA makes a lick of goddamned difference in the drug war.

My name is Carlos Moore and I’m a fucking criminal. I’m a soldier for a pollero organization. The Gomez family. They got out of drugs and stayed in human trafficking. I’m a coyote. I transport people across the border from Mexico into the United States. Illegally. For money. For a lot of fucking money. That’s what I do. I’m not doing it undercover because it lets me keep tabs on drug traffickers and give me access to good leads and information. I do it because, like being a Marine or a cop, I’m good at it and I like it. And yes, it bears repeating, it pays a fuck of a lot more money than being a Federal employee.

My fiancee’s waiting for me. I’ll write more later. I still have a lot of shit to get straight in my head.

What I don’t want is to get pulled into the Mexican drug war. Unfortunately, I don’t seem to have a choice. I’m trying to keep too many plates spinning, I haven’t had time to sit down with people I need to have important conversations with, and I’m still living in a hotel. The last part is better than where I was living, but I want to get a real place to live, get a new car, buy some respectable clothes. I want to have relationships. But there’s too much going on all at once, and I’m trying to help fix all of it.

Ray and I have been tracking down “Little Frankie” Mendez. We know he’s got information on the guy trying to kidnap Solana. For all we know, Little Frankie could be the guy behind it. He’s a greasy little shit, Mercedes kicked his ass once, who knows what sort of grudges he holds. I found an old girlfriend of Frankie’s, who led me to a sister of his no one knew about, a meth head. At that point all Ray had to do was wave $20 bills at the sister’s boyfriend, and he eavesdropped on a conversation and sold her and her brother out.

Mercedes and Solana went down to Mexico to follow a lead on a woman who was kidnapped by the person after Solana and had escaped. I found out about this after the fact. Now is not the time for those two to go running off having adventures. They found the woman and tried to drive her across the border, right through the checkpoint at Nogales, and got detained. I have no idea what they thought would happen. I called a contact at BP to see if I could get them sprung, told him it was a witness in the case I was working for the FBI. He told me they were tipped off to watch for her, which reinforced my bullshit story but also made me realize this woman might have seriously useful information about the kidnapper. I told him that’s why the FBI didn’t alert the BP ahead of time, too many leaks, and that lie was so close to the truth he bit. Told me to have my FBI handler call it in. If I thought for a moment that Solana and Mercedes would be safer in BP custody while a kidnapper is after Solana, i’d have left them there and hired a lawyer.

Instead I ate crow, lied my ass off, and called Special Agent Wang. Told him the woman was someone I was hoping would have information on the OMM, and needed them sprung. Ran the whole story about leaks, and that someone had tipped her to the BP. That convinced Wang that she was a person of importance, if someone on the Mexican side had reason to stop her from crossing. He got it done, and had the file sealed, no one’s business but the FBI why they needed her released. Of course, this means I need to pull a major OMM lead out of my ass to satisfy Wang, but that’s not even my major concern right now.

“Uncle Eddie”, Eduardo Gomez, is supposedly trying to get back into the drug trade. Motherfucker will put the whole family in danger. They want to bring fucking Michael Saavedra in to talk him out of it, and while Mike is a silver-tongued motherfucker he’s a wold class cockup and fucks up everything he touches. It reeks of a bad idea. Rafael has cancer, he won’t be around much longer, so Eduardo’s already starting to jockey for position as patriarch.

I’m tired of this shit. I just want to buy a fucking house, buy a decent car, get some desk job doing security consulting or something, and see where this relationship with Teresa goes. Jesus Christ, I might want to get married or do something normal. Get Ray back to med school, get Solana back to college, set Mercedes up with an auto shop or whatever would make her happy, leave this shit behind. Obviously, that’s not going to happen. The family doesn’t know that I’ve started recruiting my own muscle. I will put a bullet in Little Frankie’s brain if it means Solana’s safe. I will put a fucking bullet in Uncle Eddie’s brain if it stops the family from being dragged into the fucking drug war again. Stop with the fucking games and politics and cut to the fucking chase. I will put together my own fucking crew and I will start murdering every motherfucker that tries to fuck with us if that what it’s going to take.

Today the MDO boogeyman, Juan Carlos Oliveras, showed up at the Cruz house and threatened Solana. This guy is like a ghost. He’s a legendary hitman, and everyone knows it, but no one’s ever been able to pin any hard evidence on him. He’s looking for some book that apparently belong to Solana’s late parents. Teresa sat Solana down and explained that all her her parents’ things have been in storage all these years, and since Solana is 18 they’re hers now. Mercedes took her down to the storage unit to look for the book. I’m a little concerned about how Solana will handle it, what memories it will dredge up and how she’ll handle it.

If there was any way to make a charge stick, I’d try to set the guy up and have my dear friends in the FBI arrest him. They don’t have enough to merit holding him, so even if we tried that he’d be sprung and back on the doorstep within a day. My next option would be to just kill the guy. The urban legends about him don’t bother me, but triggering a war with the MDO does. The best option is probably to just give him the fucking book, but Solana and Mercedes don’t want to, and it does sort of send the message that seven years after the MDO won the drug war against the Gomez family they can still come in and push people around. It doesn’t matter that the drug-dealing Gomezes are all dead.

Now would seem like the time to just go. Leave Tucson, leave Southern Arizona, go someplace with less crime, or at least someplace where the family doesn’t have old ties to crime. Rafael Gomez, the current patriarch of the family, has cancer and won’t be around much longer. I turned all of my notes on all of the cartels and gangs active in the area over to the FBI. Ray just needs to walk away and go back to school. Mercedes could certainly benefit from being separated from her bad influences. Solana could probably get into a school better equipped to help her with her problems than Pima Community College. But Teresa won’t move. She won’t leave that house, let alone leave Tucson. Because she’s staying, I’ll stay and the girls will stay. And because Michael Saavedra is rumored to be coming into town to deal with things Rafael isn’t up to handling, Ray will stay.

On top of Oliveras, there’s still the slaver that wants his property back. Mercedes is putting the guy on a bus or something and getting him out of town, so the slaver is supposed to be coming for Solana instead. Pretty much all of my attention has been on that, and now I have two scumbags to watch for. At least there’s only one target to guard.

I packed all of my clothes and personal stuff up and shoved it into my car. Currently I’m living in a motel while I look for a nice, respectable apartment and buy some furniture. I might look into buying a house, since the housing market has tanked and there are a lot of deals out there. There’s still almost two weeks on the month-to-month lease for the old place, but I had to get out of there after everyone saw it. I feel like an ass. I left all of my cartel and gang org charts on the walls, and one of the computers with all the profiles and data on these people that I’ve gathered. I took the computer that had my personal stuff on it. I gave the keys to the place to Wang and Snodgrass. I know they’ll never do anything with it, too “local” for them, but the point was to give it away and walk away. I’m done. I’m not fighting any more wars that aren’t mine to fight. Since I walked into that crime scene years ago, the Gomez house where Solana’s parents were murdered by the MDO, and I picked that kid up and took her out of there, I haven’t really cared about any other case. I don’t even care about the case any more. I care about the people. I’m holidng a grudge that even the Gomezes don’t seem to bear. Tracking the MDO isn’t the best way I can help Teresa, or Solana, or Mercedes, or Ray, or Rafael. Getting my shit together and doing what I can to actually help them is the best thing I can do. For them and for me.

Knowing that I have a limited skill set and a pretty narrow world view is one thing. I make it work for me most of the time. Having my face rubbed in it, that’s another game entirely. Shit. You see things, things happen, you rethink your life. A while back I came across a guy, he’d been kidnapped and enslaved, but he’d escaped. Only he had nothing to come back to, because the kidnappers had stolen his identity and fucked up his life. This guy’s been dehumanized and had everything stripped away from him, and now he’s just a homeless guy walking around with nothing. No past, no future. What do you do with that? You can’t help this guy. You can do things to help him get his identity back in a legal sense, but you can’t undo what happened to him. Even if you can take out the monsters that did it to him, it still happened.

Solana showed up at my place at 3 a.m., barefoot and in her pajamas. She’d walked the whole way, apparently ran a good part of it. Mercedes was right on her heels. Apparently whoever kidnapped and enslaved the guy attacked them, pissed off at them for helping the guy. Shit, we picked the guy up after he escaped and gave him a ride, that’s all. I don’t even know who the fuck we’re dealing with. I’m glad Solana trusts me to come to me when she needs to feel safe, but my place isn’t exactly family friendly. I’ve got crime scene photos and stuff from her family’s murder all over, because I’ve never given up that cold case. She seemed okay with it, she didn’t freak. Mercedes freaked and left. She also figured out that I’m sleeping with her mom. I don’t know what upset her more. Take your pick. Like it matters.

I keep meaning to ask Ray why the hell he doesn’t just tell everyone to go fuck themselves and go back to medical school. Why does he have to be the one to clean up the mess? Tonight I realized that if I ask him that question I have to answer it myself. Why can’t I walk away from a case everyone else has moved on from? Putting down the MDO, locking up the people who massacred the Gomez family eight years ago, isn’t going to make Solana better. It’s not going to undo the hurt that Mercedes and Teresa have been through. It’s not going to suddenly make me a respectable cop. Fuck. What the girls needed tonight was for me to have a normal, safe apartment for them to crash at and feel safe, not a fucking fleabag that I use as an operations center for my personal war on crime. Teresa’s fucking pissed at me.

Fuck it. Fuck the MDO. I’m going to hit Roy Cardwell up for some of that C.I. money and get a decent place and some real furniture. I’m going to try to just take care of these people day to day. If I lose these people I feel like I’ll lose that last of my humanity, and tonight I feel like I came this goddamn close to fucking up everything because I’ve been so wrapped around my axle about the wrong fucking things. Deal with the now, plan for the future, fuck the past. I’ll send Teresa some flowers. I’ll go to confession and see if I can get some of this shit off my chest. Then I’ll go out and get good and drunk and get that out of my system and see how I feel when I come out the other side.

Then I have to deal with human traffickers, kidnappers and slavers. Today’s monsters, not the monsters from eight years ago.

A contact within the Attorney General’s office notified me that there’s going to be a major press conference in the morning announcing the results of Operation En Fuego, a multi-agency investigation that’s supposedly made some major arrests in the field of human trafficking. That would be a good thing, except i’ve had my ear to the ground for months watching for exactly this sort of thing, and haven’t heard a word. i know who the major drug smugglers and human traffickers in Southern Arizona area, and there hasn’t been a peep along the grapevine that anyone significant has been arrested. None of my contacts in the Border Patrol, the DEA, or Mexican Law Enforcement said a peep to me either. I understand playing something like this close to the vest, and I wouldn’t expect all or even most of my contacts to hear anything, but to hear nothing at all makes me suspicious. Given that this happens only days after the FBI contacts me, via the DEA, looking for intel on the OMM, and I have to assume there’s a connection.

Operation En Fuego could be a dog and pony show for the taxpayers, for political reasons admittedly beyond my understanding. Let mister and missus taxpayer feel like we’re doing something about those nasty filthy immigrants. Maybe bolster confidence that those evil drug murderers aren’t about to come over the border and start killing gringo tourists in their RVs. Given other things that I know, I’m wondering if it’s a smokescreen. The MDO have been gathering toxic materials and buying up hazmat suits. If I can put those pieces together, I’m sure the best and the brightest our government has to offer can connect the dots too. There’s no way they’s want the citizens to know what’s really going on or what potential danger their in, but they need to explain the increased activity by Federal agents somehow, so they can conduct their investigation and get their PR fix in one swoop.

All of this is pure speculation, of course. I have no idea what’s really going on.

Today it was made very clear to me that the evidence I’ve been gathering here will be worse than useless in the long run. Two FBI agents, Wang and Snodgrass, met me for breakfast. The meet was at their request, arranged by my former partner at the DEA Roy Cardwell. Wang’s a slick piece of shit, a political agent who smiles a lot and speaks in overly polite and friendly tones. I know the type. He’ll fuck you over in a heartbeat if it’ll further his career. Snodgrass I trust more. She’s a cranky bitch with a jacket for beating the shit out of a 16 year old girl out in L.A. in order to get information. She’s still a piece of shit, but you know where you stand with her and if she’s going to come at you, she’ll come at you straight.

Wang start off by telling me they need my help, gathering some intel on what the Fed has coded as OMM – Original Mexican Mafia. He’s excessively polite as he tells me he only wants intel so they can investigate for themselves, because I’m too controversial to put on the stand and no evidence I gather would hold up in court. In exchange he offers to look the other way and ignore my own criminal activities. All of which is bullshit. If he wanted to blackmail me, he’s the type that would show up with a neat little manila envelope with photos and documents so he could ever so politely rub my nose in it. He wouldn’t be asking for my help unless he were desperate, or at least on a tight timetable. I have no doubts, though, that he’ll try to fuck me. He wants to run me as an asset. He only wants information on what’s important to him, and anything else will get swept under the carpet. He’ll discredit me and cock block me to make himself look better, so I can’t claim any credit for any busts he makes. I know this game. I’ve been down this road before.

I told him I’d keep my ears open but that this incurs expenses, and told him I want paperwork listing me as a C.I. He agreed. I was less interested in the money than in covering my ass, so I can show I’m doing things on behalf of the FBI. A few hours later a courier shows up with documents showing me that Cardwell’s had me listed as his C.I. for months. Sure, maybe he created it and backdated it to cover his own ass and make the busts I set up for him stick. If the date’s correct, he’s probably been drawing money to pay me and sticking it straight into his own pocket. Son of a bitch.

Why am I still keeping this journal? I can’t find anyone that gives a damn about taking down the MDO. For god’s sake, the Gomez massacre was eight years ago. It’s a cold case. It’s not a priority and it won’t be a priority until the body count on the North side of the border is as bad as that on the South side of the border and the citizens start to complain. 4,000 drug murders in the northern Mexican states this year. Cartels using mercs trained by U.S. and Mexican special forces. And we’re giving away free helicopters to the crooked Preventative Police.

I think I’m starting to lose it. I’m sitting here pissing off the neighbors with The Who cranked up on my piece of shit stereo. There are days when I think the only ending would be to drive a car bomb straight into Jose Montez de Oca’s compound and take out as many of them as I can in one shot. I don’t want to end up on their level, and that’s where I’m headed. I can see it. I’m trying to have a life. I’m trying to have a relationship with a woman. I’m trying to watch over the members of the Gomez family whose lives have been fucked over by this drug cartel shit. Solana Gomez is having trouble in school because she’s just not screwed down tight. She’s a good kid, but when you’ve seen your parents butchered in front of you it’s a fact you’ll never be right in the head. Ray Saavedra’s selling used cars and trying to clean up after his fuckup con artist father, when the guy should be in medical school. Mercedes Gomez considers a fucking jailbird to be her mentor, and while her mother’s managed to keep her from boosting any more cars the kid has no direction. I’m certainly no role model for any of these people. I don’t know what I’m doing. I feel responsible for them, since I was there when the MDO gunned down their families. They’re not my family. I’m the stupid guy who lost his job with the DEA because I was too connected to the victims.

I got a lead that the MDO may be trading in religious artifacts, maybe illegally, maybe laundering money in antiquities trade. Got a name, an Irishman named O’Shea, an expert on appraising this stuff hanging around the mission in Tubac. I made a couple of calls, should head down and surveil this guy, see if it leads anywhere, but I’m just tired. I’m tired of chasing one lead after another that takes me nowhere near where I want to be. I’m tired of just wandering aimlessly, not knowing where I’m going, hoping that I’ll end up in the right place.

A friend of mine told me she had some stuff stolen by a couple of meth addicts, presumably so they could sell it for money to buy more drugs. I told her I’d look into it. I ended up losing it, taking my frustrations with this whole world, this whole hierarchy of scumbags on all sides, out on them. I beat the living shit out of two guys who together weren’t coherent enough to pose any real threat. I took my anger out on their faces, told them it was a warning to not take other peoples’ shit. Then I drove their truck through their shitty mobile home, spun the thing around and knocked it over. It felt good at the time. Afterward I’m thinking, what the fuck is wrong with me?

Why am I still keeping this journal? Nobody’s going to read this shit until I’m dead, which much mean I don’t intend to live long. I need to get a life, but I don’t know how. Maybe I just want my story told. Maybe I just want some of the truth about the way the world works to come out. Maybe I hope that if people, citizens, real people had more of an inkling about the shit that goes on under their fucking noses they’d rise up and make sure something was done about it. I’m not that naive. I know it’s all hope and wishful thinking.

I read on the BBC website that the U.S. is giving Mexico $197 million for anti-drug funding. They’re at least wise enough to not give cash, which would disappear into the pockets of corrupt officials. It’s a donation of equipment, including helicopters and surveillance aircraft. Hopefully it’s surplus equipment that was due to be replaced anyway, but I suspect some part of it will still end up in the hands of drug cartels via their allies in the Preventative Police. This is like Homeland Security giving aid to the Taliban to help fight al Qaeda. Near the end of the article it reads “There is plenty of evidence that Mexican law enforcement agencies have been extensively infiltrated by the cartels”. There’s an understatement.

Anyone with half a brain knows that the Mexican government is behind both the drug problem and the illegal immigrant problem, but we’re not willing to deal with them the way we’ve deal with Iraq or North Korea. It’s about the money and the corporations, that’s all. We don’t deal with Mexico for the same reason we lifted trade restrictions with China: some U.S. politician’s making money from the arrangement.

$197 million to Mexico. We act like it’s a Third World country but it’s the 12th largest economy in the world. Canada is 13th. Australia is 17th. That should put things in perspective. If they wanted to fix their economy and stop shipping their poor North, they could. If they wanted to put resources into stopping the drug trade, they could. $197 million to Mexico when the Border Patrol and other police organizations are under-funded. Hell, when our schools are under-funded and our infrastructure like roads and power grids are under-funded. How many flak vests for soldiers would that buy? There are better ways we could be spending money other than giving it to Mexico. If we really wanted to halt the problems with Mexico. Which we obviously don’t.

In the past month I’ve put six drug dealers behind bars and I’m not even a cop any more. It’s not a question of throwing money at a problem. It’s a question of pulling your head out of your ass. It’s a question of having the will to see things through and do what goddamn needs to be done.