A Plan

Planning came easy. Planning was what they did to earn a wage. They were trusted to work undercover, to make meetings, to build up relationships with the bad guys, then to bust them. There were enough bad guys around for them to do it again and again. Sometimes it worked out and sometimes it didn’t. The agency expected them to do the paperwork and to make some arrests and to spend some time in meetings nodding along with everyone else and eating doughnuts. Didn’t have to be top level guys they took out. Guys in the middle, stupid middling drug gangsters, in this part of the world they were everywhere. Make a new plan, bust another. All they needed was to make one more plan. And like many of the plans, for this one not to work out. No arrests, no-one to blame, just one of those things. All with false Ids. The DEA made false IDs the way Taco Bell made Tacos. One after the other. They were the government. No trouble at all. US, Mexican, Honduran, Panamanian, British, whatever. They just churned them out like a factory. So when their plan came off, the bad guys who were left looking at the space where their money had been would be looking for someone who was literally nowhere to be found, a fiction, and the agency would be told a very simple story.

‘Sorry chief. No go. Didn’t fly. It was all set to go. We had the deal, they had the money, the hour came, they didn’t show, stopped taking our calls. Maybe a tip-off; who knows? Life is disappointment.’

There were so many millions floating around in the Mexican drug business, so many billions, so much theft, so many bad guys, one more take off and who would notice.

Sure, someone would be angry. Someone would be looking round Sonora for their faces, both sides of the border. But they could all come over all burnt out and angry after the flop. Volunteer for some desk-time in Tucson. There were always volunteers for field work. Chance for some expenses to boost up the lousy basic pay, and some adventure too. They would just hold up their hands, like honest boy scouts, say sorry about the failed bust, maybe we’re a little jaded, a spot busted up, we need to get back to basics, get back into the organisation.

And they could have their stash. Their million, or their two million, however much they could take off, sitting there, somewhere safe, until it was safe to use it. Even before you could spend it, life would feel better knowing there was a big pile of greenbacks sitting in storage waiting for the day.

The laugh was, after all the time they’d looked at the bad guys, envious of their money and resentful that they were the good guys and they were scratching around to make a living, now they’d made the decision to go, it was easy. So easy it hardly needed any work. All they needed was a money laundering sting. The business generated so much cash, it was a real problem. A drug lord needs a garage full of Mercedes when the cops come visiting, not a garage full of banknotes.

They needed to clean the money, and people who could provide that service were well paid. Anything up to eight per cent of the clean money. That made a very handsome eighty thousand dollars on the million.

‘So who’s the lucky guy?’ Rudy asked, on their next meet, in a storage container in a self service storage park out near Nogales airport.

‘I can narrow it down to a couple,’ Doug said. You asked me to look at it. Near as I can see, you’d come up with the same names. Marti Guitterez has been very busy lately, making lots of money, I heard he was looking for new laundry talent. The other is Jackie Fukoyami.’

‘The mad Peruvian?’ Alan asked. ‘And can somebody explain why there are so many Japanese names in Peru.’

‘No I can’t explain,’ Rudy said. ‘But yeah, him.’

Alan shook his head.

‘What I hear, he’s so crazy, I’m not sure we would choose him of all the people to mess with.’

‘Guys, come on, we know this business. For what we’re planning, for planning it alone, any one of the targets would kill us slow. But Fukoyami is hot. He has a lot of cash to clean, and we have an in, which is why I think he’s favourite. That’s what makes him better than Marti, even though Marti is slightly stupid, which gives him an edge from our point of view.

‘No-one calls Fukoyami stupid.’ Doug said.

‘I know. So smart and ruthless and crazy too, they’re all big points against him. But he has a lot of cash right now, and I’ve found the in.

‘He uses an English guy, works over here a lot.’

‘Giles Mackey?’ Doug asked.

‘The same.’

‘He’s Scottish. Like it makes a difference. Story I heard, he’s from old money, but the money trickled away before it reached him, and he didn’t like the idea of real work, so he got in the laundry business. I hear he’s very good.’

‘He is. He’s made a lot of money. But I was reading the inter-agency reports, and the National Intelligence Unit in London, they’re looking at him hard. I had a spot of work with a guy there, nice guy, knows how to share without dying of paperwork. I had a word. That word is, they don’t think they can nail him, but they’ve put in a lot of work and they don’t want to just let it drop. If we put in a request, start talking about Fukoyami, give them an extra reason to pick him up for a day or so, maybe the English call Fukoyami, ask if he knows this guy, no-one gets charged, but it sours things for Mackay who’ll probably go keep his head down for a few months, and it puts Fukoyami in the market for a laundry.’

Alan kicked the door of the storage unit open. The heat was starting to build up.

‘Good work Rudy,’ Doug said.

‘Thanks. Now the only problem is getting our little laundry through the door. Any ideas?’

‘I do, ‘ Doug said. ‘Not a new idea, but it works anyway. You know Don James?’

‘Lawyer in Atlanta. Good clean cover; been under suspicion of running a top-end super clean laundry?’

Yeah. Well he was lifted last month. He made one deal too many and he’s inside. He’s coming up for trial and wetting himself pretty much the whole time. He doesn’t expect to get easy prison time and he isn’t the type would have an easy life inside. Cause of nasty witnesses and all, his arrest wasn’t announced. Word out there is that he’s spent some of his new money on a fancy yacht and a crew, and he’s halfway to New Zealand. We go knocking on Fukoyami’s door, we get to make a satellite phone call to James, which is of course a mobile phone call to the pen in Atlanta, with a little extra DEA electronic gimcrackery thrown in to make the call sound right and the trace on the call fit the story. He vouches for us. Right now, he’d say just about anything if he thought it would give him easier time.’

‘This is official channels stuff. The chief OK’d it?’ Alan asked.

‘We haven’t agreed to go with him yet, guys, but if we do, there’s no reason why he shouldn’t.’

Rudy nodded. ‘No reason at all. We’re looking at this job harder because it means more, but come on, this is the kind of stuff we do, right?’

‘Right. So Jackie Fukoyami’s our man?’

No-one dissented.

‘So let’s put it together, make the calls, set the ball rolling, get approval from the chief, go become rich men.’

‘On government pensions,’ Rudy added.