Nikki cast her mind back to her sessions with Anne, where she’d mentioned something about her husband’s philanthropy and his tragic past.
‘That’s all real,’ said Williams. ‘And his real estate empire is real too. It just happens to be the best cover story ever for a major cocaine producer. Which is what he is.’
Williams explained how Rodriguez had evaded justice both at home and in the US by a skillful directing of his resources towards both the police and the impoverished communities, ravaged by drugs, they purported to serve. ‘He’s everybody’s friend. It’s kind of incredible. Ordinary people don’t know about his cartel, and they wouldn’t believe it if they were told. Meanwhile, those in authority who do know have had it made worth their while to turn a blind eye. We’re talking more than lining the pockets of corrupt officials. That’s Rodriguez’s genius: he’s generous and he’s charming, and he’s embedded himself in every possible aspect of these communities’ infrastructures. So in Mexico he pays for schools and roads and hospitals. Here in the US he funds senatorial races, gives a ton of money to our friends the LAPD. He’s a master manipulator.’
That last part rang true to Nikki from her many long and torturous conversations with Anne. As for the rest of it, she wasn’t sure what to believe. She was perfectly happy to imagine that Anne’s husband was a ‘bad hombre’ with illicit businesses behind his legitimate ones. But Williams’ characterization of Luis Rodriguez as some sort of untouchable drug kingpin smacked of a conspiracy theory worthy of Carter Berkeley.
‘Can you prove any of this?’ she asked Williams outright.
‘Not much of it,’ Williams admitted. ‘Not yet anyway. But I’m working on it. I’ve been working on it for almost a decade, ever since Charlotte’s father, Tucker Clancy, fired me.’
‘Why’d he fire you?’ Nikki asked.
Williams shrugged. ‘He didn’t want to hear the truth about his daughter. That she’d been seeing a married man and all that. I mean, I get it. He was her dad.’
Nikki thought for a moment. ‘What about Valentina’s charity? You said you thought they were involved.’
Williams inhaled deeply. ‘I did. I mean, I still do, potentially. But that’s been a lot harder to unravel, a real hornets’ nest. And to be frank with you, after a while I let it go, because Rodriguez was clearly the bigger fish in all of this. But’ – he cleared his throat – ‘I’m pretty sure Missing isn’t all it seems to be. I heard rumors when I was down in Mexico City that they had a hand in orchestrating some of these kidnappings that they then helped to “solve”.’
Nikki frowned. ‘Why would they do that?’
Williams rubbed his fingers together to indicate money. ‘There’s a whole bunch of ways to make a profit from abduction. I heard that Valentina “helped” families to pay ransoms and then took a cut from the kidnappers. That’s the most obvious business model. Other times Missing were paid by the gangs to smuggle members or associates out of the country – supposedly some of them into witness protection programs here in the States. Which would mean Mrs Baden must have had inside help.’
‘From the police, you mean?’ asked Nikki.
Williams chuckled. ‘Don’t sound so shocked. The LAPD are as bent as an old coat hanger. I also got good information that Missing were involved in people-trafficking. Young girls were being picked up off the street and sold to Russian sex-gangs. Nothing I could prove. But there were a lot of rumors.’
Nikki’s eyes widened. ‘You don’t think … Charlotte Clancy?’
Williams shook his head. ‘Unlikely. Sex-trafficking is usually low income, Favela kids, young girls – and boys – with no status, no family to look out for them. An eighteen-year-old American girl would have been more trouble than she was worth. But one way or another I got the strong impression that the charitable side of Missing’s work was a front. Huge sums of money were flowing through that organization – way more than you’d see for a legitimate NGO.’
Nikki lapsed into silence. It was difficult squaring Williams’ ‘rumors’ with what Gretchen had told her about Valentina Baden. About her sister going missing when they were teenagers, and how that tragedy had changed and inspired her life. Nikki wasn’t sure why, but she desperately wanted to believe the inspirational version over the corrupt one. Too much around her was rotten at the moment. Was it too much to ask that Williams be wrong about this one?
‘In any case,’ Williams broke the silence, ‘Mrs Baden is kind of a sideshow here. The real linchpin has always been Luis Rodriguez. In the last two years his entire focus has shifted from cocaine to Krok. He’s been trying to wrest control of the supply chain from the Russians, right here in LA. He has guys all over the city right now. They’re like a plague.’
Nikki’s pulse quickened. Plague. Wasn’t that the exact word Carter had used in her office earlier about these mysterious Mexican assassins he claimed were trying to kill him? Or at least to scare him into silence, perhaps about a murder, if Carter’s stream-of-consciousness ramblings were to be believed?
Another link. Another dark thread in the spider’s web.
She forced herself to think rationally, to sift out the facts from this sea of speculation.
‘Let’s assume you’re right about Luis’s drug business. Do you think Anne knows?’ she asked Williams.
‘I am right,’ he replied. ‘As to whether his latest wife knew where his cash came from, I have no idea. I’ve never met Anne. But from what you’ve told me about her, I doubt it. Like I said, Rodriguez has a split personality. He may well have kept his business and personal life totally separate.’
I have to tell her, thought Nikki. She has a right to know who her husband really is. Every wife has that right. The right not to live a lie, because of her husband’s secrets. She wondered how many of Anne’s friends had known about Luis and kept the truth from her. The same way that Haddon Defoe and countless of Doug’s colleagues had kept the truth from Nikki.
‘But you say the police do know?’ Nikki looked at Williams. ‘The FBI and the police here in LA?’
‘Oh yeah. They know.’ Williams nodded grimly. ‘You can bet the LAPD drug squad has got files as big as the telephone book on Rodriguez and De la Rosa. They know where and how this so-called “clean” Mexican Krok is coming into the city. But they seem to be letting Rodriguez’s guys act with impunity.’
‘Because …?’ Nikki raised a questioning eyebrow.
Williams shrugged. ‘Either they prefer the Mexicans to the Russians, so it’s a lesser of two evils thing. Or, someone senior in the department is getting a cut.’
Nikki digested this for a moment.
‘So you’re saying the police are in on the deal? That they’re sharing the cartel’s profits, in the same way they did with Missing?’