Chapter 6: Ciggies

Back in Los Angeles, I was now in a graduate seminar.

Carmen Ortega smiled, “Sistine thinks you’re ready to move on.” From opioids to the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder drug that Macklin had under development. PTSD.

I had briefed the three of them — Gloria Allen, Sistine Sanders, Carmen Ortega — on l’affaire Dillinger. It was over, time to turn back to my real job.

I said, “He wasn’t a criminal genius. The Sig Sauer was in his glove compartment. But he’d already confessed by then.”

Gloria reached for a Snickers bar, “Good.”

Enough about me. Tick-tock.

She said, “Macklin has set up a new lab in India. City called Indore. Big education center. And they brought along a boatload of scientists from their opioids lab.”

Sistine said, “They’re ready to start testing the new drug. Actually, three different versions of it, if our source in the Madhya Pradesh Police is accurate. He has some considerable leverage over one of the molecular biologists.”

I said, “Madhya Pradesh?”

Carmen smiled, “That’s the state where Indore is. It’s all in the folder.” In other words, don’t ask unnecessary questions until I’ve done my homework. Not the way I usually roll, but...

Cozad’s mother, Berlie Dillinger, hadn’t suspected anything. Certainly not the attempted murder. But she didn’t seem all that surprised. Nor did she when the Nelson Chang revelations came out. Moms know things.

Lonely days and lonely nights. Okay, I missed my family. FaceTime just wasn’t the same. Better than nothing, but not the same.

By now, the Beverly Wilshire was beginning to feel like home. A home where someone changed the linens and made the bed every day. Where food was delivered on demand. Where, eventually, I ran out of closet space. Carmen offered to upgrade me to a suite. Not at these prices, thank you. My contributions to the case consisted, so far, of draining money. Fortunately, there seemed to be enough of it. Gloria paid attention to the budget and had anticipated my side of the ledger.

The hotel agreed to put my clothes in storage when I’m not there. Nice to come back to freshly laundered outfits.

I quickly immersed myself into the LA food truck culture. Kansas City has a few; Los Angeles has a gazillion. Starting with the famous Kogi BBQ Taco Truck. Korean-Mexican rules.

Mitchum didn’t seem to mind driving me around. Especially once I started buying dinner for him and his silent wife. Besides, he got paid the same. For driving or sitting.

Kogi night, Mitchum and his wife had wide stripes of glitter paint on their eyelids. LA.

While I preferred, generally, to be out on my own, there were certainly advantages to being part of a successful operation. Financial security was an obvious one.

But time was another. I’m used to doing a lot of research. Stuff I didn’t want to bother the Sullivans with. Nor pay them.

But here, the Gloria Allen team not only did most of the background work, they anticipated what I was going to need.

For instance, I’d never heard of Indore, India before. Fine, just open the INDORE file. Metro population — over two million. And, like most Americans, it was terra incognita to me. Mostly Hindu. A local rock/metal band, Nicotine, was a pioneer in central India. Like that.

As Carmen started to lead me into the labyrinth of PTSD, I began to appreciate all the background work they’d had me do on Macklin’s opioid empire. Especially that marketing plan — most especially their deep incursion into the entire distribution channels.

The opioid game-plan was now the template for Macklin’s new drug.

Carmen walked me through the process to date:

> Macklin was trying to develop a medicine to mediate the horrific effects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Psychosis, suicide, drug addiction, crime, jail time.

> PTSD wasn’t all combat-related. In fact, around ten percent of American women are, or will be, affected. Growth market from Macklin’s point of view.

> A small pharmaceutical company outside of Durham, North Carolina had had some positive preliminary results from a neuron blocker that might do more than relieve symptoms. It might eventually prevent PTSD. Collins, Schneider, & Malcomb Inc.

> CS & M couldn’t get the safety profiles worked out. Their drug — internal name, ZB8687 — was still causing tumors in test animals. Mostly rodents, but some primates too in the later laboratory experiments. Macaques usually, a few marmosets, tamarins, spider monkeys.

> CS & M couldn’t fade the ever-increasing costs of refining ZB8687. They put the patent on the market and Macklin leaped. Bought it for a little more than $88 million. Pennies on the dollar.

> Macklin had deep pockets, an experienced R & D staff, a built-in distribution network, doctors hungry for solutions, public demand ... the perfect storm. If they could eliminate the fatal side effects.

Gloria added some perspective, “If the lab can come up with a safe, effective PTSD drug, it’ll be worth billions and billions and billions. At the same time, they’re configuring it to treat ADD kids. Sky’s the limit.”

Once I had familiarized myself with the entirety of Gloria Allen’s files —STRESS files — I stopped taking the paperwork home. Beverly Wilshire. But I had a 27-inch iMac on my desk. And a STRESS thumb drive. Good to go.

When I left for work in the morning, I put the thumb drive in my closet floor-safe. Maybe an excess of caution. Maybe not.

While US combat engagements ebbed and flowed, the pressure to find a cure for PTSD continued to grow. Too many families had too many loved ones affected. Homeless veterans. Prisons, suicides. And families stressed out from the opioids epidemic. Macklin had helped to cause one and now wanted to cure the other. Like throwing yourself on the mercy of the court — “I’m an orphan” — after killing your parents. No, I guess it wasn’t like that.

The Department of Defense allocated over $100 million for PTSD research. The Defense Appropriations Act.

Macklin viewed the disease, well the victims, as a growth area. Although not yet a market they could grow themselves as they had with opioids addiction. But the fuckers might even be working on ... no, too early to go that cynical.

Meanwhile pressure on another government agency — the Food and Drug Administration — took on a growing urgency. In the form of requests for wartime drug approvals. The Macklin lobbyists were particularly adept at prosecuting the PR battles.

As they had done with opioids, Macklin waged its STRESS campaign on several fronts.

The Institutional Review Board was charged with protecting the rights of human research subjects. Macklin now had a member, one of their allies, on the committee.

Of course no ZB8687 testing had been done on humans. Rodents, and a few primates before CS & M ceded the field and sold the patent rights. But Macklin now had a member on the IRB committee.

It felt like a gathering storm.

I was lost in the gorse. STRESS gorse. All of the files, all of the thumb drive capacity, could take me only so far. Like Daddy, I preferred to deal with people. Of course institutions couldn’t be ignored; best-practices procedures had to be followed.

But I was antsy. Felt I knew more than I wanted about Macklin’s company. Whatever it was called. Triple-I. Fine. I felt I knew more than I wanted about the pharmaceutical process. Processes.

I was itching to get out in the field. To start talking to people. Or at least learn who I should be talking with. I felt like a tiny stick figure looking up at a giant, brick wall. With no doors, no windows.

My choice was pretty straightforward. Keep my nose to the proverbial grindstone or talk with Sistine. Keeping a frustrated student in from recess will backfire. Sooner or later.

“Oh what a tangled web we spin ... something, something, Rin Tin Tin.” Or whatever it was that Wally Scott had to say about deception.

The one question I’d had from the very first time I’d met Gloria Allen was ... why me? With decades of mostly successful litigation behind her, she had access to dozens of private investigators. With a lot more seasoning than I had. Better contacts too. And many of them were based where she was — Los Angeles and New York.

Being a professional detective, licensed, I had figured it out. Pretty sure.

Gloria had asked me three or four times about my connection, my relationship, with Ash Collins. I told Daddy, “Red herring. Gloria must know people above Ash.”

“Then what’s her game?”

“I think it was my connection to Matt.”

Daddy’s quick. He leapfrogged Constance Grayson and said, “Senator Wainwright.”

“I believe so. Although my ties to him are less direct, now...” Now that Matt’s dead.

Daddy said, “What do you plan to do about it?” About my understanding of Gloria’s use for me. Potential use.

“Not sure. But I’m glad I figured it out.”

“Better to know than not.”

Ash Collins had always struck me as imperturbable. Even in the political maelstrom that engulfed the J. Edgar building. Which was, literally, crumbling around him. He even has a chunk of granite on a side table that had actually fallen onto the sidewalk. The chunk, not the table.

Months earlier, Constance had told Matt and me, “There are a lot of people, a surprisingly large number, who would be just fine if the building, the entire organization, collapsed.”

Matt said, “The Deep State gang.”

“Yes. And they’re howling in delight as scandal after scandal hits the FBI.” She reached over and patted Ash’s hand.

He said, “Look, we made mistakes. Are still making them. Will in the future. We’re 36,000 strong. There will be dotards, bumblers, iconoclasts, politically corrupt ... just like with any major organization. We have our share of stupid, too.”

Neither Ash nor Constance mentioned the direct, almost relentless, attacks from 1600 Penn.

Walker came up behind me at the kitchen sink. Put his arms around my waist and rested his chin on my head, “Winter.”

“Walk.” I continued rinsing soapy dishes.

“If you, um, meet like, some new guy...”

Uh oh. “Yeah?”

“I mean would you like to?”

“God, yes. I’m about ready to sleep with a Kennedy.”

“Huh?”

“Joke.”

“Oh. Well, if you do meet a guy ... I won’t be ... I mean, I’m sure I’d like him. Right away.”

Walker can be so sweet. “I’ve known you all your life, baby.”

“I know.”

“I recognize an excuse to cop a feel when I see one.”

I could almost hear the grin. I could feel, no almost, the instant bulge. Youth.

In a too-cheery voice as we were taxiing toward the terminal, the pilot said, “Welcome to El Paso. It’s eleven-twenty and the temperature is a pleasant one oh two.”

Logistics. It was Lina Paloma and me headed toward a Tornillo, Texas face-off with the United States Department of Health and Human Services. Specifically with their Office of Refugee Resettlement.

Hmm ... refugee resettlement. Innocuous-sounding term for ripping families asunder.

I had started the trip with Lina because, first of all, she’s a warrior. Language skills of course. Overriding everything, she’s a mother. An outraged immigrant in the shadow of a callous administration. Although, DC has had to do some recent back-scrambling — this family-separation policy had been too much of a black eye, even for some of the most ardent supporters. An executive order — that the nation had been told couldn’t be issued — had been issued to halt the government practice.

But Lina didn’t care, and I didn’t care, about the politics, about the optics. We had decided that if we could reunite even just one family ... well, that would be something good. Maybe just a small something, but something.

And, this would be a team effort. Pilar could supplant her mother; Vanessa could take my place. We had the financial resources and we would find the time. Make the time, take the time. Steal it from my Macklin duties — it suddenly felt that imperative to me. I’d even bring Walker into it if necessary.

Our goal was, pretty sure, noble. But what a depressing arena. A vast Texas desert, dusty roads, endless cotton fields. And a tent city to accommodate ‘unaccompanied minors’.

Actually, Tornillo was just a temporary stop; we’d circle back to El Paso. I’d called the office of a United States Congressman from Texas who’d been turned away, not allowed to go inside the tents to see the children. An elected United States Representative.

One of his assistants told me, slow Texas drawl, “Check it out. You’ll see the prison-like facility even from the outside. That’s the face of America these days. Down here anyway.” Her voice dripped with venom, “Zero tolerance.”

To orient ourselves, we took an early morning drive across the Fabens–Caseta International Bridge into Guadalupe, Mexico. A bank sign said 7:21. And 99 degrees. No border crossing problems either way. Two sleepy towns. And I was white; Lina had her citizenship papers.

She and I drove to the Tornillo tents. Stopped, and stared wordlessly. She had tears in her eyes. Me? I felt anger. Outrage. I U-turned and headed back to El Paso. To a federal court, if we could work things out.

So much for the Tornillo face-off.

The legal procedures would actually turn out to be the simple part of the process. Which I had mentally dubbed Project Reunification.

Lina and I made an appointment with the Rio Grande legal services operation which focused on indigent folks in Southwestern Texas. And it didn’t get much more Southwestern than El Paso. Nor indigent.

We drove past a branch of the United Bank of El Paso. The sign informed us it was 9:13 and 97 degrees. The legal office, a crowded, dusty storefront, was located in a crowded, dusty barrio. The only AC was an ancient wheezer above the front door. Its main function seemed to be to drip warm, rusty water on every visitor. The front windows were slanted open, but that didn’t help much. Room temperature in the nineties. At least. And that was my subliminal memory of that entire Texas trip — oppressive, unrelenting heat.

Annalie Delgado was Latina, all right, but not Mexican. Nor Central nor South American.

She was almost invisible behind two huge stacks of files.

Portly, dusky-skinned, pleasant. A white smile that buried a dark mole in the crevice of a deep laugh line. Annalie and Lina chatted merrily in Spanish. I was getting better at following the conversation. ‘Por favor’ and ‘gracias’. Nothing about ‘cerveza’, although I could have gulped one or two down right then and there.

Remembering her manners, Annalie turned to the ignorant Gringa and said, “I was telling Lina that my mother and grandmother were on the boat-lift out of Cuba — Marielitos. In 1980.”

Lina said, “They were treated about as well as the new immigrants today.”

Annalie shrugged, “Yesterday’s newspaper. Now, how can I help?”

I reached between the two tottering stacks and handed her an envelope. “Ten thousand dollars. A donation whether you help us or not.”

Huge grin. She reached down to a drawer and pulled out a worn, canvas-covered ledger. She asked for my ID. Filled in a pre-printed receipt, “IRS-approved.”

“Thank you.”

“Thank you. So, how can I help?”

Not rushing us, but keeping things moving. The office was filled, every visitor’s chair taken. Twenty or so standing, many holding wide-eyed kids. Some children were crying softly — exhaustion and heat and ... life. Everywhere, Latino families clutched numbered cards, like at a popular deli counter. Except this was life and death for many of them. The last stop before the street, jail, a bus ride back across the border. The room smelled of sweat and despair.

Most of the staff was Latinx. Most were young, with a few grizzled vets. All shared that same look. Harassed to the breaking point. Mostly helpless tasks made more miserable through arbitrary changes emanating from DC. A movie they’d seen for years and years.

Here, in this grimy office, I stood out because I was blonde, tall, out of place. But I didn’t sense any animosity from the supplicants. So, someone else cut in line in front of them. A tired old story. Them that has, gets; them that don’t...

Lina spoke, in Spanish again, wanting to be sure there was no misunderstanding. In English, it would have been, “We want to help a mother get out of detention; bail her out of jail if that’s necessary. A mother who had her children taken away. We’ll provide for her, do everything we can to find her children.”

A bit of skepticism. Yankee do-gooders. Although Lina...

“Any mother? No one in particular?”

I said, “We’ll follow your lead. Or, if you point us to another attorney, a social worker.” I shook my head, “There are so many women who need help. If we can reunite just one family...”

The money we had given her had been needed. And appreciated. But it still created a rather awkward dynamic. Some understandable resentment. Rich bitches thinking they can buy their way into God’s Good Graces. And God didn’t seem to be spending a lot of her time in this particular barrio.

Balancing that: Lina Paloma. An immigrant herself. Illegal when she crossed into Texas. Both Lina and I were mothers — that might count for something.

Annalie held up a ‘wait-one’ finger and left for the back of the room. Strode directly to one of two dozen or so four-drawer file cabinets. A family of five stepped politely aside. She brought back a tattered file labeled ‘Luzon López’. A mug shot was paper-clipped to the inside cover. Along with a garishly-colored photo of a young boy.

“Bail hearing is Wednesday morning, which means it might be then or that afternoon or the next day. Or the next.” This was Monday.

My blouse was sweat-soaked, completely saturated. The overhead fans just pushed warm air down on us. “What is she accused of? Luzon López?”

Annalie shook her head. “She was a motel housekeeper. Admitted as a refugee from El Salvador four months ago. She and her son were granted Temporary Protected Status. That’s good for 18 months in their case. Her green card application will be sent to the USCIS as soon as she qualifies.”

I said, “CIS?”

Lina said, “Citizenship and Immigration Services.”

Annalie patted the folder, “Fortunately, Luzon was meticulously obsessive about the paperwork. Saved a copy of everything remotely related to the process.” She shook her head, “Wasn’t enough to keep her out of the dragnet.”

“What happened?”

“The motel manager got nervous — all this new aggressive border enforcement. He didn’t provide any benefits, ignored minimum wage laws. He was paying late night visits to Luzon too. But he still fired her. She and her son, Ennio, lost the storage shed they were sleeping in. All their belongings are still in there.” Shrug. “As far as I know.”

Lina said, “How old is Ennio?”

“Five years, two months. A neighbor a couple of doors down from the motel was teaching them English.”

I said, “The arrest?”

“Shoplifting. Tortillas and milk. Overzealous clerk. The bodega is willing to drop the charges, but for now it still impacts the federal paperwork.”

“I want to help them. Lina and I do. Where’s the boy?”

Annalie shook her head, “Between the cracks. No one knows. Luzon is having panic attacks. Which doesn’t endear her to the federales.”

I got a suite for Lina and a room for me. Indigo Plaza Hotel in downtown El Paso. If we got Luzon out on bail, she could bunk in with Lina. Then the hard part — locating Ennio.

I thought about, but didn’t really consider, calling for reinforcements. Bulldog Bannerman. Constance Grayson. Gloria Allen. Although in this climate, I’m not sure any intervention by a U. S. Senator would be helpful.

But that’s not really why I didn’t reach out. I needed to become more self-sufficient, more ... capable. Hanging with Constance and Gloria ... well, I’d gotten to see firsthand two strong, resourceful ladies in action.

Plus, I didn’t know what Lina and I were getting ourselves into. My intentions were good, maybe even honorable. But there was no telling what I might have to end up doing ... well, one never knows, do one?

Lina and I started with the Immigration Enforcement detention facilities in the El Paso Processing Center on Montana Avenue. Joint looked like the prison it was.

Annalie Delgado had called ahead and got us a sit-down with Luzon López. The old-girl network ... um, worked. Even from lowly Legal Aid up to the mighty Feds.