Ty in the front row to pass around. She caught his eye for a split second. Irritation lurked there but she chose to ignore it. She could see his point. Given what had happened between them, he had a right to at least be acknowledged. And she regretted she couldn't, she really did. The problem was she couldn't do that without the rest of the room jumping to conclusions. That they would be the right conclusions didn't matter. If it were a different situation, maybe she wouldn't mind as much. But not now, not with this case.
“These folders contain information on the investigation that brings us to your fair city,” Dani began the presentation. “Ramon Getz, resident of Portland, is the primary focus. The first page has his photo and general stats.” She called up his image on a projector the captain had prepared for her at her request. The face looking back at them was that of a forty-five-year-old man in a well-cut suit and silk tie. His first name was Hispanic, but Getz's features, like most Americans, were mixed enough that it was impossible to tell his heritage.
“Over the years, he's been making his way up the drug distributor food chain.” Dani clicked to the next slide showing a picture of younger Getz standing on the tarmac of an airstrip in Colombia. “He got his start over thirty years ago as a transporter for one of the South American cartels. He made enough contacts and enough money that he went into business for himself about ten years ago.” The slide she clicked to next showed a map of the United States with cities color coded to dates.
“At first his influence was pretty much limited to the Portland area but in the last year or so, through various avenues of information, we've been hearing his name crop up in places like Miami, Seattle, and LA.” She paused, studying the map. “He's getting big and we'd like to make sure he doesn't get any bigger.”
“His cartel buddies just let him go into business for himself?” one of the vice detectives asked, not bothering to hide his cynicism.
Dani smiled to herself, it had been her first reaction too, when she heard about Getz. Drug cartels tended to hold tight to their markets and their members. Getz was an enigma in more ways than one. “They were—lucky for Getz—short sighted,” she explained, turning back toward the room. “Portland just wasn't on their radar. The cartel was focused on the big cities: New York, LA, Miami. Maine was too remote, not wealthy enough, you name it.”
She pulled out the third page from the folder and held it up. “The intelligence we've collected suggests that Getz made a deal with them. He'd stay out of their territories and they would leave him alone. In exchange, he would do a certain percent of his business with them. At the time, it was a standard high-risk investment for him. He took on all the risk of obtaining and distributing the drugs in newer, untested markets while there was only an upside for the cartel.
“By the time they realized how short sighted the deal was, Getz had already built himself quite an empire and it was easier and less costly to keep the status quo than for the cartel to try to change the arrangement.”
“Convenient for Getz,” Ty interjected.
She glanced at him and saw a hint of amusement flash across his features. It almost made her smile. Almost, but not quite.
“He's a nasty son of a bitch. But, unfortunately for all of us, he's not dumb,” Dani responded in acknowledgement. “He has no formal education beyond tenth grade, but he grew up in South Boston in one of the toughest neighborhoods on the Eastern Seaboard. He knows how to move drugs through a community—he lived it firsthand. He learned what drugs can do to people and he's used this knowledge to pit people against each other in ways that leave him on top. He manipulated his former employer in a way that would almost be admirable, if it weren't so dirty.”
“So now that he's a big dog, the DEA is sweeping in to clean up the mess?” Detective Warren asked.
Dani saw Ty slide his partner a look. It was a subtle show of support that was both surprising and welcome. Warren's comment echoed the cries of local agencies all over the US—that the DEA didn't really care about the drug situation until it got big enough that