“And they say we don’t have a diverse economy.”
She didn’t smile. “Local law enforcement is not ready for what’s coming, David. That war down in Juarez and Tijuana-it could come here. The people behind their gated communities think this won’t touch them. They’re wrong.”
“But I thought tax cuts would solve everything,” I said.
“The thing is, we don’t just import and distribute, with all the bodies along the way. We’re probably the biggest hub for firearms smuggling back the other way.”
“The drug war in Mexico.”
“Exactly,” she said. “Calderon’s offensive has set off a bloodbath down there. The cartels get their guns from here.” The Mexican president had promised an offensive against the narcos, and the border had been convulsed with violence. I wondered when we would have a failed state on our southern flank. And the firepower for the bad guys was courtesy of the good old U.S. of A.
I asked her if it was that easy.
She nodded emphatically. “The gun laws are so lax. There are six thousand licensed gun dealers in the border states and we have two hundred agents to police them. Try to get an Arizona jury to convict these gun dealers. Not going to happen.”
I listened as she explained the enterprise: American citizens can take the guns across the border-they won’t be searched going in. The smugglers hire Americans with clean records, have them buy three or four assault rifles, and take them south. Sometimes they buy at gun shows where there’s no requirement to notify the authorities. Other times they use licensed dealers. She said, “Most of the time it moves below the radar. Hundreds of individuals going south with guns. Drugs and money moving north to pay for them. It’s very hard to detect.”
The Jesus Is Lord Pawn shop didn’t seem hard to detect. I described the store.
“I’m aware of it.” And that was all she said.
So I detailed what else I saw: the black Suburban, the well-dressed Hispanics, and the large quantity of boxes they loaded. “They were a tad out of place there, to say the least.” Springsteen sang “One Step Up.” I fought against my guilt and gloom like a man trying to stay standing in a brutal windstorm. Emotional honesty and mordant guitars were not what I needed at that moment. And then it occurred to me. “Mexican cops, right?”
Amy Preston sipped her white wine and shook her head. “You know I can’t comment…”
I finished the sentence for her: “on an ongoing investigation.”
