Page 181 of The Fourth Option
“I was just about to call you with a big update,” she said by way of greeting.
“Let me go first,” Stanton said as they walked. “I didn’t want to meet at the office.”
“What’s up?” J.J. asked, the concern evident in her tone.
“Remember when I asked you about how you might have reported Babineaux’s fishing boat?”
“Sure.”
“Well, that day Lloyd had us in his office, he said something like ‘Maybe Babineaux is just off on his fishing boat.’ Remember?”
J.J. stopped in her tracks.
“I never told Lloyd about the boat,” he said.
“Fuck. I should have caught that.”
“You didn’t, because you trusted him. You figured that maybe I told him about it. I would have thought the same thing had our positions been reversed.”
“Maybe.”
They continued walking and stopped at a T-shirt vendor. Stanton looked over a few before proceeding.
“There is no easy way to say this: Augie Lloyd is compromised. I think he’s bought and paid for by an El Salvador−based cartel run by a man named Fulgencio Vargas.”
“What?”
“Irene Isaacson gave him information passed to her by Leigh Ann Staub before her murder, information on cops possibly involved in the drug trade here in New Orleans, information he never shared with us.”
“There has got to be another explanation. You’ve met with the DA before. Why didn’t she mention it then?”
“Because Bates was there too. Augie was stringing her along. She trusted him. Just like us.”
They stopped at a wrought-iron bench along the river. Stanton pulled a folded printout from his jacket pocket and handed it to her.
“Isaacson got us a warrant,” he said. “She moved fast and called in a favor with a judge.”
J.J. looked through the tightly spaced records. “All of the prominent wireless carriers.”
“I used the warrant to pull cell signal identifiers—tower pings—from Lloyd’s home, his commute, and his office. Then I looked for commonalities.”
J.J. flipped a page. “You suspected he has a burner.”
“We can’t trace it directly to him, not yet anyway, but I found a number that shows up consistently in those locations, the same locations and times as Lloyd’s FBI phone. That number has been transmitting scrambled data, not regular texts or calls, just encrypted bursts.”
“Using an app?”
“Military-grade encryption. But with that warrant and with Alvaro Mendez’s help, I was able to trace the endpoints. One terminated at a residence in El Salvador belonging to Vargas. Another at the Nectar Sugar facility. And one more at the Four Seasons Hotel on the river.”
J.J. looked up. “Who was staying there?”
“Same guy. Fulgencio Vargas. He’s the CEO of Nectar Sugar. Mendez had ICE confirm that Vargas’s private jet often lands at Lakefront Airport. He stays at the Four Seasons when he’s in town.”
J.J. exhaled. “So, Augie Lloyd has been speaking with Fulgencio Vargas on an encrypted burner phone?”
“Yes.”
“What do we know about Vargas? Is he allied with the cartels?”
