A/N: Normal disclaimer that I do not own Batman or any DC properties. This is my attempt to combine a bunch of interests of mine into something I've wished DC would do. In Lost Days we got glimpses into the tiny things that make up being a crime fighter. Basically what I wanted was a combination of The Wire and Batman. So using a recent New York Times article on the Mexican Sinaloa cartel, I did my best to set it up a foil for Batman.
Even in what of the hottest summers in Gotham history, dew still formed on the brick walls of the west side projects in the morning. On a summer like this it was a hidden treasure. A junkie could was as likely to collapse from the heat as shooting up if they waited until the afternoon to pick up. But coming this early, before the corner boys had even started up, wasn't that much better. A row of thirty had lined up this morning, slouching against the brick walls to beat the heat. Resting their faces against the walls, they waited for the collection of teens and kids.
Bruce knew they didn't come early to avoid the afternoon heat. The scratching and shaking of the dope fiends told the story. Mimicing it, the nuances of an addict, had been hard for him. His first few times out the children the dealers paid to keep an eye out had called out Bruce as an undercover cop. It wasn't true, but it meant Bruce had to change locations to buy. After two weeks though Bruce had learned to blend in. Maybe it was the overwhelming stress that made looking drawn and haggard so easy.
There was no need to do hand to hand sales anymore, but Bruce liked to have a feel for how the corners worked. As his eyes moved methodically over the dealers, from the boy who he asked for 2 vials from, to the other, no older than 16, near an alley down the block who he walked to pick up from, Bruce memorized the faces. Six guys worked this corner. Three of them looked to be in high school, two children around ten kept look out for any cops or rival dealers, and one low level dealer named Cudi who had just turned twenty. Bruce knew him. Three levels down from anyone major, he wasn't likely to advance much higher than he was. Bruce had picked up the mid level dealers complaining that Cudi's count kept coming in low. As Bruce shuffled away from the dealers he saw a ten year old he had seen talking to the mid level guys the week before. Bruce knew the kid was assigned to watch Cudi.
After a short walk Bruce arrived and small white van he'd been using for his investigation. It was no Bat Cave, but it helped to have a place to change into a clean shirt after spending two hours baking in a dirt coated jean jacket. Bruce changed in the back of the van, putting on clean black workout pants and a white t-shirt, and stuffed his disguise and the drugs into a compartment hidden in the floor of the van. Should he get pulled over, even the closest inspection wouldn't turn up the compartment, nor the other one containing his body armored suit. All a traffic stop would reveal was a rather smelly, poorly spoken Wayne Enterprises delivery man named Dan Didio who would be passed over for his mediocrity.
It wasn't until he was back at the Bunker he'd had built in the city that Bruce was able to clean off all the grime that went along with making his disguise believable. As he exited the Bunker's make shift locker room in just sweatpants Bruce saw that Alfred had already arrived. Bruce and Alfred were staying in a penthouse in the city rather than drive back to mansion. Or at least Alfred was. Bruce was spending his nights on the streets and his days in the Bunker's forensics lab. To keep anyone from noticing how little Bruce spent at the penthouse, Bruce had bought out the entire floor, as well as the one's above and below.
"Another long night, sir?" Alfred asked, setting a tray with plates of toast and eggs next to the elaborate computer Bruce had installed in the Bunker. The Bunker was incredibly sparse, even after all the time Bruce had been using it.
Originally the bottom floor of a Wayne Enterprises parking garage, Bruce had seemingly blocked the whole bottom floor out, citing a report about the structural integrity of the garage. The ramp leading to the second floor of the garage was able to slide away to allow the Batmobile to drive in and out. Bruce left it in the cave most night though, and used his nondescript white van and a motorcycle while trying to go undercover. In fact most of the Bunker was different from the Cave under the mansion. The array of weapons replaced with a long work station with various listening devices, bugs that could be clandestinely placed on dealers. A row of glass cases lined the back wall, each containing a manikin wearing a batsuit. In the middle of the right hand side wall was Bruce's computer. It was actually four computers, each using two screens, with specialized functions, but Bruce referred to it as one computer. And along the entire length of the left hand wall were cork pin up boards with pictures and notes pinned. Red and white string connected the pictures, moving up like and evolutionary tree.
"Another long night, Alfred," said Bruce, collapsing into the chair in front of the computer. He placed his hand on the glass pad next to the keyboard and waited as the scanner recognized his fingerprints. After that it was just a pair 38 digit pass codes before the computers were up and running. "I was able to listen on meetings between the top lieutenants from two different groups. They confirmed my theory." Bruce slid one of the vials he'd bought that morning into the centrifuge. A little bit of humming and a few seconds later and message popped up on screen six informing Bruce the heroin was 70% pure. "A year ago street level vials were 20% pure, cut with so much baking soda addicts would still feel withdrawal symptoms after. Dealers trying to spread out competing packages for every last dime. Now none of them are worried about supply. All of them. The heroin you buy on any street corner in Gotham is uniform." Bruce sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose in frustration. "Every organization in Gotham is now being supplied by the same source for an incredible mark off."
"A truly concerning problem to be certain, Master Bruce," Alfred said while removing the mud coated clothes from the compartment in the van. "But is it one that requires you spend every night awake wearing these foul smelling garments?"
"Don't wash those, it adds to the disguise," Bruce said without turning from the computer. "Just put them one of the drawers in the armory. Keep the odors trapped in." Alfred shook his head in disgust but walked into a side room before returning a few seconds later. The butler kept his hands stretched out in front of him as though to bring them closer to his body would lead to a deathly infection. Only when Alfred returned from washing his hands did Bruce continue. "It's a problem because even though I've brought drug trafficking in Gotham to an all time low, they've made record profits. According the call I intercepted last night close to $100 million per gang. All of it for nothing."
"Fewer addicts on the street, Wayne Enterprise funded treatment centers throughout the city, and you've brought down three of the largest gangs in the city. I would hardly call that nothing." Alfred stopped behind Bruce's seat, giving the young man he'd helped raise a pat on the shoulder. "Did you really expect they wouldn't adapt?"
"No, but how do I go about stopping a cartel twice the size of my own company?" Bruce tapped a button bringing up his file on the supplier, the Coronel drug cartel.
"Miguel Rios, aka El Asasino, aka the head of the Coronel Mexican drug cartel," Bruce said a week later. Bags had begun to form under his eyes from sleepless nights combing through more pages of DEA, CIA, and FBI files than Bruce thought exists. "Place of birth unknown, although the CIA doesn't seem ready to rule out he was born in Los Angeles." Bruce was sitting on side table near the computer while Alfred took the chair. This was the first time Bruce would walk through all of his findings to Alfred, but would most certainly not be the last. "You're my Watson," Bruce would say as he began explaining the structure of a mob family. Now it had become a ritual that Alfred could sometimes contribute to. "Age, 58."
"Fifty eight?" Alfred said astonished. "For the largest drug dealer in the world for over a decade? Are they certain? Could they be wrong?"
"I checked. They may be off a year or two, but he still has the longest reign of any one man over a cartel in the history of the drug war." Bruce rubbed his eyes and tried to blink away the exhaustion before focusing on the monitor again. "Over $40 billion in profit annually they traffic in cocaine, heroin, meth, ecstasy, marijuana, and recently have expanded to firearms. If you sell a product that gangs will go to war over you might as well sell them the guns they use in the process. Upward synergy at its best."
"Capitalism is a wonderful thing."
"Indeed." Bruce reached over and took one of five glasses of coffee on a tray Alfred brought down with him and drank it all at once. As the scalding liquid moved down his throat Bruce shivered then continued. "They have, over the last decade changed the drug trade. Rios has moved the Mexican cartels from glorified middle man for Columbia to the dominant power in the trade. He used meth and heroin to cover the cost of creating land routes into the country after the DEA cracked in on the boats the Columbians were using. They can now buy a kilo of coke for $2,000 in Columbia and sell it for $30,000 in the US. Bump that to $100,000 if they directly control the street dealers and can sell it in small amounts.
"Rios has been ruthless in his efforts to quell any challenges to his control. Fair warning, Alfred, these are gruesome even by our standards." A series of pictures flashed on the screen showing burned villages, piles of human limbs and heads larger than most houses in Gotham, and a series of blown up buildings. "There have been close to 100,000 deaths attributed to Rios' cartel since 2007. He kills DEA agents with impunity. It's gotten so bad the DEA is only letting agents who have put in a formal request at least once a month for 18 months before allowing them to be tested for qualification. Rios employs a group of thugs so colorful they'd fit right in at Arkham. El Flamingo might as well be Joker with a motorcycle. Jaguar is a meta humanoid predator cat, full mental faculties, put Croc in the hospital when Croc tried to rip off a shipment in New Orleans last year. Last year there were twelve recorded cases of them contracting out to Bane. Oh and Rios personally employs the 4th largest land army in human history."
"A truly formidable leviathan you've chosen to involve yourself with, Master Bruce." Alfred was silent for a few seconds, sliding back between the pages of information, ignoring the anxious and impatient grunts from Bruce. "An organization this large has to have some weaknesses. Perhaps infiltrate a branch far enough from the base that their operatives are less afraid of reprisal?"
"Sadly they are amazing with delegating for a power hungry and ruthless cartel." Bruce reached forward and tapped the keyboard calling up a map of the country, spotted sporadically with flashing dots. "The dots are midway points. St. Louis. Biloxi. Dallas. Jacksonville. Greensboro. Santa Fe. The largest is Chicago. The cartel ships the drugs to these locations and from there they sell wholesale to major drug dealers. It's a huge price cut for the local dealers from what they were paying. Not that it matters because in return for the price cut they pay the cartels for protection."
"That protection hasn't exactly stopped you from hurting their business."
"They don't pay for protection from other gangs or me. They pay for protection from the cartel itself." Bruce called up another set of images on the monitor. "These are from two months ago. Rios was unhappy with the profits a dealer called Boxxie was sending back." Hundreds of crime scene photos flashed over the screen showing teenage street dealers shot dead on sidewalks, arrested dealers stabbed to death in prison, and crime scene photos of Boxxie's home. "It was a coordinated attack. From what I can piece together from the shoddy local police reports it took 45 seconds to kill ever street dealer, every arrested muscle Boxxie had, and Boxxie's family. Boxxie has since rebuilt his empire, and is the most profitable dealer Rios has under his thumb."
Silence fell over both of them as they struggled to think of any opening. After a few minutes Alfred 's face had the same frustrated mask on. "Just how stuck are you?"
"I wouldn't say stuck so much as-" Alfred turned to look at him skeptically. "Yeah I'm stuck."
"Have you considered asking one of your friends with a penchant for stopping bullets if they can just fly down to Mexico and pick him up?"
"There have been 27 assassination attempts on Rios. After attempt number eleven they implemented a line of succession. The people in line to replace Rios are with him less often than the cabinet is with the president."
"Then perhaps you have found a task even you can't accomplish, Master Bruce."
A/N: Blerg. This didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped. Feedback would be very much appreciated.