The Border

by Don Winslow

  Los Hijos.

  Now one of Iván’s bitches takes out her phone and screams, “It would be a million YouTube hits!”

  Fucking awesome, Ric thinks. Someone blowing his brains out on a vid-clip, over a dare. Show the world we just don’t give a shit, we’re capable of anything, anything. “Okay, whoever the barrel points to puts it to his head and pulls the trigger. If he survives, we do it again.”

  He spins it.

  Hard.

  Everyone holds their breath.

  The barrel points right back at him.

  Iván Esparza explodes in laughter. “Fuck you, Ric!”

  The oldest Esparza brother has always been pushing him, since they were little kids. Daring him to jump off the cliff into the quarry pond. Go on, do it, I dare you. I dare you to break into the school, steal your papi’s whiskey, unbutton that girl’s blouse. They’ve chugged bottles of vodka, raced speedboats straight at each other, cars to the edge of cliffs, but this . . .

  Amid chants of “Do it! Do it! Do it!,” Ric picks up the pistol and puts it against his right temple.

  Just like that yanqui cop did.

  The one who did a number on Iván’s face.

  It’s been what, a year, and the scar is still angry on Iván’s cheek, even after the best plastic surgeons money can buy. Iván is cool about it, of course, claiming that it makes him look even more macho.

  And swearing that one day he will kill that gringo Keller.

  Ric’s hand shakes.

  Drunk and stoned as he is, all he wants in the world right then is to not pull the trigger. All he wants is to go back a few minutes to the moment when he had this insanely stupid idea, and to not suggest it.

  But now he’s trapped.

  He can’t punk out, not in front of Iván, Alfredo and Oviedo, not in front of Rubén. Especially not in front of Belinda, the girl sitting beside him in a black leather jacket, a sequined bustier and painted-on jeans. Belinda is as crazy as she is beautiful; this girl will do anything. Now she smiles at him and the smile says, Do it, boyfriend. Do it and I’ll make you so happy later.

  If you live.

  “Come on, man, put it down,” Rubén says. “It was a joke.”

  But that’s Rubén. The cautious one, the careful one, what did Iván call him once—the “Emergency Brake.” Yeah, maybe, but Ric knows that Rubén is his father’s son—El Cachorro, “The Puppy,” is absolutely, totally lethal, like his old man.

  He doesn’t look lethal now, though; he looks scared.

  “No, I’m doing it,” Ric says. They’re telling him not to, and he knows they mean it, but he also knows they’ll think less of him. He’d be the one who chickened out, not them. But if he pulls the trigger and it doesn’t go off, he’ll be the man.

  And it’s great to see Iván freaking out.

  “It was a joke, Ric! No one expected you’d do it!” Iván yells. He looks like he’s going to lunge across the table but is afraid to make the gun go off. Everyone at the table is frozen, staring at Ric. From the corner of his eye, he sees their private waiter sneak out the door.

  “Put the gun down,” Rubén says.

  “Okay, here goes,” Ric says. He’s starting to tighten his finger when Belinda grabs the gun from his hand, sticks it in her mouth and pulls the trigger.

  The hammer clicks on the empty chamber.

  “Jesus fucking Christ!” Iván yells.

  They all freak out. The crazy chava actually did it, and then she calmly sets the gun back on the table and says, “Next.”

  Except Rubén picks up the gun and sticks it in his pocket. “I think we’re done.”

  “Pussy,” Belinda says.

  If it were a guy who’d said that, Ric knows, it would be on, a reason to go, and Rubén would either pull the trigger on himself or on the mouth that called him that. But it’s a girl, a chica, so it’s all good.

  “What a rush,” Belinda says. “I think I came.”

  The door opens and Rudolfo Sánchez walks in. “What the hell is going on in here?”

  “We’re just having some fun,” Iván says, assuming leadership.

  “I heard,” Rudolfo says. “Do me a favor? You want to kill yourselves, don’t do it in my place, okay?”

  He asks politely, but if it were any other club owner, there’d be a problem. Iván would feel a need to face him, maybe slap him down, or at least cause some damage, break some shit up, throw down some bills to cover the damage, and walk out.

  But this isn’t any club owner.

  Rudolfo is Adán Barrera’s nephew, his sister Elena’s son. A little older, but an Hijo like them.

  Rudolfo looks at them like, Why are you in my club raising dust? Why did you have to pick this place? And he says, “What would I say to your fathers if I let you blow your brains out in my club?”

  Then he stops, looking embarrassed, only now remembering that Iván’s father is dead, killed by the Zetas in Guatemala.

  Ric feels bad for him. “Sorry, ’Dolfo. We’re fucked up.”

  “Maybe we should just get the check,” Rubén says.

  “It’s comped,” Rudolfo says.

  But Ric notices he doesn’t say anything like, No, please stay. Have another round. They all get up, say good night to Rudolfo, thank him—show some respect, Ric thinks—and walk out onto the street.

  Where Iván goes off. “That malandro, pendejo, pinche motherfucker lambioso fuck! Does he think he’s funny?! ‘What would your fathers think?’”

  “He didn’t mean anything,” Rubén says. “He probably just forgot.”

  “You don’t forget something like that!” Iván says. “He was stepping on my dick! When I take over . . .”

  Ric says, “The guy hasn’t been the same since he got back.”

  Unlike any of them, Rudolfo had gone to prison. Did time in an American supermax and the word was that it wrecked him, that he came home messed up.

  “The guy is weak,” Iván says. “He couldn’t take it.”

  “None of us know what we’d do,” Rubén says. “My old man says prison is the worst thing that can happen to you.”

  “He came out of it okay,” Ric says. “Your dad is tough.”

  “None of us know,” Rubén repeats.

  “Fuck that,” Iván says. “This is our life. If you go, you go. You have to hold it together, like a man.”

  “Rudolfo did,” Ric says. “He didn’t bitch up, he didn’t flip.”

  “His uncle got him out,” Iván says.

  “Good,” Ric says. “Good for Adán. He’d have done the same for you.”

  They all know that Adán did it before, too, when his nephew Sal got busted for killing two people outside a club. Adán made a deal to get the charges dropped, and the rumor they all heard was that he flipped on the Tapia brothers, launching the bloody civil war that almost destroyed the cartel.

  And Sal got killed anyway.

  Blown to shit by Crazy Eddie Ruiz.

  Sal should be here tonight, drinking with us, Ric thinks.

  Go with God, ’mano.

  Iván notices the girls staring at him. “What are you looking at?! Walk ahead, get in the fucking cars!”

  Then, just as quickly as he got furious, he gets all happy again. Throws his arms around Ric’s and Rubén’s shoulders and yells, “We’re brothers! Brothers forever!”

  And they all shout, “¡Los Hijos!”

  Coked, drunk, and orgasmed out, the girl falls asleep.

  Belinda shakes her head. “No stamina. I wish Gaby was here.”

  She rolls over and looks at Ric.

  Shit, he thinks, she wants to go again. “I can’t.”

  “I’ll give you a few minutes,” Belinda says. She finds a blunt on the nightstand, lights it up, takes a hit and offers him one.

  He takes it. “That was crazy tonight, what you did.”

  “I did it to bail you out,” she says. “You talked yourself into a trap.”

  “You could have died.”

  “
Could have,” she says, gesturing to get the joint back. “Didn’t. Anyway, it’s my job to protect you.”

  Belinda Vatos—La Fósfora—was the jefa of FEN, Fuerza Especial de Núñez, the armed wing of the Núñez faction of the Sinaloa cartel. It’s unusual to have a woman in that position, but God knows she earned it, Ric thinks.

  Started as a courier, then a mule, then took a major step up when she volunteered to kill a Zeta operative who was playing hell with their people in Veracruz. The guy didn’t expect a young, beautiful woman with big round tits and a head of wavy black hair to walk up and put two bullets in his face, but that’s what Belinda did.

  She and her girlfriend, Gabriela, had a technique. La Gaby would go into a bar, stay awhile, then leave pretending to be drunk. She’d fall down on the sidewalk, then when the target bent over to help her, La Fósfora would come out of the alley and blast him.

  Ric soon learned that she had more exotic tastes. She and Gaby and a few of her men liked to kidnap victims, chop them up into deli meat, and then drop the pieces off at their families’ doorsteps, as a message.

  The message got through.

  La Fósfora became a narco rock star, posing in sexy garb for Facebook photos and YouTube videos, having songs written about her, and Ric’s father moved her up to the top spot after the previous head of security was sent to prison.

  Ric first fucked her on a dare.

  “It would be like sticking your dick into death,” Iván said.

  “Yeah, but a chava that crazy has to be great in bed,” Ric said.

  “If you live,” Iván said. “She might be like one of those spiders who, you know, kill the male after mating. Anyway, I hear she’s a lesbian.”

  “She’s bi,” Ric said. “She told me.”

  “So go for it,” Iván said. “You can maybe get a threesome out of it.”

  “That’s what she said she wants,” Ric said. “Her and that girl Gaby, I can dick them both.”

  “You only live once.”

  So Ric went to bed with Belinda and Gaby, and the fucked-up thing is that he fell for one and not the other. He still fucked a lot of different women, including even sometimes his wife, but what he had with Belinda was special.

  “We’re soul mates,” Belinda explained to him. “In the sense that neither of us has one.”

  “You don’t have a soul?” Ric asked her.

  “I like to get high, I like to fuck guys, I like to fuck girls, and I like to kill people,” Belinda said. “If I have a soul, it’s not much of a soul.”

  Now Belinda looks at him and says, “Anyway, I couldn’t let the crown prince blow his own brains out.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Think about it,” she says, handing back the joint. “Barrera’s probably dead. Nacho’s dead for sure. Rudolfo is a zero. Your father? I love your father, I kill for him, I’d die for him, but he’s a placeholder. You’re the godson.”

  Ric says, “You’re talking crazy. Iván’s next in line.”

  “I’m just saying.” She takes the joint from him, sets it down and kisses him. “Lie back, baby. If you can’t fuck me, I’ll fuck you. Let me fuck you, baby.”

  She licks her finger and then snakes it into his ass. “You like that, don’t you?”

  “Fuck.”

  “Oh, I will, baby,” she says. “I’ll fuck you. I’ll fuck you good.”

  She does.

  With her mouth and her fingers, and when he’s about to come she takes her mouth off him, shoves her fingers in deep and says, “It could be yours, all of it. The whole cartel, the whole country, if you want it.”

  Because you’re Adán Barrera’s godson, he hears her tell him.

  His rightful heir.

  The anointed one.

  El Ahijado.

  Weeks went by, then months, then a year.

  The anniversary of the reputed battle in Guatemala coincides with the Day of the Dead, and makeshift shrines to Adán Barrera—photos of him, candles, coins, little bottles of booze and papel picado—spring up all over the country, even in Juárez. Some are left intact while others are torn down by angry adherents claiming there’s no need for shrines because “Adán vive.”

  For Keller, the Christmas holidays come and go with little fanfare. He joins Marisol and Ana for a subdued dinner and an exchange of small gifts, then goes back to Juárez and gives Chuy a new video game that the kid seems to like. The next morning’s newspapers carry stories of toys magically appearing for poor children in rural villages and city barrios in Sinaloa and Durango from their “Tío Adán.” Baskets of food arrive in town plazas, gifts from “El Señor.”

  Keller barely acknowledges New Year’s Eve. He and Marisol share an early dinner, a glass of champagne, and a chaste kiss. He’s in bed asleep before the ball drops in Times Square.

  Two weeks into the new year, Chuy disappears.

  Keller comes back from grocery shopping, the television is off, the Xbox cables unhooked.

  In Chuy’s room the backpack Keller had bought him is gone, as are the few clothes Chuy owns. His toothbrush is missing from the ceramic rack in the bathroom. Whatever storms blew inside Chuy’s head, Keller thinks, have apparently driven him to leave. At least, as Keller discovers when he searches the room, he took his meds with him.

  Keller drives around the neighborhood, asking at local shops and internet cafés. No one has seen Chuy. He cruises the places downtown where teenagers hang out, but doesn’t see Chuy. On the off chance that the kid has decided to go out to Valverde, he calls Marisol, but no one has seen him there, either.

  Maybe, Keller thinks, he’s crossed the bridge back into El Paso where he grew up, so Keller goes over and drives around the barrio, asks some reasonably hostile gangbangers who instantly make him as some sort of cop and tell him that they haven’t seen any Chuy Barajos.

  Keller reaches out to old connections with the El Paso PD narcotics squad and finds out that Chuy is a person of interest in several local homicides back in ’07 and ’08 and they’d like to talk with him. In any case, they’ll keep an eye out and give Keller a call if they pick him up.

  Going back to Juárez, Keller finds Terry Blanco at San Martín over on Avenida Escobar downing a Caguama at the bar.

  “Who is this kid?” the cop asks when Keller explains the favor he wants.

  “You know who he is,” Keller says. “You see him when you scope my house.”

  “Just checking on your welfare,” Blanco says. He’s drunk more than one beer. “Tough times here, Keller. We don’t know who to report to anymore, who’s in charge. You think he’s alive?”

  “Who?”

  “Barrera.”

  “I don’t know,” Keller says. “Have you seen this kid?”

  “You know how many fucked-up kids we got running around Mexico?” Blanco asks. “Shit, just in Juárez? Hundreds? Thousands? What’s one more? What’s this one to you?”

  Keller doesn’t have an answer for that. He says, “Just pick him up if you find him. Bring him to me.”

  “Sure, why not?”

  Keller leaves some money on the bar for Blanco’s next beer. Then he gets back in his car, calls Orduña and explains the situation.

  “This Barajos was in Guatemala?” Orduña asks.

  “Yeah.”

  “Was he a witness?”

  “To what, Roberto?”

  “Okay.”

  “Look, you owe this kid,” Keller says. “He killed Forty.”

  After a long silence Orduña says, “We’ll take good care of him. But, Arturo, you know the odds of finding him are . . .”

  “I know.”

  Infinitesimal.

  The long drug war has left thousands of orphans, shattered families and dislocated teenagers. And that doesn’t include the thousands fleeing gang violence in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, passing through Mexico to try to find sanctuary in the United States. A lot of them don’t make it.

  Chuy is now both a monster and a g
host.

  Senator Ben O’Brien calls.

  He’s in El Paso, phones Keller and asks for a meeting. What he actually says is “Keller, let me buy you a beer.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “The Indigo. On Kansas Street. You know it?”

  Keller knows it. He drives up to the city and meets O’Brien at the hotel bar. The senator has gone back to his roots, wearing a denim shirt and Lucchese boots. His Stetson is perched on his lap. Good as his word, he brings a pitcher of beer, pours one for Keller and says, “I saw something interesting driving through El Paso today—a homemade sign that read ‘Adán Vive.’”

  Keller isn’t surprised—he’s seen the same signs in Juárez and heard that they’re all over the place in Sinaloa and Durango. “What can I tell you? The man has a following.”

  “He’s becoming Che Guevara,” O’Brien says.

  “I guess absence does make the heart grow fonder.”

  “You heard anything more?” O’Brien asks. “About his death?”

  “I don’t follow that world anymore.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Keller shrugs—it’s true.

  “Do you read the American papers?” O’Brien asks.

  “The sports pages,” Keller says.

  “Then you don’t know what’s been happening up here?” O’Brien asks. “With heroin?”

  “No.”

  “A lot of people in the law enforcement community have been celebrating Barrera’s alleged demise,” O’Brien says, “but the truth is that it hasn’t slowed the flow of drugs at all. In fact, it’s only gotten worse. Especially with heroin.”

  From the year 2000 to 2006, O’Brien tells him, fatal heroin overdoses stayed fairly stable, about 2,000 a year. From 2007 to 2010, they rose to about 3,000. But in 2011, they rose to 4,000. Six thousand in 2012, 8,000 in 2013.

  “To put it in perspective,” O’Brien says, “from 2004 to now we lost 7,222 military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.”

  “To put it in perspective,” Keller says, “in the same period of time, over a hundred thousand Mexicans were killed in drug violence, with another twenty-two thousand missing. And that’s a conservative estimate.”

  “You’re making my argument,” O’Brien says. “The loss of life you cite in Mexico, the heroin epidemic here, the millions of people we have behind bars. Whatever we’re doing, it’s not working.”