by Don Winslow
They all ended bloody.
Chapter Eight
Days of the Innocents
In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, for they are not.
—Matthew 2:18
Tegucigalpa, Honduras
San Diego, California
Guadalajara, Mexico
1992
Art sits on a park bench in Tegucigalpa and watches a man in a maroon Adidas tracksuit leave his building across the street.
Ramón Mette has seven of the suits—one for each day of the week. Every day he puts on a fresh one and leaves his mansion in suburban Tegus for a three-mile jog, flanked by two security guards in matching outfits, except theirs are bulging in unusual places to allow for the Mac-10s they carry to keep him safe on his jogs.
So Mette goes out every morning. Runs a three-mile round-trip and returns to the mansion and takes a shower while one of the bodyguards whips up a fruit smoothie in the blender. Mango, papaya, grapefruit and, this being Honduras, bananas. Then he takes his drink out onto the patio and sips it while he reads the paper. Makes some phone calls, conducts a little business, then goes to his private gym to pump some iron.
That’s his routine.
By the clock, every day.
For months.
Except this one morning, the bodyguard opens the door, a sweaty, puffing Mette goes in, and a pistol butt slams into the side of his head.
He slides onto his knees in front of Art Keller.
His bodyguard stands helplessly with his hands up as a black-clad Honduran secret-service trooper points an M-16 at his head. There have to be fifty troopers standing there. Which is odd, Mette thinks through a haze of pain and dizziness, because don’t I own the secret service?
Apparently not, because none of them do shit as Art Keller kicks Mette square in the teeth. Stands over him and says, “I hope you enjoyed your jog because it’s the last you’re ever going to get.”
So Mette’s drinking his own blood instead of a fruit smoothie as Art slips the old black hood over his head, ties it tight and frog-marches him to a waiting van with tinted windows. And this time there’s no one there to object as they haul him onto an Air Force plane for a flight to the Dominican Republic, where he’s taken to the American embassy, arrested for the murder of Ernie Hidalgo, taken to another plane and flown to San Diego, where he’s promptly arraigned, denied bail and put in a solitary cell in the federal holding facility.
All of this touches off riots in the streets of Tegucigalpa, where thousands of angry citizens, incited and paid for by Mette’s lawyers, burn the American embassy in protest against Yanqui imperialism. They want to know where this American cop gets the huevos to come into their country and snatch one of their prominent citizens.
A lot of people in Washington are wondering the same thing. They would also like to know where Art Keller, the disgraced former RAC of the closed Guadalajara office, gets the balls to create an international incident. And not just the balls, but the package to pull it off.
How the hell did that happen?
Quito Fuentes is a small-time operator.
He is now, and he was in 1985 when he drove the tortured Ernie Hidalgo from the safe house in Guadalajara to the ranch in Sinaloa. Now he lives in Tijuana, where he does small-time dope deals with small-time Americans coming across the border for a quick score.
You do that kind of business, you don’t want to show up light, in case one of the Yanqui kids decides he’s a real bandito and tries to take your dope and make a run for the border. No, you want some weight on your hip, and Quito’s current piece is, well, a piece of shit.
Quito needs a new gun.
Which, contrary to public image, is hard to come by in Mexico, where the federales and the state police like to have a monopoly on firepower. Lucky for Quito, living as he does in TJ, he’s right next door to the world’s biggest arms supermarket, Los Estados Unidos, so he’s all ears when Paco Méndez calls from Chula Vista to tell him he’s got a deal for him. A clean Mac-10 he just has to move.
All Quito has to do is come pick it up.
But Quito doesn’t like to venture north of the border anymore.
Not since the thing with the Yanqui cop, Hidalgo.
Quito knows he’s pretty safe from arrest on that thing in Mexico, but in the United States it might be a different story, so he tells Paco thanks but no thanks, and couldn’t he just bring it down to TJ? It’s more of a hopeful question than a realistic one, because you have to be either (a) very well connected or (b) some kind of fucking moron to try to smuggle any firearm, never mind a machine pistol, into Mexico. If you got caught, the federales would beat you like wet laundry on a dry line, then you’d catch a minimum two-year sentence in a Mexican prison. Paco knows that they don’t feed you in Mexican prisons—that’s your family’s problem, and Paco doesn’t have family in Mexico anymore. And as he’s neither well connected nor a fucking moron, he tells Quito he doesn’t think he can make that trip.
But as Paco has to turn this gun into some quick cash, he tells Quito, “Let me think about it. I’ll call you back.”
He hangs up and tells Art Keller, “He won’t come over.”
“Then you have a big problem,” Art says.
No shit, a big problem—a cocaine and a gun charge, and just in case Paco isn’t gripping hard enough already, Art adds, “I’ll take it federal and I’ll ask the judge for consecutive sentences.”
“I’m trying!” Paco whines.
“You don’t get points for effort,” Art says.
“You’re a real ball-buster, you know that?”
“I know that,” Art says. “Do you know that?”
Paco slumps in his chair.
“Okay,” Art says. “Just get him to the fence.”
“Yeah?”
“We’ll do the rest.”
So Paco gets back on the horn and arranges to make the deal at the rickety chain-link border fence along Coyote Canyon.
No-man's-land.
You go into Coyote Canyon at night, you’d better bring a gun, and even that might not be enough, because a lot of God’s children got guns in Coyote Canyon, a big scar in the rolling hills of barren dirt that flank the ocean along the border. The Canyon runs from the north edge of TJ for about two miles into the United States, and it is bandit country. Late in the afternoon, thousands of would-be immigrants start forming up on either side of the canyon on a ridge above the dry aqueduct that is the actual border. When the sun goes down, they make a rush through the canyon, simply overwhelming the outmanned Border Patrol agents. It’s the law of numbers—more get through than get caught. And even if you get caught, there’s always tomorrow.
Maybe.
Because real banditos get into the canyon and lie in wait like predators for the herd of mojados to come through. Pick off the weak and the wounded. Rob, rape and murder. Take what little cash the illegals have, drag their women into the bushes and rape them, then maybe slit their throats.
So you want to come pick oranges in los Estados Unidos, you have to run the gauntlet of Coyote Canyon. And in that chaos, in the dust from a thousand running feet, in the darkness amid screams, gunfire and flashing blades, with the Border Patrol vehicles roaring up and down hills like cowboys trying to control a stampede (which they are; which it is), a lot of business gets done along the fence.
Deals for dope, for sex, for guns.
And that’s what Quito’s doing as he crouches by a hole cut in the fence.
“Gimme the gun.”
“Gimme the money.”
Quito can see the Mac-10 glittering in the moonlight, so he’s pretty sure his old cuate Paco’s not going to rip him off. So he reaches through the hole to hand Paco the cash and Paco grabs—
—not the money, but his wrist.
And holds on.
Quito tries to pull back, but now there are three Yanquis grabbing him, and one of them says, “You’re
under arrest for the murder of Ernie Hidalgo.”
And Quito says, “You can’t arrest me, I’m in Mexico.”
“No problem,” Art says.
Then starts to pull him into the United States, just starts yanking him through the hole in the fence, but one of the jagged pieces of the cut fence snags Quito’s pants. But Art keeps pulling, and the sharp wire pierces Quito’s butt, then pokes out the other side.
So he’s lying there basically impaled through the left butt cheek, and he’s screaming, “I’m stuck! I’m stuck!”
Art doesn’t care—he braces his feet against the American side of the fence and just pulls. The wire rips through Quito’s butt, and now he’s really screaming because he’s hurt and bleeding and in America and the Yanquis are punching the shit out of him, and then they stick a rag in his mouth to shut him up, and handcuff him, and they’re carrying him toward a jeep, and Quito sees a Border Patrol agent and tries to scream for help, but the migra just turns his back like he don’t see nothing.
Quito tells all this to the judge, who looks solemnly down at Art and asks him where the arrest took place.
“The defendant was arrested in the United States, Your Honor,” Art says. “He was on American soil.”
“The defendant claims you pulled him through the fence.”
Then, as Quito’s public defender literally hops up and down with indignation, Art answers, “There’s not a word of truth to that, Your Honor. Mr. Fuentes came into the country of his own volition, to purchase an illegal firearm. We can offer a witness.”
“Would that be Mr. Méndez?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“Your Honor,” the PD says, “Mr. Méndez obviously has made a deal with—”
“There was no deal,” Art says. “My hand to God.”
Next.
The Doctor’s not going to be so easy.
Doctor Álvarez has a thriving gynecology practice in Guadalajara, and he isn’t leaving. There’s nothing on earth that’s going to lure him across or even near the border. He knows the DEA is aware of his role in the Hidalgo murder, he knows how badly Keller wants him, so the good doctor is staying put in Guadalajara.
“Mexico City’s already screaming about Quito Fuentes,” Tim Taylor tells Art.
“Let them. “
“Easy for you to say.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“I’m telling you, Art,” Taylor says. “We can’t just go in and grab the Doctor, and the Mexicans aren’t going to do it. They’re not going to extradite him, either. This isn’t Honduras, this isn’t Coyote Canyon. Case closed.”
Maybe for you, Art thinks.
Not for me.
It will never be over until every person involved in Ernie’s murder is dead or behind bars.
If we can’t do it, and the Mexican cops won’t do it, I just have to find someone who will.
Art goes to Tijuana.
Where Antonio Ramos owns a little restaurant.
He finds the big ex-cop sitting outside with his feet up on a table, his cigar clenched in his mouth and a cold Tecate at the ready. He sees Art walk up and says, “If you’re on a search for the perfect chile verde, I can tell you this isn’t the place.”
“Not what I’m after,” Art says, sitting down. He orders a cerveza from the waitress who comes over like a shot.
“What, then?” Ramos asks.
“Not what—who,” Art says. “Doctor Humberto Álvarez.”
Ramos shakes his head. “I retired.”
“I remember.”
“Anyway, they broke up the DFS,” Ramos says. “I make one grand gesture in my life, and they render it inconsequential.”
“I still could use your help.”
Ramos swings his legs off the table and sits forward in his chair to bring his face closer to Art’s. “You had my help, remember? I gave you fucking Barrera, and you wouldn’t pull the trigger. You didn’t want revenge, you wanted justice. You got neither.”
“I haven’t quit.”
“You should,” Ramos says. “Because there is no justice, and you’re not serious about revenge. You’re not Mexican. There aren’t many things we take seriously, but vengeance is one of them.”
“I’m serious.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I’m a-hundred-thousand-dollars serious,” Art says.
“You’re offering me a hundred thousand dollars to kill Álvarez.”
“Not kill him,” Art says. “Kidnap him. Bag him, put him on a plane to the States, where I can bring him to trial.”
“See, this is exactly what I mean,” says Ramos. “You’re soft. You want revenge, but you’re not man enough to just take it. You have to mask it with this 'fair trial’ mierda. It would be a lot easier just to shoot him.”
“I’m not interested in easy,” Art says. “I’m interested in hard, long suffering. I want to put him in some federal hellhole for the rest of his life and hope it’s a long one. You’re the one who’s soft, wanting to put him out of his misery.”
“I don’t know . . .”
“Soft and bored,” Art says. “Don’t tell me you’re not bored. Sitting here day after day, cranking out tamales for tourists. You’ve kept up with the news. You know I got Mette and Fuentes already. And next I’m going to get the Doctor, with or without you. And then I’m going to get Barrera. With or without you.”
“A hundred grand.”
“A hundred grand.”
“I’ll need a few men . . .”
“I have a hundred grand for the job,” Art says. “Split it any way you want.”
“Tough guy.”
“You better believe it.”
Ramos takes a long pull on his cigar, exhales in perfect smoke circles and watches them float into the air. Then says, “Shit, I’m not making any money here. Okay. Acuérdate.”
“I want him alive,” Art says. “You bring me a corpse, you can whistle for your money.”
“Sí, sí, sí . . .”
Doctor Humberto Álvarez Machain finishes with his last patient, gallantly sees her out the door, says good night to his receptionist and steps back into his private office to gather up some papers before going home. He doesn’t hear the seven men come through the outer door. He doesn’t hear anything until Ramos steps into his office, points a stun gun at his ankle and shoots.
Álvarez falls to the floor and rolls in pain.
“You’ve seen your last funciete, Doctor,” Ramos says. “No chocho where you’re going.”
And shoots him again. Ramos says, “Hurts like a bastard, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” Álvarez moans.
“If it were up to me I’d put a bullet in your head right now,” Ramos says. “Lucky for you, it isn’t up to me. Now, you’re going to do everything I say, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
They blindfold him, wrap telephone ties around his wrists and take him out the back door to a car waiting in the alley and shove him into the backseat, where they make him lie on the floor. Ramos gets in and sets his feet on Álvarez’s neck, and they drive to a safe house in the suburbs.
They bring him into the darkened living room and take off the blindfold.
Álvarez starts to cry when he sees the tall man stretched out in the chair in front of him.
“Do you know who I am?” Art asks. “Ernie Hidalgo was my close friend. Un hermano. Sangre de mi sangre.”
Álvarez is trembling uncontrollably now.
“You were his torturer,” Art says. “You scraped his bones with metal skewers, you shoved white-hot iron rods inside him. You gave him shots to keep him conscious and alive.”
“No,” Álvarez says.
“Don’t lie to me,” Art says. “It only makes me angrier. I have you on tape.”
A stain emerges on the front of the doctor’s pants and spreads down one leg.
“He’s pissing himself,” Ramos says.
“Strip him.”
They pull his shirt off and leave it dangling around his bound wrists. Jerk his pants and his shorts down to his ankles. Álvarez’s eyes widen in little orbs of terror. All the more so when Kleindeist says, “Take a whiff. What do you smell?”
Álvarez shakes his head.
“From the kitchen,” Kleindeist says. “Think hard—you’ve smelled it before. No? Okay—metal heating. A piece of rebar, over the stove.”
