by Don Winslow
“Don’t.”
“—that would meet more of your needs.”
“You meet all my needs.”
The expression on her face is so serious that he is taken aback for a moment. Those startling eyes so intense. He answers, “Certainly not all.”
“All.”
“Don’t you want a husband?” he asks. “A family? Children?”
“No.”
She wants to scream, Don’t leave me. Don’t make me leave you. I don’t need a husband or a family or children. I don’t need sex or money or comfort or safety.
I need you.
And there are probably a billion psychological reasons—indifferent father, sexual dysfunction, fear of committing to a man who’s actually available; a shrink would have a fucking field day—but I don’t care. You are the best man I’ve ever known. The smartest, kindest, funniest, best man I’ve ever known, and I don’t know what I’d do if anything ever happened to you, so please don’t go away. Don’t make me go away.
“You’re not going to resign, are you?” she asks.
“I can’t.”
“Okay.”
“Is it?”
“Sure.”
She never really thought he would resign.
A soft knock on the door, and his assistant murmurs that he has an unscheduled visitor who has been told—
“Who is it?” Parada asks.
“A Señor Barrera,” the assistant answers. “I have told him—”
“I will see him.”
Nora gets up. “I need to get going anyway.”
They embrace and she goes to get dressed.
Parada goes into his private office to find Adán sitting there.
He’s changed, Parada thinks.
He still has the boyish face, but it’s a boy with cares. And little wonder, Parada thinks, what with the sick child. Parada offers his hand to shake. Adán takes it and, unexpectedly, kisses his ring.
“That’s certainly unnecessary,” Parada says. “It’s been a long time, Adán.”
“Almost six years.”
“Then why—”
“Thank you for the gifts you send Gloria,” Adán says.
“You’re welcome,” Parada says. “I also say Masses for her. And offer prayers.”
“They’re appreciated more than you know.”
“How is Gloria?”
“The same.”
Parada nods. “And Lucía?”
“Fine, thank you.”
Parada goes behind his desk and sits down. Leans forward on the desk, clasps his fingers together and looks at Adán with a studied, pastoral expression. “Six years ago I reached out to you and asked for your mercy on a helpless man. You answered by killing him.”
“It was an accident,” Adán says. “It was out of my control.”
“You can lie to yourself and to me,” Parada says. “You cannot lie to God.”
Why not? Adán thinks. He lies to us.
But he says, “On the lives of my wife and my child, I was going to release Hidalgo. One of my colleagues accidentally gave him an overdose, trying to reduce his pain.”
“Which he required because he had been tortured.”
“Not by me.”
“Enough, Adán,” Parada says, waving his hand as if to swat away the evasion. “Why are you here? How can I minister to you?”
“You can’t.”
“Then . . .”
“I’m asking you to be a pastor to my uncle.”
“Jesus walked on water,” Parada says. “I don’t know that it’s been done since.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning,” Parada says as he takes a pack of cigarettes from the desktop, shakes one into his mouth and lights it, “that despite the official party line, I have to believe that some people are beyond redemption. What you are asking for is a miracle.”
“I thought you were in the miracle business.”
“I am,” Parada answers. “For instance, right now I am trying to feed thousands of hungry people, provide them with clean water, decent homes, medicine, education and some hope for the future. Any one of these would be a miracle.”
“If it’s a matter of money—”
“Fuck your money,” Parada says. “There, is that plain enough?”
Adán smiles, remembering why he loves this man. And why Father Juan is probably the only priest tough enough to help Tío. He says, “My uncle is in torment.”
“Good. He should be.”
When Adán raises an eyebrow, Parada says, “I’m not sure I believe in a fiery hell, Adán, but if there is one, your uncle is doubtless going there.”
“He’s addicted to crack.”
“I will let the irony of that pass without comment,” Parada says. “You are familiar with the concept of karma?”
“Vaguely,” Adán says. “I know he needs help. And I know that you cannot refuse to help a soul in torment.”
“A soul who comes in true repentance, seeking to change his ways,” Parada says. “Does that describe your uncle?”
“No.”
“Does it describe you?”
“No.”
Parada stands up. “Then what do we have to talk about?”
“Please go see him,” Adán says. He takes a notepad from his jacket pocket and scribbles Tío’s address. “If you could persuade him to go to a clinic, a hospital . . .”
“There are hundreds in my diocese who want such treatment and can’t afford it,” Parada says.
“Send five of them with my uncle, and send their bills to me.”
“As I said before—”
“Right, fuck my money,” Adán says. “Your principles, their suffering.”
“From the drugs you sell.”
“He says with a cigarette in his mouth.”
Adán drops his head, looks at the floor for a second then says, “I’m sorry. I came to ask you for a favor. I should have checked my attitude at the door. I meant to.”
Parada takes a long pull on the cigarette, walks to the window and looks outside onto the zócalo, where the street vendors have spread their blankets and laid out their milagros to sell.
“I’ll go see Miguel Ángel,” he says. “I doubt it will do any good.”
“Thank you, Father Juan.”
Parada nods.
“Father Juan?”
“Yes?”
“There are a lot of people who want to know that address.”
“I’m not a policeman,” Parada says.
“I shouldn’t have said anything,” Adán says. He walks to the door. “Good-bye, Father Juan. Thank you.”
“Change your life, Adán.”
“It’s too late.”
“If you really believed that,” Parada says, “you wouldn’t have come here.”
Parada walks Adán out the door into the small foyer, where a woman is standing with a small overnight bag over her shoulder.
“I should be going,” Nora says to Parada. She looks at Adán and smiles.
“Nora Hayden,” Parada says, “Adán Barrera.”
“Mucho gusto,” Adán says.
“Mucho gusto.” She turns to Parada. “I’ll be back in a few weeks.”
“I’ll look forward to it.” She turns to leave.
“I’m just going now myself,” Adán says. “May I carry your bag? Do you need a taxi?”
“That would be nice.”
She kisses Parada on the cheek. “Adiós.”
“Buen viaje.”
Outside in the zócalo she says, “That sly smile on your face . . .”
“Is there a sly smile on my face?”
“—is misplaced. It’s not what you think.”
“You misunderstand,” Adán says. “I love and respect the man. Any happiness he finds in this world, I would never begrudge him.”
“We’re just friends.”
“As you wish.”
“We are.”
Adán looks across the square. “There’s
a good café over there. I was about to have breakfast, and I hate to eat alone. Do you have the time and inclination to join me?”
“I haven’t eaten.”
“Come on, then,” Adán says. Crossing the square with her, he adds, “Look, I just have to make one phone call.”
“Go ahead.”
He gets his cell phone out and dials Gloria’s number.
“Hola, sonrisa de mi alma,” he says when she answers. She is the smile of his soul. Her voice is his dawn and his dusk. “How are you this morning?”
“Good, Papa. Where are you?”
“In Guadalajara,” he says. “Visiting Tío.”
“How is he?”
“He’s good, too,” Adán says. He looks out over the square where the street merchants have gathered in strength. “Ensancho de mi corazón, comfort of my heart, they sell songbirds here. Shall I bring one home to you?”
“What songs do they sing, Papa?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “I think you have to teach them songs. Do you know any?”
“Papa,” she laughs, delighted, knowing she’s being teased, “I sing to you all the time.”
“I know you do.” Your songs crack my heart.
“Yes, please, Papa,” she says. “I would love to have a bird.”
“What color?”
“Yellow?”
“I think I see a yellow one.”
“Or green,” she says. “Any color, Papa. When will you be home?”
“Tomorrow night,” he says. “I have to go see Tío Güero, then I’ll come home.”
“I miss you.”
“I miss you, too,” he says. “I’ll call you tonight.”
“I love you.”
“I love you.”
He ends the call.
“Your girlfriend?” Nora asks.
“The love of my life,” Adán says. “My daughter.”
“Ah.”
They choose an outdoor table. Adán pulls the chair out for her, then sits down. He looks across the table at those remarkable blue eyes. She doesn’t look away or flinch or blush. Just looks right back at him.
“And your wife?” she asks.
“What about her?”
“That’s what I was going to ask,” Nora says.
The door cracks like a gunshot.
Wood shattering on metal.
Ángel’s pito slides out of the girl as he turns to see federales coming through the door.
Art thinks it’s almost comical as Tío shuffles with his pants around his ankles into a grotesque imitation of a run, the rolling IV stand following him like a harried servant, trying to reach the guns that are stacked in the corner of the room. Then the stand topples over in a crash, pulling the needle out of his arm, and Tío falls in the corner, on top of the guns, and comes up with a hand grenade and sits there fumbling with the pin until a federale grabs him and jerks the grenade out of his hand.
There’s still a fat, white ass sticking up from the kitchen table like a gigantic pile of dough. And the sound of a thwack as Ramos walks over and whacks it with the butt of his rifle.
She yelps an indignant “Ow.”
“You should have cooked breakfast, you lazy slut.”
He grabs her by the hair and pulls her up. “Get your pants on, no one wants to look at your nalgas grandes.”
Your big ass.
“I’ll give you five million dollars,” Ángel is saying to the federale. “Five million dollars American to let me go.” Then he sees Art standing there and knows that five mil isn’t going to do it, that there isn’t enough money. He starts crying. “Kill me. Please, kill me now.”
And this is the face of evil, Art thinks.
A sad burlesque.
The man sitting there in the corner with his pants off, begging me to kill him.
Pathetic.
“Three minutes,” Ramos says.
Before the guards get back.
“Let’s get this piece of shit out of here, then,” Art says. He kneels down so his mouth is right next to his uncle’s ear and whispers, “Tío, let me tell you what you’ve always wanted to know.”
“What?”
“Who Source Chupar was.”
“Who?”
“Güero Méndez,” Art lies.
Güero Méndez, motherfucker.
“He hated you,” Art adds, “for taking that little bitch away from him and ruining her. He knew the only way of getting her back was to get rid of you.”
Maybe I can’t get to Adán, Raúl and Güero, Art thinks, so I’ll settle for the next best thing.
I’ll make them destroy each other.
Adán collapses on Nora’s body. She holds his neck and strokes his hair.
“That was incredible,” he says.
“You haven’t had a woman in a long time,” she says.
“Was it that obvious?”
They had left the café and gone directly to a nearby hotel. His fingers had trembled, unbuttoning her blouse.
“You didn’t come,” he says.
“I will,” she says. “Next time.”
“Next time?”
An hour later she braces her hands against the windowsill, her legs a muscular V as he pumps into her from behind. The breeze through the open window cools the sweat on her skin as she moans and whimpers a beautiful fake climax until he is satisfied and lets himself come.
Later, lying on the floor, he says, “I want to see you again.”
“That can be arranged,” Nora says.
It’s just a matter of business.
Tío sits in a cell.
His arraignment didn’t go well—not the way it should have gone at all.
“I don’t know why they connect me with the cocaine business,” he said from the dock. “I’m a car dealer. All I know about the drug trade is what I read in the newspapers.”
And the people in the courtroom laughed.
Laughed, and the judge bound him over for trial. No bail—a dangerous criminal, the judge said. A definite risk of flight. Especially in Guadalajara, where the defendant is alleged to have considerable influence in the law enforcement community. So they had put him—shackled—on a military aircraft and flown him to Mexico City. Under a special canopy from the plane to a van with black-painted windows. Then to Almoloya prison and into solitary confinement.
Where the cold makes his bones ache.
And the screaming need for crack gnaws at his bones like a hungry dog. The dog chewing on him, chewing on him, wanting that cocaine.
But worse than any of that is the anger.
The rage of betrayal.
The betrayal of his allies—for there must have been a betrayal at the highest levels for him to be sitting in this cell.
That hijo de puta and his brother in Los Pinos. Whom we bought and paid for and put in office. The election that was stolen from Cárdenas using my money and the money I made the cartel give them—and they have betrayed me like this. The motherless whores, the cabrones, the lambiosos.
And the Americans, the Americans whom I helped in their war against the Communists, they have betrayed me, too.
And Güero Méndez, who stole my love. Méndez, who has the woman that should have been mine, and the children that should have been mine.
And Pilar, that cunt who betrayed me.
Tío sits on the floor of the cell, his arms around his legs, rocking back and forth with need and rage. It takes him a day to find a guard to sell him crack. He inhales the delicious smoke and holds it in his lungs. Lets it seep into his brain. Give him euphoria, then clarity.
Then he sees it all.
Revenge.
On Méndez.
