by Don Winslow
“My boyfriend?”
“Or is Barrera your 'client'?” Art asks. “Or your 'john'? Educate me on the jargon.”
She doesn’t blink. “He’s my lover.”
“Does he pay you for the privilege?”
“That’s none of your business.”
Art asks, “Do you know what your lover does for a living?”
“He’s a restaurateur.”
“Come on, Nora,” Art says.
“Mr. Keller,” she said, “let’s just say I have some sympathy for dealing in pleasures that society deems illegal.”
“Yeah, okay,” Art said. “How about murder? Are you okay with that?”
“Adán’s never killed anybody.”
“Ask him about Ernie Hidalgo,” Art says. “While you’re at it, ask him about Pilar Méndez. He had her head cut off. And her children. Do you know what your boyfriend did with them? He threw them off a bridge.”
“That is an old lie that Güero Méndez put out to—”
“Is that what Adán told you?”
“What do you want, Mr. Keller?”
She’s a businesswoman, Art thinks. She’s getting right down to it. Good. Time to make your pitch. Don’t fuck it up.
“Your cooperation,”Art says.
“You want me to inform on—”
“Let’s just say you’re in a unique position to—”
She opens the car door. “I’m going to be late for my movie.”
He grabs her and stops her. “Go to a later show.”
“You have no right to hold me against my will,” Nora says. “I haven’t committed any crime.”
“Let me explain a few things to you,” Art says. “We know that the Barreras are investors in Haley Saxon’s business. That alone puts her on Queer Street. If they ever used the house to have a meeting, I’ll RICO her into twenty-to-life, and it will be your fault. You’ll have plenty of time to apologize to her, though, because I’ll put you in the same cell. Can you explain all your income, Ms. Hayden? Can you account for the money that Adán is paying you now to be your 'lover'? Or is he laundering drug money along with the dirty sheets? You’re in deep, hot water, Ms. Hayden. But you can save yourself. You can even save your pal Haley. I’m reaching out my hand. Take it.”
She looks at him with pure loathing.
Which is fine, Art thinks. I don’t need you to love me, I just need you to do what I want.
“If you could do what you say you can do to Haley,” Nora says calmly, “you would already have done it. And as for what you can do to me—take your best shot.”
She starts to get out again.
“How about Parada?” Art asks. “Are you doing him, too?”
Because they have her visiting the priest in Guadalajara, and even San Cristóbal, on numerous occasions.
She turns and glares at him.
“You’re a piece of filth.”
“You’d better believe it.”
“For the record,” she says, “Juan and I are friends.”
“Yeah?” Art says. “Would he still be your friend if he knew you were a hooker?”
“He does know.”
He loves me anyway, Nora thinks.
“Does he know you sell yourself to a murdering little piece of shit like Adán Barrera?” Art asks. “Would he still be your friend if he knew that? Should I pick up the phone and tell him? We go way back.”
I know, Nora thinks. He’s told me about you. What he didn’t tell me is how awful you are.
“Do whatever you’re going to do, Mr. Keller,” Nora says. “I don’t care. May I go?”
“For now.”
She gets out of the car and walks back down the street, her skirt swinging against her beautiful, tanned legs.
Looking, Art thinks, as cool as if she’d just had tea with a friend.
You fucking asshole, he thinks, you totally blew it.
But I’d love to know, Nora, if you tell Adán about our little chat.
Mexico
1994
Adán has spent the whole day at cemeteries.
He had nine graves to visit, nine little shrines to build, nine elaborate meals to lay out. Nine family members killed by Güero Méndez on a single night barely one month ago. His men, dressed in the black uniforms of the federales, had taken them from their houses or kidnapped them off the streets, in Mexico City and Guadalajara, driven them to safe houses and tortured them, then dumped their bodies on busy corners for the morning street sweepers to find.
Two uncles, an aunt and six cousins—two of the latter women.
One of the female cousins was a lawyer working for the pasador, but the others were uninvolved with the drug end of the family business. Their only connection was being related to Miguel Ángel and Adán and Raúl, and that was enough. Well, it was enough for Pilar and Güerito and Claudia, wasn’t it? Adán thinks. Méndez didn’t start this thing of killing families.
We did.
So it was expected, Méndez’s “Bloody September,” by everyone in Mexico who knew anything about the drug trade. The local police barely investigated the murders. “What did they expect?” ran the general opinion. “They killed his wife and children.” And not only killed them, but sent Méndez his wife’s head and a videotape of his children plummeting off a bridge. It was too much, even for Mexico, even for the narcotraficantes—it put the Barrera pasador beyond the pale, as it were. And if Méndez retaliated by killing members of the Barrera family, well, it was expected.
So Adán had a busy day, starting early in the morning with the Mexico City graves, then flying to Guadalajara to attend to his duties there, then a quick flight here to Puerto Vallarta where his brother Raúl was, characteristically, throwing a party.
“Cheer up,” Raúl tells Adán when he arrives at the club. “It’s El Día de los Muertos.”
Sure, they’ve taken some hits, but they’ve delivered some, too.
“Maybe we should bring food to their graves, too,” Adán says.
“Shit, we’d go broke,” Raúl says to him, “feeding all the guys we’ve sent to the devil. Fuck them—let their families feed them.”
The Barreras v. the world.
Cali cocaine v. Medellín cocaine.
If Adán hadn’t made the deal with the Orejuela brothers, the Barreras would be the recipients of the candy and flowers today. But with the steady supply of product from Cali, they have the men and the money to fight the war. And the battle for La Plaza has been bloody but simple. Raúl has presented the local dealers with a clean choice: Do you want to be a Coca-Cola distributor or a Pepsi distributor? You have to choose; you can’t be both. Coke or Pepsi, Ford or Chevy, Hertz or Avis—it’s either one or the other.
Alejandro Cazares, for instance, had chosen Coke. The San Diego real-estate investor, businessman and dope dealer had declared his loyalty to Güero Méndez, and his body was found in his car off a dusty dirt street in San Ysidro. And Billy Brennan, another San Diego dealer, was found with a bullet in his brain in a motel room in Pacific Beach.
The American cops were puzzled as to why each of these victims had a Pepsi can stuck in his mouth.
Güero Méndez struck back, of course. Eric Mendoza and Salvador Marechal went with Pepsi, and their charred bodies were found in their still-smoldering cars in a vacant lot in Chula Vista. The Barreras answered in kind, and for a few weeks Chula Vista became a virtual parking lot for burning cars with burned bodies inside.
But the Barreras were making their point: We’re here, pendejos. Güero is trying to run La Plaza from Culiacán, but we are here. We’re local. We can reach right out and touch somebody—in Baja or San Diego—and if Güero is so tough, why can’t he reach out for us in his own territory in Tijuana? Why hasn’t Güero had us killed? The answer is simple, my friends—because he can’t. He’s holed up in his mansion in Culiacán, and if you want to take his side go ahead, but brothers, he’s there and we’re here.
Güero’s lack of action is a show of weakness, not strength, because
the truth is that he is running out of resources. He may have a firm grip on Sinaloa, but their beloved home state is landlocked. Without use of La Plaza, Güero has to pay El Verde to move drugs through Sonora, or pay Abrego to move them through the Gulf, and you can bet those two greedy old bastards charge him plenty for every ounce of his product that passes through their territories.
No, Güero is almost finished, and his slaughter of Barrera uncles, aunt and cousins was just the flopping of a fish on the deck.
It’s the Day of the Dead and Adán and Raúl are still alive, and that is something to celebrate.
Which they do at their new disco in Puerto Vallarta.
Güero Méndez makes the pilgrimage to the Jardines del Valle cemetery in Culiacán, to an unmarked crypt with carved marble columns, bas-relief sculptures and a dome decorated with frescoes of two little angels. Inside are the tombs of his wife and children. Colored photographs locked in glass cases hang from the wall.
Claudia and Güerito.
His two angelitos.
Pilar.
His esposa and querida.
Seduced, but still beloved.
Güero has brought with him ofrenda a los muertos, offerings to the dead.
For his angelitos, he has papel picado, tissue paper cut in the shapes of skeletons and skulls and little animals. And cookies, and candies shaped like skulls and inscribed with their names in frosting. And toys—little dolls for her, little soldiers for him.
For Pilar he has brought flowers—the traditional chrysanthemums, marigolds and coxcomb—formed into crosses and wreaths. And a coffin made from spun sugar. And the little cookies made with amaranth seeds that she liked so much.
He kneels in front of the tombs and lays down his offerings, then pours fresh water into three bowls so that they can wash their hands before the feast. Outside, a small norteño band plays cheerful music under the watchful eye of a platoon of sicarios. Güero lays a clean hand towel beside each bowl, then sets up an altar, carefully arranging the votive candles and the dishes of rice and beans, pollo in mole sauce, candied pumpkins and yams. Then he lights a stick of campol incense and sits on the floor.
Shares memories with them.
Good memories of picnics, swims in mountain lakes, family games of fútbol. He speaks out loud, hears their answers in his head. A sweeter music than they’re playing outside.
Soon I will join you, he tells his wife and children.
Not soon enough, but soon.
First there is much work to be done.
First I must set a table for the Barreras.
And load it with bitter fruit.
And candy skulls with each of their names: Miguel Ángel, Raúl, Adán.
And send their souls to hell.
After all, it’s the Day of the Dead.
The disco, Adán thinks, is a monument to vulgarity.
Raúl has done La Sirena up in an underwater theme. A grotesque neon mermaid (La Sirena herself) presides over the front entrance, and when you come inside, the interior walls are sculpted like coral reefs and underwater caves.
The entire left wall is one huge reef tank holding five hundred gallons of salt water. The price of the glass wall made Adán shudder, not to mention the cost of the exotic tropical fish—yellow, blue and purple tangs at $200 each; a porcupine puffer fish at $300; a $500 clown trigger fish, with its admittedly beautiful yellow and black spots. Then there were the expensive corals, and of course Raúl had to have several kinds: open brain coral, mushroom coral, flower coral and pumping venicia coral, shaped like fingers, reaching up from underwater like a drowned sailor. And “live rocks” with calcified algae glowing purple in the lights. Eels—black-and-white snowflake eels and black-striped brown morays—peek their heads out from holes in the rock and the coral, and crabs crawl across the tops of the rocks and shrimp float in the electrically created current.
The right side of the club is dominated by an actual waterfall. (“That doesn’t make any sense,” Adán objected to his brother when it was under construction. “How can you have an underwater waterfall?” “I just wanted one,” Raúl answered. Well, that answers that, Adán thought—he just wanted one.) And underneath the waterfall is a grotto with flat rocks that serve as beds for couples to lounge on, and Adán is just glad that, for hygienic purposes, the grotto is regularly sprayed by the waterfall.
The club’s tables are all twisted, rusted metal, the surfaces done in mother-of-pearl with seashells encrusted on them. The dance floor is painted like an ocean bottom, and the expensive lighting creates a blue ripple effect, as if the dancers were swimming underwater.
The place cost a fortune.
“You can build it,” Adán had warned Raúl, “but it had better make money.”
“Haven’t they all?” Raúl answered.
In all fairness, this is true, Adán had to admit. Raúl might have appalling taste, but he’s a genius at creating trendy nightclubs and restaurants, profit centers in themselves and invaluable for laundering the narco-dollars that now flow south from El Norte like a deep green river.
The place is packed.
Not only because it is El Día de los Muertos but also because La Sirena is a smash, even in this highly competitive resort town. And during the annual drunken orgy known as spring break the American college kids will flock to the club, spending even more (clean) American dollars.
But tonight the crowd is mostly Mexican, mostly, in fact, friends and business associates of the Barrera brothers, here to celebrate with them. There are a few American tourists who have found their way in, and a handful of Europeans as well, but that’s all right. There will be no business conducted here tonight, or any night, for that matter—there is an unwritten rule that the legitimate businesses in the resort towns are strictly off limits for any narco activities. No drug deals, no meetings and above all, no violence. After narcotics, tourism is the country’s biggest source of foreign currency, so no one wants to scare away the Americans, British, Germans and Japanese who leave their dollars, pounds, marks and yen in Mazatlán, Puerto Vallarta, Cabo San Lucas and Cozumel.
All the cartels own nightclubs, restaurants, discos and hotels in these towns, so they have an interest to protect, an interest that would be ill served by a tourist catching a stray bullet. No one wants to pick up a newspaper and see headlines of a bloody shoot-out with photos of corpses lying in the street. So the pasadores and the government all have a healthy agreement of the “Take it somewhere else, boys” variety. There’s just too much money being made to mess with.
You can play in these towns, but you have to play nice.
And they are certainly playing tonight, Adán thinks as he watches Fabián Martínez dance with three or four blond German girls.
There is too much business to take care of, the unceasing cycle of product going north and money coming south. There are the constant business arrangements with the Orejuelas, then the actual movement of the cocaine from Colombia to Mexico, then the endless challenge of getting it safely into the States and converting it to crack, then selling it to the retailers, collecting the money, getting the cash back into Mexico and cleaning it.
Some of the money goes into fun, but a lot of the money goes into bribes.
Silver or lead.
Plata o plomo.
One of the Barrera lieutenants would simply go to the local police comandante or army commander with a bag full of cash and give him the choice in those exact words: “¿Plata o plomo?”
That’s all that needed to be said. The meaning was clear—you can get rich or you can get dead. You choose.
If they chose rich, it was Adán’s business. If they chose dead, that was Raúl’s business.
Most people chose rich.
Coño, Adán thinks, most of the cops planned on getting rich. In fact, they had to buy their positions from their superiors, or pay a monthly share of their mordida. It was like a franchise operation. Burger King, Taco Bell, McBribes. Easiest money in the world. Money for no
thing. Just look the other way, be someplace else, see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, and the monthly payment will be there in full and on time.
And the war, Adán reflects, watching the partiers dance in the shimmering blue light, has been a further boon for the cops and the army. Méndez pays his cops to bust our dope, we pay our guys to bust Méndez’s dope. It’s a good deal for everyone except the guy whose dope gets popped. Say the Baja State Police seize a million dollars of Güero’s cocaine. We pay them a $100,000 “finder’s fee,” they get to be heroes in the papers and look like good guys to the Yanquis, and then after a decent interval they sell us that million bucks’ worth of blow for $500,000.
