Queen of the South

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  Then I walked along under the royal palms and mango trees to Calle Juárez, and in front of the little grocery store I stopped to watch the girls who, holding a cell phone in one hand and a calculator in the other, were changing money right out in the open. Or to put it another way, taking stacks of American dollars fragrant with cocaine or high-quality hashish from the sierra, and laundering it into Mexican pesos. In that city where breaking the law is often a social convention and a way of life—It’s a family tradition, says one famous corrido, to break the law—Teresa Mendoza was one of those girls for a while. Until a black Bronco stopped one afternoon, and Raimundo Dávila Parra lowered the smoked-glass window and sat there and stared at her from the driver’s seat. And her life changed forever.

  Now she was walking down that same sidewalk, a sidewalk she knew every inch of, with her mouth dry and fear in her eyes. She dodged the girls standing around in little groups talking, or pacing back and forth, waiting for customers in front of the El Canario fruit stand, and as she did so she glanced mistrustfully at the bus-and-tram station, the taquerías in the mercado—the street swarming with women carrying baskets and moustached men in baseball caps and sombreros. From the music store behind the jeweler’s on the corner came the words and melody of “Pacas de a Kilo”—“Kilo Bricks”—sung by Los Dinámicos. Or maybe Los Tigres—from that distance she couldn’t be sure, but she knew the song. Chale, she knew it all too well—it had been Güero’s favorite, and that hijo de su madre used to sing it when he shaved, with the window open to annoy the neighbors, or whisper it in her ear, just to infuriate her:

  My father’s friends and colleagues

  Admire me and respect me

  And in two or three hundred yards

  I can get planes off the ground.

  I can hit any bull’s-eye

  With a pistol or machine gun. . . .

  Pinche Güero cabrón, she thought again—fucking asshole prick, and she almost said it out loud, to control the sob that suddenly rose within her.

  Then she looked right and left. She was looking for a face, a presence that meant danger. They would send somebody who knew her, she thought, somebody who could recognize her. So her hope lay in recognizing him before he recognized her. Or in recognizing them. Because there were usually two, so one could back the other one up, and also so they could keep an eye on each other, because this was a business where nobody trusted even his own shadow.

  Somebody will smile at you, she remembered. And a second later, you’ll be a dead woman. If you’re lucky, she added for him, imagining the desert and the blowtorch that Güero had mentioned.

  On Juárez, the traffic was coming from behind her. She realized this as she passed the San Juan monument, so she turned left, heading for Calle General Escobedo. Güero had explained that if you ever thought you were being followed, you should take streets where the cars come toward you, so you could see them coming. She walked on down the side street, turning from time to time to look back. She came to the center of the city, passed the white edifice of City Hall, and mingled with the masses of people crowding the bus stops and the area around the Garmendia mercado.

  Only then did she feel a little safer. The sky in the west was intense orange over the buildings—a beautiful sunset—and the store windows were beginning to light the sidewalks. They almost never kill you in places like this, she thought. Or even kidnap you. Cars and other vehicles passed by in both directions, and two brown-uniformed police officers stood on one corner. One of them had a vaguely familiar face, so she turned her own face away and changed direction. Many local cops were in the narcos’ pay, as were a lot of the Judiciales and Federales and so many others, with their dime bags of smack in their wallets and their free drinks in the cantinas. They did protection work for the bosses or abided by the healthy principle of Live, collect your paycheck, and let live, if you want to stay alive. Three months earlier, a police chief who’d been brought in from outside tried to change the rules of the game. He had been shot seventy times at point-blank range with a cuerno de chivo—the narcos’ name for the AK-47—at the door of his house, in his own car. Rat-a-tat-a-tat. There were already CDs out with songs about it. “Seventy Before Seven” was the most famous. Chief Ordoñez was shot dead, the lyrics recounted, at six in the morning. A lot of bullets for such an early hour. Pure Sinaloa. The album photographs of popular singers like El As de la Sierra—the Ace of the Sierra—often showed them with a small plane behind them and a .45 in their hand, and Chalino Sánchez, a local singing idol who’d been a hit man for the narcomafia before becoming a famous singer, had been shot dead over a woman or for god knew what other reason. If there was anything the guys who wrote the narcocorridos had no need for, it was imagination—the ideas for the songs came ready-made.

  At the corner where La Michoacana ice cream store stood, Teresa left the area of the mercado and the shoe and clothing stores behind and took a side street. Güero’s safe house, his refuge in case of emergency, was just a few yards away, on the second floor of an unassuming apartment building. Across the street was a cart that sold seafood during the day and tacos de carne asada at night. In principle, no one knew of the existence of this place except the two of them. Teresa had been here only once, and Güero himself hardly came, so as not to burn it.

  She climbed the stairs, trying not to make any noise, put the key in the lock, and turned it carefully. She knew nobody could be inside, but even so, she walked through the apartment nervously, checking to make sure everything was all right. Not even that crib is completely safe, Güero had said. Somebody may have seen me, or know something, or whatever—in this fucking city, everybody knows everybody else. And even if it doesn’t go down that way, say they catch me—if I’m alive, I’ll only be able to keep my mouth shut for so long before they beat it out of me and I start singing rancheras. So keep one eye open, mi chula. I hope I can take it long enough for you to grab the money and run, because sooner or later they’ll be there. But no promises, prietita—he kept smiling as he said that, pinche cabrón—I can’t promise you a thing.

  The little crib’s walls were bare, and the only furniture was a table, four chairs, and a couch in the living room, and in the bedroom a big bed with a night table and a telephone. The bedroom window was at the back of the building, overlooking an open lot with trees and shrubs that was used for parking, and behind that were the yellow cupolas of the Iglesia del Santuario. One of the closets had a false back wall, and when she pulled the panel out, Teresa found two thick packages with stacks of hundred-dollar bills. About twenty thousand, she figured, drawing on her experience as a money changer on Calle Juárez. There was also Güero’s notebook: a large one with a brown leather cover—Don’t even open it, she remembered—a stash of white powder that weighed about three hundred grams, she estimated, and a huge Colt Double Eagle, chrome with mother-of-pearl handles. Güero didn’t like weapons, and he never carried even a revolver—What the fuck good would it do me, he would say; when they look for you, they find you—but he had put this one away for emergencies. Why should I tell you no if the answer’s yes. Teresa didn’t like guns, either, but like almost every man, woman, and child in Sinaloa, she knew how to use them. And since we’re talking about emergencies, this is one, she thought. So she checked to make sure the gun’s clip was loaded, pulled back the slide, and released it. With a loud, sinister click a .45-caliber round was loaded into the chamber. Her hands were shaking with anxiety as she put the money, the dope, and the gun in the gym bag she had brought with her.

  Halfway through the operation, she was startled by a backfire from a car down in the street. She stood very quiet for a while, listening, before she went on. With the dollars were two valid U.S. passports—hers and Güero’s. She studied his photo: his hair cropped short, those gringo eyes gazing out serenely at the photographer, the beginnings of that eternal smile on one side of his mouth. After hesitating a second, she put just her passport in the bag, and it was only when she leaned over and felt
tears dripping off her chin and wetting her hands that she realized she’d been crying for a long time now.

  She looked around, her eyes blurry with tears, trying to think whether she was forgetting something. Her heart was beating so hard she thought it was about to burst through her chest. She went to the windows, looked down at the street that was beginning to grow dark with the shadows of nightfall, the taco cart illuminated by a naked lightbulb and the coals in the brazier. She lit a Faro and took a few indecisive steps through the apartment, puffing nervously. She had to get out of there, but she didn’t know where to go. The only thing that was clear was that she had to leave.

  She was at the door of the bedroom when she noticed the telephone, and a thought flashed through her head: don Epifanio Vargas. He was a nice guy, don Epifanio. He’d worked with Amado Carrillo in the golden years of runs between Colombia, Sinaloa, and the United States, and he’d always been a good padrino to Güero, always a man of his word, a man you could trust, a real professional. After a while, he invested in other businesses and got into politics, stopped needing planes. Don Epifanio had offered Güero a place with him, but Güero liked to fly, even if it was for other people. Up there you’re somebody, he would say, and down here you’re just a mule driver. Don Epifanio didn’t take offense, and in fact he even lent Güero the money for a new Cessna when Güero’s old one got fucked up in a violent touchdown on a landing strip up in the sierra, with three hundred kilos of Miss White inside, all wrapped up in masking tape, and two Federales planes circling overhead, highways green with soldiers, AR-15s firing, sirens wailing, bullhorns booming—one bad fucking afternoon, no doubt about it. Güero had escaped that one by the short hairs, with just a broken arm—broken once by the law and then again by the owners of the cargo, to whom he had to prove with newspaper clippings that everything had been nationalized, that three of the eight men on the reception team had been killed defending the landing strip, and that the one who’d fingered the flight was a guy from Badiraguato that squawked on retainer for the Federales. The loudmouth had wound up with his hands tied behind his back, suffocated with a plastic bag over his head, as had his father, his mother, and his sister—the narcomafia tended to mochar parejo, as they put it, wipe the slate clean. They took out the whole family, as an object lesson for anybody else who might get ideas.

  Güero, cleared of suspicion, bought himself a new Cessna with don Epifanio Vargas’ loan.

  Teresa put out the cigarette, left the gym bag open on the floor by the headboard, and pulled out the notebook. She laid it on the bed and stared at it for a long time. Don’t even look at it. The fucking notebook belonged to the fucking cabrón who was probably dancing with La Pelona right about now, and she was sitting there like a pendeja, docile, obedient, idiotic, not opening it. Nor should you, said a voice inside. Just a little peek, whispered another; if this could cost you your life, you ought to see what your life’s worth. To work up the courage she took out the package of powder, stuck a fingernail through the plastic, and brought a hit to her nose, breathing deep.

  Seconds later, with a new and different lucidity and her senses keen, she looked at the notebook and opened it, at last. Don Epifanio’s name was there, with others that gave her cold chills just looking at them: Chapo Guzmán, César “Batman” Güemes, Héctor Palma . . . There were telephone numbers, contact points, intermediaries, numbers, and codes whose meaning she couldn’t make out. She kept reading, and little by little her pulse slowed, until her blood was ice. Don’t even look at it, she remembered, shivering. ¡Híjole! Now she understood why. It was much worse than she’d thought.

  And then she heard the door open.

  Look who we’ve got here, Pote. My, my . . .” Gato Fierros’ smile gleamed like the blade of a wet knife, moist and dangerous, the smile of a killer from a gringo movie, one of those where the narcos are always brown-skinned, Latino, and bad. Gato Fierros was dark-skinned, Latino—like Juanito Alimaña, that gangster in the Hector Lavoe song—and bad. He could have been the model for the even more famous Pedro Navaja in Rubén Blades’ take on “Mack the Knife.” In fact, the only thing that wasn’t clear was whether he cultivated the stereotype on purpose or whether Rubén Blades, Willie Colón, and gringo movies were inspired by people like him.

  “. . . Güero’s girlfriend.”

  The gunman was leaning on the door frame, his hands in his pockets. His feline eyes, which had given him his nickname, never left Teresa as he spoke to his companion—twisting his mouth to the side with malignant charm.

  “I don’t know anything,” said Teresa. She was so terrified that she hardly recognized her own voice. Gato Fierros shook his head sympathetically, twice.

  “Of course not,” he said, his smile broadening. Odds were, he’d lost count of the number of men and women who’d assured him they didn’t know anything before he killed them, quickly or slowly, depending on the circumstances. In Sinaloa, dying violently was dying a natural death. Twenty thousand pesos for a common, run-of-the-mill hit, a hundred thousand for a cop or a judge, free if it was to help out a compadre.

  And Teresa knew the score: She knew Gato Fierros, and also knew his companion, Potemkin Gálvez, whom everyone called Pote, or Pinto. They were wearing almost identical jackets, silk Versace shirts, denim pants, and iguana-skin boots, as though they shopped in the same store. They were hit men for César Güemes, “Batman,” as he was called, and they had hung out a lot with Güero Dávila—coworkers, escorts for cargos airlifted up to the sierra, and also drinking buddies at parties that started at the Don Quijote in midafternoon, with fresh money that smelled like what fresh money smells like, and went on till who knew when at the table-dancing clubs in the city, Lord Black’s and the Osiris, with girls dancing nude at a hundred pesos for five minutes, two hundred and thirty back in the private rooms, before the boys moved on and greeted the new day with Buchanan’s and norteño music, their hangovers tempered with lines of coke while Los Pumas, Los Huracanes, Los Broncos, or some other group, paid in hundred-dollar bills, accompanied them with corridos—“Noses a Gram Apiece,” “A Fistful of Powder,” “Death of a Federale”—about dead men, or men as good as dead.

  “Where is he?” Teresa asked.

  Gato Fierros gave a low, mean laugh. “Hear that, Pote? . . . She’s asking about Güero. My, my . . .”

  He was still leaning on the door frame. The other gunman shook his head. He was broad and heavyset, with a solid look about him, and he had a thick black goatee and dark blotches on his skin, like a pinto horse. He didn’t seem as much at ease as his companion, and he looked at his watch impatiently. Or maybe uncomfortably. When he moved his arm, he revealed the butt of a revolver at his waist, under the linen golf jacket.

  “. . . Güero,” Gato Fierros repeated, pensive.

  He’d taken his hands out of his pockets and was slowly walking toward Teresa, who was sitting motionless at the head of the bed. When he reached her he stopped and looked down at her.

  “Well, you see, mamacita,” he said at last, “your man thought he was smart.”

  Teresa felt the fear writhing in her intestines, like a rattlesnake. The Situation. A fear as white and cold as the surface of a gravestone.

  “Where is he?” she repeated.

  It wasn’t her talking, it was some stranger whose unexpected, unforeseeable words startled her—a reckless stranger who didn’t recognize the urgent need for silence. Gato Fierros must have sensed that, because he looked at her strangely, surprised that she could ask questions instead of sitting there paralyzed, or screaming in terror.

  “He’s nowhere. He died.”

  The stranger continued to act on her own, and Teresa was once again startled to hear her curse them: Hijos de la chingada. That was what she said, or what Teresa heard her say—Hijos de la chingada—regretting it before the last syllable had left her lips. Gato Fierros was studying her with a great deal of curiosity and a great deal of attention.

  “Not nice,” he said, still thoughtful. �
�Talking about us that way . . . That mouth on you,” he added. And then he hit her in the face, knocking her full length across the bed, backward. He stood looking down at her for another while, as though taking in the view. With the blood pounding in her temples and her cheek throbbing, her head dulled by the blow, Teresa saw his eyes go to the packet of powder on the night table. He picked up a pinch and raised it to his nose.

  “Hm, good stuff,” the hit man said. “Been cut, but it’s still good stuff.” He rubbed his nose with his thumb and index finger, then offered some to his companion, but Pote shook his head and looked at his watch again.

  “No hurry, carnal,” said Gato Fierros. “None at all.” He turned once more to Teresa.

  “Nice piece, Güero’s girlfriend . . . and now she’s a widow, poor thing.” From the door, Pote Gálvez spoke his companion’s name. “Gato,” he said, very seriously. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Gato raised a hand, asking for quiet, and sat down on the edge of the bed. “Don’t fuck around,” Pote insisted. “The orders were to off her, not boff her. So get on with it—no seas cabrón.”

  But Gato Fierros shook his head like a man listening to the rain. “My, my,” he said. “I always wanted a piece of this.”

  Teresa had been raped other times: at fifteen, by several of the boys in Las Siete Gotas, and then by the man who’d put her to work on Calle Juárez. So she knew what to expect when the killer’s knifelike smile grew wetter and he unbuttoned her jeans. And suddenly, she wasn’t afraid. It isn’t happening, she thought. I’m asleep and this is just a nightmare like all the others, the ones I lived through before, something that happens to the other woman I dream about, the one who looks like me but isn’t. I can wake up whenever I want to, listen to my man’s breathing on the pillow, hold him to me, sink my face in his chest, and discover that none of this has ever happened. I can also die in my sleep, of a heart attack, a cerebral hemorrhage, whatever. I can die all of a sudden, and neither the dream nor life itself will have any importance anymore. Sleep, without images of anything at all, without night-mares. Rest forever from what has never happened.