Queen of the South

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  She’d had a man, she summarized one day, tired of seeing him slinking around the same old topic when the unanswerable questions left unbearable silences.

  “I had a man that was good-looking and brave and stupid,” she said. “A great guy. A pinche cabrón like you—like all of you, but this one in particular got me when I was just a kid, without a world, and in the end he screwed me good, and I had to run because of him, and you can see how far I had to run if I came all the way here. But it’s no business of yours if I had a man or not, because this man I’m talking about is dead—very, very dead. He got taken out, and he died, the way we all die, but early. And what that man was or was not in my life is my business, not yours.”

  And after all that, one night when they were screwing, clutching each other for dear life, and Teresa’s mind was deliciously blank, stripped of memory or future—nothing but dense, thick present, a warm intensity to which she abandoned herself without remorse—she opened her eyes and saw that Santiago had stopped and was looking at her very close in the semidarkness, and she also saw that he was moving his lips, and when she finally came back to where they were and paid attention to what he was saying, the first thing she could think was, Stupid Gallego, stupid, stupid, stupid, like all men, with those questions at the absolutely worst fucking time—him or me, him better, me better, love me, loved him. As though it were that easy, just sum everything up that way, life in black and white, good and bad, one better than the other, one worse. And she felt a dryness in her mouth and in her soul and between her legs, a new anger bursting inside, not because he was asking questions again but because he was elementary, and awkward, and was seeking confirmation for things that had nothing to do with him, and it wasn’t even jealousy, but habit, self-image, some absurd stupid male thing, the hang-ups of a macho that takes the woman out of the herd and refuses to allow her any life but the life that he plants in her womb. Which was why she wanted to insult him, and hurt him, and she shoved him away as she spat out Yes, the truth, of course—to see what he would think, this idiotic Gallego. What did he think—that life started with him and his fucking prick?

  “I’m with you because I’ve got no better place to go, or because I learned that I don’t know how to live alone, without a man—which could be one man or another, no big deal—and I couldn’t care less why he chose me or I chose the first one that came along.” And getting up, naked, still not free of him, she slapped him, hard, a slap that made Santiago turn his face. And she tried to hit him again, but this time it was him that hit her, kneeling above her, returning the slap with a violence that was calm, dry, without anger—she was surprised, perhaps—and then he stood there above her, still on his knees, unmoving, while she cried and cried, tears that sprang not from her eyes but from her chest and throat, as she lay still, on her back, insulting him—Pinche gallego cabrón de la chingada, pendejo, hijo de puta, hijo de tu pinche madre, cabrón, cabrón, cabrón. Then he tumbled down beside her and lay there awhile not saying anything, not touching her, ashamed and confused, while she lay on her back, also not moving but growing calmer little by little, until she felt her tears drying on her face. And that was all, and it was the only time. Neither one ever again raised a hand against the other. Nor were there, ever again, any questions.

  Four hundred kilos,” said Cañabota in a half-whisper. “First-quality oil, seven times purer than the normal stuff. The cream of the crop.”

  He had a gin and tonic in one hand and an English cigarette with a gold filter in the other, and he alternated puffs at the cigarette and sips at his drink. He was short and fat, and his head was shaved, and he sweated all the time, to the point that his shirts were always wet under the arms and at the collar, where there gleamed an inevitable gold chain. Maybe, thought Teresa, it was his job that made him sweat that way. Because Cañabota—she had no idea if that was his surname or some kind of nickname—was what in professional slang was called un hombre de confianza, a man of trust: a local agent, a go-between, an intermediary between two groups of drug traffickers. Specializing in logistics, in organizing the shipment of hashish from Morocco and ensuring its delivery. That included hiring runners like Santiago, and also seeing to the complicity of certain local authorities. The sergeant of the Guardia Civil—thin, fiftyish, dressed in civilian clothes—who accompanied him that afternoon was one of the many instruments that had to be played to make the music. Teresa knew him from other times, and she knew that he was posted somewhere around Estepona. There was a fifth person in the group: a Gibraltar attorney named Eddie Alvarez, a small man with thin, kinky hair, very thick glasses, and nervous hands. He had a modest law office located down by the harbor in the British colony, with ten or fifteen front operations with their signs on the door. He was in charge of controlling the money that Santiago was paid in Gibraltar after each run.

  “This time we have to send notaries,” Cañabota added.

  “No way.” Santiago shook his head, very calmly. “Too many people on board. What I’ve got is a Phantom, not a fucking ferryboat.”

  Notaries were witnesses that drug traffickers put on speedboats to ensure that everything went according to plan: one for the providers, who were usually Moroccan, and another for the buyers. Cañabota didn’t seem to like this new wrinkle.

  “She”—he tilted his head toward Teresa—“can stay on land.”

  Santiago didn’t take his eyes off the hombre de confianza as he shook his head. “I don’t see why she should. She’s my crew.”

  Cañabota and the guardsman turned to Eddie Alvarez disapprovingly, as though they blamed him for the refusal. But the lawyer shrugged. It’s useless, his gesture said. I know the story, and besides, I’m just here to watch. What the fuck do I care.

  Teresa ran her finger over the condensation on the outside of her glass. She had never liked going to these meetings, but Santiago always insisted. “You take the same risks I do,” he would tell her. “You have a right to know what goes down and how it goes down. Don’t talk if you don’t want to, but it can’t hurt you to pay attention. And if these guys don’t like you being there, fuck ’em. Fuck all of ’em. I mean, their women are playing with themselves at home, watching TV, they’re not risking their cunts against the Moros five or six times a month.”

  “Usual payment?” Eddie Alvarez asked, looking out for number one.

  Payment would be made the day after the delivery, Cañabota confirmed. One-third direct to a BBV account in Gibraltar—the Spanish banks in the colony were branches not of the main bank in Madrid, but rather the bank in London, and that made for delightful financial blindspots—and two-thirds in hand. The two-thirds in dinero B, as the Spaniards called money that was never reported on tax forms. Although they’d need some fake invoices for the bank. The usual red tape.

  “Make the arrangements with her,” Santiago said. And he indicated Teresa.

  Cañabota and the guardsman exchanged an uncomfortable glance. What a fucking thing, their silence said. Bringing a chick into this. Lately, Teresa had been increasingly involved in the bookkeeping side of the operation. That included control of expenses, doing the books, telephone calls in code, and periodic visits to Eddie Alvarez. And also dealing with a corporation headquartered in the lawyer’s office, the bank account in Gibraltar, and the justifiable money invested in low-risk ventures—something without too many complications, because Santiago was not used to having his life exposed too much to banks. He’d opted for what the lawyer called a minimal infrastructure. A conservative portfolio, he also called it, when he was wearing a tie and decided to get technical. Until recently, and despite his mistrustful nature, Santiago had depended almost blindly on Eddie Alvarez, who charged him a commission even for simple monthly payments when he invested legal money. Teresa had changed that, suggesting that everything be used for safer and more profitable investments, and even that the lawyer make Santiago a partner in a bar on Main Street, to launder part of their income. She didn’t know anything about banks or finance, but he
r experience as a money changer on Calle Juárez in Culiacán had given her some very clear ideas. So gradually she took over the money end of the business, putting papers in order, finding out what could be done with the money instead of immobilizing it in some hiding place or checking account. Skeptical at first, Santiago finally had to yield to the evidence: she had a good head for numbers, and was able to foresee possibilities that never entered his mind. Above all, she had incredible common sense. Unlike him—the son of the Galician fisherman was one of those people who keep their money in plastic bags in the back of the closet—Teresa always saw the possibility that two and two made five. So despite Eddie Alvarez’ initial reticence, Santiago put it to him clearly: She had a say in the money.

  “Cunt hair ties tighter knots than hemp rope,” was the lawyer’s verdict when he got Santiago alone. “I hope you don’t wind up making her co-owner of all your holdings, too: Gallego-Aztec Transport, Inc., or whatever. I’ve seen stranger things. Because women . . .” He shook his head as his voice trailed off. “. . . And these quiet little mousy types, worse yet. You start out screwing them, then you get them to sign papers, then you put everything in their name, and in the end they run off and leave you without a penny.”

  “That,” replied Santiago, “is my business. Read my lips: Mine. . . . And by the way, fuck yourself.”

  He said this with an expression that made the lawyer almost drop his glasses in his drink. After that he very meekly drank down his whisky—they were on the terrace of the Rock Hotel, with the Bay of Algeciras spread out below them—and never again expressed any reservations about the matter. I hope you learn your lesson, you pendejo, the lawyer thought to himself, however. Or that that slut two-times you like they all wind up doing. But he didn’t say it.

  Now Cañabota and the Guardia Civil sergeant were looking at Teresa, the atmosphere tense, and it was clear that the same thoughts were going through their minds. Skirts stay home and watch TV, their silence said. Uncomfortable, Teresa averted her eyes. “Trujillo Fabrics,” read the glazed-tile sign on the building across the street. “Notions.” It was not pleasant, being studied that way. But it occurred to her that the way they were looking at her was an insult to Santiago, too, and at that she turned her face, now angry, toward them and locked unblinkingly on their gaze. You don’t know who you’re fucking with, she seemed to be telling them.

  “Well, when all is said and done,” the lawyer was saying—he never missed a thing—“she’s in pretty deep already.”

  “Notaries are good for what they’re good for,” said Cañabota, still looking at Teresa. “And both sides want guarantees.”

  “I’m the guarantee,” Santiago shot back. “They know me.”

  “This shipment is important.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, they all are, so long as somebody’s paying. And I’m not in the habit of having people tell me how to do my job.”

  “Rules are rules.”

  “Cut the crap. This is a free market, I’m a free agent, and I have my own rules.”

  Eddie Alvarez shook his head in discouragement. Useless to argue, he appeared to be saying, when there’s tits involved. Just wasting your time.

  “The boys over in Gibraltar don’t make such a fuss about it, Santiago,” Cañabota insisted. “Parrondi, Victorio . . . They take on notaries and anything else that’s asked of them.”

  Santiago took a drink of his beer, staring over the rim of the glass at Cañabota. That guy has been in the business ten years, he had once remarked to Teresa. And never been in jail. Makes me wary of him, you know?

  “You don’t trust the Gibraltar boys as much as me.”

  “That’s what you say.”

  “So do the thing with them and stop busting my balls.”

  The guardsman was watching Teresa, with an unpleasant smile on his face. He was badly shaven, and a few white hairs bristled on his chin and under his nose. He wore his clothes awkwardly, like a man who’s more used to a uniform, a man whose plainclothes cover is never quite comfortable. I know your type, thought Teresa. I’ve seen you a thousand times in Sinaloa, in Melilla, everywhere. You’re always the same. “Let me see your documents,” et cetera. “And tell me how we can get you out of this problem.” Oh, the cynicism of it. The excuse that you can’t quite make it on your salary, with all your expenses, till the end of the month. Shipments of drugs intercepted and half the seizure reported, fines you collect but never put in your reports, free drinks, hookers, made men. And those official investigations that never get to the bottom of anything, everybody covering for everybody else, live and let live, because everybody has a stash of something in the closet or a dead man buried under the floor. The same thing here as over there, except that the Spaniards aren’t to blame for what goes on over there, because they left Mexico two hundred years ago, so . . . Less brazen about things here, of course, more suave. Europe and all that. Teresa looked across the street. That “less brazen” applied only sometimes. The salary of a sergeant in the Guardia Civil, or a cop, or a Spanish Customs officer wasn’t enough to pay for a brand-new Mercedes like the one this asshole had parked, brazenly, in front of the Café Central. And he probably—no, surely—went to work in that same car, to his fucking police station, and nobody was surprised, and all of them, chiefs included, pretended they didn’t see a thing. Yeah. Live and let live.

  The discussion—almost an argument—went on in lowered voices, while the waitress came and went with more beers and gin and tonics. Despite Santiago’s firmness about the notaries, Cañabota wasn’t giving in just yet. “If they jump you and you have to throw the shipment overboard,” he said, “let’s see how you justify that without witnesses. X number of kilos overboard and you coming back without a scratch. Plus this time they’re Italians, and they’re bad boys—trust me, I deal with these guys. Mafiosi cabroni. Bottom line, a notary is a guarantee for you as well as for them. For everybody. So just this once, leave the little lady on land and don’t be so fucking stubborn. Stop fucking around and don’t be so fucking stubborn and you don’t get fucked.”

  “If they jump me and I throw off the bundles,” Santiago replied, “everybody knows that it’s because I had to. . . . It’s my word. And anybody that hires me knows that.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ. I’m never going to convince you?”

  “No. No, you’re not.”

  Cañabota looked at Eddie Alvarez and passed his hand over his shaved head, declaring himself beaten. Then he lit another of those cigarettes with the weird filters. And if you ask me, thought Teresa, this one bats left-handed. His shirt was sopping wet, and a rivulet of sweat ran down one side of his nose, to his upper lip. Teresa still said nothing, her eyes fixed on her own left hand on the table. Long red nails, seven bangles of Mexican silver, a thin silver cigarette lighter, a gift from Santiago for her birthday. With all her heart she wanted this conversation over. Wanted to get out of there, kiss her man, lick his lips, dig her red nails into his kidneys. Forget about all this for a while. All of them.

  “One day something bad is going to happen to you,” the guardsman muttered.

  They were the first words he had spoken, and he spoke them directly to Santiago. He stared at him deliberately, as though engraving his features in his memory. A gaze that promised other conversations in private, in the privacy of a jail cell, say, where no one would be surprised to hear quite a few screams.

  “Well, you make sure it’s not you that makes it happen.”

  They studied each other a few seconds longer, wordlessly, and now it was Santiago’s expression that promised things. For example, that there might be jail cells where a man might be beaten to death, but there were also dark alleys and parking lots where a corrupt Civil Guardsman might find six inches of knife rammed up his crotch, right about where the femoral runs. And five quarts of blood spurting out before he knew what was happening. And that the man you push past going up the stairs, you might trip over real bad on the way down. Especially if he’s a Galici
an—and hard as you try, you never really know whether you’re on the way up or on the way down.

  “Okay, then, that’s settled.” Cañabota clapped his hands together softly in a gesture of reconciliation. “Your fucking rules. Let’s not quibble . . . we’re all in this together, right?”

  “All of us,” added Eddie Alvarez, who was cleaning his glasses with a Kleenex.

  Cañabota leaned toward Santiago. Notaries or not, business was business. “Four hundred kilos of oil in twenty kits of twenty,” he said, tracing out imaginary numbers and drawings on the table. “Delivered Tuesday night, dark of the moon . . . You know the place—Punta Castor, on the beach near the rotunda, right at the end of the Estepona loop, where the highway to Málaga begins. They’ll be waiting for you at one sharp.”

  Santiago thought about it for a second. He looked at the table as though Cañabota had actually drawn the route there.

  “Seems a little far to me, if I have to go down to Al Marsa or Punta Cires for the shipment and then deliver it so early . . . From Gibraltar to Estepona it’s forty kilometers as the crow flies. I’ll have to load while it’s still light, and it’s a long return.”

  “There’s no problem.” Cañabota looked around at the others, encouraging them to confirm his words. “We’ll put a monkey up on the Rock with binoculars and a walkie-talkie to watch for HJs and the bird. There’s an English lieutenant up there that we’ve got eating out of our hand, plus he’s fucking a stripper that works for us in a titty club in La Línea.... As for the kits, no problem there, either. They’ll pass them over to you from a fishing boat, five miles east of the Ceuta lighthouse just after dark. The Julio Verdú, from Barbate. Channel 44 on the marine band: you say ‘Mario’ two times, and they’ll guide you in. At eleven you come alongside the fishing boat and load up, then head north hugging the coast, nice and easy, no hurry, and you unload at one. At two, the kids are in bed and you’re in your warm little love nest.”