“You played it straight, Pinto. Not like this asshole.”
It was not a statement directed at Pote Gálvez, exactly, or even a fully formed thought. It was just a fact that had entered her head at that moment. The hit man remained impassive, as though he hadn’t heard. A new thread of blood fell from his nose, then hung in the dirty hairs of his moustache. She studied him a few seconds more, then stepped toward the door, pensively. Yasikov was waiting for her.
“Let Pinto go,” she said.
It’s not always right to wipe the whole slate clean, she thought. Because there are debts that must be paid. And strange moral codes that each person must understand in her own way. Things only she can decide on.
12. How ’bout if I buy you?
In the light from the large skylights up in the vault of the huge dry-dock shed, the two gray floats on the inflatable Valiant looked like torpedoes. Teresa Mendoza was sitting on the floor, surrounded by tools, and her greasy hands were tightening down the new propellers on the two 250-horsepower outboards. She was wearing old jeans and a dirty shirt, and her hair, in two braids, hung at each side of her sweat-streaked face. Pepe Horcajuelo, her head mechanic, was beside her, watching the operation. From time to time, without her having to ask, he would pass Teresa some tool.
Pepe was small, almost tiny, and years before had been a rising star in the world of motorcycle racing. An oil slick on a curve had forced his retirement from the track, and after a year and a half of rehabilitation he had traded in his racing leather for mechanic’s overalls. Dr. Ramos had discovered him when the head gasket on his Deux Chevaux burned out in Fuengirola and he went looking for a garage that was open on Sunday. The former racer had a good hand for engines, including marine engines, which he was able to get an extra five hundred rpms out of. He was one of those quiet, efficient types that like their work, and work hard, and never ask questions. And he was also—a basic requirement—discreet. The only visible sign of the money he’d earned in the last fourteen months was a Honda 1200 that was now parked near the big galvanized-iron hangar occupied by Samir Marina, a business backed by Moroccan capital, headquartered in Gibraltar—another of the sister front companies that Transer Naga owned down near the docks in Sotogrande. The rest, Pepe was diligently saving. For his old age. Because you never know, he would often say, what curve the next oil slick will be on.
“That’s it,” said Teresa.
She picked up the cigarette she’d left on the edge of one of the work stands and took a couple of puffs, staining the cigarette with grease. Pepe didn’t like people smoking when they worked in the shop, and he didn’t like other people fiddling with the engines whose maintenance was entrusted to him. But she was the boss, and the engines and boats and storeroom were hers. So neither Pepe nor anybody else could object. Besides, Teresa liked to do these things, keep her hand in, she called it, do a little mechanicking, move around the dock area, the dry docks. Sometimes she would take the engines or a new boat out for a test run. And once, piloting one of the new thirty-foot semi-rigids—it had been her idea to use the hollow fiberglass keels for fuel reserves—she was out all night, running at full throttle to see how the boat behaved in a choppy sea. But all that was a pretext to remember, and remind herself of, and maintain a link with, a part of herself she couldn’t bear to let go. It may have had something to do with a lost innocence, with a state of emotion that now, looking back, she thought had been very close to happiness. Chale, she told herself, maybe I was happy back then. Maybe I really and truly was, though I never noticed.
“Hand me a five-millimeter socket. Hold that there . . . like that.”
She stood back with a satisfied expression to look at the result. The stainless-steel propellers she’d just installed—one counterclockwise and one clockwise, to compensate for the pull created by the rotation—were of smaller diameter and greater screw pitch than the original aluminum ones, and that allowed the paired engines, attached to the rear deck of a semi-rigid, to develop a few more knots’ speed on a calm sea. Teresa laid her cigarette on the stand again and inserted the last washers and bolts that Pepe handed her, and tightened them down. Then she took one last puff on the cigarette, put it out in the cut-down Castro oil can she was using as an ashtray, and stood up, rubbing the small of her back.
“You’ll let me know how they behave.”
“I’ll let you know.”
Teresa wiped her hands off with a rag and went outside, squinting against the glare of the Andalucían sun. She stood there for several seconds, enjoying the place and the view: the dry dock’s huge blue crane; the masts of the boats; the soft splashing of the water on the concrete launch ramp; the smell of ocean, rust, and fresh paint that the hulls out of water gave off; the clanking of the halyards in the breeze blowing in from the west, over the breakwater. She waved to the dry-dock operators—she knew every one of them by name—and skirting the sheds and sailboats up on braces she walked to the rear of the dry-dock area, where Pote Gálvez was waiting for her by the Cherokee. The SUV was parked under a stand of palm trees, with the gray-sand beach behind it, curving off toward Punta Cullera and the east. A good deal of time had passed—almost a year—since that night in the basement of the house under construction in Nueva Andalucía. That, and what had happened a few days later, when the hit man, with welts and bruises covering his body, had come in to see Teresa, escorted by two of Yasikov’s men.
“I have something to discuss with la doña,” he had told them. “Something urgent. And it has to be now.”
Teresa gave him a cold, almost grim reception on the terrace of a suite in the Hotel Puente Romano, on the beach. The bodyguards watched them through two sliding-glass doors off the living room.
“You wanted to see me, Pinto? Maybe you’d like a drink?”
Pote Gálvez said no, gracias, and stood for several seconds gazing out at the ocean without really seeing it, scratching his head like a clumsy bear, his dark suit wrinkled, the double-breasted jacket looking like hell on him because it accentuated his girth. His Sinaloa-style iguana-skin boots were a discordant note in the business attire; Teresa felt a strange sympathy, almost a liking, for those boots. His shirt collar was buttoned for the occasion, and he wore a tie that was much too wide and colorful. She studied him with great attentiveness. Pinche rational human beings, leaking not just what they were saying but even, or especially, what they didn’t say, or what they took their sweet time saying, like this fucking Mexican here now.
“You wanted to see me, Pinto?” she repeated, and Potemkin Gálvez turned slowly toward her, still in silence, then stood facing her. He stopped scratching his head to say softly, after glancing out of the corner of his eye at the men in the living room, “Well, señora—I came to thank you. Thank you for letting me live in spite of what I did, or what I was about to do.”
“Surely you don’t expect me to explain why,” she replied flatly, harshly. And the hit man turned his eyes away again—
“No, of course not,” and he repeated it twice, with that way of talking that brought back so many memories to Teresa, because it insinuated itself into her very heart. “That’s all I wanted, to thank you, and to tell you that Potemkin Gálvez owes you one, and he’ll pay you back.”
“And how does Potemkin Gálvez plan to pay me back?” Teresa asked.
“Well, señora, I already did, partway anyway,” came the reply. “I talked to the people that sent me over here. On the telephone. I told them the truth: that these guys laid a trap for us and that Gato fell right in, and that there wasn’t anything anybody could do, because they roughed us up pretty good.”
“What people are we talking about?” asked Teresa, already knowing the answer.
“People,” replied Pote, standing a little straighter, his proud eyes hardening a little. “Quihubo, mi doña. You know there are some things I don’t talk about. Let’s just say people. People from over there.” And then, once again meek, pausing often, searching hard for the right words, he explained
that those people, whoever they were, had taken it real hard that he was still breathing and that his buddy Gato had had his neck wrung that way, and that they’d explained real, real clear what his three options were: to finish the job, or to take the first plane back to Culiacán and face the consequences, or to hide out someplace where they couldn’t ever find him.
“And which one have you decided on, Pinto?”
“Well . . . really . . . none of them look good to me, señora. Fortunately, I never had a family. So I don’t have to worry about that part.”
“So?”
“Órale. So here I am.”
“And what am I supposed to do with you?”
“That’s for you to decide, mi señora. I don’t think that’s my problem.”
Teresa studied the pistolero again. You’re right, she conceded after a second. She felt a smile about to emerge, but she suppressed it. Pote Gálvez’ logic was elementary, yet perfectly accurate—she knew the rules. In a way it had been and still was her own logic, the logic of the hard-boiled world they both came from. Güero Dávila, she suddenly thought, would have had a good laugh at this one. Pure Sinaloa. Life’s little jokes.
“Are you asking me for a job?”
“One day they might send somebody else,” the pistolero said, shrugging in resigned simplicity, “and then I could pay back what I owe you.”
So there stood Pote Gálvez beside the Cherokee now, waiting for her as he had every day since that morning on the hotel terrace: driver, bodyguard, messenger, whatever she needed. It was easy to get him a residency permit, and even—though it cost her—a weapons license, which she obtained through a friendly security company. That allowed him to carry, legally, in a holster under his arm or at his waist, a Colt Python identical to the one he had put to Teresa’s head in another country and another life. The people from Sinaloa gave no more trouble: in the last few weeks, via Yasikov, Transer Naga had acted as intermediary, for free, in an operation that the Sinaloa cartel had about half worked out with the Russian mafias that were now entering Los Angeles and San Francisco. That smoothed out some of the tensions, or put to rest old ghosts, and Teresa received the unequivocal message that all was forgotten—live and let live, the counter set back to zero and enough chingaderas. Batman Güemes in person had cleared that up through reliable go-betweens, and although in this business any guarantee was only relative, the reassurance at least poured some oil on the troubled waters. There were not to be any more hit men—although Pote Gálvez, distrustful by nature and profession, never let down his guard. Especially given that as Teresa broadened her operations, relationships became more and more complex and enemies multiplied in direct proportion to her range and power.
“Home, Pinto.”
“Sí, patrona.” In Pote Gálvez, what might have seemed officiousness, ass-kissing, was simply his old-fashioned Mexican way of showing the respect due an employer and a woman who had spared his life. He was subservient, even meek, and he was grateful, but he was still a professional killer, and Teresa, in turn, respected him for all that.
Home was a luxurious two-story house with an immense lawn and pool; it was finished at last, in Guadalmina Baja, next to the sea. Teresa got into the passenger seat while Pote Gálvez took the wheel. The work on the engines had brought her a couple of hours’ relief from the concerns in her head. This was the culmination of a good stretch: four shipments for the ’Ndrangheta had been delivered with no problems, and the Italians were asking for more. The people from Solntsevo were also asking for more. The new speedboats could easily manage the transport of hashish from the coast of Murcia to the Portuguese border, with a reasonable percentage—those losses were also foreseeable—of interception by the Guardia Civil and Customs. The Moroccan and Colombian contacts were working perfectly, and the financial infrastructure updated and improved by Teo Aljarafe was able to absorb and funnel off vast amounts of money, of which only forty percent was reinvested in operational expenses and expansion. But as Teresa expanded her activities, friction with other organizations in the same line of business increased. It was impossible to grow without taking up space that other people thought belonged to them. And then there were the Galicians and the French.
No problems with the French. Or rather, few and short-lived. Some of the Marseilles mafia’s hashish providers worked on the Costa del Sol; they were grouped around two main capos: a French-Algerian named Michel Salem, and the Marseilles mobster Nené Garou.
Salem was a heavyset, sixtyish man with gray hair and pleasant manners with whom Teresa had had a few not altogether satisfactory experiences. Unlike Salem, who specialized in moving hashish in recreational boats and was a discreet family man who lived in a mansion in Fuengirola with two divorced daughters and four grandchildren, Nené Garou was a classic French ruffian: an arrogant, wise-mouthed, violent gangster given to leather jackets, expensive cars, and spectacular women. Garou ran hashish, but also dealt in prostitution, short arms, and a little heroin. All Teresa’s attempts to negotiate reasonable agreements with him had failed, and during an informal meeting with Teresa and Teo Aljarafe in a private room in a Mijas restaurant, Garou lost it—making threats too loud, too gross, and too explicit not to take seriously. This happened more or less when Garou had proposed that Teresa transport a quarter-ton of Colombian black-tar heroin for him, and she said no—the way she saw it, hashish was more or less for everybody and coke a luxury item for assholes who could pay for it, but heroin was poison for the poor, and she wasn’t into that shit. Garou took that the wrong way. “No Mexican bitch is gonna bust my balls,” was how he put it, as a matter of fact, and the Marseilles accent made it sound all the worse. Teresa, not a muscle in her face moving, very slowly stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray before calling for the check and leaving the restaurant.
“What are we going to do?” was Teo’s worried question when they got outside. “That guy is dangerous.”
But Teresa said nothing about the meeting for three days—not a word, not a remark. Nothing. Inside, serene and silent, she was planning moves, thinking out the pros and cons, as though she were in a complex game of chess. Over the years, she had discovered that those gray predawn hours led to interesting reflections, sometimes very different from those she arrived at in the light of day. And three predawns later, the decision made, she went to see Oleg Yasikov.
“I’ve come to ask your advice,” she said, although both of them knew that wasn’t true. And when she laid it all out, briefly, using the fewest words possible, Yasikov looked at her for a few seconds before shrugging.
“You’ve grown a lot, Tesa,” he said. “Yes. And when you grow a lot, these inconveniences come with the territory. But I can’t get involved in this. No. Can’t give you advice, either, because it’s your war, not mine. One day—life is full of surprises—we might find ourselves in the same situation, you and I. Yes. Who knows. Just remember that in this business, a problem that goes unsolved is like a cancer. Sooner or later, it kills.”
Teresa decided to apply a Sinaloan solution. Me los voy a chingar hasta la madre de esos cabrones—nothing’s more impressive than a disproportionate reaction, she told herself, especially when they’re not expecting it. Güero Dávila, who was a big fan of the Culiacán Tomateros, and who was laughing out loud in that cantina in hell where he now had his own table, would no doubt have described this as hitting every ball that came over the plate, and stealing second base off the assholes to boot.
This time she found her resources in Morocco, where an old friend, Colonel Abdelkader Chaib, supplied the appropriate personnel: ex-cops and ex-military types who spoke Spanish, had their passports and tourist visas in order, and came and went on the Tangiers-Algeciras ferry line. Hard, tough guys: muscle who received only the necessary information and instructions and who, should they be captured by Spanish authorities, could not be tied to anybody. They caught Nené Garou coming out of a disco in Benalmádena at four in the morning. Two young North African-looking men—he told the
police later, when he’d recovered his ability to speak—approached him like they were going to mug him, and after taking his wallet and watch they broke his spine with a baseball bat. Clack, clack. “Broken into so many pieces it was like a baby rattle,” was the graphic expression used by the hospital spokesman, who was later reprimanded by his superiors.
The same morning this story appeared in the police-blotter notes in the Málaga newspaper Sur, a telephone call came for Michel Salem at his house in Fuengirola. After a pleasant Buenos días, the caller identified himself as a friend and in perfect Spanish offered his condolences for the regrettable accident that Garou had suffered and that Monsieur Salem, he imagined, had no doubt recently learned of.
Then the voice told Salem that at that moment, his grandchildren—three sweet girls and a boy, five to twelve years old—were playing in the yard of the Swiss school in Las Chapas. They’d spent the previous day at a McDonald’s, at a birthday party for the eldest, a cute tomboy named Desirée. Her usual route to and from school, like that of her sibling and her cousins, was given in minute detail to Salem.
That same afternoon Salem received, by messenger, a package of telephoto pictures of his grandchildren—at McDonald’s and at the school playground.
I spoke with Cucho Malaspina—black leather pants, English tweed jacket, Moroccan bag over his shoulder—as I was about to go to Mexico for the last time, two weeks before my interview with Teresa Mendoza. We ran into each other at the airport in Málaga, where we were waiting for our respective delayed flights.
“Hola, qué tal, love,” he said. “How are you?”
I got myself a cup of coffee and he had orange juice, which he sipped through a straw as we caught up on each other’s lives: I read your things, I see you on TV, the usual. Then we sat down together on a couch in a quiet corner. “I’m working on something about the Queen of the South,” I told him, and he broke out in wicked laughter. It was he who’d given her that sobriquet. The cover of ¡Hola! four years before. Six pages in color with the story of her life, or at least the part he’d been able to find out about, centering mostly on her power, her luxurious life, and her mystery. Almost all the photographs taken with a telephoto. Something along the lines of This dangerous woman controls this and that. Reclusive multimillionaire Mexican, shadowy past, shady present. “Beautiful and enigmatic,” read the caption of the single photo taken from closer range: Teresa in dark glasses, dressed austerely and elegantly, getting out of a car surrounded by bodyguards in Málaga, on her way to testify before a judicial commission on drug trafficking that was able to prove absolutely nothing against her.
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