Queen of the South

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  “I’m Nino Juárez.”

  “I know who you are.”

  From the other side of the room, Teo, who never missed anything, gave Teresa a look of warning. He may be ours, when he’s paid off, but that guy is a minefield, his eyes said. And besides, there are people watching.

  “I didn’t know you came to this sort of affair,” said the cop.

  “I didn’t know you did.”

  That was not true. Teresa knew everything about the commissioner of the organized-crime unit: He liked the Marbella life, rubbing elbows with the rich and famous, appearing on television announcing the successful conclusion of some important operation, the rendering of some important service to the community. He also liked money. Tomás Pestaña and he were friends, and they lent each other support in many ways.

  “It’s part of my work.” Juárez paused and smiled. “As it is of yours.”

  I don’t like him, Teresa decided.

  “There’s a problem,” Juárez said suddenly. His tone was almost intimate. He, like her, was looking around, smiling vaguely.

  “Problems,” said Teresa, “are not my problem. I have people to deal with them.”

  “Well, this one can’t be dealt with quite that easily. And I prefer to tell you what it is, not somebody else.”

  And then he did, in the same tone and a very few words. A new investigation had begun, set in motion by a judge in the National Tribunal who took his work very, very seriously: one Martínez Pardo. This time, the judge had decided to leave the organized-crime unit out of it and use the Guardia Civil. Juárez was out of the loop, and he couldn’t do anything to stop or derail it. He just wanted to make that clear before things started rolling.

  “Who in the Guardia Civil?”

  “There’s a group that’s good. Delta Four. It’s headed by a captain named Víctor Castro.”

  “I’ve heard of him.”

  “Well, he’s been working in secret on this operation for some time. The judge has come down a couple of times. Apparently they’re tracking the last departure of semi-rigids out there. They want to intercept a few and trace them up the food chain.”

  “And this is serious?”

  “Depends on what they find. You should know.”

  “So what about Organized Crime? . . . What do you plan to do?”

  “Nothing. All I can do is sit back and watch. I told you, we’ve been bumped. With what I’ve told you, I’ve done my duty.”

  Patty was back, with another glass in her hand. She was walking straight, and Teresa figured that she’d visited the ladies’ room to perk herself up.

  “Oh, wow,” she said as she approached. “Look who we have here. Law and order. And my, Grandma, what a big Rolex you have tonight. New?”

  Juárez turned grim, looking at Teresa. You all right with this? he said wordlessly. Your partner is not going to be much help when the shit hits the fan.

  “Excuse me,” he said. “Buenas noches.” And he wandered off among the guests.

  Patricia laughed softly, watching him.

  “What was that hijo de puta saying to you? . . . His check didn’t come in the mail yet?”

  “It’s not a good idea to yank people’s chain like that.” Teresa, uneasy, had lowered her voice. She didn’t want to lose her composure, not here and not now. “Especially when they’re cops.”

  “Don’t we pay him? . . . So fuck ’im.”

  Patty jerked the glass to her lips, almost violently. Teresa wasn’t sure whether the anger in her words was aimed at Nino Juárez or at her.

  “Listen, Lieutenant. Don’t fuck with me. You’re drinking too much. And the other, too.”

  “So what? . . . It’s a party, and tonight I feel like partying.”

  “Who’s talking about tonight?”

  “Oh, I see. Now you’re my babysitter.”

  Teresa said no more. She looked fixedly into her friend’s eyes, and Patty looked away.

  “After all,” Patty growled, “fifty percent of the payoff to that asshole comes from me.”

  Teresa still didn’t reply. She was thinking. From afar, she felt the questioning look of Teo Aljarafe. This was never going to end. You plug one hole, and another one opens. And not everything could be fixed with common sense or money.

  “How’s the queen of Marbella?”

  Tomás Pestaña had just appeared by their side—charming, back-slapping, vulgar. He wore a white dinner jacket that gave him the look of a short, chubby waiter. The mayor liked to live dangerously, as long as there was money or influence in it for him, and he and Teresa had a relationship based on mutual interests. He had founded a local political party, and he sailed the murky waters of real estate; the legend that was beginning to grow around the Mexicana reinforced his sense of power, and his vanity. It also reinforced his checking account. Pestaña had made his first fortune as a right-hand man for an important Andalucían real estate developer, buying land for the business through his boss’ contacts and with his money. Later, when a third of the Costa del Sol belonged to him, he visited his boss to tell him he was quitting. Really? Yes, really. Well, listen, how can I thank you for your services? You already did, was Pestaña’s reply. I put it all in my name. For months after the boss got out of the hospital, after his heart attack, he was on the lookout for Pestaña, and he had a gun in his belt for when he found him.

  “An interesting group of people, don’t you think?” said Pestaña.

  The mayor, who never missed a trick, had seen her talking to Nino Juárez, though he never would have said so explicitly. They exchanged compliments: Happy birthday, Mr. Mayor. Wonderful party. Teresa asked what time it was, and the mayor told her.

  “We’re still on for dinner Tuesday, of course,” said Teresa. “Same place as always. Now Patty and I really have to go—have to get up early tomorrow morning.”

  “You’ll have to go by yourself, sweetie,” Patty said. “I’m having a wonderful time right here.”

  With the Galicians, things were a little more complicated than with the French. In fact, it was like threading a needle with a piece of hawser, because the gangs in northwest Spain had their own contacts in Colombia, and sometimes worked with the same people Teresa did. Plus, these were serious tough-guy gangster types, they had years of experience, and they were on home turf, after the amos do fume, who controlled the tobacco-smuggling rings, had retooled themselves for drugs and were now amos da cocaína. The Galician coves and inlets were their territory, but they had been extending it southward, toward the mouth of the Mediterranean and North Africa. So long as Transer Naga transported only hashish along the Andalucían coastline, relations with the northwestern Spaniards, though cool, were live-and-let-live. But cocaine was different. And recently, Teresa’s organization had become a serious competitor. All this emerged in a meeting held on neutral ground, a large country house in Cáceres, near Arroyo de la Luz, between the Sierra de Santo Domingo and the N-521 highway—a place surrounded with pastures for the cattle and thick stands of oak. The huge white house was at the end of a road on which approaching cars raised clouds of dust, so an intruder could easily be seen from far away.

  The meeting took place at mid-morning, and Teresa and Teo Aljarafe attended for Transer Naga, escorted by Pote Gálvez at the wheel of the Cherokee and, in a dark Passat behind them, two of their most trusted men—young Moroccans who had first proved themselves in the rubbers and later been recruited for security. She was wearing black, a well-cut designer pantsuit, and her hair, parted down the center, was gathered into a bun. The Galicians were already there: three of them, with three bodyguards at the door, next to the two BMW 732s they had arrived in. Everyone got right down to business, the gorillas looking warily at one another outside while the principals did the same inside, around a large rustic wood table in the center of a room with a beamed ceiling, stuffed deer and boar heads on the walls. There were sandwiches, soft drinks and coffee, boxes of cigars, and notepads, as for a typical business meeting—although this one
got off on the wrong foot when Siso Pernas, of the Corbeira clan, the son of don Xaquin Pernas, amo do fume of the Ría de Arosa, began by laying out the situation, speaking entirely to Teo Aljarafe as though the lawyer were the interlocutor of choice and Teresa there just as decoration. The issue here, Siso Pernas said, was that the Transer Naga people had their finger in too many pies. No objection to expansion into the Mediterranean, the hashish and all that. Or to them moving coke on a reasonable scale—there was enough business to go around. But everybody in his own territory, and with respect for seniority, which in Spain—he continued to look only at Teo Aljarafe, as though he were the Mexican—was always rule number one. And as for territories, Siso Pernas and his father, don Xaquin, covered the Atlantic operations, the big shipments by boat from Latin American ports. They had always been the operators for the Colombians, ever since don Xaquin and the Corbeira brothers and the people of the old school, pressured by these new generations, had started to move out of tobacco and into hashish and coke. So they had come with a proposal: No objection to Transer Naga working the blow that came in through Casablanca and Agadir, so long as they took it into the eastern Mediterranean and it didn’t stay in Spain. Because if we were talking about direct shipments to the Peninsula and the rest of Europe, then the Atlantic route, and all its branches to the north, belonged to the Gallegos.

  “That’s really what we’re doing,” said Teo Aljarafe. “Except with regard to the transportation.”

  “I know.” Siso Pernas poured himself some coffee from the carafe in front of him, after offering a cup to Teo, who shook his head; the Gallego’s offer didn’t include Teresa. “But our people are afraid that you might be tempted to expand your business. Certain things are not clear. Ships coming and going . . . We can’t control that—and besides, we expose ourselves to getting other people’s operations blamed on us.” He looked at his two colleagues, as though they knew exactly what he was talking about. “To having the Customs people and the Guardia Civil on us like mosquitoes all the time.”

  “The sea is free territory,” said Teresa.

  It was the first she’d spoken, after the initial greetings. Siso Pernas looked at Teo, as though the words had come from him. Friendly as a razor blade, this guy. His colleagues did look at Teresa, out of the corners of their eyes. Curious, and apparently amused by the situation.

  “Not for this,” said the Galician. “We’ve been in the white-powder business for a long time. We’ve got experience. We’ve made large investments.” He was still addressing Teo. “And you people are beginning to upset us. We might have to pay for your mistakes.”

  Teo glanced briefly at Teresa. The lawyer’s dark, thin hands twirled his pen. She sat impassively. Do your work, her silence said. All things in due time.

  “And what do the Colombians think?” asked Teo.

  “They don’t want to get involved,” Siso Pernas sneered. Those cabrón Judases, his smile implied. “They think it’s our problem, and that we ought to solve it here.”

  “What’s the alternative?”

  The Galician sipped at his coffee calmly and leaned back a bit in his chair, giving all the appearances of a very self-satisfied man. He was dirty blond, with a trimmed moustache. Good-looking, late twenties, early thirties. Blue blazer over a white shirt. No tie. A second- or third-generation junior narco, probably MBA, or maybe just B.A., in economics and finance. In more of a rush than his elders, who kept their money in a sock and always wore the same cheap suit. Less thoughtful. Fewer rules and more push to make money, so he could buy high living and expensive women. More arrogant, too. Now we’re getting down to the nitty-gritty, his attitude seemed to say. He looked at the colleague to his left, a blocky type with pale eyes. Job done. He turned the details over to his assistant.

  “From the Strait inside,” the chunky man said, putting his elbows on the table, “you people have absolute leave. We could load the merchandise in Morocco, if you want it there, but we alone bring it in from the Latin American ports. . . . We’re willing to offer certain special conditions, percentages, and guarantees. Including that we work together as partners, but with us controlling the operations.”

  “How much simpler it can all be,” Siso Pernas interjected, almost from behind, “fewer risks.”

  Teo exchanged a look with Teresa. And if we don’t go along? she said with her eyes.

  “And if we don’t go along with that?” the lawyer repeated aloud. “What happens if we don’t accept those conditions?”

  The heavyset man didn’t reply, and Siso Pernas entertained himself by examining his coffee cup thoughtfully, as though that eventuality had never crossed his mind.

  “Well, I don’t know,” he said at last. “We might have problems.”

  “Who?” Teo wanted to know. He leaned forward, calm, serious, the pen between his fingers as though he were about to take notes. Secure in his role, although Teresa knew that he desperately wanted to get up and get out of that room. The problems the Gallego was hinting at were not Teo’s specialty. From time to time he turned toward her, though without looking at her directly. I can only go so far, he implied. What I can offer are peaceful negotiations, financial advice, and financial engineering, not hints and double meanings and threats floating in the air. If this goes beyond a certain point, there’s not much more I can do.

  “You . . . us . . .” Siso Pernas directed pleading looks at Teo’s pen. “Nobody wants a disagreement.”

  His last words sounded like a splinter of glass. Ding. So this is that certain point, Teresa told herself, the place where push has come to shove. And I intend to shove. This is where the Sinaloa girl that knows what’s at stake steps in. And she’d better be there, waiting for me to put her in the game. Because I need her now.

  “Híjole. You planning to break our legs with baseball bats? . . . Like that French guy that was in the newspapers the other day?”

  She was looking at Siso Pernas with a surprise that appeared authentic, although it didn’t fool anyone—nor did it try to. The Galician turned toward her as though she had just materialized out of thin air, while his heavyset companion with the pale eyes looked at his fingernails, and the third man, a skinny guy with the hands of a farmworker, or a fisherman, picked his nose. Teresa waited for Siso Pernas to say something, but he remained silent, facing her with a mixture of irritation and confusion.

  As for Teo, his worry had turned to manifest uneasiness. Careful, he mutely warned. Be very careful.

  “Maybe,” Teresa went on slowly, “it’s that I’m not from here and I don’t know the customs. . . . Señor Aljarafe is my attorney, and he has my entire trust, but when I do business I like people to address me. I’m the one who makes the decisions about my affairs. . . . Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Siso Pernas was still looking at her in silence, one hand on each side of his coffee cup. The air was thick enough to cut with a knife. You guys wanted to play, Teresa said. So you sing the song, and I’ll supply the lyrics. And I do know something about pinche Gallegos.

  “So now,” she continued, “I’m going to tell you how I see this thing.”

  I hope I don’t fuck this up, she thought. And she told him how she saw this thing. She did so very clearly, delivering each phrase separately and slowly, with pauses to let everyone catch the full meaning of what she had to say.

  “I have the greatest respect for what you do in Galicia,” she began. “You’re tough, but I respect that. But that doesn’t keep me from knowing that the police have you people under a microscope—most of you are under surveillance around the clock, and some of you are up for trial. There are rats everywhere, cops have infiltrated your whole operation, and once in a while one of you gets caught skimming. Just the way things ought to be, eh? But if there’s one thing I base my business on, it’s security, with a way of working that keeps leaks, as far as reasonably possible, from happening. Few workers, and most of them don’t know each other. That prevents rats.

  “It’s tak
en me a long time to create that infrastructure, and I don’t intend, one, to let it get rusty, and two, to endanger it with operations I have no control over. You want me to turn it over to you in exchange for a percentage, or something else, who knows what. That is, I sit back and give you the monopoly. I don’t see what I get out of that, or why it makes good business sense for me. Except for the threats. But I don’t think—you know?—that you’re threatening me.”

  “What could we threaten you with?” asked Siso Pernas.

  That accent. Teresa pushed away the ghost hovering nearby. She needed to stay calm, and to hit the right tone. The León Rock was a long way away, and she didn’t want to crash into another one.

  “Well, I’ll tell you, two ways occur to me,” she replied. “Either by leaking information that hurts me, or trying something directly. In both cases, you need to know that I’m just as bad-ass as anybody else. With one difference: I don’t have a family that would make me vulnerable. I’m just one person, and I’m just passing through, and I could die tomorrow or disappear, or take off without packing my bags. I haven’t even ordered a big fancy marble headstone for myself, despite the fact that I’m Mexican. You people, on the other hand, have possessions. Pazos, I think they call those big pretty houses in Galicia. Nice cars, friends . . . Families. You can send for Colombian hit men to come do your dirty work for you. But I can, too. You can even start a war, if it goes that far. All modesty aside, I can, too, because I’ve got so fucking much money you wouldn’t believe it, and money buys a lot of army. But a war would attract the attention of the authorities. . . . I’ve noticed that the Ministry of the Interior doesn’t like it when narcos start settling scores, especially if there are names attached, and property to confiscate, people to send to jail, trials under way. . . . You guys’ll be in the newspaper every day.”

  “You will, too,” Siso Pernas said with an irritated smile.

  Teresa stared at him coldly for three seconds, very calm.

  “Not every day, and not in the same pages. Nobody’s ever proved anything against me.”