Queen of the South

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  Teresa went below to wash the salt off her face, lit a cigarette, and poured herself an inch of tequila. She drank it in one gulp, before the mirror in the bathroom. The violence of the drink brought tears to her eyes, and she stood there, cigarette in one hand and empty glass in the other, looking at the teardrops run slowly down her face. She didn’t like her expression, or that of the woman who gazed out of the mirror back at her: dark circles under her eyes, her hair a mess, rigid with salt. And those tears. They met again, and she found her tireder, older. Teresa turned away abruptly and went into her cabin, opened the closet where she’d left her purse, pulled out the wallet with her initials, and sat for a long time, studying the wrinkled half-photograph.

  The scrambled telephone in the pocket of her jeans rang. Rizocarpaso’s voice reported briefly, without unnecessary words or explanations: “The kids’ godfather has paid for the christening.” Teresa asked for confirmation, and the voice on the other end replied that there was no doubt: “The whole family went to the party. They just reported in from Cádiz.”

  Teresa hung up and stuck the phone back in her pocket. She felt the nausea returning. The liquor she’d drunk didn’t go well with the humming of the engines and the swaying of the boat. With what she’d just heard and what was about to happen. She carefully returned the photo to her wallet, put her cigarette out in the ashtray, calculated the three steps that it would take her to reach the head, and after calmly covering that distance she knelt before the toilet and vomited up the tequila and the rest of her tears.

  When she came out on deck, her face washed again, she was still wearing the slicker over the wool turtleneck. Pote Gálvez was waiting for her, motionless, a black shape on the gunwale.

  “Where is he?” Teresa asked.

  The bodyguard didn’t answer right away. Perhaps thinking about it. Or giving her the chance to think.

  “Below,” he said at last. “In cabin four.”

  Teresa went down, holding on to the teak handrail. Pote Gálvez murmured, “Con permiso, patrona,” and stepped ahead of her to open the locked door. He gave a professional look inside and then stood aside to let her pass. Teresa entered, followed by the bodyguard, who locked the door again behind him.

  “Customs,” Teresa said, “boarded the Luz Angelita tonight.”

  Teo Aljarafe looked at her expressionlessly, as though he were far away and none of that had anything to do with him. His day’s growth of beard gave his chin a bluish cast. He was lying on the bunk, dressed in wrinkled chinos and a black sweater, socks. His shoes were on the floor.

  “They intercepted the boat three hundred miles west of Gibraltar,” Teresa continued. “A couple of hours ago. They’re towing it to Cádiz now. . . . They’d been following it since it set sail from Cartagena. . . . Do you know which boat I’m talking about, Teo?”

  “Of course I do.”

  He’s had time, she told herself. Here inside. Time to think. But he doesn’t know where this is going.

  “There’s something you don’t know,” she said. “The Luz Angelita is clean. The most illegal thing they’re going to find on her, when they empty her, will be a couple of bottles of whisky that the crew didn’t pay tax on. . . . Do you know what that means?”

  Teo, processing that, his mouth half open, didn’t move.

  “A decoy,” he said at last.

  “A decoy. And you know why I didn’t tell you before that that boat was going to be used as a decoy? . . . Because when you passed the information on to the people you’ve been talking to, I needed everybody to believe it was a real run as much as you did.”

  “You ran another operation tonight.”

  You’re still one smart hijo de puta, she thought, and I’m glad. I want you to understand why. All my men have died knowing why.

  “Yes. Another operation that you didn’t know anything about. While those bastards from Customs were rubbing their hands together and boarding the Luz Angelita, looking for a ton of coke that never got loaded on, our people were doing business someplace else.”

  “Very well planned . . . How long have you known?”

  He could deny it, she suddenly thought. He could deny everything, protest, get all indignant, tell me I’ve gone crazy. But he’s thought about it enough since Pote locked him in here. He knows me. Why waste time, he’s probably thinking. What’s the point?

  “For a long time. That judge in Madrid . . . I hope you’ve made a lot of money on this. Although I’d like to think you didn’t do it for money.”

  Teo grimaced, and she liked that. The hijo de puta almost managed to smile. In spite of everything. He was just blinking too much. She’d never seen him blink that much.

  “I didn’t do it for money.”

  “They squeezed you?”

  Again, almost a smile. But it was only a sarcastic smirk. With little hope.

  “Imagine.”

  “I understand,” Teresa said.

  “Do you really?” Teo was analyzing that word, his brow furrowed, in search of some sign of his future. “Yes, maybe . . . It was you or me.”

  You or me, Teresa repeated inwardly. But forget the others: Dr. Ramos, Farid Lataquia, Rizocarpaso, all the people that trusted in him and in me. People we’re responsible for. Dozens of loyal people. And one Judas.

  “You or me,” she said aloud.

  “Exactly.”

  Pote Gálvez had melted into the shadows of the bulkhead, and Teo and Teresa looked into each other’s eyes calmly. A conversation like so many before. At night. All that they needed was music, a drink. A night like so many others.

  “Why didn’t you come and tell me? . . . We could have done something. We could have come up with a solution.”

  Teo shook his head. He’d sat up on the edge of the bunk, his feet on the floor.

  “Sometimes everything gets so complicated,” he said simply. “You get all tangled up, you surround yourself with things that become necessary. They gave me the chance to get out, and still keep what I have . . . start over from scratch.”

  “Yes. I think I can understand that, too.”

  That word again, “understand,” and it seemed to illuminate Teo’s head like a hope. He looked at her very attentively.

  “I can tell you what you want to know,” he said. “There won’t be any need to . . .”

  “Interrogate you.”

  “Right.”

  “Nobody’s going to interrogate you, Teo.”

  He was still watching her expectantly, weighing her every word. More blinking. A quick glance at Pote Gálvez, then back to her.

  “Very clever, the operation tonight,” he said at last, tentatively. “Using me to put out the decoy . . . It never occurred to me. . . . Was it coke?”

  He’s probing, she told herself. He still hasn’t given up on living.

  “Hashish,” she replied. “Twenty tons.”

  Teo thought about that. Again the attempt at a smile that never quite jelled.

  “I guess it’s not a good sign that you’re telling me,” he concluded.

  “No. It’s really not.”

  Teo wasn’t blinking anymore. He was alert, searching for signs, but he alone knew what they were. Somber. And if you can’t read it in my face, she told herself, or in the way I’m measuring my words with you, or the way I’m listening to what you still have to say, then all this time with me was wasted on you. The nights and the days and the conversation and the silences. Tell me, then, where you were looking when you embraced me, pinche pendejo. Although you may have more class than I thought. If you do, I swear, that reassures me. And makes me happy. The bigger a man you are, and all of them, the more it reassures me and makes me happy.

  “My daughters,” Teo whispered suddenly.

  He seemed to finally understand, as though until now he’d been considering other possibilities.

  “I have two daughters,” he murmured, lost in his own thoughts, looking at Teresa without seeing her. The low light of the cabin made his cheeks look su
nken, two dark hollows down to his jaw. He no longer looked like an arrogant Spanish eagle. Teresa observed Pote Gálvez’ impassive face. Some time before, she had read a story of samurai: When they performed hara-kiri, another warrior would cut off their head so that they could die without losing their composure. The trigger man’s narrowed eyes, alert to his employer’s sign, reinforced the association. And it’s a pity, Teresa told herself. The composure. Teo was holding up well, and I’d have liked to see him hold up until the end. Remember him that way when I don’t have anything else to remember—if I manage to stay alive.

  “My daughters,” she heard him repeat.

  It sounded muffled, with a slight tremor. All at once his voice had felt the cold. His eyes were vacant, staring into space, the eyes of a man who was already far away, dead. Dead meat. She’d known that meat when it was tense, hard. She’d taken pleasure from it. And now it was just dead meat.

  “Come on, Teo, get real.”

  “My daughters.”

  It was all so very strange, reflected Teresa. Your daughters are my child’s sisters, or they will be, maybe, if seven months from now I’m still breathing. And what the fuck does mine mean to me. What do I care about that thing that’s yours, too, and that you’re leaving without even knowing about, and what do you care whether you know or not. She experienced no pity or sadness or fear. Just the same indifference she felt toward what she was carrying in her belly, the desire to be done with this scene the way a person would want to get through any hassle.

  Casting off, Oleg Yasikov had said. And not looking back.

  Then she nodded slowly, almost imperceptibly. Pote Gálvez took his revolver out of his waistband and reached down for the pillow on the bed. Teo said something about his daughters again, but whatever it was became a long moan, or wail, or reproach, or sob. All four at once, maybe. And as Teresa turned toward the door, she saw that his eyes were still vacant, looking at the same spot, seeing nothing but the well of shadows toward which he was being dragged. Teresa went out into the corridor.

  I wish he had put on his shoes, she thought. That was no way for a man to die—in his socks. She heard the muffled shot just as she put her hand on the rail to go up on deck.

  She heard the pistolero’s footsteps behind her. She did not turn around, but waited for him to catch up to her, on the wet gunwale. There was a line of pale light in the east, and the lights of the coast glittered closer and closer, with the flashes of the Estepona lighthouse directly north. Teresa lifted the hood of her slicker. It was cold.

  “I’m going back, Pinto.”

  She didn’t say where; there was no need to. Pote Gálvez’ heavy humanity leaned farther out over the gunwale. Thoughtful and quiet. Teresa could hear his breathing.

  “It’s time to settle some old debts.”

  Another silence. Above them, against the light of the bridge, she saw the silhouettes of the captain and the crew member on watch. Deaf, blind, and mute. Hearing and seeing nothing but their instruments. They earned enough so that nothing that happened back on the stern had anything to do with them. Pote Gálvez was still leaning out, looking down at the black water murmuring past below.

  “You, patrona, always know what you’re doing. . . . But I’ve got a feeling this could be cabrón.”

  “I’ll be sure you’re okay, Pinto. You’ll be taken care of.”

  He ran a hand through his hair. Perplexed.

  “Quihubo, mi doña. . . . You think you’re going to do this alone? . . . Don’t insult me. . . .” He seemed truly hurt. Stubborn.

  They stood watching the flashes from the lighthouse in the distance.

  “They can take us both out,” Teresa said softly. “Nasty.”

  Pote Gálvez said nothing for a while. One of those silences, she sensed, with life in the balance. She turned to look at him, and she saw him run his hand through his hair again and then drop his head between his shoulders. A big, loyal bear, she thought. Straight as an arrow. With that resigned air, determined to pay whatever it cost without another word. Like the rules said.

  “Well, it’s a pretty clear decision, patrona. . . . You might as well die in one place as another.”

  The bodyguard looked back, toward the wake of the Sinaloa, where the body of Teo Aljarafe, wired to a hundred pounds of lead, had sunk into the sea.

  “And sometimes,” he added, “it’s better to choose how you die, if you can.”

  17. Half my drink, I left on the table

  It was raining in Culiacán, Sinaloa, and the house in Colonia Chapultepec was enclosed in a bubble of gray gloom. There was a definite line between the colors in the garden and the leaden tones outside it. On the window, the largest drops of rain melted into long streams that made the landscape look wavy, watery, and mixed the green of the grass and the leaves of the Indian laurel with the orange of the poinciana flowers, the white of the gardenias, the lilac and red of the bougainvillea and hibiscus. But the colors died away at the high walls that surrounded the garden. Beyond them, there was only a blurry, formless gray, in which one could barely distinguish, behind the unseen riverbed of the Tamazula, the two spires and white cupola of the cathedral and, farther on, to the right, the yellow-tiled bell towers of the Iglesia del Santuario.

  Teresa was standing next to the window of a den on the second floor, gazing at the landscape, although Colonel Edgar Ledesma, assistant commander of the Ninth Military District, had advised her not to. “Every window,” he had said, looking at her with the eyes of a cold, efficient warrior, “is an opportunity for a sniper. And you, señora, aren’t here to give them opportunities.”

  Colonel Ledesma was a pleasant sort of man, very correct in his bearing, who wore his fifty years as lightly as he did his uniform and his close-cropped hair. But she was sick and tired of the limited view from the downstairs windows, sick of the large living room with fake French provincial sofas mixed with acrylic tables, horrendous pictures on the walls—the house had been seized by the government from a narco now in prison in Puente Grande. From the windows and the porch you could see only a slice of the lawn and the empty swimming pool. From upstairs you could see in the distance, at least if you were aided by memory, the city of Culiacán. You could also see one of the Federales who were assigned as her escort inside the walls: a man in a plastic poncho whose girth was expanded by a bulletproof vest. He was wearing a beret and carrying an AR-15, and he stood smoking under a mango tree that sheltered him from the drizzle.

  Quite a bit farther away, behind a wrought-iron gate that opened onto Calle General Anaya, Teresa could see a military pickup and the green forms of two soldiers—guachos, everyone in Sinaloa called them—standing guard in combat attire. That was the agreement, she’d been informed by Colonel Ledesma four days earlier, when the chartered Learjet that was bringing her down from Miami—the only stop from Madrid, since the DEA discouraged the idea of any intermediate stop on Mexican soil—landed at the Culiacán airport. The Ninth District was in charge of general security, and the Federales took over on the inside. Transit police and the Judiciales, the special investigative police attached to the courts, had been excluded from the operation because they were considered easier to infiltrate, and because it was common knowledge that some of them moonlighted as hit men for narcotics gangs and cartels. The Federales might also be persuaded by green-backs, but the elite group assigned to this mission, brought in from the Distrito Federal—no agent with any Sinaloan connections allowed—was supposedly unbuyable. As for the military, they weren’t incorruptible but their discipline and organization made buying them very expensive. Harder to buy, then, and also more respected. Even when they were detailed up into the sierra, the campesinos always said they did their job without looking for angles or “considerations.” And Colonel Ledesma had a reputation for being a tough, straight-shooting man, of absolute integrity. The narcos had murdered a nephew of his, a lieutenant. That helped.

  “You should move away from that window, patrona. The wind . . .”

/>   “Chale, Pinto”—she smiled at the bodyguard—“give me a break.”

  It had been like a weird dream, like witnessing a chain of events that weren’t happening to her. The last two weeks lined up in her memory, a succession of intense and perfectly defined chapters. The night of the last operation. Teo Aljarafe reading his absence of future in the shadows of the cabin. Héctor Tapia and Willy Rangel looking at her in amazement in a suite of the Hotel Puente Romano when she presented her decision and her demands: Culiacán rather than the Distrito Federal—We do things right, she said, or not at all. The signing of confidential documents with guarantees for both parties, in the presence of the U.S. ambassador in Madrid, a high official of the Spanish Ministry of Justice, and an officer from Foreign Affairs. And then, once her bridges had been burned, the long trip across the Atlantic, the technical stopover on the Miami runway with the Learjet surrounded by police, the face of Pote Gálvez inscrutable each time they exchanged glances.

  “They’re going to want to kill you every minute,” Willy Rangel had warned her. “You, your bodyguards, and anybody breathing anywhere near you. So you need to be very, very careful.”

  Rangel had accompanied her to Miami, briefing her on everything she needed to know and do. Instructing her in what was expected of her and what she, in turn, could expect. Afterward, if there was an afterward, there would be help for the next five years in setting her up wherever she wanted—the United States, Latin America, Europe—a new identity including American passport, official protection. Or nothing, if that’s what she wanted. And when she replied that what came afterward was her business, and hers alone, thank you, Rangel rubbed his nose and nodded, as though he’d seen that coming. After all, the DEA figured that Teresa Mendoza had stashed away, in Swiss and Caribbean banks, between fifty and a hundred million dollars.