Queen of the South

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  She continued to watch the rain fall outside. Culiacán. The night of her arrival, when at the foot of the Learjet’s steps she boarded the convoy of military and Federales vehicles waiting on the runway, Teresa had seen off to the right the airport’s old yellow control tower, with dozens of Cessnas and Pipers parked around it, and to the left the new facilities under construction. The Suburban she got into with Pote Gálvez was armored, with dark tinted glass. Just she, Pote, and the driver rode in it, and the driver had a police-frequency radio turned on. There were blue and red lights, guachos in combat helmets, Federales in street clothes or dark gray uniforms, armed to the teeth, sitting in the rear of the trucks or the open doors of Suburbans, their baseball caps and ponchos glistening with raindrops. Machine guns mounted on jeeps and pickups were aimed in every direction, and radio antennas whipped in the air as the vehicles took curves at top speed and the convoy moved through the city, to the deafening ululation of sirens. Chale. Who’d have thought, said Pote Gálvez’ face, that we’d be coming back this way.

  They drove at high speed down Zapata, turning at the A-l Valle gas station onto the north beltway. Then came the shore drive with the poplars and the big weeping willows whose graceful branches drooped to the ground, the lights of the city, the familiar places, the bridge, the dark waters of the Tamazula, Colonia Chapultepec. Teresa had thought she would feel something special in her heart when she was back here, but the truth was, she discovered, one place was not very different from another. She felt neither elation nor fear.

  During the drive, she and Pote Gálvez had looked at each other many times. Finally Teresa asked him, “What’s in your head, Pinto?” He took a moment to answer, staring out the window, his moustache a dark brush-stroke, the spatters of water on the window speckling his face when they passed streetlights.

  “Well, you know, nothing special, patrona,” he replied at last. “Just that it’s strange.” He said this without emotion, his norteño, Mayan face inexpressive. Sitting very straight and formal beside her on the leather seat, his hands crossed over his belly. And for the first time since that night in the basement in far-off Nueva Andalucía, he looked defenseless to Teresa. They hadn’t let him carry a gun, although they told him there would be guns in the house, for personal protection, even with the Federales in the garden and the guachos on the perimeter, in the street.

  From time to time the bodyguard turned to look out the window, recognizing this or that spot as they flew past. Not opening his mouth. As silent as when, before they left Marbella, she made him sit down with her and explained to him what was coming. For both of them. She was not fingering anybody, just collecting a big debt from un hijo de su pinche madre. Him and nobody else. Pote sat awhile thinking that over. “Talk to me,” she’d finally said. “I need to know how you’re looking at this before I let you go back over there with me.”

  “Well, I don’t know how I’m looking at this,” was his response. “And I tell you that—or rather don’t tell you anything—with all respect. Maybe I even do have my opinion, patrona. Why say no if the answer’s yes? But the opinion I have or don’t have is my business. You think it’s right to do something, you do it, and that’s that. You decide to go, and I, well, I go with you.”

  She stepped away from the window and went to the table for a cigarette. The pack of Faros was beside the SIG-Sauer and the three full clips. At first Teresa wasn’t familiar with that pistol, and Pote Gálvez spent one morning teaching her to take it apart and put it back together again, over and over until she could do it with her eyes closed. “If they come at night and it jams, you’d better know how to fix it without turning on the light.” Now Pote Gálvez stepped over with a lit match, bowed his head briefly when she thanked him, and replaced Teresa at the window, to give a look outside.

  “Everything’s in order,” she exhaled. It was a pleasure to smoke Faros after so many years.

  The bodyguard shrugged, the gesture implying that in Culiacán, “order” was a relative term. Then he went out into the hall and Teresa heard him talking to one of the Federales stationed in the house. Three inside, six in the garden, twenty guachos on the outer perimeter—reliefs every twelve hours—keeping back the curious. The journalists, and the hired squad of executioners who by now were on the prowl, were waiting for their chance. I wonder, Teresa said to herself, how big a price the representative to the House of Deputies and future senator from Sinaloa, don Epifanio Vargas, has put on my head.

  “What do you think we’re worth, Pinto?”

  He had come to the door again, with that look of a big clumsy bear he had when he wanted to be inconspicuous. Apparently quiet and slow-moving, as always. But she could see that behind the narrowed lids, his dark, suspicious eyes never lowered their guard, never stopped seeing everything around them.

  “They’ll take me out for free, patrona. . . . But you’re a big fish to catch, now. Nobody would take it on for less than full retirement pay for life.”

  “You think it’ll be the escorts, or that they’ll come from outside?”

  The bodyguard pursed his lips, thinking.

  “I think from outside. The narcos and the police are the same thing, but not always. . . . Understand?”

  “More or less.”

  “That’s the truth. And the guachos—the colonel looks to me like the real thing, stand-up, you know? . . . He’ll keep his men in line.”

  “That, we’ll see about, no?”

  “It’ll be something to see, all right, patrona—see it once and for all, and get our asses out of here.”

  Teresa smiled when she heard that. She understood what he was saying. The waiting was always worse than the fight, no matter how bad the fight was. Anyway, she’d taken additional measures. Preventive measures. She wasn’t born yesterday—she had money and she’d read her classics. The trip to Culiacán had been preceded by a campaign of information in the right places, including the local press. Just Vargas, was the motto. No squealing, no squawking, no ratting, no fingerpointing, no blowing the whistle on anybody but Epifanio Vargas: a personal matter, a mano a mano, a duel in the dust. Admission free, and everybody welcome to watch the show. But not another name or date. Nothing. Just don Epifanio, Teresa, and the ghost of Güero Dávila, burned to death on the Espinazo del Diablo twelve years ago. This was not a betrayal, this was a limited, personal payback, the kind of thing that could be understood very well in Sinaloa, where double-crossing was frowned on—you die, cabrón—but revenge was what filled the cemeteries. That had been the deal struck in the Hotel Puente Romano, and the Mexican government had signed on the dotted line.

  Even the gringos had signed, although grudgingly. Concrete testimony, a concrete name.

  The other drug bosses who used to be close to Epifanio Vargas, even Batman Güemes, had no reason to feel threatened. That, as one could well imagine, had reassured Batman and the others considerably. It also increased Teresa’s chances of survival and reduced the fronts that had to be covered. After all, in the shark-feeding ground of Sinaloan drug money and narcopolitics, don Epifanio had been or was an ally, a pillar of the community, but also a competitor and, sooner or later, an enemy. A lot of people would be very happy if he could be taken out of action for such a low price.

  The telephone rang. It was Pote Gálvez who answered it, and he looked at Teresa as though the voice on the other end had just spoken the name of a ghost. But she wasn’t the least bit surprised. She’d been expecting this call for four days. And the time was getting short.

  This is very irregular, señora. I can’t authorize this.” Colonel Ledesma was standing on the living room rug, his hands behind his back, his uniform perfectly ironed, his boots, spotted with raindrops, gleaming. That short hair looks good on him, Teresa thought, even with all the gray. So polite and so clean. He reminded her of that captain in the Guardia Civil in Marbella, a long time ago, whose name she’d forgotten.

  “It’s less than twenty-four hours before your testimony.”

 
; Teresa remained seated, smoking, her legs in black silk pants crossed. Looking up at him. Comfortable. Very careful to make things very clear.

  “Let me tell you again, Colonel. I am not here as a prisoner.”

  “No, of course not.”

  “If I accept your protection it’s because I want to accept it. But no one can keep me from going wherever I want to go. . . . That was the agreement.”

  Ledesma shifted his weight from one leg to the other. Now he was looking at Gaviria, the lawyer from the Mexican national prosecutor’s office, his liaison with the civil authorities handling the case. Gaviria was also standing, although farther back, with Pote Gálvez behind him, leaning on the door frame, and the colonel’s aide, a young lieutenant, looking over Pote’s shoulder from the hall.

  “Tell Señora Mendoza,” the colonel pleaded with the lawyer, “that what she’s asking is impossible.”

  Ledesma was right, Gaviria said. He was a rail-thin, pleasant man, shaved and dressed very correctly. Teresa glanced at him for no more than a second, her eyes taking him in and spitting him out as though he didn’t exist.

  “I’m not asking, Colonel,” she said, “I’m telling. I intend to leave here this afternoon for an hour and a half. I have an appointment in the city. . . . You can take security measures, or not.”

  Ledesma, powerless, shook his head.

  “Federal law forbids me from moving troops through the city. I’m already stretching it with those men I’ve got posted outside there.”

  “And the civil authorities . . .” Gaviria began.

  Teresa stubbed out her cigarette with such force that the fire burned her fingertips.

  “You and the civil authorities, let me tell you—don’t worry your little head about me. Not a bit. I’ll be there tomorrow, on the dot, to do what I said I’d do for the civil authorities.”

  “You have to consider that in legal terms. . . .”

  “Listen. I’ve got the Hotel San Marcos full of very expensive lawyers.” She motioned toward the telephone. “How many do you want me to call?”

  “It could be a trap,” the colonel argued.

  “Híjole, no kidding!”

  Ledesma ran a hand across the top of his head. He took a few steps around the room, Gaviria watching him anxiously.

  “I’ll have to consult with my superiors,” the colonel said.

  “Consult with whoever you want to,” Teresa told him. “But get one thing straight: If I’m not allowed to keep that appointment, I’ll interpret it as being held here against my will, in spite of the government’s commitment. And that violates the agreement. . . . Plus, I remind you, in Mexico there are no charges against me.”

  The colonel looked at her fixedly. He bit at his lower lip as though a piece of loose skin were bothering him. He turned and started toward the door, but then stopped halfway.

  “What do you gain by putting yourself at risk this way?”

  It was clear that he really wanted to understand this. Teresa uncrossed her legs, brushing out the wrinkles in the silk.

  “What I gain or lose,” she replied, “is my business, and no fucking concern of yours.”

  She said it and then fell silent, and in a few moments she heard the colonel’s deep, resigned sigh.

  “I’ll ask for instructions.”

  “So will I,” the lawyer from the prosecutor’s office added.

  “Órale. Ask for all the instructions you want. Meanwhile, I want a car at the door at seven o’clock sharp. With him”—she pointed at Pote Gálvez—“inside and armed to the teeth. What you’ve got around us or on top of us, Colonel, is up to you.”

  She said this looking the whole time at Ledesma. And this time, she calculated, I can allow myself a smile. It makes quite an impression on them when a woman smiles as she twists their balls. What, Colonel? You thought you were the Marlboro man?

  Whhhp-whhhp. Whhhp-whhhp. The monotonous sound of the windshield wipers, big drops of rain drumming like hail on the roof of the Suburban. The Federale who was driving turned the wheel to the left and started down Avenida Insurgentes, and Pote Gálvez, beside him in the passenger seat, looked to one side and the other and put both hands on the AK-47 in his lap. In his jacket pocket he was carrying a walkie-talkie tuned to the same frequency as the radio in the Suburban, and from the back seat Teresa could hear the voices of agents and soldiers taking part in the operation. Objective One and Objective Two, they were saying. Objective One was her. And they were going to meet Objective Two in just seconds.

  Whhhp-whhhp. Whhhp-whhhp. It was still daylight, but the gray sky made the streets dark, and some businesses had turned their outside lights on. The rain multiplied the lights of the small convoy. The Suburban and its escort—two Rams belonging to the Federales and three Lobo pickups with soldiers manning machine guns in the back—raised fans of water from the brown torrent that overran gutters and drains and filled the streets on its way toward the Tamazula. A band of black crossed the sky, silhouetting the tallest buildings along the avenue, and a reddish band below it seemed beaten down by the weight of the black.

  “A checkpoint, patrona,” said Pote Gálvez.

  There was the noise of a round being chambered in Pote’s AK-47, and that earned the bodyguard a look out of the corner of the driver’s eye. When they passed the checkpoint without slowing, Teresa saw that it was a military patrol and that the soldiers, in combat helmets, had pulled over two police cars and were holding the Judiciales at gunpoint with their AR-15s and M16s.

  Clearly, Colonel Ledesma trusted the police just so far. Clearly, also, after searching for a loophole in the law that kept him from moving troops through the city, the assistant commander of the Ninth District had found one in the small print—after all, the natural state of a soldier was always very close to a state of siege. Teresa saw more Federales and guachos posted under the trees along the median, with transit police blocking the intersections and detouring traffic down other routes. And right there, between the railroad tracks and the large concrete block of the administration building, the Malverde Chapel seemed much smaller than she remembered it, twelve years before.

  Memories. She realized that for that entire long round-trip journey, she had acquired only three certainties about human beings: that they kill, that they remember, and that they die. Because there comes a moment, she told herself, when you look ahead and see only what you’ve left behind—dead bodies all along the road you’re walking down. Among them, your own, although you don’t know it. Until you come upon it, and then you know.

  She looked for herself in the chapel’s shadows, in the peace of the pew set to the right of the saint’s image, in the reddish half-light of the candles that sputtered among the flowers and offerings hung on the wall. The light outside was fading quickly, and as the dirty gray of the evening deepened, the flashing lights of one of the Federales’ cars illuminated the entrance with intermittent red and blue. As she stood before St. Malverde, his hair as black as beauty-parlor dye, his white jacket and the kerchief at his neck, his Mayan-Aztec eyes, and his charro moustache, Teresa moved her lips to pray, as she’d done so many years before—God bless my journy and allow my return. But no prayer would come. Maybe it would be sacrilege, she thought. Maybe I shouldn’t have wanted to have the meeting here. Maybe with the years I’ve become stupid and arrogant, and now I pay.

  The last time she’d been here, there had been another woman gazing out at her from the shadows. Now Teresa looked for her, but didn’t find her. Unless, she decided, I’m the other woman, or have her inside me, and the narco’s morra with the scared eyes, the girl who ran away carrying a gym bag and a Double Eagle, has turned into one of those ghosts that float along behind me, looking at me with accusatory, or sad, or indifferent eyes. Maybe that’s what life’s like, and you breathe, walk, move so one day you can look back and see yourself back there. See yourself in the successive women—yours and others’—that every one of your steps condemns you to be.

  She stuck he
r hands into the pockets of her raincoat—underneath, a sweater, jeans, comfortable boots with rubber soles—and took out the pack of Faros. She was lighting one at the flame of an altar candle when she saw don Epifanio Vargas silhouetted against the red and blue flashes at the door.

  Teresita. It’s been a long time.” He looked almost the same, she saw. Tall, heavyset. He had hung his raincoat on the rack next to the door. Dark suit, shirt collar open, no tie, pointed-toe boots. With that face that reminded her of old Pedro Armendáriz movies. He had a lot of gray in his moustache and at his temples, quite a few more wrinkles, a few more inches at the waist, perhaps. But he was the same don Epifanio.

  “I hardly recognize you,” he said, taking a few steps into the chapel after glancing suspiciously to one side and then the other. He was looking at Teresa fixedly, trying to relate her to the other woman he had in his memory.

  “You haven’t changed much,” she said. “A little heavier, maybe. And the gray.”

  She was now sitting on the pew, next to the image of Malverde, and she didn’t move.

  “Are you carrying?” don Epifanio asked, ever cautious.

  “No.”

  “Good. Those hijos de puta out there patted me down. I wasn’t, either.”

  He sighed, looked up at Malverde in the trembling light of the candles, then back at her.

  “The gray . . . I just turned sixty-four. But I’m not complaining.”

  He came closer, until he stood very close, studying her from above. She remained as she was, holding his gaze.

  “I’d say things have gone well for you, Teresita.”