Crossers

by Philip Caputo

  After more pummeling, he was forced to lie tied up on the bare concrete floor, where he spent the night. The next day his tormentors, who may well have been trained by the same people who’d tutored Carlos Aguilar’s torturers, shoved his head into a tub of water until he was at the point of drowning. This was repeated three more times before the comandante reappeared to put the same questions to him. He gave the same answers. “How I wish I could believe you!” exclaimed Zaragoza, and once again left. More punches, more bobbing for apples in the tub, and then a new method—he was poked in the thighs with an electric cattle prod, with the promise that his testicles would be next. On his third visit, Zaragoza informed him that he had done some checking with certain friends in the United States. It seemed he was being truthful about his work with the DEA, but he wasn’t convinced that Señor Bonham, as he now called himself, was no longer in their employ. The Oakland Raider jerked him to his feet, pulled his pants down, and flung him onto the floor. His smaller teammate poked him between the legs with the cattle prod, but didn’t switch it on. “Listen, pendejo, I don’t enjoy this, I am not a sadist,” said Zaragoza. “If you don’t tell me the truth, those huevos of yours are going to get fried.” “Go ahead,” The Professor gasped. “I won’t tell you anything different.” At a gesture from Zaragoza, Oakland stood him on his feet and pulled his pants back up. “Muchacho, you’ve got cojones, I’ll say that for you,” declared the comandante. He gathered from that comment that he’d passed his employment test.

  The thugs returned him to his hotel and told him to stay there. He staggered to his room and collapsed onto the bed, aching all over. Sometime later in the afternoon a knock awakened him. He opened the door. His visitor was a short, heavyset man in the costume of the prosperous ranchero—a straw cowboy hat, a snug waist-length jacket, snakeskin boots. Four men were with him, dressed like vaqueros, though herding cattle was not what they did for a living. Joaquín Carrasco motioned to his bodyguards to wait in the corridor, entered the room, doffed his hat, and sat down in the only chair. “Do you know who I am?” he asked. Yes. And how did he know? “I recognize you from photographs in our files.” “The files of the DEA?” That was correct. “But you no longer are in their service?” That too was correct. Carrasco folded his knotty peasant’s hands over his mouth and flossed his front teeth with a thumbnail. “You know,” he said, “that thing those Juárez boys did to your friend was very bad for business. Bad for everyone, not just them. It was very stupid! It drew so much attention! I don’t wish to make the same mistake. If you were sent here to spy for the DEA, tell me. Nothing will happen to you. I will even pay for your transportation back to the United States, I swear it.” The Professor replied that he had no desire to go back to the United States. The government of the United States had allowed the death of his friend to go unavenged, it had betrayed him; now he would betray it in turn. His wish was to enlist his services with Don Joaquín. “So how shall I call you? By your real name or this Gregorio Bonham?” inquired Carrasco. He preferred El Profesor. When he was instructing for the American army, that was what his students called him, out of respect. “Then El Profesor it will be. Get yourself cleaned up, and pack your things. You will come with me to my ranch and we can discuss what you can do for me.”

  With Carrasco’s blessings, The Professor resumed his pursuit of the third and final torturer of Carlos Aguilar and nailed him a week later. In the meantime a new president representing a new political party, the first one to take power since the Revolution, had been elected. The former minister of defense, the brother-in-law of the general commanding the military forces in Chihuahua, had been replaced. Carrasco felt the time was right; he could eliminate the Juárez Cartel’s chief patron without fear of government retaliation. The Professor was given the mission, and nothing could have pleased him more. No micromanager, Don Joaquín had only one instruction: “This new government won’t shed any tears for our general, but we don’t want to alarm them.” The implication was clear—it should look like an accident. To assist him in his work, Carrasco, through Comandante Zaragoza, secured him a badge and a card identifying him as Capitán Gregorio Bonham. He was also issued a nine-millimeter pistol, a radio, handcuffs, and for appearances’ sake if for no other reason, a black field uniform and bulletproof vest. He was, however, to perform this task in plainclothes.

  Capitán Bonham established contact with the federales in Chihuahua City, with whom the general had unwisely not shared any but the crumbs of the mordida pie. He kept his quarry under surveillance for several weeks and developed snitches within the officer’s retinue, who likewise had not benefited to a degree they thought they deserved. One informed him about the general’s vacation plans—he would be flying in his private plane to Costa Rica on a certain date. The Professor, bringing all his skills and experience to bear, worked quickly to take advantage of this wonderful opportunity. The Cessna went down somewhere in the Sierra Madre Occidental. The collateral damage—the pilot and the general’s wife—was regrettable, but with its protector’s demise, the Juárez Cartel lost all its armor. Its warehouses and plantations were raided, the boss and his underlings were imprisoned.

  The succeeding months brought The Professor no cause for regrets. He formed a singular loyalty to Joaquín Carrasco, in whose empire he had found a refuge and a home. And in him Carrasco found an extraordinarily able lieutenant. When two snitches whose informing had led to the confiscation of fifty kilos of coke fled to Phoenix, Don Joaquín dispatched The Professor and Félix, newly on the payroll and eager to show what he could do, to find them. The search took more than a week. They located the chingados shooting pool in a central Phoenix garage. A stifling summer night. The garage door was open. Félix, backed up by his ex-teacher, walked through it and said, “Sabe por qué estoy aquí,” and capped them with fine precision. Four bullets, two bodies, no one else hurt.

  The success of that and subsequent missions persuaded Carrasco to expand The Professor’s duties beyond enforcement. He was summoned to another tête-à-tête at the Santa Clara ranch. “You have not had any big troubles being two people,” Don Joaquín began. “Do you think you could be three?” He supposed so. Why? “Because you would be perfect for this. You speak English like a gringo, you look like a gringo—shit, muchacho, you are a gringo! All that is needed is for you to establish a new American identity for yourself. You would be able to do that?” He would, though doing so might take more time in the United States than it had in Mexico. Joaquín shook his head. “I know people in Tucson and Phoenix who do that every day for fucking mojados. They can get you whatever you need. Social Security card. Driver’s license. Passport.” And what, exactly, was he going to do with this new identity? Carrasco gave him a sly look. “Escúchame, compa! You will be my ears, my eyes al otro lado, understand? You will find out what the gringo chotas are up to and let me know.” The Professor said, “You know what that means, I hope.” Joaquín knew—now and then, to keep La Migra and the chotas contented, a load and its mules would have to be sacrificed. No big deal. A cost of doing business. “My eyes, my ears on the other side, and on this side, too. I have confidence you can do both. Está bien?”

  The Professor prospered. He bought a ranchito for himself outside Magdalena, that lovely old mission town where the bones of Father Kino rested. He later purchased a seaside condo in San Carlos, where Don Joaquín, a passionate fisherman, maintained a villa. By the standards of the country, The Professor was fabulously rich; by the standards of the trade, of modest means. That didn’t bother him. Narco-trafficking, after all, was market capitalism with the muzzle off. Like the stock exchange, it ran on greed and fear, with revenge thrown into the mix. But of the three, greed was the most dangerous. It led to fatal mistakes in judgment. Keeping it in check had allowed him to survive and thrive in a world where average life expectancy was about where it had been in the eleventh century. As for fear, it had been his companion for so long, he thought he would miss it, the taste and smell of it, if ever he had
to live without it. As for revenge, he had satisfied it when he took out the general; and in the slaking of that thirst, he had acquired a clearer vision of himself and his place in the scheme of things.

  Now, waiting for Félix in the Church of the Immaculate Conception, he was inclined to view the circumstances leading to his switch in allegiance, to his crossings and recrossings of borders both geographical and figurative, as destined. It was as if history had guided him into becoming its agent.

  His fellow renegade appeared, right on time. Félix Cabrera glided down the aisle garbed in pressed slacks, a black leather sport jacket, and polished loafers. He knelt at the shrine to the Virgin without acknowledging The Professor’s presence, made the sign of the cross, and lit a vigil candle—probably for his father, dying of cancer in a Mexico City hospital. He crossed himself again, rose, and slid into the pew beside The Professor, who pulled an envelope out of his inside pocket and handed it to Félix. Inside were surveillance photographs taken in the last week

  Félix studied them, squinting in the dim light.

  “Ahora hablaremos inglés,” The Professor whispered. English as a precaution. Although there was no one who could possibly overhear, you couldn’t be too careful. “Vicente is hiding out on the other side. Almost every night he eats, drinks at a restaurant, Tehuantepec it’s called. Sits at the same table, in a back corner with friends. He has a pistolero with him. You will have to take him out, too.”

  Félix cocked his chin to say that this would be no difficulty and looked at him, a question in his yellowish green eyes.

  “Ten thousand. ¿Bien?”

  “Está bien.”

  “A bonus in addition,” The Professor said, passing Gloria’s card. “Bought and paid for. She wants to be taken to dinner first and told me to tell you she doesn’t take it up the ass.”

  Félix smiled. “A little extra cash would be better. The hospital bills for my father …”

  “She is muy mota. When you see her, you’ll forget cash, you may even forget your father.” He dipped into a side pocket and placed a set of car keys in Félix’s hand. “It’s in the parking lot behind the McDonald’s. A dark blue Chevrolet Blazer. California plates. The piece is inside the door panel. Passenger side. You have gloves?” he asked. Félix had been fingerprinted when he was at Fort Benning.

  “Of course,” Félix replied, a little insulted that The Professor would think he’d overlook that detail.

  A middle-aged woman dressed in mourning interrupted the conversation. She knelt, lit a candle, and prayed for a minute or two.

  “Follow me to the restaurant,” The Professor said when she left. “This Tehuantepec is in a shopping plaza. At one end there is a farmacia, a Walgreens. Park there and wait. I’ll go into the restaurant first to make sure he’s there and no problems. I’ll call you on your mobile. If I say listos, it’s on. If I say espera, that’s what you do. If I say muy malo, it means a big problem and you are to get out immediately. Questions?”

  Félix shook his head and left. Outside the lights were coming on, and cirrus clouds colored by the sunset striped the sky directly overhead. The Professor trailed Félix down López Mateo to Calle Juárez, past the border wall with its slogans and crosses and bill posters advertising festivals and concerts, Félix sliding through the crowds as if they weren’t there, light-footed and relaxed, like a jaguar with bigger game in mind moving through a clutch of rabbits. Inside the pedestrian port of entry, he calmly showed a forged border-crossing card to the U.S. Customs officer behind the counter, and was waved on. Following him, The Professor produced his U.S. passport, and when the customs agent asked if he had any fruits or vegetables in his possession, he quite honestly answered no.

  Maintaining their distance from each other, he and Félix climbed the stairs by the handsome old U.S. Customs House, cut through a gas station at the corner of Crawford and Terrace, climbed another set of stairs to the McDonald’s, and entered the twenty-four-hour lot where tourists visiting Nogales for the day usually left their cars.

  From his car The Professor watched Félix get into the Blazer, stolen in Arizona by a ring that supplied Carrasco with vehicles. The California plates had been stamped out in an auto-body shop that specialized in such arts. He waited for Félix to uncover the Colt concealed behind the door panel, then pulled out through the McDonald’s, the golden arches throwing off an odor resembling burnt toast. One of the interesting things about his condition: it was idiosyncratic. There was no correlation between the perception of one sense and the sense it called up. If there was, the arches’ bright yellow would have smelled like what it resembled, cheap, squeeze-bottle mustard, say. Instead, burnt toast.

  A cavernous and somewhat run-down fitness center took up one side of the Mariposa Plaza on Grand Avenue. Tehuantepec, its name painted across the front of the building over the words ¡MARISCOS FRESCOS! and renderings of a fish and a prawn, was at the end of a row of downscale shops, next to a Shakey’s Pizza with one letter of its neon sign burned out. SHAK-Y’S. The Professor had visited Tehuantepec three times in the past couple of weeks to observe Vicente Cruz. Its interior was as unpromising as the exterior, but the worn tile floor, the cheesy travel posters on the walls, the shabby tables, and the rickety chairs were deceptive: the cuisine was excellent, especially the shrimp in cream and brandy sauce that Nacho had recommended. The restaurant drew very few Anglos; virtually all the customers, like the staff, were Mexican, and he assumed not all were legal residents of los Estados Unidos. A plus. Illegals were less likely to come forth as cooperative witnesses, should something go wrong.

  He parked and strolled through the lot, looking for Cruz’s silver Lexus, doubtlessly purchased with the proceeds from the twelve kilos of coke he’d ripped off from Carrasco last summer. The shipment, packed into the frame of a pickup truck, had been destined for Phoenix, but somewhere between Phoenix and the border, the truck and the coke and Cruz vanished. Carrasco’s instructions to The Professor had been simple: “Twenty thousand to roast the pig.” The Professor had never met Cruz but knew him by reputation: a drunk and a loudmouth, with a taste for nightclubs, expensive cars, and ostentatious women. He should have been easy to track down, but he’d proved elusive. Informants reported him in various places, but the in formation was usually wrong or outdated. About two months ago a Border Patrol agent was gunned down when he came across some mules cutting through the border fence. Within a day The Professor learned from snitches that Cruz had killed the agent—reliable ears had heard the gritón bragging about it in a pueblo near Cananea, Imuris. The Professor got there that night and was astonished to find that Cruz had dissolved again.

  Even now, as he located the Lexus, it rankled El Profesor that he’d had to rely on Nacho’s tip to discover Cruz’s whereabouts. Cruz’s carelessness rankled further, even though it turned to his advantage. The babo had violated a fundamental rule—never establish a pattern—by eating at the same table in the same restaurant at the same time almost every night. How could he have failed to catch up with such an idiot for so long? He made it a point never to allow emotions to interfere with business, but he took Cruz’s slipshod ways personally, as if the man knew he was being pursued by one of the best and didn’t give a damn.

  He went inside. The Tehuantepec had a dining room and a barroom, connected by an archway. To escape, Félix would have to pass through the bar into the dining room, through the dining room to the front door. He trusted that his ex-pupil’s resourcefulness and the shock of the assault would create a clear avenue of retreat; but if some fool decided to play hero, there could be civilian casualties—that is, a mess—and he’d promised Nacho not to make one.

  He sat at the bar and ordered a Dos Equis. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Cruz, a chubby man with thick gray hair, presiding at his usual table alongside his pistolero, both with their backs to the wall. Cruz, The Professor had learned from sources on both sides of the line, was not lying quite as low as Nacho believed; he was now moving merca for Yvonne. (I
f he remained true to form, he was ripping her off whenever an opportunity presented itself.) Three more men sat with him and his bodyguard, talking loudly over a clutter of beer bottles. One was the nephew Nacho had mentioned, Billy Cruz, about whom The Professor had picked up a few scraps. Billy, it seemed, was a coyote and maintained his shuttle service as a legitimate front. He was believed to dabble in the drug trade, possibly in association with Tío Vicente, but it was mostly a small-scale sideline. The Professor had passed that morsel on to Nacho; otherwise, Billy and the other two were of no concern to him.

  A TV on a platform directly over the elder Cruz’s head was tuned to a sports channel. If he followed his normal pattern, Cruz would order dinner in another fifteen, twenty minutes, but he wasn’t going to eat it tonight. A feeling of almost divine power surged through The Professor, a hot, metallic flow, as if his blood had turned to mercury. You thieving cabrón, I know your life expectancy is now shorter than a mosquito’s, and you don’t. He went to the men’s room, locked the door, and dialed Félix’s mobile.

  “Listos,” he said in an undertone, then returned to the bar.