Him? He was good as dead, I only hurried him along. He’s your kill.
The Malos come out of the clearing, jabbering and laughing, describing to each other how well the ambush worked, how fast the buyers across the river hauled ass when the shooting started. Too damn bad. Woulda been nice to kill them, too, get the money. Their only casualty is Alto. A bullet through the outer part of a calf. In and out without touching bone. Won’t sideline him long.
Quino sends Vaquero and another man to retrieve their vehicles from the other side of the highway, then checks out the load in the shot-up truck. It consists of four duffle bags full of tightly wrapped two-kilo plastic packs of what is supposed to be cocaine. Quino removes one of the packs and has Axel hold it directly in front of a headlight. With a pocketknife he makes a small cut in an upper corner of the pack, extracts a little of its content on the blade, presses a finger to one nostril, and snorts the powder with the other. He wipes at his nose and sniffs as if testing the air. Then says, Excellent! The Zetas will be pleased.
Their vehicles come around and the men make fast work of transferring the heavy duffles to the Cherokee. Quino appoints Axel to drive the Ram and gets in the backseat and they drive off on the little trail, headed for the gap in the brush and then onto the highway, then the back-road ride for home.
The Ram’s great power is palpable in the steering wheel under Axel’s hands, in the accelerator under his foot. He had thought to remind Quino that he hadn’t driven in more than twenty years and maybe wasn’t the wisest choice of driver for a speeding night drive through the desert. Then thought, What the hell, Quino knows that. And he anyway has been wanting to drive. And a chance to drive something with as much muscle as this? Bring it on.
He’s holding their speed at a hair above 70 when Quino says, Move this thing, Maestro! I’m hungry for a steak and want to get to it!
He presses the accelerator and the truck surges up to 80, 85. They’re flying through the night, the headlights swaying over the low-rolling road, the truck seeming to dance its way over it in skips and hops, wagging its ass, the Cherokee lost in its dust behind them.
“Wooo!” Axel yells.
Sino laughs and withdraws a small bottle of tequila from his jacket, takes a drink from it, and passes it to Quino, who takes a swallow and returns the bottle. Sino starts to hand it to Axel, then draws it back and says, No, it is against the law to drink and drive. Axel snatches the bottle from him—the truck veering off the road for a moment, jarring hard—and Sino says, For the love of God, man, don’t kill us! They all laugh and Axel takes a sip, starts to give the bottle back to Sino, then jerks it away and takes another drink before giving it up. He’s never cared much for tequila, but at the moment it tastes glorious.
49
Not until they’re back home and have eaten steaks and had a few cold beers and relived the fight yet again and have all sworn they’re going to sleep until mid-afternoon and he returns to his room and strips to take a shower does he see the bloody patch on the left side of his shirt and then the two holes, one where the bullet entered and one where it exited. Then he finds the small clotting gash on his left-side ribs where the bullet brushed him. And only now feels its mild burn.
He stays under the shower a long while. After drying off, he disinfects the rib wound and affixes a small bandage over it, then removes one of the butterfly stitches to examine the cheek cut, decides that it has sufficiently healed, and removes the rest of its stitches as well. He puts on pajamas, gets a bottle of beer from the little fridge, and starts toward the chair in front of the window. Then stops and looks at the still-tousled bed. He goes to it and picks up a pillow and holds it to his face. It contains the scent of her. Of her skin, her hair. The wonderful perfume smells of a woman, so long denied to him.
He settles into the balcony chair and stares out at the vast and ghostly moonlit country and sips the cold beer. It seems inconceivable that a week ago he was in prison, and that within the last ten hours he’s had sex with a woman for the first time in twenty-four years—had it thrice, with a lovely young woman—and for the first time in his life killed a man. Two men. Three, by Quino’s estimation. Any of whom, given the chance, would have killed him, and one of whom had come within inches of doing it. All he’s ever wanted was a life of … sensation. That’s as well as he can define it. He is not unmindful of the actual smallness of such a life, of its paltry essence. But the truth’s the truth. It’s all the life he’s ever wanted … and here it is. This is it. And he can have it for the rest of the ride. How did Quino put it? Forever or until death, whichever comes first.
What more could he ask?
Except to see Jessie.
Yes, well. That particular objective, he reminds himself, is currently on hold. He wonders if his worry of maybe being recognized and rousing the cops, making trouble for Charlie, maybe for others in the family, is overblown. The beach house is way back in the dunes. If all he wanted to do was look at her, he could go there at night, leave the car on the beach, sneak up to the house, peek in a window, have his gander, and get gone. She wouldn’t be any the wiser. He smiles at the thought that it could also be a good way to get his ass shot off for a burglar or Peeping Tom. Not so much by Jessie—though Charlie had told him he taught her how to shoot when she was fifteen and that she’d gotten quite good at it—as by that Jaguaro cousin, Rayo, whose style for damn sure would be to shoot first and ask later, if she asked at all. Still, if he could settle for just a look at Jessie and forget trying to talk to her, it might just work.
He goes to bed as the sky shows the thin light of false dawn.
The following afternoon he accepts Quino’s invitation to go with him and Sino in the Cherokee to turn over the confiscated cocaine to the Zetas. Midway between the ranch and Nuevo Laredo, they turn off into a winding trail that takes them to an isolated spot in the wooded hills. A large green SUV with black glass, a GMC Yukon, is already there and waiting. Five men step out of it, two of them holding small submachine guns pointed at the Cherokee. Axel recognizes them as Uzis. Quino halts the Cherokee and gets out and raises a hand in greeting, calling, Hector, how’s it going? One of them smiles and flicks a hand at the guys with the Uzis and they lower the muzzles. The man wears a T-shirt that says in English, “It’s Only Funny Until Somebody Gets Hurt—Then It’s Hilarious.” He comes over to Quino and they embrace. Quino says something that Axel doesn’t catch but that makes both men laugh, then opens a back door to expose the duffle bags. Hector smiles and asks if he’s sampled it and Quino says that of course he has, and it’s top-grade. Hector pats him on the shoulder and signals his other two men, and they get busy transferring the duffles to the Yukon.
Hector’s gaze suddenly fixes on Axel, and he says, Who’s the gringo? The guy who helped my little brother escape from prison, Quino says. I told you about him. Glowering at Axel, Hector walks up to within a few feet of him, saying, You sure he’s not some gringo cop spy? He draws a snub-nosed revolver from behind his back and points it squarely at Axel’s face. Axel raises his hands at his sides, saying, Hey, man, easy. Hector’s eyes blaze. I think he’s a fucking spy! he says, and cocks the hammer. Axel believes he’s going to be shot and he’s about to try to slap the gun aside when Hector lowers it and laughs. Oh, man, he says, the look on your face! The other Zetas laugh too. Hector claps him on the shoulder and says, You’re okay, pal. You didn’t piss or shit your pants. He whirls a hand at his men and they all get in the Yukon and a moment later are gone. Quino tells Axel that the accusation of spying is a game Hector loves to play with new men. It’s why he keeps that little revolver, Quino says, so he can cock the hammer for effect. Not a lot of people are aware of it, but some of the Zetas have a pretty good sense of humor.
“Oh yeah, no question,” Axel says.
50
The next day, another sizzler, the bodies at Dos Burros are discovered when an enlarging flock of vultures circling low over the river prompts a pair of passing state policemen to pull over and
make their way through the brush to determine the attraction. That evening the Malos at the lounge bar watch the TV footage and whoop at the sight of the draped corpses—eleven of them, according to the report—and the two shot-to-hell vehicles. The report is followed by an editorial lamentation about the continuing violence of the drug wars, with much finger-pointing at the United States and its insatiable appetite for drugs and much reiteration of the need for the Americans to legalize them and thereby deflate their value and financially cripple the cartels.
Quino and Axel, buzzed on beer, hoot at the editorial. Except maybe for weed, Quino says, you gringos will never legalize drugs. Too many of your politicians are being bribed to keep them illegal, which of course keeps their prices high. And the politicians need only to hold to a moral stand. They have only to say that their love for America’s children, their desire to do the right thing for American families, will not permit them to support legalization of such an evil product that has done so much great harm to so many families. It’s win-win for the fuckers. With one hand they pound the table in high-minded dedication to the war against drugs, and with the other they receive money under that table to keep that war going. The truth is, you can’t afford to legalize drugs. Hell, man, what would happen to the DEA and all of its employees? To the thousands of police departments whose budgets depend on federal money to fight drug trafficking? To all the private prisons making all that money for keeping all those poor bastards locked up for possession, for dealing?
What would happen to all the school drug counselors? Axel says, signaling the bartender for another round.
Exactly! Quino says, thumping the heel of his fist on the bar. The simple truth, my gringo friend, is that the illegal drug trade has become an essential component of your economy. Every American who tokes up or shoots up or snorts up is doing his patriotic part to sustain your country’s financial well-being and preserve its employment rolls.
Hear, hear, Axel says, raising his bottle to Quino.
The TV is now reporting yet another discovery of bodies, this one near Monterrey, the screen displaying a quartet of charred corpses that were dumped in a city park.
Now, things like that don’t really help to promote international notions of smiling Mexican benevolence, Axel says.
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s really a matter of perspective,” Quino says in English. He points at the burned bodies on the screen. “From a certain point of view, that sort of thing can be seen as an act of high altruism. It’s like the difference between giving a man a fish and teaching him to fish. I mean, if you build a man a fire, you warm him for a night, but if you set a man on fire you warm him for the rest of his life.”
51
Two weeks pass and there is another party. Cacho has been freed of the cast shoe and now has no need even of a cane and is eager to dance again. At the greeting line for the girls from Monterrey, Quino pairs Axel with a pretty and very amiable girl named Azuela. Axel has sex with her in his room before taking her to the lounge, where he looks around for Celinda but doesn’t see her. He isn’t surprised, because surely any man paired with her would want to have her for the full length of her visit. But neither is he disappointed. Which he is pleased to discover. He then dances with a girl named Rosa Blanca, takes her to his room, and again has a grand time.
As he would have with two different girls at the next party as well.
Now they are into September. Quino has a photographer take Axel’s picture in front of a portrait screen backdrop. “For your passport and license,” he says.
Five days later he hands Axel a Mexican passport with his picture and physical description and bearing the name “Alejandro Xavier Capote Lobos.” Plus both a Laredo and a Nuevo Laredo driver’s license with the same photo and ID.
“Social Security card’s gonna take a while longer,” Quino says.
He takes target practice almost every day at the little range outside the compound, as often as not accompanied by Quino and Cacho. Several times a week, with one or the other Capote brother, Axel goes for a long drive out on the open plain, each time in a different vehicle so he can get acquainted with all of them.
One day they take him to Nuevo Laredo for his first visit. They dine in an excellent seafood restaurant, Axel relishing his first oysters since preprison days, amazed at their freshness. Flown in every morning from Corpus Christi, Quino tells him. They stroll through the streets and ogle the girls, take a walk along the river. At a sporting goods store Axel and Cacho buy running shoes, and the next day begin a daily routine of jogs around the ranch compound, ignoring the gibes of other Malos, who call them lunatics and mad dogs.
A week later, at breakfast, Quino says to Axel, “By the way, it might interest you to know that Duro Cisneros may still be alive.”
Axel sets his fork down and clears his throat. “What makes you think so?”
“You said he had a red mark on his inside wrist like a crescent moon. I asked around and found out that such a tattoo had been the sign of a robbery gang along the Lower Rio Grande many years ago. La Luna Roja. So I asked the Zetas to put the word out that anyone who knows anybody who was a Luna Roja or who has such a tattoo was to inform me of it. Because it was a small gang and has been out of existence for nearly thirty years, it’s no surprise that only three men were located. All three were taken to Nuevo Laredo, and when I went there yesterday to meet with Sino I also went to talk to them. You said Cisneros was probably between thirty-five and forty when you knew him, which would now put him in his late fifties, mid-sixties. One of the three guys was eighty-five years old and looked it. He was able to provide a birth certificate, and I cut him loose. The other two were in their sixties, but one of them could prove he’d been in the army during the time you were with Cisneros, and the other swore he couldn’t speak English, and you said Cisneros spoke it well. We gave that one a little test that proved he really doesn’t know the language. However, in the course of our Q&A, that man, whose name is Azcal, told me there was guy in the gang named Jesús Gallo whose nickname was Duro. Hardly an uncommon name, of course, but, according to Azcal, Duro Gallo could speak English very well. Azcal and Gallo were the same age and both from Monclova, and after the gang broke up they sometimes ran into each other back home. The last time Azcal saw him was about twenty-five years ago. Gallo told him that he and a partner had been doing well pulling robberies in New Mexico and Texas. He said he could use a third man, but Azcal had quit the life. He didn’t hear anything about Gallo again until eight years ago, when he heard that he had been working as a money courier for the Juárez cartel and tried to steal a transfer somehow or other. To make a lasting example of him, they crippled him severely. The way Azcal heard it, they placed him in a Monclova apartment and the people paid to care for him were under orders to put him on display on the balcony for an hour every morning and again in the late afternoon. As far as Azcal knew, Gallo might still be there, though of course he might long since have died or been taken somewhere else. So I had it checked out. He’s still there. Apartment number eleven-F.”
“You put a lot of effort into this,” Axel says.
“I’m still thanking you for my brother, but I don’t want to discuss it. The only question is, do we go see this guy?”
They hold each other’s eyes a moment.
“Let’s do it,” Axel says.
52
They leave at sunrise, Quino at the wheel, Axel beside him, Cacho and a man named Rico in the back. It’s a two-and-a-half-hour drive and they don’t talk much on the way.
For much of the previous night, Axel had deliberated on the state of things. After many prison years of aching for revenge against Duro and Billy, he had come to believe he had at last made peace with that desire. Had at last decided that their desertion of him no longer mattered, he no longer cared, it was in the past, and the past could never be changed and so it was best forgotten. Now comes the possibility Duro is alive and in Monclova. If that’s true, it raises the additional possibility
that he might know if Billy Capp is alive as well—and if so, where. Such possibilities have sundered the peace he’d made with himself and exposed it for the lie it was. Because he does care and the past does matter and can never be left behind, never be forgotten.
That is the state of things.
They get there at mid-morning of what is already another searing day. The four of them enter the apartment house lobby and Quino gives the doorman a pair of hundred-dollar bills and directs the man’s attention to Rico, who opens his jacket just enough to permit him a glimpse of a holstered pistol fitted with a suppressor and then seats himself in a chair next to the doorman’s desk. Quino tells the doorman to phone the people in number eleven-F in three minutes and tell them a package from Ciudad Juárez is being delivered to their door. Then they take the elevator to the eleventh floor.
They’ve been informed that Gallo’s resident attendants are a middle-aged married couple, and at the door to the apartment they hear the sounds of television voices within. Quino gives the door two solid raps and says, Delivery! The man opens up and Quino puts the muzzle of the silencer in his face and backs him into the living room. Axel and Cacho come in behind them, pistols in hand, also with silencers, and Axel closes the door. The woman stares at them wide-eyed from a sofa facing the TV, and Quino puts a finger to his lips. No one else is in the room. Along the far wall are two doors, both closed, and Cacho holds his Glock pointed in their direction. There’s a faint stink in the air. The telenovela cuts to a commercial and the sound volume automatically rises. Quino gives the man a quick pat-down with one hand and motions for him to sit on the sofa, then gestures for the woman to stand, frisks her too, and has her sit again.
He leans down to the man’s ear and says, Point to where Gallo is.
The Ways of Wolfe Page 19
