The Cartel: A Novel

by Don Winslow

  So if you are sucio—dirty—Keller thinks, it’s on Barrera’s side.

  “If I get a vote,” Keller says, “it’s no. Check that, it’s hell no.”

  They look at Vera.

  “Gentlemen,” he says, “we deal in the art of the possible. Removing the Tapias takes out a full third of the Sinaloa cartel, and, most importantly, Barrera’s armed wing. I would think that DEA would be delighted. I’m sorry, Arturo, but I agree that we should seize this opportunity with both hands.”

  If you were on the Tapia payroll, Keller thinks, now you’ve flipped.

  And now you’re fucked.

  “This is wrong,” he says.

  “But you’ll support it?” Aguilar asks.

  Keller knows what he’s concerned about. One of the victims is an American citizen. If Keller leaked this deal, there’d be an uproar in the States, one that could potentially kill the fragile Mérida Initiative.

  They need him to sign off.

  Keller is silent for a few seconds and then says, “I won’t sabotage it.”

  Feeding them a line and feeding them line—the hook is set so let them run with it. I’ll jerk the hook when it’s good and set.

  Three hours later Salvador Barrera and his buddies walk out of jail.

  Free.

  The parents of David Ortega and Brooke Lauren are told that law enforcement is doing everything in its power to find their children’s killers.

  Sinaloa

  July 2, 2007

  Eva wears white.

  A spring bride, virginal.

  Lovely and traditional, she wears a mantilla veil with the white dress and a bolero jacket entwined with white baby rosebuds. Chele Tapia, as the madrina, sewed the three ribbons onto the bride’s lingerie—yellow for food, blue for money, and red for passion.

  Adán hopes that there will be passion despite the difference in their ages.

  Chele had tried to talk him into the bolero garb, but he’d picked up a few pounds lately and his vanity made him reject the tight pants. Instead, he wears a guayabera shirt of the presidencial style, with embroidered designs on the front and back, over loose drawstring trousers and sandals—traditional garb for a rural groom.

  Now he stands and waits for his bride.

  —

  Eddie thinks Eva looks hotter than shit and wouldn’t mind getting himself a little of that. He half thinks about asking Esparza if he has any other daughters, but the wedding day of Adán Barrera is no time to fuck around, and Esparza takes the virginity of his daughters very seriously.

  Adán is going to pop a cherry tonight.

  Anyway, the wedding is a target-rich environment, more Sinaloa Tens than you can shake a dick at, at least half of them beauty queens, former or current Miss Whatevers—Miss Guava, Miss Papaya, Miss Methamphetamine…

  If you can’t get laid at this wedding, Eddie thinks, you are a dickless gnome. That or you got no money—these babes are wearing more gold around their wrists and necks than old Cortés ever found in Mexico, that’s for sure.

  There’s a lot of cash at this bash.

  Anybody who’s anybody in the narco-world is here, and Eddie knows that his presence signals a big leap in status.

  Nacho is here, of course, with the wife who produced the lovely Eva. Diego is here with his wife, Chele (showing a lot of tit, a definite MILF), his brother Alberto and his hot wife, and his brother Martín and his hot wife, an iceberg that Eddie wouldn’t mind crashing into.

  Adán’s family is here, or what’s left of them.

  Eddie thinks he recognizes Adán’s sister, Elena—Elena la Reina—the former patrona of Tijuana. Then there’s the nephew, Sal, a real hard-on, and his mom, who looks like she’s been sucking on lemons. Then you got some second-tier narcos, Eddie thinks, like me, and then there are the politicians.

  The head of PAN in the state.

  A PAN senator.

  The mayor of the local town.

  At the wedding of the most wanted man in Mexico, a man the U.S. and Mexican governments swear that they just can’t find. It’s funny, Eddie thinks—these guys are afraid to be seen at Adán Barrera’s wedding, but more afraid not to be seen.

  And of course, the whole village is ringed with Diego’s guys, and Eddie’s. State cops patrol the roads in and out, and helicopters hover overhead, only moving away so the rotors don’t wash out the actual exchange of vows.

  There would be even more security, Eddie knows, except that we’re relatively at peace, only at war now against the Tijuana boys, who aren’t about to come down here to take a shot at Adán under these circumstances.

  Peace is good, Eddie thinks, even if it meant playing kissy-face with those Zeta cocksuckers. But for the time being, it’s nice not to have your head on a swivel, although it takes a little getting used to. Nice not to have to worry about a bullet or a grenade, or ending up guiso’d.

  And nice to be making money again.

  Nice to be sitting next to a hot woman, a genuine Sinaloa Ten, even if he’s here as Adán’s beard.

  —

  Magda Beltrán thinks that Eva Esparza looks pretty, too.

  The tight-twatted little bitch.

  That’s not fair, Magda thinks. I’m sure she’s a perfectly nice, sweet little girl, and, in all honesty, exactly what Adán needs at this moment. But still, a woman can’t help but feel a little jealous.

  Clever move, she has to admit, Adán bringing Nacho into the family. Peace breaks out and the king settles down to the business of getting a queen and cranking out some princes.

  Your basic fairy-tale ending.

  Real Walt Disney.

  All we need are cartoon birds singing.

  Then again, Adán always gets what he wants. He wanted Nuevo Laredo and he got Nuevo Laredo. Now he has a secure port through which to ship the cocaine she arranged for him—independent of Diego or his new father-in-law—and free of the burdensome piso, which he can now charge others.

  And slowly, quietly, with Magda’s help, Adán has been recruiting his own force, independent of both Nacho’s and Diego’s. The Gente Nueva—the “New People”—mostly former and current federal police—owe their allegiance only to Adán.

  So he has his own cocaine supply and his own armed force.

  He has Laredo, and Nacho is gaining ground in Tijuana, now connected to Adán again by family.

  “How’s your little virgin?” Magda asked Adán the last time she saw him, to go over some cost and pricing issues.

  “She’s my fiancée now.”

  “But still a virgin?” Magda asked. “Yes? No? Never mind—a gentleman doesn’t tell. But you know Nacho will be watching for bloodstained sheets to be draped out the window.”

  Adán ignored the jibe. “My marriage doesn’t need to change anything between you and me.”

  “Does your little virgin know this?” Magda asked.

  “Her name is Eva.”

  “I know her name.” After a while, she asked, “Do you love her?”

  “She’ll be the mother of my children.”

  “Mexican women.” Magda sighed. “We’re either virgins, madonnas, or whores. There are no other choices.”

  “Mistress?” Adán suggested. “Business partner? Friend? Adviser? Choose any. My preference is you choose all.”

  “Maybe,” Magda said. His business partner she certainly is. As for the rest, she’s not sure. She is sure that she wants to extract more of a price. “I want to be invited to the wedding.”

  It was fun to see Adán taken aback, if only for a moment.

  “You don’t think that would be awkward?” he asked.

  “Not if you find me an acceptable escort.”

  So now Magda sits with this handsome young North American, who is very sweet and attentive but has a wandering eye for every attractive woman at the wedding, of whom there are many. She’s not offended—he assumes that, as Adán’s woman, she’s out of bounds. It would serve Adán right if she slept with him. Maybe she will, but probabl
y not. Magda can’t help teasing him a little. “I’ve heard you have a nickname.”

  Crazy Eddie.

  “I don’t like it.” She finds it funny that he pouts.

  “Based on your wardrobe,” Magda says, “I hear they call you ‘Narco Polo.’ ”

  Eddie laughs. “Well, I like that.”

  —

  Diego Tapia has been a busy man.

  Security for the wedding has been brutal.

  First there was the problem of the multiple dates and locations. Just yesterday, Diego’s people reached out from a network of cell phones all over the country, to call the guests and tell them the real location.

  Then and only then did Diego distribute his sicarios, in concentric circles around the village, with special attention given to the roads in and out. He stationed more men at the local airstrips to meet the many guests who were coming in on private planes and take them to the wedding site.

  All cell phones and cameras had to be politely but firmly collected, and each guest just as politely and firmly informed that they must not, under any circumstances, talk about the wedding afterward, not even to the extent of mentioning that they were present.

  Adán is firm about this—he wants no pictures, no videos, no recordings, and no gossip afterward. The guest list alone would be a treasure trove for DEA and other enemies.

  Arriving cars are searched far outside the village. Snipers are hidden in the hills above the village, with more heavily armed men standing by in vehicles that block roads at all compass points.

  Nobody is going to go in—or out—of the village without Diego’s knowledge and permission.

  Not that they’re expecting trouble now that there’s peace with the Gulf. The only possible threat is from La Familia, which is deeply angered at Adán’s abandonment of them. But they’re too busy fighting off the army and the federales, and besides, not even Nazario is crazy enough to attack Adán Barrera’s wedding ceremony in the heart of Sinaloa.

  La Familia’s jefe may be insane—he’s not suicidal.

  Now, watching Nacho walk Eva down the aisle, Diego is unsettled. Nacho got Tijuana. Now he’s going to be Adán’s father-in-law? It’s like a screen door shutting in Diego’s face. He can still see through it, but from the outside.

  I shouldn’t worry, he tells himself. I’m Adán’s cousin, more like his brother. We’ve been friends since before our balls dropped. And Nacho is also my friend and my ally. We have interests together. Nothing has really changed.

  Then why do you feel that it has?

  “I’d like you to be in charge of our relationship with Ochoa,” Adán said to Diego after the peace meeting with the CDG. “Make him your friend.”

  “Now you’re pushing it.”

  “And meet with our friends in Mexico City,” Adán said. “Make sure they know that the CDG is under our protection now, in Michoacán as well as Tamaulipas.”

  “I’ll do it,” Martín said.

  “I want Diego there,” Adán said, “so they’ll know that there would be consequences for any betrayals.”

  Martín was the glove, Diego the fist inside.

  “We’ll both go,” Diego said.

  The meeting with the government assholes in Mexico City was funny. The suits just sat there while Martín Tapia carefully explained to them what the new world was going to look like.

  “By all means,” Martín said, “continue your campaign in Michoacán. La Familia is a dangerous threat to public safety—lunatics really—not to mention the largest purveyors of methamphetamine in the country.”

  “What about the Zetas?”

  “They’re under our protection now.”

  Amazing, Diego thought. The federales had been giving La Familia a pass and beating the Zetas like rented mules, but now they didn’t even blink when they were told that they were going to switch sides.

  But that’s the way it is in this business.

  Enemies one moment, friends the next.

  Unfortunately, it also works the other way around.

  Now Chele reads her husband’s mind. “Don’t worry. They chose us as their padrinos.”

  The padrinos are a married couple who mentor the newlyweds from the engagement throughout their entire marriage. It’s an honor, Diego knows, in his case more symbolic than practical, because Adán has certainly not asked for marital advice.

  Eva, on the other hand, has come to Chele to ask certain questions that Chele won’t reveal and Diego can only guess at. He would have thought that modern girls didn’t have these questions anymore, but from Chele’s sly smiles, he guesses that Eva did.

  “I just told her how to keep her man happy,” Chele told him.

  “And how is that?”

  “Later, marido.”

  Chele didn’t share it with the girl, but the sad truth is that Eva doesn’t need to keep Adán happy in the bedroom—his spectacular mistress will see to that—she only needs to keep him happy in the delivery room.

  Eva has to produce a son who will join the Barrera and Esparza organizations—rendering, however unintentionally, the Tapias outsiders. If Chele had a daughter of marriageable age, she would have shamelessly walked her to Adán’s bed and tucked her in. But her daughter is too young, and anyway, inheriting more of her father’s genes, unlikely to be as beautiful as the splendid young Eva.

  Now Chele looks at Eva coming down the aisle between the rows of white chairs.

  Nacho looks every bit the proud papa in his own black bolero jacket and tight-fitting pants as he walks her down the aisle, conscious of and gratified by the stares of envy both for his daughter’s beauty and his good fortune.

  Fortune my ass, Chele thinks—Nacho has been grooming the girl for this since she slid out between her mother’s thighs.

  —

  It breaks Adán’s heart.

  Turning on his old friend.

  On the other hand, he has reason to believe that Diego Tapia has turned on him. Not with law enforcement, true, but with the Zetas.

  It’s your own fault, Adán tells himself as he waits for his bride. You practically shoved Diego and Ochoa into bed together, made them meet, asked Diego to become the Zetas’ “friend.”

  Well, he did that, all right. Adán’s informants have it that Diego has been steadily shifting his operation into Monterrey, basing himself in the tony neighborhood of Garza García, and that he’s welcoming the Zetas into the city.

  Where they’re selling drugs, setting up an extortion racket and a kidnapping operation.

  Stupid, Adán thinks, to go for chump change that could interfere with the real money pipeline from the U.S. by alienating police, politicians, and the powerful industrialists in Monterrey who, at the end of the day, control them.

  Stupid and shortsighted.

  Almost as bad is their ostentatious behavior, displaying their wealth and power like chúntaros—hillbillies—instead of the billionaire businessmen that they are.

  Adán was saddened to hear that his old friend is dipping into his own product, that, like Tío back in the bad old days, he has started snorting coke. If it’s true, it’s bad news, and certainly Diego’s recent behavior supports the suspicion. Diego’s been throwing huge, loud parties, and in the wrong places—Cuernavaca, Mexico City, where they can’t escape the notice of the powers-that-be.

  When will we ever learn? Adán wonders.

  The cops, the politicians might be on our payroll; the financiers, bankers, and businessmen may be our partners in legitimate businesses; they might look the other way on our other activities—but you can’t rub their noses in it.

  Stupid and self-indulgent, Adán thinks. You can’t be doing those things in a neighborhood like that. We have everything. Everything that money can buy. We can do whatever we want—only be subtle about it.

  There are worse rumors about Diego, rumors that Adán doesn’t want to believe. That he’s started to follow Santa Muerte, the so-called Saint of Death, a cult that’s sweeping the mostly younger narc
o ranks with blood sacrifices and God only knows what else.

  Foolishness.

  When he was young, Adán made a blood oath with Santo Jesús Malverde, the local Sinaloan drug trafficking martyr who became something of a religious figure with his own shrine in Culiacán.

  Adán blushes at the memory of his youthful foolishness.

  But Diego is no kid. He’s a grown man with a wife and kids and adult responsibilities. He’s the boss of the largest drug trafficking organization in Mexico and he’s messing around with this foolishness?

  Ridiculous.

  And dangerous.

  But not as dangerous as him flirting with an alliance with the Zetas.

  Adán gets it—Diego feels threatened by Nacho’s rise. You gave him Tijuana to take, you’re marrying his daughter.

  Adán thought of reaching out to make things right with Diego. Sit down and talk like the old friends they are, and work it out. Apologize for any seeming slights or neglect. But now it’s too late.

  Diego is the price for stupid, idiotic, undisciplined Salvador’s life. And it’s for the best, Adán decides. The Tapias have to go. Face it, you were going to have to do it anyway, and Sal’s issues are a convenient pretext.

  It’s all set up and ready to go.

  Simultaneous raids against Alberto and Diego in Badiraguato, take them both out in one swoop.

  Martín they’ll leave alone, for now.

  He has too many connections—another stupid mistake of yours, Adán thinks, to let the Tapias gain so much political influence—and you can deal with him. He’ll be reasonable.

  As long as there are no deaths.

  Adán has insisted that both Alberto and Diego must, at all costs, be taken alive. They are his friends, his brothers, blood of his Sinaloan blood.

  —

  The altar has been built under a bower of ficus trees. The chairs are set up on an emerald-green lawn clipped again that morning and lined with stacks of fresh flowers.

  Adán stands by the priest. He smiles at Eva as Nacho releases her, kisses her on the cheek, and ushers her to the altar.

  Opening a small wooden box, Adán pours thirteen gold coins—one each for Christ and the twelve apostles—into Eva’s outstretched, cupped hands. Then he places the box on top of her hands. The coins signify his pledge to take care of her and her promise to run his household conscientiously.