The Cartel: A Novel

by Don Winslow

  Keller holds his thumb and little finger to his face—Call me—smiles, and walks away.

  —

  There’s little to do now but wait.

  And prepare for the worst-case scenario, that Palacios runs to Vera and they launch a counteroffensive that could take several forms, the most likely of which is a raid on SEIDO to acquire the incriminating tapes, Aguilar’s firing by pressure from Los Pinos, and even criminal charges against him.

  Keller doesn’t discount another possibility—an outright assassination attempt on Aguilar.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Aguilar says when Keller suggests it over a brandy in his study.

  Lucinda had prepared her usual excellent dinner, a fiery shrimp dish over rice, and the children were their charming selves, conversing easily about their ballet and horseback lessons, and shyly about boys they had met at an interschool dance. Keller had forgotten how simply lovely family life could be.

  Then Aguilar and Keller went into his study to discuss business, and now Keller sits there with the cell phone in his pocket, urging it to ring. He’d bought it only for Palacios’s call, and now it sits in his pocket like a time bomb you want to go off. Every second it doesn’t increases the possibility that Palacios has gone to Vera, or, maybe worse, to the Tapias. “It’s not ridiculous, Luis. In fact, I think you should consider moving your family out for a little while.”

  “How would I explain that to them, Art?” Aguilar asks. “Without terrifying them?”

  “A vacation,” Keller said. “We set you up in the States, DEA provides security.”

  “I don’t think Gerardo would go so far as to hurt families.”

  “But Barrera would,” Keller says, “and has.”

  “They’d make a threat first, no? To intimidate me into cooperating?”

  “Probably,” Keller admits. “But it doesn’t hurt to be safe. Look, wouldn’t the girls love a couple of weeks at some dude ranch in Arizona? They could ride—”

  “Western saddles? And ruin their seats—”

  “Luis,” Keller says. “Galvén, Aristeo, and Bravo were killed outside their homes. Do you want to expose your family to that possibility?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Well…”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  They go over other possibilities. If Aguilar’s boss, the attorney general, calls him in and either fires him, shuts down the investigation, or both, it means he’s in on it, in which case Keller gets out of the country as fast as possible with a copy of the tape.

  The phone vibrates.

  Aguilar watches as Keller digs it out of his pocket, listens for two seconds. “Parque México,” he says. “Foro Lindbergh. One hour.” He clicks off.

  —

  They meet under the pergola near the large columns in the Lindbergh Forum.

  A smart choice, because it’s out of sight. But dangerous, because the trees behind the columns offer ample cover for gunmen, especially at night.

  Keller knows that he might be walking into a trap. But then again, he’s pretty much in a trap already, so what’s the difference? Nevertheless, he keeps his hand on the pistol under his jacket.

  Palacios stands at the end of the pergola.

  He appears to be alone.

  “I want out tonight,” he says.

  “That’s not going to happen.” The moment Palacios crosses the border, he loses half his motivation to talk. Keller has seen it happen—the source sits on a chair in some office on the other side and spins useless bullshit stories until everyone gets tired of it and moves on. No, what they have to do is pick Palacios as clean as they can before they move him. Everything they get after that is gravy.

  But they have to move fast.

  “Here’s how it’s going to work,” Keller says. “You’re going to give us information. We check it out to see if you’re telling the truth. When we have enough to nail Vera, you get your ticket.”

  Palacios stares at him. Then he says, “I want visas for myself, my wife, and my two adult children. And I get immunity, I get to keep my bank accounts.”

  The prick doesn’t want to go into the program and become a greeter at a suburban Tucson Home Depot. He wants to come across and live the high life on the dirty millions he’s taken from the Sinaloa cartel.

  “That’s up to your AG,” Keller says.

  It’s a risk Keller has to take, and it might as well be sooner than later. Palacios might balk at the Mexican involvement, because he thinks he’s been dealing exclusively with DEA.

  Palacios says, “We’re done here.”

  “You walk away now,” Keller says, “you don’t get far. You get busted before you leave the park. You think your old buddies are going to wait around to see if you flip?”

  Keller knows his business, knows that there’s a time to push and a time to pull, so now he softens his tone and says, “Look, you haven’t committed a crime in the States. Neither has Vera. So the Justice Department can only offer you sanctuary as a courtesy to the Mexican AG’s office. We do it through SEIDO, keep it under wraps.”

  “Luis Aguilar?” Palacios asks. “That sanctimonious prick?”

  “He’s your lifeline, Chido.”

  Palacios laughs. “Where is he?”

  “In a car on Calle Chiapas.”

  “Let’s go.”

  —

  At first they meet in cars, in parks at night, but then Aguilar invents a new segundera for Palacios, actually an undercover SEIDO agent named Gabriela—drop-dead gorgeous, a guapa with long legs and a longer résumé—law degree, a master’s in sociology, and a ruthless ambition. Aguilar provides Palacios with photos to show off to his buddies (“Look what I’m tapping”) and arranges for them to be seen together at bars around AFI headquarters. He provides her with an apartment and makes sure she’s seen leaving in the morning for her job at a local bank, and seen returning in the evening.

  In the afternoons they meet with Palacios.

  He plays games of his own, what Keller would call hide-the-ball, giving them a little information to shield more damaging information, having to be pressed, cross-examined, coddled, cajoled, threatened. He lets intelligence out like a fisherman lets out line to a fish, and they do the same with him, reminding him not too gently that he’s the one who’s hooked.

  “You know we’ll run you through a polygraph,” Aguilar says.

  “Yeah, I’ve taken them,” Palacios says with a smirk. “Best test money can buy.”

  “This one will be legitimate,” Aguilar says. “And if you lie about anything, our deal is null and void. Let’s go over it again, Barrera’s escape from prison.”

  “Who was in charge of prisons?” Palacios asks.

  “Quit playing games.”

  “Galvén,” Palacios says. “Nacho Esparza delivered $500,000 to Galvén and we cut it up.”

  “Did Vera get a share?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I’m asking the questions.”

  “It’s a stupid question.”

  Aguilar sighs. “Humor me.”

  “Vera got the biggest share, as usual,” Palacios answers. “Me, my motto is ‘Eat like a horse, not like a pig.’ That’s not Gerardo’s motto.”

  He’s cute, Keller thinks. He knows the apartment is miked, and that he’s playing to a crowd that will eventually include the Mexican AG and a host of yanquis in DEA and Justice.

  When they get through the failed raids on Barrera after his escape, Palacios actually laughs. They have to go over it a dozen times before they get what they think is the whole truth, but then Palacios laughs and says, “Are you fucking kidding me? We had him.”

  “When? Where?”

  “Nayarit,” Palacios says. “When he got out by helicopter. He and Nacho paid us four million for the next leg of his flight.”

  “Did Vera—”

  “Get his share? Of course.”

  You almost had Barrera in Apatzingán, Palacios tells them. But we got him out
that night and put in the lookalike. After that, Barrera moved back to Sinaloa.

  “Where?” Keller asks.

  “My deal is on Vera,” Palacios says, “not Barrera.”

  Anyway, he doesn’t know, he claims. El Patrón moves from finca to finca in the mountains of Sinaloa and Durango. The police protect him, the locals protect him; he has his own private army now—Gente Nueva.

  “Are they doing the fighting in Juárez?” Aguilar asks.

  “You already know that.”

  The meetings go on. Sometimes Palacios meets Gabriela at her apartment, other times he treats her to a suite at a five-star hotel—the Habita, the St. Regis, Las Alcobas, the Four Seasons—but never the Marriott. They take a suite so Gabriela can wait in the sitting room, out of earshot, and leave just before or after Palacios.

  “Try to look well-fucked,” he says to her one day at the Habita. “I have a reputation to maintain.”

  Gabriela is too disciplined to respond.

  At every session, Palacios plays peekaboo, but Aguilar and Keller doggedly work him, like a boxer walks his opponent into a corner. Keller was not a bad amateur middleweight in his youth. He was patient then and he’s patient now, letting Palacios dance and shuffle, but always cutting off the ring and forcing him against the ropes where the truth gets told.

  Palacios tells them how it worked.

  A group of beat cops led by Gerardo Vera formed a drug, extortion, kidnapping, and car theft ring in Iztapalapa that they parlayed into a small empire, dealing dope internally for Nacho Esparza and the Tapias.

  They had a monopoly in the eastern part of Mexico City that they enforced through threats, selective arrests, and—if that didn’t work—assaults, kidnappings, and murders.

  The Izta cartel.

  The Tapias used their political influence to move Vera into the old, PRI-era federal police. He played it clean for years—the very model of the incorruptible cop. Eliot freaking Ness. He quietly brought his old boys up with him—they were the same choirboys—until they moved high enough up the ladder to really do the Sinaloa cartel some serious good.

  When the new administration decided to reorganize the old, “corrupt” federal police, the Sinaloans hit the jackpot. Vera turned the organization inside out, firing anyone he couldn’t control and hiring people loyal to him. And he put into high positions men from his old Izta cartel.

  It was goddamn genius, Keller has to admit. Vera used the polygraphs to get rid of the undesirables, and then whitewashed the others to get the results he wanted. You could lie, just don’t lie to Gerardo Vera. You could take money from narcos, just make sure they’re the right narcos. Vera turned the entire AFI into an efficient, incorruptible institution serving the interests of the Sinaloa cartel.

  Breaking Adán Barrera out of prison.

  Making sure that no raid ever captured him.

  Taking down Barrera’s rival narcos like Osiel Contreras.

  Going to war against the CDG cops in Nuevo Laredo.

  Vera didn’t have to worry about being investigated from below—his own people—or from above, thanks to Yvette Tapia’s suitcase deliveries to the Amaros.

  It was a beautiful system, smooth as a German railroad, even through the elections and the new administration, which only promoted Vera to an even higher position. It should have gone on forever.

  The money flowed through the Tapias and was, as far as Palacios knew, made up of a collective fund from them, Esparza, and Barrera. It cost a flat mil to appoint a tame AFI boss to a region and another $50,000–$100,000 monthly salary to that guy, 20 percent of which he kicked up to the Izta cartel.

  Five hundred thousand a month went to Vera, with step-down payments to the other high-ranking guys—Galvén, Aristeo, Bravo, and Palacios—depending on their rank.

  “How much did you make?” Aguilar asks one afternoon at the Four Seasons, unable to keep the disgust from his voice.

  “Two million a year,” Palacios answers casually.

  Special favors—the escape from Puente Grande, the close call after Nayarit, the takedown of Contreras, the raids on the Tapias—required extra money, Palacios tells them.

  In those special cases, Esparza usually handled the payments.

  “Where did the money come from?” Keller asks.

  “El Patrón, I guess,” Palacios says. “I didn’t ask.”

  “How high does it go?” Aguilar asks.

  Palacios shrugs. “All I know is Vera. What he does with the money afterward—above my pay grade.”

  “Los Pinos?” Aguilar asks. “We know that money went to Benjamín Amaro.”

  “Then you know more than I do,” Palacios snaps.

  Aguilar asks, his voice tight, “The attorney general?”

  “I don’t know.”

  —

  At the next meeting at the St. Regis, Aguilar says, “Tell us about the meeting with Martín Tapia.”

  “Tell me when I go el norte.”

  “When we say you do,” Keller says. But he understands Palacios’s anxiety. Every day it gets more dangerous for him, every day he’s at risk of getting gunned down by the Tapias, if not by Gerardo Vera. Keller doesn’t really care if Palacios gets killed—good riddance to bad garbage—but not until they’ve stripped him of everything he knows, and he testifies.

  “I want Arizona,” Palacios says. “Not Texas. I like Scottsdale.”

  “It could be Akron for all I know,” Keller says.

  “And a car,” Palacios adds. “Land Rover or Range Rover.”

  “The fuck you think this is?” Keller asks, “The Price Is Right?”

  “Tell us about the Tapia meeting,” Aguilar repeats.

  “Can we get some lunch sent up?” Palacios asks. “I haven’t eaten.”

  Gabriela calls down for some sandwiches. Palacios, munching on a torta, says, “The fuck you want to know? We met—”

  “Was Vera there?”

  “You know he was.”

  “Do you know he was?”

  “He was sitting beside me.”

  “And—”

  “And Martín told us that they’d made peace with the CDG and the Zetas,” Palacios says, “and that we were to go after La Familia instead. The fuck did we care? A narco is a narco.”

  “Vera said that certain people would need more money,” Aguilar says. “Which people?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t?”

  “Ask Gerardo.”

  —

  At the next meeting, Aguilar opens with, “Tell me about the Tapia raids.”

  “You tell me about the Tapia raids.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “All I know is that Gerardo wanted to meet,” Palacios says. “Out of the office. Fine, we go out for a walk. He’s shook, like I’ve never seen him. You know Gerardo—ice.”

  “And?”

  “He tells me we have to go after the Tapias,” Palacios says. “I about shit my pants. ‘The Tapias, are you fucking kidding me? You know how much food they’ve put on our tables?’ He says it comes from on high.”

  “And you ask him how high,” Keller prompts.

  “And he holds his hand way above his head,” Palacios says. “So I say, ‘Adán Barrera is not going to like this,’ and Gerardo just stares at me, and then I get it—it comes from Barrera. And I say, ‘I don’t care, I’m not doing it, it’s suicide, going after the Tapias,’ and he says, ‘That’s why we better not fuck it up.’ ”

  “Did he tell you why Barrera wanted the Tapias taken down?”

  Palacios launches into a song-and-dance about how Gerardo didn’t share it with him specifically, but it had something to do with Diego getting too much power, and Alberto being too flashy, and all of them being into this Santa Muerte shit, and Adán thought they were becoming a liability, a risk.

  All of which is true, Keller thinks, but he can see that he’s lying, that Vera told him about Salvador Barrera’s double-murder beef, and that Palacios doesn’t want
Aguilar to know that he knows about the Tapia-for-Sal deal.

  It’s very dangerous knowledge, Keller agrees.

  “But you did fuck it up,” he prompts.

  Palacios holds his hands up. “Not me—Galvén got stupid and blew Alberto away, and we just couldn’t lay our hands on Diego.”

  “Couldn’t or wouldn’t?” Aguilar asks. “Are you still on his payroll? You’re alive, after all.”

  “Shit,” Palacios says. “You think the Tapias are going to take us back after we killed his little brother? You think we’re going to double-cross Barrera? We’re running for our lives here.”

  “You’re having coffee at the same place every day,” Keller says.

  “When I’m not sitting here blowing you,” Palacios says. “Do you think I’d be doing this if I’d made a separate peace with Diego? Jesus Christ, could that cunt remember the mustard for a change? How hard is that?”

  —

  The game goes on.

  Aguilar wants names, numbers, he wants to see Palacios’s bank accounts, his cell phone records, his e-mails. All the while, Keller plays a game of his own. He makes himself go out to lunch with Gerardo Vera, go out for drinks, listen to the man’s problems.

  A straight-up shooting war has broken out in Sinaloa and Durango between Barrera loyalists and the Tapias.

  Eight killed in a gun battle on Tuesday.

  Another four on Wednesday…

  Two hundred and sixty killed by the end of June.

  Then, just yesterday, seven AFI agents were killed storming a safe house in Culiacán filled with Diego’s shooters.

  And then, this morning, a banner appeared hanging from a Culiacán bridge that read THIS IS FOR YOU, GOVERNOR VILLA, EITHER YOU MAKE AN ARRANGEMENT WITH US OR WE’LL MAKE AN ARRANGEMENT FOR YOU. THIS WHOLE GOVERNMENT WORKING FOR BARRERA AND ESPARZA IS GOING TO DIE.

  And other banners start to appear all over town with the message LITTLE TOY SOLDIERS AND STRAW POLICEMEN, THIS TERRITORY BELONGS TO DIEGO TAPIA.

  “We have to move,” Keller tells Aguilar after another dance session with Palacios. “This whole thing is going to blow up.”

  “You’re friends with the Tapias,” Aguilar says drily. “Tell them to give us a little time.”

  Then Palacios balks—digs his feet in and says that he won’t give any more information until he’s assured of asylum in the United States.