The Cartel: A Novel

by Don Winslow

  Two of the previous cops were killed, the others fled to the United States.

  Keller sits with Marisol in her mayor’s office in the town building as she ponders this problem.

  He’s furious with her.

  Not only has she not left Valverde, she’s put herself squarely in the crosshairs and shone a light on it. He’s leaving later in the morning, now he tries to persuade her to at least carry a gun.

  “I’ll get it for you,” he says. “A little Beretta, it will fit in your purse.”

  “I don’t know how to shoot a gun.”

  “I’ll teach you.”

  “If I’m carrying a firearm,” Marisol says, “it will just give them a pretext for shooting me, won’t it?”

  He’s forming a counterargument when there’s a knock on the door.

  “Come in!” Marisol yells.

  The door opens and a young woman stands there. She’s tall, probably five-ten. Long black hair, not fat by any means, but not skinny either, with wide hips and big bones.

  “Erika, isn’t it?” Marisol asks.

  The young woman nods. “Erika Valles.”

  “You work for your uncle, Tomás.”

  Her uncle is a realtor in the valley.

  “There are no houses to sell,” Erika says, looking down at the floor.

  “What can I do for you?” Marisol asks.

  Erika glances up. “I’m here to apply for the job.”

  “What job?” Marisol asks.

  “Police chief.”

  Keller is appalled.

  Marisol smiles. “How old are you, Erika?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “Education?”

  “I went to ITCJ for a semester,” Erika says, naming the local community college.

  “Did you study law enforcement?” Marisol asks.

  Erika shakes her head. “Computer programming.”

  Now Keller shakes his head. A nineteen-year-old girl with no training and a semester or two of community college computer science wants to be the town’s only police officer. It’s cloud cuckoo land.

  Marisol asks, “Why do you want to be police chief, Erika?”

  “It’s a job,” she says. “No one else wants it. I think I’d be good at it.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m tough,” Erika says. “I’ve been in a few fights. I play fútbol with the boys.”

  “Is that it?”

  Erika looks at the floor again. “I’m smart, too.”

  “I’ll bet you are,” Marisol says.

  Erika looks up. “So I have the job?”

  “Do you have any criminal record?”

  “No.”

  “Drugs?”

  “I smoked a little mota,” Erika says. “When I was young.”

  When you were young? Keller thinks.

  “But not anymore,” Erika adds.

  “Erika,” Marisol says, “you know that people have been killed doing this job.”

  “I know.”

  “And you want to do it anyway?”

  Erika shrugs. “Someone has to do it.”

  “And you know that there’s no one else on the force,” Marisol says. “For the time being, anyway, you’d be the chief of yourself.”

  “Sounds good to me.” Erika smiles.

  “All right,” Marisol says. “I’ll swear you in.”

  Are you out of your goddamned mind? Keller thinks, giving Marisol a look that expresses exactly what he’s thinking. She gives him an irritated look back, and then fishes through her desk for the police chief’s oath.

  After she’s sworn in, Erika asks, “Do I get a gun?”

  “There’s a what…an ‘AR-15,’ ” Marisol says, “but do you know how to shoot it?”

  “Everyone knows.”

  Jesus Christ, Keller thinks.

  “All right,” Marisol says. “When can you start?”

  “This afternoon?” Erika asks. “I should go tell my mom.”

  “She should go tell her mom,” Keller says when Erika leaves. “This is insanity, Mari.”

  “It’s all insanity, Art,” Marisol answers. “It’s not as if she’s going to be investigating murders or busting narcos. Parking tickets, routine patrols against break-ins…Why can’t she do it?”

  “Because the narcos don’t want any kind of police here,” Keller says. “Or any government.”

  “Well,” Marisol says, “we are here.”

  Keller shakes his head.

  “But,” she adds, “I will take that gun.”

  —

  Weeks later, the messages start to appear in the valley.

  White bedsheets, spray-painted in black with the names of those to be executed, are nailed to walls. Banners strung on phone lines read YOU HAVE FORTY-EIGHT HOURS TO LEAVE.

  Leaflets threaten to kill police and town officials.

  Marisol’s name is on the list.

  So is Erika’s.

  So are the names of the councilwomen of Valverde and the police officers in the other towns.

  During Semana Santa, Holy Week, leaflets tossed from the backs of trucks tell the entire populations of Porvenir and Esperanza, “You have just a few hours to get out.”

  On Good Friday, a firebomb is thrown at the Porvenir church, burning its old wooden door.

  The exodus begins.

  People leave their homes for Juárez, or to family farther south, or they try to cross the border.

  Keller urges Marisol to be one of them. He shows up at her office, having driven down from EPIC, and confronts her with the threats.

  “How do you know about this?” she asks.

  “I know about everything.” The hyperbole is not that exaggerated. He gets daily briefings from every important intelligence source, and can’t help himself from finding out what’s going on in the valley.

  “So if you know everything,” Marisol says, “tell me—is it the army or the Sinaloa cartel, or is there really a difference?”

  Keller does know.

  The CDG and the Zetas are expanding west, along Highway 2, through Coahuila and then into Chihuahua.

  There are signs that the process has already begun, and Adán Barrera isn’t taking any chances on this part of the border. He’s already moving Sinaloans into the lands vacated by the people he forced off.

  Adán Barrera isn’t just depopulating the Juárez Valley.

  He’s colonizing it.

  It’s a bizarre repeat of the history that brought so many of those families into the valley in the first place, as “military colonists” to fight off the Apaches. Except this time, the Apaches are Zetas. The Zetas and CDG are doing a similar thing in rural northern Tamaulipas, moving suspect people off their land and putting loyalists in their place.

  “It’s Sinaloa,” Keller tells Marisol, “but the army won’t do a damn thing to stop them.”

  “To say the least.”

  “Mari, you have to go,” Keller says. “I admire what you’re trying to do, I admire the hell out of what you’re trying to do, but it’s not possible. You and a half dozen women cannot go up against the Sinaloa cartel!”

  “Because the people who are supposed to protect me,” she said, “are the same people who are going to kill me.”

  “Yes. Fine. Okay.”

  “No, it’s not okay. If we yield to intimidation—”

  “You don’t have a choice!”

  “We always have a choice!” Marisol says. “I choose to stay.”

  Keller walks over to the window and looks out at the devastated town, half-deserted. A few folding tables set up under a tent in the park to serve as a grocery store, untended trash blowing across the street. Why does she want to fight and die for this wasteland?

  “Mari,” he says, “I have to be back in Mexico City on Monday. I’m begging you—please come with me.”

  Erika picks that moment to come in. She wears jeans and a hooded sweatshirt and has her AR-15 slung over her shoulder.

  “Erika,” Marisol says, “A
rturo thinks we should run away.”

  “There would be no shame in it,” Keller says. “No one would think any less of you.”

  “I would,” Erika says.

  Marisol flashes Keller an I-told-you-so smile.

  “This is not some Hollywood movie,” he says, “where the brave women band together, sing ‘Kumbaya,’ and there’s a happy ending. This is—”

  Seeing the look on Marisol’s face, he instantly regrets what he said.

  She says quietly, “I’m very aware it’s not a movie, Art. I have seen my dearest friend killed, the town I grew up in devastated, the people I grew up with pack what little they have and trudge down the road as refugees.”

  “I’m sorry. That was stupid.”

  The sunlight, filtered by dust, is beautiful—a dark red-gold—in the sunset as they walk from the office to her house. They go past the Abarca bakery, now closed and shuttered, past the tiendita, also closed, its owners now living across the border in Fabens.

  Three soldiers, standing behind a barbed-wired sandbag emplacement, watch them walk past.

  “They know who you are,” Marisol says to Keller, “the big gringo DEA man.”

  Keller isn’t crazy about the fact that he’s known, but it’s a trade-off he’s willing to make if it affords her a little protection when he’s there. Erika walks five paces behind them, her rifle in hand now.

  She’s devoted to Marisol.

  Dedicated to her job.

  “Thank you, Erika, we’re fine now,” Marisol says when they get to her house. They kiss each other on the cheeks, and Erika walks back down the street.

  Marisol’s house is an old restored adobe with a new red tin roof. It’s small but comfortable, its thick walls keeping out both the cold and the heat. The windows now have bars and anti-grenade screens that Keller insisted on putting in.

  She slides off her white jacket, revealing the shoulder holster with the Beretta Nano, then pours a glass of wine for each of them and hands one to Keller. He’s glad that she’s carrying the weapon. He bought it for her and took her out into the desert to teach her how to use it.

  Marisol was a surprisingly good shot.

  Now she plops into the big old easy chair in her small living room, kicks off her shoes, puts her feet up on a hassock, and says, “Christ. What a day.”

  “Good Friday,” he says.

  “I forgot,” she says. “No procession. No one to do it.”

  It’s painful, Keller thinks. The traditional Good Friday reenactments of Christ’s march to Calvary have been replicated all through the valley by processions of refugees leaving their homes. “Do you want to go to church tonight?”

  Marisol shakes her head. “I’m tired. And truthfully? I’m losing my faith.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “That’s a funny response if you think about it,” she says. “Don’t let me stop you from going, but what I really want is another glass of wine, a quiet dinner at home, and an early night.”

  That’s what they do.

  Keller finds some chicken in her refrigerator and makes a dinner of arroz con pollo and a green salad while Marisol takes a long shower. They eat while watching some American television show and then go to bed.

  Marisol sleeps in on Saturday morning, and Keller brings her coffee in bed.

  She likes it white and sweet.

  “You’re an angel,” she says, taking the cup.

  “That’s the first time that’s ever been said.”

  Marisol takes her time getting ready, and then Keller escorts her to her office so she can use the relative quiet of Semana Santa to catch up on some paperwork. He brings his laptop and goes over the classified intelligence briefings.

  A top-secret report from DEA and CIA intelligence analysts opines that the Sinaloa cartel has won the war for Juárez and is all but in control there. La Línea has been virtually annihilated and Los Aztecas, while still fighting, has seen its leadership decimated and is in disarray.

  Keller has mixed feelings. He hates that Barrera has won, but the victory might bring an end to the hideous violence. That’s what it’s come to, he thinks ruefully. That’s what we can hope for now—a win by one gang of murderers over another.

  The memo attached to the report asks for his commentary, and he writes that while the Juárez cartel seems to be finished in the city, its Zeta allies seem to be getting active along the Chihuahua border and the Sinaloa cartel is taking defensive measures.

  Then he reads a series of e-mail exchanges between DEA and SEIDO speculating on the whereabouts of Eddie Ruiz. Is he in San Pedro, Monterrey, Acapulco? Another report has him sighted in Veracruz. All agree that he’s flying under the radar, hunted by the Zetas and Martín Tapia.

  Tapia is back in the country, trying to piece together the remnants of his brothers’ organization into something called the “South Pacific cartel.” Most of the analysts agree that it’s not going particularly well—most of the major Tapia players have sided with Ruiz, who, in any case, seems to have recruited the best killers. And there are reports that Martín, perhaps out of grief for his brother, has adopted Diego’s cult of Santa Muerte and is spending more and more time in religious observances, and that his wife isn’t happy about it.

  Martín’s rumored to be in Cuernavaca, Yvette is said to be living somewhere in Sonora.

  Keller reads more reports.

  CIA warns that the Zeta presence in Central America is getting stronger, especially in Guatemala, in the northern provinces like the Petén and the city of Cobán. The report also indicates that the Zetas are openly advertising for more Kaibiles, but also recruiting MS-13 gang members from the slums of El Salvador.

  It makes sense, Keller thinks. The Zetas are fighting on five fronts and need troops.

  Keller’s own “Zeta front” is bogged down. They know that Rodríguez, Z-20, is somewhere in the Veracruz area, because he surfaced as the leader of a Zeta team that lobbed incendiary grenades into the house of a Veracruz police operations director.

  The wooden structure went up in flames. Just to be on the safe side, Rodríguez and his men waited outside to gun down anyone who made it out.

  No one did.

  The police commander, his wife, and his four young children died in the fire.

  —

  Keller and Marisol do go to Mass that night, if only because the people of Valverde expect their mayor to be present at Holy Saturday services. The church is only half full anyway, so many people have left town. By tradition, the statue of the Virgin Mary is draped in black for mourning, and the obvious symbolism of the current situation escapes no one.

  The whole valley, Keller thinks, is on the cross.

  Marisol doesn’t take communion and neither does Keller. As they’re sitting in the pew, he feels his cell phone vibrate in his pocket and steps outside. It’s a computer tech at EPIC.

  They’ve picked up cell phone traffic between Rodríguez’s cousin and him in Veracruz and they have an address.

  Keller gets on the horn to Orduña. If they move fast, they can get Z-20.

  The plan was for Keller to spend the night and then go to Juárez with Marisol for Easter—a dinner with Ana and the crew. Then he was going to fly back to Mexico City and she was going back to Valverde for a meeting with the mayors and city councils from the Valley. When she comes out of the church, Keller tells her that he has to leave. They go back to her house so he can get his things.

  “Go to El Paso,” he asks.

  “I can’t. I have things to do,” she says. “I’ll be fine. I’m going into the city for an Easter party with the crew.”

  “Te quiero, Mari.”

  “Te quiero también, Arturo.”

  —

  Marisol and Ana leave the Easter party in separate cars to go back to Valverde for the meeting tomorrow morning. The plan is for Ana to stay at Marisol’s that night and come back after the meeting. She follows Marisol down Carretera 2.

  Ana is going to write a st
ory on the meeting as a way of explicating the “Woman’s Rebellion” in Chihuahua. In the valley, in Juárez, in little towns all across the state, women are standing up, filling positions in the government and police, demanding accountability, transparency, answers.

  Marisol is tired and would have preferred to stay in Juárez, but the meeting is at eight in the morning, and besides, she doesn’t like to leave Erika on her own for too long. The young woman has done a good job but she’s still nineteen years old.

  The party had been fun—good food, good company—although Marisol missed Arturo being there. She’s glad that he likes her friends and that they like him; otherwise, it would make the relationship horribly awkward.

  It’s a crisp Juarense night and she wears a heavy sweater and a scarf. The pistol that Arturo gave her is in her purse, within easy reach on the passenger seat. She wonders about her relationship with Keller. She loves him, she knows that, more than she ever loved her husband, probably more than she’s ever loved anyone. He’s a wonderful man—intelligent, funny, kind, a good lover—but the challenges to their relationship are formidable.

  He needs to understand—well, he does understand, he needs to accept, Marisol thinks—that I’m as committed to my work as he is to his. And if I’m under threat, so is he. Arturo’s old-school in that regard—being in danger is a man’s role, not a woman’s.

  And Arturo is far more North American than he thinks he is—he has that North American belief that every problem has a solution, whereas a Mexican knows that this isn’t necessarily true.

  She punches the radio to an El Paso station that plays country-western music, her secret guilty pleasure.

  She chuckles. Me and Miranda Lambert.

  —

  Despite four bullet wounds, Rodríguez is still breathing with the help of an oxygen mask, his chest heaving as he lies on a gurney in the back of the ambulance now racing across Veracruz toward the hospital.

  Keller thinks the man is going to make it. They’d hit Rodríguez’s safe house in Veracruz just before dawn and took it by surprise. The raid netted Rodríguez, five armored cars, radio equipment, and Rodríguez’s famous gold-plated M-1911 pistol, with his aportos encrusted in diamonds.

  Now one of the Matazetas, his face disguised under a black balaclava, looks at Keller and asks, “This is one of the pendejos who killed Lieutenant Córdova’s family?”