by Mark Gimenez
"So, Professor, what exactly is my job description?" Eddie said.
"Odd jobs."
"Odd jobs?"
Jim Bob nodded. "Your skill set uniquely qualifies you to handle certain tasks for me during the governor's campaign for reelection."
Eddie Jones was not educated or refined or possessed of a particularly pleasing personality, but he was handy to have around when it was dark out.
"Like what?"
"I don't know yet. But things always come up during the course of a campaign that require special attention. Unforeseen things. Unexpected things. Unpleasant things that require an unpleasant man."
Jim Bob Burnet would never get his candidate into the White House, but he sure as hell wouldn't have his candidate kicked out of the Governor's Mansion. So he had hired Eddie Jones as an insurance policy of sorts. The sort of insurance seldom needed but which could prove career-saving if needed. A stop-loss policy. The business of politics was often unpleasant and often required an unpleasant man. He turned to the TV. The news returned from commercial break to a female Yale law professor arguing in favor of ObamaCare. They listened for a minute, then Jim Bob pointed the remote and muted her voice.
"Damn," Eddie said, "that bitch's voice sounds like the brakes on an old Ford pickup I had back in high school. And she's ugly as sin to boot. Hope to hell for her sake she can suck a tennis ball through a garden hose, otherwise she's gonna have to pay a man to screw her. Cash money."
Yes, Jim Bob thought, Eddie Jones was the right man for the job.
"The governor, he is a very lucky man," Congressman Delgado said, "to have such a wife as you. And that I am not thirty years younger, for I would take you away from him."
"You're very sweet, Congressman. And thank you for the late lunch."
Lindsay Bonner was still high on adrenaline when she and Ranger Roy followed Congressman Delgado into his downtown Laredo office situated on the north bank of the Rio Grande. The receptionist took one look at the blood on her suit and jumped up.
"Mrs. Bonner-are you okay?"
"I'm fine."
She was more than fine. She was a nurse again. At least for a day.
"She saved a boy's life," the congressman said.
"The doctor saved his life. I helped."
"You were amazing. Awesome, as the young people say. It was very exciting-would the boy live or die?"
"What boy?" the receptionist asked.
"Mexican boy," the congressman said. "He works for a cartel, probably Los Muertos. The federales shot him. They could not take him to a hospital, so they brought him to the clinic. Jesse and Mrs. Bonner, they opened the boy's chest right there in the clinic-oh, Claudia, you should have seen all the blood. Yes, it was quite a day."
Ranger Roy's eyes had lit up at the sight of the congressman's pretty receptionist. So, like a good mother, Lindsay left her son to his awkward attempts at romance. She followed the congressman into his office. They had come back to retrieve their overnight bags. The state jet would be at the airport in an hour, and she would be back in the Governor's Mansion in two. Back in her prison, as if she had been given a twenty-four-hour furlough. She had escaped for a day and remembered how much she missed her old life. She had helped save a boy's life.
"Why would he work for a drug cartel?"
The congressman gestured her to the floor-to-ceiling window facing Mexico.
"Because on that side of the river, there is no one else to work for. The two main sources of income for Mexicans are money sent home by relatives working in the U.S. and drug money. The sad truth is, Mrs. Bonner, the Mexican economy would collapse without drug money. Even here in Laredo and other border towns on our side, the economy is driven by drug money. The cartel lieutenants, they pay cash to buy big homes over here because the neighborhoods are safer and the schools are better. They raise their families and coach their kids' soccer teams in Laredo and commute each day to work in Nuevo Laredo."
"They're here, in America?"
"Oh, yes. They are here, the money is here, and so the corruption is here, too. The cartels bribe law officers on this side to look the other way when shipments cross the river. And with such money comes violence. It will be here, too. And it will change our lives, just as it has changed theirs."
He flipped through newspaper clippings on his desk.
"Twenty men killed in Acapulco… seventy-two in Hidalgo… one hundred sixty in Durango… one hundred eighty in San Fernando… They set fire to a casino in Matamoros and killed fifty-two. They murdered twenty-two journalists and ten mayors last year and the leading candidate for governor of the state of Tamaulipas, which includes Nuevo Laredo. They hang people from overpasses-imagine driving the interstate through Austin and seeing bodies swinging in the wind. We do not do that sort of thing in America. But in Mexico, governors, mayors, judges, prosecutors, police chiefs, they all get killed. The last chief in Nuevo Laredo was killed the same day he started. And just last week, guards at the state prison in Nuevo Laredo opened the gates and allowed the prisoners to walk out."
"Why?"
" Plata o plomo. Silver or lead. The cartels tell politicians and police they must take the money or they will take a bullet. They pay one hundred million dollars in bribes every month… and they kill a thousand people every month." He shrugged. "At least in Mexico it is easy to know which politicians took the money."
"How?"
"They are still alive."
He gestured south across the river.
"The cartels engage in street battles in broad daylight. The city posts alerts on Facebook and tweets on Twitter to warn the citizens, and the schools have shootout drills to teach the students to lie on the floor until the gunfire stops, just as we once had nuclear bomb drills in our schools. Imagine if there were running gun battles in downtown Austin or Houston or Dallas every day-that is what Mexicans in Nuevo Laredo live with. Because of us. Would we live with that because of them? What if today the mayor of Denver were assassinated and tomorrow the governor of Oklahoma and the next day the police chief in Los Angeles? And all by Islamic terrorists? What if the Saudis were sending thirty billion dollars each year to those terrorists, which they used to kill forty thousand Americans the last four years? We went to war over three thousand American deaths. But that is exactly what we are doing to Mexico. Each year we send thirty billion dollars to the cartels for illegal drugs. And they are terrorizing Mexico-with our money. And our guns."
He waved a hand up and down the river.
"Four thousand gun shops line the Texas side of the river, from Brownsville to El Paso. Sixty thousand guns in Mexico have been traced back to U.S. dealers, guns that killed Mexicans."
"Why doesn't our government stop it?"
"The gun lobby is very strong, Mrs. Bonner. The Congress, we cannot even ban the assault weapons. Gunrunners pay straw purchasers to buy ten, twenty AK-47s at one time-the gun shops know those guns are going to the cartels. Obama proposed to ban such multiple purchases, but the gun lobby scared him off."
"He didn't stand up to them?"
"He wants to be reelected." The congressman exhaled. "We arm and fund the cartels, but we blame the Mexicans for the violence on the border. Just as we blame the illegal Mexican immigrants for all that is wrong in America, even though we are to blame for much that is wrong in Mexico. But to blame is easier than to accept responsibility."
"I thought the cartels were fighting each other?"
"Yes, they are fighting for the right to sell dope to the gringos. If we would stop buying their drugs, the violence on the border would end. Mexicans would live in peace-and in Mexico. The best way to stop illegal immigration is to stop the drug trade. But the flow of drugs across the border is relentless, like the wind."
He pointed down at the bridge spanning the river.
"That is International Bridge Number One. Interstate 35 begins right there at the bridge and ends at the Canadian border. That is the drug super-highway. Half of all drugs smuggled into the U.S. t
ravel up I-35. That is what the cartels in Nuevo Laredo fight for, and that is what Mexicans die for. What that boy today almost died for."
"You said he worked for a cartel?"
"Yes. Most likely Los Muertos. "
"The dead."
"It is the most powerful cartel in Nuevo Laredo. And El Diablo is the most dangerous drug lord in all of Mexico."
The congressman now motioned at the Mexican side of the Rio Grande.
"See the white building there, and the tall wall, just across the river? That is El Diablo's compound. He is young, only forty-six, handsome and quite charismatic, something of an icon among his people. He takes money from the rich gringos and gives to the poor Mexicans, like Robin Hood. Or perhaps Pancho Villa. He is the de facto government in Nuevo Laredo. He funds everything-schools, hospitals, the church…"
"The church takes drug money?"
"Everyone in Mexico takes drug money."
"Why?"
"Because it is the only money in Mexico. El Diablo, he gives away one billion dollars each year. The Justice Department labels him an international criminal and puts a ten-million-dollar bounty on his head, but the people of Nuevo Laredo, they view him as a hero. He is beloved by his people. They say he is an honorable man."
"A drug lord?"
"Or he was… until we killed his wife."
"We?"
"FBI, CIA, DEA… who knows?"
"How?"
"By mistake. Five years ago, they had the surveillance on his compound, and they thought it was him in the caravan, so they tried to kill him. Only they killed her."
The congressman blew out a breath.
"They say it changed him."
"In what way?"
"Before he was just a businessman, selling drugs to Americans just as we sell weapons to the world. He did not take our attempts to kill him personally. He understood it was just business. But after his wife, that is when he became El Diablo."
Lindsay Bonner stared south across the Rio Grande at the white compound.
"The devil."
Enrique de la Garza stared at the woman's image on the seventy-two-inch flat-screen television mounted on the wall of his office in the white compound on the south bank of the river. The high-definition made her seem to be standing so close to him that he could almost inhale her scent. Her creamy smooth skin, her sensual green eyes, and most of all, her wild red hair. He liked the red hair on an Anglo woman. And she was a very alluring woman, the governor's wife.
"Counting all residents of Texas will determine the future of Texas," she was saying on the television. "And the future of the border."
The Laredo station had interviewed her that morning in Congressman Delgado's office just across the river from Enrique's compound. She was in town to encourage Mexicanos in the colonias to complete the census reports. Of course, she would not venture into the filthy colonias herself; she was just a pretty face to attract the media.
A very pretty face.
He picked up the high-powered binoculars from his desk and walked to the bulletproof plate glass wall facing north and peered across the river at the top floor of the building in Laredo where the congressman kept his office. Was she still there? Just a few hundred feet away from him? He would like very much to meet her, the governor's wife.
"Mr. de la Garza, you still there?"
The voice on the speakerphone brought Enrique back to the moment. He dropped the binoculars from his eyes-but not before noticing the two Border Patrol agents down on the far riverbank, peering through binoculars at him-then replaced the binoculars on his desk and picked up the remote; he pointed it at the screen and froze the frame on the image of the governor's wife. He then said to his New York broker on the phone, "Yes, Senor Richey, I am still here. Waiting for an answer."
"I gave you an answer."
"I am waiting for a better answer."
Enrique's spacious office occupied the fourth floor on the north side of the compound, which was built around a courtyard with a pool. He walked to the courtyard side and gazed down at the pool, where Carmelita, his ten-year-old daughter, sat on a chaise in her school uniform and texted on her iPhone, and Julio, her seventeen-year-old brother, played the grand piano. He opened the louvered windows slightly to allow the music in… ah, Bach. Enrique straightened the Monet on the wall then picked up the gold-plated AK-47 from the credenza.
"Mr. de la Garza," the voice on the speakerphone said, "I told you. The subprime market tanked. We didn't see it coming."
"Then why did your firm bet that it would tank? You put one billion dollars of my money in subprime mortgages, and then your firm bet against those same subprime mortgages, did you not? Is that an honorable way to conduct business?"
" Honorable? " His broker chuckled. "No, no, no, we don't do honorable on Wall Street. We do 'legal and illegal,' at least some of the time. And our actions in this instance were completely legal, according to our legal department."
"Perhaps. But not very wise. You bet against me and now my account is worth half its original value."
"Well, I had nothing to do with that. I'm not responsible for what our trading division-"
" Senor Richey, I did not amass a seven-billion-dollar fortune by allowing others to act dishonorably toward me."
Enrique slid open the sliding-glass door and stepped out onto the balcony overhanging the Rio Bravo del Norte, what the gringos call the Rio Grande. He inhaled the lovely spring day then pointed the AK-47 down at the Border Patrol agents standing on the other side of the river next to their green-and-white vehicle parked on the river road and pulled the trigger. The bullets splashed into the water just in front of the agents. They dove behind their vehicle. He emptied the clip. He was not trying to hit them, just to make a point.
But one agent did not appreciate Enrique's point.
He walked to the rear of his vehicle and opened the tailgate. He emerged with a shoulder-mounted grenade launcher. He aimed it toward Enrique, but the other agent grabbed the weapon. The two agents got into a heated argument. Apparently, the Border Patrol frowned on its agents firing missiles into Mexico.
Which amused Enrique de la Garza.
He stepped back inside and heard a frantic voice on the speakerphone: "What's happening? Is that gunfire?"
Enrique's office door opened, and Hector Garcia, his second-in-command, entered with a bound-and-gagged man in tow. Julio followed, albeit reluctantly.
"Excuse me one moment, Senor Richey," Enrique said to the speakerphone. "I must terminate an employee."
Enrique placed the AK-47 on his desk then stepped to the far wall and removed from a rack his prized four-foot-long handcrafted machete with the razor-sharp carbon steel black blade and the engraved mahogany handle. The employee's eyes got wide, and he tried to scream, but only a muffled sound came from his gagged mouth. Enrique and Julio followed Hector as he pulled the employee out onto the balcony and over to the railing then pushed his head down. But the employee struggled against Hector.
"Remove the gag," Enrique said.
Hector removed the gag.
"Felipe, look at me."
He turned his face to Enrique. Felipe Pena was only twenty-two, but he had lived a full life. A full, mean, cruel life. Four years before, Enrique had taken the boy into the cartel, hoping to save his soul. But it was not to be.
"You came to me, did you not?"
Felipe nodded.
"You swore allegiance to God, to me, and to the honor code, did you not?"
Another nod.
"You understood that violating the code is a crime punishable by death, did you not?"
Another nod.
"And what does the code state? Please tell me, Felipe Pena."
As if reading from the scripture: "We do not kill women, children, or innocents. We do not sell the drugs to Mexicanos, only to gringos. We do not ourselves use the drugs. We tithe twenty percent to charity and church."
"Now, Felipe, have you lived your life by the code?"
<
br /> He pondered a moment, then his shoulders slumped.
"No, jefe."
"Did you use the drugs?"
"Yes."
"Did you sell the drugs to Mexicanos? "
"Yes."
"Did you kill an innocent?"
"Yes."
"A ten-year-old girl you raped?"
"Yes."
"Why? Why, Felipe Pena?"
The boy now cried.
" Jefe, it was the drugs."
Enrique shook his head and sighed.
"The drugs. That is why we do not ourselves use the drugs we sell to the gringos. It is a filthy habit that blackens the soul with hate and cruelty, that does not allow one to live an honorable life. Felipe, if you were a soldado with another cartel, I would send Hector to put a bullet in your brain. But you are my soldado, you are my responsibility, your acts are my acts… so I must personally dispense justice to you. That child's parents have demanded justice, and I must give them justice. They look to me for justice because there is no other justice in Nuevo Laredo. Only me, Enrique de la Garza. I am the law in Nuevo Laredo. Felipe, I too have a ten-year-old child. If you raped and killed my Carmelita, would I not demand justice? If a man raped and killed your child, would you not demand justice?"
"Yes, I would."
"Yes, Felipe, you would. You would demand justice. And I would give you justice. Now you must give justice to that child's parents."
Enrique de la Garza now rendered his judgment.
"Felipe Pena, you have not lived your life with honor-will you now die with honor?"
He blinked hard to clear his eyes of the tears, then he stood tall.
"Yes, jefe, I will."
Felipe turned back, bent his head over the railing, and awaited his fate with honor.
"Felipe, would you like to pray?"
