THE ALCATRAZ OPTION

by Jay Begler

  Chula always remembered this part of the conversation with great clarity. It was almost as if Guzman was being condescending. “Look, Don, one way or the other, the Cartel will own the ranch. We have many people who can run it, but I think with your intelligence you would be the best person for the job.”

  “And if I say no?”

  “That would be unfortunate Don, since you’d know about our plans for the ranch and we couldn’t permit that if you get my drift. You’ve seen the Godfather. It’s one of my favorite movies. Just tell your wife I made you an offer you couldn’t refuse, no you dare not refuse. Work for us, make millions and stay alive.” He emphasized, “Stay alive.”

  Chula replied, “Understood,” but thought, “What a fucking monster. He doesn’t give a shit for anyone but himself.” He felt like saying, “So just like that you take over my life regardless of the consequences for me,” but knew that since Guzman had no moral compass he would have replied, “That’s right.” Chula realized that he had little choice and that his life was about to change irrevocably. He nodded his head to indicate his acceptance while thinking, “How the hell am I going to explain this to Adrianna?”

  “Good. I’ll have someone contact you in a few days.”

  Guzman said, “Before I go, I have a question. Why were you so helpful to us from the very start?”

  “I thought that if you didn’t trust me immediately, you’d probably kill us.”

  “Probably so.” Guzman replied.

  A week later, Chula met in Mexico City with some higher-ups with the Cartel and accepted the offer. Three weeks later, a swarm of Federales and police re-captured El Chapo, but his Sinaloa Cartel did not skip a beat. A few months later, Chula integrated into the Cartel and supervised the cattle drives to Texas with cattle bearing kilos of heroin. Within two years, his herd had grown to 10,000 heads, his acreage tripled, and he was running other major operations of the Cartel on his ranch. Five years later he became the head of the Cartel and began the unification process Guzman only dreamt about.

  May 20, 2030 – Morningside Heights, Manhattan

  Hector Morales and three of his fellow graduate students were drinking beer and commiserating in a local hangout near Columbia University. The following day they would receive MBAs from the University’s School of Business and set off on their life’s’ paths. It was long into the evening and each of them was predicting their future. His three friends got their short-term predictions right; that part was simple. When it was Morales’ turn, not intending to be facetious, but thinking it to be inevitable, he said: “I plan to have a secure and very dull life running my family’s bank in Mexico City.”

  The spontaneous response from his friends was a series of mock boos. His closest friend at school, Laura Gold, destined many years later to become head of the Fed, intervened.

  “No way, Hector. Impossible! We all took a vote, and it was unanimous. We voted you as most likely to succeed.”

  Morales took a long swig of beer, laughed and replied, “Well if that’s true, it would seem that your future lives will not be very exciting.”

  Ironically, however, their prediction came true. Within ten years of his graduation, Morales would be working for Chula as a high functioning member of the “Aztec Cartel,” renamed from Sinaloa because it represented a consolidation of most of the major cartels in Mexico. In its merged form, Aztec was the largest and most powerful criminal enterprise in history. Then, at 39, Morales succeeded Chula and became the head of the Cartel. In this position, his wealth and power dwarfed that of Guzman. Ultimately, Morales would be responsible for the worst drug epidemic in American history, so severe that the CDC characterized it as the most impactful health crisis since Covid-19. The consequence of the epidemic, prison overcrowding of unimaginable proportions, would lead to an Orwellian medical procedure performed on prison inmates and known as the “Alcatraz Option,” so named because Alcatraz, refurbished and enlarged to accommodate a daily influx of new prisoners, was the first prison in the country to offer the Option.

  There is little doubt that when Morales stepped up to receive his diploma the following day and waived to his proud parents, relatives, and friends, the concept of him becoming a drug lord would have been as implausible to them as Morales sprouting wings and flying over rooftops. How could they possibly know in that moment of joy that the young man walking across the stage to receive his diploma, whom they loved and admired so much, had all the makings of a sociopath?

  PART ONE

  —

  The Overwhelming Obsession of

  Hector Morales

  One

  •

  The Illusory Perfect Boy

  Had someone predicted Morales’ destiny to his parents, they would have dismissed it as an absurdity and, from their vantage point, with good reason. For one thing, his pedigree set him far apart from the reigning Mexican drug lords. Unlike those thugs, Morales was, as the cliché goes, “born with a silver spoon in his mouth;” some would say a gold spoon. The Morales family were prosperous bankers and Mexican socialites who traced their linage back to Spanish nobility. Morales’ father, Angel, was the chairman of Banco Pacifica, a bank founded many decades earlier by his great grandfather. It was one of the few remaining independent banks in Mexico. His mother, Sophie, a gifted violinist who once played for the Mexican Philharmonic, was the head of the music department at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico and a moving force behind several important charities. Their photographs frequently appeared on the society pages of local newspapers and magazines.

  From the very beginning, his family assumed that Morales would eventually enter their banking business. At Morales’ elaborate first birthday party, Angel, offering a toast to his son, said, “To my replacement at the bank.” Even as a youngster, Morales took it for granted that he would be a banker. Among his early childhood memories were those of his father taking him to the bank to help him “count money” and of friendly bank clerks saying respectfully to the young boy in shorts sitting in front of small stacks of change, “Good afternoon, Mr. Morales.”

  When he was eleven, Morales and his mother gave a violin recital in one of the larger salons of the Palacio de Bellas Artes. At its conclusion, amidst well deserved praise and congratulations, a handsome and distinguished looking man named Antonio Rodriguez, the first violinist for the Philharmonic, approached them. Rodriguez was so pre-eminent that everyone called him “Maestro.” The Maestro said in all seriousness that he expected that someday Morales would play for the Philharmonic. His assessment was accurate. Morales was an exceptionally talented violinist with skills just short of a violin prodigy. He continued to play as a drug lord and in this position purchased a 1697 Molitor Stradivarius, alleged to have been owned by Napoleon Bonaparte, for a record $4.5 million out of what he called “petty cash.” There were rumors that he would often play the violin while plotting the murder of a rival. He dismissed these with a chuckle and say “I would never let a little thing like murder interfere with my music.”

  Young Morales responded to the Maestro respectfully, and to the delight of his parents, explained that while he loved the violin, banking was his future. That night as they read in bed, Angel said to Sophie, “He is such a good boy.” She corrected him, “He is a perfect boy.” Angel had to agree.

  In the quiet of their bedroom, Sophie and Angel were reveling in that rare sweet moment parents have when their child makes them proud and when his momentary glory washes back to them. Their happy and optimistic conclusion about Morales, however, rested upon the person he wanted them to see. Had they been aware of his well-hidden dark side, they would have realized that he was far from perfect. If they had a magic crystal ball through which they could have watched him on a daily basis, they would have been horrified and broken hearted beyond repair. They might have even called him a “monster,” but they remained blissfully unaware of what he really was, a young man without a conscience, best characterized as “a sociopath in the making.” />
  Morales’ first theft occurred when he was ten. Like significant firsts in people’s lives, Morales always remembered the moment he made his choice. There was no weighing of pros or cons or the moral consequences of his act or even the necessity to do it. Sitting alone in his room, he stopped what he was doing, found his mother’ purse in the living room and removed just enough cash to avoid suspicion. She always had about 10,000 pesos on hand and was a tad careless about how she handled and accounted for her money. Recalling the event to one of directors of the Cartel, he said, “I don’t know what prompted me to do it. I just stole from my mother, giving no thought to it.” Morales continued his petty thefts whenever he had reason to do so, expanding his victims to his friends’ parents.

  Over time, his misdeeds escalated. When he was in the eighth grade, to avenge his class for being punished by a demanding teacher, Morales put three drops of sewer water into her coffee. The teacher, infected with amoebic dysentery, never returned. When he was fourteen Morales caused the accidental death of a young American after he had made anti-Mexican racial slurs. Being smart and cunning, he was never a suspect for the crimes he committed. He realized too that the use of deceit to manipulate people worked to his advantage, and honed his skills in this arena to the point where his outsized ego led him to conclude as a teenager that he was a “master manipulator.”

  Morales understood that his crimes were not only wrong, but often had dire consequences for his victims. He didn’t particularly care, however. Guilt was not part of his DNA. At first, being too young to be truly introspective, he didn’t consider that his behavior had serious psychological implications. It was not until Morales was in college and writing a paper on a famous person with an Anti-Social Personality Disorder (“APD”) that he questioned whether he might have this form of pathology.

  In his research he found that most people judged to be APD types were mass murderers like Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer. He read a long psychological profile in the New Yorker about Nikolas Cruz, 19, who years earlier murdered 17 people and who, the author concluded, had all the “markings of a sociopath.” He saw no parallels in himself with these people. Morales found others, however, including Kenneth Lay of the Enron scandal, with whom he could identify. A news article he read described Lay as someone who had an APD and was not only highly successful, but had close relationships, particularly with his wife and family. Lay’s personality appeared to fit the typical APD profile: ice in his veins, self-centered and not caring about the welfare of others.

  Lay as a character fascinated him. The more he studied the life of Ken Lay, particularly his early life as revealed through letters and interviews, the, the more he saw parallels with himself. He found it fascinating that Lay once revealed to a reporter that he could never root for a sports team. This was true of Morales. He couldn’t attach himself to any sports team, nor understand why people rooted for them. Given that virtually everyone he knew was a sports fanatic, he wondered if there was something wrong with himself, but concluded that everyone else was crazy. Psychological profiles described Lay and others, for example Sherlock Holmes, as “high functioning sociopaths.” Morales liked that term and from that point on thought it applicable to him. It gave him a sense of pride.

  Morales was never truly happy. There were momentary senses of satisfaction but they didn’t rise to the level of happiness. He never knew what being happy felt like. Alone, Morales often brooded and felt resentment, and sometime anger, against a host of people and institutions, but he never expressed these to anyone lest they reveal a side of him he wanted to keep secret. He hardly ever laughed unless his laughter was for show. His sense of humor was almost non-existent, and his jokes far and few between.

  Ironically, most everyone who came into contact with Morales liked him, and thought he was a genuinely nice person. He was very generous to his friends, often gifting them with the fruits of his petty thefts, but this was all part of his deceit. With very few exceptions, Morales’ interactions with people were charades, intended to build allies who he could use in some fashion in the future. In one instance when he was careless and rightfully accused of stealing from a new classmate, he had his coalition of bribed friends gang-up on the boy to the point where, under extreme pressure, he withdrew his complaint, and in tears said that he was lying. The school promptly expelled the boy. Soon thereafter, he moved to another city. Morales reacted to this news with a shrug.

  Deep down, Morales had contempt for all of his peers and felt no genuine connection to any of them. He viewed them as inferior to himself and mostly as “spoiled brats.” The only person he truly liked and admired was an older boy named Luis Escobedo, the son of Mariana, the Morales’ cook. No one in the Morales’ household knew her last name. Out of necessity, when Mariana, a single mother, began working for the Morales family, she often had to take eight-year-old Luis with her. Luis and Morales, two years his junior, began playing with each other and quickly became friends. In ways, Luis became the older brother Morales never had. Luis would often refer to Morales as “little brother.”

  Luis took it upon himself to act as Morales’ mentor in the ways of the world. It was Luis who, with the aid of pornographic photographs, explained the facts of life to Morales. Under the guidance of Luis, Morales would have his first gulp of tequila, his first marijuana cigarette and, as a gift from Luis for his fourteenth birthday, sex with a woman named Esmeralda, an older local prostitute who would discount her services for high school boys. Morales later described his mechanical interaction with her, “more like horseback riding than making love.”

  On a hazy afternoon in May just before their respective graduations, Morales from his elite private public school and Luis from a run-down public high school, sat in the bleachers of the high school and shared a joint. Luis, now 18, would graduate in two days, Morales two days after that. He said to Luis, “So Luis, what are you going to do now?”

  “You mean for the summer or for the rest of my life?”

  “Both, I guess.”

  “Well, in a few days, I will be going to Princeton, New Jersey.”

  “What are you doing up there?”

  “A crash course in English. Then, in September, I enter the University.”

  Morales could not imagine that this was true and said, “No, seriously.”

  Luis laughed and said, “Seriously, little brother, look.” With that he took a crumpled envelope out of his pocket and showed him a letter from Princeton’s dean of admissions. Morales never imagined that Luis, the son of his parents’ cook and a dope smoking, tequila drinking, sometimes whoring guy, would go to college, let alone Princeton.

  “I know what you’re thinking, but the fact is we never discussed school itself. Turns out, I’m very smart, and as bad as Mexico High is, and it is terrible, the school has advanced classes for gifted students. I fit right in.”

  “But you never spoke about studying.”

  “I know, but the great thing is I read really fast and have what they call a photographic memory. I never forget a face, though in your case I’ll make an exception.”

  “But how can you afford Princeton?”

  Luis laughed and said, “I have my ways.”

  Morales had his suspicions and asked, “Do you…?

  Luis finished his sentence, “Yes, Little Brother. I sold drugs, and have sold them since I started high school, but now I’m finished.”

  “But, why?”

  “You know how much it costs to go to a place like Princeton. Four years equals about $300,000. I started a nice little business dealing marijuana and then branched out to cocaine. I became known as the go-to guy for cocaine in the Zona Rosa and the supplier to some of your parents’ good friends, but never to your parents. In three years, I put away $350,000 after-tax dollars.”

  Morales was incredulous. “You paid taxes?”

  Luis laughed, “Sure. I’m a law-abiding citizen. On the tax form, where it stated “occupation,” I put ‘pharmaceutical salesman.’ If
I didn’t go to college, I would have ended up working at a low-paying job at a hotel or become a professional dope dealer and probably killed before I was thirty. Here’s the ironic part, it was the drugs that got me accepted. My personal essay was how as the son of a cook had to sell drugs to pay for tuition. That made me so exotic that Princeton accepted me.”

  “So, what are you going to study?”

  “Besides girls and beer? I’m thinking I may want to become a journalist. That’s another thing you don’t know about me, because I never talk about it. I read El Universal, The International Herald Tribune every day, and a magazine called The New Yorker. That one is hard, but it helps me learn English. I like the idea of investigating and writing.”

  “And Hector, what will you do this summer?”

  For a moment, Morales said nothing. “Don’t laugh. I’m going to work on the Don Chula cattle ranch. I’ve been there a few times with my parents for long weekends. It’s a pretty nice place, and Don Chula is a very cool guy. He promised to teach me to shoot and ride, though I’ll also have to shovel horse shit. He’s great friends with my father and my parents talk about his hacienda often.” What Morales didn’t know at the time was that his upstanding father was the banker for Chula’s Cartel, and its chief money launderer.

  Early the following day, he and Luis sat on a bench near Morales’ house, shared a joint and reminisced about their adventures together. That afternoon, Luis would fly to the United States and Morales would leave for Chula’s ranch. It was a poignant moment for them both. They realized that the time they would spend with each other after tonight would never be the same.

  Luis said, “I will miss you, little brother.”

  “And I you,” Morales replied.

  “One last gift, Hector.” He handed Morales a gross of condoms. “For those cowgirls you can make love to, or to the cows if the cowgirls are unavailable. They laughed, then stopped, rose simultaneously, both knowing it was time to go. For the first time, they hugged awkwardly, then turned and went their separate ways. They would remain lifelong friends until a violent night many decades later when each felt betrayed by the other.