by A. T. Grant
Other headlights came into view. The beams played across the mountainside like smouldering fires, momentarily igniting each patch of thin grassland. “Tell them to cut the lights,” Alfredo barked. The sight of a backup vehicle stiffened his resolve. He took a last distasteful look at the shadows around him and shuddered, trying to dismiss a conviction that he was being observed and, possibly, hunted.
“Do it. Do it now,” he spat.
Two men in dark suits glanced towards Gennaro for confirmation then turned back to the car. A door creaked open. There was a muffled cry of pain and protest, followed by a dragging sound. The henchmen ripped open ribbons of duct tape, securing their prisoner’s mouth and feet. Then one took firm hold of two trembling hands and forced them onto the steering wheel. The other wound more tape between each wrist and its rim. All hints of defiance in the man’s eyes had now drowned in deep pools of terror. The trunk slammed and liquid sloshed across upholstery. Gennaro reached over the front passenger seat to release the handbrake, struggled to extract his bulk from the car again, and nodded solemnly.
Alfredo raised his cigarette close to his eyes, the arc of its light trail temporarily obscuring the shining city-scape below. He drew deeply until it was a hard ball of fire and flicked it casually onto the backseat. The fire spread across the fabric, first in one direction, then the other. Wisps of smoke wound inconsequentially upward and out through the open rear windows. The flames took hold, despite a flood of tears, spreading across the ceiling through a soup of acrid black smoke. The bound figure tried frantically to push open the driver’s door with his hip. Then he began a strange, staccato dance of death.
Walking slowly back along the track, Alfredo concentrated upon the approaching headlights. The others assembled cautiously at the rear of the burning car. As they pushed, it began to creep along the path. Gathering its own momentum, it veered across the downward slope, bouncing between the rocks. A trail of flame and sparks shot into the night sky at each collision. Suddenly it was gone, lost beyond the rim of a hidden canyon. For a short while all was still, until a muffled, distant explosion heralded a deeper silence.
Although he couldn’t articulate why, Alfredo’s reverie seemed more real than this cold, surreal country called England. He closed the curtains. A London morning held no further interest. He examined the remaining contents of the minibar, pulling out a Twix and a bottle of water. Back in bed, he poked randomly at the buttons on the remote control in an unsuccessful effort to find a programme that might distract him. Nothing could stop his mind returning, just as he had eventually done on that fateful night, to Mexico.
His older brother, Luis, was out of town, so their father was making a sortie out of semi-retirement on the Caribbean coast, near Cancun. Alfredo hadn’t looked forward to explaining himself to old Paulo. They had met the next morning at a safe house in Juarez, the owner nervously obsequious as he gestured Alfredo from one cluttered but hastily tidied room to another. Two children stared from the top steps of open stairs. The wife prepared drinks in the kitchen in a nervous clatter of glasses. They were led to a small, sparsely furnished office overlooking a whitewashed courtyard full of laundry. Alfredo noticed the large black gate at the back of the yard and the guards placed on either side. Beyond these, parallel lines of smashed or boarded up windows framed an alley that led down to the railroad. There was always an emergency exit.
Don Paulo, as he liked to be called by anyone other than close family, rose stiffly from behind the single desk, placed a slight and trembling hand on each of Alfredo’s shoulders and reached up to kiss his youngest son’s cheeks. Every time Alfredo saw the old man he looked smaller and thinner, despite a tan thicker than his skin.
“Alfredo. Always your brother worries about you and always you give him more to worry about. Your Uncle Felipe, my own little brother, is already in gaol. Why do you have to make the same mistakes?”
Alfredo had not been asked to sit down. Partly because it was unclear where he could sit and partly because he sensed that any further display of familiarity would not be welcomed, he thrust his hands deep into his trouser pockets and did his best to look relaxed. “Hello Papa. How was your journey?”
Paulo frowned at the glib response, took a deep, seemingly painful breath then spoke in a slow, laboured monotone. “Eusabio flew me most of the way. We landed at Rancho Morales. It was good to catch up with that side of the business. It looks like a big harvest and the market is strong now there’s so little heroin out of Colombia. The poppies are healthy: soon there’ll be fields of scarlet, yellow and orange across the mountainsides. The local police chief took us to tea with a couple of the growers - Senor and Senora Barosso, as I recall - proud people, who claim to be Aztec. Everyone seems to be making money. The chief was like an excited child, driving through the dirt in the Range Rover he bought with our money.
“Marcelo told me the product we’re supplying is too good - too strong. Kids keep overdosing and getting us noticed.”
Paulo paused and took a deep breath. He urgently needed to talk to Luis about Marcelo and Barrio Fuerte. “Alfredo, we don’t need product to get us noticed when you’re around.” He gave him a serious and disapproving stare - not the look of mock disapproval with which Alfredo was comfortably familiar.
“Sure,” Paulo mused, “some college kids have died, but it is all part of the plan. A few deaths get us noticed in the right way, because buyers know we’re selling quality goods. It’s a user’s own fault if he’s too stupid not to OD. Anyway, Barrio Fuerte lower the quality for those they know to be hooked. Trash deserves trash and why shouldn’t a few Yankie children die, when our graveyards spill over with a generation of young Mexicans?”
Paulo sat for a few seconds looking at the floor, frail hands on bony knees, fighting to control his anger. “Sit down please, son. There are important things I need to say.”
He gestured towards a thin, whitewashed chair standing in a corner of the room. The seat was barely visible beneath a pile of children’s school books. Alfredo paused to assess this inconsequential evidence of normality. Somehow picking up the books and depositing them on a nearby shelf grew, second by second, into a tiny act of humiliation. His father meant business.
“I know Luis thinks he has to look after you because you’re young and you were your mother’s favourite, but for once he’s wrong. You’re not so young anymore and your mother and I both loved Luis at least as much as you. It’s hard for him. He’s the one who has to coordinate everything and this isn’t as easy as it was in my time. There’s too much traffic, too many different drugs and too many players trying to control what can never really be controlled.”
“But you controlled it, Papa. We’re the biggest family along the border.” Alfredo gave an expansive gesture towards nothing in particular, but the narrow domestic scene made him feel vaguely ridiculous. He dropped his gaze and shuffled uncomfortably on his tiny seat.
“I controlled nothing. It was all a bluff. Luis understands that. You lean on someone here and take a cut there and try to make it look as if you’re the boss, but I’ve spent my whole working life reacting to things I hadn’t planned and didn’t really understand. You just try and make a call that other people think makes sense. Look at the US Government. They know they can never control the drugs trade. It’s part of the fabric of their country. They play the game for the sake of public opinion, winning a battle here and taking an important step there, whilst everywhere else we can do what we want.”
“But you were strong, Papa.” Alfredo instantly regretted using were, as his father scowled.
“Perhaps, but sometimes that means not making violence. It means not settling a score and not killing a man just because you can. You’ve made too many mistakes. It makes us look desperate. It makes us looks like amateurs, like any of the other street hoodlums that infest this town.”
Alfredo reflected upon his father’s words. He
struck out when he was afraid, but his enemies had only multiplied, and this had spawned an increasing sense of foreboding. There was now an edge of desperation to his violence.
Paulo continued. “You think our enemies carry guns and make themselves known to us. Those are bums, like the kid you killed yesterday. Yes, we have enemies. We have other families testing us to see if they can break into our operations, because we’ve got greedy and we’ve got weak. And you’re part of the weakness, Alfredo.”
“Papa, I took care of business last night. Nobody will mess with us now.”
“You took care of nada. You’ve stirred up a hornet’s nest. Why do you think I have to extend my stay in this God-forsaken city? Over the border you’ve created two serious crime scenes for the US Authorities. Our family’s name’s written across both. Have you any idea how pissed off the Americans will be? Why, at least, didn’t you dispose of the guy in Juarez? We drive truck-loads of weapons from the US into Mexico every week. Who would care about a Spik with a bit of blood on him?” Paulo paused to catch his breath and his foul temper.
“Luis can’t sort this out alone. Luckily I still have enough influence here to help him. Otherwise this family would be finished.”
Alfredo remained mute. In all his life it had never occurred to him that his family could be anything other than all-powerful. It was his world; one where you were never held to account.
“I’m sorry, Papa.” He meant it.
“Sorry doesn’t cut it anymore. Luis told you many times never to mix work with pleasure. What were you doing at that night club? What were you doing with Barrio Fuerte? Just because you can make a deal with someone doesn’t mean you can trust them. Gennaro is family to us. He is your Godfather. You put him in danger and two of his best men as well.”
“Marcelo invited me. I thought it would be rude to refuse; that it would be safe because they make so much money from our business.”
Paulo sighed and studied his errant son. How could he have seen so much and be so naive? Under the desk he clasped his hands tightly between his knees. A general dull ache from each joint and a stabbing arthritic pain from a poorly healed, bullet-induced fracture reminded him of how little time he had to repair the damage. Slowly, he began to outline the situation.
“Last night you killed Marcelo’s brother. As you would expect, we have a couple of people high up in their organisation. Gennaro made a call this morning and it was definitely him. We don’t know why he tried to shoot you. The girls you were dancing with were hired hands, presumably meant to distract you. It doesn’t really matter. Barrio Fuerte are dead to us now. We no longer have a way of shifting our product once it’s across the border. Now, all we have on the other side are enemies, ones who’ll almost certainly look to join forces with another family.”
Once again, Alfredo apologised. He had the urge to hug his father, but this had never been an instinct that he could indulge.
“Someone is going to try to kill you, Alfredo. Someone is going to want to demonstrate their strength. You’ve made yourself a target for anyone who wants to make a name. Even the CIA may decide it’s time for a change of family here. If they send someone after you, we may not be able to stop them. If you die, it would be the end of me and of your Uncle Felipe too. If you’re killed then everyone would know we can’t protect our people. You’ll have to go away. That means Europe.” Paulo paused again to snatch more air. “We have a new way of laundering our profits. They go into a sports bicycle manufacturing company near Madrid, which retails mainly in Great Britain. I want you to show a family face in London. As far as the English end of the business is concerned, you’re Spanish, so you’d better work on your Spanish and your English. Check the money is getting through. We’ve someone there to help you forward it to our bank in Texas.”
It was a stupid argument, but it brought Alfredo out of his reverie. Global warming! Why, in the coldest, dampest country he had ever experienced, were people on TV getting angry about global warming? England was incomprehensible. He wanted to throw something at the screen. Instead he stomped into the bathroom. There he cleaned his teeth so hard that blood mixed with the paste and patterned the spittle he projected violently into the basin. Although he knew it was pathetic, he was homesick.
Chapter Nine
Rochas Blancas
Rochas Blancas was a non-descript prison in the midst of equally non-descript rolling scrubland. It was set a few hundred metres outside a small town of the same name, which was built around cattle stockyards and provided a staging post for a railroad meandering its way the few remaining miles to the US border. Beyond its rectangle of whitewashed walls and razor wire stood a scattering of staff accommodation, a visitors’ car park, and a small police station and pound.
Inside the jail, Felipe Contadona watched the sun dipping below the same whitewashed walls, one hand in a back pocket and the other clasping the window grill. Not even an unusually strong odour from the nearby stockyards could pierce his sense of serenity. Felipe knew almost the exact order in which the stars would shortly appear above the faint orange glow of the unseen township. He would greet them as old friends, after several days of blank, rain-sodden skies. The three stars marking Orion’s Belt were his first target, as he had recently acquired a book which mapped the major constellations from his older brother, Paulo. Betelgeuse, the red supergiant star that marked Orion’s left shoulder could easily be traced from this bright marker, and its story was his favourite. Grand though it was, it was a dying star, struggling with the last vespers of fuel to maintain the nuclear reactions that were its only defence against gravity. Tomorrow, or in a million years’ time, it would die and in its death throes turn night into day on Earth and appear like a second sun, even though it was 640 million light years away.
Felipe had only rarely, in all his fifty-seven years, been happier than here in this jail. He occupied a suite of three rooms originally designed for the prison governor. He shared his quarters and its extensive facilities with a relay of unobtrusive minders who took care of every chore. Behind him he could hear one of them laying the table for dinner. The local mayor and the assistant governor were due to dine with him tonight. The news about Alfredo’s misdemeanours, which he had received alongside the book from Paulo, could have been a concern, but he had heard it all before. Only Alfredo’s departure for Europe aroused any sense of disapproval. Felipe had long since learned that, in the end, it all came down to money. Once Felipe had outlined the family’s enhanced concerns about security, the mayor and the governor would demand more cash. But there was always more money for Las Contadonas. There was so much that the greatest problem was what to do with it all, forcing his clan to continually expand into new territory and trade. Money could be found in thick wads of used banknotes in every home the family and its many lieutenants occupied, stuffed into draws, in suitcases under beds, or at the back of kitchen cupboards.
Hearing his guests approaching, Felipe turned to greet them. The two men who entered the room were not those he was expecting. He assessed the situation. Over the shoulders of the bulky intruders he could see two other men guarding the door. His minders were nowhere to be seen. He considered making a dash for the bedroom and the handgun in his bedside cabinet, but he would be stopped within a couple of paces, and the gun had almost certainly been removed anyway. A flush of fear coursed through Felipe as he comprehended the gravity of his situation. To his intense chagrin a warm trickle of urine descended the inside of one leg. His fear was followed in turn by a rising tide of anger, partly in response to this little humiliation and partly as he realised he might never see his nephews again. Although he had experienced liaisons with many women, none had ever produced a child he was prepared to acknowledge. Luis, and then Alfredo, by contrast, had always been close, pushed towards their uncle by the preoccupied, emotionally distant nature of their own father, Paulo. As children, they were eager to hear Felipe’s stories of gran
d adventure and to be spoiled by his extravagant gifts. He remembered the pair squealing with joy as they climbed aboard an electric toy Ferrari and swerved along the drive of the family’s summer mountain retreat, near Chihuahua. It was this image of the boys, perhaps the only people he had ever truly loved, which he would, if necessary, take with him now to the grave.
Felipe focused again on the squat, heavy-jowled hit men. He flicked his tongue around the inside of his dry mouth then spat the resulting shallow phlegm onto the black shiny shoes of the nearest heavy. “Go on then, get it over with.”
He waited for a gun to appear. For a few seconds nothing happened. Then, in a strongly accented growl, the same man spoke.
“This is a message from Xterra.”
Both men were at Felipe’s side, marching him towards the door. Once out onto the corridor he scanned the inside of the prison block, peering over the metal railings to the floor below. Every cell door was closed. The prison was in lockdown, but without the usual shotgun laden, lugubrious guards. All was eerily quiet. Felipe glanced enquiringly at one of those framing the door. With a malicious grin the guard gestured towards one of the men at Felipe’s side. Felipe turned and froze in terror as a gleaming silver knife from his own dining table caught the light. As if in a dream, he felt himself begin to struggle. Despite his years, he was strong and it took three men to turn him around in the narrow corridor and force him back against the bannister. He sweated profusely and strained every sinew to break free, as a large moon face with rotten teeth drew oppressively close to his own. He jerked his head backwards to escape the rancid stench. Instantly the man’s arm was resting on his forehead, arching Felipe backwards over the railings. He felt the knife press against his throat and, for a moment, was relieved by its obvious bluntness. As the pressure grew so did the pain and his increasing shortness of breath. He managed to screw his head to one side, but felt the blade beginning to cut and to track his movement as he did so. He heard a splatter, which could only be his own blood hitting the floor below. At the far end of the lower level stood his friend the Governor, arms folded impassively. He wanted to plead for forgiveness, but his larynx had been destroyed by the crushing force of the blade. Within moments he could not see and there was nothing left but terrible, all-consuming pain. He tried to cry out, but no scream would come: only a long, damp gurgle, as air bubbled up through the mess of blood and tissue in his throat.
