Cartel Wives

by Mia Flores

  “I’m just kidding,” he said to his kidnapper. “I know you were just doing your job.”

  Then he took his hand and shook it. The kid gratefully hugged him, happy to still be breathing, while the entire room burst into laughter.

  I was shocked, but I stomached it. I don’t know why someone would ever want to hug their kidnapper, but I realized it was in keeping with who Peter was. He could be upset one minute and totally forgiving the next.

  I looked over at Mia, though, and she wasn’t half as sympathetic. She had fire in her eyes. I thought to myself, Seeing those twenty sicarios and their guns is horrifying to her. Worse than that, watching her husband hug his kidnapper is dredging up memories of the worst time in her life.

  I decided to do my best to console her.

  “These guys are professional hitmen, Mia,” I said as I pulled her into a hug. “What he did to Peter wasn’t personal.”

  “I know, I know,” she said. “But we can’t be living like this.”

  I paused and held her tighter. “I think about that every day.”

  Mia

  Soon after Olivia and I walked out of the house and pulled ourselves together, we learned from our husbands what was happening.

  Apparently, Chapo had discovered from his surveillance that Pablo was back in his hometown near San Juan. Around Christmastime, there were these big carnivals called ferias that went on for weeks. Entire families, whole towns, would go out to them and drink and listen to music all night. Chapo was positive that Pablo would be there. The ferias were all about pride and showing how much money you were worth. If you were Uncle Pablo, it wasn’t the kind of event you’d ever dream of missing.

  Olivia

  Still angry about Pablo skipping out on a meeting with him and eager to collect his debt, Chapo planned to send some sicarios to kidnap Pablo and his two sons right in front of everyone, right there at the ferias. Pablo was his enemy, and Chapo wanted to send him a clear message: don’t mess with the boss. The operation would be headed up by none other than Rambo.

  When Junior and Peter found out, they felt hurt and upset. Regardless of what Pablo had put them through, they never wished harm on anyone.

  “His sons have nothing to do with it,” they said.

  Rambo responded, “I’m just following orders from Señor.”

  Less than three days later, the operation was complete. Chapo’s men snatched Pablo and his sons at the ferias, holding them hostage and doing God knows what to them.

  Mia

  We didn’t hear anything for more than ten days after that. The phone went silent, and we thought for sure that our father-in-law and his baby were both dead.

  Then the kidnapper, El Comandante, called. When Peter answered the phone, it was clear that the Old Man wasn’t giving him orders anymore. The kidnapper was practically a pussycat.

  “I’ve heard so many great things about you, Mr. Flores,” he said. “And I’m sorry this all happened. Because of that, we only want $2 million now. Give that to me, and I’ll let your father and his son go.”

  Peter was furious. “Don’t fuck with me. I’m not playing with you, so don’t play with me. Bring my father and his son back now.” He slammed down his phone so hard I thought he’d broken it.

  The kidnapper called right back.

  “I’ll take a million,” he said.

  Peter looked at Junior, and together, they agreed. Even though Chapo gave them a direct order not to pay one penny, they had to do what was best for their family. After all, Chapo hadn’t been thinking of them. He had his own agenda.

  “Please drop the money in the black Ford Explorer at the McDonald’s on 54th and Pulaski.”

  Peter paused with his mouth wide open. “In Chicago?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you are working for Pablo. No one else would ask for a drop off in our city.”

  “Yes,” the kidnapper said, ratting out Pablo without even a thought. Then, things got weird when he continued. “But I’m actually a Mexican federal agent, and this is my side job. I’d much rather work for you and your brother.”

  Peter hung up. He didn’t even give him the dignity of an answer. In his mind, kidnappers are the lowest of the low, the toilet scrubbers and garbage men for the cartels. They’re just thieves, and thieves would never work for them.

  People in this world will do anything for position, I thought. It’s more than about money. It’s about selfish power.

  Olivia

  The day after Peter and Junior had the ransom dropped in Chicago, their dad and his little boy came home. It had been a brutally long three weeks, and every horrible minute showed on my father-in-law’s face. When Junior first saw him, he didn’t look much different than Peter had after his kidnapping; his hair was long and unwashed, and he was covered in bruises.

  “They never let me or the baby go hungry,” he told us. “And they never laid a finger on him.”

  But that wasn’t much relief. The little boy couldn’t stop crying, and he’d been having nightmares. He would for a long, long time.

  Mia

  Peter and Junior never saw Pablo again. After Rambo kidnapped him and his sons, Pablo settled his debt to Chapo by signing over $10 million in properties. Rambo then released his sons, but under Chapo’s order, he executed Pablo.

  The lesson was that no one disrespects the boss. Ever.

  CHAPTER 14

  The Peak of Their Careers

  Olivia

  Junior and Peter’s peak year was 2006. By early that winter, their business had started growing faster than they ever imagined, and they were Sinaloa’s and the BLO’s golden boys.

  One of the main reasons it happened was because they took advantage of opportunities and connections that no one else had. Chapo and El Mayo were sending Junior and Peter four hundred kilos, minimum, every five days, which was unheard of. Most months they averaged selling two to three thousand kilos, but one time they broke the record and sold two tons in ten days. In Chicago, they’d sold one to two thousand kilos a month.

  As for prices, they typically paid $15,000 a kilo. On each load, the cartels allowed them to buy 10 percent at cost as an incentive, which was $10,000 per kilo. This was just insane; the cartels could mark up anything they wanted to, but for Peter and Junior, they actually gave them a steep discount. Chapo and Mayo insisted on sending them twenty tons of weed, but my husband and brother-in-law didn’t want to sell it because the weed was too bulky and smelled too much. Unfortunately, when Chapo’s the boss you just can’t say no, so they had to do it.

  After everything was paid off, they started making $5–7 million a month on average. In Chicago, they’d been making half that, like $2–3 million after expenses. They could have made more money, but they were giving their wholesalers the cheapest prices because they wanted to help them grow. The wholesalers were not only a big asset; they were their friends and not just guys they did business with, so Junior and Peter knew that if they made them happy, it was good business all around. Plus, wholesalers lost a lot through raids, seizures, and theft, so not having hefty price tags meant they could afford to take losses and still be able to make payments.

  El Mayo told Junior that one of his guys once complained about their prices. The man had said, “The cuates [twins] are selling the kilos too cheap in Chicago! Please tell them to stop giving them away because they’re messing up my money.”

  Junior got nervous. He thought Mayo was going to start regulating his prices. Instead, Mayo laughed and brushed the guy off. “Whatever the Flores brothers want to make is their business,” he said.

  Junior joked, “You tell him that the next time he wants to move work in our city, he needs to ask us for permission.”

  People might as well have because, believe me, the way Junior and Peter tackled different parts of their enterprise, business wasn’t just good, it was great.

  Mia

  Peter excelled at running the US-based details. The numbers, the logistics, and the ins and
outs of who needed what and when made his brain light up. I’ve never seen anyone roll calls like he did. One cell phone would ring, and he’d bark some orders about moving a shipment of cocaine from here to there, then another would ring, and he’d hang up and work out some numbers on another call. There were no days off.

  He’d become more serious and withdrawn emotionally after his kidnapping, so focusing on straight business, nose to the grindstone, actually seemed to provide some relief for him. He felt like he’d been handed so much responsibility when they hooked up with the cartels that there was no room for error, and he became 100 percent pure perfectionist. He and Junior had taken too many losses and dealt with too much heartache and stress, so all they wanted to do was be great at what they did and never fuck anything up. They aimed to be the best traffickers ever, and, in 2006, they were on their way to achieving that goal.

  Olivia

  While Peter was more on the logistics side, Junior excelled at the personal side. Peter used to call Junior a kissass because of the way he handled their suppliers, customers, and associates. He’d take them out, entertain them, and make them feel really special, and sure, it seemed a little excessive sometimes, but they loved it. Junior’s a real people person. He enjoyed talking about stuff outside of business, which made everybody warm up to him fast.

  He spent so much time beefing up their relationships and connections, but it wasn’t to the exclusion of everything else. He also set up their infrastructure in Culiacán, Mexico City, Juárez, Guadalajara, Mexicali, and Toluca, which meant we were traveling nonstop. He had to get stash houses, warehouses, workers, and put together businesses that could serve as fronts. When these things were in place, he had to negotiate for a specific contract with El Chapo, El Mayo, or Arturo Beltrán for a specific amount of coke, usually three or four tons set at a fixed price. If the street value went up or down, there was no renegotiating.

  Even though they were still receiving shipments for the bosses, they also worked for themselves. In Chicago, their wholesale price for a kilo was $18,000, but they were getting it at $15,000. That’s a $3,000 profit on each one. But in LA, their cost was $12,000. Realizing they could double their profits if they relocated their shipments to LA, they decided to start their own route. Junior set up an infrastructure there, with stash houses, stash cars, warehouses, and workers, while Peter set up the routes, trailers, and drivers.

  Mia

  When the contracts were settled with the cartels, Peter would negotiate prices with his wholesalers. Then, it was time for things to move. Junior would fly wherever the cartel’s shipments had landed to make sure the cocaine was quality grade. Once everything checked out okay, Peter would coordinate with Junior and make sure all his drivers were in place, with a deposit payment in hand.

  Junior would then pay the fleteros (independent contractors who move shipments of drugs to various locations) to pack up the commercial buses that held the stashes. Junior would call his contact person to clear all the military checkpoints so the buses could make it safely to the border. They paid $50,000 each month for this luxury.

  Before they actually drove into California, Junior would have their workers unload the buses in Mexicali. Then, he’d pay cruceros, who are independent smugglers, to jump the work across the border using underground tunnels, cars with fast passes that allowed them to drive into Mexico without being checked, or however else they saw fit. Later, when they got access to La Puerca’s tunnels, they eliminated the cruceros and began using their own people.

  When the shipments made it to LA and a deposit was paid, Junior’s employees would load the drugs into SUVs with stash compartments and take them to various stash houses. There, different workers would clean the bricks of kilos, repackage them, and vacuum seal them.

  Then Junior’s workers would take the kilos to a warehouse and wait for the drivers that Peter would send. Employees would load up the tractor-trailers with kilos, and then Peter would send his drivers to Cincinnati, Columbus, DC, Philly, New York, Detroit, and their main hub, Chicago. Peter was meticulous about keeping daily tabs on the drivers; the shipments had to get where they were expected. There could be anywhere from two to four semis on the road at a time, either with drugs or money, but they never carried more than three hundred kilos each.

  Olivia

  Once the shipments arrived at their destination, the same cycle started again. Peter had his workers unload the bricks, take them to the stash houses, count them, and keep inventory on them. They would never keep more than two to three hundred kilos or $5–7 million at a time in a single location, and they nicknamed every stash house, warehouse, courier, and wholesaler so that if the feds were listening they’d have no idea what and who they were talking about. For example, if there was a 7-Eleven nearby, they’d call a stash house “the 7-Eleven.”

  Then, he’d serve his wholesalers, most of the time on the same day, and they’d dole out the bricks to their dealers.

  Mia

  The last part of the trafficking equation concerned money. Peter got the couriers in each city to collect cash from the wholesalers, and his tractor-trailer drivers would take it to their main hub in Chicago. Then, his couriers would carry it to their stash houses. Peter would have them sort through the bills using money counters, bundle it up in certain denominations, package it, vacuum seal it, and transport it to the tractor-trailer drivers. His workers would be up all night counting while his couriers were delivering drugs to his wholesalers, and he wouldn’t sleep till they all got home. It wasn’t just that he wanted to make sure everything was in order; he needed to be sure his guys were safe. They were counting millions of dollars, so it wouldn’t take an hour. They’d be working till four a.m., so he and I wouldn’t go to bed till five or six.

  He was tired every day, but nothing ever came before his employees. They needed to know they were more valuable than any amount of money or drugs.

  Olivia

  With the money all loaded up, the semis would get back on the road and drive to LA, where Junior’s workers would hand the cash to the same person they picked up the work from. The cash would make its way across the border then on a commercial bus to Mexico City or Culiacán, and once it was there, Junior would have his employees take inventory of the packaged money and make sure it was accounted for. Junior would deposit it immediately because there was no such thing as consignment in Mexico, ever. All work at cost had to be paid upfront.

  But if Junior negotiated a contract in LA or Chicago, they would have their workers unload the shipments at their warehouses, and then deposit the money in either city. The money always had to be paid in the city where they received the shipment.

  Moving money was actually worse than moving drugs, and taking care of it was a job in and of itself. Junior and Peter served the wholesalers, who served the drug dealers, all the way down the line until someone reached the little guys on the street corners who were collecting ones and fives from dope fiends. People imagine the cash involved in drug trafficking is like a scene in the movies, when one person hands another a suitcase full of clean, crispy $100 bills, all tied up and positioned in neat rows. It’s not like that. You have a hell of a lot of small bills on your hands, and you’ve got to figure out what to do with them.

  Sometimes, these bills aren’t just a headache, they’re a real problem.

  Once, Junior went to see Chapo, and Olivares became furious with him about the small bills they’d given him.

  “You turned in $1.6 million in ones and fives!” he yelled. “That money filled up a whole fucking shipping container. You better come pick them up right now because I’m not accepting your bullshit money as payment. If you don’t get it fast, I’ll burn it all.”

  Junior was stunned, but he didn’t want to show it. Instead, he looked at Olivares and Chapo and leveled with them. “We have to pick up $6–7 million just to get $1 million in hundreds. We didn’t have the time to change the rest into larger bills. My brother’s depositing faster than the workers
can run through the money and package it. Since you needed to transport the money quickly to Mexico, we had to do it this way.”

  Chapo thought for a minute, then nodded his head. He understood that Junior was doing his best. “Let it go, Olivares,” he said. “Let it go.”

  Olivares was beyond upset, but Chapo was the boss, and his order was going to stand.

  Mia

  While Peter took control of the ledgers and the accounting in meticulous detail, he and Junior took equal responsibility for hiring and training employees. As far as their people were concerned, they were one voice, and, together, they always stressed one thing: their workers should act, not think. “Leave the thinking up to us,” they’d say, knowing there was no room for error.

  Their employees were their eyes and their ears, and they maintained close relationships with every one of them. Peter and Junior always made sure they knew that they were not replaceable, and they would never choose money over them. Because of the respect Junior and Peter showed them, their workers would do anything for them—or us—at any given moment.

  Olivia

  I remember one time when Junior’s associate and close friend Paco picked us up from the airport in Culiacán. Even though we had new identities, airports were always nerve-wracking, especially that day. As soon as we stepped off the plane and walked past the gate, I could see the federal police. They were walking quickly toward us, looking right at Junior. My heart dropped.

  Oh, God, I thought. This is it. He’s going to jail. They’re going to drag him away.