The Cartel

by Don Winslow

  “You like baseball?” Diego asks.

  “It’s okay.”

  “You’re a yanqui,” Diego says. “I thought all yanquis liked baseball.”

  “I’m more of a football guy.”

  “Which kind?”

  “The good kind,” Eddie answered. “The kind where something happens occasionally.”

  He’d rather watch grass grow and die again than sit through a soccer game.

  “How about them ’Boys?” Diego says in English.

  “Something like that.”

  Diego’s man puts a beer in Eddie’s hand.

  The Tecolotes pitcher hangs a curve and the batter connects. It’s a solid hit, but Eddie can tell from the crack of the bat that it don’t have the legs, and it dies in the center fielder’s glove.

  Then Diego asks, “Are you here for yourself, or Chacho?”

  It’s risky. Diego has to know that it was Chacho who killed Mario Soto and the others and caused all this hassle. So Chacho is about as popular as herpes right now. But Eddie’s here to offer Diego his loyalty, so if he acts disloyal to Chacho…

  “Both of us,” Eddie answers.

  Diego takes this in. “And what do you think I can do for you?”

  “We had some trouble in Laredo.”

  “You boys are in the shit,” Diego says. “You should have come to me before blood got spilled. Harder to fix now.”

  But Eddie notices that he left the door open. “Harder” to fix, not “impossible.” He says, “You and Chacho always had a good relationship. You’ve moved product through Laredo.”

  “Chacho doesn’t control Laredo anymore,” Diego says. “He can’t fight the CDG.”

  “But you could.”

  “But I won’t,” Diego says. “Why should I go to war to pay the piso to Chacho instead of Contreras?”

  “We’ll lower the rate.”

  Diego just smiles.

  Eddie drinks his beer because suddenly his throat is dry. If Tapia thinks he’s a clown, the conversation is over and he’ll end up in a fifty-gallon drum filled with gasoline.

  Fuck baseball, it’s time to blitz.

  “You back the CDG off of us,” Eddie says, “you use our turf, no piso.”

  “You have balls.” Diego laughs. “You come to me for protection and then want to charge me rent on property you don’t own.”

  The batter smacks a sharp hit to the shortstop, who digs it out of the dirt and throws a beautiful ball to the first baseman for the out.

  “Slider,” Diego says. “He wanted the ground ball. If I back the CDG off you, you go to work for us. You handle our product, you manage the plaza, if you move your own product, you pay us eight points.”

  The next batter swings on the first pitch. It’s a curve that hung up there a millisecond too long, and now is headed over the left-field wall.

  Eddie accepts the offer.

  —

  Diego sits over a plate of cabrito, a Monterrey specialty—kid goat slow-cooked over a bed of embers.

  He and Heriberto Ochoa are sitting in the back room of a restaurant in the exclusive Garza García neighborhood in Monterrey’s south end, below the Santa Catarina River. Two plainclothes policemen guard the door.

  “Why are we here?” Ochoa asks.

  It’s rude, but he’s impatient. They’ve talked about baseball, the weather, the food, the wine, baseball again, and now the food. It’s time to get on with it.

  Diego sets his fork down and looks across the table.

  “We don’t want trouble with you,” Diego says. “We’re willing to forget that Contreras tried to have Adán Barrera killed.”

  “Someone’s been telling you lies.”

  “Someone is always telling me lies,” Diego says. “If I don’t get lied to by lunchtime, I feel deprived.”

  “It wasn’t us,” Ochoa lies. “But whoever did it was doing you a favor. You’d be better off, wouldn’t you, with the Boy King in the dirt?”

  Again, Diego lets the insult slide. “We’re doing business with Chacho García.”

  “What business do you have in a cemetery?” Ochoa asks.

  Diego picks up his fork again. Looks down at his food as he says, “At the end of nine innings, if you’re ahead, the game is over. You don’t keep playing after you’ve already won.”

  It’s a remarkable admission, Ochoa thinks—Diego Tapia has just conceded that Nuevo Laredo now belongs to the CDG.

  “What business do you have with Chacho?” Ochoa asks.

  “We move product through his old plaza,” Tapia says. “He has the men, the machinery, the customs agents. Why reinvent the wheel? All we’re asking of you is the courtesy. Of course, I didn’t come with empty hands. It goes without saying that we’d pay you the traditional piso.”

  “Of course.”

  “Then we have no problem?”

  “Yes, we have a problem,” Ochoa said. “This Chacho killed Soto and two of his men.”

  “And you killed four back.”

  “But Chacho’s family isn’t weeping,” Ochoa answers.

  “You made your point. Leave it now.” A lesson Diego learned from Adán—strike fast, strike hard, and then be content with victory. Don’t grind the survivors into the dust and make more enemies.

  Ochoa took a different lesson away from Chiapas. Winning isn’t enough—the losers have to fear you or they try again. He says, “If you want to keep the Laredo plaza open for your shipments—tell us where this malandro Chacho is.”

  “That’s assuming I know,” Diego answers.

  “If you don’t,” Ochoa asks, “what do we have to talk about?”

  Diego had argued with Adán about this.

  “How long do we eat the CDG’s shit?” he’d asked Adán.

  “As long as necessary.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “Do you have a better one?” Adán asked.

  “I can have fifty good men in Matamoros tonight,” Diego said. “We kill Z-1, then Z-2, then Z-3…”

  “No,” Adán said. “We cooperate with them, let them think we’re afraid of them. I want them complacent, arrogant, secure.”

  Diego has learned not to second-guess Adán. Every move he’s made since coming out of Puente has been right. So if Adán wants him to play ball with the Zetas, that’s what he’ll do.

  He hates to do it, but Diego tells Ochoa where he can find Chacho.

  —

  On Sunday they do carne asada.

  Carne asada and beer, man, that’s Sunday. Carne asada means “meat” and it also means “cookout,” and there’s really no difference because you ain’t got one without the other.

  It’s a tradition, and anyway, they’re celebrating the deal with the Alliance, which Eddie persuaded Chacho to accept.

  Now Eddie is busting Chacho’s balls, trying to make the best of it, put a smile on it, telling Chacho how he’ll get a weekly paycheck now, benefits, health insurance—eye and dental, paid vacations, a 401(k).

  “Maybe a gym membership,” Eddie says.

  “I do my workouts with her,” Chacho said, pointing his thumb at Yolanda, who’s sitting out on the deck in just a red bra and panties (“What’s the difference between this and a bikini?”), and from what Eddie can see—which is a lot—he can’t blame Chach for doing his push-ups with her.

  Anyway, he likes Yo.

  She’s been with Chacho about two years and is a very cool chick, very laid-back. Low-maintenance, which is a plus in their line of work. Doesn’t hassle him about where he’s been, what he’s been doing, who he’s been doing. Teresa could take some lessons from her, and Eddie makes a mental note to introduce the two of them. And maybe Yo can teach her a few new tricks in the bedroom, too, freshen things up a little.

  Chacho flips the meat on the grill and they get into one of those Tex-Mex border skirmishes about the marinade.

  “You beaners use too much lime,” Eddie says between swallows of cerveza. “Shit, if I wanted fruit juice, I’d get
a V8.”

  Chacho says good-naturedly, “You pochos wouldn’t know good meat if it hung between your legs, which it don’t.”

  “You want to see?” Eddie asks.

  “Didn’t bring my magnifying glass,” Chacho says.

  It goes like that, ball-busting and horsing around, and then they sit down to eat. Eddie can’t help but sneak a few peeks at Yo’s tits as she bends over to get some salsa, and she sees it and just smiles.

  Cool chica.

  They’re going to eat and pack it up and then get in the car and head back to Nuevo. Eddie’s eager to call Teresa and tell her to get her ass back home. Anyway, they eat and clean up the kitchen and load the car and they’re about to pull out when a black Ford Explorer pulls behind them, another one roars up in front and cuts them off. A third comes in from the side.

  At least twenty men get out.

  Dressed in black.

  Black hoods.

  The boogeymen.

  Fast, so fast. It’s over before it even starts. Eddie don’t even have time to reach for his gun before they pull him out of the door and shove him into one of the SUVs.

  Where he gets a black hood of his own.

  —

  The room smells like gasoline.

  Eddie, naked, is duct-taped, wrists and ankles, to a wooden chair, Chacho beside him.

  Yolanda is already dead.

  They taped Chacho to the chair and then made him watch as they did what they wanted with her and then shot her in the head. Now she lies dead at his feet, her red bra and panties tossed into a corner of the room. Looks like a living room, but except for the wooden chairs, there’s no furniture.

  The white walls are bare and the blinds are pulled.

  Three Zetas are in the room now. Grenade Guy is there—Eddie heard the others call him “Segura.” The linebacker is there, too. They called him “Cuarenta”—“Forty”—which Eddie thinks is odd because he’d heard there were only thirty Zetas. He speaks English like he’s spent some time in Texas.

  Ochoa leans against the wall.

  That’s Movie Star’s name—Ochoa.

  “Z-1.”

  The fact that they hadn’t bothered to disguise their faces or their names tells Eddie that they’re going to kill him, too.

  He only hopes it’s quick.

  Then he sees white T-shirts soaking in a dishpan full of gasoline, and Ochoa says, “You boys like carne asada, don’t you? We had to sit out there for hours, smelling it. Made us hungry. So we’re going to have carne asada of our own.”

  He nods to Forty, who takes one of the T-shirts from the pan, wrings it out, then walks behind Chacho and lays the T-shirt on his bare back. The legs of Chacho’s chair rattle on the wooden floor, he’s shaking so bad. He shakes worse when Forty takes a Bic lighter out of his pocket and waves it like he’s at a concert.

  Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Eddie thinks. He feels like he’s going to piss, and his right leg starts to quiver and he can’t stop it.

  Forty steps behind Chacho and talks into his ear. “You killed Soto. Now you burn in hell.”

  He lights the T-shirt.

  Flames shoot up like a flare.

  Chacho screams.

  His chair bounces.

  Segura laughs. “He sounds like a girl.”

  The fire goes out, the shirt seared into Chacho’s raw skin.

  Burning flesh scorches Eddie’s nose, then his lungs, his soul.

  Ochoa walks over from where he was leaning and lifts Chacho’s chin. “You think you hurt? You don’t hurt yet.”

  Stepping behind Chacho, he takes remnants of the T-shirt between his thumbs and his forefingers.

  “You don’t hurt yet,” he repeats.

  Then he tears the fabric out of Chacho’s burned skin.

  Chacho bellows.

  A rhythmic, animalistic huffing.

  The veins in his neck look like they’re going to burst, his eyes like they could pop out of his face.

  “Now you hurt,” Ochoa says.

  Forty laughs. He seems to think this is hysterical. Segura fingers the grenade around his neck like it’s a rosary. When Chacho finally stops howling, exhausted, Forty takes another shirt from the pan and lays it on his back.

  “Please,” Chacho murmurs.

  “Please what?” Ochoa asks.

  “Please don’t…do it again.”

  They do it three more times, set him on fire, rip off the shirt, and with it his burned flesh. By the time they finish, Chacho is meat, Eddie thinks. Nothing more than burned meat.

  Carne asada.

  Steam comes off his back.

  Then Eddie hears Ochoa say the worst thing he’s ever heard in his life.

  “You’re next.”

  Forty walks behind Eddie and lays a gas-soaked shirt on his back. Eddie, he tries to control himself but he can’t. He feels his urine run down his leg and then sees it pool on the floor.

  “He pissed himself.” Forty laughs.

  Segura fingers his grenade. “Like another girl.”

  Eddie blubbers, “No, please.”

  Like he’s talking from far away, like through an old cardboard tube or something you used to shout through when you were a kid.

  Forty flicks the lighter.

  “No!” Eddie screams.

  Forty closes the lid.

  “We’re going to let you go,” Ochoa says, holding Eddie by the chin. “You go and you tell people what happens when you disrespect the Zetas. Now stop crying, faggot, and get dressed.”

  They cut the tape off and Eddie scrambles into his clothes and runs down the stairs.

  He hears them laughing behind him.

  —

  “Segura,” Eddie tells Diego, verbalizing what has become an internal chant, a prayer, a mantra, “Forty, Ochoa. They’re mine. I’m going to kill each one of them personally.”

  Diego just smiles. He likes this young man, likes his spirit.

  Eddie ran to Badiraguato after the Zetas finished with him. They dumped Chacho’s body out in the street, clad only in Lupe’s underthings, to embarrass him, shame his family, call him a joto who died like a girl.

  A big joke.

  Funny assholes.

  So Eddie came to Badiraguato, to the heart of the Sinaloa cartel, to tell the Big Man that he was in, that he’d come in with the cartel, he was their guy for the war against the Zetas and Contrerases.

  The big bearded man just looks at him and says, “No war.”

  Eddie can’t believe what he’s hearing. “I told you what they did. In Monterrey, which is supposed to be neutral ground.”

  “I said no war.”

  “I’ll do it on my own, then,” Eddie says, getting up. “Without you.”

  “You think you and a few Los Chachos can go up against the Zetas?” Diego asks. “This time they will kill you.”

  It was him who asked Ochoa not to kill this young pocho, to let him live to run the business.

  “At least I can die like a man,” Eddie says.

  “Think like a man,” Diego says. “A man has responsibilities. You have a wife, you have kids to take care of.”

  “I got no way of taking care of them anymore.”

  “You’ll run Laredo for us, pay our piso to Ochoa,” Diego says.

  “You want me to suck his cock, too?”

  “That’s up to you, m’ijo,” Diego says. “What I’m trying to tell you is, don’t be stupid. Don’t let your emotions get in the way of doing the smart thing. Sit down.”

  Eddie sits down. But he says, “They killed my friend. In front of me. Burned him to death.”

  Diego already knows what happened in that room. It was awful, disgusting, unnecessary. But done. Now he says, “You know how many friends I’ve lost? You grieve, you put food on their graves on the Day of the Dead, you move on. I’m offering you a plaza. You’re a pocho and I’m offering you a plaza. In exchange, I’m asking you for one thing—”

  “To eat shit.”

  “To bide your time,�
�� Diego says.

  You eat shit, you smile. You deliver the piso to Ochoa and smile some more. You’re happy and grateful to still be alive and still be in business.

  In the meantime—quietly, smartly—you recruit men. Not in Laredo, not even in the Gulf, but in Sinaloa, Guerrero, Baja. And not coke-snorting malandros, either, but police, soldiers, serious people.

  Slowly, quietly, you move them into Laredo.

  You build up a force, an army.

  “The CDG has the Zetas,” Diego says. “We’ll have—”

  “Los Negros,” Eddie says.

  The Blacks.

  Black.

  The color of burned flesh.

  It takes months.

  Months of recruiting, secretly renting safe houses, moving men and weapons into Nuevo Laredo, months of kissing CDG ass, delivering payments to the men who had tortured his friend to death, grinning like a stray dog who’s been tossed a scrap from the table.

  But finally, it was ready.

  Adán Barrera gives them the green light.

  El Señor says the word, Diego gives it to Eddie like a gift, and Eddie gets on the phone to Ochoa. “You have one week to get your asses out of Nuevo Laredo and Reynosa. You can keep Matamoros so you can eat, but that’s it.”

  Eddie relishes the long, stunned silence. Then Ochoa asks, “What if we don’t?”

  Eddie’s answer is simple.

  If you don’t—

  —we’ll burn you.

  One week later Eddie stands on a Nuevo Laredo roof with five men dressed in police uniforms, lets off bursts of rifle fire into the air, and shouts, “We are Los Negros, Adán Barrera’s people, and he is here…in Nuevo Laredo!”

  —

  Keller reads the headlines and can’t help smiling.

  The devil was dead.

  But he wasn’t dead for long.

  3

  Los Dos Laredos

  The blues is my business

  And business is good.

  Todd Cerney

  “The Blues Is My Business”

  Nuevo Laredo

  2006

  It’s civil war in Nuevo Laredo.

  Keller goes there because Adán Barrera has announced himself there, literally from the rooftops.

  Everyone keeps waiting for Barrera to show up in Nuevo Laredo. A rumor, repeated to the point that it’s become “fact,” is that his men came into a Nuevo Laredo restaurant, confiscated all cell phones, locked the doors, and politely said that no one could leave. The story goes on that Barrera came in, had dinner in the back room, paid everyone’s check, and then left. The cell phones were restored to their owners, who were then allowed to leave.