The Cartel

by Don Winslow

—

  The dinner at the Tapias’ is large, loud, and celebratory, a gathering of the new rich Mexican entrepreneurial class—stockbrokers, hedge fund managers, film producers, with a few actors, singers, and artists tossed in to give the evening tone.

  Laura Amaro is there, and this time, even her husband has found the time to attend.

  “He’s out of a job,” Laura declares happily. “Unemployed.”

  Benjamín shrugs.

  “But not to worry,” Laura says. “He’s been promised something even more likely to keep him away from home.”

  “Laura…”

  “It’s a victory for business,” Martín says quickly, lifting a glass of champagne to the new president, “a victory for stability, growth, and prosperity.”

  “Even for the poor?” Keller asks, because he can’t help himself.

  “Especially for the poor,” Martín says. “Seventy-five years of socialism did what for them? Nothing. In the past six years, we’ve started to create a middle class. In the next six, that middle class will solidify and expand. We’ll be looking for cheap labor on your side of the border.”

  “We could use the jobs,” Keller says.

  After dessert and coffee, Yvette says, “Let’s walk down to the pool.”

  “Where’s Martín?”

  “Did you notice that handsome young actor?” Yvette asks.

  “Yes.”

  “So did Martín.”

  “Oh.”

  “We have an arrangement,” Yvette says. “We’re not as provincial about these things as you are up in the barbarian north. Martín does what—or whom—he wishes, and I do the same.”

  “Yvette—”

  “Relax,” she says. “This is not that kind of seduction.”

  They reach the pool, she sits down at the edge, takes off her shoes, and dangles her feet in the water. The pool shines blue and beautiful under the filtered lights. Sitting beside her, Keller asks, “What kind of seduction is it?”

  “First of all,” Yvette says, “could we drop the pretense? We know who you are, you know who we are. The dance has been amusing, but at some point the masquerade ends and we reveal our faces.”

  “All right.”

  Good, Keller thinks. Let’s get on with it.

  “We could be your friends,” Yvette says. “Influential friends who could provide you with important information. That is your currency, isn’t it? You’ll note, please, that I haven’t insulted you with an offer of money.”

  “How do you know I’d be insulted?”

  “You’re much too Catholic,” she answers. “You couldn’t live with the guilt. No, you’d have to be convinced it was for the greater good.”

  “Would it be?”

  “You know what’s out there,” Yvette says. “Perhaps we’re not the greater good, but we are the lesser of evils.”

  If I were as much a Catholic as you say I am, Keller thinks, you’d know I believe that evil is an absolute, without gradations. But he asks, “What would you want in return?”

  “Friendship,” she says. “We would never ask you to betray a colleague, reveal a source, anything like that. We would come to you only when our interests align. Perhaps just to be an ‘ear,’ someone to represent a point of view in Washington…”

  “Whose point of view?” Keller asks. “Yours? Martín’s? Diego’s? Adán Barrera’s?”

  It’s inconceivable to him that this is Barrera reaching out, probing for peace. There’s too much blood between them. But the Tapias are Adán’s creatures, his functionaries, his ambassadors to the outside world.

  Or are they?

  “Martín and I are truly partners,” Yvette says. “We share everything. Diego? Diego is a dear sweet man and I love him like a brother, but he’s a dinosaur. Diego still thinks that this is a culture, a way of life, he still thinks it’s about the drugs.”

  “What is it about?”

  “Money,” Yvette answers. “Finance. Power. Connections. I’m speaking for myself and Martín.”

  “And Adán?”

  “If we were representing Adán’s point of view,” Yvette says, “your head would be in a box of dry ice by now, on its way to Sinaloa, and we’d be two million dollars richer. But two million dollars is small change, no offense.”

  Is this a rift between the Tapias and Barrera? Keller wonders. Big enough for me to walk through? To get the evidence I need about Vera or Aguilar? Or Los Pinos? Big enough to bring Barrera down?

  Yeah, Keller thinks, this is a different kind of seduction.

  “You understand,” he says, “that if we become ‘friends,’ that friendship cannot ever include Adán.”

  “Actually, I’m counting on it.” She puts her hand out. “It’s a complicated world. In a complicated world, everyone needs friends.”

  Keller takes her hand. “Friends.”

  Yvette gets up. “We should wander back. My husband’s sodomies are passionate but short-lived.”

  —

  The next morning, Felipe Calderón takes office.

  On the same day, he appoints Gerardo Vera as commander of all federal police forces in Mexico.

  Benjamín Amaro is appointed as Vera’s liaison to Los Pinos.

  Luis Aguilar is retained as head of SEIDO.

  Twelve days later, the new president launches Operation Michoacán and sends four thousand army troops and a hundred AFI agents into the violence-torn state, his wife’s native country, to suppress La Familia.

  Three weeks later Operation Baja California sends thirty-three hundred troops into Tijuana.

  Three weeks after that, Osiel Contreras is extradited to the United States.

  It’s the beginning of Mexico’s war on drugs.

  Good Night, Juárez

  This isn’t a city, it’s a cemetery.

  —Peggy Cummins as Laurie Starr

  in Gun Crazy

  1

  Gente Nueva—The New People

  And he that sat upon the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.”

  —Revelation 21:5

  Mexico City

  May 2007

  The trajinera, named María, is brightly decorated, its high arch painted in blue, red, and yellow, its gondola-like bow strewn with fresh spring flowers.

  Keller and Yvette sit in the prow, out of hearing from the oarsman who steers the boat through the canal flanked by ahuejote trees. The narrow canals are all that remain of the once large lake of Xochimilco, where the Aztecs grew crops in the chinampas, floating gardens.

  For the past five months, Keller and Yvette Tapia have had secret assignations. They’d meet in the Zócalo, in the museum at Chapultepec Castle, in the Palacio de Bellas Artes by the Orozco murals. Each time he went, Keller wondered if this was the time that she was setting him up, and each time he came back safely he was a little surprised.

  Twice she warned him of an impending attack—That Italian restaurant you like, don’t go there. Take a different route home tonight. It was risky. Adán was getting impatient, she told Keller, frustrated at the failed attempts, beginning to get suspicious.

  Risky for Keller, too. Every meeting with Yvette increased the chance that Aguilar or Vera would find out what he was doing. At the very least, they’d expatriate him; at worst, if either or both were dirty, it would kill any chance of getting Barrera.

  Then there was the sheer physical danger and the stress of being a hunted man again. He found his life becoming more and more constrained, limited, his world getting smaller as he went from his apartment to his office to the occasional rendezvous with Yvette or meetings in the SEIDO building or at AFI.

  Before Marisol he was never lonely, in fact he reveled in his solitude. After she first left, they spoke over the phone every few days. She had set up her clinic—the only full-time doctor for twenty thousand people in the valley—and was happily busy. They talked about getting together—she coming to Mexico City for a weekend, he going to Valverde—but something always came up for her, and he didn�
�t feel right about exposing her to the risk of being with him.

  The phone calls started to fade to once a week, then once every ten days, and then once a month or so.

  And he was getting nowhere on Barrera.

  Just hanging in, hovering, hoping for a break.

  Yvette was giving him bits of information that he knew had been approved and sanitized by Martín. Mostly “soft” intel—Diego was getting more involved in the Monterrey area, Eddie Ruiz’s star was rising, Nacho had acquired yet another new mistress. The “hard” intel she gave him was mostly about Solorzano—safe houses, drug shipments, which cops he owned, which border—in the hope that he would pass it on to DEA.

  She also bitched about Diego. Even Martín Tapia was getting fed up with his brother’s antics. Diego comes to stay at the Cuernavaca house for weeks at a time, and the well-heeled neighbors have started to complain about the loud music, the strange men coming in and out at all hours of the night and day, the clouds of yerba smoke rising above the walls, the apparent squadron of hookers who arrive in the evening and depart in the morning.

  Alberto was even worse, with his bejeweled pistols and norteño clothes, flashing his money around jewelry stores, nightclubs, restaurants, and discos. There have been incidents—fights in bars, shootings, alleged rapes—all of which cost money and favors to straighten out. And there are rumors of Alberto’s involvement in kidnapping—the sons of wealthy businessmen—which, if it continues, can’t be straightened out. The big money establishment won’t tolerate that for long.

  So Yvette gave up tidbits of family gossip, useful in its own way, but no hard information.

  He knew that she was playing a cute double game—giving him enough to keep him interested but nothing that could hurt the Tapias or even Barrera. Just keep him on the hook in case things went sick and wrong with Adán and they needed an ally with a voice in Washington.

  Keller played the same game with her. He fed her tidbits from DEA intelligence—similar information about Solorzano, gossip about their Zeta allies, general analysis of trends in U.S. drug policy.

  “What about the Mérida Initiative?” she asked one time. “Is it going to pass?”

  The Mérida Initiative was a proposed $1.4 billion U.S. aid package to Mexico to fight drug trafficking—cash, equipment, and training.

  “I don’t know,” Keller answered. “It’s controversial.”

  “Because of corruption?”

  “That’s part of it.”

  Even the questions they asked each other were risky, because each tried to discern the reason for the question, which in itself could provide information. Why were the Tapias interested in Mérida? Why did Keller want to know where Adán bought his clothes? Where was Magda Beltrán? Why did Keller want to know?

  Now Keller is getting tired of the game. The string has to run out. Aguilar or Vera will find out about it, or Adán will, and then it will be over, and he has to make it pay off before that happens. So today, as the boat floats slowly along the green water of the canal, he presses. “Give me something I can actually use.”

  Yvette wears a long white dress today, and the effect is fetching and a little anachronistic, as if they were in a Monet painting of people on a Sunday along the Seine.

  “All right,” she says. “Adán is getting married.”

  “Really.”

  “To Nacho Esparza’s daughter,” she says, an edge in her voice.

  The marriage will bring Adán closer to Esparza, Keller thinks. Are the Tapias concerned about it? Wondering if they’re losing influence, that Adán is pulling away from them?

  “The girl is just eighteen,” Yvette sniffs. “A beauty queen, of course.”

  “Adán has a type.”

  “Apparently.”

  He keeps his tone casual as he asks, “When’s the wedding?”

  Yvette says, “We’ve been told to save three days—July first, second, or third.”

  “Where?”

  “No one knows.”

  “You’re lying.” She has to know—Diego is doubtless in charge of security, and Keller tells her so.

  “He hasn’t told us,” Yvette insists. “He just says that we’ll be informed of the location the day before.”

  It’s classic Adán, Keller thinks, a heady mixture of paranoia and arrogance. He’ll take every precaution, but his ego tells him—probably accurately—that’s he’s untouchable.

  Even if an agency wanted to stage a raid on the wedding, it couldn’t organize an assault on that scale inside twenty-four hours. Diego will have the site protected by rings of security, including local and state cops. Anyone who wants to get near that wedding without an invitation is going to have to shoot his way in, and even that’s doubtful.

  But God, the guest list.

  It’s a royal wedding—the Barreras joining with the Esparzas in a dynastic marriage. Adán knows that he has to go full bore, invite every major narco that he’s not actively at war with, make a show of wealth and confidence.

  And the invited know that they have to go, lest they offend the royal couple. A raid on the wedding could net almost the entire Most Wanted list, in Mexico and the United States.

  It’s a pipe dream, Keller thinks.

  But even pipe dreams have their uses.

  —

  Keller does an analysis of orders from the scores of floral shops in Sinaloa and Durango. Every florist shows a vast increase in orders for July first, second, and third. Barrera has ordered flowers from all over the Golden Triangle.

  The same situation exists for caterers. Every major caterer in the general area has been engaged.

  So Barrera is going to throw himself a huge party, Keller thinks, with every major narco in the country, and there is nothing we can do about it.

  Keller calls for a meeting of the committee.

  —

  “If I could get you a location with twenty-four hours’ notice,” Keller asks, “will you go in?”

  “Yes,” Vera answers.

  “No,” Aguilar says. “There would be no time for proper planning, we would be walking into a hornet’s nest, never mind the possibility—no, the probability—of civilian casualties.”

  Vera says, “With a select force of my men—”

  “You’d be risking a bloodbath,” Aguilar says. “I mean, my God, do you really want images of a massacre at a wedding all over the television news? The public wouldn’t stand for it, and I wouldn’t blame them. Think about it. An errant bullet strikes a bride? It’s not worth the risk.”

  “To get Barrera?” Keller asks.

  “To get anyone,” Aguilar says. “We do not defeat the narcos by becoming them, and by the way, not even the narcos have attacked a wedding.”

  “Who knew you were so sentimental?” Vera asks.

  “I am not sentimental, I am correct,” Aguilar sniffs. “A wedding is a holy sacrament.”

  “A demonic one in this case,” Vera says.

  “What crime has Eva Esparza been convicted or even accused of?” Aguilar asks.

  “Oh, here we go again,” says Vera.

  “Yes, here we go again,” Aguilar says. “There are right ways of doing things and wrong ways of doing things, and I am going to persist in insisting that we do things the right way.”

  “Then we’re going to lose,” Vera says. He turns to Keller. “How could you get us the location on twenty-four hours’ notice?”

  “Cell phone traffic,” Keller says. “They’ll have to let people know, and if we pick up a surge from a certain area, it might be indicative.”

  “So you don’t have a source,” Aguilar says.

  “How would I have a source?”

  “A good question,” Aguilar says, “because I would hate to think that you’re violating our working agreement.”

  “He could violate my sister if it would get us Barrera,” Vera says.

  “That’s very nice,” Aguilar says. “Thank you.”

  “So what should I tell Washington?” Kel
ler asks. “That you don’t want to take this shot at Barrera?”

  “Well, there’s a shot across the bow,” Vera says. “Did someone say, ‘Mérida Initiative’?”

  Aguilar asks, “What does Washington know about this?”

  “Nothing from me,” Keller says, “but I’m sure EPIC has picked up soundings. And if you want satellite runs, I have to tell them something.”

  “Tell them,” Aguilar says, “that it’s an internal Mexican matter.”

  “It’s not an internal matter if they’re sending us a billion-plus dollars in weaponry, aircraft, and surveillance technology,” Vera says. “If we’re allies, we’re allies.”

  “If we were to move against Barrera in this situation,” Aguilar says—“and again, I remain opposed—we would have to get clearance from the very highest levels.”

  Which is as good as killing it, Keller thinks.

  But instructive.

  “Top secret” consultations take place involving the Mexican attorney general’s office, the interior secretary, and a representative from Los Pinos, as well as the DEA chief and the American Justice Department.

  The decision comes back down—SEIDO and DEA should make every effort to locate the time and place of Barrera’s wedding, but it should be considered strictly an “intelligence opportunity” and not an “operational mandate.”

  Barrera’s right, Keller thinks.

  He’s untouchable.

  Keller has long believed that you have to be lucky to be good, but not good to be lucky.

  But sometimes luck just rolls your way.

  It’s nothing you did, nothing you didn’t do, and it can come from the most unexpected places.

  Now luck rolls the other way.

  From the unlikeliest of sources.

  —

  Sal Barrera is clubbing at Bali.

  Not as cool as clubbing in Bali, but it is the coolest disco in Zapopan, and he and his buddies were ushered into the VIP section because they’re buchones—Sal is Adán Barrera’s nephew, of course, César is the son of Nacho Esparza’s latest mistress, and Edgar’s father is a big shot in Esparza’s organization.

  So they sit in the raised center of the club, which is decorated in Indonesian style, and scope out the talent around them.