The Cartel

by Don Winslow

  Ana sits down the row with her eyes closed, shutting off visual stimuli to focus on the sounds of the words. Giorgio stands off to the side, quietly snapping photos of Tomás without the distraction of a flash.

  Óscar has his bad leg propped up on the chair beside him, his cane hooked over the chair in front. He and Tomás go back to their university days—close friends still—and Pablo knew that El Búho wouldn’t miss this reading.

  Really, most of the Juárez intelligentsia are present for the event—writers, poets, columnists, and a scattering of serious readers who always show up for this kind of thing. Pablo recognizes a few local politicians, there to display that they have a brain and, supposedly, a soul, although he doubts both.

  Victoria is not there, even though she loves Tomás, both professionally and personally.

  Probably working, Pablo thinks.

  Victoria is always working.

  The reading ends and Tomás takes questions. There are many—some of them legitimately curious and wanting an answer; others more statements than interrogatives, meant to show off the questioner’s knowledge or express a dogma. Tomás is patient and painstaking with all of them, but is clearly relieved when the Q&A is over.

  Then there’s coffee and wine and the usual standing around and schmoozing, but Pablo figures that he’s probably used up his four-year-old’s full store of patience and takes him across the boulevard into the park to run around and play before they go over to Ana’s.

  —

  Four hours later, Pablo sits on the kitchen steps that lead into the small fenced-in backyard of Ana’s little bungalow in Mariano Escobedo. Pablo has spent many a good evening out there, sitting on the kitchen steps or in one of the wooden chairs, or helping Ana to cook on the little charcoal grill.

  Tonight, the house is packed.

  Ana of course ended up inviting everyone who attended the reading, and most of them showed up. It didn’t matter, she’d made enough paella to feed a small army, and a lot of her guests went out to dinner first before showing up at the party.

  And most of them brought wine or beer, as did Pablo, so as not to put a financial strain on the hostess. That was just expected at Juárez gatherings, especially among a group that is mostly communist, or at least socialist, anyway.

  Now Pablo sips on a beer and listens to Tomás and El Búho, just slightly in his cups, passionately discuss the romantic lyricism of Efraín Huerta as Giorgio debates the World Bank with an attractive woman whom Pablo doesn’t know.

  “Fiscal policy as foreplay,” Jimena observes as she eases herself down beside Pablo, who slides over to make room.

  Jimena is tall and thin, all awkward angles and sharp edges. One of nine brothers and sisters—her family have been bakers out in the Juárez Valley for generations—Jimena is also an activist. In her early fifties now, with two sons who are now young men, she spends more and more time on social causes, which often bring her to Juárez.

  —

  They met when Pablo was covering the feminicidio, as it came to be called—the disappearances and murders of hundreds of young women.

  Three hundred and ninety, to be exact, Pablo thinks.

  He covered at least a hundred of them. Saw the bodies—if they were indeed found— interviewed the families, went to the funerals and memorial services. It seems to have ended now, with no more answers than there were when it started. But Jimena, who lost a niece, helped to create an organization—Our Daughters Coming Home—to pressure police and politicians to close the cases.

  Now she wryly observes Giorgio make his moves.

  “He does have a certain charm,” Jimena says. “What about you? Any romance in your life?”

  “Not lately,” Pablo says. “Between work and having a kid…”

  “Mateo’s getting big.”

  “He is.”

  “Such a nice boy.”

  And he loves his Tía Jimena, Pablo thinks. Mateo went to her the second they got into the house, climbed into her lap, and they had a serious conversation about zebras, tigers, and other animals.

  Then she got Mateo a bowl of rice from the paella and, after securing Pablo’s permission, some polvorones de canela, then eventually took him into Ana’s big bed and read him a story until he fell asleep.

  “How’s Victoria?” Jimena asks.

  “She’s Victoria,” Pablo answers. “Conquering the world.”

  “Poor world.” She ruffles his hair. “Poor Pablo. Our big, shaggy puppy of a Pablo. Who is Giorgio seducing now?”

  “Some lawyer, I think.”

  “Is he succeeding?”

  “Just a matter of time,” Pablo says.

  But Giorgio breaks it off and comes to sit down with them, and the lawyer goes into the house.

  “Neofascist dyke,” Giorgio says.

  “Now, now,” Jimena warns.

  “Left-wing lesbians are perfectly natural,” Giorgio says, “but there’s something about a right-wing lesbian that’s, I don’t know…almost North American. Sort of Fox News–ish.”

  They get El Paso television broadcasts in Juárez, and Giorgio is masochistically addicted to Fox News, which makes him simultaneously livid and horny.

  “Tell me you don’t want to do those women on Fox News,” Jimena says.

  “Tell me you don’t,” Giorgio counters. “Anyway, of course I do. I want to convert them through the subversive power of the orgasm.”

  “So it would be a political act,” Jimena says.

  “I am willing to sacrifice myself for the cause,” Giorgio answers.

  “How did she find her way to this party?” Pablo asks.

  “She’s a disciple of Tomás’s,” Giorgio answers. “She thinks he’s ‘important.’ ”

  “He is,” Jimena says. “And her supporting the World Bank doesn’t necessarily make her a fascist any more than her resisting your doubtless charms makes her a dyke.”

  “I just couldn’t imagine waking up with her,” Giorgio says. “What would we talk about?”

  “How wonderful you were in bed?” Jimena suggests.

  “Certainly, but that gets boring after a few times,” Giorgio says.

  “Pobrecito. Such problems.”

  “You should go after her, Pablo,” Giorgio says. “She’s your type.”

  “But I’m not hers,” Pablo answers.

  “Pablo is giving up on love,” Jimena says.

  “Who said anything about love?”

  “What about love?” Ana asks as she comes out the door. She sits down on Jimena’s lap.

  “Why do women love to talk about love?” Giorgio asks.

  “Why don’t men, is more the question,” Ana says.

  “You can either love,” Pablo says, “or you can talk about it. You can’t do both.”

  Ana whoops, then hollers, “Óscar, did you know that you have a young Hemingway working on your staff?”

  Óscar blinks vacantly—he’s much too involved in the discussion of poetry for this—but smiles politely before he turns back to make a point to Tomás.

  “I’m a little drunk,” Pablo admits.

  “But you make a point,” Giorgio says.

  “Oh?” Ana asks. “So, Giorgio, can you either make love or photograph it, but not both?”

  The edge in her voice makes Pablo certain now that they had sex.

  “You should have seen Ana with our esteemed governor today,” Giorgio says, changing the subject. “She had him sputtering.”

  Ana laughs, then does a rather good imitation of the Chihuahua state governor: “ ‘On the subject of a so-called cartel in Juárez, it does not now nor never has existed, and moreover, my administration has made excellent progress in combating it if it does or has, which, of course, it doesn’t and hasn’t, unless you have evidence that you’re about to show me, in which case I’m late for a very important meeting.’ He’s a great idiot, our governor, but very well bred. He kissed my hand.”

  “He didn’t,” Jimena says.

  “
He did,” Ana answers. “I blushed.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Ana answers. “But I didn’t dislike it as much as I thought I would. It’s been a long time since a man has kissed my hand.”

  Pablo leans across and touches his lips to her fingers.

  “Oh, so sweet, Pablo,” Jimena says.

  Ana looks at him curiously, then recovers and says, “Anyway, certainly there are more important stories to cover, with PAN taking us into the brave new world of free-market economics just as all the jobs are going to China, and Bush killing every Muslim that moves.”

  “Bush speaks Spanish, you know,” Giorgio says.

  “That’s the brother,” Ana corrects him. “The one in Florida.”

  The conversation swings from the brothers Bush to the war in Iraq to the emerging rights of Muslim women to postfeminism to current cinema—Mexican, American, European (Giorgio goes spasmodically mad over Bu-ñuel), and back to Mexican again—to the relative superiority of shrimp over any other kind of taco to the excellence of Ana’s paella, to Ana’s childhood, then to Jimena’s, to the changing role of motherhood in a postindustrial world, to sculpture, then painting, then poetry, then baseball, then Jimena’s inexplicable (to Pablo) fondness for American football (she’s a Dallas Cowboys fan) over real (to Pablo) fútbol, to his admittedly adolescent passion for the game, to the trials of adolescence itself and revelations over the loss of virginity and why we refer to it as a loss and now Óscar and Tomás, arms over each other’s shoulders, are chanting poetry and then Giorgio picks up a guitar and starts to play and this is the Juárez that Pablo loves, this is the city of his soul—the poetry, the passionate discussions (Ana makes her counterpoints jabbing her cigarette like a foil; Jimena’s words flow like a gentle wave across beach sand, washing away the words before; Giorgio trills a jazz saxophone while Pablo plays bass—they are a jazz combo of argument), the ideas flowing with the wine and beer, the lilting music in a black night, this is the gentle heartbeat of the Mexico that he adores, the laughter, the subtle perfume of desert flowers that grow in alleys alongside garbage, and now everyone is singing—

  México, está muy contento,

  Dando gracias a millares…

  —and this is his life—this is his city, these are his friends, his beloved friends, these people, and if this is all that there is or will be, it is enough for him, his world, his life, his city, his people, his sad beautiful Juárez…

  —empezaré de Durango, Torreón y Ciudad de Juárez…

  Pablo sings into the soft night.

  —

  Sundays are the worst.

  They always are, but especially when he has to bring Mateo back to his mother. And Mateo is sad, too. Are they his own feelings? Pablo wonders, or is he picking up my melancholy?

  Pablo makes them a simple breakfast of croissants, jam, and butter—Mateo has milk while he has café blanca—and then they walk over to the park to kick the ball around. They try to joke and laugh, but they’re each aware that they’re just killing time, postponing the sadness, and after a while Pablo asks Mateo if he’s ready to go “home” and he says yes.

  So Pablo calls Victoria and tells her that they’re on their way, and they take a bus to her neighborhood and then walk down to her condo. It’s a gated community but Pablo has the code, and anyway the guard recognizes them and passes them through.

  Victoria is waiting out front.

  She hugs and kisses Mateo, then says, “Honey, run inside and get ready for your bath, please. Mami wants to talk to Papi.”

  Mateo hugs his father and trudges inside.

  “He’s tired,” Victoria says. “Did you let him stay up?”

  “He went to bed at Ana’s,” Pablo says a little defensively. “At the usual time.”

  “Well, Ana has some sense,” Victoria says. She looks tired herself and she’s dressed professionally and Pablo is sure she took advantage of the free Sunday to get some time in at her desk. Tired or no, she looks beautiful, and Pablo is chagrined to feel the same old stir that he always feels.

  Then she says, “Pablo, I’ve been offered a new job. A promotion.”

  “That’s great. Congratulations.”

  “It’s El Nacional. In Mexico City.”

  Pablo feels his heart stop. “Well, you’re not taking it.”

  “Well, I am,” she says. “A national newspaper? Editor of the financial desk? Come on.”

  “What about Mateo?”

  She has the decency to look a little abashed. “He’s coming with me. Of course.”

  “He’s my son.”

  “I’m aware of that, yes.”

  Pablo feels anger welling up inside him. “Then you’re also ‘aware,’ ” he says, “that I have certain paternal rights.”

  “I was hoping you’d be reasonable.”

  “That I’d be reasonable?! You’re talking about taking my son to live a thousand miles away!”

  “Please keep your voice down.”

  “I’ll yell if I want!”

  “So mature.”

  “You’re not taking Mateo away from me.”

  “I’m not staying in this…border town,” she spits. “Not when I have the opportunity to go someplace else. And think of Mateo. Better schools, better friends…”

  “His school and his friends are just fine.”

  “The problem with you—”

  “Oh, just one problem today?”

  “One of the problems with you,” she says, “is that you can’t see beyond this backwater. Nothing happens here, Pablo. No one who lives here makes any decisions about what happens here, because the people with the power all live somewhere else. This is a colony and you’re a hopeless colonial. I don’t want that for Mateo and I don’t want it for me.”

  It’s quite a speech and he’s sure that she carefully rehearsed it. “But you’re all right with him growing up without a father.”

  “You’re a wonderful father. But—”

  “Not a phrase generally followed by a ‘but.’ ”

  “—you have no ambition. And Mateo sees that.” She looks down, and then makes herself look back up at him. “You can come on weekends—”

  “I can’t afford that.”

  “—or I’ll bring him here,” Victoria says. “When he’s a little older, he can fly himself—”

  “He’s four!”

  “The flight attendants take very good care of children,” Victoria says. “I see it all the time.”

  “This is not going to happen,” Pablo says.

  “I’ve already accepted the position.”

  “Without talking with me first.”

  “You see what happens when we try to talk,” Victoria says. “You won’t listen to reason, you get emotional—”

  “You’re goddamn right I get emotional about losing my child!”

  “You’re not losing him!”

  “Then let him stay here with me,” Pablo says. “This is the only home he knows.”

  “That’s part of the problem,” Victoria says. “He can’t live with you, Pablo. You’re out half the night. Covering stories, drinking, doing God knows what…”

  “I’m always there, sober, when he’s with me!”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “You’re the one who’s leaving, not me,” Pablo says. “It isn’t fair.”

  “You sound like a child.”

  “See if I sound like a child in court.”

  “You will,” she says, because she can’t help herself. “I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that. But I have spoken to an attorney—”

  “Of course you have.”

  “—and she tells me that I will have no trouble retaining custody of Mateo when I explain how this will improve the quality of his life—”

  “You bitch.”

  “You could always move to Mexico City,” Victoria says. “Get a job there and then you’d be close. I could talk to some people…”

  “There are thousands
of journalists in Mexico City,” he says. “Natives. I know Juárez. I cover Juárez.”

  “And that’s all you want.”

  “It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

  “And there we are.”

  She turns and walks away, leaving him standing there.

  —

  Victoria goes inside and lets herself cry for a minute before she calls Mateo for his bath.

  Poor Pablo, she thinks.

  Poor lost Pablo, adrift in a sea of his own sorrow.

  He was never the same after the feminicidio, never the same and never even knew it. Day after day—more often night after night, or dawn after dawn—he would come home depressed, angry, tired, and sad.

  As, one after another, young women disappeared and his beloved city became an abattoir. He could never understand it, never account for it, never explain it—to himself or to his readers—and when the killings faded away it seemed that he had faded away with them.

  His drive, his ambition, his fierce love of life.

  All muted or gone.

  She tried to talk to him about it but he wouldn’t talk, became angry if she even brought it up. He went out all the time, seeking answers, and if she complained then she was the heartless bitch.

  The feminicidio killed their marriage.

  Killed, to some extent, the woman inside her.

  Because she could never understand, can still not understand, how he could love a city where that could happen.

  —

  If Sundays are the worst, Sunday nights somehow manage to achieve a less-than-zero, a negative “quality of life” number, especially when your ex-wife tells you that she’s taking your son, and you decide to get a lawyer of your own and fight it, but when you know that you can’t afford a really good lawyer and that she’s going to win anyway.

  And that a court fight will tear your kid apart.

  And that there’s no good answer.

  He thinks of seeking Giorgio out to commiserate, or Ana, or even Ramón. Ramón would be good to drink with tonight, because he wouldn’t intellectualize it, he’d just say, “Fuck that segundera” and “No one can take a man’s son away from him” and things that Pablo wants to hear.

  But he doesn’t call Giorgio or Ana (would they fall into bed together on this sad night, him needing, her needing to offer, consolation) or Ramón. He just goes alone from bar to bar in old downtown, in Old Juárez, and has a whiskey in each, even though he knows it won’t help his financial situation at all. He gets miserably, soddenly drunk, but at least manages to refrain from phoning Victoria and begging.