Текст книги "The Cartel"

Автор книги: Don Winslow

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 42 страниц)

She still likes to turn him on, maybe all the more so because she no longer has to. It’s now a matter of choice, not survival, and the distinction is important. Whether or not she slept with Jorge—or anyone else for that matter—is none of Adán’s damn business, so she leaves the question unanswered.

Let him twist.

Besides, she’s heard all about his courtship of Nacho’s daughter, Eva, the little virgin. It’s not surprising, but a little disappointing, Adán playing the stereotypical Sinaloan señor, plucking a rose from the beauty pageant garden. Still, he hasn’t really plucked her yet, has he, if the rest of the rumors are true. Our Adán, every inch the gentleman.

Magda chose a basic black dress for this reunion, with a diamond necklace that she bought for herself. It does more than draw his eye to her décolletage, it makes a point—I bought this, Adán darling, with my own money. I don’t need you to drape jewelry around me anymore.

Or a blanket.

Magda got a bonus of twenty kilos of cocaine for setting up the Colombian connection. Of course Adán knows that she’s already sold all twenty kilos and used the profit to buy more discounted coke from Jorge, which she’ll parlay into a larger fortune. Nothing happens in Sinaloa that Adán Barrera doesn’t know about. Still, numbers are numbers to an accountant—it helps to have a little visual aid. “Do you like what you see?”

“I always have,” Adán says.

“I meant the necklace.”

“I know.” He understands—Magda is asserting her independence. It’s not such a bad thing, given that he’s probably going to have to cut her loose anyway. She’s doubtless heard all about Eva, and her pride will make her pull away before she’s pushed. “It’s lovely.”

“Would you like me to take it off?”

“No,” Adán says, his throat tightening. She doesn’t need him, and it makes her wildly attractive. Like Nora. “Just the dress. Please.”

“Oh. ‘Please.’ In that case…” The dress slides off her like water. The diamonds dig into his chest as he makes love to her.

–

Chuy has about $120,000 in the bank (well, not in the bank, he can’t open his own account), but what does an eleven-year-old buy with $120K?

Can’t buy a house.

Can’t buy a car.

Can’t buy a ticket to an R-rated movie.

He can buy clothes, he can buy Air Jordans, he can buy video games. He can buy a woman, or rent one, anyway. Him and Gabe go across the bridge and through the guard shack into Boy’s Town down Calle Cleopatra where Esteban hooks them up with a brothel. And not a house where their next stop is a pharmacy, but to a really good house where the women are beautiful and really know what to do.

Which is a good thing, because Chuy really don’t.

Next morning he revisits the car issue.

“You want a car?” Esteban asks. “No problem.”

They get back to the other Laredo, Esteban takes Chuy to a dealership and lays down the kid’s cash for a new Mustang convertible, black. It’s in Esteban’s name, but it’s Chuy’s car, and Esteban hands him the keys.

Chuy’s rolling.

He has money, clothes, a brand-new ride. He has dreams that would sear the inside of your eyelids. Speaking of eyelids, Gabe does something really weird. Comes home one night, and his eyelids are tattooed with images of eyeballs.

“So when I close my eyes,” Gabe says, demonstrating, “it looks they’re still open.”

What it looks like is creepy, Chuy thinks. Especially because Gabe’s real eyes are brown but his tattoo eyes are blue.

It gets creepier.

Gabe gets called across the river to do some “work.” Calls one night and he sounds messed up, really high, and he’s talking some weird shit about kidnapping this kid they knew, Poncho, who was dealing for the Alliance, and his girlfriend.

Gabe, he’s just riffing. “You should have seen Poncho, dude. He was crying like a fag. ‘No! I’m your friend! I’m your friend!’ I was all like, ‘What friend, you son of a bitch, shut your fucking mouth!’ and then—POOM—I just slashed him, dude. Just took this motherfucking beer bottle and slit his whole fucking belly open! You should have been there, dude, you should have seen it. He was bleeding? And I took this plastic cup and held it under his belly and filled it with blood and then I drank it, dude! Right in front of him I drank it and held it up and dedicated it to Santísima Muerte, and then I went over to the girl and did the same thing.”

“So they’re both dead?” Chuy asks.

“Yeah, they both bled out. They died and shit, dude.”

“You really cooked them?”

“Of course, dude. Right there at the house.” Fifty-gallon drum and gasoline. “They’re soup, dude.”

Chuy clicks off and goes back to Grand Theft Auto. He didn’t know Gabe was into that weird Santísima Muerte shit. Chuy’s a Catholic, man, he believes in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

–

Eddie’s having a relaxing evening cocktail at the Punta Bar down by the beach in Acapulco, scoping out this tourista chick who looks like she’s either Danish or Swedish or Norwegian, but definitely a Scandinavian Ten.

Blond hair.

Rack.

Yoga ass.

Eddie knows he’s looking tight—new plum-colored polo, white jeans, huarache sandals. It’s annoying that the shirts have to be a size too large these days to accommodate the Glock, but war is hell.

The chick is drinking a mojito—of course she is—and Eddie has the bartender set up another for her. She looks over at Eddie, lifts her glass in thanks, and Eddie smiles back.

He’s going to get up in that tonight.

Then an explosion goes off.

–

Chuy goes in heavy.

Okay, a little too heavy.

Okay, a lot too heavy.

He knows Ruiz’s rep. He’s seen the video and doesn’t want to star in Ruiz’s next movie, and he knows that the Punta Bar is a Tapia hangout and that Ruiz will have people there.

Chuy got orders to go to Acapulco to take out this guy, this Eddie Ruiz.

Because what the fuck, right?

Why not?

Ruiz is looking for men, Zeta sicarios. He’s not going to have his eyes open for some eleven-year-old kid. Plus, this is a chance. If Bruno Resendez was worth $150K, Eddie Ruiz—public enemy número uno—has to have a price tag of what, half a million? A mil? More? And if Esteban could buy him a car, he could also buy him a house. Two houses—one for him and one for Mami and Papi.

It’s Chuy’s fantasy, rolling up on the house in his sled, walking in and saying, No more digging ditches, Papi, no more cutting hair, Mami—and handing them the keys to their new house on the other side of Laredo. A nine-bedroom house—a room for everyone and a Guatemalan maid to keep it clean.

If he takes Eddie Ruiz off the count, Forty and Ochoa will throw him a party, give him coke, make him an officer, give him his own plaza to run. He’ll boss Gabe around, shit, he’ll boss Esteban around. People will treat him with respect, whisper, That’s the guy who did Eddie Ruiz. That’s Chuy Barajos, Jesus the Kid, the macho who walked into the Punta Bar on his own and…

Chuy opens the door and tosses in a grenade.

Then he unslings the erre and opens up.

–

Eddie jumps on Ilsa, throws her to the floor, and lies on top of her.

Pulls the Glock and looks up.

It’s ugly. People hold their bleeding faces, shards of glass sticking out. One of his flunkies looks down, staring, at his severed left arm. Bottles behind the bar shatter and then the mirror goes. Bullets zing, people go down, women scream, men scream…

Fucking Zetas, Eddie thinks—the place is packed with civilians. This is not the way you do things. He looks for the shooters but only sees one, a spindly-looking little dude standing in the doorway spraying fire like this is some sort of video game.

Ain’t no replay, asshole, Eddie thinks.

He sights the bead on the shooter’s chest.

The shooter sees him, swings his rifle, and fires.

–

Chuy drops the AR and runs.

Runs the way that only a scared boy can run, fast and fluid, through the streets. Doesn’t dare turn his head to see if they’re coming after him.

Tells himself you gotta be alive to spend the money. Gotta be alive to buy your mom and dad the house. Except the Zetas will take care of them—that was the promise, that was the oath. A soldier falls in combat, his family will be taken care of. Ochoa told him that himself, on graduation night before…

Chuy runs until he’s out of breath.

Stops and looks around.

Hears the sirens, sees the ambulances speed past him, going the other way, toward the Punta Bar.

An hour later he’s on a bus, heading up the coast to the port of Lázaro Cárdenas, Zeta country, to collect his beautiful reward for killing Eddie Ruiz.

–

Four dead, twenty-five wounded.

A real mess.

It takes Eddie three hours to get Forty on the phone, but when he does he says, “What the fuck? You’re so desperate for men now you’re using midgets?”

“What are you talking about?”

“That pygmy you sent,” Eddie says, “was even smaller than your dick. Good job, by the way—he hit a dozen civilians and one of them’s dead. Lobbing a grenade into a public place? Is this the way we play now?”

Forty hangs up.

Eddie turns to Ilsa, who’s sitting on his bed.

The sex had been incredible—something about that near-death experience thing, he guesses.

“Crazy night, huh?” he says.

–

Chuy goes to the address of the safe house they gave him.

Gabe and Esteban are there waiting for him, and Chuy smiles at them.

“Forty wants to see you,” Esteban says.

Chuy smiles. Of course Forty wants to see him. When he gets into the room, Forty stands up and slaps him so hard across the face Chuy thinks he might black out. His head spinning, he says, “But I killed Ruiz.”

“No you didn’t,” Forty says. “You missed.”

“I saw—”

Forty slaps him again. “A grenade?! You throw a grenade into a bar full of tourists, and then start shooting?! Are you stupid?! Are you crazy?!”

“I’m sorry.”

“Make it hurt,” Forty snaps.

Gabe and Esteban grab Chuy and drag him up the stairs. They strip him, tie his wrists to a rope, run the rope through a pulley, haul him up until he’s barely on his toes, then tie the other end of the rope off on a bolt in the floor.

Esteban hands Gabe a thick leather strap. Walking behind Chuy, Gabe says softly, “Sorry, dude.”

He takes a swallow of Coke, the good Mexican Coke in a bottle with all the sugar, then starts in with a leather strap on Chuy’s back, on his ass, on his legs. Takes another hit of Coke, sets the bottle down on the floor, and starts whipping him again.

Chuy tries not to scream, but his determination doesn’t last past the third stroke.

It hurts bad.

He screams and twists and cries.

Begs.

Like the little bitch he knows he is.

Finally, Esteban says, “Enough.”

He picks up a length of two-by-four and shows it to Chuy. “You know what I’m going to do?”

Chuy knows.

La paleta is a Zeta specialty they taught at the training camp.

You take a piece of board and hit someone in the lower back. Slowly, rhythmically, again and again. The victim wants to die a long time before he does. Sometimes they stop before they kill him, and then the man is a cripple, barely able to walk, groaning every time he takes a piss.

Chuy had seen those guys and laughed at them.

Now Esteban steps behind him.

Chuy breaks down sobbing.

“Bitch,” Esteban says. “You’re nothing but a little bitch after all.”

“Bitch,” Gabe chimes in. “Fag.”

“You think about it,” Esteban says. “You think about what’s going to happen to you, perrita.”

He unties the rope and Chuy falls to the floor.

“Forty wants to do it himself,” Esteban says.

–

Chuy lies fetal on the floor.

His blood sticks to the wooden planks.

Gabe sits with his back propped against the wall. “I’m sorry, dude.”

Chuy don’t answer.

“You don’t know,” Gabe says. “You don’t know what they make you do. At the ranch. One after the other. One after the other. Like a machine, dude. Then we burn them. Put them in drums and burn them.”

Chuy don’t want to listen, don’t want to feel sorry for Gabe. Fuck him, they aren’t about to beat him to death. He closes his eyes and doesn’t open them again until Gabe finally shuts up.

He looks over at Gabe’s eyes.

His blue eyes.

Staring back at him, unseeing.

Chuy wriggles across the floor like a snake. Grabs the Coke bottle and smashes it against the wall. It wakes Gabe up but Chuy is already on top of him and slashes the jagged glass across his throat.

Gabe tries to keep his blood in, but it spurts out his carotid artery.

Tries to yell, but his throat is cut.

Naked, his wrists still bound together in front of him, Chuy jumps out the window.

Morelia, Michoacán

A whore finds Chuy two weeks later, sleeping in a Dumpster in the alley off the street she works.

Flor is young and Guatemalan. She came up from the Petén when the Kaibiles came in and forced her family off their land. They rode a train into Mexico, hoping to make it to the U.S., but somewhere in Quintana Roo, police stopped the train and forced them off.

The men took her father and brothers away—she doesn’t know where.

They took her, too, to the city of Morelia, and told her that she’d have good work as a waitress, that she would make money that she could send to her family. She did work in the restaurant, washing dishes and the floor, but they told her that she owed the money she made as rent for the room above the restaurant she shared with twelve other girls.

She learned the truth from these girls.

Learned that the men—the “Zetas”—would put her on the street to have sex with men who paid them.

At first she didn’t believe them, but then she learned to believe.

One at a time, men taught her to believe.

In the front seats of cars, they taught her to believe. In cheap dirty rooms, they taught her to believe. Bent over trash cans in an alley, they taught her to believe.

Now Flor stands under the pools of streetlamp lights in clothes that shame her, and she calls to the men in cars in words that shame her, bidding them to do things that shame her, for money that shames her.

She doesn’t send money to her family. The men told her that they would help her find them, but never did.

The money her shame makes goes for rent, goes for food, for clothes, for makeup, it goes to the doctors for medicine, it goes to pay for the train that she rode. The money goes to the “interest” on her debt that grows every day, no matter how much shame she makes at night.

The money used to go for drugs.

She started shooting heroin that washed away her shame like a moist and soothing cloud full of rain, that brought dreams of her beautiful home in the Petén, her parents, her brothers. Her heroin dreams were green and soft and beautiful like her home.

But heroin cost money.

The men would always give it to her, but they would add it to her “tab,” and as she got deeper and deeper into addiction she fell deeper and deeper in debt, until the men had her working all the time and she shamed herself ten, twelve, fourteen times a night.

Not that she felt shame any longer.

Not that she felt anything.

Then Flor found the Lord.

Not the Catholic god of her childhood, but a loving Lord.

Jehovah God.

A man bought her on the street one night, took her to a dim and dirty room, but instead of taking her, asked, “Child, my sister, do you know the Lord?”

He read to her from the Bible, and then gave her a book, the one written by the leader, a man named Nazario. He came to see her every night, when the men weren’t watching, when the other girls weren’t watching, and he told her that Jesus loved her, that the Lord loved her, Nazario loved her, and that if she accepted that love she would see her family again in heaven. She read the book and he took her to meet other people, other brothers and sisters, in a house where they live and call themselves a family.

One night there Nazario walked over to her, rolled up her sleeves, and saw the needle tracks, and he gently said, “You don’t need this, my sister,” and that was the truth and she believed. He taught her to believe.

That while her body might be a slave, her soul is free.

She gave up the heroin.

This night Flor is standing at the edge of the alley and she hears something in the Dumpster and thinks it’s a rat, but then she sees this boy climb out, this child. He looks startled to see her and starts to run, but she asks, “Are you hungry?”

The boy nods.

“Wait here,” she says.

She goes into the restaurant’s kitchen and asks the cook for some scraps—some meat, a little chicken, a corn tortilla—and brings it out into the alley.

The boy is still there and she hands him the food.

He eats like a ravenous dog.

Flor asks, “What’s your name?”

“Pedro,” he lies.

“Do you have a place to stay?” Flor asks him.

Chuy shakes his head.

“I can take you to a place where you can sleep,” she says. “Jesus loves you.”

This is how Chuy joins La Familia Michoacana.

–

Now Chuy lives in an old house with twenty or so other people, most of them young, most of them otherwise homeless. Some are girls, or even boys, who work the street. Others sell candy, flowers, or newspapers from traffic islands.

Chuy gets a different job, delivering food to orphanages, homeless shelters, and drug clinics. He hops in a van or a pickup truck in the morning and spends the day unloading boxes of rice, pasta, powdered milk and cereal, big vats of soup, cookies and candies, all labeled “With love from La Familia.”

At the drug rehab clinics they deliver something else in addition to the food—copies of the Book: The Sayings of Nazario. Sometimes an adult stays behind at the clinic to talk to the addicts, tell them about Jehovah God and Jesus Christ and Nazario. As the weeks go by, Chuy notices that some of the patients he saw at the clinic come to live at the house or work on the delivery trucks.

At night, Chuy has supper at the house, and then goes to the meeting where they discuss the Bible and the Book, and then sometimes he hangs around the restaurant near the block where Flor works or he sits at home and slogs painfully through the Book, because he was never very good at reading, in Spanish or English. But with Flor’s help, he makes it through, and memorizes key sayings. His favorite is, “A true man needs a cause, an adventure, and a good woman to rescue.”

On Sunday mornings everyone goes to church, and on special occasions Nazario himself comes to preach—the good word about Jehovah God and Jesus Christ and how to live right and do the right things, and Chuy sees Flor’s eyes light up when she gazes at Nazario, and after the service they line up to get his blessing and Chuy is excited in a way he hasn’t been since he first met Ochoa, which now seems like a lifetime ago, because now he has a new life—he loves Jehovah God and Jesus Christ. He loves Nazario.

He loves Flor.

But the Zetas are still very much a part of his new life.

They’re part of everybody’s.

As Chuy moves around the city, he sees their gunmen on the street, sees them go into the bars and the clubs, into the brothels and the tienditas—the little stores—and he sees that they collect protection money from everyone.

The Zetas run Michoacán.

“Didn’t you know that?” Flor asks him one night.

“I thought they were just narcos,” Chuy says.

“They run everything now,” she says. “It was them who took me off the train, brought me here, put me to work. The money I make goes to them. All the girls pay them or they beat you, maybe kill you.”

She knows girls who have just disappeared.

The Zetas rule Michoacán like a colony.

So as Chuy works, he literally keeps his head down. As he goes in the truck all around the city, even out to the little villages in the countryside where La Familia delivers food and clean water, digs wells, and builds daycare centers, he keeps an eye out for Zetas.

If they recognize him, he knows they’ll kill him.

And not quick.

But other than that, life is good. He likes living at the house with his new friends, likes spending his spare time with Flor, even finds he likes going to church, singing the hymns, hearing Nazario preach.

One of Nazario’s sayings is, “You are only as sick as your secrets,” and Flor urges Chuy to go speak to one of the counselors, the man who brought her into La Familia, to do a “cleansing,” because it’s wonderful and he will feel better.

“I feel okay,” he says.

“You have nightmares,” Flor says. “You wake up weeping. If you do the cleansing, the nightmares will stop. Mine did.”

A few nights later, Chuy does his cleansing. He goes into a small room with the “counselor,” a man in his forties named Hugo Salazar.

“Tell me your sins,” Hugo says. “Get them off your soul.”

Chuy balks, says nothing.

Hugo says, “ ‘You cannot climb a mountain with a sack of garbage on your back.’ ”

“I’ve done bad things.”

“God already knows everything you’ve done and everything you will do,” Hugo says, “and He loves you, anyway. This is not a confession, it’s a liberation. Nightmares can’t live in the light.”

“I’ve killed people.”

“You look like just a boy.”

Chuy shrugs.

“How many people?” Hugo asks.

“Six?”

“You don’t know?”

“I’m pretty sure six.”

“Were they innocent people?” Hugo asks. “Women? Children?”

“No.”

“How did you come to kill?” the man asks.

“I worked for narcos.”

“I see,” Hugo says. “Anything else?”

Chuy wants to tell him about his nightmare, what he did with Ochoa that night, but he’s too ashamed, and afraid. The Zetas might be looking for him, and if he tells, he might be identified, because only Zetas do that kind of thing.

“Yes,” Chuy says. He stares at the floor. “I killed my best friend.”

“Why, my young brother?”

“He was going to kill me.”

Hugo lays a hand on his shoulder. “Nazario says that this world is full of evil, which is why we must not be fully part of this world, but always have an eye on the next one. In an evil world, sometimes we have to do evil to survive, and God understands this. The point is that we try to do the right thing, with a pure heart. Go back now, my brother, and do what’s right.”

Chuy leaves and finds Flor on the street.

“Was it wonderful?” she asks, beaming at him. “I’m so happy you did it.”

It was good, Chuy thinks.

He does feel lighter.

The nightmares still come, but less often, and he knows the reason that he still has them is because he didn’t cleanse what he did with Ochoa that night. Maybe someday, he thinks, I’ll have the courage to say.

Three days after his cleansing, Hugo approaches him.

“We have a new job for you, little brother.”

The Family needs warriors.

–

Because La Familia Michoacana traffics drugs.

Nazario is the chaca, the boss.

But under the Zetas. Just as the Zetas run Michoacán, La Familia is also under their thumb. But the Family has its own trafficking business, mostly in meth, and it’s bringing in vast amounts of money.

La Familia pays a tax to the Zetas, so are allowed to exist. Nazario was good friends with Osiel Contreras, who sent his Zetas to train Nazario’s gunmen. Then the Zetas took over.

Chuy don’t like the idea of working for Forty again, even indirectly, and he tells Hugo that the Zetas are evil.

“In an evil world,” Hugo tells him, “you have to do evil to do good. The drugs we send to America pay for the food for orphans, the water for the villagers. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“God needs warriors in this world,” Hugo says. “You’ve read the Bible.”

Chuy hasn’t but doesn’t say so.

Hugo says, “David was a great warrior. He killed Goliath. The Family needs Davids. Like you.”

Chuy looks at him, puzzled.

“Don’t you see, my brother?” Hugo asks. “All those bad things in your past, those things you were ashamed of, God takes and turns into good. When you fight for Nazario, you fight for the Lord. Your soul shines like the armor of a knight.”

“But I’d be fighting for the Zetas,” Chuy argues.

“The will of God is a mystery,” Hugo answers, “that we humans can’t always solve. Nor should we. We should only listen to His voice, and if you listen, Pedro, you will hear Him calling you.”

Chuy hears the call.

He becomes a warrior of God.

Every night they meet for Bible study or to discuss the Book. They don’t work on Sundays—instead they attend a massive outdoor service at which Nazario preaches.

“Every man needs a cause!” the leader bellows. “A cause, an adventure, and a good woman to rescue!”

His disciples cheer, then sing a hymn.

After the service there’s a large dinner and then silent time—they spend four hours in quiet, contemplating their souls, their mission, the meaning of their lives, the sayings of Nazario. Sunday evenings they meet in the hall and chant the sayings over and over.

They watch videos, listen to tapes, and learn the strict rules—no smoking, no drinking, no drugs. A first offense will earn a beating, a second brings a severe whipping, a third means execution.

Three strikes and you’re out.

One day the leaders bring Chuy a man they snatched off the streets—a child molester, the worst of the worst—and order Chuy to kill him.

No problem.

A warrior of the Lord, he strangles the man with his hands.

Now Chuy has a different job.

Now he doesn’t deliver groceries.

His five-man cell patrols three city blocks. They watch who comes and goes, report anyone suspicious to their superiors, keep things tight, clean, and orderly. They deliver protection money to the local Zeta boss, who hangs out with his underlings in the office of a local auto body shop.

Instead of boxes, Chuy carries a Glock. He gets a salary. It’s not much, but enough to rent a small room where he moves in Flor. They buy a bed at a junkyard, find a little table at the dump, get a lamp from a secondhand store. And Chuy has a different status—as a warrior, he has respect that earns him a right to make a request.

“I want to take Flor off the streets,” he tells Hugo. “Let her work as a waitress.”

“She isn’t your wife,” Hugo answers.

“She’s going to be the mother of my child,” Chuy answers. Flor told him, shyly and not without fear, that she had missed two periods.

Part of him was scared, part of him was thrilled. He took her in his arms and held her gently. “It will be all right. I’ll take care of you.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I will,” Chuy promised. “I’ll take good care of you both.”

Now Hugo argues, “That child could be anyone’s, little brother.”

“Flor is my woman, so it’s my child,” Chuy answers.

That simple.

“I’ll have to ask,” Hugo says.

“The Zeta boss?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t ask,” Chuy says. “Tell him that the mother of a warrior’s child can’t be a whore.”

–

The Zeta boss’s answer comes three nights later.

With four other Zetas, he walks into the restaurant after closing, when Flor is wiping down the tables and setting up for the morning.

“Everyone out,” he orders, then looks at Flor. “You stay.”

The others quickly walk out, their eyes on the floor. One of them, a former whore herself, runs to find Pedro.

“Are you Flor?” the boss asks.

Terrified, Flor nods.

“Take off that dress.”

“I don’t do that anymore.”

“You’re a whore,” he says, “and you’ll do what I tell you. You still owe us money.”

“I’ll pay you.”

“Yes, you will. Right now.”

He nods and the four men grab her, strip the dress from her, and pin her onto one of the tables.

–

“Pedro! Pedro!”

Chuy sees the girl running toward him.

“What is it?”

“It’s Flor! Come quick!”

He runs.

–

Chuy lifts Flor’s body off the table and cradles her corpse on his lap. She’s still warm, her skin is still warm.

People say that you could hear Chuy’s howl through the whole colonia.

They say they can never forget the sound.

–

Chuy stands outside the yonke, the auto shop where the Zeta peces gordos—the big bosses—hang out.

He hears them laughing inside.

The clink of bottles and glasses.

Well trained, Chuy checks the clip on his erre. Then he kicks the door in and sprays the five of them before they can as much as move.

Crouching beside the wounded Zeta chaca, Chuy takes the man’s hair in one hand, like Ochoa did with the man that night. He takes out his knife, like the one the Kaibile handed him that night, pulls the boss’s head back so that his neck is taut, and presses the serrated blade against his throat.

He’s lived this over and over again.

More than the times that the boys hurt him, raped him, made him their girl. More than those things, his nightmares are of that night, when they handed him the knife and told him what to do—

–so now he knows and as if in a dream he saws the blade back and forth as the Zeta boss who raped and murdered Flor screams just as the man screamed that night and the blood spurts out in hot jets as Chuy saws through the arteries, and then the boss is quiet, just gurgling as Chuy saws through cartilage and bone like he did that night, and the bone and cartilage and skin pop as he severs the head.

He sets it down and starts in on the other four. Two are already dead. One tries to crawl away, but Chuy grabs his hair and pulls him back. The last man cries and slobbers and begs but Chuy tells him, “Shut up, bitch.”

Chuy is sitting on the floor with the five decapitated bodies when Hugo bursts in. “Dios mío, Pedro, what did you do?!”

“My name is Jesús,” Chuy says numbly. Over Hugo’s shoulder he sees Nazario, with several men behind him. “Kill me.”

Hugo pulls his gun, ready to oblige. The fallout from one of theirs killing five of the Zeta overlords will be horrific. If they can at least turn over a corpse…He points the gun at Chuy’s head.

“Stop!” Nazario yells, knocking Hugo’s hand down.

“The calf and the yearling will be safe with the lion,” Nazario quotes from scripture, “and a little child shall lead them all.”

He lifts Chuy up.

“It’s time,” Nazario says.

–

Chuy leads five La Familia warriors into the Sol y Sombre disco where a lot of the Zetas party.

The music throbs, the lights strobe.

Chuy fires a burst from his AR into the ceiling.

As the revelers dive to the floor, two of Chuy’s men open a black plastic bag and dump out its contents.

Five human heads roll across the black-and-white-tiled floor.

Chuy reads from a cardboard sheet, “The Family doesn’t kill for money! It doesn’t kill women, it doesn’t kill innocent people! Only those who deserve to die, die! This was divine justice!”

He tosses the sheet down and walks out.

The revolution—the rebellion of La Familia Michoacana to throw the Zetas out of their homeland—starts that night. Nazario writes press releases and takes out advertisements in the major newspapers to the effect that La Familia is not a public menace but just the opposite, a patriotic organization doing what the government cannot or will not do—“cleanse” Michoacán of kidnappers, extortionists, rapists, meth dealers, and foreign oppressors such as the Zetas.