Текст книги "The Cartel"

Автор книги: Don Winslow

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 42 страниц)

Chuy doesn’t care about any of that.

All he knows now is killing, and it’s all he wants to know.

–

Eddie sees the story about the Sol y Sombre nightclub on the news.

“Nice,” he says to the flunkie playing Madden with him. “Beheadings? Like…beheadings? I thought that was Muslim shit. Al Qaeda.”

A few days later Eddie hears that the beheadings might have been carried out by the same guy who attacked his nightclub.

“Jesus the Kid.”

The boy changed jerseys, I guess, Eddie thinks.

A midseason trade.

And some of the narcos are saying that the kid is really a kid, eleven, twelve years old.

Junior varsity.

Suddenly, Eddie feels old.

Then he gets the word—

–okay, the order—

–to go make nice.

–The word comes down from AB, El Señor, through Diego.

Eddie gets it—the Zetas have fought them to a bloody stalemate in Tamaulipas—tit-for-tat trench warfare that promises nothing but more of the same. So if these La Familia whackadoodles can draw some troops away from Tamaulipas, okay, good.

It doesn’t stop Eddie from arguing. “They’re religious nuts. You know this Nazario’s aporto? ‘El Más Loco’—the Craziest.”

“As long as he’s killing Zetas,” Diego says.

“He’s doing that,” Eddie says. “He’s also our biggest competitor in the North American meth market.”

“Plenty of helio-heads to go around,” Diego answers.

Well, that’s a big chunk of truth, Eddie thinks. The Mexicans have finally found a drug that white trash likes and can afford. And one thing you ain’t never gonna run out of is white trash.

That stuff makes itself.

They get made in the backseats of junk cars, and then they live in them.

So a week later Eddie Ruiz looks across a table at Chuy up in Morelia, Michoacán.

And he really is a kid.

An actual kid.

“I should be really pissed at you,” Eddie says. “That stunt in Acapulco—very bad shit.”

Feels like he should put him in “time out.”

Chuy doesn’t respond. Eddie looks into his eyes and sees nothing there—it’s like staring at a snake. This kid, he has to remember, this freaking junior varsity water boy, cut the heads off five men and rolled them across a disco floor like he was duckpin bowling.

Guilty feet ain’t got no rhythm, Eddie thinks.

But Diego said to work with these born-again Bible-thumpers, so—

“Hey, ‘Texas forever,’ right?” Eddie says. “We pochos have to stick together. Now let’s you and me go bag ourselves some Zeta assholes.”

“I kill for the Lord.”

“Okay, then,” Eddie says.

In the next ninety days, over four hundred narcos will be killed in Uruapan, Apatzingán, Morelia, and Lázaro Cárdenas.

The new tag team of Crazy Eddie and Jesus the Kid account for more than a few of them.

5 Narco Polo

Must be the money.

–Nelly

“Ride wit Me”

Mexico City

2006

Keller sips his white wine and looks over the glass at the exquisite woman smiling at him across the lobby of the movie theater.

Yvette Tapia is stunning in a short silver dress, her black hair cut in a severe pageboy, her lipstick a dark, daring red. If she meant to invoke the age of the flapper, a Zelda Fitzgerald combination of sophistication and sexiness in a Mexican milieu, she’s succeeded. As one of the film’s financial backers, she moves fluidly through the crowd, smiling and chatting and charming.

Desperate men, Keller reflects, make desperate moves.

And he’s desperate.

His hunt for Adán Barrera is at a standstill, frozen on an investigational tundra of no leads, mired in bureaucratic entropy. His colleagues on the Barrera Coordinating Committee are bogged down elsewhere, simply too busy trying to cope with simultaneous wars in Baja, Tamaulipas, and now Michoacán.

Keller has to admit that the violence is unprecedented. Even at the height (the depth?) of Barrera’s war against Güero Méndez, back in the ’90s, the fighting was sporadic—brief sudden peaks of violence—not a daily event. And not spread across three broad areas of the country, with multiple and interconnected antagonists.

The Alliance fighting Teo Solorzano in Baja.

The Alliance fighting the CDG/Zetas in Tamaulipas.

La Familia (with, apparently, Alliance help) fighting the Zetas in Michoacán.

The war back in the ’90s encompassed a few dozen fighters at a time. Now the cartels are mustering literally hundreds of men, maybe thousands—most of them military veterans, former or current police officers, in any case, trained fighters.

AFI and SEIDO are trying to take them all on.

Unless you believe Ochoa, Keller thinks, in which case the lineup looks a little different:

The Alliance and the federal government fighting Teo Solorzano in Baja.

The Alliance and the federal government fighting the Zetas in Tamaulipas.

La Familia (with, apparently, Alliance help) and the federal government fighting the Zetas in Michoacán.

Keller doesn’t want to believe it. Was there official collusion in Barrera’s escape from Puente Grande? Doubtless. Complicity in his close escapes? Likely. Entrenched corruption that keeps him protected wherever the hell it is he’s “hiding”? Inarguable.

But a coordinated federal effort to assist Barrera in taking over the entire Mexican drug trade? That’s a grassy knoll that Keller can’t climb.

He and Ochoa do agree on one thing.

Start with the Tapias.

I have nowhere else to start, Keller thinks as he watches Yvette come toward him in the lobby.

It’s in direct violation of his working agreement with both DEA and the Mexicans. You are not here to cultivate your own sources, take independent action, or do surveillance or any other intelligence gathering.

Yeah, well, Keller thinks, I’m not here to sit on my ass and do nothing while you guys work on everything but Barrera, either. Nothing changes if nothing changes, so it’s time to start a little change.

He’d used an embassy connection to get into the film, and it came with an invitation to the post-premiere reception where everyone stands around thinking of nice things to say. Keller sought Yvette out, complimented her on the movie, and they got to talking.

“Yvette Tapia,” she said. “My husband, Martín, and I helped to finance the film.”

“Art Keller.”

If she recognized the name, she didn’t show it. “And what do you do in Mexico City, Art?”

“I’m with the DEA.”

Give her credit, she didn’t flinch. Her in-laws are some of the biggest drug traffickers in the world and she didn’t as much as blink. Instead, she smiled charmingly and said, “Well, that must keep you very busy.”

They made small talk for a little bit, and then she moved on to work the crowd. Now she makes her way back to him and says, “Art, we’re having a post-party party at the house. Very casual. Won’t you come?”

“I’m by myself,” Keller answers. “I don’t want to be a fifth wheel.”

“You’d be a twenty-fifth wheel,” she says. Her husband comes up and stands at her shoulder, and she turns to him and says, “Martín, we have a poor lonely diplomat here who’s resisting my invitation. Make him come.”

Martín Tapia looks like anything but a narco. He wears a carefully tailored dark blue suit with a white shirt and tie, and the word that comes to Keller’s mind is “polished.”

Martín extends his hand. “My wife has invited all the usual suspects, so a little fresh blood would be very welcome.”

“Always happy to be a transfusion,” Keller says. “Where…”

“Cuernavaca,” Martín says.

Hello, “Cuernavaca,” Keller thinks, remembering the series of phone calls that led to the ambush at Atizapán. “I don’t have my car with me.”

“I’m sure we can arrange a ride with someone,” Martín says.

So Keller hops in a car with a film agent, and rides out to the modern house in a gated community in the hills of Cuernavaca.

The small crowd can only be described as “glittering.” Literally, in the case of the actresses in sequined dresses—one of whom he thinks he recognizes from American films—metaphorically in the case of the writers, producers, and financiers. He’s been standing around for about ten minutes when Yvette comes over to him.

“Let me see,” she says, scanning the room. “Who here is right for you? Not Sofía, she’s a wonderful actress but quite insane…”

“Maybe not an actress.”

“A writer, then,” Yvette says. “There’s Victoria—stunning, isn’t she? She’s some sort of financial journalist, but I think she’s married, and, anyway, she lives in Juárez…”

“You really don’t have to play matchmaker for me.”

“But I enjoy it so much,” Yvette says, “and you wouldn’t deprive a staid married lady of her small pleasures, would you?”

“Of course not.”

“Come on, then,” she says, taking him by the arm, “let me introduce you to Frieda. She writes film criticism and we’re all terrified of her, but…”

Yvette skillfully dumps him off on Frieda, and Keller chats with the film critic as he watches Yvette move from guest to guest, charming everyone.

But she’s here to do just that, Keller thinks.

So is her husband.

Martín Tapia is a successful young entrepreneur on the rise, and making high-level connections is his business. Or his brother’s, Keller thinks. The Tapias could be Diego’s link to Mexico’s upper crust. And if they’re Diego’s, they could very well be Adán’s.

It’s not much, but it’s the only thread Keller has. It’s pretty ballsy, though, he has to admit, injecting himself into the Tapia household. I wonder what Adán would think, if he knew I was here.

Maybe he already does.

Keller makes polite conversation with the film critic for a moment and then wanders off and grabs another glass of wine.

“You look as lost as I feel.”

The woman beside him is stunning—a heart-shaped face, high cheekbones, dazzling brown eyes, auburn hair that falls to her shoulders, and a figure that Keller can’t help but notice under her classic little black dress.

“I don’t know how you feel, but, yes, I do feel lost,” Keller says. He offers his hand. “I’m Art Keller.”

“Marisol Cisneros,” she says, shaking his hand. “North American?”

“With the embassy.”

“Their Spanish instruction is better than it used to be,” Marisol says. “Rosetta Stone—Latin American version?”

“My mother was Mexican,” Keller says. “I spoke Spanish before I spoke English.”

“Are you a friend of the Tapias?”

“I just met them at the film opening,” Keller says.

“I don’t know them at all. I came with a friend.”

Keller’s surprised that he feels a slight pang of disappointment until he hears her say, “I think you met her. Frieda?”

“The terrifying film critic.”

“All critics are terrifying,” Marisol says. “That’s why I became a mortician.”

“You don’t look like—”

“I’m a doctor,” she says. “One step removed from a mortician.”

Keller sees her blush.

“I’m sorry,” she says, laughing at herself. “That was a stupid joke. I think I’m nervous. This is sort of my coming-out party.”

“Coming out from…”

“My divorce,” Marisol says. “It’s been six months and I’ve done that bury-yourself-in-your-work thing. Frieda dragged me to this. I’m not very comfortable with the beautiful people.”

But you’re beautiful, Keller thinks. “Me neither.”

“I can tell.” She blushes. “There I go again, being socially awkward. What I meant was…I don’t know…you don’t seem…”

“The beautiful people type?”

“I meant it as a compliment, believe it or not.”

“I’ll take it as one.” They stand there—awkwardly—and then Keller thinks of, “Do you live in Cuernavaca?”

“No, the city. Condesa. You know it?”

“I live there.”

“I moved from Polanco after the divorce,” she says. “I like it there. Bookstores. Cafés. You don’t feel so…pathetic…going into those places by yourself.”

Keller can’t imagine that she’s by herself that much. If she is, it’s by choice. He says, “I was reading a book the other night while eating—alone—in a Chinese restaurant, and the book talked about a man so lonely that he eats alone in Chinese restaurants.”

“So sad!”

“But you’re laughing.”

“Well, it’s funny, too.”

“I got up and left,” Keller says. “Totally demoralized.”

“This past Valentine’s Day?” Marisol says. “I sent out for a pizza. Sat in my condo and watched Sabrina and cried.”

“That’s pretty bad.”

“Not as bad as your Chinese restaurant.”

They look at each other for a second and then Keller says, “I think this is where I ask you for your phone number. So I can…call…”

“Right.” Marisol reaches into her purse.

“I’ll remember it,” Keller says.

“You will?”

“Yes.”

Marisol tells him her number and he repeats it back. Then she says that she’d better collect Frieda and head back to the city—she has clinic hours in the morning. “It was nice to meet you.”

“You, too.”

As she starts to walk away, Keller asks, “Anne Hathaway or Audrey Hepburn?”

“Oh, Audrey Hepburn. Of course.”

Of course, Keller thinks.

Of course.

–

“What do you think of the North American?” Martín Tapia asks as he steps out of the shower later that night.

Yvette sits in front of the mirror, carefully taking off her makeup and checking for wrinkles around the eyes that are as inevitable as they are undesirable. It might be time, she thinks, to check in with her cosmetic surgeon about Botox or a procedure.

“Keller?” she answers. “He’s nice enough.”

“Don’t get fond. Adán wants him dead.”

“That’s a shame,” Yvette says. “He could be useful.”

“How?”

“Let me ask you something,” Yvette says as she gets into bed. “Do you trust Adán?”

–

Keller starts with Martín Tapia the next morning.

To all appearances, the middle Tapia brother is a successful young entrepreneur who does what successful young entrepreneurs do.

Most days Martín leaves the house midmorning and drives downtown. He has meetings, he has lunches, he has more meetings. He plays golf at the Lomas Country Club. He goes to banks and corporate offices. Some evenings, usually with his lovely wife on his arm, he’s seen in trendy restaurants, at the theater, at the ballet or the opera. On other evenings they just stay home and enjoy a quiet dinner—the pool, the Jacuzzi, the tennis court—and retire early.

On Sundays, he and Yvette go to brunch at the Hotel Aristo with the other smart couples. Their list of friendships, acquaintances, and associates is a Who’s Who of the capital. But after a month of surveillance, Keller never sees Martín meet with a policeman or a politician.

Maybe I’m wrong, he thinks. Maybe Martín is clean, not involved in his brothers’ business. Or maybe he’s taken some of the money and used it to launch himself in legitimate business.

Maybe.

Keller switches his attention to Yvette.

And again, to all appearances, she does what the wife of a successful young entrepreneur would do. She gets up and does yoga or swims laps, she takes tennis lessons from a private coach. She goes out to lunch with other wives, serves on charitable committees.

She plays golf.

Yvette Tapia is a serious golfer, going two or three times a week to the La Vista Country Club.

Keller can’t follow her into the club without being stopped at the gate, but he parks across the road. Switching rental cars every day or so, he gets an idea of her schedule—every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday she drives her white Mercedes to the club, plays nine holes, and usually drives home, unless she goes somewhere to have a drink with friends.

Maybe I’m wrong, Keller thinks again.

The next afternoon, Keller doesn’t track Yvette from the house but waits on the road outside the club for her to finish. This time she doesn’t drive home or to a restaurant, but to a residential street that flanks the golf club.

Keller watches the white Mercedes pull into a driveway.

He notes the address—123 Vista Linda.

Probably a friend, Keller thinks.

He drives past and watches through the rearview mirror as Yvette gets out of the Mercedes, takes a small case from the passenger seat, and walks up to the front door. Then he pulls over on the other side of the street as she lets herself in with a key.

Jesus, he thinks, is Yvette Tapia having an affair?

But there’s no other car in the driveway. Maybe, Keller thinks, the guy is cautious enough to park down the street and walk to the assignation. Feeling like a sleazy private detective, Keller shuts off the motor and waits.

If Yvette is having an affair, it lacks passion, because she comes right back out.

Sans suitcase.

Having to choose whether to follow Yvette or stay on the house, he decides on the house.

An hour later, a blue Audi pulls into the driveway and a well-dressed man who looks to be in his midthirties gets out and lets himself into the house. He’s only there for a few minutes, then comes out with the small suitcase and drives away.

Keller gives him a few hundred feet, and then follows.

Yvette Tapia isn’t having an affair.

She’s a bagman.

–

Keller could use help.

Surveillance isn’t a one-man job.

It’s hard to follow a car and not lose it or get “made,” harder still to follow it through the labyrinth of heavy traffic that is the Mexico City metropolitan area, especially when you’re relatively new to the area and don’t know its intricacies. At least the Audi isn’t trying to lose him—the driver seems confident, complacent, unaware that he might be followed.

That helps, but Keller knows that a successful surveillance operation needs a team—two or three cars to trade off the tail, a helicopter, communications and tech support. He could get any of this—all of this—through SEIDO or AFI, but…

…he can’t.

For one thing, he’s not supposed to be doing his own investigation, much less active surveillance. For another thing, he doesn’t know whom he can trust.

Vera? Aguilar?

Every time—every time—they came close to Barrera, he slipped away. Then there was the Atizapán ambush. Did one or the other know? Did they both?

Keller could get some support from DEA, but he can’t even go there because (a) he isn’t supposed to be doing this, (b) they’d want to know why he isn’t working with the Mexicans, and (c) he doesn’t know whom he can trust.

For all he knows, this could be a setup and the blue Audi is leading him into a trap.

I’m bait, Keller thinks.

Now maybe the bait’s been set for me.

He thinks of breaking off the tail. He has the license plate and could probably run it through EPIC without drawing too much attention. Find out who the driver is and proceed from there.

It’s not a bad plan. Maybe smarter than losing the track now or, worse, getting made.

Or driving into an ambush.

The Audi takes a left.

It’s the chance to let it go.

Keller follows.

The whole long way to Lomas de Chapultepec.

–

The man tosses the car keys to the valet outside the Marriott and goes inside, the suitcase in his hand.

This is where Keller could really use a teammate, someone to go inside. If anyone in that lobby knows him, it’s over. But he doesn’t have an option, so he hands the valet his keys and some peso notes. “Keep it close.”

He walks into the lobby and goes straight to the bar.

His man is sitting in the lounge with the case at his feet.

“A Cucapá, please,” Keller says.

He can see his man in the bar mirror. Watches him order a drink, watches as the waiter brings him what looks like a gin and tonic, watches as the man finishes his drink, leaves some bills on the table, and leaves.

The suitcase stays.

Seconds later, another man—in his forties, in a charcoal-colored suit—sits down, looks around briefly, and then picks up the suitcase and walks out.

Keller would give a lot for photographic surveillance.

He quickly pays for his beer, heads for the door, and watches the man get behind the wheel of a white Lexus. It’s too late to get his own car and follow, but he does get the license plate.

The next morning, Keller runs both plates through EPIC. The first plate, the blue Audi that picked up the suitcase at 123 Vista Linda, is registered to a Xavier Cordunna, a junior partner in a Mexico City investment banking firm.

The second plate, the white Lexus that picked up the suitcase at the hotel, belongs to a Manuel Arroyo.

A commander in AFI.

–

Keller punches in Marisol Cisneros’s number.

“I was beginning to think that you’d forgotten it,” she says when she answers.

There’s a little starch in her voice and he hears it—this is not a woman used to being ignored, and she’s going to let you know it.

“No,” Keller says. “I just didn’t want to be pushy. I’m sorry, I’m sort of out of shape in the dating thing. I don’t know what the rules are anymore.”

“I’ll send you the book.”

“Seriously?”

“Another nervous joke. Bad habit.”

“So,” Keller says. “I was thinking if we’re going to have dinner alone, we could have it alone together.”

“That was very good.” Marisol laughs. “Did you practice that?”

“A little.”

“I’m flattered.”

“So…yes?”

“I would love to.” Her voice is deep and sincere now—warm—and it sends a little jolt through him.

“Where would you like to go?” Keller asks.

“We could go back to your Chinese place,” she says, “and redeem you in front of the waiters.”

“It’s kind of a dive. Maybe someplace nicer.”

They settle on a little Italian place they both know in Condesa, and agree to meet there rather than for him to pick her up. “That way if we don’t like each other,” Marisol says, “it will be easier for one or both of us to escape.”

There’s no need to escape. Again, a little to his surprise, the conversation flows easily and he finds that he likes Dr. Marisol Cisneros very much.

Over linguine with clams, served family style, a mozzarella salad, and a bottle of white wine, he learns that she’s originally from Valverde, a little town in the Juárez Valley just along the Río Bravo. Her family has been there “forever,” at least since the 1830s, anyway, when they were given land to settle in exchange for fighting the Apaches who were always raiding from the north.

The Cisneros clan has still been prominent in the Valverde area—not one of the “Five Families” that still dominate the valley, but more upper middle class than most of the people who live there—planting cotton and wheat down along the river, and running cattle and horses on the drier plateaus.

Marisol always knew she didn’t want to be a ranchero’s wife, so she studied hard and won a scholarship to the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico City. Then she went to Boston University Medical School and did her residencies at Massachusetts General and Hospital México Americano in Guadalajara, specializing in internal medicine.

She married a contract lawyer from Mexico City, moved back here, and went into practice with three partners in lucrative Polanco, although she volunteers time at a clinic in Iztapalapa.

“Rough neighborhood,” Keller says.

“The people look out for me,” Marisol says, “and it’s only on Saturday mornings. The rest of the week, I take care of rich people’s small complaints. But I’ve been talking and talking. What about you?”

He tells her a little more than he did at the Tapias’ party, “confessing” that his job at the embassy is with DEA.

“We know a little bit about drugs in the valley,” Marisol says. “The Juárez people have been operating there for years through the Escajeda family.”

“Is it a problem for you?”

“Not really,” she says. “Over the years, you work out a modus vivendi. You know how it is—you leave them alone, they leave you alone.”

“I work mostly on bilateral policy issues,” Keller says.

“I like the U.S.,” Marisol says. “Let me see, I’ve been to El Paso, of course, San Antonio, New Orleans, and New York. Lived in Boston. Of these, I liked New Orleans the best.”

Why? “I’ve never been.”

“The food. The gardens.”

The divorce, she tells Keller, was more her fault than her husband’s. He thought he knew what he was marrying, and so did she. In all fairness, he gave her the life she thought she wanted—a two-professional household in a trendy neighborhood, successful friends, dinners out at the best places…status.

“He was exactly what I wanted him to be,” Marisol says, “and I punished him for it. Anyway, that’s what my therapist said. I was a real bitch toward the end—I think he was quite relieved when I moved out.

“I always thought that Valverde wasn’t enough for me,” Marisol continues. “Then it turned out that it was Mexico City that wasn’t enough for me. I was bored and boring—I was just a consumer. I need to…I don’t know…contribute something. So what’s your story?”

“The usual cop story,” Keller says. “I was married more to my work than to my wife. You’ve seen it in a dozen movies. It was my fault entirely.”

“Well, we’re both just guilty bastards, aren’t we?”

They finish the linguine.

“Do you want to escape?” Keller asks. “Or would you like dessert?”

“I’d very much like dessert,” Marisol says, “but I’d also like to walk this meal off. Perhaps we could go for a stroll and find a place?”

“Sounds great.”

Keller pays the check, likes that she doesn’t offer to split it, and they walk down to the Pendulo bookstore. He enjoys watching her prowl the aisles, seriously perusing the volumes on the shelves.

She looks good in glasses.

“I love doing this of an evening,” she says. “Looking at books, having a coffee. This is a very nice date, Arturo.”

“I’m glad.”

Marisol picks out a volume of Sor Juana’s poems and they sit at a table in the little café and have coffee and pan dulce.

“There’s a bakery in Valverde,” she says. “Best pan dulce in the world. Maybe I’ll take you there sometime.”

“I’d like that.”

Afterward, they stroll down Avenida Nuevo León.

“This is what they did in the old days,” she explains. “A courting couple would walk on the paseo in the evening. Of course, the watchful tías would walk behind—out of earshot but within sight—to make sure that the boy didn’t try to steal a kiss.”

“Are there any tías behind us now?” Keller asks.

She turns around. “No.”

Keller bends down and kisses her. He’s just about as surprised as she is, and he doesn’t know where he found the nerve to do that.

Marisol’s lips are soft and full and warm.

–

Two days later, Keller answers his phone to hear Yvette Tapia say, “Please tell me that you’re free on Sunday.”

“I’m free on Sunday.”

“Good,” she says. “And do you like polo?”

Keller laughs. Polo? Seriously? “I’ve never been asked that before.”

“Martín plays,” Yvette says, “and we’re getting up a group to go watch and then a little party at our place afterwards. Shall we say Campo Marte at one?”

We shall, Keller thinks.

But he doesn’t know why.

–

Campo Marte sits on a plateau in Chapultepec. A rectangle of green field with the high-rises of the city looming in the background.

Keller sits with Yvette Tapia in the shell of an amphitheater that makes up the spectators’ section. She’s resplendent in a white summer dress that shows off her legs and a white bonnet that sets off her jet-black hair.

The rest of the hundred or so spectators are equally well-heeled—the rich, beautiful people of Mexico City—sipping champagne or mimosas, nibbling on hors d’oeuvres served by white-liveried waiters.

“Explain polo to me,” Keller says to Yvette.

“To the extent that I understand it myself,” she answers. “Martín just took it up about two years ago, but already I think he is quite good, a ‘one’ handicap, whatever that means.”

“Do you own the ponies,” Keller asks, “or rent them like bowling shoes?”

“You’re making fun of us,” Yvette says. “That’s all right. It is a bit much, isn’t it? But Martín’s passionate about it, and a wise wife never denies her husband his passions if she wants to stay his wife for long.”

“And a wise husband?” Keller asks.

“Lo mismo.”

The same.

“Some husbands buy sports cars,” Yvette says, “or planes, or whores for that matter. Martín buys horses, so I’m lucky. The horses are very pretty and we meet some very nice people.”

Which is the point, isn’t it? Keller thinks. Golf and tennis place you in one social circle, polo takes you into another stratum altogether.

Keller sits back and watches the flow of play, a swirl of color with the riders’ bright green or red jerseys, and the horses themselves—varied shades of white and brown and black. He barely understands what’s going on—four riders on each side try to knock the ball into the opponents’ goal—but it’s fast and dramatic.

And dangerous.

The horses bump each other or flat-out collide, and several times—to the gasps of the crowd—it looked like one or both were going down.

Martín does look like a good player, a graceful rider, and aggressive in going after the ball. Keller learns that he’s a “number two” on his team, responsible for feeding passes to the leading scorer and also for defense. It’s the most “tactical” role on the team, Yvette tells Keller, who’s not surprised.

The score is tied 4–4 at the end of two chukkers—halftime.

Yvette stands up. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

“It’s a tradition.”

With the rest of the crowd they walk onto the playing field for the “divot-stamping,” replacing the sod that the horses’ hooves kicked up. Everyone does it to make the field clean and safe for the second half, but also to socialize.

Yvette introduces him.

Keller meets bankers and their wives, diplomats and their wives, he meets Laura Amaro.

Laura and Yvette are good friends.

“Where is your husband today?” Yvette asks.

“Working.”

“Poor man.”

“The president keeps him busy.” She turns to Keller. “My husband, Benjamín, works in the administration.”

“Ah.”

“I barely see him anymore,” Laura says with a pout. “I live at Yvette’s house more than I do at mine.”

“Can you come to the house after?” Yvette asks.

“There’s nothing stopping me,” Laura says. “Maybe Benjamín can join us.”

“Call him and say that I insist,” Yvette says.

“Well, that should scare him.”

They walk around, replacing divots and talking. Then Yvette points out a striking woman chatting with a tall, broad-smiling man in an impeccably cut Italian suit.

“Do you recognize the woman?” Yvette asks.

“No.”

“The president’s wife,” Yvette says. “The first lady.”

“Do you want to go over?”

Yvette shakes her head. “I’m not there yet. Anyway, there’ll be a new first lady soon, won’t there? God send her husband is PAN.”

Halftime ends and they go back to their seats.

The second half is more intense than the first. The sporting atmosphere becomes more competitive, the play more physical. Once, when it looks like Martín’s horse is about to topple, Yvette reaches over and grabs Keller’s hand.

She keeps it there for several seconds, squeezes, and then lets go.

The match is a 6–6 tie when Martín bursts his gray horse forward, “hooks” the mallet of the opposing player, and blocks it. Shouldering the other player aside, he takes the ball and drives down the field.