Текст книги "The Cartel"

Автор книги: Don Winslow

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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 42 страниц)

Keller sees the intensity in Yvette’s eyes as her husband gallops ahead.

One opponent stands between him and the goal.

Martín raises his mallet over his head, swings it down, and, at the last second, passes to his teammate, who scores the winner.

–

Laura Amaro’s overworked husband doesn’t show up at dinner, so Yvette sits Keller next to her at dinner as her “date.”

“Benjamín books the president’s travel,” Laura explains, “so it’s a seven-day-a-week job.”

“Important, though,” Keller says.

“Oh, yes, we’re all very important,” Laura answers. “Just ask us. Of course he might be out of a job soon.”

“Do you really think PRD can win?” Keller asks. PRD is a left-wing coalition that basically replaced PRI as the main opposition party. Its presidential candidate, Manuel López Obrador, was the mayor of Mexico City and had seen a commanding lead in the polls fade against the PAN candidate, Felipe Calderón.

“I think it’s going to be close,” Laura says. “So does Benjamín. It would be a disaster for the country, though, if we lose. I think your people in Washington share this opinion, don’t they?”

“I think so, yes.”

Keller also thinks this—the center of the Mexican drug trade isn’t in the frontline border cities of Tijuana, Juárez, or Laredo.

Or even in the heartland of Sinaloa.

It’s here, in Mexico City.

–

“You’re kissing a cobra,” Martín Tapia says as he climbs into bed next to his wife.

“But it’s so much fun.”

“If Adán knew that Keller was a guest here…”

“ ‘Adán, Adán, Adán,’ ” Yvette says, “ ‘Upon what meat does this our Caesar feed that he is grown so great?’ ”

“Diego is devoted to him.”

“I know,” Yvette says, turning to her husband, “they were boys together. Diego’s problem is that he doesn’t see his own worth.”

“He’s loyal.”

“Loyalty should extend both ways.”

“Meaning?”

“Adán’s getting closer and closer to Nacho Esparza,” Yvette says. “First he gives him Tijuana, now he’s sniffing around the daughter.”

“She’s seventeen.”

“There’s no harm in keeping Keller close,” Yvette says. “He might come in handy for us, and if not, he’s always worth two million on the hoof, isn’t he? Not to mention the Emperor’s undying gratitude.”

Yvette slides down in the bed.

“Let me show you,” she says, “how much fun it is kissing the cobra.”

–

Keller waits outside the Marriott in a rented car.

Arroyo comes out with the case and gets into his Lexus. Up Paseo de la Reforma into Colonia Polanco, then onto Avenida Rubén Dario, flanking Chapultepec Park.

The Lexus pulls over by the park.

A woman walks out, the passenger door opens, and she takes the suitcase. Keller doesn’t have to risk following the woman to learn her identity, because he’s already had dinner with her.

He watches Laura Amaro walk away.

Jesus Christ, he thinks. Laura hands the money to her husband, Benjamín, who takes it to Los Pinos.

–

Three weeks later, on election night, Keller and Marisol join thousands of people gathered in the Zócalo to await the results.

The Zócalo is Mexico City’s main square, one of the largest in the world. The Palacio Nacional, built on the grounds of Moctezuma’s palace, flanks the square to the east, and on the west is the Portal de Mercaderes. The mundane Federal District office buildings are on the southern edge, while the north of the square is dominated by the Metropolitan Cathedral of the Assumption of Mary, the largest church in the Americas, the construction of which began in 1573. It’s said that Cortés himself laid the cornerstone. Its twin bell towers made of red tezontle stone loom over the Zócalo like sentries.

The square itself is huge and empty, save for the actual zócalo, the base for a column that was never built which now supports a flagpole with a giant Mexican flag. It has been a gathering place for centuries, and Keller has learned that the Aztec center of the universe was said to have been just northeast of here, at the old Templo Nachor.

Standing in the Zócalo makes you feel very small; as an American, it makes you feel that your country is very young.

Marisol is a political animal, Keller has discovered, a passionate leftist. She wept during Pan’s Labyrinth, first from anger at the Spanish Fascists and afterward with pride that such a beautiful film had been made by a Mexican director, Guillermo del Toro.

As the election neared, her conversation became more and more obsessed with politics, to the point where she would apologize, change the subject, and then get back to politics a few minutes later.

Keller didn’t mind—he liked her passion, and the truth was that he couldn’t help but compare her to Althea, a dyed-in-the-wool liberal for whom Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan were demonic figures.

“You don’t know what poverty is in the U.S.,” Marisol said to him one night over dinner at an Argentine place.

“Have you seen the South Bronx?”

“Have you seen the colonias of Juárez?” Marisol countered. “Or the rural poverty out in the valley, where I come from? I’m telling you, Arturo, the conflict between right and left is different in Mexico.”

So she detests PAN, is wholeheartedly and hopefully PRD, and the night before the election, she asked Keller out for a date.

To watch the results in the Zócalo.

Keller isn’t a very political person, more wearily cynical after his experiences with Washington. Marisol knew this, and was very pleased when he agreed to go to the Zócalo, because she knew he was doing it for her.

Now they stand in the enormous public square with a crowd that Keller guesses to be about fifty thousand. The mood is tense, and all day they have heard rumors of voter fraud—ballot boxes stuffed, ballots tossed away, small rural communities threatened with the loss of government benefits if they vote PRD.

Everyone knows it’s going to be close, so the air is electric as they wait for the results of a peculiar Mexican procedure known as the Cuenta Rápida—the “Quick Count.” The election commission takes a sampling of votes from some seven thousand districts when the polls close at 10:00 p.m. If the margin for one candidate is greater than .06 percent, a winner would be predicted; if less, the election would be determined “too close to call” until a complete counting of the votes.

At 11:00 that night, the election commissioner goes on television to an-nounce that the Quick Count showed that the results are “too close to call,” but he refuses to give the actual numbers.

“We’re being robbed,” Marisol says as they make the slow walk through the crowd from the Zócalo. “Everyone knows that the people want the PRD. They’re going to cook the books.”

“You don’t know that,” Keller answers, although he’s worried. Worried for her, that she’ll be hurt and disappointed; worried for himself, that PAN will take the election—fairly or unfairly—and that it will be business as usual for the Tapia money network.

He’s in a quandary about what to do with the information he has about the money pipeline going to Los Pinos.

If he tells Aguilar or Vera, he could be instantly expelled from the country.

Worse, he doesn’t know if one or both are implicated.

He should take the information to Taylor, let DEA and the rest of the alphabet soup take over the investigation, then deal with its consequences on the highest level.

But who in DEA is going to take on Los Pinos? The issue would be kicked up to Justice, then over to State, and probably die a slow death in the hallways. Because Laura Amaro is right—the current conservative administration in the White House wants PAN to win this election. They’d do nothing to rock that boat and risk the Mexican election going to the left wing.

So the smartest thing to do for the time being is nothing.

Continue the investigation and keep it from his colleagues and superiors until after the election.

Everything depends on the election.

The official count starts three days later.

The election commission collects all the sealed ballot packages from the districts and examines them for signs of alterations. Representatives from the various parties are present and can make objections.

Marisol sits up all night by the television in her condo.

Keller waits with her. They drink coffee and make nervous conversation as the numbers start to come in and López Obrador jumps out to an early lead.

“I told you,” Marisol says. “The country wants PRD.”

Then the erosion begins. It’s like watching a riverbank collapse under a slow flood of water. The lead dwindles and then collapses as results from the northern districts are slow arriving.

“That’s me,” Marisol says. “That’s my home.”

When the northern votes finally come in, they’re strongly for Calderón.

“I don’t believe it,” Marisol says. “I know the people there, they’re poor and they’re not PAN.”

Early the next morning, the official result is announced.

Calderón has won by a mere 243,934 votes.

0.58 percent.

A hanging chad, Keller thinks.

Marisol cries.

Then she gets angry.

–

They take to the streets.

Two days after the official tally, almost three hundred thousand people demonstrate in the Zócalo and listen to PRD speakers talk about voter fraud. A week later, the crowd swells to half a million people who demand that the courts order a recount.

Marisol is one of them.

Keller another.

He goes to protect her, but he also goes because it’s just such a spectacle. When was the last time, if ever, that half a million Americans gathered to fight for democracy? He doesn’t know if the accusations of voter fraud are right or wrong, but he’s impressed—no, moved—that they care in those numbers, that it means something to them. He’d watched an American election stolen with barely a whimper.

The ambassador would shit bricks if he knew that Keller was there, Tim Taylor would probably hemorrhage through the nose, but Keller doesn’t care. It’s an historic moment and he’s not going to miss it, and of course he’s aware that there’s something else.

He might be falling in love.

It seems unlikely at his age and place in life. Marisol is twenty years younger (although she would be the first to say that she has an “old soul”) and a loyal citizen of a country he might get tossed out of any day.

They haven’t slept together yet—their physical contact has been confined to kisses—but the physical attraction is there. He certainly feels it, and thinks she does as well, from the nature of those kisses and her sighs when they say good night.

But she’s a Mexican woman of a certain class, and a Mexican woman of a certain class doesn’t go to bed on the first date or the third. He knows that if it happens it won’t be casual for her—she’s been through the demise of a marriage and now she’s going to take her time.

Art Keller is no lovestruck fool, no victim of a midlife crisis. He knows that there are problems, problems he hasn’t talked to her about. How do you tell a woman you’re reluctant to get involved because it puts her in danger? How do you deliver the melodramatic, surreal news that there’s a multimillion-dollar price on your head that someone might try to collect any moment, and that you don’t want her to be in range of an errant bullet?

It’s surreal, like so much of the narco-world—and yet, like so much of the narco-world, all too real.

So Keller knows he shouldn’t be seeing her at all.

Her, or anyone else.

But being with her feels too good, too natural, too “right,” to employ a cliché from pop music. He likes Marisol, he respects her, he admires her (okay, yes, he lusts after her), he might be falling in love.

And the odds of anyone trying to collect Barrera’s bounty are slim right now. In a strange way, the disputed election affords him a level of protection, because Adán is too cautious to rock the boat in the middle of a storm.

Still, Keller knows that his getting involved with anyone is a bad idea.

Two weeks later he joins her at the biggest demonstration yet—a march down Paseo de la Reforma to demand a recount. It’s impossible to judge the number of marchers from inside the march—some observers put it at two hundred thousand—but the Mexico City police estimate that almost two and a half million people march that day to demand a fair election.

Two and a half million people, Keller thinks as he walks beside Marisol, who chants along with the crowd. Martin Luther King’s March on Washington was about a quarter of a million strong; a protest against the Vietnam War in ’69 might have had six hundred thousand.

Despite himself, Keller finds it compelling. Anyone who says that Mexicans don’t care about democracy should be here today, he thinks, as the marchers file pass the statue to Los Niños Héroes and El Ángel de la Independencia, past the American embassy and the stock exchange.

It’s stirring.

“They’ll have to give us a recount now!” Marisol shouts happily to him over the chanting. “They’ll have to!”

The march ends in the Zócalo, but this time people don’t leave as thousands of them start a plantón, an encampment, refusing to vacate until a recount is announced. Keller is against Marisol staying. “It’s dangerous. What if the police try to clear you out? You could get hurt.”

“Go home if you don’t want to stay,” she says.

“It’s not that—”

“After all, it’s not your country.”

It isn’t but it is.

Keller has spent more of the past twenty years in Mexico than he has in the United States, and even his time at “home” was consumed with Mexico. He’s shed blood here, had friends die here.

He stays.

The first night he spends with Marisol Cisneros is on a sleeping bag in the Zócalo with a thousand other people around them.

Things start to turn ugly the next day as the protestors snarl traffic on Paseo de la Reforma and other major thoroughfares. Fights break out with commuters, police make arrests. Keller urges Marisol not to get involved—she has a practice to protect, patients to see, he urges caution—but she won’t quit. She reschedules her regular patients and only leaves the protest to make her clinic hours in Iztapalapa. That afternoon, the judges decide that there is enough doubt as to the legitimacy of the voting to justify a recount in 155 disputed districts. The recount will start in four days and take weeks, at least.

A celebration breaks out in the Zócalo. Guitars play, people hug and kiss, some cry in joy.

“Will you go home now?” Keller asks Marisol.

“Only if you come with me,” she says.

–

“I want to take a shower,” she says when they get to her condo. “I’m a filthy mess.”

Keller waits on a sofa in the small living room. The condo is nice but not elaborate and has the barely lived-in look of the divorced person who spends little time at home. Through the thin walls, he can hear the water running. It finally stops and he thinks that she’ll come out, but it takes forever.

It’s worth the wait.

Marisol’s amber hair hangs over her bare shoulders, above a black negligee that shows tantalizing glimpses of the body underneath. “Shall we go to bed?”

Keller thought that she’d be tentative, he thought they both would be. But their bodies take over and she quickly lets him know that she wants him inside her, and when he is she’s surprisingly unladylike.

Later, her head on his shoulder, her hair splayed on his chest, Marisol says, “Well, you worry that the fantasy is going to be better than the actual event, but in this case…no.”

“You fantasized?” Keller asks.

“You didn’t?”

“I did.”

“I should hope so.”

A few minutes later Marisol sighs. “It’s been a long time.”

“Me, too.”

“No,” she says, “I meant since I’ve loved someone.”

And that’s it—una locura de amor, that’s what they have.

A crazy love.

–

“I’m looking at some interesting intel photos,” Taylor says over the phone, “of you at a demonstration. Some people aren’t happy, Art. They’re wondering whose side you’re on.”

“I don’t give a fuck who’s happy,” Keller says. “As for sides, I’m on my side.”

“Same old Keller.”

“Don’t call me anymore with this bullshit.”

He clicks off.

–

August in Mexico City is wet.

The rains usually come in the afternoon, and many of those afternoons find them in bed together, when her practice and his work allow. They meet at Marisol’s and make love as the rain spatters against the bedroom window, then they get up, make coffee, and wait for the shower to pass before venturing out.

The protests against the election continue during the recount. There are marches out to the airport, marches downtown—demonstrations break out in other parts of the country, including Marisol’s beloved Juárez.

Keller keeps up his surveillance of the Tapia money machine—it rarely varies as money finds its way to Los Pinos, or at least to its senior staff. And he keeps playing his dangerous game, socializing with the Tapias, provoking a response.

The Zetas don’t contact him again, but he figures that they’re doing what everyone else is doing—waiting for the election results, which might render their government problem moot.

Mexico is holding its collective breath, and then on August 28, the election commission releases the final count. By the slimmest of margins, virtually identical to the original results, Calderón is declared the winner and PAN retains Los Pinos.

New president, same party.

Marisol is devastated.

“They stole the election,” she tells Keller, citing the various allegations of fraud, voter intimidation, miscounts, and no-counts. “They stole it.”

The confirmation of the election results is also the confirmation of everything she’s feared about her country, that it’s hopelessly corrupt, that power will always protect power.

The rain keeps coming down.

Marisol becomes depressed, morose. Keller sees a person he didn’t know was in there—quiet, uncommunicative, remote. Her disappointment turns to bitterness, her bitterness to anger, and with no legitimate outlet to turn it on, she turns it on him.

She’s sure “his” government is pleased with the results, maybe even complicit. “His” politics are a little further to the right than hers, aren’t they? He’s a man (Keller pleads guilty), and no man can really be a feminist, can he? Does he have to hang his shirt on the bathroom hook, does he have to read her the headlines from the paper (she can read herself, can’t she?), can a North American man really understand a Mexican woman?

“My mother was Mexican,” Keller reminds her.

“Do I remind you of your mother?” she asks, deliberately taking the argument sideways.

“Not remotely.”

“Because I don’t care to be a mommy figure to—”

“Marisol?”

“You interrupted me.”

“Fuck off.” He takes a breath and then says, “I didn’t steal the election, if, in fact, it was stolen—”

“It was.”

“—so don’t take it out on me.”

Marisol knows she’s doing it. Knows it but can’t seem to stop doing it, and she’s not proud of herself for it. She did the same thing to her ex, blamed him for things that he couldn’t do anything about—for her own dissatisfaction, her own anger, her rage that life isn’t what it should be, when she doesn’t even know what it should be.

And Arturo—this beautiful, wonderful, loving man—is just so…North American. He’s not only a North American, he’s a North American law enforcement official, a drug cop who does God knows what and now somehow he’s come to embody her…

…anger.

She tries to be reasonable. “What I’m saying is that there are a thousand years of history here that you North Americans don’t comprehend and you come here stumbling around in ignorance and—”

“I came down here to—”

“Down here?” she asks. “Do you even hear the paternalism and condescension implied—”

“I meant ‘down’ as in ‘south.’ ”

“South of the border, down Mexico way.”

“Jesus Christ, Mari, stop being such a—”

“Bitch?” she asks. “That’s what a woman who stand up for her own opinions is, right?”

Keller walks out of the apartment. He’s angry about the election, too, and for reasons he can’t tell her.

The continuation of a PAN administration is going to force his hand vis-à-vis the Tapia money tube. He’ll have to do something—trust Aguilar or Vera—or finally take it to Taylor, who is going to reasonably ask why he wasn’t told sooner.

And pull you out of Mexico, Keller thinks.

And then what?

Do you ask Marisol to come with you? She loves her country, it wouldn’t be fair to ask her. So far, she’s put up with the secret part of his life. She’s smart, she senses that his job is more than “policy liaison,” and she doesn’t ask where he goes or what he does when he’s not with her.

But that can’t last; it’s no kind of life.

In a different life, he’d ask her to marry him, and he thinks she’d say yes. In a different life, he’d leave the agency and settle in Mexico, find something to do—a job in SEIDO, or a private security firm. Maybe he’d open a bookstore or a café.

But that would be a different life.

You’ve been at this for coming on two years now and you’re no closer to getting Barrera than you were when you started. Adán is more entrenched in power than he ever was.

And it’s more than that—the validated election result will free Barrera to come after you.

He’ll hunt you down in the States, or Mexico, or wherever you go, and it isn’t fair to ask Marisol to endure that.

You don’t do that to someone you love.

Keller knows what he should do, and knows that he should do it soon. The holidays will be here soon, and it’s cruel to break off a relationship then. It’s going to be cruel anyway—on both of them—but he doesn’t have a choice.

That night at her place in Condesa, he says, “Marisol, I want to tell you something.”

“I want to tell you something, too.” She walks him over to the sofa and helps him sit down. Then she gently sits down next to him. “I guess this isn’t the best time, but I want to tell you that I’ve moving.”

“Where?”

“Valverde,” Marisol says. “I’ve decided to go home.”

She feels useless here, she says, treating rich patients, when there is so much poverty and need back home. She could do something there, mean something to people there, be part of the struggle instead of just making symbolic gestures at protest marches. She can’t live like this anymore.

“We can still see each other,” she says. “I can come down here, you can come to Juárez…”

“Sure.”

It’s the sort of thing people tell each other when they both know it isn’t really going to happen.

“Arturo, please understand,” she says. “I feel like I’m living a lie here. That we’re living a lie.”

Keller gets that.

He knows about living lies.

–

Adán decides to make peace in the Gulf.

The CDG and their Zeta troops have proved to be a surprisingly tough and resilient enemy, even with Osiel Contreras in jail. There have already been seven hundred killings in Tamaulipas, another five hundred in Michoacán, and the Mexican public is growing tired of the violence.

“Do you think they’d come to the table?” Magda asks. She knows her role—play devil’s advocate to let him test his ideas. So she asks, “Why make peace now?”

“Because we can get what we want now,” Adán says.

“What about La Familia?” Magda asks. “They’ve been good allies, and they’ll never make peace with the Zetas.”

She’s heard the story about the murdered young whore and the boy who loved her.

It’s almost romantic.

“The Zetas can have Michoacán,” Adán answers. “I don’t want it.”

Magda knows what he does want.

–

Eddie sits with Diego and Martín Tapia in the back of a Cessna 182 on its way to the meeting with the CDG and Zetas. After long negotiations, the Sinaloans had agreed to meet at a ranch Ochoa owns between Matamoros and Valle Hermosa.

“Let me teach you what my mother taught me,” Diego says to him. “If you keep your mouth shut, no one can stick his dick into it.”

“Your mom didn’t teach you that, Diego,” Eddie says.

Diego says, “What I’m telling you is, at this meeting, you keep your fucking mouth shut.”

Eddie looks out the window at the sere landscape below. “If you think I’m just going to sit there with the people who tortured my best friend to death—”

“Sí, m’ijo, I think you are,” Diego says. “Or you take your money, go back el norte, and open a Sizzler’s or whatever.”

“Maybe a Soup Plantation,” Eddie mutters.

“Cheer up,” Diego says. “Things might go bad and then we can kill everybody.”

God knows they have enough firepower to do it. They didn’t come light—four airplanes full of automatic rifles, handguns, grenade launchers, and the people to use them. If this is a trap, they aren’t going to be defenseless.

“Remember, I get Forty and Ochoa,” Eddie says.

Gordo Contreras—aka Jabba the Boss—he could give a shit about either way, although it was Eddie who started the joke: “What happened when Gordo took over the Gulf?” “The water level rose three feet.”

Martín has warned Eddie that if he wants to do jokes, he should find an open mike night at a comedy club, but definitely, definitely not try out his material at the peace table.

The plane lands on a strip on the west side of Ochoa’s ranch. Eddie looks out the window to see a dozen jeeps, three of them with machine guns trained on the aircraft, and Forty on full alert.

“Yeah, I can feel the love here,” he says.

“If that’s you keeping your mouth shut, it’s not working,” Martín says.

–

The hacienda has a tiled roof and a broad, covered porch where a long table has been set with carafes of ice water, iced tea, and bottles of beer. Ochoa, looking like a matinee idol from one of those old movies, steps down from the porch and walks toward Adán as he gets out of the jeep.

It’s a key moment, Adán knows. Everyone here knows that the whole thing could go south and the guns will come out. He looks Ochoa up and down and then says, “You’re as good-looking as they said. If my gate was hinged on the other side, I’d marry you.”

A moment of silence, then Ochoa cracks up.

Everyone laughs and then they go up onto the porch.

Gordo Contreras—the little brother who is now the putative head of the CDG—is sitting at the table, not having bothered, Adán notes, to haul his fat ass out of the chair. He’s sweating heavily—it’s disgusting. All the more so when he leers at Magda.

“I didn’t know segunderas were invited,” Gordo says. “I would have brought mine.”

Adán is about to step in when Magda says, “Partners were invited, Gordo. Your segundera can stay home where he belongs.”

The look on Gordo’s fat face is priceless—slack-jawed and furious at the same time. He glares at Magda but she looks coolly back at him until he drops his eyes.

Advantage Magda, Adán thinks.

They sit down, Adán and Ochoa at respective ends of the table. Drinks are poured and then Nacho says, “I think we should limit our discussions as to how we move forward. I see no gain in bringing up the past.”

“We didn’t start this war,” Gordo says.

“Your brother tried to have me killed in Puente Grande,” Adán says calmly. “I considered that a declaration of war.”

“There was a gap of several years before you acted on it,” Gordo says, already huffing with effort. He leans over and gulps from a glass of ice water.

Adán shrugs. “I have a long fuse.”

“Can we just focus on how to end the war?” Nacho asks.

“Sure,” Gordo says. “You withdraw all of your people from Tamaulipas, and if you want to use the Laredo plaza, you pay us tax. And we want what-do-you-call thems…reparations.”

“You’re out of your mind,” Magda says.

Adán notices that Ochoa has said nothing. The former soldier is sitting back, letting Gordo go through the preliminary nonsense. As Tío taught me, Adán thinks—Él que menos habla es el más chingón.

He who speaks least has the most power.

Speaking of nonsense, Vicente Fuentes weighs in with cocaine-inspired gibberish. “Profit is the blossom of the plant of peace. While we are watering the fields with blood, we should be…”

As Vicente goes on, Ochoa looks down the table at Adán, who wonders if he’s really seeing what he thinks he’s seeing. Ochoa’s smile is subtle, almost undetectable, but it’s there, and then Ochoa ever so slightly juts his chin at Vicente.

It’s a question.

And Adán ever so subtly nods.

Yes.

The real deal of this meeting has been made—Juárez is a legitimate target and the CDG won’t interfere. Adán stands up. “We’re not going to withdraw from Tamaulipas nor are we going to pay reparations. But here’s what we will do…”

A cease-fire will start immediately, with each side keeping the territories it has taken.

The CDG will keep all of Tamaulipas with the exception of Nuevo Laredo, which will be an open city. In addition, it will retain Coahuila, Veracruz, Tabasco, Campeche, and Quintana Roo.

The Alliance will move product through Laredo without paying a tax. It will retain control of all of its old territories—Sonora, Sinaloa, Durango, Chihuahua, Nayarit, Jalisco, Ochoa, Guanajuato, Querétaro, and Oaxaca, as well as Acapulco, and it will acquire—as Diego had insisted to Adán—the Monterrey suburb of San Pedro Garza García, the richest municipality in Mexico.

The territories of Nuevo Léon, Federal District, State of Mexico, Aguascalientes, San Luis Potosí, Zacatecas, and Puebla will be neutral.

Gordo struggles to his feet. “Barrera graciously offers to give us what we already have. This is a waste of time.”

“Sit down,” Ochoa says quietly.

Gordo glares at him.

But he sits down.

An amazingly blunt show of power, Adán thinks. Which Ochoa didn’t bother to disguise and so wanted me to see. Gordo Contreras will hold on to power for as long as Ochoa wants him to and not a moment longer. Then Ochoa says, “I’m sure Barrera wasn’t finished with his offer and was about to say something about Michoacán.”

Ochoa has grown at the game, Adán thinks, but he’s still no Osiel Contreras. Osiel would never have brought up Michoacán proactively, tipping off his main concern like that.

“I don’t control La Familia,” Adán says. “They’re loose cannons. But we would become neutral in that conflict.”

“Your friends in the government aren’t neutral,” Ochoa answers.

“If we make peace, our friends will become your friends,” Adán says. “At the very least, they won’t be your enemies. The government might decide to focus its efforts onto La Familia.”

“And what would these ‘friendships’ cost us?” Gordo asks.

Rudely.

“I don’t ask guests to dinner,” Adán answers, “and then hand them a bill.”

Ochoa takes a moment to look over at Gordo as if to ask, Do you understand the importance of this? What he’s offering is more valuable than territory. He looks back to Adán and says, “Still, you’ll be polite enough to let us pick up the check every now and then?”