Текст книги "The Cartel"

Автор книги: Don Winslow

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 42 страниц)

Adán nods.

He has to give in on this issue—it’s not only a matter of Ochoa’s pride, to pay his way, but he knows that the Zeta boss also wants to establish his own relationships with Mexico City.

That’s a problem, but he’ll work it out.

“At the same time,” he says, “if we don’t assist a rebellion against you in Michoacán, we wouldn’t expect you to help rebels fighting against us in Tijuana.”

“Agreed,” Ochoa says.

“Are we done?” Adán asks.

“Not quite,” Ochoa answers. He looks pointedly at Eddie. “This man has to leave Nuevo Laredo. His presence there is an insult.”

Eddie keeps his mouth shut. It’s hard because he’s thinking, shit, I took Laredo for us. Now that we have it, I have to leave? It’s hard, because as he looks at Ochoa, he sees Chacho’s face, hears him howl in agony, smells his burning skin. What he wants to do is stand up and put a bullet between Movie Star’s eyes, but he keeps his mouth shut.

“Agreed,” Adán says.

They all get up from the table.

The Gulf War is over.

Adán has created peace among the narcos and divided the country into plazas.

He’s become his uncle.

–

What follows is a bitchin’ good party.

Adán and Magda left right away, which made the party even better, because El Patrón is notoriously stuffy about these things. But with Barrera gone, the wraps came off—champagne, weed, coke, hookers—it goes on all night into the next day.

Eddie is particularly taken with Las Panteras—the female contingent of the Zetas. These are some hot chicas, who went through the same training that the men did, and came out on the other side smokin’. They even have hot names. Eddie gets with the Panteras’ leader, Ashley (no, seriously, a Mexican chick named Ashley), who calls herself La Comandante Bombón. “Commander Candy” carries a pink Uzi, which Eddie really digs. She likes to hold on to it while she rides him, threatening, “Let’s see which goes off first, you or the Uzi.”

Eddie’s been with a lot of women, but there’s a unique sexual thrill to banging a gash you know has canceled some guy’s reservation. Like, literally killer pussy. Doing the midnight rodeo with a babe you know would waste you if she got the order adds a little Tabasco to the taco.

Commander Candy…shit.

Eddie still plans on killing both Forty and Ochoa, but he has to admit they know how to throw a party.

–

“Ruiz behaved himself,” Nacho says to Adán on the flight back to Sinaloa.

“He did,” Adán agrees. “Diego is going to bump him up, give him San Pedro Garza García.”

“He’ll do well.”

“Nacho,” Adán says, “I have something I want to ask you.”

But he’s looking at Magda instead of Nacho.

She arches a curious eyebrow at him, and then he turns back to Nacho. “Now that we have peace with the Gulf, I want to ask you for your daughter’s hand in marriage.”

Magda forces herself to smile.

Despite his amazing cruelty, to ask for another woman in front of her. She knows this is payback for her sleeping with Jorge—or not, as the case may be—and she accepts it as such.

But even Nacho—smooth, unflappable Nacho—is a little taken aback and stammers, “Adán, I’m honored.”

“If she’ll have me,” Adán adds.

“I’m sure she will.”

It’s time, Adán thinks, to create another family.

“There’s one other thing,” he says.

“Anything.”

“I don’t want to hear that now is not the time, it’s too politically sensitive, it’s risky, anything,” Adán says to both of them. “As soon as the new president takes office, I want Keller dead.”

It’s time for that, too.

Past time.

–

Yvette Tapia invites Keller to their house on inauguration eve for a celebratory dinner party.

“You’re happy about the results?” Keller asks when she phones.

“Of course,” Yvette says. “Six more years of PAN means six more years of prosperity, growing the economy, lifting people out of poverty. Genuine democracy.”

“Even though it was decided by a federal tribunal?”

“Sort of like your Supreme Court?” Yvette asks. “Come to dinner. We can talk about Florida, hanging chads, and voter fraud.”

He might as well go, continue his dangerous courtship with the Tapias, all the more dangerous now that PAN will retain the presidency. It remains to be seen if Barrera money will continue to flow through the Tapias to the new president, whether either Vera or Aguilar will be retained in their positions or how the change of administrations, if not parties, will affect the drug situation.

The fighting in Tamaulipas, anyway, stopped as abruptly as it started, and there are rumors of a peace meeting between the Alliance and the CDG. It could be true, because Barrera has apparently withdrawn his men from Michoacán and the Zetas have stopped their public complaints about the government being prejudiced against them.

The intel coming out of Nuevo Laredo is that Barrera has use of the city without paying a piso. The common wisdom is that he “lost” the war against the CDG and had to “settle” for Laredo, but Keller knows that the common wisdom is bullshit.

Barrera, as usual, got exactly what he wanted.

Laredo.

A plaza.

At the same time, the war in Tijuana seems to be going Barrera’s way, and the word is that he’ll soon wrest control of the city back from Teo Solorzano, if he hasn’t already.

Two down, Keller thinks, one to go.

And me.

Adán will be looking to settle the tab with me now.

At least Marisol is safely away from it.

She’s in Valverde now, bought a house, opened her clinic. He helped her pack and move out of the Condesa place. They were both very civilized about it, and made mutual pro forma promises to visit when she got settled.

Which they haven’t done yet.

Keller misses her.

They talk on the phone, but the calls are short and awkward, and he can tell she’s very busy with her work.

It’s good, he thinks, as he drives out to Cuernavaca.

It’s the right thing.

–

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

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

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

Benjamín shrugs.

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

“Laura…”

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

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

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

“We could use the jobs,” Keller says.

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

“Where’s Martín?”

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

“Yes.”

“So did Martín.”

“Oh.”

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

“Yvette—”

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

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

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

“All right.”

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

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

“How do you know I’d be insulted?”

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

“Would it be?”

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

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

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

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

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

Or are they?

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

“What is it about?”

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

“And Adán?”

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

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

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

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

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

Keller takes her hand. “Friends.”

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

–

The next morning, Felipe Calderón takes office.

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

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

Luis Aguilar is retained as head of SEIDO.

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

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

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

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

Good Night, Juárez

This isn’t a city, it’s a cemetery.

–Peggy Cummins as Laurie Starr

in Gun Crazy

1 Gente Nueva—The New People

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

–Revelation 21:5

Mexico City

May 2007

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

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

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

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

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

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

Before Marisol he was never lonely, in fact he reveled in his solitude. After she first left, they spoke over the phone every few days. She had set up her clinic—the only full-time doctor for twenty thousand people in the valley—and was happily busy. They talked about getting together—she coming to Mexico City for a weekend, he going to Valverde—but something always came up for her, and he didn’t feel right about exposing her to the risk of being with him.

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

And he was getting nowhere on Barrera.

Just hanging in, hovering, hoping for a break.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Because of corruption?”

“That’s part of it.”

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

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

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

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

“Really.”

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

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

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

“Adán has a type.”

“Apparently.”

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

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

“Where?”

“No one knows.”

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

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

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

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

But God, the guest list.

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

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

It’s a pipe dream, Keller thinks.

But even pipe dreams have their uses.

–

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

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

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

Keller calls for a meeting of the committee.

–

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

“Yes,” Vera answers.

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

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

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

“To get Barrera?” Keller asks.

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh, here we go again,” says Vera.

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

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

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

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

“How would I have a source?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which is as good as killing it, Keller thinks.

But instructive.

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

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

Barrera’s right, Keller thinks.

He’s untouchable.

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

But sometimes luck just rolls your way.

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

Now luck rolls the other way.

From the unlikeliest of sources.

–

Sal Barrera is clubbing at Bali.

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

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

“A little sparse tonight,” César says. He’s a good-looking dude—slim, with wavy black hair, and well dressed in a black Perry Ellis shirt over custom jeans.

“It only takes one,” Sal answers, scanning the lower level where the plebes are. Sal is dressed to score, too—silk batik shirt, white jeans, Bruno Magli loafers. He’s there to get his knob polished, at the very least. Figures he needs the release, because Nacho’s been working him like a burro.

Adán was as good as his word—Sal finished his degree, and then went to his uncle.

“You’ve done everything that I’ve asked,” Adán said.

“I gave you my word,” Sal said.

“Don’t think I haven’t noticed,” Adán said. “So I want you to serve as an apprentice to Nacho Esparza for one year. As such, you’ll be present at important meetings and privy to the family’s business. If that goes well, as I expect it will, I’ll bring you in as my second in command here in Sinaloa. Be a sponge, soak up everything that Nacho has to teach you.”

Sal blushed with the unexpected news. “Sí, patrón.”

“ ‘Tío,’ ” Adán corrected. “I’m your uncle.”

“Sí, Tío.”

“To get you started,” Adán said, “I’m giving you five kilos of cocaine. Market it through Nacho. He’ll help you make a good profit and set yourself up in business. “

“Thank you, Tío.”

“Sobrino,” Adán said, “the days ahead are going to be interesting…and dangerous…I’m going to rely increasingly on family. Do you understand? On family.”

“I’m honored, Tío Adán.”

“Well, don’t be too honored,” Adán said, “until you see what it entails.”

It’s been a revelation to Sal how boring the drug business is. Yeah, there’s the women, the money, the parties, the clubs, but at the heart of it are numbers.

Endless columns of numbers.

And not just the money coming in, but the money going out, which Nacho keeps a sharp eye on. The price of precursor chemicals, shipping costs, dock handling charges, equipment, transportation, labor, security…it goes on and on.

Sal spends most of his time double-checking figures that some worker bee has already checked, but when he objects to the redundancy of this “busy work,” Nacho tells him that he’s learning the business, and the business is numbers.

Then there are the meetings.

Holy fuck, the meetings.

Everyone has to sit down, everyone has to be given coffee or a beer, everyone has to be fed. Then everyone has to talk about their families, their kids, their kids’ kids, their prostate problems…then they finally get to the tedious details. They want a lower piso, they want someone to pay them a higher piso, so-and-so is overpaying the truck drivers and fucking up the market for everyone else, some chemist in Apatzingán is fucking with the meth recipe…

It goes on and on until Sal wants to swallow his gun.

At least he has that.

At least Nacho lets him carry and feel like a narco instead of an accountant, and Sal has a Beretta 8000 Cougar tucked into the waistband of his jeans.

All the buchones carry—a piece on the hip is as mandatory an accessory as the gold chains around your neck. You just aren’t a buchón without the pistola. You might as well not have a dick.

He scans the crowd and then sees this babe sitting at a table, sipping on some fruity drink.

She’s with two guys.

No problem—the guys look like jerks, cheaply dressed, no style at all. And neither of them is Salvador Barrera.

“I’m going in,” he says to César.

“She’s with somebody.”

“She’s with nobodies,” Sal answers. He pours a glass of champagne from the complimentary bar, descends to the floor, and walks up to the girl’s table.

“I thought you might like a good drink,” he says. “Cristal.”

“I’m good,” she says.

“I’m Sal.”

“Brooke.”

“What a nice name,” Sal says, ignoring the two guys sitting there like crash test dummies. They look annoyed, a little bewildered, a little scared. They’re both Mexicans, they know what’s what. “Where are you from, Brooke?”

“L.A.,” she says. “Well, Pasadena. South Pasadena.”

She’s pretty. Blue eyes, honey hair, turned-up nose, nice rack under a white blouse.

“What brings you to Mexico?” Sal asks. “Spring break?”

She shakes her head. “I’m a student at UAG.”

Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara, right here in Zapopan.

“A student. What do you study?”

“Pre-med.”

Now she’s looking a little nervous, like this guy is hitting on her, right in front of her friends, so Sal moves to close the deal. “How would you like to come up to the VIP section? It’s better.”

“I’m with friends,” she says. “We’re celebrating David’s birthday.”

“Feliz Navidad, David,” Sal says to the jerk she points out. “Listen, you all three can come. It’s cool.”

They look at each other, like, what do you think? But Sal sees that David isn’t having it. Jesus, is this plebe tapping that? Unbelievable. But she’s looking at David, and he just slightly shakes his head, so Brooke looks up at Sal and says, “Thanks, but…you know…we’re just having a little birthday party here. But thanks.”

It pisses Sal off. “Well, how about a little later? I mean, after you shake these losers.”

David makes a mistake.

He gets up. “The lady said no.”

“Is that what the lady said?” Sal asks. “What are you, a tough guy?”

“No.” His voice shakes a little, but he stands there in Sal’s face. “Why don’t you leave us alone and go back to the VIP section?”

“You going to tell me what to do now?” Sal asks.

“Please,” Brooke says.

Sal smiles at her. “You know, you must be a dumb cunt, you can’t get into pre-med in the States. It’s okay, I’ll still fuck you until you scream my name and come on my dick.”

David shoves him.

Sal takes a swing and then bouncers are there, squeezing between them, and César and Edgar pull him back.

“Big mistake, birthday boy,” Sal says to David.

Edgar’s big and he gets his arms under Sal’s and hauls him away, toward the door. “Come on, ’mano. This chiflada isn’t worth it.”

They wrangle him out the door. On the sidewalk, Sal says, “This isn’t over.”

“Yes it is,” Edgar says. “Nacho—”

“Fuck Nacho.” They get into Sal’s red BMW, but Sal won’t leave. “We wait.”

“Come on, man,” César says.

“You want to go, go.”

“You’re my ride.”

So they sit and wait, and instead of Sal cooling off, he gets hotter and hotter. By closing time, 4:00 a.m., he is seething.

“Here they come,” Edgar says.

Brooke, David, and her other friend come out of the club, walk into the parking lot, and get into an old Ford pickup truck.

“He’s a farmer,” Sal sneers.

“You’d better get over there, you’re going to mess him up,” Edgar says.

“Fuck that.” Sal starts the car and follows the truck. It pulls onto the highway and Sal hits the gas, coming right up on the truck’s bumper. The truck speeds up but the truck isn’t going to outrun a BMW.

Sal laughs. “Now this is fun!”

He pulls up alongside the truck.

They’re doing about eighty now.

“Let’s fuck them up,” Sal says.

“Come on, ’mano,” César answers. “It’s enough. Let it go now.”

“Can’t let it go,” Sal answers. “You think we can let people disrespect us in public like that?! Let it get around that we did nothing, and we’re pajearses, jerkoffs.”

He pulls his Beretta out and rolls the windows down. “You with me? Or are you pussies?”

They take out their guns.

“Duck,” Sal says to César.

Then he opens up.

So do César and Edgar.

They put twenty shots into the truck before it rolls over into the ditch.

David and Brooke are both dead.

The other friend, Pascal, is badly hurt, but still alive.

He IDs the three shooters to a Jalisco state cop smart enough to know what he has and honest enough to know what he should do. The detective phones SEIDO and holds until Luis Aguilar himself comes on the line.