Текст книги "The Cartel"

Автор книги: Don Winslow

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 42 страниц)

“We have Salvador Barrera in custody,” he tells Aguilar.

“On what?” Aguilar asks, assuming it’s a drug charge.

It’s not.

“A double homicide,” the Jalisco cop says.

–

Sal Barrera has that me vale madre attitude, but Keller can see that he’s scared.

For good reason.

The Jalisco police have witnesses to the fight, and the third victim can identify the shooters. Sal dropped the gun out of the car but it has his prints and matches eight of the shots. And the paraffin test came up positive.

Sal’s fucked.

Aguilar and Keller got on a SEIDO plane right away and flew to Guadalajara. Now Keller watches through the glass as Aguilar interviews Sal.

“I want my lawyer,” Sal says.

“A lawyer is the last thing you want,” Aguilar answers. He reviews all the evidence against him. “You killed a rich blond girl from California, Salvador. You’re not going to walk away from that, I don’t care who your uncle is. Let me help you.”

“How can you help me?”

“We can make a deal for lesser charges,” Aguilar says. “Maybe you do ten years instead of twenty. You’re still a young man when you get out.”

“What do I have to do?”

“Give us your uncle,” Aguilar says.

Sal shakes his head.

“He’s getting married, isn’t he?” Aguilar asks. “To Eva Esparza. We can pick him up when he leaves the wedding. No one ever needs to know it was you.”

“He’ll know. He’ll kill me.”

Aguilar leans across the table. “He’ll kill you anyway. You’ve put him in a very difficult position. If he even suspects that you might roll over, he might be tempted to…eliminate that possibility. We can’t protect you forever. I can, however, get you extradited to the United States.”

Sal asks, “You think my uncle couldn’t have me killed in the States?”

“Then help me get him,” Aguilar presses. “Save your life.”

Sal shakes his head again and stares at the floor.

“Think about it. But don’t take too long.” Aguilar gets up and comes into the observation room. “So?”

“I think he’s Raúl’s son,” Keller says. “He stonewalls.”

“Do you really believe that Barrera would have him killed?” Aguilar asks. “Just on the chance that he might talk?”

“Don’t you?” Keller asks.

–

Nacho stands in Adán’s study, looking chagrined.

“You were supposed to be looking out for him!” Adán yells. “Teaching him!”

“I was. He was doing well.”

“You call this ‘well’?!” Adán yells. He takes a moment to collect himself, and then asks, “What can he give them?”

“A lot,” Nacho answers. “You said to bring him into the business, educate him. I did.”

“Shit.”

“And he knows this place, Adán,” Nacho says. “He could bring them right here. You’ll have to go on the run again.”

“May I remind you that I’m marrying your daughter in a week?” Adán asks. The phone rings and Adán checks the caller ID. “God damn it.”

He hesitates, but picks it up.

Sondra is sobbing. “Don’t kill him, Adán! He’s my son! I’m begging you, don’t kill him!”

“No one’s talking about anything like that, Sondra.”

“Is it true? Did he do it?”

“It looks like it.”

She starts sobbing again. “How could he? He’s a good boy. I don’t understand!”

I do, Adán thinks. He’s arrogant and young and thinks the world belongs to him, including any woman he wants. His father was the same way. And some of this is my fault. I should have known better. I should never have brought him into the business. “Sondra? That’s his lawyer on the other line. I’d better go.”

“Please, Adán. Please. Don’t hurt him. Help him. Anything, I’ll do anything. You can have all the money back, the house…”

“I’ll call you,” Adán says, “when I know something.”

He clicks off and looks at Nacho. “I’m open to ideas.”

Nacho has one.

–

Aguilar’s phone rings. He listens for a moment, clicks off, and asks Keller, “Do you know an American lawyer named Tompkins?”

“ ‘Minimum Ben’?”

–

Keller hasn’t been to San Diego in years.

He grew up here, in Barrio Logan, until he worked up the nerve one day to march into his estranged father’s office downtown and demand money to go to college. He went off to UCLA, where he met Althea, and then it was Vietnam and CIA, and then DEA—Sinaloa and then Guadalajara—before he came back to San Diego as the “Border Lord,” running the Southwest Task Force from his office downtown.

It’s strange to be back.

He, Aguilar, and Vera flew to Tijuana, crossed on the pedestrian bridge at San Ysidro, where Minimum Ben is waiting for them.

Keller knows Ben Tompkins well, from the old Border Lord days, when they played sheepdog and the coyote together on dozens of drug cases. Now he sits in Tompkins’s Mercedes—the two Mexicans in the back, Keller in the front passenger seat—because they don’t want to be seen and no one is going to admit that this meeting ever happened.

Tompkins starts in full Minimum Ben mode. “First thing is, Salvador Barrera gets a pass.”

“Call us when you sober up,” Keller says, opening the car door.

Tompkins leans across him and closes it. “Dome light?”

“If Salvador can give us Adán Barrera,” Aguilar says, “I would agree to a plea agreement under which Salvador would serve no more than ten years.”

“You’re asking Adán to exchange his life for Salvador’s?” Tompkins asks.

“I’m not asking for anything,” Aguilar answers. “I’m perfectly happy to prosecute Salvador for a double homicide and put him away for life. You called me. If you don’t have anything serious to offer, I’d like to get dinner.”

“What I’m about to say never leaves this car,” Tompkins says. “And if you start a CI file, I’m the informant.”

“Go on,” Keller says.

“I can’t give you Adán—”

“See you, Ben.”

“But I can give you the Tapia brothers.”

Shit, Keller thinks. It’s a genius move, a classic Adán manipulation. He gave up Garza to get himself out of an American prison, now he’ll give up the Tapias to get his nephew out of a Mexican one.

Tompkins starts selling. “If you look at the actual numbers, the Tapias—not Adán Barrera—are the biggest drug dealers in Mexico. That being the case, you’d be negligent in not accepting this arrangement. You’re not trading down, you’re trading up.”

“We are talking about the senseless, brutal murders,” Aguilar insists, “of two innocent young people.”

“I understand that,” Tompkins says calmly. “On the other hand, how many have the Tapias murdered? More than two.”

Keller notices that Vera has uncharacteristically said nothing.

“We need to confer,” Aguilar says.

“Absolutely,” Tompkins answers. “Take your time, I’ll just be getting some coffee.”

He gets out of the car and crosses the street to the Don Félix Café and takes a booth by the window.

Keller feels a thrill shoot through his body.

Because he sees it now, sees it as clearly as he’s ever seen anything—the breach in Barrera’s stone wall.

Adán’s move to throw the Tapias under the bus is brilliant and ruthless. There is a rift between him and the Tapias, as Yvette feared, and he wants to take them down. Then his nephew kills two innocent people, gets caught, and Adán sees the opportunity to solve two problems in one stroke.

Classic Adán.

Usually he sees the whole chessboard, several moves in advance, but this time he doesn’t realize that he’s put himself in checkmate.

Neither does Aguilar or Vera—that if they are working for either Barrera or the Tapias, or both, they’re about to put themselves into exposed, vulnerable positions, knights moved forward too quickly.

And Adán’s carefully built protective structure—his castle—will come tumbling down.

After the castle comes the king.

But Keller pretends to put up a fight, plays the role they expect of him. “You’re going to allow Adán Barrera to manipulate your entire legal system and let his nephew walk for killing two people?”

“But you would let him walk in exchange for Adán,” Aguilar says. “We have to face facts. Salvador is not going to give up his uncle, but Tompkins didn’t come with empty hands. It’s a very serious offer—capturing the Tapias would be a major blow that would disrupt trafficking to the States for months at least and take tons of drugs off your streets.”

“Why would Adán turn on his oldest friend?” Keller asks, although he knows the answer.

“Because Salvador is family,” Vera says. “His dead brother’s son. He has three choices—swap places with him, kill him, or free him. What would you do?”

“But why the Tapias?”

“What else does he have to offer?” Vera asks. “Nacho Esparza is going to be his father-in-law. He can’t go there. The Tapias are his only choice.”

“We have two young people here,” Keller says, “slaughtered for nothing. We have two grieving families. What are we supposed to tell them? That we have a better deal, and they just need to understand?”

Aguilar says, “Diego and Alberto Tapia are murderers many times over.”

“You sound like Tompkins now.”

“Even a North American defense lawyer is right sometimes,” Aguilar says. “Like a broken clock, twice a day. I say that we should accept his offer.”

So if you are sucio—dirty—Keller thinks, it’s on Barrera’s side.

“If I get a vote,” Keller says, “it’s no. Check that, it’s hell no.”

They look at Vera.

“Gentlemen,” he says, “we deal in the art of the possible. Removing the Tapias takes out a full third of the Sinaloa cartel, and, most importantly, Barrera’s armed wing. I would think that DEA would be delighted. I’m sorry, Arturo, but I agree that we should seize this opportunity with both hands.”

If you were on the Tapia payroll, Keller thinks, now you’ve flipped.

And now you’re fucked.

“This is wrong,” he says.

“But you’ll support it?” Aguilar asks.

Keller knows what he’s concerned about. One of the victims is an American citizen. If Keller leaked this deal, there’d be an uproar in the States, one that could potentially kill the fragile Mérida Initiative.

They need him to sign off.

Keller is silent for a few seconds and then says, “I won’t sabotage it.”

Feeding them a line and feeding them line—the hook is set so let them run with it. I’ll jerk the hook when it’s good and set.

Three hours later Salvador Barrera and his buddies walk out of jail.

Free.

The parents of David Ortega and Brooke Lauren are told that law enforcement is doing everything in its power to find their children’s killers.

Sinaloa

July 2, 2007

Eva wears white.

A spring bride, virginal.

Lovely and traditional, she wears a mantilla veil with the white dress and a bolero jacket entwined with white baby rosebuds. Chele Tapia, as the madrina, sewed the three ribbons onto the bride’s lingerie—yellow for food, blue for money, and red for passion.

Adán hopes that there will be passion despite the difference in their ages.

Chele had tried to talk him into the bolero garb, but he’d picked up a few pounds lately and his vanity made him reject the tight pants. Instead, he wears a guayabera shirt of the presidencial style, with embroidered designs on the front and back, over loose drawstring trousers and sandals—traditional garb for a rural groom.

Now he stands and waits for his bride.

–

Eddie thinks Eva looks hotter than shit and wouldn’t mind getting himself a little of that. He half thinks about asking Esparza if he has any other daughters, but the wedding day of Adán Barrera is no time to fuck around, and Esparza takes the virginity of his daughters very seriously.

Adán is going to pop a cherry tonight.

Anyway, the wedding is a target-rich environment, more Sinaloa Tens than you can shake a dick at, at least half of them beauty queens, former or current Miss Whatevers—Miss Guava, Miss Papaya, Miss Methamphetamine…

If you can’t get laid at this wedding, Eddie thinks, you are a dickless gnome. That or you got no money—these babes are wearing more gold around their wrists and necks than old Cortés ever found in Mexico, that’s for sure.

There’s a lot of cash at this bash.

Anybody who’s anybody in the narco-world is here, and Eddie knows that his presence signals a big leap in status.

Nacho is here, of course, with the wife who produced the lovely Eva. Diego is here with his wife, Chele (showing a lot of tit, a definite MILF), his brother Alberto and his hot wife, and his brother Martín and his hot wife, an iceberg that Eddie wouldn’t mind crashing into.

Adán’s family is here, or what’s left of them.

Eddie thinks he recognizes Adán’s sister, Elena—Elena la Reina—the former patrona of Tijuana. Then there’s the nephew, Sal, a real hard-on, and his mom, who looks like she’s been sucking on lemons. Then you got some second-tier narcos, Eddie thinks, like me, and then there are the politicians.

The head of PAN in the state.

A PAN senator.

The mayor of the local town.

At the wedding of the most wanted man in Mexico, a man the U.S. and Mexican governments swear that they just can’t find. It’s funny, Eddie thinks—these guys are afraid to be seen at Adán Barrera’s wedding, but more afraid not to be seen.

And of course, the whole village is ringed with Diego’s guys, and Eddie’s. State cops patrol the roads in and out, and helicopters hover overhead, only moving away so the rotors don’t wash out the actual exchange of vows.

There would be even more security, Eddie knows, except that we’re relatively at peace, only at war now against the Tijuana boys, who aren’t about to come down here to take a shot at Adán under these circumstances.

Peace is good, Eddie thinks, even if it meant playing kissy-face with those Zeta cocksuckers. But for the time being, it’s nice not to have your head on a swivel, although it takes a little getting used to. Nice not to have to worry about a bullet or a grenade, or ending up guiso’d.

And nice to be making money again.

Nice to be sitting next to a hot woman, a genuine Sinaloa Ten, even if he’s here as Adán’s beard.

–

Magda Beltrán thinks that Eva Esparza looks pretty, too.

The tight-twatted little bitch.

That’s not fair, Magda thinks. I’m sure she’s a perfectly nice, sweet little girl, and, in all honesty, exactly what Adán needs at this moment. But still, a woman can’t help but feel a little jealous.

Clever move, she has to admit, Adán bringing Nacho into the family. Peace breaks out and the king settles down to the business of getting a queen and cranking out some princes.

Your basic fairy-tale ending.

Real Walt Disney.

All we need are cartoon birds singing.

Then again, Adán always gets what he wants. He wanted Nuevo Laredo and he got Nuevo Laredo. Now he has a secure port through which to ship the cocaine she arranged for him—independent of Diego or his new father-in-law—and free of the burdensome piso, which he can now charge others.

And slowly, quietly, with Magda’s help, Adán has been recruiting his own force, independent of both Nacho’s and Diego’s. The Gente Nueva—the “New People”—mostly former and current federal police—owe their allegiance only to Adán.

So he has his own cocaine supply and his own armed force.

He has Laredo, and Nacho is gaining ground in Tijuana, now connected to Adán again by family.

“How’s your little virgin?” Magda asked Adán the last time she saw him, to go over some cost and pricing issues.

“She’s my fiancée now.”

“But still a virgin?” Magda asked. “Yes? No? Never mind—a gentleman doesn’t tell. But you know Nacho will be watching for bloodstained sheets to be draped out the window.”

Adán ignored the jibe. “My marriage doesn’t need to change anything between you and me.”

“Does your little virgin know this?” Magda asked.

“Her name is Eva.”

“I know her name.” After a while, she asked, “Do you love her?”

“She’ll be the mother of my children.”

“Mexican women.” Magda sighed. “We’re either virgins, madonnas, or whores. There are no other choices.”

“Mistress?” Adán suggested. “Business partner? Friend? Adviser? Choose any. My preference is you choose all.”

“Maybe,” Magda said. His business partner she certainly is. As for the rest, she’s not sure. She is sure that she wants to extract more of a price. “I want to be invited to the wedding.”

It was fun to see Adán taken aback, if only for a moment.

“You don’t think that would be awkward?” he asked.

“Not if you find me an acceptable escort.”

So now Magda sits with this handsome young North American, who is very sweet and attentive but has a wandering eye for every attractive woman at the wedding, of whom there are many. She’s not offended—he assumes that, as Adán’s woman, she’s out of bounds. It would serve Adán right if she slept with him. Maybe she will, but probably not. Magda can’t help teasing him a little. “I’ve heard you have a nickname.”

Crazy Eddie.

“I don’t like it.” She finds it funny that he pouts.

“Based on your wardrobe,” Magda says, “I hear they call you ‘Narco Polo.’ ”

Eddie laughs. “Well, I like that.”

–

Diego Tapia has been a busy man.

Security for the wedding has been brutal.

First there was the problem of the multiple dates and locations. Just yesterday, Diego’s people reached out from a network of cell phones all over the country, to call the guests and tell them the real location.

Then and only then did Diego distribute his sicarios, in concentric circles around the village, with special attention given to the roads in and out. He stationed more men at the local airstrips to meet the many guests who were coming in on private planes and take them to the wedding site.

All cell phones and cameras had to be politely but firmly collected, and each guest just as politely and firmly informed that they must not, under any circumstances, talk about the wedding afterward, not even to the extent of mentioning that they were present.

Adán is firm about this—he wants no pictures, no videos, no recordings, and no gossip afterward. The guest list alone would be a treasure trove for DEA and other enemies.

Arriving cars are searched far outside the village. Snipers are hidden in the hills above the village, with more heavily armed men standing by in vehicles that block roads at all compass points.

Nobody is going to go in—or out—of the village without Diego’s knowledge and permission.

Not that they’re expecting trouble now that there’s peace with the Gulf. The only possible threat is from La Familia, which is deeply angered at Adán’s abandonment of them. But they’re too busy fighting off the army and the federales, and besides, not even Nazario is crazy enough to attack Adán Barrera’s wedding ceremony in the heart of Sinaloa.

La Familia’s jefe may be insane—he’s not suicidal.

Now, watching Nacho walk Eva down the aisle, Diego is unsettled. Nacho got Tijuana. Now he’s going to be Adán’s father-in-law? It’s like a screen door shutting in Diego’s face. He can still see through it, but from the outside.

I shouldn’t worry, he tells himself. I’m Adán’s cousin, more like his brother. We’ve been friends since before our balls dropped. And Nacho is also my friend and my ally. We have interests together. Nothing has really changed.

Then why do you feel that it has?

“I’d like you to be in charge of our relationship with Ochoa,” Adán said to Diego after the peace meeting with the CDG. “Make him your friend.”

“Now you’re pushing it.”

“And meet with our friends in Mexico City,” Adán said. “Make sure they know that the CDG is under our protection now, in Michoacán as well as Tamaulipas.”

“I’ll do it,” Martín said.

“I want Diego there,” Adán said, “so they’ll know that there would be consequences for any betrayals.”

Martín was the glove, Diego the fist inside.

“We’ll both go,” Diego said.

The meeting with the government assholes in Mexico City was funny. The suits just sat there while Martín Tapia carefully explained to them what the new world was going to look like.

“By all means,” Martín said, “continue your campaign in Michoacán. La Familia is a dangerous threat to public safety—lunatics really—not to mention the largest purveyors of methamphetamine in the country.”

“What about the Zetas?”

“They’re under our protection now.”

Amazing, Diego thought. The federales had been giving La Familia a pass and beating the Zetas like rented mules, but now they didn’t even blink when they were told that they were going to switch sides.

But that’s the way it is in this business.

Enemies one moment, friends the next.

Unfortunately, it also works the other way around.

Now Chele reads her husband’s mind. “Don’t worry. They chose us as their padrinos.”

The padrinos are a married couple who mentor the newlyweds from the engagement throughout their entire marriage. It’s an honor, Diego knows, in his case more symbolic than practical, because Adán has certainly not asked for marital advice.

Eva, on the other hand, has come to Chele to ask certain questions that Chele won’t reveal and Diego can only guess at. He would have thought that modern girls didn’t have these questions anymore, but from Chele’s sly smiles, he guesses that Eva did.

“I just told her how to keep her man happy,” Chele told him.

“And how is that?”

“Later, marido.”

Chele didn’t share it with the girl, but the sad truth is that Eva doesn’t need to keep Adán happy in the bedroom—his spectacular mistress will see to that—she only needs to keep him happy in the delivery room.

Eva has to produce a son who will join the Barrera and Esparza organizations—rendering, however unintentionally, the Tapias outsiders. If Chele had a daughter of marriageable age, she would have shamelessly walked her to Adán’s bed and tucked her in. But her daughter is too young, and anyway, inheriting more of her father’s genes, unlikely to be as beautiful as the splendid young Eva.

Now Chele looks at Eva coming down the aisle between the rows of white chairs.

Nacho looks every bit the proud papa in his own black bolero jacket and tight-fitting pants as he walks her down the aisle, conscious of and gratified by the stares of envy both for his daughter’s beauty and his good fortune.

Fortune my ass, Chele thinks—Nacho has been grooming the girl for this since she slid out between her mother’s thighs.

–

It breaks Adán’s heart.

Turning on his old friend.

On the other hand, he has reason to believe that Diego Tapia has turned on him. Not with law enforcement, true, but with the Zetas.

It’s your own fault, Adán tells himself as he waits for his bride. You practically shoved Diego and Ochoa into bed together, made them meet, asked Diego to become the Zetas’ “friend.”

Well, he did that, all right. Adán’s informants have it that Diego has been steadily shifting his operation into Monterrey, basing himself in the tony neighborhood of Garza García, and that he’s welcoming the Zetas into the city.

Where they’re selling drugs, setting up an extortion racket and a kidnapping operation.

Stupid, Adán thinks, to go for chump change that could interfere with the real money pipeline from the U.S. by alienating police, politicians, and the powerful industrialists in Monterrey who, at the end of the day, control them.

Stupid and shortsighted.

Almost as bad is their ostentatious behavior, displaying their wealth and power like chúntaros—hillbillies—instead of the billionaire businessmen that they are.

Adán was saddened to hear that his old friend is dipping into his own product, that, like Tío back in the bad old days, he has started snorting coke. If it’s true, it’s bad news, and certainly Diego’s recent behavior supports the suspicion. Diego’s been throwing huge, loud parties, and in the wrong places—Cuernavaca, Mexico City, where they can’t escape the notice of the powers-that-be.

When will we ever learn? Adán wonders.

The cops, the politicians might be on our payroll; the financiers, bankers, and businessmen may be our partners in legitimate businesses; they might look the other way on our other activities—but you can’t rub their noses in it.

Stupid and self-indulgent, Adán thinks. You can’t be doing those things in a neighborhood like that. We have everything. Everything that money can buy. We can do whatever we want—only be subtle about it.

There are worse rumors about Diego, rumors that Adán doesn’t want to believe. That he’s started to follow Santa Muerte, the so-called Saint of Death, a cult that’s sweeping the mostly younger narco ranks with blood sacrifices and God only knows what else.

Foolishness.

When he was young, Adán made a blood oath with Santo Jesús Malverde, the local Sinaloan drug trafficking martyr who became something of a religious figure with his own shrine in Culiacán.

Adán blushes at the memory of his youthful foolishness.

But Diego is no kid. He’s a grown man with a wife and kids and adult responsibilities. He’s the boss of the largest drug trafficking organization in Mexico and he’s messing around with this foolishness?

Ridiculous.

And dangerous.

But not as dangerous as him flirting with an alliance with the Zetas.

Adán gets it—Diego feels threatened by Nacho’s rise. You gave him Tijuana to take, you’re marrying his daughter.

Adán thought of reaching out to make things right with Diego. Sit down and talk like the old friends they are, and work it out. Apologize for any seeming slights or neglect. But now it’s too late.

Diego is the price for stupid, idiotic, undisciplined Salvador’s life. And it’s for the best, Adán decides. The Tapias have to go. Face it, you were going to have to do it anyway, and Sal’s issues are a convenient pretext.

It’s all set up and ready to go.

Simultaneous raids against Alberto and Diego in Badiraguato, take them both out in one swoop.

Martín they’ll leave alone, for now.

He has too many connections—another stupid mistake of yours, Adán thinks, to let the Tapias gain so much political influence—and you can deal with him. He’ll be reasonable.

As long as there are no deaths.

Adán has insisted that both Alberto and Diego must, at all costs, be taken alive. They are his friends, his brothers, blood of his Sinaloan blood.

–

The altar has been built under a bower of ficus trees. The chairs are set up on an emerald-green lawn clipped again that morning and lined with stacks of fresh flowers.

Adán stands by the priest. He smiles at Eva as Nacho releases her, kisses her on the cheek, and ushers her to the altar.

Opening a small wooden box, Adán pours thirteen gold coins—one each for Christ and the twelve apostles—into Eva’s outstretched, cupped hands. Then he places the box on top of her hands. The coins signify his pledge to take care of her and her promise to run his household conscientiously.

They turn to the priest, who drapes the lazo—a long, decorated cord—around each of their shoulders, symbolizing that they are now attached to each other. They wear the lazo throughout the long ceremony, which includes a Mass, then the wedding vows, and finally the priest declares them man and wife.

Eva kneels at the little shrine that had been built to the Virgin of Guadalupe and makes the ofrenda, leaving a bouquet of flowers.

Then the bride and groom walk back up the aisle and the wedding party and guests follow them back to where the reception party will be held and the mariachi band—decked out in their finest costumes of black and silver—falls in behind, playing the estudiantina music.

–

Salvador Barrera has kept a low profile throughout the wedding.

After the unfortunate incident in Zapopan, Adán called him back to Sinaloa and put him on double secret probation.

“If you were not my blood,” Adán said when he sat Sal down in his office, “you would be dead.”

“I know.”

“No,” Adán said, his face tightening. “You will never know—and I mean you will never know—what your freedom has cost me.”

“Thank you, Tío. I’m so sorry.” Then he had to sit and let Adán lecture him for twenty minutes about respecting women and innocent people. This from the same man who’s invited his whore to his own wedding? Who had a woman’s head cut off and sent to her husband like a muffin basket? The guy that once threw two little kids off a bridge? I mean, come on. This guy’s going to lecture me on family values?

But now Sal knows that he’s being watched.

Eventually, he hopes, his uncle will forgive him and bring him back into the business.

–

Eva swoops in, takes Adán’s hand, and pulls him toward the center of the reception area, a clearing in the middle of the dining and banquet tables.

It’s time to lanzar el ramo, toss the bouquet.

As is traditional, the wedding guests form not a circle but a heart shape around the bride and groom. All the eligible women gather, and Eva tosses her bouquet back over her shoulder. It hits Magda right in the hands, but she squeals and bats it back up in the air, where it’s caught by one of Eva’s bridesmaids.

Then a chair is brought out, Eva sits down, and Adán—backed up by Diego, Nacho, and Salvador—kneels in front of her and, to ribald remarks from the guests, slides her dress up her thigh and pulls her garter back down her leg.

It feels odd, running his hand up her smooth skin, because heretofore they have done little more than kiss, and this feels oddly intimate. Then Adán stands up, throws the garter over his shoulder, and turns to see Salvador catch it.

Then the men swoop in, pick Adán up, and begin to throw him around and dance with him to the funeral music (“Your life is over!”) that the band strikes up. When this stops, Salvador and the bridesmaid dance together, then Adán and Eva, then the entire party joins in the dancing. As they dance, married couples come up to the bride and groom, chat a little, and pin envelopes onto Eva’s dress, money that will later be given to charity, as Adán Barrera and the daughter of Nacho Esparza hardly need money to start their married life. Eventually the dance turns into la víbora de la mar—“the sea snake”—the guests joining hands and “snaking” under Adán and Eva’s outstretched arms as they stand on chairs.

–

Magda finds Adán alone in a bedroom, changing clothes to leave for his honeymoon.

“How convenient,” she says.

“How so?”

“Well,” Magda says, kneeling in front of him, “we wouldn’t want you to disappoint your new bride, letting that tight virgin chocha make you come too quickly. The poor thing expecting a night of breathless passion and youthful endurance.”

“Magda…”

“Don’t be so selfish,” Magda says as she unzips him. “I’m only thinking of her.”

“You’re very considerate.”

“Besides,” Magda says, “when she’s all fat, splotchy, and bitchy, you’ll remember that you have this to come to. Just don’t get anything on my dress, do you hear, there are appearances to keep up.”