Текст книги "The Cartel"

Автор книги: Don Winslow

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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 42 страниц)

Now he sits with his stiff leg propped up on the table beside his cane and blinks at Pablo. “And why do you think that story about itinerant musicians who play at bus stops might be of interest to our readers?”

“It interests me,” Pablo responds truthfully.

Óscar blinks. There is some sense to that—when a reporter is interested in his subject, his research is more thorough and his writing more passionate. “But you would be writing about music, which our readers wouldn’t be able to hear.”

“They could on the e-edition,” Giorgio says. “We could record a track and run an MP3.”

Now Óscar frowns—he understands the technology, it’s part of his job—but that doesn’t mean he likes it. He’s only reluctantly yielded to the mixture of video clips on the daily e-edition of his paper, his belief being that if people wanted to watch television, they should. But the business managers at the paper insisted, so now they have video and audio tracks.

Óscar prefers written words on paper.

And beautiful photographs that help tell the story.

Memorable, as opposed to fleeting, images.

He asks Giorgio, “Could you shoot this?”

To Pablo’s gratitude, Giorgio answers, “I could shoot the hell out of it. Give you killer stills and video, if you want.”

Giorgio is an amazing specimen, Pablo thinks, looking at the man. His cheeks are ruddy, his voice firm, he is none the worse for wear despite having outdrunk them all—and he looks like he just got off the slopes from a morning skiing. And he’s positively glowing with energy this morning—Pablo suspects there was a woman involved in this—and it’s disgusting.

Óscar blinks again and says, “Eight hours, not a minute more. On more substantive matters, the drug situation.”

Pablo groans.

He’s not behind in his rent, doesn’t need a child support payment, so a narco story is simply an exercise in tedium. The truth is that the narcos are generally stupid, brutal thugs—once you’ve written about one of them, you’ve written about them all.

And anyway, who cares?

Apparently Óscar. “You object, Pablo?”

“Why give ink to these bastards?”

“Five Juárez police officers murdered?” Óscar asks. “I’d say that amounts to sufficient reason. I want to know what the ‘street’ says.”

Pablo had covered the murders.

A little over two weeks ago, snipers with high-powered rifles killed five men in various parts of the city. Two of them, Miguel Roma and David Baca, were Juárez cops.

Two days ago, Juárez police captain Julián Chairez was shot twenty-two times while he was on patrol at the corner of Avenida Hermanos Escobar and Calle Plutarco Elías.

Then, yesterday morning, Commander Francisco Ledesma, the third-highest-ranking cop in the city, was pulling out of his driveway to go to work when a white Chevy van pulled up, a man got out, calmly walked up to Ledesma’s car, and put four 9mm pistol rounds through the door lock.

Ledesma died before the EMTs got there.

His killing rocked the city. He was only thirty-four, charismatic and popular, and headed up a unit called Los Pumas, the city’s antigang task force.

There are about eight hundred gangs in Juárez—most of them in the poor colonias that surround maquiladoras—with about fourteen thousand members. These gangs are recruiting grounds for the “big” gangs that operate the drug trade under the Juárez cartel—Los Aztecas, Los Mexicles, Los Aristos Asesinos, and La Línea.

Ledesma was going after those gangs, and Pablo guesses it got him killed.

But the details bother him.

Gangbangers spray bullets around, but this was clearly a professional hit—experienced sicarios shoot through the lock because the bullets go through the door in a tight pattern, which professional gunmen take pride in.

Five city cops—Chairez, Baca, Romo, Gómez, and Ledesma.

Pablo can’t blame Óscar for wanting the story.

Now El Búho turns to Ana. “Find out what our officials think. The governor is in town today, meeting with the mayor. Get quotes.”

“Images?” Giorgio asks.

Óscar answers, “If Ana gets an interview with the governor—”

“When Ana gets an interview with the governor,” Ana corrects.

–

Pablo drives out to the working-class Galeana neighborhood to find Victor Abrego, a Juárez cop he knew from the bad old days.

Something that Pablo has found almost impossible to explain to his American editors (because it’s inexplicable, he thinks) is the byzantine structure of Mexican law enforcement.

As in the U.S., there are basically three levels of police—municipal, state, and federal—but the resemblance ends there. What’s so different in Mexico is that the municipal police, the city cops, don’t investigate crimes. Their role is basically preventative—patrol, traffic control, community relations. They’re the first responders to a crime—assist the victims, secure the scene—but then their role ends.

The investigation of a crime is left to state police and prosecutors. A Juárez cop who responds to a murder call in Juárez turns the investigation over to a civilian state prosecutor or a state cop.

Unless it’s a federal crime.

If it’s a federal crime—there are allegations of organized crime or drug trafficking over a certain weight—the investigation is handed to the federal police and prosecutors.

So a narco killing in Juárez is handled at various times, often overlapping, by a combination of city police, state prosecutors and police, federal prosecutors and police, and a grab bag of intelligence agencies from the city, state, and national governments.

It’s no wonder, Pablo thinks as he looks for a parking spot in Galeana, that so few crimes are ever solved.

Mexico is a very good place to be a criminal.

There’s another factor at play in Juárez, and everyone knows it.

Most Juarenses are scared shitless of the city cops.

And for good reason. Not only can they be arbitrary and unpredictably violent, but the plain truth is that a lot of them work for two bosses—the chief of police and La Línea.

La Línea—“the Line”—was, until recently anyway, the chief enforcement arm of the Juárez cartel. Made up exclusively of current or retired city or state police, La Línea keeps the drug trade, well, in line. Someone tries to run a load through without paying the piso? La Línea collects. Someone loses a shipment and claims the customs agents seized it? La Línea learns the truth and deals out justice. Someone is a chronic problem or an unlicensed competitor? La Línea “lifts” him and makes him disappear.

And who are you going to go to for help?

The cops?

Pablo wouldn’t say that all, or even the majority, of the fifteen hundred Juárez police are La Línea, but he’s certain that a critical mass are, that those who are intimidate those who aren’t, and those who aren’t “go along to get along” if they want to keep their jobs or even survive.

Say that even two of the district commanders—there are six in Juárez—are La Línea. They control postings, they can shift La Línea cops to where they’re needed at the moment, transfer out or fire clean cops. Say a state homicide investigator is La Línea. How hard is he really going to investigate the murder of some narco who fell afoul of the Juárez cartel, a murder that La Línea probably committed? Is he really going to pass critical evidence along to the federales, or is he going to lose it somewhere in the process?

It’s an open secret in Juárez that the cops pass “066” calls—the anonymous tip line—right through to the cartel. So if a citizen tries to aid an investigation, that citizen is likely to become the subject of the next one.

But now the latest victims are cops.

Parking the car, Pablo gives the parquero at the corner a five-peso coin not to steal the tires, and walks down the street until he finds Abrego. He’s in his powder-blue uniform with a dark blue flak jacket with white lettering: POLICÍA MUNICIPAL.

Pablo doesn’t begrudge him the protective vest; he almost wishes he had one himself.

“I’m busy, Pablo,” Abrego says when he spots Pablo walking up the street.

“I’m sorry about your people,” Pablo says.

“No comment.”

“Come on,” Pablo says. “Usual deal—deep source, no attribution. What’s going on?”

It’s tricky, asking a cop questions after a brother officer has been murdered. They’re angry, sensitive, easily offended, and Abrego is no different. “What’s going on? Some narco garbage killed a police commander.”

“Motive?” Pablo asks. “Leads?”

“I guess Ledesma was pushing too hard and got someone angry,” Abrego says.

“Vicente Fuentes?”

Abrego shakes his head. “These weren’t locals.”

“How do you know?”

This pisses Abrego off. “Because I’d have heard something.”

Pablo doesn’t know if Abrego is La Línea or not. He guesses not, but he’s not going to ask, either. “If they weren’t locals, who were they?”

“Go to Sinaloa and ask.”

“Adán Barrera?”

Abrego hesitates and then says, “Cops have been getting calls. On their personal cell phones. Or other cops have been approaching them…”

“And saying what?”

“That ‘New People’ are moving in,” Abrego says. “The Sinaloa people, and you’d better get on the bus now.”

If he’s right, Pablo thinks, at least five guys missed the bus.

“Go away, Pablo,” Abrego says. “I have work to do, then I have a funeral to attend.”

–

Pablo takes a Chihuahua state homicide investigator to lunch.

Comandante Sánchez isn’t fooled by the social gesture—in Mexico no less than the rest of the world, there is no such thing as a free lunch. So after polishing off a plate of excellent camarones, he looks across the table at Pablo and asks, “Pues?”

“What’s going on in Juárez?”

“Why ask me?”

“Did you get a phone call, too?” Pablo asks.

“From whom?”

“The ‘New People.’ ”

“Who told you about that?”

Pablo doesn’t answer.

Then Sánchez says, “As a matter of fact, I did. On my private phone, and how did they get that number? What we’re hearing is they approached division commanders with money. I guess Ledesma didn’t take it.”

“Would you like another beer? I think I would.” Pablo signals the waiter and then turns back to Sánchez. “Are we looking at an invasion here?”

“You’re so well informed, you tell me.”

“Okay,” Pablo says, starting to get annoyed with the game. “Is this Adán Barrera putting the empire back together?”

Sánchez says, “You were a kid then.”

“I heard the stories.”

The waiter sets two cold cervezas on the table and then, at a glance from Sánchez, steps away.

“Do yourself a favor,” Sánchez says. “Don’t hear stories now.”

“What does that mean?”

“You know what it means.”

“Oh, come on.” The food has helped Pablo’s general condition, as has the beer, but he still has a headache and all this silly subterfuge makes it worse. The whole world knows about Adán Barrera—there have been books, novels, movies, television shows. The narcos are a media franchise, for God’s sake, this generation’s version of the Mafia.

“That was the old days, wasn’t it?” Pablo asks. “The cartels, the patrones—they’re all dead or locked up. Even Osiel Contreras is in prison.”

“But Adán Barrera is out.”

Pablo is annoyed and eager to finish up the interview. “So what are you saying? There’s going to be a ‘war’? Barrera is moving in on Juárez?”

“I’m saying you’d be better off not hearing any more stories,” Sánchez says. He reaches across the table for the bill.

A new one on Pablo.

He’s never seen a cop pick up the check before.

–

It takes Pablo three hours to track down Ramón, but he finally finds his old schoolmate at the Kentucky, near the Santa Fe Bridge that crosses into El Paso.

Pablo plops down on the stool beside Ramón. “Qué pasa?”

“Nada.”

Nothing my ass, Pablo thinks. If Ramón is hanging out by the border there’s a reason—he has a shipment going over. And it speaks to another truth about Juárez—everybody knows someone in the drug business.

The Kentucky is classic Old Juárez. It came into being just a few weeks after Prohibition hit the United States as an easy place for gringos to come and get a drink. Sinatra used to hang out here, and Marilyn Monroe, and the legend—although Pablo doesn’t believe it—is that Al Capone visited once after making a deal for bootleg whiskey.

But the bar is mostly famous for the birthplace of the margarita.

That’s us, Pablo thinks, we’re known for other contraband, other countries’ movie stars, and fruity drinks.

He orders an Indio.

“Long time no see, ’mano,” Ramón says with a trace of resentment in his voice.

It’s true, Pablo thinks—in high school they were buddies, hung out all the time, but then their lives took different turns. I got busy with work and other friends and Ramón went to prison.

Got caught jacking cars and did three years in Juárez’s deservedly notorious CERESO.

If you wanted to survive there, you joined Los Aztecas.

Ramón wanted to survive.

The gang actually started in American prisons, where it’s called Barrio Azteca, but when the U.S. started to deport convicts who were also illegal aliens, the gang quickly spread to Mexican prisons.

Then into the community.

There are roughly six hundred Aztecas in Juárez, but they use kids from a lot of the little gangs, and the word is that they’re taking over more and more of the enforcement duties of the Juárez cartel. With La Línea, they control the drug trade in the northeast part of the city, while Los Mexicles and Los Aristos Asesinos control the southwest.

Pablo’s heard the stories about how they exercise control—how they throw big parties and everyone cheers while they beat up a prisoner. Then they dig a hole, fill it with mesquite branches, throw the victim in, and light a match. Pablo doesn’t quite believe those stories and doesn’t believe that Ramón would do anything like that, but it’s a fact that the Juárez cartel gives Los Aztecas a discount on the cocaine that they traffic across the border.

The gang makes a lot of money.

Los Aztecas have a military structure—generals, captain, and lieutenants—and the last time Pablo heard, Ramón was a lieutenant on the way up. He looks like an Azteca—crew cut with a blue bandana, white sleeveless T-shirt, tattoos up his neck.

Ramón looks Pablo up and down. “You look like shit, ’mano.”

“Rough night.”

“Looks more like a rough month,” Ramón says. “You need money?”

“No, thanks.”

“How’s Mateo?”

“He’s good, thanks. Your guys?”

“Isobel’s a little bitch on wheels,” Ramón answers, “but you already know that. Dolores is almost walking, and Javier, he’s playing fútbol now.”

“No shit.”

“You should come by sometime,” Ramón says.

“I will.”

“Watch a match on TV or something, burn some steaks…”

“Sounds great.”

Ramón signals the bartender for a refill on his whiskey and then asks, “So what brings you here now?”

Pablo says, “A police lieutenant clipped.”

“ ‘Clipped,’ ” Ramón says. “Listen to you, tough guy.”

Pablo chuckles at his own pretensions, and then asks, “Who did it?”

Ramón knocks his fresh drink down with one gulp and then asks, “You want to do some blow?”

“I have to pick Mateo up,” Pablo says, shaking his head. That’s true, but the other truth is that he hasn’t done drugs in years. Okay, maybe a hit of yerba from time to time, but even that’s getting rare.

“Anyway, walk out back with me,” Ramón says. Then he says to the bartender, “Narizazo.”

Time to snort up.

Pablo follows him out the back door into the alley. Ramón takes a vial of coke out of his jeans pocket, scoops a little onto his fingernail, and takes a hit. “They say it’s bad when you start using your own product. It’s just I’m so fucking tired these days, I need a little pick-me-up in the afternoon. So what were you asking me?”

Pablo gets it. Yes, they came out here so Ramón could snort, but also to get away from the ears of the bartender. “These cop killings. Ledesma.”

“Wasn’t us, ’mano.”

Pablo pushes the envelope. “Was Ledesma La Línea? The others?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Ramón answers. “Sinaloa wants this plaza, so they have to neutralize the cops. Clean cops, dirty cops, if they don’t get on board with Sinaloa, Sinaloa is going to take them off the board.”

So there’s my story, Pablo thinks. The Sinaloa cartel has launched a systematic invasion and started with a strategic campaign against the Juárez cartel’s central strength—La Línea.

It must have been in the planning for months—the intelligence and infiltration needed to get the officers’ phone numbers, their addresses, their daily habits and routes. There had to have been surveillance, phone taps, informants…

Ramón shakes some more coke out on his finger and asks, “You sure?”

“Yeah,” Pablo says. “So there’s going to be a war.”

“Going to be?” Ramón asks. “What do you call those bodies out there? There is a war. It’s on.”

“Los Aztecas in it?”

“The price we pay, man,” Ramón says. “They don’t give us the cheap coke because we’re pretty. Up until now, it’s been taking care of a few malandros, now it’s going against Barrera’s pros. The big-league batters. But we gotta do what we gotta do, and all that bullshit.”

They’re quiet for a few seconds, then Ramón adds, “I’m always proud of you, ’mano, every time I see your name in the paper. You did good for yourself.”

Pablo doesn’t know what to say.

Then Ramón grabs him by the elbow. “Don’t get too close to this world, it’s not anything you want. You need information, you come to me. Don’t go around asking a lot of questions. People don’t like it.”

They say their goodbyes and talk about getting together maybe next Sunday, but they both know it isn’t going to happen. Pablo goes back to the office, writes up the story, and then goes to pick up Mateo.

–

Pablo waits out in front of the preschool.

He really thought that Mateo was too young to start school, “pre” or otherwise, but Victoria argued successfully (of course she did; all of Victoria’s arguments are successful) that it was never too early to start, especially if they wanted to get him into a decent elementary school.

Pablo suspects that the deeper motive was to free up more of her time for work. As she makes more money than he does, he was close to volunteering to give up the job at the paper, just freelance and be a stay-at-home dad for the next year or so, but some last vestigial trace of his machismo prevented him.

He didn’t think that she would have agreed anyway, on the basis that Mateo’s days under his father would not have been sufficiently organized. Which would have been true, Pablo thinks as he watches the children burst out of the door. They would have been wonderfully disorganized.

Mateo is the perfect combination of their union.

His jet-black hair, her piercing (ouch) blue eyes. Her keen intelligence, his warmth. The relentless curiosity comes from both of them.

Pablo is prejudiced, of course, but it is simply evident that Mateo is the handsomest child in the school. And the smartest, and the most charming, and doubtless, of course, the best fútbol player. Of course his entire future will be destroyed if he doesn’t get into the right elementary school, so Victoria believes.

Mateo runs up and Pablo hugs him. It’s amazing, he thinks, that he never gets tired of that sensation.

“How are you, Papi?”

“Very well, m’ijo. And you?”

“We colored zebras.”

“Really?” Pablo asks. “Did they hold still for that?”

Mateo squeals with laughter. “Papi!”

“What?”

“They were paper zebras!”

“Paper zebras? I never heard of such a thing.”

“Pictures of zebras!”

“I see now.”

“Silly Papi!”

Pablo takes his hand and they start to walk toward the bus stop. This simple, normal activity is an intense relief from the insanity of “narco-world,” as he terms it.

“Am I staying with you tonight?” Mateo asks now.

“Yes.”

“How many sleeps?”

“What? Oh yes, for two sleeps.”

“Yay.” He tightens his grip. Then he asks, “What are we doing?”

“If you’d like,” Pablo says, “I thought we’d go to the park and kick the ball. Then Tío Tomás is reading from his book. Would you like to go to that?”

“Can I bring coloring?”

“Of course,” Pablo says. “Then Tía Ana is having a party. Tía Jimena will be there. Would you like to go to that?”

“Will Tío Giorgio be there?”

“Probably,” Pablo answers.

Everyone loves Giorgio, he thinks.

Me too.

“Maybe he’ll let me take a picture,” Mateo says.

“I’m sure he would,” Pablo says. “And if you get tired, you can fall asleep on Tía Ana’s big bed.”

“Can we go to the zoo?” Mateo asks.

“Saturday?”

“Well, not today.”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

“What did you color your zebras?” Pablo asks.

“Orange and blue.”

Good, Pablo thinks.

All this narco stuff is foolishness. All that matters is that his son is willing to color zebras in orange and blue.

–

The two rectangular boxes—one yellow, the other terra-cotta—of Cafebrería, sit on José Reyes Estrada Circle, just off the Plaza de las Américas and close to the university, and are the epicenter of the intellectual life of the city.

It represents everything Pablo loves about Juárez.

A coffeehouse, a bookstore, a gallery, a performance spot, a gathering place for everyone who cares about ideas and art and community, Cafebrería is almost literally the heart of the city for him.

He goes there to see friends, meet new people, find interesting ideas, get into discussions and debates (which occasionally turn into arguments but never fights), listen to music, hear readings, buy books that he can neither afford nor resist, not to mention just get an honest strong cup of coffee that doesn’t come from a giant corporate chain, and sit in a quiet spot and read.

Now he sits in a metal folding chair with Mateo at his feet happily coloring (a magenta and turquoise tiger this time) and listens to Tomás read from his latest novel. It’s a beautiful book and a beautiful reading, as one would only expect from Tomás Silva, whom Pablo regards as a national treasure.

One thing that Pablo loves about Tomás’s readings is that there is no sense of irony in them. The author is serious about his work and reads it seriously, his sad eyes glowing from behind his glasses, his strong jaw set as if he’s reconsidering his words as he speaks them.

Ana sits down the row with her eyes closed, shutting off visual stimuli to focus on the sounds of the words. Giorgio stands off to the side, quietly snapping photos of Tomás without the distraction of a flash.

Óscar has his bad leg propped up on the chair beside him, his cane hooked over the chair in front. He and Tomás go back to their university days—close friends still—and Pablo knew that El Búho wouldn’t miss this reading.

Really, most of the Juárez intelligentsia are present for the event—writers, poets, columnists, and a scattering of serious readers who always show up for this kind of thing. Pablo recognizes a few local politicians, there to display that they have a brain and, supposedly, a soul, although he doubts both.

Victoria is not there, even though she loves Tomás, both professionally and personally.

Probably working, Pablo thinks.

Victoria is always working.

The reading ends and Tomás takes questions. There are many—some of them legitimately curious and wanting an answer; others more statements than interrogatives, meant to show off the questioner’s knowledge or express a dogma. Tomás is patient and painstaking with all of them, but is clearly relieved when the Q&A is over.

Then there’s coffee and wine and the usual standing around and schmoozing, but Pablo figures that he’s probably used up his four-year-old’s full store of patience and takes him across the boulevard into the park to run around and play before they go over to Ana’s.

–

Four hours later, Pablo sits on the kitchen steps that lead into the small fenced-in backyard of Ana’s little bungalow in Mariano Escobedo. Pablo has spent many a good evening out there, sitting on the kitchen steps or in one of the wooden chairs, or helping Ana to cook on the little charcoal grill.

Tonight, the house is packed.

Ana of course ended up inviting everyone who attended the reading, and most of them showed up. It didn’t matter, she’d made enough paella to feed a small army, and a lot of her guests went out to dinner first before showing up at the party.

And most of them brought wine or beer, as did Pablo, so as not to put a financial strain on the hostess. That was just expected at Juárez gatherings, especially among a group that is mostly communist, or at least socialist, anyway.

Now Pablo sips on a beer and listens to Tomás and El Búho, just slightly in his cups, passionately discuss the romantic lyricism of Efraín Huerta as Giorgio debates the World Bank with an attractive woman whom Pablo doesn’t know.

“Fiscal policy as foreplay,” Jimena observes as she eases herself down beside Pablo, who slides over to make room.

Jimena is tall and thin, all awkward angles and sharp edges. One of nine brothers and sisters—her family have been bakers out in the Juárez Valley for generations—Jimena is also an activist. In her early fifties now, with two sons who are now young men, she spends more and more time on social causes, which often bring her to Juárez.

–

They met when Pablo was covering the feminicidio, as it came to be called—the disappearances and murders of hundreds of young women.

Three hundred and ninety, to be exact, Pablo thinks.

He covered at least a hundred of them. Saw the bodies—if they were indeed found– interviewed the families, went to the funerals and memorial services. It seems to have ended now, with no more answers than there were when it started. But Jimena, who lost a niece, helped to create an organization—Our Daughters Coming Home—to pressure police and politicians to close the cases.

Now she wryly observes Giorgio make his moves.

“He does have a certain charm,” Jimena says. “What about you? Any romance in your life?”

“Not lately,” Pablo says. “Between work and having a kid…”

“Mateo’s getting big.”

“He is.”

“Such a nice boy.”

And he loves his Tía Jimena, Pablo thinks. Mateo went to her the second they got into the house, climbed into her lap, and they had a serious conversation about zebras, tigers, and other animals.

Then she got Mateo a bowl of rice from the paella and, after securing Pablo’s permission, some polvorones de canela, then eventually took him into Ana’s big bed and read him a story until he fell asleep.

“How’s Victoria?” Jimena asks.

“She’s Victoria,” Pablo answers. “Conquering the world.”

“Poor world.” She ruffles his hair. “Poor Pablo. Our big, shaggy puppy of a Pablo. Who is Giorgio seducing now?”

“Some lawyer, I think.”

“Is he succeeding?”

“Just a matter of time,” Pablo says.

But Giorgio breaks it off and comes to sit down with them, and the lawyer goes into the house.

“Neofascist dyke,” Giorgio says.

“Now, now,” Jimena warns.

“Left-wing lesbians are perfectly natural,” Giorgio says, “but there’s something about a right-wing lesbian that’s, I don’t know…almost North American. Sort of Fox News–ish.”

They get El Paso television broadcasts in Juárez, and Giorgio is masochistically addicted to Fox News, which makes him simultaneously livid and horny.

“Tell me you don’t want to do those women on Fox News,” Jimena says.

“Tell me you don’t,” Giorgio counters. “Anyway, of course I do. I want to convert them through the subversive power of the orgasm.”

“So it would be a political act,” Jimena says.

“I am willing to sacrifice myself for the cause,” Giorgio answers.

“How did she find her way to this party?” Pablo asks.

“She’s a disciple of Tomás’s,” Giorgio answers. “She thinks he’s ‘important.’ ”

“He is,” Jimena says. “And her supporting the World Bank doesn’t necessarily make her a fascist any more than her resisting your doubtless charms makes her a dyke.”

“I just couldn’t imagine waking up with her,” Giorgio says. “What would we talk about?”

“How wonderful you were in bed?” Jimena suggests.

“Certainly, but that gets boring after a few times,” Giorgio says.

“Pobrecito. Such problems.”

“You should go after her, Pablo,” Giorgio says. “She’s your type.”

“But I’m not hers,” Pablo answers.

“Pablo is giving up on love,” Jimena says.

“Who said anything about love?”

“What about love?” Ana asks as she comes out the door. She sits down on Jimena’s lap.

“Why do women love to talk about love?” Giorgio asks.

“Why don’t men, is more the question,” Ana says.

“You can either love,” Pablo says, “or you can talk about it. You can’t do both.”

Ana whoops, then hollers, “Óscar, did you know that you have a young Hemingway working on your staff?”

Óscar blinks vacantly—he’s much too involved in the discussion of poetry for this—but smiles politely before he turns back to make a point to Tomás.

“I’m a little drunk,” Pablo admits.

“But you make a point,” Giorgio says.

“Oh?” Ana asks. “So, Giorgio, can you either make love or photograph it, but not both?”

The edge in her voice makes Pablo certain now that they had sex.

“You should have seen Ana with our esteemed governor today,” Giorgio says, changing the subject. “She had him sputtering.”

Ana laughs, then does a rather good imitation of the Chihuahua state governor: “ ‘On the subject of a so-called cartel in Juárez, it does not now nor never has existed, and moreover, my administration has made excellent progress in combating it if it does or has, which, of course, it doesn’t and hasn’t, unless you have evidence that you’re about to show me, in which case I’m late for a very important meeting.’ He’s a great idiot, our governor, but very well bred. He kissed my hand.”

“He didn’t,” Jimena says.

“He did,” Ana answers. “I blushed.”

“You didn’t.”

“No, I didn’t,” Ana answers. “But I didn’t dislike it as much as I thought I would. It’s been a long time since a man has kissed my hand.”

Pablo leans across and touches his lips to her fingers.

“Oh, so sweet, Pablo,” Jimena says.

Ana looks at him curiously, then recovers and says, “Anyway, certainly there are more important stories to cover, with PAN taking us into the brave new world of free-market economics just as all the jobs are going to China, and Bush killing every Muslim that moves.”

“Bush speaks Spanish, you know,” Giorgio says.

“That’s the brother,” Ana corrects him. “The one in Florida.”

The conversation swings from the brothers Bush to the war in Iraq to the emerging rights of Muslim women to postfeminism to current cinema—Mexican, American, European (Giorgio goes spasmodically mad over Bu-ñuel), and back to Mexican again—to the relative superiority of shrimp over any other kind of taco to the excellence of Ana’s paella, to Ana’s childhood, then to Jimena’s, to the changing role of motherhood in a postindustrial world, to sculpture, then painting, then poetry, then baseball, then Jimena’s inexplicable (to Pablo) fondness for American football (she’s a Dallas Cowboys fan) over real (to Pablo) fútbol, to his admittedly adolescent passion for the game, to the trials of adolescence itself and revelations over the loss of virginity and why we refer to it as a loss and now Óscar and Tomás, arms over each other’s shoulders, are chanting poetry and then Giorgio picks up a guitar and starts to play and this is the Juárez that Pablo loves, this is the city of his soul—the poetry, the passionate discussions (Ana makes her counterpoints jabbing her cigarette like a foil; Jimena’s words flow like a gentle wave across beach sand, washing away the words before; Giorgio trills a jazz saxophone while Pablo plays bass—they are a jazz combo of argument), the ideas flowing with the wine and beer, the lilting music in a black night, this is the gentle heartbeat of the Mexico that he adores, the laughter, the subtle perfume of desert flowers that grow in alleys alongside garbage, and now everyone is singing—