Текст книги "The Cartel"

Автор книги: Don Winslow

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Текущая страница: 26 (всего у книги 42 страниц)

He leans forward and shows them the screen of his camera.

A beautiful close-up of Colonel Alvarado.

“How did you do that?” Pablo asks.

“While you were firing at him, so was I.”

“Will Óscar print it?”

“With what?” Ana asks. “What story do we have? ‘Colonel Denies Torturing Prisoners’? That’s not news, that’s the opposite of news. News would be ‘Colonel Admits Torturing Prisoners.’ ”

“Yes, but there’s a bigger story here,” Pablo says. “If you accept Abarca’s and Cisneros’s version of events, the army is allied with the Sinaloa cartel to wipe out the Juárez cartel, and not only that, to move normal citizens out of the Juárez Valley.”

If true, the Sinaloa cartel and the army are the same beast.

–

That night, Ana comes out on her back step, sits down next to Pablo, and lights a cigarette.

“When did you start again?” Pablo asks.

“I think it was when I started going to the morgues again,” Ana says.

Pablo knows what she means—the cigarettes help get the smell out of your nose. Not entirely, nothing can do that, but it helps.

“What do you think about today?” Pablo asks.

“It’s a hell of a story.”

“Will Óscar print it?”

“Not the speculations,” Ana says. “He’ll run the fact that the army is holding prisoners in Práxedis without regard to legal rights.”

They sit in silence for a while, enjoying the soft night and the faint sound of norteño music coming from someone’s radio down the street. Then Ana asks, “Pablo, can I talk to you about something?”

“Of course.”

“It’s very awkward,” Ana says, “and you can’t say anything to Giorgio or Óscar about it.”

“Dios mío, are you pregnant?”

“No,” she snorts. “No…It’s just that…while you were gone…a man came up to me outside the office and handed me an envelope.”

Pablo feels his stomach flip. “An envelope?”

“He called it la sobre.”

“A bribe?” Pablo asks, choking on his own duplicity. “What did you do?”

“Well, I didn’t know who he was,” Ana says. “A cop, some politico’s stooge, a narco…”

“So what did you do?”

“What else?” Ana says. “I shoved it back at him and told him that I wasn’t interested.”

Pablo tries to tell her, but shame stops him. Ana was always, he thinks, better than me. Every Monday, as promised (“threatened” is more like it), the man appears outside the office and gives (“forces on”?) Pablo the sobre. Pablo doesn’t know what to do with the money, so he keeps it in an ever-growing manila envelope in his backpack.

You could just give it to charity, he told himself. Give it to the poor, give it to the homeless. (Shit, he thinks, you are the homeless.) Give it to the church if you can’t think of anything better.

Then why don’t you?

Because you could really use the money, is the answer. For trips, legal fees, court costs.

He hasn’t so far, but still it sits there, a growing fund.

And the odd thing is that they haven’t asked him for anything yet. They haven’t demanded that he write a story, or kill another one, or give them a source, or anything. They just come every Monday, as inevitable as the post-Mateo hangover, and hand him the envelope.

He still doesn’t know who they are. Juárez cartel? Sinaloa cartel? Somebody else?

Pablo was even tempted to talk to Óscar, but he feared what the reaction would be—contempt and disdain, maybe an immediate sacking—and he can’t afford to lose this job.

So he kept his mouth shut.

And the money stacked up.

Betrayals start that way, with lies hidden in the shadows of silence.

“Are you on my sofa tonight?” Ana asks.

“If that’s okay.”

“Giorgio’s probably driving back out to Valverde to bag that doctor.”

“He’s not her type.”

“Oh,” Ana says, both amused and annoyed at the easy assertion, thinking, I hate to tell you, bud, but Giorgio is about every woman’s type. She gets up, tosses down the last of her beer, and crushes her cigarette out on the step. “See you in the morning.”

Pablo sits for a while, enjoying the silence. Then he crashes on the sofa and indulges in a brief, consciously futile fantasy about Marisol…excuse me, Dr. Marisol Cisneros. Christ, he thinks, even my imagination knows that she’s out of my league.

He and Ana go into the office in the morning and pitch the story to Óscar. He listens carefully, then tells them to cowrite a descriptive piece about the valley—what it looks like, how it sounds, the army patrols, the checkpoints, the bullet-riddled buildings.

Óscar says, “Ana, do the piece about the men being held in Práxedis. Quote the colonel’s no-comment, call officials in these other towns and see if they have any people being held.”

“What about what Jimena and Marisol told us?”

“On deep background,” Óscar says. “Don’t use their names, just write that some citizens in the valley believe that the army is favoring the Sinaloa cartel in the struggle, something like that.”

All three articles run that week.

–

Juárez is a horror show.

The Juárez cartel and their Zeta allies put up banners promising to kill a police officer every forty-eight hours until the new police chief—a former army officer—resigned.

After the first two officers were murdered, the chief did resign. The Zetas then sent the Juárez mayor a message that if “you put in another asshole working for Barrera, we’ll kill you, too.” Signs went up around the city promising to decapitate the mayor and his family. He moved his wife and children to El Paso but, contrary to rumor, stayed in Juárez himself, albeit under heavy round-the-clock security.

The administration sent five thousand more troops into Juárez.

The new police chief was another former army general, and the mayor disbanded the entire municipal police force and announced that the army would take over all city police duties.

In effect, Juárez is under martial law.

–

Summer burns off spring.

Sweltering becomes scorching.

And the violence in and around Juárez goes on.

On the first official day of summer, eighteen people are killed in Juárez. Pablo, Ana, and Giorgio hop around the city like drops of grease on a hot pan. One of the bodies, found out in the desperately poor colonia of Anapra, just along the border, is decapitated and dismembered, just a trunk in a bloody T-shirt.

Pablo’s glad that he, and not Ana, caught this call.

By week’s end, three more are killed, although the headline story is that the $1.6 billion Mérida Initiative has gone into effect.

In July, the police commander in charge of antikidnapping is himself kidnapped, and the chief of Juárez’s prison system is gunned down in his car along with his bodyguard and three other people.

By August, Pablo thinks he has seen it all when he gets a call to go out to the colonia known as First of September in the southwest part of the city to something called CIAD #8.

Center for Alcohol and Drug Integration.

A rehab clinic.

It’s about 7:30 on a Wednesday night, still light out, enough to see the blood on the sidewalk outside the newly whitewashed little building. The metal gate that leads onto a front patio is open. Cops are everywhere.

Pablo counts seven bodies on the patio, and by now he’s experienced enough to know that these men—recovering addicts and alcoholics—were dragged out here, shoved against the wall, and executed with shots to the back of the head.

He looks up.

A lifeless body, bullet holes punched in the back, still grips the rungs of a fire escape ladder.

The outraged neighbors are eager to tell the story. An army truck pulled up at the end of the block and stopped. Then another vehicle—some say it was a Humvee, others a Suburban, roared up and started blasting.

The neighbors screamed for help, phoned emergency services, ran down to the army truck and pleaded. The truck never moved, the soldiers didn’t help, emergency services never came. The survivors and neighbors loaded the twenty-three wounded into the center’s old van in shifts, until finally a Red Cross ambulance came to take several of the rest.

Pablo examines shell casings before the cops take them away. He’s not concerned about contaminating evidence, knowing by now that there will be no arrests, never mind trials.

Like most Juarense reporters now, Pablo has become a semi-expert in forensics. The casings are from 9mms and 7.62s, and 5.56s. The 7.62s could be from AKs—the narco weapon of choice—or military weapons. The 5.56s are consistent with several of the NATO weapons used by the Mexican army. The 9s are Glock or Smith and Wesson sidearms.

Pablo sees a cop he knows from…who knows what recent killing. “You have any suspects?”

“What do you think?”

“There were soldiers fifty yards away,” Pablo says. “They didn’t do anything.”

“Didn’t they?”

True, Pablo thinks. They blocked the street, maybe they were lookouts, maybe they scared the police and the EMTs from coming.

“Why would anyone want to kill rehab patients?” Pablo asks.

“Because the cartels use them to hide gunmen,” the cop says. “Or because they’re afraid of what a clean and sober ex-gunman might confess to. I don’t know. Unless you have some answers for me, Pablo, get the fuck out of my way. I have to collect evidence that will never be used.”

“The weapons might have been military.”

“Go have a beer, Pablo, huh?”

Pablo goes him eight better. He’s working on nine when he gets a phone call from Ana.

The army has taken away Jimena Abarca’s older son.

–

The sergeant at the gate won’t admit them to see Colonel Alvarado.

But when they insist that they won’t leave until they do, and that television trucks will be there soon, the colonel finally comes out to the gate.

At first, he denies any knowledge of Miguel Abarca.

“At least ten people saw soldiers throw him into an army truck,” Jimena says.

“Unfortunately,” Alvarado says, “the narcos sometimes use stolen army uniforms and vehicles.”

“Are you really saying,” Ana presses, “that you’re so careless with your equipment that you allow it to be stolen by the very people you’re supposed to be controlling? Do you have an inventory of these missing vehicles?”

Alvarado will neither confirm nor deny that his unit is holding Miguel.

“But you can check,” Pablo says. “Presumably you keep better track of people than you do of equipment.”

Glaring at Pablo, Alvarado sends a lieutenant to check the day’s paperwork. The subordinate comes back with a report that they do indeed have an “Abarca, Miguel,” age twenty-three, in custody.

“On what charges?” Jimena asks.

“Suspicion,” Alvarado answers.

“Of being my son?” Jimena asks.

“Of colluding with narcotics traffickers.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Marisol says. “Miguel is a baker.”

“Osiel Contreras was a car salesman,” Alvarado says. “Adán Barrera was an accountant.”

“I want to see him,” says Jimena.

“That’s not possible.”

“As an official of the Valverde town government,” Marisol says, “I demand access to Miguel Abarca.”

“You have no authority here.”

“As his physician, then.”

“Perhaps,” Alvarado says, “if his mother weren’t so busy attending demonstrations and spent more time supervising her children, her son wouldn’t be in this difficulty.”

“Is that what this is about?” Jimena asks.

“Isn’t it?” Alvarado asks. “Aren’t you just a publicity seeker? I noticed you brought the media with you.”

“They’re my friends.”

“Exactly.”

Pablo looks around and sees that the commotion in front of the gate has attracted a few onlookers. Within minutes word gets around, people start to walk down the dirt street toward the post, and a crowd forms around the gate. The people in Práxedis know the Abarcas, and Marisol Cisneros is their doctor.

Someone shouts an insult at the soldiers.

Someone else throws a rock.

Then a bottle smashes against the wire.

“Don’t do that!” Jimena shouts.

“You see?” Alvarado says. “You’re causing an incident.”

Pablo sees that the soldiers are getting nervous. Rifles are unslung, bayonets fastened.

“Please, don’t throw anything!” Marisol yells.

The missiles stop, but one of the townspeople starts to holler, “Miguel! Miguel! Miguel!” and the rest pick up the chant, Miguel! Miguel! Miguel! Miguel!

“These people are not doing your son any favors,” Alvarado says.

But the chant keeps up—Miguel! Miguel! Miguel!—and more people come down the street. Cell phones come out—calls are made, pictures and video taken. The whole valley will be alerted soon.

“I will clear this street,” Alvarado says to Jimena, “and hold you personally responsible for any civic unrest.”

“We hold you responsible for civic unrest,” Marisol says.

When Giorgio starts taking pictures of the crowd, Alvarado yells at Ana, “Tell him to stop that!”

“I’ve never been able to control him.”

“Release my son,” Jimena says.

“I do not respond to threats.”

“Neither do I.”

Arms outstretched, Jimena and Marisol move the crowd back about twenty yards from the gate, but more people keep coming until about two hundred are gathered in the long light of the summer evening.

Two television news trucks pull up.

“You’ll be on the Juárez news tonight,” Marisol tells Alvarado. “The El Paso news by morning. Why don’t you just let him go? I know Miguel—he isn’t even politically active.”

“If Señora Abarca would agree to mind her own business from now on,” Alvarado says, “perhaps something could be worked out.”

“So Miguel is a hostage.”

“Your word, not mine.”

“I will call the governor,” Marisol says, “I will call the president, if I have to. I am not without influence.”

“Indeed, you are out of your social setting, Dr. Cisneros.”

“Meaning that I’m not an indio?”

“Again, your words,” Alvarado says. “I am only stating that I see you more in a Mexico City salon than on a dusty street in rural Chihuahua.”

“My family have been here for generations.”

“As landlords,” Alvarado says. “As patrones. Perhaps you should consider acting as such.”

“Oh, I am, Colonel.”

Off to the side, away from the crowd, Jimena breaks down in Ana’s arms. “They’re going to hurt him. They’re going to kill him, I know it.”

“No they’re not,” Ana says. “Not now. There are too many eyes watching them now.”

Pablo gets a call from Óscar. “Are you all right? Are you safe?”

“We’re fine.”

“How’s Jimena holding up?”

“As might be expected.”

“Tell Giorgio I need his photos.”

“I will.”

“Do you think they’ll release him?”

“No,” Pablo says frankly. “This Alvarado guy would lose too much face now.”

It settles into a siege.

When darkness finally comes, the candles come out and the vigil begins.

Marisol calls the governor and is told that he will “certainly look into it.” Then she takes the humiliating step of calling her ex-husband for help. He phones a friend, who phones a friend, who talks to someone at Los Pinos, who promises to “look into it.”

They don’t release Miguel that night, or the next morning.

The crowd fades away, but somehow it’s arranged that a few people always wait by the gate, with signs demanding Miguel’s release.

And Jimena Abarca goes on a hunger strike.

–

The hunger strike of Jimena Abarca doesn’t make international news.

Or even national news.

Óscar, though…Óscar makes it a daily, above-the-fold headline, telling his staff, “If we’re not here to cover something like this, we’re not here for anything at all.”

For three days straight he makes it front-page news, running stories under Ana’s and Pablo’s bylines about injustice in the valley, about the suspension of human rights, about the army running roughshod.

Pablo is there when the first phone calls start to come in. At first they’re official—the general in command calls to ask Óscar why he’s taking sides.

“We’re not taking sides,” Óscar says, perhaps a bit disingenuously. “We’re reporting news.”

“You’re not reporting our side.”

“We’d love to,” Óscar says. “What is your side? You can give it to me over the phone or I’ll send Ana right over. You know Ana, yes?”

“We’re not giving interviews at this point.”

“And if that’s your side of the story,” Óscar responds, “I’ll print that.”

A flack from the governor’s office phones to ask basically the same question and to observe that the other papers aren’t making this front-page news.

“I’m not the editor of other papers,” Óscar answers. “I’m the editor of this one, have been for quite some time, and in my experience this is front-page news.”

He hangs up, taps his cane on the side of his desk a few times, and then says, “The publisher will call next. Not until after lunch, though, when he thinks I’m mellowed by a glass of wine and a full stomach.”

The call comes at 2:05, ten minutes after Óscar has returned to the office. El Búho listens to his complaints, sympathizes with the angry calls he’s had to endure from the Defense Department, the governor’s office, and even Los Pinos, and then kindly says he will do nothing different than what he’s doing except to add an angry editorial for tomorrow’s edition.

He puts the phone on speaker so Pablo and Ana can listen.

“News articles are one thing,” the publisher says. “Editorials are quite another.”

“I have built my professional life on that principle,” Óscar says, smiling at Pablo. “I’m glad we agree.”

“So you intend to commit this paper to the position that the army is committing an outrage in Práxedis.”

“In the whole Juárez Valley,” Óscar says.

“I don’t know if the board can accept that.”

“Then the board had better fire me,” Óscar says.

“Now, Oscar, no one said anything about—”

“As long as I’m the editor of this paper,” Óscar says, “I will be the editor, and, by definition, the editor writes the editorials.”

It’s classic Óscar—firm, decisive, authoritative—but Pablo notices that he’s aged. The mischievous glint in the eye has dimmed a little, his blinks are more frequent, his hip seems to hurt him a little more, and Pablo knows that the events in Juárez have played on their boss. On all of us, I guess, Pablo thinks.

Two more days into the hunger strike and Óscar’s scathing editorial, the other calls come in.

The anonymous ones.

The threats.

“Stop what you’re doing if you know what’s good for you.”

“Don’t think bad things can’t happen to you.”

“I’m perfectly aware that bad things can happen to me,” Óscar says. “Dios mío, they put three bullets into me.”

“Then you should have learned.”

“Ah, but sadly, I’m a slow learner,” Óscar says. “My teachers in school despaired of me.”

“Who are they from?” Pablo asks, guiltily conscious of the sobres, the envelopes.

“Narcos?” Óscar asks. “The government?”

“Is there a difference?” Ana asks.

“Until you can prove otherwise, yes,” Óscar answers. He tells them to be careful, to watch their backs, and he increases security around the office. But he keeps running stories about Jimena Abarca.

–

For the first three days, Marisol explains, the body uses energy from stored glucose. It’s painful of course, as anyone who has experienced hunger knows, but not lethal.

But after three days the liver starts to consume body fat, a process known as ketosis, which is dangerous and can cause permanent damage. If the hunger strike goes into a third week, the body starts to “eat” its own muscles and vital organs. There is loss of bone marrow.

This is called starvation mode.

Marisol then gives them the old “4-4-40” rough standard for human survival: four minutes without air, four days without water, forty days without food.

They are in day seven now.

Fortunately Jimena has agreed to drink water, but won’t take vitamins or other supplements. She lies on a cot in a friend’s house in Práxedis, not far from the army post, and grows weaker every day. A thin woman to begin with, she now looks emaciated.

The army shows no sign of releasing Miguel, demanding instead that Jimena be arrested and force-fed, if necessary.

“Are we just going to let her commit slow suicide?” Ana asks. She has taken turns with other women from the “movement” sitting with Jimena. More people sit outside to make certain that if the army tries to arrest Jimena, they won’t do it easily and the seizure will be recorded.

“You’re a doctor,” Ana says to Marisol. “Don’t you have an obligation to intervene? Certainly you can’t assist in a suicide.”

“I won’t force-feed her,” Marisol answers. “It’s torture.”

“As opposed to starvation?” Pablo asks.

Going back and forth between Jimena and Alvarado, Marisol feverishly tries to find a compromise. Will Jimena stop her hunger strike if Alvarado will let her see Miguel? They both refuse. What if the army turns Miguel over to the Chihuahua state police? Jimena agrees, Alvarado refuses. What if the AFI takes custody of him? Alvarado agrees, Jimena refuses.

Then they both dig their heels in.

Jimena won’t quit until Miguel is unconditionally released, and Alvarado won’t release him.

It turns into a grim siege of wills.

And tactics—on the eighth day, a note arrives from Miguel, asking his mother to stop her strike.

“I don’t believe it,” Jimena says.

“It’s his handwriting,” Ana says.

“He was coerced.”

“He doesn’t want his mother to die!”

“Neither does his mother,” Jimena says, smiling as she lays her head back on the small pillow. “Neither does his mother.”

Later that day, they put Miguel on the phone.

“Mama, I’m all right.”

“Have they hurt you?”

“Mama, please eat.”

“Are they forcing you to make this call?”

“No, Mama.”

They take the phone away from him. Jimena’s younger son, Julio, asks her, “Mama, are you satisfied now? Please stop.”

“Not until they release him.”

“Miguel said that they weren’t hurting him.”

“What else was he going to say?” Jimena asks. “If I give in now, they win.”

“It’s not a game,” Ana says.

“No, it’s a war,” Jimena answers. “The same war it’s always been.”

Pablo gets that. It’s the war between the haves and the have-nots, the powerful and the powerless. The one has the power to inflict suffering—the other only to endure it.

Their only weapon is shame, if the powerful can even feel it.

The people in the “movement” do their best—there are daily protests now outside the army post, the governor’s office; a few allies in Mexico City even picket Los Pinos. The people in the small towns shun the soldiers, who can’t buy so much as a candy bar, a beer, a postage stamp in the Juárez Valley.

Pablo hears whispers that some are talking about darker measures. If the army is taking the side of the Sinaloa cartel, why shouldn’t we join with the Juárez people? La Familia Michoacana have attacked army posts, the Zetas have attacked prisons and freed convicts. If the army sees us as devils anyway, let’s give them true hell. The talk turns from passive resistance to revolution, an old Chihuahua tradition.

Jimena gets wind of the talk and shuts it down.

“We do not beat them by becoming them,” she says.

Others aren’t so sure.

Marisol uses the weapons she has—her looks and charm—and literally attracts the media. The camera loves her, as they say, and she consciously takes advantage of that to get in front of television cameras in her white coat and with her physician’s demeanor describe in graphic yet media-friendly terms what is happening to Jimena Abarca’s body.

She knows exactly what she’s doing, turning the Abarca ordeal into a soap opera—hoping that it will become a telenovela with a short run and a happy ending.

Marisol becomes “La Médica Hermosa”—the Beautiful Doctor. People turn on the news to see her, and Jimena’s case starts to get national attention. It’s hateful, Marisol tells Pablo and Ana privately—gross and demeaning—but it might be the way to save Jimena’s life.

Then there are Giorgio’s photographs.

It was a genius idea, Pablo thinks, Giorgio’s concept to run a photo of Jimena’s face every day, an increasing strip of them, so that readers could see the progression of her condition.

Day after day, people pick up their paper and see this woman starving to death. And the photos, they are beautiful, carefully, artfully composed in the half-light of the little house, each one a pietà of a mother grieving for her son.

The paper’s circulation goes up.

It becomes water-cooler conversation—Have you seen Jimena today? Newsboys shout it from traffic islands—Have you seen Jimena today? Housewives talk about it at lunch—Have you seen Jimena today?

An anonymous donor pays for a billboard at the base of the Lincoln International Bridge, so that people coming in from El Paso are asked the question Have you seen Jimena today?

It speaks to the photos’ effectiveness that no one has to ask what that means.

The army fights back with a public relations campaign of its own. The commander of the 11th Military Zone holds a press conference and says, “This woman is not Mother Teresa. She’s nothing more than a tool of the cartels.”

Ana is there to ask the questions. “Do you have information linking Jimena Abarca to drug trafficking? And if so, why haven’t you released it?”

“It might compromise ongoing investigations.”

“If you have such information,” Ana presses, “why haven’t you turned it over to prosecuting authorities so that they can file charges?”

“We will in due time.”

“What’s ‘due time’?”

“When we’re ready.”

“Will you be ready,” Ana asks, “before or after Jimena Abarca starves to death?”

“We are not starving Señora Abarca,” the general says. “She is starving herself. We will not be bullied or intimidated by these tactics.”

The next morning, a photo of the well-fed general in his dress uniform appears next to a picture of the emaciated Jimena with the caption BULLIED AND INTIMIDATED?

The following day, an editorial appears in a major Texas newspaper under the title IS THIS WHAT THE MÉRIDA BILLIONS ARE PAYING FOR? A Democratic congressman from California stands up on the House floor and asks the same question. This prompts a call from the West Wing to DEA basically asking what the fuck is going on down there and demanding that whatever it is, DEA get a handle on it.

There’s an election coming up, it’s going to be close, and the incumbent party’s candidate is from a border state with a lot of Hispanics. McCain was in Mexico City just last month, for Chrissakes, praising the Mérida Initiative as an important step, and the last thing he needs is the perception that the aid package he touted is being used to torture Mexican mothers.

The DEA director calls a colleague in the Mexican Defense Department, who listens and then says, “We can’t let ourselves be beaten by one woman. What kind of message would that send?”

“That you’re smart?” the director asks. “I suggest that if you want the helicopters and the aircraft to keep coming, you find a way to back down on this thing.”

It’s axiomatic that at certain points in any conflict, both sides think they’re losing. It’s true of wars and battles, lawsuits and strikes. It’s true now. Jimena’s supporters know nothing about the calls from Washington and don’t realize the immense pressure being brought to bear on the army.

What they see is no movement from the military.

And Jimena failing.

Ana breaks down one night.

“I can’t stand it,” she cries to Pablo, who holds her in his arms and rocks her. “I can’t stand the thought of her dying.”

“She won’t,” Pablo says, even though he isn’t so confident. “They’ll break first.”

“What if they don’t?”

Pablo doesn’t have an answer.

–

Adán watches La Médica Hermosa on television.

“She’s so pretty,” Magda says.

“I suppose.” Adán is familiar enough with women to steer around the obvious pothole. But the woman on television is stunning. And effective—no wonder she’s become a media sensation.

“And effective,” Magda adds. They’re lying in bed in her flat in Badiraguato, the one she comes to when she feels a need to be with him, less and less frequent now, he’s observed.

“Do you think so?” he asks.

“Face it, cariño,” Magda says. “It’s a new world now. Every war you fight, you fight on three fronts: a shooting war; a political war; a media war. And that you can’t win one without the others.”

She’s right, Adán thinks.

She’s absolutely right.

–

He gets out of bed and phones Nacho. “Who is this Miguel Abarca, anyway? I’ve never even heard of him. Is he with Fuentes? Los Aztecas? La Línea?”

“He’s a nobody,” Nacho says. “A baker’s kid.”

“He’s not a nobody anymore,” Adán says. “Neither is the mother. The army has turned them into celebrities.”

He’s so tired of endless, needless stupidity. How the army could take a simple incident and let it grow out of proportion.

Adán has plans for the Juárez Valley, and they don’t include creating a cause célèbre. He’s winning the war against the Juárez cartel and now a bunch of morons in uniform find a way to screw it up.

“I don’t want to read any more articles,” Adán says. “I don’t want to see this doctor on television. This needs to come to a quick and happy conclusion.”

“Agreed.”

“And we need better media control,” Adán says. “For the money we’re paying, you would think—”

“It’s being worked on.”

Isn’t everything? Adán thinks after he hangs up and as he actually gets a chance to take a shower. The media are being “worked on,” hunting down Diego is being “worked on,” going after the Zetas is being “worked on.” Killing Keller is being “worked on.” I don’t want something “worked on,” I want something completed.

–

Marisol’s phone wakes her in the small hours of the morning.

It frightens her, because at first she thinks that it’s about Jimena, that her body has gone into crisis.

It is about Jimena, but it’s Colonel Alvarado.

“I have a proposal,” he says.

–

Óscar walks out into the city room.

“I just got a call that they released Miguel Abarca.”

When Pablo, Ana, and Giorgio get out to the valley, Miguel and Jimena are already home in Valverde, with Marisol carefully easing Jimena back onto some solid food.

“I’m sorry I didn’t inform you,” Marisol says, “but that was the deal—no press coverage of Miguel’s actual release. They didn’t want film of him walking out to a triumphant crowd.”

“We understand,” Ana says.

“I hope you’ll also understand this,” Marisol says. “We can’t let you interview Miguel or take photos.”

“Why not?” Giorgio asks.

“He’s on a gurney in my clinic,” Marisol says. “Broken nose, two fractured ribs, and the soles of his feet have wounds consistent with la chicharra—burning with electrical wires. But he’s alive, guys, and so is Jimena.”

They drive back to Juárez and file a simple story stating that Miguel Abarca was released without charges, and that Jimena Abarca has ended her hunger strike. The story doesn’t mention Miguel’s injuries. The next day’s edition features a photo of Jimena sipping a protein shake, and La Médica Hermosa makes what she assures reporters is a final appearance on the evening news and describes her patient’s condition as stable.