Текст книги "The Cartel"

Автор книги: Don Winslow

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Текущая страница: 27 (всего у книги 42 страниц)

The Abarca story disappears from the headlines because the Zetas throw grenades into an Independence Day celebration in Morelia, Michoacán, and kill eight people.

And in Juárez, the tired war of attrition goes on.

Pablo covers the killing of a police commander shot in a hotel parking lot, eleven gunned down in a bar, six killed at a family party, six more lined up outside a tienda and executed against the wall.

He writes the story about 334 Juárez city cops fired for failing polygraphs and drug tests.

All that is fine with the man who comes and slips him the sobre.

“I told you,” Pablo says, “I don’t want this.”

“And I told you,” the man says, “no one’s asking you. Give the money to charity if you don’t want it, but you’re taking it.”

Pablo’s next call is to a headless body hanging from its feet off the Bridge of Dreams with the narcomensaje reading I, LORENZO FLORES, SERVED MY BOSS, THE DOG-FUCKER BARRERA.

“ ‘Dog-fucker’?” Giorgio asks, trying to figure out his shot. “That’s a new one.”

“Zetas,” Pablo says.

“How do you know?”

“Decapitation. That’s their thing.”

The head turns up later at the Plaza del Periodista.

Mexico City

December 2009

Only Keller knows the identity of the informant code-named “María Fernanda.”

Through the miserable year of 2009, as violence and bloodshed spread through Mexico like an unstoppable virus, Keller stayed in the Mexico City bunker and, good as his word, focused on bringing down Diego Tapia.

Except you can’t kill what you can’t find.

It wasn’t from lack of trying.

No “search and avoid” missions with the FES. Orduña even has his own satellite surveillance system, purchased from the French and operated by the European Space Agency.

It couldn’t draw a bead on Tapia.

Neither could any of the American intelligence packages.

In regard to intelligence, Keller gets what he wants.

Taylor has seen to it.

“Let the word go forth from this time and place,” Taylor pronounced. “There is no secret unit operating in Mexico City, and it gets everything it needs from you. If Keller asks you for something, you don’t ask ‘why,’ you ask ‘when.’ If Keller wants a large pizza smothered with chocolate ice cream, French fries, and a cherry on top, you deliver it faster than Domino’s, no questions asked. You have any questions, come to me, but don’t have any questions. Are there any questions?”

There weren’t.

Keller knew that a lot of this came from the fact that the new administration in Washington has a distinctly “antiterrorist” bent. The rumor was that the White House has a “kill list” on top jihadists, and this strategy had carried over into the war on drugs.

It’s not so much that we’ve now defined the narcos as terrorists, Keller thought, but that there’s more of a psychological leak from the war on terror into the war on drugs. The battle against Al Qaeda has redefined what’s thinkable, permissible, and doable. Just as the war on terror has turned the functions of intelligence agencies into military action, the war on drugs has similarly militarized the police. CIA is running a drone and assassination program in South Asia; DEA is assisting the Mexican military in targeting top narcos for “arrests” that are often executions.

Mexico has formalized the militarization of the drug war; the U.S. is drifting in that direction.

Certainly, Keller thought, my war on drugs has changed over the years. It used to be all about busts and seizures, the perpetual cat-and-mouse game of getting the shit off the street, but now I barely think about the drugs themselves.

The actual trafficking is almost irrelevant.

I’m not a drug agent anymore, he reflected, I’m a hunter.

He came out of retirement to hunt Barrera—if he has to take down other narcos on the way to that, so be it. Mostly to stay on—however indirectly—Barrera’s trail. The other reason is that he likes and actually trusts Roberto Orduña. Still mourning Luis Aguilar’s death and enraged over Gerardo Vera’s betrayal, Keller didn’t want a close working relationship—never mind a friendship.

But that’s what he got—a friendship, of sorts, based on a common understanding.

Revenge.

It came over a late-night drinking session after a long day of unsuccessfully tracking Diego Tapia. Single-malt scotch, very expensive, lowered inhibitions and provoked revelations.

Keller learned that Orduña came from an immensely wealthy family (“The reason I’m impervious to bribery”), and that they have something in common.

A grudge.

Felipa Muñoz.

Nineteen, a model, and a cheerleader for the local Tijuana fútbol team, Felipa was apparently friendly with a young man who was somehow associated with the Tapias.

Her decapitated body was found dumped on the soccer field—the trunk in two black plastic bags, the head in another. Her feet had been smashed in and her fingers cut off—the usual torture for a dedo, a snitch—although the clumsy nature of the wounds indicated that it was done by amateurs, not professionals. The two men who did it—Felipa’s twenty-two-year-old “friend” and a forty-nine-year old associate—were arrested for speeding and the police found a video of the torture on their cell phone. They’d apparently heard that she was passing information along to a policeman and thought they’d kill her to garner favor with the bosses.

Felipa Muñoz was Orduña’s goddaughter.

He’d held her in his arms as an infant, committed her soul to God.

“I hate the narcos,” Orduña told Keller that night. “Tapia, Contreras, Ochoa, Barrera, all of them.”

They touched glasses.

It was personal, Keller got that.

Keller knew “personal,” so he started to trust Orduña.

Worked hard with him to bring down Diego Tapia.

At the end of the day, it came down to what it almost always comes down to.

A snitch.

–

The relationship, Keller thinks as he goes to meet María Fernanda at a movie theater in Mexico City, between an informant and “handler” is one of mutual seduction—if only in the basest of terms, because each is trying to fuck the other.

But it goes deeper than that.

You have to bring the informant in, convince him or her that your bed is warmer and safer than the one the informant is currently sleeping in. You have to be a friend, but not too friendly, you have to make promises, but none that you can’t deliver. You have to keep your informants safe, but not hesitate to put them in mortal danger. You have to show them that there’s a future beyond this, when you know that there probably isn’t.

At the same time, the informant is seducing you—showing you a little leg, a glimpse beneath an unbuttoned blouse, promising that there’s more. An informant is a great cock tease, knowing that her value is depleted as soon as she delivers all the goods. So she holds back, plays it coy, hard-to-get.

Keller makes his point very clear to María Fernanda as he sits behind the informant in the uncrowded matinee screening.

“Christmas is coming,” Keller says. “I want Diego on the table with my turkey.”

“Easier said than done.”

“Didn’t ask whether it was easy,” Keller says, “and I don’t care. You’ve been giving me appetizers—little snacks—and now I want to sit down and eat.”

“I’ve given you over fifty arrests.”

True enough, Keller thinks. Based on María Fernanda’s information, the FES have captured a slew of Tapia soldiers, along with weapons, cash, and drugs. It’s good, but makes it all the more urgent to get Diego, because every arrest shortens the informant’s shelf life, and now Keller makes exactly that point. “I wouldn’t want to be you when Diego figures out who you are. You need to put him away.”

“I don’t know where he is.”

“I want Diego,” Keller says. He walks away and heads back to the office thinking that the best time to nab Diego Tapia is coming up.

Narcos take the holidays very seriously. The peces gordos have to throw elaborate parties or they lose face. And none of them can afford to lose face, not this year, with loyalties and alliances on the fence, waiting to be tipped to one side or the other. Diego will throw a party and “María Fernanda” goddamn well better invite me.

María calls two weeks later.

“Ahuatepec. 1158 Avenida Artista. Tonight.”

Keller puts up a photo of the address, a big house in a gated community outside Cuernavaca.

“He’s an arrogant son of a bitch,” Orduña says when Keller relays the phone conversation to him. Diego has invited dozens of guests, and hired twenty of Mexico City’s highest-priced call girls and one of Mexico’s most renowned norteño musicians to play at the party.

“We don’t want a bloodbath,” Orduña says. They both know the political reality—it’s a far different thing to shoot up a wealthy suburb than some impoverished colonia. Maybe that’s why Diego feels safe.

“We know where he is now,” Keller said. “We can’t lose him again.”

Keller puts a call back in to María Fernanda.

Then sits back and watches the party from a distance.

–

Eddie hopes like hell it was goat.

Diego demanded that Eddie show up for his holiday party, and Eddie was all like “I’m busy” but Diego was like “Fuck that, m’ijo, you’re showing up.” So Eddie went and the usual crew was there—the bodyguards and some Zetas and the squadron of whores and they were all doing blow and then dinner was served.

Sitting around the table eating chili verde and Diego started talking about Manuel Esposito, this old Sinaloa cartel sicario—genuine tough guy stone-cold killer—who sided with the Barreras, and alone among the guests asked Whatever happened to old Manuel and Diego, he got this weird smile on his face and said, “Maybe you’re eating him.”

Everybody laughed, like, yeah, that’s real funny, but then Diego looked all serious and said, “No. Maybe you’re eating him.”

Eddie set his spoon down.

Diego said, “I mean, they say you should eat what you kill, don’t they? Besides, the flesh of a strong enemy makes you strong.”

Eddie thought he might blow chunks right there at the table. He didn’t eat any more chili, and probably Diego was kidding. But with Diego these days, who knows? And Eddie was pissed, because, well shit, did Diego just make him into a fucking cannibal?

That’s just not right.

That could mess with a guy’s head.

Turn him into a vegetarian.

Anyway, Eddie don’t have time for this crazy shit.

He’s got a business to run and he’s married again.

Yeah, okay, well, sort of married, seeing as how he never got divorced. But he found himself another Tex-Mex honey, the daughter of one of his big-time coke runners, so they got “married” in Acapulco by a priest who wasn’t anal about the paperwork and maybe wasn’t really a priest anyway.

Honeymooned right there in Acapulco and she got knocked up, like microwave pregnancy. So now there’s a kid on the way, so who has time for Diego’s crazy death-worshipping maybe-I’m-a-cannibal-maybe-not bullshit?

And then there are these command performances he has to make when Diego requests his presence at one of the many safe houses he has in the greater Mexico City metro area, which he refuses to leave.

The visits to Diego are risky, because the federales have a hard-on for him like a fence post, and they’re also a pain in the ass because El Jefe’s always busting Eddie’s balls about why he’s not killing more of Barrera’s people, “carrying more of his weight” in the war.

Well, in the first fucking place, it’s not my weight to carry, Eddie thinks. I didn’t start the war with El Señor, I only did what I was asked-slash-told and offed the nephew, and now my ass is on the line? My business?

Eddie don’t want no part in the war, either in Sinaloa or in Juárez, because what’s Juárez to him? He ain’t gonna get a piece of the plaza, even if they win, so fuck that. So he’s held back a little in the fighting—let his guys do a little here and there if they were eager to win their spurs, but that’s about it.

So every time he goes to see Diego, it comes up.

And Diego is motherfucking crazy when he does coke, which he does more of every day, it seems. Coke and booze and hookers and the Skinny Lady, and it’s getting stranger than strange.

The whole thing is jacked up, though. Killing cops. This is not what we used to do, this is not how we ran business. And this new stuff—the extortion, kidnappings, for Chrissakes—all this Zeta-type shit that Diego’s into now.

It’s not right.

It’s not right and it’s going to get us fucked up. And fucked up is something Eddie can’t afford right now. Yeah, he’s clearing over a hundred mil a year in coke sales north of the border, another twenty in Monterrey—it’s not a money issue, it’s a quality-of-life issue.

The DEA has put two million on his head, the Mexican government has matched it, and who knows which cop is on whose payroll anymore? It’s chaos out there, not to mention that the Barrera faction has him high on their to-do list for canceling young Sal’s reservation.

So he’s on the move, splitting time between condos and apartments in Acapulco and Monterrey. Not only does he have to manage business in both places, he has to keep his ass moving lest it get shot off.

It’s a hell of a party, though, Eddie has to admit now, looking down at the thousand-dollar blond head bobbing for apples on his lap. He’s never been a fan of norteño—Eddie’s taste runs more to Pearl Jam—but it is pretty cool to listen to a freaking Grammy winner sing “Chaparra de mi amor.” Kind of like when Johnny Fontane sang at Connie’s wedding in One, only better, because it comes with a blow job.

Even Diego’s in a good mood, walking among the guests playing Santa Claus, handing out expensive watches, jewelry, and envelopes of cash—the aguinaldos—the yearly bonuses. He’s also passing out raffle tickets with drawings later for cars and houses—this is how you keep the employees happy. And the women he brought in are fantastic, right out of Mexican Playboy. A little different from Barrera’s parties where wives but not mistresses were invited. Wives were banned from this shindig.

What happens in Ahuatepec, Eddie thinks, stays in Ahuatepec.

A good thing, too, because guys are fucking women right out there in the open, booze flowing like water, coke everywhere, tables loaded down with food (Eddie only hopes that the chicken in the fajitas is really chicken).

It’s like Six Flags for narcos.

The Mexico Ten finishes him off, he zips up and rejoins the party. Diego comes up to him and hands him a gift-wrapped box.

It’s a diamond-studded Audemars Piguet.

Eddie figures the watch goes for about a half mil.

“I feel bad, Diego,” Eddie says. What he got Diego for Christmas was a pair of Lucchese alligator boots, custom made. True, they cost him eight grand, and Diego’s proudly wearing them now, but still.

“You got me Salvador Barrera,” Diego says, and then wraps Eddie in a bear hug and says in his ear, “I love you, m’ijo.”

Now Eddie really feels bad about the boots.

–

They stay on Diego for five long days.

While Mexico City bustles with all the usual holiday activity, Keller and Orduña bunker down, track Diego Tapia’s moves, and wait for him to go somewhere that they can take him. They have to be careful—the government won’t tolerate another civilian casualty, nor do they have much stomach for one themselves.

The tracking device homes in on Diego, but he also makes several cell phone calls to María Fernanda, which they have monitored.

In the meantime, Diego doesn’t go far, from one safe house to another in the Cuernavaca area. One is near a school—no good. Another near a busy shopping street—same. Finally he settles for two days in an apartment in one of five fifteen-story towers in the Lomas de Selva neighborhood of Cuernavaca.

“Elbus Complex, the Altitude Building,” Orduña says. “But we don’t know which floor.”

Thirty minutes later, María calls.

“Where have you been?” Keller asks. “If you’re playing some kind of double game here—”

“Nobody’s playing.”

“He’s in the Altitude Building,” Keller says. “Lomas de Selva. Which floor?”

“Second. 201.”

Diego’s planning a dinner with a general and three officers from the 24th Military Zone tonight. “Maybe you won’t chicken out this time.”

They have no intention of chickening out.

The FES are the elite troops that Keller wanted back in the early days of hunting Barrera. This is no clumsy AFI full frontal assault, but a highly professional, well-planned operation.

Plainclothes FES operatives move onto the street outside the complex, and report back that the forty Tapia sicarios are in three concentric circles—two of them around the building, the innermost in the lobby. Six additional men have gone inside the apartment, and listening posts outside Altitude confirm the presence of seven distinct voices in addition to Diego Tapia’s.

The best FES marksmen take position on the rooftops of the surrounding buildings, ranged in on all exits, with permission to shoot if Diego comes out.

Orduña is taking no chances with civilian casualties. Over the course of five hours, starting at noon, the plainclothes ops start to quietly remove residents from the other buildings into the basements.

Others start removing Diego’s security on the street, approaching with knives and pistols and quietly taking them away, putting on their clothes, taking their phones, replacing them. Diego’s outer security ring is now Orduña’s outer security ring.

And three officers from the 24th Military Zone, on their way to dinner, are stopped in their car and arrested.

Two hundred FES wait a kilometer away in armored cars. Others are loaded into Mi-17 helicopters. A pair of M1A2 Abrams tanks, part of the Mérida package, stand by.

Orduña is not fucking around.

–

Diego is pissed off that his guests haven’t arrived.

Maybe, Eddie thinks, they heard about some of El Jefe’s previous menu items. He’s sitting at the table with Diego, waiting to eat. Five sicarios are on guard around the apartment, more in the lobby.

“I don’t think they’re going to show,” Eddie says.

“Why not?” Diego asks.

He’s stressed out, and Eddie gets it. The army is his protection—if they’ve flipped to Barrera, he’s in deep shit. And now the army guys haven’t shown up and aren’t answering their phones.

“Fuck this,” Eddie says. “I’m out of here.”

“You’re leaving?”

“I don’t know, man,” Eddie says. “I just don’t feel good about this.”

“Relax,” Diego says. “I got forty men out there. What are you worried about?”

“I got shit to do, Diego,” Eddie says. “The waifa’s on my ass about getting a bassinette, baby clothes…I got two dealers in Monterrey need straightening out…”

“Go ahead,” Diego snaps. “Get the fuck out.”

“Diego…”

“How about that watch I gave you?” Diego asks. “You like that, right?”

“Yeah, it’s beautiful. You’re still wearing the boots, huh?” He kisses Diego on the cheek and gets up. “See you later, Tío.”

“Later.”

Eddie takes the elevator down, walks out onto the plaza.

–

Keller hears the radio call from the helicopter.

“Target acquired.”

“Hold,” Orduña says. “Repeat, hold. Let him go.”

A long five minutes later, Keller hears him say, “Go.”

The helicopter takes off, flies over the Lomas de Selva neighborhood, and lands on the roof of the Altitude Building. The roof secured, some of the FES evacuate tenants in the higher floors of the building while Keller and the others move down the stairwell toward the second floor.

Then the armored vehicles race up to the front of the building and start pouring 7.62mm rounds from the machine guns and M-16 fire into the lobby, mowing down Tapia’s sicarios before they can react. Marines rush into the lobby, secure the wounded, and then head up to the second floor.

As the commandos burst into the second-floor hallway, one of the men inside apartment 201 throws a grenade out the door. Other sicarios fire out the second-floor windows at the troops outside the building, while the others make a fight of it in the stairway.

Keller is coming down the stairs behind a marine lieutenant when a grenade clatters into the stairway. The lieutenant takes the brunt of the blast and shards of the fragmentation grenade hit him in the neck above his Kevlar vest. Keller squats to feels his pulse, but there is none—the severed artery quickly bleeds him out.

Drawing his pistol, Keller fires down the stairway as other FES come in behind him. They’re well trained, alternating cover and motion, and drive the sicarios back into the apartment.

Diego and his five men make a siege of it, holing up in the apartment. Through his headset, monitoring phone traffic, Keller can hear Diego calling Crazy Eddie Ruiz.

“Where are you, m’ijo? We’re getting fucked to hell here. We’re about to get taken.”

“Give it up, Diego. There’s nothing I can do.”

“Fuck that. I’m fighting. Get over here with some men.”

“It’s no good, Tío. They’ve got hundreds of guys out there. Helicopters. Tanks. Give up.”

Keller listens to a few moments of silence and then hears Diego say, “Okay, m’ijo, you take care of my kids, okay? I’m going to take some of these pendejos with me. Last bullet for myself.”

They hold out for three more hours.

Tipping the tables and sofas on their side for cover, they use up most of the ammo for the AKs and AR-15s. Then all they have left are grenades. The FES, already furious at the death of the much-loved lieutenant, are in no hurry to take more casualties. They just keep up the pressure, keep tightening the noose, and force the narcos to expend ammunition.

At nine that night, when it’s relatively quiet, Orduña gives the order to finish it.

A small C-4 charge blows the apartment door off.

Three FES go through the door, M-16s at their shoulders. Each kills a sicario with a two-shot burst to the chest. Keller sees another one of Diego’s men put his pistol in his mouth and pull the trigger. The last jumps out the window, a burst of fire from a rooftop sniper catches him in midair, and he’s dead before he somersaults onto the concrete courtyard.

Keller sees Diego go through a back door into the hallway toward a freight elevator.

I guess he decided not to fight it out after all, Keller thinks as he goes after him.

The elevator door slides open.

The two FES inside fire bursts of 5.56 hollow-points into Diego’s chest. He staggers backward into the apartment and falls to the floor.

But still breathing, still alive.

Orduña comes in from the hallway. He stands over Diego and then looks at Keller.

Keller turns his back, then hears two shots. When he turns back again there are two neat bullet holes in Diego’s forehead. El Jefe de los Jefes, La Barba, is dead.

He already looks like an anachronism—the long hair and beard, the tall frame, once heavily muscled, now as thin as some crippled beast starved over the course of a long hard winter.

Diego Tapia was from another time, and that time is gone.

Orduña walks out.

Keller squats down and pulls off Diego’s boots.

He removes the monitoring device from the left boot and slips it into his pocket.

What happens next shouldn’t have.

Inside the apartment, the FES discipline breaks down. Whether out of revenge, or adrenaline, or the sheer heady relief of surviving, some of the commandos yank Diego’s black jeans down around his ankles and pull his shirt up to his neck, displaying his wounds. Then they take some money they find in the apartment—peso and dollar bills—and toss it on the body, then take photos and videos and start texting and tweeting.

By the time Orduña, furious, gets up there to stop it, the damage is done.

The images are out on the Net.

–

Keller walks away from Lomas de Selva to find “María Fernanda.”

Crazy Eddie waits in the Zócalo in the shadow of the fresno trees. He looks cool and fresh in a plum polo shirt, white jeans, and loafers.

Narco Polo, Keller thinks. He walks up to Eddie and says, “He’s dead.”

Eddie nods. “Diego wasn’t a bad guy, you know? The drugs fucked him up. And the Skinny Lady. I just couldn’t go down with the ship.”

“You have a chip with me,” Keller says. “Why don’t you cash it in now? I can bring you in safe.”

“ ‘Let that pickup man haul in’?”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Old song about rodeo,” Eddie says. “No, I ain’t done with my ride yet.”

“You’re on the list, Eddie.”

Actually, he just moved up one slot.

“Right,” Eddie says. “Because that’s what you guys do now, isn’t it? You just kill people.”

“Doesn’t have to end that way,” Keller says.

“The Zetas,” Eddie says, “that’s who you should be going after. They’re pure evil, man.”

“Thanks for the advice.”

“Fuck you.” Eddie looks around the Zócalo for a second and then says, “You know? Someone’s always going to be selling this shit. It might as well be someone who doesn’t kill women and kids. If someone’s going to do it, you guys might as well let someone like me do it.”

Keller lets him walk away. Could have taken him right there, but that wasn’t part of their deal.

–

Adán looks at the photos of his old primo’s bullet-shredded corpse and tells Nacho, “You’d think I’d be happier.”

“We were all friends once.”

“I think about Chele and the kids.”

Nacho has no answer for that. He’s fond of Chele, they all are.

“Drive home the message,” Adán says.

They talk business for a few more minutes—Martín Tapia might keep up the fight, but will be at most an annoyance. Eddie Ruiz won’t pick up Diego’s fallen banner. He’ll start his own organization, and as long as he stays out of the war, Adán is willing to let him be. Payback for Sal can wait until the war is over.

When Nacho leaves, Adán goes into his bedroom. Eva is already asleep, or pretending to be.

It’s odd, Adán thinks, how life gets lonelier.

The next morning, two bound and beaten bodies of Tapia sicarios are found hanging by the necks from a bridge in Culiacán with a banner that reads THIS TERRITORY ALREADY HAS AN OWNER—ADÁN BARRERA.

–

Looking at the photos of Diego’s body, Heriberto Ochoa, the head of the Zetas, is furious.

And concerned.

The government has finally figured out that to fight special forces you need special forces. No one saw it coming, and no one—not Diego or Martín, not even Barrera, managed to find out about this new unit, much less infiltrate or suborn it.

And this FES is very, very good.

A direct challenge to the Zetas.

As a special-ops vet, Ochoa recognizes the Lomas de Selva raid for what it was—not a law enforcement operation, but an execution.

Well done.

But this, he thinks, looking at the photos that are all over the Internet, this was unnecessary. To strip Diego and mock him, boast about murdering him, and then post pictures of it on the Net?

The FES needs to be taught a lesson.

Taught not to behave this way.

Taught that we’re not going to be intimidated.

Taught that we’re the ones who intimidate.

He gives the orders.

–

Keller stands to the side as six FES, in their cammie fatigues, with blue vests marked MARINA in white, carry the flag-draped casket of Lieutenant Angulo Córdova from the funeral home in his small hometown of Ojinaga, on the south bank of the Río Bravo in Chihuahua.

Trumpets and drums from a military band play as the casket is carried through the crowd of family, friends, and townspeople, who quietly applaud as the casket passes by. Middle-class or poor, Keller notices, they’re dressed in their best clothes—the women in plain dresses, the men in jeans and white shirts. They’re subdued and respectful, some weeping quietly, and Keller is struck again by the difference between Americans and Mexicans. Americans take their strength in victories, Mexicans’ strength is in their ability to suffer loss.

One of the people is Marisol.

She and Keller look across the coffin at each other.

He can see her eyes beneath her black veil.

Keller falls in beside Orduña as the crowd follows the hearse to the little cemetery at the edge of town.

An honor guard of sailors in dress white marches behind the hearse, the band plays a dirge.

At least there’s no wife and kids, Keller thinks. But there is a grieving mother, supported, literally, by Córdova’s sister, brother, and aunt.

Marisol walks behind them.

The Christmas decorations on the street give the funeral parade an added poignancy.

Orduña gives a speech at the gravesite. Talks about Córdova’s character, his courage, his service, his sacrifice. When he’s done, an old man in a tattered vest and a knit cap raises his hand and asks to speak.

“I’ve known this man since he was a boy,” the viejo says. “He was a good boy and a good man. He sent money home to his family. He died for our Republic. Our Republic. We can’t give away our Republic to drug dealers and criminals. I’m sorry this man is dead, but he died fighting these animals. That is all I have to say.”

Orduña thanks him and then signals the honor guard. The soldiers raise their M-16s to their shoulders and fire three salutes into the air. Then, at Orduña’s orders, they attach bayonets and stand at guard. Two marines take the Mexican flag from the casket, fold it, and hand it to Córdova’s mother.

A trumpet plays as the casket is lowered into the ground.

After the ceremony, Keller is unsure whether or not he should approach Marisol. It’s awkward—they haven’t spoken in a long time.

She solves his dilemma by coming up to him. “It’s good to see you.”

“You, too,” he says. “I take it you know the family.”

“Since I was a little girl,” she says. “I’m their doctor now. What’s your connection?”

Keller hesitates before he answers and then says, “I worked with him.”

“Oh.” The obvious question is right there in her eyes, but Keller doesn’t answer it. Luckily for him, Córdova’s younger sister walks up. “My mother would like you to come back to the house. Both of you.”

“I don’t want to intrude,” Keller says.

There was a wake at the house the night before the funeral, when friends came to view the body and pay their respects. The time after the burial is usually reserved for the family.

“Please come,” the sister says.

The house is modest, clean, and well kept. The aunts have laid food out on a table and Córdova’s mother sits in an upholstered chair in the corner. Irma Córdova is a handsome woman, quietly elegant in a black tunic over black pants. Her iron-gray hair is pulled back into a bun. Keller can see where Angulo got his strength. She gestures Keller to come over.

“You were with my son when he died,” Irma says.