The Border

by Don Winslow

  Of course, Keller delegated most of this—in many ways the DEA was a perpetual motion machine that functioned on its own momentum—but he still had to handle the major issues personally and was determined to sharpen its blade and point it straight at the heroin problem.

  Keller took over a DEA that was deeply wary of him as a former undercover operative, a field agent and a hard charger with a reputation for ruthlessness.

  We got us a real cowboy now was pretty much the overall take, and a number of midlevel bureaucrats started to pack their personal belongings because they thought the new boss would bring in his own people.

  Keller disappointed them.

  He called a general meeting at which he said, “I’m not firing anybody. The knock on me is that I’m not an administrator and don’t have a clue how to run a gigantic organization. That rap is accurate—I don’t. What I do have is you. I will give clear, concise direction and I trust you to make the organization work toward those objectives. What I expect from you is loyalty, honesty and hard work. What you can expect from me is loyalty, honesty, hard work and support. I will never stab you in the back, but I will stab you in the chest if I catch you playing games. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes—only slackers and cowards don’t make mistakes. But if we have a problem, I don’t want to be the last to know. I want your thoughts and your criticisms. I’m a big believer in the battleground of ideas—I don’t need the only word, just the last word.”

  He set priorities.

  Next he called in the deputy administrator, Denton Howard, and the chiefs of Intelligence and Operations and told them that their first priority was heroin.

  The second priority was heroin.

  The third priority was heroin.

  “We’ll sustain our efforts on all Schedule I drugs,” he told them, “but our overriding emphasis on the enforcement side is ending the heroin epidemic. I don’t care about marijuana, except where it can lead us up the ladder to the heroin traffickers.”

  Which meant focusing on the Sinaloa cartel.

  Keller’s approach is something of a departure—historically, Sinaloa hadn’t been greatly involved with heroin production since the 1970s, when the DEA and the Mexican military had burned and poisoned the poppy fields (Keller was there), and the growers turned to other products.

  The Barrera wing of the cartel had made most of its money from cocaine and marijuana, the Esparza wing from methamphetamine, the Tapia faction from a combination of all three.

  “It’s a mistake to put all our efforts into fighting them in Mexico,” Keller told his people. “I know, because it’s a mistake I made. Repeatedly. From now on we put our priority on hitting them where we can hit them—here in the United States.”

  Howard said, “That’s a piecemeal approach that will require coordination from dozens of metropolitan police departments.”

  “Set it up,” Keller said. “Within the next month I want face-to-face meetings with the chiefs of narcotics from New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. If they can’t or won’t come to me, I’ll go to them. After that, I want Boston, Detroit and San Diego. And so on. The days of standing at the urinal pissing on each other’s shoes are over.”

  But great, Keller thought, I have a deputy who’s looking to sabotage me. I’m going to have to starve him out, and the way to starve a bureaucrat is to deprive him of access and information.

  Keller kept Blair after the meeting. “Does Howard have a hard-on for me?”

  Blair smiled. “He expected to get your desk.”

  The administrator and deputy administrator of the DEA are political appointees—all the rest are civil servants who come up through the system. Keller figured that Howard probably thought O’Brien and his cabal fucked him.

  The organizational chart has all the department heads reporting directly to Howard, who then reports to Keller.

  “Anything significant,” Keller told Blair, “you bypass Howard, bring directly to me.”

  “You want me to keep a double set of books.”

  “You have a problem with that?”

  “No,” Blair said. “I don’t trust the son of a bitch, either.”

  “It blows up, I’ll cover your ass.”

  “Who’s going to cover yours?” Blair asked.

  Same person who always has, Keller thought.

  Me.

  “Let’s look at the velorio again,” Keller says.

  Blair puts up the photos from Barrera’s wake, taken by an incredibly brave SEIDO undercover working as a waiter for the catering company that serviced the event. Keller stares at the dozens of photos—Elena Sánchez sitting by the coffin; the Esparza brothers; Ricardo Núñez and his son, Mini-Ric; a host of other important players. He studies photos taken in the house, on the lawn, out by the pool.

  “Can you order them by time sequence?” Keller asks.

  The cliché is that every picture tells a story, but a sequence of pictures, Keller thinks, can be more like a movie and tell a different story. He’s a big believer in chronology, in causation, and now he studies the photos with that sensibility.

  Blair is smart enough to shut up.

  Twenty minutes later, Keller starts to select a series of photos and lay them out in line. “Look at this—Núñez goes up to Elena. They walk outside, let’s say it’s to talk in private.” He highlights a series of photos that show Elena and Núñez walking closely together, in what seems to be intense conversation. Then—

  “Shit,” Keller says, “what’s this?”

  He zooms in on Núñez’s hands, on a piece of paper that he gives Elena.

  “What is it?” Blair asks.

  “Can’t make it out, but she’s sure as hell reading it.” Keller zooms in on Elena’s face—reading, frowning. “It could be the catering bill, who knows, but she isn’t happy.”

  They look at pictures of Elena and Núñez in conversation and then check the time log. The conversation lasted for five minutes and twenty-two seconds. Elena gave Núñez the paper and went back inside the house.

  “What I wouldn’t give for some audio,” Keller says.

  “They were jamming,” Blair says.

  Keller goes back to his timeline series of photos and notes Iván and Mini-Ric in what looks to be a casual conversation by the pool. Then Núñez comes out and walks away with Iván, leaving Ric sitting there. Half an hour later, by the time log, Iván comes back out and talks to Ric.

  And it doesn’t look casual.

  “Am I imagining things,” Keller says, “or are they in an argument?”

  “Iván sure looks angry.”

  “Whatever got his panties in a wad,” Keller says, “it had to have been when he was with Núñez. I don’t know, maybe I’m reading too much into this.”

  And maybe not, he thinks.

  All the drumbeats said that Iván was next in line to take control of the cartel, merging the Barrera and Esparza wings of the organization. But now we seem to be seeing Ricardo Núñez summoning Elena Sánchez and Iván Esparza to personal talks, after which Iván appears to be angry.

  Jesus Christ, could we have missed something here?

  Keller had thought of Ricardo Núñez as a midlevel functionary, at most some kind of adviser to Barrera, but he’s been playing an outsize role in the velorio and the funeral and now he seems to be some kind of go-between from Elena to Iván.

  Negotiating what, though?

  Elena’s been out of the trade for years.

  Keller tries a different theory—maybe Núñez isn’t simply providing “good offices,” but has become a power in and of his own.

  Stay tuned, Keller thinks.

  ¡adán vive!

  Elena Sánchez Barrera looks at the graffiti spray-painted on the stone wall of the Jardines del Valle cemetery.

  She saw the same thing on the ride into the city, painted on walls, the sides of buildings, on billboards. She’s been told that the same phenomenon has occurred in Badiraguato and that little shrines to “Santo Adán” have shown
up on roadsides in smaller towns and villages all across Sinaloa and Durango—the deeply felt, passionate wishful thinking that Adán Barrera—the beloved El Señor, El Patrón, the “Godfather,” the “Lord of the Skies,” the man who built clinics, schools, churches, who gave money to the poor and fed the hungry—is immortal, that he lives in flesh or spirit.

  Saint Adán, indeed, she thinks.

  Adán was many things, but a saint wasn’t one of them.

  Elena looks out the window and sees the entire power structure of the Sinaloa cartel, in fact of the whole Mexican trafficking world, gathered. If the government really intended to stop the drug trade, it could do so in one fell swoop.

  A single raid would net them all.

  It will never happen—not only are there hundreds of cartel sicarios posted around and inside the cemetery, but it’s been cordoned off by the Sinaloa state police and the Culiacán municipal police. A state police helicopter hovers overhead, and, in any case, the federal government is not serious about shutting down the drug trade, it’s serious about managing the drug trade, so it’s not going to disrupt this service.

  Ricardo Núñez stands in his impeccably tailored black suit, rubbing his hands together like some kind of Latino Uriah Heep, Elena thinks. The man insisted on inserting himself into the planning of every element of the funeral, from the selection of the coffin to the seating arrangements to security, and Núñez sicarios in their trademark Armani caps and Hermès vests guard the gate and the walls.

  Elena spots the notorious La Fósfora, somewhat subdued in a black suit jacket over black pants, supervising the sicarios, and she has to admit that the girl is quite striking. Ricardo’s son, “Mini-Ric,” stands beside him with his mousy wife, whose name Elena cannot recall.

  The Esparza brothers stand in a row like crows on a telephone line. For once they aren’t dressed like extras in a cheap telenovela, but respectfully garbed in black suits and real shoes with actual laces. She nods to Iván, who curtly nods back and then moves a little closer to his sister as if asserting his ownership.

  Poor Eva, Elena thinks, standing there with her two small boys, who are now pawns in a game they know nothing about. As is Eva, of course—Iván will take control of her as leverage against Núñez. She can hear it already—See, we are Adán Barrera’s real family, his true heirs, not some jumped-up assistant, some clerk. If Eva is too weak to go back to California, Iván will roll her and the twins around like stage props.

  Speaking of props, he has his guard dog close at hand. El Mastín is sweating at the collar, looking distinctly uncomfortable in a jacket and tie, and Elena knows that he was brought here as a reminder that Jalisco is allied to the Esparza wing of the cartel and that if it comes to a fight, this brutal mass murderer and all his troops are loyal to Iván.

  But hopefully it won’t come to that.

  Ricardo had phoned her to say that Iván had—albeit grudgingly and bitterly—accepted Núñez’s leadership of the cartel and—grudgingly and bitterly—the transfer of Baja to Rudolfo.

  It must have been some scene, Elena thinks, at least as Ricardo described it. Iván had yelled, cursed, called Elena every name in the book and a few that hadn’t been memorialized yet, had threatened war, promised to fight to the death, but was finally worn down by Ricardo’s steady, monotonous, Chinese-water-torture application of logic and reason.

  “He agreed to a two percent piso,” Ricardo told her.

  “The standard is five.”

  “Elena . . .”

  “Very well, fine.” She would have agreed to zero, if that’s what it took.

  Ricardo couldn’t help but slip the knife in a little. “And shouldn’t I be having this conversation with Rudolfo?”

  “You phoned me.”

  “So I did,” Ricardo said. “Slip of the speed dial.”

  “I’ll run it past Rudolfo,” she said. “But I’m sure he’ll agree.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he will,” Ricardo said.

  Rudolfo sits beside her in the back seat of the limousine. He had claimed nothing but enthusiasm when she told him that he was the new boss of Baja, but she could tell he was nervous.

  He has reason to be, she thinks.

  There’s hard and uncertain work to be done. Traffickers and gunmen who had once been “Barrera people” had been transferred to the Esparzas and would now be asked to come back. Most will, she knows, eagerly; but others will be reluctant, even rebellious.

  A few examples might have to be made—the first person who vocally objects will have to be killed—and she worries if Rudolfo has it in him to order that. If he ever did—her poor sweet son likes to be liked, a useful trait in the music and club businesses, not so much in la pista secreta.

  Elena has people who will do it, and do it in his name, but sooner rather than later he will need to have his own armed wing. She can and will give him the people, but he will have to command.

  She puts her hand over his.

  “What?” Rudolfo asks.

  “Nothing,” Elena says. “Just that it’s a sad occasion.”

  The car slows as one of Núñez’s people tells them where to park.

  The mausoleum, Elena thinks as she takes her seat next to her mother, is a monument to tasteless excess. Three stories high in classic churrigueresque architecture with a dome roof tiled with mosaic; marble columns; and stone carvings of birds, phoenixes and dragons.

  And it’s air-conditioned.

  I doubt, Elena thinks, that Adán will feel the heat.

  A Dolby sound system is encased in the columns, running a continuous loop of corridos about Adán; inside the crypt, a flat-screen monitor shows videos of the great man and his good works.

  It’s hideous, Elena thinks, but it’s what the people expect.

  And it wouldn’t do to let the people down.

  The priest had actually hesitated to perform the service for “a notorious drug lord.”

  “Look around you, you sanctimonious little prick,” Elena said when they met in his office. “That desk you’re sitting behind? We paid for it. The chair your flabby ass sits in? We paid for it. The sanctuary, the altar, the pews, the new stained-glass windows? All straight from Adán’s pocket. So I’m not asking you, Padre, I’m telling you—you will perform this service. Otherwise—my hand to the Virgin Mary—we will send people in to remove everything from this church, starting with you.”

  So now Father Rivera says some prayers, gives a blessing, then a little homily about Adán’s virtues as a dedicated family man, his generosity toward the church and the community, his deep love of Sinaloa and its people, his faith in Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost and God the Father.

  Adán had faith in money, power and himself, Elena thinks as the priest moves to wrap it up. That was his Holy Trinity, he didn’t believe in God.

  “I do believe in Satan, though,” he had told her once.

  “You can’t believe in one without the other,” she said.

  “Sure you can,” Adán said. “The way I understand it, God and the devil were in a giant battle to rule the world, right?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Right,” Adán said. “Look around you—the devil won.”

  The whole thing is a joke, Ric thinks.

  He’s also thinking about how badly he has to piss and wishes he had before this endless service began, but it’s too late now, he’ll just have to hold it.

  And endure Iván’s stink eye.

  His friend hasn’t stopped glaring at him since it started. Just as he had glared at him when he came out of his meeting with Ricardo Sr. at the velorio, walked up to Ric at the pool, glared down at him and said, “You knew.”

  “Knew what?”

  “That Adán made your father the new boss.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You father called me a clown,” Iván said.

  “I’m sure he didn’t say that, Iván.”

  “N
o, that bitch Elena did,” Iván said. “But your father repeated it. And you knew, Ric. You knew. You let me talk, go on and on about what I was going to do, and all the time, you knew.”

  “Come on, Iván, I—”

  “No, you’re the guy now, right?” Iván said. “Your father is the jefe, that makes you what, Mini-Ric, huh?”

  “Still your friend.”

  “No, you’re not,” Iván said. “We’re not friends. Not anymore.”

  He walked away.

  Ric called him, texted him, but got no answers. Nothing. Now Iván sits there staring at him like he hates him.

  Which maybe he does, Ric thinks.

  And maybe I can’t blame him.

  After talking to Iván, his father had called Ric in.

  Ric read the paper that his old man slid across the glass top. “Jesus Christ.”

  “That’s all you have to say?”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “I was hoping for something more along the lines of ‘Let me know what I can do to help, Dad,’” Núñez said, “or ‘Whatever you need from me, I’m there.’ Or ‘Adán chose wisely, Dad, you’re the man for the job.’”

  “All that goes without saying.”

  “And yet I had to say it.” Núñez leaned back in his chair and put his fingertips together, a gesture Ric had hated since he was a child, as it always meant that a lecture was coming. “I need you to step up now, Ric. Take more of an active role, lend a hand.”

  “Iván thought it was going to be him.” Every other word out of Iván’s mouth had been how things were going to be when he took over, and now here was Adán reaching out from the grave to snatch that from him.

  “His happiness is not my concern,” Núñez said. “Or, for that matter, yours.”

  “He’s my friend.”

  “Then perhaps you can help persuade him to be reasonable,” Núñez said. “He’ll still run the Esparza wing of the organization.”

  “I think he had something more in mind.”

  “We all have to live with our disappointments,” Núñez said.