by Don Winslow
“They were Esparza’s people,” Hugo said. “Elena’s answer to her son’s murder.”
“Is he still denying responsibility for Rudolfo’s murder?”
“He is,” Hugo said, “but the street says that he’s using Elena’s hostility as an excuse for not handing over Baja, so she hits his street dealers.”
The Mexican street sales are a relatively small profit center compared to the cross-border trade, but they’re essential to holding the border turf. To hold a plaza, a boss needs local gunmen, and the gunmen make most of their money from local street sales.
Without the street sales, no army.
No army, no plaza.
Hence, no local street sales, no international trade.
So unless Núñez can enforce peace, Elena and Iván will fight it out locally in Baja for control of the border crossings.
“Does Elena have the troops?” Keller asked.
Hugo shrugged. “Hard to say. Some old Barrera loyalists are going back to Elena now that she’s raised her flag. A lot of them were Rudolfo’s friends looking for revenge. Others are holding with the Esparzas, scared shitless Iván will bring Tito Ascensión and his Jalisco people in to keep them in line.”
It’s a reasonable fear, Keller thought. Nacho’s old guard dog El Mastín is as brutal as it gets. “Núñez?”
“Staying neutral,” Hugo said. “Trying to keep the peace.”
Keller’s suspicions about Núñez had proved to be true—Barrera had named the lawyer as his successor, as the “first among equals” to run the cartel. Núñez is in a tough position—if he lets Iván keep Baja, he looks weak, which in the narco world is the top of a slippery slope. But if he forces Iván to give it up, he’ll have to go to war against him. Either way he goes, his organization fractures. While most of the old Barrera wing is staying loyal to Núñez, some are reported to be looking hard at Elena or Iván as options.
Núñez will have to either force Iván and Elena to the peace table or choose a side.
In the aftermath of Adán Barrera’s death the Pax Sinaloa is dissolving.
Maybe it’s all deck chairs on the Titanic, Keller thinks. Maybe it doesn’t matter who’s sending the heroin, only that it’s coming in. The narcos can play musical chairs all they want; hell, we can empty the chairs with the so-called kingpin strategy—arresting or killing cartel bosses—but the top chair always gets filled and the drugs keep coming.
Keller had been one of the main executors of that strategy, having had a hand in taking out the jefes of the old Federación, the Gulf cartel, the Zetas and Sinaloa, and what’s been the result?
More Americans than ever are dying from overdoses.
If you asked the average citizen to name America’s longest war, he’d probably say Vietnam and then quickly amend it to Afghanistan, but the true answer is the war on drugs.
Fifty years old and counting.
It’s cost over a trillion dollars, and that’s only one part of the financial equation—the legitimate, “clean” money that goes for equipment, police, courts and prisons. But if we’re going to be really honest, Keller knows, we have to account for the dirty money, too.
Tens of billions of drug dollars—in cash—go down to Mexico alone every year, so much cash they don’t even count it, they weigh it. It has to go somewhere, the narcos can’t stick it under their pillows or dig holes in their backyards. A lot of it is invested in Mexico, the estimate being that drug money accounts for 7 to 12 percent of the Mexican economy.
But a lot of it comes back here—into real estate and other investments.
Into banking and then out to legitimate businesses.
It’s the dirty secret of the war on drugs—every time an addict sticks a needle into his arm, everyone makes money.
We’re all investors.
We’re all the cartel.
Now you’re the commanding general in this war, Keller thinks, and you have no idea how to win it. You have thousands of brave, dedicated troops and all they can do is hold the line. You only know how to do the same old thing you’ve been doing, which isn’t working, but what’s the alternative?
Just give up?
Surrender?
You can’t do that, because people are dying.
But you have to try something different.
The train goes into a tunnel on its way to Manhattan.
By design, no one is there to meet them. No one from DEA or the AG’s office. They go out of Penn Station by the Eighth Avenue exit and hail a cab. Hugo tells the driver, “Ninety-Nine West Tenth.”
“We’re not going there,” Keller says, and before Hidalgo can ask why not, adds, “Because if I take a piss in the New York DEA office, Denton Howard knows how much and what color before I finish washing my hands.”
Leaks are going out from DEA, Keller knows—to the conservative media and also to the Republican politicians now vying for the presidential nomination, Ben O’Brien among them.
One of the potential candidates is right here in New York, although Keller has a hard time believing he’s for real.
Real estate tycoon and reality TV star John Dennison is making noise about running, and a lot of the noises he’s making have to do with Mexico and the border. All Keller needs is Howard feeding Dennison half-truths and insider information, including that Keller is meeting privately with the chief of the New York City Police Department’s Division of Narcotics.
“Where are we going?” Hidalgo asks.
Keller tells the driver, “Two-Eighty Richmond Terrace. Staten Island.”
“What’s there?” Hidalgo asks.
“You ask a lot of questions.”
Brian Mullen is waiting for them on the sidewalk outside an old house.
Keller gets out of the cab, walks up to him and says, “Thanks for meeting me.”
“If my chief finds out I’m doing this on the down low,” Mullen says, “he’ll hand me my ass.”
Mullen came up the hard way, as an undercover, working Brooklyn during the bad old crack days and coming out of a dirty precinct squeaky clean. Now he’s breaking every protocol by agreeing to meet with Keller without informing his superiors.
The visit of the head of DEA would be an occasion, replete with media and photos taken with a gang of brass in dress uniform at One Police Plaza. There’d be assistants and cupbearers and PR flaks and a lot of talk and nothing would get done.
Mullen is wearing a Yankees jacket over jeans.
“Does it bring back your UC days?” Keller asks.
“Sort of.”
“What is this place?” Keller asks.
“Amethyst House,” Mullen says. “A halfway house for female addicts. If I get spotted by some cop from the One Twenty, I can say I was meeting with a source.”
“This is Hugo Hidalgo,” Keller says. He can see Mullen isn’t thrilled to see someone else there. “His father and I worked together back in the day. Ernie Hidalgo.”
Mullen shakes Hugo’s hand. “Welcome. Come on, I have a car. There’s a deli at the corner, you need coffee or something.”
“We’re good.”
They follow Mullen to an unmarked black Navigator parked on the street. The guy behind the wheel doesn’t look at them as they get into the back. Young guy, black hair slicked back, wearing a black leather jacket.
“Meet Bobby Cirello,” Mullen says. “He works for me. Don’t worry. Detective Cirello is professionally deaf and dumb. Just take us for a drive, Bobby, okay?”
Cirello pulls out onto the street.
“This is the St. George neighborhood,” Mullen says. “Used to be the epicenter of the heroin epidemic in New York, because it’s closest to the city, except now heroin is everywhere on the island—Brighton, Fox Hills, Tottenville—hence the name ‘Heroin Island.’”
St. George looks like junkie turf, Keller thinks, if there is such a thing, and he sees what look like addicts from the car, hanging out on the corner, in parking lots and vacant lots.
But then they d
rive into what could be any suburb in any town in the United States. Residential areas of single-family homes, tree-lined streets, well-kept yards, swing sets and driveway basketball hoops.
“Smack is killing kids here now,” Mullen says. “Which is why we have an ‘epidemic.’ When it was blacks and Puerto Ricans, it wasn’t an illness, it was a crime, right?”
“It’s still a crime, Brian.”
“You know what I mean,” Mullen says. “It’s this new ‘cinnamon.’ Thirty percent stronger than the black tar the Mexicans used to sell, that the addicts were used to. That’s why they’re overdosing—they’re shooting the same amount they used to and it’s taking them out. Or they were used to taking pills, but the heroin is cheaper, and they shoot too much.”
As the drive moves south into even more suburban areas, Mullen points out houses—a son from this house, a daughter from this one, these people lucked out, their kid ODed but survived, is in rehab now, who knows, we’ll see, I guess.
“We’re talking triage here,” Mullen says. “The first step is to treat the wounded, right? See if we can save them on the battlefield. New York State just gave us a grant to equip twenty thousand officers with naloxone.”
Keller knows the drug, commercially known as Narcan. It’s like an EpiPen—if an overdosing addict is treated in time, you can practically bring them back from the dead. A Narcan kit costs all of sixty bucks.
“But DEA has expressed ‘reservations,’ right?” Mullen says. “You’re concerned it will just encourage addicts to shoot up, or kids will start using it to get high. You’re worried about ‘Narcan parties.’”
That’s Denton Howard shooting his mouth off to the media, Keller thinks, but he doesn’t say it. He’s not about to lay it off with a “that ain’t me” excuse.
“I’d put Narcan kits out on the street like fire extinguishers,” Mullen says. “Maybe the addicts could save their friends, because by the time my cops or first responders get there, it’s often too late.”
It makes sense, Keller thinks. It’s also political suicide—if he came out for open Narcan distribution, Fox and Friends would chop him to pieces. “Okay, triage—keep going.”
“Cutting down on overdose deaths is the first step,” Mullen says, “but when the addict comes to, he’s still an addict, right? You’re just saving him so you can save him again, until one day you can’t. What you have to do is get him into rehab.”
“So rehab’s the answer?”
“I know jail isn’t the answer, prison isn’t the answer,” Mullen says. “They’re getting high in there, only it costs more. Drug courts, maybe—bust them, have a judge force them into rehab? I don’t know that there’s an answer. But we have to do something different. We have to change the way we think.”
“Is this you?” Keller asks. “I mean, are you expressing a shift in the department’s thinking or are you an outlier?”
“A little bit of both,” Mullen says. “Look, you go to the chief, some of the older guys with this stuff, they look at you like you’re some bleeding-heart mugger hugger, but even some of the guys at One Police are starting to look for different answers, they see what’s going on now. Hell, we had a detective overdose two years ago, did you know that? Guy got hurt on the job, started taking pain pills. Then smack. Then he ODed. An NYPD gold shield, for Chrissakes. It makes people think. Look for new solutions. You heard of SIFs?”
Supervised injection facilities, Keller thinks. Places addicts can go and shoot up. Medical personnel supervise the content and the dose. “De facto legalization of heroin?”
“Call it what you want,” Mullen says. “It’s saving lives. The revolving door of bust-and-convict doesn’t. I arrest addicts, they shoot up in jail. I take dealers out, new ones take their place. I seize heroin, more comes in. Bobby, let’s head up to Inwood, show this man what he needs to see.”
“Jersey or Brooklyn?” Cirello asks.
“Take the Verrazano,” Mullen says. He looks at Keller. “I don’t like going out of my jurisdiction.”
They take Route 278 into the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn, then Sunset Park and Carroll Gardens. Mullen says, “This used to be called Red Hook, but Carroll Gardens sounds better for real estate. You’re not a New York guy, are you?”
“San Diego.”
“Beautiful there,” Mullen says. “Great weather, right?”
“I haven’t been there much the past few years,” Keller says. “Mostly El Paso and Mexico. Now DC.”
They cross the Brooklyn Bridge into lower Manhattan, over to the West Side Highway almost all the way up the island until they turn off at Dyckman Street, then take a left and go up Broadway.
“Where are we?” Keller asks.
“Fort Tryon Park, Inwood area,” Mullen says. “The northernmost tip of Manhattan, and heroin central.”
Keller looks around at the well-tended redbrick apartment complexes. Parks, ballfields, nannies pushing babies in strollers. “Doesn’t look like it.”
“Exactly,” Mullen says. “There aren’t a lot of users up here, but what you have here in Inwood and Washington Heights, just downtown from here, are heroin mills. This is where your Mexicans bring the shit in, sell it to wholesalers who cut it up, put it into dime bags and ship it out. Sort of an Amazon fulfillment center.”
“Why here?”
Location, location, location, Mullen explains. Easy access to Route 9, right up to the little towns on the Hudson that are getting hammered with the shit. A short hop to 95 and the Bronx, or out to Long Island or up to New England. Harlem is just down Broadway, and you’re close to the West Side Highway and the FDR to go to the boroughs.
“If you were UPS or FedEx,” Mullen says, “and wanted to serve the Northeast Corridor, this is where you’d be. You can get in your car, be on the Jersey Turnpike or the Garden State in minutes and you’re on your way to Newark, Camden, Wilmington, Philly, Baltimore, Washington. If you’re moving less weight, you put it in a backpack, you take the One or the Two train to Penn Station and get on the Acela. Go south to the towns I just mentioned or north to Providence or Boston. No one is going to stop you, no one’s going to search your bag, and they have Wi-Fi on the train, you can catch up on Narcos.
“Your people are onto this, too. We’ve busted mills here . . . fifteen pounds, twenty, thirty-five, millions in cash . . . but the narcos write it off as the cost of doing business, and the shit keeps coming.”
“You feel like you’re trying to sweep back the ocean,” Keller says.
“Something like that.”
“Are you getting what you need from my agency?” Keller asks.
“In the short term?” Mullen says. “Pretty much. Look, there’s always the tension between feds and local police, let’s not kid ourselves. Some of your people are afraid to share information with us, either because they want the busts for themselves or they think all local cops are dirty. My people will play hide-the-ball with your guys because they want the busts and they don’t want the feds tromping over their turf and jacking it up.”
Coordination is tricky, Keller knows, even when there’s the best of intent, which isn’t always the case. It’s too easy for different agencies to run across each other’s informants or protected witnesses, jam up or cut short a promising investigation, even get informants killed. And he knows DEA can be high-handed with local police forces, telling them to stay away from investigations, just as he knows the local guys are too often more than willing to freeze his people out of valuable intelligence.
Professional jealousy is a real problem. Everyone wants to make busts themselves because busts are the route to promotions. And good publicity—everyone wants to stand in front of that table loaded with drugs, guns, and money and get their picture taken. It’s become a cliché but not a harmless one, Keller thinks, because it gives the impression that we’re winning a war we’re not winning.
The drugs on the table are like photos of dead Vietcong.
“But for the most part,” Mullen is
saying, “I think we’re working pretty well together. It could always be better, of course.”
Which is Mullen opening the door, Keller thinks. Asking the question—what are you really doing here?
“Why don’t you and I talk away from the kids,” Keller says.
“You ever been to the Cloisters?”
Keller and Mullen walk along the pillared arches of the Cuxa Cloisters in the park not far from Inwood. The structure was once part of the Benedictine Abbey of St. Michel in the French Pyrenees, was moved to New York in 1907 and now surrounds a central garden.
Keller knows that Mullen is making a statement by coming here. And, sure enough, Mullen says, “I heard you liked monasteries.”
“I lived in one for a while.”
“Yeah, that’s what I heard,” Mullen says. “In New Mexico, right? What was that like?”
“Quiet.”
“They said you were in charge of, what, the beehives or something?” Mullen asks.
“The monastery sold honey,” Keller says. “What else do you want to know, Brian?”
Because if Mullen has doubts about him, it’s better to know now.
“Why did you leave it?” Mullen asks.
“Because they let Adán Barrera out of prison.”
“And you wanted to put him back in,” Mullen says.
“Something like that.”
“I like it here,” Mullen says. “I like to come here, walk around and think. It gets me away from all the shit. I’m not sure I like the modern world, Art.”
“Me neither,” Keller says. “But it’s the one we have.”
“Hey, we’re at the chapel, you want to go in?” Mullen asks. “I mean, if we’re going to have a come-to-Jesus talk, we might as well come to Jesus.”
They go through the heavy oak doors, which are flanked by carvings of leaping animals. The large room is dominated by an apse at the end with a hanging crucifix. The side wall contains frescoes honoring the Virgin Mary.
“They moved this here from Spain,” Mullen says. “Beautiful, huh?”
“It is.”
“Why are you really here?” Mullen asks. “I know it’s not for me to give you a tour and show you things you already know.”