The Border

by Don Winslow

  They need to bring him up short, make him produce.

  No more free ride.

  He pays the fare or he’s off the bus.

  They meet on the Acela.

  “What do you think we are, Chandler, assholes?” Hidalgo asks. “You think you can just blow us off and go on with your life?”

  “I’m trying.”

  “Not hard enough.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Chandler asks.

  “Bring us something we can use,” Hidalgo says. “New York’s fed up with your act. They’re going to prosecute.”

  “They can’t do that,” Claiborne says. “We have a deal.”

  “Which you haven’t lived up to.”

  “I’ve been doing my best.”

  “Bullshit, you have,” Hidalgo says. “You’ve been playing us. You think you’re so much smarter than a bunch of dumb cops who buy their suits off the rack, and you probably are. You’re so smart you’re going to smart your way right into a cell. You’re going to love the room service in Attica, motherfucker.”

  “No, give me a chance.”

  “You had your chance. We’re done.”

  “Please.”

  Hidalgo pretends to think about it. Then he says, “All right, let me get on the phone, see what I can do. But no promises.”

  He gets up, walks out of the car and stands in the next one for a couple of minutes. Then he walks back in and says, “I bought you a little more time. But not, like, infinity. You give us something we can use, or I let New York hump you.”

  Keller takes a call from Admiral Orduña.

  “That kid you’re looking for,” Orduña says, “we might have a sighting.”

  “Where?”

  “Guerrero,” Orduña says. “Does that make any sense?”

  “No,” Keller says. But when has anything to do with Chuy Barajos made any sense?

  They’re not sure it’s him, Orduña says, but one of his people in Guerrero was surveilling a group of student radicals at a local college and spotted a young man hanging around the fringes who meets the description, and he heard one of the students call him Jesús.

  Could be anybody, Keller thinks. “What college?”

  Chuy never finished high school.

  “Hold on,” Orduña says, checking his notes. “Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  “I don’t suppose your guy—”

  “It’s on its way, cuate.”

  Keller stares at his computer screen.

  Christ, the odds are . . .

  The photo comes across.

  Keller sees a short, scrawny kid in torn jeans, sneakers and a black ball cap. His hair is long and unkempt.

  The photo is a little blurry, but there’s no question.

  It’s Chuy.

  2

  Heroin Island

  Let me have a dram of poison, such soon-speeding gear

  As will dispense itself through all the veins . . .

  —Shakespeare

  Romeo and Juliet, act V, scene 1

  Staten Island, New York

  2014

  Bobby Cirello is thirty-four.

  Young for a detective.

  Chief Mullen is his hook and he’s worked for the man for a long time, first as a UC out in Brooklyn when the boss was running the Seven Six. Cirello made a shitload of cases for him. When Mullen got the big job at One Police, he brought Cirello with him, and a gold shield came with the ride across the bridge.

  Cirello’s glad to be out from under UC. It’s no way to live, hanging out with skels, junkies and dealers all the time.

  You can’t have your own life.

  He likes his new job, his little efficiency apartment in Brooklyn Heights, just big enough for him to be able to keep clean and trim, and at least semiregular hours, although there are a lot of them.

  Now he sits in Mullen’s office on the eleventh floor of One Police Plaza.

  Mullen has the remote control in his hand and clicks from news channel to news channel on the television mounted to the wall. Every one of them is running the story of a famous actor’s overdose, and every one of them refers to the “flood of heroin” and the “heroin epidemic” rampant in the city. And they each maintain that NYPD “seems powerless to stop it.”

  Cirello knows Mullen isn’t one to take the description “powerless” passively. Nor the phone calls from the chief of D’s, the commissioner, and Hizzoner the Mayor. Shit, about the only big shot who hasn’t piled weight on Mullen is the president of the United States, and that’s probably only because he doesn’t have his phone number.

  “So now we have a heroin epidemic,” Mullen says. “You know how I know? The New York Times, the Post, the Daily News, the Voice, CNN, Fox, NBC, CBS, ABC, and, let us not forget, Entertainment Tonight. That’s right, people, we’re getting ass-fucked by ET.

  “All that aside, people are dying out there. Black people, white people, young people, poor people, rich people—this shit is an equal opportunity killer. Last year we had 335 homicides and 420 heroin overdoses. I don’t care about the media, I can deal with the media. What I do care about is these people dying.”

  Cirello doesn’t speak the obvious. ET wasn’t there when it was blacks dying out in Brooklyn. He keeps his mouth shut, though. He has too much respect for Mullen and, anyway, the man is right.

  There are too many people dying.

  And we’re a few brooms trying to sweep back an ocean of H.

  “The paradigm has shifted,” Mullen says, “and we have to shift with it. ‘Buy and bust’ works up to a point, but that point is far short of what we need. We’ve had some success busting the heroin mills—we’ve seized a lot of horse and a lot of cash—but the Mexicans can always make more heroin and therefore more cash. They figure these losses into their business plans. We’re in a numbers game we can never win.”

  Cirello’s done some of the mill busts.

  The Mexicans bring the heroin up through Texas to New York and store it in apartments and houses, mostly in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx. At these “mills” they cut the H up into dime bags and sell it to the retailers, mostly gangbangers, who put it out in the boroughs or take it to smaller towns upstate and in New England.

  NYPD has made some big hits on the mills—twenty-million-, fifty-million-dollar pops—but it’s a revolving door. Mullen’s right, the Mexican cartels can replace any dope and any money they lose.

  They can also replace the people, because most of the personnel at the mills are local women who cut the heroin and low-level managers who work for cash. The cartel wholesalers themselves are rarely, if ever, present at the mills except for the few minutes it takes to bring the drugs in.

  And the drugs are coming in.

  Mullen is in daily touch with DEA liaisons who tell him the same thing is happening all over the country—the new Mexican heroin is coming up through San Diego, El Paso and Laredo into Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, Washington, DC, and New York—all the major markets.

  And the minor ones.

  Street gangs are migrating from the cities into small towns, setting up and doing business from motels. It’s not just urban dwellers hooked on opiates now—it’s suburban housewives and rural farmers.

  They aren’t Mullen’s responsibility, though.

  New York City is.

  Mullen cuts right to it. “If we’re going to beat the Mexicans at their game, we have to start playing like the Mexicans.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “What do the narcos have in Mexico they don’t have here?” Mullen asks.

  Primo tequila, Cirello thinks, but he doesn’t say it. He doesn’t say anything—Bobby Cirello recognizes a rhetorical question when he hears one.

  “Cops,” Mullen says. “Sure, we have some dirty cops. Guys who’ll look the other way for cash, a few who do rips, a rare few who sell dope themselves, even serve as bodyguards for the
narcos, but they’re the exception. In Mexico, they’re the rule.”

  “I don’t get where you’re going with this.”

  “I want you to go back undercover,” Mullen says.

  Cirello shakes his head. His UC days are over—even if he wants to go back under, he can’t. He’s too well known as a cop now. He’d get made in thirty seconds, it would be a fuckin’ joke.

  He tells Mullen this. “They all know I’m a cop.”

  “Right. I want you to go undercover as a cop,” Mullen says. “A dirty cop.”

  Now Cirello doesn’t say anything because he doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t want this job. Assignments like this are career killers—you get the rep for being dirty, the stink stays on you. The suspicion lingers, and when the promotion lists are posted, your name isn’t on them.

  “I want you to put it out there that you’re for sale,” Mullen says.

  “I’m a thirty-year man,” Cirello says. “I want to pull the pin from this job. This is my life, Chief. What you’re asking will only jam me up.”

  “I know what I’m asking.”

  Cirello grabs at straws. “Besides, I’m a gold shield. That’s too high up the chain. The last gold chains who went dirty were all the way back in the eighties.”

  “Also true.”

  “And everyone knows I’m your guy.”

  “That’s the point,” Mullen says. “When you get a high-enough buyer, you’re going to put it out that you represent me.”

  Jesus Christ, Cirello thinks, Mullen wants me to put it out that the whole Narcotics Division is up for sale?

  “That’s how it works in Mexico,” Mullen says. “They don’t buy cops, they buy departments. They want to deal with the top guys. It’s the only way we get in the same room with the Sinaloans.”

  Cirello’s brain is spinning.

  It’s so goddamn dangerous, what Mullen’s suggesting. There’s so much that can go wrong. Other cops get word he’s dirty and run an op against him. Or the feds do.

  “How are you going to paper this?” he asks. Document the operation so that if it goes south, their asses are covered.

  “I’m not,” Mullen says. “No one is going to know about this. Just you and me.”

  “And that guy Keller?” Cirello asks.

  “But you don’t know about that.”

  “If we get popped, we can’t prove we’re clean.”

  “That’s right.”

  “We could end up in jail.”

  “I’m relying on my reputation,” Mullen says. “And yours.”

  Yeah, Cirello thinks, that’s going to do a lot of good if I run into other cops who are dirty, who are taking drug money, doing rips. What the hell do I do then? I’m not a goddamn rat.

  Mullen reads his mind. “I only want the narcos. Anything else you might come across, you don’t see.”

  “That’s in direct violation of every reg—”

  “I know.” Mullen gets up from behind his desk and looks out the window. “What the hell do you want me to do? Keep playing it by the book while kids are dying like flies? You’re too young, you don’t really remember the AIDS epidemic, but I watched this city become a graveyard. I’m not watching it again.”

  “I get it.”

  “I don’t have anyone else to go to, Bobby,” Mullen says. “You have the brains and the experience to do this and I don’t know who else I could trust. You have my word, I’ll do everything I can to protect your career.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay, you’ll do it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Thank you.”

  Riding down in the elevator, Cirello wonders if he’s not completely, utterly and totally fucked.

  Libby looks at him and says, “So you’re a nice Italian boy.”

  “Actually, I’m a nice Greek boy,” Cirello says.

  They’re sitting at a table at Joe Allen, near the theater where she’s working, bolting down cheeseburgers.

  “‘Cirello’?” she asks.

  “It doesn’t hurt to have an Italian-sounding name on the job,” Cirello says. “If you can’t be Irish, it’s the next best thing. But, yeah, I’m a Greek boy from Astoria.”

  Almost a stereotype. His grandparents came over after World War II, worked their asses off and opened the restaurant on Twenty-Third Street that his father still runs. The neighborhood isn’t so Greek anymore, but a lot of them still live there and you can still hear “Ellenika” spoken on the streets.

  Cirello didn’t want to go into the restaurant business, and it’s a good thing he has a younger brother who did so his parents weren’t heartbroken when Bobby went first to John Jay and then to the police academy. They came to his graduation and were proud of him, although they always worry, and never really understood when he was undercover and would show up with shaggy hair and a beard, looking thin and haggard.

  His grandmother looked him straight in the eyes and asked, “Bobby, are you on drugs?”

  “No, Ya-Ya.”

  I just buy them, he thought. It was impossible to explain his life to them. Another reason undercover is such a tough gig—nobody understands what you really do except other undercovers, and you never see them anyway.

  “And you’re a detective,” Libby says now.

  “Let’s talk about you.”

  Libby is freaking beautiful. Rich red hair Cirello thinks they usually describe as “lustrous.” A long nose, wide lips and a body that won’t quit. Legs longer than a country road, although Cirello wouldn’t know much about country roads. He saw her at a Starbucks in the Village, turned around and said, “I have you for a low-fat macchiato type.”

  “How did you know?”

  “I’m a detective.”

  “Not a very good one,” Libby said. “I’m a low-fat latte.”

  “But your phone number,” Cirello said, “is 212-555-6708. Am I right?”

  “No, you’re wrong.”

  “Prove it.”

  “Let me see your badge,” Libby said.

  “Oh, you’re not going to turn me in for sexual harassment, are you?” Cirello asked.

  But he showed her his badge.

  She gave him her phone number.

  He had her down as a cop groupie, except it took him about eighteen phone calls to get her to this table.

  “There’s not much to tell,” she says. “I’m from a little town in Ohio, I went to Ohio State and studied dance. Six years ago I came to the big city to make it.”

  “How’s that going?”

  “Well,” she says, shrugging, “I’m on Broadway.”

  Libby’s in the chorus of Chicago, which Cirello figures is probably the dancer equivalent of a gold shield. And she’s looking at him with those green eyes, letting him know that she’s his equal.

  Cool, Cirello thinks.

  Very cool.

  “You live in the city?” he asks.

  “Upper West Side,” she says. “Eighty-Ninth between Broadway and Amsterdam. You?”

  “Brooklyn Heights.”

  “I guess we’re not geographically compatible,” Libby says.

  “You know, I’ve always thought geography was overrated,” Cirello says. “I don’t think they even teach it in school anymore. Anyway, I work in Manhattan, down at One Police.”

  “What’s that?”

  “NYPD headquarters,” he says. “I work in the Narcotics Division.”

  “So I shouldn’t smoke weed around you.”

  “I don’t care,” Cirello says. “I’d do it with you, except they test us from time to time. Let me ask you something, you have roommates?”

  “Bobby,” she says, “I’m not sleeping with you tonight.”

  “I didn’t ask you to,” Cirello says. “Frankly, I’m offended. What do I look like, some cheap whore, you can let him buy you a burger and you think it means you can have your way with him?”

  Libby laughs.

  It’s deep and throaty and he likes it a lot.

  “Do you
have roommates?” Libby asks.

  “No,” Cirello says. “I have an efficiency, you have to step outside to change your mind, but I like it. I’m not there a lot.”

  “You work all the time.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “What are you working on now?” she asks. “Or can you tell me?”

  “We were going to talk about you,” Cirello says. “For instance, I didn’t think dancers ate cheeseburgers.”

  “I’ll have to take an extra class tomorrow, but it’s worth it.”

  “Class?” Cirello asks. “I thought you already went to college for this.”

  “You have to keep working,” Libby says, “to stay in shape. Especially if you’re going to indulge in late-night meat binges, and I realized how gross that sounded the second it came out of my mouth. How about you? Do you eat healthy?”

  “No,” Cirello says. “I eat like a cop, whatever I can grab on the street at the moment.”

  “Like doughnuts?”

  “Don’t profile me, Libby.”

  “What about all that wonderful Greek food?”

  “Not so wonderful when you grow up on it,” Cirello says. “Don’t tell my ya-ya, but I’d take Italian every time. Or Indian, or Caribbean, anything, as long as it’s not wrapped in a grape leaf. Let me ask you something else: Indians or Reds?”

  “Reds,” Libby says. “I’m all about the National League.”

  “Should Rose get in the Hall?”

  “Absolutely,” Libby says. “I bet on myself every day. I’ll bet you do, too.”

  “You know, this could work out.”

  “Mets?”

  “Of course.”

  She takes a french fry off his plate and pops it in her mouth. “Bobby, about this cheap whore thing . . .”

  Cirello spoons coffee into the briki and turns the gas stove to medium. He stirs the coffee until the foam rises, pours it into two cups and walks over to the bed. “Libby? You said wake you at seven.”

  “Oh shit,” she says, “I have to get to class.”

  He hands her the coffee.

  “This is wonderful,” she says. “What is it?”

  “Greek coffee.”

  “I thought you said you hated Greek food.”