by Don Winslow
Smart-ass.
“What’s on TV?” Hidalgo asks. He grabs a glass of punch and sits down. “Oh, yeah. I like this one. So where are the sister wives?”
“Mass. Get all the jokes out of your system now, Hugo.”
“Do we have that much time?” Hidalgo says.
“Another thing,” Keller says. “No shop talk tonight.”
“You got it,” Hidalgo says. “But before the shop talk ban goes into effect, we’ve been running down the intel on Damien Tapia.”
“And?”
“The reporter lady is right,” Hidalgo says. “Tapia’s been seen around Tristeza. He was spotted there that night with the Renterías. The word is GU was moving smack both for Sinaloa and Damien.”
“You think they had the balls to fuck Sinaloa?”
“There’s old grudges, right?” Hidalgo asks. “Weren’t you there when Damien’s father got killed?”
“You pull my file, Hugo?”
“Agency lore, boss,” Hidalgo says. “So maybe the Renterías have rediscovered their old Tapia roots and are working with the kid.”
“Maybe,” Keller says. “But I don’t like him for the student killings. Damien Tapia doesn’t have the weight to do that on his own. Someone else gave the word.”
“Who?” Hidalgo asks. “As far as we know the Young Wolf is unassociated.”
“I don’t know,” Keller says. “Keep working it. Only not tonight. And don’t say anything to this reporter.”
“I thought she was your friend.”
“She is.” And I wish to hell she’d stay out of this.
He’s already lost too many friends.
The women come back singing.
They stand on the steps like carolers and sing villancicos. Or at least try to, between gulps of laughter.
Althea looks lovely.
Has aged, as they say, gracefully. Her ash-blond hair is cut short, her blue eyes shine behind glasses tilted low on her long aquiline nose. Keller had forgotten how beautiful she is, and only now remembers, as he watches her sing, that she had been determined to become fluent in Spanish when they lived in Mexico.
She looks up at him and smiles.
The song ends and the three women start into the Spanish version of “Silent Night.”
Noche de paz, noche de amor,
Todo duerme en derredor . . .
It’s soft and beautiful and it takes Keller back to a Christmas, God, thirty years ago, the last Christmas Eve he spent with his family, back when things were good, just before Ernie was killed, and it was on that Christmas Eve that Althea took the kids and left him in Guadalajara because she was scared for them and for herself.
Entre sus astros que esparcen su luz,
Bella anunciando al niñito Jesús . . .
There were children singing villancicos in the street outside their house that night, when he’d kissed Althea and put her and their kids in a cab to the airport, thinking they’d be together again soon, either in Mexico or back in the States. And he’d spent Christmas Day with the Hidalgos and watched little Hugo open his presents, and it was just a few days later that Ernie was kidnapped and tortured and murdered and the world grew dark and Keller never got back with Althea, never got back to his family.
Brilla la estrella de paz,
Brilla la estrella de paz.
The song ends and there’s a moment of perfect silence.
Perfect stillness.
Timelessness.
Then Keller says, “Come on in.”
Other guests arrive.
It turns out that Marisol has invited everyone she knows and anyone she has seen over the past few weeks, so there are people from her charities and boards, people from the Mexican embassy, waiters from their favorite restaurants, bookstore clerks, the dry cleaners, neighbors . . .
Keller recognizes most, but not all, of the guests in his home.
Essentially a loner, he’s surprised to find that he doesn’t hate it and is actually having sort of a good time.
The food is fantastic.
When most Americans think of Mexican food, they think about burritos and tacos filled with chicken, beef or pork, smothered in cheese and refried beans, but Keller knows that Mexican cooking is far more varied, sophisticated and subtle.
The turkey in mole sauce is delicious, but Keller really digs into the romeritos en revoltijo—shrimp, potatoes and nopales with rosemary cooked in a sauce of ancho, mulato and pasilla chiles, almonds, cinnamon, onions and garlic.
The bacalao is a traditional Christmas dish. Marisol had soaked the salted cod for an entire day, then peeled the skin and deboned the fish; deseeded and peeled the ancho chiles and blended them with fresh tomatoes. Then she’d filled the house with a tantalizing aroma as she simmered the sauce with bay leaf, cinnamon, red peppers, olives, and capers. Then she added potatoes and topped it all with chiles güeros.
But Christmas isn’t Christmas without tamales.
Marisol has stuffed the corn husks with pork, beef and chicken (“Only dark meat, please, Arturo, the breasts get too dry”), but she has also made some in the Oaxacan style, wrapping plantain leaves around chicken and onions, poblano peppers and chocolate.
If that weren’t enough, a big pot of pozole sits simmering on the stovetop and there’s a large bowl of ensalada de Nochebuena—lettuce, beets, apples, carrots, orange slices, pineapple chunks, jicama, pecan, peanuts and pomegranate seeds.
For dessert, Marisol has made stacks of buñuelos sprinkled with sugar, but as most of the guests are Mexican, and no Mexican would arrive at someone’s door empty-handed, there are also roscas de reyes, rice pudding, tres leches cakes, polvorones de canela and flan.
Certainly no one goes hungry, and no one is thirsty, either.
There’s steaming apple cider and hot chocolate for the nondrinkers, and rompope—rum-laced eggnog—and the ponche navideño for the imbibers. Marisol went to a lot of trouble to find atole champurrado (“It goes so well with tamales”) and Noche Buena beer, but only the brand brewed by Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma (Keller didn’t have the heart to tell her the brewery had been acquired by Heineken).
Standing back a little, forcing himself out of his admittedly dour self, Keller sees that Marisol is in her glory. Her home is full of people, food, drink, talk, laughter. One guest has brought a bajo sexto and has found a quiet corner to provide an unobtrusive norteño twelve-string guitar background. Keller notices that his wife is unconsciously swaying to the music even as she’s making a point to introduce Hugo to a very pretty young woman Keller thinks he recognizes from Busboys and Poets.
“Matchmaking?” he asks Marisol when she’s completed her mission.
“They’re perfect for each other,” she says. “And it would be nice for him to have someone. Have you talked with Althea?”
“Well, that was seamless. Not yet.”
“But you will.”
“Yes, Mari, I will.”
He bumps into Althea a few minutes later in the hallway as she’s coming out of the bathroom.
“Like old times, Art,” she says. “It’s good to see you.”
“You too. I’m sorry about Bob.”
“Thank you. He was a good guy.”
They stand there in expected awkwardness until Keller asks, “What do you hear from the kids?”
The kids aren’t kids, Keller reminds himself—Cassie is thirty-five; Michael, thirty-three—and he missed most of their growing up.
Chasing Adán Barrera.
“Well,” Althea says, “Cassie has a guy. Finally. I think this one is serious—she actually takes a little time off from work.”
Cassie is a fanatic special-ed elementary-school teacher in the Bay Area. Both the social concern and the fanaticism, Keller thinks, she comes by honestly.
“I don’t want to get ahead of myself,” Althea says, “but you might be getting a ‘save the date’ card sometime soon.”
“You think she’d want me there?” Keller asks.
Keller had remained
as good a father as he could—he supported his kids, put them through college, saw them when he could and when they wanted, but they drifted apart from one another and now they’re virtually strangers. A phone call now and then, an email, that’s about it. If they’ve been interested in seeing him, they haven’t expressed it.
“Of course,” Althea says. “She’ll want her father to walk her down the aisle. And we should probably offer to help with the expenses.”
“Glad to. Michael?”
“Is being Michael,” Althea says. “He’s in New York now, or maybe you knew.”
“No.”
“It’s film this time,” Althea says. “He’s trying to get into a program at NYU, in the meantime he’s working as a freelance ‘PA,’ whatever that is.”
“Where’s he living?”
“With some friends in Brooklyn,” Althea says. “It’s all on his Facebook page.”
“I’m not communicating with my kids via social media,” Keller says.
“It’s better than not communicating with them at all,” Althea says. “Call him, then.”
“I don’t have his number.”
“Give me your phone.”
Keller hands her his phone and she punches a bunch of keys. “Now you do. Call him, he’d love to hear from you.”
“No, he wouldn’t, Althie.”
“He was hurt,” she says. “You just disappeared into that place you go. He was left with this distant, hero father who was off doing noble things, so he didn’t even have the comfort of resenting his abandonment without feeling guilty.”
“I thought it was better if I didn’t come in and out of your lives.”
“Maybe it was,” Althea says. “Call the kids, make inconsequential small talk, that sort of thing.”
“Yeah.”
“You did good with Marisol,” Althea says. “She’s wonderful.”
“I married up.”
“Twice now.”
“That’s true,” Keller says.
“No, I’m happy for you, Art.”
“Thank you.”
“And try to be happy, would you?” Althea says. “Not all the world’s problems are your fault.”
“How about you? Are you happy?”
“Right now some tres leches cake would make me happy,” she says, and then squeezes past him. “Call the kids.”
It’s around three in the morning when Marisol hands out the sparklers and leads the remaining guests out into the street in a relatively drunken little parade.
“The neighbors are going to call the cops,” Keller says.
“Most of the neighbors are here,” Marisol says, “and so are the cops. I invited at least three of them.”
“Smart.”
“This is not my first Nochebuena. And look.” She juts her chin to where Hugo is standing with his arm around the young woman from the bookstore. “Do I know what I’m doing or no?”
“They’re not walking down the aisle quite yet.”
“You wait.”
Althea comes over and hugs Marisol. “I’m going to head out. Thank you for the best night I’ve had in quite some time.”
“It wouldn’t have been half as nice without you.”
“She’s a keeper, Art,” Althea says. “Try to keep her, huh?”
Keller watches her walk down the street, twirling a sparkler.
The sun is almost up when the last of the guests totter away. Marisol stands in the living room and says, “Maybe we could just burn the place down?”
“Let’s burn it down in the morning,” Keller says.
“It is morning,” says Ana.
“Regardless, I’m going to bed,” Marisol says. “Good night, my loved ones.”
Keller tries to sleep in but it doesn’t work. Mari is completely out when he gets up, goes into his study and picks up the phone.
He calls Cassie first.
She was always the softer one, the more forgiving. “Cassie Keller.”
“Cassie, it’s Dad.”
“Is Mom okay?”
“Everyone’s fine,” Keller says. “I just called to say hello. Merry Christmas.”
A brief silence, then, “Well, hello and Merry Christmas back.”
“I know it’s been too long.”
She tries to wait him out, but then says, “So how are you?”
“Good, I’m good,” Keller says. “So Mom told me you’re serious about some guy.”
“Don’t start going all ‘Dad’ on me now.”
“But is it true?”
“Yeah, I guess it’s pretty true,” Cassie says.
“Well, that’s nice,” Keller says. “Does he have a name?”
“David.”
“What does David do?”
“He teaches.”
“At your school?” Keller asks.
“Yup.”
“Well, that’s nice.”
“Are you going to keep saying that?” Cassie asks. “‘That’s nice’?”
“I guess I don’t know what else to say. Sorry.”
“No, it’s ‘nice,’” Cassie says. “You should meet him sometime.”
“I’d like that.”
“Me too.”
They talk for a couple more minutes—inconsequential small talk—and then agree that he’ll call her next week. Keller has several sips of coffee before he hits Michael’s number.
It goes to voice mail. “It’s Michael. You know what to do.”
“Michael, it’s your dad. Don’t worry, everything is fine. I just called to say Merry Christmas. Call me back if you want.”
Ten minutes later his phone rings.
It’s Michael.
Keller can picture him sitting there trying to decide what to do. He’s glad he decided to call back and tells him so.
“Yeah, well, I hesitated,” Michael says.
“I can understand that.”
“I mean, at first I thought maybe it’s my birthday or something,” Michael says, “and then I realized that it wasn’t, it was Jesus’s.”
I deserve that, Keller thinks.
He keeps his mouth shut.
“So what’s up?” Michael says.
“Just what I said. I wanted to say hello, see how you are.”
“I’m good,” Michael says. “How are you?”
“Yeah, good.”
Silence.
Keller knows Michael is waiting for him to make the next move and that he’s perfectly capable of waiting forever, the stubbornness also being part of his DNA. So Keller says, “Listen, the next day or so, I could hop on the Acela and be up there in three hours.”
Silence, then—
“Look, no offense,” Michael says, “but I’m pretty busy right now. I’m on a shoot. It’s just an industrial, but work is work, and I can’t afford to blow off this connection.”
“No, of course not.”
Michael’s soft side gets the better of him. “You’re okay, though, right?”
“Yeah, I’m good.”
“Okay. Well . . .”
“Next time,” Keller says, “I’ll call, give you more notice.”
“That’d be great.”
It’s a start, Keller thinks, clicking off. He gets that his son is too proud to make peace on the first offer. But it’s a start.
Marisol comes down a couple of hours later looking the worse for wear. “If you really loved me, you’d shoot me. Oops, I suppose that was in bad taste, I take it back. Merry Christmas, Arturo.”
“Merry Christmas,” Keller says. “I called Cassie and Michael.”
“How did that go?”
“Cassie good, Michael not so much,” Keller says. He tells her about his spurned offer to go up to New York. “I got what I deserved. He’s a proud kid, he handed me my head. You know what? Good for him.”
“It’s going to take a little time,” she says. “But he’ll come back to you, you’ll see.”
Wrong holiday anyway, Keller thinks, that’s Easter.
N
ot everything comes back.
He’s seen the end-of-year statistics—28,647 people died from heroin and opioid overdoses in 2014.
Forty-nine kids in Mexico on buses.
In the US, 28,647 from dope.
None of them are coming back.
And you’re failing in your job.
“I love you but I’m going back to bed,” Marisol says.
“Yeah, actually I’m going into the office.”
“It’s Christmas Day.”
“Then it will be good and quiet,” Keller says. “I’ll be back before you’re up.”
He drives himself over to Arlington, goes into the office and pores over the intelligence gathered about Tristeza.
Because he knows they’re missing something.
He goes back through history—the last time innocent people were taken off a bus and murdered was in 2010 when the Zetas stopped a bus coming up Highway 1 and killed everyone on board in the mistaken belief that they were recruits for the Gulf cartel.
Could that have happened in Tristeza?
If it was Guerreros Unidos, could they have thought that the students were Los Rojos? Maybe, but how could they have made that mistake? Veteran traffickers like GU couldn’t possibly have thought that a bunch of vaguely lefty kids on a spree were nascent narcos.
Or could there be some reality to it? Could a few of the students have been involved with Los Rojos and GU killed them all to make sure they got the “guilty” ones?
Back it up, Keller thinks.
GU and Los Rojos are fighting over who supplies heroin to Sinaloa. Damien Tapia may be involved with GU. Tapia was seen with the Renterías in the vicinity of the Tristeza bus station, so . . .
Jesus Christ, he thinks, we’ve been focused on the wrong thing.
We’ve been focusing on the students, when . . .
He calls Hugo.
“Jesus, boss, it’s Christmas.”
“It’s not about the students,” Keller says. “It’s about the buses.”
There was heroin on the buses.
Three days after Christmas, on the Día de los Santos Inocentes, Rafael Caro makes his own breakfast in the kitchen of his home in Badiraguato.
The stove, fueled by propane, has four burners. A pot with the pozole sits on one, a pan for his mornings eggs on another, an old coffeepot on the third. Caro sits at the folding kitchen table in his denim shirt and an old pair of khakis, a blue baseball cap jammed on his head even though he’s indoors. He eats his eggs and thinks about Arturo Keller.