by Don Winslow
How could anyone mistake a 6'4?, sixty-two-year-old, white-haired man wearing a soutane and a crucifix for a 5'10” blond guy wearing narco-cowboy gear? At point-blank range? How could an experienced killer like Fabián Martínez do that? Why was an airplane waiting? How could Adán and Raúl and all their hitters get on board? How could they get off in Tijuana and get escorted right out of the airport?
And why, even though dozens of witnesses described a man identical to Adán Barrera at the airport and on the plane, did a Father Rivera in Tijuana—the Barreras’ family priest—come forward to announce that Adán Barrera was the godfather at a christening performed at the exact time that Parada was gunned down?
The priest even displayed the baptismal records, with Adán’s name and signature.
And who was the mysterious Yanqui a dozen witnesses saw cradling Parada’s body? Who was carried on the plane with the Barreras and has since dropped out of sight?
Art says a quick prayer—there are people in line behind him—and finds a seat in the crowded cathedral.
The funeral Mass is long and moving. Person after person stands up to speak about what Father Juan had done in their lives, and the sound of weeping fills the large space. The atmosphere is quiet, mournful, respectful, subdued.
Until the president gets up to speak.
He had to be there, of course, the president and the entire cabinet and a score of other government officials, and as he gets up and walks to the pulpit an expectant silence falls over the crowd. And El Presidente clears his throat and begins, “A criminal act has taken the life of a good, clean and generous man—”
And that’s as far as he gets because someone in the crowd shouts, “¡Justicia!”
Justice.
And then someone else picks it up, and then another and within seconds thousands of people in the cathedral and then thousands more outside start to chant—
“Justicia, justicia, justicia—“
—and El Presidente steps back from the microphone with an understanding smile as he waits for the chant to stop, but it doesn’t stop—
“Justicia, justicia, justicia—” it just gets louder—
“JUSTICIA, JUSTICIA, JUSTICIA—“
—and the secret police start to get nervous, whispering to each other in their little microphones and earpieces, but it’s hard to hear over the chant of—
“JUSTICIA, JUSTICIA, JUSTICIA—“
—which builds and builds until two of the police nervously hustle El Presidente away from the microphone and out a side door of the cathedral and into his armored limousine, but the shouts follow him as his car pulls out of the plaza—
“JUSTICIA, JUSTICIA, JUSTICIA—“
Most of the government men are gone by the time Parada is interred in the cathedral.
Art hadn’t joined in the chanting, but sat there in amazement as the people in that church declared that they’d had enough of the corruption and faced the powerful leader of their country and demanded justice. And he thought, Well, you’ll get it if I have anything to do with it.
Now he gets up to stand in line to file past the casket. He carefully maneuvers his place in line.
Nora Hayden’s blond hair is covered with a black shawl, her body draped in a black dress. Even with all that she’s still beautiful. He kneels beside her, puts his hands up in prayer and whispers, “Pray for his soul and sleep with his killer?”
She doesn’t answer.
“How can you live with yourself?” Art says, then gets up.
He walks away from her soft crying.
By morning the national commander of the entire MJFP, General Rodolfo León, is flying to Tijuana with fifty specially selected elite agents, and by afternoon they’ve broken into heavily armed, combat-ready squads of six officers each, sweeping the streets of Colonia Chapultepec in armored Suburbans and Dodge Rams. By evening they’ve smashed into six Barrera safe houses, including Raúl’s personal residence on Caco Sur, where they find a cache of AK-47s, pistols, fragmentation grenades and two thousand rounds of ammunition. In the enormous garage they find six armor-plated black Suburbans. By the end of the week they’ve arrested twenty-five Barrera associates, seized over eighty houses, warehouses and ranches belonging to either the Barreras or Güero Méndez and arrested ten of the airport security police who escorted the Barreras off Flight 211.
In Guadalajara, a squad of real Jalisco State Police stumbles on a pickup truck full of fake Jalisco police, and a chase through the city ends with two of the fake cops being trapped inside a house and shooting it out with over a hundred Jalisco cops all night and into the morning, when one is killed and the other surrenders, but not before they’ve killed two of the real police and wounded the commander of the state police force.
The following morning, El Presidente goes in front of the cameras to declare his determination to crush the drug cartels once and for all, and to announce that they’ve just exposed and fired and will criminally charge over seventy corrupt MJFP officers, and he offers a $5 million reward for information leading to the capture of Adán and Raúl Barrera and Güero Méndez, all of whom are still on the loose, whereabouts unknown.
Because even with the army, the federales, and every state police force scouring the country, they can’t find Güero, Raúl or Adán.
Because they aren’t there.
Güero’s across the border in Guatemala.
And the Barreras have also crossed the border.
Into the United States.
They’re living in La Jolla.
Fabián finds Flaco and Dreamer living under the Laurel Street Bridge in Balboa Park.
The cops couldn’t find them, but Fabián hit the barrio and people told him stuff they weren’t going to tell the cops. They tell him because they know if they stone the cops, the cops might harass them and shit, but if they stone Fabián, he’ll fucking kill their asses, and that is the cold truth.
So Flaco and Dreamer are dozing one night under the bridge when Flaco feels a shoe dig into his ribs and he jumps, thinking it’s a cop or a fag, but it’s Fabián.
So he looks up at Fabián with big eyes because he’s half-afraid the tiro is going to put a bullet into him, but Fabián smiles and says, “Hermanitos, it’s time to show you have heart.”
And he thumps his chest with the inside of his fist.
“What you want us to do?” Flaco asks.
“Adán is reaching out to you,” Fabián answers. “He wants you to go back to Mexico.”
He explains how the Barreras are taking all the heat from the death of that priest, how the federales are putting pressure on them, busting their safe houses, arresting people, and how it’s not going to settle down until they get someone who was involved in the shooting.
“You go down and get yourselves arrested,” Fabián says, “and you tell them the truth—we were going after Güero Méndez, he ambushed us instead, and Fabián mistook Parada for Güero and shot him by accident. Nobody ever meant for Parada to get hurt. One of those things.”
“I don’t know, man,” Dreamer says.
“Look,” Fabián answers, “you’re kids. And you didn’t do the shooting. You’ll only get a few years, and while you’re in, your families will be taken care of like royalty. And when you get out, you’ve had the appreciation and respect of Adán Barrera in the bank, earning interest for you. Flaco, your mother is a maid in a motel, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Not anymore she isn’t,” Fabián says, “if you show heart.”
“I don’t know,” Dreamer says. “Mexican cops . . .”
“Tell you what,” Fabián says. “That reward for Güero? That fifty thousand. You two split it, tell us who to bring it to and it’s done.”
Both boys say they want the money to go to their mothers.
As they get near the border, Flaco’s legs are shaking so hard he’s afraid that Fabián can see them. His knees are literally knocking together and he can’t seem to stop them, and his eyes are filled
with tears and he can’t stop the tears from spilling over. He’s ashamed, even though he can hear Dreamer sniffling in the backseat.
When they get near the crossing, Fabián pulls over to let them out.
“You got heart,” he tells them. “You’re warriors.”
They make it through Immigration and Customs with no problem and start walking south into the city. They get about two blocks when searchlights hit them in the face, blinding them, and the federales are yelling and telling them to get their hands up and Flaco throws his hands up high. Then a cop grabs him, throws him to the ground and cuffs his hands tight behind his back.
So Flaco’s lying there in the dirt, his back arched painfully because his arms are pulled back so hard, but then that pain don’t seem like nothing because the federale spits on his face then kicks him hard, right in the ear, with the toe of his combat boot, and Flaco feels like his eardrum has just exploded.
Pain goes off like fireworks inside Flaco’s head.
Then, from a long way away, he hears a voice tell him—
It’s just the beginning, mi hijo.
We’re just getting started.
Nora’s phone rings and she picks it up.
It’s Adán.
“I want to see you.”
“Go to hell.”
“It was an accident,” he says. “A mistake. Give me a chance to explain it to you. Please.”
She wants to hang up, detests herself for not hanging up, but she doesn’t hang up. Instead, she agrees to meet him that night on the beach at La Jolla Shores, by Lifeguard Tower 38.
Under the dim light of the tower he sees her coming. She looks like she’s alone.
“You know I put my life in your hands,” he says. “If you called the police . . .”
“He was your priest,” she says. “Your friend. My friend. How could you—”
He shakes his head. “I wasn’t even there. I was at a christening in Tijuana. It was an accident, a cross fire—”
“That’s not what the police are saying.”
“Méndez owns the police.”
“I hate you, Adán.”
“Don’t say that, please.”
He looks so sad, she thinks. Lonely, desperate. She wants to believe him.
“Swear,” she says. “Swear to me you’re telling the truth.”
“I swear it.”
“On your daughter’s life.”
He can’t bear losing her.
He nods. “I swear.”
She reaches her arms out and he holds her. “God, Adán, I’m so miserable.”
“I know.”
“I loved him.”
“I know,” Adán says. “So did I.”
And the sad thing is, he thinks, that’s the truth.
They must be at a dump because Flaco smells garbage.
And it must be morning because he can feel faint sunlight on his face, even through the black hood. One of his eardrums is ruptured, but he can hear Dreamer pleading, “Please, please, no, no, please . . .”
A gunshot explodes and Flaco don’t hear Dreamer no more.
Then Flaco feels a gun barrel brush the side of his head, by his good ear. It makes little circles, like its holder wants to make sure Flaco knows what it is, then he hears the hammer click back.
Flaco screams.
A dry click.
Flaco loses it. His bladder lets go and he feels the hot urine run down his leg and his knees give out and he crumbles to the ground, squirming and twisting like a worm, trying to get away from the gun barrel at his head and then he hears the hammer go back and another dry click and then a voice says, “Maybe the next one, little pendejo, eh?”
Click.
Flaco messes his pants.
The federales whoop and holler. “God, what a stink! What you been eating, mierdita?”
Flaco hears the hammer click back again.
The gun roars.
The bullet plows into the dirt by his ear.
“Pick him up,” the voice says.
But the federales balk at touching the filthy kid. They finally hit on a solution—they take the hood off Dreamer and the gag out of his mouth and make him pull off Flaco’s soiled pants and underwear, and they give him a wet rag to wipe the shit off his friend.
Flaco murmurs to him, “I’m sorry. Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
Then they put both of them into the back of the van and take them back to their cell. Throw them on the bare concrete floor, slam the door shut and actually leave them alone for a while.
The boys lie on the floor and cry.
An hour later a federale comes back in and Flaco starts to tremble uncontrollably.
But the federale just tosses them each a pad of paper and a pencil and tells them to start writing.
Their stories hit the papers the next morning.
Confirmation of what the MJFP thought had happened in the Parada case—the cardinal was the victim of mistaken identity, killed because American gang members mistook him for Güero Méndez.
El Presidente gets back on television with General León at his side to announce that this news only strengthens his administration’s resolve to wage a merciless war against the drug cartels. They will not stop until these thugs are punished and the narcotraficantes are destroyed.
Flaco’s tongue lolls lazily from his mouth.
His face is dark blue.
He hangs by the neck from the steam pipe that runs across the ceiling in his cell.
Dreamer dangles next to him.
The coroner returns with a verdict of double suicide: The young men couldn’t live with the guilt of killing Cardinal Parada. The coroner never deals with the unexplained blunt-trauma blows on the backs of their heads.
San Diego
Art waits on the American side of the border.
The terrain looks strangely green through the night-vision scopes. It’s a strange piece of ground anyway, he thinks. No-man's-land, the desolate stretch of dusty hills and deep canyons that lies between Tijuana and San Diego.
Every night a weird game is played out here. Just before dusk, the would-be mojados gather above the dry drainage canal that runs along the border, waiting for darkness. As if on a signal, they all rush across at once. It’s a numbers game—the illegals know that the Border Patrol can stop only so many, so the rest will get through to find the sub–minimum wage jobs picking fruit, washing dishes, working on farms.
But this night’s mad scramble is already over, and Art has made sure that the Border Patrol has been cleared from this sector. A defector is coming over from the other side, and even though he’s going to be a guest of the United States government, he can’t come across at any of the regular stations. It would be too dangerous—the Barreras have spotters who watch the checkpoints 24/7, and Art can’t take the chance that his man might be spotted.
He checks his watch and doesn’t like what he sees. It’s 1:10 and his man is ten minutes late. It could just be the difficulty of negotiating the treacherous terrain at night. His guy could be lost in one of the numerous box canyons, or come up the wrong ridge, or . . .
Stop kidding yourself, he says. Ramos is with him, and Ramos knows this territory like it’s his backyard, which it pretty much is.
Maybe Ramos didn’t get to him, and the guy decided to keep his lot in with the Barreras. Maybe he just chickened out, changed his mind. Or maybe Ramos didn’t get to him first, and he’s lying in a ditch somewhere with a bullet in the back of his head. Or, more likely, shot in the mouth, as informers usually are.
Just then he sees a flashlight blink three times.
He blinks his own twice, flips the safety of his service revolver off and walks down into the canyon, the flashlight in one hand, the gun in the other. In a minute he can make out two figures, one tall and thick, the other shorter and much thinner.
The priest looks miserable. He’s not wearing a soutane or collar, but a hooded Nike sweatshirt, jeans and running shoes. Which are, Art
thinks, appropriate.
He looks cold and scared.
“Father Rivera?” Art asks.
Rivera nods.
Ramos slaps him on the back. “Cheer up, Father. You made a good choice. The Barreras would have killed you sooner or later.”