The Queen of the South

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  At the corner where La Michoacana ice cream store stood, Teresa left the area of the mercado and the shoe and clothing stores behind and took a side street. Güero's safe house, his refuge in case of emergency, was just a few yards away, on the second floor of an unassuming apartment building. Across the street was a cart that sold seafood during the day and tacos de came asada at night. In principle, no one knew of the existence of this place except the two of them. Teresa had been here only once, and Güero himself hardly came, so as not to burn it.

  She climbed the stairs, trying not to make any noise, put the key in the lock, and turned it carefully. She knew nobody could be inside, but even so, she walked through the apartment nervously, checking to make sure everything was all right. Not even that crib is completely safe, Güero had said. Somebody may have seen me, or know something, or whatever—in this fucking city, everybody knows everybody else. And even if it doesn't go down that way, say they catch me—if I'm alive, I'll only be able to keep my mouth shut for so long before they beat it out of me and I start singing rancheras. So keep one eye open, mi chula. I hope I can take it long enough for you to grab the money and run, because sooner or later they'll be there. But no promises, prietita—he kept smiling as he said that, pinche cabron— I can't promise you a thing.

  The little crib's walls were bare, and the only furniture was a table, four chairs, and a couch in the living room, and in the bedroom a big bed with a night table and a telephone. The bedroom window was at the back of the building, overlooking an open lot with trees and shrubs that was used for parking, and behind that were the yellow cupolas of the Iglesia del Santuario. One of the closets had a false back wall, and when she pulled the panel out, Teresa found two thick packages with stacks of hundred-dollar bills. About twenty thousand, she figured, drawing on her experience as a money changer on Calle Juarez. There was also Güero's notebook: a large one with a brown leather cover—Don't even open it, she remembered—a stash of white powder that weighed about three hundred grams, she estimated, and a huge Colt Double Eagle, chrome with mother-of-pearl handles. Güero didn't like weapons, and he never carried even a revolver—What the fuck good would it do me, he would say; when they look for you, they find you—but he had put this one away for emergencies. Why should I tell you no if the answer's yes. Teresa didn't like guns, either, but like almost every man, woman, and child in Sinaloa, she knew how to use them. And since we're talking about emergencies, this is one, she thought. So she checked to make sure the gun's clip was loaded, pulled back the slide, and released it. With a loud, sinister click a .45-caliber round was loaded into the chamber. Her hands were shaking with anxiety as she put the money, the dope, and the gun in the gym bag she had brought with her.

  Halfway through the operation, she was startled by a backfire from a car down in the street. She stood very quiet for a while, listening, before she went on. With the dollars were two valid U.S. passports—hers and Güero's. She studied his photo: his hair cropped short, those gringo eyes gazing out serenely at the photographer, the beginnings of that eternal smile on one side of his mouth. After hesitating a second, she put just her passport in the bag, and it was only when she leaned over and felt tears dripping off her chin and wetting her hands that she realized she'd been crying for a long time now.

  She looked around, her eyes blurry with tears, trying to think whether she was forgetting something. Her heart was beating so hard she thought it was about to burst through her chest. She went to the windows, looked down at the street that was beginning to grow dark with the shadows of nightfall, the taco cart illuminated by a naked lightbulb and the coals in the brazier. She lit a Faro and took a few indecisive steps through the apartment, puffing nervously. She had to get out of there, but she didn't know where to go. The only thing that was clear was that she had to leave.

  She was at the door of the bedroom when she noticed the telephone, and a thought flashed through her head: don Epifanio Vargas. He was a nice guy, don Epifanio. He'd worked with Amado Carrillo in the golden years of runs between Colombia, Sinaloa, and the United States, and he'd always been a good padrino to Güero, always a man of his word, a man you could trust, a real professional. After a while, he invested in other businesses and got into politics, stopped needing planes. Don Epifanio had offered Güero a place with him, but Güero liked to fly, even if it was for other people. Up there you're somebody, he would say, and down here you're just a mule driver. Don Epifanio didn't take offense, and in fact he even lent Güero the money for a new Cessna when Güero's old one got fucked up in a violent touchdown on a landing strip up in the sierra, with three hundred kilos of Miss White inside, all wrapped up in masking tape, and two Federales planes circling overhead, highways green with soldiers, AR-15s firing, sirens wailing, bullhorns booming—one bad fucking afternoon, no doubt about it. Güero had escaped that one by the short hairs, with just a broken arm—broken once by the law and then again by the owners of the cargo, to whom he had to prove with newspaper clippings that everything had been nationalized, that three of the eight men on the reception team had been killed defending the landing strip, and that the one who'd fingered the flight was a guy from Badiraguato that squawked on retainer for the Federales. The loudmouth had wound up with his hands tied behind his back, suffocated with a plastic bag over his head, as had his father, his mother, and his sister—the narcomafia tended to mochar parejo, as they put it, wipe the slate clean. They took out the whole family, as an object lesson for anybody else who might get ideas.

  Güero, cleared of suspicion, bought himself a new Cessna with don Epifanio Vargas' loan.

  Teresa put out the cigarette, left the gym bag open on the floor by the headboard, and pulled out the notebook. She laid it on the bed and stared at it for a long time. Don't even look at it. The fucking notebook belonged to the fucking cabron who was probably dancing with La Pelona right about now, and she was sitting there like a pendeja, docile, obedient, idiotic, not opening it. Nor should you, said a voice inside. Just a little peek, whispered another; if this could cost you your life, you ought to see what your life's worth. To work up the courage she took out the package of powder, stuck a fingernail through the plastic, and brought a hit to her nose, breathing deep.

  Seconds later, with a new and different lucidity and her senses keen, she looked at the notebook and opened it, at last. Don Epifanio's name was there, with others that gave her cold chills just looking at them: Chapo Guzman, Cesar "Batman" Giiemes, Hector Palma ., . There were telephone numbers, contact points, intermediaries, numbers, and codes whose meaning she couldn't make out. She kept reading, and little by little her pulse slowed, until her blood was ice. Don't even look at it, she remembered, shivering. Hijole! Now she understood why. It was much worse than she'd thought.

  And then she heard the door open.

  Look who we've got here, Pote. My, my. . ."

  Gato Fierros' smile gleamed like the blade of a wet knife, moist and dangerous, the smile of a killer from a gringo movie, one of those where the narcos are always brown-skinned, Latino, and bad. Gato Fierros was dark-skinned, Latino—like Juanito Alimana, that gangster in the Hector Lavoe song—and bad. He could have been the model for the even more famous Pedro Navaja in Ruben Blades' take on "Mack the Knife." In fact, the only thing that wasn't clear was whether he cultivated the stereotype on purpose or whether Ruben Blades, Willie Colon, and gringo movies were inspired by people like him.

  ". .. Güero's girlfriend."

  The gunman was leaning on the door frame, his hands in his pockets. His feline eyes, which had given him his nickname, never left Teresa as he spoke to his companion—twisting his mouth to the side with malignant charm.

  "I don't know anything," said Teresa. She was so terrified that she hardly recognized her own voice. Gato Fierros shook his head sympathetically, twice.

  "Of course not," he said, his smile broadening. Odds were, he'd lost count of the number of men and women who'd assured him they didn't know anything before he killed them,
quickly or slowly, depending on the circumstances. In Sinaloa, dying violently was dying a natural death. Twenty thousand pesos for a common, run-of-the-mill hit, a hundred thousand for a cop or a judge, free if it was to help out a compadre.

  And Teresa knew the score: She knew Gato Fierros, and also knew his companion, Potemkin Galvez, whom everyone called Pote, or Pinto. They were wearing almost identical jackets, silk Versace shirts, denim pants, and iguana-skin boots, as though they shopped in the same store. They were hit men for Cesar Guemes, "Batman," as he was called, and they had hung out a lot with Güero Dávila—coworkers, escorts for cargos airlifted up to the sierra, and also drinking buddies at parties that started at the Don Quijote in mid-afternoon, with fresh money that smelled like what fresh money smells like, and went on till who knew when at the table-dancing clubs in the city, Lord Black's and the Osiris, with girls dancing nude at a hundred pesos for five minutes, two hundred and thirty back in the private rooms, before the boys moved on and greeted the new day with Buchanan's and norteno music, their hangovers tempered with lines of coke while Los Pumas, Los Huracanes, Los Broncos, or some other group, paid in hundred-dollar bills, accompanied them with corridos—"Noses a Gram Apiece," "A Fistful of Powder," "Death of a Federale"—about dead men, or men as good as dead.

  "Where is he?" Teresa asked.

  Gato Fierros gave a low, mean laugh. "Hear that, Pote? ... She's asking about Güero. My, my . . ."

  He was still leaning on the door frame. The other gunman shook his head. He was broad and heavyset, with a solid look about him, and he had a thick black goatee and dark blotches on his skin, like a pinto horse. He didn't seem as much at ease as his companion, and he looked at his watch impatiently. Or maybe uncomfortably. When he moved his arm, he revealed the butt of a revolver at his waist, under the linen golf jacket. . . Güero," Gato Fierros repeated, pensive.

  He'd taken his hands out of his pockets and was slowly walking toward Teresa, who was sitting motionless at the head of the bed. When he reached her he stopped and looked down at her.

  "Well, you see, mamacita" he said at last, "your man thought he was smart."

  Teresa felt the fear writhing in her intestines, like a ratdesnake. The Situation. A fear as white and cold as the surface of a gravestone. "Where is he?" she repeated.

  It wasn't her talking, it was some stranger whose unexpected, unforeseeable words startled her—a reckless stranger who didn't recognize the urgent need for silence. Gato Fierros must have sensed that, because he looked at her strangely, surprised that she could ask questions instead of sitting there paralyzed, or screaming in terror.

  "He's nowhere. He died."

  The stranger continued to act on her own, and Teresa was once again startled to hear her curse them: Hijos de la chingada. That was what she said, or what Teresa heard her say—Hijos de la chingada—regretting it before the last syllable had left her lips. Gato Fierros was studying her with a great deal of curiosity and a great deal of attention.

  "Not nice," he said, still thoughtful. "Talking about us that way . . . That mouth on you," he added. And then he hit her in the face, knocking her full length across the bed, backward. He stood looking down at her for another while, as though taking in the view. With the blood pounding in her temples and her cheek throbbing, her head dulled by the blow, Teresa saw his eyes go to the packet of powder on the night table. He picked up a pinch and raised it to his nose.

  "Hm, good stuff," the hit man said. "Been cut, but it's still good stuff." He rubbed his nose with his thumb and index finger, then offered some to his companion, but Pote shook his head and looked at his watch again.

  "No hurry, carnal? said Gato Fierros. "None at all." He turned once more to Teresa,

  "Nice piece, Güero's girlfriend .. . and now she's a widow, poor thing."

  From the door, Pote Galvez spoke his companion's name. "Gato," he said, very seriously. "Let's get this over with."

  Gato raised a hand, asking for quiet, and sat down on the edge of the bed.

  "Don't fuck around," Pote insisted. "The orders were to off her, not boff her. So get on with it—no seas cabron!'

  But Gato Fierros shook his head like a man listening to the rain. "My, my," he said. "I always wanted a piece of this."

  Teresa had been raped other times: at fifteen, by several of the boys in Las Siete Gotas, and then by the man who'd put her to work on Calle Juarez. So she knew what to expect when the killer's knifelike smile grew wetter and he unbuttoned her jeans. And suddenly, she wasn't afraid. It isn't happening, she thought. I'm asleep and this is just a nightmare like all the others, the ones I lived through before, something that happens to the other woman I dream about, the one who looks like me but isn't. I can wake up whenever I want to, listen to my man's breathing on the pillow, hold him to me, sink my face in his chest, and discover that none of this has ever happened. I can also die in my sleep, of a heart attack, a cerebral hemorrhage, whatever. I can die all of a sudden, and neither the dream nor life itself will have any importance anymore. Sleep, without images of anything at all, without nightmares. Rest forever from what has never happened.

  "Gato," the other man repeated. He had moved at last, taking a couple of steps into the room. "Quihubo," he said. "What's up? Güero was one of ours, man. A good guy. Remember—the sierra, El Paso, Rio Bravo. And this was his woman." And as he was saying this, he was pulling a Python out of his waistband and pointing it at Teresa's forehead. "Get up so you don't get splattered, man, and let me put her lights out."

  But Gato Fierros had other plans. "She's going to die anyway," he said, "and it'd be a waste."

  He knocked the Python away, and Pote Galvez stood looking at them, first at Teresa and then at Gato—undecided, fat, with his dark, Indian, norteno hit-man eyes, drops of sweat in his thick moustache, his finger on the trigger guard, the barrel pointing up, as though he were about to scratch his head with it. And then it was Gato Fierros who took out his gun, a big silver Beretta, and pointed it straight at the other man, at his face. Laughing, he said that Pote was either going to have a go at her, too, so they'd be in it together, or, if he was the type of guy who preferred to bat left-handed, then he needed to step aside, cabron, because if he didn't he was having lead for lunch.

  Pote Galvez looked at Teresa with resignation and embarrassment; he stood a few seconds more, and then he opened his mouth to say something but then didn't. Instead, he slowly stuck the Python back into his waistband and walked slowly to the door, without turning around. The other killer kept his pistol pointed at him, saying, "I'll buy you a Buchanan's afterward, mi compa, to make you feel better about being a maricon."

  And as Galvez disappeared into the other room, Teresa heard a crash, the sound of wood splintering—maybe the hit man putting his fist through the closet door—which for some reason made Teresa very grateful. But she didn't have time to think about that anymore, because Gato Fierros was already taking off her jeans, or rather ripping them off, raising her T-shirt, and pawing at her breasts, and as he did so he stuck the barrel of the pistol up between her legs as though he were going to blow her away from down there. She let him, without a scream or even a whimper, her eyes very open, looking up at the white ceiling, praying to God for it to all happen fast, and when it was over, for Gato Fierros to kill her fast, before it all stopped being a nightmare and turned into the naked horror of pinche fucking life.

  It was the same old story. Winding up like that. How could it be otherwise, even though Teresa Mendoza never imagined that The Situation would smell like sweat, like rutting macho, like the shot glasses of tequila that Gato Fierros had knocked back before coming up those stairs looking for his prey. I wish it was over, she thought in her moments of lucidity. I wish it was just fucking over and done with, and I could rest. She thought that for a second and then she sank again into her void without emotions, without fear. It was too late for fear, because fear was what you felt before things happened, and the consolation when they finally did happen was that it all
came to an end. The only true fear was that the end would take too long to come.

  But Gato Fierros was not going to be that case. He was pushing violently, with the urgency to finish and empty himself. Quiet, Short. He was pushing cruelly, without looking at her, shoving her little by little to the edge of the bed. Teresa emptied her mind as she suffered his thrusts. She let her arm drop, and it touched the open gym bag on the floor.

  The Situation can go two ways, she suddenly discovered. It can be Your Situation or the Other Guy's. She was so surprised to realize this, that if the man holding her down had let her, she would have sat straight up in bed, one finger held up, very serious and reflective, to think it through. Let's see, let's just consider this variant. ... But she couldn't sit up, because the only part of her that was free was her arm and hand, which, falling accidentally into the gym bag, was now stroking the cold metal of the Colt Double Eagle inside it, among her clothes and the stacks of bills.

  This is not happening to me, she thought. Or maybe she never really thought anything, but instead just observed, passively, while that other Teresa Mendoza thought in her place. Whatever—before she became conscious of it, her or the other woman's fingers had closed around the butt of the pistol. The safety was on the left, next to the trigger and the button to release the clip. She touched it with her thumb and felt it slide down, to the vertical, freeing the hammer. There's a bullet in the chamber, she remembered, there's a bullet there because I put it there—she remembered the metallic click-click—although maybe she just thought she'd loaded the chamber, but hadn't, and the bullet wasn't ready. She considered all this with dispassionate calculation: Safety, trigger, hammer. Bullet. That was the right sequence of events—if, that is, that click-click had been real and not the product of her imagination. Because if it hadn't been real, the hammer was going to hit nothing, air, and Gato Fierros would have time to take it badly. Of course, whatever happened, things couldn't be that much worse than they were now. There might be a little more violence, or rage, in the last moments. Nothing that wouldn't be over within a half-hour or so—for her, for that woman watching her, or for both at once. Nothing that wouldn't stop hurting in a little while. And as she thought all this, she stopped looking up at the white ceiling and realized that Gato Fierros had stopped moving, and that he was looking at her. That was when Teresa raised the pistol and shot him in the face.