The Queen of the South

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  Teresa looked around, disconcerted. Now the HJ was on their left again, outside, pressing inexorably in toward land, with the Phantom running at fifty knots in less than fifteen feet of water and the chopper right on top of them, its white spotlight trained on them tight. The situation looked no worse than five minutes earlier, and Teresa put her mouth to Santiago's ear and told him that. "We're not so bad," she shouted. But Santiago moved his head as though he hadn't heard, absorbed in piloting the speedboat, or in what he was thinking. "That cargo," she heard him say. And then, before he stopped talking altogether, he added something, but Teresa could make out only one word: decoy. He's probably saying they suckered us, she thought. Then the HJ sideswiped them with its bow, and the spray from the two boats running alongside each other at full speed turned into foam, water beaten into a meringue that drenched them, blinded them, and Santiago was forced to yield a notch, to take the Phantom in toward the beach, so that now they were running in the current, between the breakers and the beach itself, with the HJ off to port and a little more open, the chopper above them, and the lights from land flying by just a few meters away, it seemed. In six inches of water.

  Jesus, there's no water here, thought Teresa. Santiago was taking the speedboat in as close as he could, to keep the cutter off them, but the other boat's skipper took every opportunity to run them in to the coast. Even so, she calculated, it was much less probable that the HJ would run aground, or suck in a rock that would totally fuck the engine, than that the Phantom would touch the sand with its propeller in the middle of a bounce, and then the bow would go straight in and the two of them would be sucking at Faros until the resurrection of the flesh. Jesus God. Teresa clenched her teeth and gripped Santiago's shoulders when the cutter closed in again, spray flying, then pulled away, ahead of them, to blind them again with its spray and then tacked in to starboard just a touch, to press them tighter against the beach. That skipper was something, no denying that, she thought. A guy that takes his job seriously. Because no law demanded this much out of him. Or maybe it did, when things got personal between two macho fucking cabrones who turned any spat into a cockfight to the death.

  The HJ was close—its flank looked so big and dark that the excitement the race had produced in Teresa started to turn to fear. She had never run in this close, in the shore current, so close to the shoreline in such shallow water, and every so often the helicopter's spotlight showed her the undulations of the sand, pebbles, seaweed on the bottom. There's hardly enough draft for the propeller, she thought. We're plowing this pinche beach. And suddenly she felt ridiculously vulnerable there, soaked through, blinded by the light, shaken, rocked by the bounces on the water. Fuck the law, she told herself. These two are just testing each other. The first one who blinks, loses, that's all. These two are doing a little dick-measuring here, and I'm in the middle, fucked. Sad, dying for this.

  And that was when she remembered the Leon Rock. It was a boulder, not very high, that sat a few yards off the beach, halfway between Duquesa and Sotogrande. It was named after a Customs agent who had smashed the hull of the cutter he was using to chase down a speedboat—craaccck!—and was forced to run ashore. And that rock, Teresa now remembered, was directly on the course they were following now. The thought gave her a jolt of panic. Forgetting the closeness of their pursuers, she looked out to the right for references, to locate herself by the land lights flashing past the Phantom. It had to be, she decided, very, very fucking close.

  "The rock!" she shouted to Santiago, leaning over his shoulder. "We're close to the rock!"

  In the light of the pursuing helicopter she saw him nod, never taking his attention off the wheel and the course, glancing over now and again at the cutter and the shore to calculate the distance and depth they were running at. Just then the HJ pulled away a bit, the helicopter closed in, and as she looked up, shielding her eyes with her hand, Teresa could make out a dark figure in a white helmet descending to the skid, which the pilot was maneuvering just over the Phantom's engine. She was fascinated by that incredible image: a man suspended between sky and water, one hand grasping the door of the helicopter and the other holding an object that it took her a second to recognize as a pistol. He won't shoot at us, she thought, befuddled. They can't do that. This is Europe, goddammit, and they have no right to treat us like that, just shoot us, bam! The speedboat gave a long leap and she fell backward, and when she sat up, dazed, ready to scream at Santiago— "They're going to kill us, cabron, slack off, stop, stop before they shoot us!"—she saw that the man in the white helmet was pointing the pistol at the engine head and was emptying the clip into it, one shot after another, orange flashes in the glare of the spotlight and the thousands of dots of shattered water, with the blasts—blam! Blam! Blam!—almost drowned out by the roar of the engine and the blades of the chopper and the sound of the ocean and the chops of the Phantom's hull against the shallow water of the shoreline. And then the man in the white helmet disappeared into the helicopter, and the bird gained some altitude, though its spotlight never wavered from them, and the HJ once more veered in dangerously close while Teresa looked in shock and stupefaction at the black holes in the casing of the engine, which went on working as though nothing had happened, not even a wisp of smoke, just the way Santiago coolly held his course, without ever having turned around to look at what was happening, without asking Teresa if she was all right, without doing anything but running that race he seemed willing to run till the end of time, or his life, or their lives.

  The rock, she remembered again. The Leon Rock had to be right there, a few yards ahead of them. She stood up behind Santiago to peer out ahead, trying to see through the curtain of droplets illuminated by the white light of the helicopter, trying to make out the rock in the darkness of the shoreline that snaked before them.

  I hope he sees it in time, she said to herself. I hope he sees it in time to maneuver and dodge it, and that the fucking HJ lets us. She was hoping all this when she saw the rock ahead, black and menacing, and without needing to look to the left she knew that the Customs cutter had swerved to miss it at the same second that Santiago, water pouring off his face, his eyes averted from the blinding light that never lost them for an instant, hit the trim-tab lever and turned the Phantom's wheel, a burst of spray covering them in its luminous white cloud, the boat dodging the danger just as Santiago accelerated and resumed his course again, fifty knots, flat water, once again inside the breakers, almost no draft. Then Teresa looked back and saw that the rock wasn't the pinche rock—it was a boat at anchor that in the darkness had looked like the rock—but the rock was still ahead of them, waiting. She opened her mouth to yell at Santiago, to tell him it wasn't behind them, be careful, it's still up there ahead, when she saw that the helicopter had turned off the spotlight and lifted almost straight up, and that the HJ was pulling away with a violent jerk seaward. And she also saw herself, as though from outside, very quiet and very alone in that boat, as if everyone were about to abandon her in some wet, dark place.

  She felt a wave of intense, familiar fear, because she had recognized The Situation. And then the world exploded.

  7- They marked me with the Seven

  At this moment, Dantes felt himself being thrown into a huge void, flying through the air like a wounded bird, then falling, falling, in a terrifying descent that froze his heart....

  Teresa Mendoza read those words again and sat suspended, the book open on her knees, looking at the prison yard. It was still winter, and the rectangle of light that moved in a direction counter to the sun warmed her half-knitted bones under the cast on her right arm and the thick wool sweater that Patricia O'Farrell had lent her.

  It was nice out there in the late-morning sun, before the bell for lunch. Around her were fifty or so women, gathered in circles, talking, sitting in the sun like she was. Some lay back smoking, trying to get some color, while others paced in groups from one side of the yard to the other, in that walk typical of inmates forced to move within the lim
its of their surroundings: two hundred thirty paces across and then back, one, two, three, four ...

  then a half-turn when they got to the wall crowned by a guard tower and rolls of razor wire between them and the men's unit... two hundred twenty-eight, two hundred twenty-nine, two hundred thirty paces exactly to the basketball court, another two hundred thirty back to the wall, and so on, eight, ten, twenty times a day. After two months in El Puerto de Santa Maria, Teresa had become familiar with those daily paces, and she herself, hardly noticing, had come to adopt that way of walking, with the fast, slightly elastic bounce one saw especially in the veteran prisoners—as fast and direct as though they were actually going somewhere.

  It was Patricia O'Farrell who had pointed it out to her after she'd been inside a few weeks. You ought to see yourself, she told Teresa, you've already got the prisoner walk. Teresa was convinced that Patricia, who was now lying on her back near her, her hands under her neck, her very short gold hair gleaming in the sun, would never walk that way, even if she spent another twenty years in this place. In her Irish-Jerez blood, she thought, there was too much class, too many good habits, too much intelligence.

  "Gimme a nail," Patricia said.

  She was lazy or capricious, depending on what day it was. She smoked American-style filter cigarettes, with blond tobacco, but if she didn't feel like getting up for one of her own she would smoke one of Teresa's unfiltered, black-tobacco Bisontes, often taken apart and rerolled with a few grains of hashish. Nails, without. Joints or basucos, with.

  Teresa pulled a cigarette out of the pack next to her on the ground, half of them laced with hash, half straight, lit it, and leaning over Patricia's face, put it between her lips. She saw Patricia smile before she said, "Thanks," and inhaled without removing her hands from behind her neck, the cigarette dangling from her mouth, her eyes closed in the sun that gave a glow to her hair and the light dusting of golden hairs on her cheeks, around the slight wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. Thirty-four years old, Patricia had said, without anybody's asking, Teresa's first day in the cell—the rack, in the jail slang that Teresa now knew so well—that the two women shared. Thirty-four on her National Identity Document, and nine on her sentencing sheet, "of which I've served two. With good behavior, work credits, a third off just because ... I figure I've got one or two more, max."

  Teresa started to tell her who she was—"My name's Teresa and ..."— when the other woman cut her off. "I know who you are, sweetheart. Here, we know everything about everybody real fast—sometimes even before they get here. So let me tell you. There are three basic types: bitches, dykes, and pussies. By nationality, aside from the Spaniards we've got Moors, Romanians, Portuguese, Nigerians—with AIDS and everything, you want to stay away from them, they're in bad shape, poor things—a group of Colombian girls that practically run the place—they get any fucking thing they want, and sometimes get away with murder, so watch out—a French girl or two, and a couple of Ukrainians—whores that offed their pimp because he wouldn't give back their passports. Then there are the Gypsies—don't mess with them. The young ones with the Lycra pants, long hair, and tattoos deal in pills and chocolate and whatever, and they're the toughest ones. The older ones, the fat ones with the big tits and the long skirts and their hair in buns, they've taken the fall for their men—who've got to stay on the street because they've got a family to feed, so they come to pick up their Rosarios in a big Mercedes when they get out—and they're pretty peaceable, but they look out for each other. Except for the Gypsies, among themselves, the inmates look out for number one and only number one, which means that the ones you see in groups are there out of self-interest, or survival—the weak ones looking for a ride on the strong ones.

  "If you want a piece of advice, don't make friends, don't mix. Try to get a good gig: laundry, kitchen, commissary—which also takes time off your sentence. And don't forget to wear flip-flops in the shower and never sit your ass down on the toilet in the latrines in the yard—you could catch god knows what. Never say anything against Camaron or Joaquin Sabina or Los Chunguitos or Miguel Bose, or ask to change the channel when the soaps are on, or take drugs from anybody without knowing what it's going to cost you in return. Your rap, if you stay out of trouble and do what you're told to do, will keep you here a year—obsessing about getting out, like all of us, thinking about the family, or remaking your life, or the drink you're going to have, or the screw, whatever it is. Year and a half max, with the papers and the reports from Corrections and the shrinks and all those other bastards that open the doors or close them on us, depending on their digestion or whether you make a good impression on them or whatever other bug happens to be up their ass that day. So take it easy, keep that nice sweet expression on your face, say Yes sir, Yes ma'am to everybody, don't pull my chain, and we'll get along fine, Mexicana. I hope you don't mind if people call you Mexicana. Everybody's got some name here. Some girls like them, some don't. Mine is Lieutenant O'Farrell. And I like it. Maybe one day I'll let you call me Patty."

  “Patty”

  "What."

  "This book is great." "I told you."

  Patty's eyes were still closed, the lighted cigarette dangling from her lips, and the sun accentuated little spots, like freckles, on the tip of her nose. She had been attractive once, and in a certain way still was. Or maybe more pleasant-looking than actually attractive, with her blond hair and her five feet eight inches and her bright eyes that made it seem she was always laughing inside. Her mother was a Miss Spain 1950-something, married to the O'Farrell of sherry and thoroughbred-horse fame, a man you saw from time to time in the magazines: an elegant, raisin-wrinkled old man photographed with beautiful horses and barrels of wine in the background, or in a house with tapestries, paintings, and shelves filled with ceramics and books. There were more children; Patricia was the black sheep. Something to do with drugs on the Costa del Sol, with the Russian mafia and a couple of dead men. A boyfriend with three or four noble last names shot dead at point-blank range, and her making it out alive by a miracle, with two gunshots that had kept her in the ICU for a month and a half. Teresa had seen the scars in the showers and when Patricia took off her clothes in the rack: two star-shaped areas of drawn and puckered skin on her back, under her left shoulder blade, about two inches apart. The exit wound from one had left a slightly bigger scar, under her clavicle. The second bullet, smashed flat against a bone, had been removed in the operating room.

  "Full metal jacket," was Patricia's comment the first time Teresa stared at the scars. "If it had been a dum-dum or a hollow-point we wouldn't be talking right now." And then she closed the matter with a silent, comic grimace. On humid days that second wound bothered her, as Teresa ached from the fresh fracture of her arm.

  "How do you like Edmond Dantes?"

  "Edmond Dantes is me," Teresa replied, almost seriously, and she saw the wrinkles around Patricia's eyes deepen, the cigarette quiver as she smiled.

  "Me, too," Patricia said. "And all of us," she added, gesturing toward the yard without opening her eyes. "Innocent and virginal and dreaming of a treasure that awaits us all when we get out."

  "Abbe Faria died," Teresa said, looking down at the book's open pages. "Poor old man."

  "You see? There are times when some people have to buy it so others can live."

  A group of inmates passed by, walking the two hundred thirty steps toward the wall. They were tough, mean-looking, a half-dozen girls led by Trini Sanchez, also known as Makoki III: a small, masculine, aggressive, tattooed dark-skinned woman, always scrapping with the other inmates, or shiwing them—dangerous, and a regular in the Hole. She'd gotten fourteen years for stabbing her girlfriend over half a gram of horse. "Those dykes like fresh bait," Patricia had warned Teresa the first time they met in the module corridor, when Trini said something that Teresa didn't catch and the others laughed, sharing the code. "But don't worry, Mexicanita. They'll only eat your cunt if you let them." Teresa hadn't let them, and after a few tactical advanc
es in the showers, the stalls, and the yard—including one attempt at social interchange via smiles and cigarettes and condensed milk at a table in the dining room—they went on their way. After all, her rackmate was Lieutenant O'Farrell. And with her, the word was, La Mexicanita was taken care of.

  "Hey, Lieutenant."

  "How's it goin', bitches?" Patricia hadn't even opened her eyes. And her hands were still crossed behind her neck. The others laughed harshly—a couple muttered some good-humored obscenity—and continued pacing the yard. Teresa watched them pass and then looked over at her friend. It had not taken her long to see that O'Farrell enjoyed certain privileges among the inmates: she had access to money far above the legal amount of available funds, she received packages from the outside, and with these goods, people on the inside were disposed to help her. Even the guards and prison officers treated her better than the rest.

  But there was also an air of authority about her that had nothing to do with money or packages from the outside. First of all, she was a girl with culture, which made an important difference in a place where very few inmates had gone as far as high school. She expressed herself well, read books, knew people at a certain level of society. It was not unusual for other inmates to come to her for help in filling out forms—requests or official documents that should have been filed by their lawyers—appointed by the court, the motherfuckers disappeared the minute the sentence was handed down, or even before.

  O'Farrell could also get her hands on drugs, from pills of any color to pot or chocolate, which was what they called hash, and she always had rolling paper or aluminum foil for those who needed to light up.

  Plus, she wasn't one to let anybody get to her. The story was that one day when she was still new, a long-time inmate had raped her, and that O'Farrell had taken it without opening her mouth. But the next morning, when she and the rapist were both naked in the showers, she had come up to the bitch and held a shiv—made from the frame of a fire-extinguisher box—to her throat. Never again, sweetheart, were her words as she looked into the woman's eyes, the water from the shower running off her, the other inmates standing around like they were watching the TV, although later they all swore on their most recently departed loved ones that they hadn't seen a thing. And the troublemaker, an alpha bitch everyone called La Valenciana, with a reputation as one mean cunt, was in complete agreement.