The Queen of the South

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  "What do you think we're worth, Pinto?"

  He had come to the door again, with that look of a big clumsy bear he had when he wanted to be inconspicuous. Apparently quiet and slow-moving, as always. But she could see that behind the narrowed lids, his dark, suspicious eyes never lowered their guard, never stopped seeing everything around them.

  "They'll take me out for free, patrona. ... But you're a big fish to catch, now. Nobody would take it on for less than full retirement pay for life." "You think it'll be the escorts, or that they'll come from outside?" The bodyguard pursed his lips, thinking.

  "I think from outside. The narcos and the police are the same thing, but not always.... Understand?" "More or less."

  "That's the truth. And the guachos—the colonel looks to me like the real thing, stand-up, you know?... He'll keep his men in line." "That, we'll see about, no?"

  "It'll be something to see, all right, patrona—see it once and for all, and get our asses out of here."

  Teresa smiled when she heard that. She understood what he was saying. The waiting was always worse than the fight, no matter how bad the fight was. Anyway, she'd taken additional measures. Preventive measures. She wasn't born yesterday—she had money and she'd read her classics. The trip to Culiacan had been preceded by a campaign of information in the right places, including the local press. Just Vargas, was the motto. No squealing, no squawking, no ratting, no fingerpointing, no blowing the whistle on anybody but Epifanio Vargas: a personal matter, a mano a mano, a duel in the dust. Admission free, and everybody welcome to watch the show. But not another name or date. Nothing. Just don Epifanio, Teresa, and the ghost of Güero Dávila, burned to death on the Espinazo del Diablo twelve years ago. This was not a betrayal, this was a limited, personal payback, the kind of thing that could be understood very well in Sinaloa, where double-crossing was frowned on—you die, cabron—but revenge was what filled the cemeteries. That had been the deal struck in the Hotel Puente Romano, and the Mexican government had signed on the dotted line.

  Even the gringos had signed, although grudgingly. Concrete testimony, a concrete name.

  The other drug bosses who used to be close to Epifanio Vargas, even Batman Giiemes, had no reason to feel threatened. That, as one could well imagine, had reassured Batman and the others considerably. It also increased Teresa's chances of survival and reduced the fronts that had to be covered. After all, in the shark-feeding ground of Sinaloan drug money and narcopolitics, don Epifanio had been or was an ally, a pillar of the community, but also a competitor and, sooner or later, an enemy. A lot of people would be very happy if he could be taken out of action for such a low price.

  The telephone rang. It was Pote Galvez who answered it, and he looked at Teresa as though the voice on the other end had just spoken the name of a ghost. But she wasn't the least bit surprised. She'd been expecting this call for four days. And the time was getting short.

  This is very irregular, senora. I can't authorize this." Colonel Ledesma was standing on the living room rug, his hands behind his back, his uniform perfectly ironed, his boots, spotted with raindrops, gleaming. That short hair looks good on him, Teresa thought, even with all the gray. So polite and so clean. He reminded her of that captain in the Guardia Civil in Marbella, a long time ago, whose name she'd forgotten. "It's less than twenty-four hours before your testimony." Teresa remained seated, smoking, her legs in black silk pants crossed. Looking up at him. Comfortable. Very careful to make things very clear. "Let me tell you again, Colonel. I am not here as a prisoner." "No, of course not."

  "If I accept your protection it's because I want to accept it. But no one can keep me from going wherever I want to go.... That was the agreement."

  Ledesma shifted his weight from one leg to the other. Now he was looking at Gaviria, the lawyer from the Mexican national prosecutor's office, his liaison with the civil authorities handling the case. Gaviria was also standing, although farther back, with Pote Galvez behind him, leaning on the door frame, and the colonel's aide, a young lieutenant, looking over Pote's shoulder from the hall.

  "Tell Senora Mendoza," the colonel pleaded with the lawyer, "that what she's asking is impossible."

  Ledesma was right, Gaviria said. He was a rail-thin, pleasant man, shaved and dressed very correctly. Teresa glanced at him for no more than a second, her eyes taking him in and spitting him out as though he didn't exist.

  "I'm not asking, Colonel," she said, "I'm telling. I intend to leave here this afternoon for an hour and a half. I have an appointment in the city.... You can take security measures, or not."

  Ledesma, powerless, shook his head.

  "Federal law forbids me from moving troops through the city. I'm already stretching it with those men I've got posted outside there." "And the civil authorities ..." Gaviria began.

  Teresa stubbed out her cigarette with such force that the fire burned her fingertips.

  "You and the civil authorities, let me tell you—don't worry your little head about me. Not a bit. I'll be there tomorrow, on the dot, to do what I said I'd do for the civil authorities."

  "You have to consider that in legal terms...."

  "Listen. I've got the Hotel San Marcos full of very expensive lawyers." She motioned toward the telephone. "How many do you want me to call?" "It could be a trap," the colonel argued. "Hijole, no kidding!"

  Ledesma ran a hand across the top of his head. He took a few steps around the room, Gaviria watching him anxiously.

  "I'll have to consult with my superiors," the colonel said.

  "Consult with whoever you want to," Teresa told him. "But get one thing straight: If I'm not allowed to keep that appointment, I'll interpret it as being held here against my will, in spite of the government's commitment. And that violates the agreement.... Plus, I remind you, in Mexico there are no charges against me."

  The colonel looked at her fixedly. He bit at his lower lip as though a piece of loose skin were bothering him. He turned and started toward the door, but then stopped halfway.

  "What do you gain by putting yourself at risk this way?"

  It was clear that he really wanted to understand this. Teresa uncrossed her legs, brushing out the wrinkles in the silk.

  "What I gain or lose," she replied, "is my business, and no fucking concern of yours."

  She said it and then fell silent, and in a few moments she heard the colonel's deep, resigned sigh. "I'll ask for instructions."

  "So will I," the lawyer from the prosecutor's office added.

  "Orale. Ask for all the instructions you want. Meanwhile, I want a car at the door at seven o'clock sharp. With him"—she pointed at Pote Galvez— "inside and armed to the teeth. What you've got around us or on top of us, Colonel, is up to you."

  She said this looking the whole time at Ledesma. And this time, she calculated, I can allow myself a smile. It makes quite an impression on them when a woman smiles as she twists their balls. What, Colonel? You thought you were the Marlboro man?

  W

  hhhp-whhhp. Whhhp-whhhp. The monotonous sound of the windshield wipers, big drops of rain drumming like hail on the roof of the Suburban. The Federale who was driving turned the wheel to the left and started down Avenida Insurgentes, and Pote Galvez, beside him in the passenger seat, looked to one side and the other and put both hands on the AK-47 in his lap. In his jacket pocket he was carrying a walkie-talkie tuned to the same frequency as the radio in the Suburban, and from the back seat Teresa could hear the voices of agents and soldiers taking part in the operation. Objective One and Objective Two, they were saying. Objective One was her. And they were going to meet Objective Two in just seconds.

  Whhhp-whhhp. Wiihhp-whhhp. It was still daylight, but the gray sky made the streets dark, and some businesses had turned their outside lights on. The rain multiplied the lights of the small convoy. The Suburban and its escort—two Rams belonging to the Federales and three Lobo pickups with soldiers manning machine guns in the back—raised fans of water from the brown torrent t
hat overran gutters and drains and filled the streets on its way toward the Tamazula. A band of black crossed the sky, silhouetting the tallest buildings along the avenue, and a reddish band below it seemed beaten down by the weight of the black. "A checkpoint, patrona" said Pote Galvez.

  There was the noise of a round being chambered in Pote's AK-47, and that earned the bodyguard a look out of the corner of the driver's eye. When they passed the checkpoint without slowing, Teresa saw that it was a military patrol and that the soldiers, in combat helmets, had pulled over two police cars and were holding the Judiciales at gunpoint with their AR-15s and Ml6s.

  Clearly, Colonel Ledesma trusted the police just so far. Clearly, also, after searching for a loophole in the law that kept him from moving troops through the city, the assistant commander of the Ninth District had found one in the small print—after all, the natural state of a soldier was always very close to a state of siege. Teresa saw more Federales and guachos posted under the trees along the median, with transit police blocking the intersections and detouring traffic down other routes. And right there, between the railroad tracks and the large concrete block of the administration building, the Malverde Chapel seemed much smaller than she remembered it, twelve years before.

  Memories. She realized that for that entire long round-trip journey, she had acquired only three certainties about human beings: that they kill, that they remember, and that they die. Because there comes a moment, she told herself, when you look ahead and see only what you've left behind—dead bodies all along the road you're walking down. Among them, your own, although you don't know it. Until you come upon it, and then you know.

  She looked for herself in the chapel's shadows, in the peace of the pew set to the right of the saint's image, in the reddish half-light of the candles that sputtered among the flowers and offerings hung on the wall. The light outside was fading quickly, and as the dirty gray of the evening deepened, the flashing lights of one of the Federales' cars illuminated the entrance with intermittent red and blue. As she stood before St. Malverde, his hair as black as beauty-parlor dye, his white jacket and the kerchief at his neck, his Mayan-Aztec eyes, and his charro moustache, Teresa moved her lips to pray, as she'd done so many years before—God bless my journey and allow my return. But no prayer would come. Maybe it would be sacrilege, she thought. Maybe I shouldn't have wanted to have the meeting here. Maybe with the years I've become stupid and arrogant, and now I pay.

  The last time she'd been here, there had been another woman gazing out at her from the shadows. Now Teresa looked for her, but didn't find her. Unless, she decided, I'm the other woman, or have her inside me, and the narco's morra with the scared eyes, the girl who ran away carrying a gym bag and a Double Eagle, has turned into one of those ghosts that float along behind me, looking at me with accusatory, or sad, or indifferent eyes. Maybe that's what life's like, and you breathe, walk, move so one day you can look back and see yourself back there. See yourself in the successive women— yours and others'—that every one of your steps condemns you to be.

  Teresita. It's been a long time.'

  She stuck her hands into the pockets of her raincoat—underneath, a sweater, jeans, comfortable boots with rubber soles—and took out the pack of Faros. She was lighting one at the flame of an altar candle when she saw don Epifanio Vargas silhouetted against the red and blue flashes at the door.

  He looked almost the same, she saw. Tall, heavyset. He had hung his raincoat on the rack next to the door. Dark suit, shirt collar open, no tie, pointed-toe boots. With that face that reminded her of old Pedro Armendariz movies. He had a lot of gray in his moustache and at his temples, quite a few more wrinkles, a few more inches at the waist, perhaps. But he was the same don Epifanio.

  "I hardly recognize you," he said, taking a few steps into the chapel after glancing suspiciously to one side and then the other. He was looking at Teresa fixedly, trying to relate her to the other woman he had in his memory.

  "You haven't changed much," she said. "A little heavier, maybe. And the gray."

  She was now sitting on the pew, next to the image of Malverde, and she didn't move.

  "Are you carrying?" don Epifanio asked, ever cautious. "No."

  "Good. Those hijos deputo out there patted me down. I wasn't, either."

  He sighed, looked up at Malverde in the trembling light of the candles, then back at her.

  "The gray ... I just turned sixty-four. But I'm not complaining."

  He came closer, until he stood very close, studying her from above. She remained as she was, holding his gaze.

  "I'd say things have gone well for you, Teresita."

  "Haven't gone bad for you, either."

  Don Epifanio nodded slowly, agreeing. Pensive. Then he sat down beside her. They were sitting exactly the way they had been the last time, except that she wasn't holding a Double Eagle.

  "Twelve years, right? You and I on this very spot, with that notebook of Güero's..."

  He paused, giving Teresa a chance to add a memory of her own to the conversation. But she said nothing. After a moment don Epifanio took a cigar out of the chest pocket of his jacket.

  "I never imagined," he started to say as he took off the wrapper. But he stopped again, as though he'd just come to the conclusion that what he'd never imagined didn't matter now.

  "I think we all underestimated you," he said at last. "Your man. Me. All of us." He spoke the words "your man" a little softer, as if trying to slip them in unnoticed among the rest.

  "Maybe that's why I'm still alive."

  Don Epifanio thought that over as he held the flame of his lighter to the cigar.

  "Being alive is not a permanent state, or guaranteed," he said with the first puff. "A person stays alive until he's not anymore."

  The two of them smoked for a while, not looking at each other. She'd almost finished her cigarette.

  "What are you doing, Teresa, getting involved in all this?"

  She took one last puff, then dropped the butt and carefully put it out with the toe of her boot.

  "Well, I'll tell you," she replied, "it's to settle some old debts."

  "Debts," Epifanio repeated. He took another puff on his Havana. "It's better to just let some debts go."

  "No way to do that," said Teresa, "if they keep you from sleeping at night."

  "You don't gain anything."

  "What I gain is my business."

  For a few seconds the only sounds were the sputtering of the candles at the altar and the rain beating on the roof of the chapel. Outside, the red and blue of the Federales' car was still flashing.

  "Why do you want to screw me?... All you're doing is playing into the hands of my political enemies."

  It was a nice tone, she had to admit. Almost affectionate. Less a reproach than a hurt question. He was the betrayed godfather. The wounded friend. And the fact is, she thought, I never saw him as a bad guy. He was often sincere with me, and maybe still is.

  "I don't know who your enemies are, and I don't care," she answered. "You did wrong in killing Güero. And Chino. And Brenda and the kids."

  If this was about affection, she could go that route, too. Don Epifanio looked at the ember of his cigar, frowning.

  "I don't know what they've told you. But whatever it was, this is Sinaloa.... You're from here, and you know what the rules are."

  "The rules," Teresa said slowly, "include collecting debts from people that owe you." She paused, and she heard the man's breathing as he concentrated on her words. "And besides the others," she added, "you tried to have me killed."

  "That's a lie!" Don Epifanio seemed genuinely shocked. "You were here, with me. I protected you, I saved your life ... I helped you escape."

  "I'm talking about later. When you changed your mind."

  "In our world," don Epifanio said, after thinking about it, "business is complicated." He studied her once he'd said this, like a man waiting for a tranquilizer to take effect. "Anyway," he added, "I can understand that you'd w
ant to send me the bill. You're from Sinaloa, and I respect that. But to strike a deal with the gringos and those cabrones in the government that want to bring me down ..."

  "You don't have any idea what cabrones, if any, I've struck a deal with."

  She said this somberly, with a firmness that left the man thoughtful. He held the cigar in his mouth, his eyes squinting from the smoke, the flashes from the street turning him alternately red and blue.

  "Tell me one thing. The night we met you'd read the notebook, hadn't

  you?... You knew about Güero But I didn't realize that. You tricked me."

  "My life was on the line."

  "So why are you digging up all these old things?" "Because until now I didn't know who asked Batman Giiemes for a favor. And Güero was my man." "He was a DEA cabron"

  "Cabron and DEA, he was my man."

  She heard him swallow an obscenity as he stood up. His corpulence filled the small chapel.

  "Listen," he said. He looked at the image of Malverde, as though calling the patron saint of drug lords as a witness. "I always behaved well. I was godfather to both of you. I loved Güero and I loved you. He double-crossed me, but despite that I saved your pretty ass.... The other was much later, when your life and mine took different paths.... Now time has passed, I'm out of that. I'm old, and I've even got grandchildren. I'm in politics, and I like it, and the Senate will let me do new things. That includes helping Sinaloa.... What do you gain by hurting me? Helping those gringos that consume half the world's drugs while they decide, depending on what's convenient to them at the moment, which narcos are good and which ones are bad? Helping the people that financed the anti-Communist guerrillas in Vietnam with drug money and then came to ask us Mexicans to pay for the Contras' weapons in Nicaragua?... Listen to me, Teresita, those people that are using you now once helped me earn a fuckload of money with Nortena de Aviaci6n, and