Wolf Boys

by Dan Slater

  Mexico’s narcotics industry was well organized. The business consisted of two classes: producers and smugglers. On the western side of Mexico, in the fertile highlands of the Sierra Madre Occidental, gomeros—drug farmers—contracted with smuggling groups to move shipments north to border towns. In the states of Sinaloa, Durango, and Chihuahua, an ideal combination of altitude, rainfall, and soil acidity yielded bumper crops of Papaver somniferum. Those poppy fields—some with origins in plantings made by Chinese immigrants a century earlier—produced millions of metric tons of bulk opium per year. Marijuana, known by its slang, mota, was Mexico’s other homegrown narcotic. When the marijuana craze hit the United States in the 1960s, mota came chiefly from the mountaintops of the Pacific states of Sinaloa and Sonora, then expanded to Nayarit, Jalisco, Guerrero, Veracruz, Oaxaca, Quintana Roo, and Campeche. The irrigated harvest for mota ran from February to March; the natural harvest from July to August. All merca, merchandise, had to reach the border by fall, November at the latest. Americans didn’t work during the holidays.

  The large, curving horn of Mexico was anchored on two great mountain chains, or cordilleras, both rising from north to south, one on the east facing the green Gulf of Mexico, the other sloping westward to the blue Pacific Ocean. Between these mountain ranges, a high central plateau tapered down with the horn to the Yucatán Peninsula. Eons ago, volcanoes cut the plateau into countless jumbled valleys with forests of pine, oak, fir, and alder. The coastal lands were tropically humid, but the plateau had a climate of eternal spring. It should’ve been eminently fit for man.

  Instead, Mexico’s future would be full of conquests, dictatorship, revolt, corruption, and crime.

  When Robert and Ronnie arrived in Laredo in 1991, the major crossings along the two-thousand-mile border between Mexico and America—from east to west: Matamoros, Nuevo Laredo, Juárez, and Tijuana—were controlled by “smuggling families” that straddled the border and charged a tax, known as a cuota or piso, which was in turn used to pay the bribes that secured the routes for trafficking in drugs and immigrants. Fights broke out between the families, and there was some spillover violence, but there were no cartels, not yet.

  Patrol officers in Laredo PD seized large quantities of narcotics and saw some dead guys left in the front yard. But nothing too graphic. The young cops, making their nine dollars per hour plus overtime, were cocky. They had no awareness of the larger world; everything revolved around them. Places like Florida, Colombia, Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Washington, D.C., were a world away, and changing. Drug-war politics were in flux. In Laredo, Robert and his partners knew little beyond their squad cars.

  As cops came up in PD, some set their sights on SWAT; others tried out state agencies like Child Protective Services and found that they didn’t mind dealing with domestic nightmares. Robert liked drug work because of the local impact. A drug arrest wasn’t mere pretext. You weren’t just taking a guy with dope off the street. That guy also committed assaults and robberies to get drugs. If the guy was a big dealer, maybe he used kids as drug couriers and to operate “stash houses,” the places where dealers kept their drugs and money. Robert would stop a guy with a gram of coke or a pound of weed, or bust a house that sold heroin to local Laredo addicts. He’d get his picture in the Laredo Morning Times perp-walking a guy to the local jail. He felt like he was “sweeping the streets of crime.” He’d turn on the TV, see some Nancy Reagan–type person telling everyone, “Say no to drugs!” and feel like Superman.

  THE LUMP-SUM PAYOUT RONNIE GOT when she left the military took some weight off her and Robert’s life together. They paid cash for a mobile home in South Laredo. Robert’s salary covered bills.

  Still, they were a young couple with two kids, trying to make it in a new city. There was plenty to fight about. One of about one thousand white people in a city where bloodlines and patronage determined jobs and social circles, Ronnie was more of an outsider than Robert. As a stay-at-home mom she felt isolated. Life in Laredo wasn’t fulfilling. That was their biggest fight: She wanted to get out. When she did go looking for work, she felt lucky to get hired at a doctor’s office, where she was told, “You know, I like it that you’re not from here.”

  Later, Robert would learn to divide the cop persona from the father-husband. But in his twenties, the machismo kicked in at home. I’m the man and you’ll obey. I’m going out tonight. There’s nothing you can do about it. Ronnie was dominant herself, until she grew sick of fighting and relented. “Okay,” she told him one night, “have a good time.” Taken aback by her capitulation, Robert worried about what she was going to do when he got home. He rushed back an hour later. Is that all it takes? Ronnie thought.

  If Robert’s bravado failed to impress his wife, his little brother Jesse saw him as a hero. Jesse, feeling as though he could please their parents only by matching Robert’s accomplishments, dropped out of high school in eleventh grade and came to live with Robert and Ronnie in Laredo, where he got a job as a high school security guard. Jesse wanted to become a cop, too, but he was young. Robert advised him to get an associate’s degree in criminal justice at Laredo Community College. But Robert hadn’t gone to college, and Jesse was eager to start a career. There were openings at the police academy in Uvalde, near Eagle Pass. In the summer of 1997, Robert gave Jesse some money, and his old service weapon, a .357 Magnum. Jesse completed the academy but failed the written test, then failed it again. If he failed a third time, he’d be barred forever from a job in Texas law enforcement.

  Meanwhile, after hundreds of drug arrests, fourteen cars wrecked in hot-pursuit chases, and a dozen minor fractures, Robert was awarded Officer of the Year.

  A week later, Jesse bused up to Wisconsin, where his parents were doing factory work that fall. He spent the weekend with them, showing no particular signs of depression, then returned to the family house in Eagle Pass and shot himself in the heart with Robert’s service weapon.

  Rumors emerged in the aftermath of Jesse’s death. A girlfriend might’ve been pregnant. He might’ve been messing around with drugs, might’ve owed people money. Robert put his fist through a wall, then stalked around Eagle Pass looking for people to speak with about Jesse, until his father said, “Déjale.” Leave it. Don’t investigate. So Robert took Jesse’s prized possession, a Marlboro jacket he’d sent away for, and bundled up his grief.

  The Officer of the Year Award came with an opportunity. The Drug Enforcement Administration offered Robert a role as a task force officer. He wouldn’t make the pay of a federal DEA agent. He’d remain a cop, collecting salary from Laredo PD. DEA agents, who had college degrees, made twice as much in base salary as task force officers. Agents also earned monetary awards for major investigations, sometimes as much as $5,000 per case. The only incentive for task force officers was overtime pay—an extra $10,000 or $12,000 a year for the crazy hours. Win an award, lose a brother. Get a promotion, make the same pay. But now Robert would have the power to investigate drug traffic and make arrests anywhere in the country. He talked to Ronnie. “I’ll travel and won’t see you or the boys much. But it’s temporary. I can bust my ass for awhile.” Eric, the older son, was in third grade; Trey, the younger, was in first. Ronnie knew this arrangement made her a single parent. “Okay,” she said. “Take four years.”

  For a young cop who believed in the drug war, joining the DEA was a big step in his career. It would be nothing like he expected.

  2

  Flickering Candle

  Freeze there: See Gabriel Cardona march backward, away from the stun grenade and the Laredo safe houses, away from the Texas jails and the Company lawyer, back to that zone of impunity. See la policía clear out a restaurant so an enemy ate alone, idle prey, practice for a new soldier. See a pickup truck: Hear the screams of the bound men inside who killed Gabriel’s boss’s brother fade to the whoosh-whoosh of towering flames. See Gabriel, months earlier, arrive at the training camp, primed for the work but not yet a frío, his aptitude raising eyes among la ge
nte nueva, the new people.

  And keep rewinding, back a decade, to Laredo, Texas, in the mid-1990s. It was as hopeful a season as there had been in the oldest ghetto of the poorest city in America. A city of new immigrants and Mexican-Americans whose mother country, next door, was finally set to democratize after seventy years of one-party rule. A city on its way to becoming one of the busiest trading posts of the world’s greatest economy.

  September mornings arrived at a cool ninety-eight degrees—“the late-summer cold spell,” locals joked. Mrs. Gabriela Cardona—known among her children as “La Gaby”—rolled out of bed quietly. Best to let the drunk sleep it off. On her way to the bathroom, with its ceiling that caved in a little more each year but never broke, she slapped the feet of her four sons, who slept together on a queen-size mattress. “Es-school! Es-school! Es-school!” she yelled in her accented English, and flicked water on the boys—ages eleven, ten, six, and four.

  Despite La Gaby’s troublemaking brother and her good-for-nothing husband, neighbors considered the Cardonas a capable family. La Gaby inherited an old family house across the river in Nuevo Laredo, and she occasionally collected rent on it. She worked hard, and always had a job. CPS never visited their address.

  If she was going to have problems with any son, she doubted it would be with the second. Gabriel had started reading earlier than other children, consuming every volume of the Sesame Street series and Selfish, Selfish Rex, a parable about the virtues of sharing. He ran about in Batman shoes, scored perfect attendance at both regular school and Sunday school, and read the Bible. Teachers remarked on his generosity, and how he looked out for smaller kids.

  “Oralé, al agua pato!” La Gaby yelled. Listen up, hit that water duck!

  During elementary school mornings Gabriel showered with his older brother, Luis, while La Gaby shouted soaping instructions from the kitchen: “Cabeza, cuello, arcas, wiwi, cola, pies.” Head, neck, armpits, penis, butt, feet. Combing the boys’ hair into Ricky Martin pompadours, she repeated the instructions until they learned to do it themselves: “El partido por la orilla, lo demás pa’ca y levantas al frente.” The part should be on the side, the rest toward here, and raise it up in the front. Then Gabriel helped his younger brothers get dressed, ate a breakfast taco of egg and chorizo, grabbed his notebook, and ran outside, where a tree dropped sour oranges and threw shade on the multiplying kittens that shat in the dirt by the rusty gate in front of 207 Lincoln.

  Situated on a bluff overlooking the Rio Grande, El Azteca—their six-square-block neighborhood known simply as “Lazteca”—was 250 years old. The streets were narrow, the sidewalks high: a closed feel. Early morning was Gabriel’s favorite time of day. Dawn came quiet in the hood, as cops and Border Patrol switched shifts. He preferred it to the chaos of Lazteca by night, when the streets came alive with the spotlights of beating helicopters and the squeal of tires as drug runners and coyotes—immigrant smugglers—tried to outrun the authorities.

  Interstate 35, the biggest smuggling corridor in America, began a hundred yards from the Cardonas’ door. On the way to school—north along Zacate Creek, west through the I-35 underpass that led to J. C. Martin Elementary—Gabriel and Luis passed men coming off night shifts packing narcotics for the drive north, illegal immigrants looking for a ride to a hotel, and the daily queue outside the bondsman’s office. Such were the signs of Lazteca’s economic health. And like any friendly neighborhood, generosity was community. Fathers and boyfriends and uncles and brothers came home after a successful trip to Dallas, giving here, giving there, buying pizzas. La Gaby would tell the boys, “Vacúnalo!”—Get a lick out of him!

  Uncle Raul, the smuggler who blasted speedballs, injecting heroin and cocaine at the same time, was always in and out of prison, but Raul taught Gabriel and his friends to play football. Gabriel was the quarterback. One of his homies from Lazteca, Rosalio Reta—younger by three years and shorter than a kitchen table—was always trying to prove himself to the older kids. He took big hits and sprang back up, smiling, his huge cheeks swelling like avocados around the upper-lip birthmark. They played violent video games like Mortal Kombat, and listened to the rap music of Tupac Shakur.

  On the way home from school, Gabriel and Luis played along Zacate Creek’s slimy bank. If they came home stinking like fish, they received a beating from La Gaby, who always stood at the ready with an extension cord in hand, nose active. But she had a soft core. Gabriel and Luis’s best friends, the Blake brothers, were allowed to sleep over whenever they brought La Gaby a bottle of Big Red soda or a Coke. She cried when CPS moved the Blakes to foster care in Brownsville after their mother was picked up again for heroin.

  Mr. Cardona was good for certain things. An out-of-work security guard, he took Gabriel and his brothers to the park for barbecues and out riding bikes. He played guitar and sang. On weekends they walked across the border to visit extended family in Nuevo Laredo, passing from the fresh air of America to Mexico’s wilder aromas: carne asada, horses, old leather. With air-pump guns, the cousins played “shooting.” Gabriel would catch pellets in the face but never relent. They called him loco, crazy.

  GABRIEL’S AMERICANNESS GAVE HIM A special status south of the border. The North American Free Trade Agreement, which took effect in 1994, eliminated tariffs on goods traded between Mexico, the United States, and Canada. Not only could Wal-Mart now ship raw materials to Mexico, manufacture goods with Mexican labor, and reimport the finished product to American consumers without penalty, but it could also establish retail outlets in Mexico and drive mom-and-pop stores out of business. Wall Street smiled. Investment flowed. American goods lined the shelves of supermarkets and U.S.-style department stores all over Mexico: Adidas and Kodak; Coke and Cheetos. Willie Nelson poured through speakers. All-day dry cleaners set a new pace. As cheap corn and wheat imports from the United States hurt Mexican farmers, rural Mexicans flocked to northern cities for work in maquiladoras, foreign-owned factories, where they became inundated with American consumer culture. McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, and even Taco Bell lit up skylines from Monterrey to Mexico City. The tendency was to idealize everything American and discount everything Mexican.

  After family visits, when the Cardonas returned to Laredo, Gabriel’s father became insecure, then violent, having seen himself through the eyes of his Mexican family: an American who did no better than they did. Gabriel and Luis watched their drunk father beat their mother, punching her like a man would hit another man. When Gabriel went to school with a palm imprinted on his face, his teacher asked if he was okay. He nodded. He knew the rule: No te identificas. Don’t say anything.

  One night, La Gaby stabbed their father with a kitchen knife, then kicked him out for good. Gabriel was proud of La Gaby for being strong. He resented his father for drinking while his mother worked, and didn’t consider his leaving any great loss. Though a sense of deep loss came a few days later, on Gabriel’s tenth birthday, when Tupac Shakur died from gunshot wounds. Pac was his perro, his dog. Even years later he would feel coraje, rage, at whoever pulled that trigger.

  IN JUNIOR HIGH, GABRIEL WON certificates of excellence for outstanding performance in math and English. Several of his adoring female classmates remembered him as the person to beat in seventh-grade algebra. He had a head for numbers, and a talent for memorization. His English teacher asked everyone to memorize a song and perform it. Gabriel appeared in class with a fake diamond nose ring, and a blue handkerchief around his head. The class rolled in laughter as he sang Tupac’s “How Do U Want It?”

  He quarterbacked the football team through two undefeated seasons, and dreamed of becoming a lawyer. In the summer between eighth and ninth grade he enrolled at Workforce Center, through the Texas Migrant Council, and made a hundred dollars a week. He gave money to La Gaby, and purchased Polo shirts and Tommy Hilfiger boots for himself. He bought a bus ticket to Brownsville to visit a girlfriend whose family had moved away. They went to South Padre Island and ate pizza. Gabriel Cardona appeared to b
e one of those rare Lazteca kids whose energy might take him somewhere other than prison. Looking at the industrious fourteen-year-old, no one could have imagined that the $896.10 he made during the summer of 2000 would be his first and last legal income.

  NAFTA, meanwhile, meant huge changes in cross-border trade, with tens of thousands of trucks coming through Laredo every week. Laredo’s population doubled during the 1990s, making it the second-fastest-growing city in America after Las Vegas, and the largest inland port in the Western Hemisphere. More than 75 percent of Fortune 1000 companies invested in Laredo’s transport facilities that warehoused Mexican goods before they headed north.

  But aside from some extra minimum-wage jobs in the warehouses, none of the new revenue seemed to make it into the pockets of the working class. With a median income 30 percent below the national average, and 38 percent of its residents living below the poverty line, life for most of Laredo, still a front-runner for poorest city in America, had changed little after NAFTA’s passing. Despite the new orgy of commerce, it remained a giant, unimproved truck stop.

  If the city of a quarter-million people didn’t look as poor as it was on paper, it was because the black market buoyed the legitimate one. Many of Laredo’s small businesses—perfume and toy stores; used-car lots and restaurants—were money-laundering fronts. The Mexican Mafia, a California gang with a strong Texas presence, owned slot machine halls known as maquinitas, and a bustling chain of beer drive-thrus, Mami Chula’s, staffed by bikini-clad teens who accepted tips like strippers. Other big gangs, such as the Texas Syndicate and Hermanos de Pistoleros Latinos, known as HPL, also owned businesses. The tallest building in town belonged to the DEA.

  Gabriel stopped looking forward to their Mexico visits. His family didn’t have much, but he still felt bad going across in his Sunday best to see cousins who had nothing. Some of them picked pockets, washed cars, or performed sidewalk spectacles for tourist change. He did like sneaking out of church with his cousin, putting chewed gum on a stick, and fishing cash from the donation box. But Mexico, he felt, was dirty. Flies buzzed around garbage. He smelled urine, saw gang graffiti on brick walls, and watched plastic bags blow against fences, trapped like wounded birds. He didn’t like having to be careful where he sat or roamed. His opinion would change, later, when he got some money. But for now he appreciated America for its relative glimmer.