Wolf Boys

by Dan Slater

  Miguel rarely drank, but at the party he drank eighteen-year-old Buchanan’s whiskey from a giant bottle and called Wolf Boys over to do shots. When summoned for a shot, Wences mentioned that he might head out soon to go meet some girls somewhere else. Wences had been working with men for months; he longed for independence and female companionship away from the Company. “Sure,” Miguel said. “But stay awhile longer. Then you can go.”

  Wolf Boys, observing the jealousy of older Company men toward Miguel, tended to assume that it was Miguel’s success that engendered resentment. Look how smart he was. Who else worked that hard? But the older soldiers saw it differently. Miguel wasn’t admired. He was a micromanaging dick who loved discipline for discipline’s sake. If your woman called during the operativo, you better hope MT didn’t call when you were on the phone with her because you’d get tablazos—spanked with a two-by-four with holes drilled in the business end for maximum batting speed, and not be able to sit down for a week. Even on franco, vacation, he expected you to call twice a day and answer when he called. If not, tablazos. What kind of vacation was that?

  Miguel was generous with money, it was true, but only because he could afford to be. He made his attitude plain. He was the one who battled the incursion from the Sinaloans. He was the one who secured Nuevo Laredo. Miguel was all about Miguel. He cared nothing about the Company. Just look at the scheming bastard. At his own drooling envy of the Zeta Chiefs, Catorce and Lazcano. Lazcano trusted Miguel, and agreed to most of Miguel’s suggestions regarding Company operations. A year earlier, Lazcano shattered the bones in his shooting hand, and could now barely work a weapon. He traveled by helicopter and with no fewer than seven bodyguards. Miguel would have the Chiefs eaten raw when the time was right, and his betrayals would destroy the organization.

  “Todo va a ser de La Compañía!” Miguel hollered—It will all belong to the Company! He wanted the Company to run everything, he claimed publicly. Inwardly, he wanted to be king.

  It had been five hundred years since Moctezuma the Younger’s accession to the throne made the Aztecs the unchallenged masters of a tribute empire that controlled the Gulf Coast. The warlords of Tenochtitlan originated in the mythic northwest land of Aztlán—“the Place of Whiteness”—before migrating south and taking over the whole of middle earth. Like the Zetas, the Aztecs began as enforcers for an established power structure. The lord of Culhuacán, ruler of the old empire around present-day Mexico City, enlisted the Aztecs as mercenaries—just as Osiel and the Gulf Cartel formed the Zetas to handle violence—promising the Aztecs their freedom if they captured eight thousand Xochimilca enemies. The Aztec tribesmen carried out the slaughter, and delivered bags of severed ears to the throne as evidence. Later, after overtaking the lord of Culhuacán, the Aztec savages, rulers of a new empire on the muddy isle of Tenochtitlan, sacrificed their own so that spring would come, and offered children of the poor to Tlaloc, the rain god.

  Aztec human sacrifice was perhaps no more extensive than comparable practices among ancient Syrians and Mesopotamians, or the barbaric Germans and Celtic Druids. If Miguel Treviño was destined for greatness in the cartel underworld, it was because he personified the extremes of these pre-moral cultures. If Miguel had an Aztec model, it was Xipe Totec, the skull-faced deity who threw bodies off pyramids and chewed on human limbs. Miguel, it was said, once removed a heart by reaching through the thorax of a beheaded corpse.

  LATER DURING THE PARTY, TONY Tormenta, the brother of the imprisoned Gulf Cartel leader Osiel Cárdenas, took the stage and addressed the crowd, a mix of Company employees, both Zetas and Gulf Cartel members.

  Tony Tormenta—who despite a healthy cocaine habit remained obese—gave the kind of rah-rah speech familiar to anyone who’s worked in a corporate setting, where expansion and the bottom line are paramount. Tormenta said the Company was making progress. From its original territories in the Gulf states of Nuevo León, Tamaulipas, and Veracruz, the Company’s control now reached west to Coahuila and even to part of Durango; into the central states of San Luis Potosí and Zacatecas; and to the crucial southeast states of Tabasco and Chiapas, where Mexico bordered Guatemala—a major gateway for traffic in cocaine and immigrants.

  The Company’s employee expansion reflected its success, Tormenta pointed out. When his brother Osiel created the Zetas in the late 1990s, the Gulf Cartel numbered fewer than 100 people. Now, from leadership to lookouts, the Company, Gulf Cartel and Zetas combined, employed about 10,000; and that number would double over the next five years. The Company also had a strong social conscience, a love of Mexico, Tormenta said. This goodwill took the form of cash to the poor; millions sent to fund-raisers; and trailers overflowing with toys on Christmas. The U.S. military had its Toys for Tots program. The Company had its Día del Niño. The Company men smiled. They all knew the rewarding feeling of giving a poor person a gift, how an old man would mutter “Bendito sea el señor” as he walked away. Miguel would often approach beggars on the street and ask them why they were poor, then take them to Soriana, the chain of Mexican grocery stores, and fill a pickup truck with food.

  Tormenta continued: The coming year of 2006 would bring more blood. But their cause was just. The war was born of the other side’s greed. It was Chapo Guzmán and the Sinaloa Cartel—through La Barbie and the Beltrán-Leyvas and other smuggling clans aligned against the Company—who had started the war by offering rewards, a going rate, for dead Company men. The Company’s soldiers, Tormenta said, would be deployed widely—to Reynosa and Monterrey—and even to plazas in the far-off Yucatán Peninsula. Some would be sent as far south as Santa Elena, the Colombian port city, and one or two as far north as Boston. All work, he concluded, would be rewarded, and, if need be, each Company man’s family would be compensated in the event of his death.

  The men in the audience straightened and nodded like stoics. By the time Company men achieved comandante status—or something above a mere hit man—most were old enough to know how the cartel life ended. Gabriel’s godfather, Meme Flores, characterized the gleeful fatalism of the Company man when he inhaled coke and tequila and screamed, “A coger y a mamar que el mundo se va acabar!” Let’s fuck and suck because the world is about to end! But in January 2006, at nineteen, Gabriel was still young enough to believe it would last forever, that each violent engagement was something more than an isolated project. He saw the vacations and bonuses, the gifts to the poor and the trailers of toys on Día del Niño. Such perks conveyed the sense that some Company committee set loyal Wolf Boys on a path, coaxed along by pay raises and the promise of management.

  Gabriel looked around the posada. Refugees of officialdom surrounded him. Politicians and cops. Artists and models. The accountant from whom Gabriel collected his Company salary had once been a federal prosecutor. The son of Nuevo Laredo’s new mayor sipped tequila a few feet away. Celebrities escorted cartel leaders: through an agent, comandantes paid five thousand dollars a night for the company of Latin singers and actresses. He thought of the parties he used to read about in Vibe magazine. He thought of Tupac, and of Suge Knight’s infamous attorney who made all problems disappear. This Company life really was no different.

  Something had happened in the three months since Gabriel got out of jail. He’d followed orders, did his time, and came back out. Prison is where the Company lost some recruits, but he not only continued, he expanded. He brought in Richard, who was liked. And he brought in Bart, a much-loved Wolf Boy. Little Bart! If you wanted him to do something, all you had to do was tell him not to do it! Gabriel was proud of Bart, and felt no threat. Gabriel already had “credit” from the comandantes. He “jumped at the front of the barrel” when others held back. People listened to him.

  Gabriel reflected on his path to this point. As a new recruit he’d worked hard in the training camp, then bounced around from plaza to plaza and helped out restlessly, voluntarily, until the comandantes saw his dedication and started giving him more important jobs. He learned the radio codes. Nuevo L
aredo was Nectar Lima. Miguel Alemán was Metro Alfa. Mexico City—el distrito federal—was Delta Fox. Reynosa was 9-6. “Nothing new” was 3-4. “I’m waiting” was 3-1. “Army” was 8-0. Puros guachos were the military you had to watch out for, soldiers who hadn’t been bribed. Papeles, paper, meant money. Nacional, national, was marijuana. Extranjero, foreigner, was cocaine. Puntos were safe houses, but could also mean targets for assassination. Chapulines, grasshoppers, were traitors. Devices, birds, and calves were kilos. Your stack, or post, was your crew. (“Look, güey, my stack is all tangled up.”)

  Gabriel knew how to be around the Chiefs, how to answer questions with to-the-point responses. In public settings, especially if a comandante was out with his family, Gabriel nodded discreetly but left them to their space, unlike other sicarios who kissed ass. He also learned to recognize resentment from midlevel managers who weren’t keen on a younger talent. Once, when he had to abort a mission because the puros guachos interfered, a comandante disparaged him in Miguel’s presence. Gabriel scoffed. The guy was dicksucking Miguel! But Gabriel respected rank. He simply said that he knew what he had to do and would do it.

  A soldier could piss away his rank by avoiding missions or crapping out on the operativo. He could misbehave on franco, dry shooting or killing without permission. And then there was the pitfall of any poor kid who came into money and reputation: unruly family who “ripped a load” from the wrong person, hit on the wrong woman, or threw their notorious relation’s name around too liberally.

  Gabriel’s uncle Raul, his mother’s youngest brother, fell into this last category. Much of the time Raul was in jail for crossing weed or illegal immigrants, or for violating probation when his urinalysis inevitably came back dirty. Raul was always getting in bar fights, then dropping Gabriel’s name when he got picked up by the police. “If you don’t cut that shit out you’re going to get in trouble!” Gabriel would tell him. Raul waved these warnings off: “But you rule Nuevo Laredo!”

  It was true. As a favored soldier of Meme and Miguel, during a moment in time when the Company appeared to be effectively fighting off enemies and controlling the border, Gabriel was tantamount to the law. He could run free, swagger, lord over, fuck with. And that status conferred power on his entourage. At clubs like Eclipse and 57th Street, the VIP area was always reserved for the Wolf Boys. Even if the tables were taken, people left without being asked whenever Gabriel walked through the door. He even had his own driver, a subservient boy from Lazteca called Chapa. When Chapa was locked up in a Nuevo Laredo jail, Gabriel’s older brother, Luis, also a member of Gabriel’s entourage, barged into the police department, shouted out Gabriel’s Zeta code, and demanded that Chapa be released.

  Such demonstrations of power were routine, and, admittedly, they set a poor example for Uncle Raul. But what could be done? Raul was like a brother, and Gabriel loved him. Whenever Uncle Raul hit big with a load of drugs or illegal aliens, he gave everything he made to family. So when Raul came charging home from another bar scrap and demanded a gun, Gabriel instructed everyone to deny him one. They gave him a phone instead and told him to call them whenever he ran into trouble.

  Gabriel loved the power, most certainly. But he didn’t like what he did for a living. Years earlier, the youngster from Lazteca had run out clean and come back hard. He ran out with a pacifist’s heart, calcified by the communal code of vengeance. The after-school fights, the club scene, the border itself—these were the doorways through which white halls led to the darkness beyond. And now? Yes, he was cold. One of the Company’s prized cold ones. A frío. But no sadist. He would never shoot a cat, as Bart did when they were kids. He would never swerve out of the way to hit a sleeping dog, as Miguel did in Mexico. How do you think that made him feel? A dog lover! And yet when it came to killing, Gabriel could remain unshaken in the face of any engagement. He did so with the help of the roches, but also by focusing on the execution of a plan rather than the elimination of a human target. In his mind he was not a doer of acts but an agent of business, an accountant of fates already inked. As Gabriel told Robert Garcia, back in June, after the murder of Bruno Orozco, “One knows what one gets into.” He saw himself as a soldier in a war, knew his enemies saw themselves in a similar light, and accepted whatever fate befell him. This mentality made torture and beatings easier on his mind: If the situation were reversed, and Gabriel was kidnapped, his enemy would take no pity on him. Sure, it was an underworld principle—supposedly—to try to spare a target’s family whenever possible. But Gabriel didn’t feel much guilt over Bart having shot Moises Garcia’s wife by accident. She was married to a well-known smuggler and killer. What did she expect?

  This code earned Gabriel success, and now, within the Company, he didn’t doubt where he stood. “I’m clear on my circle,” Miguel would tell him with a nod, a way of saying he knew his associates were trustworthy and that Gabriel was part of that circle. He felt a destiny, merging with Miguel’s, toward some exalted corporate realm that Richard and Wences lacked the sacrificial will to penetrate. “I’ll let you take this one,” the other Wolf Boys would often say to Gabriel on jobs, as if doing him a favor, then mumble something about having kids, a family.

  Among the Wolf Boys, only Richard declined to openly exalt Gabriel. To Richard, Gabriel chose wrong by connecting himself so closely to Meme. Any reasonable person saw that Meme was not of Miguel’s ilk. He just didn’t have the right stuff for leadership. Take the house where Miguel kept his wife and daughters: well cared for but discreet. Then look at “El Castillo,” the name of Meme’s palace in La Amalia. With its big columns and lookout towers, El Castillo was the garish theme park of lesser lords. Meme was from the school of Die-Young-And-Look-Beautiful-In-The-Casket. Like other comandantes who would never become top capos, Meme was more soldier-in-the-field than general-at-his-desk. A loyal gunslinger, sure, and respected, but not, in Richard’s words, “a business-wise individual.” In Richard’s opinion, Meme was too friendly with younger guys like Gabriel because he hadn’t earned the respect of his peers.

  Now, as the posada carried into the early-morning hours, Gabriel and Richard drank whiskey with Miguel.

  Richard, his nose packed with lavadita, blithely mentioned that he’d seen Miguel’s ex-girlfriend Elsa Sepulveda with a Laredo doper named Mike Lopez, a successful smuggler who transported drugs for the Zetas. This loose talk annoyed Gabriel. Everyone knew of Miguel’s jealousy. A month earlier, Miguel had barged into another ex-girlfriend’s wedding and danced with the bride. And everyone remembered Yvette Martinez and Brenda Cisneros, the Martin High students who worked as gofers for Miguel. When Yvette and Brenda started talking to a former Company man, a bodyguard who defected to Sinaloa, Miguel gave the girls tickets to a Paulina Rubio concert from which they never returned. As for his ex-girlfriend Elsa Sepulveda, the beautiful daughter of a Nuevo Laredo cop, Miguel was so humiliated when she broke it off that he threw a grenade at her house. He coveted intelligence about his girlfriends, present and past, as if the vicissitudes of romantic drama were business itself.

  Gabriel wondered: Was Richard trying to win Miguel’s favor by passing info that should’ve gone to Gabriel first? When Richard joined the Wolf Boys, Gabriel introduced him to Miguel and told him to tell Miguel everything he knew about logistics. Tell him about the trucks. The warehouses. The front company. Go ahead, tell him. Conversations followed, and their candor surprised Gabriel. Richard told Miguel that, prior to his San Antonio warehouse getting busted by the feds, he’d been moving drugs for a Sinaloa supplier. Gabriel expected that Richard would hide this former association with the enemy. It was even more surprising to Gabriel, however, when Miguel just shrugged it off. Miguel told Richard to request a loan when he was ready to get a new line of trucks running. Miguel and Richard, it seemed, shared some sophisticated approach to business, a mature understanding.

  Still, Gabriel felt secure in his “chosen path.” A young man from poverty who landed in this higher-status milieu, he possessed the
requisite anxiety and anger that fueled an obsession with detail. Such conscientious managers were the lifeblood of companies, of capitalism itself. As a middle manager located in one of the Company’s crucial international territories—Laredo, Texas—Gabriel was now both point man for Laredo jobs, and fall guy when things went wrong. He relished the responsibility, though it created pressures he did not yet understand.

  Miguel called a pantera to ask if it was true: Was Elsa Sepulveda with Mike Lopez?

  Richard and Gabriel could hear the woman’s voice break on the other end. Miguel clicked the phone shut, pulled the golden .38 from his belt, spun around, and brandished it in different directions, laughing, as if trying out ways he might kill Mike Lopez, or have him killed.

  Miguel glanced at Gabriel.

  It didn’t matter that Mike Lopez was an American who lived in Texas. Miguel had enforcers on that side as well.

  21

  A Boner for Bart

  South Padre Island?” Ronnie asked. “Now? It’s the middle of the week!”

  A prepper by nature, Ronnie Garcia needed time to prepare for a trip, to write lists of what to take and consider all options for transport and lodging. So when Robert announced, last minute, that they were going to South Padre Island for a long weekend, and that Trey would come along, Ronnie was pissy from the moment they got in the car. She was even pissier four hours later when they checked into a roach motel and she realized she forgot her sunscreen and bathing suit. Robert yanked her along South Padre’s main strip, in and out of beach shops that sold bikinis, seemingly oblivious, after fifteen years of marriage, that a big girl like Ronnie didn’t do bikinis.