He’d wanted to be a cop as long as he could remember, and his dream came true. What Chief Margarito hadn’t anticipated was that after all those years, being a police officer in the port would feel like rowing solo into the eye of a hurricane. And sometimes the hurricane even called you on the phone to give you a direct order or to say, I’m coming for you—which is what happened the night before.
The day that was supposed to be his last on the job was one of those when you couldn’t tell the sea from the sky, when you knew a storm was coming because you heard the sound of the thunder pushing through the fog and it felt like bombs going off somewhere far away. It was stifling, unbearable, like being inside a pressure cooker: the minute you stepped out of the shower, you were already covered in sweat. After a brutal week when not a single cloud bothered to pass over La Eternidad, when the port’s residents and those few, clueless tourists still drawn in by the malecón decided to huddle in the shade from noon till six at night, the deluge felt like a miracle. It was a furious, thousand-armed giant that knocked down three palm trees and didn’t rest until it had flooded every working-class neighborhood, fishing settlement, and slum. But under the normal summer sun, the city would be a sauna until nightfall. What a difference, he thought. The day he took the job had been clear and sunny with a gentle breeze blowing in off the water. Now, the heat and the fog multiplied his misgivings.
As he finished his usual breakfast (a cup of coffee and a Coca-Cola), he mulled over who could have called to threaten him the night before. When I get my hands on that motherfucker … Hardly anyone had the number of the cell phone he reserved for his most trusted colleagues, his contacts in the trade, a few snitches, and a certain high-ranking military officer. His ex-wife and son were in the respectable phone he used for his professional conversations, even if she only ever dialed his number to yell at him, and his son wouldn’t take a call from him in a million years.
As he lit his second cigarette of the day, he noticed that his hands were shaking. He hadn’t been able to take his mind off the threat or his imminent retirement long enough to fall asleep. What were the guy’s exact words? Your days are numbered, Chief. I’ve got bullets here with your name on them.
He’d been heading out of the office after delegating a few loose ends and saying good-bye to the team who had been at his side for so long. El Flaco was the only one who’d volunteered to keep him company on the way to the beach, more as a friendly gesture than out of any real need.
He got the call on the highway, right in the middle of the storm. His pickup was full of his belongings, and he’d been slow to react because he was at the wheel. El Flaco’s run-down truck was a few yards behind him. Margarito’s phone rang about six times before he noticed the words UNKNOWN CALLER on the screen and picked up—against every instinct he’d developed in three decades of working for the worst kinds of men.
“Hello?”
“You’re going to die.”
Understandably, he didn’t respond right away. Death threats weren’t a common thing, not even for him. He could count on the fingers of one hand the times someone had dared to threaten him directly. One time, Don Agustín’s bodyguard tried it when they picked him up for selling amphetamines without permission from the local wholesalers. Margarito had told the other officers to let him go and knocked the man’s teeth out with two or three right hooks and a few well-placed kicks. Then he’d grabbed him by the collar and snarled, “Say it again, sweetheart, and I’ll bury you alive right here on the beach.” Word must have gotten around, because it never happened again. The guys he worked with didn’t beat around the bush. If they didn’t like something, they told you straight out or acted accordingly, but they didn’t telegraph things beforehand. It was true that since marijuana took off in the seventies, the precinct had been getting more prank calls, especially on the weekends, when the dumber brats had a little too much to smoke or drink. But this was Margarito’s private number, the one he saved for dangerous contacts, and very few people had it. So he slowed down.
“Who is this?” he asked.
“Your days are numbered, Chief. I’ve got bullets here with your name on them.”
It sounded as if the mouthpiece was being dragged through sand or gravel and then the call cut out.
He pulled over near some palm trees. There wasn’t another soul anywhere on that stretch of highway.
His initial train of thought was shattered when El Flaco tapped his keys a few times on the passenger’s side window. It took Margarito a second to register that the man standing there was his bodyguard and to lower it for him.
“Die on you?”
“What?”
“Your car, boss. Did it die on you?”
El Flaco was completely soaked from the storm, despite the plastic bag he’d torn open and was using as a hood.
“No, I have to return a call. Give me a minute.”
When Flaco Ibarra didn’t move, he added, “Go back to your car.”
Fucking Flaco, there’s no point in kissing ass now.
The voice had sounded familiar, but he didn’t think it was one of his contacts in either of the organizations engaged in a war of atrocities over the port. He racked his brain but couldn’t think of anything he might have done to anger them. Nothing much had changed in the past few months: the same two groups were still armed to the teeth and determined to massacre each other. La Cuarenta still held uncontested control over Colonia Pescadores. The only difference was the body count. But he’d been instructed to limit his involvement to clearing away the remains.
Did I screw up somewhere? His only arrests in the past few days had been of three gangbangers who’d insisted on selling drugs on the pier, outside their designated territory, but the voice on the phone didn’t seem to come from a gang. No, they wouldn’t go that far, he thought. And whoever it was sounded too well educated to be from the Four-Zero. The face of the young man who’d taken over the leadership of Los Viejos flashed before his eyes, followed by that of the Colonel, who’d recently moved to La Eternidad. Could I have pissed one of them off? You never know with those guys. They can’t be trusted, not with all the shit they snort. It’d be just like the Colonel to want to get rid of someone like him, an associate who knew too much. Still, he wasn’t the type to telegraph his intentions, and Margarito was confident he’d be useful to the warring factions even after leaving his post. He wasn’t surprised when his godson had insinuated there’d be room for him in the ranks. It was what the young man’s father, Obregón—Margarito’s dear friend and the organization’s founder—would have wanted, may he rest in peace. In any case, he concluded, I can’t just leave this threat hanging there. I need to find out who called me. The minute I’m off the force they’re going to be lining up to settle accounts. The new administration had made it very clear he shouldn’t expect any help from them. We all have skeletons in our closets, but Margarito’s closet was especially big. He’d made a lot of enemies over the course of his career, and now they all wanted to get even. But how else was he supposed to have done his job? A cop who doesn’t strike first is a lousy cop.
Just the thought of what awaited him was exhausting. He was sixty years old, about to go into forced retirement, and had one of the worst reputations of any police chief in the country. Not even hell itself would give him a second chance—which is why he needed so desperately to speak with his replacement.
As if the prospect of being killed or hauled into court weren’t enough, there was also a rumor going around that he was the one who’d kidnapped Mr. De León’s daughter the week before and that he was the one who’d demanded the ransom. Well, isn’t that just the goddamn cherry on top. As his former mentor, Elijah, used to say, rumors like that could ruin a gentleman’s reputation.
It might not be such a bad idea to get out of town for a while. With a little luck, he could talk his son into letting him stay at his apartment in Canada until things settled down. If memory served, Canada didn’t require an entry visa—and it
didn’t have an extradition treaty with Mexico.
Now that his career was coming to an end, he asked himself what he was going to do with his life. He didn’t have many options left. He pictured himself investing his depleted savings in honest but short-lived businesses; he’d never been much good at those things. He pictured himself down and out, driving his old partners around or working as a bodyguard to the rich and infamous. He pictured himself getting arrested and not lasting long in jail, ending his days beaten to a pulp and carved up by the guys he’d sent through the system. He pictured his immediate future, and he didn’t like what he saw. Which is why he was so grateful for the ace he still had up his sleeve: it was a risky move, but it might just save his hide. First, though, he had to win his successor over.
He set his coffee on the table in front of the window and looked at the two cardboard boxes sealed with packing tape next to the bookshelf. Those files had been his insurance policy for years, especially certain documents signed by or implicating politicians who were still in office. As the chief took them out of his car the night before, he’d thought to himself that those kinds of precautions were going to be useless before long. Knowing his enemies in the mayor’s office, he wouldn’t be surprised if he were detained within hours of being removed from his post. I wouldn’t be surprised, either, if the kidnapped girl suddenly turned up and they tried to lay the blame on me. The proceedings scheduled for the next few hours at city hall were just the start of the public execution they’d planned for him.
Fresh beads of sweat began to gather on his forehead and he realized he’d strayed too far from the air conditioner. He was going to need to jump from one artificially cool bubble to the next all day if he didn’t want his clothes to end up soaked through.
He walked over to the console table by the front door and looked at the objects he typically attached to his belt: key ring, dark glasses, two cell phones, gun, lucky knife. He put on his favorite straw hat and, just before he walked out the front door, looked down at the loafers his ex-wife had given him years ago. For some inexplicable reason, he still had them. The simple elegance of the loafers, more appropriate for a dentist or an accountant, clashed with his button-down shirt and jeans. He’d gone barefoot until he started primary school, which he was forced to attend in flip-flops; he got his first pair of boots when he was twelve and had never worn anything else since. The loafers seemed hypocritical, almost fraudulent. Then again, my whole life is a fraud, he thought, and he decided it was time to break them in.
He couldn’t remember ever having walked through a denser fog: it was hard to see to the end of the block. Just as he was about to open the door to his truck he heard a strange noise coming from the palm trees behind him. Faster than a lightning bolt cuts through the sky and disappears, he’d thought: It’s them. They’ve come for me and they’re going to kill me, right here. But it was just the horrible screech of an owl: it had emerged from the vegetation, beat the air with its wings, and vanished into the fog. An owl, he thought. He’d crossed paths with them before, way back when he and his mother lived out on a ranch in the middle of the sierra, but they never used to frighten him. You scared the shit out of me, fucker. The tiny bit of his brain that had managed to survive the sleepless nights, poor diet, and stress of his thirty years as police chief produced the only remotely profound thought it would have that morning, and Margarito understood why people freeze in terror when they hear those birds screech in the dark, as if they’d spent thousands of years as mice. He got into the truck and thought: It was just an owl. My nerves are shot, it was just an owl, let’s get the hell out of here.
A few moments later his extended cab Cheyenne pickup, purchased with funds from one of the criminal organizations operating in the port, pulled out of the garage and headed straight into the storm.
Among the few possessions he’d managed to hold on to after being extorted by Los Nuevos were his two residences: an apartment in an old building downtown and a house on the beach, which he considered the jewel in his crown despite the fact it was only half finished and he spent barely any time there. Luckily, the title wasn’t in his name. He’d never forget the day Los Nuevos arrived. Bunch of fucking assholes, he thought. I bust my ass my whole life and they drop in and take it all away. He’d gone to check out two decapitated bodies that had been left on the outskirts of the city. It didn’t make any sense; executions just weren’t done that way. The fingerprint database back at the office was such a joke it would take forever to identify them. The chief was examining the crime scene when one of his investigators shouted, “Heads up, Chief! Incoming!” He looked up to see a caravan of five white pickups speeding through the neighborhood. As the trucks got closer, it dawned on him that this wasn’t a visit from the governor. When the first few guys got out of the trucks and nonchalantly leveled their assault rifles at him like they owned him, he studied their clothes and weapons closely. This was before the rash of firefights began, so even with their guns pointed at him, he had no idea what danger he was in. His first thought was that the army had finally come to arrest him for corruption. There’s been a shake-up in the state police, he thought. One of my enemies made it to a position of power without my knowing it. Looking more closely at the new arrivals, though, he quickly realized that no officer in the Mexican military would let his men go around with those handlebar mustaches, sideburns, and goatees.
“What do you want?”
“Get in, Chief Margarito González,” someone shouted from inside one of the trucks. “We’re going for a spin.”
He was so surprised he didn’t even put up a fight when they took his gun.
The truck they hoisted him into seemed like a recent acquisition—by one means or another. The leather smelled as if the vehicle had just rolled off the assembly line, and inside two rows of seats faced each other with a minibar between them. From one of the seats, a man in a suit with a shaved head, a thick mustache, and a black cowboy hat on his lap addressed him.
“Welcome, Chief. Do you know who I am?”
Margarito gestured toward the street.
“The guy who left me those bodies?”
“That’s right. I’m the new boss around here,” the man replied. “We should talk.”
“I’m listening.”
“It’s very simple, Chief. You do business with Mr. Obregón’s son. But that stops now. You’re either with us or you’re against us. With the job you have, you’ve got to choose. We’ve tolerated your presence until now, because you didn’t make trouble. You were always the type to live and let live, and as long as we didn’t draw too much attention to ourselves we never had any problems with you. But not anymore. We’re coming for all of it. We’re in charge now.”
Margarito took a good look at him but didn’t recognize his face. He spoke and moved like a military man, but he wore expensive clothes from up at the border. A soldier couldn’t afford that luxury.
“Mr. Obregón and his son are on their way out. They’ll either make a deal or they’ll die. In the meantime, we’re calling in the debts some of these local entrepreneurs have racked up. You know who I mean. If they think they get to keep the money they made off us, money they were just holding for us because the army took out our boss a couple of weeks ago—well, they won’t think that for long. And just so there’s no question about who’s in charge here, we’re going to start with you.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Margarito.
“We know you’re close with Mr. Obregón. They pay you five thousand dollars a month for your cooperation.”
It was true. When his friend decided to dedicate himself full-time to the trade, he’d invited Margarito over and said, “If I’m greasing the palms of the federales and every customs agent between here and the border, how could I not pay you a little, after everything you’ve done for me?”
The man who’d been speaking, known as the Colonel, slid a blue plastic cooler toward him with his foot.
“Open it.”
One of the guys sitting next to Margarito jabbed him in the ribs with the barrel of his gun, so he leaned over the cooler.
Inside were the heads of two men he knew: Antonio Gallego and Roque Linares, who dealt drugs for Mr. Obregón in La Eternidad’s nightclubs.
“They didn’t want to work with us.”
The Colonel shut the cooler with the tip of his boot.
“Five thousand a month over fifteen years comes to nine hundred grand. Figuring that you probably spent half of it and that you built a house in the middle of the city, we’re asking for four hundred thousand and the house. That’s for letting you, your wife, and your son live. If you say no, the three of you will end up in a cooler like this one. Your wife teaches history at the university from nine to five. Poor thing, she stays so late the parking lot’s practically empty when she leaves. Your son goes to the same university; he takes classes in the evening and then goes for a run between eight and nine in La Huasteca. The boy’s in great shape; not bad for a civilian.
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