What did he remember about her? Her name: Marisol? Soledad? The tops of her breasts swelling out of a leotard. Extra heft in the hips and thighs. Turning, posing on the dance floor, swaying against him in knee-length leather pants. Marisol-or-Soledad was from Calexico. Said his accent in Spanish was cute, reminded her of this South American singer on MTV Latino. She was one of the platoon of women waiting when the homeboys arrived at the ranch. The place was fancied up for a party: mariachis, an outdoor bar, a disc jockey on the gazebo spinning tunes. Oldies for cholos: “Always and Forever,” “Who’s That Lady?,” “Lean On Me.” But the mood was less than mellow because Pelón wandered around firing one-armed volleys at the stars with his AK-47.
Time for the Death Patrol to celebrate. Mission accomplished. But nobody bothered to tell Pescatore what the mission had been. Soon after César had gotten out, the van had left the Río Zone and headed for the ranch. Riding silently, the homeboys heard traffic on Buffalo’s police radio. César had used the gun on somebody important.
Marisol-or-Soledad was curious too: What are you guys celebrating? Pescatore just mumbled and poured rum in her Coke. He did not want to think about it. Marisol-or-Soledad was all over him and he responded in kind. He pulled her close on the dance floor by the gazebo, hungry for her. He pawed at her leotard, her rum-and-Coke-and-nicotine taste filling his mouth. He tried to coax her into the darkness beyond the firing range. Let’s go see Junior’s zoo: He’s got ostriches, kangaroos, a big ol’ Galapagos turtle. She nuzzled him, toyed with him, told him he was too drunk to be trusted. As they lurched toward a bench, she said, “Oye, que borracho estás, no? You going to vomit?”
She kept asking what they were celebrating. What a pain in the ass. Somebody must have told her. Or told her to stop asking questions, bitch. That was what had freaked her out.
Time moved in freeze-frames. Pescatore contemplated strange things. The way Pelón’s eyebrows climbed his scalp. The way Pelón’s lips strained back from a startling outsized mouthful of teeth. Pelón and Sniper sat across the coffee table from Pescatore, laughing at the screen.
“Aw, ain’t that a fuckin’ pity,” Pelón whooped. “Served her right.”
Pescatore found himself suspended head down over the mirror, homing in on the white lines with a plastic straw. A sour stream blazed up through his sinuses. He snuffled and spluttered, turning away from the mirror. It was the first time he had done cocaine. It felt like a noseful of chlorine. He slumped miserably, trying to play it off, hoping the others were too wasted to notice.
Then a flash of awareness cut through the fog in his head. Amid the clutter on the table—pistols, ammo, keys, cigarette packs—he had spotted a cell phone. The phone was silver. It was decorated with a red-green-and-black decal: an image of a skeleton wearing a wedding veil and holding a Grim Reaper’s scythe. Santa Muerte, the patron of the narco-pistoleros. Sacred Death. Pescatore believed it was Pelón’s phone; he had seen the shaven-headed homeboy fiddling with it. Pescatore calculated the distance to the phone. More than an arm’s length. Closer to Pelón and Sniper than to him.
The shouting got really loud. Pescatore looked up. The TV showed a corpse. A woman sprawled in a red puddle among cops, bystanders, discarded paramedic’s gloves.
Cut to indignant politicians. Cut to tearful relatives. Live shot: a funeral. A coffin on a lawn.
A familiar face: Méndez. Unshaven, gray-flecked stubble, red-streaked squinty eyes. Open-collared striped shirt under his leather jacket.
Méndez walked among mourners. He carried a little girl in a black dress with a frilly white collar, her curls held back by a black headband. The faces around them were anguished, distorted. Méndez and the toddler were not crying. Méndez held the girl high on his chest. Her arms encircled his neck. They both looked as if they were staring at a door that was about to open onto something hideous.
“You’re next, güey!” Pelón hooted. “You’re next, Méndez. Gonna kill your ass!”
Oh God, Pescatore thought. The image of Méndez and the girl hit him like a punt in the gut. That’s what we’re celebrating. César killed that lady. Who was she, Méndez’s wife? Oh fuck. What did they do? What did we do? The camera zoomed in on a bearded professor-looking guy behind Méndez. The man was crying so hard his whole body convulsed. Mourners held his arms, practically carrying him.
“Cállate, maricón!” Pelón made a whimpering noise. Sniper echoed him, egging him on. Pelón took a long hit off a joint, threw his head back and wailed like a coyote.
The television showed file footage of the dead woman: Araceli Aguirre. Talking into microphones, a Mexican flag behind her. A big shot. Cute in a skinny, retro-hippie kind of way. The newscaster spewed words: assassination, human rights, crisis of government.
Pescatore tried to concentrate on the phone on the table. He scanned the mess frantically, shaking his head to focus, until he located the phone again. But then he saw Buffalo appear behind Sniper and Pelón.
Buffalo had been drinking whiskey all night, brooding and unapproachable. He held the bottle now. He still wore the fingerless gloves. The sleeves of his turtleneck were rolled up over his bulging tattooed forearms. His mouth was slightly open, the lips curled tightly inward. He watched Sniper and Pelón cackle and howl on the couch.
“Good idea,” Buffalo said, just loud enough to be heard over the blaring television. “That’s nice: Disrespect the dead. Disrespect their families. You two oughta shut the fuck up.”
Sniper felt the edge in Buffalo’s tone; he quieted down. But Pelón chortled obliviously. Pelón threw Buffalo a delayed-reaction glance over his shoulder, not quite making eye contact.
“We just havin’ some fun, man, qué onda contigo?” Pelón scoffed. “Why you wanna make a issue out of it, Buffalo? Damn.”
Buffalo’s face contorted. Three steps brought him around the couch. With his left hand, he grabbed the remote control off the table, killed the sound on the television and hurled the remote across the room.
“What’d you say, puto?” Buffalo’s bass voice reverberated. “Now you’re disrespecting me?!”
There was sudden silence. The grip of Buffalo’s right hand on the bottle had shifted. He held it straight-armed and thumb down, around the neck, as if it were a club. Someone’s about to get their bald skull tonked, Pescatore thought, watching Sniper sidle away from Pelón. Pescatore felt himself cringe as if he were the imminent victim beneath the two-hundred-fifty-pound shadow.
Pelón glared up at Buffalo through a cloud of disbelief, coming to grips with the reality of the confrontation.
“Disrespectin’ me,” Buffalo repeated in a choked voice. “Talkin’ shit. ’Cause you sat in a van while César shot that lady. Sat in the van with your hand on your dick. And that makes you a big mafioso. Not a little faggot punk bitch.”
Pelón stiffened. His eyes jumped to a pistol lying next to the mirror, then away, terrified by the impulse.
Buffalo followed the look with grim satisfaction. His grip tightened on the bottle. His upper body tilted forward.
“That’s right, Pelón,” Buffalo said, savoring the words, delivering them like blows. “Make a move. Reach for that cuete so I can bust your face open. No wait, let’s get Veronica first. That skank haina you call a girlfriend. She can watch.”
Pelón made a strangled noise. He did not budge. An invisible force pinned him to the couch. Pescatore remembered one of the homeboys telling him how Buffalo had stabbed to death an inmate in Mule Creek with a blade fashioned out of a toothbrush.
Buffalo grunted.
“You ain’ shit,” he said. “Now get outta my sight. Fuera, ya!”
Pelón rose, keeping a careful distance from the pistol on the table. No front, not a shred of attitude left. He tripped over someone’s outstretched legs. At a glance from Buffalo, Momo got up fast and followed Pelón out of the room with a gun in his hand.
Pescatore decided that he’d never get a better opportunity to grab a phone. He hunched forward as if con
templating the cocaine traces on the mirror. Arm extended, he palmed Pelón’s cell phone without looking at it. He reclined and slipped it into a pocket of his jacket. His head whirling, his heart hammering, he stared at the television.
The news program repeated the image of Méndez holding the little girl. Pescatore felt his stomach tighten. His eyes burned and blurred.
Perfect, Pescatore thought in a panic. I’m gonna start bawling. Crying like a bitch in front of everybody. And Buffalo’s gonna crush my skull. And then he’ll find the phone.
“Where you think you’re going, Valentín?” Buffalo snarled after him.
“Throw up,” Pescatore gasped, stumbling, eyes averted.
By the time he reached the hallway, it was no longer a lie. All the tastes of the night, of the past two weeks, heaved up inside him: liquor, reefer, pills, coke, Marisol-or-Soledad. What are you celebrating? What did we do?
He caromed down the hallway into the kitchen and retched into the sink. Clinging to the faucet, he drank from the tap. The water spattered his hair and face and jacket. Camouflaging his tears, swirling them safely down the drain.
For a moment, he saw only blackness. He coughed, gulping air and water alternately. The blackness was disintegrating when he heard the voice behind him.
“Makes me sick too, homes.”
Pescatore saw Buffalo indistinctly among floating silver spots. Buffalo had propped himself against the butcher-block counter in the middle of the kitchen. His feet were spread wide. He swigged from the bottle. Pescatore realized how drunk Buffalo was. Slow-motion drunk, stealth drunk. His voice and face seemed steady. But he teetered. His head nodded in little flurries. His breathing was agitated.
Pescatore put a hand on the pocket containing the cell phone, making sure it was still there. He mumbled apologetically about how that cocaine had gotten all on top of him. Buffalo did not seem to hear.
“Makes me sick, Valentín.”
“What?”
“What happened to that lady. Them braggin’ about it.”
Mystified, Pescatore wiped a sleeve across his mouth. Buffalo’s black eyes glittered, unfocused.
“I told Junior: I vote no,” Buffalo said hoarsely, slurring. “Hell, no. I told ’em, wanna do somebody, do Méndez. He’s askin’ for it. Not that lady, por Dios. You don’ do that. That’s fucked up.”
“Yeah.”
“Junior’s all geeked up. Khalid’s encouragin’ him, like darin’ him. Junior wants Khalid to know he’s the chingón around here, and he respects Khalid’s advice. Junior’s partyin’ all night, this and that. He won’ listen. I told him and I told him. But he hadda make a example of the human rights lady. So Comandante Mauro and me, we set it all up.”
Pescatore heard himself say: “How come you did it, if you were against it?”
Buffalo did not look at him. His bandit mustache sagged. His voice had dropped; he could have been talking to himself.
“Tha’s what I do. Tha’s my job. Así es la onda. You seen my house, my cars—he gave me everything. I stayed in fuckin’ Colonia Libertad when I was a kid, Valentín. We didn’ even have a toilet. We went north, my viejo moved around working los fields. We stayed in the projects in Pacas. Had a toilet there. But you know what? We had the pinche mayates waitin’ outside to kick our asses every day. Every day.” Buffalo grinned blearily, humorlessly. “Back then the projects was still wall-to-wall mayates, and they didn’ like the Mexicans moving in. You had to be ready to throw down. Do something for your race. Like in the joint. Except funny thing is, when I was locked up I met some of those same brothers we use to fight back in the projects. And we got along OK.”
In a rush of images, Pescatore saw the Taylor Street of his childhood, the barred Italian shops and restaurants facing the low-rise housing project where the blacks lived across the street. That was a border, he thought. That was a serious border. He said: “Where I’m from was kinda like that too.”
Buffalo was adrift in his own words. “Never had shit till I hooked up with Junior. I’m down with Junior, all the way, to the curb. But yesterday was bad, Valentín. Real bad.”
Buffalo sounded strangely nostalgic talking about his house and cars, his voice full of loss. It went beyond remorse. He seemed convinced that the murder of Araceli Aguirre had a whiff of doom about it for all involved.
“The AFI gonna come after us?” Pescatore asked.
Buffalo puffed dismissively. “We own the federales. All we gotta worry about is the Diogenes Group. Pinche Méndez. Thinks he can sweat Junior. It’s all his fault, really. He was the one pushing the human rights lady.”
“That motherfucker.”
“Motherfucker is right. And he wants you bad.”
“Me?”
“Our friends in la federal say the Diogenes Group is huntin’ for you and Garrison overtime. Spreading around lana to informants. They say Méndez isn’t particular, long as he gets you. Dead or alive.”
Pescatore shook his head. He would have thought the Americans wanted him alive, cop-killer or not. Did that mean Isabel had given up on him and told Méndez to do his thing? Or that Méndez decided he’d handle Pescatore any way he wanted on Mexican turf?
Buffalo looked directly into Pescatore’s eyes for the first time since entering the kitchen. The sudden clarity of the stare surprised Pescatore. “You’re not used to gettin’ high so much, huh, Valentín?”
Pescatore shook his head. Buffalo continued: “Stay away from it, then. You got more discipline than these youngsters, your training from the Migra. No seas pendejo. You come with Momo and Sniper and me. We’re gonna stay close by Junior. Get yourself cleaned up now, drink some coffee. Hórale.”
Buffalo turned away, focused again, his moves brisk. Pescatore regarded his own haggard reflection in one of the kitchen windows. He shook his head. How about that, he thought. I made supervisor in the Death Patrol.
“One thing.” Buffalo paused in the doorway. “You be sure an’ look sharp around Junior. Last week he told me we should cut you loose, give you up to la federal. Throw ’em a bone for the americanos. I said no, you handle yourself good, you helped us out with Garrison, this and that. I vouched for you, homes. Don’t make me look bad, you understan’ what I’m sayin’?”
Back in his third-floor room, Pescatore wedged the chair against the knob. He put the keys on the chair. He crouched in a corner holding the phone, the gun within reach on the bed. He dialed Isabel’s apartment. She had told him to call land lines whenever possible. The Santa Muerte skull leered at him from the decal on the phone.
“Puente.”
She sounded like she was in a bad mood. He imagined her just home from work, sitting at her kitchen table over a cup of Cuban-style coffee the way she liked it, strong and sweet. He closed his eyes.
“Hello?” she demanded.
He whispered: “Isabel.”
Silence. She spoke finally in Spanish, voice trembling, her Cuban accent fierce.
“What did you do? For the love of God, what did you do? What have you done, crazy imbecile? Are you all right?”
He clung to the emotion in her voice, the purity of it. No way she was good enough of an actress to fake that on the spot, right?
“I’m OK,” he whispered more softly, his eyes on the door. “Isabel: I did not shoot that highway patrolman. It was Garrison. He damn near shot me too. You gotta believe—”
She switched back to English. “I believe you. Is it safe to talk?”
“No. But I had to call you.”
“Valentine, I thought you were…” Her voice broke. Then her tone changed, like she was getting control of herself. “Listen. Can you tell me where you are?”
Pescatore’s grin was triumphant. “I don’t know if you’re gonna believe me.”
The boxing ring was in a private gym that took up a wing of the Ruiz Caballero family compound at the crest of Colonia Chapultepec. One wall was mostly glass, offering a view of the brown beehive hills of Tijuana in the afternoon, the Pacific s
treaked purple and crimson.
Junior was turning purple and crimson himself. Sweat leapt from his hair mashed beneath the helmet. Sweat cascaded from the flab wobbling over the waist of his baggy trunks. He breathed arduously through the mouthpiece, making a distressed humming sound as he threw punches. But there was power in his wide, round-shouldered frame, judging from the sledgehammer sound of the impacts.
His sparring partner was Kid Avila, the rangy pro from Northern California who had defended his championship title a month earlier at Multiglobo Arena. Kid Avila patiently withstood Junior’s flailing and lunging. Kid Avila moved now and then, catching blows on his forearms and gloves. He threw periodic measured punches to sustain the illusion of combat. He allowed Junior to connect, reacting with theatrical grunts and headshakes.
“There you go, jefe, way to stick!” Avila said.
Buffalo, Momo, Sniper and a half-dozen men lounged outside the ring on bleachers and folding chairs, echoing him.
“Muy buena, Junior.”
“Dale duro.”
“Get it on, get it on.”
Mr. Abbas did not participate in the commentary. The gangster from South America sat on the other side of the ring in a folding chair by the glass wall. He drank from a tall glass and checked his watch periodically. He was alone; Moze and Tchai had left with Khalid before the assassination.
Judging from what Pescatore had seen on the way in, the Ruiz Caballeros lived and did business in a complex that was a hilltop fortress done in red-roofed hacienda style. The well-guarded walls enclosed buildings on terraced levels connected by wooden decks and walkways. There were corporate offices, a recording studio, the gym, separate residences for Junior and his uncle. Statues of cavorting cherubs filled a fountain in the middle of the circular driveway. There was a barn-size garage with rows of antique cars under plastic covers.
Pescatore sat miserably on the low bleachers. He was drinking Coke from a can, hoping to get hydrated and alert. Despite the air-conditioning, he was perspiring. His head throbbed. He felt uncomfortably well armed with the pistol in his shoulder holster and the AK-47 by his side.
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