The Border: A Novel

by Don Winslow

  Keller, the same man who put him in hell for twenty years, is causing him hell again, putting enormous pressure on everyone because of this Tristeza thing. At a moment when the business is on the edge of chaos, Caro thinks, when we most need to be left in quiet to work things out, Keller is all over us again.

  Will the man ever just die?

  He’s provoked a major investigation, and who knows where that will lead? Already, it’s led Caro to a tough decision—he has to shut down the GU heroin pipeline to Ruiz. At least the fifteen kilos got through and reached their connection in New York. That’s good, but it’s too dangerous now to continue.

  They’ll have to make other arrangements. Ariela Palomas has to keep her stupid fucking mouth shut, and the Rentería brothers . . . How could they be so stupid as to let a bunch of students . . . kids . . . hijack a bus full of chiva?

  “Bring Tilde in,” Caro says to the young man sitting at the kitchen table. The young man, Caro’s sole employee, who drives him around on an old Indian motorcycle and goes to the tienda for beans, tortillas, meat, eggs and beer, goes out and returns a moment later with Tilde Rentería.

  Caro juts his chin at the empty wooden chair.

  Tilde sits down.

  “You were careless,” Caro says.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re ‘sorry’?” Caro says. “I had to order the deaths of forty-nine young people—children—and you’re ‘sorry’?”

  “You gave the order,” Tilde says, “but I did the killing.”

  “What would happen,” Caro asks, “if Ricardo Núñez found out that you moved heroin stolen from him? That you’re allied with Damien? That you’re in business in El Norte with Eddie Ruiz? What would happen?”

  “A war.”

  “You’re not ready for a war with Sinaloa,” Caro says. “You cannot win a war with Sinaloa, but that’s not the main point. The main point is that wars are bad for business.”

  And not part of his plan, which is to destroy the Sinaloa cartel without ever fighting it. To make it destroy itself.

  “Here’s what’s going to happen now,” Caro says. “The federal police will get an anonymous tip where you are and they will stage a raid. You and your brothers will surrender. Then, under interrogation, you will confess to the murders of those students.”

  “Is this a joke?” Tilde asks.

  Today is the Day of the Innocents, which memorializes Herod’s slaughter of the newborn babies in Bethlehem and has become Mexico’s version of April Fool’s Day, replete with practical jokes.

  “Am I laughing?” Caro asks.

  “That’s a life sentence!”

  “It’s better than a death sentence, no?” Caro asks. He had thought of simply killing the Renterías—it would be simple enough to have the federales shoot them during the raid—but it would destroy relationships with the old Tapia organization. “You confess, and you tell your Los Rojos story and shut down this investigation. You get life, you serve twenty years, when you get out you’re still a relatively young man.”

  “I can’t do twenty years.”

  “I did,” Caro says.

  And I was a lot older when I got out than you’ll be, Caro thinks.

  “With all respect,” Tilde says, “you aren’t the boss. You’re, what shall we say . . . a revered uncle who gives us the benefit of his advice.”

  “And as your revered uncle,” Caro says, “I strongly suggest that you take my advice. I’m loaning you your life, Rentería. Take it today and I can never take it back.”

  Another Día de los Santos Inocentes tradition—you don’t have to return anything someone loans you on this day.

  “We can wait until after the holidays if you want,” Caro says.

  He stares Tilde down.

  Tilde gets the message and leaves.

  Fuck him, Caro thinks.

  He’s nothing.

  And fuck Art Keller.

  He gave me twenty years in a freezing hell.

  I’ll have to find a gift for him.

  One he can’t return.

  The bells rings and Marisol pops the last grape into her mouth.

  It’s a New Year’s Eve tradition—you pop twelve grapes, las doce uvas de la suerte, in your mouth—one for each chime of the bells—and it brings you good luck for the upcoming year.

  So now Ana rings the bell and Marisol swallows grapes. Then she holds a spoon of lentils out for Keller. “Come on.”

  “I don’t like lentils.”

  “It’s for luck. You have to!”

  Keller swallows the lentils.

  Marisol’s gone almost as nuts for New Year’s Eve as she did for Christmas. As befits Mexican tradition, every light in the house is on; she did a thorough cleaning, making sure to sweep from the inside out; and the place still smells of cinnamon from her heating the spice in water and then mopping with the scented mixture. Then they went upstairs, opened the bathroom window and tossed a bucket of water out into the street.

  In all of this, Ana has been her enthusiastic confederate, insisting with her that they all write down their “negative thoughts”—everything bad that has happened over the past year—on a piece of paper that they will burn to ensure that the bad things don’t follow them into the new year.

  I wish it were that easy, Keller thinks, but he did write down the numbers 49 and 28,647, Denton Howard, John Dennison, Guatemala, and Tristeza, and now he sets a match to the paper and burns it.

  “What did you write?” he asks Mari.

  “I can’t tell!” she says, burning her own paper.

  New Year’s Eve, Ric thinks, is always an occasion for wretched bacchanalian excess among Los Hijos.

  But Iván has really maxed it out this year.

  He’s bought out the entire rooftop Skybar at Splash, the newest and most exclusive strip club in Cabo. His security team—and Ric’s—are there in full force in case Elena wants to balance the books before the end of the fiscal year.

  Splash’s “butlers,” long-legged, gorgeous women clad only in G-strings, give them private service, bottles of Dom and Cristal and the club’s custom cocktails broken up into “sensory elements”—Dirty, Smoky, Sweet, Smooth, Salty, and Spicy.

  Ric goes with Smoky, something built on scotch, and sucks on one of the Arturo Fuente Opus X cigars that Iván passed around at $30,000 a box. Bowls of coke—not lines, bowls—are set on each table as well as rows of joints—Loud Dream hybrid weed, which goes for about $800 an ounce.

  On the stage, six incredibly beautiful women writhe to throbbing techno, each dressed in lingerie that Iván specifically mandated for New Year’s Eve, and now he narrates his little pageant, “Okay, each girl has a color—red for passion, yellow for prosperity, green for health, pink for friendship, orange for luck, and white for peace.”

  None of them are dressed in black.

  Black is bad luck for New Year’s.

  Which is why, of course, Belinda is wearing a slinky black dress, a defiant fuck you to tradition and fear. She’s the only woman invited to the party; wives and mistresses—other than La Fósfora—have been banned, and Ric’s wife, Karin, is not happy that he’s chosen to spend New Year’s Eve with Los Hijos instead of her.

  The fuck does she want? Ric thinks. Earlier that night, Iván had paid a multiple-Grammy-winning recording artist and his band to give a private concert for all the families over dinner at Casiano. Karin got her picture taken with the singer and everything. Then Ric dropped a gold necklace into her champagne glass over dessert. He’d seen the midnight in with her, even gulping down the twelve dumb grapes. And now she’s sitting it out in a suite with a balcony overlooking the ocean, so what the fuck more does the bitch want?

  “It’s work,” he told her.

  “Work?” Karin asked. “Are you kidding me right now?”

  No, he wasn’t.

  The New Year’s Eve party was Iván reaching out to him. Things had been tense between them since Ric’s dad took over and then awarded Baja
to Elena. So this was Iván saying he wanted to put that aside and pick up the friendship again. So, yeah, it was personal, but it was business, too, mending fences, serving as his father’s ambassador to an important wing of the cartel.

  “So you’re the jefe of La Paz now, huh?” Iván asked Ric when he called to invite him.

  “Come on, man.”

  “No, I think it’s good,” Iván said. “You staked out a claim and backed it up. Laid-back Mini-Ric, getting all intense. Except they don’t call you Mini-Ric anymore, do they? It’s ‘El Ahijado.’”

  “Yeah, that’s me,” Ric said, trying to make light of it.

  “Your father’s grooming you for bigger things,” Iván said.

  “My father,” Ric said, “thinks I’m a waste of space.”

  “Not anymore he doesn’t,” Iván says. “Not after what you did in La Paz.”

  “That was more Belinda.”

  “You still fucking that crazy bitch?” Iván asked. “Be careful, ’mano, I’ve heard you can catch crazy through your dick. No, you’re a big deal now, Ric. A rock star.”

  “I’m just trying to help my father,” Ric said. “That’s all.”

  “The godson doesn’t want to be the godfather?” Iván asked. “What kind of shitty movie is that?”

  “Actually, that was the movie.”

  “And look how it turned out.”

  “It was a movie, Iván.” First Belinda, now Iván, Ric thought. Why is everyone trying to push me into a chair I don’t want?

  So when Karin got all twisted about him “dumping” her on New Year’s Eve, Ric said, “I have to make things up with Iván. If I spurn his invitation, he’ll be offended.”

  “But it doesn’t matter if I’m offended.”

  “It’s business, baby,” Ric said.

  “It’s an excuse to get high and fuck whores.”

  Yeah, pretty much, Ric thinks as he watches the girls dance. He’s higher than shit from the blow, the weed, the booze—even the cigar—and he’s reasonably sure they’re going to end up fucking some whores. What do you want for New Year’s, he asks himself—passion, prosperity, health, friendship, luck, or peace?

  Iván is going to leave it to fate. Holding up a fedora hat he says, “There’s six pieces of paper in here. Each one with a color that matches a girl. You draw the paper out of the hat, and that’s who you get.”

  The girls take it up a level. Shedding the lingerie tops, they start writhing against each other, kissing and feeling each other up.

  “This is heaven,” Belinda says.

  Ric laughs—she’s sitting there with a cigar jammed into her mouth, ogling the dancers like some horny guy. It’s her and Iván, Oviedo, Alfredo, and Rubén—just six of them, one for each girl.

  An empty place, replete with a bottle of Dom and a cigar, has been set for Sal.

  Ric turns to Belinda. “Are you going to get jealous if I have another girl?”

  “Are you going to get jealous if I do?”

  Ric shakes his head. “Gaby will be pissed.”

  “You see her here?”

  “No.”

  “Neither do I,” Belinda says, clasping her hands together.

  “What are you doing?” Ric asks.

  “Praying for peace.”

  Ric doesn’t blame her—the chick in white is hot. Long, shiny black hair that flows down to a bubble butt. Himself, he’s kind of hoping he pulls green—health is always a good thing and the blonde has full, blow-job lips and a rack he could lie down and die on.

  “Ladies first,” Iván says, standing in front of Belinda. She reaches up, puts her hand in the hat and comes out with a white slip of paper. “Yes!”

  Oviedo pulls pink.

  Alfredo gets yellow.

  Rubén, damn it, pulls the green slip.

  “Awww,” Belinda says to Ric. “Pobrecito.”

  Ric reaches in and gets red.

  “Passion,” Belinda says.

  His girl is certainly sexy enough, Ric thinks. The same thick black hair as Belinda’s, long legs and beautiful tits.

  “I get lucky!” Iván announces as he pulls the orange paper.

  The girls come down from the stage in a line and then kneel in front of their respective clients.

  “Passion” kneels in front of Ric and unzips his fly. Her mouth feels incredible on him. He glances over to see Belinda’s head thrown back and her hands on the back of her girl’s head, pressing her face into her crotch. Then her hands fly to the sides of the chair and grip the arms, her knuckles white.

  Iván . . . well, Iván’s gotten lucky.

  He climaxes with a shout. “¡Madre de Dios! That was so good, I’m going to give you my car, mamacita!”

  The party goes on.

  The blow, the weed, the booze, the women.

  At some point, Ric passes out.

  Wakes up to gunfire.

  Next to him, Belinda laps at one of the dancers like a kitten with a bowl of warm milk. Rubén is unconscious, his left arm dangling off the side of a chair, lightly resting on a beer bottle. The Esparza brothers are standing at the edge of the roof, firing AKs into the air.

  There’s no Rudolfo to ask them to stop.

  Ric doesn’t really give a fuck and tries to go back to sleep but the gunfire won’t let him. Then he opens his eyes to see Lucky, dressed now in a black T-shirt over jeans and high heels, walk over to Iván.

  “Can I have the car?” she asks.

  Iván lowers his rifle. “What?”

  “You said you’d give me your car.”

  Iván laughs. “You seriously think I’m going to give you a seventy-five-thousand-dollar Porsche for a blow job?”

  “It’s what you said.”

  Shit, Ric thinks. He tumbles off the couch, gets up and walks over.

  “Get the fuck out of here, conchuda estúpida,” Iván says. He raises the AK to his shoulder again and fires a clip into the air.

  But Lucky is stubborn. She stands there looking at him.

  “Are you still here?” Iván asks, lowering the rifle. “What about ‘get the fuck out of here’ don’t you understand?”

  “You said a car.”

  “Do you believe this gash?” Iván asks Ric. Then he looks at the girl. “Let me ask you something. We know you can suck, but can you suck the bullets out of a gun before I can pull the trigger? Come on, let’s see.”

  He puts the rifle barrel to her mouth and pushes. “Open, bitch.”

  Ric says, “Come on, man.”

  Iván is coked out of his mind. “Stay out of this.”

  “You’re high, Iván,” Ric says. “You don’t want to do this.”

  “Don’t tell me what I want to do.”

  The woman is terrified. She’s shaking as she opens her mouth around the barrel and Iván pushes it down, forcing her to her knees. “Suck the bullets out, puta, before I pull the trigger.”

  Ric sees a stream of urine run down her legs.

  Oviedo laughs. “She’s pissing herself!”

  Everyone is looking now, stunned. But no one moves.

  “You still want my car?” Iván asks.

  She shakes her head and says no.

  “I can’t understand you with your mouth full,” Iván says.

  “Enough, Iván,” Ric says.

  “Fuck you.” Iván looks back down at the woman. “I’m not sure what you said, but I think you said, ‘I’m a stupid, worthless whore, so please do me a favor and put me out of my misery.’ Is that right?”

  He moves the rifle barrel up and down so it forces the woman to nod.

  “See?” Iván says. “She wants to die.”

  Ric doesn’t know how it happens but suddenly his pistol is out and pointed at Iván’s head. “Enough.”

  Oviedo and Alfredo point their guns at Ric.

  Iván’s gunmen start to move in.

  So do Ric’s.

  Iván looks at Ric and smiles. “So it’s like that, El Ahijado? Over a fucking whore?”

&n
bsp; “Let her go, man.”

  “You’re a tough guy now?”

  Ric can feel all the guns pointed at him. In a fraction of a second, any one of these guys could decide to pull the trigger to save his boss. There could be a bloodbath here any moment. “I’ll take you with me, Iván.”

  Iván stares at him, his eyes looking through him.

  Then he slowly pulls the rifle barrel from the woman’s mouth, lowers his gun, reaches out and pulls Ric into an embrace. “Together forever, then, huh? ¡Los Hijos siempre! ¡Feliz Año Nuevo a todos!”

  Iván pulls Ric closer and whispers into his ear, “Who thought you had the balls? But you ever pull a gun on me again, ’mano, and I will kill you.”

  He lets Ric go.

  Ric watches Lucky struggle to her feet and walk toward the elevator on shaky legs. No one goes near her; none of the other women go up to her.

  She’s a leper.

  He follows her. “Hey.”

  She turns around. Her eyes are scared and angry, her hair disheveled; the lipstick smeared around her mouth makes her look like a clown.

  Ric digs into the pocket of his jeans, pulls out a set of keys and tosses them to her. “It’s an Audi, not a Porsche, but it’s a good car. Only thirty thousand miles on it.”

  She stares at him, unsure what to do.

  “Take it,” Ric says. “Take the car.”

  The elevator opens and she gets in.

  Ric walks back to the party.

  Iván saw what he did.

  He shakes his head, smirks, and says, “You’re a sucker, Ric.”

  Maybe so, Ric thinks.

  Anyway, happy New Year.

  Damien Tapia sits in the lead car of a convoy that snakes through the mountain switchbacks of backcountry Sinaloa.

  Ten vehicles with fifty heavily armed men, funded by the fifteen keys of heroin he sent to Eddie Ruiz. Like Damien, all the men are dressed in black—black shirts or sweatshirts, black jeans, black shoes—boots or sneakers. Some are already wearing black hoods, others have them in their laps.

  Damien tightens the scarf around his neck against the predawn chill. The sky is just changing from pitch black to slate gray but he hasn’t allowed the drivers to turn on headlights even though the roads carved out of the mountain face are narrow and a slip of the wheel could send a vehicle plummeting a hundred feet straight down.