The Border: A Novel

by Don Winslow

  Hidalgo goes for the close. “Eddie, we can really do something here.”

  Eddie throws him a curve. “Why? Other than money, why are you doing this?”

  Hidalgo is quick.

  “Because I’m sick of fighting a war we’re never going to win,” he says. “Because I’m sick of watching other people get rich. And because you guys are going to start slugging it out over turf, I don’t want to see this become Mexico. So we pick a winner early and get peace.”

  The Mexican scenario.

  The Pax Sinaloa.

  Now a thing of the past.

  “And just let us sling dope?” Eddie asks.

  “Junkies are junkies,” Hidalgo says. “They’re going to get it somewhere. Fuck them, I want the streets safe for people who aren’t shooting poison into their arms.”

  “I’ll be in touch,” Eddie says.

  “I look forward to it.”

  “You guys need reservations or anything?” Eddie asks. “I can get you a table at Nobu.”

  Hidalgo laughs. “We probably shouldn’t be seen dining at Nobu.”

  “More like Denny’s,” Cirello says.

  “Got it,” Eddie says. “But I mean, you want some women or something, Osvaldo will set it up. World-class chocha, on me.”

  “I appreciate it,” Hidalgo says, “but I like the hunt, you know what I mean? And Vegas is a target-rich environment.”

  Eddie looks at Cirello.

  “I’m going to hit the tables,” Cirello says.

  “Ozzie, give the guys some chips, let them play on us.”

  Osvaldo gives them some chips.

  They get downstairs, Hidalgo takes a deep breath. “Jesus Christ.”

  “You were great, man,” Cirello says. “Very impressive.”

  “You think so?” Hidalgo asks. “You think we made the sale?”

  “I think so, but who knows?” Cirello says. “He’s gonna get on the phone now, kick this up. Then we’ll see. In the meantime . . .”

  Hidalgo goes out to call Keller.

  Cirello hits the blackjack table.

  Plays with the cartel’s money.

  Keller waits for the call.

  Already regretting he sent Hugo.

  A hundred things could go wrong, the least of which is Ruiz rejecting the overture, sniffing out the trap. Ruiz could drive Hugo out into the desert, put a bullet in his head, and into Cirello’s. No, he wouldn’t do that, he’s too smart. Still . . .

  The downside is horrific.

  But the upside . . .

  A chance to turn the cartel inside out.

  The phone finally rings. “Are you out?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “And?”

  “I think he bit,” Hidalgo says. “He’s going to kick it up.”

  “Did he say who he needs to talk to?”

  Because whomever he talks to is running things. The real connection to Echeverría and the syndicate.

  “No,” Hidalgo says, “and I didn’t want to push it.”

  “That was the right call,” Keller says. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m great.”

  He sounds jacked up, Keller thinks. Coming off an adrenaline high. “Okay. Lay low. Check in.”

  It takes Eddie forty-five long minutes to decide to take this upstairs. The number he calls is in Sinaloa and the call lasts for almost an hour. Orduña’s people run it down for Keller—the closest cell-phone tower is near Rafael Caro’s house in Culiacán.

  Rafael Caro, Keller thinks.

  Everything old is new again. The past comes back.

  Follow the drugs, follow the money.

  Caro connects to Ruiz and Darnell.

  Caro connects to Damien Tapia, who connects to Ruiz and Darnell.

  Damien Tapia moved heroin with Caro.

  It was Caro who gave the order to kill the Tristeza students.

  Caro connects Echeverría to Claiborne to Lerner.

  In effect, Caro to Lerner.

  Okay.

  Keller is going to pull the whole wall down.

  Right on top of himself, if necessary.

  2

  Death Will Be the Proof

  Death will be the proof that we lived.

  —Castellanos

  Sinaloa, Mexico

  December 2016

  His father looks old.

  I guess, Ric thinks, getting shot will age you.

  But his thick hair is now more silver than black—prematurely—and there seems to be a constant grimace of fatigue (or is it pain?) on his face. The bullets didn’t kill him, but they certainly diminished him. He’s as bright as he always was, and every bit as analytical, but his energy is quickly depleted.

  Ric knows what they’re saying about his dad now: If you want to talk with El Abogado, do it before lunch, before his daily siesta. After that, he’s not so sharp. To be sure, more and more, they’re not going to see him at all, they’re going to Ric.

  Clearly, his father’s life is attenuated, from his reduced energies to his limited diet, no alcohol—maybe a Sunday sip of sherry—and bland meals that won’t irritate his repaired stomach lining. Ricardo Núñez Sr. was never exactly the life of the party, but he was always a gracious host—now the gatherings at the house are few and truncated and guests know to leave when they see the dark circles appear under Núñez’s eyes.

  In the movies, people get shot and either die or completely recover. Ric’s learned that the reality is somewhat different.

  Now he sits with his father in the back seat of a car on the way to a meeting. He hadn’t wanted his father to come at all, or at least to hold the meeting at home, but Núñez Sr. wanted to dispel the notion that he’s an invalid.

  “The patrón has to be seen,” he said. “Otherwise they start thinking there’s nothing behind the curtain.”

  “Huh?”

  “The Wizard of Oz. You never saw it?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “This powerful wizard runs a kingdom, just with his voice, from behind a curtain,” Núñez said. “But when they pull the curtain back, they discover that he’s just a man.”

  But you are just a man, Ric thought.

  The meeting is with the leaders of a group called La Oficina, one of the splinter groups from the old Tapia organization.

  At Ric’s last count, twenty-six separate groups—sometimes cooperating, sometimes fighting each other—have sprung from the Tapias. Some are autonomous, others claim allegiance to Damien, others still pledge loyalty to Eddie Ruiz. And they’re spread all over the country now—most, like GU and Los Rojos, in Guerrero and Durango, but others in Sinaloa, Jalisco, Michoacán, Morelos, Acapulco, Tamaulipas, even all the way down in Chiapas. A few of the groups exist right in Mexico City. What they have in common is they’re all causing problems.

  Throw in the autodefensas—the volunteer militias that claim to be fighting to defend civilians against the cartels. Some legitimately try to do that; others started that way and have evolved into just more examples of corruption and coercion.

  It’s a clusterfuck.

  Chaos everywhere.

  The biggest mistake Adán Barrera ever made was betraying his old friend Diego Tapia and touching off a civil war inside the Sinaloa cartel. While he was alive, Ric thinks, he could rein in the results; now he’s left my father to try to pour the spilled wine back into the bottle.

  It’s impossible.

  But today’s meeting is an effort.

  La Oficina has made overtures that they want to come back into the Sinaloa fold. It’s worth a try, Ric thinks—we could use allies.

  The war with Tito isn’t going well.

  For one thing, we’re losing Baja.

  The Sánchez-Jalisco alliance has taken Tecate, the smaller but still important border crossing into San Diego. That means it can ship its coke, meth and heroin directly into the US, breaking what had been a Sinaloa monopoly. And it’s lending the Tecate border crossing to Damien and other Tapi
a splinter groups, further fueling and funding the insurgency against Sinaloa in Guerrero, Durango and Michoacán.

  From his stronghold deep in the Guerrero mountains, Damien is raising sheer hell. Far from backing down after kidnapping the Esparza brothers, he’s become more aggressive, conducting ambushes on Sinaloa drug couriers and army and police patrols. He recently killed three Guerrero state police in a four-hour gun battle near an opium farm. A week later, he ambushed an army convoy and killed five soldiers.

  He’s becoming freaking Che Guevara.

  It’s not just in the countryside.

  Acapulco has become a nightmare.

  The seaside resort town, once peaceful territory, is now a battlefield where Sinaloa, New Jalisco, and Damien are fighting it out for the valuable port, so necessary for bringing in the base chemicals for meth and fentanyl.

  Eddie Ruiz used to run it, and Ric has to admit that he did a good job. But since Ruiz’s departure from the scene, his organization has splintered into competing factions that act independently or make ever-shifting alliances with one or more of the major players.

  The butcher’s bill has been high.

  And grotesque—one group of former Ruiz guys likes to flay the faces off its victims and leave them on their car seats. Another favors the now commonplace tactic of hanging bodies from bridges or scattering limbs along the sidewalks. GU and Los Rojos are fighting in the city, and the only Sinaloa ally right now is a group known as the “Sweeper Truck,” which does, indeed, sweep some of its enemies off the street.

  Acapulco is up for grabs.

  So is Mazatlán.

  Our major port, Ric thinks, and we might lose it.

  Another Tapia splinter group, Los Mazateclos, fought Sinaloa during the civil war, faded out when it lost, but now is back after Barrera’s death.

  With a vengeance.

  Literally.

  We’re holding on there, Ric thinks, but the plaza is definitely heating up, and with Tito helping to fund the old Tapia groups, it will only get worse. Baja, Guerrero, Durango, Michoacán, Morelo—everywhere—the little groups are springing up like mushrooms after a wet winter.

  And old plants, thought dead or dying, are starting to rise again from the old soil.

  In Juárez, the busiest and most valuable border crossing, the bloodiest battleground of Barrera’s war, fought for and won by Sinaloa at tremendous cost, the defeated Juárez cartel is coming back.

  In Chihuahua, the moribund Gulf cartel is rising from the dead. Its old boss, Osiel Contreras, will soon finish his sentence in an American prison and come home, one of los retornados. Who knows what Contreras will want?

  And in Tamaulipas and Veracruz, the Zetas—the most violent, sadistic and psychopathic of the cartels—the enemy put down by an unholy alliance of Sinaloa, the Mexican federal government and the American DEA, the people who killed Barrera and Esparza in Guatemala—are coming back.

  The murder rate rises.

  Ric has studied the numbers.

  In October 2015, Mexico had 15,466 murders.

  In October 2016, the number is almost 19,000.

  More than a 20 percent bounce, a level not seen since the bad old days of 2011, when Barrera was fighting the Tapias, the Gulf, Juárez and the Zetas.

  The government can’t stop it.

  The government is panicking.

  Looking to us to stop it.

  If we don’t, Ric knows, they’re going to find someone else.

  Maybe they already have.

  Earlier on the drive, his father gave him alarming news. “Rafael Caro has put together a syndicate.”

  “What you mean? What kind of syndicate?”

  “A loan fund,” Núñez said. “He’s working with bankers, government people and some people in our business to loan $285 million to an American real estate group owned by the son-in-law of the new president. The syndicate has basically bought the American government for a paltry three hundred million. It’s the bargain of the century.”

  Ric spun through the ramifications—

  The people in the syndicate would not only have influence in Mexico City, but in Washington, DC, as well. They could potentially impact the DEA—gleaning intelligence, using it to act against enemies . . .

  . . . like us.

  The loan gives the syndicate a voice in the highest business circles in the United States, especially in New York, where Sinaloa is struggling to gain a foothold.

  The upside is unlimited.

  But so is the downside of being excluded.

  “How did you find out about this?” Ric asked.

  “We still have friends in Mexico City,” Núñez said. “They assumed we were in on it. I didn’t disabuse them.”

  “Which people in our business?”

  Núñez dropped it like a bomb on his son’s head. “Iván Esparza, among others.”

  “They went to Iván and not to us,” Ric said, his head whirling.

  “It would seem that way.”

  “And Iván didn’t tell us.”

  “The point is,” Núñez said, “we’ve been frozen out. With the complicity of your good friend Iván.”

  Ric didn’t take the bait. He hasn’t told his father about his succession deal with Iván. It wouldn’t be accepted. But this is Iván jumping the gun, Ric thinks now. Making a play to buy that kind of influence without sharing it with us. It feels like a violation of their friendship, not to mention their business relationship.

  It feels like a betrayal.

  There’s been tension between them.

  Ric holds Iván responsible for the problems in Baja. They argued over it at their most recent sit-down, this time at a seaside bar out in Puesta del Sol.

  Iván didn’t want to hear the truth that Tito and Elena now had Tecate.

  “Not just Tecate,” Ric said. “La Presa, El Florido, Cañadas, Terrazas, Villa del Campo . . .”

  One by one, territories in Baja are falling to Tito and Elena. The only places where Sinaloa is still strong are the places that Ric and Belinda have—Cabo and La Paz. Belinda is active in Tijuana, but it’s a battlefield, very much in play, with tit-for-tat killings.

  “What else is on your mind, young Ric?” Iván asked.

  “It’s your brother.”

  “Oviedo?” Iván asked, bristling. “What about him?”

  “He’s fucking up,” Ric said. “Since you made him the Baja plaza boss . . . I mean, he’s not doing the job. You can’t get him on the phone, he’s high half the time, he’s trying to fuck other people’s women—”

  “He’ll settle in.”

  “When?” Ric asked. “We’re under fire, Iván. And Oviedo is screwing around. You can’t get a decision made, it’s whoever talks to him last.”

  “With all due respect,” Iván said, “you run certain neighborhoods in La Paz and Cabo, but the rest of Baja is my business, not yours.”

  Then take care of your business, Ric thought. “What happens in Baja affects all of us. Tito and Elena having the Tecate plaza hurts all of us. If they get the Tijuana crossing—”

  “They won’t.”

  “They just killed Benny Vallejos.”

  Benny Vallejos was one of Iván’s main shooters in Tijuana. They found his bullet-riddled body on a lonely stretch of highway with a sign on his torso that read, Greetings from Your Fathers in the New Jalisco Cartel.

  “We’ll pay them back,” Iván said.

  “It’s not a matter of payback,” Ric said. “It’s a matter of controlling territory.”

  “Listen to you,” Iván said. “Mr. All-Serious right now. I remember you used to be a party guy yourself.”

  “Maybe I grew up,” Ric said, starting to get pissed. “Maybe Oviedo should too.”

  “Shut up about my brother, Ric.”

  “Iván—”

  “I said shut the fuck up.”

  Ric shut the fuck up. But it bothered him, Iván’s unwillingness to listen. And now he’s really bothered that Iván has gone behi
nd his back to make a serious play.

  “We have to sit down with the Esparza brothers,” Núñez says. “I want an explanation. They have to let us buy into this syndicate.”

  “I agree.”

  “Set it up,” Núñez says. “As soon as possible.”

  He sits back and closes his eyes.

  Ric looks out the window at the countryside flanking Route 30 as the little convoy makes its way west toward El Vergel. The meeting is set at a farmhouse south of town, among the endless flat fields of bell peppers.

  He hears his father snore.

  Looks at his watch and confirms that it’s siesta time.

  The convoy—armed uniformed guards are in SUVs in front of and behind them—drives through El Vergel and then turns south on a two-lane road through Colonia Paradiso and then out of town to a cluster of trees along the river.

  The farmhouse, a typical stucco with a red tile roof and a broad porch, is set among the trees.

  Ric walks around the car, opens the passenger door and helps his father out. Núñez gets up slowly and is unsteady as he sets his feet down. They walk into the house. Guards go in first, others set up outside.

  The Oficina people—someone named Callarto and another called García—are already sitting at the kitchen table. The place is rustic, the table wooden and painted white, old plates on wall shelves, broad plank floors.

  They stand when Núñez comes in, a good sign.

  Núñez gestures for them to sit back down.

  Ric takes a chair beside his father.

  “It’s good to see you again,” Núñez says. “It’s been too long.”

  Classic, Ric thinks—his father’s lawyerly way of reminding them that they’ve been disloyal while also suggesting that it’s water under the bridge. At the same time, everyone in the room is aware that La Oficina are small players, that a year ago—shit, six months ago—Ricardo Núñez wouldn’t have bothered to sit down with them personally at all.

  Ric hopes they didn’t come with an inflated view of their importance.

  They’re still small players.

  But the 2016 reality is that the big players will have to put together coalitions of a lot of small players. La Oficina operates in Aguascaliente, in the Federal District. As Tito has created a presence in Mexico City, it would be good to have an ally perched on his flank to worry him. Good but not essential, Ric thinks, and he hopes that his father doesn’t give away too much for what might be a slight advantage.