The Border: A Novel

by Don Winslow

  “Why are you calling me?” Ana asked.

  Victoria has never particularly liked Ana. Not only because she’s a flaming leftie, but also because she slept with her late husband, albeit after they were divorced.

  “You know,” Victoria said, stiff and cold as ever.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “This bank is notorious for laundering drug money,” Victoria said. “León Echeverría runs in narco circles.”

  “Is there a reason you’re not doing the story yourself?” Ana asked, her radar screens up.

  “There are a hundred reasons,” Victoria said. “I rely on these bankers and certain government officials to do my job. If I were to come out with this, or even look into it . . .”

  “They’d cut you off.”

  “I’d be ostracized.”

  “So why are you . . .”

  “Ana,” Victoria said, “it’s bad. I’m actually, well, dating a man from HBMX and he’s very upset. He heard a name of someone who’s involved . . .”

  “What name?” Ana asked, her stomach sinking.

  “Rafael Caro,” Victoria said. “What my friend heard was that Echeverría went to Caro to help put narco investors together because he can talk to all of them. My friend is concerned that this could expose HBMX to investigation from the DEA, Interpol . . . If there were to be an article, HBMX might back out before it’s too late.”

  “Well, thank you for coming to me, Victoria.”

  “Pablo always said you were the best.”

  “I miss him,” Ana says. “How is Mateo?”

  Pablo’s little boy, who must be what now, twelve?

  Mateo was with Ana when Pablo was murdered.

  “He’s fine, thanks for asking,” Victoria said. “Growing like a weed.”

  “I’d love to see him.”

  “Absolutely,” Victoria said. “We don’t get back to Juárez very often, but when we do, I’ll be sure to look you up.”

  Ana knows it will never happen.

  And now she doesn’t share Victoria’s lead with Óscar. It’s premature. He would only quiz her about sources and then tell her to work one story at a time. But it might be one story, Ana thinks.

  It might be the same story.

  If the Tristeza students were murdered to protect the Caro connection, that connection might go a lot farther up the ladder.

  If Caro is using heroin money to invest with big banks . . .

  And big banks and the government are the same . . .

  It would explain why the government is covering up the real story of Tristeza.

  “Let me see if Palomas will talk to me,” she says. “And let me go see if I can get an interview with Damien Tapia.”

  “Ana . . .”

  “What?”

  “It’s too dangerous,” Óscar says.

  She sees the sorrow in his eyes. He’s already lost two reporters—Pablo and the photographer Giorgio. For all his curmudgeonly veneer, El Búho is softhearted—he still aches for those losses. And the danger is real: more than 150 Mexican reporters have been murdered covering the drug wars. At the height of the violence, Óscar had even forbidden them from covering the drug situation.

  Ana had responded to the prohibition by creating an anonymous blog to report the narco news.

  The Zetas put out an order to shut it down.

  Poor Pablo, poor sweet Pablo, had figured out it was her and took the responsibility. Sent her across the border with Mateo and wrote a final blog before they found him, tortured him, cut him to pieces and scattered his parts around the Plaza del Periodista.

  By the statue of a newsboy.

  It was my fault, Ana thinks.

  Pablo paid for my arrogance.

  She quit after that. Always a social drinker, she became an antisocial drinker, pouring alcohol on her guilt and grief, hiding from everyone, especially herself. Marisol wouldn’t let her disappear, though, bullied her into coming to live with her in the little town, cajoling her to go work in the clinic.

  Little by little, her life came back.

  But it was Tristeza that woke her from her sleep, kindled a fire of outrage that she thought had long since expired to cold ash. She had once been a respected, even feared, journalist; it was what she knew how to do.

  Now she’s doing it again.

  If Óscar will let her.

  When she first came back, he put her on “safe” stories, “women’s” stories—charity benefits, arts assignments, human interest angles that were far away from the crime, narco and political beat that she’d inhabited. She was an investigative journalist but he wouldn’t let her investigate anything deeper than a society snub (such as any existed in a backwater like Juárez) or a leaking sewer pipe.

  She investigated Tristeza on her own time and her own money.

  And still will, if Óscar won’t authorize it.

  Forty-nine dead kids.

  Forty-nine grieving families.

  And everyone seems to have forgotten.

  Just another tragedy in Mexico.

  “We’re journalists,” Ana says. “If we’re not going to cover the important stories, why do we even exist?”

  “It was always my conceit,” Óscar says, “that my reporters would come to my funeral and say embarrassingly laudatory things about me. Not the other way around.”

  Óscar’s eulogy for Pablo was beautiful.

  Ana read it in the paper. She hadn’t been able to make herself attend the funeral. She stayed home, drank and cried.

  Ana says, “Óscar, you know this is what we should be doing.”

  Óscar closes his eyes, as if consulting something in the past. Then he opens them, blinks, and says, “Be careful.”

  Ana calls the Bureau of Prisons and gets paperwork to request an interview with Palomas.

  Then she gets on the phone to Art Keller.

  “Let’s play a game,” she says. “I tell you the first part of a story and you finish it for me.”

  Ana runs down her theory and then tells him about the HBMX deal and its possible connection to Rafael Caro. She guesses Keller already knows about this, and then she says, “Here’s where you start playing. Who is the HBMX loan going to? Who is the ‘real estate concern’?”

  “Even if I knew that,” Keller says, “I couldn’t tell you.”

  “Couldn’t or wouldn’t?”

  “They’re the same thing,” Keller says.

  “But you know.”

  “I can’t confirm or deny—”

  “Oh, stop, Arturo,” Ana says. “This is on deep background. You know I’d never reveal the identity of a source.”

  “That’s not the point,” Keller says. “I wish you’d drop this, Ana.”

  “In your capacity as a government official,” Ana says, “or a friend?”

  “A friend.”

  “If you’re my friend, help me.”

  “I’m trying,” Keller says. “Look, why don’t you come to the United States and work on your story. If you think it has an American element . . .”

  “I will,” Ana says. “But I have lines of inquiry here first.”

  “Who gave you Caro’s name?” Keller asks.

  “Oh, you’ll ask questions but not answer them? I just told you that I don’t reveal sources.” But now she knows she’s onto something. Questions often reveal as much as answers, and Keller just revealed that Caro is a person of interest. She decides to push it. “Do you think Caro is connected to Tapia, Art? Do you think he’s involved with HBMX?”

  “Come up here,” Keller says.

  That’s a yes, Ana thinks. “How’s Mari?”

  “Busy being Mari,” Keller says. “Ana, be careful, huh?”

  “I will.”

  The prison official gets Ana’s request and calls Tito.

  Tito calls Caro.

  Caro tells him what needs to happen and makes his own request.

  Tito relays it to his people.

  Ana goes home.

  A one-bedroom apart
ment on Bosques Amazonas in Las Misiones.

  A quiet place in a quiet neighborhood.

  Some nights it doesn’t occur to Ana to drink, other nights it seems as if there’s no other option. She supposes she’s what they call a “functioning alcoholic,” although she’s functioning better than she did a year or so ago.

  But some nights the ghosts visit and they arrive demanding libation.

  This is one of those nights.

  Ana has a bottle of vodka shoved in a kitchen cabinet for ghost nights; now she takes it out, sits down at the table and pours some into a squat water glass. She’s not intending to get drunk, just sodden, just a little numb to take the edge off.

  Some people find memories comforting. They remember the good times with departed loved ones and it makes them feel better. The good-time memories make Ana feel worse. It’s the contrast, she guesses, the fact that she misses the happy-drunken nights, the laughs, the songs, the arguments, the work. The good memories are painful, sharp reminders of things she’ll never have again.

  Sweet, shaggy, unshaven, overweight Pablo.

  Drunken, undisciplined, underperforming, wonderful Pablo, dizzy with love for his child, for (hopelessly) his ex-wife, for his beloved, shattered city. Pablo wasn’t so much a Mexican as he was a Juarense; his world began and ended within the limits of the border town, on the edge of both Mexico and the United States, its location simultaneously its reason for being and the reason for its destruction. Pablo loved every dirty, tawdry inch and resented every improvement the way an old girlfriend resents the newer, younger, prettier version.

  He loved Juárez for its flaws, not in spite of them, just as Ana loved him for his shortcomings—his stained, wrinkled sport coats, his stubble as perpetual as his hangover, his self-destructive, career-stunting predilection for the weird, offbeat, quirky stories that relegated him to the back pages of the paper and the lower rungs of the salary ladder.

  Pablo was always broke, always cadging money and drinks, always struggling to pay child support; he ate fast food in his car, the floor of the old vehicle strewn with paper wrappers and cardboard cups. Now Ana is crying.

  Pathetically crying into my booze, she thinks.

  The first drink calms.

  The second drink numbs.

  The third makes you question yourself.

  Why am I really doing this? she wonders. Because I believe that the truth is important, or that some good will come out of it? Because I believe those kids should get justice, the justice that Pablo, Giorgio, Jimena and thousands of others didn’t get? Why do I think anything will happen, even if I find the truth?

  What difference does the truth make?

  We all know it, anyway.

  The truth of the Tristeza Massacre comes down to just more details in a long story. What difference do they make?

  Same story, different facts.

  Ana knows she should eat, gets a frozen dinner—chicken and rice—out of the freezer and sticks it in the microwave. She’s eating, without taste or appetite, when her phone rings. She wouldn’t answer but sees that it’s Marisol. “Hello?”

  “Just calling to say hello, catch up.”

  “Arturo told you he was worried.”

  When Marisol doesn’t answer, Ana says, “And yes, I’m a little drunk. One of those nights.”

  “Ana, why don’t you come up for a visit?”

  “Don’t patronize me,” Ana says. “Or would that be ‘matronize’?”

  “You’re witty when you’re in your cups.”

  “Famous for it,” Ana says. “Pablo used to say I was nicer when I was a little drunk.”

  “So you’ll come?”

  Relentless Marisol, Ana thinks. Always so sure that she knows what’s right and so relentless about making it happen. Self-assured, self-righteous Marisol—martyr and secular saint, perfect wife, perfect hostess, perfect pain in the ass. “When I’ve finished my work. Very busy right now, Mari.”

  “Yes, Art said you were working on a story.”

  “I think we’re working on the same story,” Ana says. “We’re competitors. Your husband is trying to scoop me.”

  “Hardly. Ana—”

  “‘Ana, be careful. Ana, don’t drink so much. Ana, take your vitamins.’”

  “Why don’t I call you tomorrow?” Marisol asks.

  “When I’m sober, you mean.”

  “All right, yes.”

  Ana asks, “Do you remember when we were happy, Mari?”

  “I’m happy now.”

  “Goody for you.”

  “I’m sorry, that was cruel,” Marisol says. “Yes, I remember . . . before all the killing started. We shouted poetry into the night . . .”

  “‘We have to laugh,’” Ana quotes. “‘Because laughter, we already know, is the first evidence of freedom.’”

  “Castellanos,” Marisol says. “‘I am the daughter of myself. My dream was born. My dream sustains me.’”

  “‘Death will be the proof that we lived.’”

  “Come visit me,” Marisol says. “I have no one to quote poetry with.”

  “Soon.”

  Ana clicks off and goes back to dinner, such as it is. Debates whether to have another drink, but she already knows who the winner of that argument is. She takes her next vodka into the bathroom and gets into the shower, stepping out of the spray to sip the drink.

  Dries off and drops into bed.

  When Ana wakes up, the bottle is by the side of the bed.

  Her head is splitting, she feels like shit. She brushes her teeth, rinses her mouth out with Listerine and squeezes Visine into her bloodshot eyes. A shower seems like too much effort, so she throws on some clothes—a blouse, sweater, jeans—puts on her shoes and heads out to go to work.

  They take her in the driveway.

  She sees the two men in front of her but not the two behind, who scoop her feet from under her and lift her as the other two grab her shoulders. One puts his hand over her mouth and they shove her in the back of the van before she really knows what’s happened.

  A very professional snatch job.

  A rag is stuffed in her mouth, a hood pulled over her head, plastic ties are fastened on her wrists, twisted behind her back.

  Hands push her to the floor of the van, feet keep her pressed down.

  Ana is terrified.

  She tries to keep her head, tries to estimate the minutes that she’s in the van before it stops, tries to listen to sounds that might give her a clue where she is. She’s written about kidnappings, about abductions, she’s interviewed police, knows what she’s supposed to do.

  Can’t.

  It’s all she can do to breathe.

  The van stops.

  She hears the door slide open. Hands grab her, lift her.

  Hands on her elbows walk her inside.

  Slam her ungently onto a chair. Cuff her to the chair legs.

  “Tell us what you know,” a man’s voice says.

  “About what?”

  The slap knocks her head to the side, hurts her neck, makes her ears ring. She’s never been hit before, it’s shockingly painful.

  “Tristeza,” the man says. “Tell us the story you believe.”

  She tells him.

  Runs down her whole theory—

  Núñez’s heroin.

  Damien’s theft.

  Heroin on the bus.

  Students killed to protect the information.

  Killed to protect—

  “Who?” the man asks.

  “I don’t know.”

  A closed fist this time. She’s a small woman, slight. The chair falls over with her. Her head hits the concrete floor. Kicks come into her ankles, her legs, her hips, her stomach. They hurt. Her face is on fire, her cheekbone broken.

  The man asks, “Guess. Who do you think?”

  “Damien Tapia,” Ana says, crying. “Eddie Ruiz.”

  “Who else?”

  “Rafael Caro?”

  Most people think they’
d resist. That they’d suffer torture, hold out.

  Most people are wrong.

  The body won’t allow it. The body overrules the mind, the soul.

  Ana tells him.

  Gives up every name.

  Survivors, other students, teachers. City cops, state cops, federales, soldiers, narcos from GU, Los Rojos, Sinaloa, the old Tapia group, Jalisco. Gives them anything and anyone so they won’t start again.

  Orwell was right.

  “Do it to Julia.”

  It does her no good.

  “HBMX,” the man says. “What do you know about that? What were you going to write?”

  “Caro. Collecting drug money for a loan. American. Real estate.”

  “What American?”

  She sobs. “I don’t know.”

  “Tell me and this can stop.”

  “I don’t know. I swear.”

  “Who told you about the loan?”

  She gives him Victoria’s name.

  “Who else?”

  “That’s all.”

  “Who have you told this to?”

  “No one. Nobody. I swear, I swear, please . . .”

  “I believe you.” The man asks, “Are you religious? Do you believe in God?”

  “No.”

  “Then you don’t want to pray.”

  “No.”

  “Face the wall. This won’t hurt.”

  Ana twists her body to face the wall.

  “My dream was born. My dream sustains me.”

  The man shoots her in the back of the head.

  Death will be the proof that she lived.

  Keller hears Marisol scream.

  He runs upstairs.

  She’s clutching a phone. Her eyes are wide. She looks as if she might fall. He grabs her and holds her up, she wraps her arms around him.

  “They killed her,” Marisol says. “They killed Ana.”

  Her body was found in a roadside ditch in Anapra, just over the border.

  She’d been tortured.

  Lessons must be taught.

  Examples set.

  Dedos—informers—who talk to the police, the military, the press must be silenced but first punished.

  In a way that teaches lessons, sets examples so the rest aren’t tempted to talk out of turn.

  Manuel Ceresco sits tied to a chair in the countryside outside Guadalajara. Sticks of dynamite are strapped to his chest. Thirty yards away, his twelve-year-old son, also Manuel, is also tied to a chair with sticks of dynamite stacked beneath it.