by Don Winslow
If I had known . . .
Too late now, though.
Now all she can do is save Luis’s life.
The car drives up Route 3, past Punta Morro, La Playita, and El Sauzal. Elena never sees El Sauzal without a twinge of pain; it was here that Adán ordered the slaughter of nineteen innocent people to make sure that he killed one informer.
The convoy passes El Sauzal, then Victoria, and then the driver takes an exit onto a roundabout that continues on Route 3, which runs inland. He should merge onto Route 1, which goes up to Tijuana and the airport.
She leans forward. “What are you doing? You need to be on 1.”
The lead car took the right route and went off on Route 1, so now there’s no car in front of Elena’s.
“Take the next roundabout,” Elena says. “You can get back on 1.”
The driver doesn’t. He blows right past and continues east on Route 3 and then Elena hears a loud buzzing sound behind them. She turns and looks through the back windshield. There must be ten motorcycles, they come up behind her trailing car, then pull alongside it.
Flashes burst from gun barrels.
The car swerves and crashes.
The motorbikes—bizarrely, all of them are pink—come after her car. She hears the whining of more engines and turns to look in front. More bikes are coming straight at them.
The driver pulls over.
“Don’t do that!” Elena yells.
The driver lies down in the front seat.
Now the bikes are circling her, like Indians in one of those bad old American westerns.
Elena sees that girl—that vulgar, vulgar girl from Adán’s wake, the same one who killed Rudolfo’s assassin—on one of the bikes as they circle tighter. The girl raises a machine pistol and fires. Elena gets down, but Luis panics. He opens his door and tries to run, abandoning her. She grabs at him, tries to stop him, but he’s out and running.
Into a wall of bullets.
They smack into his legs, his chest, his face.
Arms akimbo, he falls on his back.
Elena crawls out of the car and kneels by her son’s shredded, bleeding, mutilated body. She lifts him, holds him in her arms, looks at the skies and screams. Screams her voice out, her heart out.
A shrill, unearthly sound.
Belinda gets off her bike.
Walks over, puts a pistol to Elena’s forehead, and says, “You always thought you were better than me.”
She pulls the trigger.
Elena falls on her dead child.
The Barrera drug dynasty is dead.
Deader, in fact, than most people know.
The doorbell rings at Eva’s house in La Jolla.
She looks through the peephole and sees a man standing there alone, dressed in a plum polo shirt and khakis. He looks harmless, so she opens the door.
“Yes?” she asks.
“You probably don’t remember me, but I was at your wedding,” he says. He looks behind her to where her twin sons stand shyly peeking out at him. “Who are these two little cuties? You must be Miguel and Raúl.”
“Who are you?” Eva asks.
“Eddie,” he says. “Eddie Ruiz.”
Eva, Eva, Evuuuh, Eddie thinks.
Eva Esparza Barrera.
Still as hot as gravy drippings and she’s what—twenty-eight now. A MILF. Squared. Two kids and she still has an ass like an apple and tits that look just as firm as they did when Adán B. reached down and snatched her out of the cradle.
El Señor’s child bride.
Married off to an old man to cement an alliance and produce heirs who would unite two wings of the cartel. Sweet demure virginal Eva, whose old man guarded her chocha like it was worth its weight in gold, which it sort of was.
The two little princes here—Prince Miguel and Prince Raúl. Eddie wonders which of them popped out first, because technically he’d be first in line for the crown.
Now that their papi is dead.
Their uncle Raúl dead.
Their great-uncle M-1 dead.
Their cousin Sal muerto. Okay, I killed Sal, Eddie thinks, but whatever. You get born a Barrera, your odds of dying of old age aren’t spectacular. And little Eva here—who Eddie thought about fucking when she was walking down the aisle—is a smokin’ hot widow.
With tens of millions of dollars that Eddie wouldn’t mind, uh, tapping into.
“How did you find me?” Eva asks.
“Persistence,” Eddie says.
And a source in the DEA.
Eva is an American citizen. Her papi drove her mami across the border to have her in Dago, so she’s here perfectly legally, and while her late lamented dearly beloved was the world’s biggest drug dealer, there’s not a single charge pending against his grieving widow.
Eva’s sheet is clean.
“What can I do for you?” Eva asks.
“Maybe the boys could go watch Sesame Street or something?” Eddie says.
“That hasn’t been on for years,” Eva says. “Where have you been?”
“Away.”
“Overseas?”
“Okay.”
Eva says, “I can put a movie on for them.”
“That would be great.”
She opens the door and lets him in. Then she walks the boys down the hall. A few minutes later she comes back, takes Eddie into the living room and gestures for him to sit on the couch.
It’s a nice house, Eddie thinks.
New furniture, view of the ocean.
Seven figures, easy.
Lunch money for Adán.
Eva’s wearing black—a black blouse over tight black designer jeans and sandals. Her hair is pulled back into one of those yummy-mummy ponytails like she just got home from yoga.
“Eddie Ruiz,” she says. “Didn’t you used to work for my husband?”
“Work for him”? Eddie thinks. Bitch, I took Nuevo Laredo for your husband. I set up Diego Tapia to get killed for your husband. I dropped into Guatemala to save your husband. And while we’re at it, princess, I turned the man who killed your father into a highway torch. So let’s not be talking to me like I just dropped off the dry cleaning. “That’s right. Back in the day.”
When your husband was on this side of the grass.
“What do you want to talk about?” she asks.
“Money.”
“What about it?”
“Who handles your money now?” Eddie asks. “Your brothers?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“It could be, though,” Eddie says. “And I wouldn’t steal from you.”
“You think my brothers are stealing from me?”
“How would you know?” Eddie asks. “You just take what they hand you, right? And say ‘thank you’?”
“They look out for me.”
“Like you were a little girl,” Eddie says.
“I’m not a little girl,” she says, bristling.
“Then why act like you are?”
He lays it out for her—she’s owed all the money that comes from Adán’s faction of the cartel. That’s tens of millions a year—money that needs to be laundered and invested. Okay, so her brothers say that they do that, but do they really? Does she get every penny she’s owed or do they just give what they think she deserves? Do they even send her all the money, or do they send her a monthly allowance?
He sees from the look on her face that it’s the latter.
“Are you kidding me right now?” Eddie asks. “You’re a grown woman with two kids.”
He presses. Are they at least investing her money well, is she getting the return she should be getting? She doesn’t know, does she, because she doesn’t track the accounting, she doesn’t ask.
“And it’s your money, not theirs,” Eddie says. “If you put your money with us, we’d be very aware that it’s your money, not ours.”
“Who’s ‘us’?”
Halfway home, Eddie thinks. If she wasn’t interested, she would have alread
y told him to get the fuck out, been on the phone to her brothers. “I’m part of a syndicate with some very important people whose names you may or may not know.”
“Try me.”
“Rafael Caro.”
This is where it could crash and burn, Eddie thinks. If she’s aware that Caro and Barrera fought a war with each other back when she was a rug rat. When, like, Sesame Street was still on.
She doesn’t know.
He can see it from the blank look in her eyes.
Jesus, can she really be as dumb as they say?
“I haven’t heard of him,” she says, as if Caro is some musician she doesn’t have on her playlist.
“He’s been away,” Eddie says.
“Same place as you were ‘away’?”
As a matter of fact, Eddie thinks. “Caro has connections at the highest levels of both Mexican and American government and business circles. He . . . we . . . can make those connections work for you. Make you a lot more money, put you in charge of your own life.”
“If I betray my brothers.”
“Loyalty is a two-way street,” Eddie says. “Eva, you think I don’t get you, but I do. You were seventeen when your father married you off to an old man for business reasons. Now your brothers are in trouble, and they need to make peace with Tito Ascensión. Remember him, big ugly old guy, looks like a dog?”
“What are you saying?”
“You know what Iván has to offer Tito?” Eddie asks. “You.”
“He wouldn’t do that.”
“If you’re lucky, they’ll marry you off to Tito’s son,” Eddie says. “About your age, not bad looking. But if Tito has a hard-on for you, well, stock up on chew bones, Eva, they might keep him off you for a few seconds now and then.”
“You’re gross.”
“I thought you were a woman, you still want to be a girl. My mistake.” He gets up. “Nice to see you again. Sorry I wasted your time.”
“Sit down.”
Eddie hesitates for a second to let her think he’s reluctant, then sits down and looks at her.
“How would this work?” she asks.
He runs it down for her. She wouldn’t even have to confront Iván. They already know the people who do the day-to-day with her money; they’ll go to these people and explain that the arrangements have been changed, that Eva Esparza Barrera is taking control of her own life. If they go along with that, great, if they don’t . . .
“I don’t want any violence,” Eva says.
Of course not, Eddie thinks. You married a guy who once threw two children off a bridge, but you don’t want any blood on your hands. Like most of the esposas, you like the money and the clothes and the jewelry and the cars and the house, you just don’t want to know where they come from.
“No violence,” he says.
Unless necessary.
But then he sees he’s losing her.
And he doesn’t want to lose her. If they have the mami of the royal twins in the car, the vag from which emerged the spawn of Barrera, it gives them instant legitimacy. Shit, there are people in Mexico still lighting candles, saying prayers to Santo Adán.
And her money don’t hurt, either.
But she’s saying, “I don’t know . . .”
Eddie knows what “I don’t know” means to a chick. It means no. It means “I like you as a friend.” It means she’ll sip wine and watch Netflix with you, but she isn’t going to fuck you.
But yeah, you are, Eddie thinks. You don’t know it yet, Eva, but you’re going to get on all fours and stick your ass up for me. I didn’t want to do this, I wanted this to be a seduction, not a rough fuck, but . . .
“You want to know what I know?” Eddie asks. “Your former bodyguard, Miguel? You fucked him in your condo in Bosques de las Lomas back in 2010. Just about nine months before the twins were born.”
“That’s absurd.”
“Miguel didn’t want to rat you out,” Eddie says. “He held out for a long time. But then it turned out he valued his balls more than you. Can you blame him?”
“He’s lying.”
“No, he’s not,” Eddie says. “Look, I don’t blame you. You had to get pregnant or Adán would replace you with another pageant queen he couldn’t knock up. I get it. You did what you had to do. And as long as you’re with us, it’s in all our best interest to pretend that the two little bastards in there watching whatever the fuck they’re watching are products of the holy sperm of Adán Barrera and not some juiced-up boy toy you didn’t make wear a condom.
“But if you’re not going to go with us . . . what would your brothers do if they knew that? Beat you? Kill you? Cut off the money, for sure. How about the rest of the world, when they find out you’re not the demure, grieving widow but a . . . I don’t know . . . slut? Whore? I mean, Jesus, Eva, really? The bodyguard? It’s so . . . porn.”
Now he’s really going to find out if she’s a girl or a woman.
A girl starts crying.
A woman makes a deal.
Eddie gives her a nudge in the direction he wants her to go. “We could build an empire, Eva. Those boys in there could be kings. For the first time since you were born, you could be in charge of your own fucking life.”
Eva doesn’t cry.
She nods.
“Okaaaay,” Eddie says. He stands up again. “I’ll get it working.”
She walks him to the door.
Eddie asks, “You seeing anybody? You have a guy?”
She smiles. “That is none of your business.”
No, Eddie thinks.
But it could be.
Rafael Caro just took over the Sinaloa cartel, Keller thinks when he gets the intel that Eddie Ruiz went to visit Eva Barrera.
Then Eddie starts dumping tons of money into his laundry banks. A lot more money than he has. It can only be Eva’s money, going into banks around San Diego, going into real estate in the US and Mexico, into construction projects in both countries, in Europe and the Middle East and, yes, going into HBMX.
Going into the syndicate.
Word comes in that some of the Esparza money handlers and accountants have moved over to Ruiz, a couple of others have been found dead at the wheels of their cars.
Keller knows that a lot of the old Barrera loyalists are going to defect to the Caro-Ruiz combination when the word gets out that Eva is with them. It’s only surprising that Caro didn’t take Eva for himself—at least not yet.
But now Eddie will raise the Barrera flag.
Adán vive.
Barrera has the cartel again.
It has the syndicate.
The syndicate has become the cartel and the cartel has become the syndicate.
Soon the syndicate will have the White House.
One and the same.
Over my dead body, Keller thinks.
5
White Christmas
I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play . . .
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“Christmas Bells”
Kingston, New York
December 2016
Jacqui haunts the streets like the zombie she is.
It’s not The Night of the Living Dead, it’s The Night and Day and Day and Night of the Living Dead.
In her lucid moments, Jacqui has come to believe that heroin was not created for human beings, but that human beings were created for heroin as a means of perpetuating itself. It’s a Darwinian thing, she thinks as she strolls along the sidewalk in search of her next fix. The survival of the fittest, and heroin is definitely fitter than people. The evidence is unassailable, herself being only Exhibit A of about a million whole alphabets.
Heroin even evolves to get fitter.
First there was Mexican black.
Then cinnamon.
Then fire, as heroin grew its opposable thumb, fentanyl. Now there are rumors of co-fentanyl, an even stronger evolutionary leap. Then there are the related subspecies—Oxy, Vico
din and the rest of the pharmaceutical products.
Yeah, heroin is taking over the world like Homo sapiens once took over the world.
Unstoppable.
A lot of us are dying, Jacqui thinks, but a lot of us aren’t. Because, unlike people, heroin is too smart to destroy its own environment. It will keep enough addicts alive to keep itself in need, in circulation, to keep human beings growing those poppies.
And heroin is patient.
Heroin will wait for you.
Waited for Jacqui until she was done with her rehab, clean-and-sober halfway-house foolishness.
Then welcomed her back like the prodigal daughter.
All is forgiven, come on home.
Come on back, baby, into my loving arms.
Bring it on home (G7) to me (C).
Yeah, Jacqui did rehab and passed with the proverbial flying colors. At first it was a bitch, she was sicker than shit, but the nurses got her through the detox, and when she came out of that, the counselors and the other patients got her through the rest of it.
They told her she was only as sick as her secrets, so one day she told about her molestations and cried all that out and felt a lot better. They told her she had to come to terms with her grief, so she opened up about Travis dying in her arms and cried some more. They told her that to get well she had to dump her guilt, make amends, so she called her mother and said she was sorry about all the nasty shit she did, and her mother forgave her and then they told her she had to forgive herself, and she did.
She went to therapy, she went to “group,” she went to the meetings and did the Steps, even the one about finding a Higher Power, which was hard because the last thing that Jacqui believed in was, like, God.
Doesn’t have to be God, they told her, but it has to be something, you have to find something bigger than yourself to believe in because the day is going to come when there’s nothing standing between you and the drug but that Higher Power. So first she used the group, then she graduated to some unspecified astral force out there, then Jacqui found Jesus.
Yup, Jesus.
Of all the fucking things, Jacqui thought at the time.
But she was ecstatic. She’d found a high that was higher than dope, higher than cinnamon, higher than freaking anything.
It was so goddamn beautiful.