The Cartel

by Don Winslow

“Ana.”

  “Just fuck me, Pablo.”

  Their lovemaking is angry and afterward she sobs.

  The day after Giorgio’s funeral, Óscar shows Pablo and Ana an editorial he intends to publish.

  “Señores of the organizations disputing the plaza of Ciudad Juárez,” he reads, “we would like to bring to your attention that we are reporters, not fortune-tellers. Thus, we would like you to explain what is it that you want from us? What do you want us to publish or refrain from publishing? You are, at present, the de facto authorities in this city, due to the fact that the legally established rulers have not been able to do anything to keep our colleagues from falling, despite our repeated demands that they do so. And it is for this reason that, faced with this unquestionable reality, we are forced to pose this question, because what we least want is for another of our colleagues to fall victim.

  “This is not a surrender on our part, but an offer of a truce. We need to know, at least, what the rules are, for even in a war, there are rules.”

  The editorial itself makes headlines internationally. It resonates among the journalistic community in Mexico because so many journalists have been murdered in Chihuahua, Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, and Michoacán.

  The Zetas, especially, have established a virtual silence born of terror in the areas that they control, with media in Nuevo Laredo and Reynosa having stopped running stories on the narcotics trade at all, and average people in the street afraid even to speak their names, referring to them instead as “the last letter.”

  The paper receives hundreds of letters and e-mails.

  No answer, however, comes from the cartels.

  No rules, no stated expectations.

  Pablo knows what the expectations are; he doesn’t need a rulebook to know the rules: Write what we tell you, and only what we tell you, or we’ll kill you. Take the sobre, or we’ll kill you. Sell us your soul, or we’ll kill you.

  It’s a bitter lesson—you think you can rent your soul, but it’s always a sale, and all sales are final.

  That night, the envelope man Pablo finds him on the street.

  “Tomorrow, pendejo, we see that story or—” He smiles, sticks his two fingers out like a gun, and squeezes the “trigger.”

  Ana’s in bed when Pablo gets back. He doesn’t want to wake her so he sleeps on the couch. Or tries to, without a lot of success. He thinks of writing Mateo a goodbye letter, but decides that’s too melodramatic.

  He decides to write the Sinaloa article.

  Then the Zeta one.

  Then neither.

  In the morning, he decides, I’ll go into the office and hand Óscar my resignation.

  Then I’ll cross the bridge.

  —

  In the morning Pablo tries to find a way to tell Ana what he’s going to do.

  But he can’t find the words.

  Or, face it, he tells himself, the courage.

  Maybe that’s the way, though, Pablo thinks. Just tell her that you’re afraid, that you don’t want to end up like Armando or Giorgio. She’ll think less of you, but she won’t hate you the way she will if she knows you took money.

  Just tell her that you’re afraid.

  She’ll believe that.

  Five times he tries to open his mouth, but nothing comes out. He tries again as they drive to the office together. He feels like he’s on a conveyor belt headed inexorably for the blades of an abattoir, but can’t yell to stop it.

  They get to the office and park the car, cross the street to get a coffee.

  Pablo can picture the crushed, disappointed look on El Búho’s face.

  He thought about simply typing up his resignation and e-mailing it, but decided that would be too cowardly. Óscar deserves a face-to-face explanation, and an apology, and somehow Pablo feels that he deserves it, too. Deserves to look into Óscar’s hurt eyes and remember his expression. Deserves to hear Óscar’s disappointed words and have them replay in his head. Deserves to walk out of the office in shame, clean out his desk, feel the stares on his back, and then (try to) explain things to Ana.

  And then what? he thinks as he sips his café con leche and looks across the street at the office building that’s been the only professional home he’s ever known. You’re done in journalism—no decent paper will hire you. The best you can hope for is to freelance for la nota roja, circling the city like a vulture, picking at its bones.

  A creature that makes its living from corpses.

  Can’t do it, he thinks.

  Can’t and won’t.

  Then again, you might not have the chance—you might be one of those corpses, if the narcos get angry that they’ve wasted their money on you and decide to do something about it. Face it, there’s no future for you in journalism and there’s no future for you in Juárez.

  Or anywhere in Mexico, for that matter.

  You’re going to have to cross the bridge.

  Become a pocho.

  “You’re particularly uncommunicative this morning,” Ana says.

  “Ummm.”

  “That’s more like it.”

  He sets his cup down and gets up. “I’m going in.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  He crosses the street and shows his ID badge to the security officers at the front door, who know him anyway. Getting into the elevator, he acknowledges that this might be the last time and almost changes his mind, but knows he can’t.

  He has to say something now, before he goes into Óscar’s office.

  “Ana—”

  “What?”

  “I—”

  Óscar appears in the doorway and announces that he wants to see the entire reportorial staff in the conference room immediately.

  “I am no longer willing to risk the lives of the people for whom I am professionally and personally responsible,” he says when they’ve assembled, “to report upon a situation that even the best of journalists—and that’s what you are—cannot affect. We will no longer report on the drug situation.”

  Ana objects. Red in the face, almost tearful, she asks, “We’re just going to give in to them? Knuckle under? Allow them to intimidate us?”

  Óscar has tears in his eyes as well. His cane taps on the floor and his voice quivers as he answers, “I don’t feel that I have a viable choice, Ana.”

  “But how is this going to work?” Pablo asks. “Say there’s a murder. We just don’t report it?”

  “You report the fact of an apparent homicide,” Óscar says, “but leave it at that. You make no connection to the drug situation.”

  “That’s absurd,” Ana says.

  “I agree,” Óscar answers. “Our civic life, however, has become an absurdity. This is not a suggestion, this is an instruction. I will wield a heavy editorial pen and simply delete anything you write that might jeopardize the safety of anyone on this paper. Do you understand?”

  “I understand that it’s the death of a great newspaper,” Ana says.

  “Which I will cheerfully bury,” Óscar says, “before I will bury another one of you. I will announce our new policy in tomorrow’s edition so that the narcos will be notified.”

  “What about Giorgio?” Ana presses.

  El Búho raises an eyebrow.

  “Are we going to investigate it?” Ana asks. “Or just let it go?”

  Because the police have let it go, Pablo thinks. Of the over five thousand murders in Juárez since the cartel war began, not a single one has resulted in a conviction. They all know the reality—no one has investigated Giorgio’s murder, and no one is going to. And now Óscar is telling them that they’re not going to, either.

  This man, this hero, who once took a narco gun blast and wouldn’t let it stop him, now leans on his cane, and looks tired and old, and says with his silence that he, and they, have been silenced.

  Not Ana.

  They’re drinking at Oxido that night, one of the clubs still open in the PRONAF Zone, and she has a couple more than she usually does.

&nb
sp; “I might as well have taken the money,” she says.

  “What do you mean?” Pablo asks.

  “When the narcos offered me a bribe,” Ana says, “I should have taken it. They’re our bosses now, right? So they should pay us.”

  Pablo drains his beer.

  “I’m not letting it go,” Ana says. “They killed our friend and our colleague and I’m not letting it go.”

  “Ana, you heard Óscar. What are you going to do?”

  “Push,” Ana said. “Push the authorities until they do something about it.”

  “Like they did something about Jimena’s murder?” Pablo asks. “Like they did something about the attack on you and Marisol? How about those two women up in the valley? Or the dozens of murders we see every week? Are those the authorities you’re going to?”

  “I’ll shame them,” Ana says.

  “Ana, they’re shameless.”

  He’s scared. If she pushes on this, she could be next.

  “Well, I’m not,” Ana mutters. “I’m not shameless.”

  “Óscar won’t print what you write.”

  “I know,” Ana says.

  A little while later Pablo pours Ana into a taxi and takes her home. Puts her to bed and then he goes out again.

  Pablo is not by nature heroic.

  He knows this about himself and he’s okay with it. But tonight he goes back out because he has to do something to prevent Ana from running headlong off the edge of the cliff. If I can get an answer, he thinks, about who killed Giorgio and why, maybe I can get the story published in a North American paper under a phony byline. Maybe that would satisfy Ana, or even pressure the police to do something about it.

  Nor does Pablo look particularly heroic, and he knows that, too. He wears a black, somewhat soiled T-shirt under a black, somewhat soiled untucked shirt with a light windbreaker and a red Los Indios ball cap, and he’s aware that his stomach hangs over his belt.

  Now he rings Ramón’s doorbell. It takes a few minutes, then some lights come on and the door cracks open behind the security chain.

  “Ramón, it’s me.”

  The door opens and Ramón has a pistol pointed at Pablo’s face. “Mierdito, ’mano, what the fuck?”

  “I have to talk to you.”

  Ramón lets him in. “Don’t wake up the kids, okay?”

  They walk into the kitchen. The house is a mini McMansion out in the new suburbs and looks like the generic home of any midlevel manager.

  “I haven’t seen our fucking story, Pablo,” Ramón says.

  Pablo tells him about Óscar’s decision.

  “I guess you’re off the hook, then,” Ramón says. “That’s good—spares us both a lot of pain.”

  “Why was Giorgio Valencia killed?”

  “Fuck, you just got out of the hot water—”

  “Why?”

  “He took the wrong pictures.”

  “Which wrong pictures?”

  “That Cisneros chocha,” Ramón says. “You tapping that, Pablo? You know her, right? Jesus shit, I would like to bang that, I mean before she got, you know, fucked up. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Pablo, it could have been you.”

  “Why wasn’t it?” Pablo asks.

  “You weren’t on the Zs’ payroll.”

  Pablo feels his head spinning. “What are you saying?”

  “Your boy Giorgio was sucio,” Ramón says. “Dirty. Like you. Only he was taking the Zs’ money and then he fucked them by doing those pictures of the broad showing off her scars. You want to see my scars, ’Blo? I have some beauties.”

  “You have names? Who did it?”

  “Fuck, you want to get me killed with you?” Ramón asks. Then he shuts up because he hears Karla coming down the stairs. His wife comes into the kitchen and looks blearily at Pablo.

  “Hi, Pablo.”

  “Hello, Karla. Nice to see you.”

  “Nice to see you.” She looks curiously at Ramón.

  “Go back to bed, baby,” Ramón says. “I’ll be back up in a few minutes.”

  “Come by sometime for dinner,” Karla says to Pablo.

  “I will.”

  She walks back upstairs.

  “Names?” Ramón asks. “Names? Grow up. What the fuck difference does it make? They’re all the same cat. I’m telling you, Pablo, leave this the fuck alone. Leave it all the fuck alone. Me, I’ve decided to get out of here. Karla’s pregnant again, I got some money set aside on el otro lado. A few little things to take care of and then I’m out of here. You should do the same.”

  “I’m a Juarense.”

  “Yeah, that’s great,” Ramón says. “Except there ain’t no more Juárez. The Juárez we knew is gone.”

  —

  When Pablo gets back to Ana’s she’s still up. “Where did you go?”

  “We’re not married, Ana.”

  “I just asked.”

  “Ana, leave this thing with Giorgio alone, okay?”

  “What do you know about it?”

  “Just leave it be.” It will only break your heart, if it doesn’t get you killed first.

  “Pablo, what do you know?”

  “I know that Sinatra’s not coming back.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  There are no answers.

  Victoria, Tamaulipas

  October 2010

  Don Pedro Alejo de Castillo hears a commotion outside his hacienda and goes to see what is happening.

  His cook, Lupe, looks terrified, and Don Pedro doesn’t like people upsetting Lupe. She’s been with him for over thirty years, the only woman in his household since his wife, Dorotea, passed away six years ago.

  Don Pedro is seventy-seven, still tall and straight-spined. He goes to the door to see men driving around the front of the house in trucks and SUVs, firing AK-47s and AR-15s into the air, honking their horns and shouting obscenities.

  Don Pedro doesn’t like that either.

  Only a malandro uses obscenity in front of a woman.

  Three of the men get out of an SUV and walk up to his front porch. They’re dressed like vaqueros, but he sees right away that they’ve never worked a day in their lives on a ranch.

  His has five hundred acres, not large by local standards, but perfectly suited to him. And it sits on the edge of a beautiful lake with ducks and geese and good fishing. He goes out there just before dawn most mornings.

  “Are you Alejo de Castillo?” one of the men demands.

  Rudely.

  “I am Don Pedro Alejo de Castillo, yes.”

  “This is your ranch?”

  “Yes.”

  “We are the Zetas,” the man says, as if it’s supposed to frighten him.

  It doesn’t.

  Don Pedro has a vague notion that the Zetas are some sort of drug gang that has been causing trouble in the cities, but he is not frightened. He has little to do with the cities, and less to do with drugs.

  “What do you want?” he asks.

  “We are confiscating this property,” the man says.

  “I don’t think so, no.”

  “Old man, we’re not asking you. We’re telling you. You have until tonight to leave, or we’ll kill you.”

  “Get off my land.”

  “We’ll be back.”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  Don Pedro has an aristocratic manner and bearing, but he is not an aristocrat. His father ran a sawmill, and Pedro grew up working very hard. He turned the one sawmill into two, then five, then twelve, and eventually became a rich man. Don Pedro didn’t inherit this ranch, he earned it the same way he earned the “Don,” from his own hard work.

  And he is not going to give it to anyone.

  He built the two-story hacienda himself, with the help of local men, and lovingly supervised each detail. The walls are of thick, mud-colored adobe, with deep-set windows. The front door, of heavy wood, is shaded by a deep portal supported by hand-carved zapatas from his own sawmills.
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  Inside, large log roof beams, called vigas, stretch across the large, whitewashed living room, jointed to the walls with hand-carved corbel brackets. Thin latillas are laid crosshatched across the ceiling. The floors are polished terra-cotta tiles, with Indian carpets laid out. A clay fireplace sits in one corner.

  The house is beautiful, understated, and dignified.

  Don Pedro is impeccably dressed, as always. Dorotea always dressed well, like a lady, and he would never let her down by dressing as anything other than a gentleman. When he goes to put flowers on her grave, on consecrated ground on the little knoll overlooking her beloved lake, he wears a suit and a tie.

  Today he wears a tweed shooting jacket, knit tie, khaki trousers, and hunting boots. Don Pedro is a founding member of the Manuel Silva Hunting and Fishing Club and the ranch will go to the club when he dies, on the stipulation that Lupe and Tomás, who has worked for him for thirty-eight years, can live their lives out here.

  He has no children to leave his land to. When Dorotea tried to apologize to him once for not being able to give him children, he put his finger to her lips and said, “You are the sunrise of my life.”

  Now Lupe is crying.

  She must have heard everything, and Don Pedro doesn’t like this, because he does not like to see a woman cry, and it makes him have even less respect for these “Zetas,” because gentlemen do not conduct business in front of women.

  “I think,” Don Pedro says, “that you should go into town so you can spend the weekend with your grandchildren.”

  “Don Pedro—”

  “Don’t cry. Everything will be all right.”

  “But—”

  “I have that beautiful duck that you made me last night,” Don Pedro says. “I can warm that up for dinner. Go pack a few things, now.”

  He finds Tomás in the barn, cleaning the heads on the new John Deere tractor that they are both so proud of.

  “Who were those men?” Tomás asks.

  “Some malandros. Idiots.” He tells Tomás to take Lupe into Victoria and to stay there himself, in the hotel where Don Pedro has an account.

  “I’m staying with you,” Tomás says. His hair has gone silver, and his strong hands are twisted with arthritis. “I can shoot.”

  “I know you can.” He must also have heard everything, Don Pedro thinks. But pigeons and ducks are not men. Not even deer are men. “I need you to take care of the others. I’m sending them, too.”