The Last Act: A Novel

by Brad Parks

  Four rules. Followed with unerring constancy. Herrera had been told El Vio developed them by studying those who had come before him, from El Patrón to El Padrino, from El Lazca to El Chapo. He had learned from their rise and, more important, their fall.

  Herrera had heard the General say that El Vio needed to relax more. Surely, El Vio—who had become the richest, most feared man in Mexico, the master of an empire forged by his cunning and brutality—could relax and enjoy what his labors had brought him.

  But as far Herrera knew, El Vio never let up. That was part of his legend. El Vio, the fifth son of a poor avocado farmer. El Vio, who spent his teens learning the trade from the original Colima cartel. El Vio, who taught himself three languages by watching foreign television shows. El Vio, who rose to become chief enforcer for the Sinaloa cartel before deciding he could do better on his own.

  And now look at him. As Sinaloa stumbled, he surged. He commanded an army of five thousand, roughly equal to the entire US Drug Enforcement Administration. He had entrenched supply lines to the wealthiest markets in North America, Europe, and Asia.

  All this, and the Americans still had virtually nothing on him. They couldn’t directly tie him to a single ounce of methamphetamine, much less the tons he shipped across their border every year.

  El Vio had only one vulnerability, and that was the banker.

  Herrera had heard all about this from the General, usually when he was drunk. There was a banker in America who had helped launder a portion of El Vio’s vast fortune. He was caught, but before El Vio could get rid of him, the banker made it known he had hidden documents. They could be used to implicate at least a dozen top leaders, including El Vio himself. He would be extradited for sure.

  If anything happened to the banker or his family, these documents would be turned over to American authorities. It was a gaping liability. The General, as chief of security, had not yet found a way to close it.

  Which was the main reason Herrera heard panic in the General’s voice when those speeding vehicles were spotted.

  The compound the General commanded was known as Rosario No. 2. There was no point in giving it a more clever or inspiring name. There were others like it. El Vio would insist it be dismantled and moved elsewhere soon enough. It consisted of seven buildings, surrounded by a twelve-foot razor-wire fence that kept workers in as much as it kept intruders out.

  Five of the buildings were flimsy metal warehouses with ventilation fans on both ends. They were spaced out, because methamphetamine had an unfortunate propensity to explode during production. But that was really the only downside of it. Whereas cocaine and heroin required huge acreage for growing plants—which could be spotted by the Americans with their satellites—meth was easy to hide.

  The sixth building was a barracks for the General and his lieutenants, who were expected to watch over Rosario No. 2 and protect it from attacks by the Mexican authorities or, just as likely, rival cartels.

  Still, it was the seventh building that mattered most. They called it “the bunker,” because it was made of double-reinforced concrete. It contained a stockpile of weapons and enough ammunition to hold off a Mexican Army battalion for a month. It also served as a nerve center for monitoring a number of highly sensitive security operations.

  Including the one watching the banker.

  The General was outside the bunker when the Range Rovers arrived. He had ordered several of the lieutenants, Herrera among them, to join him.

  “Stand up straight,” the General barked. “El Vio doesn’t like slouching.”

  Herrera straightened. The vehicles stopped.

  El Vio climbed out of the first one. He was five foot seven and built like a welterweight. His thick dark hair was combed back from his forehead and held in place by gel. His face was partially covered by mirrored sunglasses, which he kept on even when indoors, so people wouldn’t be able to stare at his right eye, the one that was said to have been injured in a childhood accident.

  He wore black cargo pants with a gray T-shirt made of some kind of breathable material. His utility belt contained, among other things, a knife and a pistol.

  “Vio,” the General said, taking a few tentative steps forward. “How good to see you.”

  El Vio froze the General’s momentum with one glance. There was no exchange of handshakes. Herrera had never actually seen El Vio touch anyone.

  “Do you have news for me regarding our friend in West Virginia?” El Vio asked.

  “Our friend.” That’s how they referred to the banker.

  “Not yet,” the General said. “We’re working on it.”

  “That’s what you told me last time.”

  “Soon. Very soon. I am confident. We have an excellent operation in place.”

  “Also what you told me last time.”

  “I’m doing everything I can,” the General said. His voice trembled.

  “Are you?” El Vio said.

  The way he posed the question did not invite an answer.

  “I just need more time,” the General pleaded. “This will soon be resolved.”

  El Vio received this promise with little emotion.

  “Come closer,” he said softly.

  The General took a few steps.

  “Closer,” El Vio said again.

  The General complied. Now the rest of him was trembling.

  “Closer.”

  The General took another step. Behind him, Herrera had also moved forward. But without fear. Something in him wanted to be nearer to El Vio.

  “That’s good,” El Vio said.

  “The Americans are having no more success than I am,” the General said. “They are—”

  The words stopped when, in one swift motion, El Vio removed his knife from its sheath and plunged it into the General’s eye. The right one.

  The General crumpled, bringing both hands to his ruined face, howling as the blood gushed. El Vio watched his agony with mild interest, like he was considering a beetle that had landed on its back and was struggling to right itself. Herrera could see a smaller version of the General’s prostrate shape reflected in the mirrors of El Vio’s sunglasses.

  Then El Vio turned to the uneven line of lieutenants.

  “Who will finish this?” he said.

  None of them moved. Not even Herrera. He wasn’t sure what El Vio meant. Finish the banker? Or finish—

  Then El Vio spoke louder: “Who will finish this?”

  That’s when Herrera understood. And he was ready. Atrevido. Be daring. He straightened. El Vio didn’t like slouching.

  The General had grasped the knife handle. He was trying to remove the blade, which had gotten stuck in his eye socket. Herrera walked up, drew his weapon, and shot the General behind the ear. The General collapsed. Herrera fired three more rounds.

  He was repulsed yet thrilled.

  El Vio walked up to the corpse, turning the body over and pressing his boot against what was left of the General’s skull to get the leverage needed to extract the blade. El Vio wiped each side of the knife on his pants, resheathed it, and then looked at Herrera.

  “Congratulations,” El Vio said. “You’ve just been promoted.”

  CHAPTER 4

  For at least the tenth time in the last twenty minutes, Amanda Porter looked at the clock that hung on the wall of the kitchen—which was also the living room, her studio, and the only room in this shabby, stifling, non-air-conditioned second-floor apartment that wasn’t a bedroom or a bathroom.

  Five fifty-two. Were this an ordinary matinee, Tommy would have been back by now. He was obviously still saying his good-byes.

  The ceiling fan took another spin through the same hot air it had been futilely recycling all afternoon. She sighed, appraising the painting she had been halfheartedly jabbing at, knowing she was too distracted to give it the kind of attention
it demanded.

  Was this one headed for the trash? She tossed way more than she kept. For months now she had been sending photos of her completed work to Hudson van Buren, the proprietor of the Van Buren Gallery and one of the most influential voices in the business. He didn’t need to see the bottom ninety-eight percent of her work. Only the top two, thank you very much.

  When people met Amanda Porter, they immediately underestimated her, because she had this cute southern twang; because she was five foot two, blue-eyed, and adorable, with her wavy strawberry-blond hair, her button nose, her freckles; because she was twenty-seven but could get carded buying a lottery ticket.

  Those looks belied the fierceness with which she attacked her work. No one looked at her and thought scrappy, but that’s how she thought of herself. She was the scrappy girl who had made it from this little nowhere town in Mississippi to a scholarship at Cooper Union—and now to the brink of artistic stardom—by outworking everyone and refusing to compromise. She poured her drive for perfection into her art. It was excellence or nothing.

  And this piece in front of her was . . . maybe okay? She was in no state of mind to decide. She put down her brush, ran the back of her hand across her damp brow, and then subconsciously tucked a curl behind her left ear.

  She thought about Tommy, about this next step in their lives. Her concern for at least the last year—if not the entire time they had known each other—was that their relationship had never really been tested. It had all been too easy, like a canvas that practically painted itself. And what good was that? What was art without struggle? What was life without struggle? If she had learned anything during her escape from Plantersville, Mississippi, it was that anything worth having needed to be earned.

  They had met at one of those strange New York parties for the rich, beautiful, and eclectic, all of whom had been haphazardly tossed together in some rich guy’s Park Avenue penthouse.

  Amanda was there because the host had discovered one of her paintings. She felt very much alone and conspicuously southern, afraid to open her mouth. Her accent marked her as some kind of exotic mutant. She didn’t dare tell anyone she grew up in a small town in Mississippi; or that the biggest, most cosmopolitan place she ever got to visit was Tupelo, where the Elvis Presley Birthplace and Museum was considered the pinnacle of culture.

  Tommy, the former Broadway star, had found Amanda in the corner, her preferred location in a large crowd. As the youngest, poorest, and least-connected guests, they had bonded over how out of place they felt. They had both been raised by single mothers, not quite hand to mouth but also pretty far from the summer-in-the-Hamptons set.

  She liked him immediately. He was a little short, sure. But he had a nice smile and a nicer ass. He was clearly in great shape. And smart. And interesting. And interested. And . . . well, who could ever really put their finger on human attraction? Amanda later told a friend that the moment she got around Tommy, it was like there was a bowl of Rice Krispies somewhere nearby: Everything went snap, crackle, pop.

  He kept asking her questions, and before she knew it, she was the one dominating the conversation. Even though she frequently chose not to, Amanda Porter could talk. She even liked to talk, especially about art, and especially when she felt like the guy listening was (a) actually listening and (b) understanding what she was saying. Oh, and (c) not just trying to get her into bed.

  At the hostess’s insistence, Tommy sang “Love Changes Everything” from Aspects of Love, which was cheesy and wonderful and brought the house down. His voice was rich, warm, full of life and character.

  Before long, they were discussing the similarities between their seemingly disparate passions.

  “We’re both performers,” he told her at one point. “You just perform on canvas.”

  They talked until two A.M., and then he started walking her home when they couldn’t find a cab. By that point, she had moved onto hoping he was trying to get her into bed. Her deepest concern was that this gorgeous, talented guy—who worked out a lot and sang beautifully—had to be gay. Her friends always teased her that growing up in the Bible Belt had endowed her with a deficient gaydar (her defense being that no one was allowed to be gay in Plantersville, Mississippi). Had she spent the evening flirting with a guy who would be more interested in her brother?

  Then she decided not to wait until they reached her place to find out. They ended up making out for two hours on a park bench.

  No, not gay.

  Subsequent explorations of his ardor and stamina only confirmed it.

  They quickly became inseparable. He would spend long hours just watching her paint—“This is better than any show on Broadway,” he insisted—and she became a de facto member of whatever cast he was in.

  Each of them had other friends, but they quickly fell away. Tommy’s were constantly being scattered to the acting winds. Amanda’s came in two groups: her fellow scholarship kids, who had mostly retreated back to their respective Mississippis, Missouris, or Maines to teach art and attempt to sell their paintings locally; and the rich kids who could afford to stay in the New York area but whom Amanda had never felt especially close to.

  So, really, it was just the two of them. Which was fine as far as both were concerned.

  He proposed after three months, just as he was about to hit the road with a touring company. She made all kinds of rational arguments about why it was too soon. He swatted them away by borrowing a line from one of her favorite movies, When Harry Met Sally: “When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”

  She said yes. He suggested they trek down to city hall the next day. She resisted.

  Wait, she said. Just wait. Until the time was right. Until she was more established as an artist. Until they passed over the line—and, surely, it would be a bright, white one—that demarcated the end of extended postcollegiate adolescence and the beginning of stable, stolid, sensible adulthood.

  That was two years ago. Every now and then, he would ask her about setting a date. She always demurred. Her go-to line became, “Honey, if it’s ’til death do us part, what’s the hurry?”

  She couldn’t bring herself to tell him she still had her doubts about them. She wanted to know what they would be like as a couple when the newness wore off, when the real relationship began. It was just difficult to discern because, with Tommy, there was always something new. A new show. A new role. A new city.

  It was like a perpetual honeymoon. They had never even gotten in a serious fight, as ridiculous as that sounded. Even when she was despondent from her failure with another painting or just plain crabby, Tommy was nothing but sweet, thoughtful, and impossibly good to her. He insisted he had never found it so easy to be nice to someone.

  And in some ways, it was great. A dream. It certainly occurred to her that maybe, just possibly, it always would be like this.

  Except there was that unanswered question about whether Tommy would be like her own father, a man she barely knew because he bolted the second things got difficult.

  And make no mistake: Things were about to get difficult.

  * * *

  • • •

  At quarter after six, the door downstairs opened. Then she heard the stairs creaking gently, which immediately told her something was up.

  When Tommy was being Tommy—flush from a great performance, filled with the energetic joy that gave him—he charged up the steps and burst through the door, primed to share his triumph; or to see the progress she had made on her latest attempt at a painting; or, if nothing else, to lure her into bed.

  When he was off for some reason, he didn’t charge. He crept.

  He once told her that one of the reasons he fell in love with her was that, unlike other women he had dated, he couldn’t hide his feelings from her with his acting ability.

  “You read m
e like a book,” he always told her.

  It’s not that hard, she often thought.

  Something must have happened during the last show. He flubbed a line. The audience was flat. She’d find out soon enough.

  She quickly picked up her brush and pressed it to her painting, like that’s what she had been doing the whole time he had been gone. She was still sweating. The ceiling fan may have actually been making the room hotter.

  He entered quietly, shutting the door softly behind him.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey. How’d it go?” she asked, already seeing the uncertainty in his eyes.

  “Fine,” he said. Then: “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  “That’s funny, there’s something I need to tell you, too.”

  “You want to go first?” he asked. “Mine’s pretty big.”

  She swirled her brush in a cup of murky liquid, damp-dried it with a rag, and said, “No, you go ahead.”

  They sat in plastic chairs, bellied up to a circular plastic folding table that had been their one furniture splurge for this apartment. Then Tommy related his bizarre encounter with two FBI agents, one of whom was a childhood friend. Tommy was incapable of telling a story without performing at least a little, though Amanda got the sense he was working very hard to give her the unembellished version of the events.

  She didn’t say a word as he spoke, letting him continue his presentation, which finished with, “So, what do you think?”

  Amanda’s hands were folded in front of her. Theirs had been a peripatetic relationship, with Tommy’s next gig serving as the driver, deciding where they went next. He would just come home and announce, It’s a regional theater in Cincinnati, or It’s a touring company for Phantom of the Opera, or whatever.

  She had never said no. As long as they were together, and as long as she didn’t have to go back to Plantersville, what did it matter? She could paint anywhere.