The Cartel (11 page)

Adán had questioned the wisdom of bringing children to the prison, but Chele was firm about it. “This is our
life.
They need to know what it is, not just the good parts. I won’t have them being ashamed of their family.”

So the children, impeccably dressed in brand-new holiday clothes, came, and now line up to kiss or shake hands with their
tío
Adán.

They’re nice kids, Adán thinks. Chele’s done well with them.

Diego’s youngest brother is a (much) smaller version of him, the classic case of the sibling becoming the oldest brother, only more so. Alberto Tapia’s one concession to Christmas is a red bolo in his otherwise totally narco-cowboy,
norteño
outfit—black silk shirt, black slacks, lizard cowboy boots, black cowboy hat.

Short as he is—and he’s shorter than Adán by at least two inches—the get-up looks comical on him, like a child playing cowboy. No one is going to say that to Alberto, though, because his fuse is shorter than he is.

Adán worries about Alberto’s violent temper, but Diego assures him that it’s nothing to worry about, that he has his little brother under control.

I hope so, Adán thinks.

Alberto seems convivial today, all laughs and smiles, and Adán wonders if he snorted up on the way here. Certainly his wife did—Lupe’s black eyes are pinned and her tight, short dress is wildly inappropriate. Another example of Alberto’s recklessness, Adán thinks. You
sleep
with strippers if that’s your taste, but you don’t
marry
them.

“Just because he bought her tits,” Chele once observed, “doesn’t mean he had to buy the rest of her.” Lupe’s remarkable breasts—cantilevered precariously on her petite frame—notwithstanding, she looks almost childlike, vulnerable, and Adán makes a mental note to be kind to her.

Former stripper or not, she is Alberto’s wife and therefore family.

Martín Tapia is the perfect middle child, as different from his brothers as the tyranny of genetics will allow, and the family joke is that a banker crept in one night and impregnated his mother while she was asleep.

The financial manager and diplomat of the Tapia organization, Martín is soft-spoken, quiet, conservatively dressed in an expensively tailored black suit and white shirt with French cuffs.

He and his wife, Yvette, have just moved to a big home in an exclusive Cuernavaca neighborhood, close to Mexico City to be nearer to the politicians, financiers, and society types whom they need to cultivate for business.

His job is to play tennis and golf, have drinks at the nineteenth hole, go to parties at the country club, be seen at expensive restaurants, and throw soirees at their home. Yvette’s job is to look pretty and be the charming hostess.

They’re both perfect for their jobs.

Yvette Tapia is another former beauty queen—impeccably dressed in an expensive, stylish black dress on her svelte body—the personification of class. Her hair is cut in a short bob, her makeup is subtle, a slash of red lipstick makes it all sexy.

She’s perfect.

“Yvette,” Chele has said, “has the beauty and warmth of an ice sculpture. The only difference is that an ice sculpture eventually melts.”

In Adán’s day, they would have been called “yuppies.” He’s not sure what the word would be now, but they’re politely tolerant, if mildly embarrassed, at being at the prison party. Yvette smiles thinly at Chele’s jokes, Martín finds topics of conversation that he can share, mostly about
fútbol.

They can’t complain about the meal.

While it isn’t the nouvelle cuisine they search out in Cuernavaca (they are both self-admitted foodies), but heartier, simpler Sinaloan fare, fresh and beautifully prepared filet mignon, shrimp, lobsters, roast potatoes, and green beans served with expensive wines that even Martín and Yvette can’t find fault with.

Dessert is the traditional flan, with
galetas de Navidad,
then
champurrado
and
arroz dulce,
after which the piñatas are hung and the children go at them with sticks, and the dining room floor is soon covered with candy and little toys.

As the evening settles into the post-feast languor, Adán nudges Elena and says, “We should talk.”

—

They sit in one of the consultation rooms.

Adán says, “The situation in Tijuana—”

“I’ve done the best I could.”

“I know.”

Elena took charge only because she was the last Barrera sibling not in a grave or a jail. A number of their people would have rebelled just because she was a woman. Some of the others were Teo’s people anyway. Once he broke away, they went with him. So did a number of the police and judges, who no longer had Raúl or Adán to fear.

The miracle of it is that Elena has held on as long as she did. She’s a good businessperson but not a war leader. Now she says, “I want out, Adanito. I’m tired. Unless you can give me more help on the ground…”

“I’m in
prison,
Elena.” They’re in a staredown, as they so often were in childhood. “Do you trust me?”

“Yes.”

“Then trust me on this,” Adán says. “It will work out, I promise you. I’ll deal with it. I just need a little time.”

They stand up and she kisses his cheek.

—

Diego interrupts playing with his children to take a phone call.

He listens and nods.

The Christmas present is on its way.

—

“May I have a word?” Sondra asks Adán.

Adán suppresses a sigh. He wants to enjoy the party, not endure Sondra’s gloom, but, as the head of the family, he has responsibilities.

It’s Salvador, she tells him when they retreat to a quiet corner. He’s disrespectful, angry. He stays away for nights at a time, he’s cutting classes. He parties, he drinks, she’s afraid he might be doing drugs.

“He won’t listen to me,” Sondra says, “and there’s no man at home to set him straight. Will you talk to him, Adán? Will you, please?”

She sounds like an old lady, Adán thinks. He does his math—Sondra is forty-one.

Salvador is none too pleased when his uncle comes up and asks to talk with him, but he grudgingly follows Adán back to his cell, sits down, and looks at Adán with a combination of resentment and sullenness that is almost impressive. “My mother asked you to do this, right?”

“What if she did?” Adán asks.

“You know what she’s like.”

Yes, I do, Adán thinks. I truly do. But he’s the head of the family so he asks, “What are you doing, Salvador?”

“What do you mean?”

“With your life,” Adán says. “What are you doing with your
life
?”

Salvador shrugs and looks at the floor.

“Have you dropped out of college?” Adán asks.

“I’ve stopped going to class.”

“Why?”

“Seriously?” Salvador asks. “I’m going to be an architect?”

It’s so Raúl, Adán almost laughs. “Your father had a medical degree.”

“And he did a lot with it.”

Adán gestures to the cell. “Do you want to end up here?”

“It’s better than where my father ended up, isn’t it?”

It’s true, Adán thinks, and they both know it. “What do you want, Salvador?”

“Let me work with Tío Diego,” he says, looking Adán in the eyes for the first time in this conversation. “Or Tío Nacho. Or send me to Tijuana. I can help Tía Elena.”

He’s so eager, so sincere all of a sudden, it’s almost sad. The boy wants so badly to redeem his father, Adán hurts for him.

“Your father didn’t want this for you,” Adán says. “He made me promise. His last words to me.”

It’s a lie. Raúl’s last words were his begging to be put out of his gut-shot misery. He said nothing about Salvador, or Sondra. What he said was
Thank you, brother
when Adán pointed the pistol at his head.

“It was good enough for him,” Salvador says.

“But he didn’t think it was good enough for
you,
” Adán insists. “You’re smart, Salvador. You’ve been to the funerals, the prisons…you know what this is. You have money, an education if you want it, connections…You can have a
life.
”

“I want
this
life,” Salvador says.

As pigheaded as his father.

“You can’t have it,” Adán says. “Don’t try. And don’t think of freelancing—if I catch anyone selling to you, I’ll have their heads. Don’t make me do that.”

“Thanks.”

“And straighten up,” Adán says, the stern uncle now, and, anyway, he’s bored with this. “Start going to class, and keep a civil tongue in your head with your mother. Are you doing drugs? Don’t even bother to lie to me. If you’re not—good. If you are—stop.”

“Are we done?” Salvador asks.

“Yes.”

The young man gets up and starts to walk away.

“Salvador.”

“Yeah?”

“Get your degree,” Adán says. “Show me you have the discipline to finish your education, stop being a pain in the ass, and then come back to me and we’ll see.”

Salvador is going to get into the
pista secreta
one way or the other, Adán thinks. He might as well do it through me, where I can at least keep an eye on him.

But not yet.

This will kick the can down the street for a couple of years, anyway. By that time he might find a nice girl, an interest, a career, and not want what he thinks he wants now.

Adán goes back into the party room and looks at his guests—his extended family, or what’s left of it.

His sister, Elena.

His sister-in-law, Sondra, and his nephew Salvador.

His cousins, the Tapia brothers—Diego, Martín, and Alberto—and their wives, Chele, Yvette, and Lupe, respectively. Diego’s children…This is his family, his blood, all that he has left.

Without me, he thinks, they go where a deposed king’s family go in this merciless realm—to the slaughterhouse. Your enemies will kill them just after they’ve killed you. And unless you take back your rightful place, all the death, all the killing, all the terrible acts for which you’re going to hell, were all for nothing.

He’s heard it said that life is a river, that the past flows downstream. It isn’t true—if it flows, it flows through the blood in your veins. You can no more cut yourself away from the past than you can cut out your own heart.

I was the king once, I will have to be the king again.

Life, he muses, always gives you an excuse to take what you want anyway.

—

Adán’s relieved when they’re gone.

When the mandatory oohs and ahhs over presents have been exchanged, the equally obligatory confessions over having eaten too much, the hugs and busses on the cheeks, the insincere promises that we need to do this again sooner, Diego finally manages to herd them all back into the truck and they leave him to the peace of his prison.

He flops face first down on the bed beside Magda.

“Families are exhausting,” he says. “It’s easier to manage a hundred traffickers than one family.”

“I thought they were nice.”

“You don’t have to meet their needs,” Adán says.

“No, only yours.”

“Are they a burden on you?”

“No, I like your needs,” she says, reaching for him. “
Feliz Navidad.
Do you want your last present?”

“Not now,” he says. “Pack a few things.”

She looks at him oddly. “What do you mean?”

“Just a few,” he says. “Not your whole wardrobe. We can buy more clothes later. Go on—we don’t have a lot of time.”

Diego walks into the cell. “You ready,
primo
?”

“For years.”

Diego points to his ear—
listen.

Adán hears a shout, then another, then a chorus of shouts. Then the banging of wooden bats on steel bars, feet pounding on the metal catwalks, alarms.

Then shots.

A
motín.

A prison riot.

Los Bateadores are rampaging through Block 2, Level 1-A, attacking other inmates, attacking each other, creating chaos. The guards are running back and forth, trying to contain it, radioing for reinforcements, but it’s already too late—inmates are busting out of cells, running down the cell block, spilling out into the yard.

“We have to go!” Diego says. “Now!”

“Did you hear that?!” Adán yells to Magda.

“I heard!” She comes out with a small shoulder bag while trying to put on a different pair of shoes, flats. “You might have given a lady some notice.”

Adán takes her arm and follows Diego onto the block.

It’s as if they’re invisible. No one looks at them as they move through the swirling fights, the noise, the guards, and Diego leads them to a steel door that has been left unlocked. He ushers them into a stairwell and they climb to another door that opens onto the roof.

The guards aren’t watching them, they have their guns and lights aimed down at the yard and don’t even seem to notice when the helicopter comes in and lands on the roof.

The rotors blow Magda’s hair into a mess, and Adán puts his hand on her back and pushes her down a little as they step into the open door.

Diego climbs in behind them and gives a thumbs-up to the pilot.

The helicopter lifts off.

Adán looks down at Puente Grande.

It’s been five years of negotiations, diplomacy, payoffs, establishing relationships, waiting for the other bosses to accept his presence, for some of them to die, for others to be killed, for the North Americans to move on and become obsessed with another public enemy number one.

Five years of patience and persistence and now he’s free.

To resume his rightful place.

Erie, Pennsylvania

Outside a diner the next morning, going in for the breakfast special of two eggs, toast, and coffee, Keller sees it.

A headline behind the cracked glass of a newspaper box.

DRUG KINGPIN ESCAPES.

Almost dizzy, Keller puts two quarters in the slot, takes out the paper, and scans the story for the name.

It can’t be.

It
can’t
be.

The letters spring out at him like shards of metal from a tripwire, booby-trap grenade.

“Adán Barrera.”