Читать книгу The Border: The final gripping thriller in the bestselling Cartel trilogy - Don Winslow, Don winslow - Страница 14

I had a friend who was a clown. When he died, all his friends came to the funeral in the same car.

—Steven Wright

Their house is a brownstone on Hillyer Place east of Twenty-First in the Dupont Circle neighborhood. They chose it because Dupont is “walkable,” for Marisol; there are coffee shops, restaurants, and bookstores nearby; and Keller likes the historical resonance of the neighborhood. Teddy Roosevelt lived around here; so did Franklin and Eleanor.

And Marisol loved the crepe myrtle tree that grew up to the third-story window, its lavender blooms reminding her of the vivid colors back in Mexico.

She’s waiting up when Keller gets home, sitting in the big armchair by the living room window, reading a magazine.

“We’re a ‘power couple,’” she says when Keller comes through the door.

“We are?” He bends over and kisses her forehead.

“It says so right here,” she says, pointing to the copy of Washington Life in her lap. “‘Washington power couple Mr. and Mrs.’—actually, Doctor—‘Art Keller showed up at the Kennedy Center fund-raiser. The DEA director and his stylish Latina wife’—that’s me, I’m your ‘stylish Latina wife’ …”

Keller looks at the page, not thrilled that she’s been photographed. He doesn’t like her image being out there. But it’s almost inevitable—she is stylish and interesting, and the story of the DEA hero with the Mexican wife who was once gunned down by narcos is irresistible to both the media and the Washington society types. So they get invitations to the chic parties and events, which Keller would by inclination turn down, but Marisol says that whether they like it or not, the political and social connections are extremely useful to his work.

She’s right, Keller thinks. Mari’s charm has proved to be an effective antidote to what has been referred to as his “anticharm,” and she has opened doors (and kept them open) that would otherwise be closed to him.

When Keller needs to talk with a representative, a senator, a cabinet official, a lobbyist, an editor, an ambassador, a shaker-and-mover—even someone in the White House—the chances are that Mari just had lunch or breakfast or served on a committee with the spouse.

Or she does the talking herself. Marisol is fully aware that people who would say no to Keller find it much harder to refuse his charming, fashionable wife, and she’s not above picking up the phone when an appropriations vote is needed, a critical piece of information has to go out in the media, or a project needs to be funded.

She’s busy—already on the board of the Children’s National Medical Center and the Art Museum of the Americas and has worked on fund-raisers for the Children’s Inn, Doorways for Women and Families, and AIDS United.

Keller worries that she’s too busy for her health.

“I love those causes,” she said to him when he expressed his concern. “And anyway, you need to put political capital in the bank.”

“It’s not your job.”

“It is my job,” she said. “It’s exactly my job. You kept your promise to me.”

He had. When he first called O’Brien to accept the offer, he said he had one condition—a replacement for Mari at her clinic had to be found and funded. O’Brien called him back the same morning with the news that a Texas oil firm had stepped up with a qualified physician and a big check, and was there anything else he needed?

Marisol started her diplomatic campaign to help him. Joined the boards and the committees, went to the lunches and the fund-raisers. Over Keller’s objections she was profiled in the Post and the Washingtonian.

“The cartels already know what I look like,” she told him. “And you need me doing these things, Arturo. The Tea Party troglodytes are already out to hang you, and the liberals don’t love you, either.”

Keller knew that she was right. Marisol was “politically perspicacious,” as she once put it, her observations and analysis usually dead-on, and she was quick to discern the nuances of the increasingly polarized American scene. And he had to admit that his desperate desire to escape politics and “just do his job” was naive.

“All jobs are political,” Marisol said. “Yours more than most.”

True enough, Keller thought, because he was the top “drug warrior” at a time when the current administration was seriously questioning what the war on drugs should mean and what it should—and, more importantly, shouldn’t—be.

The attorney general, in fact, had ordered DEA to stop using the phrase war on drugs at all, stating (rightly, in Keller’s opinion) that we shouldn’t wage war on our own people. The Justice Department and the White House were reevaluating the draconian drug laws passed during the crack epidemic of the ’80s and ’90s that legislated mandatory minimum sentences that put nonviolent offenders behind bars for thirty years to life.

The result of that legislation was that more than two million people—the majority of them African American and Hispanic—were in prison, and now the administration was reviewing a lot of those sentences, considering clemency for some of them, and exploring ending mandatory minimum sentences.

Keller agreed with these efforts but wanted to stay out of the controversies and focus on the mandate to end the heroin epidemic. In his opinion, he was the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, and while he was willing to put less emphasis on enforcing, say, marijuana laws, he preferred to defer policy statements to the drug czar.

Officially the director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, the “drug czar”—as the position had been tagged—was the guy who spoke for the president on drug policy and was in charge of seeing the White House’s intentions implemented.

Well, sort of.

The current czar was a hard-liner who was somewhat resistant to the AG’s reforms that POTUS supported, so he was on his way out to become the boss of US Customs and Border Protection (so Keller would still have to work with him), and a new guy—more amenable to the reforms—was on his way in.

To Keller, it was just another strand of bureaucracy in an already tangled net. Technically, Keller’s immediate boss was the attorney general, but they both had to take the drug czar into account, as the AG served at the behest of the White House.

Then there was Congress. At various times, DEA had to consult with and report to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Appropriations Committee, Budget Committee, the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.

The House was even worse. It had its own Budget, Appropriations, and Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committees, but its Judiciary Committee also had subcommittees—Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security and Investigations, and Immigration Policy and Border Security.

So Keller had to confer and coordinate with the Justice Department, the White House, and the Senate and House committees, but there were also the other federal agencies whose missions coincided with his—Homeland Security; CIA; FBI; Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco; ICE; Bureau of Prisons; the Coast Guard and the Navy; the Department of Transportation; the State Department … the list went on and on.

And that was just federal.

Keller also had to deal with fifty state governments and state police forces, over three thousand county sheriff’s departments and more than twelve thousand city police departments. Not to mention state and local prosecutors and judges.

That was the United States, but Keller also had to communicate, confer and negotiate with government officials and police from foreign countries—Mexico, of course, but also Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, and all the European Union countries where heroin was bought, sold and/or transshipped. And any of those dealings had to be run through the State Department and sometimes the White House.

Of course, Keller delegated most of this—in many ways the DEA was a perpetual motion machine that functioned on its own momentum—but he still had to handle the major issues personally and was determined to sharpen its blade and point it straight at the heroin problem.

Keller took over a DEA that was deeply wary of him as a former undercover operative, a field agent and a hard charger with a reputation for ruthlessness.

We got us a real cowboy now was pretty much the overall take, and a number of midlevel bureaucrats started to pack their personal belongings because they thought the new boss would bring in his own people.

Keller disappointed them.

He called a general meeting at which he said, “I’m not firing anybody. The knock on me is that I’m not an administrator and don’t have a clue how to run a gigantic organization. That rap is accurate—I don’t. What I do have is you. I will give clear, concise direction and I trust you to make the organization work toward those objectives. What I expect from you is loyalty, honesty and hard work. What you can expect from me is loyalty, honesty, hard work and support. I will never stab you in the back, but I will stab you in the chest if I catch you playing games. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes—only slackers and cowards don’t make mistakes. But if we have a problem, I don’t want to be the last to know. I want your thoughts and your criticisms. I’m a big believer in the battleground of ideas—I don’t need the only word, just the last word.”

He set priorities.

Next he called in the deputy administrator, Denton Howard, and the chiefs of Intelligence and Operations and told them that their first priority was heroin.

The second priority was heroin.

The third priority was heroin.

“We’ll sustain our efforts on all Schedule I drugs,” he told them, “but our overriding emphasis on the enforcement side is ending the heroin epidemic. I don’t care about marijuana, except where it can lead us up the ladder to the heroin traffickers.”

Which meant focusing on the Sinaloa cartel.

Keller’s approach is something of a departure—historically, Sinaloa hadn’t been greatly involved with heroin production since the 1970s, when the DEA and the Mexican military had burned and poisoned the poppy fields (Keller was there), and the growers turned to other products.

The Barrera wing of the cartel had made most of its money from cocaine and marijuana, the Esparza wing from methamphetamine, the Tapia faction from a combination of all three.

“It’s a mistake to put all our efforts into fighting them in Mexico,” Keller told his people. “I know, because it’s a mistake I made. Repeatedly. From now on we put our priority on hitting them where we can hit them—here in the United States.”

Howard said, “That’s a piecemeal approach that will require coordination from dozens of metropolitan police departments.”

“Set it up,” Keller said. “Within the next month I want face-to-face meetings with the chiefs of narcotics from New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. If they can’t or won’t come to me, I’ll go to them. After that, I want Boston, Detroit and San Diego. And so on. The days of standing at the urinal pissing on each other’s shoes are over.”

But great, Keller thought, I have a deputy who’s looking to sabotage me. I’m going to have to starve him out, and the way to starve a bureaucrat is to deprive him of access and information.

Keller kept Blair after the meeting. “Does Howard have a hard-on for me?”

Blair smiled. “He expected to get your desk.”

The administrator and deputy administrator of the DEA are political appointees—all the rest are civil servants who come up through the system. Keller figured that Howard probably thought O’Brien and his cabal fucked him.

The organizational chart has all the department heads reporting directly to Howard, who then reports to Keller.

“Anything significant,” Keller told Blair, “you bypass Howard, bring directly to me.”

“You want me to keep a double set of books.”

“You have a problem with that?”

“No,” Blair said. “I don’t trust the son of a bitch, either.”

“It blows up, I’ll cover your ass.”

“Who’s going to cover yours?” Blair asked.

Same person who always has, Keller thought.

Me.

“Let’s look at the velorio again,” Keller says.

Blair puts up the photos from Barrera’s wake, taken by an incredibly brave SEIDO undercover working as a waiter for the catering company that serviced the event. Keller stares at the dozens of photos—Elena Sánchez sitting by the coffin; the Esparza brothers; Ricardo Núñez and his son, Mini-Ric; a host of other important players. He studies photos taken in the house, on the lawn, out by the pool.

“Can you order them by time sequence?” Keller asks.

The cliché is that every picture tells a story, but a sequence of pictures, Keller thinks, can be more like a movie and tell a different story. He’s a big believer in chronology, in causation, and now he studies the photos with that sensibility.

Blair is smart enough to shut up.

Twenty minutes later, Keller starts to select a series of photos and lay them out in line. “Look at this—Núñez goes up to Elena. They walk outside, let’s say it’s to talk in private.” He highlights a series of photos that show Elena and Núñez walking closely together, in what seems to be intense conversation. Then—

“Shit,” Keller says, “what’s this?”

He zooms in on Núñez’s hands, on a piece of paper that he gives Elena.

“What is it?” Blair asks.

“Can’t make it out, but she’s sure as hell reading it.” Keller zooms in on Elena’s face—reading, frowning. “It could be the catering bill, who knows, but she isn’t happy.”

They look at pictures of Elena and Núñez in conversation and then check the time log. The conversation lasted for five minutes and twenty-two seconds. Elena gave Núñez the paper and went back inside the house.

“What I wouldn’t give for some audio,” Keller says.

“They were jamming,” Blair says.

Keller goes back to his timeline series of photos and notes Iván and Mini-Ric in what looks to be a casual conversation by the pool. Then Núñez comes out and walks away with Iván, leaving Ric sitting there. Half an hour later, by the time log, Iván comes back out and talks to Ric.

And it doesn’t look casual.

“Am I imagining things,” Keller says, “or are they in an argument?”

“Iván sure looks angry.”

“Whatever got his panties in a wad,” Keller says, “it had to have been when he was with Núñez. I don’t know, maybe I’m reading too much into this.”

And maybe not, he thinks.

All the drumbeats said that Iván was next in line to take control of the cartel, merging the Barrera and Esparza wings of the organization. But now we seem to be seeing Ricardo Núñez summoning Elena Sánchez and Iván Esparza to personal talks, after which Iván appears to be angry.

Jesus Christ, could we have missed something here?

Keller had thought of Ricardo Núñez as a midlevel functionary, at most some kind of adviser to Barrera, but he’s been playing an outsize role in the velorio and the funeral and now he seems to be some kind of go-between from Elena to Iván.

Negotiating what, though?

Elena’s been out of the trade for years.

Keller tries a different theory—maybe Núñez isn’t simply providing “good offices,” but has become a power in and of his own.

Stay tuned, Keller thinks.

¡ADÁN VIVE!

Elena Sánchez Barrera looks at the graffiti spray-painted on the stone wall of the Jardines del Valle cemetery.

She saw the same thing on the ride into the city, painted on walls, the sides of buildings, on billboards. She’s been told that the same phenomenon has occurred in Badiraguato and that little shrines to “Santo Adán” have shown up on roadsides in smaller towns and villages all across Sinaloa and Durango—the deeply felt, passionate wishful thinking that Adán Barrera—the beloved El Señor, El Patrón, the “Godfather,” the “Lord of the Skies,” the man who built clinics, schools, churches, who gave money to the poor and fed the hungry—is immortal, that he lives in flesh or spirit.

Saint Adán, indeed, she thinks.

Adán was many things, but a saint wasn’t one of them.

Elena looks out the window and sees the entire power structure of the Sinaloa cartel, in fact of the whole Mexican trafficking world, gathered. If the government really intended to stop the drug trade, it could do so in one fell swoop.

A single raid would net them all.

It will never happen—not only are there hundreds of cartel sicarios posted around and inside the cemetery, but it’s been cordoned off by the Sinaloa state police and the Culiacán municipal police. A state police helicopter hovers overhead, and, in any case, the federal government is not serious about shutting down the drug trade, it’s serious about managing the drug trade, so it’s not going to disrupt this service.

Ricardo Núñez stands in his impeccably tailored black suit, rubbing his hands together like some kind of Latino Uriah Heep, Elena thinks. The man insisted on inserting himself into the planning of every element of the funeral, from the selection of the coffin to the seating arrangements to security, and Núñez sicarios in their trademark Armani caps and Hermès vests guard the gate and the walls.

Elena spots the notorious La Fósfora, somewhat subdued in a black suit jacket over black pants, supervising the sicarios, and she has to admit that the girl is quite striking. Ricardo’s son, “Mini-Ric,” stands beside him with his mousy wife, whose name Elena cannot recall.

The Esparza brothers stand in a row like crows on a telephone line. For once they aren’t dressed like extras in a cheap telenovela, but respectfully garbed in black suits and real shoes with actual laces. She nods to Iván, who curtly nods back and then moves a little closer to his sister as if asserting his ownership.

Poor Eva, Elena thinks, standing there with her two small boys, who are now pawns in a game they know nothing about. As is Eva, of course—Iván will take control of her as leverage against Núñez. She can hear it already—See, we are Adán Barrera’s real family, his true heirs, not some jumped-up assistant, some clerk. If Eva is too weak to go back to California, Iván will roll her and the twins around like stage props.

Speaking of props, he has his guard dog close at hand. El Mastín is sweating at the collar, looking distinctly uncomfortable in a jacket and tie, and Elena knows that he was brought here as a reminder that Jalisco is allied to the Esparza wing of the cartel and that if it comes to a fight, this brutal mass murderer and all his troops are loyal to Iván.

But hopefully it won’t come to that.

Ricardo had phoned her to say that Iván had—albeit grudgingly and bitterly—accepted Núñez’s leadership of the cartel and—grudgingly and bitterly—the transfer of Baja to Rudolfo.

It must have been some scene, Elena thinks, at least as Ricardo described it. Iván had yelled, cursed, called Elena every name in the book and a few that hadn’t been memorialized yet, had threatened war, promised to fight to the death, but was finally worn down by Ricardo’s steady, monotonous, Chinese-water-torture application of logic and reason.

“He agreed to a two percent piso,” Ricardo told her.

“The standard is five.”

“Elena …”

“Very well, fine.” She would have agreed to zero, if that’s what it took.

Ricardo couldn’t help but slip the knife in a little. “And shouldn’t I be having this conversation with Rudolfo?”

“You phoned me.”

“So I did,” Ricardo said. “Slip of the speed dial.”

“I’ll run it past Rudolfo,” she said. “But I’m sure he’ll agree.”

“Oh, I’m sure he will,” Ricardo said.

Rudolfo sits beside her in the back seat of the limousine. He had claimed nothing but enthusiasm when she told him that he was the new boss of Baja, but she could tell he was nervous.

He has reason to be, she thinks.

There’s hard and uncertain work to be done. Traffickers and gunmen who had once been “Barrera people” had been transferred to the Esparzas and would now be asked to come back. Most will, she knows, eagerly; but others will be reluctant, even rebellious.

A few examples might have to be made—the first person who vocally objects will have to be killed—and she worries if Rudolfo has it in him to order that. If he ever did—her poor sweet son likes to be liked, a useful trait in the music and club businesses, not so much in la pista secreta.

Elena has people who will do it, and do it in his name, but sooner rather than later he will need to have his own armed wing. She can and will give him the people, but he will have to command.

She puts her hand over his.

“What?” Rudolfo asks.

“Nothing,” Elena says. “Just that it’s a sad occasion.”

The car slows as one of Núñez’s people tells them where to park.

The mausoleum, Elena thinks as she takes her seat next to her mother, is a monument to tasteless excess. Three stories high in classic churrigueresque architecture with a dome roof tiled with mosaic; marble columns; and stone carvings of birds, phoenixes and dragons.

And it’s air-conditioned.

I doubt, Elena thinks, that Adán will feel the heat.

A Dolby sound system is encased in the columns, running a continuous loop of corridos about Adán; inside the crypt, a flat-screen monitor shows videos of the great man and his good works.

It’s hideous, Elena thinks, but it’s what the people expect.

And it wouldn’t do to let the people down.

The priest had actually hesitated to perform the service for “a notorious drug lord.”

“Look around you, you sanctimonious little prick,” Elena said when they met in his office. “That desk you’re sitting behind? We paid for it. The chair your flabby ass sits in? We paid for it. The sanctuary, the altar, the pews, the new stained-glass windows? All straight from Adán’s pocket. So I’m not asking you, Padre, I’m telling you—you will perform this service. Otherwise—my hand to the Virgin Mary—we will send people in to remove everything from this church, starting with you.”

So now Father Rivera says some prayers, gives a blessing, then a little homily about Adán’s virtues as a dedicated family man, his generosity toward the church and the community, his deep love of Sinaloa and its people, his faith in Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost and God the Father.

Adán had faith in money, power and himself, Elena thinks as the priest moves to wrap it up. That was his Holy Trinity, he didn’t believe in God.

“I do believe in Satan, though,” he had told her once.

“You can’t believe in one without the other,” she said.

“Sure you can,” Adán said. “The way I understand it, God and the devil were in a giant battle to rule the world, right?”

“I suppose.”

“Right,” Adán said. “Look around you—the devil won.”

The whole thing is a joke, Ric thinks.

He’s also thinking about how badly he has to piss and wishes he had before this endless service began, but it’s too late now, he’ll just have to hold it.

And endure Iván’s stink eye.

His friend hasn’t stopped glaring at him since it started. Just as he had glared at him when he came out of his meeting with Ricardo Sr. at the velorio, walked up to Ric at the pool, glared down at him and said, “You knew.”

“Knew what?”

“That Adán made your father the new boss.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Fuck you.”

“I didn’t.”

“You father called me a clown,” Iván said.

“I’m sure he didn’t say that, Iván.”

“No, that bitch Elena did,” Iván said. “But your father repeated it. And you knew, Ric. You knew. You let me talk, go on and on about what I was going to do, and all the time, you knew.”

“Come on, Iván, I—”

“No, you’re the guy now, right?” Iván said. “Your father is the jefe, that makes you what, Mini-Ric, huh?”

“Still your friend.”

“No, you’re not,” Iván said. “We’re not friends. Not anymore.”

He walked away.

Ric called him, texted him, but got no answers. Nothing. Now Iván sits there staring at him like he hates him.

Which maybe he does, Ric thinks.

And maybe I can’t blame him.

After talking to Iván, his father had called Ric in.

Ric read the paper that his old man slid across the glass top. “Jesus Christ.”

“That’s all you have to say?”

“What do you want me to say?”

“I was hoping for something more along the lines of ‘Let me know what I can do to help, Dad,’” Núñez said, “or ‘Whatever you need from me, I’m there.’ Or ‘Adán chose wisely, Dad, you’re the man for the job.’”

“All that goes without saying.”

“And yet I had to say it.” Núñez leaned back in his chair and put his fingertips together, a gesture Ric had hated since he was a child, as it always meant that a lecture was coming. “I need you to step up now, Ric. Take more of an active role, lend a hand.”

“Iván thought it was going to be him.” Every other word out of Iván’s mouth had been how things were going to be when he took over, and now here was Adán reaching out from the grave to snatch that from him.

“His happiness is not my concern,” Núñez said. “Or, for that matter, yours.”

“He’s my friend.”

“Then perhaps you can help persuade him to be reasonable,” Núñez said. “He’ll still run the Esparza wing of the organization.”

“I think he had something more in mind.”

“We all have to live with our disappointments,” Núñez said.

Ric had an idea he was talking about him.

“Iván will have to run the entire Esparza operation,” Núñez said. “He wouldn’t have time for Baja anyway.”

“He was going to give it to Oviedo.”

“The same Oviedo I saw on Facebook driving a motorcycle with his feet?” Núñez asked.

“I didn’t know you went on Facebook.”

“Aides keep me in touch,” Núñez said. “In any case, you have Elena’s permission to keep selling in Baja.”

“Elena’s or Rudolfo’s?”

“Are you being funny with me?”

“I had an arrangement,” Ric said. “With Iván.”

“Now you have it with Rudolfo,” Núñez said. “Show me some success on the narcomenudeo, I might give you the trasiego. From there, who knows?”

“Show you some success.”

“For God’s sake, Ric,” Núñez said, “show me something. You’re Adán Barrera’s godson. With that comes certain privileges, and with privilege comes responsibility. I have a responsibility to see that his wishes are carried out, and you share in that.”

“Okay.”

“Here’s something else you should think about,” Núñez said. “We’re holding this position for Adán’s sons to come of age, but that will be years from now. Suppose something happens to me in the interim? That leaves you.”

“I don’t want it,” Ric said.

There it was again—that trace of disappointment, even disgust, as his father asked, “Do you want to be ‘Mini-Ric’ your whole life?”

Ric was surprised by his father’s ability to hurt him. He thought he was over it by now, but he felt a stab in his heart.

He didn’t answer.

One of the things Ric is expected to show his father is a speech, a eulogy, at the funeral service.

To which Ric had objected. “Why me?”

“As the godson,” Ricardo said, “it’s expected.”

Well, if it’s expected, Ric thought. He had no idea what he was going to say.

Belinda offered some ideas. “‘My godfather, Adán, was a ruthless cocksucker who killed more men than ass cancer—”

“Nice.”

“—and married a hot chica less than half his age who we would all like to fuck, if we’re being honest with ourselves. What’s not to love about Adán Barrera, a man’s man, a narco’s narco, a godfather’s godfather. Peace. Out.’”

She hadn’t been much more help about his Iván problem.

“You know Iván,” she said. “He runs hot. He’ll get over it, you’ll be doing shots together tonight.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then so be it,” Belinda said. “You got to start looking at the facts. Fact: Barrera named your father the boss, not Iván. Fact: you’re the godson, not him. Maybe you should start acting like it.”

“You sound like my father.”

“He’s not always wrong.”

Now Ric really has to piss. The fucking priest finally gets offstage and then a singer comes on. One of Rudolfo’s older recording hacks who starts in with a corrido he wrote “especially for El Señor,” and it has more downer lyrics than an Adele tune.

After that, a poet comes up.

A poet.

What’s next, Ric thinks, puppets?

Actually, it’s him.

His father gives him what could be called a “significant” nod and Ric walks up to the altar. He’s not stupid—he knows it’s a moment, an announcement of sorts that he has leapfrogged Iván to the head of the line.

Ric leans into the microphone. “My godfather, Adán Barrera, was a great man.”

A general murmur of agreement and the audience waits for him to go on.

“He loved me like a son,” Ric says, “and I loved him like a second father. He was a father to us all, wasn’t he? He—”

Ric blinks when he sees a clown—a full-fledged payaso with white makeup, a red curly wig, a rubber nose, baggy pants and floppy shoes come prancing down the center aisle blowing on a kazoo and carrying a bunch of white balloons in one hand.

Who ordered this up? Ric wonders, thinking he’s seeing things.

It couldn’t have been laugh-a-minute Elena or his old man, neither of whom is exactly known for whimsy. Ric glances over at both of them and neither is laughing.

Elena, in fact, looks pissed.

But, then again, she always does.

Ric tries to pick up his speech. “He gave money to the poor and built …”

But no one is listening as the clown makes his way to the altar, tossing paper flowers and little papel picado animals to the astonished onlookers. Then he turns, reaches inside his patched madras jacket, and pulls out a 9 mm Glock.

I’m going to get killed by a fucking clown, Ric thinks in disbelief. It’s not fair, it’s not right.

But the payaso turns and shoots Rudolfo square in the forehead.

Blood flecks Elena’s face.

Her son falls into her lap and she sits holding him, her face twisted in agony as she screams and screams.

The killer runs back up the aisle—but how fast can a clown run in floppy shoes—and Belinda pulls a MAC-10 from her jacket and melts him.

Balloons rise into the air.

Adán Barrera’s Pax Sinaloa ended before he was even lowered into the ground, Keller thinks, watching the news on Univision.

Reporters outside the walls of the cemetery described a “scene of chaos” as panicked mourners fled, others pulled out a “proliferation” of weapons, and ambulances raced toward the scene. And with that touch of surrealism that so often seems to pervade the Mexican narco world, early reports indicate that Rudolfo Sánchez’s killer was dressed as a clown.

“A clown,” Keller says to Blair.

Blair shrugs.

“Do they have an ID on the shooter?” Keller asks, unwilling to say clown.

“SEIDO thinks it’s this guy,” Blair says, throwing a file up on the computer screen. “Jorge Galina Aguirre—‘El Caballo’—a player in the Tijuana cartel way back in the nineties when Adán and Raúl were first taking over. A midlevel marijuana trafficker with no known enemies, and no known grudges against the Barreras.”

“Apparently he had a grudge against Rudolfo.”

“There’s some shit running around that Rudolfo nailed Galina’s daughter, or maybe his wife,” Blair says.

“Rudolfo was a player.”

“The wages of sin,” Blair says.

Yeah, but Keller doubts it.

The old “honor killing” ethos is rapidly fading into the past, and the insult—the almost unbelievably offensive act of murdering one of Barrera’s nephews in front of his family at his funeral—argues that this is something more.

It’s a declaration.

But of what, and by whom?

By all accounts, Rudolfo Sánchez was a spent force, the juice drained out of him by the stay in Florence. He was involved with nightclubs, restaurants and music management, cash businesses handy for laundering money. Had he fucked someone on a deal, lost someone a serious amount of cash?

Maybe, but you don’t kill a Barrera over something like that, especially not at El Señor’s funeral. You negotiate a settlement or you eat the loss because it’s better for business and your odds for survival. Again, intelligence had it that Rudolfo—or any of the Sánchez family—wasn’t trafficking anymore, so he shouldn’t have been killed over turf.

Unless the intelligence is wrong or things have changed.

Of course things have changed, Keller thinks. Barrera is dead and maybe this was the opening shot in the battle to replace him.

Rudolfo didn’t want to be buried in the cemetery, he wanted to be cremated, his ashes tossed into the sea. There will be no grave, no crypt, no gaudy mausoleum to visit, just the sound of waves and an endless horizon.

His widow—we have so many widows, Elena thinks, we are our own cartel—stands with her son and daughter, ten and seven, respectively. Who saw their father murdered.

They shot my son in front of his wife and children.

And his mother.

She’s heard the joke going around—Did they catch the clown who did it?

They did.

He never made it out of the mausoleum. One of Núñez’s people gunned him down in the aisle. The question, Elena thinks, is how he made it in. There was so much security, so much security. Barrera security, Esparza security, Núñez security, city police, state police—and this man walked right through it all.

The shooter was Jorge Galina Aguirre, a marijuana trafficker with no known enemies, and no known grudges against the Barreras.

Certainly not against Rudolfo.

That night, after she had seen Rudolfo to a funeral home, Elena went to a house on the edge of town where the entire security contingent was held in the basement, sitting on the concrete floor, their hands tied behind their backs.

Elena walked down the row and looked each one in the eye.

Looking for guilt.

Looking for fear.

She saw a lot of the latter, none of the former.

They all told the same story—they saw a black SUV pull up. With just the driver and the clown, in the passenger seat. The clown got out of the car, and the guards let him in because they thought he was some bizarre part of the ceremony. The SUV drove off. So it was a suicide mission, Elena thought. A suicide mission that the shooter didn’t know was a suicide mission. The driver watched him go in and then took off, leaving him there.

To do his job and die.

When they went back upstairs, Ricardo Núñez said, “If you want them all dead, they’re all dead.”

Members of his armed wing were already in place, locked, loaded and ready to perform a mass execution.

“Do what you want with your men,” Elena said. “Release mine.”

“You’re sure?”

Elena just nodded.

She sat in the back of a car, flanked by armed guards, her own people flown in from Tijuana, and watched the local Barrera men walk out of the house.

They looked surprised, stunned to still be alive.

Elena said to one of her men, “Go out there, tell them they’re fired. They’ll never work for us again.”

Then she watched Ricardo’s people go in.

They walked back to their cars an hour later.

Now she watches her daughter-in-law step ankle-deep into the ocean and pour Rudolfo’s ashes out of a jar.

Like instant coffee, Elena thinks.

My son.

Whom I laid on my chest, held in my arms.

Wiped his ass, his nose, his tears.

My baby.

She talked to her other baby, Luis, that morning.

“It was the Esparzas,” she said. “It was Iván.”

“I don’t think so, Mother,” Luis said. “The police say that Gallina was insane. Delusional. He thought Rudolfo had slept with his daughter or something.”

“And you believe that.”

“Why would Iván want to kill Rudolfo?” Luis asked.

Because I took Baja from him, Elena thought. Or thought I did. “They killed your brother and now they’re going to try to kill you. They’ll never let us out alive, so we have to stay in. And if we stay in, we have to win. I’m sorry, but that’s the cold truth.”

Luis turned pale. “I’ve never had anything to do with the business. I don’t want to have anything to do with the business.”

“I know,” Elena said. “And I wish it were possible to keep you out of it, my darling. But it’s not.”

“Mother—I don’t want it.”

“And I didn’t want it for you,” Elena said. “But I’m going to need you. To avenge your brother.”

She watches Luis looking at his brother’s ashes float on the surface of the water and then disappear into the foam of a gentle wave.

Just like that.

The poor boy, she thinks.

Not a boy, a young man, twenty-seven now. Born to this life from which he can’t escape. It was foolish of me to think otherwise.

And that foolishness cost my other son his life.

She watches the wave go out, taking her child with it, and thinks of the song she sang on his birthdays.

The day you were born,

All the flowers were born,

And in the baptismal fountain

The nightingales did sing,

The light of day is shining on us,

Get up in the morning,

See that it has already dawned.

A sharp, heavy blade presses down on her chest.

Pain that will never go away.

Keller sits down on the sofa across from Marisol.

“You look tired,” Marisol says.

“It’s been a day.”

“Barrera,” she says. “It’s been all over the shows. What a scene, huh?”

“Even dead, he’s still getting people killed,” Keller says.

They talk for a few more minutes and then she goes up to bed. He goes into the den and turns the television on. CNN is covering the Barrera story and doing a recap of his life—how he started as a teenager selling bootleg jeans, how he joined his uncle’s drug business, his bloody war with Güero Méndez to take over the Baja plaza, his succeeding his uncle as the head of the Mexican Federación. As the scant photos of Barrera appear on the screen, the reporter goes on to talk about “unconfirmed rumors”—that Barrera was involved in the torture-murder of DEA agent Ernie Hidalgo, that Barrera had thrown the two small children of his rival Méndez off a bridge, that he’d slaughtered nineteen innocent men, women and children in a small Baja village.

Keller pours himself a weak nightcap as the reporter provides “balance”—Barrera built schools, clinics and playgrounds in his home state of Sinaloa, he had forbidden his people to engage in kidnappings or extortion, he was “beloved” by the rural people in the mountains of the Sierra Madre.

The screen shows the signs reading ¡ADÁN VIVE! and the little homebuilt roadside shrines with photos of him, candles, bottles of beer, and cigarettes.

Barrera didn’t smoke, Keller thinks.

The profile relates Barrera’s 1999 arrest by “current DEA head Art Keller,” his transfer to a Mexican prison, his 2004 “daring escape” and subsequent rise back to the top of the drug world. His war with the “hyperviolent” Zetas, and his betrayal at the peace conference in Guatemala.

Then the scene at the funeral.

The bizarre murder.

The lonely lowering of the coffin into the ground, with only his widow, his twin sons and Ricardo Núñez present.

Keller turns off the television.

He thought that putting two bullets into Adán Barrera’s face would bring him peace.

It hasn’t.