Silencer (30 page)

It sounded like the journey from the Costa Rica shack to the luxury
estancia
north-east of Narcopulco had been an eventful one for Liseth and her children.

‘She even had the fat fuck’s body driven north from CR for burial, man. Then kept digging him up and taking him with her every time she moved from one fucking pot of opulence to another.’

‘I didn’t have her down as sentimental.’

Dino snorted. ‘She didn’t keep him as some kind of beacon of hope, man, that’s for sure. The bitch has a different agenda. She don’t think like normal people. She wanted the kids to be reminded twenty-four/seven that their old man lost an empire, and none of them must ever be as weak as he was.’ Dino went quiet for a moment as he placed the pipe gently back on the table. ‘She buried him at the
casa
… in a one-fucking-third scale replica of the Lincoln Memorial – can you believe it, one-third? How the fuck is Peregrino going to miss that shit when he opens his curtains every morning?

‘You ever seen the real one? Nice piece of stonework, just up the road. The only thing missing is a statue of the Wolf looking thoughtful. He’s lying in a crypt.’

‘With my Mauser rounds still in him, you reckon?’

Dino threw his head back and laughed a bit too heartily – it wasn’t that funny.

‘Yeah, man, weak is definitely something her son is not – not on her watch. Even the name of the
casa
– Casa fucking Esperanza – has a different meaning for her.’

‘Not “hope”?’

He rolled his eyes. ‘That’s just the crap Jesus for Fucking Peace feeds the people. The version Liseth prefers means “desire” and “expectation”.’

I needed to drag him back to specifics. ‘And the Casa of Desire is about eighteen Ks north-east of Acapulco?’

‘Correct. Near a shit-kickers’ town, El Veintiuno. Or, at least, that’s the nearest point where mere mortals dare to breathe the same fucking oxygen. The ranch is another ten Ks from anything and anyone, man, surrounded by mountains and scrubland.’

‘Roads?’

Dino shook his head. ‘The only way for wheels, in and out, is private and patrolled. No vehicle can make it over that terrain cross-country, man. Rocks, boulders, gulches – impenetrable. They got a fucking helicopter up there – escape tunnel, all kinds of shit. Just like the old days.’

I had another question lined up but Dino was off on one. ‘That bitch has bigger plans for the boy than she ever dreamed of for his pop.’

His face glowed with the wonder of the thing. I was beginning to get the impression that a part of him admired ‘that bitch’. Part of me did too.

‘The Wolf always had grab bags, man, even in that shack. She headed north with close on thirty-two million – pocket change for her, but she knew the big sharks in the pool up north wanted it, and they were going to take it the first chance they got.

‘The bitch was smart enough to know she needed a new Big Swinging Dick to protect her and her family – but it wasn’t easy. She told me and the dogs that whoever she attached herself to had to be smart enough to stay at the top of the greasy pole – with her help, of course.’

‘She found someone?’

‘Sure she did. Husband number two was a big-time gang leader in Acapulco. And it was just peachy to start with. The kids were safe, the PRI were still in power, and everyone was making money. But then the cracks started to show. She came round to thinking that he also suffered from limited horizons.’

He adjusted himself in his chair and closely examined the pipe, debating another hit.

‘She formed a plan early on to get rid of him and have Jesús Junior take over, but had to wait until the boy was older – ready to rule the roost. Her game plan was royally fucked for a year or two when the PRI lost their grip and the gangs went to war. But Liseth knew there would be a power vacuum at some point. They kept killing each other, she kept waiting – and then she saw her opportunity.’

‘To kill off number two?’

‘You got it.’ This time he pointed at me instead of heading for the pipe. ‘He didn’t find his way into the firing line as quickly as she’d have liked. Rumour has it, she instructed Peregrino to give her husband both barrels, point blank in the fucking face. Rumour? I fucking know it for fact, man. She told us. We were her pets, but we were also her sounding board.’

‘We?’

‘The German Shepherds – three of the fuckers – and me. They were pampered, even shampooed and blow-dried every other day, man. Unlike me. But she also had their claws ripped out so they didn’t make any noise on her marble floors.

‘We were the only living things to hear her deepest thoughts. She’d tell us how weak her husbands were, how proud she was of her fucking son, you name it. She didn’t ask for our opinions, of course. Just our devotion. I figured it was best to act as confused as the dogs were – and to leave her with the impression all I wanted to know was when I’d be fed.

‘Anyway, she told us that sweet little Jesús left him with half a head, tied to a chair in the middle of a fucking roundabout on the Costera, to put commuters off their breakfast tacos.’

‘The bitch saw the future.’

The way Dino was studying the pipe you’d have thought he was valuing it for
Antiques Roadshow
. ‘She knew the gangs would eventually choose sides and amalgamate into full-blown cartels … and she also knew that would keep escalating the war. The bigger the cartels got, the more power they’d want. She’d seen all that shit in Colombia.

‘That was when she set her little boy on the path towards becoming a paramilitary leader. She knew there was more chance of surviving the war and winning the peace if they had no allegiance to any one of the new cartels. She did her deals behind closed doors – and Jesús followed her instructions to the letter. He became El Peregrino, like some fucking Mexican version of Allah’s favourite prophet. There are no pictures of the fuck. They knew Facebook wasn’t the answer, man. Just the name, and the awe they’ve created around it, is enough for now. But he’s fucking worshipped by those who toed the line.’

‘And those who didn’t?’

‘Those who didn’t, he fucked up the ass.’ He put down the pipe and massaged his cheeks with his hands, like he was rubbing shaving oil into a beard. His voice dropped; he was in memory mode once more. ‘Sometimes she took pictures of me on her cell to send as invitations to her Come-and-Poke-Fun-at-the-DEA-Gimp dinner parties. She dressed me up like a fucking jester, a
clown, even a fucking orang-utan one time. Sometimes they’d talk about making me jump out of El Peregrino’s birthday cake … or killing me right there … Shit …’ His right hand moved to the back of his head, as if it was going to help him sort out his mental filing cabinet.

I didn’t want him to play with his thoughts: I wanted him focused. ‘What else did the She Wolf talk about?’

He came right back on track. ‘The bitch used to tell her dogs and me how she’d guided her
protégé
through the war – decided who to fight for, who to destroy – and what she thought of the government and the evolving cartels. They were weak, in her book – and, like I said, she despises weakness more than anything. As far as she’s concerned the weak deserve to be exploited.’

Dino’s jaw clenched. ‘That fucker Peregrino – you gotta watch him, man. He’s his mother’s son. If there wasn’t the right toy in his cereal box to complete his collection, he’d want the grocery store manager killed.

‘Yeah, sounds funny, doesn’t it?’ His smile was bleak, and slid swiftly from his face. ‘Until you find out it’s true. It really happened, when he was just fucking fourteen. A fraction older than my boys are now …’

I could see him wandering off again. ‘So she’s got him in pole position?’

‘Getting there. They even have their own cell-phone network. Jesus for Peace has telecoms towers like you wouldn’t believe – their very own fucking national encrypted communications system. That’s pole position and then some, man.’ He arched his neck and pushed his head back against the leather.

I sat back too, thinking about the investment cost, innovation and infrastructure required to build a system like that. Then I remembered my iPhone’s performance in DC: just a few miles from the centre of the world’s most powerful capital city, and only one bar of signal. ‘SIM cards and organ harvesting … It’s one hell of a portfolio …’

Dino closely scrutinized the ceiling. ‘They’ve got a whole heap of other businesses too, man. They’ve got coal mines, oil off the
Gulf coast, all kinds of shit.’ His eye line returned briefly to Planet Earth. ‘But it’s just the beginning. This boy is going all the way, unless someone stops him. Liseth is set on him following in the footsteps of his Uncle Pablo. We’re talking the fucking presidency, man, Mexico’s answer to Barack Hussein Obama.’

Surreal, but it made sense to me. El Peregrino and his mum might have been Colombian once, but what the fuck did that matter? Peru had had a Japanese immigrant’s son as its president for ten corrupt and very violent years. And, as Dino said, Escobar had nearly made it to the top job in Colombia without much more of a skill set than knowing an opportunity when he saw one and not worrying too much about who he bludgeoned to death on the way. Liseth, on the other hand, had it all, and she knew it.

‘It may take another ten years, Nick, but it’s gonna fucking happen. That bitch might be one fucking crazy dog-whispering psycho, but she has a blueprint. She read Kitson, man. Two of his books, over and fucking over.’

‘
Gangs and Counter-gangs
and
Low Intensity Operations?
’

I couldn’t tell if he was surprised that I knew them.

‘I’ll never forget them, man – the covers had the first English words I’d seen for one fuck of a long time …’ He rubbed his stump to liven it up a little, and levered himself off the La-Z-Boy.

‘Peregrino is organizing all
los vigilantes
. He’s forming a country wide community police network that’s funded and trained by Jesus for Peace. In maybe seven or eight years, he’ll not only be the bringer of health, education and clean water to the masses, he’ll be the patron saint of protection from the cartels, gangsters, even the fucking sex offenders.

‘He’ll have the masses totally onside, because he’ll provide them with everything the government are fucking up. That’s when his fucking supernatural presence will get a face. By then he’ll be the government in everything but name. Election will be nothing more than a formality. That bitch will have him running everything down there, man – everything. Then we’ll see how far their tentacles can really reach.’

He stopped pacing and looked down at me. ‘You think that’s crazy?’

‘Sane as you and me, mate.’

He nodded. Irony had never been his strong suit.

‘Fucking right, man. I told you, Nick, she thinks differently – I know her. Everything she’s dreamed of has worked out for her. That’s why I wrote a paper on how to squeeze those drug fucks out of existence. We need to keep a very close eye on people like her. Kitson knew it. I know it. And you clearly know that Kitson shit, but the State Department? They got no balls to take action, man.’

Dino’s eyes drilled into me. ‘Let me tell you why I really want those cunts dead.’

‘He was playing polo against a team from Tijuana. Fuck knows why anybody bothered turning up. Peregrino’s team always won. That was the rule.’

Dino resumed the position on the La-Z-Boy. He wasn’t looking at me any more: he was staring at the ceiling again, like it was a cinema screen.

‘So this one day Liseth stops the game and calls Peregrino over. We’re with her, on our leashes, sitting at her feet. She says Morales, one of Peregrino’s players, has been disloyal. She don’t say how and she don’t say why. And Peregrino? He asks her jack.

‘The fat fuck steers his pony back onto the lawn, goes up to this guy and swings a mallet straight into his head. Morales has one of those polo helmets on, complete with face guard, but he still goes down like a sack of shit. Even when he hits the ground, Peregrino ain’t finished with him. He leans out of his saddle and rips the fucking helmet off this guy. By now he’s begging, screaming at him to stop, but no way. The fat fuck swings that mallet again, and again, and again … Jesus Christ, man, you ever seen what one of those things can do to a guy’s head? Imagine taking a sledgehammer to a watermelon. Blood everywhere. Brains and shit all over the grass.’

His eyes were still fixed on the scene playing out on the imaginary screen above him. I wasn’t too sure I was needed there.

‘Without even blinking, Peregrino removes a fleck from his jodhpurs and restarts the game. They play to the end. The body gets trampled to fuck. When it’s all over, Liseth’s gofers gather around it like flies. They dump it in a wheelbarrow, then about ten of them give the grass a good spray – would you believe, with bottles of fucking mineral water?’

He pushed himself upright again.

‘I was numb, man. Totally – fucking –
numb
. It was like nothing had happened. I felt no emotion at all. I was just unbelievably glad it wasn’t me. And I made a cold, clear promise to myself. The first chance I got not to be on the business end of that mallet, I was going to take it. You know what I’m saying.’

It wasn’t a question.

‘But later, when I got back to what I used to think of as the real world – maybe a couple of months out of hospital – that whole experience hit me like a fucking express train.
Whoosh
. Slammed straight into me, man. I couldn’t clear it from my head – and then it started kicking up all the other kinds of bad shit in there.

‘There’s one nightmare I keep having, man. This fucking nightmare, I’m running through the scrub, trying to escape El Peregrino. He’s in his fancy fucking polo gear, riding his fancy fucking horse. Calling for me, like he’s looking for a lost dog.

‘He finds me and he’s hitting me over the head with his mallet. I ain’t got no fucking helmet. I really go down. And he’s dismounting to fuck me up, and I’m, like, begging, covering my head. Then the bitch is there with him, high above me on her horse. She’s screaming down at me: “No one runs away from me!
No one!
” She’s screaming it, like, over and over. Then she’s telling her fucking psycho of a son to make it slow, man, make it painful.