The Cartel (52 page)

Five hundred thousand a month went to Vera, with step-down payments to the other high-ranking guys—Galvén, Aristeo, Bravo, and Palacios—depending on their rank.

“How much did you make?” Aguilar asks one afternoon at the Four Seasons, unable to keep the disgust from his voice.

“Two million a year,” Palacios answers casually.

Special favors—the escape from Puente Grande, the close call after Nayarit, the takedown of Contreras, the raids on the Tapias—required extra money, Palacios tells them.

In those special cases, Esparza usually handled the payments.

“Where did the money come from?” Keller asks.

“El Patrón, I guess,” Palacios says. “I didn’t ask.”

“How high does it go?” Aguilar asks.

Palacios shrugs. “All I know is Vera. What he does with the money afterward—above my pay grade.”

“Los Pinos?” Aguilar asks. “We know that money went to Benjamín Amaro.”

“Then you know more than I do,” Palacios snaps.

Aguilar asks, his voice tight, “The attorney general?”

“I don’t know.”

—

At the next meeting at the St. Regis, Aguilar says, “Tell us about the meeting with Martín Tapia.”

“Tell
me
when I go
el norte.
”

“When we say you do,” Keller says. But he understands Palacios’s anxiety. Every day it gets more dangerous for him, every day he’s at risk of getting gunned down by the Tapias, if not by Gerardo Vera. Keller doesn’t really care if Palacios gets killed—good riddance to bad garbage—but not until they’ve stripped him of everything he knows, and he testifies.

“I want Arizona,” Palacios says. “Not Texas. I like Scottsdale.”

“It could be Akron for all I know,” Keller says.

“And a car,” Palacios adds. “Land Rover or Range Rover.”

“The fuck you think this is?” Keller asks, “
The Price Is Right
?”

“Tell us about the Tapia meeting,” Aguilar repeats.

“Can we get some lunch sent up?” Palacios asks. “I haven’t eaten.”

Gabriela calls down for some sandwiches. Palacios, munching on a
torta,
says, “The fuck you want to know? We met—”

“Was Vera there?”

“You know he was.”

“Do
you
know he was?”

“He was sitting beside me.”

“And—”

“And Martín told us that they’d made peace with the CDG and the Zetas,” Palacios says, “and that we were to go after La Familia instead. The fuck did we care? A narco is a narco.”

“Vera said that certain people would need more money,” Aguilar says. “Which people?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t?”

“Ask Gerardo.”

—

At the next meeting, Aguilar opens with, “Tell me about the Tapia raids.”

“You tell
me
about the Tapia raids.”

“What do you mean?”

“All I know is that Gerardo wanted to meet,” Palacios says. “Out of the office. Fine, we go out for a walk. He’s shook, like I’ve never seen him. You know Gerardo—ice.”

“And?”

“He tells me we have to go after the Tapias,” Palacios says. “I about shit my pants. ‘The Tapias, are you fucking kidding me? You know how much food they’ve put on our tables?’ He says it comes from on high.”

“And you ask him how high,” Keller prompts.

“And he holds his hand way above his head,” Palacios says. “So I say, ‘Adán Barrera is not going to like this,’ and Gerardo just stares at me, and then I get it—it
comes
from Barrera. And I say, ‘I don’t care, I’m not doing it, it’s suicide, going after the Tapias,’ and he says, ‘That’s why we better not fuck it up.’ ”

“Did he tell you why Barrera wanted the Tapias taken down?”

Palacios launches into a song-and-dance about how Gerardo didn’t share it with him specifically, but it had something to do with Diego getting too much power, and Alberto being too flashy, and all of them being into this Santa Muerte shit, and Adán thought they were becoming a liability, a risk.

All of which is true, Keller thinks, but he can see that he’s lying, that Vera told him about Salvador Barrera’s double-murder beef, and that Palacios doesn’t want Aguilar to know that he knows about the Tapia-for-Sal deal.

It’s very dangerous knowledge, Keller agrees.

“But you did fuck it up,” he prompts.

Palacios holds his hands up. “Not me—Galvén got stupid and blew Alberto away, and we just couldn’t lay our hands on Diego.”

“Couldn’t or wouldn’t?” Aguilar asks. “Are you still on his payroll? You’re alive, after all.”

“Shit,” Palacios says. “You think the Tapias are going to take us back after we killed his little brother? You think we’re going to double-cross Barrera? We’re running for our lives here.”

“You’re having coffee at the same place every day,” Keller says.

“When I’m not sitting here blowing you,” Palacios says. “Do you think I’d be doing this if I’d made a separate peace with Diego? Jesus Christ, could that cunt remember the mustard for a change? How hard is that?”

—

The game goes on.

Aguilar wants names, numbers, he wants to see Palacios’s bank accounts, his cell phone records, his e-mails. All the while, Keller plays a game of his own. He makes himself go out to lunch with Gerardo Vera, go out for drinks, listen to the man’s problems.

A straight-up shooting war has broken out in Sinaloa and Durango between Barrera loyalists and the Tapias.

Eight killed in a gun battle on Tuesday.

Another four on Wednesday…

Two hundred and sixty killed by the end of June.

Then, just yesterday, seven AFI agents were killed storming a safe house in Culiacán filled with Diego’s shooters.

And then, this morning, a banner appeared hanging from a Culiacán bridge that read
THIS IS FOR YOU, GOVERNOR VILLA, EITHER YOU MAKE AN ARRANGEMENT WITH US OR WE
’
LL MAKE AN ARRANGEMENT FOR YOU. THIS WHOLE GOVERNMENT WORKING FOR BARRERA AND ESPARZA IS GOING TO DIE
.

And other banners start to appear all over town with the message
LITTLE TOY SOLDIERS AND STRAW POLICEMEN, THIS TERRITORY BELONGS TO DIEGO TAPIA
.

“We have to move,” Keller tells Aguilar after another dance session with Palacios. “This whole thing is going to blow up.”

“You’re friends with the Tapias,” Aguilar says drily. “Tell them to give us a little time.”

Then Palacios balks—digs his feet in and says that he won’t give any more information until he’s assured of asylum in the United States.

“You’ve been stringing me along for weeks,” he says. “Enough.”

And walks out of the room.

—

It feels strange, being back in the United States. After what, Keller thinks, three years?

Strange hearing the language, seeing the ugly green money.

Washington is hot and humid in June, and Keller is sweating before he can get into the cab to DEA. At least he managed to get a flight into National, so the cab trip isn’t too long compared with the odyssey down from Dulles.

The announcement by Tim Taylor’s receptionist that there’s an Art Keller here to see him is greeted with the enthusiasm normally reserved for a colonoscopy. Taylor sticks his head out the door, sees that it’s sadly true, and gestures for Keller to come into his office.

“Hold my calls,” he says to the receptionist.

Keller sits down across from Taylor’s desk.

“So,” Taylor says, “how’s the hunt for Barrera going? Not so good, huh?”

Keller takes out his copy of the Tapia tape, sticks it into Taylor’s Dictaphone, and hits play. “One of the voices is Martín Tapia, the other is Gerardo Vera.”

Taylor turns white. “Bull fucking shit. Where did you get this?”

Keller doesn’t answer.

“Same old Keller,” Taylor says. “How the fuck do you know that’s Vera?”

“Voice recognition software.”

“Inadmissible.”

“And a witness.”

“Who?” Taylor asks. He is not a happy man. He’s a less happy man when Keller tells him that the witness is Palacios. “That’s the third-highest-ranking cop in Mexico.”

Keller tells him about the Izta Mafia, the killings of the three cops, and the highlights of Palacios’s potential testimony.

“And you have this all on tape,” Taylor says.

“Aguilar does.”

Taylor gets up and looks out the window. “I’m pulling the pin in eighteen months. Bought one of those mobile homes with everything but a Jacuzzi in it, the wife and I are going to cruise around the country. I don’t need this right now.”

“I’ll need a snitch visa for Palacios,” Keller says. “Papers, a whole new package.”

“No shit.”

“Maybe one for Aguilar, too, if this goes south.”

“Oh, it’s already gone south,” Taylor says. “Do you know how much intelligence, how much information we’ve shared with Vera?”

“I have an idea.”

“No, you fucking don’t,” Taylor says, “because we specifically told him to keep most of it from you. If what you’re saying is true, every op we have down there…and a bunch of them up here…have been compromised. We’ll have to pull agents in, undercovers…”

“If what I’m saying is true,” Keller answers, “and it is, the entire federal justice system of Mexico has been turned inside out.”

“Palacios could be making up a story to get his ticket punched,” Taylor says.

“He could be,” Keller agrees. “But then, why would he need a ticket? If all this is bullshit, his life is in no danger.”

Taylor thinks about this for a second, then goes off. “Your mission was very clear, very specific—assist in the pursuit of Adán Barrera. You were not authorized to launch an investigation of corruption within the federal police force of a foreign nation—”

“You
don’t
want to know?” Keller asks. “You wanted me to hold it back until Vera gives Barrera one of your UCs to torture?!”

“Of course not,” Taylor says. He sighs, tired. “Look, I’ll need to go upstairs with this. You’ll have to come in, do the dog-and-pony. Fuck.
Fuck.
I’d thought we’d finally…Okay, let me get on the horn with the director, make his week. You stay where I can reach you in a hurry. Anything else you want, or is ruining my life sufficient for today?”

“Reservations at a dude ranch in Arizona.”

Taylor stares at him.

“For Aguilar’s family,” Keller says.

“See Brittany outside.”

“Can you expense it through—”

“Yes. Get out.”

—

Bureaucratic battles are bloody.

All the more so because it’s usually other people’s blood being shed, so what the fuck.

This is what Keller’s thinking as he sits at a table with Taylor, the DEA director, and representatives from Justice, State, Immigration and Naturalization, and the White House. There’s probably a Company guy in the room as well, sitting in the corner.

The DEA director chairs the meeting. “If Agent Keller’s information is accurate, we have a crisis on our hands.”

“Agent Keller,” the Justice hack, a middle-aged lawyer named McDonough, weighs in, “has a dubious tape recording and an even more dubious witness. I, for one, would not jeopardize our relations with Mexico based on the tales of a dirty cop.”

Keller knows McDonough—a former prosecutor in New York’s Eastern District. He’s gained more weight—his face is even redder, his jowls fatter, he’s one jelly doughnut away from a triple bypass.

“Concur,” the State Department rep says. Susan Carling has curly red hair, skin the color of chalk, and a PhD from Yale.

“What is the provenance of this tape?” McDonough asks.

Keller says, “The tape was handed to me by a source inside the Tapia organization, and that’s as far as I’m prepared to go.”

“You do not have the option, Agent Keller,” McDonough says, “of withholding the source of your information.”

“Fire me,” Keller says.

“Now,
that’s
an option,” McDonough says.

“
Do
you have a source inside the Tapia organization?” the DEA director asks Keller. “Because it doesn’t appear that you opened a file.”

“I don’t have a CI in the Tapia organization,” Keller answers. “Someone handed me the tape and—”

“Do you have a relationship with them?” McDonough asks. “Because if you haven’t opened a file, that’s completely inappropriate and opens you to suspicions of—”

Taylor says, “Can we talk about the real problem here, Ed? If a source came to you with information that the number three guy in the FBI was on the Gambino family payroll, you wouldn’t be sitting there picking him apart on procedural issues. I have
people
out there, who are now under horrendous risk.”

“Potentially,” McDonough says.

“Okay, you go to Tamaulipas under ‘potential’ risk, and tell me that you have time for this nitpicking shit,” Taylor says. “Keller is protecting his source. He’s an asshole, but that’s what he’s doing. Move on.”

The White House rep says, “The Mexican government is extremely sensitive to accusations of corruption, especially from us. If we push an agenda on this, it might sabotage years of diplomacy that are now finally having some positive effect. It could scuttle the very antitrafficking efforts that DEA has worked so hard to establish. Not to mention embarrassing us on the Hill.”

“I wouldn’t want anyone to be embarrassed,” Keller says.

“Be as ironic as you want,” the rep says, “but the Mérida Initiative wasn’t easy to push through Congress. It’s what you guys wanted, isn’t it??”

The Mérida Initiative is a three-year, $1.4 billion aid package, most of it to Mexico, to combat drug trafficking. Keller knows the details—thirteen Bell 412EP helicopters, eleven Black Hawks, four CN-235 transport planes, plus high-tech scanners, X-ray machines, and communications equipment. Not to mention training for police and Mexican military.

The same training, Keller thinks, we gave to the Zetas.

“Now you want us to do what?” the White House rep asks. “Go back to the Hill and tell them, ‘Whoops, forget it’? Turns out we were going to give a billion and a half dollars in sophisticated military equipment to a cabal of corrupt cops? That, in effect, we were going to hand over Black Hawk helicopters to the Sinaloa cartel? No, this is not going to happen.”