The Cartel (63 page)

Wagner went back to the van, came back out with a pound package wrapped in plastic. He took a knife out of his pocket, unfolded it, and slashed the plastic.

Keller looked. The meth was a nice blue color—transparent, not cloudy—good ragged shards.

“You wanna bleach it, go ahead,” Wagner said.

“No, I want a hit,” Keller said.

“Get out your pookie,” Wagner said, digging into the package to take out a rock.

“Yeah.” Keller reached into his jacket pocket for the glass pipe, pulled out a syringe instead, and jabbed Wagner in the carotid artery. Wagner sagged right away and Keller and Jiménez caught him, carried him to their car, and tossed him into the trunk. Wagner tried to get out but all he could do was mumble, “I have my rights.”

Keller slammed the trunk closed.

He dropped Jiménez off in El Paso.

“There’s thirty to life in the trunk,” Keller said as Jiménez got out of the car. “If this goes south on us.”

“No worries,” Jiménez said. “There’s not a prison in America where I’d last more than a week.”

Keller crossed the border—“nothing to declare”—and went to a warehouse outside of Juárez where the FES had set up operations. They strapped Wagner into a wooden chair and waited until he came to.

Now Keller explains to Mikey-Mike that he doesn’t, in fact, have any rights, that he’s in Mexico now, and that the black-masked men around him are FES commandos who are very angry about the Zetas’ murder of the Córdova family.

“If I turned you over to them,” Keller says, “they’d skin you alive, and we’re not speaking figuratively. Let me translate that for you, Mikey-Mike—they’d actually skin you.”

“You’re bluffing,” Wagner says. “You’re a cop. You can’t just kill people.”

“I can do any fucking thing I want down here,” Keller says. The truth is he doesn’t know what he’s going to do if Wagner calls his bluff. Part of him isn’t bluffing, part of him knows that he’ll take it all the way. He hasn’t felt this much anger, this much hatred, since they killed Ernie Hidalgo. Enough anger, enough hatred to kidnap an American citizen and haul him across the border. “Killing a grieving family, on the night of the funeral. That’s about as low as it gets, isn’t it?”

“I didn’t have anything to do with that,” Wagner says, shaking his head, still a little groggy from whatever they shot him up with.

“But you sold them the guns, didn’t you?” Keller says evenly. “Or you know someone who knows someone who knows who did, and you’re going to tell me.”

“The fuck I am,” Wagner says, eyeing the needle.

Keller says, “Here’s how it’s going to work. We’re going to party like it’s 1999. I’m going to start hitting you with
colmillos.
First couple of shots, you’re going to feel great, better than you’ve ever felt in your life. After the next few, you’re going to start getting sick. Really sick. You’re going to get delirious, you’re going to start seeing things that aren’t there. And that was the good part, because then you’re going to start to sweat, and then you’re going to start to feel intense anxiety, and then you’re going to panic.

“Which you should, because with the next few pops your blood vessels are going to constrict, your heart is going to start pounding, and then racing, and you’re going to feel like it’s going to explode right out of your chest, which is half right, because it is going to explode, but
inside
your chest. Then you’re going to die.

“Then I’m going to drive your body back over the border and dump it, and the police will think that you stiffed the Zetas and they did this angry cocaine beehive thing on you, but they won’t give a shit, because it’s just one less meth dealer.”

Keller jabs him with the first needle. “All you have to decide is where on this runaway train you want to jump off.”

He jabs Wagner with two more needles. “Pure coke—‘Rolex.’ I took it off Diego Tapia myself. Feels good, doesn’t it?”

Wagner throws his head back in pure pleasure as the drug bypasses his frontal lobes and hits right into his reptilian brain.

“You want to tell me now,” Keller asks, “while we’re all still happy?”

Wagner laughs. “The Zetas will kill me.”

“Motherfucker,” Keller says. “
I’m
going to kill you.”

“You’re going to kill me anyway,” Wagner says as Keller pops him with two more hits.

“But you can go out happy,” Keller says, laughing.

Wagner laughs. “True.”

“Tell you what we’ll do,” Keller says. “You give me what I want, we dump you back high but alive.”

“You’re going to kill me so I don’t tell,” Wagner says.

“What are you going to tell?” Keller asks. “Some guys drugged you and took you down to Mexico and got you high? No one’s going to believe you, and if they do, no one’s going to care.”

Two more pops.

“Oh, shit, that’s good.”

“Good
now.
”

Wagner holds on, Keller has to give him credit for that, riding it straight toward the edge of the cliff in a game of chicken to see who blinks first. He holds on through the euphoria, the laughter, holds on as he starts to get the shakes and then he starts seeing all kinds of shit that isn’t there.

“Make it stop!” Wagner yells.

God knows what the hell he’s seeing, Keller thinks.

“You make it stop,” Keller says. “Give me a name.”

Mikey holds on. Literally, his bound hands grip the arm of the chair, his knuckles go white, he shakes his head back and forth.

Keller hits him with three more pops. Doesn’t want to, but then he makes himself picture the photos of Irma Córdova, chopped to pieces with machine-gun fire, and that makes it easier to jab this fucking mutt with the needle.

You think
you’re
seeing things, Mikey?

You want to see what
I
see?

And my shit’s
real.

Wagner starts sweating. First it pops out of his forehead in little dots, then it streams like rain down a window in a tropical storm, and then Mikey starts getting happy feet, tap-tapping away on the concrete floor, his thighs bouncing. Pretty soon Mikey’s rattling like an old heap down a highway and begging for Keller to stop.

“It’s not going to get any better, Mikey,” Keller says.

Jabs him.

“Oh, fucking shit!”

Wagner’s face gets red, his chest heaves, and for a second Keller’s afraid of losing his potential source. He lays two fingers on Wagner’s neck, takes his pulse, and says, “It’s not looking good. A buck ten. You are off to the races.”

“Motherfucker, make it stop.”

“Give me a name.”

“I can’t.”

“A buck forty, now, Mikey,” Keller says. “And you were one Big Mac away from a coronary before you got here, so I don’t know…”

Keller administers another hit.

Been over a hundred shots now.

Wagner isn’t going to last.

But will you do it? Keller asks himself. Can you do this?

He hits him with three more—pop, pop, pop.

Wagner’s face goes scarlet, veins pop out, his chest heaves like some bad sci-fi movie.

“Tachycardia on the way,” Keller says, holding an ampule in front of Wagner’s face. “This one might take you over the top.”

“You…won’t…do it.”

“Don’t test me.”

“You…won’t…”

Keller shrugs and goes to plunge the needle into Wagner’s vein.

“Carrejos!” Wagner screams. “José Carrejos! They call him El Chavo!”

“You sell him guns?” Keller asks, the needle still pressed against Wagner’s arm. “Did you sell him guns, motherfucker?!”

“Yes!”

Keller takes the needle away. “Where do we find Carrejos?”

“I don’t know! Please, give me something…”

Keller unties Wagner’s left hand and then gives him the cell phone he took from him. All the numbers and contacts have already been downloaded. “Call him.”

“What…do…I…say?”

“I don’t care. Just keep him on the line.”

Wagner finds the number and hits it. “Chavo, it’s me, Mikey…No, I’m good, I’m just high is all…really jacked up,
’mano.
Hey, do you guys need any more stuff? I just moved that…that…two pounds and I…I…”

The FES technician gives Keller a thumbs-up.

They have Carrejos’s location.

Keller grabs the phone and clicks it off. He turns to the medic. “Take care of him. Ease him down.”

The medic looks at Keller, like,
Why?
But he does it. Half an hour later, Mikey-Mike Wagner is in the front seat of Keller’s car, sound asleep, when they cross back over the border. Keller drives him to the bus station in El Paso and then shakes him. “Wake up.”

Wagner looks bleary.

Keller hands him a bus ticket. “Chicago. It’s Sinaloa cartel turf—the Zetas can’t get to you there. If you ever come back here, the Z Company will kill you. If they don’t, I will. Now get out.”

“Thank you.”

“Fuck you. Die.”

Driving away, his phone rings. It’s one of the FES guys, they already have Carrejos, and he’s already talking.

Keller doesn’t doubt that. They’re holding a Mexican citizen on Mexican soil and there’s nothing stopping them from doing what they’re going to do—track down the men who killed their comrade’s family.

They’ll strip Carrejos of everything he knows and then, if he’s lucky, put a bullet in the back of his head and dump his body out in the desert.

Keller doesn’t care—he just wants the information, even as he knows that the hunt for the Zeta killers takes him further away from his search for Barrera. It’s the principle of a river—the deviation of even an inch at the source takes that river on a new course, farther and farther from where it started to go.

Now he drives to meet Marisol.

They’re going to a New Year’s Eve party.

—

It turns out to be not a bar or a restaurant but a bookstore café. And she’s right, Cafebrería has that feel of a meeting place, a cultural center, a refuge from the insanity that’s taken over so much of this city.

Marisol introduces him around. Her friends are nice but he feels out of place, clearly a stranger, a gringo, a North American government official and therefore a curiosity and a little bit of a threat among a crowd of writers, poets, activists, and unironically self-proclaimed intellectuals.

Still, even though he’s standing on the periphery, there’s a warmth to this circle that he hasn’t seen or felt in a long time. The affection is palpable and genuine, the humor of a gentler sort than he encountered in Cuernavaca, and there seems to be no other agenda than friendship and a shared cause, even if he thinks that cause is too inchoate and impractical to ever be realized.

A woman friend of Marisol’s, a reporter, invites them over to her house afterward, and as Marisol seems keen to go, Keller agrees.

It’s the usual suspects—intellectuals, activists, writers, poets—cheap wine, and cheaper beer, and Keller gets the feeling that joints would be passed around if he weren’t there, and he wants to tell them that he just doesn’t care, but doesn’t know how to broach the subject.

He’s standing in the little backyard sipping a beer when a somewhat plump man with long black hair and a day-old beard comes up to him.

“Pablo Mora.”

“Art Keller.”

“I write for
El Periódico,
” Pablo says. He’s clearly had more than one beer, and he says, “Some of us have been talking and the consensus is that you’re some kind of a spy. If that is the case, what kind of a spy are you?”

“I’m with the government,” Keller says, “but I’m not a spy.”

“That’s disappointing. It would be more fun if you were a spy,” Pablo says. “So why are you here?”

“Marisol asked me.”

“We love Marisol,” Pablo says. “We all love Marisol. I love Marisol. I mean, I
love
her.”

“I don’t blame you.”

“Well, I blame
you,
” Pablo says. “How can she love a gringo?”

“Well, I’m only half gringo,” Keller says. “Half gringo, half
pocho.
”

“A
pochingo.
”

“I guess.”

“I just made that word up,” Pablo says. “I’m a Juarense. Born and bred.”

Marisol walks over to rescue him. “Pablo, I see you’ve met Arturo.”

“The
pochingo
spy.”

“Pochingo?”
Marisol asks.

“I’ll tell you later,” Keller says.

“You’re okay,
pochingo,
” Pablo says. “I’m going to get another beer. You want another beer?”

“I’m good.”

“Okay.”

Pablo walks away.

“He’s a little over-refreshed,” Keller says.

“Kind of a sad story, Pablo.”

“I like him,” Keller says. “He has a crush on you.”

“A small crush,” Marisol says. “He’d be in love with Ana if he had any brains. Are you having a good time?”

“I am.”

“Liar.”

“No, I am.”

“Let’s go talk with Ana,” Marisol says. “I’d love for you to be friends.”

They go and sit on the steps with the petite black-haired woman who’s in an intense discussion with a bespectacled middle-aged man with a cane. Keller figures that this has to be the famous Óscar Herrera, the eminent journalist whom the Barreras tried to assassinate back in the day.

“Tell me how it’s different, Óscar,” Ana is saying. “Tell me how this isn’t an army of occupation.”

“Because it’s our own country’s army,” Óscar answers.

“Still, it’s martial law.”

“I’m not disputing that,” Óscar says. “I’m disputing your notion that it’s an army of occupation and I’m also asking, what are the other options? We have a police force that either cannot or will not enforce the law, that is afraid to come out of its precinct houses for fear of being killed, so what is the city government supposed to do? Just surrender to anarchy?”

“This
is
anarchy.”

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Marisol says. “I wanted to introduce you to my friend. Óscar Herrera, this is Arturo Keller.”

“Mucho gusto.”

“The pleasure’s mine.”

“We were just discussing the sad condition of our city,” Óscar says, “but I, for one, am glad to be interrupted. You’re a North American, Señor Keller.”