The House of Wolfe (18 page)

As expected, Galán says. The security force has been withdrawn from the project.

Though their table is well removed from the nearest other diners, they have lowered their voices to near whispers.

Melitón nods. As expected, yes. All else is good?

Yes. My assistant had already checked with the crew chiefs before I called him this morning. No problems. Well, except for a bad smell of some sort at the Beta site. You would think they could put up with it till this afternoon but the crew chief claims it's quite severe. My assistant will have the owner of the place look into it, see if he can ease the condition.

It must be a very bad smell, Melitón says, to stand out among slum stinks. You know what the most common air freshener is in the slums? A dead rat hung from the ceiling.

Galán smiles at the old joke.

So, Melitón says. Now you wait until the principals have processed the funds and call you this afternoon.

Correct. My agents will observe the process to make certain the funds are conveyed to the repository until the hour of transfer.

I'm sure it will seem a long time until then.

Waiting can slow the clock, says Galán.

And yet the operation from start to finish will have taken less than twenty-four hours. Absolute lightning, my friend. Most impressive.

Thank you, Mr. Engineer.

There are others who will be no less impressed.

I hope so.

Be assured of it, Melitón says.

Their breakfasts arrive, and they apply themselves to the dishes with gusto.

They had first met on a Sunday night last spring. Galán had just come out of a downtown restaurant when he saw a woman in a little white dress displaying much of her exquisite legs getting out of the backseat of a black Chrysler at the curb, assisted by a corpulent but finely attired man who looked more than twice her age. It was early evening and the sidewalk traffic was fairly light, and Galán paused to light a cigar and admire her. The man spoke to the driver and shut the door and the Chrysler drove away. Just then, a pair of young men with buzz cuts and dressed in denim, their sleeveless shirts exposing sinewy arms, came strutting by on either side of the woman, and when she turned to keep an eye on the nearer one, the other stepped over to her and grabbed her ass with both hands, saying, “Ay, que bonitas nalgas!” The woman yelped and whirled around, backing away from him, and then the other one slipped his hands under her arms from behind and squeezed her breasts, saying, And these too! The woman cursed and broke free, slapping at him, but the kid just laughed and easily dodged her hand. The fat man yelled “Bastards!” and tried to grab the tit squeezer by the shirt, but the kid batted the man's arms aside and punched him hard in the face, knocking him to one knee. He was about to hit the old man again when Galán flicked away the cigar and grabbed him by the shirt collar with both hands and slung him around headfirst into the stone wall. The kid's head struck with an ugly sound and he dropped into a motionless heap. The other thug then brandished a knife and started toward Galán in a crouch. But the old man grabbed him from behind, locking a forearm around his throat and clamping his other hand on the wrist of his knife hand, and Galán stepped up and kicked the kid in the balls. The kid made a croaking sound and sagged in the old man's hold. The man let him drop and Galán kicked the thug in the mouth and then stomped on his head twice, the second time grinding his heel into an ear.

A small crowd had bunched to either side of them on the sidewalk, some faces shocked, some grinning.

Come, the fat man said to Galán, extracting a phone from his coat and pulling the girl along by a hand, the crowd parting with alacrity to let them pass.

I'm going around the north corner and heading east, the old man said into the phone. There's three of us. Make it fast.

The old man could move with haste, but the girl wailed that she was about to lose a shoe, and they paused to let her remove both of them and carry one in each hand. They were almost to the end of the block when the black Chrysler swooped up beside them with a small toot of the horn and stopped in the street. They all hustled into the backseat and Galán shut the door and the car gunned away, the old man saying, “A los taxis.” As he'd entered the car, Galán had seen the driver slip a pistol into a holster under his coat.

The Chrysler made a series of sharp left and right turns for a few blocks and then doubled back before pulling into the parking lot of a taxi company. The car stood with its engine idling while the fat man, who had introduced himself as Melitón and the girl as Silvia—Galán saying he was Ramón—gave her money for a cab and, in addition, a few bills of large denomination. He apologized to her for their missed dinner and promised they would go to an even better restaurant the next time and said he would call her tomorrow. Then he caught the look that passed between her and Galán, and he said, I'll also give Ramón your number so he can call you if he pleases. His tone was good-natured sincerity. I mean, what the hell, he said. We've been in battle together, we three. We're comrades. Comrades share, do they not?

They all laughed and the girl kissed Galán on the cheek, then very gently put her lips to Melitón's swollen eye that was already discoloring, then got out of the Chrysler and into a cab. The following week Galán would bed her for the first time. They would thereafter get together once a week for almost two months before exiting each other's life as easily as they had entered it.

Shortly after dropping off the girl, the two men were seated in a softly lighted Argentine restaurant, perusing the menu. On arriving, they had tidied themselves in the men's room, and Melitón grinned at his bruised face in the mirror and said, Look at me! Mr. Street Fighter! Galán laughed and told him he had very well held his own.

As they decided on filets and a bottle of Barolo, Melitón saw Galán tapping his fingers in time to the low-volume music from the ceiling speakers and said, You like the sixth Brandenburg, eh?

Galán felt himself flush and said he'd recently heard that music somewhere and had liked it very much, but he had no idea what it was called except classical. He said he wished he knew more about such music.

If you wish to know more, learn more, Melitón said. He took a small notebook from his coat and wrote something in it and tore out the page and handed it to Galán. Meet me there for breakfast tomorrow, he said. I'll have some books for you. Some recordings for you to try. If you don't like them, donate them to the nearest library.

Galán saw that the café address was in Colonia Roma. He pocketed the paper and thanked him and said he'd be there.

They conversed with ease, and over the next hour they progressed from cordial guardedness to tentative candor to complete frankness. Galán had never before conversed so openly with anyone. By the time their table had been cleared away but for the glasses of amber brandy glowing in the candlelight, Galán had learned that Melitón was raised in a working-class home and had been in his share of boyhood fights. But he had been lucky to go to an adequate public school and eventually earned degrees in economics and in art history from the National Autonomous University. He had worked as a government accountant for several years before finding his true calling as a broker of sorts for Mexico City street gangs, which has been his main trade ever since. He is known to them as El Ingeniero for his ability to engineer almost any enterprise proposed to him that he finds promising. In exchange for a share of the gains, he provides whatever capital is necessary, plus, if also necessary, the venues for caching or brokering goods or for hiding out for a while. At times he even suggests improvements on the proposals themselves. The ventures he engineers range from burglaries, robberies, and drug transactions to larger and longer-term objectives such as brothels, gambling halls, and opium dens. Melitón's shares from all such projects amount to a steady and considerable income. In truth, he told Galán, he is not the one staking them, but only a front man for the Gulf cartel, which gets fifty percent of everything he earns from the gangs. In this way does the Gulf organization receive a steady revenue from Mexico City without attracting attention to itself in the capital. Melitón is fairly sure that other major organizations operate similarly through their own Mexico City middlemen. If any of the gangs who do business with those middlemen suspect their connection to the cartels, they also know the wisdom of keeping such suspicions to themselves. The cartels prefer not to wage war in the capital, Melitón said, with either each other or the police.

For his part, Melitón had come to know of Ramón Colmo's origin in an abysmal shantytown—his father unknown to him, his two sisters dead in their infancy, his mother uncertain of the date of his birth but for the year, and herself dead before he was thirteen. Ramón had since chosen the midyear, the first of July, as his birth date. He told Melitón of his days with Los Malditos, of the small but efficient organization of his own making called Los Doce and its successful kidnapping trade, of his efforts to improve his manner and dress and speech. And of his great ambition—which he had never before revealed to anyone—to have Los Doce accepted as an associate gang in a major organization. As a cartel undergang, they would not have to look for jobs, but rather the jobs would be assigned to them. Bigger, more lucrative jobs, whether burglaries or kidnappings or whatever else. They would no doubt have to turn over to the cartel a large share of their reap, but Galán believed that as his gang proved itself equal to any task assigned them, they would gain in reputation and rise in the cartel's esteem. As he saw it, he would either work his way up to an underboss position or, better yet, other small outfits of the organization would be assigned to Los Doce, enlarging it into a major undergang of the cartel with its own regional jurisdiction.

I can see it quite clearly, Melitón said with a smile. But with more than twelve members, you would have to change the name.

Indeed. Maybe to . . . Los Cincuenta? Galán smiled. Dare I think that big?

In a gang worthy of your leadership, at
least
fifty men, Melitón said. A hundred would be more like it.

Galán said he liked the sound of it—Los Ciento. It is a large ambition, he said. I know that.

Melitón said it was, yes, but what was life without a large ambition? In the meantime, and even though Los Doce was doing quite well on its own, he wanted Galán to know that if he should ever find himself in need of capital for some particular endeavor, it would be his great pleasure to provide it.

The next morning they met at La Golondrina as agreed and Melitón presented him with the books and CDs he'd promised, and Galán's instruction in classical music began in earnest. Melitón also gave him a book about world history. You want knowledge, Melitón said, and tapped the book. It begins here.

They continued to meet at La Golondrina on every Monday thereafter. Under the guidance of Melitón, Galán further improved his general education, his elocution and manners, and at every meeting he learned more about the workings of the crime cartels. Before long, he too was dressing almost exclusively in white suits of superior tailoring. Moreover, it pleased him to know that even at his age Melitón was still enjoying himself in bed with such lovelies as were always with him on Monday mornings. Melitón in turn always took great enjoyment in Galán's tales of past street battles and of his own latest sexual adventures.

And then a little more than two months ago Jaime Huerta had come to Galán with an audacious proposition to kidnap an entire wedding party of ten members, all of whom belonged to wealthy families. Over a succession of meetings between just the two of them—sometimes in Chapultepec Park, sometimes at La Nereida, sometimes near the Palace of Fine Arts in the Alameda municipal park—they discussed the project at length. They carefully formed a plan, reviewed it, refined it, came to accord on its logistics. They haggled about the ransom amount and finally agreed to a demand of five million American dollars. After further wrangling, they agreed as well that Huerta's share would be two million, the enormous cut premised on Huerta's argument that the project was after all his idea and, most important, could not be carried out without his inside information and access. Without Huerta present, Galán then gathered Los Doce at their usual meeting place, El Nido, the basement restaurant in his old neighborhood, and told them of the plan he and Huerta had devised. The men were excited by it but displeased with Huerta's share of the ransom. Then grinned in unanimous approval of Galán's suggested reapportionment of the shares. They were all in favor, as well, of his proposal for allying Los Doce with the Gulf cartel.

He met with Huerta a few times more after that, the last time just two weeks ago, when he took Espanto with him so Huerta could meet the man he would be working so closely with in making the snatch.

Galán had by then told Melitón of the project, and had asked him to convey an offer to the Gulf organization. He wanted him to tell them that, on completion of the job, Los Doce was willing to pay the cartel one million Yankee dollars for admittance into its ranks as an undergang.

A sort of membership fee, Galán said. Also, our successful exploit to acquire that money should testify to our proficiency. All I want is for them to admit us to the organization and give us a chance to prove ourselves worthy of remaining a part of it.

Jesus, kid, Melitón said. A million. You want in
that
bad?

Galán stared at him. If you race cars for a living, he said, you want to compete at Le Mans, no? If you play soccer, you want to play for the World Cup, is that not so? For what
we
do . . . he turned up his palms. What but membership in a top company?

I understand, Melitón said. But, well, how do your boys feel about giving up a million? It leaves your bunch with two million yes, but divided among—