Triple Crossing (11 page)

Athos stayed by Méndez, AK-47 at the ready, eyeing the crowd, the balconies and rooftops. Porthos shadowed Aguirre, shoving
away inmates violently but surreptitiously, his hands low so the human rights commissioner wouldn’t notice. The crowd ebbed
and swirled. A group of women shouldered forward. They had an elderly female inmate in tow—bent over, gray-haired, grandmotherly-looking.
They wanted Aguirre to see her: Exhibit A for the injustice of it all. Can you believe they arrested this poor old
comadre
for smuggling drugs, Doctora? She was just in the wrong car at the wrong time. Can’t you do something for her, Doctora? Aguirre
pulled the woman aside, a comforting arm around the frail back in a mangy green sweater. Aguirre and the woman took turns
speaking into each other’s ears, straining over the noise. Aguirre pulled out a pad and took notes.

Athos sidled up to Méndez and murmured: “Listen, Licenciado, perhaps it would be best to cut short the tourism, what do you
think?”

Isabel Puente’s look suggested wholehearted agreement.

Méndez shrugged. “What do you want me to do? Every time I came here when I was commissioner, it was the same. They all want
you to make them a miracle.”

Aguirre leaned over a counter into a wooden hut that was a handicrafts store and, judging from the mattress and bassinet on
the floor, a tiny residence for the inmate entrepreneur and his family. The ponytailed owner was an artisan who decorated
belt
buckles with images of curvaceous women, AK-47s, marijuana leaves. After handing Aguirre a folder containing documents about
his court case, he tried to make a sale.

“Perhaps your husband would like another one, Doctora, or one of the gentlemen with you,” he said in what sounded to Méndez
like the cadences of Michoacán. “This is really a complicated design, I call it the Sinaloan Phantom, the skull with the cowboy
hat requires an infernal amount of detail…”

Méndez noticed a scraggly inmate with buzz-cut hair and a cotton workshirt shoving his way toward Aguirre, rasping her name.
The inmate wore a necklace with a bullet as a medallion. Méndez did not like what he saw.

“Porthos,” he called.

The big commander was way ahead of him. By the time Méndez reached them, Porthos had intercepted the inmate and applied a
crushing one-handed grip to his throat. Clearing a path in the crowd with his free arm, Porthos pinned the inmate to a wall
beneath a dragon painted on a food stand run by Asian smugglers.

The inmate squawked and gurgled. Porthos tightened his hold. Some inmates laughed, others yelled insults. Méndez cursed. They
were like hyenas in here.

Méndez fought his way to Aguirre’s side and put a hand on her shoulder.

“Araceli, please,” Méndez said. “I would gladly spend the entire day here, but…”

They followed Rico down a narrow walkway behind a cell block to the Colonel’s compound. It was a cement yard half the size
of a tennis court: two picnic tables, barbells around a weight bench. A slobbering pit bull strained a leash. The open space
fronted a two-story block of housing that had been custom-built for a drug lord years earlier and purchased by the Colonel
for himself, several of his imprisoned former police officers, and henchmen and servants he had hired from the inmate population.

Two stern inmates in cowboy hats manned the gate of the compound. Two more stood sentry on a second-floor walkway of the building.
Like Rico, they wore long coats or bulky jackets. Several did not bother to conceal the pistols in their belts, declaring
to the world that the prison had turned reality upside down.

The Colonel himself was on hand to greet his visitors. The dutiful host stood at attention in the middle of the cement patio
area, arms spread magnanimously. He was resplendent in a brown-and-gold Fila jogging suit with a brown scarf tucked around
his throat and into the warm-up jacket. He was thickset, with a long torso, long arms and disproportionately short legs. He
wore a baseball-style cap adorned with the English word “Skipper.”

“Doctora Araceli,” the Colonel called, and embraced Aguirre.

Then he swiveled toward Méndez, who noticed Athos tense next to him. The Colonel made the most of the moment. He advanced
slowly, ceremonially, his hands wide and upturned.

“Licenciado Méndez,” the Colonel boomed. “It is sincerely a pleasure to see you. I would like to welcome you. I would like
to thank you humbly and profoundly for accepting my invitation and taking the time to come see me.”

The former police chief gave him a big hug with the requisite double back slap. Méndez smelled cigarettes, tequila and Old
Spice—the same aroma the Colonel had given off the day they had arrested him. The day the Colonel had warned Méndez that Junior
Ruiz Caballero would avenge this insult by cutting off Méndez’s ears and making him eat them, one at a time.

The Colonel disengaged. His laugh echoed in the compound.

This man is even more of a psychopath than I remembered, Méndez thought. But he’s shrewd. He’s using us and this scene out
here in the open, making people think he has new allies.

“Good morning,” Méndez muttered.

Araceli Aguirre leaned close to the Colonel and spoke in his ear, gesturing briefly at Isabel Puente. The Colonel’s eyes
brightened. With a mischevous smile, he stepped forward, took her hand and bent over it with a flourish.

“Welcome, señorita,” he murmured, all gallantry and discretion.

“Thank you,” Puente said, attempting a polite smile.

“I invite you all to come upstairs and have some coffee,” the Colonel declared. “Please, this way.”

The Colonel reached the base of the spiral stairway. He paused. A young woman had emerged from a door on the second-floor
balcony. She began a wobbly, hip-swinging descent. Her pointy heels rang on the metal steps. She had billowing, pink-streaked
blond hair and a heart-shaped face that looked fifteen years older than the rest of her. She wore a pink windbreaker zipped
to her throat and, despite the chill, tight denim shorts over sinewy legs.

The Colonel gave the woman a look of homicidal fury that stopped her cold. She gripped the stairway railing, one foot in the
air, hair tumbling. The Colonel turned his glare on one of the henchmen on the balcony. The man hurried over and reached to
help the startled strawberry blonde pick her way back up the stairs. He steered her into a doorway and slammed the door behind
them, cutting off the strains of a song by Los Plebeyos.

The Colonel wheeled with parade-ground precision toward Aguirre. Her face had registered uncertainty for the first time since
their arrival.

With a big smile and a little bow, the Colonel said: “After you. Please.”

A recent layer of lemon scent melded with musty and unpleasant smells in the Colonel’s windowless quarters. Méndez, Aguirre,
Puente and the Colonel sat on wood chairs around a metal folding table in a narrow living room area. There was a television
on a high shelf, a portable stereo, a cell phone hooked to a charger, a samurai sword on a little table near the short hallway
leading to a sleeping alcove. Whiskey and tequila bottles stood
on a tray. A bulletproof vest hung from a hook. A velvet tapestry depicting a colonial church in a country landscape covered
one wall; photos of the Colonel with relatives, soldiers and policemen filled another. The Colonel was a career army officer
in his fifties. He had been appointed chief of the state police when the theory held sway that the culture of the Mexican
military insulated its officers from corruption and made them the ideal reformers to clean up civilian law enforcement.

By some silent accord, the four prison guards remained outside the compound. Méndez doubted that any guard had come through
that gateway since the Colonel had moved in. Two Diogenes officers were downstairs in the yard. Athos checked the interior
and stationed himself outside the door on the balcony. Porthos settled his bulk onto a low couch near Méndez. Rico stood behind
a counter in the kitchenette. A short youth with Mixteco features, wet-combed hair and a Georgetown sweatshirt served coffee.
He wore a black thread crucifix around his neck.

“The ironies of life,” the Colonel said. “When I was a young captain, I had the privilege of serving as warden at a problematic
prison in Chihuahua. I can assure you that by the time I was done, there was order, respect, dignity. And now, I find myself
in this inferno. This zoo.
National Geographic
would love this place. In this warped institution you have all the degradation and the degeneracy that our society has come
to, my friends. An enormous sea of shit. If you’ll pardon me, Doctora. And señorita.”

Aguirre nodded, warming her hands on the coffee mug. Puente fiddled with her sunglasses, trying not to touch anything else.
Méndez whisked a cockroach off his sleeve.

“I have to get out of here,” the Colonel muttered huskily. He had a rather square face. His watery eyes gave the impression
that he was perpetually on the brink of shedding sentimental tears.

The bravado of the welcome had faded. The Colonel looked old and haunted in the gloom. He contemplated his outsized
hands—the ridges of the veins, the knuckles like knots of bone—flat on the table in front of him. Without looking up, he said:
“You must help me, Licenciado Méndez. I know that sounds strange, after our discrepancies of the past. But why delude ourselves?
I need help.”

“Doctora Aguirre gave me the sense that we could be of mutual help to one another,” Méndez said.

“I know you want that snot-nosed little son of a bitch,” the Colonel rasped. “That little brat sitting on that hill in Colonia
Chapultepec who toys with human beings the way children torture insects. Junior has no conception of honor like you and I,
Méndez.”

Aguirre rearranged her shawl. She said: “Perhaps you could give the Licenciado an idea of how you could help, Colonel. Regarding
the Ruiz Caballeros. As we discussed.”

“What a partner you have, Méndez.” The Colonel raised his head, brightening a bit. “That’s why everybody wants her to run
for governor. A real lady. And tough as a soldier.”

Aguirre laughed uneasily. Méndez took a long sip of coffee.

“I see this as the first step toward a dialogue,” the Colonel continued. “I assure you we don’t have much time. Junior’s people
are closing in. I have reliable reports about two heavyweight
sicarios
among the inmates who have been approached separately. Each has been given an advance payment for my head. Like a macabre
competition.”

“If it’s as bad as you say, then you should act first,” Méndez said. “That’s the best strategy. That means you trust me and
hold nothing back.”

“That would certainly be one way of looking at it,” the Colonel said. “César!”

Everyone jumped. The short servant appeared.

“Bring the book I was looking at earlier,” the Colonel ordered. He leaned toward Méndez. “I can give you a sign of my good
faith. I can give you the larger scheme of things. You probably see parts of it already, but not the dimensions, the audacity.”

César placed a large and moldering atlas on the table. Scrawled in orange Magic Marker on the cover was a reminder that the
atlas was the property of the prison library.

Rico flicked on an overhead light. The Colonel’s scalp gleamed through the gaps in his comb-over. He had acquired the air
of a field marshal dispensing orders in a battle tent. His veined hands pried the atlas open to a full-color map of the Americas.
A thick finger searched out and tapped a spot slightly below the center of South America.

“I assume you have heard of the Triple Border,” the Colonel said.

“Of course,” Méndez said.

“This is the Triple Border,” the Colonel proclaimed, ignoring him. “The place where Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina come together.
The Tijuana of South America, you could say. The core of the Ruiz Caballeros’ scheme.”

The Colonel’s hands hovered over the map, little bursts of movement accompanying and diagramming his words.

“Being a student of organized crime, you know that Mexican drug mafias now dominate the world cocaine market. Mexican narcos
have taken over areas once run by the Colombians, such as cocaine distribution in the United States and smuggling to Europe.
Certain visionary Mexicans have established connections with suppliers in Colombia, Bolivia and Peru, transporters in Venezuela,
Italy, Africa. And as you know, the Ruiz Caballeros have decapitated and absorbed the cartels in northwest Mexico. Thanks
largely to my help when I was chief of police, modesty aside. Though that ingrate Mauro Fernández Rochetti wants to take the
credit now.”

The Colonel stabbed the heart of South America again. His mood seemed to swing back toward euphoria.

“But Junior is also developing a revolutionary route, new allies. This could make him richer and stronger than the competition.
It is untapped territory. You know more history than I do. If I
understand correctly, the Triple Border became a smuggler’s paradise during the dictatorship of that general who ruled Paraguay
for so long.”

“Stroessner,” Méndez said.

“That one. A kleptocrat. When he fell, the civilians took over Ciudad del Este. The smuggling business kept growing.”

“The government barely exists there,” Araceli said to Méndez. “The mafias move an enormous amount of money.”

The Colonel nodded graciously. “Billions a year, they say. You still have to pay toll to the Paraguayans, but it is an international
platform now. Asian gangs. Arabs. Brazilians, Russians. Pure mafias. The United Nations of crime.”

Méndez’s eyes were on the map. He decided to jab the Colonel. “What could be so profitable down in the middle of nowhere?”

The Colonel’s fist clenched on the atlas. He looked miffed.

“Look. It is what the South American cops call a ‘liberated zone.’ You have every racket: Drugs. Guns. Fake documents. Money
laundering. Contraband. Junior got interested in the place when he found out they were pirating the discs of his damned
norteño
bands faster than the pirates in Mexico. He had some emissaries sniff around. He went down himself. There are waterfalls,
jungle parks. Better than Niagara Falls. Junior established alliances with big capos down there. Cautious, experimental. But
huge potential.”