The Border

“Núñez has the wealth and the power to take over the cartel,” Blair says, “but he’s a natural born number two, born to stand behind the throne, not to sit in it. He’s a lawyer at heart, a cautious, persnickety legalist without the taste or tolerance for blood that a move for the top demands.”

Another picture of a young man goes up on the screen.

Keller recognizes Ric Núñez.

“Núñez has a son,” Blair says, “also Ricardo, twenty-five, with the ridiculous sobriquet of ‘Mini-Ric.’ He’s only on the list because he’s Barrera’s godson.”

More pictures go up of Mini-Ric.

Drinking beer.

Driving a Porsche.

Holding a monogrammed pistol.

Pulling a cheetah on a leash.

“Ric lacks his father’s seriousness,” Blair says. “He’s another Hijo, a playboy burning through money he never earned through his own sweat or blood. When he isn’t high, he’s drunk. He can’t control himself, never mind the cartel.”

Keller sees a photo of Ric and Iván drinking together, raising glasses in a toast to the camera. Their free hands are tossed over each other’s shoulders.

“Iván Esparza and Ric Núñez are best friends,” Blair says. “Iván is probably closer to Ric than to his own brothers. But Ric is a beta wolf in the pack that Iván leads. Iván is ambitious, Ric is almost antiambitious.”

Keller already knows all this, but he asked Blair to give a briefing to the DEA and Justice personnel in the wake of the discovery of Adán’s body. Denton Howard is in the front row—finally educating himself, Keller thinks.

“There are a few other Hijos,” Blair says. “Rubén Ascensión’s father, Tito, was Nacho Esparza’s bodyguard, but now has his own organization, the Jalisco cartel, which primarily makes its money from methamphetamine.

“This kid—”

He shows another picture of a young man—short black hair, black shirt, staring angrily into the camera.

“—Damien Tapia,” Blair says, “aka ‘The Young Wolf.’ Age twenty-two, son of the late Diego Tapia, another one of Adán’s former partners. Was a member of Los Hijos until his dad ran afoul of Barrera back in 2007, touching off a major civil war in the cartel, which Barrera won. Used to be very tight with Ric and Iván, but Damien doesn’t hang with them anymore, as he blames their fathers for his father’s killing.”

Los Hijos, Keller thinks, are sort of the Brat Pack of the Mexican drug trade, the third generation of traffickers. The first was Miguel Ángel Barrera—“M-1”—and his associates; the second was Adán Barrera, Nacho Esparza, Diego Tapia, and their various rivals and enemies—Heriberto Ochoa, Hugo Garza, Rafael Caro.

Now it’s Los Hijos.

But unlike the previous generation, Los Hijos never worked the poppy fields, never got their hands dirty in the soil or bloody in the wars that their fathers and uncles fought. They talk a good game, they wave around gold-plated pistols and AKs, but they’ve never walked the walk. Spoiled, entitled and vacuous, they think they’re just owed the money and the power. They have no idea what comes with it.

Iván Esparza’s assumption of power is at least ten years premature. He doesn’t have the maturity or experience required to run this thing. If he’s smart, he’ll use Ricardo Núñez as a sort of consigliere, but the word on Iván is that he’s not smart—he’s arrogant, short-tempered and showy, qualities that his buttoned-down father had only contempt for.

But the son is not the father.

“It’s a new day,” Keller says. “Barrera’s death didn’t slow down the flow for even a week. There’s more coming in now than ever. So there’s a continuity and stability there. The cartel is a corporation that lost its CEO. It still has a board of directors that will eventually appoint a new chief executive. Let’s make sure we’re privy to that conversation.”

He’s the image of his old man.

When Hugo Hidalgo walks through the door, it takes Keller back almost thirty years.

To himself and Ernie Hidalgo in Guadalajara.

Same jet-black hair.

Same handsome face.

Same smile.

“Hugo, how long has it been?” Keller walks out from behind the desk and hugs him. “Come on, sit down, sit down.”

He leads Hugo to a chair in a little alcove by the window and takes the seat across from him. His receptionist and a number of secretaries had wondered how a junior field agent had managed to get an appointment with the administrator, especially on a day when Keller had canceled everything else and basically locked himself in his office.

Keller has been in there all day, watching Mexican news shows and satellite feeds covering the announcement of Adán Barrera’s death. Univision broadcast footage of the funeral cortege—scores of vehicles—as it snaked its way down from the mountains toward Culiacán. In villages and towns along the way, people lined the road and tossed flowers, ran up to the hearse weeping, pressing their hands against the glass. Makeshift shrines had been constructed with photos of Barrera, candles and signs that read ¡ADÁN VIVE!

All for the little piece of shit who murdered the father of the young man who now sits across from him, who used to call him Tío Arturo. Hugo must be, what, thirty now? A little older?

“How are you?” Keller asks. “How’s the family?”

“Mom’s good,” Hugo says. “She’s living in Houston now. Ernesto is with Austin PD. One of those hippie cops on a bicycle. Married, three kids.”

Keller feels guilty that he’s lost touch.

Feels guilty about a lot of things involving Ernie Hidalgo. It was his fault that Ernie got killed when Hugo was just a little boy. Keller had spent his entire career trying to make it right—had tracked down everyone involved and put them behind bars.

Devoted his life to taking down Adán Barrera.

And finally did.

“How about you?” Keller asks. “Married? Kids?”

“Neither,” Hugo says. “Yet. Look, sir, I know you’re very busy, I appreciate you taking the time—”

“Of course.”

“You once told me if there was anything you could ever do, not to hesitate.”

“I meant it.”

“Thank you,” Hugo says. “I haven’t wanted to take advantage of that, of our relationship, it’s not that I think I’m owed anything …”

Keller has followed Hugo’s career from afar.

The kid has done it the right way.

Military. Good service with the US Marines in Iraq.

Then he went back and finished college, degree in criminal justice from UT, and then caught on with Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. Put up a good record there and kept applying to DEA until he was finally hired.

He could have done it differently, Keller knows. Could simply have walked in and said he was the son of a fallen DEA hero, and they would have given him a job right away.

But he didn’t do that.

He earned it, and Keller respects that.

His father would have, too.

“What can I do for you, Hugo?”

“I’ve been on the job for three years now,” Hugo says, “and I’m still investigating marijuana buys in suburban Seattle.”

“You don’t like Seattle?”

“It’s about as far as you can get from Mexico,” Hugo says. “But maybe that’s the idea.”

“What do you mean?”

Hugo looks uncomfortable, but then sets his jaw and looks straight at Keller.

Just like Ernie would have done, Keller thinks.

“Are you keeping me out of danger, sir?” Hugo asks. “If you are—”

“I’m not.”

“Well, someone is,” Hugo says. “I’ve put in for FAST assignments five times and haven’t gotten one of them. It doesn’t make any sense. I speak fluent Spanish, I look Mexican, I have all the weapons qualifications.”

“Why do you want FAST?”

FAST is an acronym for Foreign-Deployed Advisory and Support Team, but Keller knows they do a lot more than advise and support. They’re basically the DEA’s special forces.

“Because that’s where it’s happening,” Hugo says. “I see kids dying of overdoses. I want in on that fight. On the front lines.”

“Is that the only reason?” Keller asks.

“Isn’t it enough?”

“Can I be honest with you, Hugo?”

“I wish someone would,” Hugo says.

“You can’t spend your life getting revenge for your father,” Keller says.

“With all respect, sir,” Hugo says. “You did.”

“Which is how I know.” Keller leans forward in his chair. “The men who killed your father are all dead. Two died in prison, one was killed in a gunfight on a bridge in San Diego. I was there. The last one … they’re about to hold his wake. The job is finished, son. You don’t have to take it up.”

“I want my father to have been proud of me,” Hugo says.

“I’m sure he is.”

“I don’t want to be advanced because of who my father was,” Hugo says, “but I don’t want to be held back, either.”

“That’s fair,” Keller says. “I tell you what, if someone is blocking your transfer to FAST, I’ll unblock it. You pass the test, you get through training—only half do—I’ll oil the wheels for assignment to Afghanistan. Front lines.”

“I speak Spanish, not Urdu.”

“Be realistic, Hugo,” Keller says. “There’s no way in hell we’re going to let you go into Mexico. Or Guatemala, or El Salvador, or Costa Rica or Colombia. DEA is simply not going to risk those headlines, if something happened to you. And something would—you’d be a marked man.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

“I won’t.” I had to tell Teresa Hidalgo her husband was dead, Keller thinks. I’m not going to tell her that her son has been killed. He makes a mental note to find out who has been keeping Hugo out of harm’s way and thank him. It was solid thinking. “You don’t want Kabul, name me something you would want. Europe—Spain, France, Italy?”

“Don’t dangle shiny objects in front of me, sir,” Hugo says. “Either I get moved to the front lines or I leave DEA. And you know I’ll catch on with a border-state police force and you also know they’ll put me UC. I’ll be making drug buys from Sinaloa before you take my name off the Christmas card list.”

You are your father’s son, Keller thinks. You’ll do exactly what you said, and you’ll get yourself killed, and I owe your dad more than that.

“You want to take down the cartel?” Keller asks.

“Yes, sir.”

“I might have a job for you right here,” Keller says. “As my aide.”

“Pushing paper,” Hugo says.

“You think you’re going to take down the cartel by buying a few keys of coke in El Paso or gunning down a few sicarios in El Salvador, you might be too stupid to work here,” Keller says. “But if you want to be in the real war, fly back to Seattle, pack your things, and be here ready to work first thing Monday morning. It’s the best offer you’re going to get, son. I’d take it if I were you.”

“I’ll take it.”

“Good. See you Monday.”

He walks Hugo to the door and thinks, Shit, I just got stood down by Ernie Hidalgo’s kid.

He goes back to the television.

They’ve brought Adán’s body back to Culiacán.

If Ric has to sit there five more minutes, he will blow his brains out.

For sure, this time.

Death would be preferable to sitting on this wooden folding chair staring at a closed coffin full of Adán Barrera’s bones, pretending to be grieving, pretending to be contemplating fond memories of his godfather that he really didn’t have.

The whole thing is gross.

But kind of funny, in a Guillermo del Toro kind of way. The whole concept of a velorio is so people can view the body, but there is no body, not really; they just tossed the skeleton into a coffin that probably cost more than most people’s houses, so it’s kind of like going to a movie where there’s no picture, only sound.

Then there was the whole discussion of what to do with the suit, because you’re supposed to dress the deceased in his best suit so he’s not walking around in the next life looking shabby, but that clearly wasn’t going to work, so what they did was they folded up an Armani they found in one of Adán’s closets and laid it in the coffin.

Even funnier, though, was the dilemma about what else to throw in, because the tradition is you put in stuff that the dead guy liked to do in life, but no one could think of anything that Adán did for fun, anything that he actually liked.

“We could put money in there,” Iván muttered to Ric as they stood on the edge of this conversation. “He sure as shit liked money.”

“Or pussy,” Ric answered.

The word was that his godfather was a major player.

“Yeah, I don’t think they’re going to let you kill some hot bitch and lay her in there with him,” Iván said.

“I dunno,” Ric said. “There’s plenty of room.”

“I’ll give you a thousand bucks to suggest it,” Iván said.

“Not worth it,” Ric said, watching his father and Elena Sánchez in earnest discussion on the topic. No, his dad would not be amused and Elena already didn’t like him. And, anyway, he wouldn’t say anything like that in front of Eva—speaking of hot bitches—who looked … well, hot … in her black dress.

Ric would definitely fuck Eva, who was, after all, his own age, but he wasn’t going to say that, either, not in front of her brother Iván.

“I’d fuck her,” Belinda had said to Ric. “Definitely.”

“You think she goes both ways?”

“Baby,” Belinda said, “with me, they all go both ways. I get anyone I want.”

Ric thought about this for a second. “Not Elena. She has ice down there.”

“I’d melt it,” Belinda said, flicking out her tongue. “And turn it to tears of joy.”

Belinda never lacked for confidence.

Anyway, what they finally decided to put in the coffin was a baseball, because Adán sort of liked baseball—although no one there could remember him going to a single game—an old pair of boxing gloves from Adán’s teenage days as a wannabe boxing promoter, and a photo of the daughter who died so young, which made Ric feel a little bad about wanting to put a dead chick in with him.

So that was that discussion—the more serious debate had been where to hold the velorio in the first place. At first they thought they’d do it at Adán’s mother’s house in his home village of La Tuna, but then they reconsidered that it might be too much on the old lady and also—as Ric’s father had pointed out—“the rural location would present a host of logistical difficulties.”

Okay.

They decided to hold it in Culiacán, where the cemetery was, after all, at someone’s house. The problem was that everyone had a house—actually, houses—in or around the city, so an argument started about whose house they should do it in because it seemed to have some significance.

Elena wanted it at her house—Adán was her brother, after all; Iván wanted it at the Esparza family home—Adán was the son-in-law; Ric’s dad suggested their place in the suburbs of Eldorado, “farther away from prying eyes.”

The fuck difference does it make? Ric wondered, watching the debate get heated. Adán’s not going to care, the guy is dead. But it seemed to matter to them and they really got into it until Eva quietly said, “Adán and I also had a home. We’ll do it there.”

Ric noticed that Iván didn’t look too thrilled about his little sister speaking up. “It’s too much to ask you to host this.”

Why? Ric wondered. It’s not like Adán’s going to be too busy laying out bean dip or something to enjoy his own wake.

“It really is too much, dear,” Elena said.

Ric’s dad nodded. “It’s so far out in the country.”

They finally agree on something, Ric thought.

But Eva said, “We’ll do it there.”

So Ric and everyone else had to drive all the way out to East Buttfuck to Adán’s estancia, up twisting dirt roads, past blockades of state police providing security. Fucking caravans of narcos coming to pay their respects, some out of love, some out of obligation, some out of fear of not being seen there. You got an invitation to Adán Barrera’s velorio and you no-showed, you might be the guest of honor for the next one.

His dad and Elena had made most of the arrangements, so of course it was perfect. Helicopters circling overhead, armed security prowling the grounds, parking valets with nines strapped to their waists.

Guests crowded the sloping front lawn. Tables with white cloths had been set out and were heavy with platters of food, bottles of wine, and pitchers of beer, lemonade, and water. Waiters walked around with trays of hors d’oeuvres.

One of Rudolfo Sánchez’s norteño bands played from a gazebo.

The walkway up to the house was strewn with marigold petals, a tradition in a velorio.

“They really went all out,” Ric’s wife, Karin, said.

“What did you expect?”

Ric had attended the Autonomous University of Sinaloa for all of two semesters, majoring in business, and all he really learned about economics was that a cheap condom can be far more expensive than a good one. When he told his father that Karin was embarazada, Ricardo told him he was going to do the right thing.

Ric knew what that was: get rid of the thing and break up with Karin.

“No,” Núñez said. “You’re going to get married and raise your child.”

Ric Sr. thought the responsibility of having a family would “make a man” out of his son. It sort of did—it made a man who rarely came home and had a mistress who would do everything his wife wouldn’t. Not that he asked her—Karin, while pretty enough, was as dull as Sunday dinner. If he suggested some of the things that Belinda did, she would probably burst out crying and lock herself in the bathroom.

His father was unsympathetic. “You spend more time running around with the Esparzas than you do at home.”

“I need a boys’ night out now and again.”

“But you’re not a boy, you’re a man,” Núñez said. “A man spends time with his family.”

“You’ve met Karin?”

“You chose to have sex with her,” Núñez said. “Without adequate protection.”

“Once,” Ric said. “I don’t have to worry about sex with her much now.”

“Have a mistress,” Núñez said. “A man does that. But a man takes care of his family.”

Although his father would shit bricks sideways if he knew Ric’s choice of a mistress—an out-and-out psycho who is also his head of security. No, Dad would not approve of La Fósfora so they’ve kept it on the down low.

His old man had more to say. “To disrespect your marriage is to disrespect your godfather, and that I cannot allow.”

Ric went home that night, all right.

“Have you been bitching to my father?” he asked Karin.

“You’re never home!” she said. “You spend every night with your friends! You’re probably fucking some whore!”

Whores, plural, Ric thought, but he didn’t say that. What he said was “Do you like this big new house? How about the condo in Cabo, do you like that? The Rosarito beach cottage? Where do you think all that comes from? The clothes, the jewelry, the big flat-screen your eyes are always glued to. The nanny for your daughter so your telenovelas won’t be interrupted. Where do you think all that comes from? Me?”

Karin sneered. “You don’t even have a job.”

“My job,” Ric said, “is being that man’s son.”

Another sneer. “ ‘Mini-Ric.’ ”

“That’s right,” he said. “So someone who’s not acting like a dumb bitch might think, ‘Hmm, the last thing I want to do is run my husband down to his dad and risk cutting all that off.’ Of course, that’s someone who’s not acting like a dumb bitch.”

“Get out.”

“Jesus Christ, make up your mind,” Ric said. “You want me home or you want me out, which is it? One fucking night with you and it turns into a life sentence.”

“How do you think I feel?” Karin asked.

That’s the best she can do, Ric thought. If he’d called Belinda a dumb cunt, she would have shot him in the dick and then sucked the bullet out.

“Here’s the point,” Ric said. “You want to bitch, bitch to your girlfriends over one of your lunches. Complain to the housekeeper, complain to the worthless little piece of shit dog I paid for. But you do not, ever, complain to my father.”

“Or you’ll what?” She got right in his face.

“I would never hit a woman,” Ric said. “You know that’s not me. But I will divorce you. You’ll get one of the houses and you’ll live in it alone, and good luck trying to find a new husband with a kid on your hip.”

Later that night he crawled into bed, drunk enough to soften a little. “Karin?”

“What?”

“I know I’m an asshole,” Ric said. “I’m an Hijo, I don’t know any different.”

“It’s just that you …”

“What?”

“You just play at life,” she said.

Ric laughed. “Baby, what else is there to do with it?”

As an Hijo, he’s seen friends, cousins, uncles killed. Most of them young, some younger than he is. You have to play while life gives you the time to play, because sooner or later, probably sooner, they’re going to be putting your favorite toys in a box with you.

Fast cars, fast boats, faster women. Good food, better booze, best drugs. Nice houses, nicer clothes, nicest guns. If there’s anything more to life than that, he hasn’t seen it.

“Play with me,” he said.

“I can’t,” she said. “We have a child.”

Now that she’s settled into young motherhood, raising their little girl, their marriage has evolved from open hostility to dull tolerance. And, of course, she had to accompany him to Adán’s velorio, anything else would have been “unseemly” in his father’s eyes.

But it didn’t help that Belinda was there, too.

On the job.

Karin noticed her. “That girl. Is she security?”

“She’s the head of security.”

“She’s striking,” Karin said. “Is she a tortillera, do you think?”

Ric laughed. “How do you know that word?”

“I know things. I don’t live in a cocoon.”

Yeah, sort of you do, Ric thought. “I don’t know if she’s lesbian or not. Probably.”

Now Karin sits next to Ric, looking every bit as miserable as he feels, but gazing dutifully at the coffin (Karin does duty like a nun does a rosary, Ric thinks) as befits the wife of the godson.

Which reminds Ric that he became Adán’s godson on the happy occasion of his wedding, an old Mexican tradition in which a man can “adopt” a godson on the celebration of a major event in his life, although Ric knows that Adán did this to honor his father more than to express any particular closeness to him.

Ric has heard the story of how his father hooked up with Adán Barrera at least a thousand times.

Ricardo Núñez was a young man then, just thirty-eight when Adán was brought to the gates of the prison, having been given “compassionate extradition” from the US to serve the remainder of his twenty-two-year sentence in Mexico.

It was a cold morning, Ric’s dad always said when relating the story. Adán was cuffed by the wrists and ankles, shivering as he changed from a blue down issue jacket into a brown uniform with the number 817 stitched on the front and back.

“I made a sanctimonious speech,” Núñez told Ric. (Does he make any other kind? Ric thought.) “Adán Barrera, you are now a prisoner of CEFERESO II. Do not think that your former status gives you any standing here. You are just another criminal.”

That was for the benefit of the cameras, which Adán completely understood. Inside, he graciously accepted Núñez’s apology and assurances that everything that could be done to make him comfortable would be done.

As indeed it was.

Diego Tapia had already arranged for complete security. A number of his most trusted men agreed to be arrested, convicted and sent to the facility so that they could guard “El Patrón.” And Núñez cooperated with Diego to provide Adán with a “cell” that was over six hundred square feet with a full kitchen, a well-stocked bar, an LED television, a computer, and a commercial refrigerator stocked with fresh groceries.