The Border

On some nights, the prison cafeteria would be converted into a theater for Adán to host “movie nights” for his friends, and Ric’s dad always made it a point to relate that the drug lord preferred G movies without sex or violence.

On other nights, prison guards would go into Guadalajara and return with a van full of ladies of the evening for the Barrera supports and employees. But Adán didn’t partake, and it wasn’t long before he started his affair with a beautiful convict, former Miss Sinaloa Magda Beltrán, who became his famous mistress.

“But that was Adán,” Núñez told Ric. “He always had a certain class, a certain dignity, and appreciation for quality, in people as well as things.”

Adán took care of people who took care of him.

So it was just like him when weeks before Christmas he came into the office and quietly suggested that Núñez resign. That a numbered bank account had been opened for him in the Caymans and he’d find the paperwork in his new house in Culiacán.

Núñez resigned his position and went back to Sinaloa.

On Christmas night, a helicopter whisked Adán Barrera and Magda Beltrán off the roof and rumors circulated that the “escape” cost more than four million dollars in payments to people in Mexico City.

Part of that was in a numbered account in Grand Cayman for Ricardo Núñez.

Federal investigators came to question Núñez but he knew nothing about the escape. They expressed moral outrage over Adán’s favored treatment in prison and threatened to prosecute Núñez, but nothing came of it. And while Núñez became unemployable as a prosecutor, it no longer mattered—Adán was as good as his word and reached out to him.

Put him into the cocaine business.

Núñez became respected.

Trusted.

And discreet. He wasn’t showy, stayed out of the spotlight and off social media. Flew deliberately under the radar so even SEIDO and DEA—in fact, few people in the cartel—knew just how important he’d become.

El Abogado.

Núñez, in fact, became Adán’s right-hand man.

Ric himself actually spent little time at all with Barrera, so it’s weird sitting there pretending to mourn.

Adán’s coffin is set on an altar built at the end of the great room for the occasion. Piles of fresh flowers are heaped on the altar, along with religious icons and crosses. Unhusked ears of corn, squash, and papel picado hang from a bower of branches constructed above the coffin. Open containers of raw coffee have been set out, another velorio tradition, which Ric suspects had more to do with killing the smell of decomposition.

As a godson, Ric sits in the front row along with Eva, of course, the Esparzas, and Elena and her sons. Adán’s mother, ancient as the land, sits in a rocking chair, clad in black, a black shawl over her head, her shriveled face showing the patient sorrow of the Mexican campesina. God, the things she’s seen, Ric thinks, the losses she’s suffered—both sons, a grandson killed, a granddaughter who died young, so many others.

He knows the expression about cutting the tension with a knife, but you couldn’t cut the tension in this room with a blowtorch. They’re supposed to be sitting there exchanging fond stories about the deceased, except no one can think of any.

Ric has a few ideas—

Hey, how about the time Tío Adán had a whole village slaughtered to make sure he killed the snitch?

Or—

What about that time Tío Adán had his rival’s wife’s head sent to him in a package of dry ice?

Or—

Hey, hey, remember when Tío Adán threw those two little kids off a bridge? What a stitch. What a great, funny guy, huh?

Barrera made billions of dollars, created and ruled a freaking empire, and what does he have to show for it?

A dead child, an ex-wife who doesn’t come to his wake, a young trophy widow, twin sons who will grow up without their father, a baseball, some smelly old boxing gloves and a suit he never wore. And no one, not one of the hundreds of people here, can think of one nice story to tell about him.

And that’s the guy who won.

El Señor. El Patrón. The Godfather.

Ric sees Iván looking at him, touching his nose with his index finger. Iván gets up from his chair.

“I have to piss,” Ric says.

Ric shuts the bathroom door behind him.

Iván is laying out lines on the marble-top vanity. “Fuck, could this get any more tedious?”

“It’s pretty awful.”

Iván rolls up a hundred-dollar bill (of course, Ric thinks), snorts a line of coke, then hands Ric the bill. “None of this shit for me, cuate. When I go, big fucking party, then take me out on a cigarette boat and, bam, Viking funeral.”

Ric leans over and breathes the coke into his nose. “Goddamn, that’s better. What if I go first?”

“I’ll dump your body in an alley.”

“Thanks.”

There’s a soft knock at the door.

“¡Momento!” Iván yells.

“It’s me.”

“Belinda,” Ric says.

He opens the door, she slides in quickly and shuts it behind her. “I knew what you assholes were doing in here. Share.”

Iván takes the vial out of his pocket and hands it to her. “Knock yourself out.”

Belinda pours out a line and snorts it.

Iván leans against the wall. “Guess who I saw the other day? Damien Tapia.”

“No shit,” Ric says. “Where?”

“Starbucks.”

“Christ, what did you say?”

“I said ‘hello,’ what do you think?”

Ric doesn’t know what he thought. Damien had been an Hijo, they were kids together, played together all the time, partied, all that shit. He was as close to Damien as he was to Iván, until Adán and Diego Tapia got into a beef, which turned into a war, and Damien’s father was killed.

They were all just teenagers then, kids.

Adán, of course, won the war, and the Tapia family was thrown out of the fold. Since then they had been forbidden to have any contact with Damien Tapia. Not that he wanted anything to do with them anyway. He was still around town, but running into him was, well, awkward.

“When I take over,” Iván says, “I’m going to bring Damien back in.”

“Yeah?”

“Why not?” Iván says. “The beef was between Adán and Damien’s old man. Adán’s dead, as you might have noticed. I’ll make it right with Damien, it will be like before.”

“Sounds good,” Ric says.

He’s missed Damien.

“That generation,” Iván says, jutting his chin at the door, “we don’t have to inherit their wars. We’re going to move ahead. The Esparzas, you, Rubén and Damien. Like before. Los Hijos, like brothers, right?”

“Like brothers,” Ric says.

They touch knuckles.

“If you guys are done being gay,” Belinda says, “we better get back out there before they figure out what we’re doing. Snorting coke at El Patrón’s velorio? Tsk, tsk, tsk.”

“Coke built this place,” Iván says.

“Selling it, not snorting it,” Belinda says. She looks at Ric. “Wipe your nose, boyfriend. Hey, your wife is cute.”

“You’ve seen her before.”

“Yeah, but she looks cuter today,” Belinda says. “You want to do a threesome, I’ll teach her some things. Come on, let’s go.”

She opens the door and steps out.

Iván grabs Ric by the elbow. “Hey, you know I have to take care of my brothers. But let things settle down for a few days and we’ll talk, okay? About where you fit in?”

“Okay.”

“Don’t worry, ’mano,” Iván says. “I’ll be fair with your father, and I’ll take care of you.”

Ric follows him out the door.

Elena sits between her sons.

She saw a documentary on television, a nature show, and learned that when a new male lion takes over a pride, the first thing he does is kill the previous ruler’s cubs. Her own cubs still carry the Barrera name and people will assume that they have ambitions even if they don’t. Rudolfo has a small retinue of bodyguards and a few hangers-on, Luis even fewer. Whether I want to or not, she thinks, I’ll have to take on a certain level of power to protect them.

But the top spot?

There’s never been a female head of a cartel, and she doesn’t want to be the first.

But she’ll have to do something.

Without a power base, the other lions will track down her cubs and kill them.

Looking at her brother’s coffin, she wishes she felt more. Adán was always very good to her, good to her children. She wants to cry, but the tears won’t come and she tells herself that’s because her heart is exhausted, played out from all the loss over the years.

Her mother, perched in her chair like a crow, is virtually catatonic. She’s buried two sons, a grandson and a granddaughter. Elena wishes that she could get her to move to town but she insists on staying in the house that Adán built for her in La Tuna, all by herself if you don’t count the servants and the bodyguards.

But she won’t leave, she’ll die in that house.

If my mother is a crow, Elena thinks, the rest are vultures. Circling, waiting to swoop down to pick my brother’s bones.

Iván Esparza and his two equally cretinous brothers, Adán’s horrible lawyer Núñez, and a flock of smaller players—plaza bosses, cell leaders, gunmen—looking to become bigger players.

She feels tired, all the more so when she sees Núñez walking toward her.

“Elena,” Núñez says, “I wonder if we could have a word. In private.”

She follows him outside to the grand sloping lawn she walked so many times with Adán.

Núñez hands her a piece of paper and says, “This is awkward.”

He waits while she reads.

“This is not a position I relish,” Núñez says, “certainly not one that I wanted. In fact, I prayed that this day would never come about. But I feel—strongly—that your brother’s wishes should be respected.”

It’s Adán’s writing, no question, Elena thinks. And it quite clearly declares that Ricardo Núñez should take over in the event of Adán’s untimely death until his own sons reach the age of responsibility. Christ, the twins are barely two years old. Núñez will have a long regency. Plenty of time to turn the organization over to his own offspring.

“I realize that this might be a surprise,” Núñez says, “and a disappointment. I only hope that there’s no resentment.”

“Why should there be?”

“I could understand that you might think this should have gone to family.”

“Neither of my sons is interested, and Eva—”

“Is a beauty pageant queen,” Núñez says.

“So was Magda Beltrán,” Elena says, although she doesn’t know why she feels a need to argue with him. But it’s true. Adán should have married his magnificent mistress. The beautiful Magda met Adán in prison, became his lover, and then parlayed that and her considerable business acumen into creating her own multimillion-dollar organization.

“And look what happened to her,” Núñez says.

True enough, Elena thinks. The Zetas suffocated her with a plastic bag and then slashed a Z into her chest. And she was carrying Adán’s unborn child. Magda had confided in Elena and now she wonders if Adán ever knew. She hopes not—it would have broken his heart.

“Obviously Eva is not the person to take over,” Elena says.

“Please understand,” Núñez says, “that I believe I hold this position in trust for Adán’s sons. But if you think that you would be the better choice, I am willing to ignore Adán’s wishes and step down.”

“No,” she says.

Letting Núñez take the throne means shoving her own sons aside, but Elena knows that they’re secretly happy to be pushed. And, frankly, if Núñez wants to make himself a target, all the better.

But Iván … Iván is not going to like it.

“You have my support,” Elena says. She sees Núñez nod with a lawyer’s graciousness at having won a settlement. Then she drops the other shoe. “I just have one small request.”

Núñez smiles. “Please.”

“I want Baja back. For Rudolfo.”

“Baja is Iván Esparza’s.”

“And before it was his, it was mine.”

“In all fairness, Elena, you gave it up,” Núñez says. “You wanted to retire.”

It was my uncle, M-1, who sent my brothers to take the Baja plaza from Güero Méndez and Rafael Caro, Elena thinks. That was in 1990, and Adán and Raúl did it. They seduced the rich Tijuana kids and turned them into a trafficking network that co-opted their parents’ power structure on our behalf. They recruited gangs from San Diego to be gunmen, and they beat Méndez, Caro and everyone else to seize that plaza and use it as a base to take the entire country.

We made your Sinaloa cartel what it is, she thinks, so if I want Baja back, you’re going to give it to me. I won’t leave my sons without a power base with which to defend themselves.

“Baja was given to Nacho Esparza,” Ricardo is saying. “And with his death, it passed to Iván.”

“Iván is a clown,” Elena says. They all are, she thinks, all the Hijos, including your son, Ricardo.

“With a legitimate claim and an army to back it up,” Núñez says.

“And you now have Adán’s army,” Elena says, allowing to go unspoken the obvious—if I back you up.

“Iván is already going to be very disappointed that he’s not getting the big chair,” Núñez says. “Elena, I have to leave him with something.”

“And Rudolfo—Adán’s nephew—gets nothing?” Elena asks. “The Esparza brothers have plenty—more money than they can waste in their collective lifetimes. I’m asking for one plaza. And you can keep your domestic sales there.”

Núñez looks surprised.

“Oh, please,” Elena says. “I know young Ric is dealing your drugs all over Baja Sur. It’s fine—I just want the north and the border.”

“Oh, that’s all.” Elena wants one of the most lucrative plazas in the narcotics trade. Baja has a growing narcomenudeo, domestic street sales, but that’s dwarfed by the trasiego, the products that run from Tijuana and Tecate into San Diego and Los Angeles. From there the drugs are distributed all over the United States.

“Is it so much?” Elena asks. “For Adán’s sister to put her blessings on her brother’s last wishes? You need that, Ricardo. Without it …”

“You’re asking me to give you something that’s not mine to give,” Núñez says. “Adán gave the plaza to Esparza. And with all respect, Elena—my domestic business in Cabo is none of yours.”

“Spoken like a lawyer,” Elena says. “Not a patrón. If you’re going to be El Patrón, be El Patrón. Make decisions, give orders. If you want my support, the price is Baja for my son.”

The king is dead, Elena thinks.

Long live the king.

Ric sits out by the pool next to Iván.

“This is better,” Ric says. “I couldn’t stand another fucking minute in there.”

“Where’s Karin?”

“On the phone with the nanny,” Ric says, “probably discussing the color of poop. It’ll be a while.”

“You think she’s figured out you and Belinda?” Iván asks.

“Who gives a fuck?”

“Uh-oh.”

“What?”

“Look,” Iván says.

Ric turns to see Tito Ascensión walking toward them. About as tall as a refrigerator but thicker.

The Mastiff.

“My father’s old attack dog,” Iván says.

“Show some respect,” Ric says. “He’s Rubén’s dad. Anyway, you know how many guys he’s killed?”

A lot, is the answer.

Triple digits, at least.

Tito Ascensión used to be the head of Nacho Esparza’s armed wing. He fought the Zetas, then the Tapias, then the Zetas again. Tito once killed thirty-eight Zetas in a single whack and hanged their bodies from a highway overpass. Turned out it was a whoops—they weren’t Zetas after all, just your average citizens. Tito donned a balaclava, held a press conference and apologized for the mistake, with the caveat that his group was still at war with the Zetas so it would be prudent not to be mistaken for one.

Anyway, Tito played a big role in winning the wars for Sinaloa, and as a reward Nacho let him start his own organization in Jalisco, independent but still a satellite of Sinaloa.

Tito loved Nacho, and when he heard the Zetas had killed him down in Guatemala he grabbed five of them, tortured them to death over the course of weeks, then cut off their dicks and stuffed them in their mouths.

No, you don’t disrespect El Mastín.

Now the man’s shadow literally falls over both of them.

“Iván,” Tito says, “may I have a word?”

“I’ll catch you later,” Ric says, trying not to laugh. All he can think of is Luca Brazi from the wedding scene in The Godfather, which he’s had to watch with Iván about fifty-seven thousand times. Iván is obsessed with the movie to only a slighter lesser degree than he is with Scarface.

“No, stay,” Iván says, and when Tito looks dubious, adds, “Ric is going to be my number two. Anything you can say to me, you can say in front of him.”

He talks a little slow, like Tito is stupid.

Tito says, “I want to move my organization into heroin.”

“Do you think that’s wise?” Iván asks.

“It’s profitable,” Tito says.

He’s got that right, Ric thinks. Sinaloa is making millions off smack while Jalisco is still slinging cocaine and meth.

“The two don’t always go together,” Iván says, trying to sound like his father. “For one thing, it would put you into competition with us.”

“The market’s big enough for both of us,” Tito says.

Iván frowns. “Tito. Why fix what isn’t broken? Jalisco makes plenty of money on meth, doesn’t it? And we don’t even charge you a piso to use our plazas.”

“That was the arrangement I had with your father,” Tito says.

“You paid your dues,” Iván says, “no question. You’ve been a good soldier, and you got your own organization as a reward for that. But I think it’s better to just leave things as they are, don’t you?”

Christ, Ric thinks, it’s almost as if he’s patting the man’s head.

Good dog, good dog.

Sit.

Stay.

But Tito says, “If that’s what you think is best.”

“It is,” Iván says.

Tito nods to Ric and walks away.

“Rubén got his brains from his mother,” Iván says. “His looks, too, thank God.”

“Rubén’s a good guy.”

“He’s a great guy,” Iván says.

Doesn’t Ric know it. Rubén is Tito’s solid number two, runs his security force in Jalisco and is heavily involved in the transport of their product. How many times has Ric heard his own father say, If only you were more like Rubén Ascensión. Serious. Mature.

He’s made it pretty clear, Ric thinks. Given a choice, he’d rather have Rubén for his son than me.

Tough luck for both of us, I guess.

“What?” Iván asks.

“What what?”

“You got a look on your face like someone just ass-fucked your puppy.”

“I don’t have a puppy,” Ric says.

“Maybe that’s it,” Iván says. “You want me to get you one? What kind of dog do you want, Ric? I’ll send someone out right now to get it for you. I want you to be happy, ’mano.”

That’s Iván, Ric thinks.

Ever since they were kids. You told him you were hungry, he went out and got food. Your bike got stolen, a new one appeared. You said you were horny, a girl showed up at the door.

“Love you, man.”

“Love you, too,” Iván says. Then he adds, “It’s our turn now, ’mano. Our time. You’ll see—it’s going to be good.”

“Yeah.”

Ric sees his father approaching.

But it’s not Ric he wants to see.

Núñez says, “Iván, we should talk.”

“We should,” Iván says.

Ric sees the look on his face, the smile, knows that this is the moment he’s been waiting for.

His coronation.

Núñez glances down at his son and says, “In private.”

“Sure.” Iván winks at Ric. “I’ll be back, bro.”

Ric nods.

Leans back in the chair and watches his best friend and his father walk away from him.

Then he does have a memory of Adán.

Standing on the side of a dirt road in rural Durango.

“Look around you,” Adán said. “What do you see?”

“Fields,” Ric said.

“Empty fields,” Adán said.

Ric couldn’t argue with that. On both sides of the road, as far as he could see, marijuana fields lay fallow.

“The US has, de facto, legalized marijuana,” Adán said. “If my American sources are right, two or more states will soon make it official. We simply can’t compete with the local American quality and transportation costs. Last year we were getting a hundred dollars for a kilo of marijuana. Now it’s twenty-five. It’s hardly worth our growing the stuff anymore. We’re losing tens of millions of dollars a year, and if California, for instance, legalizes, the loss will be in the hundreds of millions. But it’s hot out here. Let’s go get a beer.”

They drove another ten miles to a little town.

A lead car went in first, made sure it was all clear, and then went into a tavern and emptied it out. The nervous owner and a girl who looked to be his daughter brought in a pitcher of cold beer and glasses.

Adán said, “Our marijuana market, once a major profit center, is collapsing; meth sales are falling; cocaine sales have flattened. For the first time in over a decade, we’re looking at a fiscal year of negative growth.”

It’s not like they were losing money, Ric thought. Everyone there was making millions. But they made less millions than they had the year before, and it was human nature that, even if you’re rich, being less rich feels like being poor.

“The present situation is unsustainable,” Adán said. “The last time this occurred we were saved by the innovation of crystal meth. It became, and remains, a major profit center, but there is small potential for growth that would compensate for our marijuana losses. Similarly, the cocaine market seems to have reached its saturation point.”

“What we need,” Ric’s father said, “is a new product.”

“No,” Adán said. “What we need is an old product.”

Adán paused for dramatic effect and then said, “Heroin.”

Ric was shocked. Sure, they still sold heroin, but it was a side product compared to weed, meth and coke. All their business had started with heroin, with opium, back in the days of the old gomeros who grew the poppy and made their fortunes selling it to the Americans to make the morphine they needed during World War II. After the war, it was the American Mafia that provided the market and bought up as much opium as they could grow for heroin.

But in the 1970s, the American DEA joined forces with the Mexican military to burn and poison the poppy fields in Sinaloa and Durango. They sprayed pesticides from airplanes, burned villages, forced the campesinos from their homes and scattered the gomeros to the winds.

It was Adán’s uncle, the great Miguel Ángel Barrera—M-1—who gathered the gomeros at a meeting similar to this one and told them that they didn’t want to be farmers—farms could be poisoned and burned—they wanted to be traffickers. He introduced them to the Colombian cocaine market and they all became wealthy as middlemen, moving Cali and Medellín coke into the United States. It was also M-1 who introduced crack cocaine to the market, creating the greatest financial windfall the gomeros—now known as narcos—had ever known.

Millionaires became billionaires.

The loose confederation of narcos became the Federación.

And now Adán wants them to make opium again? Ric thought. He thinks heroin is the answer to their problem?