“I have news for you, Leo,” Aguirre said when they were alone. “In times gone by, I would have told you to stop the presses.”
“What suspense.”
“The conversations with the Colonel have taken an unexpected turn,” she began. She rose and went to a window through which the shouts of the marchers in the street were audible. She closed the window and pantomimed relief. “Enough. It’s the interminable revenge of the cretins out there.”
“Let me say one more time how uncomfortable I am with these jailhouse visits of yours to the Colonel,” Méndez said.
“Ay Leobardo, you are a man who is fundamentally unhappy unless he has something to worry about,” she retorted. “I must tell you, this thing with the Colonel has blossomed. He calls from the penitentiary every night. He talks and talks. First he asks if he is bothering me, of course. A gentleman. My friend, the torturer and assassin.”
“Your husband must be as thrilled as I am. I hope it’s worth it.”
She got serious. “That’s what I’m telling you, Leo. It’s worth it. The Colonel wants a deal. He wants, believe it or not, to talk to you.”
“To me.”
“Although he hasn’t exactly forgiven you for arresting him, he has decided that you are a ‘man of honor.’ Exact words. And he says you are the only person around here with enough clout in Mexico City to help him.”
“Incredible.”
“He’s desperate. He says Junior has cut him off, won’t take his calls, rejects his emissaries.”
“No One Writes to The Colonel.”
“Very funny. He thinks he’s not going to last long. So he’s ready to talk.”
Méndez turned down the corners of his mouth. Because he had been worried about her safety, he had discouraged Aguirre’s plan to reach out to Regino “The Colonel” Astorga, the former state police chief captured five months earlier by the Diogenes Group. The Colonel had filed a complaint with the human rights commission asserting that his life was in danger in the state prison. Aguirre had taken it seriously, going to the prison to interview him. She had made a public statement urging the government to ensure his safety. She had kept visiting him and, gradually, had gained his trust.
“Well, Araceli, this is really something.”
Aguirre was enjoying herself, practically giving off sparks of adrenaline. Ever since they had been students together, he had wished that she were not quite so fearless. She still looked more like an underfed university student than an admired public official with a bright political future. She wore round glasses. Her short hair revealed her silver earrings, one shaped like the sun and the other like the moon. Only the pronounced circles under her eyes gave her brown, fine-boned face some gravity.
“I want you to hear his story,” she said. “Some of it fits with what we already know. Some of it is new. If it’s true, this is even worse than we think.”
“We would need his testimony to seriously consider prosecuting Junior and his uncle,” Méndez said. “What does the Colonel want?”
“He thinks you can get the Americans to save his hide. He fantasizes about their witness-protection program. At minimum, he wants a transfer to a prison as far from Baja as possible.”
“That’s not easy. When we do we see him?”
“Tomorrow. Saturdays are especially charming at the penitentiary.”
“Short notice. I know you won’t like this, but I think it would be wise to bring Isabel Puente on this little safari.”
“Ay Leo, please. The gringa cubana? That woman is imperious and insufferable.”
“You are unfair to my friend Isabel.”
“You have a strange weakness for her. The last thing I want is her stomping around in that prison.”
“If the Colonel really thinks the Americans can help him, it would be a perfect incentive. And we might be able to get them interested in a deal with him.”
Aguirre tapped with a pen. She realized he was right, but she didn’t like backing down. He continued: “Even if she doesn’t say a word-”
“She better not!”
Méndez relaxed. “She doesn’t have to. Her presence will appeal to his appetites.”
“Very well. But if anything happens to her, don’t blame me. If she plays the pushy cubana in there, they might decapitate her and play soccer with her head.”
The cold returned Saturday morning, along with gray skies.
In his readings about the U.S. penal system, Méndez had come across the term “extraction.” It referred to operations in U.S. penitentiaries when a rebellious inmate barricaded himself in a cell and responded to appeals to reason with threats, violence and hurled excrement. Four guards would put on helmets and body armor, arm themselves with clubs, shields and mace, and charge into the cell in a tactical formation to subdue and “extract” the inmate as rapidly and safely as possible.
Méndez wondered what term the yanqui correctional experts might come up with to describe a visit by the Mexican authorities to an inmate chieftain in the penitentiary of Baja California.
Méndez, Athos, Araceli Aguirre and Isabel Puente arrived at the prison at 11 a.m. They had brought Porthos and two of the largest, meanest-looking officers in the Diogenes Group. Méndez, Aguirre and Puente had a quick strategy session in the car. It mainly consisted of Aguirre giving Puente a stern lecture. Puente sat next to Méndez in back, chewing gum, impassive behind sunglasses. She was dressed down in jeans and a ponytail.
“Forget about American prisons,” Aguirre said, twisted around in the front seat. “You never saw anything like this. The inmates have guns. Children live inside. The capos build houses, hire servants, bodyguards, whores-”
“I know about the prison,” Puente said tonelessly.
Aguirre ignored her. “Don’t trust the guards. The inmates will harass you for money. And they will tell you what they would like to do to you. Put up with it. No hard looks. No stupid confrontations. And for the love of God, you’re in a foreign country. So no guns.”
Aguirre got out, lecture over, slamming the door. Puente reached down calmly to adjust the top of her boot; Méndez looked away when he saw the concealed holster. He did not intend to be the one who tried to disarm Isabel Puente.
“Warm welcome,” Puente said.
“You have to understand,” Méndez said soothingly. “Araceli has worked hard to gain trust in there. It goes against her principles to bring an American agent inside.”
As they crossed the gravel parking lot, Méndez saw that Athos had an AK-47 assault rifle slung across his shoulder. He gave the weapon a pained look. Athos raised his eyebrows over his sunglasses in response.
“That zoo in there is a sniper’s paradise, Licenciado,” Athos said. “If it were up to me, I would have brought the whole unit. You are putting yourself in the mouth of the wolf in there.”
It was visiting day. The lines of families were especially long. Among the features that made the prison unique in Mexico and the world were the hundreds of wives and children who lived inside with the inmates. The families went to work and school and returned each day like commuters, blending with the crush of visitors. The prison had been built as a city jail for five hundred inmates, but it housed several thousand: federal and state offenders, incorrigible convicts and wrongly accused suspects, hit men and purse snatchers, drug lords and drug mules, men and women, the vicious and the hapless, the privileged and the indigent.
A guard with a sallow face, a scarf around his neck and an Uzi strapped over his shoulder let them in. He looked eighteen at most. Another guard stamped their hands with red ink insignias, like a nightclub bouncer. The guard with the Uzi walked them through a yellow-walled office area and told them to wait. The madhouse racket of the prison yard reverberated off tiled floors and cement walls: shouts, children laughing, Vicente Fernández crooning, construction hammers pounding, the bark of a good-sized dog, and three small explosions that Méndez assumed were firecrackers because nobody paid any attention.