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.”