“I can’t imagine that anyone whose opinion I respect pays attention to that buffoon. One day he’ll call me a lesbian narco-satanist.”
“It’s not so much what he says, it’s the fact he says it. They are trying to isolate us. I don’t have to tell you these are dangerous times. The times of excellent cadavers.”
“Of what?”
The lines in his face creased. He kept his voice low.
“It’s an expression from the Sicilian mafia wars. It refers to murders of people in power. I’m reading a book about Falcone, the Sicilian judge. There are parallels to Mexico, Colombia. La vita blindata, that’s what the anti-mafia judges called it. Bodyguards, bunkered courthouses, armored cars: the armored life. Do you know when Judge Falcone said he realized that they were going to kill him?”
Aguirre half smiled. “The gloomier the better, no?”
He continued: “When they went after him publicly. Bureaucrats, politicians allied with the mafia. They tore him down with news stories, anonymous letters. Preparing the terrain. That worried him more than the threats. He said it was a fatal combination: He was dangerous but vulnerable, because he had become isolated. That’s what they want to do to us, Araceli. This visit to the Colonel will make it worse.”
“Leo,” she said sweetly. She put her hand on his. “Don’t you think it’s an exercise of lunatics, trying to calculate the danger? If we do this, it’s x amount dangerous. If we don’t do that, y amount of danger. We do what we do and that’s that. Nothing has stopped us so far.”
“No one wants to stop,” Méndez said. He leaned back, watching a slow-motion replay on the television above the bar: A forward for the Mexican national soccer team attempted an elegant back-to-the-goal scissors kick, his mane of hair swirling. The bodyguards at the bar hooted sorrowfully. A narrow miss.
“At least it’s good to hear you talk for once, unburden yourself,” Aguirre said. “I am probably more worried about you than you are about me. I talked to Estela last night.”
At the mention of his wife’s name, Méndez’s tone grew cold. “Estela.”
“That’s right.” Her smile was defiant. “She called me. She’s worried too.”
“She called you.”
“My God, Leo, you practically threw her and Juancito out of Tijuana. You lined up the job for her at Berkeley, totally clandestine. And you forced her to take it.”
He kept watching the soccer footage. He said, “It was for their own good. It was absolutely impossible for them here. Going everywhere with bodyguards, to school, the supermarket. And it’s an excellent opportunity for her.”
“She doesn’t see it like that.”
“All I can tell you is, I am finally able to concentrate for the first time since I took this job. I know they are living a safe, normal, civilized life. Far from here.”
Aguirre lit another cigarette.
“I suppose everyone deals with the danger in different ways,” she said. “But you have banished your family. That doesn’t make their life normal or civilized. You have systematically cut yourself off from everyone and everything. Except the Diogenes Group. You talk about the mafias trying to isolate us. You don’t need any help.”
“I haven’t cut myself off from you.”
“Because I am essential to your work.”
“I see.” Méndez’s mouth tightened. “And how do you deal with it, if I may ask?”
“I live my life, for God’s sake.” She brandished the cigarette. “Why let them control your existence? I have lunch with my husband whenever I can. I spend time with my kids. I certainly don’t-”
“Excuse me, but now that you mention it, I meant to tell you I don’t think it’s wise to bring Elena and Amalia to the office, not with those protester thugs around-”
“Leobardo, you are really impossible!”
“Alright, alright, enough,” he said. “This unburdening that you like so much is the modern disease. What’s your point?”
“Promise me you’ll call your wife and have a real conversation with her. “Alright?”
“Done.”
They talked about their plan for the coming week, the logistics of coaxing the Colonel into testifying before a prosecutor as he had promised. Méndez raised a hand as the television filled with images of a bloodied boxer against the ropes, warding off punches.
“Wait,” he said. “That’s the fight from Wednesday. Junior made an appearance.”
Méndez asked the owner to turn up the sound. There were fans booing, scuffles with helmeted police in a boxing ring, hurled coins tracing shiny arcs through smoke and floodlights. The top-billed match of the Wednesday-night fights at Multiglobo Arena had ended in favor of the champion, infuriating partisans of the challenger. He appeared to have outfought the champion, a long-armed Mexican-American managed by Junior Ruiz Caballero’s company. The champion’s fans had counterattacked with bottles and folding chairs.
The television showed a crowded hallway, the camera advancing among police, rich kids, sultry women in fight-night finery. Junior Ruiz Caballero appeared, turning back from a doorway to attend to a couple of microphones poked at him between hulking backs. With Junior were two American Las Vegas types in double-breasted suits and a thick-necked African-American prizefighter.
Junior was unshaven and deeply tanned, as usual. He wore a two-toned leather jacket that looked like something out of a music video. The gossip magazines portrayed Junior as a swashbuckling ladies’ man; he was good-looking in a baby-faced, degenerate sort of way. He appeared to be going through one of his bloated phases.
Junior Ruiz Caballero grinned hugely over his shoulder at the female reporter.
“We always give the people what they want, that’s what show business is all about,” he said, using the English phrase. “The people want a rematch, we’ll give them a rematch. The people want drama. We’ll give them drama.”
5
BEFORE HIS PURSUIT OF Pulpo a month earlier, Pescatore had only crossed twice into Tijuana.
The first time was during a trip to San Diego that was part of the nineteen-week training course at the U.S. Border Patrol academy. Near the end of the course, when the trainees had been assigned to stations, The Patrol flew them to their sectors to see the reality waiting beyond the gauntlet of Spanish classes, arcane immigration laws and role-playing exercises with Latino actors impersonating suspects. Pescatore and three other rookies walked into Tijuana, had a drink in the first tourist bar they found and went right back, heads down, sweating profusely, pretending they were not worried about getting lynched if someone realized they were U.S. feds.
The second crossing was with Garrison, Dillard and Macías before Christmas. They got hammered in a noisy basement club featuring raunchy dancers and bartenders blowing whistles. A couple of hard-ass-looking Mexicans showed up and slammed drinks with the agents. Garrison explained that they were informants from his days on The Patrol’s antismuggling investigative unit: They were called madrinas (godmothers) or aspirinas (aspiring cops). The Mexican police used them as all-purpose ass-kickers, snitches and flunkies.
The main thing Pescatore remembered from that night was an Indian woman, one of the street vendors known as Marias, who had knocked on the window of Garrison’s Jeep Cherokee on the way back to San Diego. The Saturday-night line of cars waiting to be inspected at the San Ysidro Port of Entry wound for a mile over ramps and under bridges. Pescatore dozed in the backseat, his head against the glass. He awoke to see a dark, rutted face framed by a shawl. The old woman extended a fistful of black strings at him. Lowering the window, he saw they were small braided crucifixes made entirely of thread, with a tiny red bead embedded in the center of the cross. A single thread served as the short necklace.