Gómez looked at Vega. “Let’s hope not.”
She gulped. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it would be like this …”
Gómez cocked an eyebrow. “Maybe you should pick up a newspaper.”
Dante Corrales was in the mood to kill someone. Three of his sicarios had been gunned down in Delicias, and Inspector Gómez had called to say that he was worried. The Federal Police were watching him more closely now and had assigned to him a female inspector who was probably working with the president’s office. She couldn’t be trusted, and he had to be much more careful now that he was being watched.
Moreover, an American had checked into the hotel, a Mr. Scott Howard, and Ignacio had learned that the guy was scouting properties for his businesses. Corrales didn’t quite believe that and was having the man followed, but thus far his story had checked out.
While Raúl and Pablo were making a large cash delivery to a contact they simply referred to as “the banker,” Corrales was headed over to the Monarch for lunch and cervezas. En route, his phone rang: Ballesteros calling from Bogotá. What the hell did that fat bastard want now?
“Dante, you know the FARC guys hit me again? I’m going to need some more help.”
“Okay, okay. You can talk to them when they get there.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
“Have you heard about Puerto Rico?”
“What now?”
“Haven’t you been watching the news?”
“I’ve been busy.”
“The FBI pulled off another inside operation. Over one hundred police arrested. Do you know what that’s going to do to me? We counted on them. That’s a whole shipping route I’ve lost in a single day. Do you know what this means?”
“Shut the fuck up and stop crying, you fat old fuck! The boss will be there soon. Stop fucking crying!”
With that, Corrales hung up, cursed, and pulled into the club’s parking lot.
There were only two strippers onstage, day workers who’d had children and weren’t shy about revealing their cesarean scars. Two other patrons sat at the main bar, old men wearing wide-brimmed hats, thick leather belts, and cowboy boots.
Corrales went to a back table, where he met his friend Johnny Sanchez, a tall, long-haired Hispanic-American screenwriter and reporter who wore tiny glasses and a UC Berkeley college ring. Johnny was the son of Corrales’s godmother, and he’d gone away to the United States and received his education, only to return to contact Corrales because he wanted to write some articles about the drug cartels in Mexico. He’d never accused Corrales of working for the cartels. He’d said only that he guessed Corrales knew a lot about them. And they’d left it at that.
For the past few months, Corrales had been talking to the man, helping him develop a screenplay that would chronicle Corrales’s life. Their lunch meetings were often the best part of Corrales’s day, when he wasn’t having sex with Maria, of course.
With Corrales’s permission, Johnny had just had an article published in the Los Angeles Times about cartel violence along the border. The article focused mainly on how police corruption was so widespread that authorities could no longer tell the good guys from the bad guys. That was exactly how the Juárez Cartel wanted it.
“The article was very well received,” Johnny said, then took a long pull on his beer.
“You are welcome.”
“It’s a pretty exciting time for me,” he said.
They spoke in Spanish, of course, but once in a while Johnny would break unconsciously into English — like he just did — and he would lose Corrales. Sometimes that would annoy Corrales to the point that he’d bang his fist on the table, and Johnny would blink and apologize.
“What did you say?” Corrales asked.
“Oh, sorry. I received over a hundred e-mails about the article, and the editor would like to turn it into a series.”
Corrales shook his head. “I think you should focus on our movie script.”
“I will. Don’t worry.”
“I’m talking to you because you are my godmother’s son, and because I want you to tell the story of my life, which would make a very good movie. I don’t want you to write any more articles about the cartels. People would become very upset. And I would be afraid for you. Okay?”
Johnny tried to repress his frown. “Okay.”
Corrales smiled. “Good.”
“Is something wrong?”
Corrales traced a finger along the sweat covering his beer bottle, then looked up and said, “I lost some good men today.”
“I didn’t know about it. There was nothing on the news.”
“I hate the news.”
He glanced at the table. The Juárez Cartel had their hands firmly planted on the shoulders of the local media outlets, which sometimes defied them, but the more recent murders of two well-known field reporters who’d been beheaded outside their TV news stations had resulted in some significant “delays” and omissions of stories altogether. Many journalists remained defiant while others feared reporting on anything related to the cartels and cartel violence.
“I want to talk about the day those sicarios threatened you,” Johnny said, trying to lighten the mood. “That would be a very good scene in the movie. And then we would show you falling to your knees outside the hotel, with the fire raging in the background, and you …there …weeping, knowing your parents are dead inside, their bodies burning because you stood up to the cartel and refused to give in. Can you see that scene? Oh my God! What a scene! The audience will be crying with you! There you are, a poor young boy with no future who just wants to stay out of a world of crime, and they punish you for it! They punish you! And you’re left with nothing. Absolutely nothing. And you need to rebuild from the ashes. You need to rise up again, and we’re rooting for you all the way! And then there really is no choice. You’re trapped in a city with nothing to offer, with only one true business, and so you do what you must because you need to survive.”
Johnny always whipped himself up into a fit of passion as he discussed the film, and Corrales couldn’t help but become infected by the writer’s enthusiasm. He was about to comment on Johnny’s suggestion that he was in fact in a cartel — but Johnny turned his head, focusing on something out near the main bar.
“Get down,” he screamed, as he dove across the table and knocked Corrales onto the floor, just as a gun boomed from that direction, followed by at least a half-dozen more shots that pinged into the table and thumped into the wall behind them. The strippers began hollering, and the bartenders were shouting about no shooting, no shooting.
Then, as Corrales rolled onto the floor, it was Johnny who shocked the hell out of him and returned fire with a Beretta clutched in his right hand.
“Is this what you want?” Johnny screamed in Spanish. “Is this what you want from me?”
And the gunman near the bar spun around and sprinted off as Johnny emptied his clip into the man’s wake.
They sat there, just breathing, looking at each other.
Then Johnny said, “Motherfucker …”
“Where did you get that gun?” Corrales asked.
It took a moment before Johnny answered. “From my cousin in Nogales.”
“Where did you learn to shoot?”
Johnny laughed. “I only shot it once before.”
“Well, it was enough. You saved me.”
“I just saw them first.”
“And if you hadn’t, I’d be dead.”
“We’d both be dead.”
“Yeah,” Corrales said.
“Why do they want to kill you?”
“Because I’m not in the cartel.”
Johnny sighed. “Corrales, we’re like blood. And I don’t believe you.”