‘Do you think he’d do that?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe? I mean, we know how smart he is. Maybe he’d see it as an opportunity to try and control the message. Get some good PR, get out ahead of the curve.’
‘Every narco has a Robin Hood complex.’
‘Right, so you appeal to that. Maybe he’d even like it.’
‘But that’s exactly what I’m afraid of. I can’t be beholden to him.’
‘No, I know.’
‘But he might not know. He might think this means I’m his new PR guy. I’m on his payroll after this.’
‘Ay.’ Lydia grimaced.
‘It’s too risky,’ Sebastián said, opening his menu. ‘What are you going to eat?’
Lydia read the article on Monday evening, the night before it went to press. She and Sebastián had to calculate the level of risk, to determine their safest course of action for the coming days. The paper had offered to put them up in a hotel again, to get them out of sight. The piece would not be published under his name, but it would be easy enough to figure out who’d written it. Any one of his sources could reveal him to Javier. They already may have.
Sebastián paced behind her while she read at the kitchen table from his laptop: la lechuza revealed: portrait of a drug lord. The story was accompanied by several photographs. Sebastián and his editor had selected a flattering picture of Javier, sitting elegantly with his legs crossed at the knee, one arm draped across the back of a velvet couch. He wore dark jeans and a tweed blazer, and looked every inch the bookish professor, his eyes warm behind the thick glasses, his face smiling but not smug. Lydia thought again of the first morning he’d come into the shop, how deeply his friendship, his vulnerability, had affected her in the months before she understood who he was. She still felt reluctant to learn more unpleasant things about him. She still felt a memory of fondness for him, which unnerved her. She pressed her eyes closed and took a deep breath before she began.
She was amazed by Sebastián’s familiarity with his subject – he clearly knew a very different Javier than she did, and yet the account was both objective and compassionate. In her husband’s words, she recognized her friend’s intensity, but she also discovered for the first time the gruesome details of Javier’s capacity for cruelty. The beheadings were only the beginning. Los Jardineros were also known to dismember their victims and rearrange their body parts into horror show tableaux. According to Sebastián’s report, during Los Jardineros’ war with the previous cartel, Javier was rumored to have shot the two-year-old son of a rival while the boy’s father watched. He’d painted the man’s face with the blood of his murdered child. Those details had been mythologized, of course; there was no proof of that brutality, but when she read that, Lydia closed her eyes for nearly three minutes before she could continue. The article also highlighted the grisly statistics of Javier’s ascension: during the transition of power, Acapulco’s murder rate was the highest in Mexico and one of the highest in the world. The city hemorrhaged tourism, investment, young people, and that kind of bleeding was difficult to stanch even after the violence tapered off. It was also true that, though the bloodshed had become less visible to the average citizen in recent months, there were still a dozen or more murders in the city each week. In addition to those numbers, countless more had silently disappeared. The very essence of Acapulco had changed; its people were permanently altered. Entire neighborhoods were abandoned as people fled the rubble of their lives and headed north. For those who left, el norte was the only destination. If a tourist mecca like Acapulco could fall, then nowhere in Mexico was safe.
The profile drew a bright line between Javier’s ascent and the truth of the city’s ruin. It was a brutal new cosmopolis, and its ugliness was underscored by the memory of Acapulco’s glorious past. Sebastián’s account was heartbreaking, unvarnished, and utterly convincing. It also credited Javier with the dawning peace, commended the control he exercised over his men, and appealed to him for continued restraint. It ended with a psychological profile of the man himself, and as Lydia read it, she knew it to be exactly true. Unlike his contemporaries and predecessors, La Lechuza was not flashy, gregarious, or even particularly charismatic. He seemed enlightened. But like every drug lord who’s ever risen to such a rank, he was also shrewd, merciless, and ultimately delusional. He was a vicious mass murderer who mistook himself for a gentleman. A thug who fancied himself a poet. The article ended with the inclusion of a poem written by Javier himself, and Lydia’s mouth dropped clean open when she saw it there in print. She knew this poem. The first one he’d ever shared with her.
‘How in God’s name did you get this?’ she whispered.
Sebastián stopped pacing long enough to lean over her shoulder. Lydia read the poem again, even more terrible printed there on-screen than it had been when Javier had entrusted it to her.
‘Oh, yeah,’ Sebastián said. ‘That was crazy. You know we run that annual poetry contest? His daughter, Javier’s daughter, sent it in. She submitted it on his behalf. I guess she wanted to surprise him.’
‘Wow,’ Lydia said. ‘Marta.’
The inclusion of the poem was mortifying. It served to coalesce all the facts into a vivid portrayal and to corroborate, somehow, the accuracy of Sebastián’s description. As she closed the browser and leaned back in her chair, Lydia discovered that there were many different ways to feel horrified at once.
‘Well?’ Sebastián shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and leaned back against the kitchen counter. He was barefoot and his socks were twisted into a small heap on the counter behind him. Lydia stared at those socks. ‘What do you think?’
She folded her hands beneath her chin and shook her head. ‘I think it’s fine.’
‘Fine? Not good?’
‘No, I mean it’s good. It’s good, Sebastián, I’m not talking about that. I mean I think it’ll be fine with Javier.’
He nodded at her. ‘Okay.’
They were quiet while she contemplated further. ‘In fact, I think it will be better than fine with Javier. I think he’ll like it. It’s fair. More than fair, almost flattering.’
He nodded some more. ‘You feel confident?’
Again, she waited a moment to make sure her answer was true before she said it. ‘Yes.’
Sebastián went to the fridge, retrieved two beers, twisted off both caps, and set one down in front of his wife.
‘I’m not gonna lie, I’m a little nervous.’ He tipped the bottle into his mouth and drained half at once. ‘I’m relieved you feel good about it, though. You’re sure it’s okay.’ He watched Lydia twist her brown bottle in circles on the table. ‘You don’t think we need to disappear for a few days, just to be on the safe side?’
She knew how important it was to be sure. She didn’t fling the answer out recklessly; she measured it first. And then, ‘No, I think we’re fine,’ she said.
‘A hundred percent?’
‘Yes. A hundred percent.’ She closed the laptop and pushed it away.
Sebastián was leaning against the counter. He hadn’t shaved that morning, and there was a shadow of stubble across his chin. ‘Are you surprised? You think it’s too sympathetic?’ he asked.
‘No. I mean, it’s still horrifying.’ She sipped from the bottle. ‘But accurate. You show that he’s human. So as far as the truth goes, I think he’ll be pleased.’
That was a Monday evening, less than two weeks ago. Lydia remembers it was Monday because she’d just brought Luca home from fútbol practice and he’d been hungry, so she’d given him a slice of toast and a banana, even though he was late getting to bed. He’d tracked dirt into the hallway because he forgot to take his cleats off at the door, and Lydia had been annoyed because she’d just swept. Less than two weeks ago, dirt on the floor in her hallway was a thing that could annoy her. It’s unimaginable. The reality of what happened is so much worse than the very worst of her imaginary fears had ever been.