“But did he draw a weapon?”
“With twenty commandos coming at him, and snipers in wait.”
“Well...” Strickland feels little real sympathy for Páez. About the same as he felt for the three men he killed that night in Furniture Calderón. Or the fighters in Helmand. They were in the line of fire by choice. Live by the sword.
As Strickland listens to her silence, he pictures Bettina driving her Jeep from the La Quinta to the Laguna Beach Library parking lot, Joe in the front seat beside her. He remembers the joy that was in him then, the way it came over him suddenly, just seeing them. Now he watches the matchbox cars creeping over the Coronado Bridge.
“I’ll be out of the country for a few days,” he says.
“I’ll miss you following me everywhere I go. But thank you for last night. It made me feel safer. It meant a lot that you’d risk yourself like that. You did kind of creep me out, there by the hotel pool.”
“I told you I’d do anything in the world to protect you and Joe. Personally, I’m glad Joaquín is out of business and Valeria Flores is being detained by DEA. They’ll squeeze her dry, try to set her up as an informant and deport her.”
Another silence from Bettina.
“Put the phone to his ear, please,” Strickland says.
He hears the shuffle and scratch of contact, then tells Joe hello. “Hope you’re taking good care of yourself and Bettina. She’s a good reporter with lots of talent, and she’ll probably be on TV someday. I hope to see you again soon. And your woman too. So long for now.”
“He listened,” she says. “And so did I.”
“I’m glad you did.”
“Who are you and what do you want?”
“I told you all of that.”
“Your life was on the table last night, just like mine.”
“You need me by your side.”
“You’re a story with holes in it,” she says. “Intriguing and mysterious.”
Strickland’s silent time now. He’s in his bedroom — the view of the harbor and a bit of the Gaslamp, the cool photos on the walls. The unmade bed. Joe’s crate and all his plush toys.
“I can tell you that story.”
“Okay.”
“Good stories aren’t short,” he says.
“True.”
“We have time. We’re young,” he says.
“Women dis twenty-six, but I like it.”
“I’m fine with thirty-three,” says Strickland. “I see a good future out there. Just now shaping up.”
Bettina sighs. Just kind of can’t believe this guy, but likes him.
“Strickland?”
“Blazak.”
“Safe travels.”
28
Jesús Narciso is waiting for Strickland at the Los Mochis train station. He’s short and wide, wears jeans and cowboy boots, a black felt cowboy hat, and a big white-and-black tooled belt. Old-school Sinaloa, thinks Strickland, not the paramilitary stylings of the New Generation.
The terminal is crowded with tourists taking the Copper Canyon train through the rough and scenic Sierra Madre Occidental, which traverses Sinaloa north — south. Strickland rode that train years ago, on a summer study program in Mexico through Newport Harbor High School.
Now he puts his overnight duffel on the back row seats of a dusty white Ford F-250 Lariat Super Duty.
“Nice truck,” he says.
Narciso nods but says nothing.
The Lariat rides loud and sits high, and Strickland can see that Los Mochis hasn’t changed much. It’s still a sprawling city, upwards of three hundred thousand souls living in the crowded central and in houses sprinkled throughout the dry green hills. It boasts a modest sportfishing industry, and is known for producing champion boxers. Strickland remembers from his study program that the city was founded by American utopian socialists hoping to make their fortune in sugarcane. But today it looks like most of the tourists are here for the dramatic railroad trip through the canyon.
Narciso steers the grumbling truck into the hills, passing small farms and houses. Not a word. A boy in sandals and shorts leads a horse through a ribbon of greenery running along the edge of the asphalt.
Then they take a wide, well-kept dirt road lined with tree-branch barbed wire, behind which slender cattle graze in sparse grass.
A mile in, Narciso turns into a dirt driveway blocked by a very tall wrought iron gate. Brick columns frame the gate and are home to an intercom and keypad. The fencing is black industrial chain link, ten feet high, topped by three rows of electrical wire.
Narciso gets out, presses some numbers, then speaks into the mic.
The house and outbuildings are another quarter mile in, tucked beneath native fan palms and paloverde. It’s rocky and rough and hot. A rugged-looking place to Strickland’s eyes, nothing on the order of Carlos Palma’s oceanside compound. Miguel Villareal — if that’s who lives here — has less ornate tastes.
Back in the truck, Narciso slams the door. “Go to the house.”
Strickland gets his duffel from the back, salutes grim Narciso goodbye.
The man who answers the door is a much larger version of Narciso, but similarly proportioned: big from the waist up but short legged, with a bullish neck and head. A cousin, thinks Strickland. He’s got two days of whiskers, a bushy mustache, and a satellite phone clipped to his belt. He points a black automatic pistol at Strickland’s chest.
He’s as tall as Strickland and now stares at him with small, hostile eyes. “Who are you?”
“I am El Romano.”
“I should kill you and get the reward.”
“Yes, you should, Señor Villareal. But alive, I can bring you a lot more than money. I can get you revenge on the New Generation. I can replace el señor Godoy’s dollars lost in California. And if you are smart enough to help me bring this deal to El Gordo, he’ll be very pleased with you. May I come in?”
Villareal pushes open the door and moves back, waving Strickland in with his weapon.
Strickland steps in with his duffel and shuts the door. The inside of the house is nothing like the outside. It’s cooled by a quiet air conditioner and furnished with some of the nicer furniture Strickland recognizes from Furniture Calderón factory-warehouse in Tijuana. The tile is the good stuff from Saltillo. And there’s Taxco silver all over the cool orange walls — crosses, candelabra, scones, hummingbirds, quetzals, crocodiles, and fish, fish, fish, some life-sized. The only thing on the walls that isn’t handcrafted silver is the enormous big-screen Sony.
Villareal’s wife, Anay, has Native blood, Strickland sees. She’s on her way out with their four children, to church — Villareal explains in his poor English — because Anay speaks no English at all. She and the kids look scrubbed clean and are dressed nicely. Through the open door, Strickland watches the black Suburban back out of the garage.
“Explain everything,” says Miguel.
It takes Strickland all of five minutes to explain his plan. He holds back a central premise — that it’s a trade for a young reporter’s life — because he knows it’s a possible dealbreaker. And if it is, then El Gordo’s sicarios would eventually find Bettina and Joe, while Strickland feeds the Sierra Madre vultures for a brief time. He feels a shiver of fear as he again considers that this whole precarious idea depends on rational decisions by violent men.
When he’s done, Villareal stands and slides the pistol into the waistband of his jeans.
“Stay. I call.”
Strickland can hear Villareal’s low rumbling voice from another room. As best he can tell, Miguel has a series of conversations with different people. Strickland can only make out occasional words: El Romano... sí, todo loco... Badiraguato o Creel?...