The Cartel (23 page)

Eddie and Chacho ran to Monterrey because Chacho has a safe house in the suburb of Guadalupe and because, narco-speaking, it’s an open city. No one has a strong presence there, even the CDG, and there’s an unspoken agreement that Monterrey is neutral ground, safe turf. Narcos go there to sit on the sidelines when they need to, or park their families when things heat up in their own plazas.

And things have certainly heated up, so to speak, in Eddie’s plaza.

Or what
used
to be our plaza, Eddie thinks as he goes down into the Metro. Los Sotos have gone over to the CDG—so have most of the city cops and state police. So has the army, although the army has always been pretty much its own gang anyway.

Eddie knows he can’t live in Monterrey forever. And that he can’t go back to the 867—other than as a human torch—unless he works something out. Fucking Zetas, man. Nobody
does
shit like that. Sure, every once in a while things get out of hand and someone catches a bullet, but
burning guys alive
?

That’s some sick shit.

That’s
way
out of bounds.

Serves a purpose, though, he has to admit. If the purpose was to scare people, it worked.

I’m
scared.

Eddie rides the subway to Niños Héroes and then walks the rest of the way to the baseball stadium where the Monterrey Sultanes are playing his own Tecolotes. He isn’t really a fan—he’ll watch baseball if he can’t get a Cowboys game on satellite.

He buys a ticket along the first-base line, finds his section, and makes his way down the row to where he sees a heavyset man with a big beard eating peanuts between gulps from a paper cup of beer.

Has to be Diego Tapia.

No one else looks like that.

Eddie and Chacho had reached out. The Tapias did business through Laredo. We gotta go with someone, Eddie knows, and now they’re the only game in town. The
alianza de sangre
is their only chance.

The man next to Tapia gets up when he sees Eddie, who takes his seat.

“I like to watch the pitchers,” Diego says. “A lot of people don’t like low-scoring games. I do. You want a Modelo?”

Eddie don’t really want a beer but he don’t want to offend Diego Tapia, either, so he nods, and Diego gestures to the guy, who goes up to get Eddie a beer. Then he asks, “Where’s Chacho?”

“I didn’t think it would be smart for you to be seen with him,” Eddie answers. “Nobody really knows
me.
”

Diego looks at Eddie as if he’s reevaluating him. Eddie knows that look from football coaches who thought he was too small until they saw him hit someone. Then they took that second look.

“You like baseball?” Diego asks.

“It’s okay.”

“You’re a
yanqui,
” Diego says. “I thought all
yanquis
liked baseball.”

“I’m more of a football guy.”

“Which kind?”

“The
good
kind,” Eddie answered. “The kind where something happens occasionally.”

He’d rather watch grass grow and die again than sit through a soccer game.

“How about them ’Boys?” Diego says in English.

“Something like that.”

Diego’s man puts a beer in Eddie’s hand.

The Tecolotes pitcher hangs a curve and the batter connects. It’s a solid hit, but Eddie can tell from the crack of the bat that it don’t have the legs, and it dies in the center fielder’s glove.

Then Diego asks, “Are you here for yourself, or Chacho?”

It’s risky. Diego has to know that it was Chacho who killed Mario Soto and the others and caused all this hassle. So Chacho is about as popular as herpes right now. But Eddie’s here to offer Diego his loyalty, so if he acts
dis
loyal to Chacho…

“Both of us,” Eddie answers.

Diego takes this in. “And what do you think I can do for you?”

“We had some trouble in Laredo.”

“You boys are in the shit,” Diego says. “You should have come to me
before
blood got spilled. Harder to fix now.”

But Eddie notices that he left the door open. “Harder” to fix, not “impossible.” He says, “You and Chacho always had a good relationship. You’ve moved product through Laredo.”

“Chacho doesn’t control Laredo anymore,” Diego says. “He can’t fight the CDG.”

“But you could.”

“But I won’t,” Diego says. “Why should I go to war to pay the
piso
to Chacho instead of Contreras?”

“We’ll lower the rate.”

Diego just smiles.

Eddie drinks his beer because suddenly his throat is dry. If Tapia thinks he’s a clown, the conversation is over and he’ll end up in a fifty-gallon drum filled with gasoline.

Fuck baseball, it’s time to blitz.

“You back the CDG off of us,” Eddie says, “you use our turf, no
piso.
”

“You have balls.” Diego laughs. “You come to me for protection and then want to charge me rent on property you don’t own.”

The batter smacks a sharp hit to the shortstop, who digs it out of the dirt and throws a beautiful ball to the first baseman for the out.

“Slider,” Diego says. “He
wanted
the ground ball. If I back the CDG off you, you go to work for
us.
You handle our product, you manage the plaza, if you move your own product, you pay
us
eight points.”

The next batter swings on the first pitch. It’s a curve that hung up there a millisecond too long, and now is headed over the left-field wall.

Eddie accepts the offer.

—

Diego sits over a plate of
cabrito,
a Monterrey specialty—kid goat slow-cooked over a bed of embers.

He and Heriberto Ochoa are sitting in the back room of a restaurant in the exclusive Garza García neighborhood in Monterrey’s south end, below the Santa Catarina River. Two plainclothes policemen guard the door.

“Why are we here?” Ochoa asks.

It’s rude, but he’s impatient. They’ve talked about baseball, the weather, the food, the wine, baseball again, and now the food. It’s time to get on with it.

Diego sets his fork down and looks across the table.

“We don’t want trouble with you,” Diego says. “We’re willing to forget that Contreras tried to have Adán Barrera killed.”

“Someone’s been telling you lies.”

“Someone is always telling me lies,” Diego says. “If I don’t get lied to by lunchtime, I feel deprived.”

“It wasn’t us,” Ochoa lies. “But whoever did it was doing you a favor. You’d be better off, wouldn’t you, with the Boy King in the dirt?”

Again, Diego lets the insult slide. “We’re doing business with Chacho García.”

“What business do you have in a cemetery?” Ochoa asks.

Diego picks up his fork again. Looks down at his food as he says, “At the end of nine innings, if you’re ahead, the game is over. You don’t keep playing after you’ve already won.”

It’s a remarkable admission, Ochoa thinks—Diego Tapia has just conceded that Nuevo Laredo now belongs to the CDG.

“What business do you have with Chacho?” Ochoa asks.

“We move product through his old plaza,” Tapia says. “He has the men, the machinery, the customs agents. Why reinvent the wheel? All we’re asking of you is the courtesy. Of course, I didn’t come with empty hands. It goes without saying that we’d pay you the traditional
piso.
”

“Of course.”

“Then we have no problem?”

“Yes, we have a problem,” Ochoa said. “This Chacho killed Soto and two of his men.”

“And you killed four back.”

“But Chacho’s family isn’t weeping,” Ochoa answers.

“You made your point. Leave it now.” A lesson Diego learned from Adán—strike fast, strike hard, and then be content with victory. Don’t grind the survivors into the dust and make more enemies.

Ochoa took a different lesson away from Chiapas. Winning isn’t enough—the losers have to fear you or they try again. He says, “If you want to keep the Laredo plaza open for your shipments—tell us where this
malandro
Chacho is.”

“That’s assuming I know,” Diego answers.

“If you don’t,” Ochoa asks, “what do we have to talk about?”

Diego had argued with Adán about this.

“How long do we eat the CDG’s shit?” he’d asked Adán.

“As long as necessary.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Do you have a better one?” Adán asked.

“I can have fifty good men in Matamoros tonight,” Diego said. “We kill Z-1, then Z-2, then Z-3…”

“No,” Adán said. “We cooperate with them, let them think we’re afraid of them. I want them complacent, arrogant, secure.”

Diego has learned not to second-guess Adán. Every move he’s made since coming out of Puente has been right. So if Adán wants him to play ball with the Zetas, that’s what he’ll do.

He hates to do it, but Diego tells Ochoa where he can find Chacho.

—

On Sunday they do
carne asada.

Carne asada
and beer, man, that’s Sunday.
Carne asada
means “meat” and it also means “cookout,” and there’s really no difference because you ain’t got one without the other.

It’s a tradition, and anyway, they’re celebrating the deal with the Alliance, which Eddie persuaded Chacho to accept.

Now Eddie is busting Chacho’s balls, trying to make the best of it, put a smile on it, telling Chacho how he’ll get a weekly paycheck now, benefits, health insurance—eye and dental, paid vacations, a 401(k).

“Maybe a gym membership,” Eddie says.

“I do my workouts with
her,
” Chacho said, pointing his thumb at Yolanda, who’s sitting out on the deck in just a red bra and panties (“What’s the difference between this and a bikini?”), and from what Eddie can see—which is a lot—he can’t blame Chach for doing his push-ups with her.

Anyway, he likes Yo.

She’s been with Chacho about two years and is a very cool chick, very laid-back. Low-maintenance, which is a plus in their line of work. Doesn’t hassle him about where he’s been, what he’s been doing, who he’s been doing. Teresa could take some lessons from her, and Eddie makes a mental note to introduce the two of them. And maybe Yo can teach her a few new tricks in the bedroom, too, freshen things up a little.

Chacho flips the meat on the grill and they get into one of those Tex-Mex border skirmishes about the marinade.

“You beaners use too much lime,” Eddie says between swallows of
cerveza.
“Shit, if I wanted fruit juice, I’d get a V8.”

Chacho says good-naturedly, “You
pochos
wouldn’t know good meat if it hung between your legs, which it don’t.”

“You want to see?” Eddie asks.

“Didn’t bring my magnifying glass,” Chacho says.

It goes like that, ball-busting and horsing around, and then they sit down to eat. Eddie can’t help but sneak a few peeks at Yo’s tits as she bends over to get some salsa, and she sees it and just smiles.

Cool
chica.

They’re going to eat and pack it up and then get in the car and head back to Nuevo. Eddie’s eager to call Teresa and tell her to get her ass back home. Anyway, they eat and clean up the kitchen and load the car and they’re about to pull out when a black Ford Explorer pulls behind them, another one roars up in front and cuts them off. A third comes in from the side.

At least twenty men get out.

Dressed in black.

Black hoods.

The boogeymen.

Fast, so fast. It’s over before it even starts. Eddie don’t even have time to reach for his gun before they pull him out of the door and shove him into one of the SUVs.

Where he gets a black hood of his own.

—

The room smells like gasoline.

Eddie, naked, is duct-taped, wrists and ankles, to a wooden chair, Chacho beside him.

Yolanda is already dead.

They taped Chacho to the chair and then made him watch as they did what they wanted with her and then shot her in the head. Now she lies dead at his feet, her red bra and panties tossed into a corner of the room. Looks like a living room, but except for the wooden chairs, there’s no furniture.

The white walls are bare and the blinds are pulled.

Three Zetas are in the room now. Grenade Guy is there—Eddie heard the others call him “Segura.” The linebacker is there, too. They called him “Cuarenta”—“Forty”—which Eddie thinks is odd because he’d heard there were only thirty Zetas. He speaks English like he’s spent some time in Texas.

Ochoa leans against the wall.

That’s Movie Star’s name—Ochoa.

“Z-1.”

The fact that they hadn’t bothered to disguise their faces or their names tells Eddie that they’re going to kill him, too.

He only hopes it’s quick.

Then he sees white T-shirts soaking in a dishpan full of gasoline, and Ochoa says, “You boys like
carne asada,
don’t you? We had to sit out there for hours, smelling it. Made us hungry. So we’re going to have
carne asada
of our own.”

He nods to Forty, who takes one of the T-shirts from the pan, wrings it out, then walks behind Chacho and lays the T-shirt on his bare back. The legs of Chacho’s chair rattle on the wooden floor, he’s shaking so bad. He shakes worse when Forty takes a Bic lighter out of his pocket and waves it like he’s at a concert.

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Eddie thinks. He feels like he’s going to piss, and his right leg starts to quiver and he can’t stop it.

Forty steps behind Chacho and talks into his ear. “You killed Soto. Now you burn in hell.”

He lights the T-shirt.

Flames shoot up like a flare.

Chacho screams.

His chair bounces.

Segura laughs. “He sounds like a girl.”

The fire goes out, the shirt seared into Chacho’s raw skin.

Burning flesh scorches Eddie’s nose, then his lungs, his soul.

Ochoa walks over from where he was leaning and lifts Chacho’s chin. “You think you hurt? You don’t hurt yet.”

Stepping behind Chacho, he takes remnants of the T-shirt between his thumbs and his forefingers.

“You don’t hurt yet,” he repeats.

Then he tears the fabric out of Chacho’s burned skin.