The Cartel (39 page)

Crazy Eddie.

“I don’t like it.” She finds it funny that he pouts.

“Based on your wardrobe,” Magda says, “I hear they call you ‘Narco Polo.’ ”

Eddie laughs. “Well, I like
that.
”

—

Diego Tapia has been a busy man.

Security for the wedding has been brutal.

First there was the problem of the multiple dates and locations. Just yesterday, Diego’s people reached out from a network of cell phones all over the country, to call the guests and tell them the real location.

Then and only then did Diego distribute his
sicarios,
in concentric circles around the village, with special attention given to the roads in and out. He stationed more men at the local airstrips to meet the many guests who were coming in on private planes and take them to the wedding site.

All cell phones and cameras had to be politely but firmly collected, and each guest just as politely and firmly informed that they must not, under any circumstances, talk about the wedding afterward, not even to the extent of mentioning that they were present.

Adán is firm about this—he wants no pictures, no videos, no recordings, and no gossip afterward. The guest list alone would be a treasure trove for DEA and other enemies.

Arriving cars are searched far outside the village. Snipers are hidden in the hills above the village, with more heavily armed men standing by in vehicles that block roads at all compass points.

Nobody is going to go in—or out—of the village without Diego’s knowledge and permission.

Not that they’re expecting trouble now that there’s peace with the Gulf. The only possible threat is from La Familia, which is deeply angered at Adán’s abandonment of them. But they’re too busy fighting off the army and the
federales,
and besides, not even Nazario is crazy enough to attack Adán Barrera’s wedding ceremony in the heart of Sinaloa.

La Familia’s
jefe
may be insane—he’s not suicidal.

Now, watching Nacho walk Eva down the aisle, Diego is unsettled. Nacho got Tijuana. Now he’s going to be Adán’s father-in-law? It’s like a screen door shutting in Diego’s face. He can still see through it, but from the outside.

I shouldn’t worry, he tells himself. I’m Adán’s cousin, more like his brother. We’ve been friends since before our balls dropped. And Nacho is also my friend and my ally. We have interests together. Nothing has really changed.

Then why do you feel that it has?

“I’d like you to be in charge of our relationship with Ochoa,” Adán said to Diego after the peace meeting with the CDG. “Make him your friend.”

“Now you’re pushing it.”

“And meet with our friends in Mexico City,” Adán said. “Make sure they know that the CDG is under our protection now, in Michoacán as well as Tamaulipas.”

“I’ll do it,” Martín said.

“I want Diego there,” Adán said, “so they’ll know that there would be
consequences
for any betrayals.”

Martín was the glove, Diego the fist inside.

“We’ll both go,” Diego said.

The meeting with the government assholes in Mexico City was funny. The suits just sat there while Martín Tapia carefully explained to them what the new world was going to look like.

“By all means,” Martín said, “continue your campaign in Michoacán. La Familia is a dangerous threat to public safety—lunatics really—not to mention the largest purveyors of methamphetamine in the country.”

“What about the Zetas?”

“They’re under our protection now.”

Amazing, Diego thought. The
federales
had been giving La Familia a pass and beating the Zetas like rented mules, but now they didn’t even blink when they were told that they were going to switch sides.

But that’s the way it is in this business.

Enemies one moment, friends the next.

Unfortunately, it also works the other way around.

Now Chele reads her husband’s mind. “Don’t worry. They chose
us
as their
padrinos.
”

The
padrinos
are a married couple who mentor the newlyweds from the engagement throughout their entire marriage. It’s an honor, Diego knows, in his case more symbolic than practical, because Adán has certainly not asked for marital advice.

Eva, on the other hand, has come to Chele to ask certain questions that Chele won’t reveal and Diego can only guess at. He would have thought that modern girls didn’t have these questions anymore, but from Chele’s sly smiles, he guesses that Eva did.

“I just told her how to keep her man happy,” Chele told him.

“And how is that?”

“Later,
marido.
”

Chele didn’t share it with the girl, but the sad truth is that Eva doesn’t need to keep Adán happy in the bedroom—his spectacular mistress will see to that—she only needs to keep him happy in the delivery room.

Eva has to produce a son who will join the Barrera and Esparza organizations—rendering, however unintentionally, the Tapias outsiders. If Chele had a daughter of marriageable age, she would have shamelessly walked her to Adán’s bed and tucked her in. But her daughter is too young, and anyway, inheriting more of her father’s genes, unlikely to be as beautiful as the splendid young Eva.

Now Chele looks at Eva coming down the aisle between the rows of white chairs.

Nacho looks every bit the proud papa in his own black bolero jacket and tight-fitting pants as he walks her down the aisle, conscious of and gratified by the stares of envy both for his daughter’s beauty and his good fortune.

Fortune my ass, Chele thinks—Nacho has been grooming the girl for this since she slid out between her mother’s thighs.

—

It breaks Adán’s heart.

Turning on his old friend.

On the other hand, he has reason to believe that Diego Tapia has turned on him. Not with law enforcement, true, but with the Zetas.

It’s your own fault, Adán tells himself as he waits for his bride. You practically shoved Diego and Ochoa into bed together, made them meet, asked Diego to become the Zetas’ “friend.”

Well, he did that, all right. Adán’s informants have it that Diego has been steadily shifting his operation into Monterrey, basing himself in the tony neighborhood of Garza García, and that he’s welcoming the Zetas into the city.

Where they’re selling drugs, setting up an extortion racket and a kidnapping operation.

Stupid, Adán thinks, to go for chump change that could interfere with the real money pipeline from the U.S. by alienating police, politicians, and the powerful industrialists in Monterrey who, at the end of the day, control them.

Stupid and shortsighted.

Almost as bad is their ostentatious behavior, displaying their wealth and power like
chúntaros
—hillbillies—instead of the billionaire businessmen that they are.

Adán was saddened to hear that his old friend is dipping into his own product, that, like Tío back in the bad old days, he has started snorting coke. If it’s true, it’s bad news, and certainly Diego’s recent behavior supports the suspicion. Diego’s been throwing huge, loud parties, and in the wrong places—Cuernavaca, Mexico City, where they can’t escape the notice of the powers-that-be.

When will we ever learn? Adán wonders.

The cops, the politicians might be on our payroll; the financiers, bankers, and businessmen may be our partners in legitimate businesses; they might look the other way on our other activities—but you
can’t rub their noses in it.

Stupid and self-indulgent, Adán thinks. You can’t be doing those things in a neighborhood like that. We have everything. Everything that money can buy. We can do whatever we want—only be subtle about it.

There are worse rumors about Diego, rumors that Adán doesn’t want to believe. That he’s started to follow Santa Muerte, the so-called Saint of Death, a cult that’s sweeping the mostly younger narco ranks with blood sacrifices and God only knows what else.

Foolishness.

When he was young, Adán made a blood oath with Santo Jesús Malverde, the local Sinaloan drug trafficking martyr who became something of a religious figure with his own shrine in Culiacán.

Adán blushes at the memory of his youthful foolishness.

But Diego is no kid. He’s a grown man with a wife and kids and adult responsibilities. He’s the boss of the largest drug trafficking organization in Mexico and he’s messing around with this foolishness?

Ridiculous.

And dangerous.

But not as dangerous as him flirting with an alliance with the Zetas.

Adán gets it—Diego feels threatened by Nacho’s rise. You gave him Tijuana to take, you’re marrying his daughter.

Adán thought of reaching out to make things right with Diego. Sit down and talk like the old friends they are, and work it out. Apologize for any seeming slights or neglect. But now it’s too late.

Diego is the price for stupid, idiotic, undisciplined Salvador’s life. And it’s for the best, Adán decides. The Tapias have to go. Face it, you were going to have to do it anyway, and Sal’s issues are a convenient pretext.

It’s all set up and ready to go.

Simultaneous raids against Alberto and Diego in Badiraguato, take them both out in one swoop.

Martín they’ll leave alone, for now.

He has too many connections—another stupid mistake of yours, Adán thinks, to let the Tapias gain so much political influence—and you can deal with him. He’ll be reasonable.

As long as there are no deaths.

Adán has insisted that both Alberto and Diego must, at all costs, be taken alive. They are his friends, his brothers, blood of his Sinaloan blood.

—

The altar has been built under a bower of ficus trees. The chairs are set up on an emerald-green lawn clipped again that morning and lined with stacks of fresh flowers.

Adán stands by the priest. He smiles at Eva as Nacho releases her, kisses her on the cheek, and ushers her to the altar.

Opening a small wooden box, Adán pours thirteen gold coins—one each for Christ and the twelve apostles—into Eva’s outstretched, cupped hands. Then he places the box on top of her hands. The coins signify his pledge to take care of her and her promise to run his household conscientiously.

They turn to the priest, who drapes the
lazo
—a long, decorated cord—around each of their shoulders, symbolizing that they are now attached to each other. They wear the
lazo
throughout the long ceremony, which includes a Mass, then the wedding vows, and finally the priest declares them man and wife.

Eva kneels at the little shrine that had been built to the Virgin of Guadalupe and makes the
ofrenda,
leaving a bouquet of flowers.

Then the bride and groom walk back up the aisle and the wedding party and guests follow them back to where the reception party will be held and the mariachi band—decked out in their finest costumes of black and silver—falls in behind, playing the
estudiantina
music.

—

Salvador Barrera has kept a low profile throughout the wedding.

After the unfortunate incident in Zapopan, Adán called him back to Sinaloa and put him on double secret probation.

“If you were not my blood,” Adán said when he sat Sal down in his office, “you would be dead.”

“I know.”

“No,” Adán said, his face tightening. “You will never know—and I mean you will
never
know—what your freedom has cost me.”

“Thank you,
Tío.
I’m so sorry.” Then he had to sit and let Adán lecture him for twenty minutes about respecting women and innocent people. This from the same man who’s invited his whore to his own wedding? Who had a woman’s head cut off and sent to her husband like a muffin basket? The guy that once threw two little kids off a bridge? I mean, come on. This guy’s going to lecture me on family values?

But now Sal knows that he’s being watched.

Eventually, he hopes, his uncle will forgive him and bring him back into the business.

—

Eva swoops in, takes Adán’s hand, and pulls him toward the center of the reception area, a clearing in the middle of the dining and banquet tables.

It’s time to
lanzar el ramo,
toss the bouquet.

As is traditional, the wedding guests form not a circle but a heart shape around the bride and groom. All the eligible women gather, and Eva tosses her bouquet back over her shoulder. It hits Magda right in the hands, but she squeals and bats it back up in the air, where it’s caught by one of Eva’s bridesmaids.

Then a chair is brought out, Eva sits down, and Adán—backed up by Diego, Nacho, and Salvador—kneels in front of her and, to ribald remarks from the guests, slides her dress up her thigh and pulls her garter back down her leg.

It feels odd, running his hand up her smooth skin, because heretofore they have done little more than kiss, and this feels oddly intimate. Then Adán stands up, throws the garter over his shoulder, and turns to see Salvador catch it.

Then the men swoop in, pick Adán up, and begin to throw him around and dance with him to the funeral music (“Your life is over!”) that the band strikes up. When this stops, Salvador and the bridesmaid dance together, then Adán and Eva, then the entire party joins in the dancing. As they dance, married couples come up to the bride and groom, chat a little, and pin envelopes onto Eva’s dress, money that will later be given to charity, as Adán Barrera and the daughter of Nacho Esparza hardly need money to start their married life. Eventually the dance turns into
la víbora de la mar
—“the sea snake”—the guests joining hands and “snaking” under Adán and Eva’s outstretched arms as they stand on chairs.

—

Magda finds Adán alone in a bedroom, changing clothes to leave for his honeymoon.

“How convenient,” she says.

“How so?”

“Well,” Magda says, kneeling in front of him, “we wouldn’t want you to disappoint your new bride, letting that tight virgin
chocha
make you come too quickly. The poor thing expecting a night of breathless passion and youthful endurance.”