The Cartel (51 page)

Palacios hesitates for a second, then nods. Keller gets up, the bodyguards start to close in, but Palacios waves them off.

“I’ll bet you thought you left ‘Chido’ behind in La Polvorilla,” Keller says when he sits down.

“I haven’t heard it in years,” Palacios says calmly. “Who are you?”

“I’m with DEA.”

Palacios shakes his head. “I know all the DEA guys.”

“Apparently not.”

“You said something about saving my life?” Palacios says. “I wasn’t aware it needed saving.”

“Seriously?” Keller asks. “You just buried three of your buddies. The Tapias want to kill you. If they don’t, Adán Barrera will. You have to know you’re on the endangered species list.”

“Your DEA colleagues would say that you’re talking out of your ass,” Palacios says.

I can’t lose him now, Keller thinks. I can’t make this cast and let him off the hook, because if I do he goes straight to Vera. So he says, “You were at a meeting last spring with Diego and Martín Tapia. During that meeting you agreed to provide protection to the Zetas and target La Familia instead. Also present at that meeting were Gerardo Vera, Roberto Bravo, and José Aristeo.”

Palacios reverts a little to his La Polvorilla days. “You’re full of shit.”

“I have you on tape, motherfucker.”

Palacios literally starts to sweat. Keller sees the beads of perspiration pop on his forehead, just below his carefully cut hair. He presses: “Think about it—you’ve got one foot on the Tapia dock and the other in the Barrera boat, and they’re drifting apart. You’re going to have to choose, and your guards can’t protect you in Puente Grande, which is where you’re going. The only question is, do they fuck you in the ass
before
they slit your throat?”

“I was at that meeting,” Palacios says, “to gather evidence against—”

“Save it,” Keller says. “You think Vera is going to protect you? I know you’re boys and all that from the old barrio, but if you think Vera’s going to put the life he has now on the line for old times’ sake, you don’t know your old friend.”

“Maybe he’s on that tape, too.”

“Maybe he is,” Keller says. “So that puts you in a little race with him, doesn’t it, because the first one of you to cut a deal gets a snitch visa to the States and the other gets ass-raped. Which do you want to be?”

Palacios glares at him.

Keller gets up. “I came to you first because you can trade up, for Vera. I’m going to go to him in exactly twenty-four hours, unless I hear from you first.”

He lays a slip of paper with a phone number on the table.

“Beautiful day for scoping the women, isn’t it?” Keller asks. “By the way, Ester Almanza sends her regards, you piece of shit.”

Keller holds his thumb and little finger to his face—
Call me
—smiles, and walks away.

—

There’s little to do now but wait.

And prepare for the worst-case scenario, that Palacios runs to Vera and they launch a counteroffensive that could take several forms, the most likely of which is a raid on SEIDO to acquire the incriminating tapes, Aguilar’s firing by pressure from Los Pinos, and even criminal charges against him.

Keller doesn’t discount another possibility—an outright assassination attempt on Aguilar.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Aguilar says when Keller suggests it over a brandy in his study.

Lucinda had prepared her usual excellent dinner, a fiery shrimp dish over rice, and the children were their charming selves, conversing easily about their ballet and horseback lessons, and shyly about boys they had met at an interschool dance. Keller had forgotten how simply lovely family life could be.

Then Aguilar and Keller went into his study to discuss business, and now Keller sits there with the cell phone in his pocket, urging it to ring. He’d bought it only for Palacios’s call, and now it sits in his pocket like a time bomb you
want
to go off. Every second it doesn’t increases the possibility that Palacios has gone to Vera, or, maybe worse, to the Tapias. “It’s not ridiculous, Luis. In fact, I think you should consider moving your family out for a little while.”

“How would I explain that to them, Art?” Aguilar asks. “Without terrifying them?”

“A vacation,” Keller said. “We set you up in the States, DEA provides security.”

“I don’t think Gerardo would go so far as to hurt families.”

“But Barrera would,” Keller says, “and has.”

“They’d make a threat first, no? To intimidate me into cooperating?”

“Probably,” Keller admits. “But it doesn’t hurt to be safe. Look, wouldn’t the girls love a couple of weeks at some dude ranch in Arizona? They could ride—”

“Western saddles? And ruin their seats—”

“Luis,” Keller says. “Galvén, Aristeo, and Bravo were killed outside their homes. Do you want to expose your family to that possibility?”

“Of course not.”

“Well…”

“I’ll think about it.”

They go over other possibilities. If Aguilar’s boss, the attorney general, calls him in and either fires him, shuts down the investigation, or both, it means he’s in on it, in which case Keller gets out of the country as fast as possible with a copy of the tape.

The phone vibrates.

Aguilar watches as Keller digs it out of his pocket, listens for two seconds. “Parque México,” he says. “Foro Lindbergh. One hour.” He clicks off.

—

They meet under the pergola near the large columns in the Lindbergh Forum.

A smart choice, because it’s out of sight. But dangerous, because the trees behind the columns offer ample cover for gunmen, especially at night.

Keller knows that he might be walking into a trap. But then again, he’s pretty much in a trap already, so what’s the difference? Nevertheless, he keeps his hand on the pistol under his jacket.

Palacios stands at the end of the pergola.

He appears to be alone.

“I want out tonight,” he says.

“That’s not going to happen.” The moment Palacios crosses the border, he loses half his motivation to talk. Keller has seen it happen—the source sits on a chair in some office on the other side and spins useless bullshit stories until everyone gets tired of it and moves on. No, what they have to do is pick Palacios as clean as they can before they move him. Everything they get after that is gravy.

But they have to move fast.

“Here’s how it’s going to work,” Keller says. “You’re going to give us information. We check it out to see if you’re telling the truth. When we have enough to nail Vera, you get your ticket.”

Palacios stares at him. Then he says, “I want visas for myself, my wife, and my two adult children. And I get immunity, I get to keep my bank accounts.”

The prick doesn’t want to go into the program and become a greeter at a suburban Tucson Home Depot. He wants to come across and live the high life on the dirty millions he’s taken from the Sinaloa cartel.

“That’s up to your AG,” Keller says.

It’s a risk Keller has to take, and it might as well be sooner than later. Palacios might balk at the Mexican involvement, because he thinks he’s been dealing exclusively with DEA.

Palacios says, “We’re done here.”

“You walk away now,” Keller says, “you don’t get far. You get busted before you leave the park. You think your old buddies are going to wait around to see if you flip?”

Keller knows his business, knows that there’s a time to push and a time to pull, so now he softens his tone and says, “Look, you haven’t committed a crime in the States. Neither has Vera. So the Justice Department can only offer you sanctuary as a courtesy to the Mexican AG’s office. We do it through SEIDO, keep it under wraps.”

“Luis Aguilar?” Palacios asks. “That sanctimonious prick?”

“He’s your lifeline, Chido.”

Palacios laughs. “Where is he?”

“In a car on Calle Chiapas.”

“Let’s go.”

—

At first they meet in cars, in parks at night, but then Aguilar invents a new
segundera
for Palacios, actually an undercover SEIDO agent named Gabriela—drop-dead gorgeous, a
guapa
with long legs and a longer résumé—law degree, a master’s in sociology, and a ruthless ambition. Aguilar provides Palacios with photos to show off to his buddies (“Look what I’m tapping”) and arranges for them to be seen together at bars around AFI headquarters. He provides her with an apartment and makes sure she’s seen leaving in the morning for her job at a local bank, and seen returning in the evening.

In the afternoons they meet with Palacios.

He plays games of his own, what Keller would call hide-the-ball, giving them a little information to shield more damaging information, having to be pressed, cross-examined, coddled, cajoled, threatened. He lets intelligence out like a fisherman lets out line to a fish, and they do the same with him, reminding him not too gently that
he’s
the one who’s hooked.

“You know we’ll run you through a polygraph,” Aguilar says.

“Yeah, I’ve taken them,” Palacios says with a smirk. “Best test money can buy.”

“This one will be legitimate,” Aguilar says. “And if you lie about anything, our deal is null and void. Let’s go over it again, Barrera’s escape from prison.”

“Who was in charge of prisons?” Palacios asks.

“Quit playing games.”

“Galvén,” Palacios says. “Nacho Esparza delivered $500,000 to Galvén and we cut it up.”

“Did Vera get a share?”

“What do you think?”

“
I’m
asking the questions.”

“It’s a stupid question.”

Aguilar sighs. “Humor me.”

“Vera got the biggest share, as usual,” Palacios answers. “Me, my motto is ‘Eat like a horse, not like a pig.’ That’s not Gerardo’s motto.”

He’s cute, Keller thinks. He knows the apartment is miked, and that he’s playing to a crowd that will eventually include the Mexican AG and a host of
yanquis
in DEA and Justice.

When they get through the failed raids on Barrera after his escape, Palacios actually laughs. They have to go over it a dozen times before they get what they think is the whole truth, but then Palacios
laughs
and says, “Are you fucking kidding me? We
had
him.”

“When? Where?”

“Nayarit,” Palacios says. “When he got out by helicopter. He and Nacho paid us four million for the next leg of his flight.”

“Did Vera—”

“Get his share? Of course.”

You almost had Barrera in Apatzingán, Palacios tells them. But we got him out that night and put in the lookalike. After that, Barrera moved back to Sinaloa.

“Where?” Keller asks.

“My deal is on Vera,” Palacios says, “not Barrera.”

Anyway, he doesn’t know, he claims. El Patrón moves from
finca
to
finca
in the mountains of Sinaloa and Durango. The police protect him, the locals protect him; he has his own private army now—Gente Nueva.

“Are they doing the fighting in Juárez?” Aguilar asks.

“You already know that.”

The meetings go on. Sometimes Palacios meets Gabriela at her apartment, other times he treats her to a suite at a five-star hotel—the Habita, the St. Regis, Las Alcobas, the Four Seasons—but never the Marriott. They take a suite so Gabriela can wait in the sitting room, out of earshot, and leave just before or after Palacios.

“Try to look well-fucked,” he says to her one day at the Habita. “I have a reputation to maintain.”

Gabriela is too disciplined to respond.

At every session, Palacios plays peekaboo, but Aguilar and Keller doggedly work him, like a boxer walks his opponent into a corner. Keller was not a bad amateur middleweight in his youth. He was patient then and he’s patient now, letting Palacios dance and shuffle, but always cutting off the ring and forcing him against the ropes where the truth gets told.

Palacios tells them how it worked.

A group of beat cops led by Gerardo Vera formed a drug, extortion, kidnapping, and car theft ring in Iztapalapa that they parlayed into a small empire, dealing dope internally for Nacho Esparza and the Tapias.

They had a monopoly in the eastern part of Mexico City that they enforced through threats, selective arrests, and—if that didn’t work—assaults, kidnappings, and murders.

The Izta cartel.

The Tapias used their political influence to move Vera into the old, PRI-era federal police. He played it clean for years—the very model of the incorruptible cop. Eliot freaking Ness. He quietly brought his old boys up with him—they were the same choirboys—until they moved high enough up the ladder to really do the Sinaloa cartel some serious good.

When the new administration decided to reorganize the old, “corrupt” federal police, the Sinaloans hit the jackpot. Vera turned the organization inside out, firing anyone he couldn’t control and hiring people loyal to him. And he put into high positions men from his old Izta cartel.

It was goddamn genius, Keller has to admit. Vera used the polygraphs to get rid of the undesirables, and then whitewashed the others to get the results he wanted. You could lie, just don’t lie to Gerardo Vera. You could take money from narcos, just make sure they’re the right narcos. Vera turned the entire AFI into an efficient, incorruptible institution serving the interests of the Sinaloa cartel.

Breaking Adán Barrera out of prison.

Making sure that no raid ever captured him.

Taking down Barrera’s rival narcos like Osiel Contreras.

Going to war against the CDG cops in Nuevo Laredo.

Vera didn’t have to worry about being investigated from below—his own people—or from above, thanks to Yvette Tapia’s suitcase deliveries to the Amaros.

It was a beautiful system, smooth as a German railroad, even through the elections and the new administration, which only promoted Vera to an even higher position. It should have gone on forever.

The money flowed through the Tapias and was, as far as Palacios knew, made up of a collective fund from them, Esparza, and Barrera. It cost a flat mil to appoint a tame AFI boss to a region and another $50,000–$100,000 monthly salary to that guy, 20 percent of which he kicked up to the Izta cartel.