The Queen of the South (52 page)

It's been a pleasure, she'd said—
exactly
what she'd said when the man from the DEA and the man from the embassy finished telling her what they'd come to tell her and sat there watching her, waiting for a reaction. You two are crazy, it's been a pleasure,
adios.
They left disappointed. Maybe they had expected comments, promises. Commitments. But her inexpressive face, her indifferent manner, left them little hope. No way. "She just told us to fuck ourselves," she heard Hector Tapia say under his breath, so that she wouldn't hear, as they were leaving. Despite his perfect manners, the diplomat had that defeated look about him.

"Think about it carefully," the DEA man had said. His words of farewell.

"The problem," she said as she was closing the door behind them, "is that I don't see what there is to think about. Sinaloa is a long, long way away.
Adios"

But she was sitting there now, in the bar in Gibraltar, thinking. Remembering point by point, putting everything Willy Rangel had told her in order in her head. The story of don Epifanio Vargas. The story of Güero Dávila. The story of Teresa Mendoza.

It was Güero's former boss, the gringo had said, don Epifanio himself, who'd found out about Güero and the DEA. During those early years as owner of Nortena de Aviacion, Vargas had leased his planes to Southern Air Transport, a U.S. government cover company that flew the arms and cocaine that the CIA was using to finance the Contras in Nicaragua, and Güero Dávila, who back then was already a DEA agent, was one of the pilots who unloaded war materiel at the airport in Los Llanos, Costa Rica, and returned to Fort Lauderdale with drugs from the Medellin cartel. When that operation, and that period of history, was over, Epifanio Vargas had maintained his good connections on the other side, which was how he could later be informed of the leak from the Customs agent who'd ratted out Güero. Vargas had paid the rat, and for a good while had kept the information to himself, not making any final decision about what to do with it. The drug boss of the sierra, the former patient campesino, was one of those men that never rush into things. He was almost out of the business, he was taking another road now, the pharmaceuticals that he managed from a distance were doing well, and the state's privatizations in recent years had allowed him to launder huge amounts of money. He maintained his family comfortably, in an immense rancho near El Limon that replaced the Colonia Chapultepec house in Culiacan—and kept a lover, too, a former model and TV host, whom he set up in a luxurious place in Mazatlan. He saw no reason to complicate things with decisions that could come back to bite him and whose only benefit was revenge. Güero was working for Batman Guemes now, so he was no business of Epifanio Vargas'.

However—Willy Rangel had said—at some point things changed. Vargas made a lot of money in the ephedrine business: $50,000 a kilo in the United States, compared with $30,000 for cocaine and $8,000 for marijuana. He had good connections, which opened the doors of a political career; he was about to collect on the half a million a month he'd been investing in payoffs to public officials all these years. He saw a quiet, respectable future for himself, for from the potential problems of his old trade. After establishing ties with the principal families of the city and the state—money, corruption, complicity made very good relationships with these people—he had enough money to say
basta,
or to go on earning it by conventional means. So suddenly, suspiciously, people related to his past began to die: police officers, judges, lawyers. Eighteen in three months.

It was an epidemic. And in that scenario, the figure of Güero Dávila was also an obstacle: he knew too many things about the heroic times of Nortena de Aviacion. The DEA agent was lurking in his past like a stick of dynamite that could go off at any time, and destroy Vargas' future.

But Vargas was smart, Rangel had said. Very smart, with that campesino shrewdness that had gotten him where he was today. He passed the job off to somebody else, without revealing why. Batman Guemes would never have taken out an agent of the DEA, but a pilot of two-engine Cessnas who was dealing behind his bosses' backs, fucking them over a little here and a little there—that was another thing. Vargas insisted to Batman: An object lesson, to teach the others that we can't let this happen, et cetera. Güero and his cousin. I've got a bone or two to pick with him, too, so consider this a personal favor you're doing me. Plus, you're his boss now—it's your responsibility to enforce discipline.

"How long have you known all this?" Teresa had asked Rangel.

"Part of it, for a long time. Almost when it happened." The DEA agent moved his hands to underscore the obvious. "The rest, about two years, when the witness I mentioned gave us the details ... And he said something else." He paused, looking at her intently, as though expecting her to fill in the blanks."... He said that later, when you started to grow over here on this side of the Atlantic, Vargas decided he'd made a mistake in letting you get out of Sinaloa alive. And he reminded Batman Guemes that he had unpaid bills over here ... and Batman Guemes sent two hit men over here to finish the job."

That's your story, said Teresa's inscrutable expression. You think you know everything. "You don't say. And what happened?"

"You'd be the one to tell me that. Nothing more was ever heard of them."

Hector Tapia gently interrupted. "Of one of them, Willy means. Apparently, the other one is still here. Retired. Or semi-retired."

"And why have you come to me with all this now?"

Rangel looked at the diplomat. Now it's your turn, his expression said. Tapia again took off his glasses and put them back on again. Then he studied his fingernails, as though he had notes written on them.

"Recently," he began, "Epifanio Vargas' political star has been rising. It has been, in fact, unstoppable. Too many people owe him too much. Many people love him or fear him, and almost everyone respects him. He was able to get out of the activities directly related to the Juarez cartel before it got into its serious trouble with Justice, when the struggle was carried on almost exclusively against its competitors in the Gulf.... In his career he has involved judges, businessmen, and politicians,
and
the highest authorities in the Mexican Church, police, and military—General Gutierrez Rebollo, who was about to be appointed the republic's antidrug prosecutor before his links with the Juarez cartel were discovered and he wound up in the Al-moloya prison, was a close friend of Vargas'.... And then there are the people themselves, the men and women in the street: since he was named state representative to the House of Deputies, Epifanio Vargas has done a lot for Sinaloa, invested money, created jobs, helped people—"

"That's not bad," Teresa interrupted. "Usually in Mexico, people steal from the state and keep it all for themselves.... The PRI did that for seventy years."

"Those are two different things," replied Tapia. "For the moment, the PRI is not in power. There's a new wind sweeping through the government, we all hope. Maybe in the end not much will have changed, but there is a will now to try. And all of a sudden, Epifanio Vargas appears on the scene, ready to become a senator."

"And somebody wants to screw him." Teresa saw it all now.

"That's one way of putting it. On the one hand, a very large sector of the
political world, many linked to the current government, don't want to see a
Sinaloan narco become a senator, even though he's officially retired and
serving as a member of the House of Deputies There are also old ac-
counts, which it would take too long to go into."

Teresa could imagine what those accounts might consist of. All of those
hijos de la pinche madre,
at war over power and money, the drug cartels and the friends of the respective cartels and the various political families, related to drugs or not. No matter who's in power in the "government."
Mexico Undo,
as they say—beautiful Mexico.

"And for our part," Rangel added, "we haven't forgotten that he had a DEA agent killed."

"Exactly." That shared responsibility seemed to relieve Tapia. "Because the government of the United States, which as you know,
senora,
continues to follow our own country's politics very closely, would also not approve of Epifanio Vargas' becoming senator ... So there has been an attempt to create a high-level commission to act in two phases—first, to open an investigation into Vargas' past, and second, if the necessary evidence can be gathered, to strip him of his government position and end his political career, perhaps even bring him to trial."

"At the end of which," Rangel added, "we do not exclude the possibility of requesting his extradition to the United States."

"And where do I fit into this happy plan?" Teresa asked. "What's the purpose of you flying all the way over here to tell me all this, like we were in the gang together back in the old days?"

Rangel and Tapia looked at each other. The diplomat cleared his throat, and while he was taking a cigarette from a silver case—offering one to Teresa, who shook her head—he said that the Mexican government had followed the, ahem, career of Senora Mendoza in recent years. They had nothing against her, since as far as they could tell, her activities took place outside the territorial limits of Mexico—she was an exemplary citizen, Rangel put in, so straight-faced that the sarcasm was almost lost. And in view of all that, the authorities were willing to come to an agreement. An agreement satisfactory to all concerned. Cooperation in exchange for immunity.

Teresa looked at them. Wary.

"What kind of cooperation?"

Tapia very carefully lit his cigarette. As carefully as he appeared to be meditating what he was about to say. Or the way to say it.

"You have personal scores there. You also know a great deal about the period when Güero Dávila was alive, and about Epifanio Vargas' activities," he finally said. "You were an eyewitness, and it almost cost you your life

One might think that an arrangement would be of benefit to you. You have more than enough resources of all kinds to go into other activities, enjoying what you have with no worries for the future."

"You don't say."

"I do say."

"Hijole.
To what do I owe this generosity?"

"You never take payment in drugs. Just money. You're a transporter, not
an owner or distributor. The largest transporter in Europe at the moment,
unquestionably. But that's it. That leaves us a margin for reasonable maneuvering, in the face of public opinion...."

"Public opinion? . . . What the fuck are you talking about?"

It took the diplomat some time to answer. Teresa could hear Rangel breathing; he was squirming in his seat uneasily, rubbing his hands together and interlacing his fingers.

"You are being given the opportunity to go back to Mexico, if you wish," Tapia went on, "or to move quiedy to another country, wherever you like.... The Spanish authorities have even been sounded out in this regard: we have a commitment from the minister of justice to halt all proceedings and investigations currently under way... which, according to my information, are at a very advanced stage and could, in the short term, make things quite difficult for the, ahem, Queen of the South.... This would be a chance to start over—all debts forgiven."

"I didn't know the gringos' arm was so long."

"Depends on what we're talking about."

Teresa broke out laughing. "You're asking me," she said, still incredulous, "to tell you everything that you think I know about Epifanio Vargas. That I start ratting people out, at my age. And me from Sinaloa."

"Not just that you tell
us,"
Rangel interrupted. "But that you tell it
there,
and to a judge."

"Where's 'there'?"

"In Mexico. Before the Justice Commission in the national prosecutor's office."

"You want me to go to Mexico?"

"As a protected witness. Absolute immunity. It would all happen in the Distrito Federal, under every kind of personal and judicial guarantee. With the thanks of the nation, and of the government of the United States."

Teresa suddenly stood up. Pure reflex, without thinking. This time, the two men also rose: Rangel disconcerted, Tapia uncomfortable. I told you so, said the last look Tapia gave the DEA agent. Teresa went to the door and yanked it open. Pote Galvez was in the hallway, his arms held slightly away from his body, his stockiness falsely peaceful. If you have to, she told him with a glance, kick them out.

"You," she almost spat, "have gone crazy." and there she was now, at her old table in the bar, reflecting about all that. With a tiny life in her belly, not knowing what she was going to do with it. The echo of that conversation in her head. Trying to think. Trying to feel. Turning over in her mind the last words of the conversation and many old memories. Pain and gratitude. The image of Güero Dávila—as motionless and silent as she was now, back in that cantina in Culiacan—and the memory of the other man sitting next to her late at night, in the Malverde Chapel. "That Güero of yours liked his little jokes, Teresita. You really didn't read any of it? Then get out of here, and try to bury yourself so deep that they can never find you."

Don Epifanio Vargas. Her godfather. The man who could have killed her, but who took pity on her. And who then thought better of it, but too late.

16. Unbalanced load

Teo Aljarafe returned two days later with a satisfactory report. Payments received prompdy on Grand Cayman, efforts made to find a small bank of their own and a shipping company in Belize, good profits on the money—laundered of its powder and weed—deposited in three banks in Zurich and two in Liechtenstein. Teresa listened attentively to his report, looked over the documents, and signed a few papers after reading them carefully, and then they went to eat at Casa Santiago, on the boardwalk in Marbella, with Pote Galvez sitting outside. Ham with fava beans and roasted crayfish, which was juicier and tastier than lobster. A Senorio de Lazan Reserva '96. Teo was talkative, charming, handsome. His jacket over the back of his chair, the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up twice over his tanned forearms, his firm wrists with a dusting of fine hair. His Patek Philippe, buffed fingernails, the wedding band gleaming on his left hand. Occasionally he turned his face away, looking out toward the street, wanting to see who came