Deep down, Danny wanted to be the person that Melanie thought he was. He tried to tell himself, each time he strayed, that this would be the last. Sometimes he could go for weeks, even months, without being with another woman, but eventually he would find himself alone for a time, or in a strange city, and the urge to trawl would take him.

But he did love Melanie, and if he could have turned back the clock of his life and made his choices again-his first hooker, and the shame he felt afterward; the first time he cheated on someone, and the guilt that came with it-he believed that he would live his life differently, and that he would be a better, happier man as a result.

I will start again, he lied to himself. It was like alcoholism, or any other addiction. You had to take things one day at a time, and when you fell off the wagon, well, you just got right back up again and started counting from one.

He reached out to stroke Melanie’s back, and heard a knock at the door.

Melanie Gardner was afraid that Danny was cheating on her. She didn’t know why she thought it, for none of her friends had ever seen him with another woman, and she had never found any telltale signs on his clothes or in his pockets. Once, while he was sleeping, she had tried to read his e-mails, but he was scrupulous about deleting both sent and received mail, apart from those that had to do with his business. There were a lot of women in his address book, but she did not recognize any of the names. Anyway, Danny was regarded as one of the best electricians in town, and in her experience it was women who tended to make most of the business calls to Danny, probably because their husbands were too ashamed to admit that there was something around the house that they could not repair themselves.

Now, as she sat on the bed, the warmth of him gradually fading, she felt the urge to confront him. She wanted to ask him if he was seeing someone else, if he had ever been with another woman in the time that they had been together. She wanted to look in his eyes as he answered, because she believed that she would be able to tell if he was lying. She loved him. She loved him so much that she was afraid to ask, for if he lied, she would know, and it would break her heart, and if he told her what she feared was the truth, then that would also break her heart. The tension she had been feeling had broken through at last in a dumb argument about music earlier in the evening, and then they had made love even though Melanie did not really want to. It had allowed her to delay the confrontation, nothing more, just as painting her toenails had suddenly seemed a matter of great urgency.

Melanie painstakingly filled in the last patch of clear nail upon her little toe, then placed the brush back in the polish, turning slightly as she did so. She saw Danny reaching out for her.

She opened her mouth to speak at last, and heard a knock at the door.

Edgar Certaz thumbed idly at the remote control, flashing through the channels. There were so many that by the time he had finished flicking through them all he had forgotten if there were any of the earlier ones that merited his attention. He settled at last upon a Western. He thought it very slow. Three men were waiting for a train. The train came. A man with a harmonica got off. He killed the three men. An Italian played an Irishman, and an American actor whose face was familiar to him appeared as the villain, which threw Certaz a little as he had only ever seen the American play good guys. There were few Mexicans that he could see, which was good. Certaz was tired of seeing peasants in white clutching sombreros as they appealed for help against bandits from gunmen in black, as though all Mexicans were either victims or cannibals who fed on their own.

Certaz was a middleman, an intermediary. Like the woman in the next room he had connections with Juarez, and he and his fellow narcotraficantes had been responsible for many deaths in the city. His was a dangerous business, but he was paid well for his troubles. Tomorrow, he would meet two men and arrange for the delivery of $2 million worth of cocaine, for which he and his associates would receive a 40 percent commission. If the delivery proceeded without a hitch, the next consignment would be considerably larger, and his reward commensurately greater. Certaz would make all of the arrangements, but at no point would either drugs or money be in his possession. Edgar Certaz had learned to insulate himself from risk.

The Colombians still controlled the manufacture of cocaine, but it was the Mexicans who were now the biggest traffickers of the drug in the world. The Colombians had given them their start in the trade, albeit unintentionally, by paying Mexican smugglers in cocaine instead of cash. Sometimes, up to half of every shipment into the United States went to the Mexicans. Certaz was one of the original mules, and had quickly worked his way up to a position of prominence in the Juarez cartel controlled by Amado Carrillo Fuentes, nicknamed “Lord of the Skies” after he pioneered the use of jumbo jets to transport huge shipments of drugs between territories.

In November 1999, a joint raid by Mexican and U.S. law enforcement unearthed a mass grave at a desert ranch named La Campana, near Juarez. The grave contained two hundred bodies, maybe more. La Campana was once the property of Fuentes and his lieutenant, Alfonso Corral Olaguez. Carrillo had died in the summer of 1997, following an overdose of anesthesia administered in the course of plastic surgery intended to change his appearance. It was rumored that his Colombian suppliers, envious of his influence, had paid off the medics. Two months later Corral was shot and killed at the Maxfim restaurant in Juarez, leading to a bloody turf war headed by Carrillo’s brother Vicente. The bodies at La Campana, stored in the narco-bunkers that riddled the land, included the remains of those who had crossed Carrillo, among them members of the rival Tijuana cartel as well as unfortunate peasants who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Certaz knew this, because he had helped to put some of them there. The discovery of the bodies had increased the pressure on the Mexican dealers, forcing them to be ever more careful in their operations, and so the need for men with Certaz’s expertise had grown considerably. He had survived the investigations and the recriminations, and had emerged stronger and more secure than ever before.

In the movie, a woman arrived on a train. She was expecting someone to meet her, but there was nobody waiting. She took a ride out to a homestead, where the Irishman lay dead on a picnic table alongside his children.

Certaz was bored. He pressed his thumb against the remote to kill the picture, and heard a knock at the door.

Danny Quinn draped a towel around his waist and went to the door.

“Who is it?” he asked.

“Police.”

It was a mistake, but Brightwell was distracted. It had been a long trip, and he was tired. The heat of the day had made him weary, and now the comparative cool of the desert night had taken him by surprise.

Danny looked at Melanie. She took her purse and headed for the bathroom, closing the door behind her. They had a little weed in a Ziploc bag, but Melanie would just flush it down the john. It was a shame to lose it, but Danny could always get more.

“You got some ID?” said Danny.

He still had not opened the door. He looked through the spy hole and saw a fat man with a round face and a weird neck holding up a badge and a laminated identification card.

“Come on,” said the man. “Open up. This is just routine. We’re searching for illegals. I just need to take a look inside, ask you some questions, then I’ll be gone.”