“I always thought politicians were glad-handers.”

“Ted isn’t a glad-hander. He’s a kingmaker. There’s a difference. That difference is money.”

“I’d like a list of the top twenty,” Faroe said.

“No one will talk to you. Ted’s a monster when it comes to business, and for him, politics is business. Most of his associates and employees are scared to death of him.”

“But you weren’t.”

“If you’re asking if Ted knocked me around,” she said, “the answer is no. If you’re asking if he hit Lane, the answer is I’d have put Ted in jail and he knew it.”

“Sounds like you wouldn’t mind feeding Ted to Hector now. What changed your mind?”

“Watching you play touchy-feely with a bomb.”

In silence they walked on toward a side gate that was guarded by a small shack.

Fifty yards from the shack Grace asked softly, “Did you like Lane?”

“He’s a good kid, tough, smart. He held it together better than most men in his position would. I like that.”

“Yes, that would be the most important thing to you,” she muttered.

“What do you want me to say? I spent half an hour with him.”

They didn’t speak again until they were almost to the guard shack. At the last moment, Faroe said very quietly, “Lane loves his mom a lot. She loves him the same way. Seeing it made me…hungry. Until that moment, I didn’t really know why I quit St. Kilda.”

Before Grace could say anything, two men in black windbreakers stepped out of the shadows of the guard shack. Both men carried pistols. The barrels were pointed slightly toward the ground, but not nearly enough for comfort.

Faroe stepped to the side, away from Grace.

The gun muzzles tracked him.

TIJUANA

SUNDAY, 9:27 P.M.

“YOU WORK FOR HECTOR Rivas Osuna?” Faroe asked calmly.

One of the men snapped on a flashlight. “Si, senor. Manos up, por favor.”

Faroe held his hands up and his arms out.

The guard frisked him with quick, neutral efficiency.

“Very polite, these two,” Faroe said to Grace. “Show them your arms.”

Grace stood in a hip-shot pose while the Mexican ran his flashlight over her costume.

“Satisfied?” she asked sweetly.

The guard’s mustache twitched in what could have been a smile or a sneer.

A pair of black utility vehicles roared up the street. With his flashlight the guard gestured toward the lead vehicle, a Cadillac Escalade.

“?Que pasa?” Faroe said sharply. “Hector is meeting us at the track.”

“Hector, he change his min’ mucho,” the guard said in the Spanglish of the border. “Get in.”

Faroe looked at Grace. “You don’t have to risk this. Go back to the hotel.”

Without a word she walked toward the Escalade in a skirt so tight he didn’t see how she breathed, much less moved. He opened the vehicle’s back door, put his hand on her leather-clad butt, and gave her a boost up into the Escalade.

Heavily smoked windows made the interior dark. Grace settled into the middle bench seat. An instant later she realized there was someone on the jump seat behind her. She could smell him, a mixture of sweat, hair oil, and gun oil. When she turned to look, light from the street gleamed faintly on the barrel of the assault rifle that lay across his lap.

“Don’t worry about him,” Faroe said. “He just suffers from testicular insufficiency.”

“You recognize the symptoms, right?”

“In others.”

The guard with the flashlight shoved his pistol into his belt and climbed into the front passenger seat. “Andale.”

The driver bulled his way back into traffic. Behind them brakes screamed and horns shouted. The driver of the Escalade stuck his arm out the window and pumped up and down, the Mexican version of a raised middle finger.

“In Tijuana, working for Hector Rivas means never having to say ‘Excuse me,’” Faroe said.

“You’re enjoying this,” she muttered.

“It’s like a hockey game. You don’t have to wonder where you stand.”

“Lane feels the same about soccer, especially the games at All Saints.”

“If he learned that, his time in Mexico wasn’t wasted.”

“But it goes against everything I’ve tried to teach him,” she said.

“So does Hector. Guess who has the best chance of surviving?”

Mouth flat, Grace watched the nightscape flash by. The driver passed a police patrol car like it was painted on the street. The officers looked sideways, then straight ahead.

“Like Washington, D.C., where Secret Service Suburbans and FBI vehicles have immunity from traffic laws,” she said.

“Down here, the boys have immunity from everything.”

“Where are we going?” she asked, straining to see road signs.

“?A donde vamos?” he said to the guard in the passenger seat.

“Senor Rivas.”

“Now you know as much as I do,” Faroe said to Grace.

“I doubt it.”

“If this is like every dope deal I’ve ever seen, we’ll ride around for an hour while these dudes make sure we aren’t being followed. Then they’ll call somebody and find out where Hector has decided to be at that moment. That’s the problem with living in the shadows. All you have time to think about is covering your own ass. Everything else comes in second.”

“I thought Hector owned Tijuana,” she said.

“He does. But there’s always somebody out there with a gun and an itch to be the new Hector. Both men know that the changeover would happen in the space of time it takes a slug from a.44 Magnum to travel from one side of Hector’s skull to the other.”

Grace flinched.

“I’m not trying to disgust you.” There was an edge in Faroe’s voice. “I’m trying to teach you. Here and now, not one of your beloved laws and regulations are worth cold spit. We’re in the middle of a guerrilla war. All that counts is guns and money.”

She didn’t say anything.

He leaned over, put a gentle, immovable hand under her chin, and turned her face toward him.

“Hector has lived this war for a quarter of a century,” Faroe said in a low voice. “He’s stayed on top by making sure that nobody gets a clear shot at him. Like every warlord, every tyrant, every outlaw from Bonnie Prince Charlie to Osama bin Laden, Hector has learned to live unpredictably. And richly. He owns players on both sides of the war.”

Faroe glanced into the front seat. “?Correcto?”

“Si, es correcto.” The Mexican half turned and gave Faroe a weary, wary smile.

“What a hellish life it must be,” Grace said.

“It’s better than hoeing a field of pinto beans on some communal farm in the mountains,” Faroe said. “Hector is what I’d be if I’d been born in Ojos Azules.”

“You sound proud of your barbaric instincts.”

“They’ve kept me alive and allowed you to argue how many legal motions can dance on the head of an indictment.”

“Motions are better than bullets.”

“In the sunshine world, yes. We aren’t there.”

“Then it’s too bad we don’t have any bullets,” she said tightly.

“Yeah. I’ve been thinking the same thing.”

The Escalade bored on through the evening traffic, circling back and forth through the Zona Rio, past nightclubs and restaurants and cheap upholstery shops and high-end retailers, through slums and shantytowns, and finally past middle-class colonias that would have been at home on either side of the border.

Silently Grace admitted that she was seeing the city with different eyes. Tijuana wasn’t as alien as it had been. She didn’t know if that was good or bad, but she knew it was real.

“What are you thinking?” Faroe asked softly.

“Tijuana and San Diego aren’t as separate as I thought they were.”

“How so?”

She shrugged. “The U.S.-Mexico border is a legal artifice. It’s necessary, but it isn’t real. Life and death, hope and fear, drugs and money-they all wash back and forth without much regard for national laws on either side.”