“All borders are like that.”

“And you like it that way,” she said.

“I wasn’t given a vote. I was just born into a Hobbesian world and made what I could of it for as long as I could take it.”

“Then you looked for a temporary autonomous zone and I found you before you could escape,” she said grimly.

He released her chin, caressed her cheekbone with his thumb, and said, “I didn’t have anything to escape to, but I didn’t know it then. Now I do. I just don’t know what the hell to do about it.”

The big Escalade tunneled through the evening crowds along Avenida Revolucion, past the tourist bars and shuttered farmacias advertising cut-rate Viagra. Drunken sailors from San Diego and wide-eyed tourists from Nebraska shuffled along the crowded sidewalks, staring and fending off the vendors and hustlers or accepting them with as much anxiety as pleasure.

The black Escalade drove on through the crowded streets and alleys of the Zona Norte, past cheap hotels that served as brothels or as consolidation warehouses for the forwarders of human freight, the smugglers whose cargo was illegal immigrants.

“It’s odd,” Grace said.

“What is?”

“This is a slum, you can see the poverty and dirt, but…”

Faroe waited.

“It’s so alive,” she said finally. “People laughing and shouldering on the sidewalks, eating tacos from corner stands, drinking beer. They don’t look oppressed and exploited.”

“A lot of them are on their way north. They’re smiling because they’re on the threshold of the Promised Land.”

“I’ve handled cases involving the immigrant smugglers. They’re treated like heroes by the very people they exploit.”

“The smugglers are heroes,” Faroe said. “They offer hope in exchange for money. A good deal for both sides.”

“And Hector?”

“They sing his praises in narco-corridas. He’s a god because he was once as poor as anyone from the hills and now he owns the plaza, which is to say he owns the city.”

“The plaza?”

“A slice of the border. Everyone who smuggles anyone or anything through Hector’s plaza pays for the privilege. Since his plaza runs from the ocean well out into the desert, Hector is one rich son of a bitch.”

“Outlaws paying outlaws,” Grace said, shaking her head.

“Even outside the law, there’s always some kind of order. Plata o plomo.”

As the Escalade forced its way through the Zona Norte traffic, the driver reached for the electric switches and opened every window. Cool, damp air poured in. Grace wasn’t dressed for it. She shivered and rubbed her arms.

“I’m cold,” she said loudly. “Please raise the windows again.”

The guard in the passenger seat shook his head. “No.”

She looked at Faroe. “Why?”

“Any pistolero on the street can shoot into the car,” Faroe said, pulling her close, sharing his body heat, “but our boys here would have a hell of a time shooting back through closed windows.”

The guard held up his thumb and forefinger. He aimed the imaginary weapon out the open window and dropped the hammer. Then he turned and smiled at Faroe, showing two front teeth covered in stainless steel that reflected light like the metal of his pistol.

A cell phone rang. The driver snatched the unit off his belt. He listened, then punched the call off and muttered something to the guard.

The guard grunted in surprise, then looked back over his shoulder. “You mus’ be muy importante. We go righ’ now to see el jefe.”

“How long will it take?” Faroe asked. “She’s freezing.”

Silence was his only answer.

TIJUANA

SUNDAY, 10:30 P.M.

FAROE HELD GRACE FOR fifteen minutes before the Escalade turned off a fast thoroughfare and slowly climbed a coastal hill. Once the wind stopped pouring through the windows, he expected her to back away.

She didn’t.

He told himself he should let go.

He didn’t.

The neighborhood was quiet, expensive, and overlooked the Pacific Ocean. They passed two Tijuana police cars that formed a casual roadblock. The officers didn’t quite salute, but they sure didn’t offer to stop the big SUV. The road wound up the hill to the top, where a big house was surrounded by an even bigger fence. The automatic gate opened. As the Escalade pulled into the driveway, the garage door lifted. It closed the instant the vehicle’s bumper cleared the electronic beam.

The three bodyguards waited. They hustled Faroe and Grace out of the car and into the house. The place was expensively furnished, etched glass and buttery leather couches, fine art on the walls and fine stone tiles on the floor.

And it smelled like the barracks of an unwashed army.

Grace wrinkled her nose.

Faroe memorized everything he saw.

The jock-strap smell couldn’t quite conceal the sharp tang of tobacco and marijuana smoke. Male voices called back and forth, ragging on each other and the world. A half dozen bodyguards lounged in front of a huge wide-screen television set, smoking and watching a soccer match. Four more men sat at a dining room table eating a meal of roasted chicken with tortillas and pickled peppers.

Weapons lay everywhere. Black assault rifles with loaded magazines stood at attention on a long rack against one wall. Chrome and black semiautomatic pistols hung in shoulder harnesses on a clothes tree, along with an old but still deadly sawed-off shotgun on a shoulder strap.

The man chopping up the chicken used a machete as long as his arm.

Faroe felt naked.

Grace’s sheer silk blouse, skyscraper heels, and tight skirt shocked the place into silence for a moment. Then several of the men made remarks in Spanish.

Faroe gave them a long look before he said to the Mexican from the car, “Your compadres are pigs. Tell them to mind their mouths in front of my woman.”

The guard shrugged. “You tell them.”

“If it happens again, I will.”

“I no think it happen. They don’ like you look.”

“Do I want to know what they said?” Grace asked. “My gutter Spanish isn’t as current as yours.”

“They like your shoes.”

“Great. I’ll swap them for one of those rifles.”

The guard’s mustache twitched. Definitely a small smile.

They were escorted through the barracks to a separate wing of the house. Two men armed with Uzi submachine guns blocked their way.

The Mexican with the mustache barked out staccato orders and used Hector’s full name.

The guards stepped back and let them pass.

Faroe, Grace, and Mustache walked down a long hallway lined with bedrooms. Each had been turned into some kind of work space. Through the open door of one bedroom, Grace saw three young, well-dressed women working at machines on a table.

“They look like bank tellers,” she said softly to Faroe.

“They are. Banco de Hector. The machines are mechanical currency counters.”

Bales of counted, sorted, and banded bills were stacked waist high along one wall of the room, like so many yards of green paper.

For an instant Grace couldn’t believe what she was seeing. There was more money in this upscale suburban bedroom than she’d ever seen short of the Federal Reserve Bank vaults in Washington.

“So, Judge, what you think? You like my pinche casa de dinero? Huh?”

Hector Rivas stood in the hallway in front of them, smoke curling up around his face from a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. He looked like a character out of a noir magazine.

And every instinct Faroe had told him that Hector was screwed up on something-as unpredictable as hot nitroglycerin.

The Butcher.

Jesus, Grace, why didn’t you go back to the hotel when you could?

“Is ver’ grande, no?” Hector said.

“I’ve been inside the Federal Reserve Bank in Washington,” she said calmly.