“This is not a surrender on our part, but an offer of a truce. We need to know, at least, what the rules are, for even in a war, there are rules.”

The editorial itself makes headlines internationally. It resonates among the journalistic community in Mexico because so many journalists have been murdered in Chihuahua, Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, and Michoacán.

The Zetas, especially, have established a virtual silence born of terror in the areas that they control, with media in Nuevo Laredo and Reynosa having stopped running stories on the narcotics trade at all, and average people in the street afraid even to speak their names, referring to them instead as “the last letter.”

The paper receives hundreds of letters and e-mails.

No answer, however, comes from the cartels.

No rules, no stated expectations.

Pablo knows what the expectations are; he doesn’t need a rulebook to know the rules: Write what we tell you, and only what we tell you, or we’ll kill you. Take the sobre, or we’ll kill you. Sell us your soul, or we’ll kill you.

It’s a bitter lesson—you think you can rent your soul, but it’s always a sale, and all sales are final.

That night, the envelope man Pablo finds him on the street.

“Tomorrow, pendejo, we see that story or—” He smiles, sticks his two fingers out like a gun, and squeezes the “trigger.”

Ana’s in bed when Pablo gets back. He doesn’t want to wake her so he sleeps on the couch. Or tries to, without a lot of success. He thinks of writing Mateo a goodbye letter, but decides that’s too melodramatic.

He decides to write the Sinaloa article.

Then the Zeta one.

Then neither.

In the morning, he decides, I’ll go into the office and hand Óscar my resignation.

Then I’ll cross the bridge.

—

In the morning Pablo tries to find a way to tell Ana what he’s going to do.

But he can’t find the words.

Or, face it, he tells himself, the courage.

Maybe that’s the way, though, Pablo thinks. Just tell her that you’re afraid, that you don’t want to end up like Armando or Giorgio. She’ll think less of you, but she won’t hate you the way she will if she knows you took money.

Just tell her that you’re afraid.

She’ll believe that.

Five times he tries to open his mouth, but nothing comes out. He tries again as they drive to the office together. He feels like he’s on a conveyor belt headed inexorably for the blades of an abattoir, but can’t yell to stop it.

They get to the office and park the car, cross the street to get a coffee.

Pablo can picture the crushed, disappointed look on El Búho’s face.

He thought about simply typing up his resignation and e-mailing it, but decided that would be too cowardly. Óscar deserves a face-to-face explanation, and an apology, and somehow Pablo feels that he deserves it, too. Deserves to look into Óscar’s hurt eyes and remember his expression. Deserves to hear Óscar’s disappointed words and have them replay in his head. Deserves to walk out of the office in shame, clean out his desk, feel the stares on his back, and then (try to) explain things to Ana.

And then what? he thinks as he sips his café con leche and looks across the street at the office building that’s been the only professional home he’s ever known. You’re done in journalism—no decent paper will hire you. The best you can hope for is to freelance for la nota roja, circling the city like a vulture, picking at its bones.

A creature that makes its living from corpses.

Can’t do it, he thinks.

Can’t and won’t.

Then again, you might not have the chance—you might be one of those corpses, if the narcos get angry that they’ve wasted their money on you and decide to do something about it. Face it, there’s no future for you in journalism and there’s no future for you in Juárez.

Or anywhere in Mexico, for that matter.

You’re going to have to cross the bridge.

Become a pocho.

“You’re particularly uncommunicative this morning,” Ana says.

“Ummm.”

“That’s more like it.”

He sets his cup down and gets up. “I’m going in.”

“I’ll go with you.”

He crosses the street and shows his ID badge to the security officers at the front door, who know him anyway. Getting into the elevator, he acknowledges that this might be the last time and almost changes his mind, but knows he can’t.

He has to say something now, before he goes into Óscar’s office.

“Ana—”

“What?”

“I—”

Óscar appears in the doorway and announces that he wants to see the entire reportorial staff in the conference room immediately.

“I am no longer willing to risk the lives of the people for whom I am professionally and personally responsible,” he says when they’ve assembled, “to report upon a situation that even the best of journalists—and that’s what you are—cannot affect. We will no longer report on the drug situation.”

Ana objects. Red in the face, almost tearful, she asks, “We’re just going to give in to them? Knuckle under? Allow them to intimidate us?”

Óscar has tears in his eyes as well. His cane taps on the floor and his voice quivers as he answers, “I don’t feel that I have a viable choice, Ana.”

“But how is this going to work?” Pablo asks. “Say there’s a murder. We just don’t report it?”

“You report the fact of an apparent homicide,” Óscar says, “but leave it at that. You make no connection to the drug situation.”

“That’s absurd,” Ana says.

“I agree,” Óscar answers. “Our civic life, however, has become an absurdity. This is not a suggestion, this is an instruction. I will wield a heavy editorial pen and simply delete anything you write that might jeopardize the safety of anyone on this paper. Do you understand?”

“I understand that it’s the death of a great newspaper,” Ana says.

“Which I will cheerfully bury,” Óscar says, “before I will bury another one of you. I will announce our new policy in tomorrow’s edition so that the narcos will be notified.”

“What about Giorgio?” Ana presses.

El Búho raises an eyebrow.

“Are we going to investigate it?” Ana asks. “Or just let it go?”

Because the police have let it go, Pablo thinks. Of the over five thousand murders in Juárez since the cartel war began, not a single one has resulted in a conviction. They all know the reality—no one has investigated Giorgio’s murder, and no one is going to. And now Óscar is telling them that they’re not going to, either.

This man, this hero, who once took a narco gun blast and wouldn’t let it stop him, now leans on his cane, and looks tired and old, and says with his silence that he, and they, have been silenced.

Not Ana.

They’re drinking at Oxido that night, one of the clubs still open in the PRONAF Zone, and she has a couple more than she usually does.

“I might as well have taken the money,” she says.

“What do you mean?” Pablo asks.

“When the narcos offered me a bribe,” Ana says, “I should have taken it. They’re our bosses now, right? So they should pay us.”

Pablo drains his beer.

“I’m not letting it go,” Ana says. “They killed our friend and our colleague and I’m not letting it go.”

“Ana, you heard Óscar. What are you going to do?”

“Push,” Ana said. “Push the authorities until they do something about it.”

“Like they did something about Jimena’s murder?” Pablo asks. “Like they did something about the attack on you and Marisol? How about those two women up in the valley? Or the dozens of murders we see every week? Are those the authorities you’re going to?”

“I’ll shame them,” Ana says.

“Ana, they’re shameless.”

He’s scared. If she pushes on this, she could be next.

“Well, I’m not,” Ana mutters. “I’m not shameless.”

“Óscar won’t print what you write.”

“I know,” Ana says.