“That’s the story you should be working on.”

—

Pablo sits at his desk and pounds out his story about voting trends.

He feels like he’s walking underwater—every keystroke is like swinging a hammer, and he makes typo after typo.

“What’s with you today?” Ana asks.

“Nothing. What do you mean?”

“You seem out of it.”

“Hungover,” Pablo says.

Ana doesn’t buy it. Pablo didn’t have that much to drink last night, and he’s probably better at writing with a hangover than without one. And he’s doing very un-Pablo-like things, like asking for more out of their relationship. Pablo is not a “more” person—he’s usually looking for “less.”

“Are you okay?” she asks.

“I’m fine,” Pablo says. “Have you thought about the camping trip?”

“I’m still thinking.”

“Could you think a little faster?” Pablo asks. “I have arrangements to make.”

“Like how many s’mores?”

“Camping permits,” Pablo says. “How many people.”

“Oh. I’ll let you know this afternoon.”

She goes back to her desk and goes online and quickly finds out that Big Bend National Park doesn’t require individual camping permits.

Why would Pablo lie about something like that? Unless he’s just wrong about it. Unlikely—Pablo is personally sloppy but professionally immaculate. He checks his facts. One thing you can never say about Pablo is that he gets his stories wrong.

Ana logs on to Esta Vida.

The featured article is “Who Picked the Winner in Juárez?” and asks the question whether the PAN government, through the army and federal police, cooperated with the Sinaloa cartel to help Barrera control Juárez and the valley. “Is the government biased,” Wild Child asks, “or just singularly inept at arresting people from Sinaloa?”

It’s exactly what they’re all thinking and exactly the kind of story that Óscar won’t let them write anymore.

The next story is even more provocative, addressing the threats that Wild Child received about running photos of dead Zetas. “Don’t Dish It Out If You Can’t Take It” reprints the photos, along with photos and vid-clips that the Zetas have put out on websites.

She glances over at Pablo, who is ham-handedly beating out his article.

What does he know about this?

—

Chuy looks at the Bridge of Dreams.

All he would have to do is walk across. He’d be in El Paso, true, not Laredo, but it would be only a bus ride home.

Home.

The word has almost no meaning.

Chuy hasn’t been home in six years. Hasn’t talked to his family, doesn’t even know if they still live in the same house. Or even if they’re alive. If they know he’s alive, if they even care.

After killing the woman police, his estaca got orders to fade into the city. They live in a safe house in the center of town so they can keep an eye on the newspaper office. Chuy doesn’t know why, he doesn’t care. Forty has a mission for them, but Chuy has a mission of his own.

Which is all that keeps him from walking across the Bridge of Dreams.

—

Eddie Ruiz is already back in Texas.

But he’s thinking about Mexico.

Sitting in his apartment on Fort Bliss, his babysitters playing cards at the kitchen table, he sips on a cold Dos Equis as he watches Univisión coverage of the elections.

Eddie figures he has a dog in that fight.

Face it, man, he tells himself, your chips are stacked with PAN. All the valuable information you have is on PAN politicians and their police. If PAN loses, like the analysts on TV are predicting, your value goes way down. The people you’re going to rat out are going to be gone anyway.

Prosecutors get hard-ons for corrupt politicians who are in office. Once they’re out their appeal fades like an old girlfriend you’re tired of tapping. No one writes headlines about politicians who are finished, and prosecutors love headlines like goats love garbage.

Eddie figures he’s looking at a wilting dick.

The negotiations with the prosecutors have dragged on for months. Eddie’s is a good poker player who knew he was holding face cards and played them well. He was in no hurry because he knew he was looking at fifteen-to-thirty and would get credit for time served.

Eddie just sat tight.

Because, what the fuck, right? Let the suits argue as long as they want.

Sit here or sit somewhere else.

The AG came back with an offer of fifteen years, seizure of Eddie’s personal assets (Eddie don’t give a shit because everything is in his wives’ names anyway), and a $10 million fine (serious money but not serious money). Eddie’s lawyer countered with twelve years, seizure, and $7 million.

Eddie’s going to take it. He’ll be at least four years testifying, with time credited. That left six, but it was really four, federal time. By the time he got to prison, he’d be old news in the narco-world. Then into the program, a whole new life ahead of him, selling aluminum siding in Scottsdale or something.

But that deal still has to be approved by a judge at the time of sentencing, and the judge might get buyer’s remorse if he sees that what he’s purchasing is a collection of out-of-office politicians and retired (or dead) cops.

I’m a used car, Eddie thinks.

As election day drags it’s like that old song, “Fast Women and Slow Horses.” The Ken doll candidate from PRI is in the lead, closely followed by the old whiner from PRD, and PAN…that filly is bringing up the rear.

You might as well just rip up your ticket, Eddie thinks, you ain’t goin’ to the window to collect.

Then Art freakin’ Keller walks through the door.

And makes Eddie an offer he can’t refuse.

—

Adán walks away from the television.

It’s over.

At least as far as PAN is concerned.

Neither Peña Nieto nor López Obrador is going to win. There will be the routine accusations of voter fraud, the usual protest marches, and then the electoral officials will do the intelligent thing and install Peña Nieto as the winner.

The election is not a disappointment, as he had expected that PAN would lose. Peña Nieto won’t throw the North Americans out, but he will neutralize them. Which would have been a dream just a few months ago, but now is a problem in that they’re allies in his war against the Zetas.

All the new government wants is peace, an end to the violence, Adán thinks. It will accept whatever arrangement we make in order to achieve peace and order. It will accept a Sinaloa-Zeta division of the plazas, it will accept a Sinaloa victory, it will accept a Zeta victory.

It only wants a pax narcotica.

Five months, Adán thinks.

We have five months until the new president takes office.

One hundred and fifty days to destroy Ochoa. Can it be done? Or is Nacho right, should we try to make peace?

It’s a hard calculation. So tempting to push for victory. Even now the Zetas are in the process of losing their deal with ’Ndrangheta, in fact, losing all of Europe. The prince of darkness himself, Arturo Keller, personally saw to it, and the Zetas waltzed into his trap that will also set the North American antiterrorist apparatus against them.

Then again, a hundred things could go wrong.

Ochoa still has the upper hand in Guatemala.

He has thousands of fighters. He is without morals, restraint, or scruples—the truly ruthless man.

And that is the hell of all this, Adán thinks.

The unvarnished truth is that Mexico would be better off with you, rather than under the Zetas. You would run a business that didn’t touch the ordinary person’s ordinary life; Ochoa would preside over a reign of terror.

The current government understands this, the future one thinks like a goat bleating “just make it stop.”

“Where are you going?” Eva asks him.

For some reason, she is glued to the elections, her attempt, Adán thinks, to display that she’s a serious person with a real interest in current affairs. It’s part of her new maturity campaign. Eva has adopted the “concerned young parent” role. Now she reads—articles about early education, organic nutrition and climate change, global warming and rising sea levels.