Chuy laughing like a motherfucker as he rips off a clip from the AR. Hears the nephew scream like a little girl. Sees Bruno slumped over the wheel, the cowboy hat slammed over his face.

Truck swerves and then flips.

Does a double roll and then goes into the ditch.

Gabe eases off on the gas. “Think they’re dead?”

“We gotta make sure.”

Gabe flips a U-ey and they go back. Get out of their Escalade and walk over to the ditch, where the truck is upside down.

Bruno is dead, no question.

Half his head is crushed, the rest of it shot away.

The nephew is whimpering. Trapped in the passenger seat, jaws-of-life candidate, he don’t look so good. He stares up at Chuy and moans, “Please.”

“Doing you a favor,” Chuy says. Even if the nephew makes it, gonna be a helper-monkey situation.

He fires into the kid’s head.

When they get back to Laredo, Esteban gives them $150,000.

And Chuy gets an aporto.

They call him Jesus the Kid.

La Tuna, Sinaloa

Adán’s reaction to Magda’s meeting with Jorge is typically male.

“Did you sleep with him?” he asks when she comes back.

“Do you need the coke connection?” Magda asks.

“Yes.”

“Then I slept with him,” Magda answers. “Or I didn’t, whichever turns you on more.”

She still likes to turn him on, maybe all the more so because she no longer has to. It’s now a matter of choice, not survival, and the distinction is important. Whether or not she slept with Jorge—or anyone else for that matter—is none of Adán’s damn business, so she leaves the question unanswered.

Let him twist.

Besides, she’s heard all about his courtship of Nacho’s daughter, Eva, the little virgin. It’s not surprising, but a little disappointing, Adán playing the stereotypical Sinaloan señor, plucking a rose from the beauty pageant garden. Still, he hasn’t really plucked her yet, has he, if the rest of the rumors are true. Our Adán, every inch the gentleman.

Magda chose a basic black dress for this reunion, with a diamond necklace that she bought for herself. It does more than draw his eye to her décolletage, it makes a point—I bought this, Adán darling, with my own money. I don’t need you to drape jewelry around me anymore.

Or a blanket.

Magda got a bonus of twenty kilos of cocaine for setting up the Colombian connection. Of course Adán knows that she’s already sold all twenty kilos and used the profit to buy more discounted coke from Jorge, which she’ll parlay into a larger fortune. Nothing happens in Sinaloa that Adán Barrera doesn’t know about. Still, numbers are numbers to an accountant—it helps to have a little visual aid. “Do you like what you see?”

“I always have,” Adán says.

“I meant the necklace.”

“I know.” He understands—Magda is asserting her independence. It’s not such a bad thing, given that he’s probably going to have to cut her loose anyway. She’s doubtless heard all about Eva, and her pride will make her pull away before she’s pushed. “It’s lovely.”

“Would you like me to take it off?”

“No,” Adán says, his throat tightening. She doesn’t need him, and it makes her wildly attractive. Like Nora. “Just the dress. Please.”

“Oh. ‘Please.’ In that case…” The dress slides off her like water. The diamonds dig into his chest as he makes love to her.

—

Chuy has about $120,000 in the bank (well, not in the bank, he can’t open his own account), but what does an eleven-year-old buy with $120K?

Can’t buy a house.

Can’t buy a car.

Can’t buy a ticket to an R-rated movie.

He can buy clothes, he can buy Air Jordans, he can buy video games. He can buy a woman, or rent one, anyway. Him and Gabe go across the bridge and through the guard shack into Boy’s Town down Calle Cleopatra where Esteban hooks them up with a brothel. And not a house where their next stop is a pharmacy, but to a really good house where the women are beautiful and really know what to do.

Which is a good thing, because Chuy really don’t.

Next morning he revisits the car issue.

“You want a car?” Esteban asks. “No problem.”

They get back to the other Laredo, Esteban takes Chuy to a dealership and lays down the kid’s cash for a new Mustang convertible, black. It’s in Esteban’s name, but it’s Chuy’s car, and Esteban hands him the keys.

Chuy’s rolling.

He has money, clothes, a brand-new ride. He has dreams that would sear the inside of your eyelids. Speaking of eyelids, Gabe does something really weird. Comes home one night, and his eyelids are tattooed with images of eyeballs.

“So when I close my eyes,” Gabe says, demonstrating, “it looks they’re still open.”

What it looks like is creepy, Chuy thinks. Especially because Gabe’s real eyes are brown but his tattoo eyes are blue.

It gets creepier.

Gabe gets called across the river to do some “work.” Calls one night and he sounds messed up, really high, and he’s talking some weird shit about kidnapping this kid they knew, Poncho, who was dealing for the Alliance, and his girlfriend.

Gabe, he’s just riffing. “You should have seen Poncho, dude. He was crying like a fag. ‘No! I’m your friend! I’m your friend!’ I was all like, ‘What friend, you son of a bitch, shut your fucking mouth!’ and then—POOM—I just slashed him, dude. Just took this motherfucking beer bottle and slit his whole fucking belly open! You should have been there, dude, you should have seen it. He was bleeding? And I took this plastic cup and held it under his belly and filled it with blood and then I drank it, dude! Right in front of him I drank it and held it up and dedicated it to Santísima Muerte, and then I went over to the girl and did the same thing.”

“So they’re both dead?” Chuy asks.

“Yeah, they both bled out. They died and shit, dude.”

“You really cooked them?”

“Of course, dude. Right there at the house.” Fifty-gallon drum and gasoline. “They’re soup, dude.”

Chuy clicks off and goes back to Grand Theft Auto. He didn’t know Gabe was into that weird Santísima Muerte shit. Chuy’s a Catholic, man, he believes in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

—

Eddie’s having a relaxing evening cocktail at the Punta Bar down by the beach in Acapulco, scoping out this tourista chick who looks like she’s either Danish or Swedish or Norwegian, but definitely a Scandinavian Ten.

Blond hair.

Rack.

Yoga ass.

Eddie knows he’s looking tight—new plum-colored polo, white jeans, huarache sandals. It’s annoying that the shirts have to be a size too large these days to accommodate the Glock, but war is hell.

The chick is drinking a mojito—of course she is—and Eddie has the bartender set up another for her. She looks over at Eddie, lifts her glass in thanks, and Eddie smiles back.

He’s going to get up in that tonight.

Then an explosion goes off.

—

Chuy goes in heavy.

Okay, a little too heavy.

Okay, a lot too heavy.

He knows Ruiz’s rep. He’s seen the video and doesn’t want to star in Ruiz’s next movie, and he knows that the Punta Bar is a Tapia hangout and that Ruiz will have people there.

Chuy got orders to go to Acapulco to take out this guy, this Eddie Ruiz.

Because what the fuck, right?

Why not?

Ruiz is looking for men, Zeta sicarios. He’s not going to have his eyes open for some eleven-year-old kid. Plus, this is a chance. If Bruno Resendez was worth $150K, Eddie Ruiz—public enemy número uno—has to have a price tag of what, half a million? A mil? More? And if Esteban could buy him a car, he could also buy him a house. Two houses—one for him and one for Mami and Papi.

It’s Chuy’s fantasy, rolling up on the house in his sled, walking in and saying, No more digging ditches, Papi, no more cutting hair, Mami—and handing them the keys to their new house on the other side of Laredo. A nine-bedroom house—a room for everyone and a Guatemalan maid to keep it clean.