She also bitched about Diego. Even Martín Tapia was getting fed up with his brother’s antics. Diego comes to stay at the Cuernavaca house for weeks at a time, and the well-heeled neighbors have started to complain about the loud music, the strange men coming in and out at all hours of the night and day, the clouds of yerba smoke rising above the walls, the apparent squadron of hookers who arrive in the evening and depart in the morning.

Alberto was even worse, with his bejeweled pistols and norteño clothes, flashing his money around jewelry stores, nightclubs, restaurants, and discos. There have been incidents—fights in bars, shootings, alleged rapes—all of which cost money and favors to straighten out. And there are rumors of Alberto’s involvement in kidnapping—the sons of wealthy businessmen—which, if it continues, can’t be straightened out. The big money establishment won’t tolerate that for long.

So Yvette gave up tidbits of family gossip, useful in its own way, but no hard information.

He knew that she was playing a cute double game—giving him enough to keep him interested but nothing that could hurt the Tapias or even Barrera. Just keep him on the hook in case things went sick and wrong with Adán and they needed an ally with a voice in Washington.

Keller played the same game with her. He fed her tidbits from DEA intelligence—similar information about Solorzano, gossip about their Zeta allies, general analysis of trends in U.S. drug policy.

“What about the Mérida Initiative?” she asked one time. “Is it going to pass?”

The Mérida Initiative was a proposed $1.4 billion U.S. aid package to Mexico to fight drug trafficking—cash, equipment, and training.

“I don’t know,” Keller answered. “It’s controversial.”

“Because of corruption?”

“That’s part of it.”

Even the questions they asked each other were risky, because each tried to discern the reason for the question, which in itself could provide information. Why were the Tapias interested in Mérida? Why did Keller want to know where Adán bought his clothes? Where was Magda Beltrán? Why did Keller want to know?

Now Keller is getting tired of the game. The string has to run out. Aguilar or Vera will find out about it, or Adán will, and then it will be over, and he has to make it pay off before that happens. So today, as the boat floats slowly along the green water of the canal, he presses. “Give me something I can actually use.”

Yvette wears a long white dress today, and the effect is fetching and a little anachronistic, as if they were in a Monet painting of people on a Sunday along the Seine.

“All right,” she says. “Adán is getting married.”

“Really.”

“To Nacho Esparza’s daughter,” she says, an edge in her voice.

The marriage will bring Adán closer to Esparza, Keller thinks. Are the Tapias concerned about it? Wondering if they’re losing influence, that Adán is pulling away from them?

“The girl is just eighteen,” Yvette sniffs. “A beauty queen, of course.”

“Adán has a type.”

“Apparently.”

He keeps his tone casual as he asks, “When’s the wedding?”

Yvette says, “We’ve been told to save three days—July first, second, or third.”

“Where?”

“No one knows.”

“You’re lying.” She has to know—Diego is doubtless in charge of security, and Keller tells her so.

“He hasn’t told us,” Yvette insists. “He just says that we’ll be informed of the location the day before.”

It’s classic Adán, Keller thinks, a heady mixture of paranoia and arrogance. He’ll take every precaution, but his ego tells him—probably accurately—that’s he’s untouchable.

Even if an agency wanted to stage a raid on the wedding, it couldn’t organize an assault on that scale inside twenty-four hours. Diego will have the site protected by rings of security, including local and state cops. Anyone who wants to get near that wedding without an invitation is going to have to shoot his way in, and even that’s doubtful.

But God, the guest list.

It’s a royal wedding—the Barreras joining with the Esparzas in a dynastic marriage. Adán knows that he has to go full bore, invite every major narco that he’s not actively at war with, make a show of wealth and confidence.

And the invited know that they have to go, lest they offend the royal couple. A raid on the wedding could net almost the entire Most Wanted list, in Mexico and the United States.

It’s a pipe dream, Keller thinks.

But even pipe dreams have their uses.

—

Keller does an analysis of orders from the scores of floral shops in Sinaloa and Durango. Every florist shows a vast increase in orders for July first, second, and third. Barrera has ordered flowers from all over the Golden Triangle.

The same situation exists for caterers. Every major caterer in the general area has been engaged.

So Barrera is going to throw himself a huge party, Keller thinks, with every major narco in the country, and there is nothing we can do about it.

Keller calls for a meeting of the committee.

—

“If I could get you a location with twenty-four hours’ notice,” Keller asks, “will you go in?”

“Yes,” Vera answers.

“No,” Aguilar says. “There would be no time for proper planning, we would be walking into a hornet’s nest, never mind the possibility—no, the probability—of civilian casualties.”

Vera says, “With a select force of my men—”

“You’d be risking a bloodbath,” Aguilar says. “I mean, my God, do you really want images of a massacre at a wedding all over the television news? The public wouldn’t stand for it, and I wouldn’t blame them. Think about it. An errant bullet strikes a bride? It’s not worth the risk.”

“To get Barrera?” Keller asks.

“To get anyone,” Aguilar says. “We do not defeat the narcos by becoming them, and by the way, not even the narcos have attacked a wedding.”

“Who knew you were so sentimental?” Vera asks.

“I am not sentimental, I am correct,” Aguilar sniffs. “A wedding is a holy sacrament.”

“A demonic one in this case,” Vera says.

“What crime has Eva Esparza been convicted or even accused of?” Aguilar asks.

“Oh, here we go again,” says Vera.

“Yes, here we go again,” Aguilar says. “There are right ways of doing things and wrong ways of doing things, and I am going to persist in insisting that we do things the right way.”

“Then we’re going to lose,” Vera says. He turns to Keller. “How could you get us the location on twenty-four hours’ notice?”

“Cell phone traffic,” Keller says. “They’ll have to let people know, and if we pick up a surge from a certain area, it might be indicative.”

“So you don’t have a source,” Aguilar says.

“How would I have a source?”

“A good question,” Aguilar says, “because I would hate to think that you’re violating our working agreement.”

“He could violate my sister if it would get us Barrera,” Vera says.

“That’s very nice,” Aguilar says. “Thank you.”

“So what should I tell Washington?” Keller asks. “That you don’t want to take this shot at Barrera?”

“Well, there’s a shot across the bow,” Vera says. “Did someone say, ‘Mérida Initiative’?”

Aguilar asks, “What does Washington know about this?”

“Nothing from me,” Keller says, “but I’m sure EPIC has picked up soundings. And if you want satellite runs, I have to tell them something.”

“Tell them,” Aguilar says, “that it’s an internal Mexican matter.”

“It’s not an internal matter if they’re sending us a billion-plus dollars in weaponry, aircraft, and surveillance technology,” Vera says. “If we’re allies, we’re allies.”

“If we were to move against Barrera in this situation,” Aguilar says—“and again, I remain opposed—we would have to get clearance from the very highest levels.”

Which is as good as killing it, Keller thinks.