“I’m busy, Pablo,” Abrego says when he spots Pablo walking up the street.

“I’m sorry about your people,” Pablo says.

“No comment.”

“Come on,” Pablo says. “Usual deal—deep source, no attribution. What’s going on?”

It’s tricky, asking a cop questions after a brother officer has been murdered. They’re angry, sensitive, easily offended, and Abrego is no different. “What’s going on? Some narco garbage killed a police commander.”

“Motive?” Pablo asks. “Leads?”

“I guess Ledesma was pushing too hard and got someone angry,” Abrego says.

“Vicente Fuentes?”

Abrego shakes his head. “These weren’t locals.”

“How do you know?”

This pisses Abrego off. “Because I’d have heard something.”

Pablo doesn’t know if Abrego is La Línea or not. He guesses not, but he’s not going to ask, either. “If they weren’t locals, who were they?”

“Go to Sinaloa and ask.”

“Adán Barrera?”

Abrego hesitates and then says, “Cops have been getting calls. On their personal cell phones. Or other cops have been approaching them…”

“And saying what?”

“That ‘New People’ are moving in,” Abrego says. “The Sinaloa people, and you’d better get on the bus now.”

If he’s right, Pablo thinks, at least five guys missed the bus.

“Go away, Pablo,” Abrego says. “I have work to do, then I have a funeral to attend.”

—

Pablo takes a Chihuahua state homicide investigator to lunch.

Comandante Sánchez isn’t fooled by the social gesture—in Mexico no less than the rest of the world, there is no such thing as a free lunch. So after polishing off a plate of excellent camarones, he looks across the table at Pablo and asks, “Pues?”

“What’s going on in Juárez?”

“Why ask me?”

“Did you get a phone call, too?” Pablo asks.

“From whom?”

“The ‘New People.’ ”

“Who told you about that?”

Pablo doesn’t answer.

Then Sánchez says, “As a matter of fact, I did. On my private phone, and how did they get that number? What we’re hearing is they approached division commanders with money. I guess Ledesma didn’t take it.”

“Would you like another beer? I think I would.” Pablo signals the waiter and then turns back to Sánchez. “Are we looking at an invasion here?”

“You’re so well informed, you tell me.”

“Okay,” Pablo says, starting to get annoyed with the game. “Is this Adán Barrera putting the empire back together?”

Sánchez says, “You were a kid then.”

“I heard the stories.”

The waiter sets two cold cervezas on the table and then, at a glance from Sánchez, steps away.

“Do yourself a favor,” Sánchez says. “Don’t hear stories now.”

“What does that mean?”

“You know what it means.”

“Oh, come on.” The food has helped Pablo’s general condition, as has the beer, but he still has a headache and all this silly subterfuge makes it worse. The whole world knows about Adán Barrera—there have been books, novels, movies, television shows. The narcos are a media franchise, for God’s sake, this generation’s version of the Mafia.

“That was the old days, wasn’t it?” Pablo asks. “The cartels, the patrones—they’re all dead or locked up. Even Osiel Contreras is in prison.”

“But Adán Barrera is out.”

Pablo is annoyed and eager to finish up the interview. “So what are you saying? There’s going to be a ‘war’? Barrera is moving in on Juárez?”

“I’m saying you’d be better off not hearing any more stories,” Sánchez says. He reaches across the table for the bill.

A new one on Pablo.

He’s never seen a cop pick up the check before.

—

It takes Pablo three hours to track down Ramón, but he finally finds his old schoolmate at the Kentucky, near the Santa Fe Bridge that crosses into El Paso.

Pablo plops down on the stool beside Ramón. “Qué pasa?”

“Nada.”

Nothing my ass, Pablo thinks. If Ramón is hanging out by the border there’s a reason—he has a shipment going over. And it speaks to another truth about Juárez—everybody knows someone in the drug business.

The Kentucky is classic Old Juárez. It came into being just a few weeks after Prohibition hit the United States as an easy place for gringos to come and get a drink. Sinatra used to hang out here, and Marilyn Monroe, and the legend—although Pablo doesn’t believe it—is that Al Capone visited once after making a deal for bootleg whiskey.

But the bar is mostly famous for the birthplace of the margarita.

That’s us, Pablo thinks, we’re known for other contraband, other countries’ movie stars, and fruity drinks.

He orders an Indio.

“Long time no see, ’mano,” Ramón says with a trace of resentment in his voice.

It’s true, Pablo thinks—in high school they were buddies, hung out all the time, but then their lives took different turns. I got busy with work and other friends and Ramón went to prison.

Got caught jacking cars and did three years in Juárez’s deservedly notorious CERESO.

If you wanted to survive there, you joined Los Aztecas.

Ramón wanted to survive.

The gang actually started in American prisons, where it’s called Barrio Azteca, but when the U.S. started to deport convicts who were also illegal aliens, the gang quickly spread to Mexican prisons.

Then into the community.

There are roughly six hundred Aztecas in Juárez, but they use kids from a lot of the little gangs, and the word is that they’re taking over more and more of the enforcement duties of the Juárez cartel. With La Línea, they control the drug trade in the northeast part of the city, while Los Mexicles and Los Aristos Asesinos control the southwest.

Pablo’s heard the stories about how they exercise control—how they throw big parties and everyone cheers while they beat up a prisoner. Then they dig a hole, fill it with mesquite branches, throw the victim in, and light a match. Pablo doesn’t quite believe those stories and doesn’t believe that Ramón would do anything like that, but it’s a fact that the Juárez cartel gives Los Aztecas a discount on the cocaine that they traffic across the border.

The gang makes a lot of money.

Los Aztecas have a military structure—generals, captain, and lieutenants—and the last time Pablo heard, Ramón was a lieutenant on the way up. He looks like an Azteca—crew cut with a blue bandana, white sleeveless T-shirt, tattoos up his neck.

Ramón looks Pablo up and down. “You look like shit, ’mano.”

“Rough night.”

“Looks more like a rough month,” Ramón says. “You need money?”

“No, thanks.”

“How’s Mateo?”

“He’s good, thanks. Your guys?”

“Isobel’s a little bitch on wheels,” Ramón answers, “but you already know that. Dolores is almost walking, and Javier, he’s playing fútbol now.”

“No shit.”

“You should come by sometime,” Ramón says.

“I will.”

“Watch a match on TV or something, burn some steaks…”

“Sounds great.”

Ramón signals the bartender for a refill on his whiskey and then asks, “So what brings you here now?”

Pablo says, “A police lieutenant clipped.”

“ ‘Clipped,’ ” Ramón says. “Listen to you, tough guy.”

Pablo chuckles at his own pretensions, and then asks, “Who did it?”

Ramón knocks his fresh drink down with one gulp and then asks, “You want to do some blow?”

“I have to pick Mateo up,” Pablo says, shaking his head. That’s true, but the other truth is that he hasn’t done drugs in years. Okay, maybe a hit of yerba from time to time, but even that’s getting rare.

“Anyway, walk out back with me,” Ramón says. Then he says to the bartender, “Narizazo.”

Time to snort up.

Pablo follows him out the back door into the alley. Ramón takes a vial of coke out of his jeans pocket, scoops a little onto his fingernail, and takes a hit. “They say it’s bad when you start using your own product. It’s just I’m so fucking tired these days, I need a little pick-me-up in the afternoon. So what were you asking me?”