“What are you doing?” Pablo asks, completely taken aback. “Who are you and what are you doing?”

“Take it,” the man says. He has the face of a cop and the body to match. Barrel chest, wide shoulders that strain his gray sports coat. Pablo has met dozens of cops but he doesn’t know this one.

“What is this?’ he repeats.

“El sobre,” the man says.

The bribe.

“I don’t want it.”

The man’s smile turns threatening. “I’m not asking you if you want it, m’ijo. I’m saying take it.”

Pablo tries to give him the envelope back, but the man traps his wrist against his chest before he can get to it. “Take it. There’ll be another like it every Monday.”

“From who?”

“Does it matter?” the man asks.

Then he walks away.

Pablo rips the envelope open.

It’s three times his weekly salary.

In cash.

Enough to hire a decent lawyer, if that’s what he wants to do. Enough, if you add it up week by week, to take a flight to Mexico City twice a month and rent a modest room. Enough…

He recalls an old dicho—

When the devil comes, he comes on angel’s wings.

3 Jolly Coppers on Parade

Oh, they look so nice

Looks like the angels have come down from Paradise

—Randy Newman

“Jolly Coppers on Parade”

Mexico City

2008

Keller walks down the center aisle to the Altar of Forgiveness.

As if, he thinks.

The altar allegedly got its name because victims of the Inquisition were brought there to ask for absolution before they were taken out and executed.

Yvette Tapia kneels there now, her head covered in a veil.

Keller kneels beside her.

She’d called an hour ago.

Not with the confident voice he’s used to, but something different. Stressed, under pressure. Not surprising, given that she’s on the run from both Barrera and the police. “Can we meet?”

The Metropolitan Cathedral in Cuernavaca is hundreds of years old, started in 1562—almost sixty years, Keller thinks, before the Pilgrims set foot on Plymouth Rock. The stones were taken from the destroyed temple of the Aztec god Huitzilopochtli, so, in a sense it’s even older. The cathedral wasn’t finished until 1813 and has survived floods, fires, and earthquakes.

They don’t talk. He simply feels her hand reach out and put something in his. Keller slips it into his pocket.

Yvette crosses herself, gets up, and walks out.

Keller forces himself to wait long enough to mumble a decent prayer and then goes through the mockery of a confession with a Mexican priest.

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned, he thinks. I have lied, been otherwise deceitful, and have touched off a war that has taken lives and will take more. In short, I have inspired men to murder, and I hold hatred in my heart.

He doesn’t say that, but confesses instead to impure thoughts about women and receives the penance of a half dozen Hail Marys, which he says at the altar before he leaves the cathedral.

Back out on Madero Street, he refrains from the temptation of reaching into his jacket pocket to touch the item that Yvette gave him. He’s seen it a hundred times from street dealers or buyers—that guilty “tell” where the contraband is. Instead, he stops at a street stand and buys a paper bag of papas with hot sauce and eats them while he checks the street for any surveillance that might have dropped Yvette in favor of him. The greasy potato chips taste good. He crumples up the bag, throws it into a trash can, and drives back to Mexico City.

It’s a tape cassette.

Keller puts on headphones and listens.

“By all means continue your campaign in Michoacán. La Familia is a dangerous threat to public safety—lunatics really—not to mention the largest purveyors of methamphetamine in the country.”

Keller recognizes the voice—Martín Tapia.

“What about the Zetas?”

Keller thinks he recognizes that voice, too.

Gerardo Vera.

—

The guards stop Keller in front of Aguilar’s house.

It’s late, after ten at night, and the guards are wary. They are asking what he’s doing there when Lucinda comes to the door.

“Arturo?”

“I’m sorry to bother you,” Keller says. “Is Luis home?”

“Come in, please.”

As she ushers Keller inside, Aguilar walks in from the den and looks at Keller quizzically.

“Do you have a moment?” Keller asks.

“Do you know what time it is?”

“I wanted to wait until the kids were in bed,” Keller says.

Aguilar stares at him for a long moment, and then says, “Ten minutes. Come into the study.”

“Do you want coffee?” Lucinda asks. “A glass of wine?”

“No,” Aguilar snaps.

Keller follows him into the study. Aguilar sits down and looks at Keller as if to ask, So?

“I came to apologize,” Keller says. “My suspicions about you were wrong.”

Aguilar looks surprised but unconvinced. “Thank you. But this doesn’t change my mind about you. Is that all?”

Keller takes the audiocassette out of his pocket and sets it on the desk.

“What is this?” Aguilar asks.

“Play it.”

Aguilar gets up and slips the cassette into a player. He sits back down and listens. “By all means continue your campaign in Michoacán. La Familia is a dangerous threat to public safety—lunatics really—not to mention the largest purveyors of methamphetamine in the country.”

“Martín Tapia,” Keller says.

“Well, you would know,” Aguilar says. “And you didn’t tell me about this because you suspected I was complicit.”

He says this as a fact, not a question, and Keller doesn’t answer.

“Did you tell Vera?” Aguilar asks.

“No.”

Aguilar restarts the tape.

“What about the Zetas?”

Keller watches Aguilar’s face turn pale and his jaw tighten as he rewinds the tape and listens again.

“It can’t be,” Aguilar says, stopping the tape.

Keller says nothing.

“Where did you get this?”

Keller shakes his head, then leans over and hits PLAY.

“What about the Zetas?”

“They’re under our protection now.”

“By ‘our protection’ you mean…”

“Us and Adán.”

“He said this specifically.”

“Adán sent us to inform you of this specifically, yes.”

“Is there a problem?”

Keller stops the tape. “I don’t know, but I’m thinking that’s Diego.”

Aguilar nods and starts the tape again.

“Turning government policy around like that…it’s going to cost more money.”

“We pay you half a million a month.”

Keller thinks Aguilar’s jaw might break.

“It’s not for us.”

There’s a silence, then Martín Tapia says, “We’re willing to pay a reasonable bonus in addition to the normal payment, if that will help smooth over any rough patches.”

“I’m sure it would help.”

“I’d think they’d be pleased to go after La Familia. You can’t do business with religious fanatics.”

Aguilar stops the tape. “Who are they talking about? How high does this go?”

It’s time, Keller thinks.

To decide if he trusts this man or he doesn’t. If Aguilar is clean, he’ll work with me. If he’s dirty, this tape disappears and I’m a dead man. He takes a deep breath and then tells Aguilar all about his surveillance of Yvette Tapia, and how it led to the Amaros, and, by inference, to Los Pinos.

Aguilar takes it in, realizing that his closest colleague is dirty, then sits quietly. Keller watches him work it through, a man considering a chessboard.