Aguilar watches as Keller digs it out of his pocket, listens for two seconds. “Parque México,” he says. “Foro Lindbergh. One hour.” He clicks off.

—

They meet under the pergola near the large columns in the Lindbergh Forum.

A smart choice, because it’s out of sight. But dangerous, because the trees behind the columns offer ample cover for gunmen, especially at night.

Keller knows that he might be walking into a trap. But then again, he’s pretty much in a trap already, so what’s the difference? Nevertheless, he keeps his hand on the pistol under his jacket.

Palacios stands at the end of the pergola.

He appears to be alone.

“I want out tonight,” he says.

“That’s not going to happen.” The moment Palacios crosses the border, he loses half his motivation to talk. Keller has seen it happen—the source sits on a chair in some office on the other side and spins useless bullshit stories until everyone gets tired of it and moves on. No, what they have to do is pick Palacios as clean as they can before they move him. Everything they get after that is gravy.

But they have to move fast.

“Here’s how it’s going to work,” Keller says. “You’re going to give us information. We check it out to see if you’re telling the truth. When we have enough to nail Vera, you get your ticket.”

Palacios stares at him. Then he says, “I want visas for myself, my wife, and my two adult children. And I get immunity, I get to keep my bank accounts.”

The prick doesn’t want to go into the program and become a greeter at a suburban Tucson Home Depot. He wants to come across and live the high life on the dirty millions he’s taken from the Sinaloa cartel.

“That’s up to your AG,” Keller says.

It’s a risk Keller has to take, and it might as well be sooner than later. Palacios might balk at the Mexican involvement, because he thinks he’s been dealing exclusively with DEA.

Palacios says, “We’re done here.”

“You walk away now,” Keller says, “you don’t get far. You get busted before you leave the park. You think your old buddies are going to wait around to see if you flip?”

Keller knows his business, knows that there’s a time to push and a time to pull, so now he softens his tone and says, “Look, you haven’t committed a crime in the States. Neither has Vera. So the Justice Department can only offer you sanctuary as a courtesy to the Mexican AG’s office. We do it through SEIDO, keep it under wraps.”

“Luis Aguilar?” Palacios asks. “That sanctimonious prick?”

“He’s your lifeline, Chido.”

Palacios laughs. “Where is he?”

“In a car on Calle Chiapas.”

“Let’s go.”

—

At first they meet in cars, in parks at night, but then Aguilar invents a new segundera for Palacios, actually an undercover SEIDO agent named Gabriela—drop-dead gorgeous, a guapa with long legs and a longer résumé—law degree, a master’s in sociology, and a ruthless ambition. Aguilar provides Palacios with photos to show off to his buddies (“Look what I’m tapping”) and arranges for them to be seen together at bars around AFI headquarters. He provides her with an apartment and makes sure she’s seen leaving in the morning for her job at a local bank, and seen returning in the evening.

In the afternoons they meet with Palacios.

He plays games of his own, what Keller would call hide-the-ball, giving them a little information to shield more damaging information, having to be pressed, cross-examined, coddled, cajoled, threatened. He lets intelligence out like a fisherman lets out line to a fish, and they do the same with him, reminding him not too gently that he’s the one who’s hooked.

“You know we’ll run you through a polygraph,” Aguilar says.

“Yeah, I’ve taken them,” Palacios says with a smirk. “Best test money can buy.”

“This one will be legitimate,” Aguilar says. “And if you lie about anything, our deal is null and void. Let’s go over it again, Barrera’s escape from prison.”

“Who was in charge of prisons?” Palacios asks.

“Quit playing games.”

“Galvén,” Palacios says. “Nacho Esparza delivered $500,000 to Galvén and we cut it up.”

“Did Vera get a share?”

“What do you think?”

“I’m asking the questions.”

“It’s a stupid question.”

Aguilar sighs. “Humor me.”

“Vera got the biggest share, as usual,” Palacios answers. “Me, my motto is ‘Eat like a horse, not like a pig.’ That’s not Gerardo’s motto.”

He’s cute, Keller thinks. He knows the apartment is miked, and that he’s playing to a crowd that will eventually include the Mexican AG and a host of yanquis in DEA and Justice.

When they get through the failed raids on Barrera after his escape, Palacios actually laughs. They have to go over it a dozen times before they get what they think is the whole truth, but then Palacios laughs and says, “Are you fucking kidding me? We had him.”

“When? Where?”

“Nayarit,” Palacios says. “When he got out by helicopter. He and Nacho paid us four million for the next leg of his flight.”

“Did Vera—”

“Get his share? Of course.”

You almost had Barrera in Apatzingán, Palacios tells them. But we got him out that night and put in the lookalike. After that, Barrera moved back to Sinaloa.

“Where?” Keller asks.

“My deal is on Vera,” Palacios says, “not Barrera.”

Anyway, he doesn’t know, he claims. El Patrón moves from finca to finca in the mountains of Sinaloa and Durango. The police protect him, the locals protect him; he has his own private army now—Gente Nueva.

“Are they doing the fighting in Juárez?” Aguilar asks.

“You already know that.”

The meetings go on. Sometimes Palacios meets Gabriela at her apartment, other times he treats her to a suite at a five-star hotel—the Habita, the St. Regis, Las Alcobas, the Four Seasons—but never the Marriott. They take a suite so Gabriela can wait in the sitting room, out of earshot, and leave just before or after Palacios.

“Try to look well-fucked,” he says to her one day at the Habita. “I have a reputation to maintain.”

Gabriela is too disciplined to respond.

At every session, Palacios plays peekaboo, but Aguilar and Keller doggedly work him, like a boxer walks his opponent into a corner. Keller was not a bad amateur middleweight in his youth. He was patient then and he’s patient now, letting Palacios dance and shuffle, but always cutting off the ring and forcing him against the ropes where the truth gets told.

Palacios tells them how it worked.

A group of beat cops led by Gerardo Vera formed a drug, extortion, kidnapping, and car theft ring in Iztapalapa that they parlayed into a small empire, dealing dope internally for Nacho Esparza and the Tapias.

They had a monopoly in the eastern part of Mexico City that they enforced through threats, selective arrests, and—if that didn’t work—assaults, kidnappings, and murders.

The Izta cartel.

The Tapias used their political influence to move Vera into the old, PRI-era federal police. He played it clean for years—the very model of the incorruptible cop. Eliot freaking Ness. He quietly brought his old boys up with him—they were the same choirboys—until they moved high enough up the ladder to really do the Sinaloa cartel some serious good.

When the new administration decided to reorganize the old, “corrupt” federal police, the Sinaloans hit the jackpot. Vera turned the organization inside out, firing anyone he couldn’t control and hiring people loyal to him. And he put into high positions men from his old Izta cartel.

It was goddamn genius, Keller has to admit. Vera used the polygraphs to get rid of the undesirables, and then whitewashed the others to get the results he wanted. You could lie, just don’t lie to Gerardo Vera. You could take money from narcos, just make sure they’re the right narcos. Vera turned the entire AFI into an efficient, incorruptible institution serving the interests of the Sinaloa cartel.