Breaking Adán Barrera out of prison.
Making sure that no raid ever captured him.
Taking down Barrera’s rival narcos like Osiel Contreras.
Going to war against the CDG cops in Nuevo Laredo.
Vera didn’t have to worry about being investigated from below—his own people—or from above, thanks to Yvette Tapia’s suitcase deliveries to the Amaros.
It was a beautiful system, smooth as a German railroad, even through the elections and the new administration, which only promoted Vera to an even higher position. It should have gone on forever.
The money flowed through the Tapias and was, as far as Palacios knew, made up of a collective fund from them, Esparza, and Barrera. It cost a flat mil to appoint a tame AFI boss to a region and another $50,000–$100,000 monthly salary to that guy, 20 percent of which he kicked up to the Izta cartel.
Five hundred thousand a month went to Vera, with step-down payments to the other high-ranking guys—Galvén, Aristeo, Bravo, and Palacios—depending on their rank.
“How much did you make?” Aguilar asks one afternoon at the Four Seasons, unable to keep the disgust from his voice.
“Two million a year,” Palacios answers casually.
Special favors—the escape from Puente Grande, the close call after Nayarit, the takedown of Contreras, the raids on the Tapias—required extra money, Palacios tells them.
In those special cases, Esparza usually handled the payments.
“Where did the money come from?” Keller asks.
“El Patrón, I guess,” Palacios says. “I didn’t ask.”
“How high does it go?” Aguilar asks.
Palacios shrugs. “All I know is Vera. What he does with the money afterward—above my pay grade.”
“Los Pinos?” Aguilar asks. “We know that money went to Benjamín Amaro.”
“Then you know more than I do,” Palacios snaps.
Aguilar asks, his voice tight, “The attorney general?”
“I don’t know.”
—
At the next meeting at the St. Regis, Aguilar says, “Tell us about the meeting with Martín Tapia.”
“Tell me when I go el norte.”
“When we say you do,” Keller says. But he understands Palacios’s anxiety. Every day it gets more dangerous for him, every day he’s at risk of getting gunned down by the Tapias, if not by Gerardo Vera. Keller doesn’t really care if Palacios gets killed—good riddance to bad garbage—but not until they’ve stripped him of everything he knows, and he testifies.
“I want Arizona,” Palacios says. “Not Texas. I like Scottsdale.”
“It could be Akron for all I know,” Keller says.
“And a car,” Palacios adds. “Land Rover or Range Rover.”
“The fuck you think this is?” Keller asks, “The Price Is Right?”
“Tell us about the Tapia meeting,” Aguilar repeats.
“Can we get some lunch sent up?” Palacios asks. “I haven’t eaten.”
Gabriela calls down for some sandwiches. Palacios, munching on a torta, says, “The fuck you want to know? We met—”
“Was Vera there?”
“You know he was.”
“Do you know he was?”
“He was sitting beside me.”
“And—”
“And Martín told us that they’d made peace with the CDG and the Zetas,” Palacios says, “and that we were to go after La Familia instead. The fuck did we care? A narco is a narco.”
“Vera said that certain people would need more money,” Aguilar says. “Which people?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t?”
“Ask Gerardo.”
—
At the next meeting, Aguilar opens with, “Tell me about the Tapia raids.”
“You tell me about the Tapia raids.”
“What do you mean?”
“All I know is that Gerardo wanted to meet,” Palacios says. “Out of the office. Fine, we go out for a walk. He’s shook, like I’ve never seen him. You know Gerardo—ice.”
“And?”
“He tells me we have to go after the Tapias,” Palacios says. “I about shit my pants. ‘The Tapias, are you fucking kidding me? You know how much food they’ve put on our tables?’ He says it comes from on high.”
“And you ask him how high,” Keller prompts.
“And he holds his hand way above his head,” Palacios says. “So I say, ‘Adán Barrera is not going to like this,’ and Gerardo just stares at me, and then I get it—it comes from Barrera. And I say, ‘I don’t care, I’m not doing it, it’s suicide, going after the Tapias,’ and he says, ‘That’s why we better not fuck it up.’ ”
“Did he tell you why Barrera wanted the Tapias taken down?”
Palacios launches into a song-and-dance about how Gerardo didn’t share it with him specifically, but it had something to do with Diego getting too much power, and Alberto being too flashy, and all of them being into this Santa Muerte shit, and Adán thought they were becoming a liability, a risk.
All of which is true, Keller thinks, but he can see that he’s lying, that Vera told him about Salvador Barrera’s double-murder beef, and that Palacios doesn’t want Aguilar to know that he knows about the Tapia-for-Sal deal.
It’s very dangerous knowledge, Keller agrees.
“But you did fuck it up,” he prompts.
Palacios holds his hands up. “Not me—Galvén got stupid and blew Alberto away, and we just couldn’t lay our hands on Diego.”
“Couldn’t or wouldn’t?” Aguilar asks. “Are you still on his payroll? You’re alive, after all.”
“Shit,” Palacios says. “You think the Tapias are going to take us back after we killed his little brother? You think we’re going to double-cross Barrera? We’re running for our lives here.”
“You’re having coffee at the same place every day,” Keller says.
“When I’m not sitting here blowing you,” Palacios says. “Do you think I’d be doing this if I’d made a separate peace with Diego? Jesus Christ, could that cunt remember the mustard for a change? How hard is that?”
—
The game goes on.
Aguilar wants names, numbers, he wants to see Palacios’s bank accounts, his cell phone records, his e-mails. All the while, Keller plays a game of his own. He makes himself go out to lunch with Gerardo Vera, go out for drinks, listen to the man’s problems.
A straight-up shooting war has broken out in Sinaloa and Durango between Barrera loyalists and the Tapias.
Eight killed in a gun battle on Tuesday.
Another four on Wednesday…
Two hundred and sixty killed by the end of June.
Then, just yesterday, seven AFI agents were killed storming a safe house in Culiacán filled with Diego’s shooters.
And then, this morning, a banner appeared hanging from a Culiacán bridge that read THIS IS FOR YOU, GOVERNOR VILLA, EITHER YOU MAKE AN ARRANGEMENT WITH US OR WE’LL MAKE AN ARRANGEMENT FOR YOU. THIS WHOLE GOVERNMENT WORKING FOR BARRERA AND ESPARZA IS GOING TO DIE.
And other banners start to appear all over town with the message LITTLE TOY SOLDIERS AND STRAW POLICEMEN, THIS TERRITORY BELONGS TO DIEGO TAPIA.
“We have to move,” Keller tells Aguilar after another dance session with Palacios. “This whole thing is going to blow up.”
“You’re friends with the Tapias,” Aguilar says drily. “Tell them to give us a little time.”
Then Palacios balks—digs his feet in and says that he won’t give any more information until he’s assured of asylum in the United States.
“You’ve been stringing me along for weeks,” he says. “Enough.”
And walks out of the room.
—
It feels strange, being back in the United States. After what, Keller thinks, three years?
Strange hearing the language, seeing the ugly green money.
Washington is hot and humid in June, and Keller is sweating before he can get into the cab to DEA. At least he managed to get a flight into National, so the cab trip isn’t too long compared with the odyssey down from Dulles.
The announcement by Tim Taylor’s receptionist that there’s an Art Keller here to see him is greeted with the enthusiasm normally reserved for a colonoscopy. Taylor sticks his head out the door, sees that it’s sadly true, and gestures for Keller to come into his office.