“She knows everything else.”

Max downs his shot. It’s the fifth since I’ve been here and I have no idea how many he had before I arrived. But the alcohol does seem to have smoothed the edge off his animosity. He shrugs back at Culebra. “Do you want to start or should I?”

Culebra looks hard at me, as if gauging how much truth I can take. In fact, that’s the very thought that sifts through the haze of alcohol in his head.

“Give it your best shot,” I quip cavalierly. What can he possibly say that will shock me? I’ve seen plenty in the last eighteen months.

He draws a breath. “You ever heard of Felix Gallardo?”

“Can’t say that I have. Is he a relative?”

That provokes a snort from Max and a shake of the head from Culebra.

“What? Who is he?”

“The godfather of the Mexican drug cartels,” Max says.

“Godfather?”

Culebra nods. “Gallardo was the first to organize the Mexican drug business. Started in the late eighties when he realized he was getting too well known and the narco business was getting too big for him to control by himself. He called together a select group of henchman in Acapulco and designated territories to be run by bosses not yet so well known to the Federales. Men who he could trust to report to him.”

“It was a smart move,” Max says with a tone of grudging admiration.

Must be the booze.

“What does that have to do with you?” I ask Culebra.

“I worked for one of his lieutenants. Boss of the Cartel de Sinaloa.”

That name I recognize, both for the ruthlessness of its methods and the success it’s achieved in getting huge quantities of drugs across the U.S. border. “The Sinaloa Cartel, huh? Were you an undercover agent for the Mexican government? Is that how you met Max? You were working together?”

“Not exactly.” Culebra’s eyes grow hard. “I was an asesino—an assassin.”

Culebra an assassin for a narco? I grin. “You’re kidding right?”

The steady, serious way he gazes back at me raises the hair on the back of my neck.

The glass I had just raised to my lips bangs down on the table with a thud. I was wrong. I can be shocked. Astonishment knocks the alcohol fog out of my brain. Suddenly I’m sober and shaken. How? Why? Questions tumble over themselves in my head.

Culebra reads them all. He smiles sadly. “The money,” he says. “Huge money. I was uneducated, an outcast in my own village because of what I was.” He averts his eyes, sarcasm tinges his words with the acid of bitter truth. “Shape-shifters are not considered valuable members of society where I come from. I was an anomaly—a freak. And treated as such.”

A pause, as if he’s waiting for me to comment. I have no comment. Even my thoughts are conflicted. He finally realizes it and continues.

“I moved to Baja when I was sixteen. Met the boss soon after. Became a runner. Eventually, I got married, had a family. Worked my way up the ladder.”

That evokes a comment. “Worked your way up to assassin?”

“I was caught up in the life.” He meets my eyes squarely. “I’m not proud of it. I hated it, but I had a family to support. There came a point when there was no turning back.”

I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Or the dead calm tone of Culebra’s voice as he speaks. “You killed people.”

He looks hard at me. “And you don’t?”

Max makes a snickering noise.

I glare at him before snapping at Culebra, “I kill because I have to, because I’m protecting someone. It’s hardly the same thing.”

Culebra shrugs. “Semantics. I was protecting someone, too. Myself. My family. I followed orders.”

“Your family? Where are they now?”

Culebra waves a hand in a vague sweeping motion. “Dead.”

Still, no emotion. Nothing in his head I can penetrate but a dull pulse beat. It’s strange. As if his answers come from a separate part of his brain, turning on and off like a recorder at the push of the right button. Programmed answers.

I soften my own tone. “What happened?”

He looks hard at me. “You want the long version or the short one?”

I wave a hand. “I’ve got nowhere else to be. Do you?”

He pours another shot. Downs it. “Get comfortable. We’re going to be here awhile.”

CULEBRA TAKES A DEEP BREATH. “I WAS BORN TO A family of shape-shifters. But I was a throwback. The first of my generation to manifest the ability. My family was horrified. They thought the curse had finally been lifted.” He drops his eyes. “The curse.”

He straightens his shoulders. “My father could never find steady work so our family always lived in poverty. What’s more, he had no trade or skills that he could pass on to me, not that he would have. He hated me. I was not allowed to go to school for fear someone would find out what I was. My own parents set me adrift. Condemned me to a life of poverty, struggle and isolation. I was sixteen.”

He reaches for the bottle. I pass it over, let him refill his glass and my own. “You’re articulate for an uneducated man.”

“We had a Bible,” he answers. “The only book we owned. My mother taught me to read with that Bible. Before she decided I was possessed by the devil.”

He drinks, continues. “I moved to Chihuahua, an unemployed drifter. Found a few odd jobs that paid poorly and required long hours of hard labor. I shared the fields and factories with petty criminals who always tried to take advantage of weaker men. I knew I had to defend myself to survive and I quickly learned to use my fists and my wits. I also became skilled at using a knife. It wasn’t long before I won respect among the migrants. Word got around and I attracted the attention of local gang members.

“Gangs were always on the lookout for young ‘badasses’ to recruit. There was a constant need for new blood since gang wars continually decimated the ranks. Young, tough, uneducated vatos like me who were dissatisfied with their lot made a perfect pool in which to fish.”

I am so engrossed in Culebra’s tale that when Max pokes me in the arm I jump. “What?”

“Pass the bottle, will you?”

Grudgingly, I do. “Are you done interrupting now?”

Max flutters a hand in a go-ahead gesture and I turn back to Culebra and mimic the action.

“One day as I was walking home from work, a gangbanger pushed me against a wall and demanded my money while other bangers stood around smiling. I was enraged that anyone would steal from a poor campesino struggling to earn a living. I pushed my aggressor back and told him to ‘go fuck himself.’ The banger pulled a knife and came at me. But I quickly grabbed his arm, twisted it behind his back and took the knife away. I spun the banger around and kneed him in the groin for good measure. As I walked away I waved the knife and thanked him for the ‘souvenir.’

“The next day members of the local gang again confronted me. But this time, I was invited to have a drink with the boss. He told me that he needed men ‘with balls’ in his operation and that I handled myself well the other day. I realized that the confrontation had been a test. He offered me a job delivering drugs and collecting payment and offered me a salary about ten times what I was earning as a common laborer. The money was irresistible to a young man with no real future ahead of him. And working for a criminal gang wasn’t much different from being an outcast as far as I was concerned. So I accepted the offer as my only opportunity for a better life.

“Like all new hires, I was assigned a mentor to teach me the business. His nickname was Julio the Pick because his preferred method of execution was to shove an ice pick into the back of a man’s head. No loud noise, little blood—he liked it that way. Julio was unusual because he was in his forties in a business where most didn’t live beyond their late twenties. His longevity was testament to the fact that he was good at his chosen profession and was an asset to the boss.