“I learned to use explosives and poison and kill silently at close range. I learned how to stalk my victims and how to judge the best time to strike. Then it was time to go home and put my education to use.

“At first, my targets were corrupt, politically connected types who tried to extort more money from the boss. One worked for the treasury and ran a money laundry on the side. His fee for service was always rising. If the boss suggested taking his business elsewhere, the finance guy would hint that he had friends in high places and that they would be interested to know what the boss was up to. The fool never realized that his threats made him a target. I remember him because I used Julio’s favorite technique to do the job. He lived on a crowded street, so the kill had to be silent. I entered his home when I knew he was alone and snuck up behind him when he was standing at the refrigerator. I grabbed him by the forehead and shoved an ice pick into the back of his skull. He fell to his knees while I rocked it back and forth to mince the brain tissue.” Culebra claps his hands and holds them palms up. “Tio Julio was right—no muss, no fuss.”

Culebra is watching my face. Gauging my reaction. When I don’t react, he continues.

“Jobs were not so frequent as they are now so I had more time to spend at home. I found that I enjoyed watching my children grow. I got to know my wife more intimately and even helped her plant a garden. The money was great. I bought a bigger house for my family and a nicer car for myself. We lived in a fancier neighborhood among a better class of people. My children attended a private school and my wife wore finer clothes. Life was good. Little did I realize what a charade this was. Devoted family man by day and killer by night. It couldn’t last. And it didn’t.

“The end came when the boss’s son fell for a pretty, young woman from a notable family. She refused his advances and bruised his ego. The son became depressed when he learned that she had accepted a marriage proposal from another young man, a judge’s son. The boss was angry that his son ‘wasn’t good enough for this bitch.’ So he decided to show what happens when people disrespect him or his family. He gave me the job to ensure that the young woman would never reach the altar on her wedding day. She had to die on her way to the church.

“When I got the order I felt as if I had been punched in the stomach. There was no way I could kill an innocent young woman on her wedding day. I would spend the rest of my life seeing her face in my daughter’s eyes. The boss wanted me to plant a bomb under the car her family would use to drive to the ceremony and detonate it by remote control when they approached the church. But I couldn’t go through with it and didn’t. The marriage ceremony went off without a hitch. I knew the boss would come after me for failing to carry out an order, but I would deal with that. Strangely, I never thought that my family would be involved. After all, this was a business matter and they were civilians. How wrong I was.”

CULEBRA’S EXPRESSION GROWS DARK, AS IF HE’S now speaking of things that fill him with more than pain and guilt. Remorse is there, too.

My own emotions are conflicted. His story is not a new one. It’s the story of every gangster who thinks himself above the law. But this is Culebra. My friend. Reconciling the man I know now with the man he describes has my head spinning.

I feel his eyes on me.

“Do you want me to stop?”

“I want you to tell me what happened to your family,” I reply softly. “How you could have thought for a moment that your family would be spared and only you would have suffered the consequences of disobeying your boss? Your job was getting rid of those who did just that. How could you not have known better?”

“I was arrogant,” he snaps back, not defensively, but with anger obviously turned back on himself. “Stupid. I believed I was so goddamned important that the boss would see how valuable an asset I was. I’d hide out. Buy time to let him cool off. So I dropped out of sight and made no effort to contact my wife or go near the house. After a few days, I snuck into the house after midnight, making sure I hadn’t been followed. I planned to gather up my wife and kids and take them to a safe place until I could arrange to make things right with the boss. How I would explain all of this to my family never entered my mind. My first thought was to get us to safety. But when I passed through the front door, the smell of blood filled my nostrils. There was blood on the carpet in the children’s room and on the walls of my bedroom. There were no bodies. But I knew what had happened. The scene in that house has never left my mind.”

Culebra’s breath catches again. He composes himself quickly. “I was filled with an intense rage that I had never felt before. I didn’t care what happened to me. If that motherfucker could kill my family for disobeying one order after all the years I was faithful to him, I was going to exact vengeance on him, his worthless son, and anyone else who got in my way. I was going to descend on his house like the angel of death. My first order of business was to drive out to a hideaway in a remote part of the desert where I stored my cache of guns, explosives and equipment. I would be armed to the teeth when I paid the boss a visit.

“I drove out to my desert ordnance dump. But I was angry—and careless. I didn’t notice the black Escalade in my rearview mirror until it was too late. I recognized the boss’s men almost immediately. They may have been waiting for me somewhere near my house. Letting me go inside and see what they had done. To realize what my disobedience had cost. Now it was my turn to experience the boss’s revenge. I stepped on the gas to speed away, but just then the gunfire started. It ripped through my rear window and knocked out my front windshield. One of the bullets grazed my head.” His hand goes to his forehead and he rubs at his temples reflexively. “There was so much blood.

“I lost control of my car and it tumbled into a ravine. I was thrown from the vehicle and landed in a gully while the car continued to tumble on over a patch of rocks. The rocks punctured the fuel tank and created sparks and the vehicle exploded into a fireball. I heard the Escalade stop on the road above. The men got out to watch the fireworks. My body must have been hidden from view in the gully because they didn’t come searching for me. They assumed that I died in the explosion and after a few minutes, they returned to the Escalade, turned around and drove off.

“When I felt it was clear, I crawled out of the gully and onto the roadbed. I stood up and staggered, light-headed from the loss of blood. Besides the head wound, I had been shot in each arm, bruised and cut from being thrown around in the car. I was probably about twenty miles from Ciudad Juárez, in the middle of the desert, with no car and no water. The only thing I could do was start walking north toward the border. I took off my undershirt, tore it into strips to make bandages. I wrapped one strip around my head to try and stop or at least slow the bleeding and others to fashion tourniquets for my arms. I started walking. After some time, I don’t know how long, I passed out. The next thing I knew I was lying in a bed in an El Paso hospital surrounded by DEA agents.”

He looks up at Max.

Max had just raised his glass to his lips. Whatever he sees in Culebra’s eyes makes him lower the glass. He takes up the story.

“We were on a routine border patrol when we found Culebra. We thought he was an illegal who had been attacked by coyotes. He’d almost made it to the border. It was a miracle he made it at all. The gunshot wasn’t serious, but he was dehydrated and exhausted. He’d lost a lot of blood.”