Saint Death

Milton watched the conversation through the windows of the diner. The place was on Avenue de los Insurgents in a strip mall with a large plastic sign in the shape of a lozenge that said Plaza Insurgents. Milton’s taxi had pulled over on the other side of the road, behind a 1968 Impala Caprice with ‘Viva La Raza’ written across the bo

He recognised the driver as the doctor from the hospital.

Milton stood quietly and watched.

The diner was busy. Beau Baxter was alone in a booth and González made his way straight to him, slipping down opposite and begi

Milton moved away from the window and leant against a telephone kiosk. He looked up and down the street and across the strip mall but if González had other men here, they were good. Milton could see nothing that made him think that there was any sort of back up. González was on his own. He could feel the reassuring coldness of the Springfield’s barrel pressed against his spine. Thirteen shots in the clip, one in the chamber. He hoped they would be enough.

Beau and González got up.

Milton moved to the entrance. There was a bench next to the door, an advertisement for a law firm on the backrest. He sat down behind a newspaper he found on the floor, the Springfield hidden in his lap. Beau came out first, González behind him. Milton let them pass, folded the newspaper over the arm of the bench and took the gun. He followed. When they reached González’s car Milton pressed the barrel against González’s coccyx.

“Nice and easy,” he said.

González turned his head a little, looking back from the corner of his eyes.

“You again.”

“That’s right.”

“I still don’t know your name.”

“I know.”

“English, then. Why are you always involved in my business, English?”

Milton glanced at Baxter. “You alright?”

“Feel a bit stupid.”

“Get his gun.”

Baxter frisked him quickly, finding a gold-plated Colt .45 in a holster clipped to his belt. He unfastened the holster and removed it.

“Look at this. Gold? You might have money but you can’t buy class.”

González said nothing. He just smiled.

“Beau,” Milton said. “What are you driving?”

“The Jeep,” he said, nodding to the red Cherokee with tinted windows.

“Get it started.”

“You have already taken too long, English,” González said. “My family has eyes everywhere. They are our falcons — waiters, barmen, newspaper vendors, taxi drivers, even the cholos on the street corners. A hundred dollars a week so that we may know everything about the comings and goings of our city. My Padre will know what you are doing before he sits down to di

“You’ll be halfway back to New Mexico by then, partner,” Beau said.

Milton prodded González in the back and propelled him towards the Jeep. When they reached the car the Mexican finally turned around to face him. “Every moment in your life is a choice, English. Every moment is a chance to go this way or that. You are making a choice now. You have picked an unwise course and you will have to face the consequences of your decision.”

Milton watched him carefully, a practiced assessment that was so automatic that he rarely realised that he was making it. He watched the dilation in his eyes and the pulse in the artery in his neck. He saw the rate of his breathing. The man was as relaxed as if they were old friends, meeting up by coincidence and engaging in banal small talk about their families. Milton had seen plenty of disconcerting people before but this man — Santa Muerta — this man was something else. A real piece of work.

“The way I’m coming at it,” Beau said, “you ain’t in a position to lecture anyone.”

González kept his eyes on Milton. “Not everyone is suited to this line of work, English. Having a gun pointed at someone can sometimes lead people to exaggerate their own abilities. They tell themselves that they are in control of events where perhaps they are not.”

“Don’t worry yourself on my account,” Milton said. “I’m as used to this as you are. Get in the car.”

Baxter opened the door and, smiling serenely and without another word, González got in.

38

El Patrón had a small mansion on the outskirts of Juárez. He had dozens, all around Mexico. This was in the best part of the city, St Mark’s Corner, a gated community approached through a series of arches and set around a pleasant green. It was a quiet retreat of mansions, each more garish than the next. Outside some were vehicles marked with the corporate logos of the owners of the maquiladoras. In other forecourts were SUVs with blacked-out windows and bullet-proof panels; those belonged to the drug barons. The community had a private security detail that Felipe bolstered whenever he was in residence. His men were posted at the gates now, in the grounds of the mansion and in the watchtower that he had constructed at the end of the drive. Twenty of his very best men, most related to him by blood or marriage, vigilant and disposed towards violence. His doctor had advised him that sleep was important for a man of his age and he made sure that he always slept well.

He had bought the place a year ago, persuading the prominent lawyer who had owned it that it was in his best interests to sell. He hadn’t stiffed him on the price — he felt no need to drive a hard bargain — and he had sent three bags with a million dollars in each as a mark of his gratitude. He had visited the house before the lawyer had owned it and he had always been fond of it. It was surrounded on all sides by tall brick walls. It had been built with a small cupola, an architectural shorthand for extravagance in Juárez. Inside, there were baroque tables mixed with minimalist leather couches, red velvet curtains and a disco ball, Oriental rugs and, on the wall above the fireplace, a knockoff of Picasso’s ‘Guernica.’ The décor was not systematic thanks to the fact that it had been purchased, at various times, by several of Felipe’s wives. There was a glass-enclosed pool. A room in the basement held a large pile of stacked banknotes — four feet cubed — a little over twenty million, all told. Another held his armoury, some of the guns plated in gold. There were just a few street-facing windows and, at his insistence, the best security system that money could buy.

Marilyn Monroe had owned the house at one time; the rumour was that the purchase was a drunken extravagance after a night in the Kentucky Bar following her divorce from that American writer. It reminded him of another time in Juárez, so different from how things were today that it was almost another place. Salaciousness and audacity, everything for sale, most of it carnal.

The fleshpot and the dope-den.

Frank Sinatra and Steve McQueen.

Matadors and baseball heroes and movie stars.

The Fiesta Club, The Chinese Palace, The Kentucky.

Not an i

The house was busy tonight. He was hosting a party for the gringos. Plenty of his lieutenants were present, together with a significant delegation from the city. The deputy mayor, representatives from the federales, senior officers from the army. They had erected a wrestling ring in the garden and a tag team of luchadores were putting on an athletic display; wiry, masked wrestlers who grappled and fought, climbing the turnbuckles to perform ever more impressive dives and twists. The best cueros from the brothels that Felipe owned had been brought to the house to provide their own kind of entertainment. Drink and drugs were unlimited.