a large empty area of concrete floor that seems more like a warehouse.
It’s the same scene as the motel, Keller thinks.
Just different players.
Same action, though—people on phones, working laptops, trying to get information as to the whereabouts of Adán Barrera. The place is dark—no windows and thick walls—just what you want in a climate that is baking hot from the sun or chilled by the north wind. You don’t want the weather or prying eyes penetrating this place, and if anyone dies in here, goes out screaming or crying or pleading, the walls keep that inside.
Keller follows Blanco to a door in the back.
It opens to a small room.
Blanco ushers Keller in and shuts the door behind them.
A man Keller recognizes sits behind a desk, on the phone. Distinguished-looking with salt-and-pepper hair, a neatly trimmed goatee, wearing a houndstooth jacket and a knit tie, looking distinctly uncomfortable in the greasy atmosphere of a garage back room.
Ricardo Núñez.
El Abogado—“The Lawyer.”
A former state prosecutor, he had been the warden of Puente Grande prison, resigning his position just weeks before Barrera “escaped” back in 2004. Keller had questioned him and he pleaded total innocence, but he was disbarred and went on to become Barrera’s right-hand man, making, reportedly, hundreds of millions trafficking cocaine.
He clicks off the phone and looks up at Blanco. “Give us a moment, Terry?”
Blanco walks out.
“What are you doing here?” Núñez asks.
“Saving you the trouble of tracking me down,” Keller says. “You’re apparently aware of Guatemala.”
“Adán confided to me your arrangement,” Núñez says. “What happened down there?”
Keller repeats what he told the boys in Texas.
“You were supposed to have brought El Señor out,” Núñez says. “That was the arrangement.”
“The Zetas got to him first,” Keller says. “He was careless.”
“You have no information about Adán’s whereabouts,” Núñez says.
“Only what I just told you.”
“The family is sick with worry,” Núñez says. “There’s been no word at all. No . . . remains . . . found.”
Keller hears a commotion outside—Blanco tells someone they can’t go in—and then the door swings open and bangs against the wall.
Three men come in.
The first is young—late twenties or early thirties—in a black Saint Laurent leather jacket that has to go at least three grand, Rokker jeans, Air Jordans. His curly black hair has a five-hundred-dollar cut and his jawline sports fashionable stubble.
He’s worked up.
Angry, tense.
“Where’s my father?” he demands of Núñez. “What’s happened to my father?”
“We don’t know yet,” Núñez says.
“The fuck you mean, you don’t know?!”
“Easy, Iván,” one of the others says. Another young guy, expensively dressed but sloppy, shaggy black hair jammed under a ball cap, unshaven. He looks a little drunk or a little high, or both. Keller doesn’t recognize him, but the other kid must be Iván Esparza.
The Sinaloa cartel used to have three wings—Barrera’s, Diego Tapia’s, and Ignacio Esparza’s. Barrera was the boss, the first among equals, but “Nacho” Esparza was a respected partner and, not coincidentally, Barrera’s father-in-law. He’d married his young daughter Eva off to the drug lord to cement the alliance.
So this kid, Keller thinks, has to be Esparza’s son and Adán’s brother-in-law. The intelligence profiles say that Iván Esparza now runs the crucial Baja plaza for the cartel, with its vital border crossings in Tijuana and Tecate.
“Is he dead?!” Iván yells. “Is my father dead?!”
“We know he was in Guatemala with Adán,” Núñez says.
“Fuck!” Iván slams his hand on the desk in front of Núñez. He looks around for someone to be angry at and sees Keller. “Who the fuck are you?”
Keller doesn’t answer.
“I asked you a question,” Iván says.
“I heard you.”
“Pinche gringo fuck—”
He starts for Keller but the third man steps between them.
Keller knows him from intelligence photos. Tito Ascensión had been Nacho Esparza’s head of security, a man even the Zetas feared—for good reason; he had slaughtered scores of them. As a reward, he was given his own organization in Jalisco. His massive frame, big sloping head, guard-dog disposition and penchant for brutality had given him the nickname El Mastín—“The Mastiff.”
He grabs Iván by the upper arms and holds him in place.
Núñez looks at the other young man. “Where have you been, Ric? I’ve been calling everywhere.”
Ric shrugs.
Like, What difference does it make where I was?
Núñez frowns.
Father and son, Keller thinks.
“I asked who this guy is,” Iván says. He rips his arms out of Ascensión’s grip but doesn’t go for Keller again.
“Adán had certain . . . arrangements,” Núñez says. “This man was in Guatemala.”
“Did you see my father?” Iván asks.
I saw what looked like