The Queen of the South (30 page)

Jimmy Arenas played the part pretty well at the beginning; he started out by getting them liquor from Jerez to smuggle into northern Europe. He also had good contacts in Latin America, and he muled for the hot discos in Marbella, Fuengirola, and Torremolinos. But the Russkis wanted their own networks: import-export. The Babushka, Yasikov's friends in Moscow, could already get blow wholesale by using Aeroflot flights from Montevideo, Lima, and Bahia, which weren't under the same kind of surveillance as the ones from Rio or Havana. So half-kilo shipments could be smuggled in via the airport at Cheremetievo on an individual basis, but the pipeline was too narrow. The Berlin Wall had just come down, the Soviet Union was crumbling, and coke was the hot thing in the new Russia of fast and easy money.

"And we now know that the Russians had not underestimated the market," Juarez went on. "Just to give you an idea of the demand, a gram sold today in a disco in Saint Petersburg or Moscow is worth thirty or forty percent more than in the U.S."

The ex-cop chewed his last mouthful of meat, then helped it down with a long sip of wine.

"Imagine," he went on, "Comrade Yasikov scratching his head trying to figure out a way to thread the needle big-time again. And all of a sudden a half-ton of coke appears that doesn't require setting up a whole operation from Colombia—it's right there, no risks, all pure profit, practically speaking.

"And as for the Mexicana and the O'Farrell girl, like I said, there was no way for them to do it on their own.... They didn't have the money or the connections or the infrastructure to put five hundred kilos on the street, and the first gram that showed up on a corner somewhere, the whole fucking sky would have fallen on them: the Russkis, the Guardia Civil, my people.... They were smart enough to see that. Only an idiot would have started by dealing a little here, a little there, and before the Guardia or my guys were able to cuff 'em, they'd have been stuffed in the trunk of a car, probably in several well-carved pieces. R.I.P."

"But how could they know they wouldn't wind up like that anyway?... That the Russians would keep their part of the deal?"

"They couldn't," Juarez said. "They just decided to risk it. And Yasikov must've taken a shine to them. Especially to Teresa Mendoza, who even proposed a couple of variants on the deal."

Did I know about that Gallego that had been her boyfriend? Yeah? Well, that was where her experience in all this came from. The Mexicana had a past. And she had something else it took—she had a tremendous pair of balls. Juarez' outstretched fingers made a circle the size of a dinner plate.

"And another thing. You know how some girls have this calculator between their legs,
clickety-click,
and
ka-ching,
the bill comes out? Well, the Mexicana had a calculator here"—he tapped his temple—"in her head. There's one eternal truth about women—sometimes you hear the song of a siren, and what you end up with is a sea wolf."

Saturnino G. Juarez had to know that better than most. I silently remembered the size of his bank account in Gibraltar, which had been aired in the press during his trial. Back then, Juarez had a little more hair and wore just a moustache; that was his look in my favorite photograph, in which he posed between two uniformed colleagues at the door of a court in Madrid. And look at him now, after paying the modest price of five months in prison and expulsion from the National Police Corps—calling the waiter over to order a cognac and a Havana cigar, to aid digestion. Not a lot of evidence, bad jury instructions from the judge, very able lawyers. I wondered how many people owed him favors, including Teresa Mendoza.

"So, bottom line," Juarez concluded, "Yasikov made the deal. Besides, he was on the Costa del Sol to invest, and the Mexicana looked like an interesting investment. So he kept his word like a gentleman.... And that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

Oleg Yasikov looked at the package on the table: white powder in a double layer of plastic shrink-wrap sealed with wide, thick tape, still obviously intact. A thousand grams, vacuum-packed, just the way it was packaged in the underground laboratories in Yari, in the Amazon jungle. "I admit," he said, "that you two are playing it pretty cool. Yes." He spoke Spanish well, Teresa thought. Slowly, with many pauses, as though carefully setting one word after another. His accent was very soft, and in no way did he resemble the evil, terrorist, drug-smuggling Russians in movies, the kind who
keel Amehricahn enehmy.
Nor did he look like a mafioso or a gangster. His skin was light, his eyes big, bright, and childlike, with a curious mixture of blue and yellow in the iris, and his straw-colored hair was short, like a soldier's. He was wearing khaki pants and a navy-blue shirt, the cuffs turned up to reveal a diver's Rolex on the left wrist, powerful forearms with a dusting of blond hair. The hands resting at each side of the package, not touching it, were big, like the rest of his body, and on one finger was a heavy gold wedding ring. He looked healthy, strong, and clean. Patty O'Farrell had said that he was also—and especially—dangerous.

"Let me see if I understand. You—you two girls—offer to return a shipment of goods that belongs to me, but only if I pay for it again. How do you call that?..." He reflected a moment, almost amused, seeking the word. "Extortion?"

"That," said Patty, "is taking things way too far."

She and Teresa had discussed this for hours, backward and forward, front and back, since the trip to the Marrajos Caves and until just an hour before coming to this meeting. All the pros and cons, over and over. Teresa wasn't convinced that their arguments would be quite as effective as Patty thought they would, but it was too late now to turn back. Patty—tasteful makeup for the occasion, expensive dress, self-assurance in keeping with her role as a high-powered female executive—started to explain again, although it was clear that Yasikov got it the first time, the minute they put the brick on the table. This, of course, came after the Russian—with an apology that sounded at best neutral—had ordered two bodyguards to pat them down for hidden microphones. "Technology," he said, shrugging.

After the gorillas closed the door, he'd offered them a drink; they both declined, although Teresa's mouth was dry. Then he sat down behind the table, ready to listen. Everything was neat and tidy—not a piece of paper in sight, not a file folder. Walls the same cream color as the wall-to-wall carpet, paintings that looked expensive, a large Russian icon inlaid with a great deal of hammered silver, a fax in one corner, a multiline telephone and a cell phone on the table. An ashtray. An enormous gold Dupont lighter. Chairs of white leather. Through the large windows in the office—the top floor of a luxury apartment house in Santa Margarita—you could see the curve of the coast and the line of surf on the beach all the way down to the breakwaters, and the masts of moored yachts, and the white houses of Puerto Bamis.

"Tell me one thing," Yasikov suddenly interrupted Patty's clumsy explanation. "How did you do it?... Go to the place where it was hidden. Bring it here without calling attention to yourselves. Yes. You have taken risks. I think. You are still taking them."

"That doesn't matter," Patty told him.

The gangster smiled. Come on, that smile said, tell the truth. It'll be all right. His was a smile that made you want to trust him, Teresa thought as she watched him. Or distrust so many other things that you wind up trusting him.

"Of course it matters," Yasikov replied. "I looked for this merchandise. Yes. I didn't find it. I made an error. About Jimmy, I mean. I didn't know that you knew.... Things would be different, no? How time flies. I hope you've recovered. After the incident."

"Perfectly recovered, thank you."

"I should thank
you
for one thing. Yes. My lawyers said that you never mentioned my name in the investigations and interrogations. No."

Patty frowned sarcastically. In the tanned triangle of her cleavage one could see the scar from the exit wound.

"I was in the hospital," she said. "With holes in me."

"I mean later." The Russian's eyes were almost innocent. "The interrogations and the trial. That part."

"You see now that I had my reasons." Yasikov reflected on her reasons.

"Yes. I see. But still, your silence saved me some trouble. The police thought you knew nothing. I thought you knew nothing. You have been patient. Yes. All these years... There had to be some motivation, yes?" He tapped his chest. "Inside."

Patty took out another cigarette, which the Russian, despite having the enormous Dupont on the table, made no move to light for her, even when it took several seconds for her to find her own lighter in her purse.
Stop shaking,
Teresa thought, looking at Patty's hands. Control that twitching in your fingers before the son of a bitch notices and this tough-girl facade starts cracking and this whole thing goes to
la chingada.

"The packages are still hidden where they were. We only brought one."

The discussion in the cave, Teresa remembered. The two of them inside, counting packages in the beam from the flashlights, half euphoric and half scared shitless. One for now, while we think—and leave the rest, Teresa had insisted. Taking it all with us now is suicide, so let's not be stupid. I know they shot you and all, but I didn't come to your lovely country as a tourist, either, you blond bitch. Don't make me tell you the whole story, which I've never told you so far. A story that has no resemblance to yours—since you managed to get shot wearing Carolina Herrera. Don't fuck with me. In this kind of deal, when you're in a hurry, the best thing you can do is go slow.

"Has it occurred to you that I can have you followed?" said Yasikov.

Patty rested the hand holding the cigarette in her lap. "Of course that's occurred to us." She inhaled and returned the hand to her lap. "But you can't follow us to where it's hidden. Not there."

"Oh, I see. Mysterious. You are mysterious ladies."

"We'd realize we were being followed and disappear. And find another buyer. Five hundred kilos is a lot."

Yasikov said nothing to that, although his silence indicated that five hundred kilos was, in fact, too much in every way. He kept looking at Patty, and once in a while he gave a brief glance in the direction of Teresa, not talking, not smoking, not moving; just watching and listening, almost holding her breath, her hands on the legs of her jeans to absorb the sweat. A light blue polo shirt, tennis shoes in case she had to make a quick getaway and slither between somebody's legs, her only jewelry the
semanario
of Mexican silver on her right wrist—in sharp contrast to Patty's elegant clothes and heels. They were there because Teresa had insisted on this solution. At first Patty had wanted to sell the drugs in small amounts, but Teresa had managed to convince her that sooner or later the real owners would figure it all out. It's better if we work straight, she counseled. A sure thing, even if we lose a little. All right, Patty had finally agreed. But I talk, because I know how that fucking Bolshevik's mind works. And there they were, while Teresa became more and more certain that they'd made a mistake.

She'd been around people like this since she was a girl. They might speak a different language, look different, wear different clothes, make different gestures, but underneath they were all the same. This was going nowhere, or rather somewhere they didn't want to go. When all was said and done— Teresa was realizing this too late—Patty was just a spoiled society chick, the girlfriend of a wet-behind-the-ears asshole who had been in the business not out of necessity, but because he was stupid. A guy who thought he was cool—like so many others. As for Patty, she had lived a life of appearances that had nothing to do with the real thing, and the time she'd spent in prison had done nothing but blind her even more. Here in this office she wasn't Lieutenant O'Farrell—she wasn't anybody. The blue eyes with flashes of yellow that were looking at them—
that
was where the power was here. And Patty was making an even bigger mistake than coming here in the first place. It was a mistake to put it to him this way. To refresh Oleg Yasikov's memory, after so much time had passed.

"That's just the problem," Patty was saying. "Five hundred kilos is too much. That's why we've come to you first."

"Whose idea was it?" Yasikov didn't seem flattered. "Me the first option? Yes."

Patty looked at Teresa.

"Hers. She's the deep thinker." She gave a quick, nervous smile between puffs on her cigarette. "She's better than I am at calculating the risks and probabilities."

Teresa felt the Russian's eyes studying her; he looked at her for a long time. He's wondering what it is that joins us, she decided. Prison, friendship, business. Whether men are my thing or we're a couple.

"I still don't know what," said Yasikov, asking Patty without taking his eyes off Teresa. "She's doing in this. Your friend."

"She's my partner."

"Ah. It's good to have partners." Yasikov turned his attention back to Patty. "It would also be good to talk. Yes. Risks and probabilities. You might not have time to disappear to find another buyer." He paused deliberately. "Time to disappear voluntarily. I think."

Teresa saw that Patty's hands were trembling again. And how I wish, she thought, I could get up right now and say,
Quihubo,
don Oleg, see ya around. Didn't even see that third strike coming. You keep that shipment, right, and forget this
chingada.

"Maybe we should ..." Teresa began.

Yasikov looked at her, almost surprised. But Patty was already at it again: You wouldn't gain anything by that. Not a thing, except the lives of two women. And you'd lose a lot. And the fact was, Teresa decided, that apart from the trembling hands that transmitted their shaking to the spirals of cigarette smoke, the Lieutenant was handling this very well. And she didn't give up easily. But both of them were dead women. She was about to say that aloud. We're dead, Lieutenant. Let's pack up and get out of here.