Triple Crossing (10 page)

“I’m tempted to grab a shotgun and go look for them myself,” Gibson exclaimed. “But that would upset the human rights nuts!
Human rights! For subhuman criminals!”

Méndez shook his head. He got out of the car and crossed the street.

Gibson caught sight of him, broke away from an interview and hurried over, his camera crew following like pilot fish. Gibson
wore loafers and wrinkled jeans below a well-cut checkered sports jacket and yellow tie. He was growing a reddish-gray beard
to camouflage his chins. With a flourish, he tossed his microphone into his left hand and extended his right to greet Méndez.

“The dynamic and controversial Leobardo Méndez, leader of the so-called Diogenes Group,” Gibson intoned, but Méndez saw
with relief that the cameraman had stopped filming. “Hunting the forces of criminality as always, Don Leobardo?”

“And finding them everywhere, maestro.”

“As the former human rights commissioner, would you care to comment on the crisis of leadership at the human rights commission
and the very serious accusations by the families of brave police officers left defenseless because they stood up to crime?
It seems La Flaca Aguirre is in trouble. Maybe she won’t run for governor after all.”

“Perhaps later, Porfirio,” Méndez said. “You’ll be here all day, no? It’s not like there are any crimes to cover.”

“Good one, maestro.” Gibson showed small teeth. “We’ll very happily grab you on the way out to ask about the radical crusade
against the humble cop on the beat.”

The commission’s offices were in a building near Boulevard Agua Caliente. A plainclothes officer of the Diogenes Group was
posted upstairs in the waiting room, which was crowded with citizens and decorated by posters and photos of indigenous villages,
street children, rural marches. Méndez had assigned the officer to guard Aguirre because of death threats.

Returning the nods and smiles of youthful, casually dressed employees, some of whom he had hired, Méndez went to Araceli Aguirre’s
corner office. It had been his office during his three years as human rights commissioner. Whenever he visited, he had the
feeling that he had returned home after losing his way.

Aguirre’s teenage daughter did homework at a conference table. Aguirre’s toddler crawled around arranging crayons at her mother’s
feet as she talked on the phone. An aide waited with a legal pad. Aguirre, slender and high-shouldered in a long violet dress,
untangled herself from the phone cord to give Méndez a kiss and gestured at a chair. She finished the phone call and told
her daughter to have their driver drop off her little sister at a daycare center on her way back to school.

“I have news for you, Leo,” Aguirre said when they were
alone. “In times gone by, I would have told you to stop the presses.”

“What suspense.”

“The conversations with the Colonel have taken an unexpected turn,” she began. She rose and went to a window through which
the shouts of the marchers in the street were audible. She closed the window and pantomimed relief. “Enough. It’s the interminable
revenge of the cretins out there.”

“Let me say one more time how uncomfortable I am with these jailhouse visits of yours to the Colonel,” Méndez said.

“Ay
Leobardo, you are a man who is fundamentally unhappy unless he has something to worry about,” she retorted. “I must tell
you, this thing with the Colonel has blossomed. He calls from the penitentiary every night. He talks and talks. First he asks
if he is bothering me, of course. A gentleman. My friend, the torturer and assassin.”

“Your husband must be as thrilled as I am. I hope it’s worth it.”

She got serious. “That’s what I’m telling you, Leo. It’s worth it. The Colonel wants a deal. He wants, believe it or not,
to talk to you.”

“To me.”

“Although he hasn’t exactly forgiven you for arresting him, he has decided that you are a ‘man of honor.’ Exact words. And
he says you are the only person around here with enough clout in Mexico City to help him.”

“Incredible.”

“He’s desperate. He says Junior has cut him off, won’t take his calls, rejects his emissaries.”

“No One Writes to The Colonel.”

“Very funny. He thinks he’s not going to last long. So he’s ready to talk.”

Méndez turned down the corners of his mouth. Because he had been worried about her safety, he had discouraged Aguirre’s
plan to reach out to Regino “The Colonel” Astorga, the former state police chief captured five months earlier by the Diogenes
Group. The Colonel had filed a complaint with the human rights commission asserting that his life was in danger in the state
prison. Aguirre had taken it seriously, going to the prison to interview him. She had made a public statement urging the government
to ensure his safety. She had kept visiting him and, gradually, had gained his trust.

“Well, Araceli, this is really something.”

Aguirre was enjoying herself, practically giving off sparks of adrenaline. Ever since they had been students together, he
had wished that she were not quite so fearless. She still looked more like an underfed university student than an admired
public official with a bright political future. She wore round glasses. Her short hair revealed her silver earrings, one shaped
like the sun and the other like the moon. Only the pronounced circles under her eyes gave her brown, fine-boned face some
gravity.

“I want you to hear his story,” she said. “Some of it fits with what we already know. Some of it is new. If it’s true, this
is even worse than we think.”

“We would need his testimony to seriously consider prosecuting Junior and his uncle,” Méndez said. “What does the Colonel
want?”

“He thinks you can get the Americans to save his hide. He fantasizes about their witness-protection program. At minimum, he
wants a transfer to a prison as far from Baja as possible.”

“That’s not easy. When we do we see him?”

“Tomorrow. Saturdays are especially charming at the penitentiary.”

“Short notice. I know you won’t like this, but I think it would be wise to bring Isabel Puente on this little safari.”

“
Ay
Leo, please. The
gringa cubana?
That woman is imperious and insufferable.”

“You are unfair to my friend Isabel.”

“You have a strange weakness for her. The last thing I want is her stomping around in that prison.”

“If the Colonel really thinks the Americans can help him, it would be a perfect incentive. And we might be able to get them
interested in a deal with him.”

Aguirre tapped with a pen. She realized he was right, but she didn’t like backing down. He continued: “Even if she doesn’t
say a word—”

“She better not!”

Méndez relaxed. “She doesn’t have to. Her presence will appeal to his appetites.”

“Very well. But if anything happens to her, don’t blame me. If she plays the pushy
cubana
in there, they might decapitate her and play soccer with her head.”

The cold returned Saturday morning, along with gray skies.

In his readings about the U.S. penal system, Méndez had come across the term “extraction.” It referred to operations in U.S.
penitentiaries when a rebellious inmate barricaded himself in a cell and responded to appeals to reason with threats, violence
and hurled excrement. Four guards would put on helmets and body armor, arm themselves with clubs, shields and mace, and charge
into the cell in a tactical formation to subdue and “extract” the inmate as rapidly and safely as possible.

Méndez wondered what term the yanqui correctional experts might come up with to describe a visit by the Mexican authorities
to an inmate chieftain in the penitentiary of Baja California.

Méndez, Athos, Araceli Aguirre and Isabel Puente arrived at the prison at 11 a.m. They had brought Porthos and two of the
largest, meanest-looking officers in the Diogenes Group. Méndez, Aguirre and Puente had a quick strategy session in the car.
It mainly consisted of Aguirre giving Puente a stern lecture. Puente sat next to Méndez in back, chewing gum, impassive behind
sunglasses. She was dressed down in jeans and a ponytail.

“Forget about American prisons,” Aguirre said, twisted around in the front seat. “You never saw anything like this. The inmates
have guns. Children live inside. The
capos
build houses, hire servants, bodyguards, whores—”

“I know about the prison,” Puente said tonelessly.

Aguirre ignored her. “Don’t trust the guards. The inmates will harass you for money. And they will tell you what they would
like to do to you. Put up with it. No hard looks. No stupid confrontations. And for the love of God, you’re in a foreign country.
So no guns.”

Aguirre got out, lecture over, slamming the door. Puente reached down calmly to adjust the top of her boot; Méndez looked
away when he saw the concealed holster. He did not intend to be the one who tried to disarm Isabel Puente.

“Warm welcome,” Puente said.

“You have to understand,” Méndez said soothingly. “Araceli has worked hard to gain trust in there. It goes against her principles
to bring an American agent inside.”

As they crossed the gravel parking lot, Méndez saw that Athos had an AK-47 assault rifle slung across his shoulder. He gave
the weapon a pained look. Athos raised his eyebrows over his sunglasses in response.

“That zoo in there is a sniper’s paradise, Licenciado,” Athos said. “If it were up to me, I would have brought the whole unit.
You are putting yourself in the mouth of the wolf in there.”

It was visiting day. The lines of families were especially long. Among the features that made the prison unique in Mexico
and the world were the hundreds of wives and children who lived inside with the inmates. The families went to work and school
and returned each day like commuters, blending with the crush of visitors. The prison had been built as a city jail for five
hundred inmates, but it housed several thousand: federal and state offenders, incorrigible convicts and wrongly accused suspects,
hit men and purse snatchers, drug lords and drug mules, men and
women, the vicious and the hapless, the privileged and the indigent.

A guard with a sallow face, a scarf around his neck and an Uzi strapped over his shoulder let them in. He looked eighteen
at most. Another guard stamped their hands with red ink insignias, like a nightclub bouncer. The guard with the Uzi walked
them through a yellow-walled office area and told them to wait. The madhouse racket of the prison yard reverberated off tiled
floors and cement walls: shouts, children laughing, Vicente Fernández crooning, construction hammers pounding, the bark of
a good-sized dog, and three small explosions that Méndez assumed were firecrackers because nobody paid any attention.

Wrapped in a multicolored shawl, Araceli Aguirre stamped her high heels on the tile. Méndez couldn’t tell if she was reacting
to the cold or the anticipation. She leaned against him with a giggle and whispered, “We might as well just move my office
into the prison, we spend so much time here. This is a human rights apocalypse.”

The deputy warden led them down a hallway. The noise got louder. In the watch commander’s office, two guards studied a bank
of video monitors. A third stood by a sliding gate with a shotgun across his chest. The chunky, shaven-headed watch commander
slumped behind a desk, blowing listlessly into an empty paper cup. He glanced at them, unimpressed. He nodded at the guard
with the shotgun, who unlocked the gate.

The prison yard was reached through a cage filled with relatives, lawyers and other visitors, the red stamps on their hands
distinguishing them from the inmates, who were also in civilian dress, on the other side of the chain-link fence. Méndez’s
expeditionary force advanced to a second gate. They were met by a lanky inmate in a San Diego Padres cap and a leather coat.
Méndez recognized him as a former state police detective whom the Diogenes Group had arrested along with the Colonel.

“Rico, you probably remember Licenciado Méndez,” Aguirre
said without a trace of irony, as if they had run into each other in a supermarket. “Shall we?”

Four grim-faced prison guards led the way. Whenever Méndez entered the yard, he felt as if he were stepping into a hallucination.
It resembled the plaza of a bustling and thuggish village. A basketball court was surrounded by two-story blocks of housing
called
carracas
with spiral staircases leading to outdoor catwalks. The walls were painted in green, orange and maroon and decorated by murals
of historical figures, religious images, zoot-suited pachucos, Aztec monarchs, Border Patrol helicopters swooping over figures
running through canyons. Most of the buildings were occupied on the ground floors by ramshackle businesses with hand-painted
signs: restaurants, grocery stores, a barbershop.

Years earlier, the prison administration had found itself overwhelmed by an excess inmate population of migrants from all
over Mexico. Politics had made the federal government disinclined to lend a hand; the opposition party was strong in Baja,
so the mess at the prison had been a perennial weapon for the ruling party of that era. The authorities decided to let the
inmates fend for themselves. The inmates created their own businesses and mafias, built their own homes—townhouses that sold
for forty thousand dollars, cubicles that sold for two hundred. A microsociety blossomed within the walls. At night, the guards
only dared to venture into the internal “streets” the way the police entered the toughest
colonias
of the city outside: in platoons and girded for combat.

It took longer than Méndez had hoped to get to the Colonel. The Saturday crowd was thick with strolling families, timid backcountry
migrants, tattered heroin addicts who prowled and scratched and hustled. The phalanx of VIPs caused a commotion. A human whirlpool
encircled the human rights commissioner. The inmates shouted her name or simply “Doctora.” They jostled close to shake her
hand, appeal for help, steal a moment of her time.

Méndez realized that Aguirre was not going to brush them off. She was unruffled by the size and noise of the swarm. She inched
forward, the shawl draped over her willowy long-backed frame. She hoisted and inspected a toddler with a respiratory disease.
She nodded gravely at the semicoherent patter of a bleary-eyed convict on crutches who wore multiple vests, a watch cap and
an Artful Dodger overcoat that looked as if he slept in it. Aguirre was doing her job.