The cartel war meant different things to different people. For some it brought problems, for others opportunity.
The American ambassador, Tony Garza, had no interest in criticizing the Mexican government, but he couldn’t shy away from speaking out when safety was at stake. The State Department warned Americans not to visit northern Mexico. “As friends and neighbors, we should be honest about the rapidly deteriorating situation along the border, and the near lawlessness in some parts,” Garza had said in a statement back in June 2005, after the Nuevo Laredo police chief was murdered on his first day in office.
As for Laredo, the mayor’s mandate was clear: deny. She insisted the war was not spilling over into her charming Texas town. Like a restaurant that advertised “Clean Food,” Laredo’s beleaguered tourism board would plaster “Laredo Is Safe” across buildings and billboards.
But not all bureaucrats and law enforcement officials in Laredo shared the same agenda. Laredo’s sheriff still warned that terrorists could arrive at any moment. The sheriff wasn’t stupid. Ever since 9/11, the word narco turned few heads in Washington. Narco-terrorism was a different matter. Local law enforcement used national security threats to argue for bigger budgets. Spillover violence, and the perception of chaos at the border, also gave political challengers an opportunity to criticize incumbents for their failure to maintain the peace. As for the journalistic community, reporters could always use a good story, and peacefulness didn’t create good stories.
For its part, the U.S. government was eager to minimize the spillover narrative. Unlike the state of Texas, which defined spillover as any cartel-related violence, regardless of the victim, the federal definition excluded “trafficker-on-trafficker” violence. This approach conveniently ignored, or glossed over, the reality that many traffickers involved in the spillover, such as Gabriel Cardona, were Americans. But the federal definition meant that most cartel violence in the United States could be categorized, at least at the federal level, as non-spillover.
At bottom, spillover violence, and how it was defined, came down to money. Which was why Laredo Chief of Police Agustin Dovalina was happy to expand his definition: it meant more money for his department. Between lieutenants, sergeants, patrol officers, investigators, and administrative people, Chief Dovalina had about five hundred employees spread among: drugs; crimes against property; auto theft; crimes against people (homicide, aggravated assault, armed robbery); sexual offenses (child abuse and child pornography; and adult crimes); and juvenile crimes.
Dovalina’s police force represented about 10 percent of all Webb County law enforcement, and competition among agencies for federal funding was fierce. At the municipal, county, and state levels, Dovalina competed with the Sheriff’s Department, the constables, the Alcoholic Beverage Commission, the Department of Public Safety, Food Stamps, and Child Protective Services. At the federal level, he had DEA, Border Patrol, Homeland Security, FBI, ATF, ICE, Justice, and the Internal Revenue Service.
Every year, in the spring, Chief Dovalina went to Washington, D.C., for the big national police conference. Upon arrival, he always visited the stingy bastards over in the Department of Justice, the ones in charge of doling out COPS grants—federal money allotted for local PDs under Community Oriented Policing Services. In reality, COPS grants never amounted to much; if Dovalina was lucky, one year of every four he came home with a pittance. He often felt shorted by the federal government. And even now, with violence on the rise, he didn’t feel the federal government gave him what he deserved.
So recently, when two of Dovalina’s PD underlings—a lieutenant in charge of the stolen-property division, and a sergeant assigned to the narcotics division—came to his office and said the Mexican Mafia wanted to launder money through its slot machine casinos, the maquinitas, by programming the slot machines to pay out above the legal limit of five dollars, Dovalina listened to the proposition. The Mexican Mafia would compensate the Laredo Police Department to look the other way, close down a competitor, and help keep the heat off.
Dovalina considered it; he wanted a new set of golf clubs. He agreed to the kickback scheme.
If Dovalina felt irreverent, it wasn’t only because he felt shorted on government funding. The cartel war gave Dovalina some power. His counterparts in Nuevo Laredo law enforcement came across the bridge seeking supplies such as body armor. “Of course,” Dovalina would say over lunch. And who knew? Maybe those supplies would reach crime-fighting cops in Nuevo Laredo. Probably not. But they would contribute to the war, a conflict about which Dovalina had few emotions, save that it was bad. One side or the other would win. His own battle would go on.
MIGUEL TREVIÑO’S BATTLE CONTINUED.
In church, he sat next to his mother and simmered. Mrs. Treviño knew her sons’ business and wept: Fito, her sweet boy who only loved to hunt, just twenty-six years old, had been sitting outside reading the newspaper when Sinaloan assassins shot him four times in the face, once in the chest, and once in each hand, then dumped his body by a swing in a park. The church in Valle Hermoso was sealed off for the closed-casket funeral.
Miguel’s little brother had been murdered, and Miguel was infuriated that the incident had been reported on TV. It was the ultimate disrespect from the press, whose activities Miguel financed. Miguel had applied Catorce’s management model to Nuevo Laredo, and put local crime journalists, from El Mañana to El Diario, on a pay schedule. But these journalistic relationships, Miguel learned, were always in flux. The Company offered the publisher of El Mañana, for instance, a deal: His newspaper would become their mouthpiece, and the publisher would agree to no longer investigate drug trafficking. The El Mañana publisher worried about the arrangement. Agreeing to be the Company’s mouthpiece was the same as signing his death sentence. If the Company didn’t kill him, the other side would. But the publisher was not stupid, and he agreed to the second condition. From then on, a Company spokesman would communicate, through a crime reporter, which stories about crime could run in the paper. Arrangements such as these worked, most of the time, but reporters were untrustworthy. They took money from the Company. Then they took money from the other side. And soon they became orejas, ears, carrying information back and forth between criminal groups.
In 2005, Miguel had had to make an example of Guadalupe “Lupita” Escamilla, a radio host who was supposed to make sure that certain news didn’t come out on the national level, which meant not reporting it at the local level. Lupita, it was rumored, had demanded a raise for her work as a Zeta mouthpiece, and tried to influence the Company by airing material contrary to its wishes. She was warned. She did it again. In January the Company put a few rounds of bullets in the side of her house. When that didn’t shut her up, the Company set her car on fire. In March, the final warning was given, and in April she was gone.
And now Miguel had to contend with this fucker from Televisa, Juaquín López-Dóriga, the famous TV news anchor in Nuevo Laredo. That morning, López-Dóriga reported that a man was reading a newspaper outside a café when he was killed. He didn’t say “Fito” on TV, but, to Miguel, it was the principle that mattered, the disrespect. López-Dóriga, Miguel had decided that morning, had to go. It hadn’t helped Miguel’s temper when he received a call from his ex-girlfriend Elsa Sepulveda, in which she taunted him for having lost his brother, and for killing the wrong guy in Laredo.
Now, at Fito’s funeral, sitting next to his mother, Miguel had second thoughts. Maybe it was his own love for his family, his wish to protect them from another loss. He also remembered a recent meeting in Monterrey, when he and Catorce and Lazcano met with the head of SIEDO—Mexico’s federal organized-crime unit. “Just keep the violence down,” the man had said, “and for godsakes keep it out of the news!”
If López-Dóriga, a high-profile TV anchor, died, it would not go unreported. No, it would go wide in the news. Miguel would catch a reprimand from Catorce and Lazcano, possibly a fatal one. The Chiefs already accused him of being too reactive.
Miguel hugged his mother, then got the attention of Meme Flores and shook his head: no.
Meme called Bart Reta and waved him off the job. Miguel accepted condolences, and headed back to work.
ON THE MEXICAN SIDE, WHERE Gabriel had been for most of January 2006, the Wolf Boys worked, and attended another Company party. Whereas Gabriel had once loathed doing jobs in Texas, he was now eager to get back. In the States, he was a more valued Company employee. In Mexico, he was just one of dozens of Wolf Boys willing to work.
At the Company party, in a raffle, Bart won a Mercedes C55 AMG, valued at $70,000. He gave it to Gabriel because Bart already had a bulletproof BMW M3, customized by the Company engineer.
Bart was being sent on big commission jobs, making a lot of money, and buying designer clothes and watches and video games by the bagful. He could only wear so much Valentino and Versace at one time; much of his booty went unused and unopened. He felt indebted to Gabriel for the older boy’s generosity in bringing him into this world. In a life where “home” was an abstract concept, a car was one’s biggest statement of identity. The Mercedes was a kind present, and an exceedingly difficult one for Gabriel to accept.
Their competitive relationship stretched back to their football days in Lazteca, when Bart was the tough little dude who loved to get tackled and Gabriel hoped to do the tackling. Their brief and brilliant trajectory, entailing large shifts in experience, was ripe for internal tension. How delicate was their system of reciprocity. How easily the Wolf Boys were irked when the unstated terms of their goodwill shifted beneath them.
Gabriel still felt he had the upper hand in his circle of Wolf Boys. He had more experience. He was the leader. But he also wondered: Why was Bart going on more missions with Miguel? Why was Bart making more money?
Money, in their world, was the strongest kind of power. One expressed that power through benevolence. On a personal and communal level, the powerful paid it forward. A cared-for constituency, a happy family: These ends justified the means. Gabriel made a weekly salary of $500, and earned about $10,000 per hit—sometimes more. He gave most of it to his brothers, Christina, his mother, aunts, and friends. He paid for everything at clubs. Having money to waste was the ultimate mark of success, and many needy enablers surrounded him.
His mother, La Gaby, made extra cash by buying used cars and having her second husband fix them at his garage. A couple of years earlier, gone on the roches and furious over being kicked out of the house after La Gaby found his prized Mini-14 rifle in the closet, Gabriel took a baseball bat to a Malibu she hoped to renovate and sell. But now, thanks to him, she could buy several used Malibus and fix them up. In middle school, Gabriel had felt unequal to the girls he liked because he couldn’t buy them things. Now he loved seeing Christina wear new clothes thanks to him, and his younger brothers enjoy luxuries like video games and snacks at school. He loved seeing his mother and aunts “out their gutter”—becoming debt-free—because of him. La Gaby made the usual squawks. Where did this come from? Leave that lifestyle! But she never turned the money down. That only happened in movies.
At one point in Gabriel’s young life, La Gaby had hopes for her second boy, as she did for all her boys. But each dream, one after the next, grew far-fetched, and a painful and familiar distance divided her from her sons. She knew the signs. They all did. La Gaby and her friends on Lincoln Street could forecast delinquency just as mothers on Park Avenue intuited Ivy League admission. A faded haircut was ominous, bald worse. It started with tattoos, sagging pants, staying out late at parties. La Gaby saw the woman down the block put a pool table in her driveway so the kids had somewhere to gather at night. Smart, she thought, and bought an old computer, hoping it would help keep her boys inside. A computer, she’d heard, was what kids needed to succeed nowadays. And still she wondered where her car went, where her son was. And still she found bullets and random gun parts in the closet.
The tumble from where he was to where he ended up was quick, the transformation almost instant: alternatives, boot camp, TYC. La Gaby shrugged, breathed. It was all she could do. What could she do? La Gaby’s new man was about to “throw” another twelve months behind bars on another trafficking case. IRS notices piled up; a final warning came: The younger boy sold his work papers to an immigrant.
She yelled loudly. She really did. But now Gabriel could give her in a week what she made in six months. The money was beyond what any brother, boyfriend, or husband ever generated from drugs, immigrants, or money laundering.
Gabriel stopped by the house in all-black clothes, staying only long enough to drink a glass of water, as if somebody was after him: “I’m a soldier, Mom.” He came back a month later, his body thickened by the weights: “I’m a commander, Mom.”
“A commander of what?” she said. “Someone’s going to come to the house and kill me because of you!”
“Here’s ten g’s. Rent a new house.”
“Dios te lo oiga,” she said—God will deal with you—and then pocketed the cash and backed away.
AS THE WINTER OF 2006 wore on, ambition consuming him, jealousy and suspicion began to take hold in Gabriel, in spite of (or because of) his power and status in the Company. He often stayed in hotels now, and Christina occasionally came to Mexico and stayed with him. A male classmate from United High kept calling the phone that Gabriel had given her. Each time the phone rang he grabbed her from behind, made her answer it, then took the phone away to hear what the guy said, then put it back to her ear and told her how to respond.
“Hola, Christina.”
“Hola.”
“Qué pasa?”
“Nada.”
“Tienes plans today?”
“Pienso que no.”
“Want to meet?”
“Porque?”
“To grab a bite to eat?”
“Comiendo o cojiendo?” Gabriel would have Christina ask. Eating or fucking? Because the words sounded the same. And then Gabriel ripped the phone away to hear the answer.
But if he was jealous over Christina, he was also distant from her. He followed the example of his Company elders by keeping Christina on the perimeter. He visited her when he could but excluded her from much of his life. He was busy. But he was also a thug, and there was nothing good for her about going out in public with his kind.
From her vantage, all Christina saw was love slipping away, a relationship reverting from serious to casual.
“Why haven’t I met your mom?” she asked.
“The house is old.”
“I don’t care. Take me.”
“But the paint is peeling.”
“Take me.”
Gabriel never took Christina to 207 Lincoln Street; Christina had only met his brothers. But he did frequently mention “mi padrino Cero Dos”—my godfather Zero Two—referring to the call sign for Meme Flores. To her, it was as if he wanted to impress her with his connections and be secretive at the same time.
Christina, nearly seventeen, tried to remain ignorant, as her own mother had done with regard to her father’s illicit activities. Gabriel had spent the previous summer in jail. But the specifics were unclear. He was the driver on the Bruno Orozco hit. Wences pulled the trigger. There was a rumor about what happened a few days before Orozco. Gabriel supposedly rang the doorbell of a Sinaloa-allied gangster named Pompoño, then shot Pompoño’s thirteen-year-old son by mistake. But people said lots of nonsense in Laredo.
Growing up among the churchgoing devout, Christina had been a vehicle of faith. Believe in a better life, and love unconditionally. But that vehicle was now parked on a steep incline. She was desperate for the affection and attention she never got from her own father. The world just disappeared when she was with her guy. Gabriel was gentle in bed, not rough. But sometimes he couldn’t get erect. He’d be “all downer,” and say: “Sorry love, a friend slipped something in my drink.” And when he said it a third time, and a fourth time, Christina thought: This one does pills. And so they’d just embrace until he had to run off again.
But during those brief interludes, as he sank into that droop-eyed haze, he confided private thoughts. “Soy un joto para matar,” he said. I’m a fag to kill. The pills weren’t just for recreation; they were necessary, and their necessity worried him. He loved the money and power. But was he a true Wolf Boy, a real Company man?
Yes, he still believed he was, and he would soon prove it.