The Queen of the South by Arturo Pérez-Reverte Page B

in. It's all about reputation, and respect. Like piranhas. You go chicken or bleed, the others are all over you. You make a pact with life and death: so many years as a king, and then . . . Say what you will, dirty money spends as green as clean. Plus, it gives you luxuries, music, wine, and women. Then you die fast, and rest in peace. Not many narcos retire, and the natural way out is jail or the cemetery. Cases of really lucky guys, or really smart ones who get off the horse in time, like Epifanio Vargas, are rare. People here don't trust anybody that's been too long in the business and is still active."
    "Active?"
    "Alive."
    He let me chew on that for three seconds. "They say," he went on then, "those who are in that line of business"—he stressed the third-person, distant aspect of all this—"that even if you're good at your business and you're straight with people—no funny stuff, you know—you come to a bad end. You come, slide in easy, you're preferred for some reason over others, you move up before you even know it, and then the competitors come after you. That's why any false step, you pay. Plus, the more people you care about, the more vulnerable you are. Take the case of that other famous gringo, corridos and the whole thing, Hector Palma. The story goes that he and a former associate of his had a falling-out, so this former associate of his kidnapped and tortured his family. So they say, you understand. And on his birthday this former associate sends him a box with his wife's head in it. Happy birthday—to—you.
    "Living on the edge like that, nobody can afford to forget the rules. It was the rules that took Güero down. He was a good guy, I give you my word. A fine fellow to work with, that compa. Brave—the type who'll risk his soul and die wherever he's supposed to die. A little talkative, you know, and ambitious, but not much different from the best we've got around here. I don't know if you understand that. But as for Teresa Mendoza, she was his woman, and innocent or not, the rules went for her, too."
    Santa Virgencita. Santo Patron. The little Malverde Chapel was in shadow. A single light glowed in the portico, whose doors were open night and day, and through the windows filtered the reddish flicker of four or five candles lighted before the altar. Teresa had been sitting motionless in the dark a long time, hidden by the wall between Avenida Insurgentes—deserted at this hour—and the railroad tracks and the canal. She tried to pray, but couldn't; other things occupied her mind.
    It had taken her a long time to decide whether to make the phone call. Calculate the possibilities. Then she'd walked here, watching her surroundings carefully, and now she was waiting, a lighted cigarette cupped in her hand. Half an hour, don Epifanio had said. Teresa had forgotten her watch, so she had no way to know how much time had passed.
    She got a hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach, and she hurried to stub out the cigarette when a patrol car passed by slowly, headed toward Zapata: silhouettes of two cops in the front seats, the face of the one on the right slightly illuminated, seen and not seen, by the light on the porch of the chapel. Teresa scooted back, seeking more darkness. It wasn't just that she was outside the law. In Sinaloa, as in the rest of Mexico, from the patrolman looking to get his back scratched—wearing his jacket zipped up so you couldn't see his badge number—to his superior who received a stack of bills every month from the narcomafia, crossing paths with the law could often mean stepping into the lion's den.
    That useless prayer that never ended. Santa Virgencita. Santo Patron. She'd started it six or seven times, and never finished. The chapel to the bandido Malverde brought back too many memories linked to Güero Dávila. That may have been why when don Epifanio Vargas agreed over the phone to the meeting, she named this place almost without thinking. At first don Epifanio had