The Cartel: A Novel Read online

  She never had the chance to decide.

  The federales arrested her as she was walking into the terminal.

  So she could truthfully tell Jorge that the police seized his money. They made a big show in front of the news cameras over the seizure of $1.5 million and the arrest of a “major money launderer for the Colombian cartels.”

  The media loved it.

  They plastered Magda’s mug shots all over the front pages and television with split-screen images of her under arrest and her standing on the stage in her tiara. News announcers shook their heads and tcch’d cautionary, let-this-be-a-lesson tales for other young women tempted by the narco-world of “glitz and glamour.”

  Even some American papers picked it up, with headlines reading BEAUTY AND THE BUST. Or, in the tabloid version, THE BUST AND THE BUST.

  Magda was less amused, although her police interrogations were ridiculous. The focus of the federales’ questions was not so much on what she was doing taking $5 million in cash through Benito Juárez Airport, but what she was doing taking $5 million in cash through Benito Juárez Airport without paying them first.

  She admitted that it was a naïve mistake, that she should have known better, and if she had it to do over again—that is, if they gave her the chance to do it over again—she would certainly do so.

  That led directly to the next round of questions—did she, in fact, have any more money?

  She didn’t.

  Magda had a few thousand in the bank, some jewelry on her fingers and around her neck and a little more in a safe-deposit box in Culiacán, but that was about it. But hadn’t they made enough from her already, stealing three and a half million dollars?

  As it turned out—no.

  They did let her try to call Jorge to see if something could be arranged, but he didn’t answer his phone and appeared to have gone on an extended trip to Southeast Asia.

  That was bad luck, the federales commiserated.

  Bad luck for them, worse luck for her, and she ended up getting charged, and convicted, of multiple counts of money laundering, advising and abetting a drug kingpin, and narcotics trafficking.

  The magistrate sentenced her to fifteen years in maximum security.

  As an example to other young women.

  Her processing into CEFERESO II was brutal.

  Of the five hundred inmates of the prison block, three of them are women, so Magda was a novelty to begin with, never mind being a (former) beauty queen. She was stripped, “internally searched” numerous times for contraband, scrubbed with disinfectant, and then hosed down. She was poked, prodded, felt up, patted down, hit on, and told over and over again about the multiple gang rapes that awaited her inside, both from guards and from inmates. By the time they carted her to COC, clad in male sweat clothes, she was almost catatonic with shock and terror.

  The other convicts hooted “compliments” and threats as the guards walked her to COC.

  This is when Adán sees her.

  —

  “Who is she?” Adán asks Francisco, the head of Los Bateadores and his personal bodyguard.

  “The dedo was Miss Culiacán,” Francisco says. “A few years back.”

  She certainly doesn’t look like a beauty queen at the moment. No makeup, her hair dirty and stringy, her body disguised in the oversized sweatsuit, shuffling along the corridor with her ankles bound.

  But Adán sees her eyes.

  Blue as a Sinaloan mountain lake.

  And the classic bones of her face.

  “What’s her name?” Adán asks.

  “Magda something,” Francisco answers. “I don’t remember her last name.”

  “Find out,” Adán says. “Find out everything about her and get back to me tonight. In the meantime, make sure they give her a blanket. And have a doctor attend her. And not one of the prison butchers—a real doctor.”

  “Sí, patrón.”

  “And no one touches her,” Adán says.

  The word—greatly disappointing as there have already been knives out over who gets to rape her first—goes out: Any part of you that touches her gets the chop. You touch her with your hand, you lose the hand. You violate her with your dick…

  She’s the patrón’s woman.

  —

  Everyone knows this but Magda.

  When the blanket arrives, from a guard who seems uneasy even being in her presence, she thinks it’s normal. Same when a respectful woman doctor comes into the cell and asks to examine her. The doctor gives her a mild sedative to help her sleep and says she’ll call back to check up on her.

  At first Magda is afraid to close her eyes for fear of the threatened rape, but the sedative takes hold and, anyway, a guard posts himself outside her cell with his back to her, his eyes never on her.

  She starts to suspect that she’s receiving special treatment when breakfast comes on a tray and it’s actually edible, but she attributes it to her celebrity.

  Two days later a guard comes in with a set of new and quite decent clothing—two dresses, some blouses and skirts, some pants, a nice sweater—with labels from chic Guadalajara shops. Magda asks the guard who sent these things and gets just a shrug in response. The clothes are in her sizes, and Magda wonders if her family got them in, or maybe Jorge did it.

  She hasn’t heard from him, nor from her family, but the prison shrink also told her that she’d be held incommunicado in COC, so perhaps there are phone calls or messages waiting for her.

  The clothes make her feel a little better, but she can’t shrug off the profound depression, imagining even a few months in this place, never mind fifteen years. She expresses this at her first evaluation with the prison psychiatrist, who insists that the door remain open and sits behind his desk as if it’s a barrier.

  He tells her that these feelings are perfectly normal, that she’ll adjust, especially when she’s out of COC and integrated into the general population. But Magda can’t imagine how that could even happen in a place with thousands of men, and wonders if they’ll put her in a cell with the two other women, and doesn’t know if that would be a good or a bad thing.

  Cosmetics arrive the next day. Expensive makeup, exactly the kind she normally uses, with a small hand mirror. At the bottom of the box she finds a note—“Courtesies of a fellow Sinaloan.”

  So much for Jorge.

  But who is it?

  Magda is not stupid.

  She knows the narco-world and its players. There are dozens of Sinaloans in Puente Grande, but maybe a handful with the means to pull off the sort of privileges she’s experiencing. Like most Sinaloans in the business, she knows that Adán Barrera, the former Señor de los Cielos, is a resident here.

  Could it be?

  Step away from yourself, she thinks, looking into the mirror as she applies the makeup, such a simple thing that is now a great pleasure. He’s Adán Barrera—he could bring in the most beautiful women in the world if he pleased.

  What would he want with me?

  Magda makes a frank self-assessment—she’s still beautiful, but closer to thirty than to twenty. Women her age back in Sinaloa are considered old maids.

  But three afternoons later, a bottle of good Merlot arrives with a glass, a corkscrew, and another note: “A few friends and I are having a ‘movie night’ and I wonder if you’d like to come as my guest. Adán Barrera.”

  Magda has to laugh.

  Inside the most brutal prison in the Western world, the man is courting her as if they’re high school students.

  He’s asking for a date.

  To “movie night.”

  She laughs even harder when she realizes what else she’s thinking—oh, God, what should I wear?

  The guard stands there, clearly waiting for an answer.

  Magda hesitates—is this just a setup for a gang rape?

  If it is, it is, she decides. She has to take the chance, because she knows that she can’t survive fifteen years in this place as a “normal” inmate.

  “T
ell him I’d love to,” Magda says.

  —

  What first strikes Magda about Adán Barrera is how shy he is.

  Not a quality you usually see in a buchone.

  His entire affect is subdued, from the tone of his voice to his clothes—tonight a black Hugo Boss suit with a white shirt.

  Adán’s a little shorter than she is; there are a few flecks of silver in the temples of his black hair. He smiles shyly and then looks down as he shakes her hand and says, “I’m so glad you came. I’m Adán Barrera.”

  “Of course,” she says. “Everyone knows who you are. I’m Magda Beltrán.”

  “Everyone knows who you are.”

  Adán notices the wine bottle and glass in her left hand. “You didn’t like the wine? I’m sorry.”

  “No,” Magda says. “I just didn’t want to drink it alone. I thought it would be more fun if we drank it together.”

  She’d decided on one of the blue dresses that he sent. At first she went with the sweater and slacks as appropriate for a “movie night,” then decided that he’d sent dresses for a reason, and didn’t want to disappoint him.

  Adán walks her to the front of five rows of folding chairs that have been set in front of a large-screen television. She notices that their whole row is empty, but that the others are filled with inmates who try to look at her without staring. Other inmates stand by the door of the dining hall, clearly on guard.

  Adán pulls out a chair for her, she sits down, and he sits beside her. “I hope you like Miss Congeniality. Sandra Bullock?”

  “I like her,” Magda says. “It’s about a beauty pageant contestant, isn’t it?”

  “I thought…”

  “That’s very considerate of you.”

  “Would you like something? Popcorn?”

  “Popcorn and red wine?” Magda asks. “Well, why not?”

  Adán nods to an inmate, who hustles to a popcorn machine and comes back with two bowls. Another inmate hands Adán a corkscrew and another glass.

  He opens the bottle and pours. “I know nothing about wine. It’s supposed to be good.”

  She rolls the glass and sniffs. “It is.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “Do I have you to thank for the clothes?” she asks. “The cosmetics?”

  Adán dips his head in a slight acknowledgment.

  “And my safety?” she asks.

  He nods again. “Nobody will touch you in here unless you want him to.”

  Does that include you? she wonders.

  “Well, I’m very grateful for your protection,” Magda says. “But may I ask why you’re being so generous?”

  “We Sinaloans have to look out for each other,” Adán answers. He nods to an inmate and the movie starts.

  —

  She doesn’t go to bed with him that night.

  Or the next, or the next.

  But Magda knows that it’s an inevitability. She needs and wants his protection, she needs and wants the things he can give her. It’s no different in here than out in the rest of the world, but it’s entirely different in the sense that he is her only choice.

  Magda wants and needs affection, companionship—admit it, she tells herself, sex—and he is the only choice. She knows that he will never accept anyone else having her. It would be not only a rejection and a disappointment, but a humiliation.

  Magda has been around enough to know that a man in Adán Barrera’s situation cannot allow himself to be humiliated. It could be literally fatal—if you’re humiliated, it’s because you’re weak. If you’re weak, you’re a target.

  So if she wants a man, it has to be Adán.

  And why not?

  True, Adán’s older and not beautiful like Emilio or handsome like Jorge, but he’s kind of cute and not at all repulsive like some of the older bosses she’s seen. He’s nice, he’s polite, he’s considerate. He dresses well, he’s smart, interesting, and well-spoken.

  And he’s rich.

  Adán can provide her with a life in this prison vastly better than she could otherwise have. With him, she’s protected, privileged, and she has the “little” things that make life in this hellhole just tolerable.

  Without him, those things go away, along with—much more important—his protection. If he withdraws that, she knows that sexual assaults will quickly follow, and she’ll become a pass-around item among first the guards and then the prisoners.

  She sees it happening with the other two women.

  They have sex for liquor, food, and drugs. Especially drugs. One of the women looks catatonic most of the time, the other—clearly psychotic now—sits naked in her cell and displays her genitals to anyone who passes by.

  So Magda knows that it’s just a matter of time before she gives herself to Adán, and while she tells herself that it’s not rape, she’s also smart enough to know that it’s definitely a power relationship with her on the bottom.

  Adán has the power, so he can have her.

  They both know this, neither speaks it, and he doesn’t press things. But she knows that she can’t let it go on until it becomes a joke, until laughs and whispers go around the prison that she is making a fool of the lovesick patrón.

  If Adán ever heard one of those jokes, she knows her throat could be slit and her body tossed literally to the dogs.

  He would have to do it, to restore his honor.

  Magda has heard the stories about the woman who spurned Adán’s uncle and ended up with her head cut off and her children tossed to their deaths off a bridge. This man Adán, she reminds herself—this polite, shy man—threw two small children off a bridge.

  Or so the story goes.

  So when, after four “dates,” he asks her to dinner in his cell, they both know that the evening is going to end in his bed.

  —

  Adán looks across the table at Magda.

  “Are you enjoying your dinner?” he asks.

  “Yes, it’s good.”

  It should be, Adán thinks. The swordfish was specially flown in from Acapulco packed in ice. The wine should meet her approval. He knows all about Magda by now, of course, about her background, her youthful affair with the young cocaine trafficker; more important, her longer relationship with Jorge Estrada.

  The Colombian had made a foolish mistake in not paying Nacho to bring product in through the airport. It would have been a simple matter of setting up a meeting, paying a modest fee, and Nacho would have graciously offered the use of his turf.

  But Estrada was too arrogant or greedy to do that, and his willful disrespect had gotten his woman thrown into prison. Worse, he knew there was a problem, that’s why he sent her instead of doing it himself. Now it was too late—her case, like his own, was too high-profile for a quick, quiet fix.

  Magda is staring at him.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “A business distraction.”

  “Do I already bore you?” she asks, with the practiced, pretty pout of a pageant contestant.

  “Not at all.”

  “If there’s something you’d like to talk about…” She reaches across the table and touches his hand.

  It’s an intimate gesture. “Adán, I don’t want to wait anymore.”

  She stands up and walks to the partitioned area that comprises his bedroom. Turning her back to him, she starts to unzip her dress, but then stops, looks over her shoulder in a way that makes her neck long and elegant, and says, “Help, please?” because she knows that he wants to unwrap her like a gift.

  Adán steps behind her and pulls the zipper down, past her shoulder blades and the small of her back, then he leans in and kisses her neck.

  “If you do that,” Magda says, “I can’t stop you.”

  He keeps kissing her neck and then pushes the dress down below her shoulders and cups her breasts. Then he slides the dress over her hips and down her legs until it pools like water at her feet.

  She steps out of it and turns to him.

  “Turnabout is fair play,” she
says, unzipping his fly. “What do you like?”

  “Everything.”

  “That’s good,” Magda says, “because I do everything.”

  Her love with Emilio had been pure passion.

  Simple and direct.

  With Jorge had come more sophistication, and he taught her things in bed, things he liked, things that any man would like.

  Now she uses them all on Adán, because this cannot be, cannot be, a one-night stand after which he figures he’s had what he wanted and throws her back into the pool. He has to know that the whole sexual world is in her fingers, her mouth, her chocha, and that she could give him things no other woman can.

  But it’s also clear that he’s had some experience himself, because Adán knows his way around a woman’s body and isn’t selfish. Magda is surprised when she feels a climax building inside her, more surprised when she feels herself toppling over that waterfall, even more surprised that he’s still hard.

  When she looks at him curiously, he says, “I was always taught, ladies first.”

  There’s something in his eyes, this small superior glint, that makes her competitive with him, so she does something that she was going to save up for another time and she watches his eyes go wide, feels his breathing get hard, then hears him moan (you’re not distracted now, are you?), and she keeps him there for a moment and cranes her neck up so her mouth is by his ear and demands, “Say my name.”

  He doesn’t and she stops what she’s doing and feels him tremble.

  “Say my name.”

  “Magda.”

  She starts to move. “Say it again.”

  “Magda.”

  “Scream it.”

  “Magda!”

  She feels him come inside her.