Keller doesn't say what else he's thinking.

That the Contreras operation wasn't a successful arrest.

It was a botched execution.

2.

Los Negros

Leave by the Gulf Road In the gray dawn.

-James McMurtry "The Gulf Road"

Nuevo Laredo 2006.

When Eddie Ruiz thinks back, he likes to think about Friday nights.

Friday night lights, baby.

Under a satin Texas sky.

The crowd chanting his name, the cheerleaders creaming for him under those short skirts, the sweet sharp adrenaline rush of sticking a QB under his pads and driving the bitch into the Texas turf.

Laredo Uni High.

(Just across the river, but a million miles away. Just eight years ago but an eon since they were division champs.) Eddie loved to hear the QB's grunt of pain, feel the air go out of him, and with it the heart and the will. Take away his breath, you take away his legs, his arm, his game.

And you hear your name.

Eddie, Eddie, Eddie.

He misses it.

Good times.

Good times.

Friday nights.

Now he sits in Freddy's, a place where they know Eddie well, unless a stranger comes asking for him, in which case they don't.

Nuevo Laredo, Eddie thinks, "Narco Laredo," "the NL," "the 867," call it what you want.

Just a bridge-well, three bridges, four if you count the rail bridge-from Laredo, Texas. But definitely Mexico, in a thin finger of Tamaulipas state that sticks up like Tamaulipas giving Chihuahua the bird.

Some people call it the Parrot's Beak, but Eddie thinks that's stupid.

What are we, pirates?

Who has a parrot anymore?

Anyway, he's been coming to the 867 all his life. As a kid to visit cousins, as a teenager after games on Friday nights to drink beer and get loaded and party. Popped his cherry with a whore in Boy's Town (shit, who didn't?), and he brought Teresa to a hotel down here where she (finally) gave it up to him, where he (finally) got under that sweet short cheerleader skirt and pulled down those panties and got into her and it doesn't seem possible they've been married for coming on seven years now.

Seven years and two kids.

How did that happen?

And he was driving home from the 876 when that other thing happened.

He was eighteen, in what should have been his sweet senior year, and he swerved his pickup onto the wrong side of the road head-on into that middle-school teacher's Honda.

The teacher died.

They charged Eddie with negligent homicide, but the charges got dropped and he was back at practice when two-a-days started, and it was after that he started dealing weed.

A shrink could call that a "causal relationship," but the shrink would be wrong.

It was an accident, that's all.

An accident is an accident, nothing to feel guilty about.

Eddie, Eddie, Eddie.

No one stopped cheering when he drilled the QB or came up on the run and stuck his man.

Eddie likes to think about that.

He looks sharp now. Eddie never could stand that norteo look-the cowboy boots, the hats, the belt buckles big as a baby's ass. For one thing, you looked like a tool, for another thing, you might as well take an ad out that you were a narco.

Eddie likes to keep it tight, clean, under the radar.

He wears polo shirts and nice slacks, makes his crew dress nice, too. Some of the norteo types don't like it, give him shit about it, are always busting his balls that he looks like a fag, but fuck them.

And he's sober and straight.

No drinking, no doping on the job.

One of Eddie's rules.

You want to get high on your own time, that's your business-but do not make it mine.

And Eddie don't drive an SUV, either. Used to have that cliche black Cherokee with tinted windows, but then he grew up. Now he drives a Nissan Sentra. Less conspicuous and it gets great mileage. He tells his guys, you change the oil in a Nissan, you just can't kill it. You'll die before that car will.

Used to have a pickup, of course, back in Texas.

When Eddie's mom was drinking, which was like when she was awake, Eddie used to drive out to the ranches at night, rope a couple of steers, and then go sell them like old-time rustlers. Then take the money and cross the river to the 867 for some brews and some girls.

Good times.

Now he looks at his watch because he don't want to keep Chacho waiting.

Chacho Garca has been his supplier for years, even before a U.S. federal indictment sent Eddie across the International Bridge for good. Seven hundred pounds of weed shipped to Houston-business as usual, except Eddie had a snitch in his crew, so he had to put the Nuevo in the Laredo and cross the river to the other side, as the Boss might say.

The Rio Grande if you're a yanqui, the Ro Bravo if you're looking at it from the Mexican side.

Eddie has been a full-time resident of the 867 for what, six years now, and it's worked out pretty good. He graduated from weed to coke and now he ships two tons a month, most of it to Memphis and Atlanta. That's a lot of blow and a lot of dough, so he don't mind that he has to buy through Chacho and pay him $60K a month in piso.

You ship two tons of coke a month, $60K isn't chicken feed, it's chicken shit. Chacho keeps it cheap because he has about twenty "Los Chachos" buying his coke and paying his piso, so he's raking it in without ever touching the drugs.

The Garca family had been in the smuggling business here since the product was whiskey, so Eddie figures it's Chacho's due, his inheritance. Besides, most of the piso goes to paying off customs agents so the trucks can roll across the World Trade International Bridge ("Commercial Trade Only"-well, there's no shit) and onto the old 35.

Anyway, over the years him and Chacho have become cuates-buddies. It was Chacho who gave him a warm welcome to the 867 when he really didn't have to, Chacho who took him around, introduced him, provided a pocho with a layer of protection from the locals.

Chacho is his best friend, maybe his only real friend in Mexico.

Eddie Ruiz is twenty-six and a freaking millionaire.

His dad wanted him to go to college, even offered to pay for it, which for Eddie's old man was a big deal, but Eddie had basically said, "I'm good, Pops."

He was shipping weed in 120-pound lots, so the thought of sitting in class taking Accounting 101 or Introduction to Shakespeare seemed counterproductive.

Pops was an engineer, had him a good-paying job, a house in the burbs, a nice car, so Eddie wasn't one of those cholos who grew up in the barrio. He was a middle-class kid who went to a good school and played football with other chicanos and with white kids, so he had none of the usual excuses to start dealing dope.

Eddie didn't need an excuse-he had a reason.

It made money.

("With my mind on my money and my money on my mind.") Four years of college would have just put him behind.

You want to live the high life, man, be a high school football star in Texas. Be a good-looking blond chicano kid with blue eyes and a killer smile, have a blond, blue-eyed drop-dead gorgeous chicana on your arm, and you're going to know what the view is like from the top of the world.

That's why he started dealing dope, you want to know the truth.

At five foot ten, 210, he knew he wasn't going Division I, at least not at a Texas school, so what was the point in going at all? Be a second-stringer in some I-AA in Ditchweed, Iowa?

No thanks.

You get used to the penthouse, you don't want to move to the third floor. You want to keep your view after the Friday night lights go out, there are only two things that can keep you there- Division I or- Money.

Maybe money can't buy happiness, but it can rent it for a long time. Now Eddie has $60K of happiness in a briefcase, and he walks out of Freddy's to his Nissan to deliver it to Chacho.

Except he don't.

Because when he gets to the sidewalk three guys stick guns in his grill, hustle him to a black Suburban, and shove him into the backseat. Two of the guys get in on either side of him, the other gets in the front passenger seat, and the driver pulls out.

Eddie knows the guy sitting beside him.

Mario Soto.

The Soto family have had a piece of Laredo as long as the Garcas have. They worked it out a long time ago-Los Chachos had the East, Los Sotos the West. Plenty for everybody, everybody got along.

Eddie's partied with Mario on many occasions.

Good times.

Mario don't look like he's in a party mood right now.

He looks jacked up.

Eddie don't know the other guy in the backseat-big head, long hair, and, seriously, a hand grenade hung like a chain around his neck-which can't be good news.

The driver is squat and thick-looks like a linebacker.

The guy in the front passenger seat looks like a hawk-with a hawk's hooked beak and a hawk's sharp, observant eyes. Thick, jet-black hair, movie-star handsome. He turns around, looks at Mario, and says, "Tell him."

"Tell me what?" Eddie asks.

"You don't pay Chacho anymore," Mario says. "You pay the CDG."

"The fuck, Mario? Laredo ain't Gulf territory," Eddie says.

"It is now," Mario says.

Christ on a pogo stick, Eddie thinks. If Los Sotos have gone with the Gulf cartel...

"You're a pocho, right?" Movie Star says. "A North American?"

"So?"

"Your life doesn't change," Movie Star says. "You can do business as usual. The only difference is that you'll pay Mario instead of Chacho."

Oh, that's the only thing? Eddie thinks.

That's a big freakin' thing.

"That sixty thousand you have in the briefcase," Movie Star says, "belongs to us. Osiel Contreras wants you to know that he appreciates your loyalty in his time of current trouble and assures you of his protection."